Ego sum vermis, et non homo
Renaissance physiologists rendered the place of memory as a worm.
Its name was vermis, worm in all respects, and was actually represented as a protuberance inside the skull. For the ancients, memory moved mainly in space and only imperceptibly in time – since the past contained everything, even the present and the future. The definition “Memory abolishes becoming and therefore embodies the a-chronic foundation” was based on an idea of synchronicity and analogies.
Numbers kept the world from evanescence.
Non-mathematical but seminal numbers.
Ancient mathematics and geometry did not have the task of describing or simulating real things but instead providing a foundation for reality. Definitively, it was all about invariance. What allowed the different numerical quantities to be collected and linked together, arranging them in finite or infinite successions, was a law that implied the idea of similarity: the logos.
The compass, almost the only instrument.
The compass includes both the inside and the outside.
Given Luca Pacioli’s linear and, therefore, geometric conception of arithmetic operations, all numbers could be calculated with the compass. The Italian mathematician, pupil of Piero della Francesca and Leonardo da Vinci’s close friend, called the compass “sexto”, sixth, because everything could be done with. However, Pacioli does not forget to mention the angle ruler, an indispensable tool for the scaling of the mathematical Logos.
The most remote continues to resurface.
Studying the origin of the universe isn’t just about looking back.
It means understanding whether that origin is still present, in some form, and in the most faraway reaches of the cosmos. In those places—invisible, unstable, distant—a question arises that science poses cautiously: if the conditions are right, how plausible is it that “the other” not only has already happened, but is already part of our present.
The skin-tunic as an “inner alchemist”.
Even though Oceanos consumes it among a thousand whispers.
The symbol of the “skin robe” refers to the “thickness” of the ray that, for the ancients, established multiple connections both with the material world and to amplify the stellar influences within us. The Greeks called it pneuma, Iamblichus ochêma, the alchemists “fish bladder”. Paracelsus considered it a natural internal alchemist, an enveloping medium that presents many analogies with the astral body. Note that fish do not have bones, but cartilage that quickly dissipates.
So, search for similarities, also called “signatures”.
Bones are the most unalterable part, where the signature remain for a long time.
Alchemical works are ultimately processes that not only alter the states of matter, but also disturb and influence the surrounding air. Hermes, the mace-bearer, leads the procession and marks the time. Hermes, the dealer, shakes the rod that makes us remember.