'Extraordinary: it shows the spiral going through all the manifestations of life – art, music, literature, dance, religion, mythology, physics, biology, botany and astronomy' Karlheinz Stockhausen

The spiral is the natural form of growth, and has become, in every culture and in every age, man’s symbol of the progress of the soul towards eternal life.

As the inward-winding labyrinth, it constitutes the hero’s journey to the still centre where the secret of life is found. As the spherical vortex, spiralling through its own centre, it combines the inward and outward directions of movement.

In this original and engrossing book, Jill Purce traces the significance of one man’s central symbols from the double spirals of Stone Age art and the interlocking spirals of the Chinese Yin Yang symbol to the whorls of Celtic crosses, Maori tattoos and the Islamic arabesque. Many of the superb images here were intended as objects of contemplation; for the spiral is a cosmic symbol.