loose connections

“[In 16th century Europe, the time of the first curiosity cabinets,] . . . alchemy and magic were seen to be right at the cutting edge of a scientific method . . . Natural magic, the pursuit of the prisca theologica, the first knowledge revealed to Adam and handed down in a hermetic tradition to Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras and later magi, assumed that the key to the understanding of the world lay in deciphering the alphabet in which the universe was written at its creation.” 

– Philipp Blom, To Have and To Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting, p. 44 (2002)

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“Ptah: The local god of Memphis [in ancient Egypt] . . . created by means of his heart and tongue, thus fashioning the world by the power of his word. The god’s creative power was then manifest in every heart-beat and in every sound.”

– Manfred Lurker, The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Egypt, p. 96-97 (1991)

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“What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”

– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, p. 89 (Routledge 2001)