‘Know thyself, and thou shalt know the universe and the gods.’

This statement, which is inscribed at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi is said to have originated with Thales of Miletus (c. 626/623  – c. 548/545 BC) who was purportedly one of the “Seven Sages” who served Apollo. He is credited with being the first philosopher to rely on natural science rather than myths and legends to explain ourselves and our world. His interests ranged from math to astronomy to engineering to meteorology.

According to Wikipedia, Aristotle said, “Thales thought “all things are full of gods”, i.e. lodestones had souls, because iron is attracted to them (by the force of magnetism). The same applied to amber for its capacity to generate static electricity. The reasoning for such hylozoism or organicism seems to be if something moved, then it was alive, and if it was alive, then it must have a soul. As well as gods seen in the movement caused by what came to be known as magnetism and electricity, it seems Thales also had a supreme God which structured the universe: “Thales”, says Cicero, “assures that water is the principle of all things; and that God is that Mind which shaped and created all things from water.”

I’m not a philosopher, more of a shade-tree mechanic who tinkers with the simpler parts of the universe and hopes he gets the wires hooked up right.  That said, I’ve never run across a more important admonition than “Know thyself, and thou shalt know the universe and the gods.” We are, I believe, the keys to the kingdom, the eyes that look out on creation and–over many lifetimes, perhaps–will grasp the importance and the meaning behind the curtain imposed on the scene by day-to-day life. Believing this is not a prideful thing, but a humbling look at what is given us to understand–when we finally learn how.

So, we begin with ourselves and look outward–or perhaps inward–from there until we are privileged to see and understand that, as the Huna mysticism of Hawai’i believes, there is nothing that is not God. Fortunately, we don’t start with the “big picture” and work our way back to ourselves. We start with us, an entity we should be able to one day understand.

So, we start with knowing ourselves. A tall order, really, but something we can fathom after years of effort. We can do his. Look in the mirror and you’ll see where the universe begins.

–Malcolm