March 22, 2021

The Light Of Ancient Wisdom

I often refer to early and ancient cultures around the globe having a similar indigenous worldview of connection with the Earth and other realm energies. A sweeping term, I admit, that rather assumes a consensual understanding. And I appreciate that while there are myriad bookshelves filled with evidence, I don’t often cite specific examples. Although Leonardo Da Vinci was not of an ancient culture, generally considered to be anything before the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476AD, he was of an early culture.

His was a culture early enough to still hold some of the ancient worldview. Leonardo believed the workings of the human body to be an analogy, in microcosm, for the workings of the universe and in this writing from his Treatise On Water he both honors and echoes an indigenous perspective.

By the ancients man has been called the world in miniature; and certainly this name is well bestowed, because, inasmuch as man is composed of earth, water, air and fire, his body resembles that of the earth; and as man has in him bones the supports and framework of his flesh, the world has its rocks the supports of the earth; as man has in him a pool of blood in which the lungs rise and fall in breathing, so the body of the earth has its ocean tide which likewise rises and falls every six hours, as if the world breathed; as in that pool of blood veins have their origin, which ramify all over the human body, so likewise the ocean sea fills the body of the earth with infinite springs of water.

We are of the Earth.

Eloquently articulated, it was nonetheless a belief that would not last. While as a young man da Vinci believed nature to be alive and animate, by the end of his lifetime he and others adopted a perspective that moved away from living nature and into the analytical mind, deadening the world around them. Humanity became reimagined as the center of consciousness, and all other creatures became marginalized. The shift to the Age of Enlightenment had begun.

Beannacht,
Judith – judith@stonefires.com