The direction it twists is asymmetrical and not mirror superposable - just like hands.
The technical terms are actually sinistral and dextral but I find the casual terms to be more sensible.
On the left of the picture is a sinistral, or left handed shell
The right one is a dextral, or right handed shell.
See how the spiral is asymmetrical?
Do these have any pattern in location? Because I know that energy and weather patterns spiral in opposite ways in the hemispheres.
Haha. I really do love it though! I ain't frontin'. And I'm trying to incorporate it into a sacred geometry symbol I came up with.
Found it. The smaller circles correspond to the larger circles as they correspond to the largest ones, and it's all in a yin yang.
[MENTION=15371]RaptorWizard[/MENTION]: That's pretty cool. I love mandalas. And if you notice, at 1:36-8 in the second one, it looks like the Phi symbol!
I have a book which I'm reading called Divine Proportion Phi in Art, Nature, and Science (by Priya Hemenway) which I'm sure mentions Da Vinci. (I haven't gotten that far yet.) I was so excited when I got the book, I was inspired to create this thread. You all should check it out! I got it at a rare book store, but you might be able to find it.
Here's a quotation I love from page 12:
"As a language, mathematics lies somewhere between the worlds that can be translated to language and those that are described by art-a mysterious, harmonious, almost magical modality in which abstractions become realities and unknowns appear as solutions to practical puzzles."
Another, and one which expresses the philosophical meaning of the symbol:
"The most essential and universally fascinating attraction of the Divine Proportion comes from the ratio's subliminal reference to ourselves, for its most profound aspect is explicitly evoked when we put the human being into the equation and perceive the proportion as a relationship that includes ourselves. Contemplating our place in the equation, we will variously find that we are the whole, we are the larger, and we are the smaller of the parts- always in some perfectly balanced ratio of whole to larger and larger to smaller.
As a relationship of macrocosm and microcosm, the Divine Proportion describes the larger and the smaller in their most intimate relationship: They are not separate; they are related. The proportion links them in such a way that there is a mirroring effect that makes it possible to see the large in the small and the small in the large."
Like this!
And in my symbol, which is a map of the chakra system. We are a microcosm of the Earth and all the patterns in it.