The World
“this cosmos”
place · 9 works · 9 mentions · 19 anchored passages
also in the atlas: The World the idea
the world · the worlds · a certain great city · a tenement-house · that mighty city which presides over the seven mountains and the many waters · the abode of dream-vision · the abode of waking · the abodes · the city · the harlot
spoken of as
4 expressionsThe Great City“the World”3 mentions
Barlaam and Josaphat (Greek) · De Cultu Feminarum (Latin) · Meditations (Greek)
I have learned of a certain great city whose citizens had from of old this custom:
The worlds2 mentions
Kitāb al-Zawrāʼ wa-al-taʻlīqāt ʻalayhi (Arabic) · Bodhapañcadaśikā (Sanskrit)
And the reality of the Return consists in the appearance of the deeds and character-traits that appear in the worldly genesis under particular forms, and in the otherworldly genesis under other forms, such as the rulings of that genesis require, as has been set out in detail in the true Law.
World1 mention
Hymn 20 To Hephaestus (Greek)
With bright-eyed Athena he taught men glorious crafts throughout the world, —men who before used to dwell in caves in the mountains like wild beasts.
cosmopolis“the great city”1 mention
Meditations (Greek)
Man, you have been a citizen in this great city;
in the texts
Bodhapañcadaśikā
The manifold worlds and their parts, described as containing utter variety in all directions along with experiences of pleasure and pain.
Within them is utter variety — upward, downward, and across — [namely] the worlds and their parts, and whatever cognition of pleasure and pain there is.
Hymn 20 To Hephaestus
The broad spatial extent across which Hephaestus and Athena teach crafts to humans.
With bright-eyed Athena he taught men glorious crafts throughout the world, —men who before used to dwell in caves in the mountains like wild beasts.
Kitāb al-Zawrāʼ wa-al-taʻlīqāt ʻalayhi
The ranked worlds and abodes which the soul inhabits in its ascent and descent, each imposing its own rulings on the form in which a single reality appears.
And the reality of the Return consists in the appearance of the deeds and character-traits that appear in the worldly genesis under particular forms, and in the otherworldly genesis under other forms, such as the rulings of that genesis require, as has been set out in detail in the true Law.
so that two things differing in form in one abode may be unified in it in another abode, and the two forms may be exchanged in the two abodes — I mean that one of them appears in a particular form in one abode and the other in another form in that abode, and then they appear in another abode with the two forms reversed, so that this one appears in the form that belonged to the other and the other …
for they are, one and all, forms of a single reality, differing by reason of the divergence of the rulings of the abodes which the soul (*nafs*) inhabits in the stages of its ascent and the apprehensions of its descent, and of the apprehensions which those abodes require.
Barlaam and Josaphat
The great city of Barlaam's parable, whose custom of crowning and exiling strangers is interpreted as an allegory of the world.
I have learned of a certain great city whose citizens had from of old this custom:
Understand, then, by the city this vain and deceitful world;
De Rerum Natura
The cosmos as a single mortal organism, born by chance combination of seeds, growing to a peak, and now declining toward eventual collapse through failure of nourishment.
Thus, too, the ramparts of the mighty world
Ere since the birth-time of the world, ere since
Till nature, author and ender of the world,
Meditations
The Stoic image of the universe as a city in which each person is a citizen bound by common law.
Man, you have been a citizen in this great city;
Ad Martyras
The secular world outside, portrayed as a greater and darker prison than the literal one.
The world, in short, holds the more numerous prisoners, namely the whole human race.
Adversus Valentinianos
The created material cosmos, founded by the Demiurge outside the Pleroma
The Demiurge, then, set outside the limits of the Pleroma, in the ignominious waste of an eternal exile, founded a new province, this world, the confusion of that double substance, disclosed, being cleansed and its diversity distinguished, of the animal and the material.
De Cultu Feminarum
A symbolic city (Apocalyptic imagery of Babylon/Rome) described as a harlot dressed in purple, scarlet, gold, and precious stones
That mighty city, which presides over the seven mountains and the many waters, deserved from the Lord the appellation of a harlot.