Reading a Cosmology

A cosmology is rarely just a description of space; it usually encodes a tradition's account of value, destiny and the moral order: what lies above and below, where the soul goes, what the axis of the world is. Reading several side by side shows both the recurring patterns (a world-tree or world-mountain, an upper and lower world, an intermediate place of the dead) and the sharp differences in what those patterns are made to mean.

Related material is close by: the largest cycles of cosmic time are under Cosmic Cycles, and the calendars that measure ordinary time under Calendars & Time.