The First Mover, and Time

From the moment we leave the Fixed Stars and enter into the First Mover, the poetry changes from deep theology to pure philosophy about motion, the universe, and Time.

And the whole sphere is pure motion:

“The parts of this, the quickest, highest heaven,
are all so equal that I cannot tell
where Beatrice chose for me to stay.”

Dante then inverts the entirety of creation into a point of the source of motion itself:

“The nature of the universe, which stills
its center while it makes all else revolve,
moves from this heaven as from its starting-point”

And then embeds the creation, and motion, in the light and love of the Divine Mind:

“no other ‘Where’ than in the Mind of the Divine
contains this heaven, because in that Mind burns
the love that turns it and the power it rains.

By circling light and love it is contained
as it contains the rest; and only He
Who bound them comprehends how they were bound.”

Finally, Beatrice points out how this also is the source of Time, as the center of the nature of the Universe.

“How time can hide its roots in this sphere’s vase
and show its leaves stemming through all the rest,
should now be clear to your intelligence.”

And with this, Dante has taken us out of the material Cosmos and placed us inside the concept of motion and time – as the transition point (which is spatially the whole sphere), to the Divine.

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