5.III

The world and this - whatever other name men have chosen to designate the sky whose vaulted roof encircles the universe, of every land as one is fitly believed to be a deity, eternal, immeasurable, a being that never began to exist and never will perish.

What is outside it does not concern men to explore and is not within the grasp of the human mind to guess. It is sacred, eternal, immeasurable, wholly within the whole, nay rather itself the whole, finite and resembling the infinite certain of all things and resembling the uncertain, holding in its embrace all things that are without and within, at once the work of nature and nature herself.

That certain persons have studied, and have dared to publish, its dimensions, is mere madness; and again that others, taking or receiving occasion from the former, have taught the existence of a countless number of worlds, involving the belief in as many systems of nature, or, if a single nature embraces all the worlds, nevertheless the same number of suns and other immeasurable and innumerable heavenly bodies, as already in a single world; just as if owing to our craving for some end the same problem would not always encounter us at the termination of this process of thought, or as if, assuming it possible to attribute this infinity of nature to the artificer of the universe, that same property would not be easier to understand in a single world, especially one that is so vast a structure.

It is madness, to go out of that world, and to investigate what lies outside it just as if the whole of what is within it were already clearly known; as though, forsooth, the measure of anything could be taken by him that knows not the measure of himself, or as if the mind of man could see things that the world itself does not contain.

Let no concern touch on the acts of the heavens except in such that they reach down by their nodens to the affairs of mortal earth and be bound by such among us men.

Its shape has the rounded appearance of a perfect sphere. In spite of whether one views it from lands found by underway march or overway canyon that through meticulous measure can be said to sit in direct oppositional occlusion with one another.

Yet it is all encompassingly visible from every valley and peak.

Of the primitive people who have never traveled under or over is it bestowed the name orb. As it surely appears to be. But any seasoned traveler who has attempted passage beyond the clefts of an overway can attest this is not but an illusory shape of the world.

However by the nature of its uniformity from all vantages and the extent to which as one traverses the greatest heights and peaks it suffuses and surrounds in encompassing vastness that the nature of the enormity is better named expanse.

As one traverses the heights and peaks which hold it aloft in the sky does the vision of it enwrap out and around leaving all lands and valleys of foothills diminished in their distance vanishingly small within its enclosing until one stands upon a seeming pillar surrounded in eternity.

At such high vantages it so appears to be holding itself together without the need of any fastenings, and without experiencing an end or a beginning at any part of itself.

However within its motions is the shape of the orb the one best fitted and so despite its vastness beyond such trifles and otherwise nature as alike too to a great depth but upward it must as any man can witness repeatedly revolve, but our eyesight betrays us further on the nature of heaven, because the firmament presents the aspect of a concave hemisphere equidistant in every direction when low upon the horizon. And curves around into full englobing with altitude.

The expanse of the firmament thus shaped then is not at rest but eternally revolves with indescribable velocity, each revolution occupying the space of a day: the rising and setting of the sun have left this not doubtful.

Whether the sound of this vast mass whirling in unceasing rotation is of enormous volume and consequently beyond the capacity of our ears to perceive, for my own part I cannot easily say - any more in fact than whether this is true of the tinkling of the stars that travel round with it, revolving in their own orbits; or whether it emits a sweet harmonious music that is beyond belief charming. To us who live within it the world glides silently alike by day and night.

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It is conjectured by the deeply learned — and yet by it made foolish — that it is not one sky which is seen by all but rather duplicates of skies around each firmament englobing them as grapes upon the vine with the under and overways channeling together to join the lands of man the vines from which they hang.

But again and again is witnessed such perfect synchronicity in sight and action across every witness from the farthest edges of the Empire that refute such small minded assertions.

The world is of a shape both round and all encompassing and riddled within and it is the failure of simple minds to try and adhere the reasoning of mortal earth and lowland geometry to the infinite arcs and perfections of the heavens.

Stamped upon this singular and universal surface are countless figures of animals and objects of all kinds - it is not the case, as has been stated by very famous authors, that its structure has an even surface of unbroken smoothness, like that which we observe in birds' eggs: this is proved by the evidence of the facts, since from seeds of all these objects, falling from the sky in countless numbers, particularly in the sea, and usually mixed together, monstrous shapes are generated; and also by the testimony of sight - in one place the figure of a bear, in another of a bull, in another a wain, in another a letter of the alphabet, the middle of the circle across the pole being more radiant.

For my own part I am also influenced by the agreement of the nations. The Nation of Waves has designated the world by a word that means 'ornament,' and we have given it the name of mundus because of its perfect finish and grace! As for our word caelum, it undoubtedly has the signification 'engraved,' as is explained by Aurus the Watcher. Further assistance is contributed by its orderly structure, the circle called the Zodiac being marked out into the likenesses of seventeen animals; and also by the uniform regularity in so many centuries of the sun's progress through these signs.

As regards the elements also I observe that they are accepted as being five in number: topmost the element of nodus, the matter of gods, set within the firmament and by which is bent all the will of genius and divine upon the others, Next most is the fire, source of yonder eyes of all those blazing stars set hovering within the grasp of heaven; next the vapor which The Nation of Waves and our own Solar Dynasty call by the same name, air - this is the principle of life, and penetrates all the universe and is intertwined with the whole; suspended by its force in the center of space is poised the earth, and with it the fourth element, that of the waters.

Thus the mutual embrace of the unlike results in an interlacing, the light substances being prevented by the heavy ones from flying up, while on the contrary the heavy substances are held from crashing down by the upward tendency of the light ones.

In this way owing to an equal urge in opposite directions the elements remain stationary, each in its own place, bound together by the unresting revolution of the world itself; and with this always running back to its starting-point, the earth is the lowest and central object in the whole, and stays suspended at the pivot of the universe and also balancing the bodies to which its suspension is due; thus being alone motionless with the universe revolving round her she both hangs attached to them all and at the same time is that on which they all rest.

Upheld by the same vapor between earth and heaven, at definite spaces apart, hang the enumerable stars which owing to their motion we call wanderers. Their comings and goings marking the ages and the great shifts of the world.

In the midst of these moves the sun, whose magnitude and power are the greatest, and who is the ruler not only of the seasons and of the lands; but even of the stars themselves and of heaven.

Taking into account all that he affects, we must believe him to be the soul, or more precisely the mind, of the whole world, the supreme ruling principle and divinity of nature.

He furnishes the world with light and removes darkness, he obscures and he illumines the rest of the stars, he regulates in accord with nature's precedent the changes of the seasons and the continuous rebirth of the year, he dissipates the gloom of heaven and even calms the storm-clouds of the mind of man, he lends his light to the rest of the stars also; he is glorious and pre-eminent, all-seeing and even all-hearing - this I observe that r the prince of literature held to be true in the case of the sun alone.

- Excerpt from Orion’s Historica naturalis Cantora