[Ansteorra] interesting news article

[Jay Rudin]

Laszlo wrote:


> As precedent, Trimaris did claim the Southern Wastes (Antartica) when
> one of their members was stationed at McMurdo.  I don't believe they
> ever had a functioning group there, although there were on occasion at
> least three SCAdians there at one time.  I think there should be no
> difficulty with Don Shamino claiming The Firmament for Ansteorra.


There are a couple of problems with the idea of claiming the firmament. 
First, by the pre-Galilean* viewpoint, Shamino isn't going into space. 
He's staying on this side of the moon, so he's still in air, not in aether. 
The moon forms the boundary between the changeable, earthly realm and the 
eternal, perfect heavens.  He couldn't get past the moon anyway, since he 
is human, and therefore not perfect.  Perhaps he will get close enough to 
hear the music of the spheres.

Secondly, it was known that the stars were incredibly far away as far back 
as the first century.  The fifth chapter of Ptolemy states "... the earth 
has sensibly the ratio of a point to its distance from the sphere of the 
so-called fixed stars."

*Copernicus placed the sun, not the earth, at the center of the universe in 
the 1500s, but the introduction to his book indicated that it might just be 
a convenience for calculations, not reality.  In the early 1600s, Galileo 
shattered the Ptolemaic view, by using the first telescope to see that:
1. the perfect planet Venus had phases, (which proved it went around the 
sun),
2. the moon has mountains and craters and is not a perfect sphere, and
3. Jupiter's moons circle Jupiter, not the Earth

> We might need to create something along the lines of the Treaty of
> Torsedillas, wherein Spain and Portugal divided up all of the world
> outside of Europe between them.

Interesting point about the Treaty of Tordesillas, but that was legalized 
by the Pope, who was assumed to have authority over all earthly realms. 
There is no equivalent entity with authority over the heavenly realms that 
we can turn to -- certainly not a California corporation.

And, of course, for many personae, Heaven is populated by the higher orders 
of angels, whom men cannot rule, since they are above us on the Great Chain 
of Being.  (This is not a Christian invention, by the way -- it can be 
found in Aristotle, under the name of "scala naturae".)  This assumed 
ultimate Order of Precedence was the authority for masters to own slaves, 
for kings to rule serfs, and for the Pope to assign lands filled with 
savages to two Christian kings.

Robin of Gilwell / Jay Rudin

What *do* they teach them in these schools?