Mundus patet, verbum patet

The world lies open, the word lies open

Notes towards a Semantic Archaeology

Every word below hides an older image. This piece recovers it — replacing a word with the literal meaning of its roots. Move across the text to stir it: words sink to their roots, then surface as the images they once held. Whatever the stirring leaves behind is a new poem. The translation appears on top; your text, beneath. Hover a recovered word to see what it was; click it to stir it.

Passage

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Translation

Original

recovered image — hover for the word and its root · origin contested — scholars disagree; no image is invented
Stirring turns each word: word → root → image → word

A lexicon of forgotten images. Entries drawn from canonical.json.
Write with the lexicon: a poem in which every line holds a dealt word.
Recover forgotten images where possible; represent the limits of historical knowledge where necessary.

Mundus patet, “the world is open”: the Romans’ phrase for three days a year (24 August, 5 October, 8 November) when the pit called the mundus was uncovered and the dead were free to walk among the living. No battles were begun, no marriages made. Here it is the word that opens. Varro, quoted in Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.16.18; the dates from Festus.