MUNDUS COGNITUS a Teste Aeterno

Author’s Note: 

The document on display has come to me in a condition both fragile and complete.
Its origin is uncertain; its author gives only the name ‘Eidon,’ though whether this is a name, a title, or a role assumed across ages is left to the reader’s discernment. The manuscript bears no date. Its language, though rendered here in modern verse, carries the cadence of something far older.

The Latin headings found throughout the work appear in the original folios. The proem and colophon, likewise, were discovered in fragmentary form and have been restored with care, preserving their intent if not every lost syllable.

What is certain is that the voice within these pages speaks from a vantage beyond ordinary measure. Whether the ‘eternal witness’ is metaphor, myth, or memory is not for this editor to decide. The reader is invited to listen as one would to a traveler returned from a long and solitary road.

May the reflections herein serve not as doctrine, but as mirror.
For the world known by the witness is completed only by the one who reads.

Note Regarding Translation: 

The task of translating much of this work was delegated to Microsoft's Copilot, a wonderful collaborator, as this editor's knowledge of ancient languages is limited. Once the A.I. assistant completed the required work, translation became less a matter of language than of listening. The voice that speaks within these pages does not belong to any known era, nor does it conform to the idioms of a single tongue. Its cadences suggest antiquity, yet its insights feel startlingly present. What survives of the original text is fragmentary, shifting between verse and meditation, as though the witness who composed it spoke in a rhythm older than grammar.

In rendering these lines into modern English, I have attempted to preserve the pulse of that rhythm—the long, tidal breath of a being who has watched centuries pass as others watch the turning of seasons. Where the translated manuscript offered only hints, I have chosen clarity over literalness, trusting that the spirit of the voice is better served by resonance than by strict fidelity.

While the Latin headings appear in the source material, their meanings are often implied rather than explicit. I have supplied English subtitles to guide the reader through the philosophical progression that unfolds across the six movements--and I make no claim that the proem and colophon match the original in full.

If the reader senses, at times, that the voice within these pages is not entirely separate from their own, I ask only that they accept this as part of the text’s nature. The witness speaks from a vantage beyond ordinary measure, but the truths he names are those each of us encounters in the quiet chambers of our lives.

May this translation serve as a bridge—
not between languages, but between ways of seeing.

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