cosmos
"Empedocles continues explaining how the universe as we know it evolved from the original appearance of the four elements and two forces. Imagine that the cosmos is like a large kitchen blender that contains equal portions of earth, air, fire and water, all swirling around. Suppose, then, that the two forces of Love and Strife are thrown into the blender, where Love has the power to draw the elements together, and Strife has the power to have the elements separate from each other. As the mixture swirls around in the blender, it will exhibit four separate states, depending on how much Love and Strife are sucked into the mix."
"The obvious solution (and I know it's been proposed before) would be to liken the universe not to the lute itself, but to the melody played on the lute. A melody requires a musician who is making it - and unlike the recipe, the dependence is an ongoing one. But since the world contains a variety of natural objects, that all make different melodies, it would perhaps be more appropriate to liken it to a musical composition - say, a symphony - rather than a single melody. If the cosmos is like a musical composition which is continuously being played, then its Author must be alive and still making the "music of the spheres."
A fantastic page with all sorts of cosmic metaphorical musings.
"The universe is elegant. And there is a harmony in it. We see that the Earth is beautiful, that the beings in it are beautiful. In the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Buddha described the universe to be like one single flower. The cosmos is like a bank of flowers. We we see the planet as a beautiful flower, and each of us is also a beautiful flower. No matter what age we are we are very beautiful. That is the insight of the Buddha in the Avatamsaka sutra. The cosmos is a kind of treasure. Each being on the planet is a flower."
Because it is
METAMIA is a free database of analogy and metaphor. Anyone can contribute or search. The subject matter can be anything. Science is popular, but poetry is encouraged. The goal is to integrate our fluid muses with the stark literalism of a relational database. Metamia is like a girdle for your muses, a cognitive girdle.