Astrolabe
Perhaps the least familiar of the images, this instrument used for navigation and locating astronomical objects, was designed by the ancient Greeks and further developed by the Arabs. With its connection to the stars, I find the astrolabe a really beautiful metaphor for the navigational device within each of us.
Awareness connects each of us to our personal compass, calibrates its workings and helps us find our bearings as we explore the seas of our own landscape; a landscape that is at once human in scale and as vast as the cosmos, if we allow it to be so.
I really enjoy pairing the image of the astrolabe with the text, ‘Everything is within’. I hear these words in my awareness if I sometimes become lost in a neighbourhood of negativity and self criticism. With a quiet smile they gently remind me to return to the truth that ‘I am enough’ (more than enough, actually) and that resourcefulness comes from within.
