Mythology itself is not simply a crude mass of superstitions or gross delusions. It is not merely chaotic, for it possesses a systematic or conceptual form.  But, on the other hand, it would be impossible to characterize the structure of myth as rational. Language has often been identified with reason, or with the very source of reason. But it is easy to see that this definition fails to cover the whole field. It is a pars pro toto; it offers us a part for the whole. For side by side with conceptual language there is an emotional language; side by side with logical or scientific language there is a language of poetic imagination. Primarily language does not express thoughts or ideas, but feelings and affections. And even a religion “within the limits of pure reason” as conceived and worked out by Kant is no more than a mere abstraction. It conveys only the ideal shape, only the shadow, of what a genuine and concrete religious life is. The great thinkers who have defined man as an animal rationale were not empiricists, nor did they ever intend to give an empirical account of human nature. By this definition they were expressing rather a fundamental moral imperative. Reason is a very inadequate term with which to comprehend the forms of man’s cultural life in all their richness and variety. But all these forms are symbolic forms. Hence, instead of defining man as an animal rationale, we should define him as an animal symbolicum. By so doing we can designate his specific difference, and we can understand the new way open to man—the way to civilization.

Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture

Mapping the Stars and Constellations

The manuscript begins with a unique sequence of celestial maps preceding the text of the Aratea. As apparent from their diverging iconography, they were made by a different illustrator than the one responsible for the constellation pictures. While attesting to a strong cosmological interest in the structure of the universe as a whole, the maps represent an effort to advance astronomy as an exact science. Thus, the sequence of the maps begins with an illustration of the two hemispheres showing a largely uniform distribution of the constellations. On the following folio the constellations are traced again in outline, here sketched more in accordance with their proper astronomical distribution. Inserted on fol. 4v(photo below), we find a (first) representation of the planisphere.

Demon flying over the Caucasus by Mihály Zichy

The Severed Head of Medusa, 1913

Paul Darde