Cymatics: A Study of Wave Phenomena and Vibration

Hans Jenny
2003, Newmarket, NH, MACROmedia
 Illus. b/w. & col. 295 pp.
ISBN 1-888-13807-6

Reviewed by Robert Pepperell

pepperell@ntlword.com

You may have come across Dr Hans Jenny's cymatic images, often rather grainy pictures of rippling blobs of viscous matter, swirls and honeycombs, lattices and whorls, all conjured  from unpromising piles of sand and dust. This Swiss medical doctor devoted a large part of his life to the study of the phenomena of Cymatics (from the Greek ta kymatica, matters pertaining to waves), which describes the effect of sound vibrations on matter. Here sonic vibrations organise viscous substances into an infinite variety of patterns, thereby directly giving visual form to sound. In the eighteenth century the so-called "father of acoustics", E F P Chladni, had used a violin bow to vibrate metal plates covered in thin layers of sand in order to observe the form the sand took in relation to certain frequencies. In cataloguing these "sonorous figures' he demonstrated the inherently geometric effect sound can have on physical matter.

Working in the 1960s, Jenny's methods used more precise electronic resonance generators and sophisticated materials to produce controlled perturbations that he then photographed, compiling by the end of his life an astonishing collection of images. Jenny published two volumes on his cymatic research, and this book reprints those volumes in full with additional forewords and index. The work is not only highly visually seductive, but philosophically and scientifically profound. The commentary by Jenny blends a clear and concise description of his methodology with powerful observations and speculations on the nature of living matter, form and energy. His is an essentially holistic view, seeing patterns across spatial and temporal magnitudes, linking the micro and macrocosmic, and it is indeed very tempting to agree with him that from molecular biology to atomic physics "the rhythms and vibrations interpenetrate", the universe is an interwoven humming mass of resonating energy.

What is so extraordinary about the geometry of forms produced by Jenny's techniques is their visual resonance with forms produced by other means. Some images of vibrating mercury drops, for instance, are almost identical to those produced by video feedback (p. 99). There are wings and flowers, branches and forks, crystals and webs, and microscopic pictures that look like aerial photographs, all emerging spontaneously from  otherwise shapeless substances. One gets the sense that all visible forms in nature might be generated by some unseen vibrational force, in the way that Jenny's heaps of "rotational sand' swirl around like specks of cosmic dust forming the two armed spiral of a miniature galaxy (p. 33). Jenny has fused his own synthetic and analytic achievements with Plato's harmonic description of nature, the flux of Heraclitus and Goethe's "spirit' to create a compelling vision of coherence and structure. The impact of his work seems now largely confined to the spiritual healing community, but one gets the sense that there is something much larger here at stake and this valuable book makes an important contribution to bringing Jenny's work to a wider audience and a new generation of researchers.