Saturday, March 12, 2016

The Sun According to Giordano Bruno



This image is designed to be incorporated into the Dome of Light. The level of the horizon
matches the equator generated on the circular panels of the Dome, and the underlying perspective system which governs the composition of the image also matches that geometry. The ratio between the distance from horizon to top, on the one hand, and from horizon to the bottom of the image, on the other, is equal to the square root of five: 1/2.236068. I didn't plan it this way, but I've found that when you're dealing in a rigorous way with geodesics, and with the geometry of the regular solids that underlies them, such "coincidences" crop up on a regular basis.

The great Hermetic philosopher and occultist Giordano Bruno wrote a series of descriptions of allegorical figures representing the planets. Taking this as my inspiration, I've done a group of watercolors representing these allegorical figures, and this is one of several such images depicting the Sun.

Bruno was ultimately burned at the stake for his ideas. Hardcore materialists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are fond of claiming that Bruno was killed for his scientific ideas, such as his suggestion that the stars are suns, and that many of these have planets orbiting them that support life, and other civilizations. But my understanding is that what *really* upset the Inquisitors was his insistence that the Sun is a god. Once they heard that, his fate was sealed. Not that I claim to have read the minutes of his trial.

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