Lux Esoterica (Nifiluz)

For nearly a thousand years — from the early Islamic astronomers of the 8th century through the Renaissance — the astrolabe was the most sophisticated scientific instrument available to humanity. Part astronomical clock, part navigation device, part calculator, part model of the universe, the astrolabe could determine the time of day from the sun's position, find the altitude of stars, predict the positions of the planets, calculate the times of sunrise and sunset, and locate the direction of Mecca for prayer. But it was also something more than a tool: it was a physical embodiment of the medieval understanding of the cosmos as an ordered, hierarchical, beautiful structure — a machine in the Aristotelian sense, a mechanism whose every part participated in the divine order of the spheres. The astrolabes that survive from medieval Islam, al-Andalus, and Christendom are among the most beautiful scientific instruments ever made, their engraved celestial maps combining mathematical prec...