#orbis

I miss thinking of you.

I miss needing you.

I miss fixating on you.

I miss ruminating about you.

I miss my obsession with you.

"It's nothing. It's just an infatuation. It's nothing." - Satine, Moulin Rouge, 2001

Title page of the series Creation of the World, designed by Hendrick Goltzius and executed by the young, talented engraver Jan Harmensz. Muller in the 1590s.

Not exactly a mirror, but it is very interesting that Goltzius chose to depict the emerging world as a mirror-like sphere (orbis) reflecting the process of its own creation (!)

Orbis is also explicitly mentioned in the Latin epigram, by Franciscus Estius, in the cartouche: Principio Omnipotens immensi conditor orbis Esse polum iussit terraeque immobile pondus, Hinc lucem tenebris removet, noctemque diemque Nuncupat; et longis spatiis mox segregat undas, Aequora secernit terris; vos Lunaeque Solique Praefectos dedit; hinc animalia cuncta creavit. Post haec natus homo est caelesti afflatus ab aura, Divinae consors mentis, dominusque priorum. That roughly goes as At the beginning the almighty maker of the vast world ordained that the sky should exist, and the earth’s unmoving mass. Then he parted light from darkness, and named night and day; soon after, across wide spaces, he divided the waters, and separated the seas from the lands; and he appointed you, Moon and Sun, as rulers. Then he created all living creatures. After these things man was born, breathed on by heavenly air, sharer in the divine mind, and lord of all created before.

Notice that the vast world is described as immensi orbis (a metaphor we also find in orbis terrarum, for example).

Goltzius carried this circular theme through the remaining six plates of the series, filled with his famously twisted bodies:

Obsessed over this tool made by the amazing people at Stanford. It's called Orbis, and you can literally calculate distance using various forms of Medieval transport. The travel time in my fics are about to get even more accurate!