The chambered nautilus is a metaphor for life's journey - a continual evolution toward wholeness. It builds its own intricate, mother-of-pearl like shell, chamber by chamber, as it grows. We have the opportunity to do the same as we create our own lives. Viewed in cross-section, it reveals a balanced spiral, unfurling naturally. Each previous chamber represents an earlier, less developed state of being within the fragile beauty of its shell body. A symbol of beauty and mathematical proportion, the nautilus has attracted scientific attention since the time of the ancient Greeks. Fibonacci discovered that the organic construction of the nautilus spiral can be illustrated by a unique logarithm based on adding whole numbers together in a specific mathematical sequence.

In his poem, The Chambered Nautilus, Oliver Wendell Holmes writes,

“Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!”

The spiral of the chambered nautilus can be found throughout nature in pine cones, flowers, star nebulae and in the human body as the inner ear cochlea (meaning “snail” in Latin), natural sound amplifiers. It is also used in ancient art to symbolize a gathering of energy and connection with the spirit. Musical instruments such as the French horn mimic this shape.

As I've been playing with fractals lately, I've been most interested in these shapes. I took this photo of a shell that I've had a long time, I enhanced it in PhotoShop and then I overlaid a fractal layer onto it.