The following is an list of certain entities observed by Modern science (or otherwise) but here understood in terms of a fully relativistic, non-Modern cosmology. This is ‘my own’ cosmology, both in the sense of what I hold to be true at this point in time, but also in the sense that it is my own ‘fiction’ that I have drawn together from various different non-Modern cosmologies which inspire me. After each description an example of a non-Modern cosmology is given in which a similar idea appears. Hopefully, I will be able to add to this list over time.
Planet: The earth-like surface upon which any finite perspective dwells.
The Tatuyo concept of the earth, 'yeba,’ as the relatively flat disk upon which every ‘mahsa’ (people) dwells, which includes non-human beings like fish or birds which live on their own earths, as well as the dead who live in the sky or appear as stars (see Bidou 1972).
Star: The perspectival center itself as a soul which emits radiation and appears in the heavens of other beings.
The soul is a ‘luminous fire’ in Tukanoan cosmology, but also in shamanic cosmologies around the world. The idea that the shaman or the dead in general ascends to the sky to become a star is extremely widespread and was also a component of Egyptian thought, Platonism, and Babylonian thought (Algis Uzdavinys 2008). The soul shines and emits energy outward (see Plotinus’ remarks on light-transmission in the Enneads for a good exposition of this widespread concept).
Big Bang: The original center before the differentiation of perspectives. It was not the origin in an absolute time-line, but what must itself be periodically repeated in order to preserve life.
In Arawakan and Tukanoan cosmology, the universe begins from a stone or crystal rock house, a condensed and contracted center of light from which it later expands. At each Yurupary rite, humans return to this state and repeat the original expansion of the universe through playing the sacred flutes which repeat “the powerful sound that opened the world.” This is the concept of eternal return or an ‘oscillating universe’ found throughout non-Modern cosmologies.
Space-time: The relatively flat earth-surface of any perspective, differentiated from the curved heavens above, whose curvature is equivalent to their rotational motion.
This follows from the idea that any perspective is an earth-like planet above. The curvature of heavens is a fundamental thesis of Baniwa (Arawakan) cosmology (Wright 2013) as well as Aztec cosmology (Maffie 2013). The idea that the sky curves downward to meet the horizon is a key component of a number of Amerindian myths (Lévi-Strauss 1968).
Orbits: The fact that any center has a revolving sky above, but viewed relativistically, is itself revolving around those objects.
In Aztec and Amazonian cosmology, the movement of the Sun as well as the stars traces out the curvature of space. Shamanic cosmologies from Amazonia to North America to Siberia and Eurasia are perspectival (see Viveiros de Castro 1998), so they are always capable of perspectival inversion where the ‘subject’ becomes ‘the object’ thus already embedding the so-called ‘Copernican revolution’ into their thought.
Light-Path: Vision.
A perspective ‘sees’ other perspectives, by definition. The ‘eye’ is not simply a passive receptacle of light but ‘partakes in light’ as the Egyptians, Platonists, and also Aztecs and Mayans understood (Newman 2019). It is present in Amazonian cosmology in the idea of the ‘eye-soul’ which is itself composed out of light or dissolves into it upon death (Yekuana cosmology is a solid example, Guss 1989). So seeing can itself be understood as an emission of light (see star above).
Waves: Recursive character of time as affecting any form of energy-transmission.
The Aztec concept of ‘Malinalli’ refers to the spiral or recursively propulsive character of energy transmission (Maffie 2013). The idea also exists in Desano cosmology where the ‘threads’ of energy that emanate from the Sun descend to the earth in spiral form. It also a core part of Platonism and Babylonian thought as evidenced in the ‘spiraling fires’ of the Chaldean Oracles. Gravitational waves can be easily incorporated: all vibration is itself a fluctuation of space-time, since waves just are the (spatio-)temporal expression of energy-transmission.
Comets: Relative instability and thus potentially non-periodic character of visible sky.
This is a very common feature of non-Modern cosmologies: the idea that comets are unstable, disordered phenomena relative to the otherwise ordered motion of the sky. A good example is the Bororo concern with comets as indicators of collective disease (see Crocker 1985). The potential instability of the visible sky is due to the fact that it is still the sky seen from the earth, not the ‘other side of the sky’ where the eternal forms of the Mythic Past (i.e. gods) exist as such.
Invisible Sky: The Big Bang itself as eternal principle, or the non-local quantum state that exists at the origin.
The idea of the invisible sky as that which is ‘beyond the sky’ is the Platonist idea of the ‘heaven of the Forms’ as a hypouranian topos.The visible sky transmits the incorporeal light of the invisible sky to earth, as Iamblichus explains in De Mysteriis. It is a key feature of Baniwa (Arawakan) cosmology in which the shaman passes to the ‘other side of the sky’ in order to return to the Mythic Past (Wright 2013). In the Mythic Past, animals, humans, and gods were undifferentiated and spoke the same language and communicated with each other prior to spatio-temporal differentiation strictly speaking (or prior to its full differentiation understood as an unfolding process).
Black Holes: Death. Souls that have died and contracted their light to the point of being invisible - they now live fully in the invisible sky.
The idea that the stars are the souls of the dead is a common idea in Amazonia. The dead return to the mythic past but their souls shine through the visible sky. The idea of a black hole on the other hand could be a way to understand those souls that have become fully invisible contracted fully into the mythic past. When a new star is born, however, light returns from the mythic past into the present. This is the very common idea of ‘soul-recycling’ between the mythic past and the present known through the Americas and Siberia as well as in Australia.
Dark Expanse: Icon of original hiddenness.
The dark expanse of the universe is the ‘icon’ (visible instantiation) of the original mythic darkness or ‘hiddeness’ from which the solar Amun-Ra (Egyptian cosmology) or Primal Sun (Amazonian cosmology) emerged. It is linked to the ‘primeval darkness’ or ‘primeval waters’ found in creation myths throughout the world. Like many other concepts on this list, the idea of primeval darkness probably goes back to paleolithic thought (see Witzel 2012).
