Bibliography : p. 263 BIBLIOGRAPHY A list of some of the books which were helpful in this study of man's conceptions of the figure of Earth and its relation to the Universe. ARISTOTLE, De Coelo. Tr. by Thomas Taylor. On the Heavens. London, 1807. De Mundo. Tr. by Thomas Taylor. On the World. (In the Metaphysics...
The Peruvian Universe : p. 185 THE PERUVIAN UNIVERSE THERE IS ANOTHER "SQUARE EARTH" shown in one of the rarer world-pictures in this collection--the Universe of the ancient Peruvians. Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayha, a native Peruvian, left the drawing in his "Account of the Antiquities of Peru", written...
Systems Of The Universe : SYSTEMS OF THE UNIVERSE WHEN THE GREEKS IN THE SIXTH CENTURY B.C. took up the study of the universe, its systems multiplied. The order of the orbits of the heavenly bodies, above all, their disorder, fascinated the Greek mind. Eclipses occurred, but how? A Comet fled through the "Almagestum Novum";...
Earth A Hollow Sphere : EARTH A HOLLOW SPHERE WITH THE "Symmes Theory of Concentric Spheres" we take up, for the first time, a cosmogony of the nineteenth century. In this flight through worlds we have spanned not only the centuries but the oceans and continents of the Earth. We are in the year of our Lord, 1818...
Man's Quest In Space : p. 1 THE BOOK OF EARTHS MAN'S QUEST IN SPACE THIS BOOK OF EARTHS began years ago, with a single little figure of Earth taken from what old book I do not know. For a long time it lay by itself; then another, come upon by chance, was laid beside it; and still others as I happened on them, always by...
The Earths In The Universe : THE EARTHS IN THE UNIVERSE OF ALL THE MYSTICAL COSMOLOGISTS Emanuel Swedenborg wrote the longest scroll of correspondences between Man, Earth, and Heaven. His whole cosmology was founded on the Grand Man, who contained within himself the universe, and testified to the mystics's truth that "all...
Maps Of The Earth : p. 199 MAPS OF THE EARTH THE SPANISH PRIEST BEATUS who in the year 798 died in a Benedictine convent in the Asturias, is recognised as the original draughtsman of a remarkable world-map lost except for "copies," ten of which are known to-day. This map-group is known as the Beatus Maps; they all...
The Square Earth Of Cosmas Indicopleutes : THE SQUARE EARTH OF COSMAS INDICOPLEUTES ONE OF THE STRANGEST OF WORLDS is the Square Earth of Cosmas Indicopleustes, an Egyptian monk of the sixth century A.D., who expended an astonishing ingenuity upon the development of a theory of the universe that would eliminate the increasingly popular...
Illustrations : p. xi ILLUSTRATIONS PLATES "Plate" "Facing page" I Stages of Creation. From "Haggadah von Sarajevo. Fourteenth century". 32 II Sustainers of the Earth. A. Quetzalcoatl Upholding the Heavens. From an original Mexican painting preserved in the Imperial Library at Vienna. "Reproduced...
Creation Of The World : CREATION OF THE WORLD And yet he has tried to determine it, with that handful of working means left him when the gods departed; his vague knowledge of truth--which has served him better for determining what is not truth than what is truth; his numbers, his signs, his characters, his symbols, his...
The Lost Atlantis : THE LOST ATLANTIS The fourth--or the third--catastrophe of the world-tradition is the sinking of Atlantis, the great prehistoric continent. A generation ago scientists would have smiled at the idea of taking this particular tradition seriously. But they do not smile to-day; they give the theory...
The Egyptian Universe : THE EGYPTIAN UNIVERSE IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM of the City of New York, rests the grey diorite sarcophagus of Uresh-Nofer, one time priest of the "watery" goddess Mut, in Egypt. On the upper half of the sarcophagus lid is engraved the figure of the Sky goddess Nut "bending over the Earth,"...
Acknowledgements : p. vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS WITHOUT THE ROUSED INTEREST and cordial co-operation of many people this collection of representations of the Earth and its relation to the Universe would have been impossible. For permission to use copyright material I am indebted to D. Appleton and Company, the Clarend...
Figures Of Earth : FIGURES OF EARTH THE BELIEF THAT THE UNIVERSE is composed of five Great Elements is untraceably old. Even the savage knows very well four of these elements, Water, Air, Fire, and Earth, and has a vague sense of the fifth, Ether, or Space. From varying combinations of these five elemental substances...
Earth The Mundane Egg : EARTH THE MUNDANE EGG THE GREAT MONAD, or the Great Beginning, or the Great Extreme, or the Great Vacuum, or Yin and Yang, or "Heaven," is one of the old, mysterious figures of Earth. It represents all the pairs of opposites that we know--Light and Darkness, life and death, death and re-birth, he...
Earth The Heart Of The Cosmos : EARTH THE HEART OF THE COSMOS THE COSMIC HEART--centre of life in the universe as man's tiny heart is his centre of life--meant to the ancient Aryans "Breath," the ceaselessly ascending and descending spiral which is the life-sustaining symbol of the universe. To the ancient Egyptians the cosmic...
Wheels Upon Wheels : WHEELS UPON WHEELS BELOW IS A GROUP OF EIGHT FIGURES whose whole interest lies just in their association. With their science we have nothing to do here, since they are old attempts, most of them, to account for the observed aberrations of movement among the heavenly bodies. Wang Ch'ung, an old...
The World Octaves : THE WORLD OCTAVES IT WAS HIS PROLONGED OBSERVATION of the movement of Mars (Fig. 95) that led Kepler to discover the true form of the planetary orbits, till then considered to be perfectly circular, and it was during the last year of his observations (1596) that he hit upon his beautiful "solution"...
The Aztec Universe : THE AZTEC UNIVERSE THE AZTEC WORLD-PICTURE (Plate XXXIII) is the first sheet of the "Night Side" of the Codex Ferjrvry-Mayer, an old Mexican painted book now in the Free Public Museums at Liverpool. The foundation for the series of paintings is a sort of parchment made of deerskin covered on both...
Dante's Universe : DANTE'S UNIVERSE COLUMBUS WAS OF GENOA a century after Dante had died at Florence. Probably he had never read his countryman's "Divina Commedia"; even if he had, he might have seen little of value or significance in Dante's cosmology. Dante had one, however, and his scheme brought back into modern...
The Deluge : THE DELUGE The third and fourth catastrophes of the Earth are the Deluge, and the sinking of Atlantis--Atlantis the fabulous continent, not the little Island remnant. Their time sequence in the old traditions is a little mixed, not that it matters. Suppose we take first the Deluge. The Comet, th...
Trees Of The World : TREES OF THE WORLD THERE ARE TWO UNIVERSAL WORLD-FIGURES, found everywhere, among all races--the World Tree, and the World Mountain. For man could draw analogies--his traditions prove it almost better than his written records. He knew that he had been born, that he was living, that he must die; yet...
Title Page : p. iii THE BOOK OF EARTHS By EDNA KENTON New York: William Morrow A. E. Nordenskild, 1897, Plate XLIV)"> PLATE XXXVI. Map of the World, by Petrus Apianus. printed 1530. From the original in the British Museum. (From Periplus; A. E. Nordenskild, 1897, Plate XLIV) Title Page Verso p. v To M. R. K. R.
The Wheel Of Life : THE WHEEL OF LIFE CLOSELY ASSOCIATED with the World Mountains are the many Wheels of Life, by which the ancients sought to picture the relations of parts of the universe to each other and to the whole. There is a hint of this in the Tibetan world-picture, with Mount Meru the axis or hub...
The Babylonian Universe : THE BABYLONIAN UNIVERSE WHAT PEOPLE AT WHAT TIME first imagined the Earth as a hollow hemispherical shell floating on the world-waters we cannot know. But it is another of the "oldest figures of Earth." This idea of the Earth as "boat-shaped" had its origin probably in the almost universal myth...
Lost Land Of The West : LOST LAND OF THE WEST But there is another obscure tradition of a fifth catastrophe which seems to have antedated the sinking of Atlantis. This concerns another lost continent in the Pacific Ocean, a great catastrophe in the western waters. Old records are riddled with allusions to vanished...
Mountains Of The World : MOUNTAINS OF THE WORLD IN MANY OF THESE WORLD TREE PICTURES we have seem World Mountains as well, but northern ones mostly. Yet the concept of the antipodal polar mountains of Earth is very old. They stand opposed to each other in the Babylonian Universe (Plate VIII). They are inherent in the very...
Earth Moon Catastrophe : EARTH-MOON CATASTROPHE The second catastrophe to afflict the Earth in the beginning of things was the Earth-Moon catastrophe; and this, by the way, is not only one of the most ancient of traditions, but it is also a modern theory of causes with which "The Heavenly Goose". (From Ancient Mythology:...
Figures : p. xvii FIGURES "Figure" "Page" 1. The Stupa. "From Ramusat's translation of Fa-heen's Foe koue ki. 1848". 6 2. The Tetrahedron. "From an old print". 7 3. The Octahedron. "From an old print". 7 4. The Icosahedron. "From an old print". 8 5. The Cube. "From an old print". 8 6. The Dodecahedr...
Upholders Of The World : UPHOLDERS OF THE WORLD FLAMMARION'S OLD DRAWING of "The Earth Floating" is a peculiarly desolate rendering of the ancient idea that the Earth was nothing more than an island in a sea. This idea would of course have its probable origin among races living near great seas or oceans whose other side...
Tartar Mongol Worlds : TARTAR-MONGOL WORLDS IN "Picture-Writing of the American Indians", Garrick Mallery has collected a delightful group of Tartar and Mongol magic drum tops, over which a little time will not be wasted just here. These drums were used--are used--by various Tartar and Mongol tribes in religious...
The Primaeval Earth : THE PRIMVAL EARTH "BECAUSE IT PLEASETH more and makes a greater impression upon us," wrote the old English Platonist Thomas Burnet, "to see things represented to the Eye, than to read their description in words, we have ventured to give a model of the Primval Earth, with its Zones or greater...
The Earth Of Columbus : THE EARTH OF COLUMBUS p. 208 IT IS ONE OF THE LITTLE IRONIES of life that the man who more than any other popularised the notion that the Earth was "shaped like a ball," himself believed it was shaped like a pear. Privately Columbus affirmed that the Earth was pear-shaped. We find this in his...
St. Hildegard's Universe : ST. HILDEGARD'S UNIVERSE THERE IS ANOTHER UNIVERSE of the Middle Ages in which the Earth is like the heart." This is the Universe of Saint Hildegard of Bingen, who lived from 1096 to 1179 or 1180. Saint Hildegard would have been a remarkable woman in any age; in her own she had no parallel. Abbess...
The Tetrahedral Earth : THE TETRAHEDRAL EARTH THE LAST FIGURE OF EARTH in this collecting of its endlessly changing forms is, so far as I know, the latest figure of Earth to be drawn; it differs in all ways from any other world-picture we have here. Plate XLVIII is a drawing of the Earth as a Tetrahedron or three-sided...