“I look down at the paper to see a fragment of cosmology:...

“I look down at the paper to see a fragment of cosmology: now I read it hungrily, my ability to read undimmed behind a wall of mute, mad years. 

Nine spheres there are that rotate across the great firmament of the heavens. As Pythagoras wrote, each sphere holds the stars like glowing jewels on their surface, whirling ever in their orbits. At the center of those vast moving orbs of quintessence rests the unmoved rock of this earth, our Eden and sometime Hell …

The ancients understood all things, from the mysteries of our frail flesh to the languages spoken by animals and by angels. Here are all the remnants of their knowledge we hold. The voices of the past echoing into our diminished age.”

— from the novel Sinful Folk

SOURCE:  Astronomical Clock, Munster Cathedral