The kinship between astronomy and religion, which to many must seem unacceptable and absurd, almost an offense, there they, is explained by the beautiful and irrefutable fact that the universe operates like a huge clock with wind, tick, tock , tic, tac, tic, tac, while each of its pieces moves with harmony and precision in a show that never ends: the machinery of creation is a prodigy, a poem.
That was the first order that our species intuited, the universal order, no less, the clock that is all this. Looking at the stars, our most remote ancestors discovered the passage of time, rather its regime at the same time marvelous and shocking: time like a river that runs without stopping – “irreparable time flees”, said Virgilio -, time like deepest and fleeting substance of the human.
But time is also order and cycle: an arbitrary and capricious construction of ours that nevertheless reflects and encodes, so to speak, the way in which the universe moves without a single pin ringing, without any screw being left out. . Hence, so many believed and still believe (we believe) that this perfection can only be explained by the presence of an intelligence that orders everything, the secret beauty of God.
I do not know and my idea is not to propose a debate on that, much less here, nor more lacking. But the historical and poetic link between astronomy and religion is not gratuitous or vain, nor is it just a hoax, because many of the mysteries of our condition, its great abysses, are expressed there. And that is very beautiful too, the way science and mythology come together to better tell that story.
I love the ancient, Greek idea of the universe as a piece of music, a symphony. Pythagoras said that, that the mathematical reason for the planets involves a “music of the spheres”: an order so moving and so perfect that if we close our eyes we can hear it, connect with it. Everyone, I suppose, hears that music differently; the one that sounds like me (let’s see) is a Pink Floyd song, Eclipse.
According to Pliny the Elder, who was a monumental writer who died devoured by Vesuvius, Pythagoras even made the musical measurement of the planets, their scale: between the Earth and the Moon there is a tone, between the Moon and Mercury a semitone, the same that there is between Mercury and Venus, and from Venus to the Sun there is a tone and a half, and from the Sun to Mars a tone, and from Mars to Jupiter a semitone, the same as there is between Jupiter and Saturn.
From Saturn to the Zodiac there is a tone and a half – the song continues, I don’t know if it’s cumbia or bolero or rock and roll – and that gives seven notes, the same ones we know until today: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la , yes, and that they are called that because a medieval monk, Guido d’Arezzo, decided to baptize them to help the singers with the initials of a hymn to Saint John that was in a book by the historian Paul the Deacon.
Dream pretty? I have not the slightest idea: sometimes one writes by ear, as if counting the syllables. I think it was Alfonso Reyes, I think, who said that you had to write with a metronome, without leaving the beat. Hopefully: literature also contains the music of the spheres; She also invokes it so that a universal order appears between its cracks: time that flees irreparably, time that is cycle and rhythm. That is poetry.
Yesterday, thanks to the Perseverance robot, we could hear for the first time in history what the planet Mars sounds like. It is an ambient noise, really, a low hum and nothing more. But it is Mars, what an exciting thing, his voice reaches us here.
Dream pretty? Perhaps we just have to close our eyes, hear the music of the spheres. Nothing goes out of tune in creation.
Juan Esteban Constaín
www.juanestebanconstain.com
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