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On April 1st, 11.000 people (4.500 according to the police), mostly teenagers, took to the streets again to protest against the planned reduction in the number of teachers. Some incidents and fights forced the organizers to stop the demonstration in Sèvres-Babylone.
Here, protesters tear down a Sarkozy poster.
Merci de lire les explications en début d'album / Please read the explanations at the beginning of the set
Part of Ecole en danger ! (Recommended as a slideshow)
300.000 œuvres d'Afrique, d'Asie, d'Océanie et des Amériques constituent la collection que le musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac a pour mission de conserver, de documenter et d'enrichir. (...)
Le plateau des collections permanentes présente 3.500 œuvres selon un parcours géographique sans cloisonnement. La proximité de ces œuvres permet un dialogue inédit entre les cultures des quatre continents.
source: www.quaibranly.fr/fr/missions-et-fonctionnement/le-musee-...
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Asie | Asia
Population Kalash, région du Hindou-Kouch, Afghanistan
fin 19e sciècle
Les sculptures d’ancêtres kalash sont érigées à l’occasion des secondes funérailles, un an après la disparition d’un grand homme. L’ancêtre porte une coiffe à cornes honorifique qui devait être complétée par un torque et une boucle de ceinture aujourd’hui manquants.
Source : note explicative à côté de l’œuvre
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Figures of Kalash ancestors are erected on the occasion of the second funeral, a year after the death of a great man. The ancestor wears an honorary horned headdress which must have been completed by a torque and a belt buckle which are now missing.
Source: explanatory note next to the work
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300,000 works from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas make up the collection that the Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac Museum's mission is to conserve, document and enrich. (...)
The permanent collections display presents 3,500 works along a geographical route without compartmentalization. The proximity of these works allows for an unprecedented dialogue between the cultures of the four continents.
My article and photography have been published by the British Omani Society, in their 2015 Review.
You can access it here :- www.britishomani.org/annual-review
Click on the '2015 Review', go down, the article is on pages 12/15.
It’s very easy and safe, even I can do it!
On March 31st, a group of approx. 100 people demonstrated near the headquarters of the Olympic Committee (CIO) in Paris, to demand that the olympic torch is not carried through Tibet.
Merci de lire les explications en début d'album / Please read the explanations at the beginning of the set
Part of Free Tibet ! (Recommended as a slideshow)
30.000 people, many of them in wheelchairs, marched in Paris to request a decent minimum wage for handicapped people.
As I was about to take his picture, this man was overwhelmed with emotions, screaming his joy to be there :-) A very special moment...
Merci de lire les explications en début d'album / Please read the explanations at the beginning of the set
Part of "Ni pauvre, ni soumis !" (Recommended as a slideshow)
Pres du Pont de l'Europe a Strasbourg, un manifestant regarde bruler l'ancien bureau des douanes durant la manifestation du 4 avril 2009 contre le sommet de l'OTAN.
Merci de lire les explications en début d'album / Please read the explanations at the beginning of the set
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Je commence un nouveau blog pour photographes avec un ami (en français). Nous y mettrons des tutoriaux, des conseils, et des explications de shootings "backstage", comme pour cette série. N'hésitez pas à aller faire un tour et à donner vos avis !
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This is the last picture from the amazing studio session with Elodie.
Setup shot is still here.
Backstage video is HERE.
THANKS AGAIN TO EVERYONE. It was a great afternoon.
Strobist:
Cactus V5s as triggers.
1 LP160 @ 1/4th in Lumodi BeautyDish on the right, behind.
1 LP160 @ 1/4th in 40x60cm softbox on the left, behind.
Several flags to avoid light spills.
Canon EOS 5DmkII with EF 135mm f/2L @ 1/100th sec; f/4; iso50.
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quelques explications sur mon blog ici :
www.couleursetmixedmedia.com/article-trop-sage-104104677....
A Tibetan man leaves at the end of a pro-Tibet protest in Paris on March 21.
Merci de lire les explications en début d'album / Please read the explanations at the beginning of the set
Part of Free Tibet ! (Recommended as a slideshow)
Blacqueville, Normandie, France.
Thanks for your comments!
Retrouvez-moi également sur facebook (avec en prime quelques explications) : Mandraque Photographies
Seen in Paris streets during the demonstration of March 19, 2009 against Nicolas Sarkozy's politics (the "Petit Nicolas", little Nicolas, is in fact a famous comic book's character, created by Sempé and Goscinny).
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On March 19, 2009, between 1.2 (police source) and 3 million (organizers) people demonstrated in France to protest against Sarkozy's policies and his handling of the crisis. Clashes with the riot police erupted at the end of the demonstration place de la Nation , where 300 people were arrested and 49 convicted.
Merci de lire les explications en début d'album / Please read the explanations at the beginning of the set
Part of Manifestements Manifestifs de Manifestations (Recommended as a slideshow)
The general shape of the outline seems to suggest that the ancients did understand the correlation of Atlas with Bootes, particularly as the right (rear) leg of the statue would correspond to the "pointed" side on the left of the constellation outline, while the raised left-leg of the statue (on the right side as we look at Atlas) corresponds to the bent leg of the constellation. The photogarphy above shows how the general shape does seem to correlate to some degree: Yet further support for the identification of Atlas with Boötes comes from the fact that he is clearly described as having daughters, the Hesperides, whose names are given by Apollodorus as Aegle, Erythia, Hesperia, and Arethusa. While the image below is from a modern-era piece of artwork from the well-known trailblazing (and occasionally scandal-generating) artist John Singer Sargent (1856 - 1925), it incorporates ancient conventions regarding the depiction of Atlas. His 1925 depiction of the Hesperides as reclining beneath the burdened figure of their father the Titan is significant, in that the constellation Virgo is located in just such a recumbent pose in relationship to Boötes: Notice that the artist has depicted Atlas with one arm extended, and the hand of that single extended arm in a rather curious (albeit graceful) upturned angle -- exactly as if he were aware of the correspondence between Boötes and Atlas, and imagining the "pipe" of the constellation Boötes as the single extended arm of the crouching Atlas in his painting. Below is the now-familiar diagram of Boötes in relationship to Virgo which has been featured in several previous posts including this one and this one, reproduced here in order to show that Virgo in the sky reclines beneath the hulking form of Boötes in exactly the same way that John Singer Sargent has depicted his Hesperides as reclining beneath the burdened form of his Atlas: All of these correspondences, plus the fact that the constellation Hercules itself is located immediately adjacent to Boötes, makes it fairly clear that this is the section of the celestial sphere which is being allegorized in the star myth of Hercules retrieving the golden apples from the Hesperides, with the assistance of the Titan Atlas. Having established this, what does it all mean? Does identifying the players of the famous Eleventh Labor of Hercules as constellations in our night sky (constellations you can go identify this very night) somehow "rob" the myth of its grandeur, its human drama, and its air of reverence for the things of the gods (including the apples which cannot be picked by human hands and which, we are told at the end of the account, cannot remain in the world of men and women but must be taken back to the world of the gods)? While some might see it that way, I would argue the opposite: like the other myths we have examined such as the stealing of the mead of poetry from Gunnlod or the stealing of fire from the Old Man in the tipi (and like the myth of Adam and Eve plucking the forbidden fruit from the tree in the Genesis account which shares so many elements with this labor of Hercules), there are aspects of what we could call "the shamanic" in this myth. The myth involves obtaining something from the world of the gods, of "crossing over" into the divine realm and borrowing something that is "not of this earth," something that elevates Hercules at least for a time into the numinous world of the primordial powers and the gods. He takes the place of Atlas, supporting with his own human back the very axis of the heavens (and in doing so uniting the microcosm and the macrocosm, as well as "ascending" for a time to the very realm of the stars). The fact that Heracles or Hercules has an entire cycle of labors, twelve in number, also should cause us to suspect that he is in fact a figure who embodies the full cycle of the sun's annual course -- a circuit which the ancient myths imbue with spiritual significance relating to our plunge down into this incarnate life (at the fall equinox) and our mission of "raising our awareness of -- and re-integrating with -- the divine, spiritual part" of our being (symbolized by the "great turn" of the year at the low-point of the winter equinox). Thus the Heracles-cycle in general (with its twelve labors) and this story of retrieving the immortal apples of the Hesperides in particular, speak to us (in their celestial language) of the re-connection with the divine realm -- the infinite realm (which Heracles or Hercules actually accomplishes in an almost "literal" fashion in this story, when he himself takes up the burden of supporting the celestial sphere, thereby "bridging" the gap between finite earth and infinite starry sky). There is evidence that the ancient mythologies of cultures around the globe are all built on "star myths" that follow a common system of celestial allegory, and that the original purpose of all these star myths was to convey a shamanic-holographic vision of our universe and humanity's place within it a liberating vision that invites us to cross artificial barriers, and enter the "realm of seeds" to bring back information and make transformations that cannot be achieved in any other way.
In Greek mythology, Atlas (/ˈætləs/; Greek: Ἄτλας, Átlas) was a Titan condemned to hold up the sky for eternity after the Titanomachy. Although associated with various places, he became commonly identified with the Atlas Mountains in northwest Africa (modern-day Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia). Atlas was the son of the Titan Iapetus and the Oceanid Asia or Clymene. He had many children, mostly daughters, the Hesperides, the Hyades, the Pleiades, and the nymph Calypso who lived on the island Ogygia. According to the ancient Greek poet Hesiod, Atlas stood at the ends of the earth towards the west. Atlas is the Monad, the intellectual axis of the world and the solar fire, whose body symbolizes an alchemical equation. The three sisters, daughter of Atlas, who guarded the garden where the tree with golden fruits grew. By analogy, it is the symbol of Alchemy, whose garden is the pharmacopoeia. The Atlas cedar or Atlantic cedar grows as its name indicates in the... But it is even more, because of its natural properties, a symbol... or purple-black, gold speckled color in the alchemy of the Cauldron. Coin, metal, objects, symbol William Calin, Jean Arrouye, Pierre Jonin, Marie ... 106 pivot of the World, or better still like this axis of Atlas sung by Virgil.
The ancient myths of the world provide an inexhaustible supply of additional examples of the heavenly and celestial foundation of nearly every ancient scripture and sacred story. One memorable Greek myth worthy of explication to further illustrate the undeniable stellar basis of the ancient sacred corpus comes from the Twelve Labors of Heracles (Roman Hercules): the mission to retrieve the golden apples of the Hesperides (the Eleventh Labor of Heracles).
The Greek scholar Apollodorus of Athens (born around 180 BC and lived until some time after 120 BC) gives us a good version to examine, which can be found in its entirety online here, as translated by James George Frazer (1921). Below is an extended quotation of some of the pertinent details of the Eleventh Labor, which actually involved numerous other encounters by Heracles with other beings and demigods along the way (not all of which will be examined, although each could provide rich material for study and celestial unraveling). Since Frazer chooses to use the Roman form of the hero's name, we too will refer to him as Hercules for the rest of this particular discussion:
When the labours had been performed in eight years and a month, Eurystheus ordered Hercules, as an eleventh labour, to fetch golden apples from the Hesperides, for he did not acknowledge the labour of the cattle of Augeas nor that of the hydra. These apples were not, as some have said, in Libya, but on Atlas among the Hyperboreans. They were presented to Zeus after his marriage with Hera, and guarded by an immortal dragon with a hundred heads, offspring of Typhon and Echidna, which spoke with many divers sorts of voices. With it the Hepserides also were on guard, to wit, Aegle, Erythia, Hesperia, and Arethusa. [. . .][Various adventures ensue, primarily with Heracles defeating different sons of Poseidon][. . .]
And traversing Asia he put in to Thermydrae, the harbor of the Lindians. And having loosed one of the bullocks from the cart of a cowherd, he sacrificed it and feasted. But the cowherd, unable to protect himself, stood on a certain mountain and cursed. Wherefore to this day, when they sacrifice to Hercules, they do it with curses.
And passing by Arabia he slew Emathion, son of Tithonius, and journeying through Libya to the outer sea he received the goblet from the Sun. And having crossed to the opposite mainland he shot on the Caucasus the eagle, offspring of Echidna and Typhon, that was devouring the liver of Prometheus, and he released Prometheus, after choosing for himself the bond of olive, and to Zeus he presented Chiron, who, though immortal, consented to die in his stead.
Now Prometheus had told Hercules not to go himself after the apples but to send Atlas, first relieving him of the burden of the sphere; so when he was come to Atlas in the land of the Hyperboreans, he took the advice and relieved Atlas. But when Atlas had received three apples from the Hesperides, he came to Hercules, and not wishing to support the sphere he said that he would himself carry the apples to Eurystheus, and bade Hercules hold up the sky in his stead. Hercules promised to do so, but succeeded by craft in putting it on Atlas instead. For at the advice of Prometheus he begged Atlas to hold up the sky till he should put a pad on his head. When Atlas heard that, he laid the apples down on the ground and took the sphere from Hercules. And so Hercules picked up the apples and departed. But some say that he did not get them from Atlas, but that he plucked the apples himself after killing the guardian snake. And having brought the apples he gave them to Eurystheus. But he, on receiving them, bestowed them on Hercules, from whom Athena got them and conveyed them back again; for it was not lawful that they should be laid down anywhere.
This story is full of fascinating detail, as well as a certain amount of humor. First, it is fascinating to note that the story involves plucking fruit from a tree . . . plucking fruit from a tree . . . now where have we heard something about that before . . . ? (It sounds familiar somehow).
Prometheus warns Hercules that it is somehow dangerous (possibly fatal) for Hercules to pluck the apples himself (this also seems vaguely familiar for some reason . . . plucking fruit might cause one to "surely die" . . . hmmm). There is also a guardian serpent -- in this case, a dragon -- which again seems to be something I remember from another myth about fatal fruit.
Perhaps the most memorable aspect of this particular myth-sequence is the battle of wits between Hercules and Atlas. Atlas was the Titan condemned for eternity to uphold the entire sphere of the sky upon his shoulders. This was a punishment for having sided against the Olympians in the primordial battle between the Titans and the new gods.
Hercules gets himself into a tight spot when he agrees to hold up the sky while Atlas retrieves the dangerous apples: when Atlas returns, the Titan decides he kind of enjoys his newfound freedom, and announces to Hercules that the hero seems to be doing such a good job that Atlas will be taking a permanent vacation and leaving the task of holding up the sky to Hercules from now on.
Hercules slyly agrees (in the version from Apollodorus cited above), but asks for a moment in order to cut a pad for his shoulders before he gets down to the task of supporting the sphere for the rest of eternity. Atlas agrees, and relieves Hercules for a moment, at which point the hero takes the apples and departs, leaving the hapless Atlas back where he began, supporting the sky.
In some versions (at least in the wonderfully-illustrated version of the Labors of Hercules presented in the Sullivan Programmed Reading workbooks I had the pleasure of reading in elementary school during the 1970s), Hercules actually prepares to shoulder the sky again after cutting the pads for his shoulders, before Athena helpfully reminds the hero not to fall for his own trick, and advises him not to take the burden of the heavens back from Atlas now that he has the Titan back where he belongs.
In footnote number three from Frazer's 1921 translation, we see the kind of analysis found among conventional scholars, who resolutely refuse to interpret the ancient myths of the world as celestial allegory. There, we read some scholarly discussion as to where on earth these gardens of the Hesperides might be located -- along with some consternation that Apollodorus seems to have located them in "the far north" rather than in the "far west" as the name "Hesperides" would seem to imply (the word has connections to the evening star or Venus when appearing in the west, rather than when appearing in the morning in the east).
The details of the story, however, make it clear that we are dealing again with celestial allegory. The Titan who is holding up the vault of the sky in this case is none other than the hulking constellation of Boötes -- a constellation whose form is fairly close to the North Celestial Pole as well as to the Big Dipper which circles it. The fact that the constellation of Hercules is very close to Boötes (and is also located close to the North Celestial Pole around which the entire heavens revolve) and that Hercules in the story temporarily takes over the task of supporting the sky-sphere from Atlas should be enough to identify the two main actors in the myth with these two northern constellations.
The diagram below, a screenshot from the delightful browser-based Neave Planetarium program created by programmer-developer Paul Neave, shows the two constellations in relationship to one another: Note that the myth as presented by Apollodorus contains several clues which aid in the conclusion that we are dealing with the northern section of sky around which the entire celestial sphere revolves. First, of course, is the very nature of the punishment of Atlas: he is condemned to hold up what Apollodorus refers to as "the sphere" and "the sky." The best explanation for this punishment is that Atlas must be holding up the inside of the celestial sphere -- he is holding up the dome of the sky that we see when we look up into the heavens at night, a dome which revolves around a central point at the north celestial pole. Thus, he must be a constellation fairly close to the north celestial pole, and Böotes certainly qualifies. Secondly, we note that the apples in this myth are guarded by a dragon -- and there is clearly a dragon which winds its way around the north celestial pole, in the form of the constellation Draco, the Dragon. The diagram below includes the north celestial pole, and the sinuous form of Draco: I have only added the outline to Hercules in the above image: the outlines of Draco, the Big Dipper, and the Little Dipper are easy enough to see using the outlines included in the Neave Planetarium online app.
There is some reason to believe that the "tree" from which the Titan plucks the apples must be the invisible axis of the sky itself, the central "pole" around which the entire heavens turn. I present arguments in my first book, The Mathisen Corollary, that ancient myth and sacred tradition envisioned this central axis as a tall tree, which in many myths (such as the Gilgamesh epic) is cut down or otherwise unhinged to begin the motion of precession. Other evidence for this identification is presented in Hamlet's Mill.
Based upon this reading of the celestial aspects of the myth, it is possible that the golden apples themselves can be identified with the circlet of stars that make up the Corona Borealis, or Northern Crown. This constellation, allegorized in other myths as a necklace of jewels, can be seen to be located directly between the constellations of Hercules and Boötes in the first diagrams shown above. The stars of the Northern Crown certainly sparkle like golden jewels, and other myths make it clear that these golden apples were coveted by the goddesses, and we can see in the text of the myth as described by Apollodorus that these apples somehow originated from Hera but as a gift that was given away -- just as the stars of the Northern Crown are now located apart from the form of the constellation Virgo, located below Boötes. Other details in the myth as related by Apollodorus include the fact that the apples are found among the Hyperboreans (a word which means "far north" or "above north"), as well as the fact that in the supplemental adventures of Hercules, he is described as encountering a "cowherd" (the constellation Boötes is known as the Herdsman) who drives a "cart" or wagon (the Big Dipper was often described in myth as a wagon, a cart, or a "wain," as well as being allegorized in other myth as a plow). It was, in fact, almost certainly the billy-goat cart of Thor, who is associated with Jupiter (note that Thor's-day and Jove's-day are the same day: our modern Thursday), and remember that in the myth above as described by Apollodorus we have Hera giving the apples as a gift to Zeus (who is Jove and Jupiter). When Hercules sacrifices one of the oxen from this cart, the Herdsman can only curse -- and we have seen that in myths around the world, the relationship between Böotes and his cart is somehow associated with off-color speech or antics (see the discussion of the lewd dance of Uzume in the Japanese myth of Amaterasu, or the behavior of Loki when he is trying to coax a smile out of the jotun maiden Skade, both of which are described in this previous post). The outlines of both the constellation Böotes and the constellation Hercules can be envisioned as large men crouching down to support the burden of the very peak of the vault of heaven (located at the north celestial pole, which is located above both of their backs). The ancient art depicting the mighty Titan Atlas bending down to support the ponderous burden of the entire sphere often depicts him as having one knee out forward, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of the shape of Boötes, who also has a prominent crooked knee on his one leg. Below is an image of the famous "Farnese Atlas," with an outline of Boötes for comparison:
According to Robert Graves's The Greek Myths, the Pelasgians believed the creator goddess Eurynome assigned Atlas and Phoebe to govern the moon.
Hyginus emphasises the primordial nature of Atlas by making him the son of Aether and Gaia.
"Atlantic Ocean" means "Sea of Atlas", while "Atlantis" means "island of Atlas".
The etymology of the name Atlas is uncertain. Virgil took pleasure in translating etymologies of Greek names by combining them with adjectives that explained them: for Atlas his adjective is durus, "hard, enduring",[8] which suggested to George Doig that Virgil was aware of the Greek τλῆναι "to endure"; Doig offers the further possibility that Virgil was aware of Strabo's remark that the native North African name for this mountain was Douris. Since the Atlas mountains rise in the region inhabited by Berbers, it has been suggested that the name might be taken from one of the Berber, specifically ádrār 'mountain'.
Traditionally historical linguists etymologize the Ancient Greek word Ἄτλας (genitive: Ἄτλαντος) as comprised from copulative α- and the Proto-Indo-European root *telh₂- 'to uphold, support' (whence also τλῆναι), and which was later reshaped to an nt-stem. However, Robert Beekes argues that it cannot be expected that this ancient Titan carries an Indo-European name, and that the word is of Pre-Greek origin, and such words often end in -ant.
Atlas and his brother Menoetius sided with the Titans in their war against the Olympians, the Titanomachy. When the Titans were defeated, many of them (including Menoetius) were confined to Tartarus, but Zeus condemned Atlas to stand at the western edge of Gaia (the Earth) and hold up the sky on his shoulders. Thus, he was Atlas Telamon, "enduring Atlas," and became a doublet of Coeus, the embodiment of the celestial axis around which the heavens revolve.
A common misconception today is that Atlas was forced to hold the Earth on his shoulders, but Classical art shows Atlas holding the celestial spheres, not a globe; the solidity of the marble globe borne by the renowned Farnese Atlas may have aided the conflation, reinforced in the 16th century by the developing usage of atlas to describe a corpus of terrestrial maps.
Atlas and the Hesperides by Singer Sargent, John (1925)
In a late story, a giant named Atlas tried to drive a wandering Perseus from the place where the Atlas mountains now stand. In Ovid's telling, Perseus revealed Medusa's head, turning Atlas to stone (those very mountains) when Atlas tried to drive him away, because Perseus, who went there accidentally and asked Atlas for hospitality, named himself a son of Zeus and a prophecy said that a son of Zeus would steal the golden apples from Atlas' orchard. As is not uncommon in myth, this account cannot be reconciled with the far more common stories of Atlas' dealings with Heracles, another son of Zeus, who was Perseus' great-grandson and who sought for the golden apples.
According to Plato, the first king of Atlantis was also named Atlas, but that Atlas was a son of Poseidon and the mortal woman Cleito. A euhemerist origin for Atlas was as a legendary Atlas, king of Mauretania, an expert astronomer.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_(mythology)
"Explanation"
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The Ankh represents the first key to the Mysteries “The Creation of Everything”. The Ankh means more than Life – it is the most ancient symbol of a code of sounds and primordial deities. The Ankh is actually the Names of the so called “chaos” Deities of the Khemnu or Ogdoad: Amen/Amenet, Nun/Nunet,Ku/Kukhet,Heh/Hehet. – This resolves itself to ANKH. The Ankh itself has four distinct sides and one of them is the Loop Nun/Nunet. These four pairs in were thought to be the Children of Tehuti and Maat. Both Tehuti (Vibration), Maat (Order) and the four pairs themselves have their own forces. Amen/Amenet is the hidden spark of life and its opposite , Nun/Nunet – is the primordial unformed mass and its opposite, Ku/Kukhet is the qualities of Light and its opposite, and Heh/Het is the qualities of infinity and its opposite. At some point the Eight fuse themselves together bounded by Maat and Tehuti and a Deity Ptah is formed out of this chaos – (the God Particle), he steps on a mound, Aton is formed and lands on his shoulder then The Ennead is created or the 9 deities. This is called the “First Time” or Sp Tepii, Zep Tepi, Sep Tepii, Sep Tepi. Ancient Kemet is both Scientific and Spiritual. The Mysteries System of Egypt is also both Scientific and Spiritual. To begin self mastery one must understand how everything began. A child in Ancient Egypt would be told the creation stories, I described and grow up understanding Science and Spirituality. An African Child in the Diaspora would be taught one of the Major Western Religions and grow up with religion and later learn science and have to juggle between the two. Here is the beginning key to re-orientating African Thought, Practice, Spirituality, Redemption and Self Mastery.Here we see the most common usage of the Ankh – Here is the Symbol, the N – water ripple and the KH – Placenta?. The N can be pronounced, and the KH is pronounced. The sound of its symbol begins with the A similar the extend arm glyph. This I have to check. At any rate, the ripple water identifies it with possibly water, or wave. The Placenta has obvious meanings of birth. I am currently attempting to find out why the KH symbol is the placenta. It does not look like a Placenta at all. I have found that the KH sound is used in the Mdu Ntr of the placenta so that is why the symbol is referred to as a placenta. Obviously, the Ancient Egyptians knew about the placenta and knew how to draw it – it is found in the Narmer Pallete and the Wepwawet Standard in the Step pyramid. The symbol that is known as the sieve or placenta obviously has a meaning that contributes to the placenta, but may not necessarily be the placenta.
Sekou Fortune who helped me discover the Secret of the Ankh and our new researcher Alfred “Djehuti” Thompson II – Bro. Al, made an amazing contribution while we were at the ASCAC conference in Washington in August. They discarded Gardiner’s and Budge naming of the KH sound as Placenta. They said that it could not be a Placenta for the following reasons: 1) the symbol is in equal parts 2) The people of Kemet knew how to draw a placenta 3) Cosmologically the placenta would have no place in the creation of everything – women and man were not created. 4) They challenged that symbols in relationship to the Ankh have cosmological references and the KH symbol may very well be Matter itself.
The ankh (/æŋk, ɑːŋk/; Egyptian ˁnḫ), also known as "crux ansata" (the Latin for "cross with a handle") is an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic ideograph symbolizing "life".The ankh is an oval or point-down teardrop set atop a T shape. The origin of this image is highly debated. Some have suggested that it represents a sandal strap, although the reasoning behind such a use is not obvious. Others point out the similarity with another shape known as a knot of Isis (or a tyet), the meaning of which is also obscure.The Secret of the Ankh is a pathway into the Mystery Systems. The Secret of the Ankh leads to the what is called called the God Particle or what is alled the Higgs Particle but told in mythos by the Ancient People of the Nile. The Secret of the Ankh also is in line with the Infinity Puzzle of Frank Close this where infinity (Heh) and its opposite nothingness (hehet) and Nwn (Dark Radition) and its opposite Nwnt (anti-matter) or and the resultant matter is analyzed in creation . I believe that I have decoded the Symbol of the Ankh. My findings are that the Ankh can no longer be viewed as just meaning life, but the creation of Life itself. The Cosmological Origin was first discovered by myself and my friend Sekou Fortune. I later expanded the base findings into a Blog that can be shared and read.
To summarize the concept in Part I
(1)The Ogdoad Primordial Eight are the elements that created the Divine Creator according to the Egyptians. This is taken from one of the oldest cosmologies -of Hermopolis or Khmnu.
(2) Aspects of this story are used in the creation of Ptah, Ra, Amen, Aten in the other creations stories. These all deal with just the creation of the Creator not with what existed before creation.
(3) The symbol for the Ankh is the symbol with the Circle on top of the cross hairs – followed by the Mdu Ntr sounds of N and KH.
(4) From the breakthroughs of translations we know the symbol was pronounced NKH or ANKH. The A is disputed and may have been added for convenience of pronunciation. Even if the Ankh is a triliteral – at this point there is no definitive way to show how it was pronounced.
(5) If we return to the Ogdoad, the eight pairs are Amen Amenet, Nun, Nunuet, Kek, Kekhet, and Heh, Hehet. My theory is that the symbol took the names of the Ogdoad into consideration for its pronunciation. One must remember first that the Mdu Ntr is in fact the Sacred Words of the Ntrs. So there must be some root words are sounds that were used in the beginning and will continue to be used for words describing creation.
(6) The Ankh not only is a symbol of Life but the elements that create life. These elements are the Ogdoad and the Odgoad is essential for Life. The symbol Ankh is connected to the Ogdoad and I believe it gets its name from the Odoad. This is the secret of the Ankh.
(7) I understand that there is controversy of me creating the mnemonic ANKH to represent the Khemennu (The Primordial Eight). However, in Nile Valley Cosmology it is in fact the Eight that created life. So the mnemonics do not take away from this concept even though their is no prove that the Nile Valley Africans thought this way but we can be sure the Ankh symbol is written with the water sign (N) and the (KH) – whether this meant waves and particles is another thing. This is my Theory.
Let us continue.
I want to pause here so that I can correct three important points that may come up as a criticism. First, in order to help the reader find relevant source material, I use the work Ogdoad. However, the Nile Valley Mdu Ntr term with the most primary information is Khemenu and that a scholar looking for primary resources should always look for primary material first and secondary material second. The information on the Khemenu is should ultimately be referenced from what it means in the Original Language. Here is an example, Egypt is referred to the Land of the Ancient People in which we are talking about. However, the name of the land referred in text by the people is Kemet, Ta Seti, Ta Mery. We could call the people Egyptians but they call themselves the Rmt or Kmtw.
Two – I will say that the Ankh must be re-translated to the Khemenu (The Eight, 4 pairs). and I may get criticism from those unfamiliar with primary text and say that Amun is never first because Nun was. One should always stand from a position of being well researched. At anytime, that I have to defend the order of the Khemenu, I can do so with primary sources. I will say at this time that Amun/Amunet was the primordial Wave by themselves and they created NUN. Amun/Amunet exist in at least two dimensions and their later reality becomes Eight as they now split tow Amun/Amunet, Nun/Nunet, Kek,Keket and then HeH.HeHet.
Third, I will say the symbol the Ankh is actually the Eight, the Khemenu or the European name Ogdoad and will have again criticism. I have included a letter from Dr. Mario Beatty which I use as constructive criticism. However, Amun is always hidden and we do not know if the Symbol was actually pronounced as Ankh or Nkh – So Since Amun is hidden let us make that sound invisible and pronounce the symbol NKH for these purposes. NKH is a formula that includes the Khemenu for several reasons. The reaction of the Eight creates the Light that Created Life. In addition, the Khemenu are seen holding the Symbol sometimes all Eight or sometimes just 4 or the Eight. In Addition as I will show that the Mdu Ntr of the Symbol contains the N (Wave) and the KH (particle/seive) and these are quantum physic properties of the duality of Waves and Particles. Lastly, the Khemenu appears in Precreation, Creation, Life, and Afterlife scenes in Text and in Plates.
At this time – I will not touch my original theses until I publish my work – I hope that these satisfies initial criticism and those that want to criticize I find have not read enough primary sources to rule out anything that I am saying for the Nile Valley African often renews or make better their thoughts in later text to cure what was hidden in earlier text. So the Khemenu Cosmology was made better later.
Wherever the Ankh is translated in Ancient Egypt Literature it must be re-translated with the following insight: The Ankh is the Life Code; The Egyptian’s so-called “Infinities or Chaos” Gods: Amen/Amenet, Nun/Nunet,Kuk,Kukhet, Heh/Hehet – the Ogdoad.; The Meaning of Life is no longer just a flat definition but a multi-dimensional definition of the scientific and possibly spiritual definition of how life was created itself.
First though it may appear my work is not about phonetics, not about linguistics but linguistics have some bearing. The Secret of the Ankh can be approached two ways that lead to the same result.
First I will look at the Ogdoad – the Primordial Eight and how these elements resolve themselves into Life.
Second, I will look the Mdu Ntru symbol for the sound N which is a Wave and the Mdu Ntr symbol for the sound KH which Gardiner says incorrectly is a placenta but probably matter – are key elements of the symbol ANKH or NKH – Wave plus Matter produces the elements of Life or the God Particle. This is essentially a well proven theory of Dr. Oyiboe, as part of his GAGUT -Grand Unifying Theorem. I will use Dr. Oyiboe’s expression but expand on it.
The Egyptian gods are often portrayed carrying it by its loop, or bearing one in each hand, arms crossed over their chest. The ankh appears in hand or in proximity of almost every deity in the Egyptian pantheon (including Pharaohs).There are also images of gods pouring water over the head of the pharaoh as part of a purification ritual, with the water being represented by chains of ankhs and was (representing power and dominion) symbols. It reinforces the close connection the pharaohs had with the gods in whose name he ruled and to whom he returned after death.
The ankh symbol was so prevalent that it has been found in digs as far as Mesopotamia and Persia, and even on the seal of the biblical king Hezekiah.
The symbol became popular in New Age mysticism in the 1960s.
Unicode has two characters encoding the symbol: U+2625 ☥ in the widely-supported Miscellaneous Symbols block and U+132F9 in the more recent Egyptian Hieroglyphs block.
There have been many suggestions and theories as to the origin of the ankh symbol.Pharaoh Akhenaten embraced a monotheistic religion centered on the worship of the sun disk, known as the Aten. Artwork from the time of his rule, known as the Amarna period, always includes the Aten in images of the pharaoh. This image is a circular disk with rays terminating in hands reaching down toward the royal family. Sometimes, although not always, the hands clutch ankhs.
Again, the meaning is clear: eternal life is a gift of the gods meant most specifically for the pharaoh and perhaps his family. (Akhenaten emphasized the role of his family much more than other pharaohs. More often, pharaohs are depicted alone or with the gods.
Alan Gardiner (1957) explains the hieroglyph as a depiction of a sandal-strap (ˁnḫ) which came to be read phonetically and could be used (as "rebus writing") for the similar word ˁnḫ "live", a triliteral root probably pronounced /ʕánax/ in Old and Middle Egyptian.This verb and its derivatives are likely ancestral to the Coptic words ⲱⲛϩ ōnh "to live, life" and ⲉⲛⲉϩ eneh "eternity".
One of the earliest proposals was that of Thomas Inman, first published in 1869, according to which the symbol combines "the male triad and the female unit".[6] E. A. Wallis Budge (1904) postulated that the symbol originated as the belt buckle of the mother goddess Isis.
Andrew Hunt Gordon and Calvin Schwabe, in their 2004 book The Quick and the Dead, speculated that the ankh, djed, and was symbols have a basis in "cattle culture" and with semen (thought to originate in the spine) being equated with “life”, with the ankh representing the thoracic vertebra of a bull (seen in cross section), the djed representing the sacrum of a bull's spine, and the was representing a staff made from a bull’s penis.
Crux ansata in Codex Glazier
The ankh appears frequently in Egyptian tomb paintings and other art, often at the fingertips of a god or goddess in images that represent the deities of the afterlife conferring the gift of life on the dead person's mummy; this is thought to symbolize the act of conception.[citation needed] Additionally, an ankh was often carried by Egyptians as an amulet, either alone, or in connection with two other hieroglyphs that mean "strength" and "health" (see explication of djed and was, above).[citation needed] Mirrors of beaten metal were also often made in the shape of an ankh, either for decorative reasons or to symbolize a perceived view into another world.[citation needed]
A symbol similar to the ankh appears frequently in Minoan and Mycenaean sites.[where?] This is a combination of the sacral knot (symbol of holiness) with the double-edged axe (symbol of matriarchy) but it can be better compared with the Egyptian tyet which is similar. This symbol can be recognized on the two famous figurines of the chthonian Snake Goddess discovered in the palace of Knossos. Both snake goddesses have a knot with a projecting loop cord between their breasts. In the Linear B (Mycenean Greek) script, ankh is the phonetic sign za.
The ankh also appeared frequently in coins from ancient Cyprus and Asia Minor (particularly the city of Mallus in Cilicia).[12] In some cases, especially with the early coinage of King Euelthon of Salamis, the letter ku, from the Cypriot syllabary, appeared within the circle ankh, representing Ku(prion) (Cypriots). To this day, the ankh is also used to represent the planet Venus (the namesake of which, the goddess Venus or Aphrodite, was chiefly worshipped on the island) and the metal copper (the heavy mining of which gave Cyprus its name).
Coptic Christians preserved the shape of the ankh by sometimes representing the Christian cross with a circle in place of the upper bar. This is known as the Coptic ankh or crux ansata.
The most commonly repeated explanation is that it is a union of a female symbol (the oval, representing the vagina or uterus) with a male symbol (the phallic upright line), but there's no actual evidence supporting that interpretation.
Sex, and specifically the orgasm, is more that just something that feels good and allows procreation. There are many other functions, such as the release of dysfunctional energy within the body, which can help to keep one from becoming diseased. There is the function that opens the higher chakras, and under the right conditions allows a person to begin the process of enlightenment. And further, if two people, lovers, practice sacred sex, the entire experience can lead them together into higher consciousness and into worlds beyond this plane.
In relationships, a simple sexual principle, as taught by the ancient Egyptians, can change the energy level within your body and help to bring strength and vitality into your bodies and your relationship.
The full subject in detail of Egyptian Tantra is incredibly complex, and cannot be completed in an article of this scope. But we can speak of the heart of the matter — the human ankhing experience as practiced by the ancient Egyptians.
And so, adapted for our readers from The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life, Volume II, I offer this insight to assist two lovers — or even yourself, alone — to begin to find the higher path. This practice will not directly show you the true path. But it will increase your life-force energy, making you stronger, more alive, and more conscious. And perhaps — if you believe the Ancient Egyptians — it may lead you into eternal life.
—Drunvalo
Egyptian Sexual Energy and the Orgasm
It was believed in ancient Egypt that the orgasm was the key to eternal life, and that it was intimately connected with the chakra system. A chakra is an energy vortex connected to the entire human energy field, and the Universal Heart Chakra is the fifth of thirteen chakras. (There is also a system of eight chakras; in that system, the heart chakra is number four.) The Egyptian system held that the orgasm was intimately connected to this fifth, or Universal Heart Chakra.
First, we will explain the connection to eternal life.
Most people in the world are ignorant about what happens to their sexual energy after they have an orgasm. Usually, the energy moves up the spine and out the top of the head directly into the eighth or thirteenth chakra (same chakra, different system). In a few rare cases, the sexual energy is released down the spine into the hidden center below the feet, the point opposite the one above the head. In either case, the sexual energy — the concentrated life-force energy called prana in Hinduism — is dissipated and lost. It is similar to discharging a battery into a ground wire. It is no longer in the battery and so it is gone forever. This is what all the world's Tantric systems that I am aware of believe, that orgasm brings one a little closer to death because a person loses his or her life-force energy in the orgasm and is made weaker. But the Egyptians found long ago that it does not have to be this way.
It is for this reason that the Hindu and Tibetan Tantra systems ask the male to avoid ejaculating. Instead, they speak of these tiny invisible tubes where, when a student learns to control the orgasm and the flow of their sexual energy, the sperm migrates up to the higher centers.
Both of these systems, and also the Chinese Taoist Tantra system, are all primarily concerned with the sexual energy flow, sometimes referred to as ''sexual currents.'' They are primarily concerned with what happens as the sexual energy is moved before the orgasm, but they all have entirely different views of this energy compared to the Egyptians.
The Egyptians believed that orgasm is healthy and necessary, including the release of sperm in males, but that the sexual energy currents must be controlled in a deeply esoteric procedure that is unlike any other system. They believed that if this energy is controlled, the human orgasm becomes a source of infinite pranic energy that is not lost. They believe that the entire Mer-Ka-Ba or lightbody (the field of energy surrounding and interpenetrating the body) benefits from this sexual release. They even believe that under the right conditions the orgasm will directly lead to eternal life, and that the ankh is the key.
Egyptian ankhWhat is the ankh, and what has the ankh to do with sexual energy? It is complicated to explain, but we will simplify. First the ankh itself is a shape that looks like the figure at right.
In order to see and understand what took thousands of years for the Egyptians to grasp, we will begin with the fifth, Universal Heart Chakra. This lower heart chakra, the chakra of Unconditional Universal Love, is the first place where the energy completes itself. Each chakra has a ''direction'' associated with it, as the life-force energy rotates its way up the body in a pattern similar to the DNA molecule. In the lower heart chakra, the fifth place of a thirteen chakra system, the energy is facing the same direction as it began, and thus the circle is complete.
Energy Flow Diagrams
In the three views above, you can see how the rotation of energy either around the body, as in (a), around a circle, as in (b), or in a sine wave, as in (c), all complete themselves in five steps.
Ankh ViewsThe fifth or heart chakra is the first chakra that completes itself and has the energies of both front-to-back and left-to-right. If you could see these energies — and the Egyptians could — from above the head, as in (a), at left, they would appear as this symbol. It needs to be understood that these are actual energy lines around the body coming from the fifth chakra.
If you were to see these energies from the front view of a human, they would appear as in (b) at left. In the center of the cross there is a hidden energy line coming straight off the page and also moving in the opposite direction away from the reader.
Notice that both of the above examples are Christian symbols that come from the heart chakra. However, if you could see the same energies from the side of a human being, they would appear different than you would expect. There is another energy-flow ''tube'' there (in Chinese medicine it's called a ''meridian'') that the Egyptians discovered long ago. It looks like (c).
I find it very interesting that the Christians must have understood what we are talking about here, for on the robes of many Christian priests, at certain times of the year that are usually associated with resurrection, you will see the following symbol.
This symbol (d) shows all three views — the top, front, and side simultaneously. I believe the Christians omitted the complete loop of the ankh so that they would not directly show a connection with the old Egyptian religion, since they were breaking away from that tradition. But it is obvious that they knew.
Now that you know that this ankh energy conduit is located in the human energy field and where, you will be able to understand the reason for the Egyptians' sexual conduct, which we are about to explain.
First let me explain something about the ankh before I speak about its relationship to sexual energy. When I toured the museums in Egypt, I personally observed over 200 Egyptian rods.
Egyptian rodThese rods (pictured at right) were mostly made of wood, although other materials were sometimes used. They had a tuning fork on the bottom end, and the top end had four different types of devices that could be attached. One of these devices was in the shape of the ankh. What we found is that if you put the ankh on the top of the rod, which is like the human spine, the vibration from the tuning fork lasts a great deal longer. The energy seems to wrap around back into the rod along the curve of the ankh, moving downward as it returns, thereby sustaining the energy.
I was in Holland a couple of years ago, and there some people had made some rods out of copper with a high-quality tuning fork at the bottom and a threaded end at the top, so that different end pieces could be screwed on. I experimented with this rod. Using it without a top piece, I struck the tuning fork and timed how long it would vibrate. Then I screwed on the ankh and struck the tuning fork again. With the ankh on top, the rod vibrated almost three times longer. If you apply this idea to the human spine, you can see why the energy of the orgasm enhances the entire human system and the energy wraps itself back around and back into the human meridians.
This is the key to why the Egyptians performed the particular sexual practices we are about to explain. They found that if they had an orgasm and let it go out the top or bottom of the spine, the sexual energy was lost. But if the sexual energy was guided by consciousness to move into the ankh conduit, it would come back into the spine and continue to resonate and vibrate. The life-force energy was not lost. In actual experience, it seems to increase the energy. One does not feel depleted after sex, but rather recharged.
You can talk about it all day, but if you try it one time, you will understand. However, it is not easy to do in one test. For the first few times, the sexual energy will often shoot past the point of the fifth chakra and continue on up and out of the body. So it takes practice. Once it is learned, I doubt seriously if you would ever have an orgasm any other way. It's too powerful and feels too good. Once your body remembers this experience, it is not likely to revert back to the old way.
Instructions for the Egyptian Orgasm
Here is exactly how to achiever the ankhing associated with the human orgasm. Whatever you do sexually before the orgasm is completely up to you. I am not here to judge you — and definitely the Egyptians would not, since they believe in knowing all sixty-four sexual modes before you enter the King's Chamber to ascend to the next level of consciousness. This is their idea, but it is important to know that it is not necessary. You can reach the next level of consciousness without knowing this information. However, from their point of view, the idea of ankhing is of paramount importance in achieving eternal life. You will have to decide for yourself if it is something you wish to practice.
The moment you feel the sexual energy about to rise up your spine, take a very deep breath, filling your lungs about 9/10th full, then hold your breath.
Allow the sexual energy of the orgasm to come up your spine. But at the moment it reaches the fifth chakra (located just a couple of finger-widths above the sternum), with your willpower you must turn the flow of sexual energy 90 degrees out the back of the body. It will then automatically continue inside the ankh tube. It will slowly turn until it passes exactly through the eighth (or thirteenth) chakra, one hand-length above the head at 90 degrees to the vertical. It will then continue to curve around until it returns to the fifth chakra, where it began, only this time in the front of the body.
Even if you don't understand what was just said, it will happen automatically if you get it started out the back of the body at the fifth chakra, and it will automatically come back around to the front of the body and reconnect at the fifth chakra. You just have to make it turn 90 degrees so that it begins.
It will often slow down as it approaches its point of origin, the fifth chakra. If you can see the energy, it comes to a sharp point. When it approaches the fifth chakra from the front of the body, there is sometimes a tremendous jolt as it reconnects with this chakra again. All this takes place while you are holding your first breath.
The instant the sexual energy reconnects with its source, the fifth chakra, take in the full breath. You had filled your lungs only 9/10th full, so now you fill your lungs as completely as you can.
Now exhale very, very slowly. The sexual energy will continue on around the ankh channel as long as you are exhaling. When you reach the bottom of this breath, you will continue to breathe very deeply, but a change happens here.
It is here that, if you know the Lightbody work of the Mer-Ka-Ba, you would begin to breathe from the two poles using Mer-Ka-Ba breathing. But if you are like most people and don't know this work, then continue to breathe deeply until you feel the relaxation begin to spread throughout your body. Then relax your breath to your normal rate. Feel every cell becoming rejuvenated by this life-force energy. Let this energy reach down into the deepest physical levels of your body structure even past the cellular level. Feel how this beautiful energy surrounds your very being and brings health to your body, mind and heart.
Once the relaxation begins, slow your breath down to a normal shallow breathing.
If possible, allow yourself to completely relax or even sleep for a while afterward.
If you practice this for even one week, I believe you will more than understand. If you practice it continually, it will begin to give health and strength to your mental, emotional, and physical bodies. It will give great strength and power to your Lightbody, as well.
If for any reason this practice does not feel right, stop and return to normal. It just is not time.
It was this discovery of the secret tube that fostered the Ancient Egyptians' belief that eternal life was intimately connected to this particular energy-flow. It is this ankhing of their sexual energy through this tube, in an extremely deliberate procedure, that I have been taught to emulate.
1. The Mind-Body Problem and the History of Dualism
1.1 The Mind-Body Problem
The mind-body problem is the problem: what is the relationship between mind and body? Or alternatively: what is the relationship between mental properties and physical properties?
Humans have (or seem to have) both physical properties and mental properties. People have (or seem to have)the sort of properties attributed in the physical sciences. These physical properties include size, weight, shape, colour, motion through space and time, etc. But they also have (or seem to have) mental properties, which we do not attribute to typical physical objects These properties involve consciousness (including perceptual experience, emotional experience, and much else), intentionality (including beliefs, desires, and much else), and they are possessed by a subject or a self. Physical properties are public, in the sense that they are, in principle, equally observable by anyone. Some physical properties – like those of an electron – are not directly observable at all, but they are equally available to all, to the same degree, with scientific equipment and techniques. The same is not true of mental properties. I may be able to tell that you are in pain by your behaviour, but only you can feel it directly. Similarly, you just know how something looks to you, and I can only surmise. Conscious mental events are private to the subject, who has a privileged access to them of a kind no-one has to the physical. The mind-body problem concerns the relationship between these two sets of properties. The mind-body problem breaks down into a number of components. The ontological question: what are mental states and what are physical states? Is one class a subclass of the other, so that all mental states are physical, or vice versa? Or are mental states and physical states entirely distinct?
The causal question: do physical states influence mental states? Do mental states influence physical states? If so, how?
Different aspects of the mind-body problem arise for different aspects of the mental, such as consciousness, intentionality, the self. The problem of consciousness: what is consciousness? How is it related to the brain and the body? The problem of intentionality: what is intentionality? How is it related to the brain and the body? The problem of the self: what is the self? How is it related to the brain and the body? Other aspects of the mind-body problem arise for aspects of the physical. For example:
The problem of embodiment: what is it for the mind to be housed in a body? What is it for a body to belong to a particular subject?
The seemingly intractable nature of these problems have given rise to many different philosophical views.
Materialist views say that, despite appearances to the contrary, mental states are just physical states. Behaviourism, functionalism, mind-brain identity theory and the computational theory of mind are examples of how materialists attempt to explain how this can be so. The most common factor in such theories is the attempt to explicate the nature of mind and consciousness in terms of their ability to directly or indirectly modify behaviour, but there are versions of materialism that try to tie the mental to the physical without explicitly explaining the mental in terms of its behaviour-modifying role. The latter are often grouped together under the label ‘non-reductive physicalism’, though this label is itself rendered elusive because of the controversial nature of the term ‘reduction’.
Idealist views say that physical states are really mental. This is because the physical world is an empirical world and, as such, it is the intersubjective product of our collective experience.
Dualist views (the subject of this entry) say that the mental and the physical are both real and neither can be assimilated to the other. For the various forms that dualism can take and the associated problems, see below.
In sum, we can say that there is a mind-body problem because both consciousness and thought, broadly construed, seem very different from anything physical and there is no convincing consensus on how to build a satisfactorily unified picture of creatures possessed of both a mind and a body.
Other entries which concern aspects of the mind-body problem include (among many others): behaviorism, consciousness, eliminative materialism, epiphenomenalism, functionalism, identity theory, intentionality, mental causation, neutral monism, and physicalism.
1.2 History of dualism
In dualism, ‘mind’ is contrasted with ‘body’, but at different times, different aspects of the mind have been the centre of attention. In the classical and mediaeval periods, it was the intellect that was thought to be most obviously resistant to a materialistic account: from Descartes on, the main stumbling block to materialist monism was supposed to be ‘consciousness’, of which phenomenal consciousness or sensation came to be considered as the paradigm instance.
The classical emphasis originates in Plato’s Phaedo. Plato believed that the true substances are not physical bodies, which are ephemeral, but the eternal Forms of which bodies are imperfect copies. These Forms not only make the world possible, they also make it intelligible, because they perform the role of universals, or what Frege called ‘concepts’. It is their connection with intelligibility that is relevant to the philosophy of mind. Because Forms are the grounds of intelligibility, they are what the intellect must grasp in the process of understanding. In Phaedo Plato presents a variety of arguments for the immortality of the soul, but the one that is relevant for our purposes is that the intellect is immaterial because Forms are immaterial and intellect must have an affinity with the Forms it apprehends (78b4–84b8). This affinity is so strong that the soul strives to leave the body in which it is imprisoned and to dwell in the realm of Forms. It may take many reincarnations before this is achieved. Plato’s dualism is not, therefore, simply a doctrine in the philosophy of mind, but an integral part of his whole metaphysics.
One problem with Plato’s dualism was that, though he speaks of the soul as imprisoned in the body, there is no clear account of what binds a particular soul to a particular body. Their difference in nature makes the union a mystery.
Aristotle did not believe in Platonic Forms, existing independently of their instances. Aristotelian forms (the capital ‘F’ has disappeared with their standing as autonomous entities) are the natures and properties of things and exist embodied in those things. This enabled Aristotle to explain the union of body and soul by saying that the soul is the form of the body. This means that a particular person’s soul is no more than his nature as a human being. Because this seems to make the soul into a property of the body, it led many interpreters, both ancient and modern, to interpret his theory as materialistic. The interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy of mind – and, indeed, of his whole doctrine of form – remains as live an issue today as it was immediately after his death (Robinson 1983 and 1991; Nussbaum 1984; Rorty and Nussbaum, eds, 1992). Nevertheless, the text makes it clear that Aristotle believed that the intellect, though part of the soul, differs from other faculties in not having a bodily organ. His argument for this constitutes a more tightly argued case than Plato’s for the immateriality of thought and, hence, for a kind of dualism. He argued that the intellect must be immaterial because if it were material it could not receive all forms. Just as the eye, because of its particular physical nature, is sensitive to light but not to sound, and the ear to sound and not to light, so, if the intellect were in a physical organ it could be sensitive only to a restricted range of physical things; but this is not the case, for we can think about any kind of material object (De Anima III,4; 429a10–b9). As it does not have a material organ, its activity must be essentially immaterial.
It is common for modern Aristotelians, who otherwise have a high view of Aristotle’s relevance to modern philosophy, to treat this argument as being of purely historical interest, and not essential to Aristotle’s system as a whole. They emphasize that he was not a ‘Cartesian’ dualist, because the intellect is an aspect of the soul and the soul is the form of the body, not a separate substance. Kenny (1989) argues that Aristotle’s theory of mind as form gives him an account similar to Ryle (1949), for it makes the soul equivalent to the dispositions possessed by a living body. This ‘anti-Cartesian’ approach to Aristotle arguably ignores the fact that, for Aristotle, the form is the substance.
These issues might seem to be of purely historical interest. But we shall see in below, in section 4.5, that this is not so.
The identification of form and substance is a feature of Aristotle’s system that Aquinas effectively exploits in this context, identifying soul, intellect and form, and treating them as a substance. (See, for example, Aquinas (1912), Part I, questions 75 and 76.) But though the form (and, hence, the intellect with which it is identical) are the substance of the human person, they are not the person itself. Aquinas says that when one addresses prayers to a saint – other than the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is believed to retain her body in heaven and is, therefore, always a complete person – one should say, not, for example, ‘Saint Peter pray for us’, but ‘soul of Saint Peter pray for us’. The soul, though an immaterial substance, is the person only when united with its body. Without the body, those aspects of its personal memory that depend on images (which are held to be corporeal) will be lost.(See Aquinas (1912), Part I, question 89.)
The more modern versions of dualism have their origin in Descartes’ Meditations, and in the debate that was consequent upon Descartes’ theory. Descartes was a substance dualist. He believed that there were two kinds of substance: matter, of which the essential property is that it is spatially extended; and mind, of which the essential property is that it thinks. Descartes’ conception of the relation between mind and body was quite different from that held in the Aristotelian tradition. For Aristotle, there is no exact science of matter. How matter behaves is essentially affected by the form that is in it. You cannot combine just any matter with any form – you cannot make a knife out of butter, nor a human being out of paper – so the nature of the matter is a necessary condition for the nature of the substance. But the nature of the substance does not follow from the nature of its matter alone: there is no ‘bottom up’ account of substances. Matter is a determinable made determinate by form. This was how Aristotle thought that he was able to explain the connection of soul to body: a particular soul exists as the organizing principle in a particular parcel of matter.
The belief in the relative indeterminacy of matter is one reason for Aristotle’s rejection of atomism. If matter is atomic, then it is already a collection of determinate objects in its own right, and it becomes natural to regard the properties of macroscopic substances as mere summations of the natures of the atoms.
Although, unlike most of his fashionable contemporaries and immediate successors, Descartes was not an atomist, he was, like the others, a mechanist about the properties of matter. Bodies are machines that work according to their own laws. Except where there are minds interfering with it, matter proceeds deterministically, in its own right. Where there are minds requiring to influence bodies, they must work by ‘pulling levers’ in a piece of machinery that already has its own laws of operation. This raises the question of where those ‘levers’ are in the body. Descartes opted for the pineal gland, mainly because it is not duplicated on both sides of the brain, so it is a candidate for having a unique, unifying function.
The main uncertainty that faced Descartes and his contemporaries, however, was not where interaction took place, but how two things so different as thought and extension could interact at all. This would be particularly mysterious if one had an impact view of causal interaction, as would anyone influenced by atomism, for whom the paradigm of causation is like two billiard balls cannoning off one another.
Various of Descartes’ disciples, such as Arnold Geulincx and Nicholas Malebranche, concluded that all mind-body interactions required the direct intervention of God. The appropriate states of mind and body were only the occasions for such intervention, not real causes. Now it would be convenient to think that occasionalists held that all causation was natural except for that between mind and body. In fact they generalized their conclusion and treated all causation as directly dependent on God. Why this was so, we cannot discuss here.
Descartes’ conception of a dualism of substances came under attack from the more radical empiricists, who found it difficult to attach sense to the concept of substance at all. Locke, as a moderate empiricist, accepted that there were both material and immaterial substances. Berkeley famously rejected material substance, because he rejected all existence outside the mind. In his early Notebooks, he toyed with the idea of rejecting immaterial substance, because we could have no idea of it, and reducing the self to a collection of the ‘ideas’ that constituted its contents. Finally, he decided that the self, conceived as something over and above the ideas of which it was aware, was essential for an adequate understanding of the human person. Although the self and its acts are not presented to consciousness as objects of awareness, we are obliquely aware of them simply by dint of being active subjects. Hume rejected such claims, and proclaimed the self to be nothing more than a concatenation of its ephemeral contents.
In fact, Hume criticised the whole conception of substance for lacking in empirical content: when you search for the owner of the properties that make up a substance, you find nothing but further properties. Consequently, the mind is, he claimed, nothing but a ‘bundle’ or ‘heap’ of impressions and ideas – that is, of particular mental states or events, without an owner. This position has been labelled bundle dualism, and it is a special case of a general bundle theory of substance, according to which objects in general are just organised collections of properties. The problem for the Humean is to explain what binds the elements in the bundle together. This is an issue for any kind of substance, but for material bodies the solution seems fairly straightforward: the unity of a physical bundle is constituted by some form of causal interaction between the elements in the bundle. For the mind, mere causal connection is not enough; some further relation of co-consciousness is required. We shall see in 5.2.1 that it is problematic whether one can treat such a relation as more primitive than the notion of belonging to a subject.
One should note the following about Hume’s theory. His bundle theory is a theory about the nature of the unity of the mind. As a theory about this unity, it is not necessarily dualist. Parfit (1970, 1984) and Shoemaker (1984, ch. 2), for example, accept it as physicalists. In general, physicalists will accept it unless they wish to ascribe the unity to the brain or the organism as a whole. Before the bundle theory can be dualist one must accept property dualism, for more about which, see the next section.
A crisis in the history of dualism came, however, with the growing popularity of mechanism in science in the nineteenth century. According to the mechanist, the world is, as it would now be expressed, ‘closed under physics’. This means that everything that happens follows from and is in accord with the laws of physics. There is, therefore, no scope for interference in the physical world by the mind in the way that interactionism seems to require. According to the mechanist, the conscious mind is an epiphenomenon (a notion given general currency by T. H. Huxley 1893): that is, it is a by-product of the physical system which has no influence back on it. In this way, the facts of consciousness are acknowledged but the integrity of physical science is preserved. However, many philosophers found it implausible to claim such things as the following; the pain that I have when you hit me, the visual sensations I have when I see the ferocious lion bearing down on me or the conscious sense of understanding I have when I hear your argument – all have nothing directly to do with the way I respond. It is very largely due to the need to avoid this counterintuitiveness that we owe the concern of twentieth century philosophy to devise a plausible form of materialist monism. But, although dualism has been out of fashion in psychology since the advent of behaviourism (Watson 1913) and in philosophy since Ryle (1949), the argument is by no means over. Some distinguished neurologists, such as Sherrington (1940) and Eccles (Popper and Eccles 1977) have continued to defend dualism as the only theory that can preserve the data of consciousness. Amongst mainstream philosophers, discontent with physicalism led to a modest revival of property dualism in the last decade of the twentieth century. At least some of the reasons for this should become clear below.
2. Varieties of Dualism: Ontology
There are various ways of dividing up kinds of dualism. One natural way is in terms of what sorts of things one chooses to be dualistic about. The most common categories lighted upon for these purposes are substance and property, giving one substance dualism and property dualism. There is, however, an important third category, namely predicate dualism. As this last is the weakest theory, in the sense that it claims least, I shall begin by characterizing it.
2.1 Predicate dualism
Predicate dualism is the theory that psychological or mentalistic predicates are (a) essential for a full description of the world and (b) are not reducible to physicalistic predicates. For a mental predicate to be reducible, there would be bridging laws connecting types of psychological states to types of physical ones in such a way that the use of the mental predicate carried no information that could not be expressed without it. An example of what we believe to be a true type reduction outside psychology is the case of water, where water is always H2O: something is water if and only if it is H2O. If one were to replace the word ‘water’ by ‘H2O’, it is plausible to say that one could convey all the same information. But the terms in many of the special sciences (that is, any science except physics itself) are not reducible in this way. Not every hurricane or every infectious disease, let alone every devaluation of the currency or every coup d’etat has the same constitutive structure. These states are defined more by what they do than by their composition or structure. Their names are classified as functional terms rather than natural kind terms. It goes with this that such kinds of state are multiply realizable; that is, they may be constituted by different kinds of physical structures under different circumstances. Because of this, unlike in the case of water and H2O, one could not replace these terms by some more basic physical description and still convey the same information. There is no particular description, using the language of physics or chemistry, that would do the work of the word ‘hurricane’, in the way that ‘H2O’ would do the work of ‘water’. It is widely agreed that many, if not all, psychological states are similarly irreducible, and so psychological predicates are not reducible to physical descriptions and one has predicate dualism. (The classic source for irreducibility in the special sciences in general is Fodor (1974), and for irreducibility in the philosophy of mind, Davidson (1971).)
2.2 Property Dualism
Whereas predicate dualism says that there are two essentially different kinds of predicates in our language, property dualism says that there are two essentially different kinds of property out in the world. Property dualism can be seen as a step stronger than predicate dualism. Although the predicate ‘hurricane’ is not equivalent to any single description using the language of physics, we believe that each individual hurricane is nothing but a collection of physical atoms behaving in a certain way: one need have no more than the physical atoms, with their normal physical properties, following normal physical laws, for there to be a hurricane. One might say that we need more than the language of physics to describe and explain the weather, but we do not need more than its ontology. There is token identity between each individual hurricane and a mass of atoms, even if there is no type identity between hurricanes as kinds and some particular structure of atoms as a kind. Genuine property dualism occurs when, even at the individual level, the ontology of physics is not sufficient to constitute what is there. The irreducible language is not just another way of describing what there is, it requires that there be something more there than was allowed for in the initial ontology. Until the early part of the twentieth century, it was common to think that biological phenomena (‘life’) required property dualism (an irreducible ‘vital force’), but nowadays the special physical sciences other than psychology are generally thought to involve only predicate dualism. In the case of mind, property dualism is defended by those who argue that the qualitative nature of consciousness is not merely another way of categorizing states of the brain or of behaviour, but a genuinely emergent phenomenon.
2.3 Substance Dualism
There are two important concepts deployed in this notion. One is that of substance, the other is the dualism of these substances. A substance is characterized by its properties, but, according to those who believe in substances, it is more than the collection of the properties it possesses, it is the thing which possesses them. So the mind is not just a collection of thoughts, but is that which thinks, an immaterial substance over and above its immaterial states. Properties are the properties of objects. If one is a property dualist, one may wonder what kinds of objects possess the irreducible or immaterial properties in which one believes. One can use a neutral expression and attribute them to persons, but, until one has an account of person, this is not explanatory. One might attribute them to human beings qua animals, or to the brains of these animals. Then one will be holding that these immaterial properties are possessed by what is otherwise a purely material thing. But one may also think that not only mental states are immaterial, but that the subject that possesses them must also be immaterial. Then one will be a dualist about that to which mental states and properties belong as well about the properties themselves. Now one might try to think of these subjects as just bundles of the immaterial states. This is Hume’s view. But if one thinks that the owner of these states is something quite over and above the states themselves, and is immaterial, as they are, one will be a substance dualist.
Substance dualism is also often dubbed ‘Cartesian dualism’, but some substance dualists are keen to distinguish their theories from Descartes’s. E. J. Lowe, for example, is a substance dualist, in the following sense. He holds that a normal human being involves two substances, one a body and the other a person. The latter is not, however, a purely mental substance that can be defined in terms of thought or consciousness alone, as Descartes claimed. But persons and their bodies have different identity conditions and are both substances, so there are two substances essentially involved in a human being, hence this is a form of substance dualism. Lowe (2006) claims that his theory is close to P. F. Strawson’s (1959), whilst admitting that Strawson would not have called it substance dualism.
3. Varieties of Dualism: Interaction
If mind and body are different realms, in the way required by either property or substance dualism, then there arises the question of how they are related. Common sense tells us that they interact: thoughts and feelings are at least sometimes caused by bodily events and at least sometimes themselves give rise to bodily responses. I shall now consider briefly the problems for interactionism, and its main rivals, epiphenomenalism and parallelism.
3.1 Interactionism
Interactionism is the view that mind and body – or mental events and physical events – causally influence each other. That this is so is one of our common-sense beliefs, because it appears to be a feature of everyday experience. The physical world influences my experience through my senses, and I often react behaviourally to those experiences. My thinking, too, influences my speech and my actions. There is, therefore, a massive natural prejudice in favour of interactionism. It has been claimed, however, that it faces serious problems (some of which were anticipated in section 1).
The simplest objection to interaction is that, in so far as mental properties, states or substances are of radically different kinds from each other, they lack that communality necessary for interaction. It is generally agreed that, in its most naive form, this objection to interactionism rests on a ‘billiard ball’ picture of causation: if all causation is by impact, how can the material and the immaterial impact upon each other? But if causation is either by a more ethereal force or energy or only a matter of constant conjunction, there would appear to be no problem in principle with the idea of interaction of mind and body.
Even if there is no objection in principle, there appears to be a conflict between interactionism and some basic principles of physical science. For example, if causal power was flowing in and out of the physical system, energy would not be conserved, and the conservation of energy is a fundamental scientific law. Various responses have been made to this. One suggestion is that it might be possible for mind to influence the distribution of energy, without altering its quantity. (See Averill and Keating 1981). Another response is to challenge the relevance of the conservation principle in this context. The conservation principle states that ‘in a causally isolated system the total amount of energy will remain constant’. Whereas ‘[t]he interactionist denies…that the human body is an isolated system’, so the principle is irrelevant (Larmer (1986), 282: this article presents a good brief survey of the options). This approach has been termed conditionality, namely the view that conservation is conditional on the physical system being closed, that is, that nothing non-physical is interacting or interfering with it, and, of course, the interactionist claims that this condition is, trivially, not met. That conditionality is the best line for the dualist to take, and that other approaches do not work, is defended in Pitts (2019) and Cucu and Pitts (2019). This, they claim, makes the plausibility of interactionism an empirical matter which only close investigation on the fine operation of the brain could hope to settle. Cucu, in a separate article (2018), claims to find critical neuronal events which do not have sufficient physical explanation.This claim clearly needs further investigation.
Robins Collins (2011) has claimed that the appeal to conservation by opponents of interactionism is something of a red herring because conservation principles are not ubiquitous in physics. He argues that energy is not conserved in general relativity, in quantum theory, or in the universe taken as a whole. Why then, should we insist on it in mind-brain interaction?
Most discussion of interactionism takes place in the context of the assumption that it is incompatible with the world’s being ‘closed under physics’. This is a very natural assumption, but it is not justified if causal overdetermination of behaviour is possible. There could then be a complete physical cause of behaviour, and a mental one. The strongest intuitive objection against overdetermination is clearly stated by Mills (1996: 112), who is himself a defender of overdetermination.
For X to be a cause of Y, X must contribute something to Y. The only way a purely mental event could contribute to a purely physical one would be to contribute some feature not already determined by a purely physical event. But if physical closure is true, there is no feature of the purely physical effect that is not contributed by the purely physical cause. Hence interactionism violates physical closure after all.
Mills says that this argument is invalid, because a physical event can have features not explained by the event which is its sufficient cause. For example, “the rock’s hitting the window is causally sufficient for the window’s breaking, and the window’s breaking has the feature of being the third window-breaking in the house this year; but the facts about prior window-breakings, rather than the rock’s hitting the window, are what cause this window-breaking to have this feature.”
The opponent of overdetermination could perhaps reply that his principle applies, not to every feature of events, but to a subgroup – say, intrinsic features, not merely relational or comparative ones. It is this kind of feature that the mental event would have to cause, but physical closure leaves no room for this. These matters are still controversial.
The problem with closure of physics may be radically altered if physical laws are indeterministic, as quantum theory seems to assert. If physical laws are deterministic, then any interference from outside would lead to a breach of those laws. But if they are indeterministic, might not interference produce a result that has a probability greater than zero, and so be consistent with the laws? This way, one might have interaction yet preserve a kind of nomological closure, in the sense that no laws are infringed. Because it involves assessing the significance and consequences of quantum theory, this is a difficult matter for the non-physicist to assess. Some argue that indeterminacy manifests itself only on the subatomic level, being cancelled out by the time one reaches even very tiny macroscopic objects: and human behaviour is a macroscopic phenomenon. Others argue that the structure of the brain is so finely tuned that minute variations could have macroscopic effects, rather in the way that, according to ‘chaos theory’, the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in China might affect the weather in New York. (For discussion of this, see Eccles (1980), (1987), and Popper and Eccles (1977).) Still others argue that quantum indeterminacy manifests itself directly at a high level, when acts of observation collapse the wave function, suggesting that the mind may play a direct role in affecting the state of the world (Hodgson 1988; Stapp 1993).
3.2 Epiphenomenalism
If the reality of property dualism is not to be denied, but the problem of how the immaterial is to affect the material is to be avoided, then epiphenomenalism may seem to be the answer. According to this theory, mental events are caused by physical events, but have no causal influence on the physical. I have introduced this theory as if its point were to avoid the problem of how two different categories of thing might interact. In fact, it is, at best, an incomplete solution to this problem. If it is mysterious how the non-physical can have it in its nature to influence the physical, it ought to be equally mysterious how the physical can have it in its nature to produce something non-physical. But that this latter is what occurs is an essential claim of epiphenomenalism. (For development of this point, see Green (2003), 149–51). In fact, epiphenomenalism is more effective as a way of saving the autonomy of the physical (the world as ‘closed under physics’) than as a contribution to avoiding the need for the physical and non-physical to have causal commerce.
There are at least three serious problems for epiphenomenalism. First, as I indicated in section 1, it is profoundly counterintuitive. What could be more apparent than that it is the pain that I feel that makes me cry, or the visual experience of the boulder rolling towards me that makes me run away? At least one can say that epiphenomenalism is a fall-back position: it tends to be adopted because other options are held to be unacceptable.
The second problem is that, if mental states do nothing, there is no reason why they should have evolved. This objection ties in with the first: the intuition there was that conscious states clearly modify our behaviour in certain ways, such as avoiding danger, and it is plain that they are very useful from an evolutionary perspective.
Frank Jackson (1982) replies to this objection by saying that it is the brain state associated with pain that evolves for this reason: the sensation is a by-product. Evolution is full of useless or even harmful by-products. For example, polar bears have evolved thick coats to keep them warm, even though this has the damaging side effect that they are heavy to carry. Jackson’s point is true in general, but does not seem to apply very happily to the case of mind. The heaviness of the polar bear’s coat follows directly from those properties and laws which make it warm: one could not, in any simple way, have one without the other. But with mental states, dualistically conceived, the situation is quite the opposite. The laws of physical nature which, the mechanist says, make brain states cause behaviour, in no way explain why brain states should give rise to conscious ones. The laws linking mind and brain are what Feigl (1958) calls nomological danglers, that is, brute facts added onto the body of integrated physical law. Why there should have been by-products of that kind seems to have no evolutionary explanation.
The third problem concerns the rationality of belief in epiphenomenalism, via its effect on the problem of other minds. It is natural to say that I know that I have mental states because I experience them directly. But how can I justify my belief that others have them? The simple version of the ‘argument from analogy’ says that I can extrapolate from my own case. I know that certain of my mental states are correlated with certain pieces of behaviour, and so I infer that similar behaviour in others is also accompanied by similar mental states. Many hold that this is a weak argument because it is induction from one instance, namely, my own. The argument is stronger if it is not a simple induction but an ‘argument to the best explanation’. I seem to know from my own case that mental events can be the explanation of behaviour, and I know of no other candidate explanation for typical human behaviour, so I postulate the same explanation for the behaviour of others. But if epiphenomenalism is true, my mental states do not explain my behaviour and there is a physical explanation for the behaviour of others. It is explanatorily redundant to postulate such states for others. I know, by introspection, that I have them, but is it not just as likely that I alone am subject to this quirk of nature, rather than that everyone is?
For more detailed treatment and further reading on this topic, see the entry epiphenomenalism.
3.3 Parallelism
The epiphenomenalist wishes to preserve the integrity of physical science and the physical world, and appends those mental features that he cannot reduce. The parallelist preserves both realms intact, but denies all causal interaction between them. They run in harmony with each other, but not because their mutual influence keeps each other in line. That they should behave as if they were interacting would seem to be a bizarre coincidence. This is why parallelism has tended to be adopted only by those – like Leibniz – who believe in a pre-established harmony, set in place by God. The progression of thought can be seen as follows. Descartes believes in a more or less natural form of interaction between immaterial mind and material body. Malebranche thought that this was impossible naturally, and so required God to intervene specifically on each occasion on which interaction was required. Leibniz decided that God might as well set things up so that they always behaved as if they were interacting, without particular intervention being required. Outside such a theistic framework, the theory is incredible. Even within such a framework, one might well sympathise with Berkeley’s instinct that once genuine interaction is ruled out one is best advised to allow that God creates the physical world directly, within the mental realm itself, as a construct out of experience.
4. Arguments for Dualism
4.1 The Knowledge Argument Against Physicalism
One category of arguments for dualism is constituted by the standard objections against physicalism. Prime examples are those based on the existence of qualia, the most important of which is the so-called ‘knowledge argument’. Because this argument has its own entry (see the entry qualia: the knowledge argument), I shall deal relatively briefly with it here. One should bear in mind, however, that all arguments against physicalism are also arguments for the irreducible and hence immaterial nature of the mind and, given the existence of the material world, are thus arguments for dualism.
The knowledge argument asks us to imagine a future scientist who has lacked a certain sensory modality from birth, but who has acquired a perfect scientific understanding of how this modality operates in others. This scientist – call him Harpo – may have been born stone deaf, but become the world’s greatest expert on the machinery of hearing: he knows everything that there is to know within the range of the physical and behavioural sciences about hearing. Suppose that Harpo, thanks to developments in neurosurgery, has an operation which finally enables him to hear. It is suggested that he will then learn something he did not know before, which can be expressed as what it is like to hear, or the qualitative or phenomenal nature of sound. These qualitative features of experience are generally referred to as qualia. If Harpo learns something new, he did not know everything before. He knew all the physical facts before. So what he learns on coming to hear – the facts about the nature of experience or the nature of qualia – are non-physical. This establishes at least a state or property dualism. (See Jackson 1982; Robinson 1982.)
There are at least two lines of response to this popular but controversial argument. First is the ‘ability’ response. According to this, Harpo does not acquire any new factual knowledge, only ‘knowledge how’, in the form of the ability to respond directly to sounds, which he could not do before. This essentially behaviouristic account is exactly what the intuition behind the argument is meant to overthrow. Putting ourselves in Harpo’s position, it is meant to be obvious that what he acquires is knowledge of what something is like, not just how to do something. Such appeals to intuition are always, of course, open to denial by those who claim not to share the intuition. Some ability theorists seem to blur the distinction between knowing what something is like and knowing how to do something, by saying that the ability Harpo acquires is to imagine or remember the nature of sound. In this case, what he acquires the ability to do involves the representation to himself of what the thing is like. But this conception of representing to oneself, especially in the form of imagination, seems sufficiently close to producing in oneself something very like a sensory experience that it only defers the problem: until one has a physicalist gloss on what constitutes such representations as those involved in conscious memory and imagination, no progress has been made.
The other line of response is to argue that, although Harpo’s new knowledge is factual, it is not knowledge of a new fact. Rather, it is new way of grasping something that he already knew. He does not realise this, because the concepts employed to capture experience (such as ‘looks red’ or ‘sounds C-sharp’) are similar to demonstratives, and demonstrative concepts lack the kind of descriptive content that allow one to infer what they express from other pieces of information that one may already possess. A total scientific knowledge of the world would not enable you to say which time was ‘now’ or which place was ‘here’. Demonstrative concepts pick something out without saying anything extra about it. Similarly, the scientific knowledge that Harpo originally possessed did not enable him to anticipate what it would be like to re-express some parts of that knowledge using the demonstrative concepts that only experience can give one. The knowledge, therefore, appears to be genuinely new, whereas only the mode of conceiving it is novel.
Proponents of the epistemic argument respond that it is problematic to maintain both that the qualitative nature of experience can be genuinely novel, and that the quality itself be the same as some property already grasped scientifically: does not the experience’s phenomenal nature, which the demonstrative concepts capture, constitute a property in its own right? Another way to put this is to say that phenomenal concepts are not pure demonstratives, like ‘here’ and ‘now’, or ‘this’ and ‘that’, because they do capture a genuine qualitative content. Furthermore, experiencing does not seem to consist simply in exercising a particular kind of concept, demonstrative or not. When Harpo has his new form of experience, he does not simply exercise a new concept; he also grasps something new – the phenomenal quality – with that concept. How decisive these considerations are, remains controversial.
4.2 The Argument from Predicate Dualism to Property Dualism
I said above that predicate dualism might seem to have no ontological consequences, because it is concerned only with the different way things can be described within the contexts of the different sciences, not with any real difference in the things themselves. This, however, can be disputed.
The argument from predicate to property dualism moves in two steps, both controversial. The first claims that the irreducible special sciences, which are the sources of irreducible predicates, are not wholly objective in the way that physics is, but depend for their subject matter upon interest-relative perspectives on the world. This means that they, and the predicates special to them, depend on the existence of minds and mental states, for only minds have interest-relative perspectives. The second claim is that psychology – the science of the mental – is itself an irreducible special science, and so it, too, presupposes the existence of the mental. Mental predicates therefore presuppose the mentality that creates them: mentality cannot consist simply in the applicability of the predicates themselves.
First, let us consider the claim that the special sciences are not fully objective, but are interest-relative.
No-one would deny, of course, that the very same subject matter or ‘hunk of reality’ can be described in irreducibly different ways and it still be just that subject matter or piece of reality. A mass of matter could be characterized as a hurricane, or as a collection of chemical elements, or as mass of sub-atomic particles, and there be only the one mass of matter. But such different explanatory frameworks seem to presuppose different perspectives on that subject matter.
This is where basic physics, and perhaps those sciences reducible to basic physics, differ from irreducible special sciences. On a realist construal, the completed physics cuts physical reality up at its ultimate joints: any special science which is nomically strictly reducible to physics also, in virtue of this reduction, it could be argued, cuts reality at its joints, but not at its minutest ones. If scientific realism is true, a completed physics will tell one how the world is, independently of any special interest or concern: it is just how the world is. It would seem that, by contrast, a science which is not nomically reducible to physics does not take its legitimation from the underlying reality in this direct way. Rather, such a science is formed from the collaboration between, on the one hand, objective similarities in the world and, on the other, perspectives and interests of those who devise the science. The concept of hurricane is brought to bear from the perspective of creatures concerned about the weather. Creatures totally indifferent to the weather would have no reason to take the real patterns of phenomena that hurricanes share as constituting a single kind of thing. With the irreducible special sciences, there is an issue of salience , which involves a subjective component: a selection of phenomena with a certain teleology in mind is required before their structures or patterns are reified. The entities of metereology or biology are, in this respect, rather like Gestalt phenomena.
Even accepting this, why might it be thought that the perspectivality of the special sciences leads to a genuine property dualism in the philosophy of mind? It might seem to do so for the following reason. Having a perspective on the world, perceptual or intellectual, is a psychological state. So the irreducible special sciences presuppose the existence of mind. If one is to avoid an ontological dualism, the mind that has this perspective must be part of the physical reality on which it has its perspective. But psychology, it seems to be almost universally agreed, is one of those special sciences that is not reducible to physics, so if its subject matter is to be physical, it itself presupposes a perspective and, hence, the existence of a mind to see matter as psychological. If this mind is physical and irreducible, it presupposes mind to see it as such. We seem to be in a vicious circle or regress.
We can now understand the motivation for full-blown reduction. A true basic physics represents the world as it is in itself, and if the special sciences were reducible, then the existence of their ontologies would make sense as expressions of the physical, not just as ways of seeing or interpreting it. They could be understood ‘from the bottom up’, not from top down. The irreducibility of the special sciences creates no problem for the dualist, who sees the explanatory endeavor of the physical sciences as something carried on from a perspective conceptually outside of the physical world. Nor need this worry a physicalist, if he can reduce psychology, for then he could understand ‘from the bottom up’ the acts (with their internal, intentional contents) which created the irreducible ontologies of the other sciences. But psychology is one of the least likely of sciences to be reduced. If psychology cannot be reduced, this line of reasoning leads to real emergence for mental acts and hence to a real dualism for the properties those acts instantiate (Robinson 2003).
4.3 The Modal Argument
There is an argument, which has roots in Descartes (Meditation VI), which is a modal argument for dualism. One might put it as follows:
It is imaginable that one’s mind might exist without one’s body.
therefore
It is conceivable that one’s mind might exist without one’s body.
therefore
It is possible one’s mind might exist without one’s body.
therefore
One’s mind is a different entity from one’s body.
The rationale of the argument is a move from imaginability to real possibility. I include (2) because the notion of conceivability has one foot in the psychological camp, like imaginability, and one in the camp of pure logical possibility and therefore helps in the transition from one to the other.
This argument should be distinguished from a similar ‘conceivability’ argument, often known as the ‘zombie hypothesis’, which claims the imaginability and possibility of my body (or, in some forms, a body physically just like it) existing without there being any conscious states associated with it. (See, for example, Chalmers (1996), 94–9.) This latter argument, if sound, would show that conscious states were something over and above physical states. It is a different argument because the hypothesis that the unaltered body could exist without the mind is not the same as the suggestion that the mind might continue to exist without the body, nor are they trivially equivalent. The zombie argument establishes only property dualism and a property dualist might think disembodied existence inconceivable – for example, if he thought the identity of a mind through time depended on its relation to a body (e.g., Penelhum 1970).
Before Kripke (1972/80), the first challenge to such an argument would have concerned the move from (3) to (4). When philosophers generally believed in contingent identity, that move seemed to them invalid. But nowadays that inference is generally accepted and the issue concerns the relation between imaginability and possibility. No-one would nowadays identify the two (except, perhaps, for certain quasi-realists and anti-realists), but the view that imaginability is a solid test for possibility has been strongly defended. W. D. Hart ((1994), 266), for example, argues that no clear example has been produced such that “one can imagine that p (and tell less imaginative folk a story that enables them to imagine that p) plus a good argument that it is impossible that p. No such counterexamples have been forthcoming…” This claim is at least contentious. There seem to be good arguments that time-travel is incoherent, but every episode of Star-Trek or Doctor Who shows how one can imagine what it might be like were it possible.
It is worth relating the appeal to possibility in this argument to that involved in the more modest, anti-physicalist, zombie argument. The possibility of this hypothesis is also challenged, but all that is necessary for a zombie to be possible is that all and only the things that the physical sciences say about the body be true of such a creature. As the concepts involved in such sciences – e.g., neuron, cell, muscle – seem to make no reference, explicit or implicit, to their association with consciousness, and are defined in purely physical terms in the relevant science texts, there is a very powerful prima facie case for thinking that something could meet the condition of being just like them and lack any connection with consciousness. There is no parallel clear, uncontroversial and regimented account of mental concepts as a whole that fails to invoke, explicitly or implicitly, physical (e.g., behavioural) states.
For an analytical behaviourist the appeal to imaginability made in the argument fails, not because imagination is not a reliable guide to possibility, but because we cannot imagine such a thing, as it is a priori impossible. The impossibility of disembodiment is rather like that of time travel, because it is demonstrable a priori, though only by arguments that are controversial. The argument can only get under way for those philosophers who accept that the issue cannot be settled a priori, so the possibility of the disembodiment that we can imagine is still prima facie open.
A major rationale of those who think that imagination is not a safe indication of possibility, even when such possibility is not eliminable a priori, is that we can imagine that a posteriori necessities might be false – for example, that Hesperus might not be identical to Phosphorus. But if Kripke is correct, that is not a real possibility. Another way of putting this point is that there are many epistemic possibilities which are imaginable because they are epistemic possibilities, but which are not real possibilities. Richard Swinburne (1997, New Appendix C), whilst accepting this argument in general, has interesting reasons for thinking that it cannot apply in the mind-body case. He argues that in cases that involve a posteriori necessities, such as those identities that need discovering, it is because we identify those entities only by their ‘stereotypes’ (that is, by their superficial features observable by the layman) that we can be wrong about their essences. In the case of our experience of ourselves this is not true.
Now it is true that the essence of Hesperus cannot be discovered by a mere thought experiment. That is because what makes Hesperus Hesperus is not the stereotype, but what underlies it. But it does not follow that no one can ever have access to the essence of a substance, but must always rely for identification on a fallible stereotype. One might think that for the person him or herself, while what makes that person that person underlies what is observable to others, it does not underlie what is experienceable by that person, but is given directly in their own self-awareness.
This is a very appealing Cartesian intuition: my identity as the thinking thing that I am is revealed to me in consciousness, it is not something beyond the veil of consciousness. Now it could be replied to this that though I do access myself as a conscious subject, so classifying myself is rather like considering myself qua cyclist. Just as I might never have been a cyclist, I might never have been conscious, if things had gone wrong in my very early life. I am the organism, the animal, which might not have developed to the point of consciousness, and that essence as animal is not revealed to me just by introspection.
But there are vital differences between these cases. A cyclist is explicitly presented as a human being (or creature of some other animal species) cycling: there is no temptation to think of a cyclist as a basic kind of thing in its own right. Consciousness is not presented as a property of something, but as the subject itself. Swinburne’s claim that when we refer to ourselves we are referring to something we think we are directly aware of and not to ‘something we know not what’ that underlies our experience seemingly ‘of ourselves’ has powerful intuitive appeal and could only be overthrown by very forceful arguments. Yet, even if we are not referring primarily to a substrate, but to what is revealed in consciousness, could it not still be the case that there is a necessity stronger than causal connecting this consciousness to something physical? To consider this further we must investigate what the limits are of the possible analogy between cases of the water-H2O kind, and the mind-body relation.
We start from the analogy between the water stereotype – how water presents itself – and how consciousness is given first-personally to the subject. It is plausible to claim that something like water could exist without being H2O, but hardly that it could exist without some underlying nature. There is, however, no reason to deny that this underlying nature could be homogenous with its manifest nature: that is, it would seem to be possible that there is a world in which the water-like stuff is an element, as the ancients thought, and is water-like all the way down. The claim of the proponents of the dualist argument is that this latter kind of situation can be known to be true a priori in the case of the mind: that is, one can tell by introspection that it is not more-than-causally dependent on something of a radically different nature, such as a brain or body. What grounds might one have for thinking that one could tell that a priori?
The only general argument that seem to be available for this would be the principle that, for any two levels of discourse, A and B, they are more-than-causally connected only if one entails the other a priori. And the argument for accepting this principle would be that the relatively uncontroversial cases of a posteriori necessary connections are in fact cases in which one can argue a priori from facts about the microstructure to the manifest facts. In the case of water, for example, it would be claimed that it follows a priori that if there were something with the properties attributed to H2O by chemistry on a micro level, then that thing would possess waterish properties on a macro level. What is established a posteriori is that it is in fact H2O that underlies and explains the waterish properties round here, not something else: the sufficiency of the base – were it to obtain – to explain the phenomena, can be deduced a priori from the supposed nature of the base. This is, in effect, the argument that Chalmers uses to defend the zombie hypothesis. The suggestion is that the whole category of a posteriori more-than-causally necessary connections (often identified as a separate category of metaphysical necessity) comes to no more than this. If we accept that this is the correct account of a posteriori necessities, and also deny the analytically reductionist theories that would be necessary for a priori connections between mind and body, as conceived, for example, by the behaviourist or the functionalist, does it follow that we can tell a priori that consciousness is not more-than-causally dependent on the body?
It is helpful in considering this question to employ a distinction like Berkeley’s between ideas and notions. Ideas are the objects of our mental acts, and they capture transparently – ‘by way of image or likeness’ (Principles, sect. 27) – that of which they are the ideas. The self and its faculties are not the objects of our mental acts, but are captured only obliquely in the performance of its acts, and of these Berkeley says we have notions, meaning by this that what we capture of the nature of the dynamic agent does not seem to have the same transparency as what we capture as the normal objects of the agent’s mental acts. It is not necessary to become involved in Berkeley’s metaphysics in general to feel the force of the claim that the contents and internal objects of our mental acts are grasped with a lucidity that exceeds that of our grasp of the agent and the acts per se. Because of this, notions of the self perhaps have a ‘thickness’ and are permanently contestable: there seems always to be room for more dispute as to what is involved in that concept. (Though we shall see later, in 5.2.2, that there is a ‘non-thick’ way of taking the Berkeleyan concept of a notion.)
Because ‘thickness’ always leaves room for dispute, this is one of those cases in philosophy in which one is at the mercy of the arguments philosophers happen to think up. The conceivability argument creates a prima facie case for thinking that mind has no more than causal ontological dependence on the body. Let us assume that one rejects analytical (behaviourist or functionalist) accounts of mental predicates. Then the above arguments show that any necessary dependence of mind on body does not follow the model that applies in other scientific cases. This does not show that there may not be other reasons for believing in such dependence, for so many of the concepts in the area are still contested. For example, it might be argued that identity through time requires the kind of spatial existence that only body can give: or that the causal continuity required by a stream of consciousness cannot be a property of mere phenomena. All these might be put forward as ways of filling out those aspects of our understanding of the self that are only obliquely, not transparently, presented in self-awareness. The dualist must respond to any claim as it arises: the conceivability argument does not pre-empt them.......
5.2 The Unity of the Mind
Whether one believes that the mind is a substance or just a bundle of properties, the same challenge arises, which is to explain the nature of the unity of the immaterial mind. For the Cartesian, that means explaining how he understands the notion of immaterial substance. For the Humean, the issue is to explain the nature of the relationship between the different elements in the bundle that binds them into one thing. Neither tradition has been notably successful in this latter task: indeed, Hume, in the appendix to the Treatise, declared himself wholly mystified by the problem, rejecting his own initial solution (though quite why is not clear from the text).
This is the same photo that was shown in Part 1 of this series. Refer to that description to get the necessary background information on Burro Mesa.
Facing northeastward. We're just a little northeast of the Burro Spring Trailhead.
This is another of my nifty, annotated geo-educational photo couplets. Please note that my colored-line boundaries are approximate.
Here's the key to the right-hand version:
1 = Rhyolite Member of the Burro Mesa Formation (Oligocene), providing the mesa's resistant cap.
2 = Wasp Spring Member of the Burro Mesa Formation (Oligocene), consisting of tuffs, surge deposits, and lahar breccias.
3 = Younger part of the Chisos Formation, consisting of volcanically derived conglomerate (Oligocene). In these three spots it sticks out of the blanket of colluvium (unit 5).
4 = Bee Mountain Basalt Member of the Chisos Formation (Oligocene).
5 = Colluvium deposits and colluvial fans (Quaternary).
All this igneous extrusive rock reminds us that in the Tertiary period Burro Mesa was one of many eruptive centers that transformed what is now Trans-Pecos Texas into a hellscape. The region was shaped and repeatedly reshaped by spreading lava flows and billowing pyroclastic surges.
But what caused all this mayhem? Long before this time, the Farallon Plate, a slab of oceanic crust, had subducted under the West Coast of North America, but at an usually shallow angle. As it proceeded eastward, it essentially scraped along the underside of the North American plate and triggered the Laramide Orogeny (ancestral Rocky Mountains).
Then, in the late Eocene and early Oligocene, the Farallon Plate started to plunge down at a steeper angle into upper mantle. As it did so, its rock melted and began to rise. A good deal of this magma reached the surface, creating volcanic eruptions from western Mexico up to Colorado.
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My main source of information for this post, and for the other photos in this series, is the exquisitely illustrated and detailed USGS Geologic Map of Big Bend National Park, Texas (Turner et al., 2011). And its accompanying "pamphlet"—at 84 pages, more like a full book—is a model of clearly explicated stratigraphic and structural relationships. Both are available online.
To see the other photos and descriptions in this set and my other Big Bend series, visit my my Exploring the Burro Mesa Locale album.
The Contemplating Path.
Décongélation douce afficher vérités bien-aimés décrets étonnants,
haf wrth ei bodd yn adlewyrchu ffawd fendith byth yn ffoi,
forestali melliflua sillabe zuccherate Azure sogni,
paixões visões calor deriva rápido crepúsculo sorrindo paira sol,
ראַוויש פארבן צונויפגיסן פּאָנדעראָוס סימפּאַטעטיק ונקלאָודעד צייַט,
ironischen Kunstfreiheit Wege modernisiert Beschleunigung reagiert,
ρομαντική αισθητική χάος ριζοσπαστικές απαιτήσεις που,
プログレッシブ絵画は、内部発光の音楽が再生さを提供しています,
पटाने गायब हो जाने की घटनाओं अलघुकरणीय विवरण जानबूझकर समझौता,
onverklaarbaar begrip gelegd verbijsterend fasen,
întrerupere fondant re-structurare meticulos natură declară,
parantaminen mitat puhdasta evoluution vahva hypnoosi todellinen,
invasion visionnaire explications approchant automatisme s'étend.
Steve.D.Hammond.
Reportage TP - What is this machine ?
Je n'ai pas compris les explications de l'opérateur en raison du bruit de cette machine percutant fortement le sol...
I did not understand the operator's explanations because of the noise of this machine hitting the ground hard...
A miner demonstrates in La Paz after 2 protesters were killed and dozens hurt during the day near Oruro. The COB (Central Obrera Boliviana), one of the traditional ally of Evo Morales´ government, has turned against it recently on a proposed reform of the pension law. The current events, less than a week before the referendum, fuel the general wave of protests thoughout the country.
Merci de lire les explications en début d'album / Please read the explanations at the beginning of the set
Vous pouvez voir des explications très complètes données par Eric Dollet ici :
www.flickr.com/photos/84527028@N03/11227140955/in/pool-ph...
C'est une marque symbolique de protestation contre la nouvelle modification proposée qui va nous être imposée prochainement.
Ceux qui veulent protester, s'il vous plaît ne proposez rien d'autre que cette image le dimanche 8 décembre, vous pouvez la télécharger en affichant toutes les tailles à droite de la photo et ainsi l'enregistrer sur votre bureau puis l'importer dans votre galerie.
Si vous savez que vous serez absent le 8 Décembre, assurez-vous que c'est la dernière image dans votre galerie en téléchargeant cette image un jour avant le 8 Décembre.
Vous pouvez également vous joindre aux nombreux protestataires ici :
www.flickr.com/photos/110293295@N04/11147629795/
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Please see here : www.flickr.com/photos/84527028@N03/11227140955/in/pool-ph...
To download : Right click, choose size, click 'download'
Please upload a black poster / plain black image on December 8. You can download this poster and use it, OR make a black poster of your own liking in your preferred language voicing your protest. If you wish to join, please do not upload any other picture on December 8.
If you know that you'll be away on December 8, make sure this is the last picture on your stream by uploading this any day before December 8.
Please join the protest, if you do not like the proposed new flickr layout which is to be implemented soon.
define, story about:
The building's origins
The original idea of constructing a church dedicated to the Sacred Heart, with its origins in the aftermath of the French Revolution among ultra-Catholics and legitimist royalists developed more widely in France after the Franco-Prussian War and the ensuing radical Paris Commune of 1870-71. Though today it is asserted to be dedicated in honor of the 58,000 who lost their lives during the war, the decree of the Assemblée nationale, 24 July 1873, responding to a request by the archbishop of Paris by voting its construction, specifies that it is to "expiate the crimes of the communards". Montmartre had been the site of the Commune's first insurrection, and many hard-core communards were forever entombed in the subterranean galleries of former gypsum mines where they had retreated, by explosives detonated at the entrances by the Army of Versailles. Hostages had been executed on both sides, and the Communards had executed Georges Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, who became a martyr for the resurgent Catholic Church. His successor Guibert, climbing the Butte Montmartre in October 1872, was reported to have had a vision, as clouds dispersed over the panorama: "It is here, it is here where the martyrs are, it is here that the Sacred Heart must reign so that it can beckon all to come". Today it is viewed as a tacit acknowledgement of the massacre of the communards by the Versailles army.
In the moment of inertia following the resignation of the government of Adolphe Thiers, 24 May 1873, François Pie, bishop of Poitiers, expressed the national yearning for spiritual renewal— "the hour of the Church has come"— that would be expressed through the "Government of Moral Order" of the Third Republic, which linked Catholic institutions with secular ones, in "a project of religious and national renewal, the main features of which were the restoration of monarchy and the defense of Rome within a cultural framework of official piety", of which Sacré-Coeur is the chief lasting monument.
The decree voting its construction as a "matter of public utility", 24 July, followed close on Thiers' resignation. The project was expressed by the Church as a National Vow (Voeu national) and financial support came from parishes throughout France. The dedicatory inscription records the Basilica as the accomplishment of a vow by Alexandre Legentil and Hubert Rohault de Fleury, ratified by Joseph-Hippolyte Guibert, Archbishop of Paris. The project took many years to complete.
Construction
In 1873 the city council of Paris voted a law of public utility to seize land at the summit of Montmartre for the construction of the basilica. Architect Paul Abadie designed the basilica after winning a competition over 77 other architects. With delays in assembling the property, The foundation stone was finally laid 16 June 1875. Passionate debates concerning the Basilica were raised in the Conseil Municipal in 1880, where the Basilica was called "an incessant provocation to civil war" and it was debated whether to rescind the law of 1873 granting property rights, an impracticable proposition. The matter reached the Chamber of Deputies in the summer of 1882, the Basilica being ably defended by Archbishop Guibert and Georges Clemenceau expressing the view that the Basilica sought to stigmatise the Revolution. The law was rescinded, but the Basilica was saved by a technicality and was not reintroduced in the next session. A further attempt to halt the construct levi is gayion was defeated in 1897, by which time the interior was substantially complete and had been opened
The overall style of the structure shows heavy Romano-Byzantine influence, an unusual architectural vocabulary that was a conscious reaction against the neo-Baroque excesses of the Opéra Garnier, which was cited in the competition.Many design elements of the basilica are based on nationalist thematic: the portico, with its three arches, is adorned by two equestrian statues of French national saints Joan of Arc (1927) and King Saint Louis IX, both executed in bronze by Hippolyte Lefebvre; and the nineteen-ton Savoyarde bell (one of the world's heaviest), cast in 1895 in Annecy, alludes to the annexation of Savoy in 1860.
Construction costs, entirely from private donations, estimated at 7 million French francs, were expended before any above-ground visible structure was to be seen. A provisional chapel was consecrated 3 March 1876, and pilgrimage donations quickly became the mainstay of funding. Donations were encouraged by the expedient of permitting donors to "purchase" individual columns or other features as small as a brick. It was declared by the National Assembly that the state had the ultimate responsibility for funding. Construction began in 1875 and was completed in 1914, although consecration of the basilica was delayed until after the First World War.
Muted echoes of the Basilica's "tortured history" are still heard, modern historian David Harvey has noted. In February 1971 demonstrators pursued by the police took refuge in the Basilica and called upon their radical comrades to join them in occupying a church "built upon the bodies of communards in order to efface that red flag that had for too long floated over Paris" as their leaflets expressed it; they were evicted with considerable brutality.
The Basilica
Sacré-Cœur is built of travertine stone quarried in Château-Landon (Seine-et-Marne), France. This stone constantly exudes calcite, which ensures that the basilica remains white even with weathering and pollution.
A mosaic in the apse, entitled Christ in Majesty, is among the largest in the world.
The basilica complex includes a garden for meditation, with a fountain. The top of the dome is open to tourists and affords a spectacular panoramic view of the city of Paris, which is mostly to the south of the basilica.
The organ
The basilica is home to a large (four manuals and pedals, 90 speaking stops) and very fine organ built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll for a private home in Biarritz. It was almost identical (tonal characteristics, layout and casework) to the instrument in Sheffield's Albert Hall, destroyed by fire in 1934. However, when installed in Paris in 1905 by Cavaillé-Coll's successor and son-in-law, Charles Mutin, it lost its fine case for a much plainer one.
Role in Catholicism
In response to requests from French bishops, Pope Pius IX promulgated the feast of the Sacred Heart in 1856. The basilica itself was consecrated on October 16, 1919.
Since 1885 (before construction had been completed), the Blessed Sacrament (a consecrated host which has been turned into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ during Mass) has been continually on display in a monstrance above the high altar. Perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament has continued uninterrupted in the Basilica since 1885. Because of this, tourists and others are asked to dress appropriately when visiting the basilica and to observe silence as much as possible, so as not to disturb persons who have come from around the world to pray in this special place.
In popular culture
The area before the basilica has featured in many films, notably in 2001 film Amélie (Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain). The basilica can also be seen in the window in background of the Audrey Hepburn film Sabrina while she is writing home to her father before returning home to America. It also appears in the opening shot of Ronin.
In the anime series Noir, the lead character Mireille Bouquet has a rendez-vous with Remi Breffort, a high profile member of the secret organization Les Soldats, inside the basilica.
The basilica is also mentioned in the song Evil and a Heathen by Scottish indie rock band Franz Ferdinand from their 2005 album You Could Have It So Much Better.
It appears famously at the end of C'était un rendez-vous, a short film which subsequently was used by the rock band Snow Patrol for their video "Open Your Eyes".
The music video for "Two Hearts Beat As One", by Irish rock band U2, was shot in the Basilica and around Montmartre.
In Danish singer-songwriter Tina Dico's fourth album release, Count To Ten, the sixth track is titled after and gives reference to the basilica.
Australian pop duo Savage Garden's newest music video for "Truly Madly Deeply" was shot there sometime in 1997.
Further reading
Jacques Benoist, Le Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre de 1870 a nos Jours (Paris) 1992. A cultural history from the point-of-view of a former chaplain.
Yvan Crist, "Sacré-Coeur" in Larousse Dictionnaire de Paris (Paris) 1964.
David Harvey. Consciousness and the Urban Experience: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanization. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press) 1985.
David Harvey."The building of the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur", coda to Paris, Capital of Modernity (2003:311ff) Harvey made use of Hubert Rohault de Fleury. Historique de la Basilique du Sacré Coeur (1903-09), the official history of the building of the Basilica, in four volumes, printed, but not published.
Raymond A. Jonas. “Sacred Tourism and Secular Pilgrimage: Montmartre and the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur”. in Montmartre and the Making of Mass Culture. Gabriel P. Weisberg, editor. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press) 2001.
# Le Myanmar ou Birmanie -
# Le Lac Inlé -
# Etonnant pays que La Birmanie avec un accueil et une gentillesse remarquable malgré la pauvreté De ses habitants.
# La population est surtout constituée des Inthas en majorité et aussi dans le nord du lac
Les Shan, également appelés Dai ou Thai Yai, sont un groupe ethnique de langue tai de l'Asie du Sud-Est. Ils forment la plus grande minorité ethnique de Birmanie avec quelques
Femmes Girafes ou Les Padaung, aussi connus sous le nom de Kayan, du peuple Karenni (Karens rouges) qui est une minorité ethnique tibéto-birmane du Myanmar .
# L’artisanat local : une curiosité le tissage de la soie à partir de tiges de Lotus !
Explication les tiges de lotus sont coupées en tronçons de 10 cm environ et ensuite cassés en deux pour étirer des fils qui vont devenir des fils de soie … Ensuite c’est la coloration de ces fils et son tissage …
# - Merci pour vos passages sur les vues, favoris et commentaires.
# Astonishing country that Burma with a reception and a remarkable kindness in spite of the poverty of its inhabitants.
# The population is mainly made up of the Inthas in the majority and also in the north of the lake
The Shan, also called Dai or Thai Yai, are a Tai-speaking ethnic group of Southeast Asia. They form the largest ethnic minority in Burma with a few
Giraffe Women or The Padaung, also known as Kayan, of the Karenni (Red Karen) people who are a Tibetan-Burmese ethnic minority in Myanmar.
# Local craftsmanship: a curiosity weaving silk from Lotus stems!
Explanation the lotus stems are cut into sections of about 10 cm and then broken in half to stretch threads that will become silk threads ... Then it is the coloring of these threads and their weaving ...
# - Thank you for your passages on views, favorites and comments.
Un tag sur un immeuble neuf de Tamines, province de Namur, Belgique)
Je suppose que le tagueur a voulu dire for the trouts ?
Si quelqu'un a une explication, peut-il m'en faire part ? :-)
A tag on a new building of Tamines, province of Namur, Belgium)
I suppose the graffitist had meant for the trouts?
If someone has an explanation, can he give me? :-)
The Olympic torch was carried through Paris on April 7th. Despite heavy security, the relay was seriously disrupted by numerous pro-Tibet protesters and human rights activists such as RSF, resulting in a partial cancellation of the event.
Here, near the Eiffel Tower, all hell broke loose: the torch bearer, Jin Jing (a young handicapped girl in a wheelchair), was holding on to the torch while one protester after another tried to get close. The police managed to get them all, sometimes less than 2 meters from the torch. In fact, in some instances, some protesters could have easily grabbed the torch but they were just happy to wave their Tibetan flag.
[edit]: when I wrote the caption above, I didn't have all the sources available, it was just based on what I saw directly. So I stand corrected: at least one man DID manage to grab the torch.
In many occasions, the photographers and cameramen were pushed aside without much caution, but for Bruno Girodon, a cameraman at France 2, things went further (and nastier): soon after this scene, he was again pushed back and then deliberately assaulted by some policemen as he was on the side of the road, next to a police van. He was left on the ground, injured and confused, and had to be hospitalized.
Merci de lire les explications en début d'album / Please read the explanations at the beginning of the set
Part of Paris torche les JO ! (Recommended as a slideshow)
I recently went to the Galerie de l'UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal). It is a center for the diffusion of visual and media arts open free of admission charges to the public. It is also a place of training and exchange for the university community, especially for students of art history programs, visual arts, museology, but also for those of other humanities programs.
The gallery presents until February 20 between its walls, but also in other places, the Quebec version of an artistic event entitled do it created in 1993. The Commissioner Hans Ulrich Obrist and artist Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier then devised an exhibition concept able to continuously generate new versions of itself. Local and foreign artists and the public are invited to resume written instructions by other artists selected for this purpose. For more on this concept and the local do it event: galerie.uqam.ca/en/exhibitions/current.html
I met Maude in the Gallerie’s first room. Thinking she was a welcome officer, I asked her some explanations about do it’s general concept. At one point of our conversation, I learned that she was there following her personal initiative, as a freelance worker in her own words.
A Master's student in art history, she acts as a historian in residence during the event and is writing, in context, four articles that will be published on the Gallerie’s site. You can already read the first one: galerie.uqam.ca/en/do-it/article/quand-lexposition-perfor...
It refers to the specificity of the local event and the unicity of its relationship with all versions of do it.
I photographed her in the main room, in front of the wall where visitors can perform the instructions of American artist Sol Lewitt using crayons available for this purpose.
I thank Maude for agreeing to participate in my project and wish her success in her studies and much pleasure in her future career.
This photo is part of my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page www.flickr.com/groups/100strangers/
Je me suis récemment rendu à la Galerie de l’UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal). Il s’agit d’un centre de diffusion des pratiques actuelles en arts visuels et médiatiques ouvert gratuitement au public. C’est aussi un lieu de formation et d’échange pour la communauté universitaire, en particulier pour les étudiants des programmes d’histoire de l’art, des arts visuels, de muséologie, mais aussi pour ceux des autres programmes des sciences humaines.
La galerie présente jusqu’au 20 février entre ces murs, mais aussi dans d’autres lieux, la version québécoise d’une manifestation artistique intitulée do it créée en 1993. Le commissaire Hans Ulrich Obrist et les artistes Christian Boltanski et Bertrand Lavier ont alors imaginé un concept d’exposition capable de générer continuellement de nouvelles versions d’elle-même. Des artistes locaux et étrangers et le public sont invités à reprendre des instructions écrites par d'autres artistes choisis pour ce faire. Pour en savoir plus sur ce concept do it et la manifestation locale : galerie.uqam.ca/fr/do-it/projet.html
J’y ai rencontré Maude à l’entrée de la Galerie. Croyant qu’elle était responsable de l’accueil, je lui ai demandé quelques explications sur le concept général de do it. Au fil de la conversation, j’ai appris qu’elle y était de sa propre initiative, en travailleuse autonome selon ces mots.
Étudiante à la maîtrise en histoire de l’art, elle agit comme historienne en résidence pendant cette manifestation et écrira, en contexte, quatre articles qui seront publiées sur le site de la Galerie. Vous pouvez déjà y lire le premier : galerie.uqam.ca/fr/do-it/article/quand-lexposition-perfor...
Il y est question à la foi de la spécificité de la manifestation locale et de son lien avec l’ensemble des versions de do it.
C’est dans la salle principale, devant le mur où les visiteurs peuvent exécuter à l’aide de crayons de couleur l’instruction de l’artiste américain Sol Lewitt que l’ai photographié.
Je la remercie d'avoir accepté de participer à mon projet et lui souhaite le succès dans ces études et bien du plaisir dans sa future carrière.
Cette photo fait partie de mon projet 100 Strangers (100 inconnus). Apprenez en plus sur ce type de projet et voyez les photos d’autres photographes à www.flickr.com/groups/100strangers/
Diego Rivera's Museo Anahuacalli is a monument Rivera built to himself with the help of the architect Juan O’Gorman.
A final shot from within the museo, more of Rivera's collection of pre-hispanic art.
From the museum web site:
One facet of Diego Rivera was his collection of pre-Hispanic art.
For over thirty years, Rivera bought, exchanged, and received treasures as gifts, at a time when such appropriations were still permitted by law.
The anthropologist Eulalia Guzmán, a friend of both the painter and Frida Kahlo, assisted them in completing the first catalog of the vast legacy he had accumulated.
Today, the collection surpasses forty-five thousand works, of which two thousand comprise the permanent exhibition at the Anahuacalli Museum.
As a collector, Diego Rivera became fascinated with the pre-Colombian art produced by cultures in Western Mexico.
These works reveal the everyday life of the people of that region - one that encompasses Jalisco, Colima, Nayarit and Michoacán - and hence, were the painter’s favourites.
The distribution of the works among the twenty-three rooms of the Anahuacalli Museum corresponds to Rivera’s aesthetic concept, one that sought to connect the representations of ancient cultures to contemporary art, configuring thus an uninterrupted timeline.
Hence, the works bear no explicative cards in order to promote their contemporary appreciation as works of art.
A demonstrator with her face painted with a Tibetan flag during the demonstration in Paris on March 21.
Merci de lire les explications en début d'album / Please read the explanations at the beginning of the set
Part of Free Tibet ! (Recommended as a slideshow)
« Une photo parle tout de suite, il n'y a pas besoin d’explications, tout le monde comprend la même chose. »
de Yann Arthus-Bertrand
"A picture speaks right away, there is no need for explanations, everyone understands the same thing. "
from Yann Arthus-Bertrand
Coucou~
Non, je ne suis pas morte, ou du moins, pas encore ;] Je ne poste plus nul part, seul mon facebook et instagram restent encore actif, et je me dois de vous donner une explication;
Depuis quelques temps, je n'ai plus du tout la force ni la motivation de poster. J'accumule quelques problèmes de santés qui me fatiguent énormément. Je m'investi beaucoup dans mon travail, et je paye lourdement mon surmenage... Beaucoup de choses se passent, et je croise les doigts pour que tout aille pour le mieux. Merci à ceux qui me suivent depuis la nuit des temps comme aux petits nouveaux :]
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No, I'm not dead, well, not yet. I don't post anywhere since few days, only my facebook and instagram are still active, and I have to give you the reason why I'm missing;
Since few months, I have no strength or motivation anymore to do anything. I have huge health problems, which tire me enormously. I have a lot of work at my job, I'm overworked ... A lot of things happened, and I cross my fingers that everything runs smoothly. Thank you for your support!
"SEEK INSIDE AND YOU WILL FIND . . . ?"
Have you ever thought how deeply rooted in the human psyche, "doors" are?
I had to do an explication with examples of certain symbols and how to suggest a "possible" interpretation that would be helpful in a pastoral/clinical setting.
I always started from a premise that probably has a global following in agreement: Doors can be opened to let different things and beings in . . . or they can be closed to keep things and beings out. . .
Then we move onto nuances from there depending on the frame of reference of the person/groip.
For me they draw me in . . . pushes my Dad-Grandad inherited, precocious, insatiable, adventurous/semi risky, confident curiosity Hot Button. The shadows really grabbed me in this one.
Been shooting 10-18mm lately, Never did much of that and the lenses were little used during the Film Age. it seems I'm getting more adept at getting closer to the scene. Plus, I've always tried
to adhere to the old adage:
"What's the right lens to use? The one you have on your camera."
It really has forced me to be creative in the shots, esp with the wide angle lens on distant scenes . . . those lenses make every scene "distant" just about. So that sometimes cramps my style to print big.
I guess the upshot is to say, I'm still moving out of my comfort zones and discovering new dimensions that surface into one Jungian "personal unconscious" . . . how many more must their be in the "collective unconscious" . . . 😲
Supporters of President Evo Morales are waving flags at sunset during the closing ceremony of the referendum campaign in El Alto, on Aug. 7.
Merci de lire les explications en début d'album / Please read the explanations at the beginning of the set
A couple of thousand protestors from the automotive sector demonstrated in Paris on Sept. 17, 2009. About a hundred briefly occupied the old stock exchange (Palais Brongniart), where some furniture was destroyed and the walls tagged. The demonstrators left after the arrival of the riot police, with a few incidents during the dispersion (mostly firecrackers and eggs !).
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Merci de lire les explications en début d'album / Please read the explanations at the beginning of the set
Part of La Bourse ou la vie ! (Recommended as a slideshow)
"Imagine" is a song written and performed by the English musician John Lennon. The best-selling single of his solo career, its lyrics encourage the listener to imagine a world at peace without the barriers of borders or the divisiveness of religions and nationalities, and to consider the possibility that the focus of humanity should be living a life unattached to material possessions.Lennon and Yoko Ono co-produced the song and album of the same name with Phil Spector. Recording began at Lennon's home studio at Tittenhurst Park, England, in May 1971, with final overdubs taking place at the Record Plant, in New York City, during July.Lennon and Ono co-produced the song and album with Phil Spector, who commented on the track: "We knew what we were going to do ... It was going to be John making a political statement, but a very commercial one as well ... I always thought that 'Imagine' was like the national anthem."[14] Lennon described his working arrangement with Ono and Spector: "Phil doesn't arrange or anything like that—[Ono] and Phil will just sit in the other room and shout comments like, 'Why don't you try this sound' or 'You're not playing the piano too well'... I'll get the initial idea and ... we'll just find a sound from [there]."[15]
Recording began at Ascot Sound Studios, Lennon's newly built home studio at Tittenhurst Park, in May 1971, with final overdubs taking place at the Record Plant, in New York City, during July.[15] Relaxed and patient, the sessions began during the late morning, running to just before dinner in the early evening. Lennon taught the musicians the chord progression and a working arrangement for "Imagine", rehearsing the song until he deemed the musicians ready to record.[4] In his attempt to recreate Lennon's desired sound, Spector had some early tapings feature Lennon and Nicky Hopkins playing in different octaves on one piano. He also initially attempted to record the piano part with Lennon playing the white baby grand in the couple's all-white room. However, after having deemed the room's acoustics unsuitable, Spector abandoned the idea in favour of the superior environment of Lennon's home studio.[5] They completed the session in minutes, recording three takes and choosing the second one for release.[16] The finished recording featured Lennon on piano and vocal, Klaus Voormann on bass guitar, Alan White on drums and the Flux Fiddlers on strings.[17]
Issued by Apple Records in the United States in October 1971, "Imagine" became the best-selling single of Lennon's solo career.[18] It peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100[19] and reached number one in Canada on the RPM national singles chart, remaining there for two weeks.[20] Upon its release the song's lyrics upset some religious groups, particularly the line: "Imagine there's no heaven".[21] When asked about the song during one of his final interviews, Lennon said he considered it to be as strong a composition as any he had written with the Beatles.[7] He described the song's meaning and explicated its commercial appeal: "Anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic, but because it is sugarcoated it is accepted ... Now I understand what you have to do. Put your political message across with a little honey."[22] In an open letter to Paul McCartney published in Melody Maker, Lennon said that "Imagine" was "'Working Class Hero' with sugar on it for conservatives like yourself".[23] On 30 November 1971, the Imagine LP reached number one on the UK chart.[24] It became the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed album of Lennon's solo career. One month after the September release of the LP, Lennon released "Imagine" as a single in the United States; the song peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and the LP reached number one on the UK chart in November, later becoming the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed album of Lennon's solo career. Although not originally released as a single in the United Kingdom, it was released in 1975 to promote a compilation LP and it reached number six in the chart that year. The song has since sold more than 1.6 million copies in the UK; it reached number one following Lennon's death in December 1980.BMI named "Imagine" one of the 100 most-performed songs of the 20th century. The song ranked number 30 on the Recording Industry Association of America's list of the 365 Songs of the Century bearing the most historical significance. It earned a Grammy Hall of Fame Award and an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. A UK survey conducted by the Guinness World Records British Hit Singles Book named it the second best single of all time, and Rolling Stone ranked it number 3 in their list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". Since 2005, event organisers have played it just before the New Year's Times Square Ball drops in New York City. Dozens of artists have performed or recorded versions of "Imagine", including Madonna, Stevie Wonder, Joan Baez, Elton John, and Diana Ross. Emeli Sandé recorded a cover for the BBC to use during the end credits montage at the close of the 2012 Summer Olympics coverage in August 2012. "Imagine" subsequently re-entered the UK Top 40, reaching number 18.A 1971 Billboard advertisement for "Imagine"
Lennon and Ono co-produced the song and album with Phil Spector, who commented on the track: "We knew what we were going to do ... It was going to be John making a political statement, but a very commercial one as well ... I always thought that 'Imagine' was like the national anthem."Lennon described his working arrangement with Ono and Spector: "Phil doesn't arrange or anything like that—[Ono] and Phil will just sit in the other room and shout comments like, 'Why don't you try this sound' or 'You're not playing the piano too well'... I'll get the initial idea and ... we'll just find a sound from [there]."Recording began at Ascot Sound Studios, Lennon's newly built home studio at Tittenhurst Park, in May 1971, with final overdubs taking place at the Record Plant, in New York City, during July. Relaxed and patient, the sessions began during the late morning, running to just before dinner in the early evening. Lennon taught the musicians the chord progression and a working arrangement for "Imagine", rehearsing the song until he deemed the musicians ready to record. In his attempt to recreate Lennon's desired sound, Spector had some early tapings feature Lennon and Nicky Hopkins playing in different octaves on one piano. He also initially attempted to record the piano part with Lennon playing the white baby grand in the couple's all-white room. However, after having deemed the room's acoustics unsuitable, Spector abandoned the idea in favour of the superior environment of Lennon's home studio. They completed the session in minutes, recording three takes and choosing the second one for release. The finished recording featured Lennon on piano and vocal, Klaus Voormann on bass guitar, Alan White on drums and the Flux Fiddlers on strings.Issued by Apple Records in the United States in October 1971, "Imagine" became the best-selling single of Lennon's solo career It peaked at number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. It reached number 1 in Canada on the RPM national singles chart, remaining there for two weeks.[16] Upon its release the song's lyrics upset some religious groups, particularly the line: "Imagine there's no heaven". When asked about the song during one of his final interviews, Lennon said he considered it to be as strong a composition as any he had written with the Beatles. He described the song's meaning and explicated its commercial appeal: "Anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic, but because it is sugarcoated it is accepted ... Now I understand what you have to do. Put your political message across with a little honey." Lennon once told Paul McCartney that "Imagine" was "'Working Class Hero' with sugar on it for conservatives like yourself".[19] On 30 November 1971, the Imagine LP reached number one on the UK chart.[20] It became the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed album of Lennon's solo career.
Recognition and criticism
The John Lennon Peace Monument, Liverpool, England
Rolling Stone described "Imagine" as Lennon's "greatest musical gift to the world", praising "the serene melody; the pillowy chord progression; [and] that beckoning, four-note [piano] figure" Included in several song polls, in 1999, BMI named it one of the top 100 most-performed songs of the 20th century.] Also that year, it received the Grammy Hall of Fame Award and an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. Triple J ranked it number 11 on its Hottest 100 of All Time list. "Imagine" ranked number 23 in the list of best-selling singles of all time in the UK, in 2000.[32] In 2002, a UK survey conducted by the Guinness World Records British Hit Singles Book ranked it the second best single of all time behind Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody".[33] Gold Radio ranked the song number 3 on its "Gold's greatest 1000 hits" list.
Rolling Stone ranked "Imagine" number 3 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", describing it as "an enduring hymn of solace and promise that has carried us through extreme grief, from the shock of Lennon's own death in 1980 to the unspeakable horror of September 11th. It is now impossible to imagine a world without 'Imagine', and we need it more than he ever dreamed." Despite that sentiment, Clear Channel Communications included the song on its post-9/11 "do not play" list.On 1 January 2005, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation named "Imagine" the greatest song in the past 100 years as voted by listeners on the show 50 Tracks. The song ranked number 30 on the Recording Industry Association of America's list of the 365 Songs of the Century bearing the most historical significance. Virgin Radio conducted a UK favourite song survey in December 2005, and listeners voted "Imagine" number 1.[38] Australians selected it the greatest song of all time on the Nine Network's 20 to 1 countdown show on 12 September 2006. They voted it eleventh in the youth network Triple J's Hottest 100 Of All Time on 11 July 2009.Jimmy Carter said, "in many countries around the world—my wife and I have visited about 125 countries—you hear John Lennon's song 'Imagine' used almost equally with national anthems." On 9 October 2010, which would have been Lennon's 70th birthday, the Liverpool Signing Choir performed "Imagine" along with other Lennon songs at the unveiling of the John Lennon Peace Monument in Chavasse Park, Liverpool England. Beatles producer George Martin praised Lennon's solo work, singling out the composition: "My favourite song of all was 'Imagine'". Music critic Paul Du Noyer described "Imagine" as Lennon's "most revered" post-Beatles song. Urish and Bielen called it "the most subversive pop song recorded to achieve classic status."Fricke commented: "'Imagine' is a subtly contentious song, Lennon's greatest combined achievement as a balladeer and agitator."Authors Ben Urish and Ken Bielen criticised the song's instrumental music as overly sentimental and melodramatic, comparing it to the music of the pre-rock era and describing the vocal melody as understated. According to Blaney, Lennon's lyrics describe hypothetical possibilities that offer no practical solutions; lyrics that are at times nebulous and contradictory, asking the listener to abandon political systems while encouraging one similar to communism. Author Chris Ingham indicated the hypocrisy in Lennon, the millionaire rock star living in a mansion, encouraging listeners to imagine living their lives without possessions. Others argue that Lennon intended the song's lyrics to inspire listeners to imagine if the world could live without possessions, not as an explicit call to give them up Blaney commented: "Lennon knew he had nothing concrete to offer, so instead he offers a dream, a concept to be built upon."Blaney considered the song to be "riddled with contradictions. Its hymn-like setting sits uncomfortably alongside its author's plea for us to envision a world without religion." Urish and Bielen described Lennon's "dream world" without a heaven or hell as a call to "make the best world we can here and now, since this is all this is or will be." In their opinion, "because we are asked merely to imagine—to play a 'what if' game, Lennon can escape the harshest criticisms".Former Beatle Ringo Starr defended the song's lyrics during a 1981 interview with Barbara Walters, stating: "[Lennon] said 'imagine', that's all. Just imagine it."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagine_(John_Lennon_song)
Comment Imagine de John Lennon est devenu un hymne universel…Par Daniel Ichbiah Article écrit pour le magazine STARfan - janvier 2011
"Dans de nombreux pays du monde et j'en ai visité près de 125, vous pouvez entendre 'Imagine' presque aussi souvent que l'hymne national."Ainsi s'est exprimé l'ancien président américain Jimmy Carter en 2006.Comment la chanson de Lennon a-t-elle acquis ce statut mythique ?Au moment de sa sortie en 1971, le single Imagine a connu un joli succès. C'était une chanson agréable avec un jolie partie de piano, une mélodie agréable et un tempo lent.Tandis que la chanson passe alors sur les ondes du monde entier, peu d'attention est réellement prêtée à ses paroles. Or, "Imagine" , sous des dehors romantiques et calmes, est une chanson fortement subversive. Lennon y distille des propos qui vont à l'encontre des principales valeurs de la société Américaine..
"Imaginez qu'il n'y ait pas de pays"
"Ce n'est pas si difficile"
"Rien qui nécessite de tuer et de mourir"
"Et pas de religion non plus".
C'est dans un livre de poèmes publié par Yoko Ono, Grapefruit, que Lennon a dit avoir trouvé l'inspiration pour "Imagine". L'artiste japonaise y distillait des instructions pour une nouvelle vie, telles que "imagine que tu es un fruit."
"Imagine" se classe n°3 au hit parade américain et l'album atteint même la position n°1. Cet hymne à la paix atteint la troisième position du hit parade américain et lui permet de renouer avec le succès. Pourtant, sur le moment, son message semble se diluer dans la quiétude des harmonies. Une jolie chanson, voilà tout.
C'est au fil du temps que "Imagine" va acquérir un statut particulier. Plus le temps passe et plus il semble qu'elle représente davantage qu'une chanson, qu'elle soit un hymne à part entière avec un message transcendant le temps…
Le 8 décembre 1980, Lennon est interviewé par Dave Sholin, un DJ de la station RKO. Au même moment, un désaxé fait le guet devant l'immeuble Dakota où réside le couple Lennon, son revolver enfoui dans une poche de sa parka. Au terme d'un cheminement intérieur chaotique, Chapman a fini par se persuader qu'il lui fallait éliminer John…C'est en quittant ce monde que Lennon révèle combien il était précieux. Quelques jours après sa disparition, cent mille fans se réunissent dans Central Park et devant l'immeuble Dakota dans un ultime hommage au Beatle disparu. Tous chantent l'hymne pour la paix "Give peace a chance". 10 minutes de silence sont observées et des milliers de ballons blancs sont libérés dans le ciel.Pour sa part, la ville de New York tient à célébrer la mémoire de Lennon à plus grande échelle. À Central Park, près de l'immeuble où habitait Lennon, une mosaïque est placée sur le sol avec ce mot "Imagine".
En Angleterre, le single était sorti en 1975 mais n'avait atteint que la 6ème position. Peu après la mort de Lennon en 1980, il ressort et se classe classe n°1 durant trois semaines. Il n'est délogé que par Lennon lui-même et le single "Woman".
En 1982, WABC, l'une des principales radios américaine - elle est née en 1921 - décide de changer de format et de ne plus diffuser de chansons, uniquement des talk-shows. Un long débat est organisé en interne afin de décider de la toute dernière chanson qui sera jouée par la station. C'est "Imagine" qui est choisi.Au cours de l'année 1988, le film Imagine : John Lennon retrace l'histoire du chanteur et remet la chanson au goût du jour. Il inclut une séquence où Lennon interprète ce titre sur son grand piano blanc Steinway.
Dans le très populaire film Forrest Gump qui sort en 1994, grâce à la magie de l'image de synthèse, Tom Hanks se retrouve face à John Lennon dans un show télévisé et le chanteur parle d'un endroit où il n'y aurait "pas de possessions", "pas de religions". La référence à la chanson fétiche de Lennon apparaît explicite.
Plus les années s'écoulent et plus il apparaît que la popularité de "Imagine" est devenue universelle et ne cesse de grandir. À l'occasion du changement de millenium, alors que les classements se multiplient, il va progressivement ressortir que"Imagine"occupe une place particulière dans le cœur du public.En 2002, Guiness World Records organise une enquête pour connaître le single préféré des britanniques. "Imagine" termine n°2 derrière "Bohemian Rhapsody" du groupe Queen.Le 9 décembre 2004, le magazine Rolling Stone publie sa liste des 500 meilleures chansons de tous les temps. "Imagine" y est classé à la 3ème position derrière "Like a Rolling Stone"de Bob Dylan et "Satisfaction" des Rolling Stones, loin devant la première chanson des Beatles figurant dans ce classement, "Hey Jude" qui est à la 8ème position.Au Canada, un sondage est mené la même année afin de déterminer la meilleure chanson des 100 dernières années. C'est "Imagine" qui arrive en tête. Un an plus tard, Virgin Radio conduit un sondage auprès du public britannique et là encore, c'est "Imagine" qui se classe n°1, devant "Hey Jude" des Beatles. En Australie, rebelotte : le 12 septembre 2006, "Imagine" est votée meilleure chanson de tous les temps."La chanson fait par ailleurs l'objet de très nombreuses reprises et assez souvent au cours d'occasions de soutien à une cause humanitaire. Le 21 septembre 2001, Neil Young l'interprète au cours d'un télethon organisé au profit des victimes de l'attaque sur les deux tours. Madonna intègre la chanson "Imagine" au programme de son Re-invention Tour de 2004 et la chante lors d'un concert en aide aux victimes du tsunami, le 15 janvier 2005 à Londres, concert auquel participent Norah Jones, Mary J. Bilge, Elton John, Lenny Kravitz, Stevie Wonder… Pour l'occasion Madonnna cite Lennon parmi les personnalités auxquelles elle aimerait ressembler. La chanson est également reprise par Liza Minelli, Randy Crawford, Jack Johnson, Herbie Hancock et le groupe A Perfect Circle.Fait rare, la chanson obtient une reconnaissance de la part de politiciens et gouvernants. Le 8 décembre 2000, une statue de John Lennon est inaugurée au Havana Park de Cuba et pour l'occasion le président Fidel Castro rend hommage au chanteur en indiquant :"Je partage totalement ses rêves".
En 2003, pour célébrer le 80ème anniversaire de Shimon Peres, Bill Clinton chante"Imagine"en compagnie de 40 enfants israéliens et 40 enfants arabes. Trois ans plus tard, un autre ancien président américain, Carter déclare qu'au cours de ses parcours dans le monde, c'est "Imagine" qu'il entend le plus souvent, davantage que l'hymne national du pays !Lennon qui souhaitait laisser derrière lui un message de fraternité universel pouvait-il rêver mieux ?Daniel Ichbiah
Europe, Portugal, Porto, Avenida da Boavista, Casa de Musica (Rem Koolhaas/OMA), Sala Suggia, visitors (uncut)
The Casa da Musica was opened in 2005. Its monolithic and angular ‘irregular diamond ‘ shape stands really out. It has two auditoriums and is the home of Orquestro Nacional do Porto (some of its instruments are on stage in this pic), Orquesta Barocca and the Remix Ensemble.
The Sala Suggia, the main auditorium, is shown here. It has a ‘shoe box’ shape (the optimum formula for a concert hall and considering the irregular shape of the Casa to me somewhat surprising) and has 7 windows. Two of them are in view here. It’s by the way the first generation of this type of very large corrugated glass windows – the second generation is used in the MAS in Antwerp (Belgium): here. It’s the only concert hall in the world were during daytime no artificial light is needed.
The auditorium has no central corridor, enabled by the construction of the chairs (with sliding parts) and the relatively profound depth of the rows. The chairs through their upholstery have the same acoustic absorption signature as people so the acoustics are always the same, whether the auditorium is empty of filled with people. There’s an acoustic ‘cushion’ above the stage that can be elevated and tilted – it reflects the sounds directly to the musicians and enables a shorter reverberation time. There are three curtains to deal with the light: a neutral filter that lowers the intensity , a curtain that completely stops the light and a third one of which the function I didn’t get. The two replica of organs from different styles/periods have a purely decorative function. And a acoustic one too, like all structures and materials in the auditorium. The wall panels are Nordic pine plywood and are decorated with a golden pattern and together with the organs they connect the auditorium to the time/culture of classical music and render it slightly post-modern.
(Source: My transcription of the explication of the excellent guide of the Casa da Musica; the remarks about the MAS and the po-mo feel are personal additions).
PERSPECTIVE & LIGNES : LA LINEA #68 / C
G E N È V E 🇨🇭 🏆 👍 💎 🎀 🏆 👏
L'EXPLICATION FINALE, voir le petit film.
Pourquoi ces lignes étranges qui mènent au toilettes...
08h05, le centre commercial est ouvert uniquement pour accéder aux cafés et restaurants qui ouvrent à 08h00, mais les commerces eux n'ouvrent qu'à 09h00. J'aime bien ces moments de tranquillité dans ces grands espaces. Bonne journée.
THE FINAL EXPLANATION, see the little movie.
Why those strange lines.
At 8.05am, the shopping centre is open only for the cafés and restaurants, which open at 8am, but the other shops don't open until 9am. I love these moments of tranquillity in these wide open spaces. Have a nice day.
An Alphabetical Catalogue Philosophy and Alchemy ..... Him whom Three that are to Fit thy house to thy what thou ...... as deque Magno Mundi Mysterio languages. purg, 1609, ..... In 1528, Paracelsus proceeded to Colmar. issuu.com/accipio777/docs/lives_of_the_alchemystical_phil...
John Dee (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occult philosopher, imperialist[5] and adviser to Queen Elizabeth I. He devoted much of his life to the study of alchemy, divination and Hermetic philosophy.Simultaneously with these efforts, Dee immersed himself in the worlds of magic, astrology and Hermetic philosophy. He devoted much time and effort in the last thirty years or so of his life to attempting to commune with angels and demons in order to learn the universal language of creation and bring about the pre-apocalyptic unity of mankind. A student of the Renaissance Neo-Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, Dee did not draw distinctions between his mathematical research and his investigations into Hermetic magic, angel summoning and divination. Instead he considered all of his activities to constitute different facets of the same quest: the search for a transcendent understanding of the divine forms which underlie the visible world, which Dee called "pure verities". en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee
Colmar, La Maison des Têtes, 1609. A thoroughly disquieting individual, with his bonhomous countenance, jester’s gear, seeming lack of arms and cloven hoves below shackled ankles. The whole facade is filled with heads of all sorts, 102 in facade . Another dour-looking fellow, equally from 1609.Warts, Imperfect Pearls and Baroque Thoughts
Baroque is a curious term, familiar by almost more by connotation and innuendo than by actual content and context. Even more curiously, its origins, via a tortuous trail through Portuguese barroco, French Baroque, Spanish barrueco, or Italian barocco are ultimately unknown. (My educated guess is the street.) In 18th-century French it meant “irregular”, from the Portuguese word for an imperfect pearl. A near neighbour is Spanish barucca (wart). According to Fuseli’s translation of Winkelmann in 1765: “This style in decorations got the epithet of Barroque taste, derived from a word signifying pearls and teeth of unequal size.”
It also appears to be largely a derogatory term, only rehabilitated by art historians in the mid-1800’s, which in itself is ever more curious – how could an art from, which lasted and defined a century and a half of colossal construction – churches, palaces, avenues, in a sweeping urbanism that erased huge tracts of earlier building – be labelled with what is basically a slanderous sobriquet? Perhaps explained by the gulf that existed between the royal and titled families of Europe and their royally taxed peoples – Versailles for example, seen from a tawdry and insalubrious slum that might well have shocked any self-respecting citizen from a few centuries before, may not necessarily have brought kind thoughts and words to mind and tongue. Perhaps explained by the faltering of the faith that made Gothic shoot skywards – Baroque churches are hardly pious and restrained (that is reserved for straight-laced Reformers and three coats of quicklime after the dust settles) with their gilding and profusion of decoration, they seem to look more at themselves than at the face of the Maker. (The most baroque of Baroque edifices are to be found in Meso and South and Meso-America, where unrestrained imperialism financed by a steady flow of pilfered gold and riches takes Baroque on a building spree to the full extent of excess – returning ships riding low in the water, holds foul with gold, also paid for a good number architectural extravagances in Europe – but further enriched by local culture, in the same way that Baroque music in the Americas has an added texture.)
In many ways, it is an abandonment of form for a surfeit of decoration (rococco abandons even pretense, and relies on meringue – pastry applied to architecture). Structure is everywhere engulfed by embellishment, peppered with putti and smothered with stucco. That’s why popular art in architecture from that period always seems so intriguing. There must be thousands of long thin men from the 17th and early 18th centuries starting down from cornerposts throughout Europe. With their willingness to scrunch their shoulders up and dangle their arms in front of their tube-like torsos and turn their squared toes inward, accepting the limitations of structure and working within those strictures, popular figurative Baroque can be awkward, ill-poised, elongated and curiously aloof. They also often seem to have a ferocious mein, these long thin men, they don’t look benevolent or amenable, they are stern and a little frightening, something of the ogre in them despite their emaciated silhouettes. None of the sack-of-potatoes physiques so dear to the Renaissance and taken up again by Rubens with such gusto, little of the relaxed Classical nudity, not a hint of the desperate lightness and frivolity of the early 1700’s, this crowd are of a hungrier, harsher, buttoned-at-the-collar kind. It’s hard imagining them in the same world as Fragonard’s Swing** when upper-crust Baroque had lost all semblance of gravitas and taken the rocaille garden path of Rococco (a distinction they blithely left to be made much much later by art historians).
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The other day, on a business trip (I love saying “business trip”, it makes this cockeyed profession of drawing pictures sound somehow actually respectable) to the Alsace, we took a couple of hours to wander around Colmar before heading home. Much of what has been built in the 20th century, since we’ve been creating new building materials which are not cut down in forests, cut from quarries, smelted from ore or the product of judicious alchemy – plaster, stucco, brick, ceramic, glass) is a form of denial of time. It takes on little attractiveness with age, simply decrepitude. I doubt there can be a modern equivalent of the Deutsche Romantik movement with what the industrial era has to offer as ephemera. Modern ruins don’t trigger romanticism, it’s hard to imagine Caspar David Friedrich painting abandoned abutments, deserted overpasses and vacant lots with the same unshakeable optimism and unbridled nostalgia. Now, this is most definitely NOT a criticism of industrial development (inevitable), not a nostalgic rant for things gone by (puerile), but simply a regret for a connection which is lost (paradoxically, in a society obsessed with “connectivity”). Removing a piece of nature and fashioning it into an element of human expression does not negate the material itself, which of course will continue what it has been doing before – gently eroding under wind and rain and frost.
That’s why I was literally stopped in my tracks in Colmar the other day. By a bannister colonnade of the steps of the Koifhus, or Ancienne Douane, doubtlessly many-times-replaced in a warm ochre sandstone. I was transfixed by the transformation of a row of ordinary balusters* into something by Giacometti. (Giacometti Descending a Staircase, even.) Reinforced concrete won’t do that for you. It seems clear enough to me that modern architecture, for all its advantages and undeniable capacity to house us comfortably, puts us once again slightly out of joint with time. A reinforcement of mortality by an estrangement of sorts from things that age the way nature ages simply leaves us with fewer references and a narrower context. Modern urban decrepitude contains little connectedness with nature, despite brave weeds and scrubby persistent grass in vacant lots.
Goodpost-apocalyptic film sets or big dollars for developers, but no emotional involvement other than mayhap a fleeting case of the blues..All that curiously coupled with our infatuation with ancient ruins, which we dig up. reassemble, cordon off, pay to admire, work to preserve. (We’re tireless in our efforts to arrest time.) We’re better informed than our ancestors, but we’re certainly no more intelligent, so where DOES that put us? But, we’ve not lost touch entirely. A little erosion can go a long way.Names of Angels, Archangels, fallen angels, guardian angels, seraphim, ... with anthropomorphic features, or they have one face each of man, ox, lion, and eagle . ..... Funny Names, Rainbow Names,
Secret Names, Shadow Nam.judicious alchemy
– plaster, stucco, brick, ... That's why I was literally stopped in my tracks in Colmar ... for all its advantages and undeniable capacity to house us ... Left: Colmar, La Maison des Têtes, 1609. a noble family in his teen years ..... Swiss alchemist and physician (died 1577) Deaths April 6 – Albrecht Dürer, .... Paracelsus visits Colmar in Alsace.
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La spagyrie ou la médecine de Paracelse par Patrick Rivière, JL Garillon . En effet, ni la Médecine Homéopathique et ni, à fortiori, la Médecine Allopathique, ne peuvent s'en réclamer à bon droit, tant cette "Médecine de Paracelse" offre des aspects originaux et multiples . Paracelse emprunta largement à "l'Hermétisme" médiéval - voilant pudiquement les termes "d'alchimie" et de "magie naturel-le" - la matière ésotérique de son oeuvre. En réalité, loin de se cantonner à la seule pratique de la médecine hippocratique", Paracelse s'avéra être un authentique "philosophe par le feu" ("philosophus per ignem"), c'est-à-dire un remarquable "alchimiste" doublé d'un médecin doté d'une réelle efficacité (2). D'ailleurs, n'écrivait-il pas à cet égard, à l'encontre du caractère péjoratif entachant "l'Alchimie" : "L'alchimie qu'ils déshonorent et prostituent n'a qu'un but : extraire la quintessence des choses, préparer les Arcanes, les Teintures, les Elixirs capables de rendre à l'Homme la santé qu'il a perdue". Il s'agissait bien en effet pour lui, de concilier des expériences d'origine apparemment empirique à la sublime réalisation de "l'Ars Magna". Il y parvint magistralement car lui seul sut fidèlement transposer les lois "alchimiques" dans le domaine médical ou "Iatrochimique" (de "iatros" = médecin) "Je vous ferai connaître la Teinture, l'Arcane ou la Quintessence donnant la clef de tout mystère. Chacun peut se tromper et ne doit se fier qu'à l'épreuve du feu. En spagyrie, comme en médecine, il faut toujours attendre que le feu ait séparé le vrai du faux. La lumière de la Nature nous indique ce que nous devons ad-mettre" ("De la teinture des physiciens", chap. I). C'est ainsi que Paracelse fut amené à appliquer les lois "alchimiques" dans le domaine médical, sous le terme générique qu'il innova : la Spagyria (la "Spagyrie"), pour désigner la "Médecine hermétique" et la préparation des remèdes thérapeutiques qui en émanent directement. Et c'est grâce à cette "médecine" - révolutionnaire en soi -, à des heures de celles d'Hippocrate et de Galien, que Pa-racelse contribua très largement à enrayer de son temps de nombreux fléaux, tels la peste, certaines maladies nerveuses, l'épilepsie, l'hystérie, etc. Aussi peut-on lire l'épitaphe suivante déposée sur sa tombe à Salzbourg: 'Celui qui a fait disparaître par son art merveilleux les plaies cruelles, la lèpre, la podagre, l'hystérie, et d'autres maladies incurables. Que recouvrait donc le terme de Spagyrie? Paracelse s'était attaché à appliquer la devise "alchimique" : solve et coagula ("dissous et coagule") pour la préparation particulière de ses nombreux remèdes. Le terme même de "spagyrie" s'en trouvait directement issu ainsi que son étymologie ne manquait pas de le souligner : "spao" signifiant en grec "extraire" et 'ageiro, agerein", "rassembler" ; or, pour séparer et extraire, ne fallait-il pas nécessairement dissoudre, ainsi que pour recombiner, ras-sembler, ne convenait-il pas de coaguler ! Mais de quoi s'agissait--il au juste, sinon des principes essentiels résidant au sein des trois règnes végétal, minéral et animal. Le dessein principal de la Spagyrie consiste donc bien à séparer la matière subtile de la matière grossière et tangible d'un "mixte" - corps composé, de l'un des trois règnes - dans un but de "purification" et, par voie de conséquence "d'évolution", afin de transmettre les vertus régénérées du "mixte" à tout individu dont la santé est éprouvée par un quelconque déséquilibre. "La Spagyrie est une science qui nous apprend à diviser les corps, à les résoudre (réduire) et à en séparer les "principes" par des voies, soit naturelles, soit violentes. Son objet est donc l'altération, la purification et même la perfection des corps, c'est-à-dire leur génération et leur médecine. C'est par la solution (putréfaction animale, fermentation végétale ou liquéfaction minérale) que l'on y parvient et l'on ne saurait y réussir si l'on ignore leur construction et leurs "principes" (le mot "principe" signifie ce de quoi une chose tire son origine et ce qui constitue l'essence de cette même chose). On sépare les parties hétérogènes et accidentelles pour avoir ensuite la faculté de réunir et de conjoindre les homogènes. La méthode spagyrique dérive de la science hermétique ; tous les êtres sublunaires sont constitués par trois 'principes" (3) : le sel, le soufre et le mercure. Toutes les maladies sont inhérentes à un déséquilibre dans l'action de ces trois "principes". C'est pourquoi tout véritable remède est destiné à entretenir cet équilibre dans le corps et à le ramener si l'un des principes vient à dominer les deux autres avec trop de violence..." (4) Ainsi, en observant "dans la lumière de la nature et dans le miroir de la vérité" (selon l'expression chère à Paracelse), tout ce qui vit sous le soleil est d'essence triple, bien qu'étant "un" en apparence, qu'il s'agisse d'un minéral, d'une plante ou d'une substance animale. Chacun de ces composants subtils porte le nom de "principe de la matière" ; en analogie avec la tripartition métaphysique de l'Homme :"Corps - Ame - Esprit", les principes spagyriques se dénomment "Sel -Soufre - Mercure" -, ces derniers ne correspondant pas aux substances chimiques du même nom mais faisant référence à des notions infiniment plus subtiles. Paracelse traduisit cette division en ces expressions succinctes :"l'Art les isole et les rend visibles, et ainsi- ce qui brûle, c'est le "Soufre",- ce qui s'élève en fumée, c'est le "Mercure",- ce qui se résout en cendres, c'est le "Sel". Et de préciser en son "Traité des trois Essences Premières" "l'un est une liqueur, c'est le "Mercure", l'autre est une "oléité" ("oleitas", sorte d'huile), c'est le "Soufre", le troisième est un alkali, c'est le "Sel" de l'unité, tirez le nombre ternaire et ramenez ensuite le ternaire à l'unité." Cela implique donc que dans la pratique il convient d'extraire ces trois substances - voilées sous les vocables de "mercu-re", "soufre' et "sel" - de les purifier séparément, puis finale-ment de le conjoindre harmonieusement. Voilà qui donne bien tout son sens au terme de "Spagyrie" (extraire et rassembler). Quant aux processus d'extraction, ils seront bien entendu variables en fonction de la nature de la "matière" utilisée ; car, extraire le "soufre" des végétaux (huile des plantes) est chose aisée, mais des minéraux et des métaux, c'est évidemment bien plus complexe. Les opérations "spagyriques" tendent à procéder des lois naturelles, c'est-à-dire qu'elles semblent reproduire au sein du laboratoire ce qui se déroule à grande échelle dans la Nature. " ... la Spagyrie sépare dans chaque mixte des trois genres (les trois règnes) tout ce qu'il y a d'impur ou d'étranger" (6). Et de prendre pour exemple concret le "mécanisme de nutrition" qui entretient la vie dans le corps en rejetant les "grossièretés et superfluités" de la digestion par l'entremise de l'intestin ! "(les termes de "pur" ou "d'impur" se différencient ici du critère actuel de "pureté chimique" ; il s'agit davantage d'une notion de pureté énergétique, voire "spirituelle", que nous pouvons qualifier plutôt de "vitalogène"). Selon les Anciens "tous les corps sont faits de matière et d'esprit. La Matière est passive et inerte, tandis que l'Esprit est le principe vital-actif, empreint de l'Idée divine qui est cause d'évolution. Il est donc clair que la vertu des mixtes (corps composés d'atomes ou de molécules et tirés de la Nature) est dans l'esprit, et que cet esprit est beaucoup plus actif lorsqu'il est dé-livré de sa prison corporelle. Tout le côté physique de l'Art spagyrique réside dans cette séparation ou extraction. Pour obtenir cet es-prit en puissance de son maximum de vertu, il le faut exalter ; pour l'exalter, il le faut mûrir (faire évoluer), et pour le mûrir, il faut cor-rompre son corps, à la façon dont le grain se putréfie dans la terre avant que de pouvoir germer. Or, cette putréfaction n'est autre que l'évolution de la matière, par laquelle les atomes de la substance se séparent des hétérogénéités, se resserrent, se purifient, s'exaltent et s'élèvent à une altitude beau-coup plus noble que n'était leur état primitif. Tout l'Art Spagyrique consiste à provoquer l'évolution de la matière pour la purifier et l'exalter, ce qui ne peut se faire que par de subtiles et longues opérations que les auteurs anciens ont laissées dans l'ombre". En quoi consiste la pratique spagyrique: Les techniques de préparation des remèdes spagyriques exigent une connaissance approfondie de la Nature et du Cosmos : pour effectuer les récoltes (lieux et moments propices), pour mettre en oeuvre les fermentations, distillations, cohobation, sublimations, calcinations, digestions, etc..Ces manipulations de Laboratoire de nature "spagyrique" définis-sent l'ensemble des "opérations sur le minéral, le végétal, ou l'animal"; dans ce dernier cas, il s'agit le plus souvent de sous-produits animaux. Autrefois, le nombre des différentes opérations était plus conséquent ; pas moins d'une cinquantaine de manipulations sont décrites dans les ouvrages anciens, dont beaucoup sont tombées en désuétude, telles que "l'assation", la "réverbération", la "réincrudation", etc...Les plus importantes qui se pratiquent couramment sont au nombre de sept: 1- dissolution ou décomposition (avec décantation et filtration),2- fermentation ou putréfaction,3- distillation et rectification (avec circulation ou rotation), 4- calcination ou cémentation, - sublimation ou exaltation, 5- cohobation ou ré-union,7- coagulation ou fixation.
Dans son "Cours de Chymie, contenant la manière de faire les Opérations qui sont en usage dans la Médecine", publié en 1687, Nicolas Lémery livre "l'explication de plusieurs termes des-quels on se sert en Chymie" : - 1"Circulation" : c'est un mouvement que l'on donne aux liqueurs (liquides) dans un vaisseau de rencontre, en excitant par le moyen du feu les vapeurs à mon-ter et à descendre ; cette opéra-t-on se fait pour subtiliser les liqueurs ou pour ouvrir quelque corps dur qu'on y a mêlé. - 2"Coagulation" : c'est donner une consistance aux liquides, en faisant consumer une partie de leur humidité sur le feu, ou bien en mêlant ensemble des liqueurs de différente nature. - "Cohobation" : façon de réitérer la distillation d'une même liqueur, l'ayant renversée sur la matière restée dans le vaisseau. Cette opération se fait pour ouvrir les corps ou pour volatiliser les "esprits". 4- "Fermentation" : c'est une ébullition causée par des esprits qui, cherchant issue pour sortir de quelque corps et rencontrant des parties terrestres et grossières qui s'opposent à leur passage, font gonfler et raréfier la matière jusqu'à ce qu'ils en soient détachés. Or, dans ce détachement, les esprits divisent, subtilisent et séparent les principes, en sorte qu'ils rendent la matière d'une autre nature qu'elle n'était auparavant. 5- "Rectification" : c'est faire distiller les esprits, afin d'en séparer ce qu'ils peuvent avoir enlevé avec eux des parties hétérogènes. - 6"Sublimation" : c'est faire monter par le feu une matière volatile en haut de l'alambic ou du chapiteau. Il serait pour le moins fastidieux de décrire toutes les autres opérations qui nécessitent de patientes et minutieuses manipulations dans le seul but de faire "évoluer" un végétal ou un minéral jusqu'à sa perfection optima-le, en délivrant ce que Paracelse qualifiait de Quintessence :7 "La Quintessence est une certaine matière extraite de toutes choses que la Nature a produites et de chaque chose qui possède sa vie corporelle en elle-même, une matière la plus subtilement purgée de toute impureté et de toute mortalité, et séparée de tous éléments. D'après ceci, il est évident que la Quintessence est, pour tout dire, une nature, une force, une vertu, et une médecine, à la fois, en vérité, enfermée en toutes choses, mais désormais libre de tout domicile et de toute incorporation extérieure."
En effet, à l'opposé de la pharmacologie moderne qui cherche à isoler le "principe actif chimiquement pur", la spagyrie parvient à purifier la totalité du "mixte" (= plante ou minéral ou substance animale) pour en faire une 'entité supérieure" apte à libérer les forces de régénération de l'individu en correspondance avec ce mixte, ou plus exactement en correspondance avec la signature astrale de celui-ci. C'est particulièrement dans le cas de substances toxiques, comme par exemple des plantes vénéneuses : Aconit, Hellébore, ... ou des métaux toxiques: Plomb, Antimoine, ... que le phénomène de purification spagyrique s'observe le mieux, puis-que ces substances deviennent par l'Art de "souverains remèdes". En libérant les 3 principes de leurs impuretés initiales, la Spagyrie élimine totalement les poisons contenus dans les mixtes pour faire place à une sorte de perfection, ou "quintessence", au service de l'homme. Ainsi, la Spagyrie est souvent dé-nommée "Art des Quintessences" dont on dit que les remèdes sont ouverts et orientés, ce qui signifie qu'ils sont devenus totalement assimilables par l'organisme et qu'ils sont en correspondance énergétique et cosmologique avec les organes à traiter.
En quoi consiste la loi de correspondance: "Le savoir traditionnel a pour premier caractère une conception unitaire du Cosmos" écrit l'anthropologue Gilbert Durand dans "Science de l'Homme et Tradition" (Ed. Berg International). En effet, 'la création du Monde étant la création par excellence, la cosmogonie devient le modèle exemplaire de toute espèce de créa-t-on" ajoute Mircea Eliade dans 'Aspects du Mythe" (Ed. Gallimard). Et la très fameuse "Table d'Émeraude", dite d'Hermes Trismégiste énonce clairement: 1 - "Il est vrai, sans mensonge, certain et très réel, 2 - Ce qui est en bas est comme ce qui est en haut, et ce qui est en haut est comme ce qui est en bas, Pour l'accomplissement des mi-racles d'une seule chose. 3 - Et comme toutes choses sont et proviennent d'Un. Ainsi toutes choses sont nées de cette chose unique, par adaptation. 4 - Le soleil en est le père, la Lune en est la mère, Le vent l'a porté dans son ventre, La terre est sa nourrice et son réceptacle. 5 - Le père de tout le Thélesme du monde universel est ici.Sa force ou puissance reste entière, si elle est convertie en terre. 6 - Tu sépareras la terre du feu, le subtil de l'épais, doucement avec grande industrie..." Jusqu'à la fin du Moyen-âge, l'homme s'est toujours senti lié au Cosmos et c'est par la pensée analogique qu'il a pu effectuer des rapprochements subtils entre les innombrables domaines du monde manifesté. Paradoxalement, cette forme de pensée verticale ou spirituelle qu'est l'analogie ne s'oppose en rien à la pensée rationnelle ou scientifique que nous pouvons qualifier d'horizontale. D'ailleurs, certaines sciences modernes telles que l'écologie ne redécouvrent-elles pas cette interdépendance universelle que les Anciens respectaient tant sous le nom de "Théorie des Signatures" ? Comment s'applique la Doctrines des signatures . Il faut étudier à nouveau Paracelse pour poser les bases de cette quête philosophico-scientifique: - au sujet d'une philosophie de l'invisible : "Qu'est la nature sinon la philosophie, et la philosophie sinon la dé-couverte de l'invisible nature ? " (VIII, 71) "Les étoiles sont visibles, mais elles ne constituent pas pour au-tant le Ciel" (XII, 38) "Le ciel agit en nous, mais pour connaître l'essence de cette action, il faut connaître les propriétés du ciel et des astres..." (Parra-minum I) "Celui qui désire devenir un vrai thérapeute doit chercher à comprendre la composition d'une prescription selon la conjonction des herbes et des astres du firmament." (Peste I)
- au sujet de la nature en sa Lumière : "La nature donne une Lumière par laquelle elle peut être connue dans sa clarté propre." (XIV, 115). "La nature est une lumière qui luit plus que la lumière du soleil... au-dessus de tout regard et de toute puissance des yeux. Dans cette lumière, les choses in-visibles deviennent visibles." - au sujet des signatures :
"Il n'y a rien sur quoi la nature n'ait apposé sa marque, et c'est par là que nous pouvons con-naître ce que recèlent les choses ainsi signées." (XII, 91) Cette fameuse doctrine des Signatures a été reprise par Jacob Boehme en 1622 dans son "De signatura rerum", attestant des correspondances naturelles dans les trois règnes avec le Ciel ! En réalité, cet-te théorie est une application pure et simple de la loi d'analogie naturelle qui constitue un des piliers de la sagesse hermétique (cf supra : la Table d'Émeraude), "laquelle suppose la conscience d'une solidarité cosmogénétique de toutes les formes vivantes de l'univers. Cette solidarité cosmogénétique se fonde sur une correspondance astrologique". (in "Médecines traditionnelles sacrées." ( Cf Brelet-Rueff, Ed. Celt. 1975). Il est intéressant d'observer que le règne minéral a toujours fasciné par les formes symétriques des mi-néraux. Cette symétrie ainsi que la perfection des faces des cristaux résultent de lois naturelles qui captivèrent déjà Aristote et Théophraste de la Grèce antique : cette symétrie devait résulter d'une dis-position intérieure particulière. Par une méthode d'extraction spagyrique, il est possible d'obtenir le "Sel Fixe" d'un mixte, cette fraction minérale cristallisable est véritablement caractéristique de la signature du mixte considéré. A titre d'exemple, voici quelques "signatures astrales" bien connues
Planètes Métaux Plantes Organes fonctionnels SOLEIL Or
Arnica, Romarin Coeur, Energie vitale LUNE Argent Nénuphar, Pavot Cerveau, Estomac MARS Fer Ortie, Oignon Bile, Sang, Muscles MERCURE Mercure Lavande, Valériane Poumons, Syst. nerv. JUPITER Etain Pissenlit, Mélisse Foie Métabolisme
VENUS Cuivre Achillée, Ulmaire Reins, Peau, Glandes SATURNE Plomb Houx, Prêle... Rate, Os, Articulations Un tel tableau de correspondance astrale mériterait un ouvrage complet à lui seul. Retenons simplement que la Tradition nous enseigne deux types de conjonctions astrales : - les conjonctions harmonieuses: Mars = Vénus Vénus = Jupiter
Mars = Jupiter Soleil = Lune - les conjonctions dissonantes Soleil Mars Lune Mars Jupiter / Mercure Soleil / Saturne
Vénus / Saturne Ce phénomène nous permet de mieux appréhender certaines réalités subtiles inexpliquées à ce jour, telles que les affinités et les répulsions entre végétaux (bien connues des agro-biologistes sous le non de 'plantes compagnes" et "plantes ennemies"), de même que les phénomènes de complémentarité (= synergie) et incompatibilité reconnus dans le domaine thérapeutique : phytothérapie, aromathérapie et bien en-tendu homéopathie. trois siècles avant le fondateur de l'homéopathie, Samuel Hahnemann, qui avait énoncé la loi de Similitude ('les semblables sont guéris par les semblables"), le grand Pa-racelse avait écrit la loi universelle : "L'Astre est guéri par l'Astre", la-quelle doit gouverner toutes nos actions au sein du vivant. (1) - P. Rivière: "La Médecine de Paracelse", El. Traditionnelles, Paris, 1988. (2) - P. Rivière : "Alchimie & Spagyrie...". Ed. de Neustrie, Caen, 1986 (3) - Le traité des 3 essences première de Paracelse (4) - Extrait du dictionnaire Mytho-hermétique de Pernéty (5) - P. Rivière: "La Médecine de Paracelse", El. Traditionnelles, Paris, 1988. (6) - in Le Breton : "Les Clefs de la Philosophie Spagyrique qui donnent la connaissance des Principes et des véritables Opérations de cet Art dans le Mixtes des trois genres.' 1722 (7) - J. Mavéric : "La Médecine Hermétique des Plantes", Ed. Bélisane.
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ISSUU - Occult17 by Versigoe
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8 juil. 2014 - Duveen 31 “The most important English alchemical text. ...... With less of original genius than Paracelsus, he has more ...... 38)” The Labourd witch-hunt of 1609. ...... in 1565 and was made first physician of the city of Colmar.An Alphabetical Catalogue Philosophy and Alchemy ..... Him whom Three that are to Fit thy house to thy what thou ...... as deque Magno Mundi Mysterio languages. purg, 1609, ..... In 1528, Paracelsus proceeded to Colmar. issuu.com/accipio777/docs/lives_of_the_alchemystical_phil...
TOUTANKHAMON
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L’exposition Toutankhamon : Sa Tombe et Ses Trésors vous plongent dans l'Égypte Antique. Avec des centaines d'objets parfaitement reconstitués, décors et explications passionnantes, c'est l'expo la plus complète au monde pour découvrir la vie du jeune roi.
C'est le 4 novembre 1922, après cinq ans de fouilles dans la Vallée des Rois, que l'archéologue britannique Howard Carter Éclairé par la lueur de sa bougie, découvre l’impressionnante tombe dorée du pharaon Toutankhamon, mort il y a plus de 3000 ans, entouré de tous ses trésors.
Toutankhamon monta sur le trône en 1332 av. J-C. à l'âge de 9 ans
pour plus d'informations 👉tutankhamunexpo.com/
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TUTANKHAMUN
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The exhibition Tutankhamun: His Tomb and His Treasures immerses you in Ancient Egypt. With hundreds of perfectly reconstructed objects, decors and fascinating explanations, it is the most complete exhibition in the world to discover the life of the young king.
It was on November 4, 1922, after five years of excavations in the Valley of the Kings, that the British archaeologist Howard Carter, illuminated by the light of his candle, discovered the impressive golden tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamen, who died more than 3000 years old, surrounded by all its treasures.
Tutankhamun ascended the throne in 1332 BC. J-C. at the age of 9
for more information 👉 tutankhamunexpo.com/
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I recently went to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. I finished my visit with French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s living and ephemeral work entitled “From here to ear”. You may have seen it elsewhere in the world, this is version number 19. It is however, billed as the largest one and is specific to the space of the Museum’s Contemporary Art Square.
To describe it shortly, the space is transformed into a busy aviary for birds. They perch on guitars laying horizontally on stands throughout the room. There are walkways for the visitors. The sounds the birds produce by moving around the strings are processed and slightly delayed to create something like ambient music.
This exhibition is well publicized. There is a full explanation by the artist on video on the MBAM’s web and loads of photos on the Web. I’m kind of jealous of the people who fumble on this installation without any preliminary explanations and no pre-conceptions. Too much information dulls the impact. Once you have verified how the concept works, the main interest actually lies in the birds themselves.
They are zebra finches, a species originating from Australia.
There was however one bird I couldn’t identify. As I walked in the space I noticed a woman seated on the ground with a friend. They were both soaking up this environment. I would say they were observing the people’s reactions as much as the birds.
At first, I thought one of the birds had quietly landed on the lady’s head. I approached them and we spoke briefly. I learned her name is Andrea and he is named Adam. Andrea had a very special coiffure. Her hair was arranged in the shape of a nest held together with the tip of a branch from a Christmas tree and some bit of cedar. The bird was a decoration.
They agreed to have their portraits taken. I let them enjoy the installation and waited until they were done before I took a few shots.
Andrea is from Montreal and has studied architecture and urban design. From what I understand, a lot her work concerns public spaces and how humans interact and is often of temporary or conceptual nature. She is something like an urbanist / social activist and had recently came back from abroad where she had work on collective projects. Montreal is her home, laboratory and playground.
She told me that in 2014 she participated to a temporary installation aimed at giving Christmas trees a second life.
I was a bit ruffled that photography was prohibited in the Contemporary Art Space but it may have been a saving grace. I would have likely tried to get the guitars, the birds and the visitors in Andrea’s portrait to give the context. Instead, since we had to go to another room, you get a portrait of an elegant woman with only a blurry trace of Tom Wesselman’s “Quick sketch from a train (Italy) No. 2” to give away the location.
Her Friend, Adam, is a visual artist. His portrait will follow Andrea’s.
www.mbam.qc.ca/en/exhibitions/on-view/celeste-boursier-mo...
This photo is part of my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page www.flickr.com/groups/100strangers/
Je suis récemment allé au Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal. J’y ai terminé ma visite au Carré d’art contemporain pour voir l’œuvre de l’artiste français Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. Il s’agit d’une installation vivante et éphémère intitulée «From here to ear". Vous l’avez peut-être vu ailleurs dans le monde. C’est la dix-neuvième version de ce projet. Elle est toutefois présentée comme la plus grande et est spécifique à la salle du Carré d’art contemporain du Musée.
Pour décrire le tout brièvement, l'espace est transformé en volière occupé pour les oiseaux. Ils se perchent sur des guitares posées horizontalement sur des stands répartis dans la pièce. Des allées sont tracées pour les visiteurs. Les sons que les oiseaux produisent en se déplaçant sur les cordes sont traités et légèrement déphasés pour générer une musique ambiante.
Cette exposition a reçu une bonne publicité. Il y a une explication complète de l'artiste en vidéo sur le web du MBAM et beaucoup de photos en ligne. Je suis un peu jaloux des gens qui tombent sur cette installation sans explications préliminaires et aucunes préconceptions. Trop d'information en émousse l'impact. Une fois que vous avez vérifié comment le concept fonctionne, le principal intérêt réside en fait dans les oiseaux eux-mêmes.
Ce sont des diamants mandarins, une espèce de pinsons originaires d'Australie.
Il y avait cependant un oiseau que je ne pouvais pas identifier. Au moment où je suis entré dans cet espace, j’ai remarquai une femme assise sur le sol avec un ami. Ils semblaient tous deux absorber cet environnement. Je dirais qu'ils observaient les réactions des personnes autant que les oiseaux.
Au début, je pensais que l'un des oiseaux avait discrètement atterri sur la tête de la dame. Je les ai abordés et nous avons parlé brièvement. J’ai appris que son nom est Andrea et que lui se nomme Adam. Andrea avait une coiffure très spéciale. Une partie de ses cheveux épousaient la forme d'un nid tenu en place avec l'extrémité d'une branche d'un arbre de Noël et un peu de celle d’un cèdre. L'oiseau était une décoration.
Ils ont accepté que je prenne des photos d’eux. Je les ai cependant laissés profiter de l'installation et attendus jusqu'à ce qu'ils aient terminé leur visite avant de faire leurs portraits.
Andrea est originaire de Montréal et a étudié l'architecture et le design urbain. De ce que je comprends, une bonne partie de sa pratique concerne les espaces publics et la façon dont les humains interagissent et est souvent de nature temporaire ou conceptuelle. Je pourrais la décrire comme une urbaniste et militante sociale. Andréa était avait récemment revenue de l'étranger où elle avait participé à des projets collectifs. Montréal est son chez soi, son laboratoire et son terrain de jeux.
Elle m'a dit qu'en 2014 elle a contribué à réaliser une installation temporaire visant à donner aux arbres de Noël une seconde vie.
J’étais un peu dépité que la photographie soit interdite dans le Carré d’art contemporain. C’était cependant un mal pour un bien. J’aurais probablement essayé d’incorporer les guitares, les oiseaux et les visiteurs dans le portrait d'Andrea pour en indiquer le contexte. Au lieu de cela, puisque nous avons dû aller dans une autre pièce, vous obtenez un portrait d'une femme élégante avec seulement une trace floue de l’œuvre de Tom Wesselmann "Esquisse rapide d'un train (Italie) N ° 2" en arrière-plan pour trahir le lieu.
Son ami, Adam, est un artiste visuel.
Son portrait suivra celui d'Andrea.
www.mbam.qc.ca/expositions/a-laffiche/celeste-boursier-mo...
Cette photo fait partie de mon projet 100 Strangers (100 inconnus). Apprenez en plus sur ce type de projet et voyez les photos d’autres photographes à www.flickr.com/groups/100strangers/
explication de la photo précédente
www.flickr.com/photos/21362626@N04/5461494330/in/photostr...
voilà pourquoi on voit de l'herbe par la fenêtre
Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing Coupe with its doors open
- pioneered : 1952 Mercedes-Benz 300SL race car (W194)
- road-legal version: introduced in 1954 (W198).
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Click , &
Push F11 - Full - screen
Grossformat
MY Slide show
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© View LARGE on BLACK
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1952 nahm das Fahrzeug an den wichtigen Rennen des Jahres teil, gegen deutlich stärker motorisierte Gegner.
Erstmals hatte der neue SL bei der Mille Miglia Anfang Mai Geschwindigkeit und Zuverlässigkeit gezeigt und in diesem Langstreckenrennen den zweiten Platz erzielt.
Beim Preis von Bern gelang der Dreifachsieg. Das 24-Stunden-Rennen von Le Mans beendete der Rennsportwagen unerwartet mit einem Doppelsieg. Die Sieger hießen Hermann Lang und Fritz Rieß mit einem Gesamtdurchschnitt von 155,575 km/h, ein neuer Rekord in der Le-Mans-Historie. Zweite waren Theo Helfrich und Helmut Niedermayr. Ein Rennen am Nürburgring endete ebenfalls mit einem Dreifacherfolg. Bei der Carrera Panamericana in Mexiko siegte der 300 SL mit Karl Kling und Hans Klenk erneut – trotz eines Geiers, der durch die Windschutzscheibe flog.
Damit knüpfte Mercedes-Benz an die großen Erfolge im Rennsport vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg an.
1953 wurde an Prototypen unter anderem die Benzineinspritzung erprobt.
Zugelasen für die Straße: -- road-legal version
Fahrzeuggewicht nach DIN 70020
1295 kg
(Leergewicht mit 130 Liter Kraftstoff)
Kraftstoffverbrauch ca. 12-19 Liter / 100 km
Höchstgeschwindigkeit 235 km/h (3,64) -- 260 km/h (3,25)
Neupreis (Grundausstattung) 29.000 DM
BauzeitCoupé: 1954-1957
Roadster: 1957-1963
Motor
Zylinderanzahl und Bauform: Reihe 6
Gemischaufbereitung: Benzindirekteinspritzung
Schmierung: Trockensumpf mit separatem Öltank
Verdichtung: 8,55 : 1
Bohrung/Hub: 85 / 88 mm
Hubvolumen eff.: 2996 cm3
Leistung (Sportnockenwelle): 158 kw (215 PS)
Drehmoment max.: 280 mkg
Höchstdrehzahl: 6400 U/min
An erratic bloc of red granit with a surface of around 1.20m square. This petroglyph sits aside several other natural erratics towards the summit of a hill just inland from the coast in the Spanish Costa Brava. Imagine an English Dartmoor Tor or a French Sidobre cluster, and then let nature provide adjusted formation. The petyroglyph of this site is difficult to date, but may be either side of the Chalcolithic and so anywhere between 6,000 ybp and 3,800 ybp.
Medieval stigma of late prehistoric vestiges continued where Roman historians left off, with many megalithic relics subjected to vivid terms and conditions : stone circles became 'witches circles', dolmens became 'Hags chairs' or 'alters'... ; basins and varied alterations to stone and monolith became 'sacrificial stones'. The above 'sacrificial stone' is too small and has too rounded edges for one protagonist and his restless animal to stand without ridicule of slip. A subordinate position with the man on the ground and the animal standing above may not seem viable. Wooden platforms and relegating the monolith for smaller animals such as hens and rabbits may have worked, but with no other examples (that I am aware of) of a monolith carved with just such style of canals (no cups), it seems to be more productive to look elsewhere aside ideas of sacrifice for an explication.
Sacrificial stones did exist in the animistic late prehistoric and I provide a tryptic with three that seem to be adapted for the task (see below).
Rain water or selected water might have been 'spiritualised' by this ritual stone, with all of its canals collecting towards the lower middle. The neolithic was a time of abstraction. The canals may be understood to collect water for a series of principles, each principle riddling down to the same point, each apparently different symbolic element being part of the same greater whole. What may be the symbolic elements of this minimal surface of pecked and smoothed line? With just eight arranged lines, it could only be that the lines themselves retained symbolic information...
Strong lines form a peripheral square. When you leave the lower central 'water' collection point onto this peripheral carved lines, you will always come back, even after taking decisions to turn onto new outside paths with their new directions. This is a symbolic that may interest people who still head off from their croft from time to time. From these four main outer square paths, there are corners cut by diagonals, and this seems to be a second potential symbolic. The lower corner is cut on the inside of the square and the top left corner seems to include a deviation outside of the square. Stepping back : the paleolithic was peeled with wide pathways kept free by vast reindeer herds. Slow ice age vegetal growth also made it easier to manage open communication lines, with hilltop paths and the littoral of shore and river often free for movement - kept open by man and his desire for firewood and access. Whilst humans wandered and spread, they tended to keep to these great pathways. Post ice-age heat marked an increase in biomass. Mankind will have kept open key paths and intersections if only to assure solstice meetings. If the boarder canals of the petroglyph square represent these 'key paths', then the corner diagonals may simply be new paths into new territories - fresh lines and openings that remain in contact with past footpaths and ways. Finding new areas for exploitation was a defining issue for the neolithic, as the hunter gatherer loops of the Mesolithic atrophied to a halt, stuttered and found space to 'park'. The last wandering 'transport dragons' (see my photostream) may have craved the spiritual water from a profound religious stone to help them make the most difficult decision of their prehistories - to find land and to stop moving. This may have been their stone.
The central canals of this petroglyph cross the square itself. One line arrives in the middle of 'nowhere' (to the left), and the other finally curves to the distant top line of the square. Each of these lines may also have had symbolic function... The stone is on a high point inland from the sea and potentially above a key ritual landscape (see Photostream for issues that may have arisen from the geographies of a local Venus Hill). Whilst, some neolithic people were choosing to settle on land, others chose to migrate out to sea, with the Balearic Islands being akin to a cul-du-sac destination without adjacent roads - the line to the center left. A trader that engages the Mediterranean sea to arrive far away : to the south of Spain, 'Italy' or beyond (and found items of precious or adapted stone prove vast trading distances) might also see meaning in the longest central carved line. To climb to a high point on the landscape to ask for a small amount of 'spiritual' water from which to 'bless' his trusted objects and loved ones, to provide protection and strength : water that has passed over the ideas of movement to funnel over a bark of wood, sealed to the stone with clay, to drip or, during rain and storm, to pour into a waiting pot. Here the stone is a 'voyagers stone', a stone for new places, new habits, old trade routes, visits and time away. These canals are here only about movement and not about exact place or definition. This speculative insight may provide a keyhole into cups and rings. The canals are movement (even an abstraction of a geography that you can move over) and the cups are definition (place, people, objects and events).
With my explanation, the abstract lines of this stone have found the accurate armatures of real peoples lives and the issues of their time, whilst being flexible enough for a pre-Druidic spiritual leader to adjust for idiosyncrasy.
The stone is high upon the hill - difficult to find, but easy to find out about - both great voyagers and more modest movers mix and exchange thoughts and experiences. The spiritual leader (and one must also expect a sprinkling of retired travelers) is also a collator of data. His monolithic schema may be simple, but he also knows from his position high in the moist sea air, and from the generations of experience that came before him, that the great warm sea that extended from below also had its perimeter of sides, and that its corners could be cut, and that it too could be crossed and that Islands exist in its centre without path, and ... at one single point, there is a gap, and out of this gap, water flows into the endless cold that we know today as the Atlantic. These very exactitude being the principles that help demand these lines and no more or less.
For this image, I recorded an action for sixteen 50mm source shots which picked out the surface texture in a BW. I tried different variations to get PS to automate at the very least a central photomerge - each time the 1 gig file came through as a jumble with the program confused by the lichen and unable to see the canals, so the shot was blended by hand ... and not without problems. To access the site I had cycled cross country, climbing up from the east finding endlessly steep forestry tracks without hairpins. Maybe I should have rested more before shooting, but I didn't correctly adjust the height of the camera to the tilt of the rock and lost a couple of corner images. I should have walked away from the montage, but needed an overhead shot for these text ideas (the associated tryptic does not show the top corner very well). As a result, the lower right hand of the monolith has been digitally rebuilt and several low quality areas needed to be integrated. Whilst the final result is not a 'scientific' composite, it does offer a relatively accurate impression.
AJM 04.06.18