‘The vene d’acqua of the earth is like the blood flow of a woman. The life cycle of a woman is short while the earth is eternal, but still they reflect one another. As a man, or indeed a woman has bones inside her, the supports and armature of flesh, so the world has the rocks, foundations of the earth. As a woman has in her a lake of blood, where the lungs rise and fall in breathing, so the body of the earth has its ocean sea, which rises and falls every six hours as if the world breathed.’
