For eons the universe has been revered for its awe-inspiring beauty. Some 2000 years ago Hermetic philosophers and scientists described it as a beautiful body of pure perfection and saw it as the manifestation of Divine Mind, which infused it with light and life, awareness and movement. Their text the Corpus Hermeticum describes the cosmos as “none more ancient, ever in the prime of life, and ever young, in even fuller and yet fuller prime” (11:6).
Today, scientists taking photographs of star clusters with powerful telescopes describe their images as “opening the lid on a cosmic jewel box”. The colour contrast between pale blue, orange and bright ruby red in the constellation Crux, for example, was considered so beautiful that John Herschel nicknamed it the Jewel Box. Yuri Gagarin, the first human to journey to outer space in 1961, extolled the rare loveliness of our living planet, and urged us to preserve and increase its beauty.
