Cosmic Images

By William Wadsworth

Cosmic images provide a useful window into the secret world of how things work.
They are not reality, but they usefully consolidate values that might otherwise require
whole volumes to explain. Ancient Sacred sites simply are physical locations where
such images were built into a civilization. You cannot have much cultural memory
without a geographical location, a sacred mountain or mound that represents the
center of your world, without stars that guide the timing and direction of migrations
and animal lore, myths that explain agricultural practices, or without ritual, symbols,
and a set of guiding values.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493185511

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Copyright © 2014 by William Wadsworth. 541779

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014904849

ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4931-8550-4

EBook 978-1-4931-8551-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 05/16/2014

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Dedicated to Jane Clarke Wadsworth

Cosmic images provide a useful window into the secret world of how things work. They are not reality, but they usefully consolidate values that might otherwise require whole volumes to explain. Ancient Sacred sites simply are physical locations where such images were built into a civilization. You cannot have much cultural memory without a geographical location, a sacred mountain or mound that represents the center of your world, without stars that guide the timing and direction of migrations and animal lore, myths that explain agricultural practices, or without ritual, symbols, and a set of guiding values.

If we want to understand the past, traditional astrology or old methods of naturalistic healing, we have to understand the world-view behind them. The following images are alter pieces that portray a sacred world order. Our job is to dwell on them and to try to understand this wondrous world that we are part of. My comments are only a starting point for thinking about how our ancestors harvested meaning from human experience.

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Figure 1: Renaissance scholar studying the spheres behind celestial appearances.

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Figure 2: The Diurnal cycle from Sebastian Munster’s Cosmography.

Cosmos not universe! The concept of the world is carried on the shoulders of two human travelers. The most important landmarks on the journey are the horizon line and the zenith above us. Isn’t this really the fundamental way we experience our personal world. The image shows the angle of the ecliptic with all its zodiac signs and the range of solar motion between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. But the absolutes of day and night and implicitly heaven and earth define more than anything else what we experience while living in some geographical location. We must come to grips with our darkness and our light. Be unafraid.

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Figure 3: The birth of human consciousness on the horizon at the point of intersection between of sun and moon, heaven and earth.

The sun and moon, heaven and earth, day and night, all form integrated pairs. The number two is the basis of all other