Tetrabiblos

It was a name given to that book by Islamic scholars that essentially meant the greatest, that this is the greatest book ever written about astronomy.

And it was that book, the Almagest, and also another work of Ptolemy's called the Tetrabiblos, these four books about astrology.

They came to define that medieval worldview for the Islamic world and then also for Christian Europe, giving them not only this structured heavens of these nested spheres, but with all of the planets, including Mars, you know, moving in perfect circles, but also this knowledge about the significance of that, of what it meant when Mars or any other planet was in a different part of the sky or behaving in certain ways.

And yeah, there were things that Ptolemy couldn't really explain very well, like that change in appearance of Mars or the retrograde motion of Mars.

So that's, so I had that all in my background and, uh, I, I started looking at a few books, I think possibly before the breakthrough with the, um, psychedelics.

It was, uh, I think I started to look at Dane Rudjar's books and, And somebody gave me Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, the early, you know, ancient Greek Hellenistic astronomer, astrologer.

His kind of textbook there that was so influential.

A couple of things like that.

I know what you like.

Yeah, the interest in book is in your book.

And again, you always get me up because of your book bank or whatever, all that money that you keep aside for books.

My book budget, yes.

Your book budget, yes.

And I know I keep blowing it, but you're really happy about this book, so this is good.

Well, let's tell everybody a little bit about Bruce.

He holds a doctorate in geosciences from the University of Massachusetts, a master's degree in social sciences from Montclair University, and a degree in history from Rutgers University.