THE BOOK OF EARTHS

By

EDNA KENTON

New York: William Morrow & Company

[1928, No renewal]

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 of a Benedictine convent near Bingen on the Rhine, she was the first of a great line of women mystics. She founded two convents, was the author of many letters and three books--possibly five--was for those days a physician in her own right, and wrote a long treatise on the nature and properties of herbs. She was interested in statecraft, was a musician and a poet, and over half a hundred hymns are credited to her. Her health was not good, but she governed her convent, wrote her books, healed her sick and ailing, corresponded with the wisest men of her age, and travelled hundreds of miles--in the twelfth century! And with all this, she led the contemplative life.

In that contemplative active life her curious system of the universe blossomed, and in her letters and her books she left the records of her mystical visions of its structure and meaning. These records usually begin with, "The Living Light sayeth . . ." It was her name for God, but it was in "The Shade of the Living Light" that she had her perceptions of the universe, and it is interesting to read her simple account of these "Lights." "From my infancy until now in the seventieth year of my age," she says, "my soul has always beheld this light, and in it my soul soars to the summit of the firmament and into different air. . . . The brightness which I see is not limited by space, and is more brilliant than the radiance around the Sun. . . . I cannot measure its height, length, breadth. Its name, which has been given me, is 'Shade of the Living Light.' . . . With that brightness I sometimes see another light for which the name Lux Vivenshas been given me. When and how I see thisI cannot tell; but sometimes when I see it all sadness and pain is lifted from me, and I seem a simple girl again, and an old woman no more."

In Hildegard's universe, the Earth was the centre, and spherical, around which were arranged concentric shells or zones. The inner zones are spherical, the outer oval or egg-shaped, and the outermost (Fig. 92 ) so formed as to suggest the acuminated sphere that symbolises the fifth element, quintessence of the other four. This point that tapers into outer space is in the East, which is the top of the diagram. One of her drawings shows, says Singer, that she believed the antipodean surface of the Earth to be uninhabitable, "since it is either beneath the ocean, or in the mouth of the Dragon."

In the interior of the Earth, she believed, are two vast spaces shaped like truncated cones, where punishment was endured, and from whence great evil came forth.

FIGURE 92. Hildegard's first scheme of the Universe. Slightly simplified from the Wiesbaden Codex B, folio 14 r.
(From ''The Scientific Views and Visions of Saint Hildegard,'' by Charles Singer; in Studies in the History and Method of Science, ed. by Charles Singer, 1917. Vol. Fig. 2.)
The Earth itself was composed of the four elements, which are represented, curiously unequal in proportion and shape. Their arrangement is not orderly, and this very disorder illustrates one of Hildegard's fundamental doctrines regarding the relation of this world to the universe. Before man's fall, the elements were united in an harmonious combination, and Earth was Paradise; after that catastrophe, the harmony of the universe was disturbed, with the centre of all the trouble on this planet which has ever since remained in its now familiar state of chaotic confusion or mistio, as Hildegard's age called it. This mistioshe represents vigorously enough by the irregular distribution of the elements over the Earth. "Thus mingled will they remain until subjected to the melting pot of the Lord Judgment, when they will emerge in a new and eternal harmony, no longer mixed as matter, but separate and pure, parts of a new heaven and a new Earth."

Around this world, says Singer, 1 is spread the atmosphere, the aer lucidusor alba pellis, also circular. Through this alba pellisno Earth creature can penetrate. Later Hildegard seems to have divided this first zone of air into two, the aer tenuisor atmosphere whose outer part is the inner zone of the clouds, and the fortis et albus lucidusque aer, where certain fixed stars are placed.

Beyond this are four outer zones belonging to the four winds, indicated by the breath of supernatural beings.

PLATE XXXVII. Nous pervaded by the Godhead embracing the Macrocosm with the Microcosm.
From ''The Scientific Views and Visions of Saint Hildegard,'' by Charles Singer. In Studies in the History and Method of Science, ed. by Charles Singer, 1917, Vol. I, Plate VII.
They also correspond confusedly to the four elements and to the four regions of the heavenly bodies.

The first is the aer aquosus, corresponding to water, and containing the east wind. In its outer part float clouds, expanding, contracting, and being blown this way and that, thus concealing or revealing the heavenly bodies.

Beyond the aer aquosus, or watery zone, is the purus aether, or zone of air, and containing the west wind. Of all the zones it is the widest, and the long axis of this zone and the remaining outer zones is from east to west, thus fixing the path of movement of the heavenly bodies. It carries in it the constellations of the fixed stars, the Moon, and the two interior planets, Mercury and Venus.

Beyond the zones of east wind and water and of west wind and air is the umbrosa pellis, or ignis niger, the zone of the "dry" and the "earthy," of the north wind, thunder, lightning, and storms. It is a dark, narrow shell which is the storehouse of "the treasures of the snow and of the hail."

The outermost shell is the lucidus ignis, zone of fire, of the south wind, and of the three outer planets, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn--also, in Hildegard's first scheme, of the Sun.

The movements of the four outer zones about each other, which carry the heavenly bodies, are caused by the four winds; and the elements peculiar to each zone are here comparatively pure. Each zone has also its own special mentalcharacter, and has a specific influence on the mind and the body of man. For, says Hildegard, "And again I heard the voice from heaven saying, 'God, who created all things, wrought also man in His own image and similitude, and in him He traced (signavit) all created things, and He held him in such love that He destined him for the place from which the fallen angel had been cast."

Plate XXXVII is an illustration from her Liber Divinorumrepresenting her second vision, which shows Nous, the "world-spirit," animated and controlled by the God-head, with arms outstretched embracing the macrocosm with the microcosm. Only the head and the feet of Nous are visible, for the body is covered with the disc of the universe. In this picture of her universe, the zones are seven: they are, from without inwards, says Singer:

a. The lucidus ignis, containing the three outer planets, the sixteen principal fixed stars, and the south wind.

b. The ignis niger, containing the sun, the north wind, and the materials for thunder, lightning, and hail.

c. The purus aether, containing the west wind, the Moon, the two inner planets, and certain fixed stars.

d. The aer aquosus, containing the east wind.

e. The fortis et albus lucidusque aerwhere certain other fixed stars are placed.

f. The aer tenuis, or atmosphere, in the outer part of which is the zone of the clouds.

From all these zones with all their contents, elements, winds, Sun, Moon, planets, fixed stars, and the great animals or qualities of the heavens, are rained down influences upon the figure of the macrocosm.

Singer quotes a passage from Hildegard's Liber Divinorum to illustrate all this, and most of it can be followed in Plate XXXVII , and in Fig. 92 .

"In the middle of the disk [of the universe] there appeared the form of a man, the crown of whose head and the soles of whose feet extended to the fortis et albus lucidusque aer, and his hands were outstretched right and left to the same circle. . . . Towards these parts there was an appearance of four heads, a leopard, a wolf, a lion, and a bear. Above the head of the figure, in the zone of the purus aether, I saw the head of the leopard emitting a blast from its mouth, and on the right side of the mouth the blast, curving itself somewhat backwards, was formed into a crab's head . . . while on the left side of the mouth a blast similarly curved ended in a stag's head. From the mouth of the crab's head, another blast went to the middle of the space between the leopard and the lion, and from the stag's head a similar blast to the middle of the space between the leopard and the bear . . . and all the heads were breathing towards the figure of the man. Under his feet in the aer aquosusthere appeared as it were the head of a wolf, sending forth to the right a blast extending to the middle of the half space between its head and that of the bear, where it assumed the form of the stag's head; and from the stag's mouth there came as it were another breath which ended in the middle line. From the left of the wolf's mouth arose a breath which went to the middle of the half space between the wolf and the lion, where was depicted another crab's head . . . from whose mouth another breath ended in the same middle line . . . And the breath of all the heads extended sideways from one to another. . . . Moreover, on the right hand of the figure in the lucidus igni, from the head of the lion, issued a breath which passed laterally on the right into a serpent's head and on the left into a lamb's head . . . similarly on the figure's left in the ignis niger, there issued a breath from the bear's head ending on its right in the head of [another] lamb, and on its left in another serpent's head . . . And above the head of the figure the seven planets were ranged in order, three in the lucidus ignis, one projecting into the ignis niger, and three into the purus aether. . . . And in the circumference of the circle of the lucidus ignis there appeared the sixteen principal stars, four in each quadrant between the heads. . . . Also the purus aetherand the fortis et albus lucidusque aerseemed to be full of stars which sent forth their rays towards the clouds, whence . . . tongues like rivers descended to the disk and towards the figure, which was thus surrounded and influenced by these signs."

In Hildegard's fourth vision--of the influence of the heavenly bodies and the pure elements on men, animals, and plants, she saw, from the upper fiery firmament, the lucidus ignis, ashes as it were cast to the Earth, which produced rashes and ulcers in men and animals and fruits. From the ignis nigershe saw vapours (nebul descending, which withered the plants and dried up the earth. Against these descending influences the purus aetherstruggled, seeking to hold back the plagues of disease and drought.

PLATE XXXVIII (From Uriusque Cosmi; Robert Fludd, 1621. Vol. I)
From the fortis et albus lucidusque aershe saw certain clouds descend to the Earth and infect men and beasts with a pestilence, but this plague the aer aquosusopposed, so that all were not destroyed. In the aer tenuisshe saw its moisture as if it were boiling above the surface of the Earth, rousing the force of the Earth, and compelling it to bring forth its fruits by aid of the cosmic rays.

In the whole of her scheme of the universe, the winds are of prime importance. Were it not for the winds, which, she said, are the wings of God's power, the other three elements, the fires of the south, the waters of the west, and the great shadows of the north would burst over the Earth and destroy it. Or, were the four winds to move forward at once, the elements themselves would be split asunder, and the waters of the sea would be dried up. As man's body, she said, is held together by the soul, so the firmament is held together by the winds, which are, like the soul, invisible.

In developing her theory of the correspondence of the microcosm to the macrocosm, of man to the universe and God, she set down many of its details. The firmament corresponds to the head of man, in which, from the top of the cerebral cavity to "the last extremity of the forehead," are seven marked spaces all equal, which correspond to the seven planets, all of which, says Hildegard, are equally distant from each other in the heavens. The Sun, Moon, and stars she compares to his eyes; air is his hearing, the winds his smelling, the dew of heaven his tasting, and the sides of the world his arms and his touching. The Earth is like the heart of the cosmos, for it, like the heart of man, can be stirred by emotion; and, as the heart of man, moved by joy or sorrow, excites the brain to cause tears to flow, so the Earth, when the Moon begins to wax and wane, sends up her tears, the fogs of her oceans and seas.

Footnotes

220:1 "The Scientific Views and Visions of Saint Hildegard;" Charles Singer: In Studies in the History and Method of Science, Vol. I, 1917, pp. 22-36.
Next: The Earths in the Universe

THE BOOK OF EARTHS

By

EDNA KENTON

New York: William Morrow & Company

[1928, No renewal]

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 heart was the Mind: "It is He (the Heart) who brings forth every issue, and it is the tongue that repeats the thoughts of the Heart." To the Chinese the heart of the universe was Buddha; it was also "the skilful workman," who made all the different conditions of existence in the ten regions of space; it was the "universal essence" from which everything in the universe came into being. Heaven and Earth, with this heart, they said, pervades everything.

PLATE XXXV. THE EARTH OF THE MYSTICS--THE HEART OF GOD (From Theologia Mystica, or, The Archtypous Globe; John Pordage, 1683)

Man obtains it, and then it is the heart of man; when things obtain it, then it is the heart of things; when grass, trees, birds, and beasts obtain it, then it is the heart of each of these. And the heart of man, they said, is simply the inborn Buddha, which belongs to everything that has conscious existence, that infinitesimal particle of the divine that gives and sustains all. Somewhere, then, in the universe this divine heart of the cosmos pulsated, and if the Earth was the centre of the cosmos, then the Earth was its heart and its life.

Just as the unknown author of De Imago Mundihad worked out his scheme of the universe on the image of the Cosmic Egg, John Pordage, an Englishman of the seventeenth century, developed his mystical theory of the "Archtypous Globe" as the Cosmic Heart. Plate XXXV gives his drawing of the Eternal World, wherein the Holy Trinity do manifest themselves, as in a clear Chrystalline Glass or Mirrour." In it, he discerned three distinct places, the Outward Court, the Inward Court, or Holy Place, and "the Inmost Court, or the Abysmal Eye in the centre of the Heart of God, . . . which essential Eye ofGod, looking into itself, and finding nothing besides itself, by dilating itself, gives a beginning and an end to itself; which beginning and entring into, and joyning with one another do constitute and form the Globe of Eternity. . . for the Eye, turning it self inwards into it self, comes to know it self, and to see, feel, and taste it self; and if it look outward, it sees nothing but it self neither, because as the Eye is God, so is the Globe nothing but the dilation of the Eye. . . for the natural formation of a Globe or sphear is by the Centre's dilating and expanding of it self; a circumference being nothing else but a centre dilated, or a central emanation bounded by it self. . . . I am ashamed to present you such a dead lifeless figure of it; but no pen can decipher it on paper, it is only the Spirit of the Eye that can open it self, and give you the living and ravishing sight of its own essentiality without similitudes or figures, though I can express it outwardly no better than I have in the foregoing figure."

Pordage explains the tiny "figure in the Margent," as typifying the Holy Trinity. The Eye in the midst of the Heart represents the Father, the Generator of the Son who is the Heart of the Father; and the out flowing exit of powers, like a breath, represents the Holy Ghost proceeding from the Father, through the Heart of the Son. Thus the birth of the Holy Trinity is manifested in the opening of the Eye, to be a Trinity in Unity; the Eye is in the Heart, and the Heart is the Eye's Centre, and the Spirit is a proceeding Spirit from the Eye and Heart; and thus they are one in another, in one Essence, and undivided and inseparable; the Father is one with the Son, and the Son with the Father; and the Spirit proceeds from the union of these both, and abides one with them. Wheresoever the Eye is, there is the Heart; and wheresoever the Eye and Heart are, there the outgoing of powers streams forth from them."

Map makers are not usually mystics, and certainly there is no indication that Petrus Apianus, distinguished German mathematician and astronomer of the sixteenth century, was proposing to do more than make an extraordinarily beautiful world-map according to a pattern he himself explains. On Ptolemy's figure of Earth, Apianus made his famous "cardiform projections" towards the poles, and obtained his heart-shaped map of the world. This is one of the earliest maps on which the just discovered western continents appear under the name of the Americas. (See Frontispiece Plate XXXVI .)

THE BOOK OF EARTHS

By

EDNA KENTON

New York: William Morrow & Company

[1928, No renewal]

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 times, that most ancient of the figures of Earth, the hills of the gods, the antipodal mountains.

But, in Dante's Earth-figure also, as in Columbus's, the mountains have shifted. If Columbus, for some strange reason--and his reason is not at all clear--had put his mountain of Paradise at the western end of the Earth, Dante's two mountains give a still odder figure. In his Paradise Found, Dr. Warren has worked out this construction of Dante's Earth, showing that the Mountain of Paradise has slipped all of 30 below the equator. He bases this construction mainly on a few lines regarding the location of the Mountain of Purgatory (Purgatorio, Canto iv, 67-70): "Zion stands with this mountain in such wise on the earth that both have a single horison and diverse hemispheres;" and he adds: ". . . no careful reader of the Divina Commedia can fail to see that its 'Mount Zion' and the Purgatorial Montagna malagevole altissima et cinta de mareare simply unrecognised 'survivals' of prehistoric thought--antipodal world-mountains once situate at the poles, but here relocated to suit the demands of sacred medial geography. They are the Su-Meru and Ku-Meru of India figuring in Christian poetry."

FIGURE 90. The Earth of Dante.
a. City of Jerusalem. b. Mountain of Purgatory. c. Inferno within the Earth.
(From Paradise Found; William Fairfield Warren, 1885.)Another construction of Dante's universe is given (Fig. 91), from Studies in the History and Method of Science, edited by Charles Singer. It is Caetani's diagram of Dante's Hell, Purgatory, Earthly Paradise and the nine Heavens. Dante describes Hell as a funnel or inverted cone descending in nine diminishing whorls through the hemisphere until the centre is reached, which is also the centre of the universe, and is situated just under Jerusalem, the centre of the habitable Earth. Or, according to Caetani, he pictures it as a circular mountain, cone-like. Purgatory, Dante places at the antipodes, that is, on an island in the ocean of the uninhabitable Earth.

FIGURE 91. Dante's Scheme of the Universe.
Slightly modified from Michelangelo Caetani, duca di Sermoneta, La materia della Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri dichiarata in Vi tavole, Monte Cassino, 1855.
(From Studies in the History and Method of Science, ed. by Charles Singer, 1917, Vol. I, Fig. 4.)From this island springs a mountain ascending in a series of stages up to the summit on which is Eden, the Earthly Paradise, home of the First Pair. Paradise includes all the spheres of heaven, through all of which Dante ascends, finding himself always on the planet that governs each sphere, until at last the Empyrean Paradise is attained, which crowns the universe.

Two regions, of air and of fire, must be crossed before the sphere of the Moon, the first star, which bounds the region of fire, is reached; and on the lower right-hand quarter of Earth is the dark forest in which Dante spent a night before he began, or in which he began, his journey. At its end he is at the foot of a hill, confronting three great beasts, from whom he is rescued by Virgil, who is to be his guide through Hell and Purgatory. The poets enter the Inferno at twilight--a world of eternal night whose ruler is the Moon. They go through the ten Pits until in the very centre of the Earth they see Lucifer, its king, at this centre of gravity, encased in eternal ice.

The passage through the centre of Earth is one of the greatest difficulty, and above it is ocean only, except for the Island of Purgatory. This division of land and water is explained to Dante thus: When Lucifer fell, all the land which existed in the mysterious hemisphere fell with him, and "fled for fear of him" escaping in what way it might around the globe, settling finally in the inhabited hemisphere. It is possible that the Earth in the interior fled also, but in the opposite direction, to form an island of land in the Purgatorial hemisphere. But, between land and land, there was left an empty space, and up this space they might climb to the island of refuge. Then comes the ascent of the stages of Purgatory to Paradise, and the flight through the heavenly spheres, until at last from the Heaven of the Stars the universe lies spread out under their feet, and Dante sees below him the purgatorial Earth, heart of the cosmos, "small and round as a threshing floor."

THE BOOK OF EARTHS

By

EDNA KENTON

New York: William Morrow & Company

[1928, No renewal]

The Earth of Columbus

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 letters, and in the writings of his contemporaries. One of these latter, Pietro Martire, who accompanied Columbus on the voyage of 1498, in his Decades of the newe worldepublished in 1555, said that "the Admirall" declared such things, "the which because they seeme contrarye to the oppinions of all the Astronomers, I wyll touche them but with a drye foote as sayeth the Evidencerbe. . . .

FIGURE 89. The pear-shaped Earth of Columbus.
(From Paradise Found; William Fairfield Warren, 1885.)For he sayeth, that he . . . conjectured, that the earth is not perfectly rownde; But that when it was created, there was a certeyne heape reysed theron, much hygher than the other partes of the same. So that (as he saith), it is not rownde after the form of an apple or a bal (as others thynke) but rather lyke a peare as it hangeth on the tree. And that Pariais the Region which possesseth the super-eminente or hyghest parte thereof nerest unto heaven. In soo muche that he earnestly contendeth, the earthly Paradise to bee situate in the toppes of those three hylles, which wee sayde before, that the watche man sawe owte of the toppe castell of the shippe: And that the outragious streames of the freshe waters which soo violently issewe out of the sayde goulfes and stryve soo with the salte water, faule head-longe from the toppes of the sayde mountaynes."

Columbus himself, in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella regarding his third voyage, wrote: 1

"I have always read that the world comprising the land and water was spherical, and the recorded experiences of Ptolemy and all the others have Evidenced this by the eclipses of the moon and other observations made from East to West, as well as the elevation of the Pole from North to South. But as I have already described, I have now seen so much irregularity that I have come to another conclusion respecting the Earth, namely, that it is not round, as they describe, but of the form of a pear, which is very round except where the stalk grows, at which part it is most prominent; or like a round ball, upon part of which is a prominence like a woman's nipple, this protrusion being the highest and nearest the sky, situated under the equinoctial line, and at the eastern extremity of this sea. [He is in the Gulf of Paria, to the north or the north-west of the mouth of the Orinoco.] . . . Ptolemy and the other philosophers who have written upon the globe thought that it was spherical; . . . but this western half of the world, I maintain, is like half a very round pear, having a raised projection for the stalk, as I have already described."

When Columbus wrote this letter to his royal helpers, he supposed himself to be in Asia's easternmost waters, but he was really in the northern part of South America, which he himself went on to describe as the Paradise of the Earth or the Mountain of the World. But the World Mountain of Columbus had dropped from its northern quarter to the western.

Footnotes

208:1 Select Letters of Columbus: Hakluyt Soc. Pub., and ed. pp. 134-138.