The Flammarion [fla-ma-ryawn] woodcut is an anonymous wood engraving (once believed to be a woodcut), so named because its first documented appearance is in Camille Flammarion’s 1888 book L’atmosphère: météorologie populaire (‘The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology’).
The engraving depicts a man, dressed as a mediaeval pilgrim and carrying a pilgrim’s staff, who peers through the sky as if it were a curtain to look at the hidden workings of the universe. One of the elements of the cosmic machinery bears a strong resemblance to traditional pictorial representations of the ‘wheel in the middle of a wheel’ (Merkabah).
The Daily Omnivore 
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