In general, maps are tools that simulate large topographic spaces. As such, they are only imperfect approximations (however well-made they may be), which rely on the imagination of their users to function as precision instruments. Following that nature of all maps, the remarkable Bethany White is making the board of The Secretariat of Tenebrous Anatomies, probably bearing in mind this strange narrative of Jorge Luis Borges and the images above:
'... In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.' (purportedly from Suárez Miranda, Travels of Prudent Men, Book Four, Ch. XLV, Lérida, 1658)
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