A cone may be spirally fluted. If the fluted body is itself wound helically toward the apex of a conical envelope, both the cone and the helices are compounded. A series of works by John Macnab explores the expressive potential and intellectual history of this proposition. The imagery traditionally manifest in Solomonic columns, heliconical spires and cosmological diagrams is aspirational, even mystical. The computation reaches back to the kinematic/parametric thinking of Albrecht Dürer but is developed in novel directions. That the astonishing forms are encoded and executed mechanically, outside the mainstream preoccupation with the “digital” can be seen as heretical.