Chronos Apollonios' "Home On Olympus"
Well, the Doctrine of Signatures is a tradition, that much is for certain. I'd hate to try to describe how deeply I was into it and striving to coordinate the chemistry and properties with the characteristics of the plant. The name, "Passion Flower" of course comes from Jesuit preists who were early visitors to the "New World". They thought that the flower symbolized the "passion", or crucifixion of Christ, and named it accordingly... another expression and use of the Doctrine of Signatures (see John Vanderplank's "Passion Flowers", pgs. 21-24, "The Legend of the Passion Flower", for an excellent coverage of this).
I had certainly seen stranger things by the time I noticed that Passion flowers look like "UFOs" and started to wonder what the ecclectic herbalist is supposed to think of that- a medicine for people who are rather disturbed by alien visitations? Certainly herbalists know of its reputation as a mild sedative and
anti-depressant, and maybe some other things that apply...
But it quickly becomes a point working with signatures that a symbol will try to mean everything it can mean all at once, and this is usually valid, if not always... and whether or not what seems to be communicating ever intended to, what only seems to be the communication can be of incredible importance.
Above: Passiflora helleri at left, and Passiflora herbertiana at right, from Australia, both looking suitably alien. In. P. herbertiana at right, as with P. bellottii further down this page, with the alternating sizes or colors of petals, this is one of those that helps call attention to certain numerical and energetic possibilities that might otherwise slip unnoticed into the background.
And of course the idea that maybe man might not be the only specie on earth with an evolutionary impetus to reach the stars as an antidote to running out of room... and since no one seems to be able to quite explain how plants show so many signs of intelligence as to be participating in this macrocosmic labelling system anyway, anymore than it's necessarily easy to achieve acceptable answers for such factors as mimicry that often occur in plants. How is it that something without eyes comes to look like another creature if and when evolution has been ruled out? ...
So the first innovation to come out of this excercise in creative thinking was that the propulsion drive of a ship might be a lot less vulnerable if it were a holographic projection, instead of having to jetison the warp core every episode. Perhaps optical property conservation, if I'm not coining a phrase, may extend beyond that hologram of a watch and lens... where the hologram of a lens seems to work like the real thing.
Passiflora antioquensis from Columbia, at left, and a close-up at right. The idea of a holographically-emitted propulsion device consisting purely of feilds, symbolized by parts emitted from the cavitatious calyx tube, becomes hard to ignore when the flowers start to take on the concentric rings that are typical of such holographic recordings as zone plates. Such a conclusion is hardly a foregone one; Tom Beardon's sophisticated scalar theories describe the manner in which Nikola Tesla's inventions, a number of which projected energy feilds, were in fact holographic technology.
(Oddly no one seems to have jumped up and mentioned what everyone is obviously dying to know: "Does the lens really work like a real one as well as in relationship to the part of the hologram that represents the watch it was photographed with?")
Imagine holograms of heaters that could actually keep you warm!
At left, Passiflora foetida replete with its "lightning", and at right, Passiflora quadrangularis. The application of the Doctorine of Signatures follows the usual patterns that often proceed by way of animal symbols. In these and other cases, the alternating banded filaments of the flowers are not only suggestive of various physics functions, but recall porcupine quills, as if in an effort to use the suddeness or other quality of the porcupine's reflexive discharge of quills as a symbol, be it a quantum jump or the abrupt pulsing feilds theorized to be able to participate in the function of tapping zero-point energy. 
Likewise, a number of the petals tend to suggest rabbit ears (Passiflora belottii is but one of them), substituting the characteristic hopping or abrupt movements of the rabbit in implying similar physical events.
Along with a number of curious shaped leaf patterns, some of them strangely reminscent of the contours of "Stealth Planes", the plants seem to use leaves with rows of mysterious spots, suggestive of mammalia, as if trying to imply the radar or sonar that not only relates to the navigation of bats, but the stealth of the planes in question.
The fact that bats, like a number of these flowers, prefer to hang upside-down may also be utilized as a reference to gravity and to the possible inversion of certian fields or principles of physics, aspects that seem not uncommonly encountered in areas such as the use of unusually high frequencies.
Adding to this, of course, are facts such as that Passiflora coriacea is commonly known as the "Bat-Leaved Passion Flower"; I'm not alone in noticing such resemblances.
Along with the remarkable forms of the Bee Orchids, Passion Flowers hint at things that simply cannot be quite accounted for with anything encountered by Darwinism.
Their apparent "physic ability" forces us to reconsider the characteristics and habits of non-linear and self-organizing aspects of biological structures to account for their remarkable semblances of intelligence, if we do not subscribe to the possibilities of extraterrestrials or ancient peoples having deliberately been genetic as well as technological benefactors.
Passiflora platyloba, at right, seems almost as if ready to start using it's symbols to start talking about "The Romulan Cloaking Device", and this in addition to the "Stealth Plane" Passion Flowers.
It's particularly strange when you consider that modern man's first experience with "warp fields", teleportation, and faster-than-light travel may have come about by accident during the "Philadelphia Experiment", while engineers and scientists tried to make a Navy ship invisible to radar, and possibly to light, in addition to magnetic interactions with magnetic mines. Perhaps the most familiar concern in these matters is the necessity of an absence of right angles. Richard Hoagland and others may still be only beginning to account for the significance of pentagonal geometry in these kinds of effects... geometry like that of the Passion Flowers.
Star Trek's "The Next Generation" series, while sometimes having to rely on fabrications to fufill it's plot demands, is nonetheless noted for its reliance on scientific consultants to make it's technical aspects seem believable. It's often been a good source of education speculations on what may be possible with the lastest in science.
One of the most rousing episodes featured a character called the "Traveller", who helps take the ship to the edges of the universe and even reality at unimaginable speed.
Just before the ship performs unimaginable feats of travel, we see the portrayal of "warp feilds" on a ship's monitor; could the show's consulants have ever dreamed just how much like those fields this photo of Passiflora cirrhiflora (at right) looks?
Passion flowers may not be alone by any means in being natural embodiments of finer points of physical forces. The sea urchins, which when "in full bloom" (at left) bear considerable likenesses to the Passion flowers, ironically enough, seem to show maps of the earth's harmonic or magnetic nodes when the spines are lost (at right). Such a map may show us where ancient sacred sites are, and further our understanding of topics from planetary science to innovations in feild resonance propulsion techniques, such as Alan Holt's designs, that NASA has already long been working on, with probably much success.
And maybe the flowers have found a use for Charles Muses' hypernumbers and nested structure of time...
Another one raised questions about the behavior of Howard Wachpress' unpaired magnetic poles in anti-time. Tom Beardon of course draws reversible Feynman diagrams in something of this regard...but this?
Well, anyway, Passionflowers are beautiful. They may be the most beautiful flowers on earth... that's enough in itself, isn't it?
Passiflora "Incense"... quite easily the world's most beautiful flower.
But of course, before I ever consider this page to be finished, I will certainly include many more details, so don't give up. Please keep checking back.
U.K. National Passiflora Collection
Passionflower Species (Info: NewCrop)
Passionflower Images
Passionflower Images
list of Passionflower species
See also the book "Passionflowers" by John Vanderplank (MIT press) for many more stunning passionflower images.
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