Lux Esoterica (Nifiluz)

The Navigator of the Greek West In the fourth century before the common era, during the reign of Alexander the Great, a Greek astronomer and geographer named Pytheas undertook one of the most daring voyages of exploration in the history of the Mediterranean. Sailing from the Phocaean colony of Massalia (modern Marseille, France), Pytheas slipped past the Carthaginian blockade at the Strait of Gibraltar, entering the open, stormy waters of the Atlantic Ocean. He sailed north, circumnavigated the British Isles, and entered the North Sea, exploring the coasts of northern Europe and the Baltic Sea, before returning to Marseille to write his lost treatise On the Ocean ( Peri tou Okeanou ). The legend of Pytheas is the mystery of the geographic limit . In his book, Pytheas described phenomena that were completely unknown to the people of the Mediterranean: * The giant tides of the Atlantic (which he correctly attributed to the cycles of the moon); * The midnight sun of the far north;...