The transcending of the elemental, planetary, zodiacal and fixed stars into the Empyrean, the mind of God
Seeing the inner mechanics of the universe
Empyrean Firmament Primum Mobile
The Flammarion engraving is a wood engraving by an unknown artist that first appeared in Camille Flammarion's L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire (1888). The image depicts a man crawling under the edge of the sky, depicted as if it were a solid hemisphere, to look at the mysterious Empyrean beyond.
Camille Flammarion FRAS1 (French: nikɔla kamij flamaʁjɔ̃; 26 February 1842 – 3 June 1925) was a French astronomer and author. He was a prolific author of more than fifty titles, including popular science works about astronomy, several notable early science fiction novels, and works on psychical research and related topics. He also published the magazine L'Astronomie, starting in 1882. He maintained a private observatory at Juvisy-sur-Orge, France.
The caption underneath the engraving (not shown here) translates to *”A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet..."
- “A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touch”
Wheels within wheels the "wheel in the middle of a wheel" described in the visions of the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel.
- The appearance of the wheels and their workmanship was the color of beryl, and the four of them had the same likeness. And their appearance and their workmanship was like a wheel inside of a wheel . . . And I looked, and behold, the four wheels were beside the cherubim . . . And their appearance was as one, the four of them . . . (Ezekiel 1:16, 10:9 - 10, HBFV).
"Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, and the wheels would rise along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When the creatures moved, they also moved; when the creatures stood still, they also stood still; and when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels." Ezekiel 1:20-21
This story is predominately found in the first chapter of the book of Ezekiel, as part of his inaugural vision. God approaches Ezekiel as the divine warrior, riding in his battle chariot. The chariot is drawn by four living creatures, each having four faces (those of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle) and four wings. Beside each "living creature" is a "wheel within a wheel", with "tall and awesome" rims full of eyes all around. God appoints Ezekiel as a prophet and as a "watchman" in Israel: "Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites."
Ezekiel 1 1 In my thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God. 2 On the fifth of the month—it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin— 3 the word of the LORD came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, by the Kebar River in the land of the Babylonians. There the hand of the LORD was on him. 4 I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, 5 and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was human, 6 but each of them had four faces and four wings. 7 Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. 8 Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. All four of them had faces and wings, 9 and the wings of one touched the wings of another. Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved. 10 Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. 11 Such were their faces. They each had two wings spreading out upward, each wing touching that of the creature on either side; and each had two other wings covering its body. 12 Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went. 13 The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it. 14 The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning. 15 As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. 16 This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like topaz, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. 17 As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not change direction as the creatures went. 18 Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around. 19 When the living creatures moved, the wheels beside them moved; and when the living creatures rose from the ground, the wheels also rose. 20 Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, and the wheels would rise along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. 21 When the creatures moved, they also moved; when the creatures stood still, they also stood still; and when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. 22 Spread out above the heads of the living creatures was what looked something like a vault, sparkling like crystal, and awesome. 23 Under the vault their wings were stretched out one toward the other, and each had two wings covering its body. 24 When the creatures moved, I heard the sound of their wings, like the roar of rushing waters, like the voice of the Almighty, like the tumult of an army. When they stood still, they lowered their wings. 25 Then there came a voice from above the vault over their heads as they stood with lowered wings. 26 Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. 27 I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. 28 Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking.
Ezekiel 1:1–3:27: God approaches Ezekiel as the divine warrior, riding in His battle chariot. The chariot is drawn by four living creatures, each having four faces (those of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle) and four wings. Beside each "living creature" is a "wheel within a wheel", with "tall and awesome" rims full of eyes all around. God commissions Ezekiel as a prophet and as a "watchman" in Israel: "Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites."
Cherubim -
the tree, which some people have interpreted as the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.
wood engraving - not a woodcut.
"In Flammarion's L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire, the image refers to the text on the facing page (p. 163), which also clarifies the author's intent in using it as an illustration: Whether the sky be clear or cloudy, it always seems to us to have the shape of an elliptic arch; far from having the form of a circular arch, it always seems flattened and depressed above our heads, and gradually to become farther removed toward the horizon. Our ancestors imagined that this blue vault was really what the eye would lead them to believe it to be; but, as Voltaire remarks, this is about as reasonable as if a silk-worm took his web for the limits of the universe. The Greek astronomers represented it as formed of a solid crystal substance; and so recently as Copernicus, a large number of astronomers thought it was as solid as plate-glass. The Latin poets placed the divinities of Olympus and the stately mythological court upon this vault, above the planets and the fixed stars. Previous to the knowledge that the earth was moving in space, and that space is everywhere, theologians had installed the Trinity in the empyrean, the glorified body of Jesus, that of the Virgin Mary, the angelic hierarchy, the saints, and all the heavenly host.... A naïve missionary of the Middle Ages even tells us that, in one of his voyages in search of the terrestrial paradise, he reached the horizon where the earth and the heavens met, and that he discovered a certain point where they were not joined together, and where, by stooping his shoulders, he passed under the roof of the heavens...
The idea of the contact of a solid sky with the Earth is one that repeatedly appears in Flammarion's earlier works. In his Les mondes imaginaires et les mondes réels ("Imaginary Worlds and Real Worlds", 1864), he cites a legend of a Christian saint, Macarius the Roman, which he dates to the 6th century. This legend includes the story of three monks (Theophilus, Sergius, and Hyginus) who "wished to discover the point where the sky and the earth touch"9 (in Latin: ubi cœlum terræ se conjungit).10 After recounting the legend11 he remarks that "the preceding monks hoped to go to heaven without leaving the earth, to find 'the place where the sky and the earth touch,' and open the mysterious gateway which separates this world from the other. Such is the cosmographical notion of the universe; it is always the terrestrial valley crowned by the canopy of the heavens."
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/flammarion-engraving/ Text by Hunter Dukes
A man crawls to the ends of earth. He has journeyed for days under the light of a splendorous sun, passed his nights beneath a firmament shot through with stars. There is no reason to look back toward his origin: everything that came before appears at toytown scale against the enormity of his present purpose. Crouching down to explore a seam, the suture where sky and ground meet, the traveler pushes his head through the celestial vault and out into the heavens beyond. Curtains of flames replace the alchemical sun of his old world. In this lacerated empyrean, the planetary bodies move like clockwork — a cosmic machinery whirring along in adherence to laws yet to be discovered, whether natural or divine. Seemingly first published in astronomer and science fictionist Camille Flammarion’s (1842–1925) L’atmosphère: météorologie populaire (1888), this image has puzzled enthusiasts of the scientific mystic’s works, both for its obscure provenance and cryptic symbolism. With its pastiche of Renaissance visual style and medieval caption — “A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touch” — the illustration was once thought to have originated centuries before Flammarion published his text. The artist remains uncertain, but early interpreters believed he or she was a contemporary of the paradigm shift that the work seems to depict: when ancient cosmogony gave way to the Scientific Revolution. Heinz Strauss and Heinrich Röttinger dated the engraving to the mid-sixteenth century, while Erwin Panofsky, writing in 1963, found its style indicative of the seventeenth. On the other hand, Ernst H. Gombrich, speaking on behalf of the Warburg Institute, was convinced that the engraving had to be a more-recent homage to the Renaissance. The artist employed a stippling technique, for example, not used before the late eighteenth century. A skilled draftsman, it is feasible that Flammarion created the image himself, although it differs slightly in style from his other artworks. More mysterious than its provenance is the work’s potential meaning. As Stefano Gattei enumerates, in a book chapter that promises to “close the debate” on Flammarion’s engraving, the stooping man has been variously described as “a missionary, a skeptic, a wandering Jew, a researcher, a traveler, a learned man contemplating divine wonders, a pilgrim, or an Earth-bound frustrated astronomer.” Part of the difficulty here comes from the image’s symbolic polyphony: aspects of the Ptolemaic universe mingle with a prominent ofan — the wheeled structure that resembles a gyroscope, which Ezekiel and David glimpsed in their vision of God’s throne — layering astrological and esoteric iconography. For many, this singular image, of a man passing beyond the world’s limits, feels indebted to a problem of bounded finitude that arises in commentaries on Aristotelean cosmogony and theological genesis. If the universe is finite, how can its limits (or creator) lay within it?