A brief Wiki intro: “A Jantar Mantar is an assembly of stone-built astronomical instruments, designed to be used with the naked eye. There were five Jantar Mantars in India, all of them built at the command of the RajahJai Singh II, who had a keen interest in mathematics, architecture and astronomy; four remain, as the Jantar Mantar at Mathura was torn down just before the
"So we live in fiction, in ancient history pretending to be present. We look up at the past projected against the night sky, like images in a planetarium." - That made a shiver run up my spine.
"Can it be that the true nature of space and time, the essence of everything that is, is cowardice?"
Did you mean fear? Maybe the fear is in us. If it is all a story then we are afraid that it could have been told a different way. That we, with our little stories known as identities--person, tribe, nation, religion, cuisine, culture, are contingent little ants dancing around a bonfire.
Wonderful story. I like how you mention the fictions we make out of the stars, the constellations that each culture sees had and has a significance for each. As the stars move, our own sun moves as well. What might our ancestors or other hominids have made out of the patterns they saw?
Have birth charts of everyone been drawn up with stars that have already passed on...
I wonder what the astrologer would have to say when the astronomer says "By the time the light gets here the star that sent it is no longer what it is"
Jantar Mantar, a story. Part One.
"So we live in fiction, in ancient history pretending to be present. We look up at the past projected against the night sky, like images in a planetarium." - That made a shiver run up my spine.
Wow! But is it not we who are feeling the universe?
I am Canadian. I visited the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur. Amazing, in the true sense of that word.
"Can it be that the true nature of space and time, the essence of everything that is, is cowardice?"
Did you mean fear? Maybe the fear is in us. If it is all a story then we are afraid that it could have been told a different way. That we, with our little stories known as identities--person, tribe, nation, religion, cuisine, culture, are contingent little ants dancing around a bonfire.
Wonderful story. I like how you mention the fictions we make out of the stars, the constellations that each culture sees had and has a significance for each. As the stars move, our own sun moves as well. What might our ancestors or other hominids have made out of the patterns they saw?
Have birth charts of everyone been drawn up with stars that have already passed on...
I wonder what the astrologer would have to say when the astronomer says "By the time the light gets here the star that sent it is no longer what it is"