Flower of life
A pattern of overlapping circles of the same size, each centred on the rims of its neighbours, usually nineteen of them. Grids of circles like it are ancient, but the name “flower of life” and the spiritual meanings given to it come from the New Age movement of the 1990s, chiefly the teacher Drunvalo Melchizedek.
Meaning
MathWorld defines the flower of life as a patch of nineteen circles from a grid of overlapping circles. Their centres lie on a triangular lattice, the radius of each circle equals the distance between neighbouring centres, and the result has sixfold symmetry, made of whole circles and the lens shapes where they cross. The name is modern, as MathWorld says, and it comes from Drunvalo Melchizedek’s The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life (volume one, 1999), the text of his Flower of Life workshop. Today it is the emblem of the sacred geometry he teaches: his publisher, Light Technology Publishing, says his books have been published in twenty-nine languages and that over three hundred trained facilitators teach his workshops in more than sixty countries. Its middle seven circles are the seed of life, and lines drawn between thirteen circles of a larger version of the pattern make Metatron’s cube.
Origin and history
Grids of overlapping circles are far older than the name. Stephen Wolfram, in A New Kind of Science (2002), illustrates a Phoenician ivory carving of about 900 BC with such a grid, probably made somewhere in the Mediterranean and now in the British Museum. Leonardo da Vinci studied a related construction of circles in the Codex Atlanticus, the collection of his papers from 1478 to 1519; one is on folio 309v.
The example most often cited is at Abydos in Egypt, in the Osireion, part of the complex of the Temple of Seti I that Flinders Petrie and Margaret Murray excavated at the beginning of the 20th century. There the circles are drawn in red ochre on one of the stone trilithons, and their date is not known for certain. The archaeologist Wayne Perkins, who studies ritual marks on buildings, sets out why they are not original to the temple. They are in one place only and aren’t part of its decoration, Egyptian temple art has no known precedent for them, and they sit four metres above the floor and off centre, as if drawn after the building was abandoned and had filled with sand. Other graffiti on the same trilithon is in early Greek. Perkins concludes that the circles were most likely added in the 1st century BC, possibly by Greek visitors.
Where the name and the meanings come from
Melchizedek’s books are the usual source for both. His publisher’s description of the first volume states the belief at their centre: that “all life in the universe knew the Flower of Life as the creation pattern”, the geometric design leading into and out of physical existence, and that for thousands of years the secret was held in ancient artefacts and carvings around the world. In his teaching, sacred geometry is the form beneath our being and points to a divine order in reality. The book also covers Egypt’s role in the evolution of consciousness and Leonardo da Vinci’s canon of the human body.
These are the beliefs of Melchizedek and his students. MathWorld calls the name modern and gives it as his terminology, and Perkins places the term in the New Age movement of the 1990s.
Is the flower of life at Abydos ancient Egyptian?
Not as far as the evidence goes. The Osireion is part of the complex of the Temple of Seti I, but the circles on its trilithon are later graffiti, and Perkins, weighing their height above the floor and the Greek writing beside them, places them most likely in the 1st century BC. The belief that the pattern holds an ancient secret comes from Melchizedek’s teaching, not from the excavators.
See also
Seed of life, Metatron’s cube.
Sources
- MathWorld: Flower of Life, Eric W. Weisstein, MathWorld (Wolfram Research), entry and references
- The ‘Flower of Life’ Motif at the Temple of Seti I & the Osireion, Abydos, Egypt, Wayne Perkins (archaeologist, ACIfA), 18 October 2025, Ritual Protection Marks & Ritual Practices, article text
- The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life, Volume One (publisher’s description), Drunvalo Melchizedek, 1999, Light Technology Publishing, book description
- Melchizedek, Drunvalo (author page), Light Technology Publishing, author biography
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Last reviewed October 1, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research