I am observing the modern passage of Pluto into the sign Capricorn a couple of years late; Pluto is now at 5°♑. I have begun reading The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, published in 1762, the year Pluto entered Capricorn in its previous incarnation.
When Pluto is in Capricorn, it is time for serious talk about civilization and its effects on the quality of human existence. I hope to return soon with relevant information about this influential philosopher and putative bad dad...
But I keep falling back to The Consolation of Philosophy written by Ancius Boethius during his imprisonment in 524 before being executed by the state. I'm so late coming to these seminal works, but glad to at last be reading them. Pluto, by the way, was in Sagittarius when Consolation was written. Here is a link to the full text of what is copied below --->The Consolation of Philosophy: Nero's Infamy
The whole of this earth's globe, as thou hast learnt from the demonstration of astronomy, compared with the expanse of heaven, is found no bigger than a point; that is to say, if measured by the vastness of heaven's sphere, it is held to occupy absolutely no space at all. Now, of this so insignificant portion of the universe, it is about a fourth part, as Ptolemy's proofs have taught us, which is inhabited by living creatures known to us. If from this fourth part you take away in thought all that is usurped by seas and marshes, or lies a vast waste of waterless desert, barely is an exceeding narrow area left for human habitation. You, then, who are shut in and prisoned in this merest fraction of a point's space, do ye take thought for the blazoning of your fame, for the spreading abroad of your renown? Why, what amplitude or magnificence has glory when confined to such narrow and petty limits?
From The Consolation of Philosophy by Ancius Boethius written 524 AD
But I keep falling back to The Consolation of Philosophy written by Ancius Boethius during his imprisonment in 524 before being executed by the state. I'm so late coming to these seminal works, but glad to at last be reading them. Pluto, by the way, was in Sagittarius when Consolation was written. Here is a link to the full text of what is copied below --->The Consolation of Philosophy: Nero's Infamy
The whole of this earth's globe, as thou hast learnt from the demonstration of astronomy, compared with the expanse of heaven, is found no bigger than a point; that is to say, if measured by the vastness of heaven's sphere, it is held to occupy absolutely no space at all. Now, of this so insignificant portion of the universe, it is about a fourth part, as Ptolemy's proofs have taught us, which is inhabited by living creatures known to us. If from this fourth part you take away in thought all that is usurped by seas and marshes, or lies a vast waste of waterless desert, barely is an exceeding narrow area left for human habitation. You, then, who are shut in and prisoned in this merest fraction of a point's space, do ye take thought for the blazoning of your fame, for the spreading abroad of your renown? Why, what amplitude or magnificence has glory when confined to such narrow and petty limits?
From The Consolation of Philosophy by Ancius Boethius written 524 AD
