In Iconologia del cavaliere Cesare Ripa Perugino, Perugia 1765, the image of Cosmography is found with a strange use of Wheel and Spindle. There are two ways of interpreting this image: alchemical and philosophical. Both speak of operations between heaven and earth.
An introduction to Cesare Ripa and his editions of “Iconologia” can be found at Cesare Ripa & the Hot Frozen Ouroboros World Machine. My translation from Italian:
An old woman, wearing a starry light blue shirt and the under cloak, a terrestrial color garment, stands with two globes on each side. On the right side is the celestial, and on the left is terrestrial. She holds the Tolomeus astrolabe with the right hand and, with the left, the astronomical radius.
Let’s start by saying that mentioning which hand holds one object and which the other might not be purely descriptive. The Ripa knight could hardly have ignored that the right hand traditionally held the concepts commonly attributed to a particular character, for example, a god or a goddess. In contrast, the esoteric sides were held in the left hand, known only by a few initiates or scholars, and therefore hidden from most. A famous Italian saying goes: “Do not let the right hand know what the left is doing”.
Undeniably this image is about measurements in sky and earth or, better, between sky and earth. The connections can be summed up in Greek mythology thus: in every area of the earth, there are a Hephaestus and a Hestia/Vesta as repeaters of the celestial and ineffable fires of Zeus and Hera, respectively.
To an untrained and inattentive eye, perhaps nothing relevant may be detected in this engraving, apart from the measuring devices represented strangely and inappropriately. On the other hand, Cesare Ripa’s words in no way explain the circumstances but suggest some intriguing perceptions.
Nevertheless, we feel as though we have been missing the point, that’s to say that the ancient capacity to understand symbolism nowadays seems to have been lost. Our last hope to get some hints might be a source commonly neglected: pre-Socratic Greek thought – when philosophy had mythological foundations. A relevant part of the European vulgar era, hermetic symbolism originates from Greek culture, which might deepen its roots in more ancient and distant worlds. We have already encountered the concept in Anaximander, Apeiron, and Earthy Sea. But let’s read these few paragraphs in Cavalier Ripa’s chapter entitled “Cosmografia”. Cosmography is ” the art that contemplates the parts of the earth to the sky, and makes the sites of one to be compatible to the other, since by this name Cosmography we intend the world “, according to Ripa as we will see, something more than mere measurements.
In ancient philosophy, Cosmography was the art of looking at the parts of the earth towards the sky and making the sites of one another compatible. By this name Cosmography, the world entirely meant what the Greeks called Cosmos.
It is represented as an old woman because her cause originated from the world’s creation. Ripa tells us that she wears a light blue dress, while the dress below – the one that can be seen between the two globes – is terrestrial.
The wheel is the sun’s ecliptic; the rhombus is an ancient symbol to indicate the northern area of the sky. We know that, for the Pythagoreans, the rhombus is the symbol of the North Star. But the North Star is also the symbol of the sounds that come from it. The rhombus is also sound and spinning top).
She wears starry light blue and terrestrial colors, as we have said because this character shares sky and earth parts. Because of that, we represent her standing between the two globes, showing her action with an astrolabe, which she holds with the right hand, and through this device, we measure the distance, the interval, and the size from a star to another, and with the radius, which she holds with the left hand, the operation to be done in earth”.
Here above, we have seen some images of astrolabes that differ from Cesare Ripa’s. What’s more, Ripa’s device lacks the central indispensable oblong rigid piece of wood, metal, or similar material used for pointing. In addition, Ripa’s looks very similar to a wheel. The outer edges are very thick, unlike real astrolabes, and the radial lines from the center are too many and too thin not to have a close resemblance to wheel spokes.The word astrolabe is from Greek astrolabon, neuter of astrolabos, or “star-taking”. Is Ripa’s wheel-shaped device intended to be star-catching but in a different way than Tolomeus’s (since legend has it that Tolemeus had invented the astrolabe)?
