On a desolate island off the southern coast of Chile, an incredible discovery is made: a gigantic meteorite, the largest ever found, entombed in the earth for millions of years. Half a world away, billionaire entrepreneur Palmer Lloyd decides he must have it as the centerpiece of his grandiose new museum. He is willing to pay any price--in dollars and in lives. Getting it back to New York poses a particular challenge: It will be the heaviest object ever moved by humankind.
In the earlier volumes of this survey of the historical transformations of those imagined forms that I am calling the "masks" of God, through which men everywhere have sought to relate themselves to the wonder of existence, the myths and rites of the Primitive, Oriental, and Early Occidental worlds could be discussed in terms of grandiose unitary stages. For in the history of our still youthful species, a profound respect for inherited forms has generally suppressed innovation.
A brilliant translation of this classic account of the art of memory and the logic of linkage and combination, the two traditions deriving from the Classical world and the late medieval period, and becoming intertwined in the 16th Century. From this intertwining emerged a new tradition, a grandiose project for an 'alphabet of the world' or 'Clavis Universalis'. Translated with an Introduction by Stephen Clucas.
