++++++ FROM WIKIPEDIA ++++++

 

Konark Sun Temple is a 13th-century CE sun temple at Konark about 35 kilometres (22 mi) northeast from Puri on the coastline of Odisha, India.[1][2] The temple is attributed to king Narasingha deva I of the Eastern Ganga Dynasty about 1250 CE.[3][4]

 

Dedicated to the Hindu 'god Surya, what remains of the temple complex has the appearance of a 100-foot (30 m) high chariot with immense wheels and horses, all carved from stone. Once over 200 feet (61 m) high,[1][5] much of the temple is now in ruins, in particular the large shikara tower over the sanctuary; at one time this rose much higher than the mandapa that remains. The structures and elements that have survived are famed for their intricate artwork, iconography, and themes, including erotic kama and mithuna scenes. Also called the Surya Devalaya, it is a classic illustration of the Odisha style of Architecture or Kalinga Architecture .[1][6]

 

The cause of the destruction of the Konark temple is unclear and remains a source of controversy.[7] Theories range from natural damage to deliberate destruction of the temple in the course of being sacked several times by Muslim armies between the 15th and 17th centuries.[1][7] This temple was called the "Black Pagoda" in European sailor accounts as early as 1676 because its great tower appeared black. [6][8] Similarly, the Jagannath Temple in Puri was called the "White Pagoda". Both temples served as important landmarks for sailors in the Bay of Bengal.[9][10] The temple that exists today was partially restored by the conservation efforts of British India-era archaeological teams. Declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 1984,[1][2] it remains a major pilgrimage site for Hindus, who gather here every year for the Chandrabhaga Mela around the month of February.[6]

Contents

 

1 Etymology

2 Location

3 Description

3.1 Reliefs and sculpture

3.2 Hindu deities

3.3 Style

3.4 Other temples and monuments

4 History

4.1 Ancient Texts

4.2 Konark in texts

4.3 Construction

4.4 Damage and ruins

4.5 Aruna Stambha

4.6 Preservation Efforts

5 Reception

6 See also

7 Gallery

7.1 Antique paintings and photographs

7.2 Current day photographs

8 See also

9 References

9.1 Bibliography

10 External links

 

Etymology

 

The name Konark derives from the combination of the Sanskrit/Odia language words Kona (corner or angle) and Arka (the sun).[9] The context of the term Kona is unclear, but probably refers to the southeast location of this temple either within a larger temple complex or in relation to other sun temples on the subcontinent.[11] The Arka refers to the Hindu sun god Surya.[9]

Location

 

The Konark Sun Temple is located in an eponymous village about 35 kilometres (22 mi) northeast of Puri and 60 kilometres (37 mi) southeast of Bhubaneswar on the Bay of Bengal coastline in the Indian state of Odisha. The nearest airport is Bhubaneswar airport (IATA: BBI). Both Puri and Bhubaneswar are major railway hubs connected by Indian Railways' Southeastern services.[12]

Description

Original temple and the surviving structure (yellow), left; the temple plan, right

 

The Konark Sun Temple was built from stone in the form of a giant ornamented chariot dedicated to the Sun god, Surya. In Hindu Vedic iconography Surya is represented as rising in the east and traveling rapidly across the sky in a chariot drawn by seven horses. He is described typically as a resplendent standing person holding a lotus flower in both his hands, riding the chariot marshaled by the charioteer Aruna.[13][14] The seven horses are named after the seven meters of Sanskrit prosody: Gayatri, Brihati, Ushnih, Jagati, Trishtubha, Anushtubha, and Pankti.[14] Typically seen flanking Surya are two females who represent the dawn goddesses, Usha and Pratyusha. The goddesses are shown to be shooting arrows, a symbol of their initiative in challenging darkness.[15] The architecture is also symbolic, with the chariot's twelve pairs of wheels corresponding to the 12 months of the Hindu calendar, each month paired into two cycles (Shukla and Krishna).[16]

 

The Konark temple presents this iconography on a grand scale. It has 24 elaborately carved stone wheels which are nearly 12 feet (3.7 m) in diameter and are pulled by a set of seven horses.[5][2][17] When viewed from inland during the dawn and sunrise, the chariot-shaped temple appears to emerge from the depths of the blue sea carrying the sun.[18]

1822 drawing of the mandapa's east door and terrace musicians

1815 sketch of stone horses and wheels of the mandapa

 

The temple plan includes all the traditional elements of a Hindu temple set on a square plan. According to Kapila Vatsyayan, the ground plan, as well the layout of sculptures and reliefs, follow the square and circle geometry, forms found in Odisha temple design texts such as the Silpasarini.[19] This mandala structure informs the plans of other Hindu temples in Odisha and elsewhere.[19]

 

The main temple at Konark, locally called the deul, no longer exists. It was surrounded by subsidiary shrines containing niches depicting Hindu deities, particularly Surya in many of his aspects. The deul was built on a high terrace.[5] The temple was originally a complex consisting of the main sanctuary, called the rekha deul, or bada deul (lit. big sanctum).[18] In front of it was the bhadra deul (lit. small sanctum), or jagamohana (lit. assembly hall of the people) (called a mandapa in other parts of India.[20]). The attached platform was called the pida deul, which consisted of a square mandapa with a pyramidal roof.[18] All of these structures were square at their core, and each was overlain with the pancharatha plan containing a variegated exterior.[18] The central projection, called the raha, is more pronounced than the side projections, called kanika-paga, a style that aims for an interplay of sunlight and shade and adds to the visual appeal of the structure throughout the day. The design manual for this style is found in the Silpa Sastra of ancient Odisha.[18][21]

A stone wheel engraved in the walls of the temple. The temple is designed as a chariot consisting of 24 such wheels. Each wheel has a diameter of 9 feet, 9 inches, with 8 spokes.

 

Twice as wide as they were high, the walls of the jagamohana are 100 feet (30 m) tall. The surviving structure has three tiers of six pidas each. These diminish incrementally and repeat the lower patterns. The pidas are divided into terraces. On each of these terraces stand statues of musician figures.[5] The main temple and the jagamohana porch consist of four main zones: the platform, the wall, the trunk, and the crowning head called a mastaka.[22] The first three are square while the mastaka is circular. The main temple and the jagamohana differed in size, decorative themes, and design. It was the main temple's trunk, called the gandhi in medieval Hindu architecture texts, that was ruined long ago. The sanctum of the main temple is now without a roof and most of the original parts.[22]

 

On the east side of the main temple is the Nata mandira (lit. dance temple). It stands on a high, intricately carved platform. The relief on the platform is similar in style to that found on the surviving walls of the temple.[5] According to historical texts, there was an Aruna stambha (lit. Aruna's pillar) between the main temple and the Nata mandira, but it is no longer there because it was moved to the Jagannatha at Puri sometime during the troubled history of this temple.[5] According to Harle, the texts suggest that originally the complex was enclosed within a wall 865 feet (264 m) by 540 feet (160 m), with gateways on three sides.[5]

 

The stone temple was made from three types of stone.[23] Chlorite was used for the door lintel and frames as well as some sculptures. Laterite was used for the core of the platform and staircases near the foundation. Khondalite was used for other parts of the temple. According to Mitra, the Khondalite stone weathers faster over time, and this may have contributed to erosion and accelerated the damage when parts of the temples were destroyed.[23] None of these stones occur naturally nearby, and the architects and artisans must have procured and moved the stones from distant sources, probably using the rivers and water channels near the site.[23] The masons then created ashlar, wherein the stones were polished and finished so as to make joints hardly visible.[23]

 

The original temple had a main sanctum sanctorum (vimana), which is estimated to have been 229 feet (70 m)[17] tall. The main vimana fell in 1837. The main mandapa audience hall (jagamohana), which is about 128 feet (39 m) tall, still stands and is the principal structure in the surviving ruins. Among the structures that have survived to the current day are the dance hall (Nata mandira) and the dining hall (Bhoga mandapa).[2][17]

 

Reliefs and sculpture

  

The walls of the temple from the temple's base through the crowing elements are ornamented with reliefs, many finished to jewelry-quality miniature details. The terraces contain stone statues of male and female musicians holding various musical instruments.[24] Other major works of art include sculptures of Hindu deities, apsaras and images from the daily life and culture of the people (artha and dharma scenes), various animals, aquatic creatures, birds, mythological creatures, and friezes narrating the Hindu texts. The carvings include purely decorative geometric patterns and plant motifs.[24] Some panels show images from the life of the king such as one showing him receiving counsel from a guru, where the artists symbolically portrayed the king as much smaller than the guru, with the king's sword resting on the ground next to him.[25]

 

The upana (moulding) layer at the bottom of the platform contains friezes of elephants, marching soldiers, musicians, and images depicting the secular life of the people, including hunting scenes, a caravan of domesticated animals, people carrying supplies on their head or with the help of a bullock cart, travelers preparing a meal along the roadside, and festive processions.[26] On other walls are found images depicting the daily life of the elite as well as the common people. For example, girls are shown wringing their wet hair, standing by a tree, looking from a window, playing with pets, putting on makeup while looking into a mirror, playing musical instruments such as the vina, chasing away a monkey who is trying to snatch items, a family taking leave of their elderly grandmother who seems dressed for a pilgrimage, a mother blessing her son, a teacher with students, a yogi during a standing asana, a warrior being greeted with a namaste, a mother with her child, an old woman with a walking stick and a bowl in her hands, comical characters, among others.[27]

 

The Konark temple is also known for its erotic sculptures of maithunas.[28] These show couples in various stages of courtship and intimacy, and in some cases coital themes. Notorious in the colonial era for their uninhibited celebration of sexuality, these images are included with other aspects of human life as well as deities that are typically associated with tantra. This led some to propose that the erotic sculptures are linked to the vama marga (left hand tantra) tradition.[5] However, this is not supported by local literary sources, and these images may be the same kama and mithuna scenes found integrated into the art of many Hindu temples.[5] The erotic sculptures are found on the temple's Shikhara, and these illustrate all the bandhas (mudra forms) described in the Kamasutra.[20]

 

Other large sculptures were a part of the gateways of the temple complex. These include life-size lions subduing elephants, elephants subduing demons, and horses. A major pillar dedicated to Aruna, called the Aruna Stambha, used to stand in front of the eastern stairs of the porch. This, too, was intricately carved with horizontal friezes and motifs. It now stands in front of the Jagannatha temple at Puri.[29]

Hindu deities

 

The upper levels and terrace of the Konark Sun temple contain larger and more significant works of art than the lower level. These include images of musicians and mythological narratives as well as sculptures of Hindu deities, including Durga in her Mahishasuramardini aspect killing the shape-shifting buffalo demon (Shaktism), Vishnu in his Jagannatha form (Vaishnavism), and Shiva as a (largely damaged) linga (Shaivism). Some of the better-preserved friezes and sculptures were removed and relocated to museums in Europe and major cities of India before 1940.[30]

 

The Hindu deities are also depicted in other parts of the temple. For example, the medallions of the chariot wheels of the Surya temple, as well as the anuratha artwork of the jagamohana, show Vishnu, Shiva, Gajalakshmi, Parvati, Krishna, Narasimha, and other gods and goddesses.[31] Also found on the jagamohana are sculptures of Vedic deities such as Indra, Agni, Kubera, Varuna, and Âdityas.[32]

Style

 

The temple follows the traditional style of Kalinga architecture. It is oriented towards the east so that the first rays of the sunrise strike the main entrance.[2] The temple, built from Khondalite rocks,[33][34] was originally constructed at the mouth of the river Chandrabhaga, but the waterline has receded since then.[citation needed] The wheels of the temple are sundials, which can be used to calculate time accurately to a minute.[35]

Other temples and monuments

 

The Konark Sun Temple complex has ruins of many subsidiary shrines and monuments around the main temple. Some of these include:

 

Mayadevi Temple – Located west-southwest from the entrance of the main temple,[36] it has been dated to the late 11th century, earlier than the main temple.[37] It consists of a sanctuary, a mandapa and, before it, an open platform. It was discovered during excavations carried out between 1900 and 1910. Early theories assumed that it was dedicated to Surya's wife and thus named the Mayadevi Temple. However, later studies suggested that it was also a Surya temple, albeit an older one that was fused into the complex when the monumental temple was built.[36] This temple also has numerous carvings and a square mandapa is overlain by a sapta-ratha. The sanctum of this Surya temple features a Nataraja. Other deities in the interior include a damaged Surya holding a lotus, along with Agni, Varuna, Vishnu, and Vayu.[38]

Vaishnava Temple – Located southwest of the so-called Mayadevi Temple, it was discovered during excavations in 1956. This discovery was significant because it confirmed that the Konark Sun Temple complex revered all the major Hindu traditions, and was not an exclusive worship place for the saura cult as previously believed. This is a small temple with sculptures of Balarama, Varaha, and Vamana–Trivikrama in its sanctum, marking it as a Vaishnavite temple. These images are shown as wearing dhoti and a lot of jewelry. The sanctum's primary idol is missing, as are images from some niches in the temple.[39] The site's significance as a place of Vaishnavism pilgrimage is attested to in Vaishnava texts. For example, Krishna Chaitanya, the early 16th-century scholar and founder of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, visited the Konark temple and prayed on its premises.[40]

Kitchen – This monument is found south of the bhoga mandapa (feeding hall). It, too, was discovered in excavations in the 1950s. It includes means to bring water, cisterns to store water, drains, a cooking floor, depressions in the floor probably for pounding spices or grains, as well several triple ovens (chulahs) for cooking. This structure may have been for festive occasions or a part of a community feeding hall.[41] According to Thomas Donaldson, the kitchen complex may have been added a little later than the original temple.[42]

Well 1 – This monument is located north of the kitchen, towards its eastern flank, was probably built to supply water to the community kitchen and bhoga mandapa. Near the well are a pillared mandapa and five structures, some with semi-circular steps whose role is unclear.[43]

Well 2 – This monument and associated structures are in the front of the northern staircase of the main temple, with foot rests, a washing platform, and a wash water drain system. It was probably designed for the use of pilgrims arriving at the temple.[44]

 

A collection of fallen sculptures can be viewed at the Konark Archaeological Museum, which is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India.[45] The fallen upper portion of the temple is believed to have been studded with many inscriptions.[46]

 

History

 

Ancient Texts

 

The oldest surviving Vedic hymns, such as hymn 1.115 of the Rigveda, mention Surya with particular reverence for the "rising sun" and its symbolism as dispeller of darkness, one who empowers knowledge, the good, and all life.[14] However, the usage is context specific. In some hymns, the word Surya simply means sun as an inanimate object, a stone, or a gem in the sky (Rigvedic hymns 5.47, 6.51 and 7.63) while in others it refers to a personified deity.[14][47][48] In the layers of Vedic texts, Surya is one of the several trinities along with Agni and either Vayu or Indra, which are presented as an equivalent icon and aspect of the Hindu metaphysical concept called the Brahman.[49]

 

In the Brahmanas layer of Vedic literature, Surya appears with Agni (fire god) in the same hymns.[50] Surya is revered for the day, and Agni for its role during the night.[50] According to Kapila Vatsyayan, the concept of a Surya–Agni relationship evolves, and in later literature Surya is described as Agni representing the first principle and the seed of the universe.[51] It is in the Brahmanas layer of the Vedas,[52][53] and the Upanishads that Surya is explicitly linked to the power of sight, and to visual perception and knowledge. He is then internalized and said to be the eye, as ancient Hindu sages suggested abandonment of external rituals to gods in favor of internal reflection and meditation of the gods within, in one's journey to realize the Atman (soul, self) within, in texts such as the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Chandogya Upanishad, Kaushitaki Upanishad, and others.[54][55][56]

 

The Mahabharata epic opens its chapter on Surya by reverentially calling him the "eye of the universe, soul of all existence, origin of all life, goal of the Samkhyas and Yogis, and symbolism for freedom and spiritual emancipation".[14] In the Mahabharata, Karna is the son of Surya and an unmarried princess named Kunti.[14] The epic describes Kunti's difficult life as an unmarried mother, then her abandonment of Karna, followed by her lifelong grief. Baby Karna is found and then adopted, and grows up to become one of the central characters in the great battle of Kurukshetra where he fights his half-brothers.[57]

 

Konark in texts

 

Konark, also referred to in Indian texts by the name Kainapara, was a significant trading port by the early centuries of the common era.[58] The current Konark temple dates to the 13th century, though evidence suggests that a sun temple was built in the Konark area by at least the 9th century.[59] Several Puranas mention Surya worship centers in Mundira, which may have been the earlier name for Konark, Kalapriya (Mathura), and Multan (now in Pakistan).[60] The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim and traveler Hiuen-tsang (also referred to as Xuanzang) mentions a port city in Odisha named Charitra. He describes the city as prosperous, with five convents and "storeyed towers that are very high and carved with saintly figures exquisitely done". Since he visited India in the 7th century, he could not have been referring to the 13th-century temple, but his description suggests either Konark or another Odisha port city already featuring towering structures with sculptures.[40]

 

According to the Madala Panji, there was at one time another temple in the region built by Pundara Kesari. He may have been Puranjaya, the 7th-century ruler of the Somavasmi Dynasty.[61]

 

Construction

 

The current temple is attributed to Narasimhadeva I of the Eastern Ganga Dynasty, r. 1238–1264 CE– . It is one of the few Hindu temples whose planning and construction records written in Sanskrit in the Odiya script have been preserved in the form of palm leaf manuscripts that were discovered in a village in the 1960s and subsequently translated.[62] The temple was sponsored by the king, and its construction was overseen by Siva Samantaraya Mahapatra. It was built near an old Surya temple. The sculpture in the older temple's sanctum was re-consecrated and incorporated into the newer larger temple. This chronology of temple site's evolution is supported by many copper plate inscriptions of the era in which the Konark temple is referred to as the "great cottage".[40]

 

According to James Harle, the temple as built in the 13th century consisted of two main structures, the dance mandapa and the great temple (deul). The smaller mandapa is the structure that survives; the great deul collapsed sometime in the late 16th century or after. According to Harle, the original temple "must originally have stood to a height of some 225 feet (69 m)", but only parts of its walls and decorative mouldings remain.[5]

Damage and ruins

  

The temple was in ruins before its restoration. Speculation continues as to the cause of the destruction of the temple. Early theories stated that the temple was never completed and collapsed during construction. This is contradicted by textual evidence and evidence from inscriptions. The Kenduli copper plate inscription of 1384 CE from the reign of Narasimha IV seems to indicate that the temple was not only completed but an active site of worship. Another inscription states that various deities in the temple were consecrated, also suggesting that construction of the temple had been completed.[63] A non-Hindu textual source, the Akbar-era text Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl dated to the 16th century, mentions the Konark temple,[40] describing it as a prosperous site with a temple that made visitors "astonished at its sight", with no mention of ruins.[63][64][65]

 

Texts from the 19th century do mention ruins, which means the temple was damaged either intentionally or through natural causes sometime between 1556 and 1800 CE. The intentional-damage theory is supported by Mughal era records that mention the Muslim invader Kalapahar attacking and destroying Jagannath Puri and the Konark temple.[63][66][67] Other texts state that the temple was sacked several times by Muslim armies between the 15th and 17th centuries.[1][40] Islamic texts describing the raids of Kalapahar mention his army's first attempt to destroy the temple in 1565, but they failed. They inflicted only minor damage and carried away the copper kalasa.[40]

A medieval era description of Konark

When nine flights of steps are passed, a spacious court appears with a large arch of stone upon which are carved the sun and other planets. Around them are a variety of worshippers of every class, each after its manner with bowed heads, standing, sitting, prostrate, laughing, weeping, lost in amaze or in rapt attention, and following these are divers musicians and strange animals which never existed but in imagination.

 

The controversial Hindu text Madala Panji and regional tradition state that Kalapahad attacked again and damaged the temple in 1568.[68] The natural-damage theory is supported by the nearness of the temple to the shore and the monsoons in the region that would tend to cause damage. However, the existence of nearby stone temples in the Odisha region that were built earlier and have stood without damage casts doubt to this theory. According to P. Parya, the number of rings of moss and lichen growth found on the stone ruins suggests the damage occurred sometime around the 1570s, but this approach does not indicate why or by whom.[63]

 

According to Thomas Donaldson, evidence suggests that the damage and the temple's ruined condition can be dated to between the late 16th century and the early 17th century from the records of various surveys and repairs found in early 17th-century texts. These also record that the temple remained a site of worship in the early 17th century. These records do not state whether the ruins were being used by devotees to gather and worship, or part of the damaged temple was still in use for some other purpose. This evidence of the use of the temple, however, contradicts any theories that the late 16th-century Muslim invasion had completely destroyed the site.[69]

Aruna Stambha

 

In the last quarter of the 18th century, the Aruna stambha (Aruna pillar) was removed from the entrance of Konark temple and placed at the Singha-dwara (Lion's Gate) of the Jagannath temple in Puri by a Maratha Brahmachari named Goswain (or Goswami).[70][71] The pillar, made of monolithic chlorite, is 33 feet 8 inches (10.26 m) tall and is dedicated to Aruna, the charioteer of the Sun god.[71]

Preservation Efforts

  

In 1803 the East India Marine Board requested the Governor General of Bengal that conservation efforts be undertaken. However, the only conservation measure put in place at the time was to prohibit further removal of stones from the site. Lacking structural support, the last part of the main tower still standing, a small broken curved section, collapsed in 1848.[72]

 

The then-Raja of Khurda, who had jurisdiction over this region in the early 19th century, removed some stones and sculptures to use in a temple he was building in Puri. A few gateways and some sculptures were destroyed in the process.[73] In 1838 the Asiatic Society of Bengal requested that conservation efforts be undertaken, but the requests were denied, and only measures to prevent vandalism were put in place.[72]

 

In 1859 the Asiatic Society of Bengal proposed, and in 1867 attempted to relocate an architrave of the Konark temple depicting the navagraha to the Indian Museum in Calcutta. This attempt was abandoned as funds had run out.[72] In 1894 thirteen sculptures were moved to the Indian Museum. Local Hindu population objected to further damage and removal of temple ruins. The government issued orders to respect the local sentiments.[72] In 1903, when a major excavation was attempted nearby, the then-Lieutenant governor of Bengal, J. A. Baurdilon, ordered the temple to be sealed and filled with sand to prevent the collapse of the Jagamohana. The Mukhasala and Nata Mandir were repaired by 1905.[63][74]

 

In 1906 casuarina and punnang trees were planted facing the sea to provide a buffer against sand-laden winds.[72] In 1909 the Mayadevi temple was discovered while removing sand and debris.[72] The temple was granted World Heritage Site status by the UNESCO in 1984.[2]

 

Reception

 

The Konark Sun Temple has attracted conflicting reviews. According to Coomaraswamy, the Konark Sun Temple marks the high point of the Odisha style of Nagara architecture.[75]

 

The colonial-era reception of the temple ranged from derision to praise. Andrew Sterling, the early colonial-era administrator and Commissioner of Cuttack questioned the skill of the 13th-century architects, but also wrote that the temple had "an air of elegance, combined with massiveness in the whole structure, which entitles it to no small share of admiration", adding that the sculpture had "a degree of taste, propriety and freedom which would stand a comparison with some of our best specimens of Gothic architectural ornament".[76] The Victorian mindset saw pornography in the artwork of Konark and wondered why there was no "shame and guilt in this pleasure in filth", while Alan Watts stated that there was no comprehensible reason to separate spirituality from love, sex, and religious arts.[77] According to Ernest Binfield Havell, the Konark temple is "one of the grandest examples of Indian sculpture extant", adding that they express "as much fire and passion as the greatest European art" such as that found in Venice.[78]

 

Indian writers, too, have expressed a spectrum of opinions. For example, the leftist author Bhattacharya criticized the "brahmanical temple erotica", offering it as evidence of "female exploitation by the dominant classes of Hindu male society", and a "reflection of abnormal sex desires".[79] In contrast, the Nobel Laureate Tagore wrote,

 

Here the language of stone surpasses the language of human.

— Rabindranath Tagore[80][81]

 

#495 EXPLORE JAN 19,2011 mujer bereber en el tren de asilah a meknes(marruecos).

 

toda la vida social bereber está estructurada en torno a un concepto fundamental para la comprensión de las relaciones entre sexos: el honor o nnif familiar.

 

la preservación de esta cualidad moral se erige como base de la cohesión familiar y social, instituyendo a los hombres del principio de autoridad para ejercer un férreo control sobre todos los miembros de la familia y, especialmente, sobre las mujeres, que se consideran como los pilares de la moral y la vida privada familiar.

el comportamiento de las mujeres del núcleo familiar revierte directamente en el prestigio social del patrilinaje. consecuentemente, en el seno de este sistema social, "la mujer se verá abocada al papel de madre y esposa, responsable del honor del padre y la perpetuación de su nombre, considerándola un objeto prohibido para los demás".

la interiorización desde la infancia de conceptos tales como ihya (pudor), horma(respetabilidad), qdâr (infundir respeto) o hachuma (vergüenza) posibilita el aprendizaje del estricto código de conducta que les permitirá el desempeño de los roles que el patrilinaje le tiene destinados: ser una madre fecunda y una fiel esposa.

   

"reflections"

berber woman in the train between asilah and meknes(morocco).

 

all berber social life is structured around a key concept for understanding the relationships between the sexes: the honor or family nnif.

 

the preservation of the moral quality stands as the foundation of family and social cohesion, establishing the principle men of authority to exercise strict control over all family members, and especially on women, which are considered the pillars of morality and family privacy.

the behavior of women in the family paid directly into the social prestige of patrilineage. consequently, within this social system, "the woman will be doomed to the role of wife and mother,responsible for the honor of the father and the perpetuation of his name,considering it forbidden for others".

internalization from infancy to concepts such as ihya (modesty), qdâr (command respect) or hachuma (shame) learning enables strict code of conduct that will allow the performance of roles that you have patrilineage intended: to be a fertile mother and faithful wife.

} These are events set shortly after my previous issue “Atychiphobia”, wherein Clayface’s personalities are put in flux. {

 

*Overview of the slums bordering Midway City, Michigan, on an unusually humid night. A perfect blend of place, time and atmosphere that would discourage most from partaking in a recreational stroll. Additionally, as a landmark notable for housing not one but two guilds dedicated to super-heroics, crimes here are exclusive committed by the ignorant, or the heedless.

 

*Cut to a dolly zoom of an unimpressive three-story apartment building. We see a woman, clad in red and white athletic wear, scaling the forest of brick and metal with swift, elastic maneuvers. A final sling of her arm, and she stretches up to a fire escape. A noise complaint from the neighboring structure was placed not ten minutes before, and this heroine, known as Elasti-Girl, arrived at the scene alongside Midway police officers. Taking into account the warnings made by concerned residents that the prior commotion had sounded excessively violent, Elasti-Girl insists upon entering the premises first, and the officers, in turn, have not forgotten her past reliability, as well as stubbornness in matters of crisis. They accommodate her selflessness, and form a perimeter around the building in preparation.

 

*This is not to be a routine arrest. What will occur in a few short moments is, in every sense of the word, a coincidence. Stars have seemingly aligned in order for the forthcoming events to take place; two vessels that crossed on a treacherous sea, in years past, are to be reacquainted on this unanticipated evening.

 

*Low-angle shot as Elasti-Girl vaults through the window in question, compressing herself on the landing in order to remain inaudible. The living room which she finds herself in is no more homely than the sticky air and concrete to be found outside. No lights are switched on, though she can distinguish cheap furniture, chipped wallpaper, and a worn rug. Rounding the divide to the kitchen, the odor belonging to scorched, spoiled meat reaches our heroine. Nearly stumbling over a sizable lump on the tile, she retreats a step, then kneels to make out its condition.

 

*A stray gust of wind upsets the blinds leading to the street-side balcony, and the minuscule glow of the lampposts lining the sidewalk below identify Elasti-Girl’s find: A man in a tattered bathrobe, unscathed on his limbs and body, but the face… The face is more scab than skin. The nose, lips, hair, earlobes and eyelids are seared off. Miraculously, patches of the marred, red flesh pulsate with blood flow, and shallow breath expels from between the protruding teeth. Elasti-Girl swivels to check the oven, and sure enough, it is still warm from its now-apparent deleterious usage.

 

*In the corner of her eye, she sees, from the same aperture in the blinds which revealed the victim, an object of human height. She reaches a hand across the room and pulls back the obstruction, to be met with what could be mistaken for a large melted candle. A few cautious steps towards the thing causes Elasti-Girl to recoil, in spite of herself, as she now perceives a face side-eyeing her within the heap of grunge. Twin yellow orbs sit deep inside their sockets, and the dribbling mouth beneath them calls the unsettled heroine by name.

 

Myself: Rita…

  

} MANY YEARS EARLIER {

  

Rita Farr made note of the sound stage’s patent aroma of cedar and hand sanitizer, as she lugged a suitcase containing one-third of her worldly possessions the last few steps of her journey to a movie studio in Atlanta, Georgia. Boom mics, ladders and lunches were being whisked about on all sides of her, not in a manner of tumult, but rather like schools of fish with a daily routine. Ms. Farr expected as much, and during her flight, began enforcing a mental note not to be swept up by the current, as she had been with previous bit parts handed to her.

 

Rita (to self): Seventh time’s a charm…

 

Finding a calmer spot, Rita unceremoniously drops her baggage, and peers upward at the reconstructed Spanish galleon positioned triumphantly as a centerpiece to the hangar. Cast and crew mill about the deck as they do on the ground level, tying ropes and checking props. Just as a sense of tranquility begins to seep into her consciousness, Rita detects movement in her direction in the corner of her vision. She faces the approaching man, rigid like a soldier in line-up, awaiting the inevitable tirade on the subject her five-minute tardiness, or how a fellow actor has had a breakdown. Instead, she is greeted by a small bow, that which may have seemed curt or sarcastic, if not for the candid grin on the dark-haired stranger’s face. He straightens, first his back, then his Georgian-era apparel, and speaks.

 

Stranger: I gather from your less than period-accurate garb, as well as that holdall, that you are a new arrival? One with a face like yours would not be working behind the camera.. Ms. Rita Farr, I should think? Marvelous! There’s no cause for alarm; you are presently quite ahead of our schedule.

 

Rita (still processing the first half of his chatter): Um, yes, I’m Rita. My agent was told one of the lead actresses was indisposed, though it wasn’t really made clear over the phone.. This isn’t an audition? I’m the only one they contacted? The thing is, I’ve never been given a part that was billed before the end crawl of the credits…

 

Stranger (beaming): It all sounds akin to what we call a “big break”, Ms. Farr!

 

Rita (to self): Not a first-name-basis type of place. I guess that’s alright.

 

Stranger: .. And, you would be correct on the subject of your predecessor. As cruel as it may come across, none of us were surprised to see Ms. Mona Taylor’s drinking habits get the better of her. I don’t like to speak ill of those unable to defend themselves; however, most denizens of this little production will tell you it is well rid of her presence.

 

Rita: Well, that… sort of puts a damper on my thankfulness for the opportunity…

 

The stranger ignores this, instead turning to welcome another actor passing by.

 

Stranger: Ms. Farr, this is Takeo Sato, a performer all the way from Tokyo, playing the part of one of our film’s roguish corsairs. Sato, Ms. Farr is Ms. Taylor’s stand-in.

 

Takeo (equally pleasant): A delight to make your acquaintance.

 

Rita nods politely, almost missing a second man, dressed just like Takeo, take an indirect route around their group, halting behind the yet-to-be-introduced stranger. He seemed the same age as Rita (years younger than the other actors), but a permanently sour expression and hunched frame made him appear infirm, unwell. Takeo and the stranger took no notice of him.

 

Stranger (to Takeo): Has “he” yet to master his choreography?

 

Takeo: Mr. Lord is working fervently, for one his age.

 

The two direct their attention to the ship’s deck, Rita following suit.

 

Stranger (waving a hand to an older gentleman in green and yellow, fencing with a stuntman near the rigging): Our fearless leader, Jonathan Lord.

 

Rita (agog): I had no idea he was attached to this! Or that he was still in the business.

 

Stranger: He is quite adamant to not wash up like many a typecast action star has. His friend Simon Trent, for example, has gone that way I’m afraid. Thus, a twelfth “Silverblade” motion picture was thrust into production, at his request.

 

Takeo: It saddens me to see a legend such as him work not out of passion, rather out of necessity.

 

Rita watches Lord trip the stuntman with a swipe of his rapier. She hated to see a ghost of an actor too, but there was still plenty of fight left in Lord.

 

The stranger once again takes control of the conversation, steering the ensemble towards two other actors chatting by the vessel’s bow. One, a man in deep blue carrying a haughty look about him; and a woman in red, with jet-black locks and a dour mien. Rita saw that the sour-faced man was still tailing the group from behind the talkative stranger, yet remained even further away from these two.

 

Stranger (nodding at each respectfully): Ms. Farr, meet Farley Fairfax, and Madame Laura De Mille. Th-

 

Laura (speaking over his exposition, in a French accent): Rita? Oh yes, Mona’s replacement. We’re finally rid of “ehr majesty”.

 

Rita: It’s nice to meet you; what is your roll in-

 

Laura: You ahre not going to be anothair detriment to zis picture, like she was, no? Your face, it is too sweet and unspoiled to be full of hot air yet.

 

Rita: That’s… relieving.

 

Farley: We hope you take a liking to our little company here. Always a pleasure, ushering in bright young people to the world of stage and screen. Farley Fairfax; more than happy to show you the ropes.

 

Rita: Oh I’m, eh, not exactly new to all this, but that’s generous of-

 

Stranger (once again intercepting the conversation, with a somewhat hurried and ruffled tone): There will be no showing of the ropes from you, Fairfax. Really, you seem to be swayed by the delusion that your smirk will every time win you an immediate “fidus Achates”.

 

Farley: My VERY old friend, I wouldn’t presume to hold the monopoly on using a few flashy words and shiny teeth to make a good impression.

 

Stranger: It’s a wonder to myself and the world of science that you attract anything, Fairfax.

 

Rita (over her shoulder and under her breath): You’re the one that introduced me to the two of them…

 

She is surprised to hear Takeo smother a laugh upon catching her comment, unbeknownst to the rest of their gathering.

 

As the situation seemed to be headed towards a scuffle between the stranger, Farley, and a simultaneously disinterested and aggravated Laura De Mille, the most colorful character yet to appear totters up to the impending drama; A bucktoothed fellow wearing green and lavender, and a battered brown hat atop his head. Farley and the others seem to drop their quarrel punctually upon his arrival, and Rita, at this point, is on the verge of booking a flight straight back to Michigan.

 

Laura: Not ‘im again! I cannot listen to zat imbecile one more MINUTE.

 

Rita: Who-?

 

Stranger (upon the bucktoothed man’s obtrusion): Mr. Spelvin, you’ve… found a way into the lot. Once again. Much to the dissension of the studio, as you may recall.

 

Mr. Spelvin: Hey, it’s “George” to my friends, remember? How’s it hangin’ kids? Boy, this is a real get-together, isn’t it?

 

Laura: You ahre like a goat, Monsieur Spelvin. A black ‘ole for wit and the relevance of whatevair space you occupy.

 

Mr. Spelvin: Always good for a yuck, Laura! Ha!

 

Farley: Spelvin, really, you can’t carry on like this. How many times now have you disrupted a take? Which line do you plan to botch this time?

 

Mr. Spelvin (finger guns): I read you, Farls, and I gotcha covered!

 

He moves to put a hand on the dark-haired stranger’s shoulder.

 

Mr. Spelvin: I asked a pal of ours to put in a good word for me with Mr. Lord.. for all those little unforeseen mix ups I’ve been affiliated with in the past, y’know how it is.. So, Lord gave me a bit, right, chum?

 

Stranger: I did not speak with Mr. Lord, Spelvin.

 

Mr. Spelvin: You eh… didn’t…

 

Stranger: I will not prevaricate. You are unwelcome to this location and its occupants, for the duration of our filming. It is expected of you to cease these infringements that only further solidify a poor image of your person. They have all, and will all, be in vain.

 

Mr. Spelvin (his bubbly facade now crumbling away): Now… look, I know you’re only teasing to toughen me up, but see this? The costume people don’t even need to make me a getup; I put this together at home! I-I thought the purple would be a nice contrast to the Silverblade costume, and well, the hat is iffy, I’ll grant you, but if we got like some safety pins we could bend it into a tricorne…

 

Stranger: Spelvin, Mr. Lord does not wish you to be here! You are a frustrated man incapable of bearing success.

 

Farley and Laura look crossly between the verbal duelists. The sour-faced man still lingers behind the stranger, hardly looking troubled in the slightest. Rita, by comparison, senses the imminent eruption. Takeo’s brow furrows.

 

Mr. Spelvin: Well… in all fairness, I was prepared for you saying something like that. Heheh, you… you might say I’m PACKING accordingly, heheheh…

 

His hands shift to their coat pockets. Rita feels opposing forces within her wanting to run, and to make a grab for whatever Spelvin is about to reveal. The sensation is like a frigid, iron grip on her very essence.

 

Mr. Spelvin (unadulterated bitterness clouding his words): Dismissal. That’s all life’s dealt me. A little thing I’ve picked up over the years, though… all that pain, that feeling of ostracism… nothing a little accelerant and igniter can’t wash away. Leastways, that’s how it works for me.

 

He cocks his head to the stranger, who still stands firmly in opposition of the madman. A scream within Rita, desperate to warn everyone, never makes it out.

 

Mr. Spelvin: Nighty-night, Sloane.

 

His hands whip out a can of hairspray and a lighter, aimed straight for the stranger, “Sloane”. As Spelvin flicks the mechanism, and a burst of flame reaches out to mar Sloane, Takeo leaps between them, palms out as though he is catching a softball. The fire sputters mid-flight and bends into tendrils, wrapping around Takeo’s fingertips. They absorb into his skin, leaving a faint orange glow. All but Takeo himself stand with mouths agape.

 

Mr. Spelvin: You’ve gotta be SHI-

 

With the debate having transitioned into an uproar, two stunt performers drop from the deck above and pin Spelvin to the floor before he can recuperate. His arms and legs flail, with the expected result of more pressure being applied to detain him.

 

Stuntwoman: Give it up; my friend here survived a POW camp breakout in Vietnam before he was doing fake falls, and I chewed up pipsqueaks like you when I was still in middle school. It’s pointless, mister. Futile.

 

Mr. Spelvin: NRAAAAGHH-

 

“Sloane”: My… undying gratitude… Ms. Sutton, Mr. Savage.

 

The stuntman gives a taciturn nod back, while wrestling Spelvin away.

 

Sloane: And… Takeo…

 

Rita looks about with Sloane for the superhuman within their midst, to see that Takeo Sato has been swamped with onlookers expressing their shock, and agents already trying to nab him for their next picture. Takeo seems overwhelmed, not wishing to drag out his moment of glory. Laura and Farley have gone off skulking away from the hubbub, obviously envious of Takeo’s attention.

 

Rita: So… “Sloane”.

 

Sloane (no longer his composed self): … You must forgive me, how silly; yes, that is my name. Paul Sloane, at your service…

 

Rita: NO one knew Takeo had… those powers?? It looks like this is his first time exposing them..

 

Sloane (trying to make merry): No people like show people, Ms. Farr, as they say, eh?..

 

Jonathan Lord calls down to Sloane from the mast.

 

Lord: Everything in order, Mr. Sloane?

 

Sloane: Eh, yes Mr. Lord..

 

Lord: No injuries? Good; let’s round up our people. We have a film to shoot.

 

Rita (to Sloane): Do you need to sit down? You’re pale.

 

Sloane: That would be an immense aid to my wits, thank you. Mr. Lord expects order, however, and-

 

Rita: … and I can chip in. I may be new around here, but I can carry my share of responsibilities. I also didn’t just have my life threatened. Come on, it’s the least a regular, un-powered human like me can do.

 

Sloane, wordless and debilitated, gives a look of appreciation, and moves away to a more restful area.

 

Rita spies the sour-faced man. He seems to notice her watching, and begins to move after Sloane.

 

Rita: Hey, he never introduced you.

 

The man stops. He offers only a glimpse of his eyes, still standing in profile to her.

 

Rita: You’re a friend of Paul? Sloane?

 

Man: .. Yeah. He’s… the best man I know. I wouldn’t be in show business, without him.

 

Rita: Why didn’t you announce yourself?

 

Man (shrug): I just follow along. That’s what I’m good at. Sloane knows how to best handle… stuff.

 

Rita (big sigh): Are we talking about the same gentleman who nearly got himself charbroiled a minute ago? To tell the truth, I can do without all the fancy talk and putting-on-airs. You got a name?

 

Myself (many years ago): … Basil.. Bas is fine.

  

} PRESENT DAY {

  

Rita stands stunned, nay, horrified, by the sight of me.

 

Myself: Oh, there’s no need for those dramatics. You would have, by now, heard tell of my “condition”; the exploits of Gotham’s Batman and his nemeses are national news after all. Thought our paths would never converge again, did you? That I would remain in Gotham to the last? How you must have prayed for that. No, that place, inciting mayhem, challenging The Bat… this offers me no solace any longer. Most of us CAN’T leave, you know. Riddler stays out of internalized necessity; Black Mask, for fear of losing his empire. Catwoman for “this” reason, Freeze for another… But I am privileged to come and to go as I please. It’s something I’m quite good at.

 

Rita: You’ve just assaulted someone, Basil. He’s nearly dead.

 

Myself: I’m… sorry, I don’t remember how to respond… to some things… The other ones are talking, and it’s hard to concentrate on… just one…

 

I trail off. Still wary of me, Rita’s eyes drift to the chair-side table beside her. On it, an unlit lamp, and a framed photo. The one I subconsciously began staring at.

 

Rita (trembling): Basil… Oh my god, Basil, do you know who’s house this is? That’s Paul Sloane you've done this to. Basil, why?

 

What are the words I had planned for this? They were just there…

 

Rita: Basil, you’re not well. I need to take you away from here. Paul needs medical attention.

 

Myself (unable to hold the tide of voices in my head at bay): Oh, she’s trying to mask her abhorrence for us with stoicism, bless her. How very genuine, personal. This moves us greatly.

 

Rita: WHY, Basil?

 

Myself (I’m… sad now?): … I thought… if I got rid of him, maybe I… wouldn’t be a lie. I can’t be whole. Not while HE’s here.

 

Rita (pleading): Even before you had this gift, you felt you had to be someone else to be worthwhile. You DON’T. You can leave all of this behind. Find the real you again and hold onto it.

 

Myself: YOU THINK I’VE NEVER TRIED? Tried to find normalcy in this maelstrom of raving madness that persists both within me and in the outside world? Let me spell something out for you, “Ms. Farr”; There is to be no normalcy in the lives of people like us. Do you recollect Farley Fairfax? Takeo? In years gone by, both have since died in unrelated attacks by DEMONS. Mona Taylor is imprisoned for crimes committed on behalf of a costumed gang in Gotham. You yourself were blessed with abilities from exposure to volcanic vapors, and you STILL battle your old rival Laura De Mille on occasion, assisted by your very own band of incorrigibly heroic freaks. Really, Rita, your taste in companionship…

 

Rita: Don’t do this to yourself.

 

Myself (droning): Mr. King Savage, our stuntman friend, was inducted into a covert special forces unit later on, and was never heard from again. Oh, have you ever heard of the actor Steven "Champ" Hazard? He vanished into thin air one day, quite literally. Delores Winters. It was hearsay for a while that her mind was stolen by a telepath…

 

Rita: I can’t help you anymore, Basil. The police will be taking over in a minute, and I can’t stop them. I wouldn’t want to.

 

She sounds hurt, though I can’t seem to distinguish why anymore.

 

Myself (wetly laughing): You need not feel guilt, this form is merely residue, only a spent shard of Basil, and it will die hastily. This one couldn’t kill Sloane, and we banish any part of us that harbors those pointless sentiments for the old days, you see… The rest of us is already down there. An officer, a citizen, it makes no difference…

 

Rita watches as I relax into a puddle, drizzling through the balcony slats down to the pavement.

 

Myself (faintly): You won’t find me. You won’t see me, ever again.

 

Pounding footsteps come from beyond the front door Rita has failed to unlock. Police shout for Elasti-Girl to dictate the situation.

 

Rita (without so much as a slight crack in her voice): I haven’t seen Basil in years.

Somehow I internalized this Caturday as being about "photograph cat with clock." I don't have a clock anywhere near where the cats are, except for my bedside clock, which doesn't interest them. Agate, however, is fascinated by the phone charging cable that I power through the clock - any time the cable is not actually attached to the phone, and when I am paying attention. I finally decided the only way to get cat and clock pix was to put the clock on the bed and wave that charge cable so she could finally play with it.

 

Then I noticed that the theme was "Waiting", not "photo with clock." Well, Agate has been waiting her whole time living in my house, to be be encouraged to play with the cable. Happy Caturday 1 November 2025, "Waiting."

After British demand: Nukhba terrorists to receive humanitarian visits, hostages won't

Israeli government accedes to British demand to be allowed to visit terrorists who committed October 7 massacre without the hostages receiving any humanitarian visits in return.

Israel National News

Israel National News

1 minutes

Apr 25, 2024 at 7:27 PM (GMT+3)

 

HamasBritainUKterrorists in prisonHostages in Gaza

Cabinet meeting

Cabinet meeting

Haim Zach (GPO)

The Security Cabinet today (Thursday) approved the decision that the imprisoned Nukhba Force terrorists who carried out the massacre in southern Israel on October 7 will receive humanitarian visits.

 

The decision was made despite the fact that none of the Israeli hostages who were kidnapped on October 7 have ever received a single humanitarian visit in the more than 200 days since the massacre.

 

The terrorists will be visited by two foreign observers and an Israeli judge, and they will pass on information about the terrorists' condition.

 

The decision was made at the behest of the British government, which demanded the right have its representatives visit the terrorists to ensure their humanitarian situation is maintained.

 

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir opposed the move. Ben-Gvir presented to Netanyahu a series of arguments for his opposition. He stated, "It is a demand designed to weaken us in negotiations. The prisoners' condition only pressures Hamas'. He also noted that 'Israeli abductees did not receive any similar visit by an international body in Hamas captivity."

 

Related articles:

Terrorists to be released from prisons

Hamas to demand the release of Ibrahim Hamed

Tel Aviv terrorist had intimate relationship with soldiers

Reduce the size of terrorists' prison cells

Ben-Gvir said, "The British apparently did not internalize that the mandate has ended and the White Paper is not in force. The Prison Service has a professional and independent inspection system, and their demand for an inspection visit is an infringement on sovereignty. No self-respecting country would agree to this."

 

He added that Israel should demand reciprocity - if an international representative will visit the abducted in Gaza, Israel should agree to an identical visit to the terrorists imprisoned in Israel due to their involvement in the massacre.

Liber Primus

The first part of the Red Book, Liber Primus, has a prologue, "The Way of the Future. See note 16, which begins with biblical quotations emphasizing the incarnation and the terrible trial it constitutes (Isaiah 53:1-4; John 1:14). The last part of the Red Book, Tests. See note 16, ends with "The Seven Sermons to the Dead", and its main object, once again, is the embodiment in space-time life of a broader spiritual reality, now called "the pleroma". Thus, the theme of incarnation as reported in The Red Book was clearly Jung's alpha and omega. The intermediate journey was sometimes ecstatic, but it was also extremely painful. The beginning of the text contrasts the "spirit of this time", the rational-scientific attitude of the collective consciousness, with the "spirit of the depths", the mysterious wisdom in its mythopoietic form long lost to consciousness. Jung begins with these words: "If I speak in the spirit of this time, I must say: nothing and no one can justify what I must proclaim to you. Any justification is superfluous for me, because I have no choice, but I need it. The Red Book (later: RB), p. 229[In this article,..... "These are the words of someone who mobilizes, and who is mobilized by, a numinous power. Jung's freedom, and that would be the freedom of anyone in this situation, was to know not what he wanted to do, but what he had to do, in this case: follow the spirit of the deep. The "spirit of this time" maintains that what is said by the other spirit, that of the depths, is madness. Jung answers: "It's true, it's true, what I'm saying is the greatness, the drunkenness and the ugliness of madness[. RB, p. 230... "Within this danger, he needs a "visible sign" RB, p. 231. "that would show him that the spirit of the depths is at the same time the one who governs the depths of the world's affairs. His need for a visible sign is important to understand the depth and nature of his experience. This need could demonstrate that his visions were of a different type than those described by mystics as unio mystica. When a person reaches this transcendent level, that is, when his soul leaves him to join the "Infinite Light" or whatever metaphor is chosen for this ineffable experience, there is no need for an external sign. The person simply knows. Jung's visions were different. They were founded in the psyche and the world of archetypes.Terribly disturbing visions set the process in motion, like the lightning bolt that marked the beginning of the alchemical opus. In October 1913, Jung had a vision that lasted two hours and came back, even more violently, two weeks later: "During the day, I was suddenly attacked by a vision in broad daylight: I saw a terrifying tide that covered all the northern and lowland countries between the North Sea and the Alps. It extended from England to Russia, and from the North Sea coast to the Alps. I saw yellow waves, floating rubble, and the death of countless thousands of human beings. RB, p. 231... "An inner voice says, "Look carefully, it's very real and it will happen that way. You can't doubt that... [The vision] left me exhausted and confused. And I thought that madness had seized my mind. RB, p. 231... » Finally, Jung obtained his "sign" linking the source of his vision and world affairs - the First World War broke out (officially, on January 8, 1914). Jung then sought what in his latest works would be called an experience of synchronicity, a meaningful relationship between inner and outer events. He seeks an archetypal, impersonal understanding of the chaos that engulfed him. It may well be that his visions were prophetic. But his answer shows him identified with the archetypal source, the condition of narcissism: "I encountered the colossal cold that froze everything; I encountered the tide, the sea of blood, and found my barren tree whose leaves had been transformed into a remedy by freezing. And I picked the ripe fruit and gave it to you, and I do not know what I offered you, what an intoxicating bitter-sweet drink, which left on your tongue an aftertaste of blood.

 

Liber Secundus

In this second part of the Red Book, Jung meets a figure he calls Izdubar, which is an older name of the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh. It seems to me that this meeting plays a crucial role in Jung's experience. For reasons of space, I did not refer in this article to Jung's drawings. But the one accompanying this passage must be mentioned. On the drawing - a character praying and a huge jet of fire in full propulsion - Jung noted a passage of the Upanishads where the god Prajapati makes tapas, and in doing so creates Agni, the Devourer, who attacks him. To avoid being killed by his own creation, Prajapati creates the world from his own members, that is, he enters space-time. This link between the creation of a new order and the simultaneous creation of chaos or disorder is the main dynamic of the transformation in The Red Book. In The Red Book, the giant Izdubar "was gigantic, like a hero of colossal power RB, p. 280... "He comes from the Light; and yet, this creature so superior to Jung by size is completely defeated by Jung's scientific explanations, which Izdubar feels as a powerful and victorious poison. This is the power of reason, which suppresses and reduces numinosum. Jung talks about his love for Izdubar, and says he doesn't want to see him die, but he's too old to be transported. He acknowledges that he can use his thinking to solve his dilemma: "I am fundamentally convinced that Izdubar is not real in the ordinary sense of the word, but that it is an RB fantasy, p. 280. "Izdubar is in agony but cannot help but accept. Izdubar becomes light, like a fantasy, and can be easily transported; Jung eventually reduces it to the size of an egg and puts it in his pocket[RB, p. 283... He needs to reduce it to keep some control.He realizes that he must let Izdubar out of the egg, because he realizes that "I still haven't accepted what embraces my heart. This frightening thing is the confinement of God in the bud... I defeated the Great One, I mourned him, I did not want to abandon him because I loved him, because no mortal could compete with him RB, p. 286-287... "But Izdubar's liberation has an unexpected result: "But when he gets up, I go down... All light abandons me.... Woe to the mother who gives birth to a God! A birth is difficult, but a thousand times more difficult is the infernal great-peace. All the dragons and monstrous snakes of eternal emptiness succeed the divine son. RB, p. 287 Order and disorder begin to be linked as integral parts of a process. "If God approaches, your being begins to bubble and the black mud from the depths rises swirling. "A thousand times more difficult is the great peace. RB, p. 287... "He reflects on the power of the created disorder that he also identifies with evil or chaos: forms (such as) "an oppressive association with the object. RB, p. 287, "can only be dissolved by evil. So, despite the wisdom he has acquired, he returns to realization: "I still don't know what it means to give birth to a God. RB, p. 290," that is, to the self within. In a later passage, probably because he was seeking refuge from chaos, he imagined entering a library, relying on his thoughts. But thought can no longer be his refuge. He was soon confused and heard "a strange rustle and purr - and suddenly, a roaring sound filled the room like a horde of huge birds - with a frenetic flapping of wings.... RB, p. 294: "Jung's flight to spirit and order has created a powerful form of disorder, and he finds himself in a madhouse. He reflects on his old "protective and repeatedly polished crust, covering the mystery of chaos. If you break through this wall, it could not be more ordinary, the flow overflowing with chaos will penetrate it. Chaos is not simple, it is an infinite multiplicity..... It is full of figures which, because of their fullness, have the effect of disturbing us and submerging us.... These figures are the dead, not just your dead, that is, all the images of the forms you have taken in the past and that the course of your life has left behind, but also the swarming crowd of the dead of human history, the ghostly procession of the past, which is an ocean compared to the drops that constitute the whole extent of your own life.... (The dead) have lived on the heights and accomplished the lowest things. They forgot one thing: they did not experience their animal.... And that too is the failure of Christ. RB, pp. 295-296... If we are in our bodies, close to the energies of the animal in us, we are not crazy. And that is why Jung realizes that Christianity - with its rejection of the flesh - cannot save him from his fall into madness. For Jung, the dead are those aspects of his soul that represent his escape from the body, and aspects of this same escape in the (Christian) generations preceding him, in his parents, grandparents etc.

 

The Red Book is a red leather‐bound folio manuscript crafted by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung between 1915 and about 1930. It recounts and comments upon the author's imaginative experiences between 1913 and 1916, and is based on manuscripts first drafted by Jung in 1914–15 and 1917. Despite being nominated as the central work in Jung’s oeuvre, it was not published or made otherwise accessible for study until 2009.

In October 2009, with the cooperation of Jung's estate, The Red Book: Liber Novus was published by W. W. Norton in a facsimile edition, complete with an English translation, three appendices, and over 1500 editorial notes. Editions and translations in several other languages soon followed. In December 2012, Norton additionally released a "Reader's Edition" of the work; this smaller format edition includes the complete translated text of The Red Book: Liber Novus along with the introduction and notes prepared by Shamdasani, but it omits the facsimile reproduction of Jung's original calligraphic manuscript.

While the work has in past years been descriptively called simply "The Red Book", Jung did emboss a formal title on the spine of his leather-bound folio: he titled the work Liber Novus (in Latin, the "New Book"). His manuscript is now increasingly cited as Liber Novus, and under this title implicitly includes draft material intended for but never finally transcribed into the red leather folio proper.The existence of C.G. Jung's Red Book was revealed by the publication of his autobiography My Life - Memories, Dreams and Thoughts. C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, A. Jaffe (Ed.), R..... The autobiography contained in the appendix a treatise of Gnostic appearance, "The Seven Sermons to the Dead", the last part of the Red Book as we now possess it.However, the "Sermons" alone tell us little about the Red Book, and the latter has remained surrounded by an aura of secrecy, as it was for me when I studied in Zurich from 1966 to 1970.2 Secrets create a void that attracts projections, and the Red Book certainly had that effect.Why had it not been published?In Zurich, fantasies were swirling: it was said that the Jung family kept him because Jung said he was the Messiah, or because Jung appeared as a psychotic, etc.We are finally in a position to evaluate these fantasies.But the publication, in a magnificent facsimile edition - a work in which the love and devotion of its publisher, Sonu Shamdasani, transpired and which has spanned a decade - also opens up a completely new field of research.For if, as Jung says in his autobiography, the Red Book was his prima materia for the rest of his life[3][3]Ibid. at 199 (translation fr. cit. at 231-232), it can be assumed that there is a strong link between these experiences and the Collected Works.3 This is only partially the case.Although the sources of the main themes of the Collected Works can certainly be found in The Red Book, there are also significant differences.In particular, chaos or disorder plays a much greater and more important role in The Red Book than in Collected Works where order plays the main role, through the order-producing function of archetypes, for example.This has far-reaching implications for Jungian psychology as a form of psychotherapy, more than as a doctrine of wisdom or as a modern form of sustainable philosophy[4].[4]M.-L. von Franz, among others, made the suggestion, during a..., but also for our evaluation of C.G. Jung's work.4C.G. Jung's Red Book is a series of dialogues, caused by striking and confusing dreams he had in 1912, with various figures of his imagination, then with repetitive fantasies that he could not understand, such as: "there was something dead, but that was still alive[5][5]C.G. Jung, 1973, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, op. cit.,..."; then, in the fall of 1913, with an outbreak of global catastrophe hallucinations. Its immersion in the unconscious then began and continued in the spring of 1914, maintaining all its intensity for about five months, but it will continue in 1916.There were periods of disorientation for several more years, but they eventually decreased with the understanding of his mandala drawings (which are contained in The Red Book) as an expression of the self: these drawings as well as his rational and scientific mind allowed him to contain his chaos. "I (first) tried an aesthetic elaboration of my.....5 Jung tells us that he had to control his fantasies in one way or another, but also that an intense fear and "violent resistance" kept him from "letting himself fall into them. Ibid, p. 178 (translated from english, p. 207). ». He recorded the fantasies he experienced in a series of "Black Papers" that covered most of the most intense period and ended in 1916 with the "Seven Sermons to the Dead. "Later, and over a period of several years, he transcribed in The Red Book his imaginative encounters into a process that he would later call "active imagination". The dialogues are interspersed with passages in the form of wisdom teachings enunciated by an amalgam (which eventually transforms) of Jung and his inner images. Later, he realized that many of these images had been precursors of the central figure of the Red Book, Philemon.

But unlike a schizophrenic, Jung was able to consider his fantasies and relate to them consciously. He was able to bring them back into space and time, so to speak, and what completely distinguishes him from a madman is that he made the choice to connect his inner world to the common reality. In addition, Jung has never decompensated during these years, as is usually the case during a psychotic episode. On the contrary, he continued his psychotherapy practice full-time and did not lose contact with his family life. It is surely wrong to think that Jung was crazy, or that he was a schizophrenic who would have treated himself creatively. But to recognize that Jung, like everyone else, to one degree or another, had crazy parts within an otherwise healthy personality. N. Schwartz-Salant, The Mystery of Human Relationship, New..., and that he suffered the horrors of this madness which was ultimately a source of both limitation and transformation, this is a very reasonable assumption. The Red Book expresses a narcissistic feature of Jung's personality before his "descent" into the unconscious, namely the amalgamation of his self with more unconscious, non-moic or archetypal energies, and his transformation. But before following the trace of this process in The Red Book, a quick reflection on the terms numinosum, narcissism, and self will be useful to understand Jung's journey. When Rudolph Otto wrote The Sacred and made the numinosum the nucleus of the religious experience, he said: "We invite the reader to focus his attention on a moment when he felt a deep and, as far as possible, exclusively religious emotion. If he is unable to do so or if he does not even know of such moments, we ask him to stop reading here. R. Otto, The Idea of the Holy, London: Oxford University...... » If one does not know the numinosum as a religious consciousness of the totally "Other", attested by emotions such as fear, terror, fascination, fright and beauty, one can use concepts such as narcissism to illuminate certain aspects of Jung's personality and system, but in so doing, one may also misunderstand and pathologize others[. An example is given by Jeffrey Satinover's analysis,...... In this spirit, I use the term "narcissism" with caution. This conceptual tool helps us to understand the experiences that Jung reported in The Red Book and how they affected the Collected Works. But Jung's narcissism does not define the nature of what happened to him, and it should not be used to foolishly criticize. NB: Although the Red Book shows various narcissistic features of Jung's personality, it is another matter to talk about a narcissistic personality. This diagnosis can only be confirmed by the nature of the transfers involved. Heinz Kohut, The Analysis of the Self, NY: International..., and we have only anecdotal evidence in this regard. In this study, I will therefore deal with those of Jung's narcissistic traits that appear clearly in The Red Book, in particular his fusion myself, and his remarkable struggle to dissolve this state of fusion, which leads to an authentic relationship me-self. The Jungian notion of self used in this article differs in its orientation from other psychoanalytical visions of self . N. Schwartz-Salant, Narcissism and Character Transformation,...... The key difference is that the self, which is a source of identity and our most intimate compass for living in a way that is felt to be authentic and true, is not the consequence of the internalization of object relationships, as with most psychoanalytical approaches. The self is an archetype. Metaphorically speaking, it's our psychic DNA. We were born with him. It is a complex energy system, which includes processes of order and disorder. Consciously realizing the existence of the self is often a long and arduous path, the path, in fact, that Jung called individuation. On the one hand, the self must be "seen" or "mirrored" by others in order to be gradually realized, which makes it possible to obtain a self-self relationship instead of a fusion. The state of fusion is a normal step, but if it stabilizes, what we call a grandiose exhibitionist self occurs. In this fusion, the self does not know that the self exists; it believes it is the self. On the other hand, inner experiences of the numinousness of the self can also lead to its actualisation. All his life, Jung doubted the need for external "mirror reflection" and the internalization of the object relationships that go hand in hand, because he saw in it a risk of altering the essential nature of the self. That's why he focused on internal objects. In general, The Red Book is Jung's encounter with the transformative power of numinosum, and it shows how Jung brought the fruits of this encounter back into spatial and temporal reality. In particular, The Red Book is a remarkable testimony to a fusion of myself and self transformed by the fire of chaos or madness, terms that Jung uses interchangeably. His effort to embody the wisdom he has acquired, both personally and in his Collected Works, is a remarkable journey. I am not aware of anything comparable in all the mystical or, more broadly, visionary literature. The Red Book is divided into three parts, Liber Primus, Liber Secundus and Events. The thread that connects these parts is analogous to a dream that begins with the initial position of the problem - the embodiment of a new spiritual attitude - and leads, through various episodes, to a lysis - the emergence of a relationship between myself and self. Jung's experience of such a profound psychological process was clearly a precursor to his notion of psychological reality and individuation, just as Philemon was the precursor to his idea of the self.

Context and composition

Jung was associated with Sigmund Freud for a period of approximately six years, beginning in 1907. Over those years, their relationship became increasingly acrimonious. When the final break of the relationship came in 1913, Jung retreated from many of his professional activities to intensely reconsider his personal and professional path. The creative activity that produced Liber Novus came in this period, from 1913 to about 1917.Biographers and critics have disagreed whether these years in Jung's life should be seen as "a creative illness", a period of introspection, a psychotic break, or simply madness." Anthony Storr, reflecting on Jung's own judgment that he was "menaced by a psychosis" during this time, concluded that the period represented a psychotic episode.[8] According to Sonu Shamdasani, Storr's opinion is untenable in light of currently available documentation. During the years Jung engaged with his "nocturnal work" on Liber Novus, he continued to function in his daytime activities without any evident impairment. He maintained a busy professional practice, seeing on average five patients a day. He lectured, wrote, and remained active in professional associations. Throughout this period he also served as an officer in the Swiss army and was on active duty over several extended periods between 1914 and 1918, the years of World War I in which Jung was composing Liber Novus. Jung was not "psychotic" by any accepted clinical criteria during the period he created Liber Novus. Nonetheless, what he was doing during these years defies facile categorization. Jung referred to his imaginative or visionary venture during these years as "my most difficult experiment."This experiment involved a voluntary confrontation with the unconscious through willful engagement of what Jung later termed "mythopoetic imagination". In his introduction to Liber Novus, Shamdasani explains: "From December 1913 onward, he carried on in the same procedure: deliberately evoking a fantasy in a waking state, and then entering into it as into a drama. These fantasies may be understood as a type of dramatized thinking in pictorial form.... In retrospect, he recalled that his scientific question was to see what took place when he switched off consciousness. The example of dreams indicated the existence of background activity, and he wanted to give this a possibility of emerging, just as one does when taking mescaline." Jung initially recorded his "visions", or "fantasies, or "imaginations" — all terms used by Jung to describe his activity — in a series of six journals now known collectively as the "Black Books". This journal record begins on 12 November 1913, and continues with intensity through the summer of 1914; subsequent entries were added up through at least the 1930s. Biographer Barbara Hannah, who was close to Jung throughout the last three decades of his life, compared Jung's imaginative experiences recounted in his journals to the encounter of Menelaus with Proteus in the Odyssey. Jung, she said, "made it a rule never to let a figure or figures that he encountered leave until they had told him why they had appeared to him." After the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Jung perceived that his visionary experience was not only of personal relevance, but entwined with a crucial cultural moment. In late-1914 and 1915 he compiled the visions from the journals, along with his additional commentary on each imaginative episode, into an initial manuscript. This manuscript was the beginning of Liber Novus. In 1915 Jung began artfully transcribing this draft text into the illuminated calligraphic volume that would subsequently become known as the Red Book. In 1917 he compiled a further supplementary manuscript of visionary material and commentary, which he titled "Scrutinies"; this also was apparently intended for transcription into his red folio volume, the "Red Book". Although Jung labored on the artful transcription of this corpus of manuscript material into the calligraphic folio of the Red Book for sixteen years, he never completed the task. Only approximately two-thirds of Jung's manuscript text was transcribed into the Red Book by 1930, when he abandoned further work on the calligraphic transcription of his draft material into the Red Book. The published edition of The Red Book: Liber Novus includes all of Jung's manuscript material prepared for Liber Novus, and not just the portion of the text transcribed by Jung into the calligraphic red book volume.In 1957, near the end of his life, Jung spoke to Aniela Jaffé about the Red Book and the process which yielded it; in that interview he stated: "The years… when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life. Everything later was merely the outer classification, scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then." He wrote a short epilog in 1959 after leaving the book more or less untouched for about 30 years: “To the superficial observer, it will appear like madness.”

Creation and physical description

The Red Book resting on Jung's desk

Jung worked his text and images in the Red Book using calligraphic pen, multicolored ink, and gouache paint. The text is written in German but includes quotations from the Vulgate in Latin, a few inscriptions and names written in Latin and Greek, and a brief marginal quotation from the Bhagavad Gita given in English. The initial seven folios (or leaves) of the book — which contain what is now entitled Liber Primus (the "First Book") of Liber Novus — were composed on sheets of parchment in a highly illuminated medieval style. However, as Jung proceeded working with the parchment sheets, it became apparent that their surface was not holding his paint properly and that his ink was bleeding through. These first seven leaves (fourteen pages, recto and verso) now show heavy chipping of paint, as will be noted on close examination of the facsimile edition reproductions.

 

In 1915, Jung commissioned the folio-sized and red leatherbound volume now known as the Red Book. The bound volume contained approximately 600 blank pages of paper of a quality suitable for Jung's ink and paint. The folio-sized volume, 11.57 inches (29.4 cm) by 15.35 inches (39.0 cm), is bound in fine red leather with gilt accents. Though Jung and others usually referred to the book simply as the "Red Book", he had the top of the spine of the book stamped in gilt with the book's formal title, Liber Novus ("The New Book"). Jung subsequently interleaved the seven original parchment sheets at the beginning of the bound volume. After receiving the bound volume in 1915, he began transcribing his text and illustrations directly onto the bound pages. Over the next many years, Jung ultimately filled only 191 of the approximately 600 pages bound in the Red Book folio.[28] About a third of the manuscript material he had written was never entered into the illuminated Red Book. Inside the book now are 205 completed pages of text and illustrations (including the loose parchment sheets), all from Jung's hand: 53 full-page images, 71 pages with both text and artwork, and 81 pages entirely of calligraphic text. The Red Book is currently held, along with other valuable and private items from Jung's archive, in a bank vault in Zurich.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Book_(Jung)

Season of Tilt

Week 20, Saturday

 

With these last photographs I've explored my life within a framework one could call 'wretchedness of life'. Using nature as a symbol of Hobbesian idea of the war of all against all (bellum omnium contra omnes), I wanted to create a discourse that self-purposely portraits my personal memories and feelings in a somewhat nihilistic light that has little faith for humanity. I wanted to create this discourse of mans subordination to nature just that I could tear it down at the end. Because the thing is that the truth about the world and life is what people believe it is and the every branch of science has its own philosophical interpretation of it. While science is good at explaining different phenomenon's of life, I'm more doubtful about the philosophical frameworks different disciplines create and interpretations of social order they convoy with them. Man creates knowledge and philosophical constructions to free himself from the compulsory nature of the world and life. Yet, all these philosophical constructions can be turned against man by, for example, showing how he is subordinated to structures of society, nature or mind. There are a lot of 'shackles of mind' to choose from which were created by science, like vulgar sociology, biological determinism, positivism of natural sciences, social contract theories a la Hobbes, economical necessity of scarcity, unfulfilled desires of Freudian psychoanalysis, selfish genes, etc., you name it. Who believes all them must be deranged himself too. They tell us something about the world and life, but at the same time cover it up like clouds in the sky – and we can only see something of the sunlight that scatters through the clouds.

 

Freedom to think and experience starts when one learns to deconstruct these constructions of the mind what we have learned and internalized before. With this process the past, together with personal memories and feelings, is opened again for reinterpretation. One doesn't need to be subordinated to ideas what one might have believed before. And in the end, the mystery of life remains to be explored again.

 

---

 

Finally, this is the last post for Season of Tilt. When I was originally planning this season, my preliminary name for it was 'Season of Modern Lomography' and I played with a idea that I could turn my modern Sony Nex-5N into lomography camera by purchasing suitable special lenses. When I did some searching I found that Lensbaby optics would suit me best, but there were a bit too costly for my little blog adventure. Therefore I decided to approach Lensbaby with a sponsorship proposal and they were very kind to support my plan (Thanks Keri!). Eventually the content for Season of Tilt turned out to be something else what I had originally thought, modern digital camera doesn't turn into Holga with some lenses only. But I think the final result is still very good overall - at least I'm happy with it. Being sponsored by Lensbaby also meant that I was acting in a different, one might say more professional, role as a photographer because of the commitment involved. I believe that in some ways it has developed my identity as a photographer. I created these pictures 'on demand' and kept demonstrating the possibilities Lensbaby products offer. It has been a fun project and I hope that those who follow me here, at forums or in Flickr have enjoyed it as well. However, ending this season will not mean that I will stop using Lensbaby. I like them a lot (Edge 80 being my favorite) and I know I'm going to keep using them in other project from time to time. I'm sure I'll be posting something taken with them in future too.

 

Next week Wednesday I will start a new season with new photography. I can't say much about it yet, other than it will have a different mood altogether. Stay tuned..

 

Year of the Alpha – 52 Weeks of Sony Alpha Photography: www.yearofthealpha.com

“It’s easy to feel uncared for when people aren’t able to communicate and connect with you in the way you need. And it’s so hard not to internalize that silence as a reflection on your worth. But the truth is that the way other people operate is not about you. Most people are so caught up in their own responsibilities, struggles, and anxiety that the thought of asking someone else how they’re doing doesn’t even cross their mind. They aren’t inherently bad or uncaring — they’re just busy and self-focused. And that’s okay. It’s not evidence of some fundamental failing on your part. It doesn’t make you unloveable or invisible. It just means that those people aren’t very good at looking beyond their own world. But the fact that you are — that despite the darkness you feel, you have the ability to share your love and light with others — is a strength. Your work isn’t to change who you are; it’s to find people who are able to give you the connection you need. Because despite what you feel, you are not too much. You are not too sensitive or too needy. You are thoughtful and empathetic. You are compassionate and kind. And with or without anyone’s acknowledgment or affection, you are enough.”

― Daniell Koepke

 

i would attempt to add to that but Daniell has said it all and i nearly burst into tears because of how unimaginably true it is to how i've been feeling for the longest time.

 

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++++++ FROM WIKIPEDIA ++++++

 

Konark Sun Temple is a 13th-century CE sun temple at Konark about 35 kilometres (22 mi) northeast from Puri on the coastline of Odisha, India.[1][2] The temple is attributed to king Narasingha deva I of the Eastern Ganga Dynasty about 1250 CE.[3][4]

 

Dedicated to the Hindu 'god Surya, what remains of the temple complex has the appearance of a 100-foot (30 m) high chariot with immense wheels and horses, all carved from stone. Once over 200 feet (61 m) high,[1][5] much of the temple is now in ruins, in particular the large shikara tower over the sanctuary; at one time this rose much higher than the mandapa that remains. The structures and elements that have survived are famed for their intricate artwork, iconography, and themes, including erotic kama and mithuna scenes. Also called the Surya Devalaya, it is a classic illustration of the Odisha style of Architecture or Kalinga Architecture .[1][6]

 

The cause of the destruction of the Konark temple is unclear and remains a source of controversy.[7] Theories range from natural damage to deliberate destruction of the temple in the course of being sacked several times by Muslim armies between the 15th and 17th centuries.[1][7] This temple was called the "Black Pagoda" in European sailor accounts as early as 1676 because its great tower appeared black. [6][8] Similarly, the Jagannath Temple in Puri was called the "White Pagoda". Both temples served as important landmarks for sailors in the Bay of Bengal.[9][10] The temple that exists today was partially restored by the conservation efforts of British India-era archaeological teams. Declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 1984,[1][2] it remains a major pilgrimage site for Hindus, who gather here every year for the Chandrabhaga Mela around the month of February.[6]

Contents

 

1 Etymology

2 Location

3 Description

3.1 Reliefs and sculpture

3.2 Hindu deities

3.3 Style

3.4 Other temples and monuments

4 History

4.1 Ancient Texts

4.2 Konark in texts

4.3 Construction

4.4 Damage and ruins

4.5 Aruna Stambha

4.6 Preservation Efforts

5 Reception

6 See also

7 Gallery

7.1 Antique paintings and photographs

7.2 Current day photographs

8 See also

9 References

9.1 Bibliography

10 External links

 

Etymology

 

The name Konark derives from the combination of the Sanskrit/Odia language words Kona (corner or angle) and Arka (the sun).[9] The context of the term Kona is unclear, but probably refers to the southeast location of this temple either within a larger temple complex or in relation to other sun temples on the subcontinent.[11] The Arka refers to the Hindu sun god Surya.[9]

Location

 

The Konark Sun Temple is located in an eponymous village about 35 kilometres (22 mi) northeast of Puri and 60 kilometres (37 mi) southeast of Bhubaneswar on the Bay of Bengal coastline in the Indian state of Odisha. The nearest airport is Bhubaneswar airport (IATA: BBI). Both Puri and Bhubaneswar are major railway hubs connected by Indian Railways' Southeastern services.[12]

Description

Original temple and the surviving structure (yellow), left; the temple plan, right

 

The Konark Sun Temple was built from stone in the form of a giant ornamented chariot dedicated to the Sun god, Surya. In Hindu Vedic iconography Surya is represented as rising in the east and traveling rapidly across the sky in a chariot drawn by seven horses. He is described typically as a resplendent standing person holding a lotus flower in both his hands, riding the chariot marshaled by the charioteer Aruna.[13][14] The seven horses are named after the seven meters of Sanskrit prosody: Gayatri, Brihati, Ushnih, Jagati, Trishtubha, Anushtubha, and Pankti.[14] Typically seen flanking Surya are two females who represent the dawn goddesses, Usha and Pratyusha. The goddesses are shown to be shooting arrows, a symbol of their initiative in challenging darkness.[15] The architecture is also symbolic, with the chariot's twelve pairs of wheels corresponding to the 12 months of the Hindu calendar, each month paired into two cycles (Shukla and Krishna).[16]

 

The Konark temple presents this iconography on a grand scale. It has 24 elaborately carved stone wheels which are nearly 12 feet (3.7 m) in diameter and are pulled by a set of seven horses.[5][2][17] When viewed from inland during the dawn and sunrise, the chariot-shaped temple appears to emerge from the depths of the blue sea carrying the sun.[18]

1822 drawing of the mandapa's east door and terrace musicians

1815 sketch of stone horses and wheels of the mandapa

 

The temple plan includes all the traditional elements of a Hindu temple set on a square plan. According to Kapila Vatsyayan, the ground plan, as well the layout of sculptures and reliefs, follow the square and circle geometry, forms found in Odisha temple design texts such as the Silpasarini.[19] This mandala structure informs the plans of other Hindu temples in Odisha and elsewhere.[19]

 

The main temple at Konark, locally called the deul, no longer exists. It was surrounded by subsidiary shrines containing niches depicting Hindu deities, particularly Surya in many of his aspects. The deul was built on a high terrace.[5] The temple was originally a complex consisting of the main sanctuary, called the rekha deul, or bada deul (lit. big sanctum).[18] In front of it was the bhadra deul (lit. small sanctum), or jagamohana (lit. assembly hall of the people) (called a mandapa in other parts of India.[20]). The attached platform was called the pida deul, which consisted of a square mandapa with a pyramidal roof.[18] All of these structures were square at their core, and each was overlain with the pancharatha plan containing a variegated exterior.[18] The central projection, called the raha, is more pronounced than the side projections, called kanika-paga, a style that aims for an interplay of sunlight and shade and adds to the visual appeal of the structure throughout the day. The design manual for this style is found in the Silpa Sastra of ancient Odisha.[18][21]

A stone wheel engraved in the walls of the temple. The temple is designed as a chariot consisting of 24 such wheels. Each wheel has a diameter of 9 feet, 9 inches, with 8 spokes.

 

Twice as wide as they were high, the walls of the jagamohana are 100 feet (30 m) tall. The surviving structure has three tiers of six pidas each. These diminish incrementally and repeat the lower patterns. The pidas are divided into terraces. On each of these terraces stand statues of musician figures.[5] The main temple and the jagamohana porch consist of four main zones: the platform, the wall, the trunk, and the crowning head called a mastaka.[22] The first three are square while the mastaka is circular. The main temple and the jagamohana differed in size, decorative themes, and design. It was the main temple's trunk, called the gandhi in medieval Hindu architecture texts, that was ruined long ago. The sanctum of the main temple is now without a roof and most of the original parts.[22]

 

On the east side of the main temple is the Nata mandira (lit. dance temple). It stands on a high, intricately carved platform. The relief on the platform is similar in style to that found on the surviving walls of the temple.[5] According to historical texts, there was an Aruna stambha (lit. Aruna's pillar) between the main temple and the Nata mandira, but it is no longer there because it was moved to the Jagannatha at Puri sometime during the troubled history of this temple.[5] According to Harle, the texts suggest that originally the complex was enclosed within a wall 865 feet (264 m) by 540 feet (160 m), with gateways on three sides.[5]

 

The stone temple was made from three types of stone.[23] Chlorite was used for the door lintel and frames as well as some sculptures. Laterite was used for the core of the platform and staircases near the foundation. Khondalite was used for other parts of the temple. According to Mitra, the Khondalite stone weathers faster over time, and this may have contributed to erosion and accelerated the damage when parts of the temples were destroyed.[23] None of these stones occur naturally nearby, and the architects and artisans must have procured and moved the stones from distant sources, probably using the rivers and water channels near the site.[23] The masons then created ashlar, wherein the stones were polished and finished so as to make joints hardly visible.[23]

 

The original temple had a main sanctum sanctorum (vimana), which is estimated to have been 229 feet (70 m)[17] tall. The main vimana fell in 1837. The main mandapa audience hall (jagamohana), which is about 128 feet (39 m) tall, still stands and is the principal structure in the surviving ruins. Among the structures that have survived to the current day are the dance hall (Nata mandira) and the dining hall (Bhoga mandapa).[2][17]

 

Reliefs and sculpture

  

The walls of the temple from the temple's base through the crowing elements are ornamented with reliefs, many finished to jewelry-quality miniature details. The terraces contain stone statues of male and female musicians holding various musical instruments.[24] Other major works of art include sculptures of Hindu deities, apsaras and images from the daily life and culture of the people (artha and dharma scenes), various animals, aquatic creatures, birds, mythological creatures, and friezes narrating the Hindu texts. The carvings include purely decorative geometric patterns and plant motifs.[24] Some panels show images from the life of the king such as one showing him receiving counsel from a guru, where the artists symbolically portrayed the king as much smaller than the guru, with the king's sword resting on the ground next to him.[25]

 

The upana (moulding) layer at the bottom of the platform contains friezes of elephants, marching soldiers, musicians, and images depicting the secular life of the people, including hunting scenes, a caravan of domesticated animals, people carrying supplies on their head or with the help of a bullock cart, travelers preparing a meal along the roadside, and festive processions.[26] On other walls are found images depicting the daily life of the elite as well as the common people. For example, girls are shown wringing their wet hair, standing by a tree, looking from a window, playing with pets, putting on makeup while looking into a mirror, playing musical instruments such as the vina, chasing away a monkey who is trying to snatch items, a family taking leave of their elderly grandmother who seems dressed for a pilgrimage, a mother blessing her son, a teacher with students, a yogi during a standing asana, a warrior being greeted with a namaste, a mother with her child, an old woman with a walking stick and a bowl in her hands, comical characters, among others.[27]

 

The Konark temple is also known for its erotic sculptures of maithunas.[28] These show couples in various stages of courtship and intimacy, and in some cases coital themes. Notorious in the colonial era for their uninhibited celebration of sexuality, these images are included with other aspects of human life as well as deities that are typically associated with tantra. This led some to propose that the erotic sculptures are linked to the vama marga (left hand tantra) tradition.[5] However, this is not supported by local literary sources, and these images may be the same kama and mithuna scenes found integrated into the art of many Hindu temples.[5] The erotic sculptures are found on the temple's Shikhara, and these illustrate all the bandhas (mudra forms) described in the Kamasutra.[20]

 

Other large sculptures were a part of the gateways of the temple complex. These include life-size lions subduing elephants, elephants subduing demons, and horses. A major pillar dedicated to Aruna, called the Aruna Stambha, used to stand in front of the eastern stairs of the porch. This, too, was intricately carved with horizontal friezes and motifs. It now stands in front of the Jagannatha temple at Puri.[29]

Hindu deities

 

The upper levels and terrace of the Konark Sun temple contain larger and more significant works of art than the lower level. These include images of musicians and mythological narratives as well as sculptures of Hindu deities, including Durga in her Mahishasuramardini aspect killing the shape-shifting buffalo demon (Shaktism), Vishnu in his Jagannatha form (Vaishnavism), and Shiva as a (largely damaged) linga (Shaivism). Some of the better-preserved friezes and sculptures were removed and relocated to museums in Europe and major cities of India before 1940.[30]

 

The Hindu deities are also depicted in other parts of the temple. For example, the medallions of the chariot wheels of the Surya temple, as well as the anuratha artwork of the jagamohana, show Vishnu, Shiva, Gajalakshmi, Parvati, Krishna, Narasimha, and other gods and goddesses.[31] Also found on the jagamohana are sculptures of Vedic deities such as Indra, Agni, Kubera, Varuna, and Âdityas.[32]

Style

 

The temple follows the traditional style of Kalinga architecture. It is oriented towards the east so that the first rays of the sunrise strike the main entrance.[2] The temple, built from Khondalite rocks,[33][34] was originally constructed at the mouth of the river Chandrabhaga, but the waterline has receded since then.[citation needed] The wheels of the temple are sundials, which can be used to calculate time accurately to a minute.[35]

Other temples and monuments

 

The Konark Sun Temple complex has ruins of many subsidiary shrines and monuments around the main temple. Some of these include:

 

Mayadevi Temple – Located west-southwest from the entrance of the main temple,[36] it has been dated to the late 11th century, earlier than the main temple.[37] It consists of a sanctuary, a mandapa and, before it, an open platform. It was discovered during excavations carried out between 1900 and 1910. Early theories assumed that it was dedicated to Surya's wife and thus named the Mayadevi Temple. However, later studies suggested that it was also a Surya temple, albeit an older one that was fused into the complex when the monumental temple was built.[36] This temple also has numerous carvings and a square mandapa is overlain by a sapta-ratha. The sanctum of this Surya temple features a Nataraja. Other deities in the interior include a damaged Surya holding a lotus, along with Agni, Varuna, Vishnu, and Vayu.[38]

Vaishnava Temple – Located southwest of the so-called Mayadevi Temple, it was discovered during excavations in 1956. This discovery was significant because it confirmed that the Konark Sun Temple complex revered all the major Hindu traditions, and was not an exclusive worship place for the saura cult as previously believed. This is a small temple with sculptures of Balarama, Varaha, and Vamana–Trivikrama in its sanctum, marking it as a Vaishnavite temple. These images are shown as wearing dhoti and a lot of jewelry. The sanctum's primary idol is missing, as are images from some niches in the temple.[39] The site's significance as a place of Vaishnavism pilgrimage is attested to in Vaishnava texts. For example, Krishna Chaitanya, the early 16th-century scholar and founder of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, visited the Konark temple and prayed on its premises.[40]

Kitchen – This monument is found south of the bhoga mandapa (feeding hall). It, too, was discovered in excavations in the 1950s. It includes means to bring water, cisterns to store water, drains, a cooking floor, depressions in the floor probably for pounding spices or grains, as well several triple ovens (chulahs) for cooking. This structure may have been for festive occasions or a part of a community feeding hall.[41] According to Thomas Donaldson, the kitchen complex may have been added a little later than the original temple.[42]

Well 1 – This monument is located north of the kitchen, towards its eastern flank, was probably built to supply water to the community kitchen and bhoga mandapa. Near the well are a pillared mandapa and five structures, some with semi-circular steps whose role is unclear.[43]

Well 2 – This monument and associated structures are in the front of the northern staircase of the main temple, with foot rests, a washing platform, and a wash water drain system. It was probably designed for the use of pilgrims arriving at the temple.[44]

 

A collection of fallen sculptures can be viewed at the Konark Archaeological Museum, which is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India.[45] The fallen upper portion of the temple is believed to have been studded with many inscriptions.[46]

 

History

 

Ancient Texts

 

The oldest surviving Vedic hymns, such as hymn 1.115 of the Rigveda, mention Surya with particular reverence for the "rising sun" and its symbolism as dispeller of darkness, one who empowers knowledge, the good, and all life.[14] However, the usage is context specific. In some hymns, the word Surya simply means sun as an inanimate object, a stone, or a gem in the sky (Rigvedic hymns 5.47, 6.51 and 7.63) while in others it refers to a personified deity.[14][47][48] In the layers of Vedic texts, Surya is one of the several trinities along with Agni and either Vayu or Indra, which are presented as an equivalent icon and aspect of the Hindu metaphysical concept called the Brahman.[49]

 

In the Brahmanas layer of Vedic literature, Surya appears with Agni (fire god) in the same hymns.[50] Surya is revered for the day, and Agni for its role during the night.[50] According to Kapila Vatsyayan, the concept of a Surya–Agni relationship evolves, and in later literature Surya is described as Agni representing the first principle and the seed of the universe.[51] It is in the Brahmanas layer of the Vedas,[52][53] and the Upanishads that Surya is explicitly linked to the power of sight, and to visual perception and knowledge. He is then internalized and said to be the eye, as ancient Hindu sages suggested abandonment of external rituals to gods in favor of internal reflection and meditation of the gods within, in one's journey to realize the Atman (soul, self) within, in texts such as the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Chandogya Upanishad, Kaushitaki Upanishad, and others.[54][55][56]

 

The Mahabharata epic opens its chapter on Surya by reverentially calling him the "eye of the universe, soul of all existence, origin of all life, goal of the Samkhyas and Yogis, and symbolism for freedom and spiritual emancipation".[14] In the Mahabharata, Karna is the son of Surya and an unmarried princess named Kunti.[14] The epic describes Kunti's difficult life as an unmarried mother, then her abandonment of Karna, followed by her lifelong grief. Baby Karna is found and then adopted, and grows up to become one of the central characters in the great battle of Kurukshetra where he fights his half-brothers.[57]

 

Konark in texts

 

Konark, also referred to in Indian texts by the name Kainapara, was a significant trading port by the early centuries of the common era.[58] The current Konark temple dates to the 13th century, though evidence suggests that a sun temple was built in the Konark area by at least the 9th century.[59] Several Puranas mention Surya worship centers in Mundira, which may have been the earlier name for Konark, Kalapriya (Mathura), and Multan (now in Pakistan).[60] The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim and traveler Hiuen-tsang (also referred to as Xuanzang) mentions a port city in Odisha named Charitra. He describes the city as prosperous, with five convents and "storeyed towers that are very high and carved with saintly figures exquisitely done". Since he visited India in the 7th century, he could not have been referring to the 13th-century temple, but his description suggests either Konark or another Odisha port city already featuring towering structures with sculptures.[40]

 

According to the Madala Panji, there was at one time another temple in the region built by Pundara Kesari. He may have been Puranjaya, the 7th-century ruler of the Somavasmi Dynasty.[61]

 

Construction

 

The current temple is attributed to Narasimhadeva I of the Eastern Ganga Dynasty, r. 1238–1264 CE– . It is one of the few Hindu temples whose planning and construction records written in Sanskrit in the Odiya script have been preserved in the form of palm leaf manuscripts that were discovered in a village in the 1960s and subsequently translated.[62] The temple was sponsored by the king, and its construction was overseen by Siva Samantaraya Mahapatra. It was built near an old Surya temple. The sculpture in the older temple's sanctum was re-consecrated and incorporated into the newer larger temple. This chronology of temple site's evolution is supported by many copper plate inscriptions of the era in which the Konark temple is referred to as the "great cottage".[40]

 

According to James Harle, the temple as built in the 13th century consisted of two main structures, the dance mandapa and the great temple (deul). The smaller mandapa is the structure that survives; the great deul collapsed sometime in the late 16th century or after. According to Harle, the original temple "must originally have stood to a height of some 225 feet (69 m)", but only parts of its walls and decorative mouldings remain.[5]

Damage and ruins

  

The temple was in ruins before its restoration. Speculation continues as to the cause of the destruction of the temple. Early theories stated that the temple was never completed and collapsed during construction. This is contradicted by textual evidence and evidence from inscriptions. The Kenduli copper plate inscription of 1384 CE from the reign of Narasimha IV seems to indicate that the temple was not only completed but an active site of worship. Another inscription states that various deities in the temple were consecrated, also suggesting that construction of the temple had been completed.[63] A non-Hindu textual source, the Akbar-era text Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl dated to the 16th century, mentions the Konark temple,[40] describing it as a prosperous site with a temple that made visitors "astonished at its sight", with no mention of ruins.[63][64][65]

 

Texts from the 19th century do mention ruins, which means the temple was damaged either intentionally or through natural causes sometime between 1556 and 1800 CE. The intentional-damage theory is supported by Mughal era records that mention the Muslim invader Kalapahar attacking and destroying Jagannath Puri and the Konark temple.[63][66][67] Other texts state that the temple was sacked several times by Muslim armies between the 15th and 17th centuries.[1][40] Islamic texts describing the raids of Kalapahar mention his army's first attempt to destroy the temple in 1565, but they failed. They inflicted only minor damage and carried away the copper kalasa.[40]

A medieval era description of Konark

When nine flights of steps are passed, a spacious court appears with a large arch of stone upon which are carved the sun and other planets. Around them are a variety of worshippers of every class, each after its manner with bowed heads, standing, sitting, prostrate, laughing, weeping, lost in amaze or in rapt attention, and following these are divers musicians and strange animals which never existed but in imagination.

 

The controversial Hindu text Madala Panji and regional tradition state that Kalapahad attacked again and damaged the temple in 1568.[68] The natural-damage theory is supported by the nearness of the temple to the shore and the monsoons in the region that would tend to cause damage. However, the existence of nearby stone temples in the Odisha region that were built earlier and have stood without damage casts doubt to this theory. According to P. Parya, the number of rings of moss and lichen growth found on the stone ruins suggests the damage occurred sometime around the 1570s, but this approach does not indicate why or by whom.[63]

 

According to Thomas Donaldson, evidence suggests that the damage and the temple's ruined condition can be dated to between the late 16th century and the early 17th century from the records of various surveys and repairs found in early 17th-century texts. These also record that the temple remained a site of worship in the early 17th century. These records do not state whether the ruins were being used by devotees to gather and worship, or part of the damaged temple was still in use for some other purpose. This evidence of the use of the temple, however, contradicts any theories that the late 16th-century Muslim invasion had completely destroyed the site.[69]

Aruna Stambha

 

In the last quarter of the 18th century, the Aruna stambha (Aruna pillar) was removed from the entrance of Konark temple and placed at the Singha-dwara (Lion's Gate) of the Jagannath temple in Puri by a Maratha Brahmachari named Goswain (or Goswami).[70][71] The pillar, made of monolithic chlorite, is 33 feet 8 inches (10.26 m) tall and is dedicated to Aruna, the charioteer of the Sun god.[71]

Preservation Efforts

  

In 1803 the East India Marine Board requested the Governor General of Bengal that conservation efforts be undertaken. However, the only conservation measure put in place at the time was to prohibit further removal of stones from the site. Lacking structural support, the last part of the main tower still standing, a small broken curved section, collapsed in 1848.[72]

 

The then-Raja of Khurda, who had jurisdiction over this region in the early 19th century, removed some stones and sculptures to use in a temple he was building in Puri. A few gateways and some sculptures were destroyed in the process.[73] In 1838 the Asiatic Society of Bengal requested that conservation efforts be undertaken, but the requests were denied, and only measures to prevent vandalism were put in place.[72]

 

In 1859 the Asiatic Society of Bengal proposed, and in 1867 attempted to relocate an architrave of the Konark temple depicting the navagraha to the Indian Museum in Calcutta. This attempt was abandoned as funds had run out.[72] In 1894 thirteen sculptures were moved to the Indian Museum. Local Hindu population objected to further damage and removal of temple ruins. The government issued orders to respect the local sentiments.[72] In 1903, when a major excavation was attempted nearby, the then-Lieutenant governor of Bengal, J. A. Baurdilon, ordered the temple to be sealed and filled with sand to prevent the collapse of the Jagamohana. The Mukhasala and Nata Mandir were repaired by 1905.[63][74]

 

In 1906 casuarina and punnang trees were planted facing the sea to provide a buffer against sand-laden winds.[72] In 1909 the Mayadevi temple was discovered while removing sand and debris.[72] The temple was granted World Heritage Site status by the UNESCO in 1984.[2]

 

Reception

 

The Konark Sun Temple has attracted conflicting reviews. According to Coomaraswamy, the Konark Sun Temple marks the high point of the Odisha style of Nagara architecture.[75]

 

The colonial-era reception of the temple ranged from derision to praise. Andrew Sterling, the early colonial-era administrator and Commissioner of Cuttack questioned the skill of the 13th-century architects, but also wrote that the temple had "an air of elegance, combined with massiveness in the whole structure, which entitles it to no small share of admiration", adding that the sculpture had "a degree of taste, propriety and freedom which would stand a comparison with some of our best specimens of Gothic architectural ornament".[76] The Victorian mindset saw pornography in the artwork of Konark and wondered why there was no "shame and guilt in this pleasure in filth", while Alan Watts stated that there was no comprehensible reason to separate spirituality from love, sex, and religious arts.[77] According to Ernest Binfield Havell, the Konark temple is "one of the grandest examples of Indian sculpture extant", adding that they express "as much fire and passion as the greatest European art" such as that found in Venice.[78]

 

Indian writers, too, have expressed a spectrum of opinions. For example, the leftist author Bhattacharya criticized the "brahmanical temple erotica", offering it as evidence of "female exploitation by the dominant classes of Hindu male society", and a "reflection of abnormal sex desires".[79] In contrast, the Nobel Laureate Tagore wrote,

 

Here the language of stone surpasses the language of human.

— Rabindranath Tagore[80][81]

 

In alchemy, earth was believed to be primarily cold, and secondarily dry, (as per ... is Ghob, and the earth elementals (following Paracelsus) are called gnomes. ... left point of the pentagram in the Supreme Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram.Modernist Alchemy: Poetry and the Occult

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Timothy Materer - 1995 - ‎Literary Criticism

In his description of the magical powers of the pentagram, he cites the most famous of the medieval alchemists, Paracelsus (63). In a passage particularly ...

 

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The key to Alchemy – The Trinities ... The trinity in Alchemy, based on Jacop Boehme and Paracelsus, are Sulphur, ..... The Pentagram and the Ether Streams.

Although the origin of this symbol is lost in time, some occult authorities try to trace the source of its esoteric significance back to an astronomical phenomena, the so called “Pentagram of Venus" . The synodic period of Venus is approximately 584 days. Plotting the greatest elongation west or east of this movement five successive times over a period of approximately 8 years and 5 days traces the figure of a Pentagram on the Zodiacal belt. Incidentally, the numbers 5 and 8 continue to play a role in the Rosicrucian symbolism of the pentagram, as will be seen further on.

The pentagram has been found on potsherds from the pre-cuneiform Uruk period of ancient Babylon (3500BCE). In later periods of Mesopotamian civilization it appears in cuneiform writing to represent the four cardinal directions with the fifth point representing “above;” as such, it represented the dominion of royal authority extending to “the four corners of the world and the heavens above.”

The symbol also appears in Egyptian hieroglyphics, associated with the Goddess Sopdet, who was represented in the night sky by the brightest star, Sirius, the so called Dog Star in the constellation of Canis Major[ii]. Interestingly, the name Sirius is from the Greek word seirios, which means “burning,” and brings to mind the Blazing Star of Alchemy.

The Pythagoreans called the Pentagram Hugieia, with the combined meanings of “health,” “wholeness” and “blessings.” The letters of this word were placed around the points of the pentagram. According to Iamblichus, the five-pointed star was the Pythagorean sign of recognition and held sacred as a symbol of divine perfection. The Greek Goddess of Health was Hygeia, or the Roman Salus. Both of these names appear on talismans from Greek and Roman periods, with the image of the pentagram central.

Pythagoras was a known traveler, and the fact that he appears in Indian tantrik texts by name as Yavanacharya (“the Greek teacher”) may explain why the Pentagram also appears in early Hindu tantrik writings and art.

To the ancient Hebrews, the Pentagram was the symbol of Truth and the five books of the Pentateuch. Ameth, the Hebrew word for Truth, is associated with humanity by the kabbalistic technique of temurah using the Aiq Beqr system, which utilizes letter substitution according to specific rules[iii]. Later it will be seen that the very geometry of the Pentagram also encodes the idea of mankind and Truth.

The Pentagram found its way onto many Gnostic amulets. According to Budge. Gnostic amulets contained the pentacle which contained the ineffable name YHWH within it. More often the names Moses or Solomon were represented, Moses because he was connected with the setting up of the brazen serpent, and Solomon because his seal worked miracles.”[iv]. The early Christians associated the Pentagram with the five wounds of Christ. Later kabalistic Christians would associate the name of Christ in Hebrew characters, IHShVH or Yeheshua, to the five points of the pentagram. This method also shows the divine Tetragrammaton associated to the four points of the star, with the fifth top point being ascribed to the Hebrew letter shin, which symbolized spirit and fire, or the Holy Ghost. Thus the pentagram represented the descent of the divine fire into the world.,The Pentagram has been associated with the Star of Bethlehem or Three Kings’ Star, which led the Magi to the newborn Christ. Of these ideas Pike writes: The Star which guided [the Magi] is that same Blazing Star, the image whereof we find in all initiations. To the Alchemists it is the sign of the Quintessence; to the Magists, the Grand Arcanum; to the Kabalists, the Sacred Pentagram. The study of this Pentagram could not but lead the Magi to the knowledge of the New Name which was about to raise itself above all names, and cause all creatures capable of adoration to bend the knee.[v] In the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Pentagram was emblazoned in gold on Gawain’s shield, representing the five virtues of generosity, courtesy, chastity, chivalry and piety. The symbol of the pentagram appears on many Knights Templar graves in France, as well as being intrinsic to the architecture and positioning of many chapels. One dramatic example is the mysterious shrine of Rennes du Chartres, said to be a center of Templar activity, which is situated in the center of a ring of mountains that form a nearly perfect pentagram. The symbolism of the Western Mystery tradition has assigned the four elements of earth, air, water and fire to the four points of the pentagram, with the top point being attributed to the quintessence, or spirit. From this pattern is then attributed Kabalistic hierarchies of Archangles (Auriel for Earth, Raphael to Air, Gabriel for Water, and Michael with Fire), the Four Worlds (Assiah, Yetzirah, Briah and Atziluth), parts of the soul, and many more correspondences which are too lengthy to address in this paper.

   

Central on our Rosicrucian Altars in the S.R.I.C.F. is the figure of the Pentagram (also called the pentacle, pentalpha, pentangle, pentancle), a five pointed star, formed by 5 straight lines between the vertices of a pentagon and enclosing another pentagon. The name pentagram is Greek, from penta (“five”) and gramma (“letter”). One of the most intriguing symbols of esotericism, it is has been held to have magical properties since time immemorial, and is a symbol that has been both revered by initiates as a talisman of power, and shunned by the masses in abject fear for hundreds of years.

 

Today the image of the five pointed star has become almost obsequious to the media, and the symbol has been used to promote Rock music and movies, feed Satanic furor with tales of “ritual slayings,” and other hype. Additionally, the many neo-pagan movements have adopted the pentagram as their ensign of “natural religion.” More recently, novels such as The Davinci Code have weaved a colorful blend of fact and fiction, and once again brought the image of the Pentagram into popular view. At the same time, there is a long, somewhat quiet esoteric history of usage associated with this symbol which initiates in all times have utilized.

 

Despite the seeming commonplace appearance of this symbol, it is little understood. This paper will endeavor to highlight some of the symbolic meanings of the pentagram, looking at historical usage across cultures and languages; Masonic usage in both the Craft and Higher Degrees, with emphasis on our Rosicrucian usage; the geometric properties inherent in the symbol, and western occult traditions of initiation and ceremonial magick. It is hoped that this paper will help to cut through the popular misinformation about this symbol, and shed some Light on the real properties and use of this powerful, sacred figure.

  

HISTORICAL USAGE

 

Although the origin of this symbol is lost in time, some occult authorities try to trace the source of its esoteric significance back to an astronomical phenomena, the so called “Pentagram of Venus” shown in the figure below[i]:

 

pentagram_venus

 

The synodic period of Venus is approximately 584 days. Plotting the greatest elongation west or east of this movement five successive times over a period of approximately 8 years and 5 days traces the figure of a Pentagram on the Zodiacal belt. Incidentally, the numbers 5 and 8 continue to play a role in the Rosicrucian symbolism of the pentagram, as will be seen further on.

 

The pentagram has been found on potsherds from the pre-cuneiform Uruk period of ancient Babylon (3500BCE). In later periods of Mesopotamian civilization it appears in cuneiform writing to represent the four cardinal directions with the fifth point representing “above;” as such, it represented the dominion of royal authority extending to “the four corners of the world and the heavens above.”

 

The symbol also appears in Egyptian hieroglyphics, associated with the Goddess Sopdet, who was represented in the night sky by the brightest star, Sirius, the so called Dog Star in the constellation of Canis Major[ii]. Interestingly, the name Sirius is from the Greek word seirios, which means “burning,” and brings to mind the Blazing Star of Masonry.

 

The Pythagoreans called the Pentagram Hugieia, with the combined meanings of “health,” “wholeness” and “blessings.” The letters of this word were placed around the points of the pentagram. According to Iamblichus, the five-pointed star was the Pythagorean sign of recognition and held sacred as a symbol of divine perfection. The Greek Goddess of Health was Hygeia, or the Roman Salus. Both of these names appear on talismans from Greek and Roman periods, with the image of the pentagram central.

 

Pythagoras was a known traveler, and the fact that he appears in Indian tantrik texts by name as Yavanacharya (“the Greek teacher”) may explain why the Pentagram also appears in early Hindu tantrik writings and art.

 

To the ancient Hebrews, the Pentagram was the symbol of Truth and the five books of the Pentateuch. Ameth, the Hebrew word for Truth, is associated with humanity by the kabbalistic technique of temurah using the Aiq Beqr system, which utilizes letter substitution according to specific rules[iii]. Later it will be seen that the very geometry of the Pentagram also encodes the idea of mankind and Truth.

 

The Pentagram found its way onto many Gnostic amulets. According to Budge

 

Gnostic amulets contained the pentacle which contained the ineffable name YHWH within it. More often the names Moses or Solomon were represented, Moses because he was connected with the setting up of the brazen serpent, and Solomon because his seal worked miracles.”[iv]

 

The early Christians associated the Pentagram with the five wounds of Christ. Later kabalistic Christians would associate the name of Christ in Hebrew characters, IHShVH or Yeheshua, to the five points of the pentagram. This method also shows the divine Tetragrammaton associated to the four points of the star, with the fifth top point being ascribed to the Hebrew letter shin, which symbolized spirit and fire, or the Holy Ghost. Thus the pentagram represented the descent of the divine fire into the world.

 

The Pentagram has been associated with the Star of Bethlehem or Three Kings’ Star, which led the Magi to the newborn Christ. Of these ideas Pike writes:

 

The Star which guided [the Magi] is that same Blazing Star, the image whereof we find in all initiations. To the Alchemists it is the sign of the Quintessence; to the Magists, the Grand Arcanum; to the Kabalists, the Sacred Pentagram. The study of this Pentagram could not but lead the Magi to the knowledge of the New Name which was about to raise itself above all names, and cause all creatures capable of adoration to bend the knee.[v]

 

In the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Pentagram was emblazoned in gold on Gawain’s shield, representing the five virtues of generosity, courtesy, chastity, chivalry and piety.

 

The symbol of the pentagram appears on many Knights Templar graves in France, as well as being intrinsic to the architecture and positioning of many chapels. One dramatic example is the mysterious shrine of Rennes du Chartres, said to be a center of Templar activity, which is situated in the center of a ring of mountains that form a nearly perfect pentagram.

 

The symbolism of the Western Mystery tradition has assigned the four elements of earth, air, water and fire to the four points of the pentagram, with the top point being attributed to the quintessence, or spirit. From this pattern is then attributed Kabalistic hierarchies of Archangles (Auriel for Earth, Raphael to Air, Gabriel for Water, and Michael with Fire), the Four Worlds (Assiah, Yetzirah, Briah and Atziluth), parts of the soul, and many more correspondences which are too lengthy to address in this paper.

  

MASONIC USAGE

 

The Zelator ritual of S.R.I.C.F. briefly introduces the symbolism of the Pentagram on the Altar to the new postulant:

 

The Five-pointed Star reminds us of the five points of felicity, which are to walk with, to intercede for, to love, to assist, and to pray for our Brethren, so as to be united with them in heart and mind.

 

As an emblem of the five points of felicity, the Pentagram reminds us of our duties towards our brethren of the Rose and Cross throughout the world.

 

Further in the ritual the subject of number symbolism is addressed, and the number five is explained as

 

the emblem of Health and Safety; it is also denominated the Occult number; the Pentagram was a famous talisman; it represents Spirit and the four elements.

 

The reference to health and safety is interesting as it is reminiscent of the Greek hygeia discussed earlier.

 

The Pentagram may be seen as symbolic of the entire course of initiation in the S.R.I.C.F. First Order, as the elemental degrees are easily associated with the elemental points of the Pentagram; while initiation into the Second Order represents the quintessence or fifth, top-most point of the Star. In this way, the candidate of the S.R.I.C.F. symbolically builds up the power of the pentagram internally as they progress through and assimilate the lessons of the degrees. Entrance to the Second Order would then represent Adepthood, as the initiate has established the flaming star within their very heart of hearts and embodies the very essence of the Pentagram, and is a living embodiment of the Stone of the Philosophers.

 

Within the Craft degrees, the figure of the Pentagram may also be seen in the image of the 5 rayed Blazing Star. According to Albert Pike, the pentagram is synonymous with the Blazing Star of Masonic Lodges:

 

The Blazing Star in our Lodges, we have already said, represents Sirius, Anubis, or Mercury, Guardian and Guide of Souls. Our Ancient English brethren also considered it an emblem of the Sun. In the old Lectures they said: ‘The Blazing Star or Glory in the centre refers us to that Grand Luminary the Sun, which enlightens the Earth, and by its genial influence dispenses blessings to mankind. It is also said in those lectures to be an emblem of Prudence. The word Prudentia means, in its original and fullest signification, Foresight: and accordingly the Blazing Star has been regarded as an emblem of Omniscience, or the All-

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THE SACRED PENTAGRAM

by Bro.Gregory H. Peters

Burlingame Lodge No. 400 F&AM

Grand Lodge of California

32° Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite in the Valley of Burlingame

Companion of King Solomon Chapter No. 95

Frater of the Golden State College of Societas Rosicruciana in Civitatibus Foederatis.

 

Note: paper presented first at the November 2004 Convocation of Golden State College Societas Rosicruciana in Civitatibus Foederatis.

Editor's Note: the paper has been edited for publication on this website

 

The Sacred Pentagram

INTRODUCTION

 

Central on our Rosicrucian Altars in the S.R.I.C.F. is the figure of the Pentagram (also called the pentacle, pentalpha, pentangle, pentancle), a five pointed star, formed by 5 straight lines between the vertices of a pentagon and enclosing another pentagon. The name pentagram is Greek, from penta (“five”) and gramma (“letter”). One of the most intriguing symbols of esotericism, it is has been held to have magical properties since time immemorial, and is a symbol that has been both revered by initiates as a talisman of power, and shunned by the masses in abject fear for hundreds of years.

 

Today the image of the five pointed star has become almost obsequious to the media, and the symbol has been used to promote Rock music and movies, feed Satanic furor with tales of “ritual slayings,” and other hype. Additionally, the many neo-pagan movements have adopted the pentagram as their ensign of “natural religion.” More recently, novels such as The Davinci Code have weaved a colorful blend of fact and fiction, and once again brought the image of the Pentagram into popular view. At the same time, there is a long, somewhat quiet esoteric history of usage associated with this symbol which initiates in all times have utilized.

 

Despite the seeming commonplace appearance of this symbol, it is little understood. This paper will endeavor to highlight some of the symbolic meanings of the pentagram, looking at historical usage across cultures and languages; Masonic usage in both the Craft and Higher Degrees, with emphasis on our Rosicrucian usage; the geometric properties inherent in the symbol, and western occult traditions of initiation and ceremonial magick. It is hoped that this paper will help to cut through the popular misinformation about this symbol, and shed some Light on the real properties and use of this powerful, sacred figure.

  

HISTORICAL USAGE

 

Although the origin of this symbol is lost in time, some occult authorities try to trace the source of its esoteric significance back to an astronomical phenomena, the so called “Pentagram of Venus” shown in the figure below[i]:

 

pentagram_venus

 

The synodic period of Venus is approximately 584 days. Plotting the greatest elongation west or east of this movement five successive times over a period of approximately 8 years and 5 days traces the figure of a Pentagram on the Zodiacal belt. Incidentally, the numbers 5 and 8 continue to play a role in the Rosicrucian symbolism of the pentagram, as will be seen further on.

 

The pentagram has been found on potsherds from the pre-cuneiform Uruk period of ancient Babylon (3500BCE). In later periods of Mesopotamian civilization it appears in cuneiform writing to represent the four cardinal directions with the fifth point representing “above;” as such, it represented the dominion of royal authority extending to “the four corners of the world and the heavens above.”

 

The symbol also appears in Egyptian hieroglyphics, associated with the Goddess Sopdet, who was represented in the night sky by the brightest star, Sirius, the so called Dog Star in the constellation of Canis Major[ii]. Interestingly, the name Sirius is from the Greek word seirios, which means “burning,” and brings to mind the Blazing Star of Masonry.

 

The Pythagoreans called the Pentagram Hugieia, with the combined meanings of “health,” “wholeness” and “blessings.” The letters of this word were placed around the points of the pentagram. According to Iamblichus, the five-pointed star was the Pythagorean sign of recognition and held sacred as a symbol of divine perfection. The Greek Goddess of Health was Hygeia, or the Roman Salus. Both of these names appear on talismans from Greek and Roman periods, with the image of the pentagram central.

 

Pythagoras was a known traveler, and the fact that he appears in Indian tantrik texts by name as Yavanacharya (“the Greek teacher”) may explain why the Pentagram also appears in early Hindu tantrik writings and art.

 

To the ancient Hebrews, the Pentagram was the symbol of Truth and the five books of the Pentateuch. Ameth, the Hebrew word for Truth, is associated with humanity by the kabbalistic technique of temurah using the Aiq Beqr system, which utilizes letter substitution according to specific rules[iii]. Later it will be seen that the very geometry of the Pentagram also encodes the idea of mankind and Truth.

 

The Pentagram found its way onto many Gnostic amulets. According to Budge

 

Gnostic amulets contained the pentacle which contained the ineffable name YHWH within it. More often the names Moses or Solomon were represented, Moses because he was connected with the setting up of the brazen serpent, and Solomon because his seal worked miracles.”[iv]

 

The early Christians associated the Pentagram with the five wounds of Christ. Later kabalistic Christians would associate the name of Christ in Hebrew characters, IHShVH or Yeheshua, to the five points of the pentagram. This method also shows the divine Tetragrammaton associated to the four points of the star, with the fifth top point being ascribed to the Hebrew letter shin, which symbolized spirit and fire, or the Holy Ghost. Thus the pentagram represented the descent of the divine fire into the world.

 

The Pentagram has been associated with the Star of Bethlehem or Three Kings’ Star, which led the Magi to the newborn Christ. Of these ideas Pike writes:

 

The Star which guided [the Magi] is that same Blazing Star, the image whereof we find in all initiations. To the Alchemists it is the sign of the Quintessence; to the Magists, the Grand Arcanum; to the Kabalists, the Sacred Pentagram. The study of this Pentagram could not but lead the Magi to the knowledge of the New Name which was about to raise itself above all names, and cause all creatures capable of adoration to bend the knee.[v]

 

In the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Pentagram was emblazoned in gold on Gawain’s shield, representing the five virtues of generosity, courtesy, chastity, chivalry and piety.

 

The symbol of the pentagram appears on many Knights Templar graves in France, as well as being intrinsic to the architecture and positioning of many chapels. One dramatic example is the mysterious shrine of Rennes du Chartres, said to be a center of Templar activity, which is situated in the center of a ring of mountains that form a nearly perfect pentagram.

 

The symbolism of the Western Mystery tradition has assigned the four elements of earth, air, water and fire to the four points of the pentagram, with the top point being attributed to the quintessence, or spirit. From this pattern is then attributed Kabalistic hierarchies of Archangles (Auriel for Earth, Raphael to Air, Gabriel for Water, and Michael with Fire), the Four Worlds (Assiah, Yetzirah, Briah and Atziluth), parts of the soul, and many more correspondences which are too lengthy to address in this paper.

ALCHEMIC USAGE: The Zelator ritual of S.R.I.C.F. briefly introduces the symbolism of the Pentagram on the Altar to the new postulant: The Five-pointed Star reminds us of the five points of felicity, which are to walk with, to intercede for, to love, to assist, and to pray for our Brethren, so as to be united with them in heart and mind. As an emblem of the five points of felicity, the Pentagram reminds us of our duties towards our brethren of the Rose and Cross throughout the world. Further in the ritual the subject of number symbolism is addressed, and the number five is explained as the emblem of Health and Safety; it is also denominated the Occult number; the Pentagram was a famous talisman; it represents Spirit and the four elements.

The reference to health and safety is interesting as it is reminiscent of the Greek hygeia discussed earlier.

The Pentagram may be seen as symbolic of the entire course of initiation in the S.R.I.C.F. First Order, as the elemental degrees are easily associated with the elemental points of the Pentagram; while initiation into the Second Order represents the quintessence or fifth, top-most point of the Star. In this way, the candidate of the S.R.I.C.F. symbolically builds up the power of the pentagram internally as they progress through and assimilate the lessons of the degrees. Entrance to the Second Order would then represent Adepthood, as the initiate has established the flaming star within their very heart of hearts and embodies the very essence of the Pentagram, and is a living embodiment of the Stone of the Philosophers.

Within the Craft degrees, the figure of the Pentagram may also be seen in the image of the 5 rayed Blazing Star. According to Albert Pike, the pentagram is synonymous with the Blazing Star of Masonic Lodges:

The Blazing Star in our Lodges, we have already said, represents Sirius, Anubis, or Mercury, Guardian and Guide of Souls. Our Ancient English brethren also considered it an emblem of the Sun. In the old Lectures they said: ‘The Blazing Star or Glory in the centre refers us to that Grand Luminary the Sun, which enlightens the Earth, and by its genial influence dispenses blessings to mankind. It is also said in those lectures to be an emblem of Prudence. The word Prudentia means, in its original and fullest signification, Foresight: and accordingly the Blazing Star has been regarded as an emblem of Omniscience, or the All-Seeing Eye, which to the Ancients was the Sun.[vi]

He further associates this star with the “Divine Energy, manifested as Light, creating the Universe.”[vii]

The Alchemic scholar Rex Hutchins asserts that the Pentagram is the symbol of the Divine in man… The five-pointed star with a single point upward represents the Divine. It also symbolizes man for its five points allude to the five senses, the five members (head, arms and legs) and his five fingers on each hand, which signify the tokens that distinguish alchemists. Furthermore he writes that this figure is the symbol of the Microcosm, the universe where humans dwell. Since the pentagon which encloses the pentagram may be formed by connecting the five points of the human body, for many centuries the symbol was also used to represent humanity in general. Within this symbol then is a representation of humanity, and our Divine role in the Universe as co-creators of eternity. In addition to being a central altar piece in our Rosicrucian Temples, and the Blazing Star of the Craft Lodges, the Pentagram appears as an ensign in some of the High Degrees and rites. For example, it is central on the apron of the 28th Degree of the Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite, Knight of the Sun or Prince Adept. In discussing the symbol of the pentagram in the lecture of this degree, Pike writes in Morals & Dogma that in certain undertakings [the Pentagram] cannot be dispensed with. It is what is termed the Kabalistic pentacle… This carries with it the power of commanding the spirits of the elements. A central lesson of this highly Kabalistic and Alchemical degree is that there is no death, only change. The Pentagram, symbol of humanity as the microcosm is an apt representation of this wisdom which, to one who has internalized it, may have that contempt for death which is expressed in the line from 1 Corinthians – “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

In the same lecture, Pike alludes to the true meaning of this radiant symbol: When the masters in Alchemy say that it needs but little time and expense to accomplish the works of Science. When they affirm, above all, that but a single vessel is necessary, when they speak of the Great and Single furnace, which all can use, which is within the reach of all the world, and which men possess without knowing it, they allude to the philosophical and moral Alchemy. In fact, a strong and determined will can, in a little while, attain complete independence; and we all possess that chemical instrument, the great and single athanor or furnace, which serves to separate the subtle from the gross, and the fixed from the volatile. This instrument, complete as the world, and accurate as the mathematics themselves, is designated by the Sages under the emblem of the Pentagram or Star with five points, the absolute sign of human intelligence. It may be said that the Pentagram represents the power of the Divine Will, as manifested in Humanity, to effect conscious change. As conscious participants with the Divine Will, humanity is in the unique position of being able to be co-creators with the Divine. Our sisters of the Eastern Star utilize a Pentagram as their primary symbol. Interestingly, their usage places the pentagram “upside down,” with two points on top and a single point facing down. According to esoteric tradition, this usage indicates the “evil” forces of darkness. The occult authority Eliphas Levi writes in Transcendental Magic: The Pentagram with two horns in the ascendant represents Satan, or the goat of the Sabbath, and with the single horn in the ascendant is the sign of the Savior. It is the figure of the human body with the four members and a point representing the head; a human figure head downward naturally represents the demon, that is, intellectual subversion, disorder and folly. As to whether the author of the Easter Star rituals was aware of these qualities when designing the emblem of the rite is most likely unknown. A contemporary member of the Eastern Star has informed us that the explanation of the symbol she received attributes the two points as facing towards the east, providing an unobstructed channel from the altar to the Eastern dais, as well as creating a confined center or “chamber” in the east that is formed between the two extended points and the dais. All Alchemists would be familiar with the idea of having the path from the Altar to the East clear at all times, and this may in fact be the most probable reason for the design., manifested as Light, creating the Universe.”[vii]

The alchemists asserts that the Pentagram is the symbol of the Divine in man… The five-pointed star with a single point upward represents the Divine. It also symbolizes man for its five points allude to the five senses, the five members (head, arms and legs) and his five fingers on each hand, which signify the tokens that distinguish alchemits.Furthermore he writes that this figure is the symbol of the Microcosm, the universe where humans dwell. Since the pentagon which encloses the pentagram may be formed by connecting the five points of the human body, for many centuries the symbol was also used to represent humanity in general. Within this symbol then is a representation of humanity, and our Divine role in the Universe as co-creators of eternity.

In addition to being a central altar piece in our Rosicrucian Temples, and the Blazing Star of the Craft Lodges, the Pentagram appears as an ensign in some of the High Degrees and rites. For example, it is central on the apron of the 28th Degree of the Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite, Knight of the Sun or Prince Adept. In discussing the symbol of the pentagram in the lecture of this degree, Pike writes in Morals & Dogma that in certain undertakings [the Pentagram] cannot be dispensed with. It is what is termed the Kabalistic pentacle… This carries with it the power of commanding the spirits of the elements.

A central lesson of this highly Kabalistic and Alchemical degree is that there is no death, only change. The Pentagram, symbol of humanity as the microcosm is an apt representation of this wisdom which, to one who has internalized it, may have that contempt for death which is expressed in the line from 1 Corinthians – “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

In the same lecture, Pike alludes to the true meaning of this radiant symbol:

When the masters in Alchemy say that it needs but little time and expense to accomplish the works of Science. When they affirm, above all, that but a single vessel is necessary, when they speak of the Great and Single furnace, which all can use, which is within the reach of all the world, and which men possess without knowing it, they allude to the philosophical and moral Alchemy. In fact, a strong and determined will can, in a little while, attain complete independence; and we all possess that chemical instrument, the great and single athanor or furnace, which serves to separate the subtle from the gross, and the fixed from the volatile. This instrument, complete as the world, and accurate as the mathematics themselves, is designated by the Sages under the emblem of the Pentagram or Star with five points, the absolute sign of human intelligence. It may be said that the Pentagram represents the power of the Divine Will, as manifested in Humanity, to effect conscious change. As conscious participants with the Divine Will, humanity is in the unique position of being able to be co-creators with the Divine. Our sisters of the Eastern Star utilize a Pentagram as their primary symbol. Interestingly, their usage places the pentagram “upside down,” with two points on top and a single point facing down. According to esoteric tradition, this usage indicates the “evil” forces of darkness. The occult authority Eliphas Levi writes in Transcendental Magic:

 

The Pentagram with two horns in the ascendant represents Satan, or the goat of the Sabbath, and with the single horn in the ascendant is the sign of the Savior. It is the figure of the human body with the four members and a point representing the head; a human figure head downward naturally represents the demon, that is, intellectual subversion, disorder and folly. As to whether the author of the Easter Star rituals was aware of these qualities when designing the emblem of the rite is most likely unknown. A contemporary member of the Eastern Star has informed us that the explanation of the symbol she received attributes the two points as facing towards the east, providing an unobstructed channel from the altar to the Eastern dais, as well as creating a confined center or “chamber” in the east that is formed between the two extended points and the dais. All alchemists would be familiar with the idea of having the path from the Altar to the East clear at all times, and this may in fact be the most probable reason for the design. The Pentagram has a long history of occult use. It was by use of a poorly constructed Pentagram that Mephistopheles was able to manifest in the circle of Faust! Magical grimoires of the western esoteric tradition are replete with examples of pentagrams being used as protective and evocatory talismans, or as the seals of circles of the Art which were traced on the floor of the ritual chamber. Literally thousands of examples are extant from the works of Trithemius, Dr. John Dee, Heinrich Agrippa, Kircher, Bruno, and many others, which show the hermetic and kabalistic applications of the Pentagram in ceremonial ritual use.Perhaps one of the most evocative descriptions of the occult powers of this symbol comes from the magician Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Louis Constant), who writes of the Pentagram in his book Transcendental Magic:

The Pentagram expresses the mind's domination over the elements and it is by this sign that we bind the demons of the air, the spirits of fire, the spectres of water, and the ghosts of earth. It is the Star of the Magi, the burning star of the Gnostic schools, the sign of intellectual omnipotence and autocracy. Its complete comprehension is the key of two worlds‑‑it is absolute natural philosophy and natural science. Its use, how-ever, is most dangerous to operators who do not completely and perfectly understand it. All mysteries of magic, all symbols of the gnosis, all figures of occultism, all Qabalis-tic keys of prophecy, are resumed in the sign of the Pentagram, which Paracelsus pro-claims to be the greatest and most potent of all. [...] this absolute sign, this sign as old or as older than history, should and must actually exercise an incalculable influence on souls disengaged from their material envelope. Armed therewith and suitably disposed, we can behold infinity through the medium of that faculty which is as the Soul’s Eye, and can cause ourselves to be served by legions of angels and demon hordes. The empire of the Will over the Astral Light which is the physical soul of the four elements, is represented in magic by the Pentagram.,If it be asked how a sign can exercise that immense power over spirits which is claimed for the Pentagram, we inquire in turn why the Christian world bows before the sign of the cross. The sign by itself is nothing, it derives strength from the doctrine which is resumes, and of which it is the Logos. Now, a sign which epitomizes by expression all the occult forces of Nature, which has always manifested to the elementary and other spirits a power superior to their own, naturally strikes them with fear and respect, and enforces their obedience by the empire of knowledge and will over ignorance and weakness. The points of the pentagram are often associated with the five-fold name of the Christ, IHShVH or Yeheshua. Paul Foster Case describes this: The letters at the five points of the pentagram are the Roman characters corresponding to Yod, Heh, Shin, Vau and Heh. They are the letters which spell the divine name IHVH, Jehovah, with the ‘holy letter,’ Shin, symbol of the Holy Spirit, placed between the first two and last two letters, thus: I H Sh V H. This is the occult and Rosicrucian spelling of the name Yeheshua, or Jesus…’It is the symbol of the Word made flesh.’ […] every pentagram … symbolizes the mystical name IHShVH…[viii]

 

www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/pentagram_freemasonry.html

“Evolution built minds twice over. The octopus is probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.” — Peter Godfrey-Smith, philosopher

 

These two octopus books came out some months apart from each other, and I have been meaning to read them back-to-back. They cover similar material — even their subtitles highlight the lessons learned about consciousness. I wonder if the publishers knew of the coincidence.

 

Some fascinating book details about the octopus:

 

• Three hearts, pumping blue-green blood because their oxygen carrying metal is copper (versus iron in the heme of our blood). They can spend 30 minutes out of the water, to scoot between tidepools.

 

• Alien intelligence: from a distant branch in the tree of life, the octopus/cuttlefish are the only invertebrates to have developed a complex, clever brain:

-Our common evolutionary ancestor is a tubule so ancient, neither brains nor eyes yet existed. They evolved independently, on land and by sea.

-From the Cambrian explosion of sensing, body plans, and predation, minds evolved in response to other minds. It was an information revolution. It’s where experience begins.

-The octopus brain rings around its throat. 500M neurons, similar to dog (vs.human: 86B, fly: 100K).

-The octopus has over 50 different functional brain lobes (versus 4 in human)

-And furthermore, 60% of its neurons are out in the arms, with a high degree of autonomy. A severed arm can carry on as if nothing has changed for several hours.

-It is a distributed mesh of ganglia (knots of nerves) in a ladder-like nervous system. Recurrent neural loops serve as a local short-term memory latch.

-“The octopus is suffused with nervousness; the body is not a separate thing that is controlled by the brain or nervous system.” Unconstrained by bone or shell, “the body itself is protean, all possibility. The octopus lives outside the usual body/brain divide.” (PGS)

-Structurally, our eyes ended up strikingly similar to the octopus (camera-like with a focusing lens, through a transparent cornea and iris aperture to a retina backing the optic nerves). But octopus eyes have a wide-angle panoramic view, and they move independently like a chameleon.

-Their horizontal slit pupil stays horizontal as the body moves, like a steady cam. This is made possible by special balance receptors called statocysts (a sac with internal sensory hairs and loose mineralized balls that roll around with movement and gravity).

-They can see polarized light, but not color (making their color-matching camouflage skills all the more intriguing; they also see with their skin).

-Their playful interactions with humans exhibit mischief and craft, a sign of mental surplus

-Humans internalized language as a tool for complex thought (we can hear what we say and use language to arrange and manipulate ideas). Octopuses are on a different path.

 

• Their entire skin is a layered screen, with about a megapixel directly controlled by the brain.

-Skin color, pattern and fleshy texture can change in 0.7 seconds.

-Three layers of skin cells control elastic sacks of pigments, internal iridescent reflections, even polarization (which the octopus can see), over a white underbody. They are regulated by acetylcholine, one of the earliest neurotransmitters in evolution.

-The octopus can create a voluntary light show on its skin, e.g., a dark cloud passing over the local landscape, or a dramatic display to confuse a predator while fleeing.

-Over thirty ritualized displays for mating and other signaling.

-Some octopuses have regions of constant kaleidoscopic restlessness, like animated eye shadow.

 

• 1,600 suckers. 35 lbs. of lift capacity per 2.5” sucker. 10,000 tasting chemoreceptors per sucker. Each is controlled individually.

 

• Octopus muscles have radial + longitudinal fibers (agile like our tongues, not our biceps).

-Opposing waves of activation can create temporary elbows at the region of constructive overlap, or pass food sucker-to-sucker like a conveyor belt.

-The octopus’ arm muscles can pull 100x its own weight.

 

• It can squeeze through a hole about the size of its eyeball.

 

• Their ink squirts contain oxytocin (perhaps to soothe prey) and dopamine, the “reward hormone” (perhaps to trick predators that they had caught the octopus in the billowy cloud).

 

I found the philosophical approach of Other MInds more interesting than the "naturalist in an aquarium" approach of Soul of an Octopus. Perhaps it's the geek in me, but I wanted a good summary of the new research and new details about these crazy nervous systems. I find that fascinating and relevant to the future incorporeal AI's that we will build.

120/365

 

Sometimes I think I feel too intensely about everything, and that is the reason I internalize, because anything else would spell insanity. Between creative impulses and intense emotions that cannot be expressed - first because I don't know how, and second because I don't know that it is possible to express emotions - I end up feeling reckless and restless, and I introvert more and more. But the world only sees detachment and coldness, lack of feeling and overall apathy.

++++++ FROM WIKIPEDIA ++++++

 

Konark Sun Temple is a 13th-century CE sun temple at Konark about 35 kilometres (22 mi) northeast from Puri on the coastline of Odisha, India.[1][2] The temple is attributed to king Narasingha deva I of the Eastern Ganga Dynasty about 1250 CE.[3][4]

 

Dedicated to the Hindu 'god Surya, what remains of the temple complex has the appearance of a 100-foot (30 m) high chariot with immense wheels and horses, all carved from stone. Once over 200 feet (61 m) high,[1][5] much of the temple is now in ruins, in particular the large shikara tower over the sanctuary; at one time this rose much higher than the mandapa that remains. The structures and elements that have survived are famed for their intricate artwork, iconography, and themes, including erotic kama and mithuna scenes. Also called the Surya Devalaya, it is a classic illustration of the Odisha style of Architecture or Kalinga Architecture .[1][6]

 

The cause of the destruction of the Konark temple is unclear and remains a source of controversy.[7] Theories range from natural damage to deliberate destruction of the temple in the course of being sacked several times by Muslim armies between the 15th and 17th centuries.[1][7] This temple was called the "Black Pagoda" in European sailor accounts as early as 1676 because its great tower appeared black. [6][8] Similarly, the Jagannath Temple in Puri was called the "White Pagoda". Both temples served as important landmarks for sailors in the Bay of Bengal.[9][10] The temple that exists today was partially restored by the conservation efforts of British India-era archaeological teams. Declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 1984,[1][2] it remains a major pilgrimage site for Hindus, who gather here every year for the Chandrabhaga Mela around the month of February.[6]

Contents

 

1 Etymology

2 Location

3 Description

3.1 Reliefs and sculpture

3.2 Hindu deities

3.3 Style

3.4 Other temples and monuments

4 History

4.1 Ancient Texts

4.2 Konark in texts

4.3 Construction

4.4 Damage and ruins

4.5 Aruna Stambha

4.6 Preservation Efforts

5 Reception

6 See also

7 Gallery

7.1 Antique paintings and photographs

7.2 Current day photographs

8 See also

9 References

9.1 Bibliography

10 External links

 

Etymology

 

The name Konark derives from the combination of the Sanskrit/Odia language words Kona (corner or angle) and Arka (the sun).[9] The context of the term Kona is unclear, but probably refers to the southeast location of this temple either within a larger temple complex or in relation to other sun temples on the subcontinent.[11] The Arka refers to the Hindu sun god Surya.[9]

Location

 

The Konark Sun Temple is located in an eponymous village about 35 kilometres (22 mi) northeast of Puri and 60 kilometres (37 mi) southeast of Bhubaneswar on the Bay of Bengal coastline in the Indian state of Odisha. The nearest airport is Bhubaneswar airport (IATA: BBI). Both Puri and Bhubaneswar are major railway hubs connected by Indian Railways' Southeastern services.[12]

Description

Original temple and the surviving structure (yellow), left; the temple plan, right

 

The Konark Sun Temple was built from stone in the form of a giant ornamented chariot dedicated to the Sun god, Surya. In Hindu Vedic iconography Surya is represented as rising in the east and traveling rapidly across the sky in a chariot drawn by seven horses. He is described typically as a resplendent standing person holding a lotus flower in both his hands, riding the chariot marshaled by the charioteer Aruna.[13][14] The seven horses are named after the seven meters of Sanskrit prosody: Gayatri, Brihati, Ushnih, Jagati, Trishtubha, Anushtubha, and Pankti.[14] Typically seen flanking Surya are two females who represent the dawn goddesses, Usha and Pratyusha. The goddesses are shown to be shooting arrows, a symbol of their initiative in challenging darkness.[15] The architecture is also symbolic, with the chariot's twelve pairs of wheels corresponding to the 12 months of the Hindu calendar, each month paired into two cycles (Shukla and Krishna).[16]

 

The Konark temple presents this iconography on a grand scale. It has 24 elaborately carved stone wheels which are nearly 12 feet (3.7 m) in diameter and are pulled by a set of seven horses.[5][2][17] When viewed from inland during the dawn and sunrise, the chariot-shaped temple appears to emerge from the depths of the blue sea carrying the sun.[18]

1822 drawing of the mandapa's east door and terrace musicians

1815 sketch of stone horses and wheels of the mandapa

 

The temple plan includes all the traditional elements of a Hindu temple set on a square plan. According to Kapila Vatsyayan, the ground plan, as well the layout of sculptures and reliefs, follow the square and circle geometry, forms found in Odisha temple design texts such as the Silpasarini.[19] This mandala structure informs the plans of other Hindu temples in Odisha and elsewhere.[19]

 

The main temple at Konark, locally called the deul, no longer exists. It was surrounded by subsidiary shrines containing niches depicting Hindu deities, particularly Surya in many of his aspects. The deul was built on a high terrace.[5] The temple was originally a complex consisting of the main sanctuary, called the rekha deul, or bada deul (lit. big sanctum).[18] In front of it was the bhadra deul (lit. small sanctum), or jagamohana (lit. assembly hall of the people) (called a mandapa in other parts of India.[20]). The attached platform was called the pida deul, which consisted of a square mandapa with a pyramidal roof.[18] All of these structures were square at their core, and each was overlain with the pancharatha plan containing a variegated exterior.[18] The central projection, called the raha, is more pronounced than the side projections, called kanika-paga, a style that aims for an interplay of sunlight and shade and adds to the visual appeal of the structure throughout the day. The design manual for this style is found in the Silpa Sastra of ancient Odisha.[18][21]

A stone wheel engraved in the walls of the temple. The temple is designed as a chariot consisting of 24 such wheels. Each wheel has a diameter of 9 feet, 9 inches, with 8 spokes.

 

Twice as wide as they were high, the walls of the jagamohana are 100 feet (30 m) tall. The surviving structure has three tiers of six pidas each. These diminish incrementally and repeat the lower patterns. The pidas are divided into terraces. On each of these terraces stand statues of musician figures.[5] The main temple and the jagamohana porch consist of four main zones: the platform, the wall, the trunk, and the crowning head called a mastaka.[22] The first three are square while the mastaka is circular. The main temple and the jagamohana differed in size, decorative themes, and design. It was the main temple's trunk, called the gandhi in medieval Hindu architecture texts, that was ruined long ago. The sanctum of the main temple is now without a roof and most of the original parts.[22]

 

On the east side of the main temple is the Nata mandira (lit. dance temple). It stands on a high, intricately carved platform. The relief on the platform is similar in style to that found on the surviving walls of the temple.[5] According to historical texts, there was an Aruna stambha (lit. Aruna's pillar) between the main temple and the Nata mandira, but it is no longer there because it was moved to the Jagannatha at Puri sometime during the troubled history of this temple.[5] According to Harle, the texts suggest that originally the complex was enclosed within a wall 865 feet (264 m) by 540 feet (160 m), with gateways on three sides.[5]

 

The stone temple was made from three types of stone.[23] Chlorite was used for the door lintel and frames as well as some sculptures. Laterite was used for the core of the platform and staircases near the foundation. Khondalite was used for other parts of the temple. According to Mitra, the Khondalite stone weathers faster over time, and this may have contributed to erosion and accelerated the damage when parts of the temples were destroyed.[23] None of these stones occur naturally nearby, and the architects and artisans must have procured and moved the stones from distant sources, probably using the rivers and water channels near the site.[23] The masons then created ashlar, wherein the stones were polished and finished so as to make joints hardly visible.[23]

 

The original temple had a main sanctum sanctorum (vimana), which is estimated to have been 229 feet (70 m)[17] tall. The main vimana fell in 1837. The main mandapa audience hall (jagamohana), which is about 128 feet (39 m) tall, still stands and is the principal structure in the surviving ruins. Among the structures that have survived to the current day are the dance hall (Nata mandira) and the dining hall (Bhoga mandapa).[2][17]

 

Reliefs and sculpture

  

The walls of the temple from the temple's base through the crowing elements are ornamented with reliefs, many finished to jewelry-quality miniature details. The terraces contain stone statues of male and female musicians holding various musical instruments.[24] Other major works of art include sculptures of Hindu deities, apsaras and images from the daily life and culture of the people (artha and dharma scenes), various animals, aquatic creatures, birds, mythological creatures, and friezes narrating the Hindu texts. The carvings include purely decorative geometric patterns and plant motifs.[24] Some panels show images from the life of the king such as one showing him receiving counsel from a guru, where the artists symbolically portrayed the king as much smaller than the guru, with the king's sword resting on the ground next to him.[25]

 

The upana (moulding) layer at the bottom of the platform contains friezes of elephants, marching soldiers, musicians, and images depicting the secular life of the people, including hunting scenes, a caravan of domesticated animals, people carrying supplies on their head or with the help of a bullock cart, travelers preparing a meal along the roadside, and festive processions.[26] On other walls are found images depicting the daily life of the elite as well as the common people. For example, girls are shown wringing their wet hair, standing by a tree, looking from a window, playing with pets, putting on makeup while looking into a mirror, playing musical instruments such as the vina, chasing away a monkey who is trying to snatch items, a family taking leave of their elderly grandmother who seems dressed for a pilgrimage, a mother blessing her son, a teacher with students, a yogi during a standing asana, a warrior being greeted with a namaste, a mother with her child, an old woman with a walking stick and a bowl in her hands, comical characters, among others.[27]

 

The Konark temple is also known for its erotic sculptures of maithunas.[28] These show couples in various stages of courtship and intimacy, and in some cases coital themes. Notorious in the colonial era for their uninhibited celebration of sexuality, these images are included with other aspects of human life as well as deities that are typically associated with tantra. This led some to propose that the erotic sculptures are linked to the vama marga (left hand tantra) tradition.[5] However, this is not supported by local literary sources, and these images may be the same kama and mithuna scenes found integrated into the art of many Hindu temples.[5] The erotic sculptures are found on the temple's Shikhara, and these illustrate all the bandhas (mudra forms) described in the Kamasutra.[20]

 

Other large sculptures were a part of the gateways of the temple complex. These include life-size lions subduing elephants, elephants subduing demons, and horses. A major pillar dedicated to Aruna, called the Aruna Stambha, used to stand in front of the eastern stairs of the porch. This, too, was intricately carved with horizontal friezes and motifs. It now stands in front of the Jagannatha temple at Puri.[29]

Hindu deities

 

The upper levels and terrace of the Konark Sun temple contain larger and more significant works of art than the lower level. These include images of musicians and mythological narratives as well as sculptures of Hindu deities, including Durga in her Mahishasuramardini aspect killing the shape-shifting buffalo demon (Shaktism), Vishnu in his Jagannatha form (Vaishnavism), and Shiva as a (largely damaged) linga (Shaivism). Some of the better-preserved friezes and sculptures were removed and relocated to museums in Europe and major cities of India before 1940.[30]

 

The Hindu deities are also depicted in other parts of the temple. For example, the medallions of the chariot wheels of the Surya temple, as well as the anuratha artwork of the jagamohana, show Vishnu, Shiva, Gajalakshmi, Parvati, Krishna, Narasimha, and other gods and goddesses.[31] Also found on the jagamohana are sculptures of Vedic deities such as Indra, Agni, Kubera, Varuna, and Âdityas.[32]

Style

 

The temple follows the traditional style of Kalinga architecture. It is oriented towards the east so that the first rays of the sunrise strike the main entrance.[2] The temple, built from Khondalite rocks,[33][34] was originally constructed at the mouth of the river Chandrabhaga, but the waterline has receded since then.[citation needed] The wheels of the temple are sundials, which can be used to calculate time accurately to a minute.[35]

Other temples and monuments

 

The Konark Sun Temple complex has ruins of many subsidiary shrines and monuments around the main temple. Some of these include:

 

Mayadevi Temple – Located west-southwest from the entrance of the main temple,[36] it has been dated to the late 11th century, earlier than the main temple.[37] It consists of a sanctuary, a mandapa and, before it, an open platform. It was discovered during excavations carried out between 1900 and 1910. Early theories assumed that it was dedicated to Surya's wife and thus named the Mayadevi Temple. However, later studies suggested that it was also a Surya temple, albeit an older one that was fused into the complex when the monumental temple was built.[36] This temple also has numerous carvings and a square mandapa is overlain by a sapta-ratha. The sanctum of this Surya temple features a Nataraja. Other deities in the interior include a damaged Surya holding a lotus, along with Agni, Varuna, Vishnu, and Vayu.[38]

Vaishnava Temple – Located southwest of the so-called Mayadevi Temple, it was discovered during excavations in 1956. This discovery was significant because it confirmed that the Konark Sun Temple complex revered all the major Hindu traditions, and was not an exclusive worship place for the saura cult as previously believed. This is a small temple with sculptures of Balarama, Varaha, and Vamana–Trivikrama in its sanctum, marking it as a Vaishnavite temple. These images are shown as wearing dhoti and a lot of jewelry. The sanctum's primary idol is missing, as are images from some niches in the temple.[39] The site's significance as a place of Vaishnavism pilgrimage is attested to in Vaishnava texts. For example, Krishna Chaitanya, the early 16th-century scholar and founder of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, visited the Konark temple and prayed on its premises.[40]

Kitchen – This monument is found south of the bhoga mandapa (feeding hall). It, too, was discovered in excavations in the 1950s. It includes means to bring water, cisterns to store water, drains, a cooking floor, depressions in the floor probably for pounding spices or grains, as well several triple ovens (chulahs) for cooking. This structure may have been for festive occasions or a part of a community feeding hall.[41] According to Thomas Donaldson, the kitchen complex may have been added a little later than the original temple.[42]

Well 1 – This monument is located north of the kitchen, towards its eastern flank, was probably built to supply water to the community kitchen and bhoga mandapa. Near the well are a pillared mandapa and five structures, some with semi-circular steps whose role is unclear.[43]

Well 2 – This monument and associated structures are in the front of the northern staircase of the main temple, with foot rests, a washing platform, and a wash water drain system. It was probably designed for the use of pilgrims arriving at the temple.[44]

 

A collection of fallen sculptures can be viewed at the Konark Archaeological Museum, which is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India.[45] The fallen upper portion of the temple is believed to have been studded with many inscriptions.[46]

 

History

 

Ancient Texts

 

The oldest surviving Vedic hymns, such as hymn 1.115 of the Rigveda, mention Surya with particular reverence for the "rising sun" and its symbolism as dispeller of darkness, one who empowers knowledge, the good, and all life.[14] However, the usage is context specific. In some hymns, the word Surya simply means sun as an inanimate object, a stone, or a gem in the sky (Rigvedic hymns 5.47, 6.51 and 7.63) while in others it refers to a personified deity.[14][47][48] In the layers of Vedic texts, Surya is one of the several trinities along with Agni and either Vayu or Indra, which are presented as an equivalent icon and aspect of the Hindu metaphysical concept called the Brahman.[49]

 

In the Brahmanas layer of Vedic literature, Surya appears with Agni (fire god) in the same hymns.[50] Surya is revered for the day, and Agni for its role during the night.[50] According to Kapila Vatsyayan, the concept of a Surya–Agni relationship evolves, and in later literature Surya is described as Agni representing the first principle and the seed of the universe.[51] It is in the Brahmanas layer of the Vedas,[52][53] and the Upanishads that Surya is explicitly linked to the power of sight, and to visual perception and knowledge. He is then internalized and said to be the eye, as ancient Hindu sages suggested abandonment of external rituals to gods in favor of internal reflection and meditation of the gods within, in one's journey to realize the Atman (soul, self) within, in texts such as the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Chandogya Upanishad, Kaushitaki Upanishad, and others.[54][55][56]

 

The Mahabharata epic opens its chapter on Surya by reverentially calling him the "eye of the universe, soul of all existence, origin of all life, goal of the Samkhyas and Yogis, and symbolism for freedom and spiritual emancipation".[14] In the Mahabharata, Karna is the son of Surya and an unmarried princess named Kunti.[14] The epic describes Kunti's difficult life as an unmarried mother, then her abandonment of Karna, followed by her lifelong grief. Baby Karna is found and then adopted, and grows up to become one of the central characters in the great battle of Kurukshetra where he fights his half-brothers.[57]

 

Konark in texts

 

Konark, also referred to in Indian texts by the name Kainapara, was a significant trading port by the early centuries of the common era.[58] The current Konark temple dates to the 13th century, though evidence suggests that a sun temple was built in the Konark area by at least the 9th century.[59] Several Puranas mention Surya worship centers in Mundira, which may have been the earlier name for Konark, Kalapriya (Mathura), and Multan (now in Pakistan).[60] The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim and traveler Hiuen-tsang (also referred to as Xuanzang) mentions a port city in Odisha named Charitra. He describes the city as prosperous, with five convents and "storeyed towers that are very high and carved with saintly figures exquisitely done". Since he visited India in the 7th century, he could not have been referring to the 13th-century temple, but his description suggests either Konark or another Odisha port city already featuring towering structures with sculptures.[40]

 

According to the Madala Panji, there was at one time another temple in the region built by Pundara Kesari. He may have been Puranjaya, the 7th-century ruler of the Somavasmi Dynasty.[61]

 

Construction

 

The current temple is attributed to Narasimhadeva I of the Eastern Ganga Dynasty, r. 1238–1264 CE– . It is one of the few Hindu temples whose planning and construction records written in Sanskrit in the Odiya script have been preserved in the form of palm leaf manuscripts that were discovered in a village in the 1960s and subsequently translated.[62] The temple was sponsored by the king, and its construction was overseen by Siva Samantaraya Mahapatra. It was built near an old Surya temple. The sculpture in the older temple's sanctum was re-consecrated and incorporated into the newer larger temple. This chronology of temple site's evolution is supported by many copper plate inscriptions of the era in which the Konark temple is referred to as the "great cottage".[40]

 

According to James Harle, the temple as built in the 13th century consisted of two main structures, the dance mandapa and the great temple (deul). The smaller mandapa is the structure that survives; the great deul collapsed sometime in the late 16th century or after. According to Harle, the original temple "must originally have stood to a height of some 225 feet (69 m)", but only parts of its walls and decorative mouldings remain.[5]

Damage and ruins

  

The temple was in ruins before its restoration. Speculation continues as to the cause of the destruction of the temple. Early theories stated that the temple was never completed and collapsed during construction. This is contradicted by textual evidence and evidence from inscriptions. The Kenduli copper plate inscription of 1384 CE from the reign of Narasimha IV seems to indicate that the temple was not only completed but an active site of worship. Another inscription states that various deities in the temple were consecrated, also suggesting that construction of the temple had been completed.[63] A non-Hindu textual source, the Akbar-era text Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl dated to the 16th century, mentions the Konark temple,[40] describing it as a prosperous site with a temple that made visitors "astonished at its sight", with no mention of ruins.[63][64][65]

 

Texts from the 19th century do mention ruins, which means the temple was damaged either intentionally or through natural causes sometime between 1556 and 1800 CE. The intentional-damage theory is supported by Mughal era records that mention the Muslim invader Kalapahar attacking and destroying Jagannath Puri and the Konark temple.[63][66][67] Other texts state that the temple was sacked several times by Muslim armies between the 15th and 17th centuries.[1][40] Islamic texts describing the raids of Kalapahar mention his army's first attempt to destroy the temple in 1565, but they failed. They inflicted only minor damage and carried away the copper kalasa.[40]

A medieval era description of Konark

When nine flights of steps are passed, a spacious court appears with a large arch of stone upon which are carved the sun and other planets. Around them are a variety of worshippers of every class, each after its manner with bowed heads, standing, sitting, prostrate, laughing, weeping, lost in amaze or in rapt attention, and following these are divers musicians and strange animals which never existed but in imagination.

 

The controversial Hindu text Madala Panji and regional tradition state that Kalapahad attacked again and damaged the temple in 1568.[68] The natural-damage theory is supported by the nearness of the temple to the shore and the monsoons in the region that would tend to cause damage. However, the existence of nearby stone temples in the Odisha region that were built earlier and have stood without damage casts doubt to this theory. According to P. Parya, the number of rings of moss and lichen growth found on the stone ruins suggests the damage occurred sometime around the 1570s, but this approach does not indicate why or by whom.[63]

 

According to Thomas Donaldson, evidence suggests that the damage and the temple's ruined condition can be dated to between the late 16th century and the early 17th century from the records of various surveys and repairs found in early 17th-century texts. These also record that the temple remained a site of worship in the early 17th century. These records do not state whether the ruins were being used by devotees to gather and worship, or part of the damaged temple was still in use for some other purpose. This evidence of the use of the temple, however, contradicts any theories that the late 16th-century Muslim invasion had completely destroyed the site.[69]

Aruna Stambha

 

In the last quarter of the 18th century, the Aruna stambha (Aruna pillar) was removed from the entrance of Konark temple and placed at the Singha-dwara (Lion's Gate) of the Jagannath temple in Puri by a Maratha Brahmachari named Goswain (or Goswami).[70][71] The pillar, made of monolithic chlorite, is 33 feet 8 inches (10.26 m) tall and is dedicated to Aruna, the charioteer of the Sun god.[71]

Preservation Efforts

  

In 1803 the East India Marine Board requested the Governor General of Bengal that conservation efforts be undertaken. However, the only conservation measure put in place at the time was to prohibit further removal of stones from the site. Lacking structural support, the last part of the main tower still standing, a small broken curved section, collapsed in 1848.[72]

 

The then-Raja of Khurda, who had jurisdiction over this region in the early 19th century, removed some stones and sculptures to use in a temple he was building in Puri. A few gateways and some sculptures were destroyed in the process.[73] In 1838 the Asiatic Society of Bengal requested that conservation efforts be undertaken, but the requests were denied, and only measures to prevent vandalism were put in place.[72]

 

In 1859 the Asiatic Society of Bengal proposed, and in 1867 attempted to relocate an architrave of the Konark temple depicting the navagraha to the Indian Museum in Calcutta. This attempt was abandoned as funds had run out.[72] In 1894 thirteen sculptures were moved to the Indian Museum. Local Hindu population objected to further damage and removal of temple ruins. The government issued orders to respect the local sentiments.[72] In 1903, when a major excavation was attempted nearby, the then-Lieutenant governor of Bengal, J. A. Baurdilon, ordered the temple to be sealed and filled with sand to prevent the collapse of the Jagamohana. The Mukhasala and Nata Mandir were repaired by 1905.[63][74]

 

In 1906 casuarina and punnang trees were planted facing the sea to provide a buffer against sand-laden winds.[72] In 1909 the Mayadevi temple was discovered while removing sand and debris.[72] The temple was granted World Heritage Site status by the UNESCO in 1984.[2]

 

Reception

 

The Konark Sun Temple has attracted conflicting reviews. According to Coomaraswamy, the Konark Sun Temple marks the high point of the Odisha style of Nagara architecture.[75]

 

The colonial-era reception of the temple ranged from derision to praise. Andrew Sterling, the early colonial-era administrator and Commissioner of Cuttack questioned the skill of the 13th-century architects, but also wrote that the temple had "an air of elegance, combined with massiveness in the whole structure, which entitles it to no small share of admiration", adding that the sculpture had "a degree of taste, propriety and freedom which would stand a comparison with some of our best specimens of Gothic architectural ornament".[76] The Victorian mindset saw pornography in the artwork of Konark and wondered why there was no "shame and guilt in this pleasure in filth", while Alan Watts stated that there was no comprehensible reason to separate spirituality from love, sex, and religious arts.[77] According to Ernest Binfield Havell, the Konark temple is "one of the grandest examples of Indian sculpture extant", adding that they express "as much fire and passion as the greatest European art" such as that found in Venice.[78]

 

Indian writers, too, have expressed a spectrum of opinions. For example, the leftist author Bhattacharya criticized the "brahmanical temple erotica", offering it as evidence of "female exploitation by the dominant classes of Hindu male society", and a "reflection of abnormal sex desires".[79] In contrast, the Nobel Laureate Tagore wrote,

 

Here the language of stone surpasses the language of human.

— Rabindranath Tagore[80][81]

 

Shui gui (Chinese: 水鬼; pinyin: shuǐ guǐ; literally: "water ghost") are the spirits of people who drowned. They lurk in the place where they died, and drag unsuspecting victims underwater and drown them in order to take possession of their bodies. This process is known as ti shen (Chinese: 替身; pinyin: tì shēn; literally: "replace the body"), as the spirit will return to the world of the living in the victim's body while the victim's soul will take the former shui gui's place and constantly seek to seize possession of another living person's body. Ghosts that died of watery causes, they will haunt the pong, pool, lake, river or sea that they died or drown in. These ghosts are said to be waiting for their victims, and they can only be reincarnated if they can claim a victim, so, the victim would in turn claim the next and so on. These ghosts are said to be very afraid of Rain and Snow as it would come down on them like millions of needles poking and piercing through them. Unlike other ghosts, they are most active during Noon time, when the sun is directly above the sky.THE ANCIENT TAOIST PRINCIPLE OF RECIPROCITY ; IF YOU DO ME A FAVOR, I WILL RETURN A GREATER FAVOR TO YOU BUT IF YOU HURT ME, I WILL NOT OFFER THE OTHER CHEEK. IF YOU INSULT ME, I WILL PUNCH YOU; IF YOU PUNCH ME, I WILL BREAK YOUR ARM; IF YOU BREAK MY ARM, I WILL BREAK YOUR LEG; AND IF YOU BREAK MY LEG, I WILL PUT YOU IN A COFFIN Five Ghosts in Taoist Sorcery

Many Western Folks who studied Feng Shui or read up Feng Shui Materials would have come across "Five Ghosts". Many Chinese Folks may have heard about Five Ghosts but don't know who they are and what they are used for. The "Five Ghosts" found in Feng Shui Studies are totally different from the "Five Ghosts" used in Taoist Sorcery. Let's get started to go into details of Five Ghosts in Taoist Magic / Sorcery ...Mao Shan sect's Five Ghosts (茅山五鬼术): In the old records, Mao Shan Five Ghosts (also known as Five Spirits or Five Ghostly Generals) is known to have 2 groups of 五鬼. The 1st group of 五鬼 (primordial group) is recorded to consist of these 5 spirits:

Dou Ren (窦仁) Li Kai (李凯) Zhang Wu (张五) Shi Tai (十泰) Chu Mian (褚免)

Under the 茅山鳳陽派 (Feng Yang Sect), the concept of the Five Spirits are that they are spirit guardians governing the 5 cardinal directions and as named as:Central: Yao Bi Song (中央姚碧松) North: Lin Jing Zhong (北方林敬忠) West: Cai Zi Liang (西方蔡子良)

South: Zhang Zi Gui (南方张子贵) East: Chen Gui Xian (東方陈贵先) Many of the Taoist Black Magic to hex/ disturb/destroy the enemies will summon these 5 ghosts [Yao Bi Song (中央姚碧松),Lin Jing Zhong (北方林敬忠), Cai Zi Liang (西方蔡子良), Zhang Zi Gui (南方张子贵), Chen Gui Xian(東方陈贵先)]. Very often these names will be found written on Black Magic Talismans. In the folklore (民俗学)， the Five Spirits are another group consisting of the 5 colors corresponding to the Five Colors Charm (五色符): Black Ghost Xiao Zan (黑面獠牙鬼萧贊) White Ghost Guan Qian (玉/花面獠牙鬼管钱) Yellow Ghost Chang Yong (黄面獠牙鬼常拥) Red Ghost Jin Cai (紅面獠牙鬼晋財) Green Ghost Wei De (青面獠牙鬼魏得)

Although termed similarly as the Five Spirits, these 2 groups are essentially different in purpose. The 1st group mentioned (primordial group/five cardinal directions) is summoned to perform information seeking/checking and doing tasks without seeking "official permission" from the deities of the 3 realms and the Mao Shan practitioner's 祖师爷。 This is one of the Closed Door Magic Skills (内门术) that is closely guarded and strongly advised not to practise/use. As it is a Closed Door Secret Art (内门术), only disciples who has been inducted into the lineage officially (公入法门) can chant the incantations and invoke the Five Spirits. For the second group of Five Ghosts, they are summoned most frequently by spiritual mediums to assist devotees (民间通灵术) to gain wealth and fulfill requests. As these group of Five Ghosts are not enlightened beings, once a request is being fulfilled, the person who made the request will need to repay back at a certain "price" that usually he/she won't know till "the day is due". Till today, a lot of the unorthodox sects (even those who claimed that they are orthodox) still summon the 2 groups of Five Spirits to assist the devotees in their requests and to make things work in order to gain the trust of the devotees or followers. In Mao Shan Magic Skills (茅山术), there are a few sets of Secret Rituals(法门) to send off or disperse these 2 groups of Five Ghosts away. But once these Secret Rituals(法门) are invoked, the owner of the Five Spirits will receive repercussions in a way that he/she cannot withstand. MORE GROUPS OF FIVE GHOSTS IN TAOISM: Five Ghosts used in "FIVE GHOSTS TRANSFER WEALTH" MAGIC(五鬼运财法): They are wondering ghosts summoned from 5 directions. They are called:

Wealth Bringing Ghost Of East Direction (东方生财鬼 Wealth Bringing Ghost Of West Direction (西方生财鬼) Wealth Bringing Ghost of South Direction (南方生财鬼) Wealth Bringing Ghost of North Direction (北方生财鬼) Wealth Bringing Ghost of the Middle (中央生财鬼) More Information on "FIVE GHOSTS TRANSFER WEALTH" MAGIC(五鬼运财法):FIVE GHOSTS TRANSFER WEALTH Five Ghosts used in "FIVE GHOSTS CONFUSE THE HEAVEN" MAGIC(五鬼混天法): They are Ghost Officials of the Five Directional Spiritual Camps (五营官将）.Their names are Cao Shi(曹十) Zhang Si(张四) Li Jiu (李九)

Wang Ren (汪仁) Zhu Guang (朱光) Note: There are specific steps and proper procedures in drawing Taoist Talismans and also individual secret spells to chant while drawing them. Merely copying or photocopy the Talisman will not produce any Magical Power from it. Important: Do not seek help to cast Black Magic Spells onto anyone just for fun. Do not harm the innocent people. Make sure You can provide good enough valid reasons, even if You can afford to pay the high fee. Email/Enquiry/Fee/Pricing: super.kumantong@gmail.com The "Five Ghosts" found in Feng Shui Studies are totally different from the "Five Ghosts" used in Taoist Sorcery. Let's get started to go into details of Five Ghosts in Taoist Magic / Sorcery ... Mao Shan sect's Five Ghosts (茅山五鬼术):

In the old records, Mao Shan Five Ghosts (also known as Five Spirits or Five Ghostly Generals) is known to have 2 groups of 五鬼. The 1st group of 五鬼 (primordial group) is recorded to consist of these 5 spirits Dou Ren (窦仁) Li Kai (李凯) Zhang Wu (张五)

Shi Tai (十泰) Chu Mian (褚免) Under the 茅山鳳陽派 (Feng Yang Sect), the concept of the Five Spirits are that they are spirit guardians governing the 5 cardinal directions and as named as: Central: Yao Bi Song (中央姚碧松) North: Lin Jing Zhong (北方林敬忠)

West: Cai Zi Liang (西方蔡子良) South: Zhang Zi Gui (南方张子贵) East: Chen Gui Xian (東方陈贵先) Many of the Taoist Black Magic to hex/ disturb/destroy the enemies will summon these 5 ghosts [Yao Bi Song (中央姚碧松),Lin Jing Zhong (北方林敬忠), Cai Zi Liang (西方蔡子良), Zhang Zi Gui (南方张子贵), Chen Gui Xian(東方陈贵先)]. Very often these names will be found written on Black Magic Talismans. In the folklore (民俗学)， the Five Spirits are another group consisting of the 5 colors corresponding to the Five Colors Charm (五色符): Black Ghost Xiao Zan (黑面獠牙鬼萧贊) White Ghost Guan Qian (玉/花面獠牙鬼管钱) Yellow Ghost Chang Yong (黄面獠牙鬼常拥) Red Ghost Jin Cai (紅面獠牙鬼晋財) Green Ghost Wei De (青面獠牙鬼魏得) Although termed similarly as the Five Spirits, these 2 groups are essentially different in purpose. The 1st group mentioned (primordial group/five cardinal directions) is summoned to perform information seeking/checking and doing tasks without seeking "official permission" from the deities of the 3 realms and the Mao Shan practitioner's 祖师爷。 This is one of the Closed Door Magic Skills (内门术) that is closely guarded and strongly advised not to practise/use. As it is a Closed Door Secret Art (内门术), only disciples who has been inducted into the lineage officially (公入法门) can chant the incantations and invoke the Five Spirits. For the second group of Five Ghosts, they are summoned most frequently by spiritual mediums to assist devotees (民间通灵术) to gain wealth and fulfill requests As these group of Five Ghosts are not enlightened beings, once a request is being fulfilled, the person who made the request will need to repay back at a certain "price" that usually he/she won't know till "the day is due".

Till today, a lot of the unorthodox sects (even those who claimed that they are orthodox) still summon the 2 groups of Five Spirits to assist the devotees in their requests and to make things work in order to gain the trust of the devotees or followers. In Mao Shan Magic Skills (茅山术), there are a few sets of Secret Rituals(法门) to send off or disperse these 2 groups of Five Ghosts away. But once these Secret Rituals(法门) are invoked, the owner of the Five Spirits will receive repercussions in a way that he/she cannot withstand.

MORE GROUPS OF FIVE GHOSTS IN TAOISM: Five Ghosts used in "FIVE GHOSTS TRANSFER WEALTH" MAGIC(五鬼运财法): They are wondering ghosts summoned from 5 directions. They are called: Wealth Bringing Ghost Of East Direction (东方生财鬼) Wealth Bringing Ghost Of West Direction (西方生财鬼) Wealth Bringing Ghost of South Direction (南方生财鬼) Wealth Bringing Ghost of North Direction (北方生财鬼)

Wealth Bringing Ghost of the Middle (中央生财鬼) More Information on "FIVE GHOSTS TRANSFER WEALTH" MAGIC(五鬼运财法):FIVE GHOSTS TRANSFER WEALTH

Five Ghosts used in "FIVE GHOSTS CONFUSE THE HEAVEN" MAGIC(五鬼混天法):

They are Ghost Officials of the Five Directional Spiritual Camps (五营官将）.Their names are: Cao Shi(曹十) Zhang Si(张四) Li Jiu (李九) Wang Ren (汪仁) Zhu Guang (朱光) Note: There are specific steps and proper procedures in drawing Taoist Talismans and also individual secret spells to chant while drawing them. Merely copying or photocopy the Talisman will not produce any Magical Power from it. Important: Do not seek help to cast Black Magic Spells onto anyone just for fun. Do not harm the innocent people. Make sure You can provide good enough valid reasons, even if You can afford to pay the high fee.

Email/Enquiry/Fee/Pricing: super.kumantong@gmail.com Qixi Festival (七夕节) - The Chinese Valentine's Day YIN SHAN SECT FAST & FURIOUS (7 In 1) WEALTH BRINGING TALISMAN BEWARE: GONG TAU (降头) Is Real & Deadly

Duanwu Festival (端午节) - Best Day Of The Year To Create Super Powerful Taoist Talismans Chinese Feng Shui Compass - The Luo Pan (罗盘)

The Origin, History & Different Schools Of Feng Shui (风水),Supreme Oneness Divination - Tai Yi Shen Shu (太乙神数) Six Yang Waters Technique - Da Liu Ren (大六壬)The Ancient Chinese Art of Six Yang Waters Technique The literal English translation of the above term written in Chinese Da Liu Ren 大六壬, has no coherent insights to it, let alone does it convey its full meaning to the readers at large except to a few good men from the ancient past imperial astronomical bureau in traditional China. In some colloquial Chinese dialects, such as Cantonese, it renders a cursory view of a particular scheme of things to happen in some future scenarios or provides some perspectives of some kind of clandestine plots being work in progress and is not fathomable to the audience at large except by the “chosen few” who have deeply studied and internalize its cryptic coding technique or in the words of the digital alphabets era, loosely translated as the “programming language standards” use to make “forecasting scenarios” in ancient China. If any serious attempt of expressing its full sense and contextual meaning here would probably take up more descriptive content to qualify it as an all-inclusive title which would go against the intended norm, as a matter of brevity and succinctness. Da Liu Ren 大六壬, in Short, Liu Ren as an arcane art, only a selected few could have the privilege to acquire it. Amongst those well-versed with its deep and penetrating knowledge & insights of Liu Ren ( translated in vernacular English language as Six Yang Waters Technique ) were typically members of the ancient China Astronomical Bureau. Most ancient scholars/literati in traditional China found it extremely difficult in comprehending the passages in question, the associated cryptic comments and its technical explanations are rarely helpful to the uninitiated general readers. According to ancient Chinese records as extracted from Mengxi bitan 夢溪筆談 ( Dream Brook Essays ) in about year 1086, one of its sections on symbolic numerology ( xiang shu 象数 ) contains some of the knowledge developed by staff member of the Astronomical Bureau includes three passages concerning the Liu Ren 六壬 celestial chart system/technique that comes immediately after the first passage on the Dayan 大衍 calendar method of the Kaiyuan 開元reign-period in Tang dynasty China. The first of these three passages reads :The Ancient Chinese Art of Six Yang Waters Technique The literal English translation of the above term written in Chinese Da Liu Ren 大六壬, has no coherent insights to it, let alone does it convey its full meaning to the readers at large except to a few good men from the ancient past imperial astronomical bureau in traditional China. In some colloquial Chinese dialects, such as Cantonese, it renders a cursory view of a particular scheme of things to happen in some future scenarios or provides some perspectives of some kind of clandestine plots being work in progress and is not fathomable to the audience at large except by the “chosen few” who have deeply studied and internalize its cryptic coding technique or in the words of the digital alphabets era, loosely translated as the “programming language standards” use to make “forecasting scenarios” in ancient China. If any serious attempt of expressing its full sense and contextual meaning here would probably take up more descriptive content to qualify it as an all-inclusive title which would go against the intended norm, as a matter of brevity and succinctness. Da Liu Ren 大六壬, in Short, Liu Ren as an arcane art, only a selected few could have the privilege to acquire it. Amongst those well-versed with its deep and penetrating knowledge & insights of Liu Ren ( translated in vernacular English language as Six Yang Waters Technique ) were typically members of the ancient China Astronomical Bureau. Most ancient scholars/literati in traditional China found it extremely difficult in comprehending the passages in question, the associated cryptic comments and its technical explanations are rarely helpful to the uninitiated general readers. According to ancient Chinese records as extracted from Mengxi bitan 夢溪筆談 ( Dream Brook Essays ) in about year 1086, one of its sections on symbolic numerology ( xiang shu 象数 ) contains some of the knowledge developed by staff member of the Astronomical Bureau includes three passages concerning the Liu Ren 六壬 celestial chart system/technique that comes immediately after the first passage on the Dayan 大衍 calendar method of the Kaiyuan 開元reign-period in Tang dynasty China.

 

The Aghori (Sanskrit aghora)[2] are ascetic Shaiva sadhus. The Aghori are known to engage in post-mortem rituals. They often dwell in charnel grounds, have been witnessed smearing cremation ashes on their bodies, and have been known to use bones from human corpses for crafting kapalas (skullcups which Shiva and other Hindu deities are often iconically depicted holding or using) and jewelry. Because of their practices that are contradictory to orthodox Hinduism, they are generally opposed by other Hindus.[3][4]

 

Many Aghori gurus command great reverence from rural populations as they are supposed to possess healing powers gained through their intensely eremitic rites and practices of renunciation and tápasya.

 

Contents [hide]

1Beliefs and doctrines

2History

3Adherents

4Spiritual headquarters

5Medicine

6In popular culture

7References

8Further reading

Beliefs and doctrines[edit]

Aghoris are devotees of Shiva manifested as Bhairava,[5] are monists who seek moksha from the cycle of reincarnation or saṃsāra. This freedom is a realization of the self's identity with the absolute. Because of this monistic doctrine, the Aghoris maintain that all opposites are ultimately illusory. The purpose of embracing pollution and degradation through various customs is the realization of non-duality (advaita) through transcending social taboos, attaining what is essentially an altered state of consciousness and perceiving the illusory nature of all conventional categories.

 

Aghoris are not to be confused with Shivnetras, who are also ardent devotees of Shiva but do not indulge in extreme, tamasic ritual practices. Although the Aghoris enjoy close ties with the Shivnetras, the two groups are quite distinct, Shivnetras engaging in sattvic worship.

 

Aghoris base their beliefs on two principles common to broader Shaiva beliefs: that Shiva is perfect (having omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence) and that Shiva is responsible for everything that occurs – all conditions, causes and effects. Consequently, everything that exists must be perfect and to deny the perfection of anything would be to deny the sacredness of all life in its full manifestation, as well as to deny the Supreme Being.

 

Aghoris believe that every person's soul is Shiva but is covered by aṣṭamahāpāśa "eight great nooses or bonds" - sensual pleasure, anger, greed, obsession, fear and hatred. The practices of the Aghoris are centered around the removal of these bonds. Sādhanā in cremation grounds destroys fear; sexual practices with certain riders and controls help release one from sexual desire; being naked destroys shame. On release from all the eight bonds the soul becomes sadāśiva and obtains moksha.[citation needed]

 

History[edit]

 

Aghori in Satopant.

 

An Aghori man in Badrinath smoking hashish or Cannabis from a chillum in 2011.

Although akin to the Kapalika ascetics of medieval Kashmir, as well as the Kalamukhas, with whom there may be a historical connection, the Aghoris trace their origin to Baba Keenaram, an ascetic who is said to have lived 150 years, dying during the second half of the 18th century.[6] Dattatreya the avadhuta, to whom has been attributed the esteemed nondual medieval song, the Avadhuta Gita, was a founding adi guru of the Aghor tradition according to Barrett (2008: p. 33):

 

Lord Dattatreya, an antinomian form of Shiva closely associated with the cremation ground, who appeared to Baba Keenaram atop Girnar Mountain in Gujarat. Considered to be the adi guru (ancient spiritual teacher) and founding deity of Aghor, Lord Dattatreya offered his own flesh to the young ascetic as prasād (a kind of blessing), conferring upon him the power of clairvoyance and establishing a guru-disciple relationship between them.[7]

 

Aghoris also hold sacred the Hindu deity Dattatreya as a predecessor to the Aghori Tantric tradition. Dattatreya was believed to be an incarnation of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva united in the same singular physical body. Dattatreya is revered in all schools of Tantra, which is the philosophy followed by the Aghora tradition, and he is often depicted in Hindu artwork and its holy scriptures of folk narratives, the Puranas, indulging in Aghori "left-hand" Tantric worship as his prime practice.

 

An aghori believes in getting into total darkness by all means, and then getting into light or self realizing. Though this is a different approach from other Hindu sects, they believe it to be effective. They are infamously known for their rituals that include such as shava samskara or shava sadhana (ritual worship incorporating the use of a corpse as the altar) to invoke the mother goddess in her form as Smashan Tara (Tara of the Cremation Grounds).

 

In Hindu iconography, Tara, like Kali, is one of the ten Mahavidyas (wisdom goddesses) and once invoked can bless the Aghori with supernatural powers. The most popular of the ten Mahavidyas who are worshiped by Aghoris are Dhumavati, Bagalamukhi, and Bhairavi. The male Hindu deities primarily worshiped by Aghoris for supernatural powers are manifestations of Shiva, including Mahākāla, Bhairava, Virabhadra, Avadhuti, and others.

 

Barrett (2008: p. 161) discusses the "charnel ground sādhanā" of the Aghora in both its left and right-handed proclivities and identifies it as principally cutting through attachments and aversion and foregrounding primordiality; a view uncultured, undomesticated:

 

The gurus and disciples of Aghor believe their state to be primordial and universal. They believe that all human beings are natural-born Aghori. Hari Baba has said on several occasions that human babies of all societies are without discrimination, that they will play as much in their own filth as with the toys around them. Children become progressively discriminating as they grow older and learn the culturally specific attachments and aversions of their parents. Children become increasingly aware of their mortality as they bump their heads and fall to the ground. They come to fear their mortality and then palliate this fear by finding ways to deny it altogether.[8]

 

In this sense, the Aghora sādhanā is a process of unlearning deeply internalized cultural models. When this sādhanā takes the form of charnel ground sādhanā, the Aghori faces death as a very young child, simultaneously meditating on the totality of life at its two extremes. This ideal example serves as a prototype for other Aghor practices, both left and right, in ritual and in daily life."[9]

 

Adherents[edit]

Though Aghoris are prevalent in cremation grounds across India, Nepal, and even sparsely across cremation grounds in South East Asia, the secrecy of this religious sect leaves no desire for practitioners to aspire for social recognition and notoriety. [1]

 

Spiritual headquarters[edit]

Hinglaj Mata is the Kuladevata (patron goddess) of the Aghori. The main Aghori pilgrimage centre is Kina Ram's hermitage or ashram in Ravindrapuri, Varanasi.[10] The full name of this place is Baba Keenaram Sthal, Krim-Kund. Here, Kina Ram is buried in a tomb or samadhi which is a centre of pilgrimage for Aghoris and Aghori devotees. Present head (Abbot), since 1978, of Baba Keenaram Sthal is Baba Siddharth Gautam Ram.

 

According to Devotees, Baba Siddharth Gautam Ram is reincarnation of Baba Keenaram himself. Apart from this, any cremation ground would be a holy place for an Aghori ascetic. The cremation grounds near the yoni pithas, 51 holy centers for worship of the Hindu Mother Goddess scattered across South Asia and the Himalayan terrain, are key locations preferred for performing sadhana by the Aghoris. They are also known to meditate and perform sadhana in haunted houses.

 

Medicine[edit]

Aghori practice healing through purification as a pillar of their ritual. Their patients believe the Aghoris are able to transfer pollution and health to and from patients as a form of "transformative healing", due to the believed superior state of body and mind of the Aghori.[11][verification needed]

 

In popular culture[edit]

This is an incomplete list of prominent Aghori recognition.

 

The Aghoris and their spiritual home Varanasi heavily influenced the 2016 British suspense thriller film Feast of Varanasi (2016 film) where a reclusive priest called NANA, who lives on the outskirts of Varanasi plays a significant role in film. The character was played by Indian Actor Ashwath Bhatt.

The Aghoris were referred to in the 2016 horror film The Other Side of the Door and were portrayed as a creepy tribe that seem to pop up multiple times to foreshadow otherwordly incidents.

The Aghoris were featured on the first episode of the new Ripley's Believe It Or Not television series, hosted by Dean Cain. The program highlighted the Aghori's rituals.

In Tad Williams' Otherland series, the main member of the resistance group the Circle, Nandi Paradivash, spent several years as an Aghori ascetic while preparing for the final confrontation with the Brotherhood.

In 2006 a Greek documentary by the name of "Shiva's Flesh" shows a Varanasi Aghori by name Black Boom Boom Baba and the existing faith around Aghoris in Varanasi.

The television program Wildboyz starring Steve-O and Chris Pontius featured a segment in which the duo learned about the Aghori culture firsthand. Chris and Steve-O were given the ritualistic alcohol from a skull and were covered in remains of a corpse in the form of ashes. One Aghori also demonstrated the drinking of urine. They hinted that more was filmed but censored when Steve-O remarked "Now imagine what we weren't allowed to show you."

Director Jeff Tremaine, responsible for the Wildboyz, Jackass, etc. felt the bit on the Wildboyz was so successful he wanted to re-shoot it for Jackass Number Two. This time they sent in Dave England, Chris Pontius, and Steve-O. When an Aghori started mutilating his own leg, and jumped at Dave England with the blood everyone decided it was far more than they had planned on, and wanted out. This 'bit' ended up in Jackass 2.5, as Johnny Knoxville foreshadows in the taping of the 'bit'.

On the Dirty Sanchez TV show, in a season called "Sanchez Get High", Welshmen Matthew Pritchard and Lee Dainton meet up with an Aghori ascetic, and shows Pritchard drinking alcohol from a skull.

In popular Finnish Television series Madventures protagonists Riku Rantala and Tuomas Milonoff encounter Aghoris at Varanasi and indulge rituals with them. This segment can be seen in Season 3 of the show.

In the Tamil film Naan Kadavul by Bala, Arya essays the role of an Aghori which won him 2 National awards.

In the Hindi film Raaz: The Mystery Continues by Mohit Suri, J. Brandon Hill plays the role of an American executive who becomes an Aghori.

In the block-buster Telugu film Arundhati, Sonu Sood, the antagonist is a converted Aghora.

A popular novel in Kannada Aghorigala naduve (Life with Agoris) was published in 1980. In that novel one of the popular sites for Aghoris in south India is near Chamundi Hills at Mysore, Karnataka state.

British death metal band The Rotted wrote the lyrics to the song Just Add Nauseam about the Aghori, and the cover of the album it features on Ad Nauseam features a six-armed, three-faced demonic figure loosely based on Indian artwork.

An Aghori was the main character in an episode of Adaalat, an Indian courtroom drama television series. The episode was called "Qatil Aghori", meaning "Murderer Aghori".

An Indian psy-trance DJ and Composer known as Aghori Tantric of Sonic Tantra Records plays dark psy tracks usually over 180BPM.

Swedish Black Metal band Dissection has a song "Maha Kali" which is a dark prayer to the Goddess Kali, the final stage of

Tired riders on the Tokyo subway.

below is a piece that I wrote accompanying 8 of these images in the March 2005 issue of (the now defunct) Wonkavison Magazine.

 

This is the text as i wrote it then. un-edited. (as much as I would like to go back and tinker and tighten things up, i haven't) and I'm including it here because it's inextricably linked to the images as I see them. hopefully I will write a little something to post with the last of the series. between looking back and looking forward. till' then.

 

thanks everyone for your responses, it's been a pleasure sharing these. i am quite thankful, the work shared here on flickr engages me day after day.

 

-Andrew

 

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Night falls over Denver as the sun recedes behind the Rocky Mountains slowly bleeding the light from a clear blue afternoon sky and gently suffocating it into black. The period between dusk and darkness has a molten quality to it. The French have a saying for this, “Entre chien et loup” – between the dog and the wolf. This saying does more than simply describe a time of day, it pins down a feeling, the inescapable experience of change; the hinge point between two very distinct worlds. Anyone who has stayed up all night and spent part of it outside knows the way the sky breaks from its black chains as the sunrise slowly comes to sweep away what remains of the night.

I often feel that these two times of day sum up my life completely. The opening and the closing, the coming and the going, all the greetings and goodbyes, the endless process wrapped up and expressed in the daily cycle of our earth’s revolution while orbiting the sun.

 

Life hinges on a rollercoaster as it does in the cosmos: as the cars ratchet up that first steep hill and come to a crawl oh so slowly before the peak, upon the fluid rails all the weight of potential energy gets transferred into kinetic. The crack of a whip flowing downhill. That surge of life about to bottom out three-quarters of the way into the plunge. All thoughts are removed and in their place is sheer exhilaration. All that energy bleeding in glorious fashion, through turns and loops, re-distributed and conserved, and yet all receding in degrees from that initial dive.

 

Early evening is when cars begin filing into the right lane of Sheridan Blvd. on their way to Lakeside Park, where two dollars will get you parking and admission. It doesn’t draw the crowds of bigger parks, but it always seems busy. Early evening is also when they switch on all the lights at Lakeside. Coming around the curve of I-70 towards Denver, the whole park burns like a mini-oasis in the night reflecting off the lake that spans the distance between the highway and the park. Above it all stands the park’s entrance tower, dating back to 1918 and modeled after the one at Coney Island’s fabled Luna Park.

 

These photographs are the testament of a love affair. In the summer of 2002 I took a job working in Denver for the summer and lived just six blocks away from Lakeside. Many days of mine were spent there after work, playing games of skee-ball (and throwing my first 400 game), riding the coaster, or just sitting in the Royal Grove Pavilion with my journal and soaking up the atmosphere of children’s laughter, of shrieks and screams echoing through the air; all that clink-clanking of metal wheels upon metal tracks.

 

Really, this is a two-part love affair. First, of a place where happiness, pleasure, excitement and laughter are the currency of life. The second is simply a love affair with light. Of neon wrought with an artisan’s hand; reflecting off aluminum, reflecting off the earth, the paved earth. I’ve always entered a trancelike state in the presence of neon. The unnatural brilliance of its color, and yet it’s totally natural, as chemistry taught me; the elemental gas when infused with an electrical current at different frequencies will produce innumerable variations of colored light. Some of these photos were taken in the blue of early night that I described earlier, but most were not. Nonetheless the anchor that blue provides against the falling night can be found in the warm and cool glow of neon. The light illuminates the vacuum. The same can be said for the faces. The trace movements of people caught in these time exposure photographs.

 

These are the two worlds I live in, one of laughter and the other of light. Call it nature and nurture. Nature in bricks and mortar as much as earth and sky. We complete the whole. Our lives’ work gives sound to trees that fall alone in the forest. All we can hope for is the transference of some portion of that initial energy; some kind of truth, perceived and internalized, which is then expressed and eternalized in the passing of future moments.

 

Home is a state of mind and as we move through this world we must not forget the people and places which make us feel at home. Lakeside is one of those places to me. It is a sweet and bitter memory, if only because it is two thousand miles away, but I still dream of it as it exists in my memory, as it has existed before I ever came into this world. I was lucky enough to cross paths with it when I did. To take the train ride around the lake on those cars which were once used in St. Louis’s 1904 Worlds Exposition. Sneaking a kiss from the girl by my side, any girl, it wouldn’t have mattered. The place was so inexplicably perfect on a cool summer night that you felt in love just being there alone. A witness to the mystery, half-explained in the moment.

 

With these pictures, the nights seem alive once again. Frozen in that moment, of a mother holding her child as he reaches towards the pressed quarter machine. Of so many Mexican families from the surrounding neighborhoods, packing up their vans on a Friday night and making Lakeside their destination. All the little kids running around and bumping into you, never breaking stride, taking the tickets you leave behind at the skee-ball machine. The brooding teenage angst traveling in groups of three, eyeing up everyone they pass with a snicker and smirk, but somehow you remember yourself as they are and you keep going. The bored workers at the funnel cake stand on the far end of the park where no one visited. They always shut it down early, especially when you were hungry for one. Of doubling up in the tight car of the wild mouse ride which surely wasn’t made with your six-foot and two-twenty frame in mind. Of that early morning captured on other rolls of film, where you got there at seven a.m. with the groundskeepers coming to clean up from the night before. Shooting the rides in the early morning light; the sun reflecting off of the calm water of the lake into the auto skooter pavilion and cascading across the horses of the carousel. Their wooden faces cracked and weathered, needing paint, needing lacquer. Of peering up at the star ride sitting there abandoned and out of use, after seeing it in a postcard on eBay dated 1922; wondering how this hulking wheel of metal sticking into the sky is still standing here eighty years later. Of sitting at the back of the Eatway Inn with the owner and her daughter (who’s your age) two hours after closing, drinking black coffee, listening to stories, asking questions. The history of the park, of the rides. What remains? What was lost? How the owner’s father who was the Coca-Cola salesman for the entire Denver area before buying Lakeside in the early twenties took the old marble topped bar from Union Station in downtown and had it installed in the back of the cafeteria. The same counter which stands today.

 

Somehow these memories provide an elixir. They continue to inform and educate me long after their moment has passed. But perhaps the moment hasn’t passed. Perhaps this is the moment, my remembering, these photos, the eye and the mind of the reader picking up this magazine, finding their own meaning where even I can’t see.

 

Yes, I’d like that.

 

Also, thinking of giving up on Furfur. I like the idea of her, but I don't LOVE her because let's face it, I just prefer male dolls. And having her around isn't really solving whatever shit I've internalized that makes me dislike girl characters. XD; So I may finally cave and just make a new character for this head. Furfur the character will still exist, just not in Expensive Yet Unenjoyed Form. >____>

Infections caused by methicillin-resistant strains of S. aureus (MRSA) range from those of the

skin and surgical sites, infections relating to catheters and prosthetic implants, to bacteremia,

endocarditis and pneumonia. In this picture, Staphylococcus strains isolated from human patients were analysed for adherence and internalization in human epithelial cellsthe in order to better

understand their mechanisms of pathogenicity. Two cells (green) are in the process of epithelial cell (red) invasion via a zipper-like mechanism.

 

Courtesy of Dr. JOSE RAMOS VIVAS , IDIVAL

 

Image Details

Instrument used: Inspect

Magnification: 15,000

Voltage: 25

Spot: 3.0

Working Distance: 8.9

 

olio su masonite trattata 50 x 70.

 

Da Anna, che ringrazio!

"Con questo quadro, Cici Peis, esprime in pittura le testimonianze della sua terra, la quale conserva tracce di un passato lontano di insediamenti di antiche civiltà rupestri e paesaggi da contemplare.

L'olivastro indigeno della Sardegna e l'ulivo originario del Mediterraneo Orientale.

E' molto longevo ed ha un' eccezionale capacità di riprodursi .

Attraverso un linguaggio pittorico semplice, viene emulato il fascino dei luoghi dove si presuma è cresciuto .

Qui non si fa unicamente interprete del paesaggio, ma percepisce e contempla la bellezza dei luoghi per trasformarla in una personalissima poetica pittorica con la quale traccia il percorso che conduce alla sua anima. Egli in questo modo diviene interprete di una forma figurativa capace di integrare componenti descrittivi ad elementi più ampiamente interpretativi.

Essa si rivela in realtà profonda e romantica come si evince in questo dipinto l’albero di ulivo, simbolo di vita, pace, purezza, dolcezza e semplicità.

Il suo paese viene guardato per interiorizzarlo nel suo mondo che è di volta in volta forte e fragile, terso ed ombroso così come lo è la natura umana."

 

With this background in painting,Cici Peis, expresses the testimony of his land, which preserves traces of a distant past of settlements of ancient civilizations and rock scenery to behold.

The olive-skinned native of Sardinia and olives originating from the eastern Mediterranean.

It 's very long-lived and has an' exceptional ability to reproduce.

Through a simple pictorial language, is emulated by the charm of the places where it is alleged he grew up.

Here you not only interpreter of the landscape, but perceives and contemplates the beauty of the area to make it a very personal poetic painting with which traces the path that leads to his soul. He thus becomes the interpreter of a figurative form that integrates components of descriptive elements to further interpretation.

It turns out to be really deep and romantic as can be seen in this painting the olive tree, symbol of life, peace, purity, sweetness and simplicity.

His country is looked for in his world that is internalized from time to time fragile and strong, clear and shady as it is human nature.

 

Con este telón de fondo en la pintura,Cici Peis, expresa el testimonio de su tierra, que conserva las huellas de un pasado lejano de los asentamientos de las civilizaciones antiguas y el paisaje de roca a la vista.

El nativo de oliva de piel de Cerdeña y de las aceitunas procedentes del Mediterráneo oriental.

Es 's muy larga duración y tiene una "capacidad excepcional para reproducirse.

A través de un lenguaje pictórico sencillo, es emulado por el encanto de los lugares donde se alega que creció.

Aquí no sólo intérprete del paisaje, sino que percibe y contempla la belleza de la zona para que sea una pintura poética muy personal con el que traza el camino que conduce a su alma. Él se convierte así en el intérprete de una forma figurativa, que integra componentes de elementos descriptivos de una interpretación posterior.

Resulta ser un proceso más profundo y romántico como puede verse en este cuadro el olivo, símbolo de la vida, la paz, pureza, dulzura y sencillez.

Su país se busca en su mundo que se interioriza de tiempo en tiempo frágil y fuerte, clara y con sombra, ya que es la naturaleza humana.

 

Desaturation Theory- This photograph, which I took while on a helicopter tour of Seattle on my last day of vacation, serves as an example of the desaturation theory. I reduced some of the color energy in this photograph so the viewer would be able to internalize the photograph more effectively. To me, the desaturation of this photo reflects the sad feelings I had about leaving Seattle.

"Um Obscurus é desenvolvido em condições muito específicas: trauma associado com o uso de magia, ódio internalizado da própria magia e uma tentativa consciente de suprimí-la."

—J.K. Rowling

 

"An Obscurus is developed under very specific conditions: trauma associated with the use of magic, internalized hatred of one’s own magic and a conscious attempt to suppress it."

—J.K. Rowling

 

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A couple years ago, I became very depressed. I was internalizing my issues and my health began to suffer. Stress is a killer, fact. Fast forward to 2021, I am in a great place emotionally and mentally. Still, I am very mindful of trigger thus, I now fortify myself with the help of herbs. My favourites are mugwort for its calming effect on the brain. I love peppermint as my morning pick me up, JUNIPER and Rosehip tea. This is how I love and maintain self.

The internet in general, and "crafting mommy" type blogs specifically (which I've been exposed to a bit too much recently, I guess I need a break) have taught me to hate the word "modest". It's touted as a catch-all excuse for slut-shaming, body-shaming, as well as internalized and non-internalized misogyny. Yes, I'm talking about "teaching little girls" that nudity is shameful. That their bodies and other women's bodies are OFFENSIVE and need to be covered up. That a woman's body is innately sexual, an object for others to judge and gawk at- in other words that it belongs not to herself but to everybody. That nudity is wrong and scary, wearing short skirts and showing cleavage means you "don't respect yourself" (an excellent article on this whole idea here: jezebel.com/female-purity-is-bullshit-493278191 ) and later on that sex is scary and wrong and bad and don't ever ever have sex okay (let's not kid ourselves we all know how abstinence only education has worked out for America so far).

It's really no wonder that in our shitty patriarchal society many men are terrified of womens' bodies and many women hate it and hate themselves. Mommies teach them this- right from infancy.

 

PS put sharpie and/or nail polish on things your babby PROBABLY chews on with regularity. what could possibly go wrong? next up in mommy crafts: DIY stomach pumping (also great for weight loss)

Self Portrait. Thepain, the burning emotions, longing and yearning to find a place among the world after so many years of crippling isolation from domestic violence, control, gaslighting from a husband with Narcissistic Personality disorder. #dvawareness

Over the land there lies a long shadow,

westward reaching wings of darkness.

The Tower trembles; to the tombs of kings

doom approaches. The Dead awaken;

for the hour is come for the oathbreakers:

at the Stone of Erech they shall stand again

and hear there a horn in the hills ringing.

Whose shall the horn be? Who shall call them

from the grey twilight, the forgotten people?

The heir of him to whom the oath they swore.

From the North shall he come,need shall drive him:

he shall pass the Door to the Paths of the Dead.

 

J.R.R. Tolkien.

 

I get it that most people will not understand the image here. It is blurry. I have a similar image that I had printed 20X30 that when people see it in my home ask: "What is that?" I'm not sure if I can explain why I like images like this, but from the first time I ever saw such an image, I seek them out in my travels. I also don't believe most people will understand the quote above, an obscure passage from a book of fantasy.

 

For a long time I have internalized things. Why? I know, but can I express it? Should I express it? None-the-less when I see a place like this dark path up to the top of Round Bald I slip into a world I created internally long ago in my youth. The present and the past, the literal and the imaginative awaken in my mind; no longer am I in the present, but a mixture of real and imaginary.

 

Thus when I blur the image, I blur reality from my creation. I am not presenting a reproduction, but a representation of what I feel in those times and places.

This was done all in one sitting. Last night I experienced something wonderful but I didn't have anyone to share it with. I felt very alone, frustrated & disappointed. I am so tired of internalizing everything. I could have worked on this all night but had to stop because my right hand was cramping up. The scan came out very light so I punched up the color in PS using the color burn tool at one of my friends suggestions. Prismacolor markers and a black Alvin Penstix marker.

 

PS - if anyone wonders why my mandala are always crooked, it's because I need new glasses and when I draw, I take them off and hold the paper close to my face. I'm getting a new prescription next week and hopefully I will be able to see to draw on a table.

writingwithcolor: Before you say, Write your own! – let me tell you that we do. But this page is a resource for writers, so we thought writers might want to know what kinds of representation would make us more likely to get excited about your book. We don’t speak for everyone in our demographic, just ourselves, but we hope this post gives you some cool writing ideas. Note: This is additional info writers can keep in mind when writing characters of those backgrounds. We believe it’s a good thing to ask the people you’re including what they’d like to see. Actually hearing from misrepresented and underrepresented people and asking us what we’d like to see of ourselves is much better than unthinkingly tossing characters into tired tropes or reinforcing stereotypes that do us harm. Colette (Black): More Black people doing shit! Going on adventures, riding dragons, being magical! More Black characters in prominent roles in fantasy + sci-fi and historical settings and not always and only as slavess. These stories are important, but they’re NOT our only stories. We were kings and queens too. Let us wear the fancy dresses for a change instead of the chains, damn it! More Black girls being portrayed as lovely and treasured and worth protecting. More Black girls finding love. More Black girls in general who aren’t relegated to arc-less, cliche “Sassy best friends” and “strong black women.” More positive, dynamic roles of Black men (fathers, brothers, boys…) More positive, dynamic family roles of Black families as a whole, families that are loving and supportive and there. More Black people from all socioeconomic classes. More Black characters that don’t rely on the stereotypes that the media is currently going full force to reinforce. Yasmin (Arab, Turkish): More Arabs who aren’t token characters. I want to see Arabs normalised in literature. Arab teenagers in high school, Arab young adults behind on their taxes, Arab dads who cook amazing food, Arab moms who refuse to soften their tongue for others. Arabs who aren’t mystical fantasy creatures from another planet. Arabs in YAs and in dramas and nonfiction and comedies and children’s books. We are human just like everyone else, and I’d like to see that reflected in literature. Often we are boxed into very specific genres of literature and made to feel ostracised from the rest. Let’s see some change! Alice (Black, biracial): I’m hoping for more Black and biracial (mixed with Black) leading characters in all genres, but mainly in SF/F who fall outside of the stereotypes. Characters I can relate to who love, cry and fight for their ideals and dreams. It would be great if their race would play an active role in their identities (I don’t mean plot-related). Some intersectionality with sexuality and disability is also sorely missed, without it becoming a tragedy or it being seen as a character flaw. More mixed race characters who aren’t mixed with some kind of monster, fictional race or different species. Dystopias about problems usually faced by poc having actual poc protags, without all the racial ambiguity which always gets whitewashed. Shira (Jewish): More Jewish characters who feel positively about their Judaism and don’t carry it around as a burden or embarrassment. While the latter is definitely a real part of our experience due to anti-Semitism and all we’ve been through as a people, the fact that it overrepresents us in fiction is also due to anti-Semitism, even internalized. (Basically, Jews who don’t hate Judaism!) More brave, heroic characters who are openly Jewish instead of being inspired by the Jewish experience and created by Jews (like Superman) or played by Jews (Captain Kirk) but still not actually Jewish. I’m tired of always being Tolkien’s Dwarves; I’d like a chance to play Bard, Bilbo, or even Gandalf’s role in that kind of story. Elaney (Mexican): While we’re discussing what sort of representation we’d like to see, I am using the word “latinista” and I want to quickly address that since you may have not seen it before: “-ista” is a genderless suffix denoting someone is from an area (“Nortista”, a northerner), or who practices a belief (“Calvinista”, a calvinist), or a professsion (you’ve heard ‘barista’). I find it more intuitively pronounceable than “latinx” and also more friendly to Spanish, French, and Portugueze pronunciation (and thus more appropriate), personally, so I invite you to consider it as an alternative. If you don’t like it, well, at least I showed you. 1. I want legal Latinista immigrants. The darker your skin is down here, the more likely you are to be assumed to be illegal by your peers, and I want media to dilute this assumption so many have of us. 2. I want Latinistas who are well educated, not just smart, and I mean formally educated, with college degrees, professional skillsets, and trained expertise. Being in fields which do not require a formal degree is no less legitimate of a lifestyle than being in a field which requires a PhD, but I want you to consider when casting your Latinista character that We, as a people, are assumed to be little more than the drop-out and the janitor by our peers, and People Of Color in scientific fields are mistaken as assistant staff rather than the scientists that they are. I want media to dilute this assumption. 3. I want Latnistas who are not marketed as “Latin American” but as their actual country of origin, because “Latin America” is a conglomerate of individual entities with their own, distinct cultures and if you are, for example, Cuban, then Mexican characters may appeal to you but they don’t have the same relatability as fellow Cuban characters. Wouldn’t you be a little more interested, too, to pick up a book that’s about a character who lives where you do rather than about a character who lives somewhere in general? 4. I want rich or well-to-do Latinistas. Looking back, I notice that several of the character concepts that have been bounced off of us with regards to Latinista characters incorporate poverty despite an astronomical and diligent work ethic. I don’t think this is on purpose but I do think that it is internalized because so often the stereotype of us is poor and uneducated in a vicious cycle (uneducated because we’re poor, poor because we’re uneducated) and I think that there should be more media to dilute this. Lastly, I personally do not want these tropes to be explored and subverted by people, I want them to be avoided entirely because I feel that normalizing positive representation rather than commenting on negative representation is far more beneficial and validating to the people these works are supposed to help and represent. We don’t need sympathy, we need empathy! Jess (Chinese, Taiwanese): Stories that don’t center around the identity of being Chinese-American. That doesn’t mean “erase any references to protag’s Chinese identity” but I’d definitely like stories that have us go on awesome adventures every now and then and don’t have the Chinese character being all “I AM CHINESE” from beginning to end. Please round out the Chinese migrant parents instead of keeping them as strict and/or traditional. PLEASE. I could go into how my parents and the Chinese aunties and uncles here are so awesome, seriously, and we need more older Chinese migrant characters who are awesome and supportive and just people. Also! EAST ASIAN GIRLS WHO AREN’T SKINNY AND/OR PETITE. Please. PLEEEEEASE. And more stories about Taiwanese and Chinese folks who aren’t in bicoastal regions (the Midwest, the Plains, etc.) WE EXIST. More Chinese-Americans who aren’t necessarily Christian. Maybe it’s because of the books I’ve wound up reading, but there seems to be this narrative of Chinese migrants joining churches and converting when they’re in the US. This doesn’t mean I want less Chinese-American Christians in fiction, mind: I’d also just like to see more Chinese families in the US who are Buddhist or who still keep up with the traditions they learned from their homelands, like me, without having it considered in the narrative as ~old fashioned~ or ~ancient~ or ~mystical~. Tangentially, when writing non-Christian Chinese families, I’d rather people keep the assumption of Communism being the underlying reason why far, far away. I have been asked in the past if Communism was why my family didn’t go to church, and needless to say, it’s really, really offensive. Stella (Korean): I’d love to see more Korean (and Asian-American) characters that don’t perpetuate the super-overachieving, stressed-out, only-cares-about-succeeding Asian stereotype. These Koreans exist (I would know; I went to school with quite a few of them) but they don’t represent all of us. I want to see more Korean characters solving mysteries, saving the world and having fun. More Koreans that aren’t pale, petite, and a size 2. Not all of us have perfect skin or straight black hair or monolids. And some of us love our short legs, round faces and small eyes! And fewer stoic&strict Korean parents, please. So many of us grew up with loud, wacky, so-embarrassing-but-endearing parents! Recently, there’s been quite a few novels with Korean American female protags (particularly in the YA section) that deal with being in high school, dealing with strict parents, getting into college, and boys. Lots of boys! I think it’s awesome that there are more books with KA protags, and I’m so so so glad they’re out there. But I also recognize that those are definitely not the kind of books I would have read as a teenager, and it’s not the kind of book I want to read now. I want to see more Korean characters that are queer, trans, ace, bisexual. More Korean characters that are disabled or autistic or have mental illnesses. More Korean characters in fantasy, SFF, mystery! Heck, space operas and steampunk Westerns. I want it all! :DDDD A lot of Korean-Americans struggle with their identity. It’s hard to balance things sometimes! But I’d love to see more stories that *aren’t* overtly about Korean-Americans dealing with their racial identity or sexual orientation, but stories about Koreans saving princesses and slaying trolls and commandeering spaceships. I want a plot that doesn’t center on Korean-American identity, but on a Korean-American character discovering themselves. White characters get to do it all the time; I want Korean characters to have a turn. And honestly, I just want to see more Asians in media, period. South Asians, Southeast Asians, Central Asians! Thai, Hmong, Tibetan, Filipino, Vietnamese characters. Indian characters! There’s so much diversity in Asia and among Asian diaspora. I want us to be more than just ~~mystical~~ characters with ancient wisdom and a generic Asian accent. We’ve got boundless oceans of stories within ourselves and our communities, and I can’t wait for them to be told. I would also love to see more multiethnic Asian characters that are *not* half white. It seems to be the default mixed-race Asian character: East Asian and white. But so many of my friends have multiethnic backgrounds like Chinese/Persian, Thai/Chinese or Korean/Mexican. I have Korean friends who grew up in places like Brazil, Singapore and Russia. Did you know that the country with the largest population of Koreans (outside of Korea) is actually China? And while I’m at it, I’d love to see more well-translated works from Asia in the US. Like, how awesome would it be to have more science fiction, fantasy, and historical novels from Asia that are easily accessible in English? SUPER awesome!! Kaye (Muslim): I am so hungry for Muslim representation, because there is so little of it. You can see one or two (YA) titles I currently think or have heard are good representation on the shelves - notably, Aisha Saeed’s Written in the Stars - on an AMA I did the other day for /r/YAwriters. However, I’d just love to see stories where Muslim characters go on adventures like everyone else! I’ve been saying recently that I’d LOVE to see a cozy mystery. Or a series of Muslim historical romances a la Georgette Heyer (there are a LOT of Muslim girls who love romances, and I’m just starting to get into the genre myself!). I’d love to see Muslim middle grade readers get girls who find secret passages, solve mysteries, tumble through the neighborhood with their dozen or so cousins. I have a lot of cousins and thus I always have a soft spot for cousins. And siblings. I’m looking forward to Scarlett Undercover by Jennifer Latham because Jen is writing Scarlett as a detective a la Veronica Mars. And she’s Somali-American. How cool is that?! Let’s see some classic road trip YA with Muslims. Let’s see comedies with quirky characters - for instance, I know one or two tween Muslim girls who are driving their moms MAD by suddenly turning vegetarian and refusing to touch the celebratory biryani at family Eid parties, who join relevant societies at their schools and start preaching to their extended families about the benefits of going vegetarian and all the funny little interactions that are involved with that. Let’s have a story with some wise-cracking African American Muslim girls. My cousin is a niqaabi who loves YA and hates that she doesn’t see herself in it. Let’s see some stories with teen niqaabis! Let’s explore the full, joyful spectrum of diversity in Islam. Let’s have stories where we talk about how one word in Bengali is totally different in another language, and one friend is hilariously horrified and the other friend doesn’t know what he/she said. (True story.) I want to see joy. I want to see happiness. Being a woman of color and a hijaabi often means facing so many daily, disheartening scenarios and prejudice and hatefulness. So many of the suggested tropes recently in the inbox focus on trying to force Muslim characters into beastly or haraam or just sad and stereotypical scenarios. I know that writers are better and have bigger imaginations than that. You want angst? Push aside the cold, unkind, abusive Muslim parents trope. Let’s talk about the Muslim girls I know who have struggled with eating disorders. Let’s talk about Islamophobia and how that is a REAL, horrible experience that Muslim kids have to fear and combat every day. Let’s approach contemporary angst without the glasses of the Western gaze and assumptions about people of the Islamic faith on. We can have Muslim novels that focus on growing pains like Sarah Dessen and Judy Blume (and speaking of that, my “auntie” who used to teach in a madrasah used to press Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret on the Muslim girls she knew because of how Margaret approached growing up and had concerns about her faith and her relationships, etc.) Having Shia friends, I would like to see more stories that aren’t just assumed to be Sunni. How about stories about Su-Shi kids, too? (Sunni and Shia - the name always surprises me!) Let’s see some Muslim-Jewish friendships. Because they exist. And of course, I always, always hunger for Muslim voices first. Because it’s so important to have these voices there, from the source, and some of the issues with answering here at WWC is how people seem to be approaching certain tropes that a Muslim writer could explore with the nuance and lived experience of their faith behind it.

I think there's a part of every builder that wants to create a generic frame that acts as a foundation for building interesting things. I've been trying for a while and I think I finally accomplished it. I've internalized a lot of techniques from different builders with this design. Vitor Faria, and Phayze81 are just two of them.

 

Blog post.

Brickshelf gallery.

Mobile Frame Hangar forum discussion topic.

Toys'N'Bricks forum discussion topic.

Chitra, also spelled as Citra, is an Indian genre of art that includes painting, sketch and any art form of delineation. The earliest mention of the term Chitra in the context of painting or picture is found in some of the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism and Pali texts of Buddhism

 

NOMENCLATURE

Chitra (IAST: Citra, चित्र) is a Sanskrit word that appears in the Vedic texts such as hymns 1.71.1 and 6.65.2 of the Rigveda. There, and other texts such as Vajasaneyi Samhita, Taittiriya Samhita, Satapatha Brahmana and Tandya Brahmana, Chitra means "excellent, clear, bright, colored, anything brightly colored that strikes the eye, brilliantly ornamented, extraordinary that evokes wonder". In the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa, it means "picture, sktech, dilineation", and is presented as a genre of kala (arts). Many texts generally dated to the post-4th-century BCE period, use the term Chitra in the sense of painting, and Chitrakara as a painter. For example, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in verse 3.2.21 of his Astadhyayi highlights the word chitrakara in this sense. Halls and public spaces to display paintings are called chitrasalas, and the earliest known mention of these are found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

 

A few Indian regional texts such as Kasyapa silpa refer to painting by others words. For example, abhasa – which literally means "semblance, shining forth", is used in Kasyapa-shilpa to mean as a broader category of painting, of which chitra is one of three types. The verses in section 4.4 of the Kasyapa-silpa state that there are three types of images – those which are immovable (walls, floor, terracota, stucco), movable, and those which are both movable-immovable (stone, wood, gems).[5] In each of these three, states Kasyapa-shipa, are three classes of expression – ardhacitra, citra, and citra-abhasa. Ardhacitra is an art form where a high relief is combined with painting and parts of the body is not seen (it appears to be emerging out of the canvas). The Citra is the form of picture artwork where the whole is represented with or without integrating a relief. Citrabhasha is the form where an image is represented on a canvas or wall with colors (painting). However, states Commaraswamy, the word Abhasa has other meanings depending on the context. For example, in Hindu texts on philosophy, it implies the "field of objective experience" in the sense of the intellectual image internalized by a person during a reading of a subject (such as an epic, tale or fiction), or one during a meditative spiritual experience.

 

In some Buddhist and Hindu texts on methods to prepare a manuscript (palm leaf) or a composition on a cloth, the terms lekhya and alekhya are also used in the context of a chitra. More specifically, alekhya is the space left while writing a manuscript leaf or cloth, where the artist aims to add a picture or painting to illustrate the text.

 

HISTORY

The earliest explicit reference to painting in an Indian text is found in verse 4.2 of the Maitri Upanishad where it uses the phrase citrabhittir or "like a painted wall". The Indian art of painting is also mention in a number of Buddhist Pali suttas, but with the modified spelling of Citta. This term is found in the context of either a painting, or painter, or painted-hall (citta-gara) in Majjhima Nikaya 1.127, Samyutta Nikaya 2.101 and 3.152, Vinaya 4.289 and others. Among the Jain texts, it is mentioned in Book 2 of the Acaranga Sutra as it explains that Jaina monk should not indulge in the pleasures of watching a painting.

 

The Kamasutra, broadly accepted to have been complete by about the 4th-century CE, recommends that the young man should surprise the girl he courts with gifts of color boxes and painted scrolls. The Viddhasalabhanjika – another Hindu kama- and kavya–text uses chitra-simile in verse 1.16, as "pictures painted by the god of love, with the brush of the mind and the canvas of the heart".

 

The nature of a chitra (painting), how the viewer's mind projects a two dimensional artwork into a three dimensional representation, is used by Asanga in Mahayana Sutralamkara – a 3rd to 5th-century Sanskrit text of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, to explain "non-existent imagination" as follows:

 

Just as in a picture painted according to rules, there are neither projections nor depressions and yet we see it in three dimensions, so in the non-existent imagination there is no phenomenal differentiation, and yet we behold it.

— Mahayana Sutralamkara 13.7, Translated in French by Sylvain Levi

 

According to Yoko Taniguchi and Michiyo Mori, the art of painting the caves at the c. 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan site in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban Muslims in the late 1990s, were likely introduced to this region from India along with the literature on early Buddhism.

 

TEXTS

There are many important dedicated Indian treatises on chitra. Some of these are chapters within a larger encyclopedia-like text. These include:

 

Chitrasutras, chapters 35–43 within the Hindu text Vishnudharmottara Purana (the standard, and oft referred to text in the Indian tradition)

Chitralaksana of Nagnajit (a classic on classical painting, 5th-century CE or earlier making it the oldest known text on Indian painting; but the Sanskrit version has been lost, only version available is in Tibet and it states that it is a translation of a Sanskrit text)

Samarangana Sutradhara (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Aparajitaprccha (mostly architecture treatise, contains a large section on paintings)

Manasollasa (an encyclopedia, contains chapters on paintings)

Abhilashitartha chinatamani

Sivatatva ratnakara

Chitra Kaladruma

Silpa ratna

Narada silpa

Sarasvati silpa

Prajapati silpa

Kasyapa silpa

 

These and other texts on chitra not only discuss the theory and practice of painting, some of them include discussions on how to become a painter, the diversity and the impact of a chitra on viewers, of aesthetics, how the art of painting relates to other arts (kala), methods of preparing the canvas or wall, methods and recipes to make color pigments. For example, the 10th-century Chitra Kaladruma presents recipe for making red color paint from the resin of lac insects. Other colors for the historic frescoes found in India, such as those in the Ajanta Caves, were obtained from nature. They mention earthy and mineral (inorganic) colorants such as yellow and red ochre, orpigment, green celadonite and ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli). The use of organic colorants prepared per a recipe in these texts have been confirmed through residue analysis and modern chromatographic techniques.

 

THEORY

The Indian concepts of painting are described in a range of texts called the shilpa shastras. These typically begin by attributing this art to divine sources such as Vishvakarma and ancient rishis (sages) such as Narayana and Nagnajit, weaving some mythology, highlighting chitra as a means to express ideas and beauty along with other universal aspects, then proceed to discuss the theory and practice of painting, sketching and other related arts. Manuscripts of many these texts are found in India, while some are known to be lost but are found outside India such as in Tibet and Nepal. Among these are the Citrasutras in the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana manuscripts discovered in India, and the Citralaksana manuscript discovered in Tibet (lost in India). This theory include early Indian ideas on how to prepare a canvas or substrate, measurement, proportion, stance, color, shade, projection, the painting's interaction with light, the viewer, how to captivate the mind, and other ideas.

 

According to the historic Indian tradition, a successful and impactful painting and painter requires a knowledge of the subject – either mythology or real life, as well as a keen sense of observation and knowledge of nature, human behavior, dance, music, song and other arts. For example, section 3.2 of Visnudharmottara Purana discusses these requirements and the contextual knowledge needed in chitra and the artist who produces it. The Chitrasutras in the Vishnudharmottara Purana state that the sculpture and painting arts are related, with the phrase "as in Natya, so in Citra". This relationship links them in rasa (aesthetics) and as forms of expression.

 

THE PAINTING

A chitra is a form of expression and communication. According to Aparajitaprccha – a 12th-century text on arts and architecture, just like the water reflects the moon, a chitra reflects the world. It is a rupa (form) of how the painter sees or what the painter wants the viewer to observe or feel or experience.

 

A good painting is one that is alive, breathing, draws in and affects the viewer. It captivates the minds of viewers, despite their diversity. Installed in a sala (hall or room), it enlivens the space.

 

The ornaments of a painting are its lines, shading, decoration and colors, states the 6th-century Visnudharmottara Purana. It states that there are eight gunas (merits, features) of a chitra that the artist must focus on: posture; proportion; the use of the plumb line; charm; detail (how much and where); verisimilitude; kshaya (loss, foreshortening) and; vrddhi (gain). Among the dosas (demerits, faults) of a painting and related arts, states Chitrasutra, are lines that are weak or thick, absence of variety, errors in scale (oversized eyes, lips, cheeks), inconsistency across the canvas, deviations from the rules of proportion, improper posture or sentiment, and non-merging of colors.

 

LIMBS OF THE PAINTING

Two historical sets called "chitra anga", or "limbs of painting" are found in Indian texts. According to the Samarangana Sutradhara – an 11th-century Sanskrit text on Hindu architecture and arts, a painting has eight limbs:

 

Vartika – manufacture of brushes

Bhumibandhana – preparation of base, plaster, canvas

Rekhakarma – sketching

Varnakarma – coloring

Vartanakarma – shading

lekhakarana – outlining

Dvikakarma – second and final lining

Lepyakarma – final coating

 

According to Yashodhara's Jayamangala, a Sanskrit commentary on Kamasutra, there are sadanga (six limbs)[note 5] in the art of alekhyam and chitra (drawing and painting):

 

Rupa-bhedah, or form distinction; this requires a knowledge of characteristic marks, diversity, manifested forms that distinguish states of something in the same genus/class

Pramanani, or measure; requires knowledge of measurement and proportion rules (talamana)

Bhava yojanam, or emotion and its joining with other parts of the painting; requires understanding and representing the mood of the subject

Lavanya yojanam, or rasa, charm; requires understanding and representing the inner qualities of the subject

Sadrsyam, or resemblance; requires knowledge of visual correspondence across the canvas

Varnika-bhanga or color-pigment-analysis; requires knowledge how colors distribute on the canvas and how they visually impact the viewer.

 

These six limbs are arranged stylistically in two ways. First as a set of compound (Rupa-bhedah and Varnika-bhanda), a set of joining (middle two yojnam), and a set of single words (Pramanani and Sadrsyam). Second, states Victor Mair, the six limbs in this Hindu text are paired in a set of differentiation skills (first two), then a pair of aesthetic skills, and finally a pair of technical skills. These limbs parallel the 12th-century Six principles of Chinese painting of Xie He. {refn|group=note|The Hua Chi of Teng Ch'un, a 12th-century Chinese text, mentions the Buddhist temple of Nalanda with frescoes about the Buddha painted inside. It states that the Indian Buddhas look different from those painted by Chinese, as the Indian paintings have Buddha with larger eyes, their ears are curiously stretched and the Buddhas have their right shoulder bare. It then states that the artists first make a drawing of the picture, then paint a vermilion or gold colored base. It also mentions the use of ox-glue and a gum produced from peach trees and willow juice, with the artists preferring the latter. According to Coomaraswamy, the ox-glue in the Indian context mentioned in the Chinese text is probably the same as the recipe found in the Sanskrit text Silparatna, one where the base medium is produced from boiling buffalo skin in milk, followed by drying and blending process.

 

The six limbs in Jayamangala likely reflect the earliest and more established Hindu tradition for chitra. This is supported by the Chitrasutras found in the Vishnudharmottara Purana. They explicitly mention pramanani and lavanya as key elements of a painting, as well as discuss the other four of the six limbs in other sutras. The Chitrasutra chapters are likely from about the 4th or 5th-century. Numerous other Indian texts touch upon the elements or aspects of a chitra. For example, the Aparajitaprccha states that the essential elements of a painting are: citrabhumi (background), the rekha (lines, sketch), the varna (color), the vartana (shading), the bhusana (decoration) and the rasa (aesthetic experience).

 

THE PAINTER

The painter (chitrakara, rupakara) must master the fundamentals of measurement and proportions, state the historic chitra texts of India. According to these historic texts, the expert painter masters the skills in measurement, characteristics of subjects, attributes, form, relative proportion, ornament and beauty, states Isabella Nardi – a scholar known for her studies on chitra text and traditions of India. According to the Chitrasutras, a skilled painter needs practice, and is one who is able to paint neck, hands, feet, ears of living beings without ornamentation, as well as paint water waves, flames, smoke, and garments as they get affected by the speed of wind. He paints all types of scenes, ranging from dharma, artha and kama. A painter observes, then remembers, repeating this process till his memory has all the details he needs to paint, states Silparatna. According to Sivatattva Ratnakara, he is well versed in sketching, astute with measurements, skilled in outlining (hastalekha), competent with colors, and ready to diligently mix and combine colors to create his chitra. The painter is a creative person, with an inner sense of rasa (aesthetics).

 

THE VIEWER

The painter should consider the diversity of viewers, states the Indian tradition of chitra. The experts and critics with much experience with paintings study the lines, shading and aesthetics, the uninitiated visitors and children enjoy the vibrancy of colors, while women tend to be attracted to the ornamentation of form and the emotions. A successful painter tends to captivate a variety of minds. A painter should remember that the visual and aesthetic impact of a painting triggers different responses in different audiences.

 

The Silparatna – a Sanskrit text on the arts, states that the painting should reflect its intended place and purpose. A theme suitable for a palace or gateway is different from that in a temple or the walls of a home. Scenes of wars, misery, death and suffering are not suitable paintings within homes, but these can be important in a chitrasala (museum with paintings). Auspicious paintings with beautiful colors such as those that cheer and enliven a room are better for homes, states Silparatna.

 

PRACITICE

According to the art historian Percy Brown, the painting tradition in India is ancient and the persuasive evidence are the oldest known murals at the Jogimara caves. The mention of chitra and related terms in the pre-Buddhist Vedic era texts, the chitra tradition is much older. It is very likely, states Brown, the pre-Buddhist structures had paintings in them. However, the primary building material in ancient India was wood, the colors were organic materials and natural pigments, which when combined with the tropical weather in India would naturally cause the painting to fade, damage and degrade over the centuries. It is not surprising, therefore, that sample paintings and historic evidence for chitra practice are unusual. The few notable surviving examples of chitra are found hidden in caves, where they would be naturally preserved a bit better, longer and would be somewhat protected from the destructive effects of wind, dust, water and biological processes.

Some notable, major surviving examples of historic paintings include:

 

Murals at Jogimara cave (eight panels of murals, with a Brahmi inscription, 2nd or 1st century BCE, Hindu), oldest known ceiling paintings in India in remote Ramgarh hills of northern Chhattisgarh, below on wall of this cave is a Brahmi inscription in Magadhi language about a girl named Devadasi and a boy named Devadina (either they were lovers and wrote a love-graffiti per one translation, or they were partners who together converted natural caves here into a theatre with painted walls per another translation)

 

Mural at Sitabhinji Group of Rock Shelters (c. 400 CE Ravanachhaya mural with an inscription, near a Shiva temple in remote Odisha, a non-religious painting), the oldest surviving example of a tempera painting in eastern states of India

 

Murals at Ajanta caves (Jataka tales, Buddhist), 5th-century CE, Maharashtra

Murals at Badami Cave Temples (Hindu), 6th-century CE, Karnataka (secular paintings along with one of the earliest known painting of a Hindu legend about Shiva and Parvati inside a Vaishnava cave)

Murals at Bagh caves (Hallisalasya dance, Buddhist or Hindu), Madhya Pradesh

Murals at Ellora caves (Flying vidyadharas, Jain), Maharashtra

Frescoes at Sittanavasal cave (Nature scenes likely representing places of Tirthankara sermons, Jain), Tamil Nadu

Frescoes at Thirunadhikkara cave temple (Flowers and a woman, likely a scene of puja offering to Ganesha, another of Vishnu, Hindu), Travancore region, Kerala-Tamil Nadu

Paintings at the Brihadisvara temple (Dancer, Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Manuscript paintings (numerous states such as Gujarat, Kashmir, Kerala, Odisha, Assam; also Nepal, Tibet; Buddhist, Jain, Hindu

Vijayanagara temples (Hindu), Karnataka

Chidambaram temple (Hindu), Tamil Nadu

Chitrachavadi (Hindu, a choultry–mandapa near Madurai with Ramayana frescoes)

Pahari paintings (Hindu), Himachal Pradesh and nearby regions

Rajput paintings (Hindu), Rajasthan

Deccan paintings (Hindu, Jain)

Kerala paintings (Hindu)

Telangana paintings (Hindu)

Mughal paintings (Indo-Islamic)

 

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Kalamkari (Hindu)

Pattas (Jain, Hindu)

 

WIKIPEDIA

Magritte's "The Rape" is a hauntingly provocative image. It depicts a woman's face, but where her features should be, viewers see a naked female torso. This disturbing juxtaposition of the face with sexualized body parts forces a confrontation with themes of objectification and violence against women.

 

The painting challenges traditional notions of beauty and the female form. It could represent the way society reduces women to their bodies or the internalized fragmentation of female identity under the male gaze. Magritte may also be referencing his mother's suicide, connecting the violence of her death with a broader societal violence towards women.

 

Bozar is celebrating 100 years of surrealism with an exhibition on Belgium’s famous avant-garde movement spanning no less than 60 years. 1924: as in Paris, surrealist activities also start in our country with bold pamphlets by artists including poet Paul Nougé, who guides this exhibition.

 

www.bozar.be/en/calendar/histoire-de-ne-pas-rire-surreali...

314/365 Gweilo and the Model Minority

 

Upon thinking of how to fight anti-Blackness in my own community, I think a lot about how the AAPI community has and continues to perpetuate anti-Blackness and internalized racism. @ my East Asian sibs, do we really deserve to identify as People of Color if we as Model Minorities are not truly holding ourselves accountable for the ways in which we benefit largely from a white supremacist society? Is there a point in labelling ourselves as part of a coalition of non-white people if we’re not willing to act in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement? We are responsible for maintaining this oppressive system by remaining silent, and we need to redirect our privilege to prioritize Black voices.

 

Resources for Non-Black Asians on Anti-Blackness:

docs.google.com/document/d/1I1BUMrKPUaERiph_3Arq8_MqQ2SDq...

“Huir”

Huir lejos, lejos de personas (muggles) tóxica/os, huir de los comentarios negativos de la gente, huir de la depresión, huir del panorama actual, de lo estándares actuales, huir no es malo. Huir es alejarse de todo lo malo que te rodea para ser mejor persona. Un pequeño insignificante comentario puede hundirte el día, la semana, el mes, los años. ¿Porqué aguantar eso? Huir no es de cobardes, es de valientes. A veces las personas tienen mucha envidia dentro o muchos problemas dentro que interiorizan muy bien, pero a la que haces algo que ellos quisieran hacer y tú lo consigues antes que ellos, es cuando pueden sacar lo peor de ellos mismos en forma de negatividad, puede ser verbal o de otras formas tóxicas. Y es muy triste, la poca empatía que tienen muchos hoy en día, el no alegrarse de los logros de otros, el querer ser mejor que todos, el hundir a las personas que ves felices porque tú no eres feliz. No tengáis miedo a plantar cara, a decir lo que queráis decir y sobretodo a huir de todo eso. Recordad, huir no es de cobardes, es de valientes.

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Yo no hago el inktober o cualquier challenge de octubre, publicar todos los días durante todo el mes de octubre pero creo que voy a subir varias fotos de otoño estos días! hahaha, me encanta el otoño!

______________

[ENG]

"Run away"

Flee away, away from toxic people (muggles), flee from negative comments from people, flee from depression, flee from the current scenario, from current standards, fleeing is not bad. Running away is getting away from everything bad that surrounds you to be a better person. A small insignificant comment can sink the day, the week, the month, the years. Why endure that? Running away is not cowardly, it's brave. Sometimes people are very envious inside or many problems inside that they internalize very well, but to which you do something they want to do and you get it before them, is when they can get the worst out of themselves in the form of negativity, can Be verbal or in other toxic ways. And it is very sad, the little empathy that many have today, not to be happy about the achievements of others, to want to be better than all, to sink the people you see happy because you are not happy. Do not be afraid to stand up, to say what you want to say and above all to flee from all that. Remember, running away is not cowardly, it's brave.

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I don't do the inktober or any October challenge, publish every day for the whole month of October but I think I will upload several autumn photos these days! hahaha, I love autumn!

A while ago, my sister asked me to fold Andrew Hudson’s Femur because she wanted a farewell gift for her coworkers, but as some of you may know I don’t have the ability to decipher figurative models so I told her that she had to ask for something else….

But in November I had the opportunity to meet Andrew in the “Origami Colombia” Convention and he was kind enough to share this beautiful model with me. (Andrew: I don’t even know how to begin to express my gratitude, thank you so much for your patience!) I must also thank Jorge for helping me to “internalize” the model!

I hope everyone likes it!

 

Passed through this intersection while a Pride Corner event was going on. I stopped to say hi to one of the organizers and chat with her for a bit.

 

About Pride Corner, copied from their website:

"Pride Corner on Whyte is a vibrant and welcoming space for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and allies in Edmonton. Located at the intersection of Whyte Avenue and 104th Street."

 

Quote from one of the founders:

“What we are protesting is hate speech. What we are protesting is when preachers are out there saying our existence is a sin, that you will burn in hell for eternity if you don’t become straight. I think about how many people walk by and hear those messages and go and internalize that, and think about how that is affecting them."

 

pridecorner.ca/

  

Over the past few years, I've noticed a rising trend among some of my fellow fellows, to sell me on something I'm really not buying. I won't give them a one-word label, and even if I tried, any applicable men would deny it described them. Perhaps they truly espouse no wider notion, following a personal philosophy that exists independent of outside influence. But, whatever the case, it's clear what they want from me – to think less highly of women. It's tough to know why they're so insistent, but personal disappointment is a common catalyst. They've been dumped or divorced, had their trust dashed or hopes betrayed in some heartbreaking way. If they did anything to deserve this, they're certainly not telling me.

 

So, rather than dissecting their irascible masculinity, I'd like to drag you through what's broken in my own brain. Maybe we'll all get better at understanding this way. I think what first makes many men distrusting of women originates in our unreasonable expectations. When I met my wife, I had a lot of internalized emotional issues. I'd spent most of my life entirely friendless, with only my own thoughts for company. Susy was the first person who really listened, and I had a lot to say, so I ended up treating her as much like an unpaid therapist as a genuine friend and lover. Most men who do this do it subconsciously – so the women in their lives rarely see it coming.

 

Wouldn't a helpful warning be nice? No one deserves to be volunteered as the arbiter of our emotional state. It's exhausting, requires constant effort, and careful tip-toeing around the things that set us off. A trained psychiatrist gets compensated, and sets boundaries on intrusion and duration. But many men – myself emphatically included – hope to get far more for less from a captive audience. It took me years to understand how much I was putting on Susy. She had to make a massive battle not to crack my fragile ego, gently prop me up while hoping I'd learn to listen as much as speak. Long wait when you're dealing with a writer, let me tell you.

 

It's real easy to take those things for granted, then act wounded when a woman gets sick of giving to a taker. I'd say that it's something we worked out in the end, but it was me who had to do the working. I felt tempted to the escape of shutting down, which is what most older men in my family did, getting steadily more detached with age. But that's a real killer to the career of an artist, and who am I without my heart? So I slowly stopped being so precious about expecting perfection. I'd fallen for the lie that, just because my expectations weren't shallow, I could get away with being emotionally demanding. Like most women I've known, Susy knew what love meant decades before I did. I'll always be grateful that she gave me time to learn – and never forget that no man deserves such patience from the one he claims to love.

 

June 22, 2024

Waterford, Nova Scotia

 

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Although sexual attitudes tracing back to Ancient Greece (8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity (ca. 600 AD)) have been termed homophobia by scholars, the term itself is relatively new,and an intolerance towards homosexuality and homosexuals grew during the Middle Ages, especially by adherents of Islam and Christianity.Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred or antipathy, may be based on irrational fear, and is often related to religious beliefs.Homophobia is observable in critical and hostile behavior such as discrimination and violence on the basis of sexual orientations that are non-heterosexual. Recognized types of homophobia include institutionalized homophobia, e.g. religious homophobia and state-sponsored homophobia, and internalized homophobia, experienced by people who have same-sex attractions, regardless of how they identify.Negative attitudes toward identifiable LGBT groups have similar yet specific names: lesbophobia is the intersection of homophobia and sexism directed against lesbians, biphobia targets bisexuality and bisexual people, and transphobia targets transgender and transsexual people and gender variance or gender role nonconformity.In the USA, according to the 2010 Hate Crimes Statistics released by the FBI National Press Office, 19.3 percent of hate crimes across the United States "were motivated by a sexual orientation bias."Moreover, in a Southern Poverty Law Center 2010 Intelligence Report extrapolating data from fourteen years (1995–2008), which had complete data available at the time, of the FBI's national hate crime statistics found that LGBT people were "far more likely than any other minority group in the United States to be victimized by violent hate crime."Coined by George Weinberg, a psychologist, in the 1960s,the term homophobia is a blend of the word homosexual, itself a mix of neo-classical morphemes, and phobia from the Greek φόβος, Phóbos, meaning "fear" or "morbid fear". Weinberg is credited as the first person to have used the term in speech.The word homophobia first appeared in print in an article written for the May 23, 1969, edition of the American pornographic magazine Screw, in which the word was used to refer to heterosexual men's fear that others might think they are gay.Conceptualizing anti-LGBT prejudice as a social problem worthy of scholarly attention was not new. A 1969 article in Time described examples of negative attitudes toward homosexuality as "homophobia", including "a mixture of revulsion and apprehension" which some called homosexual panic. In 1971, Kenneth Smith used homophobia as a personality profile to describe the psychological aversion to homosexuality.[16] Weinberg also used it this way in his 1972 book Society and the Healthy Homosexual,published one year before the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.Weinberg's term became an important tool for gay and lesbian activists, advocates, and their allies. He describes the concept as a medical phobia:[A] phobia about homosexuals.... It was a fear of homosexuals which seemed to be associated with a fear of contagion, a fear of reducing the things one fought for — home and family. It was a religious fear and it had led to great brutality as fear always does.Internalized homophobia refers to negative stereotypes, beliefs, stigma, and prejudice about homosexuality and LGBT people that a person with same-sex attraction turns inward on themselves, whether or not they identify as LGBT. The degree to which someone is affected by these ideas depends on how much and which ideas they have consciously and subconsciously internalized.These negative beliefs can be mitigated with education, life experience and therapy,especially with gay-friendly psychotherapy/analysis.Internalized homophobia also applies to conscious or unconscious behaviors which a person feels the need to promote or conform to cultural expectations of heteronormativity or heterosexism.This can include extreme repression and denial coupled with forced outward displays of heteronormative behavior for the purpose of appearing or attempting to feel "normal" or "accepted." Expressions of internalized homophobia can also be subtle. Some less overt behaviors may include making assumptions about the gender of a person's romantic partner, or about gender roles.[52] Some researchers also apply this label to LGBT people who support "compromise" policies, such as those that find civil unions acceptable in place of same-sex marriage.Some studies have shown that people who are homophobic are more likely to have repressed homosexual desires.[59] In 1996, a controlled study of 64 heterosexual men (half said they were homophobic by experience, with self-reported orientation) at the University of Georgia found that men who were found to be homophobic (as measured by the Index of Homophobia)[60] were considerably more likely to experience more erectile responses when exposed to homoerotic images than non-homophobic men.Another study in 2012 arrived at similar results when researchers found that students who came from "the most rigid anti-gay homes" were most likely to reveal repressed homosexual attraction.The researchers said that this explained why some religious leaders who denounce homosexuality are later revealed to have secret homosexual relations.They noted that "these people are at war with themselves and are turning this internal conflict outward."Researcher Iain R. Williamson, in his 1998 work "Internalized Homophobia and Health Issues Affecting Lesbians and Gay Men" finds the term homophobia to be "highly problematic" but for reasons of continuity and consistency with the majority of other publications on the issue retains its use rather than using more accurate but obscure terminology..The phrase internalized sexual stigma is sometimes used in place to represent internalized homophobia.An internalized stigma arises when a person believes negative stereotypes about themselves, regardless of where the stereotypes come from. It can also refer to many stereotypes beyond sexuality and gender roles. Internalized homophobia can cause discomfort with and disapproval of one's own sexual orientation. Ego-dystonic sexual orientation or egodystonic homophobia, for instance, is a condition characterized by having a sexual orientation or an attraction that is at odds with one's idealized self-image, causing anxiety and a desire to change one's orientation or become more comfortable with one's sexual orientation. Such a situation may cause extreme repression of homosexual desires.[60] In other cases, a conscious internal struggle may occur for some time, often pitting deeply held religious or social beliefs against strong sexual and emotional desires. This discordance can cause clinical depression, and a higher rate of suicide among LGBT youth (up to 30 percent of non-heterosexual youth attempt suicide) has been attributed to this phenomenon.Psychotherapy, such as gay affirmative psychotherapy, and participation in a sexual-minority affirming group can help resolve the internal conflicts, such as between religious beliefs and sexual identity.Even informal therapies that address understanding and accepting of non-heterosexual orientations can prove effective.Many diagnostic "Internalized Homophobia Scales" can be used to measure a person's discomfort with their sexuality and some can be used by people regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Critics of the scales note that they presume a discomfort with non-heterosexuality which in itself enforces heternormativity.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophobia

This lagoon is not far from the Mermaidia post. It is a reworking of picutre I posted last summer. www.flickr.com/photos/colvinart/1029273472/in/set-7215760...

 

the more I work on process and the more I look at my old work, the more I sense the room for improvement. I'm much happier with this version now. In fact I cringe at the old one. I have to remind myself how far beyond the scans that one was.

 

I remember when I was fresh out of high school I apprenticed with the towns local photographer for a summer. He would have me print his black and white images. I remember going out from the dark room over and over again, and he'd always find one more thing to make better. I guess I'm still learning that lesson!

 

Of course I've internalized this years ago. but it is interesting how as we learn more tricks and techniques, the number of things to fix and adjust just swell up too. On this one I tried a new colorizing technique. It is a standard colorize adjustment layer in Hue, but then I applied the image itself as a mask for that adjustment layer so the color only comes in full at the highlights and fades off to the darks. Also doing multiple blur layers now instead of just one: One set to 50% normal, another set to multiply at around 38% to make these blur layers I simply duplicate the final image and blur it, usually with a Gaussian blur and then bring that layer down with transparency so the sharp layer comes through. Also have the usual host of curves adjustments some image wide others specific to the special spots. I could go and on, but I don't want to bore you all.

  

View On Black

 

Yolanda Bertolaso Abstract in English′s “Märchen” (The Fairy Tale) represents one of the most subtle and at the same time pieces of German literature. Interpretating and translating the fairy tale through artistic dance therapy allows its contents to be internalized and explained throughmovement, as well enables the individual to center and give himself or herself a perspective on him-/herself. Metamorphosis and transformation through dance.in German Goethes „Märchen” ist eines der tiefsinnigsten, aber auch rätselhaftesten Stücke deutscher Literatur. Den Gehalt durch Tanz, durch künstlerische Bewegung deutlich zu machen, zu internalisieren und so den Menschen zu zentrieren, ihm einen Ausblick auf sich selbst zu gewähren, das geschieht in der Deutung und Übersetzung durch die Künstlerische Tanztherapie. Metamorphose und Transformation durch Tanz.

Keywords in English Goethe, “Das Märchen” (the fairy tale), metamorphosis and transformation, centering Keywords in German Goethe, „Das”,, Zentrierung

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“Order is heaven`s first law.

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man: Epistle I

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“Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.

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On Humanism and Morality

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Tor Wennerberg

chomsky.info/199811__-2/

Montreal Serai, Vol. 13, No. 3, Autumn 2000 [conducted in November, 1998]

Tor Wennerberg: One idea that I find extremely interesting and fascinating is the notion that just as our language capabilities are genetically determined, so is our capacity – as human beings – for moral judgement. What do you see as the implications of the idea that our moral capacity is innate?

 

Noam Chomsky: Well, for one thing, I don’t think it can really be much of a question. (That’s not to say we understand anything about it.) But, the fact of the matter is that we’re constantly making moral judgments in new situations, and over a substantial range we do it in a convergent fashion–we don’t differ randomly and wildly from one another. Furthermore, young children do it, very quickly, and they also converge.

 

Of course, there are cultural and social and historical effects, but even for those to operate, they must be operating on something. If you look at this range of phenomena, there are only two possibilities: one is, it’s a miracle, and the other is, it’s rooted in our nature. It’s rooted in our nature in the same sense in which language is, or for that matter, having arms and legs is. And it takes different forms depending on the circumstances, just as arms and legs depend on nutrition, and language depends on my not having heard Swedish when I was six months old and so on. But basically, it must be something that flows out of our nature, or otherwise we’d never use it in any systematic way, except just repeating what happened before. So, it’s got to be there.

 

What are the implications? One implication is, we ought to be interested in finding out what it is. We’d learn something important about ourselves. You can’t hope at this stage that we’re beginning to learn anything from biology. Biology doesn’t begin to reach that far. In principle it should, but right now it deals with much tinier problems. It has a hard time figuring out how bees function, let alone humans.

 

But I think we can learn things by history and experience. Take, say, the debate over big issues like slavery or women’s rights and so on. It wasn’t just people screaming at each other. There were arguments, in fact, interesting arguments on both sides. The pro-slavery side had very substantial arguments that are not easy to answer. But there was a kind of common moral ground in which a good bit of the debate took place, and as it resolved, which it essentially did, you see a consciousness emerging of what really is right, which must mean it reflects our built-in conception of what’s right. And that’s something that we learn more about over time, we get more insight into what’s coming out of our nature. The implications are very substantial, to the extent that we can understand them. It’s better to have a conscious understanding of what’s guiding you, to the extent you can, than just to react intuitively, without understanding. That’s true whether you’re a carpenter reacting to how to form wood artifacts or a moral human being reacting to how to decide between behaviors toward others.

 

One example that comes to mind is that even the most extreme neoliberals never defend income inequality in itself – it’s always supposed to benefit the poor.

 

That’s a kind of universal. Every proposal that’s made is made because it helps the poor people. Doesn’t matter what it is. Actually, that’s something that’s been noticed by mainstream economists, like Paul Krugman. He has a review article in a professional journal, International Affairs, in their 75th anniversary issue. They had reviews of various topics. He reviewed economic development. He pointed out that people have always had different ideas about economic development, and every time they’re completely certain that it’s right, and they’re completely certain it’s going to help everyone. But then it turns out, shortly afterwards, that it was all built on sand, and they switch to some other idea, with equal certainty that it’s also going to help everyone, including the poor, although it’s recognized in retrospect that the earlier one was a bad idea. He then adds that some people claim that bad ideas flourish because they’re beneficial to the people with power. Well, yes, that probably happens–perhaps a hundred percent of the time.

 

But you’re right, it’s always rationalized as being for the poor. No individual gets up and says, I’m going to take this because I want it. He’d say, I’m going to take it because it really belongs to me and it would be better for everyone if I had it. It’s true of children fighting over toys. And it’s true of governments going to war. Nobody is ever involved in an aggressive war; it’s always a defensive war–on both sides. Again, you have to present things in such a way that they will accord with people’s understanding of what’s right or wrong. Sometimes reaching ludicrous levels. Let’s take, say, the Nazis and Jews. That was presented to the population as a defensive action. The Germans were defending themselves against the Jewish attack.

 

If we just make the thought experiment that a whole generation of children were given the opportunity to grow up in a truly loving and respectful environment, through liberatory child-rearing, so that they would be able to fully develop their moral capacity, would it then, do you think, be impossible to uphold a social order based on vast inequality and elite rule?

 

I wouldn’t say it’s impossible, but I would think it would generate very considerable resistance. Actually, it always generates resistance. And it would generate even more in that case. It’s a striking fact, if you look at the notion of equality, take our own history, from the Greeks to the present, it’s very striking that just about every leading figure has regarded equality as an obvious desideratum.

 

Take the earliest serious work on politics, Aristotle’s Politics. Well he points out that he’s not a great fan of democracy, it’s the best of a bunch of bad systems. But he said a democracy cannot function if there are extremes of wealth. Everyone has to be roughly equal– everyone has to be middle class, he said. And in fact, he called for a super welfare state. He said in any democratic society, public resources will have to be used in ways that he outlines, like communal meals, to ensure that the poor are relatively well off and that there are no big differences. Otherwise, it’s impossible to have a properly functioning democracy.

 

Or go on to, say, Adam Smith. His argument for markets was nuanced; it’s not as extreme as people claim. He argued that under conditions of perfect liberty, markets will lead to perfect equality. That’s basically the argument for them. Maybe the first real break with this, apart from pathological cases, is capitalist ideology. So after Ricardo, you start getting the conception that it’s better for the poor if I’m rich. As capitalist ideology becomes dominant, this conception that you’ll only hurt the poor by helping them, takes over. And then comes the idea that you have no intrinsic rights. The big intellectual revolution for capitalism, I think, was the principle that you human beings, have no rights other than what you can gain on the labor market. So Malthus and Ricardo and others said that if you can’t survive by what you can gain on the marketplace, go somewhere else. And any effort to try to help you will just harm you in the long run, because of market interference. This was a real intellectual revolution reflecting the economic emergence of capitalist relations of ownership and production. And people fought against it. The British army was putting down riots in the 1820s and 1830s, because people simply would not accept the fact that they had no right to live. And that goes way back to enclosure of the commons.

 

Look at what was called liberty in England, the first modern democratic revolution, in the 17th and 18th century. Liberty meant liberty for property, which meant taking away from people their traditional rights. Like their rights to the commons. And this was no small thing. The rights to the commons meant forests, and pasture lands, grazing lands, and so on. That’s what kept people alive, and it was considered communal property. With proprietary rights established, with liberty given to the owners, that land was taken away from everyone else. And thereafter you had formal liberty, but popular deprivation, which proletarianized the British working class. And, there was plenty of resistance to that. In fact, and the resistance goes on today. I think this is a deep sentiment, and an understandable one, and we all recognize, at some core of our being, that there’s something quite wrong with one person having superfluities and another person starving. You find that all the way through the tradition, in people’s actions, in literature.

 

And now, just looking at the latest Human Development Report, the figures on the combined wealth of the 250-something richest individuals in the world…

 

But you noticed that they criticized it. They don’t say, isn’t this wonderful? They say it’s something wrong. In fact everybody says there’s something wrong. The only arguments that support it are saying, really everybody benefits because it trickles down. The arguments are ludicrous, but it’s interesting that they have to give the arguments. The arguments for defensive war are often equally ludicrous. Take the latest U.S. bombing in the Sudan: it wasn’t an attack on a Sudanese factory, it was self-defense. Everything has to be self-defense.

 

If we consider the likelihood that we as humans have an instinct for creativity and a moral instinct, what is it in the way our system of education is functioning, that perverts or inhibits these instincts from fully developing themselves?

 

A good educational system ought to nurture and encourage these aspects of human life and allow them to flourish. But of course that has problems. For one thing it means that you will encourage challenge of authority and domination. It will encourage questioning of powerful institutions. The fact of the matter is that honesty, integrity, creativity, all these things we’re supposed to value, all run up dramatically against the hierarchic, authoritarian structure of the institutional framework in which we live. And since that structure is what sets the basic framework in which things happen, it becomes virtually contradictory to implement the values that you talk about in church on Sunday morning. So you put the values to the side, to the Sunday Service, and get on with existing the rest of the time. So Sunday is when you say, yeah, love and kindness and charity and equality and all that stuff are the soul of life. But the other six days of the week you’re working within institutions of authority and domination and control and self-enrichment and so on and you must comply or suffer even graver consequences for not complying.

 

And schools are like that. So the way schools actually function – of course it’s not 100 percent, because there is a contradiction, so all sorts of aspects show themselves depending on the teacher and so on – but, by and large, there’s a very strong tendency which works its way out in the long run and on average, for the schools to have a kind of filtering effect. They filter out independence of thought, creativity, imagination, and in their place foster obedience and subordination. I think everyone knows this from their own history. Like, how did I get to a good college myself? I was always very critical and dissident. But I got there by shutting up! I went through high school, thinking it was all really stupid and authoritarian and boring, but I was obedient, I was quiet, I wasn’t a behavior problem, I didn’t tell the teacher what I thought he was teaching was ludicrous when I thought it was. And I made it to a good college.

 

There are people who don’t accept, who aren’t obedient. They are weeded out, they’re driving taxi cabs, they’re behavior problems. The long-term effect of this is to reward and foster subordination; it begins in kindergarten and goes all the way through your professional or other career. If you challenge authority, you get in one or another kind of trouble. Again, it’s not 100 percent the case, and there are some areas of life were it’s dramatically not the case, but on average and overwhelmingly in the outcomes, it holds.

 

Yes, certainly there are counterforces at work but unfortunately, the major effect is disciplinary. This is a point that Orwell notes in works of his that aren’t read. Everyone has read Animal Farm, the satire about the Soviet Union. Not many people have read the introduction to Animal Farm, and one of the reasons they never read it is it wasn’t published. The introduction to Animal Farm was called “Literary Censorship in England.” It wasn’t published, it was found in his papers years later.

 

The point of the intended introduction is that, well, the book is about this totalitarian monster society, but I want to talk about England, a free society, to talk about how opinions are suppressed here, because they’re suppressed with remarkable efficiency. He doesn’t go into the reasons in any great depth, actually he has two sentences about the reasons. One of them is that the press is owned by wealthy men who have every reason not to want certain thoughts to be expressed. And the other reason is that as you go through a good education – Oxford, Cambridge, that sort of thing–you have instilled into you, you sort of internalize the fact that there are some things it just wouldn’t do to say. In fact, deeper: it wouldn’t do to think. And you become aware that people who do think those things – now, going beyond Orwell–people who do think those things and do say them tend to elicit a negative reaction, either to be weeded out of the system or to be marginalized or to be punished in some fashion. And the long-term effect is that success is to some considerable extent contingent on subordination to institutions of power, and that that kind of socialization–knowing what it wouldn’t do to say–is a good part of our education.

 

I just reread the chapter “Psychology and Ideology” in The Chomsky Reader, your critique of Skinner. Behaviorism is much less influential today, but I wonder-it is two or three decades ago that you wrote about thi-but what do you think has happened in the time since with the theory of human malleability in a broader sense?

 

Well, behaviorism was very popular among the managerial classes, for not surprising reasons. For one thing, it gave them a moral right to control and dominate people. If people have no nature, no intrinsic nature, then there is no moral barrier to control or manipulation of them – in their own interest, of course. Somehow “we,” the controllers, are immune from this human condition of infinite malleability, however. “We” have a nature and “we” understand what’s good, that’s kind of like a hidden premise. But for the rest of the slobs out there, they’re just passive objects, and we can control and manage and organize them using the latest behavioral techniques, and they’ll all be better off.

 

That’s a strain of thought that runs right through the whole intellectual, managerial culture, from priesthoods up to Leninist commissars and to contemporary liberal theorists. And behaviorism gave the perfect intellectual justification for it; it didn’t matter that the intellectual foundations were ridiculous. It served a function so it survived. And the parts of the society that need that, they still believe it–in fact, believe it more than ever.

 

So, instead of talking only about academics, we’re sort of minor folk, let’s go to the big institutions, like, say, the public relations industry. Now we’ve gone several orders of magnitude larger in power and significance. They were based from the beginning on the same idea. The idea that it is necessary to control the public mind. In fact, the modern public relations industry was in many ways an outgrowth of the increase in democracy–and consciously so. You read the manuals, they talk about it, in the 1920s and so on. With the extension of the franchise, with the bringing in of working people and others into the public arena, you can no longer ensure that the wealthy and the capable and the enlightened, us good folks, will run everything. So therefore it is necessary to use the techniques of propaganda. And right after the First World War this was very prominent because of the enormous success of Anglo-American propaganda during the war, which had real success in affecting people’s views, extremely so, and they were aware of it.

 

So in England for example–documents have now come out–the British Conservative party recognized that its traditional domination of English politics was threatened seriously by the extension of the franchise. And they therefore concluded that they must turn to the techniques of propaganda, drawing on the war-time experience, when the British Ministry of Information had set off, as they put it, to control the thought of the world–particularly the thought of the United States, because that’s what they cared about, that the United States come in and save them from this mess. The Conservative party organized itself around the theme of propaganda to overcome the threat of democracy. Something comparable happened here, but here it happened primarily in the rise of public relations, which became a huge industry devoted to “controlling the public mind.” The “intelligent minority” must “regiment the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers.”

 

I’m quoting from a manual written, incidentally, by a good New Deal liberal intellectual, for whom this was second nature–of course you have to regiment the public mind. He had come out of Woodrow Wilson’s wartime propaganda ministry, the first state propaganda ministry in American history, which was very successful. You have to remember, during the first World War, the population here was pacifist, the tradition was: don’t get involved in the European bloody nonsense, it’s not our business, we’re the New World. And somehow, Woodrow Wilson had to – he was elected in 1916 on a slogan of “Peace Without Victory”–and he had to quickly turn the country around to become raving jingoist fanatics, hating everything German. And they did it. With remarkable success. So they were impressed with their achievement. The British Conservative party was impressed, the business world was extremely impressed (then came the huge growth of the propaganda industry). Another person who was impressed, incidentally, was Adolf Hitler. He writes in Mein Kampf that Germany lost the war because of propaganda, and next time we’re going to have it too.

 

The idea that you can control people was supported by that experience. They didn’t read Watson or Skinner. You can control people, and you must control people – of course in their own interest, it’s always in their own interest. You can read it in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, by one of the founders of modern American political science, Harold Lasswell. In an article on propaganda, he says that we should not succumb to “democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests.” They’re not, they’re too “stupid,” they’re too “ignorant.” We’re the best judges of their interests, and although they have this official right to vote, we have to make sure they don’t make any use of it in an unreasonable way. We do that by controlling the public mind, by propaganda. This was before the Second World War. After the Second World War the term propaganda took on bad connotations and people did not want to use the word anymore. But that was pre-World War II, so you were allowed to use it.

 

And it continues. After the second world war, the business world, particularly in the United States but in fact worldwide, was appalled by the fact that most of the world, the industrial world, was being swept by radical democratic ideas–takeover of factories and all sorts of activities, including in the United States incidentally–and the business world was terrified. You can read it in their manuals and pronouncements. They say we have a few years to try to reverse this tide, we have to fight “the everlasting battle for the minds of men,” and “indoctrinate citizens with the capitalist story” until “they are able to play back the story with remarkable fidelity.” Huge campaigns took place, covering everything you can imagine. In factories you have a captive audience, so they ran what they called economics lectures on the principles of “free enterprise,” and Americanism lectures that went on radio and television. They aimed at churches and schools, even to sports leagues. There was a huge coordinated campaign, with many purposes. It demonized unions. It instilled the idea that the government can’t do anything for you–it’s not your government anyway, it’s some thing out there which takes money from you. The government isn’t anything that you have, and what it does is harmful, stealing your money and taxes and so on, and the only real kind of freedom is freedom to function in a market economy. You should be a consumer and not worry about anything else except maybe diversions, entertainment, sports and so on.

 

These are self-conscious campaigns, designed to control people and to make sure that the formal mechanisms of democracy really don’t function. In a third world country you can do what is essentially the same thing more simply: put in a military dictatorship and send out the death squads. In societies where people have won a degree of freedom from state coercion, you have to turn instead to the techniques of propaganda, control of the mind, of course all on the assumption that people are not only malleable but that they’re better off if they’re molded and you are the one who molds them. There is a very striking similarity between Leninist and Western liberal doctrine on this, they’re almost interchangeable. I’ve sometimes run paragraphs side by side, and if you change a few names you can hardly see the difference.

 

I think that helps account for the appeal of behaviorist doctrine. It gives a kind of moral basis for all this.

 

So it lives on outside of academia, outside of science?

 

As an intellectual claim about how people actually are, it’s pretty hard to take seriously in the sciences anymore.

 

With the global economic crisis growing deeper and deeper ever since last summer, several mainstream economists are finally saying that we’re about to see a replay of the Great Depression. Even Clinton and Blair produce rhetoric about the need to regulate markets and Business Week argues the case for capital controls. What is happening and what does this tell us about this past decade of capitalist triumphalism?

 

The triumphalism was an expression of the fact that a very small section of the population was becoming enriched. But this crisis happens to be now at a point where it’s hitting rich people, and that’s why it’s a crisis. But in fact the crisis has been going on for 25 years. There was a period after the second world war, sometimes called the Golden Age of capitalism, in which there were historically unprecedented growth rates over most of the industrialized world. There was also growth of the social contract, labor rights, workplace reforms, as well as growth of both the economy and productivity. That sort of continued into the late 1960s, more or less.

 

From the early 1970s, the industrial world has been in a long downturn. Since the early 1970s growth rates have slowed, both of the economy and of productivity, wages and incomes have basically stagnated for most of the population; for a period, corporate profits were lowered, but in the 1990s–and that’s the triumphalism–corporate profits shot up, sky-high. Read the business press in the United States, every year: “dazzling,” “stupendous,” they ran out of adjectives a long time ago. And that’s the triumphalism. For a small sector of the population, this long downturn happened to lead to extreme wealth mostly via redistribution upward. That is why inequality is so radically increased.

 

Take, say, the recovery in the United States, the latest stage of the business cycle in the United States, from about 1991 until now. In fact, it’s the slowest postwar recovery. And it’s the first one in American history in which most of the population has been left out. Wages and incomes are barely getting back to their 1989 level, let alone their level of the 1970s. One thing that is booming, however, is the stock market. When you read – this is pre-August, still triumphalist – the stories about “the fairy-tale economy,” about Americans being “smug and prosperous,” there is only one example that’s given: that’s the stock market. But close to 50 percent of the stocks are held by one percent of households; and most of the rest is held by the top ten percent so that roughly 90 percent of the stocks are held by ten percent of the population. And in fact if you look more closely, the richest one half percent holds about forty percent of the stock. And for that sector, the economy no doubt is a fairy-tale economy. But for maybe two thirds of the population or perhaps as much as 70 percent of working people, wages have either stagnated or declined, working conditions have gotten worse, working hours have gotten longer, and you have to have both husband and wife working just to keep food on the table. It’s been a long slowdown across the industrial world, and it has hit the underdeveloped world in much harsher ways.

 

You can roughly date when it happened, it’s from the early 1970s. And there was one crucial event that took place in the early 1970s, namely the Bretton Woods system was dismantled. The Bretton Woods system – the postwar economic system – was based on an effort to free trade from restraints (freedom of trade was considered something to work for), but to simultaneously regulate finance. So the Bretton Woods system was not solely a liberalization system – it called for liberalization of trade but regulation of finance and fixed exchange rates. Capital controls were permitted, and there was something like a gold standard except that it was a dollar standard, with the dollar pegged to gold. The IMF in its rules was to maintain stability of exchange rates and to cut back capital flight. For example the rules of the IMF prohibit giving credits to cover capital flight. The rules are not honored nowadays, but they’re there.

 

This system was dismantled from the early 1970s. The U.S. took the first steps to break it down, Britain went along, and gradually other financial powers went along as well, and so the rest of the world just had to do it too. Some parts held back, like South Korea, they maintained the system of controls through the late 1980s. And then they were more or less forced to give them up. That was a condition for entry into the OECD. And the United States put enormous pressure on them to overvalue their currency and to take more American imports and to deregulate their financial markets and so on, and they gave in. Next you had this huge market failure, which is largely what it is: the so-called Asian crisis. By now it’s fairly widely recognized.

 

First, the pundits were talking about crony capitalism and that sort of thing, as an explanation, which is nonsense – I mean, it’s there, of course, but it’s here too, it’s everywhere, and it was there during the growth period as well. What was different about the recent period of decline was that you had an almost classic failure of financial markets, a huge flow of capital, huge borrowing, private borrowing, private lending, and an extraordinary flow of herd-like behavior, and then pulling it all out in another irrational, herd-like action. And this is very familiar. Keynes warned about it 60 years ago, when he argued that finance ought to be closely regulated and controlled, as indeed it sort of is internally. So internally to the United States, the banks want to keep it controlled or otherwise everything blows up.

 

But during this neoliberal escapade of the rich after dismantling Bretton Woods, they were having a ball, and it was great for them, the super rich, while most of the population suffered. And they spread the conditions supporting this sort of triumph far and wide. And now the crisis is hitting home, hitting them too, so now it’s called a crisis.

 

Notice that there is nothing new about the volatility – since the early 1970s, markets have become much more volatile, contrary to the predictions of many famed economists. Milton Friedman predicted with confidence that, free the exchange rates, let the market rule, and everything will settle down, it will all be stable. It went exactly the other way. With capital restraints reduced, with limits on how capital could be moved about, markets became far more volatile, with very sharp ups and downs. The IMF recently released a report saying that of its roughly 180 members, about 20% had suffered severe financial crises, and about 60 percent, some number around that neighborhood, had suffered fairly serious ones, over this post World War Two triumphalist period (1980 to 1995). This is the way financial markets operate. There is no theory of financial markets. It’s mostly amateur psychology. When you read economists – Alan Greenspan and so on – talking about economic policy, it’s mostly, this is going to inspire confidence, or this will make people feel better, or something like that. You can sort of dress it up in formulas if you like, but it’s a kind of amateur psychology, no real theory applied.

 

It’s known descriptively that highly irrational behavior, even from the point of view of market doctrine, takes place all the time. So in a rational market, investors are supposed to look for economic fundamentals, they’re supposed to value solid manufacturing capacity and fiscal austerity and all that kind of stuff. They are not supposed to do what is called technical trading, to look for short-term patterns and see if you can make a tiny gain by playing this and that game over a period of weeks, or days, or even hours. But the latter is exactly what they do. About 80 percent of the capital in foreign exchange has a turnaround time of less than a week, much of it a day or less. And what this is, it’s smart guys, a lot of Ph.D.s in math who are working for Wall Street firms on sophisticated techniques to extrapolate little changes in currency fluctuations and so on, so that you can make a lot of money fast.

 

It finally hit home that this is a real crisis when one of the big hedge funds collapsed, which wasn’t supposed to happen, but that’s the game they’re playing. Not only does it not contribute to the economy, it harms it.

 

And now the tax payers are paying the bill.

 

In some manner the public bails it out, that’s the name of the game. Capitalism means, we don’t take the risks, the public takes the risks, we take the profits. As much as possible, risk and cost have to be socialized, profits privatized. It’s the basic principle. But the thing has become so serious that by now even the major establishments are worrying about it.

 

So what they’re now talking about in the G-7, and the finance ministers, and Business Week, and the Financial Times and so on, is what critics have been saying all along, that unless there is some regulation, careful regulation in fact, of financial flows, and some penalty for short-term speculation, you’re going to have serious problems. And in fact there have been problems, in blow-up after blow-up. Now they’re even willing to talk about things that were anathema to them until recently, like the Tobin tax.

 

The Tobin tax was proposed more than 20 years ago by a Nobel prize-winning economist, who pointed out that unless you do something to throw sand in the gears of short-term, speculative capital flows, it’s going to seriously harm the international economy. Well, nobody wanted to hear that, because that was challenging the orthodoxy that markets are wonderful, which was an orthodoxy precisely because it was benefiting rich people, not because there was any logic in it – the usual story. There was a major study done on the Tobin tax by a group of quite well-known international economists, about five years ago I guess. The UN Development Program wanted to distribute it, and they were apparently put under pressure by the Clinton administration not to so the book is known mostly to technical economists. Not all of the authors thought it was a great idea. It includes people like the chief economist of the IMF, who didn’t particularly like it. But it was a serious discussion of its possibility, and this type discussion was just not supposed to be on the agenda. In today’s newspapers, however, they’re talking about it. What’s the difference? Well, now the rich people are in trouble. So it’s a sudden crisis — a crisis for the wealthy and powerful whereas up until now, it was just a crisis for everybody else.

 

Given the risk that the world economy might spin out of control completely now, and considering that last time, in the 1930s, it took a world war to overcome the depression, how worried do you think we ought to be about the prospect of war?

 

The prospect of war is much less, but for other reasons. Europe is, in modern history at least, the most violent part of the world. One of the reasons why Europe conquered the world is that it created a culture of war, based on centuries of mutual massacre and slaughter – both a culture of war and a technology of war. But that largely came to an end in 1945, and for a very simple reason. Everybody could understand that the next time we play this game, we’re all dead. The techniques of destruction had reached such a point that war is simply not an option for rich and powerful countries. If they try it once more, that’s the end. Now, somebody may be irrational enough to do it anyway, but within anything remotely like the domain of rationality, where you can at least begin to talk about prediction, there isn’t going to be war among the powerful countries. And this is understood.

 

For example, right in the middle of the Gulf War, somebody at the Pentagon leaked to the press – which buried it — an interesting document. When any new administration comes in, the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency and so on give them a kind of intelligence assessment of the world, a strategic analysis of the world. Someone leaked part of the Bush administration strategic analysis (this would have been from early 1989), and one part of it dealt with war. Here is approximately what it said: it said in case of a conflict with “much weaker enemies” (implication: that’s the only kind of conflict we’re ever going to get into), we must defeat them “decisively and rapidly,” because anything else will “undercut political support.” So no more bombing of South Vietnam for fifteen years, and certainly we don’t go to war with any major power.

 

This was well before the Gulf War. In fact at that time Saddam Hussein was a great friend, so he wasn’t contemplated as a target – but that’s what you can do. You can invade Panama, kidnap Noriega and get out in a couple of weeks, bomb the Sudan, bomb Libya, bomb Iraq from a distance, very fast, and don’t get involved in more than a few days of fighting. That kind of thing you can do with a much weaker enemy, rapidly and decisively, but nothing else. So as long as you’re within the domain of rationality, the chances of war involving major powers I think, are extremely slight, unless they’re fighting a much weaker enemy. And even that’s not so simple anymore.

 

But to return to your other point, what actually overcame the depression was not so much the war as the semi-command economies. The British economy started to pick up in the late 1930s, when it sort of deliberalized and became a kind of semi-command economy. The U.S. was barely at war, there was no fighting here. But the wartime economy not only overcame the depression, it flourished as industrial production tripled, and so on. But that was a semi-command economy, it was highly coordinated from Washington, run by corporate executives, with wage and price controls, industrial policy deciding what would be produced, and so on. And that worked like a charm. Just like it worked in England – England in fact out-produced Germany and came close to the United States.

 

So the mobilization of the economy did overcome the depression. The war was taking place and that was the justification for it, but the war was not what overcame the depression in itself. This was pretty well understood. The consensus among American economists and businessmen and others in the mid-forties was that with the government-coordinated economy declining, after the war, they were going to go right back to the depression due to market failures. And so there was an interesting discussion in the late forties, quite open. It’s in the business press, I’ve quoted parts of it at times, and it’s very interesting. There was recognition that we’ve got to do something to get the government to stimulate the economy again or else we’ll go back to the depression.

 

It was understood — you didn’t have to read Keynes to figure it out — that you could stimulate the economy in a lot of different ways. You could stimulate it with social spending, or you could stimulate it with military spending. There there was a perfectly sane discussion, in Business Week actually, of which to do. And the conclusion was: well, social spending is not a good idea, and military spending is a great idea. The reason is that social spending has a downside. Yes, it can pump the economy. But it also has a democratizing effect, because people are interested in social spending; they want to know where you’re going to build a hospital or a road or something, and they become involved. They have no opinions about what jet plane to build. Social spending also gives people more security and better conditions, better education, more means of communicating, more ability to withstand threats of unemployment. It makes people, workers, more powerful, that is, and thereby better able to win higher wages and better conditions.

 

So social spending has a democratizing effect, it has a redistributive effect, and it’s not a direct gift to corporations. Military spending, however, has none of those defects; it’s non-democratizing – on the contrary, people are frightened and they shelter under the umbrella of power. And while it aids corporations it doesn’t directly improve the lot of workers; it rather tends to reinforce workplace discipline. So it’s a direct gift to corporations. It redistributes upward. And it’s easy to sell if you terrify the public. So what emerges is a Pentagon-based industrial policy program, one which is now buckling a bit, due to the excessive liberalizing of capital movements, and thus, one which has to be repaired a bit, so that it once again benefits the rich, as intended.

CHOMSKY.INFO

 

“For the anarchist, freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but the vital concrete possibility for every human being to bring to full development all the powers, capacities, and talents with which nature has endowed him, and turn them to social account.”

― Noam Chomsky, On Anarchism

 

“The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself.”

― Noam Chomsky

 

“... if we adopt the principle of universality: if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us. Those who do not rise to the minimal moral level of applying to themselves the standards they apply to others -- more stringent ones, in fact -- plainly cannot be taken seriously when they speak of appropriateness of response; or of right and wrong, good and evil”

― Noam Chomsky

 

“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours.”

― Noam Chomsky

 

“If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world.”

― Noam Chomsky

 

“Thinking is a human feature. Will AI someday really think? That's like asking if submarines swim. If you call it swimming then robots will think, yes.”

― Noam Chomsky

 

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the USAF rebuilt and modernized the way it trained for air to air combat, trying to internalize the lessons of the Vietnam War. One of the many things was changed was the introduction of dissimilar air combat training (DACT). This concept had American jets practice fighting against aircraft like the F-5, which was nimble enough to represent the capabilities of the smaller and more agile Soviet fighters of the era. At Nellis AFB in Nevada, both the 64th and 65th Aggressor Squadrons carried out this mission in support of RED FLAG exercises and USAF Weapon School classes. Unbeknownst to the public, the USAF was also flying a unit of clandestinely acquired Soviet fighters known as the 4477th Test and Evaluation Squadron. For over a decade, these two types of aircraft were critical in training thousands of American and allied fighter pilots over the skies of the Nevada Test and Training Range. Although neither are in service anymore, the USAF still operates F-16s and even some F-35s in the Aggressor roles, supporting RED FLAG exercises in Nevada and Alaska.

acrylic paint, polyethylene on tarpaper, 11x15in, Feb-22

 

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Outlining a Theory of General Creativity . .

. . on a 'Pataphysical projectory

 

Entropy ≥ Memory ● Creativity ²

__________________________________________________

 

. . fenêtre à devenir

 

Celui qui s’effraie de partir

qui se rassure à s’ennuir,

ferme la fenêtre

et se cache de découvrir.

 

Celui qui peure de s’abêtir

qui lit de relire à délire

déconstruit la fenêtre

à ne plus s’en ouvrir.

 

Celui qui s’étiole de languir

qui se grise d’éblouir

caresse la fenêtre

et la flatte de vernir.

 

Celui qui s’alarme de croupir

qui s’assoiffe d’à venir,

fuit par la fenêtre

s’oublie de nostalgir.

 

Celui qui ne craint rien

qui choisit de déchoisir,

s’amuse de la fenêtre,

s’enjoue d’aller et de venir.

  

Et toi, qui es-tu ?!

Moi ? J’essaie de devenir fenêtre ..

.. fenêtre à devenir

 

jef safi - 2oo7

  

. . window to become

 

Who scares to improvise,

who cheers oneself, botherwise,

folds the windows

covers up, not otherwise.

 

Who alarms to be stupid,

who reads and reads to be worried,

unconstructs the windows

never more to open it.

 

Who grows sickly languishing,

who gets drunk on dazzling,

cherishes the windows

flatters them, varnishing.

 

Who worries to stagnate,

who thirsties for futur,

flees from the windows

forgets to nostalgy.

 

Who does not fear anything,

who chooses to dischoose,

plays the windows,

enjoys to come and go.

  

And you, who are you ?!

Me ? I try to become window

.. window to become

 

jef safi - 2oo7

 

__________________________________________________

rectO-persO | E ≥ m.C² | co~errAnce | TiLt

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNwgozJ_qAc

 

It is September which means it is suicide prevention month. I wanted to do something for this month and at first, I thought it was going to be a simple picture but... The past few weeks I have had an urge to share my story and it's not going away. People are still afraid to talk about their own depression and it is still considered a taboo subject, but that is changing. I don't know how detailed I will be, so I am putting in a TRIGGER WARNING just in case. If this subject is a trigger for you then please don't read any further. I will have links for help down at the bottom. I would also like to add that there will be LOTS... I mean lots of grammar and spelling mistakes. My spelling is that bad. lol

 

The only diagnosis for depression that I ever had was long term depression through my teen years. When I was in second grade my parents got a divorce and I ended up moving to a town close by and started going to a new school. for whatever reason, the kids in my class considered me an outsider and I struggled with bullying and ostersisism through my school days. my school days are a blur to me, but it set the foundation on how I viewed myself and what effects it had with any future relationships. there was a number of years which I stayed in my room most of the time with books being my friends. I would get lost in the stories and time would pass. Things got a little easier once in high school I started making a friend or two, and after school I finally made some close friends who helped me gain a personality.

 

through all those years no matter how depressed I was I could count on my mom to listen to me and be there. my relationship with my mother was very close. I stayed with here up until she passed away some years back. I was a hairstylist for ten years and decided that I needed to go back to school for a better education. I didn't know what I wanted to do but decided on computer networking to open doors for me as a currier. I started taking classes at the community college close by and was going slow but had decent grades. one day my mom comes to me and tells me she is bleeding (vaginally) I had three nurses in the family. two older sisters and my mom. I knew what it meant that she was bleeding. the next two years will forever be etched in my mind. she was diagnosed with endometrial cancer, and it was at, I believe, stage two. She had surgery and a round of radiation. there was 4% chance that it would come back.... 4%. We barely had enough time to breath and relax until we found out that it did come back, and it was moving fast. she started out her chemo treatments and I the non-nurse was her main care giver. My mom... she couldn't accept her fate. she was full of fear and no matter how I tried to ease it... you can't ever make it go away, but I spent my days with her on the couch watching the shows she liked, I took up reading her a few pages of the bible every night, I made calls for a priest to visit once a week, (we are a catholic family) Took her to her appointments, stayed at the hospital with her, gave her meds, made sure she was as comfortable as possible and try to find things she would eat. there was good days and bad days. later on, the bad days outnumbered the good. I slowly watched the cancer take over my mom's body. people told me that I did a good job taking care of her. I had the doctor praise me, but I couldn't take the cancer away, I couldn't even take her fear away. My mom was my whole world, and I was in the middle of losing her. I did what I could for self-care, I spent moments relaxing at Starbucks when I could. at night while she rested, I lost my mind in Korean music and Korean dramas. I honestly don't know why it was that entertainment that helped me. probably because it was something new and honestly Korean dramas were kind of like books put to screens. They are only so many episodes long and didn't drag on like season after season of western shows.

 

My mom battled for two years before she lost her fight. family was in the room with her. we had hospice come in for the last few weeks. I remember sitting down on the ground at the foot of the bed keeping my eyes closed until I heard her last breath. At first, I felt relief. She was no longer in pain, then I felt tired. so very tired. I don't know how long I slept after she passed but it was the first real sleep, I had for two years. after that my new life began with a huge hole and the world turn to shades of grey.

 

I lived my whole life with my mom but now my whole world changed. I couldn't keep the place I was at. I could not afford the payments. My oldest sister, was dealing with her own grief and had the responsibility of mom's funeral and taking care of her assets. unfortunately, I couldn't help much because a lot of the legal work was over my head. I internalized my grief a lot and was afraid of where I was going to live. At the time, I was only part time at Walmart. I never did finish school for computer networking. I ended up moving in with someone I got reacquainted with from high school. I felt like I was in a desperate situation and this person was kind of pushing me to move out of my mom's house quickly. This move caused a bigger problem between my oldest sister and myself. During this time, I realized why people end their lives. I never took action to ending my life. I had a lot of thoughts that I would love to just disappear. I didn't want to be on this earth anymore. My mom was gone, my siblings kind of fell away, I closed in on myself not wanting to add to their grief, I was isolated by a woman who ended up being very toxic. while I lived with her and her husband and son, I picked up a second job in the mornings at a fast-food place. I ended up doing a few hours of dive work and cleaning up the lobby. after that, most days I would double up with my Walmart job. I looked forward to working both jobs most days. it meant more time at work and less time at a house I was never comfortable in. I spent my days waking up, going to work, coming back late at night hoping the house would be quiet and most times it was not. I would sit in what would become my spot and be a captured audience for a woman who honestly was not mentally healthy and waited until she decided it was ok for me to go to bed. On my days off, I would wake and usually be stuck in my spot most of the day listening to her stories and complaints. sometimes I would be degraded for hours on end for whatever wrong I committed that day. I spent a year in that house before I moved out. during that winter, I lost count how many times I ended up in a ditch because of slippery roads. Even though I did not attempt suicide, I was stupid in some of my actions. winter driving was one. I still white knuckle my grip on the steering wheel these days if there is any snowfall to cover the roads. After a year of living there, I finally moved out. the first night laying on my mattress on the floor, boxes all around me in my own space felt AMAZING. The problem was that I felt like I still owed this woman in being her friend. after all she did take me in. no matter how I was treated. I tried really hard to remain friends, but it was like being friends with a drunk, or drug addict. she had a picture in her head on how I should be and act and if I didn't fit her picture of me, then I was in the wrong. I wasn't a mind reader so I will forever be in the wrong. I came to realize that I was holding on to nothing. what is the use of being friends with someone that only sees your "wrongs". I finally grew a spine and ended that chapter of my life.

 

my Days and nights consisted of me going to my jobs and coming home just to wake up for the next day of work. for years I existed in life doing only what I had to do for day-to-day life. This became my normal. I got used to my normal. really quite comfortable in it... Then the pandemic came. I have a really good friend that I have known for many years. We met in Second Life before there were any such things as mesh. The very first thing I did with the first stimulus check I received was run out and buy a gaming computer that could handle second life and bam! inworld we became brother and sister. we make a good brother and sister the way we bicker all the time lol. So now here I am spending my downtime in Second Life with an online family that I absolutely adore but I am a quiet member. It is hard for me to keep up conversation when my SL brother is not around, and the silence becomes awkward. At some point, I don't quite remember but I think there was a time where he was busy with other things, so we hung out a little less. I have started making noises that I felt wrong. I came to realize that I got so used to my depression that I forgot it was there and it was just a part of me, but I was starting to notice it again and as days passed the feeling of wrongness became suffocating.

 

I am supper good at running away from any sexual intimacy that comes my way. I don't know how many times I ghosted someone that wanted to get sexual, and I freaked out. (remember earlier where I said my school days set the foundation on how I looked at myself?) social anxiety to the max with any intimacy. that type of relationship was a no go for me, but I was damn lonely. so here I am in a downward spiral of depression and loneliness... a great time to look for new friends. I found one! it was exactly at the worst time in my sl life. Things were great in the beginning, we got along so well at first. it was like we were twins. I introduced her to my family and bam... I got another um... brother I know I am not using the correct pronouns she would want. it's hard for me to see her as male if she doesn't act like one. It is hard for me to talk about this last part. It was textbook toxic. some love bombing in the beginning then isolation from any friends I had online. anytime I had access to the internet we communicated back and forth. surprised that I didn't get written up at work for being on my phone. only defense I can say for myself was that I was an easy target. I also blinded myself to any red flags that came my way. My world was so mixed up in hers that what should have been crazy became not so crazy. I did some stupid ass things to prove friendship. and I have a dear friend that I turned my back on... along with the rest of the fam. Then one day after a downward spiral of her own, she decides that I was never her friend and I learned just about everything she told me, every reason I made stupid ass choices for her was a lie. I turned my back on people that loved me, I put my job at risk, I made myself look bad publicly, and made friends with a lie. I remember standing there with the phone in my hand with the past so many months going through my head and it felt like waking up from a dream... and I felt so completely alone. I almost dropped my account on second life and started fresh, but I had a good person to talk to that convinced me not to and I am glad that I didn't. It is better to learn and grow instead of hiding, and you know what it took for me to get my family back??? one single post of a simple "I screwed up and I'm sorry." my family along with my brother who I KNOW I hurt just waited for me to wake up. It took me time to understand how I came to that place. I need to understand so I don't make the same mistake because the one thing I refuse to do is make the same mistake.

 

ok. I got my family back; I patched up my friendship of my dear friend of over ten years. life has gotten back to my normal and my depression has once again taken a back seat. The one thing I didn't talk about was my health. I had female problems for a few years. they got worse and worse. didn't go to the doc. remember how much life mattered to me. Going to the doc meant time off of work that I can't afford, it meant bills I can't pay. it meant dealing with the collection agency and so I kept putting off my health and it kept getting worse. I kept getting lower and lower in blood but hey, crunching ice never tasted so good. (pagophagia) the breaking point was when I was at work sitting in the bathroom unable to get up because I was bleeding that heavy. It took an hour of me sitting there until I caved in and had the ambulance come. my hemoglobin was down to 5.2. organs start shutting down at 5. I had a blood transfusion and three more after that before I made it to surgery. I had a total of 9 units of blood that was not mine in my system. I ended up with a very good doctor that took on my case. I had a complete hysterectomy. by the time I seen the doctor, I had multiple fibroids, a uterus the size of a bowling ball, a cist on one of my ovaries and yes, the start of cancer. stage 1. When I found out that I cold have cancer I was scared but had the thought that it was my own fault and if I die, at least there would be no more struggle, but you know that sometimes bad things can bring good things in your life? during this I started talking to a sister that I have not talked to in years. She is one of the nurses in the family. her and my brother-in-law (another nurse) were my care givers while I recovered, and I can honestly say I was never treated so well in my life. They even made sure I had the best foods to eat for healing! this all happened through this past winter and something in me has changed in that time. my sister and I are becoming close again and finding things that we share a love of. It is because of her that I started paint pouring and now I am getting into wire wrapping. I want to continue with painting and see how far I go. I have another painting I need to do and three pendants I need to make for paying customers which just blows my mind because I'm so new at it. I'm starting to feel a little self-worth and purpose back in my life. my world is still mostly grey, but I am seeing splashes of color.

 

The hardest fight a person has in their life is when they have to fight themselves. there are people that have it much worse than me that live on day by day and people you think that has everything given to them and one day... they disappear. I don't know exactly what my story is supposed to be. maybe just showing people they are not alone and it's ok to speak out. sometimes all a person needs are to know that they are not alone. I'm still struggling with depression, but I keep on fighting.

 

Links for help if anyone is struggling.

 

www.spsamerica.org/

 

save.org/find-help/international-resources/