www.riverhillgardens.co.uk/

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.

  

The colour Yellow is the colour of Sunshine, Hope, and Happiness !! It stands for Freshness, Positivity, Clarity, Energy, Optimism, Enlightenment, Remembrance, Intellect, Spirituality, Honor, Loyalty, and Joy !!! ……What else do you want???

 

I personally prefer the Golden Yellow , because it makes my heart sing, like the colour White does !! Therefore, I have plenty of both representatives in the garden, which make EXCELLENT associations with all the rest strong bloom colours in the garden, like the reds , Indian pinks, and blues!! Well, I would say a very ….Mediterranean-style-coloured garden…

 

Ekaterine Chavchavadze was frequently described as proud, self-assured, strict, and demanding. Governor N. Muraviov provided the following description of her:

 

"Aspiration to nobility was evident in Ekaterine since her childhood. She was regarded as a very beautiful girl, but haughtiness always prevailed. She was always smart and restrained; she seldom laughed. Because of her haughtiness, I called [her] 'princess,' and predicted that she would be enthroned. It came true."

 

Ekaterine was born in Tbilisi on March 19, 1816 and named in honor of Russia’s Tsarina Ekaterine. After obtaining her primary education, Ekaterine entered the exclusive private boarding school of Praskovya Nikolaevna Arsenyeva Akhverdova in St. Petersburg. Like her older sister Nino, Ekaterine met her future husband—David Dadiani, the heir and future prince of the Georgian principality of Samegrelo—at Akhverdov’s school, where David, a fellow student, was attracted by her beauty, grace, intelligence, and wit.

 

Ekaterine had many admirers both before and after she married David Dadiani in 1839. One was her childhood friend, Nikoloz (Tato) Baratashvili. Ekaterine continued to harbor tender feelings toward him throughout her entire life, and she played a vital role in popularizing his poetic works.

 

Unlike her sisters, Sophio Chavchavadze was not distinguished as a youthful beauty, she was silent and modest. In the letter written to Grigol Orbeliani shortly after her birth, her mother, Salome Orbeliani, wrote: "... She has astonishing black hair, a nice forehead, strange black eyebrows and black lashes, and small red lips. Her smile stirs up feeling. She has amazing body structure. Her smartness is unusual for her age..."

 

When Sophio’s parents died, her sister, Nino, and her brother, David, became her guardians. In 1850, Sophio married a Finnish baron, Alexandre Nikolai, who worked as the Director of the Army Office of the Governor of Caucasia in Tbilisi. In 1861, Baron Nikolai was transferred to Kiev; Sophio accompanied him. Little is known about their private lives; however, they had one daughter, Mariam (Maka) Nikolai.

 

In 1862, when Sophio died, at the age of 29, Mariam Nikolai was a young child. She was reared in Georgia and married Georgi Shervashidze. Sophio Chavchavadze was buried in Vyborg, Russia, 38 Kilometers from Finland’s border with Russia.

 

Nino Chavchavadze was stately, dark-haired, and dark-eyed, and attracted considerable attention for her beauty and charm. One of the literary essays about Nino Chavchavadze reads: "Nino was an incomparable musician, singer, and dancer; director and participant of family performances; artist; [a] magnificent embroider [and] rider; and a true lover of literature. At first sight, she charmed women and men of all ages and ethnicities—Georgian, Asian, Russian and European."

 

Nino was born in Tbilisi on November 4, 1812. Her birth was celebrated with a feast in the Chavchavadze family. In commemoration of her birth, her father Alexandre stored wine in a special amphora to be opened at Nino’s wedding party.

 

Nino received her initial education at home. Later, she attended a famous private boarding school in the St. Petersburg home of Praskovya Nikolaevna Arsenyeva Akhverdova. Praskovya Akhverdova’s school attracted children of many noble families, and played an important role in Nino’s life as well as the lives of her siblings.

 

Nino met her husband, the Russian poet Alexandre Griboedov (1795-1829), at Praskovya Akhverdova’s school. Griboedov was a man of formidable intellect and extraordinary educational achievement. He was accepted to prestigious Moscow University, and began studies in the Department of Letters at the University, receiving the academic degree of Candidate of Sciences in 1812. He continued his studies at the Faculty of Law, from which he graduated with the academic degree of Candidate of Legal Sciences. He then embarked on a career in the Russian diplomatic service, which sent him to Persia in 1813.

 

Griboedov was a close friend of the Akhverdovas, and through them had established ties with the Chavchavadzes. Praskovya Akhverdova’s daughter, Darya Akhverdova, later related, "Alexandre Griboedov singled out Nino Chavchavadze. He taught her music, spoke to her in French and studied Georgian. Sometimes they rode horses together." Little by little, their friendship developed into an affectionate relationship and finally into love and marriage.

 

Nino Chavchavadze and Alexandre Griboedov married in Sioni Cathedral on August 22, 1828. The ceremonial feast continued at the Tsinandali estate, where the Chavchavadze family spent its summers. There Alexandre Chavchavadze opened the wine he had placed in storage sixteen years earlier for Nino’s wedding.

 

The newly-married couple spent a lot of time at Tsinandali, where they organized and hosted elegant soirees, and pursued a shared interest in music. Nino was an excellent pianist and singer, and learned to perform a number of Alexandre’s musical works, which she sometimes played for guests. The couple liked to walk in Tsinandali’s gardens, particularly along the shaded lane referred to as "Love." They could often be seen sitting and conversing on a loveseat along this path.

 

When his responsibilities required Alexandre to travel to the East or to his home town of St. Petersburg, he found it hard to leave his spouse and Georgia. In one letter, he promised his wife that as soon he completed his diplomatic mission in Persia, the couple would settle down at Tsinandali.

 

Unfortunately, the happy times Nino and Alexandre spent together as a married couple lasted just a few months. In 1828—four months after their marriage, and with Nino expecting a child—Griboedov traveled to Persia once again. In February, 1829, he was assassinated in Tehran, a victim of violent anti-Russian sentiment in Persian at the time. Ominously, Alexandre had previously instructed his wife, "If I die in Persia, do not leave my body there. Bury me at St. David’s Monastery in Tbilisi." The death of her husband affected Nino deeply; the day after she received the tragic news, she prematurely gave birth to a son who lived only a few hours.

 

On July 13, 1829, Alexandre Griboedov’s body was buried in the Mtatsminda churchyard of St. David’s Monastery in Tbilisi. Nino had the following words engraved on the gravestone: "Your thoughts and deeds remain eternally in the memory of Russians, but why did my love for thee outlive thee?" Nino later told her sister’s husband, David Dadiani:

 

"I could never imagine a happiness greater than my love for Alexandre Griboedov. But alas, this love was kidnapped from me, and my happiness followed. My love is buried on Mtatsminda Hill, and my heart, still burning in love, lies in my husband’s grave. When this love disappears, I will also die physically and morally. There are many who cannot imagine this. They surprise me. They have probably never loved and cannot love anybody."

 

Although only 16 at the time of Alexandre’s death and still surrounded by a great many admirers, Nino never remarried. Instead, she turned her attention to family, friends, and people in need.

 

After her parents’ deaths in 1846 and 1847, Nino managed the entire household. When her sister Ekaterine married, she reared her younger sister, Sophio, who was ten years old at the time. As her brother David’s children matured, she became their governess. She also continued to conduct official and artistic soirees at the Chavchavadze salon in Tbilisi, as well as at the palace of the Governor of Georgia.

 

Materials recently published discuss her involvement in affairs of state, including the administration of the province of Samegrelo (often referred to as Mingrelia) when her sister Ekaterine was Queen of Samegrelo. For example, Muravyov Karski, the Governor of Georgia, who visited Samegrelo in 1854, wrote: "Nino Chavchavadze has accomplished a great deal for the welfare of Samegrelo. When Turkey invaded the area and Omar Pasha’s army was opposed by the Megrelian popular militia, Nino Chavchavadze stayed at the front line with her sister." When the Russian Imperial Court decided to abolish the Megrelian Princedom, the Russian government requested Nino’s assistance in persuading Ekaterine to surrender.

 

While in Mingrelia, Nino took an interest in improving public health, selecting 41 women to become nurses, and designing and organizing an educational program for them. Her tireless efforts in this cause extended well beyond instruction and administration, to details such sewing white uniforms for the nurses and embroidering red crosses on their hats.

 

Nino also contributed greatly to the publication of Alexandre Griboedov’s works, which have come to be seen as precious contributions to Russia’s literary heritage. Her efforts were stimulated not only by her devotion to the memory of her husband, but also by her love of literature and her sincere conviction that his works deserved greater attention.

 

Writings left by many of her contemporaries attest to the love and esteem in which Nino was held. Words such as "perfect," "angelic," and "kind" appear frequently, and one account even refers to her as a "guardian angel, respected by all from the Vice Regent to ordinary citizens." David Eristavi; a Georgian noble, agreed, noting, "People of very diverse [classes], thoughts, and ideas were unanimous in recognizing that Nino Chavchavadze was an ideal woman." Russian Admiral Siniavin simply stated, "Nobody can compare to her."

 

In 1857, Nino Chavchavadze died of malaria in Tbilisi. According to her wish, she was buried beside her husband on Mtatsminda Hill. Flowers are often placed near her grave, as a testament to the love and respect that she continues to command among Georgians.

 

Control?

You are kidding, don’t you?

 

HKD

 

Gegensätze ziehen sich an und stoßen sich gleichzeitig ab.

Diesen Tempelaffen habe ich auf Bali fotografiert.

Den Mönch habe ich mit photoshop auf Tuchfühlung gebracht.

Ich selbst bin respektvoll auf Abstand gegangen.

 

HKD

 

Falls Psychologie interessiert:

Auf dem Pfad der Selbsterkenntnis ist die Auseinandersetzung mit der eigenen Triebnatur unausweichlich.

 

HKD

 

Anmerkung:

 

This is digital art work, not reality.

Das Bild ist ein digital hergestelltes Werk.

Jede Ähnlichkeit mit realen Gegebenheiten wäre rein zufällig.

 

HKD

 

If you like to see my latest video:

 

Path of Wisdom

 

www.youtube.com/user/koppdelaney

   

Taken on our recent weekend getaway to Copenhagen. For more information on these photos and other interesting cities, please check out Postcard Intellect

G's breath caught in her throat as the realization dawned on her. She was in the presence of one of the Clockwork Sibyls, a duo revered not only for their groundbreaking contributions to the digital realm, but also for their rare status as celebrated female oracles in a domain predominantly ruled by men.

 

Lady Beatrice, with her keen intellect and ability to decipher the complex patterns of the cosmos, alongside Lady Abigail, whose engineering prowess brought to life inventions that were the very essence of the steampunk spirit, were figures of legend. The thought that one half of this illustrious pair was missing sent a ripple of concern through G's mind.

 

"To clarify," G responded, maintaining her professional demeanor while subtly acknowledging the significance of Lady Beatrice's identity, "Lady Abigail, your partner and fellow Clockwork Sibyl, is missing?"

 

"The last communication I had from her, she said 'BRB, bio break.' And then... silence. I believe she has vanished to a place known as 'RL', and I fear she's being held there against her will."

 

The term 'RL' lingered in the air, an acronym for the mysterious and unpredictable realm of Real Life. G leaned back in her chair, her mind's gears beginning to turn. This was no ordinary disappearance; this was a journey across dimensions, a voyage from the digital to the organic.

A missing avatar was one thing but vanishing into the vast unknown of Real Life was a complexity of a different caliber.

 

"So you suspect foul play?" G inquired.

 

Lady Beatrice, taking a seat with composed grace across from G, spoke with a hint of distress in her voice.

 

"I find myself at a loss," she admitted. "It's as though Lady Abigail has departed from our realm and is no more. I've searched tirelessly, exploiting all my intellectual resources, networks, and assets, yet she remains lost to me."

 

"I'll take the case," G stated, her voice soft yet resolute, silently pledging her loyalty to the captivating Lady Beatrice.

 

With the case now officially open, G. Aeon stood, her figure a beacon of resolve in a sea of uncertainty, thus marking the beginning of a new partnership between her and Lady Beatrice as they set out to unravel the mystery of Lady Abigail's disappearance.

 

Part 1 flic.kr/p/2pQizbm

Part 2 flic.kr/p/2pQtrtY

 

Photo taken at New Victoria Township - RP and community opening late Summer.

Story by Grace with some help from ChatGPT

More G. Aeon, Private Detective, at flic.kr/s/aHBqjBgiN8

More Clockwork Sibyls at flic.kr/s/aHBqjBiSG9

 

The being is a hybrid of Einstein and Cthulhu — an ancient cosmic intellect given form.

Its anatomy merges human cognition with incomprehensible scale. The head and upper structure echo a cybernetic human design: exposed brain matter partially encased in biomechanical architecture. Organic folds, veins, and subtle mechanical interfaces fuse seamlessly, as if evolution and engineering reached the same conclusion from opposite ends.

The brain emits a faint, cold glow — not radiant, but deliberate — suggesting intelligence that does not seek attention, only understanding.

A point that has only been touched on incidentally in earlier chapters must now be elaborated. It is what may be called the tendency to ‘popularization’ (this word being another of those that are particularly significant as pointers to the nature of the modern mentality), in other words, the pretension to put everything ‘within the reach of all’, to which attention has already been drawn as being a consequence of ‘democratic’ conceptions, and that amounts in the end to a desire to bring all knowledge down to the level of the lowest intelligences. It would be only too easy to point out the multiple ineptitudes that result, generally speaking, from the ill-considered diffusion of an instruction that is claimed to be equally distributed to all, in identical form and by identical methods; this can only end, as has already been said, in a sort of leveling down to the lowest— here as elsewhere quality being sacrificed to quantity. It is no less true to say that the profane instruction in question has nothing to do with any kind of knowledge in the true sense of the word, and that it contains nothing that is in the least degree profound; but, apart from its insignificance and its ineffectuality, what makes it really pernicious is above all the fact that it contrives to be taken for what it is not, that it tends to deny everything that surpasses it, and so smothers all possibilities belonging to a higher domain; it even seems probable that it is contrived specially for that purpose, for modern ‘uniformization’ necessarily implies a hatred of all superiority.

 

There can really be no accommodation between the traditional spirit and the modern spirit, any concession made to the latter being necessarily at the the expense of the former, since the modern spirit consists fundamentally in the direct negation of everything that constitutes the traditional spirit. The truth is that the modern spirit implies in all who are affected by it in any degree a real hatred of what is secret, and of whatever seems to come more or less near to being secret, in any and every domain.

 

In the end, the real secret, the only secret than can never be betrayed in any way, resides uniquely in the inexpressible, which is by the same token incommunicable, every truth of a transcendent order necessarily partaking of the inexpressible; and it is essentially in this fact that the profound significance of the initiatic secret really lies, for no kind of exterior secret can ever have any value except as an image or symbol of the initiatic secret, though it may occasionally also be not unprofitable as a ‘discipline’. But it must be understood that these are things of which the meaning and the range are completely lost to the modern mentality, and incomprehension of them quite naturally engenders hostility; besides, the ordinary man always has an instinctive fear of what he does not understand, and fear engenders hatred only too easily, even when a mere direct denial of the uncomprehended truth is adopted as a means of escape from fear; indeed, some such denials are more like real screams of rage, for instance those of the self-styled ‘free-thinkers’ with regard to everything connected with religion.

 

The hatred of secrecy is basically nothing but one of the forms of the hatred for anything that surpasses the level of the ‘average’, as well as for everything that holds aloof from the uniformity which it is sought to impose on everyone. Nevertheless, there is, within the modern world itself, a secret that is better kept than any other: it is that of the formidable enterprise of suggestion that has produced and that maintains the existing mentality, that has constituted it and as it were ‘manufactured’ it in such a way that it can only deny the existence and even the possibility of any such enterprise; and this is doubtless the best conceivable means, and a means of truly ‘diabolical’ cleverness, for ensuring that the secret shall never be discovered.

 

Rationalism, being the denial of every principle superior to reason, brings with it as a ‘practical’ consequence the exclusive use of reason, but of reason blinded, so to speak, by the very fact that it has been isolated from the pure and transcendent intellect, of which, normally and legitimately, it can only reflect the light in the individual domain. As soon as it has lost all effective communication with the supra-individual intellect, reason cannot but tend more and more toward the lowest level, toward the inferior pole of existence, plunging ever more deeply into ‘materiality’; as this tendency grows, it gradually loses hold of the very idea of truth, and arrives at the point of seeking no goal other than that of making things as easy as possible for its own limited comprehension, and in this it finds an immediate satisfaction in the very fact thafits own downward tendency leads it in the direction of the simplification and uniformization of all things; it submits all the more readily and speedily to this tendency because the results of this submission conform to its desires, and its ever more rapid descent cannot fail to lead at last to what has been called the ‘reign of quantity’.

 

It is a work that obviously could not be made effective all at once, although perhaps the most astonishing thing of all is the speed with which it has been possible to induce Westerners to forget everything connected with the existence of a traditional civilization in their countries; if one thinks of the total incomprehension of the Middle Ages and everything connected with them which became apparent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it becomes easy to understand that so complete and abrupt a change cannot have come about in a natural and spontaneous way. However that may be, the first task was as it were to confine men within the limits of their own individuality, and this was the task of rationalism, as previously explained, for rationalism denies to the being the possession or use of any faculty of a transcendent order; it goes without saying moreover that rationalism began its work before ever it was known by that name, and before it took on its more especially philosophical form, as has been shown in connection with Protestantism; and besides, the ‘humanism’ of the Renaissance was no more than the direct precursor of rationalism properly so called, for the very word ‘humanism’ implies a pretension to bring everything down to purely human elements and thus (at least in practice if not yet by virtue of an expressly formulated theory) to exclude everything of a supraindividual order.

 

Materialism merely survives for its own sake, and no doubt it may well survive a good deal longer, especially in the form of ‘practical materialism’, but in any case, it has ceased henceforth to play the principal part in anti-traditional action.

 

After having enclosed the corporeal world as completely as possible, it was necessary, while guarding against the re-establishment of any communication with superior domains, to open it up again from below, so as to allow the dissolving and destructive forces of the inferior subtle domain to penetrate into it.

 

The word ‘satanic’ can indeed be properly applied to all negation and reversal of order, such as is so incontestably in evidence in everything we now see around us: is the modern world really anything whatever but a direct denial of all traditional truth? At the same time, and more or less of necessity, the spirit of negation is the spirit of lying; it wears every disguise, often the most unexpected, in order to avoid being recognized for what it is, and even in order to pass itself off as the very opposite of what it is; this is where counterfeit comes in; and this is the moment to recall that it is said that ‘Satan is the ape of God’, and also that he ‘transfigures himself into an angel of light’. In the end, this amounts to saying that he imitates in his own way, by altering and falsifying it so as always to make it serve his own ends, the very thing he sets out to oppose: thus, he will so manage matters that disorder takes on the appearance of a false order, he will hide the negation of all principle under the affirmation of false principles, and so on. Naturally, nothing of that kind can ever really be more than dissimulation and even caricature, but it is presented cleverly enough to induce an immense majority of men to allow themselves to be deceived by it; and why should we be astonished at this, when it is so easy to observe both the extent to which trickery, even of the crudest sort, succeeds in imposing itself on the crowd, and also the difficulty of subsequently undeceiving them? Vulgus vult decipi (common people love to be deceived) was already a saying of the ancients of the ‘classical period’, and no doubt there have always been people, though never as many as in our days, ready to add: ergo decipiatur (so deceive them)!

 

Excerpts from:

 

René Guénon - The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times

Marc Zakharovich Chagall (/ʃəˈɡɑːl/ shə-GAHL;[3][nb 1] born Moishe Zakharovich Shagal;[4] 6 July [O.S. 24 June] 1887 – 28 March 1985) was a Russian-French artist of Belarusian Jewish origin.[1] An early modernist, he was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in virtually every artistic format, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints.

 

Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century" (though Chagall saw his work as "not the dream of one people but of all humanity"). According to art historian Michael J. Lewis, Chagall was considered to be "the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists". For decades, he "had also been respected as the world's preeminent Jewish artist". Using the medium of stained glass, he produced windows for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, windows for the UN, and the Jerusalem Windows in Israel. He also did large-scale paintings, including part of the ceiling of the Paris Opéra.

 

Before World War I, he travelled between Saint Petersburg, Paris and Berlin. During this period he created his own mixture and style of modern art based on his idea of Eastern European Jewish folk culture. He spent the wartime years in Soviet Belarus, becoming one of the country's most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avant-garde, founding the Vitebsk Arts College before leaving again for Paris in 1922.

 

He had two basic reputations, writes Lewis: as a pioneer of modernism and as a major Jewish artist. He experienced modernism's "golden age" in Paris, where "he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism". Yet throughout these phases of his style "he remained most emphatically a Jewish artist, whose work was one long dreamy reverie of life in his native village of Vitebsk."[5] "When Matisse dies," Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, "Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is".[6]

 

Contents

 

1 Early life and education

1.1 Early life

1.2 Art education

1.3 Artistic inspiration

2 Art career

2.1 Russia (1906–1910)

2.2 France (1910–1914)

2.3 Russia and Soviet Belarus (1914–1922)

2.4 France (1923–1941)

2.4.1 The Bible illustrations

2.4.2 Nazi campaigns against modern art

2.4.3 Escaping occupied France

2.5 United States (1941–1948)

2.5.1 Aleko ballet (1942)

2.5.2 Coming to grips with World War II

2.5.3 Post-war years

2.6 France (1948–1985)

2.6.1 Ceiling of the Paris Opera (1963)

3 Art styles and techniques

3.1 Color

3.2 Subject matter

3.2.1 From life memories to fantasy

3.2.2 Jewish themes

  

Early life and education

Chagall's Parents

 

Marc Chagall was born Moishe Segal in a Lithuanian Jewish family in Liozna,[7] near the city of Vitebsk (Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire) in 1887.[note][8] At the time of his birth, Vitebsk's population was about 66,000, with half the population being Jewish.[5] A picturesque city of churches and synagogues, it was called "Russian Toledo", after a cosmopolitan city of the former Spanish Empire. As the city was built mostly of wood, little of it survived years of occupation and destruction during World War II.

 

Chagall was the eldest of nine children. The family name, Shagal, is a variant of the name Segal, which in a Jewish community was usually borne by a Levitic family.[9] His father, Khatskl (Zachar) Shagal, was employed by a herring merchant, and his mother, Feige-Ite, sold groceries from their home. His father worked hard, carrying heavy barrels but earning only 20 roubles each month (the average wages across the Russian Empire being 13 roubles a month). Chagall would later include fish motifs "out of respect for his father", writes Chagall biographer, Jacob Baal-Teshuva. Chagall wrote of these early years:

 

Day after day, winter and summer, at six o'clock in the morning, my father got up and went off to the synagogue. There he said his usual prayer for some dead man or other. On his return he made ready the samovar, drank some tea and went to work. Hellish work, the work of a galley-slave. Why try to hide it? How tell about it? No word will ever ease my father's lot... There was always plenty of butter and cheese on our table. Buttered bread, like an eternal symbol, was never out of my childish hands.[10]

 

One of the main sources of income of the Jewish population of the town was from the manufacture of clothing that was sold throughout Russia. They also made furniture and various agricultural tools.[11] From the late 18th century to the First World War, the Russian government confined Jews to living within the Pale of Settlement, which included modern Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, almost exactly corresponding to the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth recently taken over by Imperial Russia. This caused the creation of Jewish market-villages (shtetls) throughout today's Eastern Europe, with their own markets, schools, hospitals, and other community institutions.[12]:14

 

Most of what is known about Chagall's early life has come from his autobiography, My Life. In it, he described the major influence that the culture of Hasidic Judaism had on his life as an artist. Vitebsk itself had been a center of that culture dating from the 1730s with its teachings derived from the Kabbalah. Chagall scholar Susan Tumarkin Goodman describes the links and sources of his art to his early home:

 

Chagall's art can be understood as the response to a situation that has long marked the history of Russian Jews. Though they were cultural innovators who made important contributions to the broader society, Jews were considered outsiders in a frequently hostile society... Chagall himself was born of a family steeped in religious life; his parents were observant Hasidic Jews who found spiritual satisfaction in a life defined by their faith and organized by prayer.[12]:14

 

Chagall was friends with Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, and later with Menachem M. Schneerson.[13]

Art education

Portrait of Chagall by Yehuda (Yuri) Pen, his first art teacher in Vitebsk

 

In Russia at that time, Jewish children were not allowed to attend regular Russian schools or universities. Their movement within the city was also restricted. Chagall therefore received his primary education at the local Jewish religious school, where he studied Hebrew and the Bible. At the age of 13, his mother tried to enroll him in a Russian high school, and he recalled, "But in that school, they don't take Jews. Without a moment's hesitation, my courageous mother walks up to a professor." She offered the headmaster 50 roubles to let him attend, which he accepted.[10]

 

A turning point of his artistic life came when he first noticed a fellow student drawing. Baal-Teshuva writes that for the young Chagall, watching someone draw "was like a vision, a revelation in black and white". Chagall would later say that there was no art of any kind in his family's home and the concept was totally alien to him. When Chagall asked the schoolmate how he learned to draw, his friend replied, "Go and find a book in the library, idiot, choose any picture you like, and just copy it". He soon began copying images from books and found the experience so rewarding he then decided he wanted to become an artist.[11]

 

He eventually confided to his mother, "I want to be a painter", although she could not yet understand his sudden interest in art or why he would choose a vocation that "seemed so impractical", writes Goodman. The young Chagall explained, "There's a place in town; if I'm admitted and if I complete the course, I'll come out a regular artist. I'd be so happy!" It was 1906, and he had noticed the studio of Yehuda (Yuri) Pen, a realist artist who also operated a small drawing school in Vitebsk, which included the future artists El Lissitzky and Ossip Zadkine. Due to Chagall's youth and lack of income, Pen offered to teach him free of charge. However, after a few months at the school, Chagall realized that academic portrait painting did not suit his desires.[11]

Artistic inspiration

Marc Chagall, 1912, Calvary (Golgotha), oil on canvas, 174.6 × 192.4 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Alternative titles: Kreuzigung Bild 2 Christus gewidmet [Golgotha. Crucifixion. Dedicated to Christ]. Sold through Galerie Der Sturm (Herwarth Walden), Berlin to Bernhard Koehler (1849–1927), Berlin, 1913. Exhibited: Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon, Berlin, 1913

 

Goodman notes that during this period in Russia, Jews had two basic alternatives for joining the art world: One was to "hide or deny one's Jewish roots". The other alternative—the one that Chagall chose—was "to cherish and publicly express one's Jewish roots" by integrating them into his art. For Chagall, this was also his means of "self-assertion and an expression of principle."[12]:14

 

Chagall biographer Franz Meyer, explains that with the connections between his art and early life "the hassidic spirit is still the basis and source of nourishment for his art."[14] Lewis adds, "As cosmopolitan an artist as he would later become, his storehouse of visual imagery would never expand beyond the landscape of his childhood, with its snowy streets, wooden houses, and ubiquitous fiddlers... [with] scenes of childhood so indelibly in one's mind and to invest them with an emotional charge so intense that it could only be discharged obliquely through an obsessive repetition of the same cryptic symbols and ideograms... "[5]

 

Years later, at the age of 57 while living in the United States, Chagall confirmed this when he published an open letter entitled, "To My City Vitebsk":

 

Why? Why did I leave you many years ago? ... You thought, the boy seeks something, seeks such a special subtlety, that color descending like stars from the sky and landing, bright and transparent, like snow on our roofs. Where did he get it? How would it come to a boy like him? I don't know why he couldn't find it with us, in the city—in his homeland. Maybe the boy is "crazy", but "crazy" for the sake of art. ...You thought: "I can see, I am etched in the boy's heart, but he is still 'flying,' he is still striving to take off, he has 'wind' in his head." ... I did not live with you, but I didn't have one single painting that didn't breathe with your spirit and reflection.[15]

 

Art career

Russia (1906–1910)

 

In 1906, he moved to Saint Petersburg which was then the capital of Russia and the center of the country's artistic life with its famous art schools. Since Jews were not permitted into the city without an internal passport, he managed to get a temporary passport from a friend. He enrolled in a prestigious art school and studied there for two years.[11] By 1907, he had begun painting naturalistic self-portraits and landscapes.

 

Between 1908 and 1910, Chagall was a student of Léon Bakst at the Zvantseva School of Drawing and Painting. While in Saint Petersburg, he discovered experimental theater and the work of such artists as Paul Gauguin.[16] Bakst, also Jewish, was a designer of decorative art and was famous as a draftsman designer of stage sets and costumes for the Ballets Russes, and helped Chagall by acting as a role model for Jewish success. Bakst moved to Paris a year later. Art historian Raymond Cogniat writes that after living and studying art on his own for four years, "Chagall entered into the mainstream of contemporary art. ...His apprenticeship over, Russia had played a memorable initial role in his life."[17]:30

 

Chagall stayed in Saint Petersburg until 1910, often visiting Vitebsk where he met Bella Rosenfeld. In My Life, Chagall described his first meeting her: "Her silence is mine, her eyes mine. It is as if she knows everything about my childhood, my present, my future, as if she can see right through me."[11]:22

France (1910–1914)

Marc Chagall, 1911–12, The Drunkard (Le saoul), 1912, oil on canvas. 85 × 115 cm. Private collection

Marc Chagall, 1912, The Fiddler, an inspiration for the musical Fiddler on the Roof[18]

 

In 1910, Chagall relocated to Paris to develop his artistic style. Art historian and curator James Sweeney notes that when Chagall first arrived in Paris, Cubism was the dominant art form, and French art was still dominated by the "materialistic outlook of the 19th century". But Chagall arrived from Russia with "a ripe color gift, a fresh, unashamed response to sentiment, a feeling for simple poetry and a sense of humor", he adds. These notions were alien to Paris at that time, and as a result, his first recognition came not from other painters but from poets such as Blaise Cendrars and Guillaume Apollinaire.[19]:7 Art historian Jean Leymarie observes that Chagall began thinking of art as "emerging from the internal being outward, from the seen object to the psychic outpouring", which was the reverse of the Cubist way of creating.[20]

 

He therefore developed friendships with Guillaume Apollinaire and other avant-garde luminaries such as Robert Delaunay and Fernand Léger.[21] Baal-Teshuva writes that "Chagall's dream of Paris, the city of light and above all, of freedom, had come true."[11]:33 His first days were a hardship for the 23-year-old Chagall, who was lonely in the big city and unable to speak French. Some days he "felt like fleeing back to Russia, as he daydreamed while he painted, about the riches of Russian folklore, his Hasidic experiences, his family, and especially Bella".

 

In Paris, he enrolled at Académie de La Palette, an avant-garde school of art where the painters Jean Metzinger, André Dunoyer de Segonzac and Henri Le Fauconnier taught, and also found work at another academy. He would spend his free hours visiting galleries and salons, especially the Louvre; artists he came to admire included Rembrandt, the Le Nain brothers, Chardin, van Gogh, Renoir, Pissarro, Matisse, Gauguin, Courbet, Millet, Manet, Monet, Delacroix, and others. It was in Paris that he learned the technique of gouache, which he used to paint Belarusian scenes. He also visited Montmartre and the Latin Quarter "and was happy just breathing Parisian air."[11] Baal-Teshuva describes this new phase in Chagall's artistic development:

 

Chagall was exhilarated, intoxicated, as he strolled through the streets and along the banks of the Seine. Everything about the French capital excited him: the shops, the smell of fresh bread in the morning, the markets with their fresh fruit and vegetables, the wide boulevards, the cafés and restaurants, and above all the Eiffel Tower.

 

Another completely new world that opened up for him was the kaleidoscope of colours and forms in the works of French artists. Chagall enthusiastically reviewed their many different tendencies, having to rethink his position as an artist and decide what creative avenue he wanted to pursue.[11]:33

 

During his time in Paris, Chagall was constantly reminded of his home in Vitebsk, as Paris was also home to many painters, writers, poets, composers, dancers, and other émigrés from the Russian Empire. However, "night after night he painted until dawn", only then going to bed for a few hours, and resisted the many temptations of the big city at night.[11]:44 "My homeland exists only in my soul", he once said.[20]:viii He continued painting Jewish motifs and subjects from his memories of Vitebsk, although he included Parisian scenes—- the Eiffel Tower in particular, along with portraits. Many of his works were updated versions of paintings he had made in Russia, transposed into Fauvist or Cubist keys.[5]

Marc Chagall, 1912, Still-life (Nature morte), oil on canvas, private collection

 

Chagall developed a whole repertoire of quirky motifs: ghostly figures floating in the sky, ... the gigantic fiddler dancing on miniature dollhouses, the livestock and transparent wombs and, within them, tiny offspring sleeping upside down.[5] The majority of his scenes of life in Vitebsk were painted while living in Paris, and "in a sense they were dreams", notes Lewis. Their "undertone of yearning and loss", with a detached and abstract appearance, caused Apollinaire to be "struck by this quality", calling them "surnaturel!" His "animal/human hybrids and airborne phantoms" would later become a formative influence on Surrealism.[5] Chagall, however, did not want his work to be associated with any school or movement and considered his own personal language of symbols to be meaningful to himself. But Sweeney notes that others often still associate his work with "illogical and fantastic painting", especially when he uses "curious representational juxtapositions".[19]:10

 

Sweeney writes that "This is Chagall's contribution to contemporary art: the reawakening of a poetry of representation, avoiding factual illustration on the one hand, and non-figurative abstractions on the other". André Breton said that "with him alone, the metaphor made its triumphant return to modern painting".[19]:7

Russia and Soviet Belarus (1914–1922)

 

Because he missed his fiancée, Bella, who was still in Vitebsk—"He thought about her day and night", writes Baal-Teshuva—and was afraid of losing her, Chagall decided to accept an invitation from a noted art dealer in Berlin to exhibit his work, his intention being to continue on to Belarus, marry Bella, and then return with her to Paris. Chagall took 40 canvases and 160 gouaches, watercolors and drawings to be exhibited. The exhibit, held at Herwarth Walden's Sturm Gallery was a huge success, "The German critics positively sang his praises."[11]

People's Art School where the Vitebsk Museum of Modern Art was situated

 

After the exhibit, he continued on to Vitebsk, where he planned to stay only long enough to marry Bella. However, after a few weeks, the First World War began, closing the Russian border for an indefinite period. A year later he married Bella Rosenfeld and they had their first child, Ida. Before the marriage, Chagall had difficulty convincing Bella's parents that he would be a suitable husband for their daughter. They were worried about her marrying a painter from a poor family and wondered how he would support her. Becoming a successful artist now became a goal and inspiration. According to Lewis, "[T]he euphoric paintings of this time, which show the young couple floating balloon-like over Vitebsk—its wooden buildings faceted in the Delaunay manner—are the most lighthearted of his career".[5] His wedding pictures were also a subject he would return to in later years as he thought about this period of his life.[11]:75

Bella with White Collar, 1917

 

In 1915, Chagall began exhibiting his work in Moscow, first exhibiting his works at a well-known salon and in 1916 exhibiting pictures in St. Petersburg. He again showed his art at a Moscow exhibition of avant-garde artists. This exposure brought recognition, and a number of wealthy collectors began buying his art. He also began illustrating a number of Yiddish books with ink drawings. He illustrated I. L. Peretz's The Magician in 1917.[22] Chagall was 30 years old and had begun to become well known.[11]:77

 

The October Revolution of 1917 was a dangerous time for Chagall although it also offered opportunity. By then he was one of the Russia's most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avant-garde, which enjoyed special privileges and prestige as the "aesthetic arm of the revolution".[5] He was offered a notable position as a commissar of visual arts for the country[clarification needed], but preferred something less political, and instead accepted a job as commissar of arts for Vitebsk. This resulted in his founding the Vitebsk Arts College which, adds Lewis, became the "most distinguished school of art in the Soviet Union".

 

It obtained for its faculty some of the most important artists in the country, such as El Lissitzky and Kazimir Malevich. He also added his first teacher, Yehuda Pen. Chagall tried to create an atmosphere of a collective of independently minded artists, each with their own unique style. However, this would soon prove to be difficult as a few of the key faculty members preferred a Suprematist art of squares and circles, and disapproved of Chagall's attempt at creating "bourgeois individualism". Chagall then resigned as commissar and moved to Moscow.

 

In Moscow he was offered a job as stage designer for the newly formed State Jewish Chamber Theater. It was set to begin operation in early 1921 with a number of plays by Sholem Aleichem. For its opening he created a number of large background murals using techniques he learned from Bakst, his early teacher. One of the main murals was 9 feet (2.7 m) tall by 24 feet (7.3 m) long and included images of various lively subjects such as dancers, fiddlers, acrobats, and farm animals. One critic at the time called it "Hebrew jazz in paint". Chagall created it as a "storehouse of symbols and devices", notes Lewis.[5] The murals "constituted a landmark" in the history of the theatre, and were forerunners of his later large-scale works, including murals for the New York Metropolitan Opera and the Paris Opera.[11]:87

 

Famine spread after the war ended in 1918. The Chagalls found it necessary to move to a smaller, less expensive, town near Moscow, although he now had to commute to Moscow daily using crowded trains. In 1921, he worked as an art teacher in a Jewish boys' shelter in suburban Malakhovka, which housed orphaned refugees from Ukrainian pogroms.[6]:270 While there, he created a series of illustrations for the Yiddish poetry cycle Grief written by David Hofstein, who was another teacher at the Malakhovka shelter.[6]:273

 

After spending the years between 1921 and 1922 living in primitive conditions, he decided to go back to France so that he could develop his art in a more comfortable country. Numerous other artists, writers, and musicians were also planning to relocate to the West. He applied for an exit visa and while waiting for its uncertain approval, wrote his autobiography, My Life.[11]:121

France (1923–1941)

 

In 1923, Chagall left Moscow to return to France. On his way he stopped in Berlin to recover the many pictures he had left there on exhibit ten years earlier, before the war began, but was unable to find or recover any of them. Nonetheless, after returning to Paris he again "rediscovered the free expansion and fulfillment which were so essential to him", writes Lewis. With all his early works now lost, he began trying to paint from his memories of his earliest years in Vitebsk with sketches and oil paintings.[5]

 

He formed a business relationship with French art dealer Ambroise Vollard. This inspired him to begin creating etchings for a series of illustrated books, including Gogol's Dead Souls, the Bible, and the La Fontaine's Fables. These illustrations would eventually come to represent his finest printmaking efforts.[5] In 1924, he travelled to Brittany and painted La fenêtre sur l'Île-de-Bréhat.[23] By 1926 he had his first exhibition in the United States at the Reinhardt gallery of New York which included about 100 works, although he did not travel to the opening. He instead stayed in France, "painting ceaselessly", notes Baal-Teshuva.[11] It was not until 1927 that Chagall made his name in the French art world, when art critic and historian Maurice Raynal awarded him a place in his book Modern French Painters. However, Raynal was still at a loss to accurately describe Chagall to his readers:

 

Chagall interrogates life in the light of a refined, anxious, childlike sensibility, a slightly romantic temperament ... a blend of sadness and gaiety characteristic of a grave view of life. His imagination, his temperament, no doubt forbid a Latin severity of composition.[6]:314

 

During this period he traveled throughout France and the Côte d'Azur, where he enjoyed the landscapes, colorful vegetation, the blue Mediterranean Sea, and the mild weather. He made repeated trips to the countryside, taking his sketchbook.[6]:9 He also visited nearby countries and later wrote about the impressions some of those travels left on him:

 

I should like to recall how advantageous my travels outside France have been for me in an artistic sense—in Holland or in Spain, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, or simply in the south of France. There, in the south, for the first time in my life, I saw that rich greenness—the like of which I had never seen in my own country. In Holland I thought I discovered that familiar and throbbing light, like the light between the late afternoon and dusk. In Italy I found that peace of the museums which the sunlight brought to life. In Spain I was happy to find the inspiration of a mystical, if sometimes cruel, past, to find the song of its sky and of its people. And in the East [Palestine] I found unexpectedly the Bible and a part of my very being.[15]:77

 

The Bible illustrations

"The Prophet Jeremiah" (1968)

 

After returning to Paris from one of his trips, Vollard commissioned Chagall to illustrate the Old Testament. Although he could have completed the project in France, he used the assignment as an excuse to travel to Israel to experience for himself the Holy Land. He arrived there in February 1931 and ended up staying for two months. Chagall felt at home in Israel where many people spoke Yiddish and Russian. According to Jacob Baal-Teshuva, "he was impressed by the pioneering spirit of the people in the kibbutzim and deeply moved by the Wailing Wall and the other holy places".[11]:133

 

Chagall later told a friend that Israel gave him "the most vivid impression he had ever received". Wullschlager notes, however, that whereas Delacroix and Matisse had found inspiration in the exoticism of North Africa, he as a Jew in Israel had different perspective. "What he was really searching for there was not external stimulus but an inner authorization from the land of his ancestors, to plunge into his work on the Bible illustrations".[6]:343 Chagall stated that "In the East I found the Bible and part of my own being."

 

As a result, he immersed himself in "the history of the Jews, their trials, prophecies, and disasters", notes Wullschlager. She adds that beginning the assignment was an "extraordinary risk" for Chagall, as he had finally become well known as a leading contemporary painter, but would now end his modernist themes and delve into "an ancient past".[6]:350 Between 1931 and 1934 he worked "obsessively" on "The Bible", even going to Amsterdam in order to carefully study the biblical paintings of Rembrandt and El Greco, to see the extremes of religious painting. He walked the streets of the city's Jewish quarter to again feel the earlier atmosphere. He told Franz Meyer:

 

I did not see the Bible, I dreamed it. Ever since early childhood, I have been captivated by the Bible. It has always seemed to me and still seems today the greatest source of poetry of all time.[6]:350

 

Chagall saw the Old Testament as a "human story, ... not with the creation of the cosmos but with the creation of man, and his figures of angels are rhymed or combined with human ones", writes Wullschlager. She points out that in one of his early Bible images, "Abraham and the Three Angels", the angels sit and chat over a glass of wine "as if they have just dropped by for dinner".[6]:350

 

He returned to France and by the next year had completed 32 out of the total of 105 plates. By 1939, at the beginning of World War II, he had finished 66. However, Vollard died that same year. When the series was completed in 1956, it was published by Edition Tériade. Baal-Teshuva writes that "the illustrations were stunning and met with great acclaim. Once again Chagall had shown himself to be one of the 20th century's most important graphic artists".[11]:135 Leymarie has described these drawings by Chagall as "monumental" and,

 

...full of divine inspiration, which retrace the legendary destiny and the epic history of Israel to Genesis to the Prophets, through the Patriarchs and the Heroes. Each picture becomes one with the event, informing the text with a solemn intimacy unknown since Rembrandt.[20]:ix

 

Nazi campaigns against modern art

 

Not long after Chagall began his work on the Bible, Adolf Hitler gained power in Germany. Anti-Semitic laws were being introduced and the first concentration camp at Dachau had been established. Wullschlager describes the early effects on art:

 

The Nazis had begun their campaign against modernist art as soon as they seized power. Expressionist, cubist, abstract, and surrealist art—anything intellectual, Jewish, foreign, socialist-inspired, or difficult to understand—was targeted, from Picasso and Matisse going back to Cézanne and van Gogh; in its place traditional German realism, accessible and open to patriotic interpretation, was extolled.[6]:374

 

Beginning during 1937 about twenty thousand works from German museums were confiscated as "degenerate" by a committee directed by Joseph Goebbels.[6]:375 Although the German press had once "swooned over him", the new German authorities now made a mockery of Chagall's art, describing them as "green, purple, and red Jews shooting out of the earth, fiddling on violins, flying through the air ... representing [an] assault on Western civilization".[6]:376

 

After Germany invaded and occupied France, the Chagalls naively remained in Vichy France, unaware that French Jews, with the help of the Vichy government, were being collected and sent to German concentration camps, from which few would return. The Vichy collaborationist government, directed by Marshal Philippe Pétain, immediately upon assuming power established a commission to "redefine French citizenship" with the aim of stripping "undesirables", including naturalized citizens, of their French nationality. Chagall had been so involved with his art, that it was not until October 1940, after the Vichy government, at the behest of the Nazi occupying forces, began approving anti-Semitic laws, that he began to understand what was happening. Learning that Jews were being removed from public and academic positions, the Chagalls finally "woke up to the danger they faced". But Wullschlager notes that "by then they were trapped".[6]:382 Their only refuge could be America, but "they could not afford the passage to New York" or the large bond that each immigrant had to provide upon entry to ensure that they would not become a financial burden to the country.

Escaping occupied France

 

According to Wullschlager, "[T]he speed with which France collapsed astonished everyone: the French army, with British support, capitulated even more quickly than Poland had done" a year earlier. "Shock waves crossed the Atlantic... as Paris had until then been equated with civilization throughout the non-Nazi world."[6]:388 Yet the attachment of the Chagalls to France "blinded them to the urgency of the situation."[6]:389 Many other well-known Russian and Jewish artists eventually sought to escape: these included Chaim Soutine, Max Ernst, Max Beckmann, Ludwig Fulda, author Victor Serge and prize-winning author Vladimir Nabokov, who although not Jewish himself, was married to a Jewish woman.[24]:1181 Russian author Victor Serge described many of the people living temporarily in Marseille who were waiting to emigrate to America:

 

Here is a beggar's alley gathering the remnants of revolutions, democracies and crushed intellects... In our ranks are enough doctors, psychologists, engineers, educationalists, poets, painters, writers, musicians, economists and public men to vitalize a whole great country.[6]:392

 

After prodding by their daughter Ida, who "perceived the need to act fast",[6]:388 and with help from Alfred Barr of the New York Museum of Modern Art, Chagall was saved by having his name added to the list of prominent artists whose lives were at risk and who the United States should try to extricate. Varian Fry, the American journalist, and Hiram Bingham IV, the American Vice-Consul in Marseilles, ran a rescue operation to smuggle artists and intellectuals out of Europe to the US by providing them with forged visas to the US. Chagall was one of over 2,000 who were rescued by this operation. He left France in May 1941, "when it was almost too late", adds Lewis. Picasso and Matisse were also invited to come to America but they decided to remain in France. Chagall and Bella arrived in New York on 23 June 1941, the day after Germany invaded the Soviet Union.[11]:150 Ida and her husband Michel followed on the notorious refugee ship SS Navemar with a large case of Chagall's work.[25] A chance post-war meeting in a French café between Ida and intelligence analyst Konrad Kellen led to Kellen carrying more paintings on his return to the United States.[26]

United States (1941–1948)

Photo portrait of Chagall in 1941 by Carl Van Vechten

 

Even before arriving in the United States in 1941, Chagall was awarded the Carnegie Prize third prize in 1939 for "Les Fiancés". After being in America he discovered that he had already achieved "international stature", writes Cogniat, although he felt ill-suited in this new role in a foreign country whose language he could not yet speak. He became a celebrity mostly against his will, feeling lost in the strange surroundings.[17]:57

 

After a while he began to settle in New York, which was full of writers, painters, and composers who, like himself, had fled from Europe during the Nazi invasions. He lived at 4 East 74th Street.[27] He spent time visiting galleries and museums, and befriended other artists including Piet Mondrian and André Breton.[11]:155

 

Baal-Teshuva writes that Chagall "loved" going to the sections of New York where Jews lived, especially the Lower East Side. There he felt at home, enjoying the Jewish foods and being able to read the Yiddish press, which became his main source of information since he did not yet speak English.[11]

 

Contemporary artists did not yet understand or even like Chagall's art. According to Baal-Teshuva, "they had little in common with a folkloristic storyteller of Russo-Jewish extraction with a propensity for mysticism." The Paris School, which was referred to as 'Parisian Surrealism,' meant little to them.[11]:155 Those attitudes would begin to change, however, when Pierre Matisse, the son of recognized French artist Henri Matisse, became his representative and managed Chagall exhibitions in New York and Chicago in 1941. One of the earliest exhibitions included 21 of his masterpieces from 1910 to 1941.[11] Art critic Henry McBride wrote about this exhibit for the New York Sun:

 

Chagall is about as gypsy as they come... these pictures do more for his reputation than anything we have previously seen... His colors sparkle with poetry... his work is authentically Russian as a Volga boatman's song...[28]

 

He was offered a commission by choreographer Leonid Massine of the Ballet Theatre of New York to design the sets and costumes for his new ballet, Aleko. This ballet would stage the words of Pushkin's verse narrative The Gypsies with the music of Tchaikovsky. While Chagall had done stage settings before while in Russia, this was his first ballet, and it would give him the opportunity to visit Mexico. While there he quickly began to appreciate the "primitive ways and colorful art of the Mexicans," notes Cogniat. He found "something very closely related to his own nature", and did all the color detail for the sets while there.[17] Eventually, he created four large backdrops and had Mexican seamstresses sew the ballet costumes.

 

When the ballet premiered on 8 September 1942 it was considered a "remarkable success."[11] In the audience were other famous mural painters who came to see Chagall's work, including Diego Rivera and José Orozco. According to Baal-Teshuva, when the final bar of music ended, "there was a tumultuous applause and 19 curtain calls, with Chagall himself being called back onto the stage again and again." The ballet also opened in New York City four weeks later at the Metropolitan Opera and the response was repeated, "again Chagall was the hero of the evening".[11]:158 Art critic Edwin Denby wrote of the opening for the New York Herald Tribune that Chagall's work:

 

has turned into a dramatized exhibition of giant paintings... It surpasses anything Chagall has done on the easel scale, and it is a breathtaking experience, of a kind one hardly expects in the theatre.[29]

 

Coming to grips with World War II

 

After Chagall returned to New York in 1943, however, current events began to interest him more, and this was represented by his art, where he painted subjects including the Crucifixion and scenes of war. He learned that the Germans had destroyed the town where he was raised, Vitebsk, and became greatly distressed.[11]:159 He also learned about the Nazi concentration camps.[11] During a speech in February 1944, he described some of his feelings:

 

Meanwhile, the enemy jokes, saying that we are a "stupid nation." He thought that when he started slaughtering the Jews, we would all in our grief suddenly raise the greatest prophetic scream, and would be joined by the Christian humanists. But, after two thousand years of "Christianity" in the world—say whatever you like—but, with few exceptions, their hearts are silent... I see the artists in Christian nations sit still—who has heard them speak up? They are not worried about themselves, and our Jewish life doesn't concern them.[15]:89

 

In the same speech he credited Soviet Russia with doing the most to save the Jews:

 

The Jews will always be grateful to it. What other great country has saved a million and a half Jews from Hitler's hands, and shared its last piece of bread? What country abolished antisemitism? What other country devoted at least a piece of land as an autonomous region for Jews who want to live there? All this, and more, weighs heavily on the scales of history.[15]:89

 

On 2 September 1944, Bella died suddenly due to a virus infection, which was not treated due to the wartime shortage of medicine. As a result, he stopped all work for many months, and when he did resume painting his first pictures were concerned with preserving Bella's memory.[17] Wullschlager writes of the effect on Chagall: "As news poured in through 1945 of the ongoing Holocaust at Nazi concentration camps, Bella took her place in Chagall's mind with the millions of Jewish victims." He even considered the possibility that their "exile from Europe had sapped her will to live."[6]:419

With Virginia Haggard McNeil

 

After a year of living with his daughter Ida and her husband Michel Gordey, he entered into a romance with Virginia Haggard, daughter of diplomat Sir Godfrey Digby Napier Haggard and great-niece of the author Sir Henry Rider Haggard; their relationship endured seven years. They had a child together, David McNeil, born 22 June 1946.[11] Haggard recalled her "seven years of plenty" with Chagall in her book, My Life with Chagall (Robert Hale, 1986).

 

A few months after the Allies succeeded in liberating Paris from Nazi occupation, with the help of the Allied armies, Chagall published a letter in a Paris weekly, "To the Paris Artists":

 

In recent years I have felt unhappy that I couldn't be with you, my friends. My enemy forced me to take the road of exile. On that tragic road, I lost my wife, the companion of my life, the woman who was my inspiration. I want to say to my friends in France that she joins me in this greeting, she who loved France and French art so faithfully. Her last joy was the liberation of Paris... Now, when Paris is liberated, when the art of France is resurrected, the whole world too will, once and for all, be free of the satanic enemies who wanted to annihilate not just the body but also the soul—the soul, without which there is no life, no artistic creativity.[15]:101

The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.

(Paul Valery )

 

taken at Hasenbergl - Subway station in Muenchen.

www.riverhillgardens.co.uk/

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.

  

When Carl Sagan had famously said that “we’re made of star stuff,” he wasn’t joking because the facts are that the cosmos are hidden within all of us humans. We are the SO BELOW here on earth in which the cosmos and heavens are the AS ABOVE.

Albert Pike, 33rd Degree Freemason and Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite said; “Lucifer the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendours intolerable blinds feeble sensual, or selfish souls? Doubt it not! ”

And one of Freemasonry’s greatest philosophers that has ever lived, 33rd Degree Freemason and master Rosicrucian Manly P. Hall said this about Lucifer in his book, All Seeing Eye; “Lucifer represents the individual intellect and will which rebels against the domination of Nature and attempts to maintain itself contrary to natural impulse. Lucifer, in the form of Venus, is the morning star spoken of in Revelation, which is to be given to those who overcome the world.”

Many people mistakenly think that Lucifer is Satan and vice versa, but the facts are that is simply not true. This misinformation, conspiracies and lies have been propagated to the people through many books and movies to the point today in this year 2013, that most people equate Lucifer with Satan or evil. Hopefully you have an open mind and will get past this propaganda like I did myself, in order for you to discover the truth. I AM sure this is the case or else most likely you wouldn’t be reading this website.

If you are asking the question, “Who is Lucifer?,” the answer that you will find often depends on who you ask or where you perform your search. But the facts are that if you were to research the true meaning of Lucifer that is somewhat hidden in secret societies such as Freemasonry, you would find that some of the world’s most prolific 33rd Degree Freemasons have already established the meaning of Lucifer, that they have written about in their books on the occult.

The word “occult” simply means hidden, which is the whole point of the misinformation that you will find on the true meaning of Lucifer. In addition, if you know where to look, the true definition of Lucifer along with corresponding information is now common knowledge on Wikipedia. However, due to countless publications of misinformation via articles, books and videos all over Youtube; the truth is still buried beneath a pile of ignorance.

Therefor, for us smart researchers, we have come to understand this simple fact: That in order to find the light, we have to uncover the truth which is buried at the bottom of these lies and hundreds of years of church, government and ignorant human propaganda. The real story of Lucifer is no different. We have to perform some fact checking of our own like you are doing right now, so that we all can get to the bottom of this disinformation in order to get to the light of the truth.

This article will do just that for you, by helping clear the lies in order for you to see the light of Lucifer for what he truly represents.

Jesus morning star

In the occult, Lucifer is often referred to as the ‘morning star.’ In the Bible, you will find this same exact reference to Jesus as well who says in Revelation 22:16 – “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.”

You see, just as Lucifer is known as the morning star, Jesus also calls himself ‘the bright morning star’ and as I stated above, Manly P. Hall had said, “Lucifer, in the form of Venus, is the morning star spoken of in Revelation, which is to be given to those who overcome the world.” Hence, rest assured that Jesus and Lucifer are one and the same which will become clearly evident to those with an eye to see the true light amongst the darkness in which we live.

The reason that both Lucifer and Jesus can be considered one and the same is because of an often little understood chemical compound that is hidden within each of our own DNA called ‘Phosphorus.’ Phosphorus is essential for life and the phosphate is a component of DNA, RNA, ATP, and also the phospholipids that form all cell membranes.

Simply put, without phosphorus, we humans would simply not be human because consciousness and our spiritual energy would not exist. It is through our DNA which contains phosphorus, that we become conscious to the world and who we are in order to live in the light. Hence, Lucifer is really just an allegory to describe ‘Phosphorus’ which resides in our DNA.

The literal meaning of phosphorus (Phosp-Horus = Lucifer) is “Light-Bringer.”

Horus winged sun

Here is the definition that you will find on Wikipedia; Phosphorus (Greek Φωσφόρος Phōsphoros), a name meaning “Light-Bringer”, is the Morning Star, the planet Venus in its morning appearance. Another Greek name for the Morning Star is Ἑωσφόρος (Heōsphoros), which means “Dawn-Bringer”.

The Latin word corresponding to Greek Phosphorus is “Lucifer”. It is used in its astronomical sense both in prose and poetry. The Latin word lucifer, corresponding to, was used as a name for the morning star and thus appeared in the Vulgate translation of the Hebrew word הֵילֵל (helel) – meaning Venus as the brilliant, bright or shining one – in Isaiah 14:12, where the Septuagint Greek version uses, not Φωσφόρος, but Ἑωσφόρος.

origins of freemasonry

Venus is the brightest morning “star” and is currently the focal point of the eastern dawn sky. This would be the reason why you will find that all Freemason Lodges face the north and south, but when you walk into the lodge room, you’re symbolically facing the East and all masonic rituals are performed while facing the East in preparation of the son of the morning via the dawn of a new day under the light of the morning star.

Manly P. Hall writes in his book, Initiates of the Flame: “It is said that in ancient times the Sphinx was the gateway of the Pyramid, and that there was an underground passage which led from the Sphinx to Cheops (Great Pyramid)” (Initiates of the Flame, p. 68).

The Sphinx symbolizes man. The Sphinx again symbolizes man, with the mind and spirit of the human rising out of the animal desires and emotions. It is the riddle of the ages, and man is once more the answer. The four fixed signs of which the Sphinx is a symbol are Taurus the Bull, Leo the Lion, Scorpio the Eagle, and Aquarius the Man, or the human head.

So, how can Lucifer be the the prince of darkness, when it has been established that Lucifer is really phosphorus, which a derived from a Greek name meaning “Light-Bringer?”

The facts are that is he is not the prince of darkness or Satan because Lucifer is really phosphorus that resides in our DNA. Once you understand this reality that is science based, you will then have one of the secret keys to the mysteries of the universe.

The light within each one of us humans is where we find Lucifer or Jesus, AKA the morning star.

sphynxeye

Hence, KNOW THYSELF and KNOW GOD. In ancient Egypt is was said; “The body is the house of God,” and one of the many proverbs is “Man, know thyself … and thou shalt know the gods,” and what Manly P. Hall called Aquarius the Man, or the human head represented by the Egyptian Sphinx.

When we KNOW THYSELF, we carry the water of Aquarius the Man and thus become Lion Kings of our own domain which the Egyptians had represented with the figure of a sphinx (Greek: Σφίγξ /sphinx, Bœotian: Φίξ /Phix) which is a mythical creature with, as a minimum, the body of a lion and the head of a human.

Unfortunately, with the advent of certain religions such as Christianity and Islam along with other government controls on the people, these ancient gnostic teachings were corrupted, modified or simply hidden from the multitudes of people because they are or were at one time very dangerous to the church and or government.

These authoritarian institutions operate primarily on the basis of having a master that is outside of you dictating your life, souls and spirit at every step, and they would rather “tell you who you are, where you come from and where you will be going,” rather than us humans being unique individuals who “know thyself … and thou shalt know the gods.”

The facts are that a person who KNOWS THYSELF and KNOWS GOD, is very hard to control by the powers that be because they loose their grip on this persons soul once they figure out “the game” which from day one has been an attempt to trick or steal us all out of our true beings, souls and spirits. Hence, the reason why there are all these lies and propaganda surrounding the name Lucifer.

lucifer 1

Lucifer represents the angel of light with individual intellect who ‘rebels’ against the outside ‘dark authority’. This is why he is called the ‘fallen angel.’ The dark and outside authority can be attributed to our flesh and fleshly desires coupled with the outside material world that attempts to take us away from the true light within each one of us.

This darkness tries to fool us into looking without when we should have always been looking within the whole time. Hence, this is the whole illusion of the matrix in which Satan, the true prince of darkness that represents the flesh and free will is looking to control you, so you do not look within yourself for the “prince of light” or “the morning star.”

The reference to the Venus is the AS ABOVE of which Lucifer, AKA Phosphorus is the AS BELOW.

The facts are that we are made of stardust” or star debris and are therefore “one with the universe.” This is where we get the AS ABOVE, in the SO BELOW and the AS WITHIN , of the AS WITHOUT. It is that star dust hidden inside you in the form of Phosphorus, which I have already stated is essential for life. The phosphate is a component of DNA, RNA, ATP, and also the phospholipids that form all cell membranes. This is the ‘spark’ in our DNA that makes us human. Lucifer is in all of us in the form of Phosphorus.

This may be where our souls access our divine consciousness and thus we become divine like Saint John or a Christ like Jesus. Or is this what the church calls evil in Lucifer because a conscious soul and spirit is a dangerous one and maybe that is why Jesus was crucified?

What is the fall of Lucifer?

fall of lucifer

It is an allegory of the light that resides in us and the fall is simply the fall away from this light. With the advent of most religions, this caused the fall of mankind. A fall away from the light within us that was then exchanged or forced by a false light that that was to be found outside of ourselves within a book or church.

Hence, the fall of Lucifer is the fall that each one of us takes when we look outside for answers as opposed to looking within for the true light, that which will guide us to the promise land or own own personal heavens.

As I stated above, Lucifer and the Morning Star are references to Phosphorus which is essential for life. Without phosphorus, consciousness, energy and the creation of this article would simply not be happening. When we turn away from this light within, we too fall away from grace. Hence, we fall for lies and truth in which we then become one of Satan’s tools that is represented by the planet Saturn. However, that will be a new article in itself.

Whether you choose to believe what I AM stating here and by confirming what I have written and quoted above, is entirely up to you because this is your path where you have to decide truth from fiction or light from dark on your own. However, if you have not done your own research and you have already reached an ignorant conclusion based on heresay or lies, then you are what Mr. Pike calls intolerable blinds feeble sensual, or selfish souls, in which you are one of the billions of Satan’s weak human tools. A soul who chooses darkness rather than light and an unawakened human who worships lies over truth, where ignorance rules your actions over that of true wisdom.

Hence, another brick in the wall…….

Albert Pike’s full quote of Lucifer in his famous book, Morals and Dogma on page 321;

albert-pike on lucifer

albert-pike

“The Apocalypse is, to those who receive the nineteenth degree, the Apotheosis of that Sublime Faith which aspires to God alone, and despises all the pomps and works of Lucifer. Lucifer. The Light Bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendours intolerable blinds feeble sensual, or selfish souls? Doubt it not! For traditions are full of Divine Revelations and Inspirations: and Inspiration is not of one Age nor of one Creed Plato and Philo also, were also inspired.”

  

Moe

Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. A website dedicated to both the ancient and modern teachings of Gnosticism.

 

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68 Comments

Realist

Realist on January 25, 2019 at 11:24 am

Lucifer is the devil. The same one who was thrown down to earth with the other rebellious angels. Hence: how art thou fallen from heaven, oh lucifer (or horus, wotan, quetzalcoatl, shiva, jahbulon, e.t.c). If there was no devil, there would be no atlantis myth (Ezekiel’s Tyre), from where the so-called “aryans” and their global “all seeing eye” religion originated. And the dragon (reptilian) said to the woman: for if you eat of the fruit, your “eye” will be opened and you will become (equal) like a god, knowing (gnosis) good and evil.

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Thoth Al Khem

Thoth Al Khem on January 24, 2019 at 1:36 pm

The WORD Lucifer is a MISTRANSLATION by St. Jerome in 382 AD ! PERIOD !!!!!! In Hebrew the word is Heylel/Halal…Hey (Yod) Lamed Lamed. Isaiah 14 is about a MAN….READ IT. The ONLY Lucifer was St. Lucifer of Cagliari who died 10 years before St Jerome PURPOSELY Mistranslated Isaiah 14:12. Doesn’t ANYONE ACTUALLY read the Bible? KILL LIST from King James Bible. YHVH 2,476,633 NOT including the Flood or Sodom and Gomorrah…..SATAN? only 10. There is NO Devil………

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Moe

Moe on January 24, 2019 at 3:32 pm

The Hebrew word Hêlêl or Heylel is found just once in the Hebrew Bible. It means to shine or shining one, to flash. The Septuagint renders הֵילֵל in Greek as Ἑωσφόρος (heōsphoros), “bringer of dawn” and Lucifer is Latin for the Greek phosphorus.

The Church had labeled Simon Magus as Satan.

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Realist

Realist on January 21, 2019 at 12:13 pm

How art thou fallen from heaven, oh Lucifer, the deciever, together with his fellow reptilians. He is the one who will take his followers to the lake of fire. Jesus Christ is God and saviour to all who accept Him.

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Leonard

Leonard on January 18, 2019 at 1:39 am

Therefore, are you saying that Lucifer is Jesus? Most of all this piece of information are craps and they are produced to confuse, brainwash and deviate us from the only true God, Jesus Christ, the one who died on the cross of calvary in order to set us free from the grip of Satan, prince of peace, the only begotten son of God, the bright and morning star, the only way, the truth and life. Nobody cometh to the father except through him. Any book contradicting what is stated in the bible, the word of God is satanic. Satan is evil and what most occult worship is satan the ark enemy of the true living God, the creator of the universe.

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Love2ClearClouds (Cherokee Name)

Love2ClearClouds (Cherokee Name) on December 3, 2018 at 9:22 am

Who is Lucifer?

I was taught in the SDA religion that Lucifer was Satan’s name before he fell from heaven. Felt stupid even when I was 11 years old.

I now understand that the Bible is astrology and physiology, as above so below. “JESUS” was originally IESOUS, the Greek name for the sUn in the sky. Each of the 12 “disciples” are actually symbolic/allegories of the 12 constellations. Those aren’t “halos” around the head of “Jesus” and the disciples, those lit heads are hints to the true identities and the actual truth that they are literally the sUn and the primary stars of the 12 primary constellations.

Every culture and time period gave their own names to the heavenly bodies. The ancients were well aware that everything in our 3D reality is frequency and vibration.

“ if you want to know the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.”

-Nikola Tesla

This sUn emits codes through frequencies and scientists have recorded the sounds coming from the sun. The stars and planets are emiting their own frequencies and all frequencies affect us here as we are affecting everything out there.

In the book of Job, the oldest book in the Bible, there are several references to astrology…Mazzaroth, which is the Hebrew word for the 12 primary constellations/clock in the sky, and Zodiac is the Greek word. In the book of Job you read about the sweet influences of the Pleiades and about the mother bear and her cub/Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.

TPTB KNOW and use this knowledge/science to their own benefit and to our detriment. Becoming educated in astrology and it’s effects on our physiology will finally break the chains that have held us in these man-made prisons for millennia.

Ultimately, what we can not live without is the SUN. The eternal SUN gives life, it triggers cell regeneration and can extend life, it heals and restores.

I am a sungazer as was Akhenaton in Egypt before the bloodline, that still rules today, killed him. Because of sungazing, I no longer have the eyeglass restriction on my drivers license. I began my son gazing practice for years ago. Two years ago, I had to go in person for my 20 year drivers license renewal. I passed the eye exam for the first time in my 43 years of driving. I had given up the practice but after passing that eye exam I have been back at it the past couple of months. I am hoping to get to the level of not needing to eat food anymore. No more hunger…isn’t that what “Jesus” promised?

🌞🌟

Reply

Love2ClearClouds

Love2ClearClouds on December 3, 2018 at 8:47 am

I was taught in the SDA religion that Lucifer was Satan’s name before he fell from heaven. Felt stupid even when I was 11 years old.

I now understand that the Bible is astrology and physiology, as above so below. “JESUS” was originally IESOUS, the Greek name for the sUn in the sky. Each of the 12 “disciples” are actually symbolic/allegories of the 12 constellations. Those aren’t “halos” around the head of “Jesus” and the disciples, those lit heads are hints to the true identities and the actual truth that they are literally the sUn and the primary stars of the 12 primary constellations.

Every culture and time period gave their own names to the heavenly bodies. The ancients were well aware that everything in our 3D reality is frequency and vibration.

“ if you want to know the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.”

-Nikola Tesla

This sUn emits codes through frequencies and scientists have recorded the sounds coming from the sun. The stars and planets are emiting their own frequencies and all frequencies affect us here as we are affecting everything out there.

In the book of Job, the oldest book in the Bible, there are several references to astrology…Mazzaroth, which is the Hebrew word for the 12 primary constellations/clock in the sky, and Zodiac is the Greek word. In the book of Job you read about the sweet influences of the Pleiades and about the mother bear and her cub/Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.

TPTB KNOW and use this knowledge/science to their own benefit and to our detriment. Becoming educated in astrology and it’s effects on our physiology will finally break the chains that have held us in these man-made prisons for millennia.

Reply

Jen

Jen on November 24, 2018 at 6:45 pm

Lovely work, as usual.

Lucifer can also relate to Samael, the Archangel. Fixed Zodiacal signs were Angels (Angels) of the Arch. The most crucial of the four fixed signs were depicted through most variations of the Sphynx, which was usually seen as a half lion and half human. In particular, an upper half woman with one breast exposed. This brings Aquarius and Leo into significance as gaurdians of the gateway of the Archs. (Think Zenith/vernal Equinox and Nadir, it’s opposition). Our most profound (and cataclysmic) events of history tend to happen when the Platonic year hits the 0 degree Pisces mark (beginning of the Age of Aquarius) and 0 degree Virgo (Beginning of the Age of Leo). The light will return during the Great Conjunction of winter 2020, the official beginning of the Age of Aquarius, by the Western systems. Strap on your seatbelts, folks. It’s going to be a wild ride! : )

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Gene

Gene on November 18, 2016 at 5:18 pm

People/ mankind want to see these 2 as a person/s or creatures. Lucifer, some form of being and Jesus the man. When all of this is astrology/ astronomy personified.

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Kirk Nyman

Kirk Nyman on October 21, 2016 at 4:28 am

I was taught in church growing up that Lucifer was Satan before his fall from grace due to his pride so he lost his once great name meaning light bearer to Satan meaning enemy opposer and slanderer. Just a thought, could it be that beings he was no longer the bright and morning star that Jesus came in to claim that title?

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Bhsas

Bhsas on August 31, 2016 at 3:00 pm

then who is it that the occultists are sacrificing animals, babies, and children to in the rituals if Lucifer the angel, the prince of the darkness?

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Lawrence clay rogers

Lawrence clay rogers on October 11, 2016 at 10:00 am

These are all ways they who are trying to prevent what must happen establish confusion for our people, they have failed

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John lester anoya duo

John lester anoya duo on August 25, 2016 at 10:16 pm

I know who is lucifer

Reply

Lawrence clay rogers

Lawrence clay rogers on October 11, 2016 at 10:00 am

Do you?

Reply

ishi

ishi on July 15, 2016 at 10:23 pm

..i love how you write..it is good to see truth being spoken again..i will join as soon as it is financially possible to do so

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angela frost

angela frost on May 31, 2016 at 4:28 pm

fantastic stuff moe,,,its great to see it put in the right context for me ,,something i have felt alone with for so long ,,i am not a scholar or a scientist of the enforced + restricted denied false truth seekers ,,,,,i just saw the real truth at the age of 5 yrs old before adults tricked me into their strange denying deliberately blinkered world of dellusional safety ,,,when my cat died ,,i watched all the elements join together to my cat more alive than his cold empty body lying in front of me ,,,it was normal to me …i knew there was no death ,,but only constant renewal ,,,but its a lonely world when you clearly see what everyone else prefers not to simply through fear of majority brain-washed acceptance

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Joseph

Joseph on February 9, 2016 at 5:35 am

This is an excellent article. However I contend that the ‘fall’ of Lucifer was not a bad thing, but a good thing. The ‘fall’ of Christ and the ‘fall’ we must individually go through to knock us from a sensual/individual type of pride and give us true humility to be able to handle the power of ‘being as a God’ is what the ‘fall’ was really about. The single biggest problem in this material existence is power/control and individuals inability to handle it. The reason this is so is because people see themselves as ‘individuals’ and not part of the One. There is a veil placed in front of their faces. That is the deception Satan/Yaldabaoth placed upon mankind in order to rule them fully. Gnostic teaching states Satan is the God/Creator of this world and the Serpent came to show us ‘the way’. He took a ‘fall’ for that. Lucifer/Prometheus took a ‘fall’ to help us, Jesus took a ‘fall’ to help us…and if you have truly lived in this material existence…it is a requirement to take a ‘fall’ to do truly good.

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Joseph

Joseph on February 8, 2016 at 5:55 am

Very good article. Something you must experience before you read and learn about. I have one comment I’d like to point out however. I believe the ‘fall’ that we take, as did Lucifer is not a bad thing or a falling away, but rather a necessary thing and a falling towards. If we are to follow true Gnostic teaching which basically teaches that Satan/The Demiurge is the God of this creation and material world, then to ‘fall’ away from it would truly be a blessing. It is described as a ‘fall’ in the sense that it is all about humility. Christ himself learned it as we must before we inherit the power of a God. Just look around. Power/Control is the single issue among separated beings. When one ‘falls’ one experiences a sense of powerlessness and helplessness. It is then true unity is infused and the individual, now realizing they are not an ‘individual’, but part of the One…can now rise up, with TRUE power, and go in and out of this material existence with relative ease and comfort. Just a thought.

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KRISTA

KRISTA on January 15, 2016 at 5:43 pm

I am one of the original Starchildren God made in the beginning. I am the Evening Star. No joking whats so ever.

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stacy

stacy on June 4, 2016 at 7:59 pm

me too are you rh neg?

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Jecht

Jecht on December 31, 2015 at 1:42 pm

Good content. Very well laid out.

Wish you would go more deeply into the light. Our stardust deep inside us.

How do you determine your purpose?

Reply

ishi

ishi on July 15, 2016 at 10:32 pm

…sometimes….our ‘purpose’…is late in coming to us…sometimes..it is just one thing, one act….get to Know yourself & do what you are best at..wait patiently..when it is time for you, you will then know what to do

Reply

Jakob Albert

Jakob Albert on November 29, 2015 at 1:01 am

TheCloning of God

Godhad an inner compulsion to externalise himself: to make aconsciousness outside and beyond himself, and through this othernessto come to full consciousness.

Hegel,one of the greatest grandmasters of the Illuminati, said, “Thedivine Idea is just this: to disclose itself, to posit the Otheroutside itself and to take it back again into itself in order to besubjectivity and mind/spirit.”

Consciousness,including that of God, requires interaction with otherness if it isto develop. God is compelled to create otherness – to externalisehimself – and through a study of that otherness we can gain sureknowledge of God.

Hegelcriticised conventional Western religion on the grounds that itseparates God from the universe, and makes all of his attributesindependent of the universe. God, according to the traditional view,would be exactly the same whether or not anything else existed. Hisnature wouldn’t alter in the slightest even if there were no universeand no other creatures. Hegel fiercely attacks this view. If God hadno inner need to create anything else then why did he? Is hecapricious? Was he bored? Curious? None of these make any sense inrelation to a perfect God without deficiency. God is entirelyself-sufficient and needs nothing else according to the tenets ofmainstream Western religion. Hegel said, “If God is allsufficient and lacks nothing, how does he come to release Himselfinto something so clearly unequal to him?”

NoChristian, Jew or Muslim can answer why God creates the world when hehas no need to do so. If he does it for a reason such as wanting tospread his love then it implies that he has a need to do that, yetGod, by definition, needs nothing. If he does it because he wants tobe obeyed and worshipped then that also indicates deficiency on hispart. If God is truly self-sufficient, it is impossible that he wouldever have felt the need to create anything. Therefore God is notself-sufficient. Therefore a God of whom it is claimed that he isself-sufficient cannot exist. God creates otherness because he must.He has no choice. He is compelled. Creation is an act of innernecessity. God needs others as much as they need him. Anyone whodoesn’t understand that single truth can never understand God. Theywill always believe in a fantasy.

Godcreated many things as he evolved – a dazzling realm fashioned fromlight – but none of them gave him what he needed: an othernesscomparable to himself. Eventually, after endless experiments, Godsucceeded in cloning himself. The clone was the being that is nowknown as Lucifer, Son of God, the Angel of Light, the Morning Star,Lux Mundi, the Light of the World.

God,through his interaction with Lucifer, became fully self-conscious, asdid Lucifer. Between them, they created the first language, thedivine language. Then Lucifer wanted a brother as a companion and Godgranted his wish. The second son of God was a fateful being. Hisoriginal name was Paracletus, meaning “the Comforter” or”one called to help” because he was to be Lucifer’s brotherand friend. But religion knows him by his later name of Satanel, thensimply Satan. Satan means “accuser/adversary”. It will beexplained below why Paracletus, second son of God and beloved brotherof Lucifer, became the sworn enemy of his father and brother andacquired his dread new name.

Satan’sfatal flaw was “hyperephania” – extreme pride. Afflicted bydoubts about himself, lacking self-esteem, in awe of his father,envious of his radiant brother, unsure of his identity, Satancompensated by cultivating an exaggerated ego. After an age, hebelieved himself superior to Lucifer and even God. He resented theirrelationship and was jealous of it. He resented being the youngestand least powerful. Resentment became hate. Hate became action. Thataction was rebellion. He stood as the adversary of God and Lucifer.He accused them of plotting against him. He opposed all of theirplans.

Havingcreated Lucifer and Paracletus, God provided his sons with the secretof how to clone themselves. The clones of the two sons were thebeings now known as angels. The realm of light became populated bymany beings of light: God, his two sons and the choirs of angels. Butthe angels were loyal to their respective creators and reflectedtheir natures. Satan’s angels were infected with his discontent.

Satanand his army of angels rebelled against God, Lucifer and their loyalangels. The struggle was long and furious, but Satan and hisfollowers lost and fell. They were banished from God’s realm, beingcast out into darkness where the light of God never penetrated.

Satanwanted his own realm where he was the sole master. He discovered thesecret of matter and fashioned a rival universe of matter rather thanlight. This was the universe of the Big Bang – our universe. “Letthere be light,” Satan announced as he brought this universeinto existence: a mockery of God’s light. Satan is the creator andruler of our universe of the Big Bang, and he’s assisted by his rebelangels – called the archons, groups of whom were given regions of theuniverse to rule on Satan’s behalf. 144 archons are assigned toearth. They are responsible for most of the secret history of earth.They are opposed by two groups within that secret history: theIlluminati (consisting of approximately 6,000 people i.e. a similarnumber to that of the Old World Order), and the small group thatcreated the Illuminati but stands outside of the society, just as thearchons stand outside the Old World Order. That small group consistsof 36 angels of Lucifer.

TheIlluminati and the Old World Order are mirror images. Both groupsknow the secret history of earth, and the strange and fatefulstruggle that takes place behind the scenes and to which the rest ofhumanity is mostly oblivious.

Satanwas almost as bright as Lucifer in his earliest days, but he grewrepelled by light and made himself dark. He became “darknessvisible” to use John Milton’s immortal phrase. He is truly theprince of darkness, yet it must never be forgotten that he is the Sonof God and contains the divine spark.

ThroughSatan, evil entered the universe. The birth of evil is not difficultto understand. It is a product of a damaged self-consciousness, oflow self esteem finding a way to overcompensate. It is exactly thesort of situation with which Freud and Jung would be familiar. Whyshould gods be any different from humans? We are made in their image.

Self-consciousnessis a prerequisite for distinguishing good from evil. Animals cannotcommit acts of evil. Evil can be defined according to three levels:strong, medium and weak. Strong evil is the voluntary commission ofmalicious, harmful and even fatal acts towards others, to suit theselfish desires of the perpetrator. Medium evil is the voluntarycommission of acts to promote a selfish agenda, regardless of theimpact on others. Weak evil is captured by Burke’s famous aphorism:”The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for goodmen to do nothing.”

Goodness,likewise, comes in three strengths. Strong goodness is the voluntarycommission of benevolent, helpful acts towards others to promotecooperative, altruistic ends. Medium goodness is the commission ofacts that are intended not to have any ill impact on others. Weakgoodness is where someone does nothing to stand in the way of goodacts by others.

Only a self-consciousness is capable of making achoice between good and evil acts. The Tree of Knowledge of good andevil is a metaphor for that choice. Knowledge, arising fromself-consciousness, allows the commission of moral or immoral acts.Without knowledge, without choice, without self-consciousness, goodand evil would not exist.

Thereason that evil triumphs is simple: most people are evil.

The meaning of life, by Jakob Albert Boor, Johannesburg SA 2011

This Poem I write to you, are you troubled by silent questions?

Still aware, that spoken questions deserve answers, followed by actions?

The biggest question we have, deserves the world, the worth, to put it in words?

Again some week answer? And hide away, silently remembering historical hurts?

Did life won the feared battle from us individually, and us all?

In the ‘’flock of sheep’’ we feel save, with courage so small.

Standing alone in silence, self decision making seems rough?

Just make the decision, in the end you will feel tough enough.

Visualizing the wall so high, the border so far, even to scared while imagining!

Imagining building inner trust, strength and pride that will be never ending!

Where the trigger does should come from, something needed to start,

Will we be waiting for the bomb, as that power provides, will awaken our hart?

The world showed his errors, examples, way too big or too small.

Everything what states ’too’’ will be a too big responsibility? Again excusing us weakened all?

The mindset we are having, the excuses from weakness we’ll make.

Not teaching us to stand strong while we are forced on steps to take.

Humans think often, the world is too much to take.

Do we use survival instinct, when that world is at stake?

Now with some details, I will show the irony in this.

Walking by, around real essentials, and leave them as it is….

We must look different to needed changes, cultures and mindsets heading for the cliffs and loose.

The roots of the problem measured, we’ll brainstorm for solutions from which together! we will choose.

Troubleshooting, attitude and believes, core reactors make it happen, you’ll see.

Opens different kinds of doors, for the lonely life changer the entrance to be?

As stepping out of the box at first, loneliness is part of the challenge.

Need an example? You will find in the movies, visuals will help with the balance.

As you may choose the right, but difficult path

You‘ll be tested mentally, trust will recognize the value in it, you should now that.

Believing is the keyword; you don’t need a religion for that?

Believing is you! That pure feeling inside! No world war started from that.

Can we stand still, could a simple poem stand a difference..?

No! It will be the reader who breaks down his offence.

Important is that it is able to trigger what’s already there!

It’s already in everybody’s hart; yes, you will get the credits! That would only be fair.

Isaiah: 64…

”Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountain would tremble before you!

As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil,

come down to make your name known to your enemies

and cause the nations to quake before you”

Isaiah 64:7-8

No one calls on your name

or strives to lay hold of you:

For you have hidden your face from us

and makes us waste away because of our sins.

Yet O Lord, You are our Father.

We are the clay, you are the Potter:

We are all the work of your hand.

Isaiah: 63;16-17 !!

BUT YOU ARE OUR FATHER,

THOUGH ABRAHAM DOES NOT KNOW US,

OR ISRAEL ACKNOWLEDGE US:

YOU OUR LORD, ARE OUR FATHER,

OUR REDEEMER FROM OF OLD IS YOUR NAME.

WHY OUR LORD, MAKE US WANDER FROM YOUR WAYS

AND HARDEN OUR HEARTS SO WE DO NOT REFER YOU?

RETURN FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR SERVANTS

THE TRIBES THAT ARE YOUR INHERITANCE…..

ISAIAH 52:6

THEREFORE MY PEOPLE WILL KNOW MY NAME;

THEREFORE IN THAT DAY THEY WILL KNOW

THAT IT IS I WHO FORETOLD IT,

YES, IT IS I…

ISAIAH: 49;5 😉

Reply

James

James on November 9, 2015 at 2:53 pm

This is about having strength within, and showing why strength within is important, because there is always one testing your inner strength. When you try to be strong externally, sometimes in a moment of anger or argument, you’re giving up your inner strength.

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jessu beluang

jessu beluang on October 30, 2015 at 5:52 am

any idea about lucifer?

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farang

farang on October 20, 2015 at 7:51 am

Lucifer is a king. A very real king, not an abstract concept and certainly not Istar/Venus. His son is “Satan.” I suppose one could label me a 34th degree realist, I read and gain knowledge. His name “Lucifer” is the French way of saying his name, much like Lazerus. Hint: Lazerus is “The Blue”…azure…same as the statue of Osiris found in Tut’s tomb. You are welcome…She asked me to spread the truth for those with ears to hear. What I am saying is from mainstream evidence easily found for those that will bother to look. User Fau was his actual name, Moe. User means “crown Prince.”

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Daniel

Daniel on June 27, 2015 at 2:28 am

I believe that all religions were created for balancing purposes and the only true creator is what everyone knows as god in which most pray to as god ,created all so god is the love and sin of all, also it is stated in the bible that we were all made perfect which we were we all chose this life we live now and the reason for this is to learn unique lessons that we have chosen, xenu/Lucifer etc were all real entities brought upon by personal belief produced by the reptilians on to man and other species and in which many beings have conquered this world single headedly, also this world has been inhabited many times over by us and different beings like us which we have ultimately destroyed ourselves in the end thanks to the help of other beings, now a systematic person who has no psychic awareness will disregard this as crap well that is ok your just not evolved enough to realise the truth and most likely have been suppressed by society all your life which is ok you will learn maybe in the next life as you have already started looking into these things in this one, but a true psychic who can communicate with the cross dimensional reptilians like I and see them in there dimension know other whys, now belief creates all and belief comes from the source I have shape shifted into what you could call Lucifer and felt his power I have also been gang stalked for the last five years and live with a spy for the last two who is my girlfriend, I have spotted many military people hiding in close quarters of the house to and get tested daily even by young kids which the government promotes, the truth is we all can be whatever we want to be but because we are evolving to quickly we are suppressed by other beings because we are very dangerous to them also here’s a few things that you should know, if you know the real truth you are a target, the reason why they presented the bali 9 all over tv was for historical purposes, the government will set up something catastrophic to enforce a new law that will take more of our rights away and cause the presentation subliminally of a coming war/ hostility or for the benefit of a new historical purpose, all crime syndicates are run by the government for the preservation of balance now non surpressed people will know this as true but it is harder to find people like I as I are killed of for we are truth

Reply

The Quantumologist

The Quantumologist on June 2, 2015 at 6:21 am

Isaiah Chapter 14 is the ONLY direct reference in the Old Testament to Lucifer, and it’s here: www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Isaiah-Chapter-14/

Reply

lallala

lallala on May 6, 2015 at 5:24 pm

lucifer is the light in darkness. He paves our way towards fully becoming a human being once again.

Reply

jv

jv on May 2, 2015 at 1:19 am

The first references of Lucifer come from the HOLY Word of God. Lucifer was cast out of Heaven for wanting to be above the one true HOLY God. There is NO other place in the entire world that the truth about Lucifer is spoken. Satan means fallen angel and deceiver. The reason why some say Luciferian is because they believe he is like God, whom is actually the roaring lion, seeking to devour and to destroy people, God’s creation. It is truly sad that I come to these sites and find people who seek the easier way, which the Bible clearly calls the wide road, of which many find, but leads to destruction. You cannot take things out of context and pick and choose verses, when the Bible is literally God’s Holy Word spoken spiritually to followers all that time ago. Lucifer and Satan ARE proven the same. The Bible is complete, and cannot be separated. Many new versions have come out with the intention to change or leave out scripture. This is also blasphemy and heresy. Jesus Christ IS God whom came to save the world from being lost and helpless.

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Cruise4

Cruise4 on December 25, 2015 at 6:31 pm

Christ, Christos is the oil produced when the Kundalini hits a gland in the brain. It sits there for 3 days and then flows over the pineal gland. I think this may equate to enlightenment. Jesus is an allegory of the Sun, and also each of us. Whether he actually existed or not is moot. Do what he says or you are no christian, and he taught the above, as is quite clear in various parables such as the Bride and Groom. This is what ‘they’ suppress in us by all means possible.

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Deb

Deb on February 8, 2015 at 4:48 pm

I agree with some of this and much of it makes sense. However, there are, in my opinion, some holes in your logic. For example, intellect is not always contrary to nature, nor is nature evil. Nature is loving and brutal, nurturing and deadly, just as is the human archetype of the divine, in whatever form. I think that you are perhaps equating nature with the feminine and maybe that is where the misogynistic tone of your other articles is coming from if you consider nature evil. Nature itself has a vast intelligence. There would be no intellect without it and certainly no avenue of expression for that intellect. Also, you say that we all have to walk our own paths and not be lead by others, which I absolutely agree with 100%. However, you also take a very condescending tone with those who disagree with you and accuse them of being blind, refusing to see the truth, etc. I would gently remind you that you are human and fallible and therefore you should take care not to sound so much like the very authorities you rightfully accuse of deceiving the people. As for Lucifer, I see him as neither perfect light or perfect darkness. He is, in my opinion, an archetype with strengths and weaknesses. He is the symbol of an truth that, as Cliff pointed out below, must be balanced with love. That love is often expressed in feminine terms as women are the great nurturers. I am reminded of nothing so much as the blind men and the elephant, all accusing each other of lies while simply looking at the same thing in a different way.

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Moe

Moe on February 9, 2015 at 5:27 am

Do you think you know it all? Do you think you are going to insult me on my blog, great work and I’m going to be Mr. Nice to you? It is clear to me you have took the new age information hook line and sinker like 99.9% of the people who have not done their own independent research which is expected so don’t feel bad. Lucifer is simply Latin for the alchemical element known in Greek as phosphorus in which Lucifer is from the morning star known a Jupiter. The feminine aspect is portrayed as the goddess Isis (Cybele, Rhea, the Magna Mater etc) who represents sulfur from the planet Venus. You are making this about men and women or into a gender battle as if Isis was a real and Lucifer was some dude who fell from heaven. They are ancient memes for the profane and ignorant like you who are truly the blind and zombified.

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Francine Stroman

Francine Stroman on April 5, 2015 at 4:02 pm

Moe- I found this article to be very “materialistic” in nature. This experience that you are having right now isn’t actually about anything, in human terms anyway. It’s just hyper intelligent light shining forth and even that is saying too much. On another note it might not be such a bad thing for to learn to acept some constructive critism..

That’s ok I love ya anyway;)

Reply

Guest

Guest on September 28, 2015 at 1:13 pm

I have to say More, I love how you take no crap from people on here. If anyone who did their research would know your right. Opinions are like butt-holes we all have one. This people are profane. And you are sharing very guarded secret s. Which I do not agree with, but that’s out of my control. It was planned long ago, and is designed to happen. Anyways stay strong, stay a warrior

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sinner

sinner on November 15, 2015 at 7:20 pm

Lucifer means The Anti Christ, by the way u idiot Moe why u insist anti christ evil calling Lucifer, ok u have ur belief , don,t u worry ur messiah will not survive except for few years, stop pretending being good guy and inventor of white magic . Have spell on me idiot, if u practice magic I hope u know what does exist to counter magic and ur messiah Lucifer ,

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Cruise4

Cruise4 on December 25, 2015 at 6:09 pm

ISIS can be conversed with, as a feminine aspect/spirit, by taking Ayahuasca. So can Lucifer who apparently comes across as somewhat arrogant. As above so below, As within so without may allow sulpher and phosphorous to be synonomous, same as planets (stars).

I’m seeing an X formation… Lucifer (Red,love of the self), Satan (Blue, love of the mother), as the left and right in this X. Whats on the other ends? We have the woman and the whore in the Bible. Inversion, tops and bottoms. Middles (balance,heart) as green. The whole construction is being prised open, the black and the white of the papersea (papacy) and represents the left and right hemispheres of the brain. This is behaviour of Light, see Goethe. Some of this information is encoded in ‘Jupiter Rising’ and ‘How to train your Dragon 2’.

Very hard to convey in such a short space. ISIS is a real something though. Confirmed and certain, and it’s why they are trying to demonise the name at present with ‘terrorist’ association etc. She is also an illusionist, I’m thinking. Spiders from Ma’s… Ma Sons?

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Cruise4

Cruise4 on December 25, 2015 at 6:16 pm

One other very interesting thing… On one of the Jeff Rense shows dealing with reverse speech (approx. January ish 2015), Obama said ‘There will be no pursuit of the woman’. They had no clue what it meant but it was one of the clearest reverses I’ve ever heard.

Reply

Cliff

Cliff on February 6, 2015 at 9:26 am

Lucifer does indeed represent the light, that is to say the pure light of the rational intellect, and just the intellect. It is the cold light of pure reason unmitigated by the warm light of the heart and thus unbalanced. It is the light that allows the means to justify the end, as pure reason would demand it do so. The Christ you quote also said that ‘by their works you shall know them’ . Your Albert Pike stated that three world wars would be required to bring in the Masonic Age, The Masons have been major players in creating two of them and are on the cusp of igniting the third, so please do not equate your luciferian objectives with that of the light of the Gnostic Christ self. Notwithstanding this, there are many truths still contained in your article, however it seems that these are very cleverly placed to capture those who seek for the light within, an imitation of the path of the seeker after truth, two paths that appear to be subtlely similar and yet ultimately lead to devastating different results. ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ , Albert Pike’s and the Mason’s very definately is.

Reply

Larry

Larry on March 12, 2016 at 10:16 pm

Quite an interesting point: ‘those who seek for the light within, an imitation of the path of the seeker after truth, two paths that appear to be subtlely similar and yet ultimately lead to devastating different results.’

Reply

THE ALL

THE ALL on December 4, 2014 at 5:14 pm

there are several important points which need to be understood…Christianity does not have a monopoly on the term “Lucifer” nor on its definition. The Christian concept and definition of the term “Lucifer” is merely the latest in a long line of definitions and interpretations of this pre-Christian term.

The word “Lucifer” occurs only once in the entire Bible. This is in Isaiah 14:12, which says: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!” Those who read this verse in its actual context will clearly see that the sentence is applied specifically to a certain Babylonian king who was an enemy in war of the Israelites. The original Hebrew text uses the word הֵילֵל which literally means “bright star” or “shining one,” a term applied sarcastically or mockingly by the Israelites to this particular enemy of theirs. The translators of the King James Version of the Bible – one of the chief of whom was the well known Rosicrucian initiate Dr Robert Fludd, a fact which will no doubt shock and horrify many Christians – chose to translate this word with the Latin word “Lucifer.” .“Lucifer” literally means Lightbringer, Lightbearer, Bringer of Dawn, Shining One, or Morning Star. The word has no other meaning. Historically and astronomically, the term “Morning Star” has always been applied to the planet Venus. Since the only occurrence of the word “Lucifer” in the Bible is that one verse in Isaiah, there is absolutely nothing in the Bible which says that Lucifer is Satan or the devil. It was Pope Gregory the Great (540-604 AD) who was the first person to apply that passage of scripture to Satan and thus to equate Lucifer with Satan. But even then this notion didn’t catch on in a big way until the much more recent popularisation of John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” in which Lucifer is used as another name for Satan, the evil adversary of God. Also, such luminaries of the Christian world as Martin Luther and John Calvin considered it “a gross error” to apply Isaiah 14:12 to the devil, “for the context plainly shows these statements must be understood in reference to the king of the Babylonians.”

Thus the Christians who claim that Lucifer is the devil actually have no Biblical basis or authority for such a belief. Though they may claim to be “Bible believing Christians” whose faith is built solely on “the Word of God” they are actually followers – in this and many other respects – of Christian religious tradition and not of the Christian Bible. Or have they quietly conferred divine infallibility upon the Pope and Milton without informing the rest of the world?

H.P. Blavatsky was never at any point in her life a Christian, gave no credence to Christian theology and did not believe in any type of personal or anthropomorphic God nor in any type of personal or anthropomorphic devil. She believed and taught that there is but ONE Infinite Divine Life which is everything and in everything and that It has no adversary or enemy, since there is nothing but That – the boundless, impersonal, omnipresent Principle of Absolute Existence Itself. She was against the notion of worshipping or praying to anyone or anything. She taught that evil is really imperfection, which is the automatic and inevitable byproduct of the existence of matter.

Now let us take a look at some of the statements HPB made about Lucifer in “The Secret Doctrine”…

* “Esoteric philosophy admits neither good nor evil per se, as existing independently in nature. The cause for both is found, as regards the Kosmos, in the necessity of contraries or contrasts, and with respect to man, in his human nature, his ignorance and passions. There is no devil or the utterly depraved, as there are no Angels absolutely perfect, though there may be spirits of Light and of Darkness; thus LUCIFER – the spirit of Intellectual Enlightenment and Freedom of Thought – is metaphorically the guiding beacon, which helps man to find his way through the rocks and sandbanks of Life, for Lucifer is the LOGOS in his highest, and the “Adversary” in his lowest aspect – both of which are reflected in our Ego.” (Vol. 2, p. 162)

* “In antiquity and reality, Lucifer, or Luciferus, is the name of the angelic Entity presiding over the light of truth as over the light of the day. In the great Valentinian gospel Pistis Sophia it is taught that of the three Powers emanating from the Holy names of the Three Tριδυνάμεις, that of Sophia (the Holy Ghost according to these gnostics – the most cultured of all) resides in the planet Venus or Lucifer.” (Vol. 2, p. 512)

* “It is but natural – even from the dead letter standpoint – to view Satan, the Serpent of Genesis, as the real creator and benefactor, the Father of Spiritual mankind. For it is he who was the “Harbinger of Light,” bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the eyes of the automaton created by Jehovah, as alleged; and he who was the first to whisper: “in the day ye eat thereof ye shall be as Elohim, knowing good and evil” – can only be regarded in the light of a Saviour. An “adversary” to Jehovah the “personating spirit,” he still remains in esoteric truth the ever-loving “Messenger” (the angel), the Seraphim and Cherubim who both knew well, and loved still more, and who conferred on us spiritual, instead of physical immortality – the latter a kind of static immortality that would have transformed man into an undying “Wandering Jew”.” (Vol. 2, p. 243)

* “The Fall was the result of man’s knowledge, for his “eyes were opened.” Indeed, he was taught Wisdom and the hidden knowledge by the “Fallen Angel,” for the latter had become from that day his Manas, Mind and Self-consciousness. In each of us that golden thread of continuous life – periodically broken into active and passive cycles of sensuous existence on Earth, and super-sensuous in Devachan – is from the beginning of our appearance upon this earth. It is the Sutratma, the luminous thread of immortal impersonal monadship, on which our earthly lives or evanescent Egos are strung as so many beads – according to the beautiful expression of Vedantic philosophy.

“And now it stands proven that Satan, or the Red Fiery Dragon, the “Lord of Phosphorus” (brimstone was a theological improvement), and Lucifer, or “Light-Bearer,” is in us: it is our Mind – our tempter and Redeemer, our intelligent liberator and Saviour from pure animalism. Without this principle – the emanation of the very essence of the pure divine principle Mahat (Intelligence), which radiates direct from the Divine mind – we would be surely no better than animals.” (Vol. 2, p. 513)

So we see that in the teachings of Theosophy – which are at times deliberately symbolical, allegorical, and esoteric – the Lightbringer or Bringer of Dawn (Lucifer in Latin) is our Mind Principle, our individual self-consciousness and spark of intelligence, which was awakened in mankind around the middle period of the Third Root Race, also known as the Lemurian Epoch. Our mind can either be our adversary (which is what the word “satan” literally means) or it can be the lightbearer (the Lucifer) of spiritual Truth to us, the knowledge of which brings about our liberation from ignorance, including spiritual self-ignorance. Jose M. Herrou Aragon, in his book “Primordial Gnosis: The Forbidden Religion,” writes…“According to Gnostic legends and myths, the great Unknowable God sent Lucifer, angel of indescribable fire and light, to show man the light and to help him wake up and see his true origin, the origin of his Spirit, which has been perversely imprisoned in this impure matter called body-soul. He is an uncreated being, who came to the created world to bring Light: Liberating Gnosis. The saving knowledge which can wake man up and help him free his imprisoned Spirit. The knowledge which allows him to know who he truly is, why he is here in this world and what he has to do to liberate himself and fulfil his Spirit, which belongs to another uncreated and unknowable plane. “We have said that Lucifer came to the world to wake man up, to help him remember his divine origin, the divine origin of his Spirit, and to help him free himself from the body-soul in which he is trapped, and from created time and matter.” Theosophy interprets all these allegorical Gnostic teachings as referring to “the lighting up of Manas” (Manas is the Sanskrit word for Mind) which we mentioned above. When we bear in mind that “The Secret Doctrine” teaches that the Lemurian Root Race was born under the influence of Venus and received its “light and life” from the Planetary Spirit of Venus, it all becomes clearer, since Lucifer has been an accepted synonym for Venus – the bright and morning star – since long before the days of Christian theology and millennia before Lucifer was first ignorantly equated with the devil. In “The Secret Doctrine” we read that “Venus, or Lucifer (also Sukra and Usanas) the planet, is the Light-Bearer of our Earth, in both its physical and mystic sense.” Venus is said to be the “spiritual prototype” of Earth and “the Guardian Spirit of the Earth and Men.” It is “the most occult, powerful, and mysterious of all the planets; the one whose influence upon, and relation to the Earth is most prominent” and every change that takes place on Venus “is felt on, and reflected by, the Earth.” Since it would take too long and also be out of place here to try to explain all of this to the reader unfamiliar with Theosophy, we can sum up by saying that what H.P. Blavatsky has to say about Lucifer is entirely esoteric, symbolical, and philosophical. Those four excerpts quoted above are virtually the only specific statements and explanations she ever made about Lucifer, although fanatical Christians and half-crazed conspiracy theorists like to give the impression that she spent almost all her time ranting and raving about Lucifer, which is simply not true. As for the reason her magazine was named “Lucifer,” she wrote in its very first article – titled “What’s in a Name?” – that “the first and most important, if not the sole object of the magazine, is expressed in the line from the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, on its title page. It is to bring light to “the hidden things of darkness,” (iv. 5); to show in their true aspect and their original real meaning things and names, men and their doings and customs; it is finally to fight prejudice, hypocrisy and shams in every nation, in every class of Society, as in every department of life. The task is a laborious one but it is neither impracticable nor useless, if even as an experiment. Thus, for an attempt of such nature, no better title could ever be found than the one chosen. … No fitter symbol exists for the proposed work – that of throwing a ray of truth on everything hidden by the darkness of prejudice, by social or religious misconceptions; especially by that idiotic routine in life, which, once that a certain action, a thing, a name, has been branded by slanderous inventions, however unjust, makes respectable people, so called, turn away shiveringly, refusing to even look at it from any other aspect than the one sanctioned by public opinion. Such an endeavour then, to force the weak-hearted to look truth straight in the face, is helped most efficaciously by a title belonging to the category of branded names.” But as she was later to remark, the ignorant and erroneous belief that Lucifer = Satan “has struck its roots too deep in the soil of blind faith” to allow many people to bravely, boldly, and unashamedly reveal the true origins and true nature of what the so-called Lucifer actually is. Those who attempt to do so are always bound to be immediately labelled as “satanists” and “devil worshippers” by a certain class of Christian, those whose trademark characteristics invariably tend to be wilful ignorance and mental laziness. It has indeed become a “branded name,” one which still automatically conjures up the image of an anthropomorphic devil even in the minds of the most hardened atheists. Yet who can deny that even Jesus is portrayed as boldly proclaiming his identity with Venus the Lightbringer in Revelation 22:16, where he says “I, Jesus, am the bright and morning star.” If the translators had chosen to translate this verse using Latin just as they did with Isaiah 14:12, it would read “I, Jesus, am Lucifer.” Theosophists are not afraid of public opinion or misguided prejudice, nor of the claims and threats of Christianity, that most arrogant, ignorant, and impudent of all the world’s religions. “There is no religion higher than Truth” – and eventually, as always, the Truth will prevail.

 

Phosphorus? How did the ancients know about, and zero in on this single element? Also, what was the mystery secret that was imparted to Alexander the great by his Greek mentor that enabled him to defeat a million man Persian army with only 35.000 of his men?

 

Before it was known by the word Phosphorus which is a word given to us by the Greeks, and the Latin Lucifer, it was simply known as the Elixir of Life or the Flower of Life. Often it was called by the plant names they used for the Elixir of Life or the Flower of Life that were high in Phosphorus such as Mandrake, the Lotus and Red Barley of the Gods.

 

Our thoughts are words,words are sounds,sounds vibrates,vibration is energy, energy glows and that glowing is LIGHT.Everything is Light.Even our thoughts.>> “It is through our DNA which contains phosphorus, that we become conscious to the world and who we are in order to live in the light.” Wrong. “live in the light” suggests you and I are separate from this universe of light ,that there is a “we” somehow not attached .EVERYTHING IS LIGHT.You and me and everything inbetween all made up of the same light energy . Light is a LIE ,there is nothing there. 99.9999999 EMPTY SPACE (potential).Lucifer =Bringer of LIGHT.

 

It is not correct that Lucifer equals Jesus, as Yourself also quote.

“Lucifer represents the individual intellect and will which rebels against the domination of Nature and attempts to maintain itself contrary to natural impulse. Lucifer, in the form of Venus, is the morning star spoken of in Revelation, which is to be given to those who overcome the world.”

Lucifer from Madam Blavatsky and Freemasonry has highjacked Jesus’ title, for evil, not for good.

The Christian mystic Rudolf Steiner says Lucifer and Satan (The Devil) is two different spiritual entities, but to compare ANY of the two as Jesus is way off target.

“Rudolf Steiner taught that the two great demons, Lucifer and Ahriman, offer mankind gifts — from Lucifer, we receive the gift of intellectual thought; from Ahriman, mastery of the physical realm. These gifts are beneficial and even necessary at our current stage of evolution, but they also entail great risks, temptations that can lead us badly astray. According to Steiner, Christ — the Intelligence of the Sun — needs to interpose between Lucifer and Ahriman, balancing them so that we may receive their influences in the proper, beneficial proportions”.

 

gnosticwarrior.com/lucifer.html

My husband was declared by his wife to be the sexiest man of the year. He easily wins every year using only his deep voice and the gray matter between his ears. I cannot divulge any specifics because he is far too busy to be stalked by titillated women, but please feel free to enjoy his image. You're welcome.

 

Brain

Vial, gas chromatography column and syringe. A good read: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/chandra-payi...

Abilities :

Genius-level intellect

Assorted bird-related paraphernalia

Deadly trick umbrellas

Vast underworld connections

Organizational leadership

Surprising physical strength

Knowledge of judo and boxing

Who ins’t? The guy who keeps the music to himself or the guy who keeps his thoughts to oneself. Music brings in thoughts and the thoughts bring music to the intellect. As long as you have the headphones and as long as you have the head, it will be all music and it will be all thoughts, helping you on your journey that’s meant more for the destiny of journeying than the destiny of reaching to one’s destination.

My photostream this week has had a developing theme alluding to the logo of Channel 4, one of the UK’s main television channels. To watch TV in the UK you will need a television licence (a consumption tax). I believe I’m right in saying Channel 4 receives a portion of the licence fee funding, despite being a commercial channel (which some might say represents a conflict of interest with government intervention resulting in pseudo-obligation of some kind). The reason I drew attention to Channel 4 is that I would like people to watch Cathy Newman’s interview with Professor Jordan Peterson, which can be found here (www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54).

 

Originally, many people were seeing it as a (a kind of Frost/Nixon) victory for Conservatism, as supposedly embodied by Prof Peterson, against the ‘Progressive Left’, as embodied by Ms Newman.

 

I choose to see it another way, as does Prof Peterson I believe, (see here, www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6qBxn_hFDQ if interested). He is an advocate for free speech and an opponent of mandated speech. The interview was a victory for all those who seek open debate, so that truth can be uncovered.

 

I also would like to congratulate Ms Newman for conducting the interview vigorously and for accepting with good grace, the ideological/rhetorical cul-de-sac into which she had steered her train of thought, (apologies for the mixed metaphor). As for those who say the final ‘Gotcha’ was unnecessary, I disagree. It made clear there was something specific and of great importance to take from the encounter.

 

It might not be a watershed moment that leads to lasting improvement in the quality and openness of public discourse. It was at least a shining moment of what could be achieved with intellect and an open mind. Furthermore, it would be lovely to see news journalism improve and see interviewees of all beliefs, affiliations, seniority, treated consistently. We might even end ambush journalism, de-contextualization, reframing and interruption of an interviewee who is answering the question posed not five seconds previously. I am a dreamer at heart.

 

Hello there. Relevant comments welcome but please do NOT post any link(s). All my images are my own original work, under my copyright, with all rights reserved. You need my permission to use any image for ANY purpose.

 

Copyright infringement is theft.

  

I don't care about the 'community' at all. I seriously care about 'general intellect'. heh.

Admiral Jim Ellis welcomed me into his Tiburon home with the calm presence of someone who has spent a lifetime navigating complexity. His wife, Elisabeth Pate-Cornell, was there too, her sharp intellect and quiet grace filling the room alongside his steady demeanor. Together, they form a partnership where conversations flow easily between national security, risk analysis, and the kind of everyday warmth that speaks to a life well balanced.

 

The house itself was modest in its reflection of their achievements. There were reminders, of course — a model ship resting on a shelf, a few framed photographs hinting at decades of service and scholarship — but nothing that spoke loudly of titles or accolades. It felt more like the home of two people who had long since understood that true accomplishment doesn’t need to be displayed.

 

Admiral Ellis has held responsibilities that most of us can scarcely imagine. As Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, he was entrusted with decisions that touched the edges of global stability. Yet in person, there is no trace of the theatrical. His authority feels earned and effortless, the result of years spent making impossible choices with clarity and composure.

 

Elisabeth Pate-Cornell is equally formidable. A renowned Stanford professor and pioneer in engineering risk analysis, she has dedicated her career to understanding how complex systems fail and how to keep them from doing so. Watching them together, it became clear that theirs is a meeting of equals. They share a deep fluency in the language of risk, responsibility, and leadership, each bringing a different lens to the same fundamental questions about uncertainty and decision-making.

 

Both remain active at Stanford, mentoring, advising, and lending their experience to shape future leaders. Retirement, in their world, is simply a shift in focus rather than a slowing down.

 

Photographing Admiral Ellis that day was less about capturing a man defined by military command and more about revealing the quiet strength that remains when uniforms are put away. It was about the bond he shares with Elisabeth, the life they’ve built around intellect, service, and a steady commitment to guiding others through complexity. In their presence, you are reminded that true leadership often speaks softly, grounded in experience, reflection, and a shared sense of duty that endures long after the official roles have changed.

Nikon D80, Nikkor 55-200/4-5.6, ISO 200, f/5,3, 1/800, 165mm

  

Thank you all for faves and comments

www.riverhillgardens.co.uk/

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.

  

Year of the Monkey

 

Lunar Lanterns, giant lanterns representing animal signs of the Chinese zodiac in city centre locations from 6–14 February.

 

Tiger

  

"People born in the Year of the Monkey are fun-loving, energetic and inquisitive. Their intellect allows them to adapt to any situation, they are confident, charismatic, loyal and inventive.

Sometimes, the Monkey can be a little too curious for his or her own good, as well as careless, restless, immature and arrogant."

  

whatson.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/posts/lunar-lanterns

As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained

 

In the study of the human mind, intellect refers to and identifies the ability of the mind to reach correct conclusions about what is true and what is false, and about how to solve problems. The term intellect derives from the Ancient Greek philosophy term nous, which translates to the Latin intellectus (from intelligere, “to understand”) and into the French and English languages as intelligence. Discussion of the intellect is in two areas of knowledge, wherein the terms intellect and intelligence are related terms.

Life University (LIFE) believes that in order to educate people, you have to do more than just feed their intellect or teach them critical thinking skills. Additionally, they believe that you have to teach them how to be better human beings by cultivating skills such as emotion regulation,...

 

www.eastcobber.com/life-universitys-innovative-approach-t...

Where foreground is not distinct from the background

Where the lines of ‘intellect’ are yet not drawn

It is the childhood days where life is still a musical

Where songs play on a loop and everting is whimsical

 

It feels I am at the lead

Playing chords and grooving to the beat

For these are my songs, my moments, my reasons to believe

That life surely is a musical, an album cover where I live.

 

Why Venice? Because Venice was uniquely beautiful, isolated, inward looking and a powerful stimulant to the senses, the intellect and the imagination.

 

- Lady Adventurer

Temple of Wisdom

Athena destroys ignorance…

 

Athena

The confrontation with her energy…

Those who are empowered by Athena search for knowledge and wisdom.

This long way finally leads to enlightenment…

  

HKD

 

Der Tempel der Athene

 

Wer bin ich?

 

Auf dem Pfad der Selbsterfahrung (Quest) wird es notwendig, sein Selbstbild infrage zu stellen. Ohne eine vollständige Erkenntnis seines Selbstbildes kann man sich nicht annehmen und (seinen Schatten) bewusst lieben.

Selbstliebe steht am Ende des Selbsterkenntnisprozesses. Dieser Erkenntnisprozess kann Jahre dauern. Zu ihm gehört das Studium einer Typenlehre, z. B. Enneagramm oder die „Schlichtungstypen“. Die Energie für diese Studien liefert der Archetyp der Weisheit – Athene.

  

HKD

  

Ganesha, also spelled Ganesh, and also known as Ganapati and Vinayaka, is a widely worshipped deity 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.

 

Although he is known by many attributes, Ganesha's elephant head makes him easy to identify. Ganesha is widely revered as the remover of obstacles, the patron of arts and sciences and the deva of intellect and wisdom. As the god of beginnings, he is honoured at the start of rituals and ceremonies. Ganesha is also invoked as patron of letters and learning during writing sessions. Several texts relate mythological anecdotes associated with his birth and exploits and explain his distinct iconography.

 

Ganesha emerged as a distinct deity in the 4th and 5th centuries CE, during the Gupta Period, although he inherited traits from Vedic and pre-Vedic precursors. He was formally included among the five primary deities of Smartism (a Hindu denomination) in the 9th century. A sect of devotees called the Ganapatya arose, who identified Ganesha as the supreme deity. The principal scriptures dedicated to Ganesha are the Ganesha Purana, the Mudgala Purana, and the Ganapati Atharvashirsa.

 

ETYMOLOGY AND OTHER NAMES

Ganesha has been ascribed many other titles and epithets, including Ganapati and Vighneshvara. The Hindu title of respect Shri is often added before his name. One popular way Ganesha is worshipped is by chanting a Ganesha Sahasranama, a litany of "a thousand names of Ganesha". Each name in the sahasranama conveys a different meaning and symbolises a different aspect of Ganesha. At least two different versions of the Ganesha Sahasranama exist; one version is drawn from the Ganesha Purana, a Hindu scripture venerating Ganesha.

 

The name Ganesha is a Sanskrit compound, joining the words gana, meaning a group, multitude, or categorical system and isha, meaning lord or master. The word gaņa when associated with Ganesha is often taken to refer to the gaņas, a troop of semi-divine beings that form part of the retinue of Shiva. The term more generally means a category, class, community, association, or corporation. Some commentators interpret the name "Lord of the Gaņas" to mean "Lord of Hosts" or "Lord of created categories", such as the elements. Ganapati, a synonym for Ganesha, is a compound composed of gaṇa, meaning "group", and pati, meaning "ruler" or "lord". The Amarakosha, an early Sanskrit lexicon, lists eight synonyms of Ganesha : Vinayaka, Vighnarāja (equivalent to Vighnesha), Dvaimātura (one who has two mothers), Gaṇādhipa (equivalent to Ganapati and Ganesha), Ekadanta (one who has one tusk), Heramba, Lambodara (one who has a pot belly, or, literally, one who has a hanging belly), and Gajanana; having the face of an elephant).

 

Vinayaka is a common name for Ganesha that appears in the Purāṇas and in Buddhist Tantras. This name is reflected in the naming of the eight famous Ganesha temples in Maharashtra known as the Ashtavinayak (aṣṭavināyaka). The names Vighnesha and Vighneshvara (Lord of Obstacles) refers to his primary function in Hindu theology as the master and remover of obstacles (vighna).

 

A prominent name for Ganesha in the Tamil language is Pillai. A. K. Narain differentiates these terms by saying that pillai means a "child" while pillaiyar means a "noble child". He adds that the words pallu, pella, and pell in the Dravidian family of languages signify "tooth or tusk", also "elephant tooth or tusk". Anita Raina Thapan notes that the root word pille in the name Pillaiyar might have originally meant "the young of the elephant", because the Pali word pillaka means "a young elephant".

 

In the Burmese language, Ganesha is known as Maha Peinne, derived from Pali Mahā Wināyaka. The widespread name of Ganesha in Thailand is Phra Phikhanet or Phra Phikhanesuan, both of which are derived from Vara Vighnesha and Vara Vighneshvara respectively, whereas the name Khanet (from Ganesha) is rather rare.

 

In Sri Lanka, in the North-Central and North Western areas with predominantly Buddhist population, Ganesha is known as Aiyanayaka Deviyo, while in other Singhala Buddhist areas he is known as Gana deviyo.

 

ICONOGRAPHY

Ganesha is a popular figure in Indian art. Unlike those of some deities, representations of Ganesha show wide variations and distinct patterns changing over time. He may be portrayed standing, dancing, heroically taking action against demons, playing with his family as a boy, sitting down or on an elevated seat, or engaging in a range of contemporary situations.

 

Ganesha images were prevalent in many parts of India by the 6th century. The 13th century statue pictured is typical of Ganesha statuary from 900–1200, after Ganesha had been well-established as an independent deity with his own sect. This example features some of Ganesha's common iconographic elements. A virtually identical statue has been dated between 973–1200 by Paul Martin-Dubost, and another similar statue is dated c. 12th century by Pratapaditya Pal. Ganesha has the head of an elephant and a big belly. This statue has four arms, which is common in depictions of Ganesha. He holds his own broken tusk in his lower-right hand and holds a delicacy, which he samples with his trunk, in his lower-left hand. The motif of Ganesha turning his trunk sharply to his left to taste a sweet in his lower-left hand is a particularly archaic feature. A more primitive statue in one of the Ellora Caves with this general form has been dated to the 7th century. Details of the other hands are difficult to make out on the statue shown. In the standard configuration, Ganesha typically holds an axe or a goad in one upper arm and a pasha (noose) in the other upper arm.

 

The influence of this old constellation of iconographic elements can still be seen in contemporary representations of Ganesha. In one modern form, the only variation from these old elements is that the lower-right hand does not hold the broken tusk but is turned towards the viewer in a gesture of protection or fearlessness (abhaya mudra). The same combination of four arms and attributes occurs in statues of Ganesha dancing, which is a very popular theme.

 

COMMON ATTRIBUTES

Ganesha has been represented with the head of an elephant since the early stages of his appearance in Indian art. Puranic myths provide many explanations for how he got his elephant head. One of his popular forms, Heramba-Ganapati, has five elephant heads, and other less-common variations in the number of heads are known. While some texts say that Ganesha was born with an elephant head, he acquires the head later in most stories. The most recurrent motif in these stories is that Ganesha was created by Parvati using clay to protect her and Shiva beheaded him when Ganesha came between Shiva and Parvati. Shiva then replaced Ganesha's original head with that of an elephant. Details of the battle and where the replacement head came from vary from source to source. Another story says that Ganesha was created directly by Shiva's laughter. Because Shiva considered Ganesha too alluring, he gave him the head of an elephant and a protruding belly.

 

Ganesha's earliest name was Ekadanta (One Tusked), referring to his single whole tusk, the other being broken. Some of the earliest images of Ganesha show him holding his broken tusk. The importance of this distinctive feature is reflected in the Mudgala Purana, which states that the name of Ganesha's second incarnation is Ekadanta. Ganesha's protruding belly appears as a distinctive attribute in his earliest statuary, which dates to the Gupta period (4th to 6th centuries). This feature is so important that, according to the Mudgala Purana, two different incarnations of Ganesha use names based on it: Lambodara (Pot Belly, or, literally, Hanging Belly) and Mahodara (Great Belly). Both names are Sanskrit compounds describing his belly. The Brahmanda Purana says that Ganesha has the name Lambodara because all the universes (i.e., cosmic eggs) of the past, present, and future are present in him. The number of Ganesha's arms varies; his best-known forms have between two and sixteen arms. Many depictions of Ganesha feature four arms, which is mentioned in Puranic sources and codified as a standard form in some iconographic texts. His earliest images had two arms. Forms with 14 and 20 arms appeared in Central India during the 9th and the 10th centuries. The serpent is a common feature in Ganesha iconography and appears in many forms. According to the Ganesha Purana, Ganesha wrapped the serpent Vasuki around his neck. Other depictions of snakes include use as a sacred thread wrapped around the stomach as a belt, held in a hand, coiled at the ankles, or as a throne. Upon Ganesha's forehead may be a third eye or the Shaivite sectarian mark , which consists of three horizontal lines. The Ganesha Purana prescribes a tilaka mark as well as a crescent moon on the forehead. A distinct form of Ganesha called Bhalachandra includes that iconographic element. Ganesha is often described as red in color. Specific colors are associated with certain forms. Many examples of color associations with specific meditation forms are prescribed in the Sritattvanidhi, a treatise on Hindu iconography. For example, white is associated with his representations as Heramba-Ganapati and Rina-Mochana-Ganapati (Ganapati Who Releases from Bondage). Ekadanta-Ganapati is visualized as blue during meditation in that form.

 

VAHANAS

The earliest Ganesha images are without a vahana (mount/vehicle). Of the eight incarnations of Ganesha described in the Mudgala Purana, Ganesha uses a mouse (shrew) in five of them, a lion in his incarnation as Vakratunda, a peacock in his incarnation as Vikata, and Shesha, the divine serpent, in his incarnation as Vighnaraja. Mohotkata uses a lion, Mayūreśvara uses a peacock, Dhumraketu uses a horse, and Gajanana uses a mouse, in the four incarnations of Ganesha listed in the Ganesha Purana. Jain depictions of Ganesha show his vahana variously as a mouse, elephant, tortoise, ram, or peacock.

 

Ganesha is often shown riding on or attended by a mouse, shrew or rat. Martin-Dubost says that the rat began to appear as the principal vehicle in sculptures of Ganesha in central and western India during the 7th century; the rat was always placed close to his feet. The mouse as a mount first appears in written sources in the Matsya Purana and later in the Brahmananda Purana and Ganesha Purana, where Ganesha uses it as his vehicle in his last incarnation. The Ganapati Atharvashirsa includes a meditation verse on Ganesha that describes the mouse appearing on his flag. The names Mūṣakavāhana (mouse-mount) and Ākhuketana (rat-banner) appear in the Ganesha Sahasranama.

 

The mouse is interpreted in several ways. According to Grimes, "Many, if not most of those who interpret Gaṇapati's mouse, do so negatively; it symbolizes tamoguṇa as well as desire". Along these lines, Michael Wilcockson says it symbolizes those who wish to overcome desires and be less selfish. Krishan notes that the rat is destructive and a menace to crops. The Sanskrit word mūṣaka (mouse) is derived from the root mūṣ (stealing, robbing). It was essential to subdue the rat as a destructive pest, a type of vighna (impediment) that needed to be overcome. According to this theory, showing Ganesha as master of the rat demonstrates his function as Vigneshvara (Lord of Obstacles) and gives evidence of his possible role as a folk grāma-devatā (village deity) who later rose to greater prominence. Martin-Dubost notes a view that the rat is a symbol suggesting that Ganesha, like the rat, penetrates even the most secret places.

 

ASSOCIATIONS

 

OBSTACLES

Ganesha is Vighneshvara or Vighnaraja or Vighnaharta (Marathi), the Lord of Obstacles, both of a material and spiritual order. He is popularly worshipped as a remover of obstacles, though traditionally he also places obstacles in the path of those who need to be checked. Paul Courtright says that "his task in the divine scheme of things, his dharma, is to place and remove obstacles. It is his particular territory, the reason for his creation."

 

Krishan notes that some of Ganesha's names reflect shadings of multiple roles that have evolved over time. Dhavalikar ascribes the quick ascension of Ganesha in the Hindu pantheon, and the emergence of the Ganapatyas, to this shift in emphasis from vighnakartā (obstacle-creator) to vighnahartā (obstacle-averter). However, both functions continue to be vital to his character.

 

BUDDHI (KNOWLEDGE)

Ganesha is considered to be the Lord of letters and learning. In Sanskrit, the word buddhi is a feminine noun that is variously translated as intelligence, wisdom, or intellect. The concept of buddhi is closely associated with the personality of Ganesha, especially in the Puranic period, when many stories stress his cleverness and love of intelligence. One of Ganesha's names in the Ganesha Purana and the Ganesha Sahasranama is Buddhipriya. This name also appears in a list of 21 names at the end of the Ganesha Sahasranama that Ganesha says are especially important. The word priya can mean "fond of", and in a marital context it can mean "lover" or "husband", so the name may mean either "Fond of Intelligence" or "Buddhi's Husband".

 

AUM

Ganesha is identified with the Hindu mantra Aum, also spelled Om. The term oṃkārasvarūpa (Aum is his form), when identified with Ganesha, refers to the notion that he personifies the primal sound. The Ganapati Atharvashirsa attests to this association. Chinmayananda translates the relevant passage as follows:

 

(O Lord Ganapati!) You are (the Trinity) Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesa. You are Indra. You are fire [Agni] and air [Vāyu]. You are the sun [Sūrya] and the moon [Chandrama]. You are Brahman. You are (the three worlds) Bhuloka [earth], Antariksha-loka [space], and Swargaloka [heaven]. You are Om. (That is to say, You are all this).

 

Some devotees see similarities between the shape of Ganesha's body in iconography and the shape of Aum in the Devanāgarī and Tamil scripts.

 

FIRST CHAKRA

According to Kundalini yoga, Ganesha resides in the first chakra, called Muladhara (mūlādhāra). Mula means "original, main"; adhara means "base, foundation". The muladhara chakra is the principle on which the manifestation or outward expansion of primordial Divine Force rests. This association is also attested to in the Ganapati Atharvashirsa. Courtright translates this passage as follows: "[O Ganesha,] You continually dwell in the sacral plexus at the base of the spine [mūlādhāra cakra]." Thus, Ganesha has a permanent abode in every being at the Muladhara. Ganesha holds, supports and guides all other chakras, thereby "governing the forces that propel the wheel of life".

 

FAMILY AND CONSORTS

Though Ganesha is popularly held to be the son of Shiva and Parvati, the Puranic myths give different versions about his birth. In some he was created by Parvati, in another he was created by Shiva and Parvati, in another he appeared mysteriously and was discovered by Shiva and Parvati or he was born from the elephant headed goddess Malini after she drank Parvati's bath water that had been thrown in the river.

 

The family includes his brother the war god Kartikeya, who is also called Subramanya, Skanda, Murugan and other names. Regional differences dictate the order of their births. In northern India, Skanda is generally said to be the elder, while in the south, Ganesha is considered the first born. In northern India, Skanda was an important martial deity from about 500 BCE to about 600 CE, when worship of him declined significantly in northern India. As Skanda fell, Ganesha rose. Several stories tell of sibling rivalry between the brothers and may reflect sectarian tensions.

 

Ganesha's marital status, the subject of considerable scholarly review, varies widely in mythological stories. One pattern of myths identifies Ganesha as an unmarried brahmacari. This view is common in southern India and parts of northern India. Another pattern associates him with the concepts of Buddhi (intellect), Siddhi (spiritual power), and Riddhi (prosperity); these qualities are sometimes personified as goddesses, said to be Ganesha's wives. He also may be shown with a single consort or a nameless servant (Sanskrit: daşi). Another pattern connects Ganesha with the goddess of culture and the arts, Sarasvati or Śarda (particularly in Maharashtra). He is also associated with the goddess of luck and prosperity, Lakshmi. Another pattern, mainly prevalent in the Bengal region, links Ganesha with the banana tree, Kala Bo.

 

The Shiva Purana says that Ganesha had begotten two sons: Kşema (prosperity) and Lābha (profit). In northern Indian variants of this story, the sons are often said to be Śubha (auspiciouness) and Lābha. The 1975 Hindi film Jai Santoshi Maa shows Ganesha married to Riddhi and Siddhi and having a daughter named Santoshi Ma, the goddess of satisfaction. This story has no Puranic basis, but Anita Raina Thapan and Lawrence Cohen cite Santoshi Ma's cult as evidence of Ganesha's continuing evolution as a popular deity.

 

WOSHIP AND FESTIVALS

Ganesha is worshipped on many religious and secular occasions; especially at the beginning of ventures such as buying a vehicle or starting a business. K.N. Somayaji says, "there can hardly be a [Hindu] home [in India] which does not house an idol of Ganapati. [..] Ganapati, being the most popular deity in India, is worshipped by almost all castes and in all parts of the country". Devotees believe that if Ganesha is propitiated, he grants success, prosperity and protection against adversity.

 

Ganesha is a non-sectarian deity, and Hindus of all denominations invoke him at the beginning of prayers, important undertakings, and religious ceremonies. Dancers and musicians, particularly in southern India, begin performances of arts such as the Bharatnatyam dance with a prayer to Ganesha. Mantras such as Om Shri Gaṇeshāya Namah (Om, salutation to the Illustrious Ganesha) are often used. One of the most famous mantras associated with Ganesha is Om Gaṃ Ganapataye Namah (Om, Gaṃ, Salutation to the Lord of Hosts).

 

Devotees offer Ganesha sweets such as modaka and small sweet balls (laddus). He is often shown carrying a bowl of sweets, called a modakapātra. Because of his identification with the color red, he is often worshipped with red sandalwood paste (raktacandana) or red flowers. Dūrvā grass (Cynodon dactylon) and other materials are also used in his worship.

 

Festivals associated with Ganesh are Ganesh Chaturthi or Vināyaka chaturthī in the śuklapakṣa (the fourth day of the waxing moon) in the month of bhādrapada (August/September) and the Gaṇeśa jayanti (Gaṇeśa's birthday) celebrated on the cathurthī of the śuklapakṣa (fourth day of the waxing moon) in the month of māgha (January/February)."

 

GANESH CHATURTI

An annual festival honours Ganesha for ten days, starting on Ganesha Chaturthi, which typically falls in late August or early September. The festival begins with people bringing in clay idols of Ganesha, symbolising Ganesha's visit. The festival culminates on the day of Ananta Chaturdashi, when idols (murtis) of Ganesha are immersed in the most convenient body of water. Some families have a tradition of immersion on the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, or 7th day. In 1893, Lokmanya Tilak transformed this annual Ganesha festival from private family celebrations into a grand public event. He did so "to bridge the gap between the Brahmins and the non-Brahmins and find an appropriate context in which to build a new grassroots unity between them" in his nationalistic strivings against the British in Maharashtra. Because of Ganesha's wide appeal as "the god for Everyman", Tilak chose him as a rallying point for Indian protest against British rule. Tilak was the first to install large public images of Ganesha in pavilions, and he established the practice of submerging all the public images on the tenth day. Today, Hindus across India celebrate the Ganapati festival with great fervour, though it is most popular in the state of Maharashtra. The festival also assumes huge proportions in Mumbai, Pune, and in the surrounding belt of Ashtavinayaka temples.

 

TEMPLES

In Hindu temples, Ganesha is depicted in various ways: as an acolyte or subordinate deity (pãrśva-devatã); as a deity related to the principal deity (parivāra-devatã); or as the principal deity of the temple (pradhāna), treated similarly as the highest gods of the Hindu pantheon. As the god of transitions, he is placed at the doorway of many Hindu temples to keep out the unworthy, which is analogous to his role as Parvati’s doorkeeper. In addition, several shrines are dedicated to Ganesha himself, of which the Ashtavinayak (lit. "eight Ganesha (shrines)") in Maharashtra are particularly well known. Located within a 100-kilometer radius of the city of Pune, each of these eight shrines celebrates a particular form of Ganapati, complete with its own lore and legend. The eight shrines are: Morgaon, Siddhatek, Pali, Mahad, Theur, Lenyadri, Ozar and Ranjangaon.

 

There are many other important Ganesha temples at the following locations: Wai in Maharashtra; Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh; Jodhpur, Nagaur and Raipur (Pali) in Rajasthan; Baidyanath in Bihar; Baroda, Dholaka, and Valsad in Gujarat and Dhundiraj Temple in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. Prominent Ganesha temples in southern India include the following: Kanipakam in Chittoor; the Jambukeśvara Temple at Tiruchirapalli; at Rameshvaram and Suchindram in Tamil Nadu; at Malliyur, Kottarakara, Pazhavangadi, Kasargod in Kerala, Hampi, and Idagunji in Karnataka; and Bhadrachalam in Andhra Pradesh.

 

T. A. Gopinatha notes, "Every village however small has its own image of Vighneśvara (Vigneshvara) with or without a temple to house it in. At entrances of villages and forts, below pīpaḹa (Sacred fig) trees [...], in a niche [...] in temples of Viṣṇu (Vishnu) as well as Śiva (Shiva) and also in separate shrines specially constructed in Śiva temples [...]; the figure of Vighneśvara is invariably seen." Ganesha temples have also been built outside of India, including southeast Asia, Nepal (including the four Vinayaka shrines in the Kathmandu valley), and in several western countries.

 

RISE TO PROMINENCE

 

FIRST APEARANCE

Ganesha appeared in his classic form as a clearly recognizable deity with well-defined iconographic attributes in the early 4th to 5th centuries. Shanti Lal Nagar says that the earliest known iconic image of Ganesha is in the niche of the Shiva temple at Bhumra, which has been dated to the Gupta period. His independent cult appeared by about the 10th century. Narain summarizes the controversy between devotees and academics regarding the development of Ganesha as follows:

 

What is inscrutable is the somewhat dramatic appearance of Gaņeśa on the historical scene. His antecedents are not clear. His wide acceptance and popularity, which transcend sectarian and territorial limits, are indeed amazing. On the one hand there is the pious belief of the orthodox devotees in Gaņeśa's Vedic origins and in the Purāṇic explanations contained in the confusing, but nonetheless interesting, mythology. On the other hand there are doubts about the existence of the idea and the icon of this deity" before the fourth to fifth century A.D. ... [I]n my opinion, indeed there is no convincing evidence of the existence of this divinity prior to the fifth century.

 

POSSIBLE INFLUENCES

Courtright reviews various speculative theories about the early history of Ganesha, including supposed tribal traditions and animal cults, and dismisses all of them in this way:

 

In the post 600 BC period there is evidence of people and places named after the animal. The motif appears on coins and sculptures.

 

Thapan's book on the development of Ganesha devotes a chapter to speculations about the role elephants had in early India but concludes that, "although by the second century CE the elephant-headed yakṣa form exists it cannot be presumed to represent Gaṇapati-Vināyaka. There is no evidence of a deity by this name having an elephant or elephant-headed form at this early stage. Gaṇapati-Vināyaka had yet to make his debut."

 

One theory of the origin of Ganesha is that he gradually came to prominence in connection with the four Vinayakas (Vināyakas). In Hindu mythology, the Vināyakas were a group of four troublesome demons who created obstacles and difficulties but who were easily propitiated. The name Vināyaka is a common name for Ganesha both in the Purāṇas and in Buddhist Tantras. Krishan is one of the academics who accepts this view, stating flatly of Ganesha, "He is a non-vedic god. His origin is to be traced to the four Vināyakas, evil spirits, of the Mānavagŗhyasūtra (7th–4th century BCE) who cause various types of evil and suffering". Depictions of elephant-headed human figures, which some identify with Ganesha, appear in Indian art and coinage as early as the 2nd century. According to Ellawala, the elephant-headed Ganesha as lord of the Ganas was known to the people of Sri Lanka in the early pre-Christian era.

 

A metal plate depiction of Ganesha had been discovered in 1993, in Iran, it dated back to 1,200 BCE. Another one was discovered much before, in Lorestan Province of Iran.

 

First Ganesha's terracotta images are from 1st century CE found in Ter, Pal, Verrapuram and Chandraketugarh. These figures are small, with elephant head, two arms, and chubby physique. The earliest Ganesha icons in stone were carved in Mathura during Kushan times (2nd-3rd centuries CE).

 

VEDIC AND EPIC LITERATURE

The title "Leader of the group" (Sanskrit: gaṇapati) occurs twice in the Rig Veda, but in neither case does it refer to the modern Ganesha. The term appears in RV 2.23.1 as a title for Brahmanaspati, according to commentators. While this verse doubtless refers to Brahmanaspati, it was later adopted for worship of Ganesha and is still used today. In rejecting any claim that this passage is evidence of Ganesha in the Rig Veda, Ludo Rocher says that it "clearly refers to Bṛhaspati—who is the deity of the hymn—and Bṛhaspati only". Equally clearly, the second passage (RV 10.112.9) refers to Indra, who is given the epithet 'gaṇapati', translated "Lord of the companies (of the Maruts)." However, Rocher notes that the more recent Ganapatya literature often quotes the Rigvedic verses to give Vedic respectability to Ganesha .

 

Two verses in texts belonging to Black Yajurveda, Maitrāyaṇīya Saṃhitā (2.9.1) and Taittirīya Āraṇyaka (10.1), appeal to a deity as "the tusked one" (Dantiḥ), "elephant-faced" (Hastimukha), and "with a curved trunk" (Vakratuņḍa). These names are suggestive of Ganesha, and the 14th century commentator Sayana explicitly establishes this identification. The description of Dantin, possessing a twisted trunk (vakratuṇḍa) and holding a corn-sheaf, a sugar cane, and a club, is so characteristic of the Puranic Ganapati that Heras says "we cannot resist to accept his full identification with this Vedic Dantin". However, Krishan considers these hymns to be post-Vedic additions. Thapan reports that these passages are "generally considered to have been interpolated". Dhavalikar says, "the references to the elephant-headed deity in the Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā have been proven to be very late interpolations, and thus are not very helpful for determining the early formation of the deity".

 

Ganesha does not appear in Indian epic literature that is dated to the Vedic period. A late interpolation to the epic poem Mahabharata says that the sage Vyasa (Vyāsa) asked Ganesha to serve as his scribe to transcribe the poem as he dictated it to him. Ganesha agreed but only on condition that Vyasa recite the poem uninterrupted, that is, without pausing. The sage agreed, but found that to get any rest he needed to recite very complex passages so Ganesha would have to ask for clarifications. The story is not accepted as part of the original text by the editors of the critical edition of the Mahabharata, in which the twenty-line story is relegated to a footnote in an appendix. The story of Ganesha acting as the scribe occurs in 37 of the 59 manuscripts consulted during preparation of the critical edition.[174] Ganesha's association with mental agility and learning is one reason he is shown as scribe for Vyāsa's dictation of the Mahabharata in this interpolation. Richard L. Brown dates the story to the 8th century, and Moriz Winternitz concludes that it was known as early as c. 900, but it was not added to the Mahabharata some 150 years later. Winternitz also notes that a distinctive feature in South Indian manuscripts of the Mahabharata is their omission of this Ganesha legend. The term vināyaka is found in some recensions of the Śāntiparva and Anuśāsanaparva that are regarded as interpolations. A reference to Vighnakartṛīṇām ("Creator of Obstacles") in Vanaparva is also believed to be an interpolation and does not appear in the critical edition.

 

PURANIC PERIOD

Stories about Ganesha often occur in the Puranic corpus. Brown notes while the Puranas "defy precise chronological ordering", the more detailed narratives of Ganesha's life are in the late texts, c. 600–1300. Yuvraj Krishan says that the Puranic myths about the birth of Ganesha and how he acquired an elephant's head are in the later Puranas, which were composed from c. 600 onwards. He elaborates on the matter to say that references to Ganesha in the earlier Puranas, such as the Vayu and Brahmanda Puranas, are later interpolations made during the 7th to 10th centuries.

 

In his survey of Ganesha's rise to prominence in Sanskrit literature, Ludo Rocher notes that:

 

Above all, one cannot help being struck by the fact that the numerous stories surrounding Gaṇeśa concentrate on an unexpectedly limited number of incidents. These incidents are mainly three: his birth and parenthood, his elephant head, and his single tusk. Other incidents are touched on in the texts, but to a far lesser extent.

 

Ganesha's rise to prominence was codified in the 9th century, when he was formally included as one of the five primary deities of Smartism. The 9th-century philosopher Adi Shankara popularized the "worship of the five forms" (Panchayatana puja) system among orthodox Brahmins of the Smarta tradition. This worship practice invokes the five deities Ganesha, Vishnu, Shiva, Devi, and Surya. Adi Shankara instituted the tradition primarily to unite the principal deities of these five major sects on an equal status. This formalized the role of Ganesha as a complementary deity.

 

SCRIPTURES

Once Ganesha was accepted as one of the five principal deities of Brahmanism, some Brahmins (brāhmaṇas) chose to worship Ganesha as their principal deity. They developed the Ganapatya tradition, as seen in the Ganesha Purana and the Mudgala Purana.

 

The date of composition for the Ganesha Purana and the Mudgala Purana - and their dating relative to one another - has sparked academic debate. Both works were developed over time and contain age-layered strata. Anita Thapan reviews comments about dating and provides her own judgement. "It seems likely that the core of the Ganesha Purana appeared around the twelfth and thirteenth centuries", she says, "but was later interpolated." Lawrence W. Preston considers the most reasonable date for the Ganesha Purana to be between 1100 and 1400, which coincides with the apparent age of the sacred sites mentioned by the text.

 

R.C. Hazra suggests that the Mudgala Purana is older than the Ganesha Purana, which he dates between 1100 and 1400. However, Phyllis Granoff finds problems with this relative dating and concludes that the Mudgala Purana was the last of the philosophical texts concerned with Ganesha. She bases her reasoning on the fact that, among other internal evidence, the Mudgala Purana specifically mentions the Ganesha Purana as one of the four Puranas (the Brahma, the Brahmanda, the Ganesha, and the Mudgala Puranas) which deal at length with Ganesha. While the kernel of the text must be old, it was interpolated until the 17th and 18th centuries as the worship of Ganapati became more important in certain regions. Another highly regarded scripture, the Ganapati Atharvashirsa, was probably composed during the 16th or 17th centuries.

 

BEYOND INDIA AND HINDUISM

Commercial and cultural contacts extended India's influence in western and southeast Asia. Ganesha is one of a number of Hindu deities who reached foreign lands as a result.

 

Ganesha was particularly worshipped by traders and merchants, who went out of India for commercial ventures. From approximately the 10th century onwards, new networks of exchange developed including the formation of trade guilds and a resurgence of money circulation. During this time, Ganesha became the principal deity associated with traders. The earliest inscription invoking Ganesha before any other deity is associated with the merchant community.

 

Hindus migrated to Maritime Southeast Asia and took their culture, including Ganesha, with them. Statues of Ganesha are found throughout the region, often beside Shiva sanctuaries. The forms of Ganesha found in Hindu art of Java, Bali, and Borneo show specific regional influences. The spread of Hindu culture to southeast Asia established Ganesha in modified forms in Burma, Cambodia, and Thailand. In Indochina, Hinduism and Buddhism were practiced side by side, and mutual influences can be seen in the iconography of Ganesha in the region. In Thailand, Cambodia, and among the Hindu classes of the Chams in Vietnam, Ganesha was mainly thought of as a remover of obstacles. Today in Buddhist Thailand, Ganesha is regarded as a remover of obstacles, the god of success.

 

Before the arrival of Islam, Afghanistan had close cultural ties with India, and the adoration of both Hindu and Buddhist deities was practiced. Examples of sculptures from the 5th to the 7th centuries have survived, suggesting that the worship of Ganesha was then in vogue in the region.

 

Ganesha appears in Mahayana Buddhism, not only in the form of the Buddhist god Vināyaka, but also as a Hindu demon form with the same name. His image appears in Buddhist sculptures during the late Gupta period. As the Buddhist god Vināyaka, he is often shown dancing. This form, called Nṛtta Ganapati, was popular in northern India, later adopted in Nepal, and then in Tibet. In Nepal, the Hindu form of Ganesha, known as Heramba, is popular; he has five heads and rides a lion. Tibetan representations of Ganesha show ambivalent views of him. A Tibetan rendering of Ganapati is tshogs bdag. In one Tibetan form, he is shown being trodden under foot by Mahākāla, (Shiva) a popular Tibetan deity. Other depictions show him as the Destroyer of Obstacles, and sometimes dancing. Ganesha appears in China and Japan in forms that show distinct regional character. In northern China, the earliest known stone statue of Ganesha carries an inscription dated to 531. In Japan, where Ganesha is known as Kangiten, the Ganesha cult was first mentioned in 806.

 

The canonical literature of Jainism does not mention the worship of Ganesha. However, Ganesha is worshipped by most Jains, for whom he appears to have taken over certain functions of Kubera. Jain connections with the trading community support the idea that Jainism took up Ganesha worship as a result of commercial connections. The earliest known Jain Ganesha statue dates to about the 9th century. A 15th-century Jain text lists procedures for the installation of Ganapati images. Images of Ganesha appear in the Jain temples of Rajasthan and Gujarat.

 

WIKIPEDIA

 

It's a gentleman who articulates his mystery with intellect and grace, it's a beautiful mind.

  

My edition of 'goat unmasked' by goat transforming into a cathedral for 1pic 2souls.

  

 

Writer. Master Photographer, Videographer, Artist, Poet, Intellect, Organizer, Father, and Mentor, A true Friend with a heart of gold…

 

And sadly also a tragic victim of the ruthless 80's Crack Cocaine epidemic.

 

Last I heard about Stewart was his throat was cut ear to ear in a drug/get high incident gone bad. I pray and hope he is still alive and has rebound… I love you dearly my friend and brother.

strobist-Info:-sb900-thru-beauty-dish-front-above-subject-sb900-snooted-to-back-drop.

“Therefore, focus your mind on Me alone and let your intellect dwell upon Me through meditation and contemplation. Thereafter you shall certainly come to Me.”

Bhagavad Gita

 

“What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love.”

Meister Eckhart

 

“Our goodness comes solely from thinking on goodness; our wickedness from thinking on wickedness. We too are the victims of our own contemplation.”

John Jay Chapman

www.therealintellect.com/

 

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spotted when searching for walnuts in the yard (the shells are toxic to the dogs)

 

Rebirth, wisdom, fluidity, wholeness, transmutations, sexuality, look for transitions, changes and new opportunities. Creative forces are awakening with heightened intuition. Snake can teach about shedding what is not needed; perceptions, attitudes, ideals. Snake shows how to access vitality, ambitions and dreams along with intellect and personal power. What things are surfacing that you need to strike out and take advantage of? Perhaps a time to rest and reflect? Listen to your intuition and visions at this time. Contemplate the colors, striking ability and activity of the snake type to further understand what snake is saying.

Okay, what's this - a singing, winking barnacle? Maybe. All I know is that of the millions upon millions of barnacles covering the beach rocks, this jumped out at me. No thought went into this image. I saw it, smiled, set my tripod, fiddled with the settings, and that was all.

 

I know there are rules - I prefer to think of them as design principles - underlying all visual art, just as there are in music, and probably in dance and other forms of creative expression. I even know what some of them are. But I almost never try to build a composition with these in mind; if anything, I prefer my mind to be as empty as possible when I'm shooting. In the field, I work via instinct: does it feel right, like this? Shooting from the gut; shooting from the heart, not the intellect.

 

But it's really a mystery to me, where and how the creative impulse manifests through art. There is no formula that can explain it. I've had students - an accomplished chemist comes to mind - who demanded to know the rule for a given photo situation, and were disappointed and even angry when I insisted there are no rules. Sorry. I can divulge technique, but I can't reveal any "shortcuts to seeing well", because they do not exist. Put in the time. Look and shoot and then assess, and do it all over, again and again, and never stop doing it, and something exciting may happen. Maybe just a glimmer at first, but then, if you persist and do the work, a breakthrough. I still miss far more shots than I get. The process is ongoing for us all.

 

For the record, I think there are two species of barnacle here, the Common Acorn Barnacle and several Small Acorn Barnacles. Not being a barnacle expert, though, I may be wrong. Evidently the large one has been attacked and mostly eaten by some predator - most likely a shorebird such as the Black Turnstone, that I saw here in great numbers. The white marks appear to be places where other barnacles once lived. Life and death: we stumble through this drama every time we take a walk on the wild side. Sometimes it can even make us smile.

 

Photographed along the coast of British Columbia (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2018 James R. Page - all rights reserved.

"Logic and intellect can take an artist to the dance, but intuition and creativity are the dance itself."

~ Greg Packard ~

 

Bringing this image back to the forefront to celebrate today, the first day of Spring,

and 8 years since I've been on flickr! Below is the first image I posted, quite controversially, back in 2006, since it was more "art" than photograph! Feel free to click on it for more history!

 

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven."

~ Ecclesiastes 3:1 ~

 

To care for only one person in the whole universe, she thought, was very different to not caring about anyone at all.

 

(not from the novel)

 

alison will become charmed by the master, but not in the way he's used to charming people. he's used to manipulating people consciously (on his part) and unnoticed (on their part)

 

but she's been analysing him from first interaction (she's always analysing people: why i'd bet on her being good at chess) and she stays wary. but then she keeps accidentally catching him being lovely to the doctor, when he doesn't notice he's being watched...

 

and the master, too, will soften towards the human companion, as he notices and respects her intellect and emotional intelligence.

 

they will see that they have something in common: they both feel protective of the strange, damaged, and intriguing person that is the doctor.

4'O clock flower

Tamil :Anthi Mandhaarai ( அந்தி மந்தாரை) Telugu : Chandrakantha(చ౦దరకా౦త).

malayalam : Naalu mani poovu.

Marathi : Gulabakshi (गुलबक्षी).

Bengali : sandhyamaloti (সন্ধ্যামালতি).

 

SOOC except for resizing and Frame

Today, 9 August, is the feast of the Carmelite saint and philosopher, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

 

The youngest child of a large Jewish family, Edith Stein, as she was known before entering Carmel, was born in Breslau, Poland. She was a woman of great piety and outstanding intellect. In 1916 she was awarded a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Göttingen, and worked with Martin Heidigger before becoming a member of the faculty at the University of Freiburg. While on holiday in Göttingen in 1921 she read a biography of the Carmelite mystic and reformer St Teresa of Avila and was drawn to the Catholic Faith. She was baptized on January 1st 1922. Having read and translated into German De Veritate by St Thomas Aquinas, she abandoned her interest in phenomenology and became a Thomist.

 

In 1932 she was appointed lecturer at the Institute for Pedagogy at Münster, but anti-Semitic legislation passed by the Nazi government forced her to resign the post in 1933. In the same year she entered the Carmel at Echt, in Holland. When the Nazis invaded Holland Teresa was arrested and deported to Auschwitz. She died in the gas chamber in 1942 aged 51. In taking the religious name 'Teresa Benedicta of the Cross', this brave saint had said: "I told our Lord that I knew it was His cross that was now being placed upon the Jewish people; that most of them did not understand this, but that those who did would have to take it up willingly in the name of all. I would do that".

 

Her life of dedication, consecration, prayer, fasting and penance is testimony to the strength of her faith even amidst the unimaginable human suffering that surrounded her at the end. She was beatified in 1987 and canonized on October 11th 1998. In 1999 she was proclaimed one of the Patronesses of Europe.

 

This Crucifix, with Our Lady of Carmel above it, is in the Carmelite church in Salamanca.

Year of the Monkey

 

Lunar Lanterns, giant lanterns representing animal signs of the Chinese zodiac in city centre locations from 6–14 February.

 

Dragon

  

"People born in the Year of the Monkey are fun-loving, energetic and inquisitive. Their intellect allows them to adapt to any situation, they are confident, charismatic, loyal and inventive.

Sometimes, the Monkey can be a little too curious for his or her own good, as well as careless, restless, immature and arrogant."

  

whatson.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/posts/lunar-lanterns

Date: 11 Febr 2011 ( 11 - II - 11 )

Computer Mirror Image: "THE BLUE BUTTERFLY IS 33YO NOW"

 

The picture "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" made by Marcel Duchamp in 1912,

is widely regarded as a Modernist classic and has become one of the most famous of its time

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchamp

 

Using the computer program Photoshop, we can see from the picture a face to appear.

How is it made ?

Use a Photoshop computer-program with 2 layers.

1e Layer : picture "Nude Descending a Staircase".

2e Layer : negative Mirror picture "Nude Descending a Staircase".

Use the function DIFFERENCE between the layers.

 

This new "Work of Art" called "THE BLUE BUTTERFLY IS 33YO NOW",

can only be made visible on a computer

 

~Duchamp~ Artmaking is making the invisible, visible.

~ Aristotle ~ The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

 

UNMOVED MOVER

Motion is therefore "the actuality of any potentiality insofar as it is still a potentiality"

Aristotle describes the "Unmoved Mover" as being perfectly beautiful, indivisible, and contemplating only the perfect contemplation: itself contemplating, the Active Intellect.

1. There exists movement in the world.

2. Things that move were set into motion by something else.

3. If everything that moves were caused to move by something else, there would be an infinite chain of causes. This can't happen.

4. Thus, there must have been something that caused the first movement.

5. From 3, this first cause cannot itself have been moved.

6. From 4, there must be an "Unmoved Mover".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover

 

Lady ”I have no sence of art” GaGa:

"I’m not fucking Duchamp but I love pissing with you”

style.com/stylefile/2010/07/r-mutt-meet-l-gaga/

"I don't want to be a part of the machine, I want the machine to be a part of me"

 

~AHRIMAN has the greatest possible interest in instructing men in mathematics, but not in instructing them that mathematical-mechanistic concepts of the universe are merely illusions. . . . that they are only points of view, like photographs from one side.

~Lucifer & AHRIMAN must be regarded as two scales of a balance and its we who must hold the beam in equipoise.

~'cosmic triad' - Lucifer, Christ and AHRIMAN.

~Electricity is AHRIMANIC light.

~AHRIMANIC "elemental spirits" inhabit our artificial machines.

~In the absolute sense, nothing is good in itself, but is always good or bad according to the use to which it is put.

adventofahriman.com

  

RIP Sri Sathya Sai Baba. Aum Shanti, shanti, shanti.

"Science must confine its inquiry only to things belonging to the human senses, while spiritualism transcends the senses. If you want to understand the nature of spiritual power you can do so only through the path of spirituality and not science. What science has been able to unravel is merely a fraction of the cosmic phenomena ..."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba

 

Date: 30 jan 2011

O(+> DEDICATED TO "science2art"

Because LOVE is Universal....

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLpHdJQdhL8

 

Date: 11 Jan 2011 ( 11 - 1 - 11 )

Emergency Protection Sought for Disappearing Miami Blue Butterfly

biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2011/miam...

 

Date: 7 Aug 2009 ( 7 - 8 - 9 )

Human Butterfly Crop Circle Mystery

youtube.com/watch?v=MhqM7hXvX6k

 

Damien Hirst Butterflies

www.othercriteria.com/browse/hirst/

flickr.com/photos/daydreampilot/2628127181/

 

Watch my internet channels:

science2art.tumblr.com/

twitter.com/#!/Namirha11111

www.facebook.com/science2art

metacafe.com/channels/Namirha/

Copyright free download:

metacafe.com/watch/6066929

 

400x200pix

i1265.photobucket.com/albums/jj508/Namirha/Butterfly400x2...

i41.tinypic.com/hv9ttg.jpg

i51.tinypic.com/mt7a7c.gif

  

In 1912 Impressionist Marcel Duchamp exhibited a

painting entitled NUDE DESCENDING A STAIRCASE.

The painting created a sensation. Worth millions today

it is held by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

==========================================

The explanation of exactly why this painting

is so famous has always been a mystery.

==========================================

A number of art experts have pointed out that the painting

is similar to Edward Muybridge.

He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion

in 1877 and 1878, which used multiple cameras to capture

motion in stop-action photographs

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Muybridge

 

This fact was even publicly acknowledged by Duchamp

himself according to the Wikipedia article:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_Descending_a_Staircase

 

Of course Duchamp's painting "impressionistically" adds

a sense of motion to the figure which is missing in

Muybridge's still-frame photos.

=========================================

HOWEVER..... the fact that Duchamp got his inspiration

from one of Muybridge's photographs IS NOT WHY

Duchamp's painting is WORLD FAMOUS.

THERE IS ANOTHER SCIENTIFIC REASON

FOR THE WORLD FAME OF

MARCEL DUCHAMP'S PAINTING---

FACT IS...... THE PAINTING IS A DIRECT

VISUAL CONFIRMATION OF THE

EXISTENCE OF GOD.................!!!!!

AND HERE I WILL EXPLAIN WHY:

=========================================

When you look at something new and unfamiliar,

your mind tries to "logically guess" what it is.... then

your mind imagines the object and tries to fit that image

to what it is seeing to see if they can be matched.

For instance, if you are out hunting and you see a

distant object which you think might be a deer, you

must check carefully before you shoot. Your mind

tries different possibilities... is it a man?.... so you try

to fit the object to the mental image of a man.... no...

it won't work.... is it a cow?.... so you try to fit the

object to a cow.... no, can't be.... is it a large dog....

so you imagine it as a large dog.... nope.... won't

work.....is it a scarecrow...so you try to imagine it as a

scarecrow..nope.... wrong again.... wait a minute.... it

could be a motorcycle parked on the side of a dirt road....

immediately you imagine a motorcycle... with a wind shield

and handle bars......... BINGO....... turns out that's

exactly what it is......... thank God you didn't pull that

trigger!

 

WELL.... it turns out almost all objects are "partially

invisible"..... as I have explained before, in fact about

20% of true reality is INVISIBLE to the average person

due to the Secular Trend Braingrowth Deficit... and

this is known as the "Invisible World" of Religion

(commonly called "Heaven").

 

What this means is that we are constantly using the

above described "GUESS AND COMPARE" method

of recognizing objects (and persons too by the way).

In fact it is this fundamental "guess and compare"

method which is what eventually leads the average person

to begin to suspect that there is an "unseen world"..

at least historically that is where Religion comes from.

Now... in fact.... the human visual system does this

automatically and very rapidly... trying in some

cases 3, 4 or half a dozen "guesses" before it

recognizes an unfamiliar object or person.

This (subconscious) process looks very much

like one of Muybridges "freeze motion" photos...

or like Duchamp's Nude Descending the Staircase

for that matter.

 

AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHY

the average person gets an overwhelming

sense of DEJA VUE the minute he first see's

Marcel Duchamp's famous painting.... he says to

himself... "hey..I've see that somewhere before.."

... and guess what.... he has.. in his subconscious mind,

and what it is is :

TWO PICTURES... ONE OF HEAVEN

(an extrapolated possibility) AND ONE OF

EARTH (a known reality).... BEING

QUICLY ALTERNATED FOR COMPARISON

BACK AND FORTH IN THE MIND !!!!

........... and that is

EXACTLY HOW

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

WAS DISCOVERED

NOT ONLY HISTORICALLY,

BUT BY AVERAGE PEOPLE

EVERY SINGLE DAY !

 

Of course Duchamp is also a pop psychologist and

that is why the figure is "descending a staircase"

because the vision of God is all about ascending

and descending (perceptually) and "stairs" are

a well known historical symbology (ladders too).

also... a "nude" is used to involve the basic

"perceptual ascension" involved in sexual

desire and attraction.

 

However... the "movie film sequence"

of the jittery "glimpses of heaven" that

we undergoe daily when perceiving

unfamiliar objects or scenes is BRILLIANTLY

captured by Duchamp's famous painting.

and that is why Marcel Duchamp's

painting is world famous !

 

Now George Hammond has proved all of this using

the Fusion Frequency of movie films to

prove the existence of the invisible world,

and has confirmed the proof to two decimal point

accuracy using 100 years of published Psychometry

data and showing that it is IDENTICAL to

Linearized Gravity and thus that the "invisible world"

is a simple classical Einsteinian Time and Space

dilation which makes as much as 20% of reality

INVISIBLE to the average person, thus explaining

both "God" and the "Invisible World" (Heaven).

 

HOWEVER..... a GENIUS like Marcel Duchamp

doesn't need theoretical Physics to explain God...

he can "paint God with a paint brush" and the

opinion of world has now confirmed the enduring

validity of his "1912 portrait of God

 

www.archivum.info/sci.psychology.theory/2006-09/00000/GOD...

 

Thomas argued that God, while perfectly united, also is perfectly described by Three Interrelated Persons. These three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are constituted by their relations within the essence of God. Thomas wrote that the term "Trinity" "does not mean the relations themselves of the Persons, but rather the number of persons related to each other; and hence it is that the word in itself does not express regard to another."[88] The Father generates the Son (or the Word) by the relation of self-awareness. This eternal generation then produces an eternal Spirit "who enjoys the divine nature as the Love of God, the Love of the Father for the Word."

This Trinity exists independently from the world. It transcends the created world, but the Trinity also decided to give grace to human beings. This takes place through the Incarnation of the Word in the person of Jesus Christ and through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within those who have experienced salvation by God; according to Aidan Nichols.

(Nature of the Trinity)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas#Nature_of_the_Trinity

  

Substantial form (the human soul) configures prime matter (the physical body) and is the form by which a material composite belongs to that species it does; in the case of human beings, that species is rational animal. So, a human being is a matter-form composite that is organized to be a rational animal. Matter cannot exist without being configured by form, but form can exist without matter—which allows for the separation of soul from body. Aquinas says that the soul shares in the material and spiritual worlds, and so has some features of matter and other, immaterial, features (such as access to universals). The human soul is different from other material and spiritual things; it is created by God, but also only comes into existence in the material body.

Aquinas’s account of the soul focuses on epistemology and metaphysics, and because of this he believes it gives a clear account of the immaterial nature of the soul.

(The afterlife and resurrection)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas#The_afterlife_and_re...

 

In recent years, the cognitive neuroscientist Walter Freeman proposes that Thomism is the philosophical system explaining cognition that is most compatible with neurodynamics, in a 2008 article in the journal Mind and Matter entitled "Nonlinear Brain Dynamics and Intention According to Aquinas."

(Impact of Thomism)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomism#Impact_of_Thomism

   

Zeyon: One of the last Great Beings Know as the Ventrillions. Zeyon is One of if Not the most powerful being in the Multiverse Capable of taking on Huge armies Single handily, His Super speed ,Strength, time Manipulation , strategic Capabilities , And Genius intellect Make him A match for anyone!

“Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.”

― Samuel Johnson, The Rambler

Men are governed by lines of intellect - women: by curves of emotion. James Joyce

The Rest of My Works are Here

NB: Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic

Works

"The Profile"

Metaphysical certainty is not God, though it contains something of Him. This is why Sufis accompany even their certainties with this formula: ''And God is more wise".

 

A cult of the intelligence and mental passion take man further from truth. Intelligence withdraws as soon as man puts his trust in it alone. Mental passion pursuing intellectual intuition is like the wind which blows out the light of a candle.

 

Monomania of the spirit, with the unconsious pretension, the prejudice, the insatiability and the haste which are its concomitants, is incompatible with sanctity.

 

Sanctity introduces in the flux of thoughts an element of humility and of charity, and so of calm and of generosity. This element, far from being hurtful to the spiritual impetus or the sometimes violent force of truth, delivers the spirit from the vexations of passions and thus guarantees both the integrity of thought and the purity of inspiration.

 

According to the Sufis mental passion must be ranked as one of the "associations" with Satan, like other forms of"idolatry" of the passions. It could not directly have God for its object, for, were God its direct object, it would lose its specifically negative characteristics.

 

Man must beware of two things: first of replacing God, in practice if not in theory, by the functions and products of the intellect, or of considering Him only in connection with this faculty; and, secondly, of putting the "mechanical" factors of spirituality in the place of the human values - the virtues - or only considering virtues in relation to their "technical" utility and not in relation to their beauty.

 

Intelligence has only one nature, that of being luminous. But it has diverse functions and different modes of working and these appear as so many particular intelligences. Intelligence with a "logical", "mathematical" or- one might say - "abstract" quality is not enough for attaining all aspects of the real.

 

It would be impossible to insist too often on the importance of the "visual" or "aesthetic" function of the intellective faculty.

 

Everything is in reality like a play of alternations between what is determined in advance - starting from principles - and what is incalculable and in some way unforeseeable, of which we have to get to know by concrete identification and not by abstract "discernment".

 

In speculations about formal elements it would be a handicap

to lack this aesthetic function of intellect. A religion is revealed, not only by its doctrine, but also by its general form, and this has its own characteristic beauty, which is reflected in its every aspect from its "mythology" to its art.

 

Sacred art expresses Reality in relation to a particular spiritual vision. And aesthetic intelligence sees the manifestations of the Spirit even as the eye sees flowers or playthings.

 

Thus, for example, in order to understand Buddhism profoundly, if one is not a Buddhist born, it is not enough to study its doctrine; it is also necessary to penetrate into the language of Buddhist beauty as it appears in the sacramental image of the Buddha or in such features as the "sermon on the flower".

 

The aesthetic function of the intelligence - if you may call it

that for lack of a better term - enters not only into the form of every spiritual manifestation but also into the process of its manifestation.

 

Truth must be enunciated, not only in conformity with certain proportions, but also according to a certain rhythm. One cannot speak of sacred things 'just anyhow", nor can one speak of them without limitations.

 

Every manifestation has laws and these intelligence must observe in manifesting itself, or otherwise truth will suffer.

Intellect is not something cerebral, nor is it specifically human

or angelic. All beings "possess" it. If gold is not lead, that is because it "knows" the Divine better. Its "knowledge" is in its very form, and this amounts to saying that it does not belong to it itself, for matter could not know. None the less one can say that the rose differs from the water-lily by its intellectual particularity, by its "way of knowing" and so by its mode of intelligence.

 

Beings possess intelligence in their form to the extent that they are "peripheric" or "passive" and in their essence to the extent that they are "central", "active" and "conscious".

 

A noble animal or a lovely flower is "intellectually" superior to a base man.

 

God reveals himself to the plant in the form of the light of the

sun. The plant irresistibly turns itself towards the light; it could not be atheistical or impious.

 

The infallible "instinct" of animals is a lesser "intellect", and man's intellect may be called a higher "instinct". Between instinct and intellect there stands in some sense the reason, which owes its troubles to the fact that it constitutes a sort of "luciferian" duplication of the Divine Intelligence - the only intelligence there is.

 

Knowledge of facts depends on contingencies which could not enter into principial knowledge. The level of facts is, in certain respects, inverse in relation to that of principles in the sense that it includes modes and imponderables that are the extreme opposite of the wholly mathematical rigour of universal laws. At least this is so in appearance, for it goes without saying that universal principles are not contradicted.

 

Even beneath the veil of the inexhaustible diversity of what is possible their immutability can always be discerned, provided that the intelligence is in the requisite condition for being able to discern it.

 

If the intellect is, so to speak, sovereign and infallible on its own ground, it cannot exercise its discernment on the level of facts otherwise than conditionally. Moreover God may intervene on the level of facts with particular things willed by Himself that are at times unpredictable, and of such things principial knowledge could only take account a posteriori.

 

-----

 

Frithjof Schuon

 

-----

 

Quoted in: The Essential Frithjof Schuon (edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr)

  

Harold Edward Elliott, was born at West Charlton in north-west Victoria on 19 June 1878. He was the fifth of eight children of Thomas Elliott and his wife Helen, née Janverin, who had arrived in Victoria during the gold rushes of the 1850s. Thomas and Helen, both English-born, married at St Michael’s Church of England, Talbot, in 1867 and settled in nearby Cockatoo. After years of adventurous gold-seeking had produced meagre returns, Thomas selected a block of land five miles from Charlton and switched to farming, which he found just as arduous and unremunerative. Young Harold grew up in an impoverished environment dominated by the perpetual struggle to extract a living from the soil. Life was a constant battle against the elements; bushfires, snakes, rabbits and too much or too little water were just some of them. He acquired a rudimentary primary education at the one-teacher outpost at West Charlton known as the Rock Tank School.

 

In 1894 his life was transformed. His father, who had never lost his fascination with the pursuit of gold, had ventured to Western Australia, where he ‘struck it rich in a big way’. Thomas purchased a stately residence, ‘Elsinore’, in Ballarat and the whole family moved there the following year, when Harold and his younger brothers began attending Ballarat College. Having been unexpectedly plucked from rural poverty and presented with a marvellous opportunity, Harold was determined to make the most of it.

 

Supplementing considerable aptitude with great dedication, he excelled scholastically at Ballarat College and in 1897 was dux of the school. At the University of Melbourne, where he resided at Ormond College, he again demonstrated that he could harness his above-average intellect with exceptional self-discipline and powers of concentration. In 1906 he crowned the successful completion of his law degree with the award of the Supreme Court prize for the top final-year student. He was called to the Victorian Bar in 1907. (In 1920 he completed his BA and LL M.)

 

Elliott was interested in sport—football and athletics principally—but his main recreational activity during these years was his involvement in military pursuits. He had a passionate interest in all aspects of soldiering. He read widely about military history, participated purposefully in peacetime defence units, and dreamed about emulating the feats of the great commanders of the past. During the Boer War he interrupted his scholarly endeavours at the university to serve in South Africa. Enlisting as a private, he returned as a lieutenant with the Distinguished Conduct Medal, which he had been awarded for a particularly daring exploit.

 

On 27 December 1909 Elliott married Catherine Frazer Campbell, under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church, at the Melbourne suburb of Northcote. They had two children, Violet Isabel in 1911 and Neil Campbell the following year. Now a partner in the firm of solicitors, Roberts and Elliott, he attained the rank of lieutenant colonel in Australia’s militia forces. A conventional middle-class conservative, he read the Argus and agreed with its advocacy of free trade rather than the protectionist views of the more progressive Age. He supported the White Australia policy. Like many other Protestants of Anglo-Scottish descent, he was inclined to be suspiciously hostile to Roman Catholics.[1]

 

At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Elliott enlisted immediately and was away for almost five years. He returned as Brigadier General ‘Pompey’ Elliott, a household name, after commanding the 7th Battalion at Gallipoli and the 15th Brigade at the Western Front. The nickname, which he acquired early in the war, endured for the rest of his life; it was derived from a well-known pre-war footballer in Melbourne, Fred ‘Pompey’ Elliott (no relation).

 

His reputation as one of the AIF’s most famous commanders was founded on his capacity and temperament. He was intelligent, well informed, energetic and decisive. His own bravery was exceptional, but he was vigilant and frank when assessing the advisability of proposed enterprises involving the men under him. It became an article of faith that he would never send a man anywhere he was not prepared to go himself. Emotional and tempestuous, he was also a real character. Anecdotes about him flourished, amusing the men he led and sometimes disconcerting his superiors.

 

In April 1915 he was wounded at the Gallipoli landing, and rejoined the 7th Battalion in June. In the desperate fighting at Lone Pine in August his battalion performed outstandingly; four of his men were awarded the Victoria Cross. Promoted to brigadier in 1916, he protested with characteristic forcefulness about the inadequacies, in his opinion, of three of the four battalion commanders allotted to his brigade. Having arrived at the Western Front, he saw his carefully prepared brigade butchered in an appallingly botched attack at Fromelles, which he had opposed and tried to prevent. This disaster affected him profoundly, but he soldiered on and rebuilt the brigade once more. His fine leadership was particularly evident at the battle of Polygon Wood, where his brigade overcame severe difficulties arising from the retreat of a British unit and, according to the historian C. E. W. Bean, ‘snatched complete success from an almost desperate situation’. It was, Bean continued, ‘the driving force of this stout-hearted leader’ that ‘was in a large measure responsible for this victory’. His crowning achievement as a commander was his prominent role in the famous counter-attack at Villers-Bretonneux in April 1918.

 

Elliott was devastated to learn in May 1918 that three other brigadiers had been preferred to him for promotion to divisional command. He was overlooked, despite his outstanding record, because of what his superiors regarded as his intermittently erratic judgment. Pompey nursed this deeply felt and enduring grievance, which he referred to as his supersession, while leading his brigade with customary fire until the end of the war. He arrived back in Melbourne in mid-1919. Later that year Nationalist representatives invited a number of prominent soldiers to stand as candidates at the next federal election.[2]

 

To the Nationalist powerbrokers Pompey was a highly desirable recruit. He had appropriately conservative political attitudes. His extraordinary popularity among returned soldiers and their families was underlined by the rapturous receptions he was given at the various welcome home functions he attended. And his political usefulness was also demonstrated after a disturbing incident in July when Harry Lawson, the Victorian Premier, was invaded in his office by an angry group of returned soldiers, one of whom hurled an inkstand at him. Pompey played a leading role in pacifying the aggrieved soldiers. Senior Nationalist strategists were concerned about the volatility and disruptive tendencies of the returned soldiers. They were keen to make use of leaders such as Elliott, who had sound, ‘right-thinking’ views as well as popularity and influence in AIF circles.

 

Pompey was flattered, but wary. The year 1919 was a worrying one for many Australians, who were understandably concerned about the Spanish influenza pandemic, widespread industrial unrest, bitter political conflict and the thousands of soldiers struggling to adjust to their peacetime circumstances. In this unsettling environment Elliott felt he could make a worthwhile contribution. However, the way the party system required politicians to commit themselves in advance to numerous detailed policies was abhorrent to him. ‘If any one wants me to stand for Parliament’, he told a friend in August, ‘they must have sufficient confidence in me as an honest man to trust me to run straight without binding me or attempting to bind me body and soul’. The Nationalist strategists were not deterred. The risk that Elliott might take an independent stance on some issues was outweighed by the electoral advantages accruing from his reputation as a charismatic, courageous commander.

 

The strategists were sufficiently flexible for him to acquiesce, although another factor may have affected his decision. As recorded by his friend, Frank Green, Elliott confided years afterwards that part of the stimulus for him to stand for the Senate in 1919 was to join a group secretly committed to supporting S. M. Bruce as party leader rather than W. M. Hughes, then Prime Minister. While this is an intriguing notion, there is no doubt that Elliott felt acutely motivated to do what he could to assist returned soldiers, and was influenced by the encouragement he received from many of them to go into Parliament to help ‘fix things up’. Nevertheless one 7th Battalion veteran urged him to avoid Parliament because it was ‘no place for an honest man’.

 

His campaign tour around Victoria was an odd mixture. There were tumultuous reunions with soldiers who had served under him interspersed with less exhilarating meetings of the political variety, where he laboured in workmanlike fashion through essentially the same lacklustre speech in every district. But the election result confirmed the wisdom of the Nationalists’ strategy. Not only did he top the poll himself; his candidature was instrumental in the election of his colleagues, Frank Guthrie and Ted Russell, giving the Nationalists success in all three Senate vacancies in Victoria.[3]

 

Entering the Senate in July 1920, Elliott lost no time in living up to his pre-election assertions about his political independence. He called on the Government to ‘revise drastically’ some of its proposals to overhaul public service administration, on one occasion coming up against another lawyer, Senator Keating, over definitions of terms used in the legislation. In August Elliott moved an amendment to the War Service Homes Bill, managing to convince the Minister for Repatriation, Senator E. D. Millen, that the amendment was necessary. The amended clause meant that returned soldiers who had commenced building their houses before the bill’s enactment would not be disadvantaged.

 

In October he and Guthrie vigorously denounced the expenditure on Canberra proposed by the Government. Amid testy exchanges with Nationalist colleagues Elliott declared: ‘I feel so strongly upon this matter that I have no desire to sit behind the Ministry if they are going to incur this expenditure. I would rather form a party of my own’. Elliott did not carry out this threat, but did rapidly establish a reputation for outspokenness in Parliament. This was dramatically reinforced the following year. Embittered by being again passed over for a divisional vacancy (this time in the postwar militia force), Elliott vented his spleen in a series of extraordinary Senate speeches during debate on the Government’s amending Defence Bill. Pompey repeatedly had his Senate colleagues, who included several fellow generals, on the edge of their seats as he lifted the lid on numerous controversial anecdotes about his wartime experiences and made some remarkable allegations about certain AIF individuals. He was repeatedly scathing about the leaders he blamed for his supersession, the AIF commander General Birdwood and his influential chief staff officer, Brudenell White.

 

Elliott made headlines when he alleged in the Senate on 21 April 1921 that he had been overlooked for promotion in 1918, after being the chief architect of the stunningly successful Australian counter-attack at Villers‑Bretonneux. He claimed this was because of an earlier incident during those desperate days of defence against the ominous German onslaught. He described how he and his brigade, having been rushed to the rescue, had been flung into a series of alarming situations, and on more than one occasion had to march all night. He went on to tell how his men had been hampered by the unauthorised occupation of a village by a detachment of British ‘fugitives’, his own forceful intervention causing the staff officer in charge of these ‘renegades’ to protest to his superiors. Three weeks later, Elliott told the Senate, his divisional commander paid him a visit:

 

He said, ‘I want to speak to you privately’, and took me out into the garden. He then said to me, ‘General, I have instructions to tell you that while you are in the Australian Imperial Force you will receive no further promotion by reason of your conduct to the [British] officers’. When he said that, I turned away rather dumbfounded, and he struck me on the back and said, ‘I have got to tell you that; but by God! you were right’. It turned out that this staff officer was the son of a Duke, and ‘put the acid’ on General Birdwood for my conduct, and you see the result.

 

With numerous other senior commanders in the Senate, the response to Elliott’s barrage of startling revelations was almost as interesting as the revelations themselves. ‘Fighting Charlie’ Cox, a Light Horse brigadier, consistently unleashed vacuous disapproval, but there were more discerning responses from other generals, such as E. A. Drake‑Brockman. Longstanding defence minister George Pearce was unsettled by Elliott’s account of the campaign and did not conceal his distaste. As for ‘Jupp’ Gardiner, Labor’s solitary senator in 1921, he concluded that ‘whoever is engaged in writing up the history of the war should be supplied with a special desk in this chamber and should be given a special invitation to be in regular attendance in the Senate, because matters of the greatest interest to them may crop up here at any time’. That observation by Gardiner had been triggered by one of Elliott’s more astonishing outbursts:

 

In France, one of the biggest ‘duds’ I know of commanded a regiment of Light Horse, and he was stationed in a village behind the lines for the whole period of the war. During practically the whole of the time he was there he was intoxicated, and the villagers, in pity and contempt, named him ‘Le Toujours Zig-Zag’, by which they meant that he was always drunk . . . He returned to Australia and is now in command of the troops in Tasmania.

 

Elliott did not name the commander concerned, but it was Brudenell White’s brother, whose lameness and slight speech impediment stemmed from a pre-war accident—he had not been repeatedly drunk at all. After this, Pompey had to eat humble pie, though not for the first or last time. His tendency to lash out rashly, at times relying on inadequately checked information, left him vulnerable to sharp criticism and sometimes undermined his credibility, but his extraordinary exposés were rarely without foundation.[4]

 

Such contentious contributions confirmed his reputation as a redoubtable gladiator. Throughout his postwar years he was inundated with requests for assistance from returned soldiers. In the main he sought to do good by stealth, but sometimes he raised grievances in Parliament. One such episode led to the formation of the Senate select committee that investigated the case of Warrant Officer J. R. Allen. Elliott chaired it. A majority of the committee concluded that the treatment of Allen by his commander had been justified. Elliott, still convinced that Allen had been unfairly treated, submitted a minority report jointly with Senator Allan McDougall. Elliott was also a member of the Royal Commission on the Navigation Act (1923–25), participating in most of its extensive investigations and contributing to its main report before resigning in August 1924.[5]

 

At one stage Elliott was single-handedly—though inadvertently—responsible for a change in government policy. One memorable day he was hurrying across King’s Hall when he happened to slip on the highly polished jarrah floor. His burly frame executed a dramatic tumble, reputedly rocking the Parliament House foundations; he accomplished such a spectacular slide on his back that he ended up entering the Senate chamber in arrestingly horizontal style, feet first. This amusing incident led to a less zealous polishing regime. When it was suggested that cleaning costs at Parliament House had been reduced, the press announced that ‘“Pompey” Elliott’s Slip May Save Australia Money’.

 

In view of Elliott’s forthrightness and maverick tendencies, it is unlikely that he was ever considered ministerial material even though he was in Parliament for over a decade and his party in government for almost all that time. That some of his strident utterances were detrimental to the Nationalist cause does not seem to have resulted in any significant pressure for him to be disowned by his party. His immense popularity—confirmed at the 1925 election when he again topped the Senate poll in Victoria—was simply too valuable to the Nationalists. Besides, apart from some characteristically idiosyncratic outbursts and his occasional willingness to cross the floor in the Senate, he was generally a wholehearted supporter of the Hughes and Bruce–Page governments. During the interminable 1921 tariff debates which resulted in considerable increases to Australian levels of protection, Elliott admitted publicly that he had abandoned his previous faith in free trade. With the zeal of the convert he consistently aligned himself with manufacturers and Victoria’s traditional adherence to the protectionist cause. Whether it was beer or malted milk, corsets or chamois leather, explosives or porcelain insulators, Elliott wanted the local product protected.

 

Moreover, when Bruce suddenly informed his government backbenchers of his intention to announce an about-turn on arbitration policy in 1929, Elliott responded with an immediate assurance to the Prime Minister that he would support the new policy absolutely. And when the Scullin Labor Government took office without a majority in the Senate later that year, Elliott was one of the opposition senators whose remorseless obstructionist tactics did much to demoralise the government. Nevertheless, as Senator Dooley remarked, Labor senators ‘always knew that with him the political fight was over as soon as he left the chamber’, although Elliott and D. C. McGrath, the ALP Member for Ballarat, had a sustained mutual enmity.[6]

 

Elliott’s parliamentary career ended with his death on 23 March 1931. The huge toll inflicted by the war on his nervous system, aggravated by the distress and misery of the Depression together with his deeply felt sense of injustice about his supersession grievance (and also, it seems, by a head injury incurred in a horse-riding accident) had undermined his mental and emotional stability. At the age of fifty-two Elliott committed suicide in hospital. His wife Kate and their children, Violet and Neil, survived him. The funeral was an extraordinary event; few, if any, in Melbourne had been bigger. Thousands lined the four-mile route the cortège travelled between his Camberwell home and Burwood Cemetery where he was buried with Presbyterian rites. Many returned soldiers marched sombrely behind the gun carriage bearing the coffin. One of them, Bruce, wrote that he had ‘never seen a greater tribute paid to a man’. Several of the parliamentary obituaries referred to Elliott’s geniality and friendliness as well as his outstanding military leadership. Opposition Leader, J. G. Latham, who had known Elliott well throughout his adult life, captured the essence of Pompey in this brief description: ‘He was a fearless man, of remarkable resolution and tenacity of purpose’. The manner of Elliott’s death was muzzled until it was controversially revealed a few weeks later by Smith’s Weekly.

 

Pompey Elliott was one of the best-known parliamentarians of his decade in federal politics. The characteristics and temperament which had won him extraordinary fame as a soldier ensured that his political career would prove lively and interesting, but he was clearly more suited to soldiering than Parliament.[7]

"In sunshine, in prosperity, the flowers are very well; but how many wet days are there in life—November seasons of disaster, when a man's hearth and home would be cold indeed, without the clear, cheering gleam of intellect."

— Charlotte Brontë