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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."
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.
The esoterist sees things, not as they appear according to a certain perspective, but as they are: he takes account of what is essential and consequently invariable under the veil of different religious formulations, while necessarily taking his own starting point in a given formulation.
This at least is the position in principle and the justification for esoterism; in fact it is far from always being consistent with itself, inasmuch as intermediary solutions are humanly inevitable.
Everything which, in metaphysics or in spirituality, is universally true, becomes "esoteric" in so far as it does not agree, or does not seem to agree, with a given formalistic system or "exoterism"; yet every truth is present by right in every religion, given that every religion is made of truth.
This amounts to saying that esoterism is possible and even necessary; the whole question is to know at what level and in what context it is manifested, for relative and limited truth has its rights, as does the total truth; it has these rights in the context assigned to it by the nature of things, which is that of psychological and moral opportuneness and of traditional equilibrium.
The paradox of esoterism is that on the one hand "men do not light a candle and put it under a bushel", while on the other hand "give not what is sacred to dogs"; between these two expressions lies the "light that shineth in the darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not". There are fluctuations here which no one can prevent and which are the ransom of contingency.
Exoterism is a precarious thing by reason of its limits or its exclusions; there arrives a moment in history when all kinds of experience oblige it to modify its claims to exclusiveness, and it is then driven to a choice: escape from these limitations by the upward path, in esoterism, or by the downward path, in a worldly and suicidal liberalism. As one might have expected, the civilizationist exoterism of the West has chosen the downward path, while combining this incidentally with a few esoteric notions which in such conditions remain inoperative.
Fallen man, and thus the average man, is as it were poisoned by the passional element, either grossly or subtly; from this results an obscuring of the Intellect and the necessity of a Revelation coming from the outside. Remove the passional element from the soul and the intelligence (remove "the rust from the mirror" or "from the heart") and the Intellect will be released; it will reveal from within what religion reveals from without.
[This release is strictly impossible-we must insist upon It-without the cooperation of a religion, an orthodoxy, a traditional esoterism with all that this implies.]
This brings us to an important point: in order to make itself understood by souls impregnated with passion, religion must itself adopt a so to speak passional language, whence dogmatism, which excludes, and moralism, which schematizes; if the average man or collective man were not passional, Revelation would speak the language of the Intellect and there would be no exoterism, nor for that matter esoterism considered as an occult complement.
There are here three possibilities: firstly, men dominate the passional element, everyone lives spiritually by his inward Revelation; this is the golden age, in which everyone is born an initiate.
Second possibility: men are affected by the passional element to the point of forgetting certain aspects of the Truth, whence the necessity (or the opportuneness) of Revelations that while being outward are metaphysical in spirit, such as the Upanishads.
[Such a Revelation has a function that is both conservative and preventive, it expresses the Truth in view of the risk of its being forgotten; It consequently also has the aim of protecting the "pure" from contamination by the "impure", of recalling the Truth to those who run the risk of going astray by carelessness.]
Thirdly: the majority of men are dominated by passions, whence the formalistic, exclusive and combative religions, which communicate to them on the one hand the means of channelling the passional element with a view to salvation, and on the other hand the means of overcoming it in view of the total Truth, and of thereby transcending the religious formalism which veils it while suggesting it in an indirect manner. Religious revelation is both a veil of light and a light veiled.
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Frithjof Schuon: Understanding Esoterism (from Esoterism as Principle and as Way)
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Image:
Beatus de Facundus illuminated manuscript - Illustration for Revelation 1:1-3
1 The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, 2 who testifies to everything he saw—that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. 3 Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.
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,...
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Why Venice? Because Venice was uniquely beautiful, isolated, inward looking and a powerful stimulant to the senses, the intellect and the imagination.
- Lady Adventurer
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Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson; June 1, 1926 – August 4, 1962) was an American actress, model and singer. Known for playing comic "blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as an emblem of the era's sexual revolution. She was a top-billed actress for a decade, and her films grossed $200 million (equivalent to $2 billion in 2022) by the time of her death in 1962. Long after her death, Monroe remains a pop culture icon. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her as the sixth-greatest female screen legend from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her childhood in a total of 12 foster homes and an orphanage before marrying James Dougherty at age sixteen. She was working in a factory during World War II when she met a photographer from the First Motion Picture Unit and began a successful pin-up modeling career, which led to short-lived film contracts with 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures. After a series of minor film roles, she signed a new contract with Fox in late 1950. Over the next two years, she became a popular actress with roles in several comedies, including As Young as You Feel and Monkey Business, and in the dramas Clash by Night and Don't Bother to Knock. Monroe faced a scandal when it was revealed that she had posed for nude photographs prior to becoming a star, but the story did not damage her career and instead resulted in increased interest in her films.
By 1953, Monroe was one of the most marketable Hollywood stars. She had leading roles in the film noir Niagara, which overtly relied on her sex appeal, and the comedies Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire, which established her star image as a "dumb blonde". The same year, her nude images were used as the centerfold and cover of the first issue of Playboy. Monroe played a significant role in the creation and management of her public image throughout her career, but felt disappointed when typecast and underpaid by the studio. She was briefly suspended in early 1954 for refusing a film project but returned to star in The Seven Year Itch (1955), one of the biggest box office successes of her career.
When the studio was still reluctant to change Monroe's contract, she founded her own film production company in 1954. She dedicated 1955 to building the company and began studying method acting under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Later that year, Fox awarded her a new contract, which gave her more control and a larger salary. Her subsequent roles included a critically acclaimed performance in Bus Stop (1956) and her first independent production in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957). She won a Golden Globe for Best Actress for her role in Some Like It Hot (1959), a critical and commercial success. Her last completed film was the drama The Misfits (1961). Monroe's troubled private life received much attention as she struggled with addiction and mood disorders. Her marriages to retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio and to playwright Arthur Miller were highly publicized; both ended in divorce. On August 4, 1962, she died at age 36 from an overdose of barbiturates at her Los Angeles home. Her death was ruled a probable suicide.
Batman is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger, and debuted in the 27th issue of the comic book Detective Comics on March 30, 1939. In the DC Universe continuity, Batman is the alias of Bruce Wayne, a wealthy American playboy, philanthropist, and industrialist who resides in Gotham City. Batman's origin story features him swearing vengeance against criminals after witnessing the murder of his parents Thomas and Martha as a child, a vendetta tempered with the ideal of justice. He trains himself physically and intellectually, crafts a bat-inspired persona, and monitors the Gotham streets at night. Kane, Finger, and other creators accompanied Batman with supporting characters, including his sidekicks Robin and Batgirl; allies Alfred Pennyworth, James Gordon, and Catwoman; and foes such as the Penguin, the Riddler, Two-Face, and his archenemy, the Joker.
Kane conceived Batman in early 1939 to capitalize on the popularity of DC's Superman; although Kane frequently claimed sole creation credit, Finger substantially developed the concept from a generic superhero into something more bat-like. The character received his own spin-off publication, Batman, in 1940. Batman was originally introduced as a ruthless vigilante who frequently killed or maimed criminals, but evolved into a character with a stringent moral code and strong sense of justice. Unlike most superheroes, Batman does not possess any superpowers, instead relying on his intellect, fighting skills, and wealth. The 1960s Batman television series used a camp aesthetic, which continued to be associated with the character for years after the show ended. Various creators worked to return the character to his darker roots in the 1970s and 1980s, culminating with the 1986 miniseries The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller.
DC has featured Batman in many comic books, including comics published under its imprints such as Vertigo and Black Label. The longest-running Batman comic, Detective Comics, is the longest-running comic book in the United States. Batman is frequently depicted alongside other DC superheroes, such as Superman and Wonder Woman, as a member of organizations such as the Justice League and the Outsiders. In addition to Bruce Wayne, other characters have taken on the Batman persona on different occasions, such as Jean-Paul Valley / Azrael in the 1993–1994 "Knightfall" story arc; Dick Grayson, the first Robin, from 2009 to 2011; and Jace Fox, son of Wayne's ally Lucius, as of 2021. DC has also published comics featuring alternate versions of Batman, including the incarnation seen in The Dark Knight Returns and its successors, the incarnation from the Flashpoint (2011) event, and numerous interpretations from Elseworlds stories.
One of the most iconic characters in popular culture, Batman has been listed among the greatest comic book superheroes and fictional characters ever created. He is one of the most commercially successful superheroes, and his likeness has been licensed and featured in various media and merchandise sold around the world; this includes toy lines such as Lego Batman and video games like the Batman: Arkham series. Batman has been adapted in live-action and animated incarnations, including the 1960s Batman television series played by Adam West and in film by Michael Keaton in Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), and The Flash (2023), Val Kilmer in Batman Forever (1995), George Clooney in Batman & Robin (1997), Christian Bale in The Dark Knight trilogy (2005–2012), Ben Affleck in the DC Extended Universe (2016–2023), and Robert Pattinson in The Batman (2022). Kevin Conroy, Diedrich Bader, Jensen Ackles, Troy Baker, and Will Arnett, among others, have provided the character's voice.
Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).
Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions
"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".
The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.
The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.
Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.
Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:
Wet with cool dew drops
fragrant with perfume from the flowers
came the gentle breeze
jasmine and water lily
dance in the spring sunshine
side-long glances
of the golden-hued ladies
stab into my thoughts
heaven itself cannot take my mind
as it has been captivated by one lass
among the five hundred I have seen here.
Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.
Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.
There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.
Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.
The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.
In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:
During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".
Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.
While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’
Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.
An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.
Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983
Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture
Main article: Commercial graffiti
With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.
In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".
Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.
Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.
Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.
Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.
There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.
The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.
Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.
Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis
Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.
Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.
Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"
Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal
In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.
Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.
Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.
Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.
With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.
Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.
Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.
Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.
Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.
Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.
Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.
Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.
The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.
I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.
The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.
Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.
Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.
In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".
There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.
Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.
A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.
By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.
Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.
In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.
A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.
From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.
Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.
Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.
In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.
Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.
In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.
In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."
In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.
In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.
In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.
In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.
In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.
The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.
To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."
In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.
In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.
Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".
Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)
In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.
Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.
Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.
In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.
Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.
Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.
To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.
When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.
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.
I had the privilege to spend some time with Brad Litwin, a kinetic artist based in Philly. His ingenuity, mechanical intellect and artistic vision is exceptional visit his web site its a must see. www.bradlitwin.com/
"The glory of him who moves everything
Penetrates the universe and shines
In one part more and, in other, less.
I have been in the heaven which takes most of his light,
And I have seen things which cannot be told,
Possible, by anyone who comes down from up there;
Because, approaching the object of its desires,
Our intellect is so deeply absorbed
That memory cannot follow it all the way"
Paradiso I, 1-9
Sold on Etsy
The son of a notorious punk rock icon, Edgar Allan grew up listening to 'Nevermind the Bollocks' instead of Mother Goose. He prefers the Pistols to princesses and always made sure his legos were somewhere they could be stepped on. He's developing a prodigious intellect gone slightly awry, and goes around saying things like "happiness is the agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of others."
His father thinks he will become a brilliant lyricist.
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
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."
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
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.
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For more information about my art: info@benheine.com
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Searching for Thoughts
A poem by Peter S. Quinn
Searching for thoughts goes on from start to end,
Quickened with passion that gives each calling;
Like a blank page where fingers move and bend,
Passion and pain from the footsteps falling.
Again now and now the movements go on,
Deeper within darkness enter a step;
Ignite corners in blaze millimicron,
Starting to grow and becoming more help.
All from the searching from within the brain,
Play with what you know in bitter and sweet;
Narrow each law by reshaping the rein,
Each of its way becomes clear in its beat.
Across clearings a mind searches all through,
Symbols of play know how to continue.
-------------
Poem's source: www.poemhunter.com/peter-s-quinn
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
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.
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:
metacafe.com/channels/Namirha/
Copyright free download:
400x200pix
i1265.photobucket.com/albums/jj508/Namirha/Butterfly400x2...
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)
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
In the Swiss Alps near the Italian border is a small valley town called Lostallo. For the 5th summer in a row Shankra festival made this place its home for a goa-psytrance festival.
Video from 2017 youtu.be/sGJAhJp605k
Downloads on Flickr are free for fiends & followers but do tell the people where you got the picture.
OM
Auṃ or Oṃ, Sanskrit: ॐ) is a sacred sound and a spiritual icon in Indian religions.[1][2] It is also a mantra in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism.[3][4]
Om is part of the iconography found in ancient and medieval era manuscripts, temples, monasteries and spiritual retreats in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.[5][6] The symbol has a spiritual meaning in all Indian dharmas, but the meaning and connotations of Om vary between the diverse schools within and across the various traditions.
In Hinduism, Om is one of the most important spiritual symbols (pratima).[7][8] It refers to Atman (soul, self within) andBrahman (ultimate reality, entirety of the universe, truth, divine, supreme spirit, cosmic principles, knowledge).[9][10][11] The syllable is often found at the beginning and the end of chapters in the Vedas, the Upanishads, and other Hindu texts. It is a sacred spiritual incantation made before and during the recitation of spiritual texts, during puja and private prayers, in ceremonies of rites of passages (sanskara) such as weddings, and sometimes during meditative and spiritual activities such as Yoga.
Vedic literature
The syllable "Om" is described with various meanings in the Vedas and different early Upanishads.[19] The meanings include "the sacred sound, the Yes!, the Vedas, the Udgitha (song of the universe), the infinite, the all encompassing, the whole world, the truth, the ultimate reality, the finest essence, the cause of the Universe, the essence of life, theBrahman, the Atman, the vehicle of deepest knowledge, and Self-knowledge".
Vedas
The chapters in Vedas, and numerous hymns, chants and benedictions therein use the syllable Om. The Gayatri mantra from the Rig Veda, for example, begins with Om. The mantra is extracted from the 10th verse of Hymn 62 in Book III of the Rig Veda.These recitations continue to be in use, and major incantations and ceremonial functions begin and end with Om.
ॐ भूर्भुवस्व: |
तत्सवितुर्वरेण्यम् |
भर्गो देवस्य धीमहि |
धियो यो न: प्रचोदयात् ||
Om. Earth, atmosphere, heaven.
Let us think on that desirable splendour
of Savitr, the Inspirer. May he stimulate
us to insightful thoughts.
Om is a common symbol found in the ancient texts of Hinduism, such as in the first line of Rig veda (top), as well as a icon in temples and spiritual retreats.
The Chandogya Upanishad is one of the oldest Upanishads of Hinduism. It opens with the recommendation that "let a man meditate on Om".[26] It calls the syllable Om as udgitha (उद्गीथ, song, chant), and asserts that the significance of the syllable is thus: the essence of all beings is earth, the essence of earth is water, the essence of water are the plants, the essence of plants is man, the essence of man is speech, the essence of speech is the Rig Veda, the essence of the Rig Veda is the Sama Veda, and the essence of Sama Veda is the udgitha (song, Om).[27]
Rik (ऋच्, Ṛc) is speech, states the text, and Sāman (सामन्) is breath; they are pairs, and because they have love and desire for each other, speech and breath find themselves together and mate to produce song.[26][27] The highest song is Om, asserts section 1.1 of Chandogya Upanishad. It is the symbol of awe, of reverence, of threefold knowledge because Adhvaryu invokes it, the Hotr recites it, and Udgatr sings it.[27][28]
The second volume of the first chapter continues its discussion of syllable Om, explaining its use as a struggle between Devas (gods) and Asuras (demons).[29] Max Muller states that this struggle between gods and demons is considered allegorical by ancient Indian scholars, as good and evil inclinations within man, respectively.[30] The legend in section 1.2 of Chandogya Upanishad states that gods took the Udgitha (song of Om) unto themselves, thinking, "with this [song] we shall overcome the demons".[31] The syllable Om is thus implied as that which inspires the good inclinations within each person.[30][31]
Chandogya Upanishad's exposition of syllable Om in its opening chapter combines etymological speculations, symbolism, metric structure and philosophical themes.[28][32] In the second chapter of the Chandogya Upanishad, the meaning and significance of Om evolves into a philosophical discourse, such as in section 2.10 where Om is linked to the Highest Self,[33] and section 2.23 where the text asserts Om is the essence of three forms of knowledge, Om is Brahman and "Om is all this [observed world]".[34]
Katha Upanishad
The Katha Upanishad is the legendary story of a little boy, Nachiketa – the son of sage Vajasravasa, who meetsYama – the Indian deity of death. Their conversation evolves to a discussion of the nature of man, knowledge,Atman (Soul, Self) and moksha (liberation).[35] In section 1.2, Katha Upanishad characterizes Knowledge/Wisdom as the pursuit of good, and Ignorance/Delusion as the pursuit of pleasant,[36] that the essence of Veda is make man liberated and free, look past what has happened and what has not happened, free from the past and the future, beyond good and evil, and one word for this essence is the word Om.[37]
The word which all the Vedas proclaim,
That which is expressed in every Tapas (penance, austerity, meditation),
That for which they live the life of a Brahmacharin,
Understand that word in its essence: Om! that is the word.
Yes, this syllable is Brahman,
This syllable is the highest.
He who knows that syllable,
Whatever he desires, is his.
— Katha Upanishad,
Maitri Upanishad
The Maitrayaniya Upanishad in sixth Prapathakas (lesson) discusses the meaning and significance of Om. The text asserts that Om represents Brahman-Atman. The three roots of the syllable, states the Maitri Upanishad, are A + U + M.[39] The sound is the body of Soul, and it repeatedly manifests in three: as gender-endowed body - feminine, masculine, neuter; as light-endowed body - Agni, Vayu and Aditya; as deity-endowed body - Brahma, Rudra[40] and Vishnu; as mouth-endowed body - Garhapatya, Dakshinagni and Ahavaniya;[41] as knowledge-endowed body - Rig, Saman and Yajur;[42] as world-endowed body - Bhūr, Bhuvaḥ and Svaḥ; as time-endowed body - Past, Present and Future; as heat-endowed body - Breath, Fire and Sun; as growth-endowed body - Food, Water and Moon; as thought-endowed body - intellect, mind and pysche.[39][43] Brahman exists in two forms - the material form, and the immaterial formless.[44] The material form is changing, unreal. The immaterial formless isn't changing, real. The immortal formless is truth, the truth is the Brahman, the Brahman is the light, the light is the Sun which is the syllable Om as the Self.[45][46]
The world is Om, its light is Sun, and the Sun is also the light of the syllable Om, asserts the Upanishad. Meditating on Om, is acknowledging and meditating on the Brahman-Atman (Soul, Self).[39]
Mundaka Upanishad[edit source]
The Mundaka Upanishad in the second Mundakam (part), suggests the means to knowing the Self and the Brahman to be meditation, self-reflection and introspection, that can be aided by the symbol Om.[47][48]
That which is flaming, which is subtler than the subtle,
on which the worlds are set, and their inhabitants –
That is the indestructible Brahman.[49]
It is life, it is speech, it is mind. That is the real. It is immortal.
It is a mark to be penetrated. Penetrate It, my friend.
Taking as a bow the great weapon of the Upanishad,
one should put upon it an arrow sharpened by meditation,
Stretching it with a thought directed to the essence of That,
Penetrate[50] that Imperishable as the mark, my friend.
Om is the bow, the arrow is the Soul, Brahman the mark,
By the undistracted man is It to be penetrated,
One should come to be in It,
as the arrow becomes one with the mark.
— Mundaka Upanishad, 2.2.2 - 2.2.4[51][52]
Adi Shankara, in his review of the Mundaka Upanishad, states Om as a symbolism for Atman (soul, self).[53]
Mandukya Upanishad
The Mandukya Upanishad opens by declaring, "Om!, this syllable is this whole world".[54] Thereafter it presents various explanations and theories on what it means and signifies.[55] This discussion is built on a structure of "four fourths" or "fourfold", derived from A + U + M + "silence" (or without an element).[54][55]
Aum as all states of time
In verse 1, the Upanishad states that time is threefold: the past, the present and the future, that these three are "Aum". The four fourth of time is that which transcends time, that too is "Aum" expressed.[55]
Aum as all states of Atman
In verse 2, states the Upanishad, everything is Brahman, but Brahman is Atman (the Soul, Self), and that the Atman is fourfold.[54] Johnston summarizes these four states of Self, respectively, as seeking the physical, seeking inner thought, seeking the causes and spiritual consciousness, and the fourth state is realizing oneness with the Self, the Eternal.[56]
Aum as all states of consciousness
In verses 3 to 6, the Mandukya Upanishad enumerates four states of consciousness: wakeful, dream, deep sleep and the state of ekatma (being one with Self, the oneness of Self).[55] These four are A + U + M + "without an element" respectively.[55]
Aum as all of knowledge
In verses 9 to 12, the Mandukya Upanishad enumerates fourfold etymological roots of the syllable "Aum". It states that the first element of "Aum" is A, which is from Apti (obtaining, reaching) or from Adimatva (being first).[54] The second element is U, which is from Utkarsa (exaltation) or from Ubhayatva(intermediateness).[55] The third element is M, from Miti (erecting, constructing) or from Mi Minati, or apīti (annihilation).[54] The fourth is without an element, without development, beyond the expanse of universe. In this way, states the Upanishad, the syllable Om is indeed the Atman (the self).[54][55]
Shvetashvatara Upanishad
The Shvetashvatara Upanishad, in verses 1.14 to 1.16, suggests meditating with the help of syllable Om, where one's perishable body is like one fuel-stick and the syllable Om is the second fuel-stick, which with discipline and diligent rubbing of the sticks unleashes the concealed fire of thought and awareness within. Such knowledge, asserts the Upanishad, is the goal of Upanishads.[57][58] The text asserts that Om is a tool of meditation empowering one to know the God within oneself, to realize one's Atman (Soul, Self).[59]
Epics[edit source]
The Bhagavad Gita, in the Epic Mahabharata, mentions the meaning and significance of Om in several verses. For example, Fowler notes that verse 9.17 of the Bhagavad Gita synthesizes the competing dualistic and monist streams of thought in Hinduism, by using "Om which is the symbol for the indescribable, impersonal Brahman".[60]
I am the Father of this world, Mother, Ordainer, Grandfather, the Thing to be known, the Purifier, the syllable Om, Rik, Saman and also Yajus.
— Krishna to Arjuna, Bhagavad Gita 9.17, [60]
The significance of the sacred syllable in the Hindu traditions, is similarly highlighted in various of its verses, such as verse 17.24 where the importance of Omduring prayers, charity and meditative practices is explained as follows,[61]
Therefore, uttering Om, the acts of yajna (fire ritual), dāna (charity) and tapas (austerity) as enjoined in the scriptures, are always begun by those who study the Brahman.
— Bhagavad Gita
Yoga Sutra
The aphoristic verse 1.27 of Pantanjali's Yogasutra links Om to Yoga practice, as follows,
तस्य वाचकः प्रणवः ॥२७॥
His word is Om.
— Yogasutra 1.27,
Johnston states this verse highlights the importance of Om in the meditative practice of Yoga, where it symbolizes three worlds in the Soul; the three times – past, present and future eternity, the three divine powers – creation, preservation and transformation in one Being; and three essences in one Spirit – immortality, omniscience and joy. It is, asserts Johnston, a symbol for the perfected Spiritual Man (his emphasis).
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.
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.
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!
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]
“Totalitarianism is not a historical coincidence. In the final analysis, it is the logical consequence of mechanistic thinking and the delusional belief in the omnipotence of human rationality. As such, totalitarianism is the defining feature of the Enlightenment tradition.” ‒ Mattias Desmet
Totalitarianism is a product of the Enlightenment tradition. It places faith in human rationality. It’s a belief system in which man’s intellect can save man, the world, and the universe. Man will solve man’s problems, thus bringing salvation to mankind. Its priests desire to form a new society built on rationality. They want a world without pain and suffering. They even want to conquer death. Science, man’s new religion, has its own creation story. In this story, man has been reduced to particles that interact according to the laws of mechanics. Life and mankind were randomly produced without any purpose or direction. Man is seen as a machine; he works (repetitively) as a machine; he will merge with machine. The universe is also a machine, and it too will eventually be manipulated. The spiritual elect of this religion look forward to an artificial heaven on earth, where man and nature have been replaced by perfect technological clones. Once this happens, man will have conquered both man and nature. He will then gain eternal life. He will synthetically live forever. “Amen and Hallelujah!” shout the transhumanists. As a result, the totalitarians will have realized their goal of a superman/super race like the New Soviet Man/Aryan Race. The idolatry of science, which aims to create a perfect world, will ultimately result in a dystopian nightmare. Their rationality will become irrational. Secular humanism will fail.
“Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power for its achievement.” – Humanist Manifesto I
With science came technological advancement. These advances separated man from nature, tradition, and family. The industrial revolution changed the social fabric of society. Before industrialization, most families lived in rural areas and did agricultural work. The family worked together to support itself. Multiple generations lived together in the same area. Extended families were an important part of society. After industrialization, many families moved to urban areas and did manufacturing work. They became cogs in the machine, working meaningless jobs. This movement split up the extended family unit. Then there was one: the nuclear family. “The dynamics of industrialization contributed to the rise of single-parent families. Factors such as increased divorce rates, the normalization of out-of-wedlock childbirth, and the empowerment of women to raise children independently all played a role in this shift.” As you can see, the nuclear family has not fared too well. Technology produced the radio, television, and social media, which have created an antisocial society. Technology was supposed to make life easier; it was supposed to make us happier, yet it has made us lonely and unhappy. Society has lost its meaning. People come home from meaningless jobs, only to live meaningless social lives online. Wolves chase after those separated from the herd, because they are easy targets. When the isolated are rounded up and killed, no one will fight for them because they are isolated from the herd. Those who are alone and isolated will be seen as useless eaters by their enemies. “To keep you is no gain; to kill you is no loss.” Indeed, a lonely society is very prone to accepting totalitarianism.
The Enlightenment was supposed to empower us, yet we have become more powerless. The Enlightenment was supposed to make us more independent, yet we have become more dependent. Plus, technology is controlled by the few. With science, a perfect artificial world is being built. It’s creating a fake Garden of Eden that is full of genetically modified foods, lab-grown meat, sex dolls that look like Eve, and synthetic-fiber clothing to hide our naked bodies of sin. Don’t eat the genetically modified fruit, it will kill you! Automated machines, robots, and artificial intelligence will replace man’s toil. Artificial wombs will replace the pain of childbirth. The digital paradise being constructed dehumanizes us. It steals our humanity. It makes us insecure, unempathetic, narcissistic, apathetic, cowardly, lonely, and isolated. An insecure society is less resilient. An insecure society is easier to control. An unempathetic, narcissistic, apathetic, and cowardly society will look the other way when people are rounded up and killed. A lonely and isolated society is weak and submissive. They feel empty and meaningless, and they have little self-worth. Such a society yearns for direction and authority. They are weak and lazy and want someone (the state) to take care of them.
We have a dumbed-down society. The education system teaches us how to be cogs in the machine. Mass media is a giant propaganda machine, indoctrinating the masses. The ignorant zombies have been trained to listen to the experts. These experts lead the sheep with twisted data and statistics. Thus, the people are easily led. Safety: give up your freedom of privacy to fight terror. Misinformation: give up your freedom of speech to fight hate speech. 15-minute cities: give up your freedom of movement to fight climate change. Mass immigration: give up your culture for multiculturalism. Abortion is women’s health. Euthanasia is good. By the way, how many genders are there? Society has been molded and shaped. You have been taught what to think, not how to think.
“I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.” ‒ John D. Rockefeller
Students have been indoctrinated and radicalized by feminism, gender theory, critical race theory, and decolonialism. The goal: abolish women, gender, race, borders and nations. All hail the tranhumanist new world order! The youth are taught that capitalism is bad and socialism is good. They’ve been taught to hate their own country, traditions, values, and culture. They’ve been taught to hate their own race! Humiliation is a tool of control to shape and guide them. If a person loses their identity, they can be easily manipulated and brainwashed. Our youth have been taught that a communist revolution is necessary to overthrow capitalism. The end justifies the means! Therefore, radicals in the education system have raised up an army of woke activists. These woke evangelists have been poisoned by envy, hate, and bitterness. It doesn’t help that subversive billionaires are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into supposed ‘organic’ protests, which are being organized by professional protesters (communist agitators). Wokeism is the new puritan movement of today, with its moral values and commandments. These born-again socialists preach the dialectic gospel of social(ist) justice and equality. These radicalized saints promise a perfect world. A radicalized society is prone to accepting totalitarianism. In fact, it’s extremely prone to accepting totalitarianism. Especially when the youth are radicalized!
“Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world.” ‒ Vladimir Lenin
Science, the religion of the day, has become corrupted. Fraud in scientific research is increasing. Falsified scientific papers are becoming more and more common. The perception of reality can be steered by crunching numbers in any desired fashion. (Climate change data is famous for distorting numbers.) Totalitarians mold the perception of reality with propaganda. The COVID-19 hysteria, with its “follow the science,” was proof of its degeneration. People blindly became disciples of the experts. Their apostles commanded: Mask up, even though it’s ineffective! Social distance, even though it’s useless! Take a PCR test, even though it’s unreliable! Take the vaccines, even though they haven’t been properly tested! Ivermectin is bad, even though it can help some patients! The population must be locked down, even though it’s physically and mentally bad for their health and weakens their immune system! Herd immunity, what’s that? Small businesses must be shutdown, even though big corporations like Walmart can stay open! Schools must be shut down, even though the average age of death is 70+ years old! Fire the unvaccinated healthcare workers, even though the emergency rooms are supposedly full and short-staffed! TicTok nurses! Dance, baby, dance! We’re in a pandemic, can’t you see!?! Falsely mark down unrelated deaths as COVID deaths—beef up those numbers! Big numbers, big money! Since this is science, we must suppress opposing ideas! Science that censors different opinions is not science. Much of society faithfully trusted the science, with its religious experts and scientific doctrines, numbers and graphs. In Nazi Germany, children were conditioned to accept any form of authority without question. Without question, many people blindly obeyed the COVID restrictions. To this day, some people mask up in public. They are religious zealots! They still haven’t woken up from their indoctrination. The science of today: take a big pharma flu shot, rather than rely on your own immune system; take a big pharma flu shot, rather than eat foods that are high in antioxidants like vitamin C. Could you not just find a natural vitamin C supplement? Nope! We love big pharma! We love big corporations! We love Big Brother! We love fascism! Since you’ve been trained to be a consumer, you’ll consume what has been marketed to you. Oh, the science of propaganda! Ah, the science of marketing!
“Scientism has remained to this day one of the strongest Gnostic movements in Western society.” – Eric Voegelin
During COVID-19, people were not only begging for totalitarian measures, but they were applauding them. They wanted strict rules to ease their uncertainty, fear, and insecurity. They coped with their insecurity by running others down. The big bad enemies were not the Jews, but the unvaccinated. Fear needs an enemy! People were calling for the unvaccinated to be rounded up. Some even wanted the unvaccinated killed. This made them feel more secure, like they had the upper hand. They had the camaraderie of the mob; they felt like they belonged! The extra rules helped ease their anxiety. They felt more in control of their fear. The fellowship of the mob helped to further ease their stress and insecurity. There is security in numbers! They rebuked, denounced, and excommunicated heretical friends and relatives who strayed from the holy narrative. They felt righteous, because they were supposedly fighting for a righteous cause. This made them feel virtuous. They were crusaders for the truth, and they felt heroic! They felt relief as they took out their frustrations on their enemies. They blew off steam! They felt good! They felt energized!
These people had an authoritarian mindset. Their true selves, their true natures, came to the surface. They had a mob mentality. They had a pack mentality. These people were so filled with fear, hysteria, and panic that they could not think straight. They lost their ability to calm down and think things through. They could not regulate their fears and emotions. As a result, they could not think critically. How can one think critically in a panic? In fact, since they were taught to be cogs in the machine, they weren’t really taught to be critical thinkers. Just as a child must learn how to walk, a child must be taught how to critically think. They were taught to solve problems related to the machine, but they were not taught to think outside the machine. That is why they say things like: I support free speech, ‘but’ not hate speech. They don’t even understand how speech operates under the framework of free speech. They literally can’t understand the concept of free speech! It’s over their heads. Will these people ever change? Nope, I’ve yet to see any of them apologize for their actions during COVID. Given the right crisis, our society will accept totalitarianism.
Big government, with its increased bureaucracy, administration, and management, loves to make ever-increasing rules and regulations. We are drawing closer and closer to totalitarianism. We will soon have a totalitarian system with digital biometric IDs, central bank digital currencies, and social credit scores. We are becoming a total surveillance society. Our data is being collected, tracked, analyzed, and sold. COVID caused a worldwide hypnosis, a mass hysteria, in which the masses were ready to trade their freedoms for safety. Nothing much has changed. The world’s population is slowly being boiled like a frog; it’s slowly being corralled into a worldwide authoritarian system. Like Nazi Germany, many today would pick totalitarianism if they were promised economic solutions in a time of financial hardship. If we had another great depression like the 1930s, many in our decadent society would pick a totalitarian system. They would choose digital IDs, CBDCs, and social credit scores if they could receive universal basic income to feed their families. Is it really a stretch to see why people would accept the Mark of the Beast?
In the fourth industrial revolution, man will physically merge with technology. Of course, this technology is supposed to make man smarter and healthier. It’s supposed to turn man into the perfect superman. How can the imperfect make the perfect? Man is an imperfect sinner. He has sinned against God. God is perfect, and sin is imperfect. Perfection and imperfection do not mix. Righteousness and sin do not mix. Light expels darkness, God expels sin. God’s punishment for sin is death. God will permit sinful man to utilize his strength and rationality to attempt to work out his own salvation. Ultimately, man will fail. Christ will return to stop man from destroying all life on earth at the battle of Armageddon (Matthew 24:22). Jesus will destroy those who, in their sin, are destroying the earth (Revelation 11:18). Jesus first came as a sacrificial Lamb for the atonement of sins. The second time, Jesus will come as a roaring lion to destroy His enemies. His enemies will choose His imposter, the antichrist. They will accept the transhuman Mark of the Beast. As a result, they will forfeit salvation. Only in Christ (the perfect sacrifice) is sin forgiven. Will you accept His salvation? Or will you try, in your sin, to work out your own salvation?
Revelation 3:20 “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and fellowship with him, and he with Me.”
The Rolls Royce Spirit of Ecstasy "Flying Lady" concealed a hidden passion. This marvellous mascot was modelled after a woman who had bewitching beauty, intellect and esprit - but not the social status which might have permitted her to marry the man with whom she had fallen in love.
This is the story of Eleanor Velasco Thornton, whose liaison with JohnWalter Edward-Scott-Montagu (second Lord Montagu of Beaulieu) was to remain a secret for a decade or more, principally because both partners acted with the utmost discretion. From 1902 he was editor of an illustrated magazine. Eleanor V Thornton was employed as his secretary. Friends of the pair knew of their close relationship but they were sufficiently understanding as to overlook it.
A member of this circle of friends was the sculptor Charles S Sykes. To Lord Montagu's order he created a special mascot for his Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost.
The small statue illustrated a young woman in fluttering robes having placed one forefinger to her lips. The sculptor had chosen Eleanor Thornton as model for this figurine. Since 1911, this sensuous lady has adorned the radiators of Rolls-Royce motor cars.
Question: Philosophical superhero with a genius intellect, brilliant detective skills, martial arts prowess, and a special chemical mask to hide his face.
Riddler: Smooth-talking supervillain with genius-level deductive reasoning, cunning skills in criminal strategy, engineering abilities, and vast esoteric knowledge.
If they had to fight, who would win?
#95 in the Duel 365 series.
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.
“Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Rambler
Mary's foot among Christians, can at any time by the false light (the temptations of this world) bite it "mortally" to keep it in the entropic cyclicity of the times. He is mortal, literally and figuratively, by an Achilles' heel that expresses his fatal weakness despite a great general strength, which can lead him to his loss. This is what the creeping serpent - the Luciferic energy - reminds us, which in the absence of being firmly contained by the sacred feminine. Transmutation is about making the form disappear or changing its nature. Alchemy is not a science, it is a Great Art, its phenomena are inexplicable for our intellect.
"If we turn to the light, there is no more shadow." All initiatory quests consist in letting the light in, not seeking it. While the chemist works on shadows (matter), the alchemist works on the obstacles that prevent light from passing through and create shadows. The alchemist's goal is therefore to transmute matter into light by removing its shadows (and if a body is able to no longer resist true light, then it no longer has any weight...!)
The alchemist who only polishes his mirror to become transparent to himself. It will thus avoid the weight of light that
would prevent out of body experience, very useful to its transcendence. It is this alignment (the inner straightness) that is symbolized by this image of the half-disappeared virgin. A process of individuation will free the individuality of the collective psyche through a deliberate act of no longer stopping the light, thus the absence of shadow allows this transmutation into the fifth dimension.. Brandemarked as the irrefutable sacred text by its more or less faithful followers, Biblical Genesis (1:3) says: "Let there be Light! And the Light was...". We can logically deduce from this that if the Light was, it is not eternal, and if it is not eternal, it was created... Also, if it was created, it was not created by the Light! By who, then? This Luciferic lesson tells us that we cannot understand Genesis, because human beings think with thoughts that come from elsewhere, instead of creating thoughts that come from the energy of Intelligence, the One who gives Light, and the devotees assimilate to God, the Creator Father, who detached a small part of His Holy Light from His divine Sphere! Only the clarity of our mind adjusted to the universal Spirit indicates the path of our evolution.
The word Light is a danger, because it forces us to have a certain notion of luminosity. And as soon as we have any notion of luminosity, we tend to be attracted by our ego-mental source of emotions, the manifestation of the soul aspiring to be liberated, to be attracted by this luminosity! That is why when we die, we are drawn to luminosity, that is, the Astral vitiated by our unclarified civilizational memories... A human being who dies must never go to the Light, source of illusions revealing his inflammatory neuroses and psychoses!
The word Light "simply" makes the human being understand that there is an Absolute Energy in the Cosmos. By radiation, It creates the atomic burst, which is the Light. In other words, Light is always an illusion projected into the Cosmos by the radiation of the Original Absolute Energy. Light is a creation, not an absolute, never to be conceived or considered as the Absolute, Which Is. In What Is, there is no Light, only clarity, Clarity. And as we know it in our transitional state, it is not very luminous... If the clarity is too luminous to our limited mystical mind, we must be careful, because we can very easily be attracted by it. And that's what happens in the Death World *!
The immortals, when they change the Plan for having successfully transmuted the material body, when they leave their material body, they do not go into the Light. They are themselves Light! Being themselves Light, they approach the more perfected Lights with which they have a vibratory relationship, and it is They who lead them to be on the planes that suit them. It is necessary to be unconscious, human and spiritual to be limited to it, to be attracted by the Light! It is one of the greatest dangers of esotericism, that of religious groups or sects, New Age, and secret societies, Freemasonry in the first place. Because in esotericism, we talk about the Light all the time, to be attracted by the Light for its wonderful promises. The day when human beings understand that Light is a creation of Universal Energy, they no longer have to go to the Light. He is the bearer of Light! Lumen Dei, the light proceeding from the unmanifest Godhead, the other is Lumen Naturae, the light hidden in matter and the forces of nature. While the Divine Light may be discerned and appreciated in revelation and in the mystery of the Incarnation, the Light of Nature needs to be released through alchemy before it can become fully operative. God redeems humanity, but nature needs to be redeemed by human alchemists, who are able to induce the process of transformation which alone is capable of liberating the light imprisoned in physical creation.The cosmos, according to Paracelsus, contains the divine light or life, but this holy essence is enmeshed in a mechanical trap, presided over by a kind of demiurge, named by Paracelsus Hylaster (from hyle, "matter," and astrum, "star"). The cosmic spider-god has spun a web within which the light, like an insect, is caught, until the alchemical process bursts the web. The web is none other than the consensus reality composed of the four elements of earth, water, fire and air, within which all creatures exist. The first operation of alchemy therefore addresses itself to the breaking up (torturing, bleeding, dismembering) of this confining structure and reducing it to a condition of creative chaos (massa confusa, prima materia). From this, in the process of transformation, the true, creative binaries emerge and begin their interaction designed to bring about the coniunctio or alchemical union. In this ultimate union, says Jung, the previously confined light is redeemed and brought to the point of its ultimate and redemptive fulfillment.
Through this work of manipulating energies by aiming to repair his inner structure, the alchemist is placed before the symbols and dreamlike processes of his inner world, this archetypal reality of the dream mixing the unconscious with the conscious. By proceeding in this way, it operates in 4th reality density, where the physical laws specific to 3-D no longer apply. It is the key to opening the doors of space-time for the purpose of exiting the Entropic Matrix, the opening of the third eye - that of the heart
Soul have both descended independently of one another into the depths of man's collective psyche and have there come upon realities which look so alike because thy are equally anchored in truth. Time and again he pointed out the affinities and contrasts between alchemical figures and those of Christianity, demonstrating a sort of mirror-like analogy not only between the stone of the philosophers and the image of Christ, but between alchemy and Christianity themselves.Alchemy, stands in a compensatory relationship to mainstream Christianity, rather like a dream does to the conscious attitudes of the dreamer. The Stone of alchemy is in many respects the stone rejected by the builders of Christian culture, demanding recognition and reincorporation into the building itself. . While these statements ostensibly refer to the material universe and to nature, those glassed Virgin perceives in them a model or paradigm for the material and natural aspect of human nature as well. Under the guise of liberating the light confined in matter, the alchemists were endeavoring to redeem the spirit or psychic energy locked up in the body and psyche (the "natural man" of St. Paul) and thus make this energy available for the greater tasks of the spirit or spiritual man. To better understand the Mysteries, it is necessary to consider the High as the nests of this fact represent the Forces and the old Races that are and have been more powerful in Us. Our Body is also a micro-universe. The planets are gaseous and chtonians, and are to be connected with the Earth and with the various forms of terrestrial humanities that we have known and our different cerebral, anatomical and physiological abilities past and present. As with the ones represent the Matter spirit, their composition and the speed of the electrons around it. is far from the nucleus and emits photon light, accelerates its speed and changes its orbit as the sapphire of a reading head jumps from one furrow to another. every other cell of the Spirit. The quantum leap occurs when an electron, which is an electron, would cross USA in one second twice and could therefore do so much faster; which would change our reality and our physical appearance. Virgin Saturne? Look at his right Index, his way of standing and his belly.
The Eastern American Toad (Bufo or Anaxyrus americanus americanus) is as American as apple pie and fireworks. With their pensive gaze and thoughtful intellect, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that a toad had served as one of our nation's founding fathers. Bursts of color that one might not expect adorn their warty skin, and these amphibians are surprisingly long-lived, attaining ages of up to 40 years! Remember that the old wive's tale of getting warts from touching toads is just that--a wive's tale. However, you can hurt toads by touching them, as your own oily hands can clog the pores on their bellies, through which they absorb oxygen and water.
Sérdeilis spennandi dagskrá þar sem fléttast saman hljóðverk eftir hljóð - og myndlistarmanninn Joe Banks og margvísleg kvikmyndaljóð sem varpað verður á vegg Mengis. VIð sögu koma meðal annars Schubert og T.S. Eliot, Dolce og Gabbana, mexíkósk ljóðskáld og seigfljótandi hljóð utan úr geimnum. Að baki hlustunarpartýinu stendur enski hljóð og myndlistarmaðurinn Joe Banks sem hefur starfað undir nafninu Disinformation frá árinu 1995 og skapað hljóðverk, hljóðinnsetningar og vídeóverk. Hann hefur gefið út rómaðar plötur á vegum útgáfufyrirtækisins Ash International (systurútgáfu Touch Records), Iris Light og Adaadat Records og haldið fjölda einkasýninga. Í Mengi býður hann upp á verk sem byggja á upptökum stuttbylgjuútvarpa af segulstormum sem myndast vegna kórónugoss eða kórónuskvettu en svo nefnist það þegar gríðarstórar gasbólur springa út frá kórónu sólar.
PoetryFilm var stofnað af sýningastjóranum og listamanninum Zata Banks árið 2002. PoetryFilm Paradox er klukkustunda löng dagskrá með stuttmyndum sem eiga það sammerkt að rannsaka og velta fyrir sér margvíslegum birtingarmyndum ástarinnar, erótík, rómantík og væntumþykju. Myndirnar eru þrettán talsins - þar á meðal er stuttmynd eftir Kate Jessop þar sem við sögu koma hjartnæm bréfaskipti hönnuðanna Domenico Dolce og Stefano Gabbana, kvikmyndafantasía Bruno Teixidor sem byggir á ljóði eftir mexíkóska rithöfundinn og þýðandann Tomas Segovia, táknmálsmynd eftir Brooke Griffin sem byggir á ljóðum Raymond Luczak, kvikmynd Stuart Pound sem byggir á ljóðasöngnum “Die Nebensonnen” úr Vetrarferð Franz Schuberts og Wilhelm Müller, myndræn túlkun Martin Pickles og Mikey Georgeson á ljóði T.S. Eliot “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, stuttmyndin “Fucking Him” eftir listamennina C. O. Moed & Adrian Garcia Gomez, og “447: Intellect - N” eftir Jane Glennie.
Mengi, Reykjavik, 10 March 2016
2,000 ISK - starts at 9pm sharp
Viðburðurinn hefst klukkan 21
Miðaverð 2000 krónur
Mengi, Óðinsgata 2
Reykjavik 101
Iceland
The Disinformation Listening Party focusses on shortwave radio recordings of so-called “Type II” (slow-drift) noise storms - interstellar shock-waves produced by coronal mass ejections from the surface of the sun.
rorschachaudio.com/2016/02/12/kvikmyndaljod-upplysingafol...
Beauty - a combination of qualities, such as shape, colour, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, esp. the sight: I was struck by her beauty | an area of outstanding natural beauty.
• a combination of qualities that pleases the intellect or moral sense.
We went to a funeral on Tuesday, it was north two hours in a small town. On our way home we took a different route, it was a winding road and there were numerous lakes and huge rocks…it was beautiful…true Canadian lake country. We had taken someone with us who needed a ride to the funeral and all I heard from the backseat for quite awhile was her remarking at all the beautiful landscape we were passing and how peaceful it was. That made me smile and realize the beauty that was in her. And even though the day was dreary the beauty was still evident. When we see something beautiful we want to stay, linger and take it in. As human beings we are drawn to beauty.
As women the whole beauty thing can be hard. We are bombarded with what culture says is beautiful when it comes to women and often times it is outward beauty and something the majority of us can never attain. And when we try to attain it it becomes our idol, our driving force for acceptance. We try so hard to conform to what culture says is beautiful that we end up destroying the true beauty that is within us. I know this is an area where I struggle. I don't want to conform to what the world says is beautiful, I want to be true to who God has created me to be.
Often times when I am struggling and feel I don't measure up my husband will pull me aside, stand in front of me and say "Tina, you know what true beauty is, it's in here" as he points to my heart "and I see it in your eyes, that's true beauty, that's what I'm looking for." And I know he's right and it's what the world needs. Physical beauty is fleeting…we all grow old…but true beauty remains and grows, it's life giving. Straight physical beauty is not life giving, if that's all we're looking and striving for it actually robs us and those around us of life.
The funeral we attended was from the mother of a woman who goes to our Church. I never knew her mother, I only saw her once and she was old and frail. Yet to hear her daughter and pastor speak of her, she was a woman of true beauty, she lived her life selflessly giving to others. Her daughter said her front door was always swinging open. She gave freely to those whose paths she crossed, she saw the need in others and gave what she could. Her beauty was life giving.
The beauty that trips some of us women up…what we see on magazine covers, billboards, commercials, movies, television shows, etc. may be outward physical beauty but it's not what we're to strive for, it's not what the world needs, it's not what our families need, it's a false reality.
Accept who you are…I say this to myself too :-) Each of us is special and has a place in this world and at this time…embrace it and be you…it's the most freeing place to be, the most rewarding and the most life-giving.
I've posted a number of images of some of the beautiful women in my life, check it out if you'd like.
tina-ramblingsofacountrywoman.blogspot.ca/2012/04/some-of...
“As we plunge into that darkness which is beyond intellect, we shall find ourselves not simply running short of words but actually speechless and unknowing.”
-Pseudo-Dionysius, “Mystical Theology,” 139.