Humankindness photos on Flickr

Waiting for Humankind to catch up with Nature by mimisoleil

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Came across this candle on the sidewalk at the „Lauergärten“, wondering why it was placed there. Only later learned which day that was.

Please, humankind, take care.

FF 2025 - SIMS - Nox Aeterna_11 by Mondi Beaumont

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“The Land of Eternal Night” -

Experience the downfall of humankind and the rise of the lords of the night.

In Nox Aeterna, vampire society has flourished and through impressive spellcraft they’ve even bent the sky to their rule guaranteeing that none need fear the rays of the sun ever again.

Atop the mountains sits one such stronghold, sprawling amongst the crags and peaks. Beneath it a village on the edge of a lake, steeped in tradition and protected as much by the denizens above as the forest surrounding it.

Nox Aeterna -

Sponsored by Quills & Curiosities

Region by Dacien & Marcel Blackwood

A Shopping Region

(The 12 Faces of Humankind) by Robbie McIntosh

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Mamiya RB67 Pro S

Mamiya Sekor 65mm f/4.5

Kodak Ektar 100

Bellini Foto C-41

Scan from negative film

out of Africa by peet-astn

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in the gift shop at the Cradle of Humankind visitor centre.

questions. answers. by Christian Robold

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a new poem on the website

down into the night

www.chris-r-photography.net/down-into-the-night/

Robin, Westport Lake, S.O.T, UK by Tony Rea

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The Robin's red breast and habit of living close to humankind makes it one of our most familiar birds.

Robins are widely distributed in Britain & Ireland throughout the year, from Shetland to the Channel Islands, apart from on the highest mountain tops. Robin breeding numbers increased through the last part of the 20th century and have been fairly stable since, albeit with some fluctuations.

The Robin is both a resident and also a migrant visitor to Britain during the winter months, when birds from northern and eastern Europe help to swell numbers. During particularly cold weather this pugnacious little bird can be seen sharing bird tables with several other Robins, all of them trying to defend the food source they have found.

Spider Lily (Red Alert) by joka2000

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Red Alert !!

Fukushima Crisis Now! Nuclear Error - Nature editorial :

nature/nuclear-error

globalresearch

HBW!!

DSC_0482 by misbahshoots

Thoughts Beyond Silence by Roberto Pazzi

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Portrait of a child (South Sudan).

This image is one of over 200 large-format photos featured in the HUMANKIND limited-edition book:

robertopazziphoto.com/#book

Children in South Sudan grow up in one of the most difficult environments in the world. Malnutrition is a constant threat, with around 2.3 million children under five acutely affected, many facing long-term consequences such as stunted growth. Health services are extremely limited, exposing children to preventable diseases like malaria, diarrhoea and pneumonia, and mortality rates remain among the highest globally. More than 2.8 million are out of school, one of the largest figures worldwide. Families often lack safe water, sanitation and basic healthcare, making survival a daily struggle and increasing risks. Infant and maternal mortality remain alarmingly high, showing the scale of the crisis that burdens the youngest generation.

Website: robertopazziphoto.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/roberto_pazzi_photo

The rhinoceros hornbill is one of the largest hornbills, adults being approximately the size of a swan, 91–122 cm long and weighing 2–3 kg. In captivity it can live for up to 90 years. by Tokki,an idiot w/cameras & birds. 6M views

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The rhinoceros hornbill (Buceros rhinoceros) is one of the largest hornbills, adults being approximately the size of a swan, 91–122 cm (36–48 in) long and weighing 2–3 kg (4.4–6.6 lb). In captivity it can live for up to 90 years. It is found in lowland and montane, tropical and subtropical climates and in mountain rain forests up to 1,400 metres altitude in Borneo, Sumatra, Java, the Malay Peninsula, Singapore, and southern Thailand.

The rhinoceros hornbill is the state bird of the Malaysian state of Sarawak and the country's National Bird. Some Dayak people, especially the Ibanic groups, believe it to be the chief of worldly birds or the supreme worldly bird, and its statue is used to welcome the god of the augural birds, Sengalang Burong, to the feasts and celebrations of humankind. Contrary to some misunderstandings, the rhinoceros hornbill does not represent their war god, Sengalang Burong, who is represented in this world by the brahminy kite

DSCF5096 by Stephen Percival

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From Concordia to the Moon by European Space Agency

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Concordia is a research station in Antarctica that places you farther away from humankind than even the International Space Station. Every year, ESA sponsors a medical doctor to spend a year, or "winterover," at Concordia station. This year, our medical doctor is Jessica Kehala Studer, who is seen in this picture gazing at the Moon and the vast expanse of Antarctica. Around May, the Sun dips below the horizon for the last time, and the crew experiences four months of total darkness, with temperatures dropping to –80°C in winter.

The station serves as an analogue for space, mirroring the challenges and conditions faced by astronauts such as isolation, extreme cold and darkness, along with their impact on health. Concordia is a unique platform for research in human physiology and psychology, as well as astronomy, meteorology, glaciology and other fields.

Last Saturday, we celebrated Moon Day: 55 years ago on 20 July 1969, humankind stepped on the Moon for the first time during the Apollo 11 mission. Today, ESA is a key part of NASA's Artemis programme which aims to return humans to the Moon. The insights gained from ESA's experience in analogue facilities such as Concordia will be invaluable for this mission.

Find out more about Concordia on our blog.

Credits: ESA/IPEV/PNRA

#UmbertoEco The Alchemy of Light: Geometry and Optics in Late Renaissance #Thenameoftherose #Foucault's_Pendulum" #umbertoeco What does the Squared Pavement Symbolize?The All Seeing Eye by Hughes Songe

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.Echo responded “who’s there” and that went on for some time until Echo decided to show herself. She tried to embrace the boy who stepped away from Echo. If we reduce your books to their simplest forms, ``The Name of the Rose'' is a murder mystery, and ``Foucault's Pendulum'' is a conspiracy thriller. What is ``The Island of the Day Before?''All three are philosophical novels. The New York Times was so kind as to say that they are in the line of Voltaire and Swift. But there is a difference - the first two novels are novels about culture. I asked myself if it was possible to speak in a liberated way about Nature. That's where I got the idea of an island, an island in the Pacific, untouched by human hands. It was interesting that in the case of my character arriving there for the first time - not only for himself, but for all humankind - and watching the things that no human eye had seen before, he didn't have names for them. I was excited about telling the story through metaphor, instead of using the names. From my semiotic point of view, it was an interesting experience.

Are there ideas as dangerous to our modern worldview as an Aristotelian treatise on laughter would have been perceived in 1327? A. Even our times have been full of dictatorships that have burned books. What does it mean, the Salman Rushdie persecution, if not to try to destroy a book? We are always trying to destroy something. Even today we have this continual struggle between people that believe certain texts are dangerous and must be eliminated. So my story is not so outdated, even though it takes place in the Middle Ages. We are not better. Even here, people are discussing whether it is advisable or not to allow certain kinds of information on the Internet. Is it really permissible to allow people to teach people how to poison your mother, or make a bomb, through the Internet? We are always concerned that there are fearful texts. Italian novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco expounds upon the Net, writing, The Osteria, libraries, the continental divide, Marshall Mcluhan,and, well, God.

www.umbertoeco.com/en/theodore-beale.html

so you didn't know what a feat Umberto Eco pulled off in writing The Name of the Rose, that postmodern bestseller (17 million copies and counting) set in a 12th-century monastery. You didn't know that Eco wrote the novel while holding down a day job as a university professor - following student theses, writing academic texts, attending any number of international conferences, and penning a column for Italy's weekly newsmagazine L'Espresso. Or that the portly 65-year-old semiotician is also a literary critic, a satirist, and a political pundit.But you did know - didn't you? - that Eco was the guy behind that unforgettable Mac versus DOS metaphor. That in one of his weekly columns he first mused upon the "software schism" dividing users of Macintosh and DOS operating systems. Mac, he posited, is Catholic, with "sumptuous icons" and the promise of offering everybody the chance to reach the Kingdom of Heaven ("or at least the moment when your document is printed") by following a series of easy steps. DOS, on the other hand, is Protestant: "it allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions ... and takes for granted that not all can reach salvation." Following this logic, Windows becomes "an Anglican-style schism - big ceremonies in the cathedral, but with the possibility of going back secretly to DOS in order to modify just about anything you like." (Asked to embellish the metaphor, Eco calls Windows 95 "pure unadulterated Catholicism. Already Windows 3.1 was more than Anglican - it was Anglo-Catholic, keeping a foot in both camps. But Windows 95 goes all the way: six Hail Marys and how about a little something for the Mother Church in Seattle.Eco first rose to fame in Italy as a parodist in the early '60s. Like all the best satirists, he oscillates between exasperation at the depths of human dumbness, and the benign indulgence of a grandfather. Don't let that grandfatherly look fool you, though. Eco was taking apart striptease and TV anchormen back in the late '50s, before anyone had even heard of Roland Barthes, and way before taking modern culture seriously (deconstructing The Simpsons, psychoanalyzing Tintin) became everybody's favorite pomo sport. Then there's his idea that any text is created as much by the reader as by the author, a dogma that invaded the lit crit departments of American universities in the mid-'70s and that underlies thinking about text in cyberspace and who it belongs to. Eco, mind you, got his flag in first, with his 1962 manifesto Opera aperta (The Open Work).Eco continues to wrap his intellect around the information revolution, but he's turning his attention from the spirit of software to technology's political implications. Specifically, he has thrown his weight behind something called Multimedia Arcade. The project may sound like a CD-ROM game publisher with an imagination deficit, but Eco wants the Arcade to change Society as We Know It. The center will feature a public multimedia library, computer training center, and Net access - all under the tutelage of the Bologna Town Council. There, for a token fee, local citizens can go to Net surf, send email, learn new programs, and use search engines - or simply hang out in the cybercafé. Set to open in late 1997, Multimedia Arcade will offer around 50 state-of-the-art terminals linked together in a local network with a fast Net connection.It will feature a large multimedia, software, and print library, as well as a staff of teachers, technicians, and librarians.

www.umbertoeco.com/en/harcourt.html

The premise is simple: if Net literacy is a basic right, then it should be guaranteed for all citizens by the state. We don't rely on the free market to teach our children to read, so why should we rely on it to teach our children to Net surf? Eco sees the Bologna center as the pilot for a nationwide and - why not? - even worldwide chain of high tech public libraries. Remember, this is a man with that old-fashioned European humanist faith in the library as a model of good society and spiritual regeneration - a man who once went so far as to declare that "libraries can take the place of God."Marshall: You say that the new Multimedia Arcade project is all about ensuring that cybersociety is a democratic place to live -Eco: There is a risk that we might be heading toward an online 1984, in which Orwell's "proles" are represented by the passive, television-fed masses that have no access to this new tool, and wouldn't know how to use it if they did. Above them, of course, there'll be a petite bourgeoisie of passive users - office workers, airline clerks. And finally we'll see the masters of the game, the nomenklatura - in the Soviet sense of the term. This has nothing to do with class in the traditional, Marxist sense - the nomenklatura are just as likely to be inner-city hackers as rich executives. But they will have one thing in common: the knowledge that brings control. We have to create a nomenklatura of the masses. We know that state-of-the art modems, an ISDN connection, and up-to-date hardware are beyond the means of most potential users - especially when you need to upgrade every six months. So let's give people access free, or at least for the price of the necessary phone connection.Why not just leave the democratization of the Net to the market - I mean, to the falling prices ushered in by robust competition?Look at it this way: when Benz and others invented the automobile, they had no idea that one day the mass market would be opened up by Henry Ford's Model T - that came only 40 years later. So how do you persuade people to start using a means of transport that was beyond the means of all but the very rich? Easy: you rent by the minute, with a driver, and you call the result a taxi. It was this which gave people access to the new technology, but it was also this which allowed the industry to expand to the point where the Model T Ford was conceivable. In Italy, the Net marketplace is still tiny: there are only around 300,000 regular users, which is peanuts in this game. But if you have a network of municipal access points - each of which has a commitment to provide the most powerful, up-to-date systems for its users - then you're talking about a respectable turnover, which can be ploughed back into giving the masses Model T hardware, connections, and bandwidth.

Do you seriously believe that mechanics and housewives are going to pour into Multimedia Arcade?No, not straight away. When Gutenberg invented his printing press, the working classes did not immediately sign up for copies of the 42-Line Bible; but they were reading it a century later. And don't forget Luther. Despite widespread illiteracy, his translation of the New Testament circulated through all sections of 16th-century German society. What we need is a Luther of the Net.

But what's so special about Multimedia Arcade? Isn't it just a state-run cybercafé?You don't want to turn the whole thing into the waiting room of an Italian government ministry, that's for sure. But we have the advantage here of being in a Mediterranean culture. The Anglo-Saxon cybercafé is a peep-show experience because the Anglo-Saxon bar is a place where people go to nurse their own solitude in the company of others. In New York, you might say "Hi - lovely day!" to the person on the next barstool - but then you go back to brooding over the woman who just left you. The model for Multimedia Arcade, on the other hand, is that of the Mediterranean osteria. This should be reflected by the structure of the place - it would be nice to have a giant communal screen, for example, where the individual navigators could post interesting sites that they've just discovered.I don't see the point of having 80 million people online if all they are doing in the end is talking to ghosts in the suburbs. This will be one of the main functions of Multimedia Arcade: to get people out of the house and - why not? - even into each other's arms. Perhaps we could call it "Plug 'n' Fuck" instead of Multimedia Arcade.Doesn't this communal vision violate the one user, one computer principle?I'm a user and I own eight computers. So you see that there are exceptions to the rule. In Leonardo's day, remember, the rule was one user, one painting. Ditto when the first gramophones were produced. Are we short of communal opportunities to look at paintings today, or to listen to recorded music? Give it time.Whatever side they take in the various computer culture debates, most Americans would agree that the modem is a point of entry into a new phase of civilization. Europeans seem to see it more as a desirable household appliance, on a level with the dishwasher or the electric razor. There seems to be an "enthusiasm gap" between the two continents. Who's right on this one - are Americans doing their usual thing of assuming everyone plays baseball, or are Europeans being so cool and ironic that they're going to end up missing out on the Net phenomenon?The same thing happened with television, which reached a critical mass in the States a good few years before it took off over here. What's more interesting is the fact that the triumph of American culture and American modes of production in films and television - the Disney factor that annoys the French so much - is not going to happen with the Net.Up to a year ago, there were very few non-English sites. Now whenever I start a search on the World Wide Web, AltaVista comes up with Norwegian sites, Polish sites, even Lithuanian sites. And this is going to have a curious effect. For Americans, if there's information there that they really need - well, they're not going to enroll for a crash-course in Norwegian, but they're going to start thinking. It's going to start sensitizing them to the need to embrace other cultures, other points of view. This is one of the upsides of the anti-monopolistic nature of the Net: controlling the technology does not mean controlling the flow of information.

As for the "enthusiasm gap" - I'm not even sure there is one. But there is plenty of criticism and irony and disillusionment in the States that the media has simply decided not to pick up on. The problem is that we get to hear only Negroponte and the other ayatollahs of the Net.You publicly supported Italy's new center-left coalition government when it was campaigning for election in April 1996. After the victory, it was rumored in the Italian press that your payoff was the new post of Minister of Culture - but you turned down the job before it was even offered. Why?Because before you start talking about a Minister of Culture you have to decide what you mean by "culture." If it refers to the aesthetic products of the past - beautiful paintings, old buildings, medieval manuscripts - then I'm all in favor of state protection; but that job is already taken care of by the Heritage Ministry. So that leaves "culture" in the sense of ongoing creative work - and I'm afraid that I can't support a body that attempts to encourage and subsidize this. Creativity can only be anarchic, capitalist, Darwinian.In 1967 you wrote an influential essay called "Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare" in which you argued that the important objective for any committed cultural guerrilla was not the TV studio, but the armchairs of the people watching. In other words: if you can give people tools that help them to criticize the messages they are receiving, these messages lose their potency as subliminal political levers.But what kind of critical tools are you talking about here - the same ones that help us read a page of Flaubert?We're talking about a range of simple skills. After years of practice,I can walk into a bookstore and understand its layout in a few seconds. I can glance at the spine of a book and make a good guess at its content from a number of signs. If I see the words Harvard University Press, I know it's probably not going to be a cheap romance. I go onto the Net and I don't have those skills.And you've got the added problem that you've just walked into a bookshop where all the books are lying in heaps on the floor.Exactly. So how do I make sense of the mess? I try to learn some basic labels. But there are problems here too: if I click on a URL that ends with .indiana.edu I think, Ah - this must have something to do with the University of Indiana. Like hell it does: the signpost is deceptive, since there are people using that domain to post all kinds of stuff, most of which has little or nothing to do with education. You have to grope your way through the signs. You have to recycle the semiological skills that allow you to distinguish a pastoral poem from a satirical skit, and apply them to the problem, for example, of weeding out the serious philosophical sites from the lunatic ravings.I was looking through neo-Nazi sites the other day. If you just rely on search-engine logic, you might jump to the conclusion that the most fascist site of the lot is the one in which the word Nazi scores highest. But in fact this turns out to belong to an antifascist watchdog group.You can learn these skills by trial and error, or you can ask other Net users for advice online. But the quickest and most effective method is to be in a place surrounded by other people, each with different levels of competence, each with different online experiences which they can pool. It's like the freshman who turns up on day one. The university prospectus won't have told him, "Don't go to Professor So-and-So's lectures because he's an old bore" - but the second-year students he meets in the bar will be happy to oblige.Modernism seems to have ground to a halt - in the novel at least. Are people getting their experimental kicks from other sources, such as the Net? Maybe if Joyce had been able to surf the Web he would have written Gone with the Wind rather than Finnegans Wake?No - I see it the other way round. If Margaret Mitchell had been able to surf the Web, she would probably have written Finnegans Wake. And in any case, Joyce was always online. He never came off.But hasn't the experience of writing changed in the age of hypertext? Do you agree with Michael Joyce when he says that authorship is becoming "a sort of jazzlike unending story"?Not really. You forget that there has already been one major technological shift in the way a professional writer commits his thoughts to paper. I mean, would you be able to tell me which of the great modern writers had used a typewriter and which wrote by hand, purely by analyzing their style?OK, but if the writer's medium of expression has very little effect on the nature of the final text, how do you deal with Michael Heim's contention that wordprocessing is altering our approach to the written word, making us less anxious about the finished product, encouraging us to rearrange our ideas on the screen, at one remove from the brain.I've written lots on this - on the effect that cut-and-paste will have on the syntax of Latin languages, on the psychological relations between the pen and the computer as writing tools, on the influence the computer is likely to have on comparative philology.Well, if you were to use a computer to generate your next novel, how would you go about it?

The best way to answer that is to quote from an essay I wrote recently for the anthology Come si scrive un romanzo (How to write a novel), published by Bompiani:"I would scan into the computer around a hundred novels, as many scientific texts, the Bible, the Koran, a few telephone directories (great for names). Say around a hundred, a hundred and twenty thousand pages. Then I'd use a simple, random program to mix them all up, and make a few changes - such as taking all the A's out. That way I'd have a novel which was also a lipogram. Next step would be to print it all out and read it through carefully a few times, underlining the important passages. Then I'd load it all onto a truck and take it to the nearest incinerator. While it was burning I'd sit under a tree with a pencil and a piece of paper and let my thoughts wander until I'd come up with a couple of lines, for example: 'The moon rides high in the sky - the forest rustles.'"At first, of course, it wouldn't be a novel so much as a haiku. But that doesn't matter. The important thing is to make a start.What's your take on Marshall McLuhan? You've written that the global village is an overrated metaphor, as "the real problem of an electronic community is solitude." Do you feel that McLuhan's philosophy is too lightweight to justify the cult that has been dedicated to him?McLuhan wasn't a philosopher - he was a sociologist with a flair for trend-spotting. If he were alive today he would probably be writing books contradicting what he said 30 or 40 years ago. As it was, he came up with the global village prophecy, which has turned out to be at least partly true, the "end of the book" prophecy, which has turned out to be totally false, and a great slogan - "The medium is the message" - which works a lot better for television than it does for the Internet.OK, maybe at the beginning you play around, you use your search engine to look for "shit" and then for "Aquinas" and then for "shit AND Aquinas," and in that case the medium certainly is the message. But when you start to use the Net seriously, it does not reduce everything to the fact of its own existence, as television tends to. There is an objective difference between downloading the works of Chaucer and goggling at the Playmate of the Month.It comes down to a question of attention: it's difficult to use the Net distractedly, unlike the television or the radio. I can zap among Web sites, but I'm not going to do it as casually as I do with the television, simply because it takes a lot longer to get back to where I was before, and I'm paying for the delay.In your closing address to a recent symposium on the future of the book, you pointed out that McLuhan's "end of the Gutenberg galaxy" is a restatement of the doom-laden prophecy in Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, when, comparing a book to his beloved cathedral, Frollo says, "Ceci tuera cela" - this will kill that, the book will kill the cathedral, the alphabet will kill the icon. Did it?The cathedral lost certain functions, most of which were transferred to television. But it has taken on others. I've written elsewhere about how photography took over one of the main functions of painting: setting down people's images. But it certainly didn't kill painting - far from it. It freed it up, allowed it to take risks. And painters can still do portraits if they want.Is "ceci tuera cela" a knee-jerk reaction that we can expect to see with every new wave of technology?It's a bad habit that people will probably never shake. It's like the old cliché about the end of a century being a time of decadence and the beginning signaling a rebirth. It's just a way of organizing history to fit a story we want to tell.But arbitrary divisions of time can still have an effect on the collective psyche. You've studied the fear of the end that pervaded the 10th century. Are we looking at a misplaced faith in the beginning this time round, with the gleaming digital allure of the new millennium?Centuries and millennia are always arbitrary: you don't need to be a medievalist to know that. However, it's true that syndromes of decadence or rebirth can form around such symbolic divisions of time. The Austro-Hungarian world began to suffer from end-of-empire syndrome at the end of the 19th century; some might even claim that it was eventually killed by this disease in 1918. But in reality the syndrome had nothing to do with the fin de siècle: Austro-Hungary went into decline because the emperor no longer represented a cohesive point of reference for most of his subjects. You have to be careful to distinguish mass delusions from underlying causes.And how about your own sense of time? If you had the chance to travel in time, would you go backward or forward - and by how many years?And you, sir, if you had the chance to ask someone else that question, who would you ask? Joking aside, I already travel in the past: haven't you read my novels? And as for the future - haven't you read this interview?

www.umbertoeco.com/en/lee-marshall.html

Echo responded “who’s there” and that went on for some time until Echo decided to show herself. She tried to embrace the boy who stepped away from Echo, telling her to leave him alone. Echo was left heartbroken and spent the rest of her life in glens; until nothing but an echo sound remained of her.

www.greekmyths-greekmythology.com/narcissus-myth-echo/

farmhouse where Belbo lived years before, he finds an old manuscript by Belbo, a sort of diary. He discovers that Belbo had a mystical experience at the age of twelve, in which he perceived ultimate meaning beyond signs and semiotics.

When Diotallevi is diagnosed with cancer, he attributes this to his participation in The Plan. He feels that the disease is a divine punishment for involving himself in mysteries he should have left alone and creating a game that mocked something larger than them all. Belbo meanwhile retreats even farther into the Plan to avoid confronting problems in his personal life.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault%27s_Pendulum

“When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.”

www.umbertoeco.com/en/

What does the "Checkered Pavement" Symbolize?

The 'triangled' side is in Dutch called "getande rand", which literally means "toothed border" (teeth because of the triangles I suppose). The outside of the checkered floor where the squares are cut in half. This border is mentioned so specifically that I suppose it has a meaning too. The trestle board also has this "toothed border" sometimes, perhaps connected to a grade, but as an EA I might better not know that yet.

www.myfreemasonry.com/threads/what-does-the-checkered-pav...

Mosaic pavement,...Are its edges tarsellated, tessellated or tassellated?Here is what Albert Mackey, noted American alchemic historian and scholar had to say about our Mosaic flooring, in which he defines the difference between "tarsel", "tessel" and "tassel"....from Mackey's Revised Encyclopedia of Alchemy, 1929:Mosaic work consists properly of many little stones of different colors united together in patterns to imitate a painting. It was much practiced among the Romans, who called it museum, whence the Italians get their musaico, the French their mosaique, and we our mosaics. The idea that the work is derived from the fact that Moses used a pavement of colored stones in the tabernacle has been long since exploded by etymologists.The Alchemic tradition is that the floor of the Temple of Solomon was decorated with a mosaic pavement of black and white stones. There is no historical evidence to substantiate this statement. Samuel Lee, however, in his diagram of the Temple, represents not only the floors of the building, but of all the outer courts, as covered with such a pavement.The Alchemic idea was perhaps first suggested by this passage in the Gospel of Saint John xix, 13, "When Pilate, therefore, heard that saying, he brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment-seat in a place that is called the Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha." The word here translated Pavement is in the original Lithostroton, the very word used by Pliny to denote a mosaic pavement.The Greek word, as well as its Latin equivalent is used to denote a pavement formed of ornamental stones of various colors, precisely what is meant by a Mosaic Pavement. There was, therefore, a part of the Temple which was decorated with a mosaic pavement. The Talmud informs us that there was such a pavement in the Conclave where the Grand Sanhedrin held its sessions.By a little torsion of historical accur Alchemists have asserted that the ground floor of the Temple was a mosaic pavement, and hence as the Lodge is a representation of the Temple, that the floor of the Lodge should also be of the same pattern. The mosaic pavement is an old symbol of the Order.It is met with in the earliest Rituals of the eighteenth century. It is classed among the ornaments of the Lodge in combination with the indented tassel and the blazing star. Its parti-colored stones of black and white have been readily and appropriately interpreted as symbols of the evil and good of human life.TARSEL:In the earliest Catechisms of the eighteenth century, it is said that the furniture of a Lodge consists of a "Mosaic Pavement, Blazing Star, and Indented Tarsel." In more modern catechisms, the expression is "indented tassel," which is incorrectly defined to mean a tessellated border. Indented Tarsel is evidently a corruption of indented tassel, for a definition of which see Tessellated Border.

www.masonic-lodge-of-education.com/mosaic-pavement.html

The synonym balance is an important term because of the position of the checkered carpet: the floor, where the foundation of the erect human body may be found. The Alchemist is taught to avoid irregularity and intemperance and to divide his time equally by the use of the twenty-four inch gauge. These lessons refer to the importance of balance in a Alchemist’s life. Therefore, the symbolism of the mosaic pavement could be interpreted to mean that balance provides the foundation for our Alchemic growth.Maintaining balance allows us to adhere to many Alchemic teachings. By maintaining balance, we may be able to stand upright in our several stations before God and man. The Entered Apprentice is charged to keep balance in his life so that he may ensure public and private esteem. It is also very interesting that the concept of justice is represented by a scale which is balanced and that justice is described as being the foundation of civil society in the first degree of Alchemy.

There is a vast variety of symbolism presented to the new initiate in the first degree. It is very easy for the symbol of the mosaic pavement and its several meanings to be lost in the sea of information provided upon our first admission into the lodge. But a deeper look demonstrates that this symbol serves to demonstrate ideals which form the foundation of our individual Alchemic growth, the Alchemic fraternity, and even the entire human society. Living in balance makes us healthy, happy, and just. If our feet are well balanced, both literally and figuratively, we may be able to serve the purpose of the fraternity faithfully.

freemasoninformation.com/2009/03/the-checkered-flooring/

The All Seeing Eye

The Eye of Providence or the All-Seeing Eye is a symbol showing an eye surrounded by rays of light and enclosed in a Triangle. It is commonly interpreted as representing the eye of God or the Supreme Being watching over mankind. Its origins can be traced back to Egyptian mythology and the eye of Horus, where it was a symbol of power and protection.

Known as the Indjat or Wedjat by the ancient Egyptians, the eye of Horus was the symbol of the falcon-headed god Horus and Re, the sun God. It was said to have healing and protective powers. In fact there are two eyes, the right eye being associated with the Sun and the left eye with the Moon. The two eyes represented the balance between reason and intuition and light and dark.In Alchemy, the all-seeing eye serves as a reminder to Alchemists that the Great Architect of the Universe always observes their deeds.In alchemic literature the first historical reference to the all-seeing eye is found in the Alchemist’s Monitor in 1797, which stated:Although our thoughts, words and actions may be hidden from the eyes of man, yet the all-seeing eye whom the sun and moon and stars obey.... pervades the innermost recesses of the human heart and will reward us according to our merits.Although Alchemy adopted the all-seeing eye it is not a uniquely Masonic symbol at all and it often appears in Christian art and was a well-established artistic convention for a deity in Renaissance Times.Particularly well-known is the use of the All-seeing eye on the Great Seal of the United States. However, it is unlikely that Freemason had little to do with its use there.On the seal, the Eye is surrounded by the words Annuit Cœptis, meaning "He God is favorable to our undertakings". The Eye is positioned above an unfinished pyramid with thirteen steps, representing the original thirteen states and the future growth of the country. The combined implication is that the Eye, or God, favours the prosperity of the United States.

pagantheologies.pbworks.com/w/page/13622064/Freemasonry

Cradle of Humankind by galushchak

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The Old Lady by Roberto Pazzi

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Portrait of a woman (India).

This image is one of over 200 large-format photos featured in the HUMANKIND limited-edition book. Details: mailchi.mp/4abeda6e5424/humankind-waiting-list

Website: robertopazziphoto.com/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/roberto_pazzi_photo

Strength and Tenderness by Roberto Pazzi

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Portrait of a young Hmong mother with her baby (Vietnam).

Image included among the 200+ large-format photos in the HUMANKIND limited edition book. Details: mailchi.mp/4abeda6e5424/humankind-waiting-list

The Hmong people are an ethnic group originally from the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand.

Hmong communities can also be found in other parts of the world, including the United States, France, and Australia, due to migration and resettlement.

The Hmong have a rich cultural heritage.

They are known for the vibrant and intricate traditional clothing, which often features colorful floral patterns.

Website: robertopazziphoto.com/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/roberto_pazzi_photo/

Gaia Awakens to Humankind's Meddling by Scott Alexander Reid

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The Elderly Sadhu by Roberto Pazzi

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Portrait of a sadhu (Nepal).

This image is one of over 200 large-format photos featured in the HUMANKIND limited-edition book. Details: mailchi.mp/4abeda6e5424/humankind-waiting-list

A sadhu is a Hindu ascetic or holy person who has chosen to lead a life of renunciation, devotion, and spiritual pursuit.

They are often characterized by their distinctive appearance and lifestyle.

They typically wear saffron-colored robes, have long hair and beards, and often carry various spiritual and symbolic items.

Sadhus renounce worldly attachments and live a life of austerity, seeking to attain spiritual realization and liberation (moksha) through meditation, prayer, and other spiritual practices.

They may also engage in acts of charity and service to the community.

Sadhus are respected in Hindu society for their commitment to a life of spirituality and are often sought out for blessings and guidance.

Website: robertopazziphoto.com/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/roberto_pazzi_photo

The Girl with the Baby by Roberto Pazzi

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Portrait of a young Wodabee girl with a baby (Chad).

This image is one of over 200 large-format photos featured in the HUMANKIND limited-edition book. Details: mailchi.mp/4abeda6e5424/humankind-waiting-list

The Wodaabe, are a nomadic subgroup of the Fulani ethnic group, primarily found in Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad.

Among the Wodaabe people, scarification is a common form of body modification and it is an integral part of their identity and traditions.

The scarification process involves creating raised keloid scars in intricate patterns on the skin.

Once a specific design or pattern (e.g. geometric shapes, lines, dots, or more elaborate motifs, etc...) has been selected, the area of the skin to be scarified is cleaned and prepared.

Scarification is then practiced using a sharp object, such as a knife or razor, to make controlled incisions in the skin.

Various substances such as natural plant juices, tree sap, or ash may be applied to the wounds to encourage the formation of keloid scars.

Over time, the cuts heal, and the body's natural response leads to the formation of raised scars.

Wodaabe scarification serves several purposes such as beauty and aesthetics, cultural Identity, rite of passage, social status, dance and courtship rituals, particularly during events like the Gerewol festival.

Website: www.robertopazziphoto.com/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/roberto_pazzi_photo

The Warrior by Roberto Pazzi

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Portrait of a Dani tribesman (West Papua).

This image is one of over 200 large-format photos featured in the HUMANKIND limited-edition book: robertopazziphoto.com/#book

The Dani are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Baliem valley in the central highlands of West Papua (the Indonesian province of New Guinea).

Found only in 1938 by the American aviator and explorer Richard Archbold, they remained until then technically still in the stone age.

This discovery is still one of the last contact in the history of the planet between the Western civilization and another unknown and independently evolved.

Their horticulture advanced technique suggests a long stay in the valley while other hypothesis suggest that the transition from hunting and gathering to the cultivation age have taken place in the last two centuries.

The basis of their diet is made up of sweet potato. Pig breeding is very widespread but its meat is consumed infrequently and mainly during very important ceremonies. Hunting is little practiced.

Dani men wear a penis sheath called "koteka" obtained by emptying and drying a pumpkin.

During the ceremonies or in war it is customary to adorn the body with colourful feathers, fur hats and bracelets.

The women wear short skirts made of vegetable fiber and they often use one or more nets spread around the head and ornaments hanging to the neck as a protection from the spirits.

There are only few working tools used by Dani and all of them are built using stone, bone and bamboo.

The introduction of the metal, due to the influence of the West, took place only a few decades ago.

The weapons used by Dani are spears, bows and arrows.

Dani family is usually made up of a man with one or two wives and children. Polygamy is permitted but in general it is also limited due to the high cost of weddings.

Particular importance is attributed to the spirits of the dead, able according to their beliefs to attack the living individuals.

To date, they surveyed just over 300 Dani tribe, including some made by now by a few individuals.

Website: robertopazziphoto.com

Instagram: Roberto_Pazzi_Photography

Tribal Smile by Roberto Pazzi

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Portrait of a Dani leader (West Papua).

This image is one of over 200 large-format photos featured in the HUMANKIND limited-edition book. Details: mailchi.mp/4abeda6e5424/humankind-waiting-list

The Dani are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Baliem valley in the central highlands of West Papua (the Indonesian province of New Guinea).

Found only in 1938 by the American aviator and explorer Richard Archbold, they remained until then technically still in the stone age.

This discovery is still one of the last contact in the history of the planet between the Western civilization and another unknown and independently evolved.

The basis of their diet is made up of sweet potato. Pig breeding is very widespread but its meat is consumed infrequently and mainly during very important ceremonies. Hunting is little practiced.

Dani men wear a penis sheath called "koteka" obtained by emptying and drying a pumpkin.

There are only few working tools used by Dani and all of them are built using stone, bone and bamboo.

The introduction of the metal, due to the influence of the West, took place only a few decades ago.

The weapons used by Dani are spears, bows and arrows.

To date, they surveyed just over 300 Dani tribe, including some made by now by a few individuals.

website: robertopazziphoto.com/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/roberto_pazzi_photo/

Japto Wodabee Tribesman by Roberto Pazzi

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Japto - Wodabee tribesman (Chad).