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سرقت النوم من داخل عيوني
و خليت السهر فيها مؤبد
أقاسي الشوق ما تغمض جفوني
و نار الصبر في قلبي توقد
و من لي من صدودك ينصفوني
اذا باشكي لهم او باتودد
و انا ما ارضى بحبك يعذلوني
اقضي العمر بين البين و الصد
نجوم الليل عنك خبروني
حبيبك بالهوى مثلك و أزيد
و أنا حبيت حبك يا جنوني
على حبي جميع الناس تشهد
غرامك حل في كني و كوني
و قيدني و أنا اللي ما اتقيد
خلاص ارحم و خفف لي شجوني
فموتي صار في حكم المؤكد
Title by: G. K. Chesterton
Model: A friend Mashalla would be NICE
Explore #214 Feb 18, 2009
To endure myself may be the hardest task in the universe. I cannot hire a wise man or any other intellect to solve it for me. There's no writ of inquest or calling of witness to provide answers. No servant or disciple can dress the wound. I dress it myself or continue bleeding for all to see.
Frank Herbert
48/365.
There are two people in my house who have a bit of a candy problem. Both these individuals, coincidentally, lack a Y chromosome. Stuff like this doesn't last long in our house. You bring home a bag of Skittles, and the two girls will make short work of them before you can even unload the rest of the groceries.
I can see why, when given a chance, any self-respecting piece of candy would attempt escape when the opportunity arises (hell, I almost had to clone some in for this shot 'cause my "assistant" kept eating the props!)
The Mini-Me's (who got my version of the "Y chromo") on the other hand, take after their Fah-zha and dig the chocolate. That's what I'm talking 'bout, Willis.
It's genetic boys, just like the dashing good looks, razor-sharp intellect, and all-around awesome-ness. Don't fight it… ;)
p.s. I got up this morning with what felt like razor blades in my throat. I think I have strep throat (lab results in the a.m.), so this photo was a challenge in more ways than one, I just wanted to go to bed. That said, any c&c (+ve or -ve) is surely appreciated. "Set pieces" and strobist lighting are not my forte.
When God created man in His image, He created a measure; the human perception of the world corresponds to God's creative intention. Man by definition is a center, or "the center" in a given universe; not by accident, but in virtue of the very nature of Being, and this is why that which is large or small for man is large or small in the divine intention; man perceives things as they present themselves in the divine Intellect.
And that is why the world of the indefinitely small, as well as the world of the indefinitely
large, is as it were forbidden to man, who should not want to disproportionately enlarge the small or to disproportionately reduce the large. Man ought to feel that there is no advantage or happiness in such enterprises; and he would feel it if he had maintained a relationship with the Absolute, or if this relationship were sincere and sufficient.
He who is really at peace with God is free from all unhealthy curiosity, if one may say so; he lives, like a well-guarded child, in the blessed garden of a grace that does not forsake him; the Creator knows the best place for the creature, and He knows what is good for man.
Oṃ Gaṇeśāya Namaḥ,
Oṃ Gan Gaṇapatayē Namaḥ
" Ganesha ... is one of the best-known and most widely worshipped deities in the Hindu pantheon. His image is found throughout India and Nepal. Hindu sects worship him regardless of affiliations. Devotion to Ganesha is widely diffused and extends to Jains, Buddhists, and beyond India. [He} is widely revered as the Remover of Obstacles and more generally as the Lord of Beginnings, patron of arts and sciences, and the deva of intellect and wisdom ... ." Wikipedia. For more about Sri Ganesha: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesha
The Provost's House in Trinity College is a scene familiar to most Dubliners, though not all know its purpose or history. An imposing residence that housed some notable intellects in its time, and no doubt was the scene of many discussions and debates.
Photographer: Robert French
Collection: Lawrence Photograph Collection
Date: Circa 1865-1914
NLI Ref: L_IMP_2520
You can also view this image, and many thousands of others, on the NLI’s catalogue at catalogue.nli.ie
A supervillain or supervillainess is a variant of the villain character type, commonly found in comic books, action movies and science fiction in various media. They are sometimes used as foils to superheroes and other heroes. Whereas superheroes often wield fantastic powers, the supervillain possesses commensurate powers and abilities so that he can present a daunting challenge to the hero. Even without actual physical, mystical, superhuman or superalien powers, the supervillain often possesses a genius intellect that allows him to draft complex schemes or create fantastic devices. Another common trait is possession of considerable resources to help further his aims. Many supervillains share some typical characteristics of real world dictators, mobsters, and terrorists and often have aspirations of world domination or universal leadership. Superheroes and supervillains often mirror each other in their powers, abilities, or origins. In some cases, the only difference between the two is that the hero uses his extraordinary powers to help others, while the villain uses his powers for selfish, destructive or ruthless purposes.
Numerology
Female Mountain Bluebird (Sialia curricoides) associated with Box 13 of Section 4 of Beaver Lake Road in Lake Country, BC.
As mentioned in the discussion of Trisk's name, the name Triska actually does have some history.
Here's what I found at www.ask-oracle.com/baby-name/triska/
"Triska is a unique and intriguing name with Greek origins, meaning "three" or "third." Though not widely used, it offers a distinct and memorable choice for parents seeking a name with historical and cultural depth. Its connection to the number three holds symbolic significance in various cultures, often representing completeness, balance, and harmony.
Triska is generally perceived as a strong and sophisticated name, evoking feelings of intellect and individuality. While its pronunciation may require some clarification, it is easy to write and remember.
Though not prevalent in popular culture, Triska's connection to the number three could spark creative interpretations in literature or art. It is a name that stands out, offering a unique and meaningful option for those seeking a name with historical and cultural resonance."
Passion, dullness, fury, sadness,
or fear should not always be owned.
They are short circumstances for now,
for the human intellect when at loss.
There are days as it comes and goes,
nothing that shifts on and off will remain.
Valerie
High intellect and an intriguing level of curiosity keep these sea dwellers popular with the diving community.
The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.
~ Paul Valéry
Taken at Fine Arts Institution, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
There are way too many roads begging to be followed. That's my conclusion anyway, after a ride down Nevada I-95. The trouble is, you can't follow them all, even when the destination appears to be as close to "heaven on earth" as you can get to in a car. This particular dirt road had a mighty powerful call. If it weren't for the Intellects awaiting us in Las Vegas, we'd most likely have been swallowed up by Mt. Whitney--that's her standing proudly in the distance.
Somewhere in Nevada
.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.”
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 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.
History
The John Rogers who bought Riverhill in 1840 was an only child, with a modest fortune, and a fine intellect. He became a classics scholar, a scientist and a friend of Charles Darwin. He was one of the first members of the Royal Horticultural Society and a patron of the plant collectors of the day.
He chose Riverhill because its sheltered situation offered an ideal lime free hillside where he could hope to establish newly introduced trees and shrubs. From his garden notebook, it can be seen that planting started in 1842. Subsequent generations, continued the planting and in 1910 Colonel John Middleton Rogers created what is now known as ‘The Wood Garden’ a fine collection of Japanese Maples, Rhododendrons and Azaleas. His wife, the infamous Muriel, created many additions including the now hidden Rock Gardens.
Until the beginning of the 2nd World War, eight full time gardeners kept Riverhill looking immaculate. Since the war years, however, a shortage of manpower and a lack of money has meant that the garden was allowed to deteriorate, with many parts of the original planting lost to everyday use and visitors.
Today, four generations of the Rogers family live at Riverhill,
The estate is managed by Edward Rogers (Great-great-great-grandson of the John Rogers who bought Riverhill in 1840) and his wife, Sarah.
"Vivid images are like a beautiful melody that speaks
to you on an emotional level.
It bypasses your logic centers and even your intellect
and goes to a different part of the brain."
- Steven Bochco
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Thanks to all for 13,000.000+ views and kind comments ... !
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History
The John Rogers who bought Riverhill in 1840 was an only child, with a modest fortune, and a fine intellect. He became a classics scholar, a scientist and a friend of Charles Darwin. He was one of the first members of the Royal Horticultural Society and a patron of the plant collectors of the day.
He chose Riverhill because its sheltered situation offered an ideal lime free hillside where he could hope to establish newly introduced trees and shrubs. From his garden notebook, it can be seen that planting started in 1842. Subsequent generations, continued the planting and in 1910 Colonel John Middleton Rogers created what is now known as ‘The Wood Garden’ a fine collection of Japanese Maples, Rhododendrons and Azaleas. His wife, the infamous Muriel, created many additions including the now hidden Rock Gardens.
Until the beginning of the 2nd World War, eight full time gardeners kept Riverhill looking immaculate. Since the war years, however, a shortage of manpower and a lack of money has meant that the garden was allowed to deteriorate, with many parts of the original planting lost to everyday use and visitors.
Today, four generations of the Rogers family live at Riverhill,
The estate is managed by Edward Rogers (Great-great-great-grandson of the John Rogers who bought Riverhill in 1840) and his wife, Sarah.
Number: CT-4554/1606
Name: Sakana
Rank: Lieutenant
Expertise: Tactics, melee weapons
Weapons: DC-17m, beskade (mandalorian sword)
Equipment: Katarn armor, macrobinoculars, EMP grenades, kama, half cape
It was a miracle that we did survive the fight with Durge on Corellia. I can’t even remember much, despite running very, very fast and trowing as many EMPs as possible, to confuse this monster. We made it, but this battle has shown that we are in need of much, much more man- and firepower. Other than that, Corellia was a battlefield just to my taste. Cities, factories, urban warfare. That’s what an ARC is made for. Apparently, we managed to bring that across to our superiors, as I was promoted and all my requests for gear and a new recruit were granted. I’ll do my best to fill my new role as Lieutenant properly and be a good example for the men that now form Mizu Squad. And I’ll keep them alive, no matter the threat of monsters like Durge.
Number: CT-7007/2828
Name: Koi
Rank: Private
Expertise: Scouting, explosives, lock picking, stand up comedy
Weapons: DC-15, E-60R rocket launcher
Koi’s sharp eye and quick thinking have proven to be a life saving asset on Corellia for both, me and the civilians around. He’s a capable scout as well as demolitions expert with more intellect behind both those skills than I first imagined. By now, I put a lot of trust in him. After our mission on Corellia, his request for a personal rocket launcher, which he handed in when we came back from Vandos, was finally granted. We could have used it against Durge, for sure. Koi cares for it like it is his baby and I am sure we can expect the next mission to be much more explosive than the previous ones.
Number: CT-9004/7755
Name: Mag’ro
Rank: Private
Expertise:
Weapons: T-21B Target Rifle, tactical headlamp
Mag’ro is our newest addition to the squad, after we rescued him from the minefield inside the foundry complex. He is a silent fellow, but careful in his movements and a surprisingly fast runner, considering he escaped a crab droid on foot. And, by the Force, running has proven to be essential on Corellia. Mag’ro had no chance to prove his abilities to me, yet, but I give him the benefit of the doubt. If only half of what I heard is true, he’ll serve the squad well. His weapon of choice tells a lot about his mindset: Focused on the target and ready to throw a big punch. I like it.
_______________________
Here's my updated squad for mission 18 of the 253rd Elite Legion.
When the heart has acquired stillness, it will look upon the heights and depths of knowledge , and the intellect, once quieted, will be given to hear wonderful things from God.
Hesychios the Martyr
“Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.” - Peter De Vries
Aaron and myself have decided to attempt the Seven Deadly Sins series - and today (somewhat appropriately) we chose Gluttony.
I have never felt so full in all my life - me, Aaron and my mum, dad and bro all went out to a thai resturant and ate so so so so much, I think we are both about to pop!! My dad was going to pay, but Aaron devised a plan to pay the bill before my dad got there, he's so lovely!! So using our cunning intellect and numerous "bathroom trips" and credit-card-to-foot passing under the table, we sorted it all out and I've never seen my dad more surprised! It was such a lovely night.
Canoing was completely awesome - it was perfect. The sky was blue and we paddled (or should I say I paddled!!) out to the middle of the lake which was completely blue and serene and lay on our backs and fell asleep there. It was so surreal, I loved it.
Aaron is asleep behind me with his laptop on his chest, hand poised to post his image, but I don't think he's gonna make it... so I'm gonna go climb in there with him!
Goodnight Flickr!
<3
99/365
....in un mondo che libero non è
The courage to be free , in a world that isn't free
Cavalli selvaggi a Pizzo d'Evigno , Liguria
....l'intelletto annulla il fato. Finché uno pensa è libero...( Ralph Waldo Emerson )
Libertà significa responsabilità. Ecco perché molti la temono
( George Bernard Shaw )
Freedom means responsability. That's why a lot of people fear it.
..Intellect defeats fate. Until a person thinks, is free...
*Working Towards a Better World
It is a happy talent to know how to play. Ralph Waldo Emerson
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. Carl Jung
My childhood may be over, but that doesn’t mean playtime is. Ron Olson
It’s better to play than do nothing. Confucious
Deep meaning lies often in childish play. Johann Friedrich von Schille
Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions. Mark Twain
Play keeps us vital and alive. It gives us an enthusiasm for life that is irreplaceable. Without it, life just doesn’t taste good. Lucia Capocchione
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. Kahlil Gibran
Almost all creativity involves purposeful play. Abraham Maslow
Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity. Kay Redfield Jamison
Know this 'rich' man, a prosperous dealer
A procurer and supplier
Of goods essential and rare
To the people near and dear
And to his villagers in general.
He did his job with a zeal
Genuine not ceremonial,
Putting a penny in every deal
To return with two, excelling
All his counterparts in business
Day by day, his purse did swell
As did his belly with cake so well
Day and night his mind pursued
And intellect worked, where he could
Find his profit tenfold or more.
Day by day grew his shop
In girth and worth this 'rich' man atop
Stood, in his village esteemed
As the wise, pious and famous
Businessman in all praise.
Bought he fields and good gardens
Built a house high and lovely,
A mansion with rubble walls
And furnished well to suit the style
Of elegant men, not of rank and file
But all his care stood about
His shop the money brewing grot
And all his worries wandered round
The slew of servants, hounds
Who wag their tails to munch his fund
Household servants put he in
Locked the gate and kept the key
In his pocket, walked with a fake grin
To his shop, his routine every day
Greeting those he met on the way
Grew he rich as years rolled
And his thirst for money strolled
After pursuits new and pastures fresh
Which put in his hands bags of coin
And in his head accounts of gain
On a rainy day, O ! a dull day to him
He returned home with a grim
And troubled heart and head too hot
Cursing rain and at the gate so stout
He stood as it was firmly closed.
At dead of night when the rain
Was pouring cats and dogs, in vain
He called his servants, at high pitch
To open the gate and let him reach
His home so beautiful and rich
None did come however loud he called
And this poor man, the 'rich' man yelled
Like the midnight owl or a crank,
An oldman with the look of a derelict pauper
Who came that way, pertly said,
"O ! Man, why so late and why you keep
Standing outside and peep
At your heavenly house ?
Go in, get yourself cleansed
Of all filth and enjoy the inside wealth".
"The gate is closed, how I could"
Said he "enter home from this mud?".
The oldman then smiled and said,
"It's no wonder, a man of your kind
Would forget the key in his pocket"
"I forgot, I forgot, O! me
This key is always with me.
Thank you sir I was in the dark
You have torched the mark
Wherein lies the key for inner joy".
- Anuj Nair
www.flickr.com/photos/anujnair/3597142183/
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© 2010 Anuj Nair. All rights reserved.
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Contact : www.anujnair.net
________________________________________________
© 2010 Anuj Nair. All rights reserved.
All images and poems are the property of Anuj Nair.
Using these images and poems without permission is in violation of international copyright laws (633/41 DPR19/78-Disg 154/97-L.248/2000). All materials may not be copied, reproduced, distributed, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted or transmitted in any forms or by any means,including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording without written permission of Anuj Nair. Every violation will be pursued penally.
Guess I’m back to the drawing board again....to making new heroes
This guy has nothing to do with a certain Nintendo character (Meta Knight). With the recent heroes made by our fellow Leaguers. Hags to those inspirations from you. Also inspired by Dr Mid-Nite, Peacemaker, and Agent Venom. This is one of my favourite characters so far, and a one I enjoyed making.
-Multi, current meme maker.
Profile
Name: Samuel “Sam” Clark Rolton
Hero's name: Metanight, also spelled as Metanite. Also called by others as Sam, Sammy Boy, “Man from the Roof”.
Age: 22
Bio: The son of illegal immigrants, Sam is a street smart kid. Despite growing up poor in the neighbourhood, he built things that he found useful. At 9, he looted a handgun from a unconscious robber and took it to his basement, and managed to make a robot for target practice and developed his own self-taught style of fighting.
Sam grew up to join the Marine Corps, alongside Adrian Kane and Marcus Crúz. He was present alongside them in some military tours, and managed to make friends with them. He struggled with depression for a year after his service ended.
Returning home, he became a bartender and courier. Despite fighting depression, he turned to his recently developed powers, which he anticipated years ago grew more stronger and honed it to his equipment. Sam trained his mind and body to perfection, and became a vigilante. He was renowned for his thievery and hunted down criminals from rooftops above at night, which earned him status among the superhero community. He also managed to build a companion out of the scrapped robot into a smaller one, the one that he carries by his shoulder, named “Nicholas”.
Sam’s recent activities include a non stop hunt of criminals, most notably trying to track down his city’s biggest drug lords, dealers and mob bosses, but has taken interest in Adrian Kane’s team, whom Sam knows about his career...
But is he the 3rd agent?
Powers and abilities: While not having genius level intellect, Sam possesses the ability to sedate people like a tranquilliser gun, and emit a odourless gas that knocks out people and puts them to sleep. He also has super stamina, the ability to breathe without oxygen, and is equally matched to an above-average Olympic level athlete (peak human strength, conditioning, running etc.) Sam is an expert thief, able to pick locks, hide undetected, and among his skills he is also good in combat, freerunning/parkour and wall/mountain climbing.
Weaknesses: Lack of salt in food, lactose intolerant, despite being able to survive without oxygen, he is still susceptible to some airborne hazards to a degree. His powers aren’t that well against powerful psychics and non-organic beings. He used to have depression after his military service.
Equipment: Super flexible, toughened suit laced with custom protective parts, two custom masks, one that covers his nose and mouth, the other for his eyes. He possesses some hidden grappling hooks and zip lines that allow him access to buildings. Nicholas, which as as his companion, is also a drone/spy camera, detector, shoulder rifle and assistant that helps him (similar to Bao-Dur’s remote from KOTOR II, as well as War Machine’s cannon) Personal sidearms/handguns and melee are his preferred weapons of choice.
Personality: Kind, well-thought, conflicted, decisive, good natured, methodical (to his own ways)
"The Northern Crown "
Corona is the word we use in attempting to the label the experience of having an active Auroral curtain pass directly above our dizzy little heads, so that we are looking right up into it, between the flickering multicolored rays, rather than looking at it from an angle, as we almost always do.
I believe it's one of the most overwhelming sensory experiences a human being can have ... We forget ourselves, our intellect falls away, the pulse quickens, the pupils dilate ... the part of our mind which remains is only that which has in the past been associated with the "God Experience", with visions, trances, feelings of transcendance and enlightenment.
This is not actually the Corona, but it's as close as I came to recording it ... A few seconds later, I fell backwards into the deep snow, camera and all ... and ... just stayed where I was, paralyzed, almost raptured up into the deep sky.
I almost didn't post this, it's such a pathetically inadequate representation of the real experience ... During an Auroral Corona, each microsecond is infinitely, inexpressibly more vivid than what any blurred time exposure can record.
( that said, this exposure was too long; the lights were too bright, their motion too rapid ... shorter would likely have been better ..)
To get an idea of the scale of this display, note the "Big Dipper", of the constellation Ursa Major, sitting just above the center of the Aurora.
March 1st, Northern Yukon Territory
( 8 sec. exposure, ISO 1600, Zenitar f2.8 16mm lens)
The meeting between two of the largest egos in existence is meant to turn into a fight.
When Tony Stark and Lex Luthor end up in the same universe the personality clash is inevitable.
They started showing off their intellect capabilities but soon the dispute moved to, well, a technical application of their Brick Mech know-how.
So Tony calls in his Hulkbuster and Lex his armored suit.
“My Mech is more imposing!” Shouts Lex
“You’re pathetic! You are not even supposed to have a Mech! You should have a power armor but the Lego designers decided to build a mech so they could have a set to sell!” Replies Tony
“That’s because they are smart guys and they recognize my intellectual superiority! Look at you! They give you a thing that is not even in scale with the Hulk you should bust- continues Lex- Oh and your Mech’s gorilla-like arms: ridicule!”
“My Mech does not need to be large because unlike you I don’t need to compensate!” comes Tony’s remark.
“We both know your Mech is smaller simply because the designers know you are such a small person in all the things that matter!”
“So tell me Lex: do you plan to annoy me to death?”
“I thought that was your super power, Tony.”
I think they can go on forever hehe :)
I hope you like this photo :)
May the Brick be with You :)
that men of moderate mental capacity have to stoop in order to reach it :-( Hillaire Belloc. HBW!!
dahlia, 'happy single party'
j c raulston arboretum, ncsu, raleigh, north carolina
“The intellect of the wise is like glass; it admits the light of heaven and reflects it.” ~ Augustus Hare
Still experimenting with glass :)
"... It is a bridge that unites the world of the gods and the world of men. The notion of metaxis can be extended in the modern era, affirming that humans are suspended in a network of polarities: the one and the many, eternity and time, freedom and destiny, instinct and intellect, risk and security, love and hate, etc. Metaxis has also been defined as the state of total and simultaneous belonging to two different autonomous worlds "
Alter Ego: Alpha
Name: Buster Calloway
Allegiance: Villain
Powers:
* Super strength, durability, stamina and senses
* Superhuman intellect
* Thick skin
* Large sharp fangs
* Wolf abilities
Weapons:
* His teeth
Key Weakness: He's not very agile and doesn't like to get his paws bloody. He's actually not a fighter but is able to hold his ground due to his abilities.
Origin:
Buster is a genetically modified wolf who's genetics were stolen from Bad Wolf by T.O.X.I.N. this was to replicate and make the beast more ferocious and controlled. However as a result from the treatment Busters brain developed rapidly allowing him to grow smarter than even some of the lead scientists there who he observed from his cell. With his knowledge and powers he escaped their facilities and decided to overthrow them and anyone who tried to stop him. He knew A.N.G.E.L. had spies amongst them so he began recruiting runaways like himself to amass his own private army to carry through his plans.
Leica M6 Re-Issue / Leica 21mm Super-Elmar f/3.4 / Kodak Ektar 100 / Plustek 8300AI Scanner / Negative Lab Pro
Nkosi.artiste@gmail.com
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Chance Nkosi Gomez known initiated by H.H Swami Jyotirmayanda as Sri Govinda walks an integral yogic path in which photography is the primary creative field of expression. The medium was introduced during sophomore year of high school by educator Dr. Devin Marsh of Robert Morgan Educational Center. Coming into alignment with light, its nature and articulating the camera was the focus during that time. Thereafter while completing a Photographic Technology Degree, the realization of what made an image “striking” came to the foreground of the inner dialogue. These college years brought forth major absorption and reflection as an apprentice to photographer and educator Tony A. Chirinos of Miami Dade College. The process of working towards a singular idea of interest and thus building a series became the heading from here on while the camera aided in cultivating an adherence to the present moment. The viewfinder resembles a doorway to the unified field of consciousness in which line, shape, form, color, value, texture all dissolve. It is here that the yogi is reminded of sat-chit-ananda (the supreme reality as all-pervading; pure consciousness). As of May 2024 Govinda has completed his 300hr yoga teacher training program at Sattva Yoga Academy studying from Master Yogi Anand Mehrotra in Rishikesh, India, Himalayas. This has strengthened his personal Sadhana and allows one to carry and share ancient Vedic Technology leading others in ultimately directing their intellect to bloom into intuition. As awareness and self-realization grows so does the imagery that is all at once divine in the mastery of capturing and controlling light. Over the last seven years he has self-published six photographic books, Follow me i’ll be right behind you (2017), Sonata - Minimal Study (2018), Birds Singing Lies (2018), Rwanda (2019), Where does the body begin? (2019) & Swayam Jyotis (2023). Currently, Govinda is employed at the Leica Store Miami as a camera specialist and starting his journey as a practitioner of yoga ॐ
Oh, very funny, Mister. I see the phrase you spelled out! No bedtime treats for you ;-) Jasper got a new game of Banagrams and just had to get cute and spell out disparaging remarks on humans vs. Aussies ("humans drools"? Bad grammar, my furry fiend!!). Look at his smirk! He's so proud of his little quip
Christie Pits Park, Toronto ON 10 May 2021
Doug Ford is the premier of Ontario. He has proven electable, but not much of an intellect. Once in power, has no idea what to do with it. It is unfair to insult his waistline, but legitimate to object to his government.
Le 900e anniversaire en 2022 de la nomination de Suger, abbé de Saint-Denis en 1122, est l’occasion de revisiter la théologie de la lumière. Fernand Schwarz, philosophe et anthropologue, décrit ce phénomène qui a engendré, avec le passage de l’art roman à l’âge gothique, un changement important dans la construction des cathédrales.
Nous publions ici des extraits du troisième chapitre de l’ouvrage de Fernand Schwarz Symbolique des cathédrales, symboles et lumière (1), chapitre consacré à Suger, l’abbaye de Saint-Denis et la théologie de la lumière.
L’abbaye de Saint-Denis, un destin royal et une œuvre théologique
En l’an 1124, l’abbaye de Saint-Denis, gardienne des reliques du saint martyr qui avait converti la France au christianisme au IIIe siècle et était vénéré à l’époque comme le patron de la maison royale, est solennellement proclamée par Louis VI, sanctuaire national de France (elle a servi de caveau à certains de ses illustres rois, et a été en outre le témoin du sacre de Charlemagne). En clair, on promet à Saint-Denis un destin équivalent à celui de Rome ou de Constantinople.
Suger conçut la cathédrale de Saint-Denis comme une œuvre théologique, qui s’inspirait largement des écrits de la figure légendaire du saint et martyr Denys, que l’on confondait à l’époque avec Denys dit l’Aréopagite, métaphysicien de la lumière qui inspira le XIIe siècle.
Toute chose participe de la lumière divine
Pour Denys, la lumière est le premier principe de cette métaphysique. Il fait ici référence à la splendide théologie de la lumière de l’Évangile selon saint Jean, dans laquelle le logos divin est conçu comme la lumière véritable qui brille dans les ténèbres et qui est à l’origine de toutes choses. « Je suis la lumière du monde ; celui qui me suit ne marche point dans les ténèbres mais aura la lumière de la vie ». Évangile selon saint Jean, VII, 12.
Pour Denys, la création est une action illuminatrice, et l’univers déjà créé ne pourrait exister sans la lumière. Si la lumière cesse de briller, tout ce qui existe tombe dans le néant. Il rappelle que la création est la révélation de Dieu et que toutes choses créées sont des « lumières » qui témoignent par leur existence de la lumière divine et permettent ainsi à l’intellect humain de Le percevoir.
Dieu est lumière et chaque être reçoit et transmet cette lumière selon une hiérarchie conçue par Dieu. [… ] La lumière physique sert à créer des analogies avec la lumière transcendante pour que l’esprit des hommes s’éveille. Tout objet, comme toute créature, réfléchit la lumière divine, tout revient donc à Dieu par le biais des choses visibles. Cette conception est à la base de la pensée gothique. Ainsi s’est établie la connexion entre la métaphysique de la lumière et l’esthétique de la lumière.
Dans son traité de métaphysique, Denys affirme que la lumière divine qui irrigue le monde assure l’union entre les êtres créés.
La cathédrale de Suger : l’expression d’une métaphysique
Suger entreprend la construction de son église avec l’objectif d’en faire un sanctuaire.
Certes, Suger veut forger une alliance entre l’Église et la couronne qui permette à l’Église et à la France de propager un nouvel art de vivre, alliance de spiritualité et de matérialité dans la cité : ce nouvel art doit permettre la rencontre du profane et du sacré. Mais l’essentiel pour lui est de construire un temple dont Dieu serait l’auteur et le guide. D’où l’importance de recourir à la théologie, à une vision métaphysique plutôt qu’à des techniques, pour servir de modèle à la nouvelle église, la cathédrale. Pour les bâtisseurs d’alors, la technique vient au second plan, elle sert à exprimer l’idée.
Contrairement à ce qu’on croit d’habitude, le trait distinctif de l’art nouveau médiéval n’est pas la voûte en croisée d’ogives ni l’arc en ogive ou l’arc-boutant. Tous ces éléments ne sont que des moyens de construction qui se retrouvent dans l’architecture pré-gothique.
[… ] Ce qui n’était qu’un artifice technique devient le moyen d’ouvrir des baies, de faire tomber les cloisons pour que toute l’église « resplendisse d’une lumière ininterrompue ». Depuis le chœur jusqu’à la porte, la lumière se diffuse sans obstacle. Cette cohésion lumineuse reflète l’unité de l’univers dont parlait Denys.
[… ] Néanmoins, deux aspects de l’architecture gothique sont sans précédents : l’utilisation de la lumière et un rapport original entre la structure et l’apparence, la fonction et la forme, qui donnera naissance à l’église mystique. Ces deux caractéristiques obéissent à une conception métaphysique et pas à un étalage de trouvailles techniques qui existaient déjà auparavant et que les maîtres gothiques n’ont fait que mettre à profit pour exprimer leur vision de l’harmonie cosmique.
L’utilisation de la lumière : la communion du Ciel et de la Terre
L’emploi de la lumière dans l’édifice gothique, dans son rapport à la substance matérielle des murs, est diamétralement opposée à celui de l’église romane ; la lumière dans le roman sert à mettre en évidence le contraste entre la substance concrète, lourde et sombre, et la lumière elle-même, symbole de l’esprit. Lumière et matière s’opposent comme le bien et le mal.
Le mur gothique donne par contre l’impression d’être poreux. La lumière s’infiltre à travers et le pénètre en se fondant avec lui et en le transfigurant, La matière apparaît de plus en plus légère et la lumière de plus en plus présente.
Toute l’architecture est conçue pour vider la matière des murs et la remplacer par d’immenses verrières translucides. La cathédrale gothique devient ainsi un monument dédié à la transparence. Le ciel et la terre entrent en intime communion grâce à la lumière qui traverse toutes les parties de l’édifice. La matière n’est plus impénétrable, elle devient la substance porteuse du Verbe-Lumière et l’ascension des flèches dans leur légèreté défie la gravité terrestre.
« [… ] Les nefs latérales, les tribunes, les déambulatoires, les chapelles du chevet deviennent plus étroites et moins profondes tandis que les murs extérieurs sont traversés par des lignes entières de verrières. Vues de l’intérieur, les verrières perdent leurs définitions comme si elles fusionnaient, verticalement et horizontalement, dans une sphère continuelle de lumière produisant une zone de contraste lumineux derrière toutes les formes tangibles du système architectural. » (La Catedral gotica, Otto von Simson, page 26 )
L’Abbaye de Saint-Denis, la porte du Ciel
[… ] Saint-Denis est la première église dont la façade soit conçue pour évoquer l’idée que le temple est, en termes liturgiques, la porte du Ciel. Ce motif sera ensuite repris par toutes les cathédrales. Il s’inspire de l’idée que l’art chrétien doit figurer la vie éternelle, telle une porte qui conduit la pensée vers les vérités ineffables.
[… ] La porte dorée de Saint-Denis est le signe qui permet à l’esprit confus de s’élever vers la vérité, de progresser du matériel à l’ineffable. En contemplant la lumière, l’âme « ressuscite de son immersion dans la matière ». (Suger, « De son administration », XXVII, 89)
La présence, dans le tympan central, de la résurrection des morts ne doit pas être comprise dans son sens eschatologique habituel. Elle sert également à exprimer l’illumination qui se produit chez celui qui passe de ce monde à la contemplation de Dieu.
Le rôle de la lumière
[… ] Grâce au savant rapport qu’il établit entre la hauteur et la profondeur, l’abbé Suger recrée un véritable circuit de prière, « circuitus oratorium », qu’il emplit de lumière en créant de nouvelles fenêtres : « Toute la chapelle majeure se trouve empreinte d’une merveilleuse lumière constante qui pénètre à travers les fenêtres sacrées ». (Suger, « De la consécration », IV, 225)
Les verrières gothiques sont nées. Pour la première fois, on réduit la surface des murs au bénéfice de la lumière, on fait tomber les cloisons, un principe qui est la grande conquête du gothique. La régularité du tracé, avec les rayons qui partent du centre de la chapelle majeure, permet ainsi à la lumière d’entrer pour la première fois sans entraves à travers les vitraux des chapelles absidiales.
La conception de la nef, restée inachevée, est aussi lumineuse que le chevet et l’édifice tout entier dégage une extraordinaire impression de luminosité. Il inspirera les cathédrales de Noyon, de Senlis et surtout Notre-Dame de Paris.
[… ] Pour Suger, la lux nova, qu’il introduit dans l’intérieur de l’église, est associée au Christ lui-même. C’est pourquoi il qualifiera les fenêtres portant les vitraux de « très sacrées et miraculeuses ». Comme le suggère un de ses amis, Hugues de Saint-Victor, un vitrail est la démonstration visuelle de la théologie de Denys.
Les vitraux sont comme des voiles, qui occultent et révèlent en même temps l’ineffable.
Pour Suger, suivant les traces de Denys, tout l’univers est comme un voile éclairé par la lumière divine. Le temple devient ainsi l’image d’un univers transparent. Les fenêtres ne sont pas conçues comme des ouvertures dans un mur, mais comme des surfaces translucides portant les formes du sacré qui irradient dans tout l’édifice.
Grâce à Suger, l’art gothique et la lumière se développèrent et apportèrent un renouveau dans la construction des édifices religieux en France et en Europe, ajoutant une dimension symbolique et de connaissance très importante. Suger fut un précurseur dans de nombreux domaines qui firent de lui un homme éclairé (2).
(1) Ouvrage publié aux Éditions du Palais, 2012, 186 pages. Ce livre a été réédité plusieurs fois : Symboliques des cathédrales, visages de la vierge (Éditions du Huitième jour en 2002), Symbolique des cathédrales, symboles et lumière(aux Éditions Nouvel angle en 2009) Symbolique des cathédrales, miroirs de l’univers (aux Éditions du Palais, 2012)
(2) Lire l’article de Marie-Agnes Lambert, Il y a 900 ans, Suger était nommé abbé de Saint-Denis dans la revue page…
Par Fernand SCHWARZ
Fondateur de Nouvelle Acropole France
La belle histoire des cathédrales
par Alain BILLARD
Éditions Adapt/SNES /éditions De Boeck Supérieur, 2021, 320 pages, 29,90 €
Ce magnifique ouvrage abondamment illustré raconte l’histoire des cathédrales depuis l’époque paléo-chrétienne jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Chaque cathédrale fait l’objet de deux pages. Se rajoutent des dates clés, des témoignages artistiques (peinture, littérature, cinéma…), des évènements liés à ces édifices (effondrements, incendies, tremblements de terre…), les techniques de construction avec les types de matériaux utilisés, l’apport de grands hommes influents (Suger, Gaudi, Perret industrialisation (carrières de pierre, forêts, utilisation de l’acier et du béton…) ou bien grands hommes influents (Suger, Gaudi, Perret, Viollet-le-Duc,…). Par un architecte, expert et chargé de mission auprès du Ministère de la Culture, spécialiste de la construction et de la stabilité des bâtiments anciens.
© Nouvelle Acropole
La revue Acropolis est le journal d’information Nouvelle Acropole
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History
The John Rogers who bought Riverhill in 1840 was an only child, with a modest fortune, and a fine intellect. He became a classics scholar, a scientist and a friend of Charles Darwin. He was one of the first members of the Royal Horticultural Society and a patron of the plant collectors of the day.
He chose Riverhill because its sheltered situation offered an ideal lime free hillside where he could hope to establish newly introduced trees and shrubs. From his garden notebook, it can be seen that planting started in 1842. Subsequent generations, continued the planting and in 1910 Colonel John Middleton Rogers created what is now known as ‘The Wood Garden’ a fine collection of Japanese Maples, Rhododendrons and Azaleas. His wife, the infamous Muriel, created many additions including the now hidden Rock Gardens.
Until the beginning of the 2nd World War, eight full time gardeners kept Riverhill looking immaculate. Since the war years, however, a shortage of manpower and a lack of money has meant that the garden was allowed to deteriorate, with many parts of the original planting lost to everyday use and visitors.
Today, four generations of the Rogers family live at Riverhill,
The estate is managed by Edward Rogers (Great-great-great-grandson of the John Rogers who bought Riverhill in 1840) and his wife, Sarah.
// Accessing... \\
\\ Login Confirmed... //
// Access Granted. \\
\\ Accessed: Commander Redwing’s Files //
// LOG 63.27: Rho Cortack IV - Last Recording \\
My squad and I had narrowly escaped the behemoth of droid by simply running from the B3. We were able to demobilize the droid with a combination of well timed teamwork and some extra boom. Wedging a thermal detonator inside it’s left leg we stopped it from chasing us and left it laying there in the corridor, immobilized but alive.
After that we decide to keep going deeper, in sesrch of our real objective, the trandoshan’s supposed leader, Sask. We were told he was a petty scientist, most likely hiding away in his lab.
“CRZZCH...crzzch...”
The static of blocked comms penetrated all our helmets. Stopping to adjust a sensor on my comms helmet I was able to get a clearer signal.
“Redwing and company, return to the— CRRZCH... come back up. We need support, droids have reinforc—CRRZCH. The scientist is gone, he was replaced, CRZZCH three jedi dead. Return at once—“
The static of the comms fizzled out and left us to our own devices, each clone turned to face me. Using their posture and probably expressions under those helmets to ask me what to do next. I didn’t know at that moment, we had to return, Jester’s orders. But 3 jedi dead? Someone had to pay for that.
“CT-9856 and CT-7723 you’re with me, the rest of you had back to command for a status report. Relay as much data as you can to me. I want to know what’s going on out there.”
“If you’re not going to command, what are you doing?” Titan asked me, with a hint of weariness in his voice.
“I’m going to find out what killed those jedi.”
“Yessir” Titan snapped back and signaled for his troops to follow him. Turning and leaving the small dark corridor they were in.
The two clones I had selected walk forward from the retreating group cautiously and somewhat weary of my presence. They were disturbed and frightened by my choice to use them to search these wretched halls.
Before Titan left the corridor, I could see him speaking to a clone that had just entered the far end, Captain Pharaoh took iff his helmet along with the rest of the clones in that area and looked in my direction.
“Pirunir sur’haaise, tal’galar vod.” Mando’a for ‘Make their eyes water, spill blood my brother.’ Titan and Pharaoh recited in unison. Placing their helmets back on and saluting myself and the two clones.
“Vode’ an brothers”
We turned in unison, heading towards both our undecided dooms. One of us most likely meeting ours sooner.
We solemnly trudged through the inner workings of labs, mechanical bays, a few mine shafts before finding a more active part of the facility. Lights were fully functioning as well as doors that didn’t need slicing. An aura of dread settled over me, this was the place.
As we stepped through a final set of blast doors we were greeted by a massive sprawling courtyard of sorts. Barren of the normal greens and bright colors in regal courtyards, replaced by the glow and hidden beauty of dark translucent fungi. Coating the walls and the floor in an iridescent blue glow. Accompanied by draping clothes and capes. Crisscrossing across the large room. The colors were reminiscent of a street market or a backwater main drag. It was genuinely beautiful.
But in all this beauty there was still violence and death, abominations and horrors. Clones and jedi alike strewn across the floor, surrounded by blood and refuse. These were the jedi Jester had spoke of, but it was more than three, at least a half dozen jedi lay motionless in the courtyard. Settled between rock and plant, coated in blood and death.
Across the grand room was a throne, that slowly swiveled to reveal a massive, disgusting mass of gears, metal and flesh. A horror of a creature, brandishing his large claws, sharpening them with a small blade, scraping away caked blood and guts.
“Mhmmm, more clonessss, kill them.” The large beast’s mouth opened to reveal a ling tongue and rows of teeth, the order barely caught my attention as I was focused on the visuals of the new threat.
Two guards awoke from behind us, shooting one of my troopers while the other had an unreadied blaster. Turning from the behemoth I threw one of my knifes directly into the lizard’s scaly neck. While the second guard was peppered in lazer bolts by the other clone.
As we turned back towards the larger, disfigured trandoshan, we readied our selves. Just in time for a spear to come flying towards us, impaling CT-7723 and sending him flying back into another pile of clone bodies.
The large half lizard half droid rose from his throne. I drew my vibronato and readied myself. Tossing my cumbersome helmet to the floor.
“For Tal’akaata, blood must be spilled.” I murmured.
The lizard seemed ready to lecture me, as if he hadn’t deterred me enough of his company. I charged towards the beast, lunging forward with my blade and slashing the fleshy, writhing muscles of it’s leg. The lizard easily brushed my aside and threw me against the side of the room. Crashing into a shelf of weapons.
A blaster rifle clattered to the floor before me, picking it up, I aimed between the lizards large yellow eyes. One fully white and glazed over, most likely a failed part of his transformation.
“Who are you!?” I yelled at the lizard, seeking to catch my breath and waste time.
“I am a sssscientist, an inventor, a thinker. I am the Republic’ssss worst enemy, it’sss downfall, it’sss doom! Call me sssSask, because now I’m an unstoppable force, with the body of demon, intellect of a god and the killer instinctssss of a trandoshan, I am your Republic’ssss worst enemy.” The creature’s single eye expanded, showing how crazed he was, licking and smacking his massive jaws together, preparing for either myself or his future rampage.
“You on the other hand clone, you are nothing. Worthlessss trash, thrown together by the Kaminoansss to collect a profit. They don’t care who wins this war, as long as you cost creditssss, they’re in businessSss.”
“You know nothing lizard! The jedi value us, without us there would be no one to protect the republic.”
“Oh you sSsilly clone, the jedi think the sssame. Using you as weaponssss, as toolsSs, who are you clone? If not another tool for the jedi?
My trigger squeezed tighter on the trigger and released a volley of shots toward the lizards head, but before they found skin, a metal plate greeted them instead. The plasma diffusing just as it had on the B3.
As the trandoshan came closer, I could do nothing but freeze. Frozen by the pure horror the being projected, scared to move, the lizard clutched my torso, lifting me into the air.
As he pressed his claws into my face, puncturing my scars, he screamed out in another tormenting volley of questions.
“You are nothing clone! Who are you? Who do you fight for for!?”
As his claws dug deeper into my face I grabbed one of my vibroknifes and stabbed it into the fleshy, writhing muscles of his exposed arm. Releasing the claws tension enough that I could fall to the ground. Backing up I found my vibrojato, picking up the blade I brandished it, wiping it through my kama.
“I fight for Democracy, for my brothers....
FOR THE REPUBLIC!!!”
The blade left my hand and flew towards the beast’s glazed, white eye. Lodging itself deep within that murky white, which was replaced by a deep dark red. The lizard buckled and his knees fell to the floor. Careening towards my lifeless body, it crushed me and sent the blade deeper into whatever brain was left in that beast. The noise and chaos settled in the courtyard, leaving only a pile, a clone and a mutated trandoshan in it’s wake.
The concept of the anima mundi (Latin), world soul (Ancient Greek: ψυχὴ κόσμου, psychḕ kósmou), or soul of the world (ψυχὴ τοῦ κόσμου, psychḕ toû kósmou) posits an intrinsic connection between all living beings, suggesting that the world is animated by a soul much like the human body. Rooted in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, the idea holds that the world soul infuses the cosmos with life and intelligence. This notion has been influential across various systems of thought, including Stoicism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, and Hermeticism, shaping metaphysical and cosmological frameworks throughout history.
In ancient philosophy, Plato's dialogue Timaeus introduces the universe as a living creature endowed with a soul and reason, constructed by the demiurge according to a rational pattern expressed through mathematical principles. Plato describes the world soul as a mixture of sameness and difference, forming a unified, harmonious entity that permeates the cosmos. This soul animates the universe, ensuring its rational structure and function according to a divine plan, with the motions of the seven classical planets reflecting the deep connection between mathematics and reality in Platonic thought.
Stoicism and Gnosticism are two significant philosophical systems that elaborated on this concept. Stoicism, founded by Zeno of Citium in the early 3rd century BCE, posited that the universe is a single, living entity permeated by the divine rational principle known as the logos, which organizes and animates the cosmos, functioning as its soul. Gnosticism, emerging in the early centuries of the Common Era, often associates the world soul with Sophia, who embodies divine wisdom and the descent into the material world. Gnostics believed that esoteric knowledge could transcend the material world and reunite with the divine.
Neoplatonism and Hermeticism also incorporated the concept of the world soul into their cosmologies. Neoplatonism, flourishing in the 3rd century CE through philosophers like Plotinus and Proclus, proposed a hierarchical structure of existence with the World Soul acting as an intermediary between the intelligible realm and the material world, animating and organizing the cosmos. Hermeticism, based on writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, views the world soul as a vital force uniting the cosmos. Hermetic texts describe the cosmos as a living being imbued with a divine spirit, emphasizing the unity and interconnection of all things. Aligning oneself with the world soul is seen as a path to spiritual enlightenment and union with the divine, a belief that experienced a resurgence during the Renaissance when Hermeticism was revived and integrated into Renaissance thought, influencing various intellectual and spiritual movements of the time.
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Plato described the universe as a living being in his dialogue Timaeus (30b–d):
Thus, then, in accordance with the likely account, we must declare that this Cosmos has verily come into existence as a Living Creature endowed with soul and reason [...] a Living Creature, one and visible, containing within itself all the living creatures which are by nature akin to itself.[1]
Plato's Timaeus describes this living cosmos as being built by the demiurge,[2] constructed to be self-identical and intelligible to reason,[3] according to a rational pattern expressed in mathematical principles and Pythagorean ratios describing the structure of the cosmos, and particularly the motions of the seven classical planets.[4] The living universe is also a god titled Ouranos and Kosmos,[5] which shows, as scholars have argued, that Plato mediates between the poetic and presocratic traditions.[6]
In Timaeus, Plato presents the cosmos as a single, living organism that possesses a soul and intelligence.[7] The demiurge, a divine craftsman, creates the universe by imposing order on pre-existing chaotic matter. This creation is not ex nihilo but rather a process of organizing the cosmos according to the eternal Forms, which are perfect, immutable archetypes of all things.[8]
Plato explains that the world soul is a mixture of the same and the different, woven together to form a unified, harmonious entity.[9] This soul permeates the entire cosmos, animating it and endowing it with life and intelligence. The world soul is responsible for the rational structure of the universe, ensuring that everything functions according to a divine plan.[10]
The rational pattern of the cosmos is expressed through mathematical principles and Pythagorean ratios, reflecting the deep connection between mathematics and the structure of reality in Platonic thought.[10] The motions of the seven classical planets (the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) are particularly significant, as they embody the harmony and order of the universe.[11]
Plato's identification of the cosmos as a god, titled Ouranos and Kosmos, reveals his synthesis of different philosophical traditions. The name Ouranos connects the world soul to the ancient Greek personification of the sky, while Kosmos signifies order and beauty.[12] By mediating between poetic and presocratic traditions, Plato integrates mythological and philosophical elements into a coherent cosmological vision.[13]
Unus mundus (Latin for "One world") is an underlying concept of Western philosophy, theology, and alchemy, of a primordial unified reality from which everything derives. The term can be traced back to medieval Scholasticism though the notion itself dates back at least as far as Plato's allegory of the cave.[1]
The idea was popularized in the 20th century by the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung, though the term can be traced back to scholastics such as Duns Scotus[2] and was taken up again in the 16th century by Gerhard Dorn, a student of the famous alchemist Paracelsus.
Dorn's explanation is illuminating in that it affords us a deep insight into the alchemical mysterium coniunctionis. If this is nothing less than a restoration of the original state of the cosmos and the divine unconsciousness of the world, we can understand the extraordinary fascination emanating from this mystery. It is the Western equivalent of the fundamental principle of classic Chinese philosophy, namely the union of yang and yin in tao, and at the same time a premonition of that “tertium quid” which, on the basis of psychological experience on the one hand and Rhine’s experiments on the other, I have called “synchronicity”. If mandala symbolism is the psychological equivalent of the unus mundus, then synchronicity is its parapsychological equivalent.
— Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis
Jung and Pauli
Model of unus mundus according to C. G. Jung.
Jung, in conjunction with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli, explored the possibility that his concepts of archetypes and synchronicity might be related to the unus mundus – the archetype being an expression of unus mundus; synchronicity, or "meaningful coincidence", being made possible by the fact that both the observer and connected phenomenon ultimately stem from the same source, the unus mundus.[3]
Jung was careful, however, to stress the tentative and provisional nature of such explorations into a unitarian idea of reality.[3]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unus_mundus
Stoicism
Further information: Stoic physics § Soul, and Pneuma (Stoic)
The Stoic school of philosophy, founded by Zeno of Citium in the early 3rd century BCE, significantly contributed to the development of the concept of the world soul. Stoicism posits that the universe is a single, living entity permeated by a divine rational principle known as the logos. This principle organizes and animates the cosmos, functioning as its soul.[14]
Central to Stoic cosmology is the belief that the logos operates as the rational structure underlying all existence. This rational principle is equated with God, nature, and the soul of the universe, making the cosmos a living, rational organism. The Stoics identified the world soul with the concept of pneuma, a life-giving force that pervades and sustains all things. Pneuma is a mixture of air and fire, elements considered active and capable of bestowing life and motion.[15]
The Stoic philosopher Cleanthes described the world soul in his "Hymn to Zeus", where he praises Zeus (a personification of the logos) for harmonizing the cosmos and ensuring its rational order.[16] Chrysippus, another prominent Stoic, further developed the idea of the world soul, arguing that it is the animating principle that ensures the coherence and unity of the cosmos.[17]
The Stoic view of the world soul differs from Plato's in that it emphasizes the materiality of the pneuma. For the Stoics, the soul of the universe is not an abstract, separate entity but a physical presence that interpenetrates the cosmos, providing it with structure and purpose. This physicalist interpretation reflects the Stoic commitment to the idea that only bodies can act and be acted upon.[15]
The Stoic concept of the world soul also has ethical implications. Since the logos governs the cosmos rationally, living in accordance with nature means aligning one's life with this rational order. The Stoics believed that by understanding and accepting the world's rational structure, individuals could achieve a state of tranquility and virtue.[18]
Gnosticism and Neoplatonism
Gnosticism
Further information: Sophia (Gnosticism) § As world-soul
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Gnosticism, a diverse and syncretic religious movement that emerged in the early centuries of the Common Era, also incorporated the concept of the world soul into its cosmological and theological framework. Gnostic systems generally posited a dualistic worldview, contrasting the material world with a higher, spiritual reality. In this context, the world soul often played a crucial role in bridging the divine and material realms.[19]
In Gnostic thought, the world soul is often associated with the figure of Sophia (Wisdom), who embodies both the divine wisdom and the tragic descent into the material world. Sophia's fall and subsequent redemption are central themes in many Gnostic texts. According to the Apocryphon of John, a key Gnostic scripture, Sophia's emanation resulted in the creation of the material world, which is seen as flawed and distant from the divine pleroma (fullness).[20]
In Gnostic systems, the concept of the world soul often carries significant ethical and soteriological implications. Gnostics believed that by acquiring esoteric knowledge and understanding their divine origin, individuals could transcend the material world and reunite with the divine. This process of gnosis involved recognizing the world soul's entrapment in the material realm and working towards its liberation.[19]
Manichaeism
In Manichaeism, a major Gnostic religion founded by the prophet Mani in the 3rd century CE, the world soul was also called the Light Soul and the Living Soul (Middle Persian: grīw zīndag), contrasting it with matter, which was associated with lifelessness and death and within which the world soul was imprisoned.[21] The world soul was personified as the Suffering Jesus (Jesus patibilis) who, like the historical Jesus, was depicted as being crucified in the world.[22][23] This mystica cruxificio was present in all parts of the world, including the skies, soil, and trees, as expressed in the Coptic Manichaean psalms.[24]
Mandaeism
Mandaeism, another Gnostic tradition that has survived to the present day, also incorporates a concept akin to the world soul. In Mandaean cosmology, the soul's journey through the material world and its eventual return to the World of Light is a central narrative. The soul's purification and ascent are facilitated by esoteric knowledge and ritual practices.[25]
Neoplatonism
Further information: Neoplatonism § The world-soul
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Neoplatonism
Reconstructed bust believed to represent Plotinus
Reconstructed bust believed to represent Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism
Concepts
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The concept of the world soul continued to influence later philosophical thought, particularly in the development of Neoplatonism. Neoplatonists such as Plotinus and Proclus expanded on Plato's ideas, emphasizing the unity and divinity of the cosmos and its connection to the One, the ultimate source of all existence.[26]
Neoplatonism, which flourished in the 3rd century CE, is a philosophical system that builds upon the teachings of Plato and incorporates metaphysical elements. Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism, articulated a vision of reality that centers on a hierarchical structure of existence. At the pinnacle of this hierarchy is the One, an ineffable and transcendent principle from which all reality emanates. The One generates the Nous (Divine Mind), which in turn produces the World Soul.[27]
The World Soul in Neoplatonism functions as an intermediary between the intelligible realm (the realm of the Forms) and the sensible world (the material universe). Plotinus describes the World Soul as the vital force that animates and organizes the cosmos, imbuing it with life and intelligence. It is both one and many, maintaining unity while simultaneously generating individual souls and entities within the cosmos.[28]
Proclus, a prominent later Neoplatonist, further developed these ideas. He posited a more elaborate structure, with the World Soul divided into a higher, more divine aspect and a lower, more material aspect. This dual nature allows the World Soul to mediate between the purely intellectual and the physical realms, ensuring the coherence and order of the universe.[29]
The Neoplatonists viewed the World Soul not only as a metaphysical principle but also as a means to achieve personal and cosmic harmony. By aligning one's soul with the World Soul, individuals could attain a higher state of being and participate in the divine order of the cosmos. This process involves philosophical contemplation, ethical living, and the cultivation of virtues that reflect the harmonious nature of the World Soul.[30]
The influence of Neoplatonism extended beyond the classical period, significantly impacting early Christian, Islamic, and Renaissance thought. The integration of Platonic and Neoplatonic ideas into Christian theology, particularly through the works of Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius, demonstrates the enduring legacy of the concept of the World Soul.[31]
Medieval and Renaissance thought
Scholasticism
During the 12th-Century Renaissance of the High Middle Ages, the analysis of Plato's Timaeus by members of the School of Chartres like William of Conches and Bernardus Silvestris led them to interpret the world soul as possibly or certainly the same as the Christian Holy Spirit under the covering (integumentum) of another name.[32] As or immediately after Peter Abelard was condemned by Bernard of Clairvaux and the 1141 Council of Sens for doctrines similarly close to pantheism, William condemned his own writings on the subject and revised his De Philosophia Mundi to avoid its discussion.[citation needed]
Hermeticism
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Hermeticism
Hermes Trismegistus
Hermes Trismegistus
Hermetic writings
Historical figures
Ancient and medieval
Zosimos of PanopolisJābir ibn Ḥayyān (may be legendary)Abu Ma'shar al-BalkhiIbn UmaylMaslama al-QurṭubīAḥmad al-Būnī
Early modern
Marsilio FicinoLodovico LazzarelliGiovanni da CorreggioPico della MirandolaHeinrich Cornelius AgrippaParacelsusJohn DeeGiordano BrunoJakob BöhmeRobert FluddChristian Rosenkreuz (legendary, see Rosicrucianism)
Modern offshoots
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Hermeticism, a spiritual, philosophical, and esoteric tradition based primarily on writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, integrates the concept of the world soul into its cosmological framework. The Hermetic tradition, which flourished in the Hellenistic period and saw a revival during the Renaissance, views the world soul as a vital, animating force that permeates and unites the cosmos.
Hermetic writings, particularly the Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius, emphasize the unity and interconnection of all things in the universe. These texts describe the cosmos as a living being imbued with a divine spirit or soul. The world soul is seen as the intermediary between the divine intellect (Nous) and the material world, ensuring the harmonious functioning of the cosmos.[33]
In the Corpus Hermeticum, the world soul is often depicted as an emanation of the divine that sustains all creation. This soul is responsible for the life, order, and movement within the universe, acting in accordance with the divine will. The Hermetic worldview is deeply rooted in the idea that understanding and aligning oneself with the world soul can lead to spiritual enlightenment and union with the divine.[34]
Paracelsus
The Renaissance alchemist and physician Paracelsus significantly contributed to the Hermetic tradition by integrating the concept of the world soul into his medical and alchemical theories. Paracelsus believed that the world soul, which he referred to as the Archeus, was the vital force that governed the processes of nature and the human body. He posited that health and disease were influenced by the balance and interaction of this vital force within individuals.[35]
Paracelsus' view of the world soul extended to his understanding of the macrocosm and microcosm, where the human body (microcosm) is a reflection of the larger universe (macrocosm). By studying the world soul's manifestations in nature, Paracelsus believed that alchemists and physicians could uncover the secrets of health and transformation.[36]
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno, a 16th-century Italian philosopher, theologian, and occultist, significantly contributed to the Renaissance revival of the Hermetic tradition. His work is known for its bold integration of Hermeticism, Copernican heliocentrism, and an infinite universe theory, which brought the concept of the world soul into a new, expansive context.
Bruno's cosmology was groundbreaking in that it proposed an infinite universe populated by innumerable worlds. Central to this vision was the idea of the world soul, or anima mundi, which Bruno described as an immanent and animating force pervading the entire cosmos. He argued that the world soul is the source of all motion, life, and intelligence in the universe, linking all parts of the cosmos into a single, living entity.[37]
In his work De la causa, principio et uno (On Cause, Principle, and Unity), Bruno articulated his belief in the unity of the universe and the presence of a single, universal spirit. This spirit, akin to the world soul, ensures the cohesion and harmony of the cosmos, reflecting the Hermetic principle of the interconnectedness of all things.[38]
Bruno was deeply influenced by the Hermetic texts, particularly the Corpus Hermeticum, which he saw as containing profound truths about the nature of the universe and the divine. His philosophy integrated the Hermetic concept of the world soul with the revolutionary scientific ideas of his time, leading to a vision of the cosmos that was both mystical and rational.[34]
Bruno's emphasis on the world soul can also be seen in his metaphysical poetry and dialogues, where he often depicted the universe as a divine, living organism animated by an internal spirit. This perspective was revolutionary, challenging the Aristotelian view of a finite, hierarchical cosmos and aligning more closely with the Hermetic and Neoplatonic traditions.[37]
Bruno's radical ideas, including his support for the Copernican model and his concept of an infinite universe with a pervasive world soul, led to his persecution by the Roman Catholic Church. He was tried for heresy and ultimately burned at the stake in 1600. Despite his tragic end, Bruno's ideas significantly influenced later thinkers and contributed to the development of modern cosmology and metaphysics.[39]
Robert Fludd
Another key figure in Hermeticism, Robert Fludd, elaborated on the concept of the world soul in his extensive writings on cosmology and metaphysics. Fludd's works depict the world soul as the divine anima mundi that connects all levels of existence, from the highest spiritual realms to the material world. He emphasized the idea of cosmic harmony, where the world soul orchestrates the symphony of creation, maintaining balance and order.[40]
Fludd's illustrations and writings highlight the Hermetic belief in the interconnection of all things, with the world soul as the binding principle that ensures the unity of the cosmos. His work reflects the Hermetic conviction that by attuning oneself to the world soul, one can achieve deeper knowledge and spiritual enlightenment.[37]
Later European philosophers
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Although the concept of a world soul originated in classical antiquity, similar ideas can be found in the thoughts of later European philosophers such as those of Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, and Georg W.F. Hegel (particularly in his concept of Weltgeist).
Modern relevance
The concept of Anima Mundi, or the World Soul, continues to resonate in contemporary philosophical, ecological, and spiritual discourse. Modern interpretations often explore the interconnectedness of life and the universe, reflecting ancient notions through new lenses.
Ecological perspectives
In contemporary environmental philosophy, the idea of Anima Mundi is often invoked to emphasize the intrinsic value of nature and the interconnectedness of all living things. Ecologists and environmentalists draw parallels between the ancient concept and modern holistic approaches to ecology. James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis posits that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system, echoing the idea of the World Soul animating and organizing the cosmos.[41] This holistic view suggests that recognizing the Earth as a living entity can foster a deeper environmental ethic and a sense of stewardship for the planet.[42]
Philosophical and scientific discourse
Philosophers like David Abram have explored the phenomenological aspects of Anima Mundi in the context of sensory experience and perception. Abram's work emphasizes the animate qualities of the natural world, suggesting that recognizing the Earth's sentience can foster a deeper ecological awareness and a sense of kinship with all forms of life.[43] Additionally, systems thinking and complexity theory in science reflect a renewed interest in holistic and integrative approaches that resonate with the concept of the World Soul, highlighting the interconnection and interdependence of various components within ecological and social systems.[44]
Spiritual and New Age movements
The Anima Mundi also finds relevance in modern spiritual and New Age movements, where it is often associated with the idea of a living, conscious Earth. Practices such as Earth-centered spirituality, animism, and certain strands of neopaganism embrace the notion of the World Soul as a guiding principle for living in harmony with nature. These movements emphasize rituals, meditations, and practices aimed at connecting with the spirit of the Earth and recognizing the sacredness of all life.[45]
Literature and the arts
The influence of the Anima Mundi extends into contemporary literature and the arts, serving as a metaphor for exploring themes of unity, interconnection, and the mystery of existence. Authors and artists draw on the symbolism of the World Soul to convey a sense of wonder and reverence for the natural world. This is evident in the works of poets like Mary Oliver, who often evoke the living essence of nature in their writings,[46] and in the visual arts, where the interplay of life and the cosmos is a recurring theme.[47]
See also
Classical theism
Pachamama
Panpsychism
Prima materia
Spiritual ecology
Unus mundus
Alter Ego: Flamiac
Name: Cleveland Patterson
Allegiance: Villain
Powers: None
Weapons:
* Custom Flame Thrower
* Flame proof armour
* Bullet resistant suit
Key Weakness: Hand to hand combat which he is not skilled in.
Origin:
Cleveland was always fascinated with fire especially ways of weaponising something so dangerous. His obsession lead him to criminal activities and engineering his own unique flame thrower called 'Fire Breather' to help him along the way. Instead of being a common street thug he pulled off high stake heists using his intellect and Fire Breather to pay for his flame resistant armour and clothing. He now is an assassin for hire and is commonly used by many mobsters as a distraction for Meta Heroes in the area going by the name 'Flamiac'.
A staple of fantasy warfare, orcs comprise the largest single contingent of the evil forces. Given that orcs are rather limited in their intellect and training, the great majority become foot soldiers to form the bulk of the front lines and the casualties. There are a few orcs, however, who manage to excel in other areas.
One of these is the orc tracker. By nature, orcs in general are not particularly observant or detail oriented, but some are found to possess these qualities. When these skills are combined with their excellent senses of smell and hearing, they make for good trackers.
The orc tracker will rarely be mistaken for a stalker. They track but they employ little to no stealth. More like baying hounds, they typically run ahead while tracking, yelling and screaming in excitement. And just as the noise of the hounds will frighten a prey into leaving cover, so the loud cacophony of a group of orc trackers can route a camp of enemies before the soldiers even arrive.
👾 Happy 🏰 Heroclix 🏯 Friday! 🐉
__________________________
A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.
The Krudhyn Tarot - Two Of Swords (2014, 2016)
Any reproduction or redistribution without permission of the Author is expressly prohibited.
In the figure the Sword attributed to King Afonso I, also called Dom Afonso Henriques " The Conqueror", the first king of Portugal (1139–1185).
Swords represent thoughts, ideas and intellect.
The Two of Swords therefore serves as a reminder that life’s decisions are frequently quite difficult and can reflect indecision and being at an impasse with regards to an important matter. In any case you need to make a decision and face the problem !
In the middle is virtue and hence the balance between the swords.
The Two of Swords can also represent that you have the ultimate fate in your hands and so is the owner of your future but of course if nothing is decided can lead to a long impasse in your life.
These cards do not stand alone. They each have individual meanings that combine and contrast with the other cards in the reading. This way, no two readings are alike.
* The reversed Two of Swords says that this is a time to be cautious and prudent whether a new relationship, is better be patient. Conflicts can arise more often and little annoyances that in the end could be avoided with diplomacy and patience.
Even though you may be sure that your ideas are the best ones is time to hear the plans and ideas of others too and avoid conflicts specially in work or with your friends, is a time that you will need them more even for help in your decisions.
On a vintage children's loom, I love weaving random strands of fiber, never knowing in which direction the creation will lead my hand and mind. I had fallen in love with this multicolored ball of yarn, surprised by the way it took shape, row by row.
Below is the final piece which morphed unexpectedly into a Goddess of Justice. This was a "visual journaling" piece for me.
“The mind is like a richly woven tapestry
in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses,
and the design drawn
from the convolutions of the intellect.”
~ Carson McCullers ~
"Put you heart, mind, intellect and soul even into your smallest acts. This is the secret of success."
~ Swami Sivananda
“Men are governed by lines of intellect - women: by curves of emotion. - James Joyce”
Macro Monday project – 04/21/14
"Curves"
L'infinito! Nessun'altra questione ha mai toccato così profondamente lo spirito umano; nessun'altra idea ha stimolato altrettanto fruttuosamente il suo intelletto; tuttavia nessun altro concetto ha più bisogno di essere chiarito come quello di infinito.
Infinity! No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man; no other idea has so fruitfully stimulated his intellect; yet no other concept stands in greater need of clarification than that of the infinite.
David Hilbert
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWLX8yq5d5E
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