COSMOLOGY
VOLUME 2 NUMBER 3
Fall 1977
The vision of a harmonious universe shows everything in its right place except the human being. Man seems to be the only living thing that has to question himself, that doesn't know who he is nor what he is for. Plants and animals fulfill their function without discussion, unless we interfere with them. It is only we who don't know what to do with ourselves; we have forgotten our lines, and there is no prompter. We drift onstage as though struck with amnesia, not knowing our own name, nor how to find ourselves again.    Our whole world is a Jericho whose walls are tumbling down. Will our dissonance destroy us? Or is there another, truer note within our range, a resolving chord through which we could find our balance again in the rhythm and melody of creation? Perhaps we can remember, rather than invent, the answers; perhaps a deliberate searching in our past can help us understand our inexplicable present. --from the editorial Focus
 
ARTICLES
VIEWS OF THE COSMOS  Brother David Steindl-Rast
Our images of the universe can either open or close us to the mystery at its core.
DO-IT-YOURSELF COSMOLOGY  Ursula K. Le Guin
Playing God with the author of The Left Hand of Darkness.
THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE HEART: AN OUTLINE OF THE SYMBOLIC METHOD AND ITS HIERATIC NATURE  R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz
A legendary and controversial Egyptologist proposes a radical approach to knowledge.
FIVE POEMS  Lorel Desjardins
THE COSMOS IS HIS SANCTUARY  Ernesto Cardenal
A Nicaraguan poet's reading of Psalm 150.
THE SPIRITUAL LANDSCAPE  Elaine Jahner
For the Lakota the vision quest takes place simultaneously in the heart and on the plains; a little-known Sioux myth shows how they have always been the same.
SELECTIONS FROM ESSENTIALS: DEFINITIONS AND APHORISMS  Jean Toomer
Best known as the author of Cane, Toomer published these observations "on the nature and forms of human existence" in a private edition in 1931. The first in a series of excerpts.
OUTER WORLDS, INNER TEACHINGS  Anne Bevan
Some surprising views on the esoteric meaning of astrology, the flat earth and the cosmos within us.
ON THE PRINCIPLES OF MOVEMENT  Harry Remde
A graphic demonstration of the laws of psychic and physical movement, from circle to spiral.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE IMPROBABLE: A Conversation with Lloyd Motz
The author of The Universe: Its Beginning and End, gives an astronomer's view of the forces that pattern both molecular and galactic worlds.
 
TANGENTS:  Reviews
John A. Miles, Jr. on Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden
 
EPICYCLES: Traditional Stories from around the World
TALES OF A DEMON: THE FAITHFUL MINISTER  Indian
Retold by Paul Jordan-Smith
THE BREATH OF BRAHMA  Vedic
Retold by Paul Jordan-Smith
THE WORLD-TREE YGGDRASIL  Norse
Retold by Ann Himler
THE GELA-FROM-ABOVE AND THE GELA-FROM-BELOW  Ivory Coast (Africa)
THE CHAIN OF WORLDS  Campa (Peru)
Retold by Chief Kecizate Ashaninga
