Soul of the World

 In the December 2020 issue of Martha Stewart’s Living magazine, the reader finds an ad for products offered by Anima Mundi Apothecary. A quick trip to the Anima Mundi website is not a quick trip to information, but clicking a few times rewards the seeker with all kinds of material for future blogposts, for, as a reader may suspect, any business with a Latin-derived name may also contain other ancient material of interest. According to its website Anima Mundi Apothecary’s mission is

TO BRIDGE ANCIENT REMEDIES

TO THE MODERN WORLD.

Anima, animae f. is a Latin noun that means “breath, soul, life.” Mundus, mundi m. is a Latin noun meaning “world.” The phrase anima mundi, meaning “breath/spirit/soul of the world,” expresses the feeling a human perceives on a fine summer afternoon when a breeze blows that animates everything. The human feels the vitality of the world like a living presence that transcends the earth, trees, plants, and animals. The phrase has existed in philosophical thought for millennia; a person could spend a lot of time reading about the idea of anima mundi. Or a person could read a lot about botanical remedies, such as elderberries, on the Anima Mundi website. Or, for a breath of fresh air, a person could step outside and expect some life to admire, like the little walking stick I spied last night. 

Vulcan's Fire

Everybody loves Vulcan, the Roman god of blacksmiths and fire. A catalogue from The Spice House found its way to my mailbox.  Flipping through the artistic pages, I almost dropped the booklet outside the post office, for there under the category of Best-Selling Blends was Vulcan’s Fire Salt:

This fiery salt is named for Vulcan, the Roman god of fire. Vulcan’s Fire Salt owes its

spicy, deep flavor to a secret ingredient discovered by The Spice House’s founder

many decades ago.

Hmmm…did the founder visit one of Vulcan’s workshops in Sicily? Is Vulcan really the god of alchemy? Or is this fanciful description another example of the enduring legacy of the ancient Romans?

In this blog readers have encountered many products—wrenches, garden tools, motorcycles, cars—named for the multi-talented creative god, but this may be the first edible. If you want to breathe a little fire as you dine, Vulcan’s Fire Salt may be the spice for you.

 

Laminating the Heavens

 

Are home-made gifts better than store-bought? I treasured a pencil cup made from a soup can, felt, and macaroni for years and only threw it away when I discovered that mice were gnawing at the (gold spray-painted) macaroni. But first I took a picture that will live forever on the internet. Another gift of a laminated piece of paper with words, decorated with a black-and-gold cord accented with a few mismatched gold-colored buttons hangs on a towel-rack in my bathroom, where it has hung for at least a decade and a half. Simple gifts may not age well but they bring great joy. 

Not a crafty person, I thought I could try laminating some quotations written in my shaky calligraphy. My research into laminators led me to the Fellowes corporation, where I discovered a ridiculous cascade of laminators for every possible situation whether infrequent home use, moderate office use, or industrial/business use. And all gradations in between. 

The most amusing discovery was that Fellowes laminators have Greco-Latin names including heavenly mythological names, from least expensive to most: Ion, Spectra, Halo, Callisto, Saturn, Neptune, Jupiter, Venus, and Proteus. Ion is a form of the Greek verb ienai, “going,” halo derives from Latin from the Greek word halos meaning a “circle” or “threshing floor,” and spectra comes from a Latin verb specto of “looking at.” Callisto was a companion of the Greek goddess Artemis. Seduced by Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, Callisto was transformed into a bear and lives on as the constellation Ursa Major as well as one of the moons of Jupiter. Saturn is the Roman name of Kronos, the father of Zeus in Greek mythology. Neptune, god of the seas, is the Roman name for Poseidon, brother of Zeus. Venus is the Roman name for Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty. In mythology Proteus is a prophetic seal-herder of Poseidon, capable of changing his appearance; in astronomy Proteus or Neptune VIII is a moon of the planet Neptune. 

The Fellowes website does not give much information about the company’s acquisition of laminators, though they may originally have come from Germany. Those who built and designed them must have seen some fanciful resemblances to planets or space exploration. Other models of Fellowes laminators are Cosmic, Lunar, Mars, Vega, Voyager… quite an array of office machines! When faced with a wide range of choices for a product, I usually choose a product with a mythological name, all other criteria being equal. But all these choices of laminators are out of this world!

Driving Upward

New Hampshire's license plates are recognizable for the legible state motto: Live Free Or Die. New York state has a Latin motto, one short word, Excelsior, meaning "ever upward." Beginning in June 2020 new New York state license plates for the first time in state history bear the Latin motto.

While it is wonderful the Latin motto is now on the license plates, this resident wonders about the color choice. The Latin word is golden (as are most things expressed in Latin), but the color is not easy to read. Maybe a future edition of the NY state license plate will be bolder--EXCELSIOR!

Empty Cathedral, Full Hearts

The scene: glowing stained-glass windows, an intricate marble floor, soaring columns, sculptures, carved wood, and rows and rows of empty chairs. Lit candles on an altar table, the organist at his instrument, and Andrea Bocelli before a microphone, the only human standing in that vast, beautiful space. On Easter Sunday from the Duomo Cathedral of Milan, the Italian tenor sang five selections, four of which were in Latin, in a solo performance with organ accompaniment. A hymn sheet of the lyrics gives viewers on youtube.com the ability to follow along. 

The first selection, Panis Angelicus, is from the sixth stanza of a seven-stanza hymn, Sacris Sollemniis written by Thomas Aquinas in 1264.

The hymn sheet needs different punctuation to reveal its meaning:

Panis angelicus                 Bread of angels/heavenly bread

fit panis hominum;             becomes the bread of humans;

dat panis coelicus              heavenly bread gives

figuris terminum.               an end to forms/shapes.

O res mirabilis,                  O marvelous thing,

manducat dominum            the poor, the slave and lowly,

pauper, servus et humilis.  chews the master.

The Latin words sound heavenly and mysterious; the English words reveal the Catholic doctrine. Almost eight hundred years of scholarship exist since Aquinas wrote these words; one could spend many hours reading Latin texts to learn more about this doctor and this sacrament (Eucharist) of the Roman Catholic church.

In the future we will remember the emptiness of the streets and cathedrals and all public buildings around the world because of Covid-19, the contagious disease caused by a novel coronavirus in late 2019. This performance, called by Bocelli Music for Hope, reminds us of the promise of Easter. In the magnificence of the empty Duomo Cathedral on Easter Sunday, Bocelli, singing of the poor, the slave, the lowly feeding on the bread of heaven, fills our hearts with good things.

Ides of October

Over the weekend of March 6-8 2020, the Dulcimer Association of Albany held its 31st Annual Dulcimer Festival in Latham, New York. The Dulcimer Association of Albany is a group of mountain dulcimer players who meet once a month to play dulcimers together. At the festival on Saturday, in a workshop called “Ensembles with Classical Music,” one of the handouts distributed to participants was a piece written by the workshop leader on October 15th. The title of the tune was “The Ides of October,” and as the Ides of March fall today, March 15th, here’s a little background on the Roman calendar.

“Beware the Ides of March,” a soothsayer warns Julius Caesar in Act 1 of William Shakespeare’s play, The Life and Death of Julius Caesar. By Act 3, scene 1, Julius Caesar announces to the soothsayer, “The Ides of March are come.” The soothsayer responds, “Ay, Caesar; but not gone.”

The Ides of March on an ancient Roman calendar is March 15th on a modern calendar. Also the Ides of May, July, and October fall on the 15th of each of those months; in all the other Roman months the Ides fall on the 13th on a modern calendar.

The Roman calendar fascinates beginning Latin students. A Roman counted forward to the next fixed date in a month. The first of every month in a Roman calendar is called Kalendae or Calends. The next fixed date is the Nonae or Nones (pronounced Nōnz) that fall on the 5th or 7th of a month, and the third fixed date is Idus or Ides on the 13th or 15th. To identify a date, a Roman counted the number of days to the next fixed date and that Roman included both the day he was on and the next fixed day. The modern date “March 13th” is written in Latin as III a.d. Id. Mart. (three days before the Ides of March) by counting the 13th (1), 14th (2), and 15th (3). The day before the next fixed date has a special designation; yesterday, March 14th, in Latin is prid. Id. Mart. “the day before” the Ides of March. 

Why do we still count down to the Ides of March? Great historical events capture the imagination. In American history we remember December 7th 1941 when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and we remember  D-Day, June 6th 1944, the invasion of Normandy, France. We will never forget September 11th 2001 when the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were attacked. In Roman history on the Ides of March 44 B.C., a conspiracy of Roman senators assassinated the self-declared Dictator Perpetuus (Dictator for Life) Julius Caesar and precipitated the Roman Civil War that brought the Roman Republic to an end by 27 B.C. when a new leader, Julius Caesar’s great-nephew, later known as Caesar Augustus, became the first Roman emperor. 

And the Ides of October? We both remember and celebrate this date, for in 70 B.C. the great Roman poet Vergil was born.

Boning Up on Biotechnology

Public television station channel 25, WNYC in the New York City area, offers programming about people and events in New York City. A half-hour program on Monday evenings called Her Big Idea introduces viewers to four women entrepreneurs in New York City. A recent episode featured a woman who began a construction company; one who started a hydroponic farm in a vacant 2500-square-foot lot; one who started a clothing collection and repurposing company to keep millions of pounds of clothing out of landfills; and Nina Tandon, co-founder and CEO of EpiBone, a biotechnology company “on a mission to use groundbreaking research to transform skeletal repair” by allowing a patient to grow new bone from his/her own cells.

The name EpiBone contains “epi” a Greek preposition with several meanings including “on, upon, after, at.” Epi appears in English words like epitaph, something (written) on a tomb or ephemeral, something that passes after a day or brief time. An eponym puts a name upon a thing, like watt, bloomers, and vulcanization, three words that originate in the names of a Scottish inventor (James Watt), an American woman (Amelia Bloomer), and a Roman god (Vulcan). EpiBone is a big idea coming to life.