temporaryreality

Reading:

Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time. (various versions, depending on what the library has available. I started with Bantam Books' 2011 version (epub), am now working temporarily with a less than ideal version available online while I wait for my renewal to process in two weeks. Yes, this is a slow-going project!)

Hesiod. The Theogony. Translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. 2014. Available on the Sacred Texts site.

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I had a thought a couple of weeks ago that I could challenge myself to write a sonnet on what I read as I go through this "course." I took up an offer by ecosophia reader Stuart to learn to write sonnets and so I might just do it.

So far, I've written one, based on the opening lines of The Theogony. It'll be interesting to see if I can come up with something on what I've read so far of Hawking.

In general, I'm taking notes (by which I mean writing down things that seem important, either for the author's thesis and that I should retain or as some sort of thrust-block/meditation fodder, commonplace-book style).

Update Sept 17, 2020 (actual readings)

Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time.
Hesiod. The Theogony.
Fortune, Dion. The Cosmic Doctrine.

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Update Aug 25, 2020.
I'd thought I had a copy of Carl Sagan's Cosmos on my shelves, but I can't find it and may have gotten rid of it. That might actually be a decent place to get a general understanding of cosmogony from a Western scientific standpoint. Barring that, I may be forced to just read up online.

The Cosmic Doctrine, which I'm reading anyway as part of JMG's book club, is certainly right at home on this reading list, even if she's conveying metaphors (and, who's to say, actually, that the metaphors don't convey some aspect of how things got started?).

As for the creation stories, I think I'll be looking for something from peoples of each continent or major civilization. I have a book of Native American myths and legends (that's probably the title even) that's got some creation stories. I'll also reread the opening chapter of the Dao de Jing (Tao de Ching) and meditate on that.

Since I'm doing this on a small (or nonexistent) budget, I'll be looking for library books, and classic and out of print, but downloadable, books for readings in this section.

Turns out the Frazer book mentioned below is not available as a scanned or digital version, so that's out. I checked The Golden Bough (I have the abridged version) and there's nothing relevant in there. Ovid's Metamorphosis (which I have) opens with the creation of the universe, so I'll go back and reread that, and I'll be looking for Hesiod's Theogony to see if it fits here as well.

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Original post, August 18, 2020 (though later changes are marked in blue)
This is a draft (and above all, editable) list of where I'm going to start diving into cosmogonies - those theories about the beginning of the universe.

Given that no humans were present for it, the stories we tell about the universe's beginning are all speculative (not to say they don't describe a truth, just that they're stories). I take them all as such, and accord myth and scientific theory equal weight. I'm interested in the ways we conceive of the start of "it all."

I'll look for something at the layperson's level for the big bang theory.
The Norton Anthology of Astronomy and Cosmology - by John North and Roy Porter - not available to me right now, and one review said it's more focused on astronomy than on cosmogony.
The Cosmic Doctrine - Dion Fortune - currently being read.

Then consider creation myths from various parts of the world, plus an academic study or two, like:

Ancient Greek Cosmogony - Andrew Gregory
Creation and Evolution in Primitive Cosmogonies - James George Frazer

I'm still gathering up titles related to creation stories.

This list will be updated as I figure things out.

Next, I'll be working to fit the plan into a workable timeline. In other words, it can't take forever, so I might as well set a time limit and see where I get.

Current Location: walking toward the library
Current Music: the buzz of cicadas

First, non-DMH related, I haven't gotten much farther into The Well-Trained Mind, having sort of just jumped into finding my first reading materials for the actual study-project.

I just put a library hold on Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time (thanks to an ecosophia commenter's suggestion). I also found a text version of Hesiod's Theogony and turned it into an epub file so I can read it on my ereader instead of spending more time on my computer. It's an inelegantly formatted epub file as it stands, but I may decide to clean it up and reformat it for no good reason other than to practice my ebook formatting for when I can return to helping

dfr1973 with her W. W. Atkinson project or actually write something myself (Hello works in progress, yes, I see you looking at me!).

I suppose in the end, these are all loosely DMH-related in that they all tie in to the effort I'm making at "self-betterment."

Relative to the cosmogony topic, I'm continuing to slowly work my way through The Cosmic Doctrine. To be honest though, I'm not a great meditator. Today, for instance, I was instantly drowsy; and while it's true that I didn't get enough sleep last night, I still caved in and called the session off. I feel like I sort of hit the point in all my practices where I can do the basic motions but some of the "oomph" needs development. That usually indicates that I need to go back and read the instructions and figure out what I've forgotten or ignored.*

At least there's one thing showing good signs: I've been getting some very accurate readings from my "invented"** divination system. The results these last few weeks have been more accurate than Ogham ever wanted to be with me and so I'm starting to feel a little hopeful that something can be made with it.

As for the SOP, I've added two deities so far and so far neither of them has complained!

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* Though I do have to be careful to not exacerbate a tendency to always dawdle at the beginning-stages of things. This is a tightly-wrapped thread around a tangled issue that I'm working on (and that in no small way is part of the "why" behind my doing the DMH practices).

** Truly "invented" isn't the right word, I hope, because what I also hope is that it's a system tapping into something real and beyond me.

Current Location: a better frame of mind than yesterday

I realized that I should have my definitions straight and that prompted me to make the first of my notebook sections: Vocabulary.

Today's vocabulary entries?

cosmogony: 1. a theory of the origin of the universe. 2. the creation or origin of the world or universe.

cosmography: 1. a general description of the world or the universe. 2. the science that deals with the constitution of the whole order of nature.

cosmology: 1a. a branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of the universe. 1b. a theory or doctrine describing the natural order of the universe. 2. a branch of astronomy that deals with the origin, structure, and space-time relationship of the universe. Also: a theory dealing with these matters.

Having been presented with the difference between these, I realize I'm probably more interested in starting with cosmogonies, but I may end up looking at the others as they seem likely to be intertwined.

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some additional reading: cosmogony (including a "chronology of the universe" according to the Big Bang version of the story, and something about creation myths). Also, a timeline of cosmological theories.

Current Location: the cosmos

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30

Entries tagged with cosmogony

beginning to read about beginnings

Cosmogonies - reading list

Just a DMH-practices update

Before I get to my reading list...

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