Beginnings...
The Greeks had a word for it: eudaimonia — the good life. Not good in the sense of indulgent, luxurious, happy or pleasurable but rather, in conjunction with arete, in the senses of desirably virtuous, of fulfilment and satisfaction. They were not alone. On every continent the rightness of living has been an abiding issue for all humanity throughout recorded history. Many, with varying degrees of success and acceptance, have spoken or written about how life should be lived. Many more still wonder.
Now, as powers once the sole preserve of mighty nation states are wielded by progressively smaller and smaller entities, as each and every human being perceives how he or she affects the world at large, the question becomes yet more pressing. And so it is asked again: How should we live?
This book does not contain the answer — the question has no ultimate end — but it does offer an answer as the basis for a new beginning. The book is itself a journey — of beginnings and endings and beginning again. Read it and travel — along the way you may remember your own dreams and discover more.
Read it and you will never be the same again. Let it pass unread and still you will be changed. How will you change? The choice is yours.
Now, as powers once the sole preserve of mighty nation states are wielded by progressively smaller and smaller entities, as each and every human being perceives how he or she affects the world at large, the question becomes yet more pressing. And so it is asked again: How should we live?
This book does not contain the answer — the question has no ultimate end — but it does offer an answer as the basis for a new beginning. The book is itself a journey — of beginnings and endings and beginning again. Read it and travel — along the way you may remember your own dreams and discover more.
Read it and you will never be the same again. Let it pass unread and still you will be changed. How will you change? The choice is yours.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Turn, and Turn Again
The constellations flow.
And the axis of the world beneath inscribes a circle in the sky a thousand
generations round, bestowing briefly as it passes by the honour of The
Pole on certain favoured stars.
Fragments of Berossus, Vega
Though the ancients conceived of the celestial sphere as eternal, unchangeable and perfect — and so were greatly disturbed by the appearances of "new stars" (novas and supernovas) and other "meteorological" phenomena (so called because they were "lofty" or "atmospheric") such as comets — that the heavens are not immutable is now common knowledge.
The so-called fixed stars move with respect to the solar system as they and we orbit the centre of the galaxy at different distances and varied speeds, and wander through space with our own peculiar, local motions; but such proper motions are not discernible by the human eye in the course of a single lifetime. What we may notice however is the precession of the equinoxes — the slow circling of the pole.
The precession of the equinoxes is the visible effect of the rotation of the Earth's axis — not the rotation of the Earth about its axis but the slow movement of the axis itself, as shown below. The cause is gyroscopic precession caused primarily by the moon's gravitational pull on a somewhat-less-than truly spherical Earth, but since there are other forces acting on the Earth (such as the Sun's gravity) and the Earth itself is not completely rigid, the motion of the pole illustrated above is neither a perfect circle nor perfectly periodic (every time a major earthquake redistributes the Earth's mass, the pole shifts by a microscopic but measurable amount).
The precession of the equinoxes is the visible effect of the rotation of the Earth's axis — not the rotation of the Earth about its axis but the slow movement of the axis itself, as shown below. The cause is gyroscopic precession caused primarily by the moon's gravitational pull on a somewhat-less-than truly spherical Earth, but since there are other forces acting on the Earth (such as the Sun's gravity) and the Earth itself is not completely rigid, the motion of the pole illustrated above is neither a perfect circle nor perfectly periodic (every time a major earthquake redistributes the Earth's mass, the pole shifts by a microscopic but measurable amount).
Labels:
Alrai,
Deneb,
Hamlet's Mill,
Homer,
Polaris,
Precession,
Thuban,
Vega
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
The Aztec and the New Fire Ceremony
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Codex Laud, folio VIII at FAMSI |
Time is spiralled, time is spun; time weaves tendrils through the days.
Tonight we mourn the dying sun; tonight my heart will feed the flames.
Fragments of Berossus, Alcor
In the pre-Columbian era, before the Spanish conquest, a variety of calendrical systems were in simultaneous use by the cultures of Mesoamerica, including both the Maya and the Aztec.For the Aztec, two systems, the 260-day cycle (tonalpohualli) and the 365-day cycle (xiuhpohualli), were particularly important. The 260-day cycle comprised thirteen repetitions of twenty day names, and the 365-day period consisted of eighteen such "veintenas" (the Spanish name; the original Nahuatl is no longer known) plus five nemontemi, or nameless days.
Because of the disparate lengths of the two cycles, the combination of tonalpohualli and xiuhpohualli dates formed an even longer cycle of approximately 52 solar years (365.25 days). After 18,980 days (the smallest number divisible by both 260 and 365; 18,980 = 73 x 260 and 52 x 365) the calendar combinations would then repeat* if the world did not end first — which could only be prevented by human sacrifice.
Labels:
Alcor,
Aztec,
Star-Myths
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Quipu
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlLhoE5nH0bOpnrpUmc1FFFmc_LKQWZ2B1wHKClPh_i550oSLAvGe2OSxymvOI4J7xvokBN4Gl0QD3IBTF7ziljB1E2Kr2DzF57_UuyV2FmrXt4Qym6A5ER6SgiN9VM9DDMgYXuNVrz-bO/s200/Quipu+%28adjusted+IMG_1819%29+smaller.jpg)
Labels:
Betelgeuse,
Inca,
Quipu,
Star-Myths
Friday, February 5, 2010
Philosophy
Although I have not eschewed all philosophical reading while writing Fragments of Berossus, I have scrupulously avoided anything to do with the major themes of the book, particularly ethics and jurisprudence.
Labels:
Ethics,
Philosophy
Language
Fragments of Berossus is written entirely in prose-poetry: it is neither pure poetry nor pure prose. Like poetry the text makes extensive use of metaphor and imagery, and, like poetry, the sounds, rhythms and cadences of the words are important; but, like prose, the text is simply presented in ordinary paragraphs and there are no rigid metrical or rhyming schemes.
Labels:
Coleridge,
Language,
Prose-Poetry
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