Having seen the relationship between cymatics and sacred geometry, and how there are examples in ancient architecture and carvings of these same patterns being used as decoration or perhaps, symbolically, it can be deduced that our past ancestors had an understanding of these concepts that went far beyond the superficial.

From our modern, and fairly limited, perspective, it can be difficult for us to comprehend how past eras were able to grasp an understanding of cymatics without any access to modern technology, and so, we might think that it is just a coincidence. This can be a plausible explanation, of course, until we are faced with the enigma that is Rosslyn Chapel and its infamous music cypher.

The Rosslyn Chapel: A Potted History

Rosslyn Chapel (aka Collegiate Chapel of Saint Matthew) was founded by William St Clair (11th Baron of Rosslyn, 3rd Prince of Orkney), with a ground-breaking ceremony- celebrating the act of breaking consecrated ground on the first day of building- in the year 1446. Located in the village of Roslin in Midlothian, Scotland, it is a 15th century Episcopal (Christian denomination in Scotland) chapel that was dedicated to Saint Matthew the Evangelist. St Clair’s intention behind founding the church was to celebrate the Liturgy of the Hours across day and night and Catholic Masses. In this period, plainsong and polyphony were employed within the singing of the liturgy, for a rich and transcendental atmosphere.

Just over a hundred years after its establishment, Catholic worship within the chapel ceased due to the Scottish Reformation in 1560, with its altar destroyed in 1592. For around 250 years, until 1842, it lay abandoned, gradually becoming more and more ruined and overgrown. It was Queen Victoria who, after visiting it, decided it was worth preserving. In 1862, it was restored by the Scottish architect, David Bryce on the authority of James Alexander (3rd Earl of Rosslyn), leading to the chapel being rededicated on the 22nd April 1862 and resuming regular Sunday services.

The Knights Templar & Freemasonry

Not to dive deeply into this topic since I am definitely no expert, from what I can find, The Knights Templar were “a secret society believed to have formed in the early twelfth century. The Knights had sought refuge in Scotland, which was primarily controlled by their allies, the Freemasons.” (Horowitz, ed. 2007) According to [Masonic Order members Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas], “From the completion of Rosslyn Chapel (in southern Scotland in 1486) to the official opening of the Grand Lodge of England on 24th June 1717, the Freemasons evolved from the Templar Order.” (Horowitz, ed. 2007). It is believed that the Rosslyn Chapel was in fact built by the Freemasons, which of course had roots in the medieval guilds of stonemasons.

It is believed that the intricate carvings within the chapel are essentially cymatics patterns carved into the stone. And for the original 15th century craftsmen who designed and built the chapel to have understood cymatics patterns, let alone the exact pattern related to each musical note, enough to then carve a whole piece of music within the chapel’s walls, is what is so intriguing. It is said that the motif present throughout the chapel is known as the ‘Music of the Spheres’, and is “cited as evidence of the Templars’ advanced knowledge of sacred geometry and their guardianship of ancient secrets.”

“It is what we could call ‘frozen music’, a little like cryogenics. The music has been frozen in time by symbolism. It was only a matter of time before the symbolism began to ‘thaw out’ and begin to make sense to scientific and musical perception”

— Thomas Mitchell

Interestingly, an Ouroboros was found carved on the Apprentice Pillar within the Rosslyn Chapel. An Ouroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a snake in a circular formation eating its own tail. It represents infinity, eternity, renewal, the perpetual cycle of life. It is supposedly a symbol that is utilised by the Knight’s Templar and Freemasons, for example it is said to appear on the front cover of the ‘Constitution of the Ancient Order of Oriental Templars’. Therefore, its appearance within the chapel might further link these orders or societies with the origin of the building itself. You can read more about the symbolism of the Ouroboros here.

Lastly, it is speculated that the reason that the tune was encrypted within this 15th century chapel outside of Edinburgh was because knowledge of music may have been considered heretical at the time, which is likely true due to the power of the Catholic Church at the time. However, if the carvings are truly related to esoteric knowledge held and protected by secret societies, such as the Knight’s Templar and the Freemasons, would it not have been in their interest to find a way to ‘hide it in plain sight’, as a way to keep their secret a secret from the uninitiated but reveal it to those who are welcomed into the fold.

I am not saying that is what was definitely going on, but one thing for sure is these types of societies love symbolism and they love to leave their mark on anything and everything related to them. The arrogance of wanting to be seen, but in a way that people do not understand. It is giving ‘we know something you don’t’ energy, which is pretty lame. It isn’t that difficult to know something and not tell people about it. But to take 40 years to build a chapel laced with ‘these secrets’ as a way to reveal them without revealing them is intense to say the least.

And with that rant over…

Let’s move on!

The Music of The Cubes

*Angel musicians playing ‘drum-like tabor’ and bagpipes.*

Inside, the chapel is heavily decorated with ornate carvings and designs throughout its interior. An incredibly interesting feature are the 213 cubes and 13 angel musicians that protrude from the 14 pillars and 12 pointed arches in the ceiling, decorated with a selection of patterns. Some of the pillars have specific names, including the Master Pillar, the Journeyman Pillar, and most notably, the Apprentice Pillar. It is said that some of the cubes were replaced during the restoration in the 19th century due to damage, so we can only suppose that the replacements share the same patterns as the original design.

Also, it is believed that originally there were 215 cubes, with two of them having been broken off at some point in the last several centuries, though it is unknown how or why. Nevertheless, some theorise that there should have been 216 cubes, since 216 is a far more significant and symbolic number. Numerologically speaking it reduces down to the number 9, which is a symbol of completion and is also the cube of 6 aka Plato’s number and a result of a Pythagorean Triple (a sum of three cubes). Considering it is the ‘music of the cubes’ that we are analysing, having the number of cubes also being related to the notion of cubes in a mathematical way is pretty neat, but at this point it can only be supposed.

It was the father-son team of Thomas and Stuart Mitchell who recognised that the patterns carved into these cubes were reminiscent of the patterns found in cymatics. In 2007, Thomas Mitchell, 75, a music teacher and RAF veteran of the Korean War and his son Stuart Mitchell, 41, a pianist and composer, released the culmination of what had been 27 years of research into the musical significance of many of the carvings featured within the Rosslyn Chapel.

Intrigued by the ‘sculpted angels and hundreds of intricately carved cubes in the arches of the Lady Chapel’, it was Thomas Mitchell who initially recognised that these patterns and carvings related to music, more specifically the frequencies of musical notes (cymatics). He noticed that “many angels were carrying musical instruments and some were even grouped as if they were a choir. But one angel gave [him] the biggest problem. He was carrying something and at first [Thomas] thought it was a musical instrument which had been lost in the mists of time. It was only when [Thomas] realized that he was carrying a musical stave, the blueprint for all musical composition, that [he] knew [he] was looking at a secretly coded piece of music.”

Looking at the angel, Thomas noticed that three of its fingers were pointing to specific positions on the stave, the positions relating to the notes B,C, & A (see image above) —> A, B, C. Then, he and Stuart deduced that the notes related to the cymatic-like patterns on the blocks above the angel’s head. Subsequently, having tested this theory using their own Chladni plate, they discovered that the patterns on the cubes complemented the patterns created using cymatics when the plate was vibrating at the frequencies of the notes pointed to by the sculpted angel. Essentially, the angel was revealing which notes the cymatics patterns on the cubes above his head resembled.

Uncovering The Music

With a lifetime of knowledge of classical music and the skills and experience from being an RAF code-breaker, Thomas and Stuart “[recreated] the patterns on each of the carved cubes… [unlocking] the notes to find a haunting piece of music had been hidden in the arches for centuries. For the choral sections, [they’ve] used the words from the hymns to St John the Baptist taken from Matthew in the Old Testament which is fitting because the chapel itself is dedicated to St Matthew." Here it is worth noting that St Matthew seems to be another ‘symbol’ that often utilised by the Freemasons, with many other examples of their lodges being named after him. It seems to be something to do with the mathematical themes believed to be hidden within the gospel of Matthew.

Believing that with each cube representing a note or chord that the pillars could therefore provide a complete musical score, the Mitchell duo speculated that if the hidden music was accurately discovered and performed under the “right acoustic conditions, the chapel would resonate with the sacred harmonies of the universe.” (Michael Daly) When recording the music they discovered, they “used authentic mediaeval instruments”, in an effort recreate the music as closely as they could to what they could imagine the original intention to be.

Stuart Mitchell explained that “The piece begins with an augmented fourth, a leap in the ceiling’s design. This interval of seven semitones was prohibited in medieval music by the Catholic Church, as it was considered unsettling and thus diabolical. It’s possible that St Clair, the chapel’s founder, was challenging the church’s authority.” This augmented fourth interval, also known as a tritone which spans 6 semitones, is nicknamed the Devil’s Chord due to its dissonant sound, instability, and sense of unease. According to Mitchell, the music they discovered sounds more like a blend of Celtic tunes, and music more associated with secular or Christian worship that is not related to Catholicism.

It is evident that, in history, the Catholic Church did not approve of the Freemasons, which may be which these types of societies remained secret, particularly in Scotland, who remained a staunchly Catholic country until the Scottish Reformation of 1560, which I discussed briefly earlier in this article. As the Rosslyn Chapel was built the best part of a century prior to this date, it can be assumed that their secrecy was, in part, to continue their ‘operations’ under Catholic noses, which could be seen as quite darkly humorous considering that it was Catholic worship that was help within the chapel until the date of the Reformation.

“[The] Rosslyn Chapel holds a musical mystery in its architecture and design. At one end of the chapel, on the ceiling are 4 cross-sections of arches containing elaborate symbolic designs on each array of cubes (in actual fact they are rectangles mostly). The ‘cubes’ are attached to the arches in a musically sequential way. And to confirm this, at the ends of each arch there is an angel playing a musical instrument of a different kind. After 27 years of study and research by [Stuart’s father Thomas J. Mitchell], we believe he has found the pitches and tonality that match the symbols on each cube, revealing its melodic and harmonic progressions.”

— Stuart Mitchell

The Significance of the Hexagon

Thomas and Stuart found that is wasn’t just the cubes and the angels that were significant within the chapel carvings, but also the shape of a hexagon.

Shortly before the first performance of The Rosslyn Motet, Stuart Mitchell was contacted by a Mexican astronomer (who this astronomer was is a bit of a mystery) who informed of him that the same hexagonal shape could be found on the planet of Saturn. Stuart affirmed that "the shape matches right down to the detail. [It] represents the B natural pattern in our code, and that is the first note of the Rosslyn Motet. Now we are starting to see that these symbols that everybody found so magical and unique are around us in a vast way. What we are seeing on our plane of existence we can now also see on a cosmic scale. It is one of the most amazing developments in this story. If the geometric figure in Rosslyn Chapel is produced by the same principles as is happening on Saturn - vibration and sound - then Saturn is literally singing a piece of music to us."

Music Cube — B natural — Cymatics — Saturn

Final Thoughts

There is no doubt that this is quite an acute conspiratorial subject that is not for the faint hearted. Most people might read this and think… absolutely not. To be honest, throughout my research, I have come across a lot of other people who have dipped their toe into this world and have completely rejected the whole notion that this 15th century Scottish chapel has music carved into its interior, preserved forever in stone. And frankly, fair enough. My intention behind writing these blog posts is not to encourage anyone to believe anything, but instead to simply share what I have discovered on this journey of investigating the world of healing frequencies, and for lack of a better term… sound symbolism.

Criticisms highlight implications of the research by the Mitchell duo, pointing out the lack of historical documentation to support the understanding of cymatics within this period and the use of it within the chapel, believing that the correlation between the carvings and cymatic-like patterns is over speculated. My initial reaction to this is only to say that if the carvings were a way for these secret societies, such as the Freemasons, to preserve and protect the esoteric knowledge they came to understand, without the awareness of their critics, namely the Catholic Church, surely we can assume that any ‘historical documentation’ would either likely be very difficult to find, or perhaps not in existence at all, simply because, if their secret was truly a secret, it is unlikely they would have left an easy-to-follow paper trail, you know?

Ultimately, I couldn’t talk about Cymatics without talking about the Rosslyn Chapel, as they are quite closely connected as far as this topic is discussed. But then, now having looked into it, what do I think?

There is no doubt that I am fully on board with the concept of Cymatics and that sound not only creates patterns but potentially reality as well (stay tuned for part four of this series to hear more about that). And I am not totally against the theories behind the Rosslyn Chapel either. I just feel as though, currently, there are limits in as far as I can go with my research. It can be so easy to disregard someone’s decades of research and study without really taking time to understand how they came to the conclusions they did. For example, I feel as though I would need to visit the chapel myself to see the cubes and then compare them with the patterns discovered on the Chladni plates so I can see the evidence for myself.

As it stands there are very poor photographs shared online of the chapel’s cubes and very little to show good quality comparisons between the cube patterns and their related Cymatics pattern on a Chladni plate. Of course, there is that one picture I shared earlier in this article, but it is quite low quality and difficult to perceive.

Nevertheless, I might have found a book that could hold the answer to my questions. Supposedly it is called “The Cryptic Code of the Hidden Masters” (2007) and is the book in which the Mitchell father and son duo presented their hypothesis regarding the music of the cubes. Therefore, if I read it, I might be further illumined as to how they came to their conclusion, which would satisfy my intrigue. Unfortunately, I cannot find any trace of a copy online, so…

It might be a while before I can update my point of view.

For now, I am pretty open. The more I research these frequency-based topics, the more I realise how connected everything is and how there are so many patterns everywhere, just slightly hidden from our view. So I am more inclined to believe in the veracity of their discoveries than their potential inaccuracy. However, I still feel a though my understanding is pretty superficial and so I just simply am not in a place where I can commit to a solid point of view.

If you have any more insight into the Rosslyn Chapel and its hidden music, don’t hesitate to contact me using my contact form here.

Listen to The Rosslyn Motet here:

This album, performed by the Tallis Chamber Choir, tuned to the frequency of 432hz, is the resulting music that Thomas and Stuart Mitchell discovered through their research of the cymatic-like patterns on the 213 cubes in the Rosslyn Chapel.

"The music is the result of years of painstaking research, recreating secret notes hidden for almost 600 years in carvings on the arches within the chapel itself.”- Thomas Mitchell