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D'autres représentations auront lieu, dont une le 30 avril à Paris 1900. Ne les ratez pas.
Pour plus d'information Merci de contacter Ciske Auster (ciskederat.auster) inworld.
This April 2 took place in Magdeburg a performance of the Moonshine Dancers ballet "The Magic World of Dreams".
A dreamlike and enchanting spectacle which draws in part its inspiration from Celtic legends.
The Magic World of Dreams takes the audience into a variety of dreamlike landscapes, a whirlwind of imaginative movements and magical costumes. Celtic-inspired music, from Brittany, Scotland, Ireland ... brings the magic of this atmosphere to life.
Moonshine Dancers are a group of dancers who work together to present dance performances in Second Life. The company is led by Ciske Auster and the group currently consists of Aurora, Bea, Bevy, Bubu, Cassy, Ciske, Cricri, James, Melissandre and René.
Other performances will take place, including one on April 30 in Paris 1900. Don't miss them.
For more information Please contact Ciske Auster (ciskederat.auster) inworld.
The birds are clearly representations of the "manutara" (the sootie tern - Onychoprion fuscatus), the species in which all Bird-Man competition is focused.
That's the cave:
PS. I will explain the Bird-man cult better when I arrive at Orongo village which is at the top of the volcano in the sequence of photographs.
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The legend of the origin of birds on Easter Island has, like all myths, part of the truth. And it is precisely that Motu Nui, together with the nearby islets Motu Iti and Motu Kao Kao, is the place chosen to nest for most of the seabirds that visit the island.
The manutara, the protagonist of our history, also nested until a few years ago on the motu or islets. This bird has been identified with two kinds of tern and specifically with the sootie tern (Onychoprion fuscatus) who came to the island every spring to lay eggs.
The manutara measures about 40 cm, has the upper part of the head black and the neck and chest white. The upper part of the wings and the body is a dark gray color by which it receives its name.
The meaning of Manutara or Manu Tara is “luck bird” in the Rapanui language. A name probably associated with its arrival coinciding with the end of winter and the beginning of a season with a greater abundance of eggs and greater fishing catches. It is possible that these reasons later made him the center of the bird-man ritual.
Unfortunately, the manutara can no longer honor its name because the bird does not visit Rapa Nui anymore due to the changes suffered in recent years in the fragile ecosystem of the island. However, as if the legend wanted to continue, the tern continues to nest in Motu Motiro Hiva, the uninhabited islet of Sala y Gómez, located 415 km northeast of the island and which is currently a protected marine reserve. Perhaps, in the near future, a new Make Make embodied in a marine biologist will introduce the species back into Rapa Nui.
The cave paintings of Ana Kai Tangata:
*Recreation of the paintings of Ana Kai Tangata | Watercolor of Melinka Pictures Hucke for the book Manu Iri:
Along with your incredible walk inside the cave, I also was able to see the rock art practiced by the natives of Rapa Nui. Yes, as you read, the island has spectacular paintings of red, white and black that adorn your wonderful walk with history and culture.
The paintings that I saw there portray the Apizarrado Tern, a bird that flew over the island for a long time and is considered sacred by the natives to this day.
The rest of the figures are related to ships and frigates that according to the researchers could represent the Europeans who landed on the island (when the Europeans first arrived on the island, they were considered gods and messengers from beyond).
The cave crisis:
Although there is no clarity of the cultural origin of this cave or of what the surprising cave paintings that I saw there mean, there is clarity of something: the seepage of seawater has caused these drawings to disappear and are in danger.
Given the above, CONAF and the government of Chile have implemented an emergency plan to maintain and restore this historical treasure. More and more care is taken with those who visit this natural wonder and there are experts working on its conservation so as not to lose this record of the Rapanui culture.
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Manutara the sacred bird that still lives in the memory of Rapa Nui.
Legend of the origin of the manutara:
Father Sebastián Englert, a Capuchin priest of German origin who lived on Easter Island for more than 30 years, studied its traditions and compiled the myths and legends that their inhabitants told him. Among them is the story of how the birds came to Rapa Nui and says:
“Formerly, when the first settlers arrived in Rapa Nui, there were no birds on the island. At that time there lived a witch or spirit called Hitu in the bay of Hanga Nui, near Tongariki. Hitu had a skull that she kept as treasure in the cavity of a rock. One day, when the sea grew, a great wave dragged the skull and carried it to the coast. Hitu threw herself into the water to retrieve it, but she could not reach it. Although she swam and swam, the skull floated among the waves and moved away.
Thus Hitu continued swimming day and night after the skull. When she was about to give up due to exhaustion, she glimpsed on the horizon the rocks of Motu Motiro Hiva (Sala y Gómez islet). When the skull reached the edge of the islet it became the creator god Make Make. Hitu reached the islet shortly after and both were welcomed by the spirit Haua who lived there because he was destined to care for the numerous seabirds that inhabited the small island.
After a few days off, Make Make ordered Haua to bring him some pairs of birds to take them to Te Pito o Te Henua (which means navel of the world, one of the names by which Easter Island is known). When Make Make arrived on the island, he went to Hanga Nui and climbed the Poike hill where he left the birds free to reproduce, and later returned to his islet.
The following year, Make Make returned to Te Pito o Te Henua to see if the birds had multiplied, but discovered that the inhabitants had eaten all the eggs. Then, furious, he picked up the birds and took them to Vaihú, where he again released them to nest there. But the same thing happened in Vaihú, and the natives ate the eggs again. The following year, Make Make, desperate, took the birds to Vai Atare, a place located on the edge of the crater of the Rano Kau volcano. There finally, the villagers left a nest with only one egg, from which the first manutara bird of the island was born.
But Make Make, to better ensure the breeding of the birds, returned again next year and left the birds on the Motu Nui islet in front of the Rano Kau volcano. There the birds multiplied in large numbers due to the difficult access of the small islet.
Later, Make Make, allowed the islanders to be able to collect the eggs of the birds in a certain period of the year, punishing those who collected them in times not allowed. In order not to provoke the wrath of God, the Ariki (king) and the priests decided to declare the eggs as Tapu (or taboo, that is, forbidden) during the closed periods. This taboo allowed the protection and development of seabirds in Rapa Nui”.
The cult of the manutara:
The importance of birds in the Rapanui culture is manifested through the numerous allusions to birds found in prints, paintings, sculptures and legends throughout its history.
This great relevance makes sense on a remote and isolated island like Rapa Nui, in which there were no large mammals or reptiles, and in which birds were the only living beings close to humans, which also provided an interesting source of protein in shape of meat and eggs, at the same time as feathers and bones to make tools and decorative objects.
Seabirds also indicate the location of shoals of fish when they fly over the surface of the sea in search of food, which was extremely useful to a people who based much of their livelihood on fishing.
It is not strange, therefore, that a religious cult arose around birds. There was a belief that the birds had a mystical relationship with the gods, and especially the seabirds that united the earth, the sea and the sky. Each year they came from “the hereafter”, an unknown land carrying messages from ancestors and spirits.
However, it is unknown exactly how the cult of the manutara was born and the bird man competition. A cult that replaced the veneration of the Moai statues with a new belief whose main ritual was carried out in spring coinciding with the migration of seabirds to nest in Motu Nui.
Juggler.
Représentations formelles histoire religieuse antiques peintures sublimes éléments en saillie gravitation symbolique styles épiques traditionnels valeurs brillantes jetées,
ποιητής φιλόσοφος καθαρά χρώματα σκηνοθεσία όνειρα διαμόρφωση γραμμών οικοδόμηση έμμεσης μουσικής αυτονομία τεχνικές ρυθμίσεις υψηλές,
романтические перерывы, отражающие серьезные протесты символические формы литературные приемы агрессивные искусства бесспорные звуки,
mbriathra cosúla bunphrionsabail bunphrionsabail anagramsanna gníomhartha suntasacha bhfolach breathnuithe modhanna dinimiciúil chumadh,
قدرتی جذبات چمکدار نعمتوں کی تعریف کی تعریفیں حیران کن سوالات مخمل کتابوں کی معدنی ہدایتوں کے مطابق معتبر کام تال شعور حدود کو تبدیل کرتی ہیں.,
抽象的要素まれな形安定化シンボル修辞的意味コンパイル手段自発的注意散漫させる興奮興味をそそる楽しい幻想動的.
Steve.D.Hammond.
Ardhanarîshvara est une des représentations du dieu Shiva, sous la forme d'un androgyne, moitié homme et moitié femme. La partie droite correspond à Shiva, et la partie gauche à son épouse Parvati.
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Mahabalipuram - hermaphrodite Shiva
Ardhanarishvara is one of the representations of the god Shiva in the form of an androgynous, half man and half woman. The right side corresponds to Shiva, and left to his wife Parvati.
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Mahabalipuram - Pancha Rathas - Tamil Nadu
Paris
Representations of suffering, solidarity, and strength & dignity,
Buchenwald Memorial, Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris
The final memorial inaugurated during the Repressed Memory stage of the Vichy Syndrome is that of Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen. Jean Baptiste-Leducq sculpted this memorial out of hammered copper. It portrays a deportee engulfed in barbed wire and flames. The base plate reads, "100,000 died in this Nazi concentration camp."
Pre-modern representations of the gift-giver from Church history and folklore, notably St Nicholas (known in Dutch as Sinterklaas), merged with the English character Father Christmas to create the character known to Americans and the rest of the English-speaking world as "Santa Claus" (a phonetic derivation of "Sinterklaas").
but it is my ambition to provide for those to whom circumstances forbid that luxury faithful representations of the scenes I have witnessed, and I shall endeavor to make the simple truthfulness of the camera a guide for my pen.
Francis Frith
1858
HPPT! Justice Matters!
camellia, 'Londontowne Blush', sarah p duke gardens, duke university, durham, north carolina
Graphic representations of gemstones on jewelry store signs.
Prague, Czech Republic.
See comments section for some previous findings.
Vera Iliatova paints narrative representations of young women in outdoor settings dense with rivers, trees, and flowers. Her figures are always backgrounded, even hidden.....the scale of their human existence dwarfed by the ominous realities of the world in which they find themselves.
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Iliatova moved to the US in 1991. Her works have shown at the Portland Museum of Art, Maine; Artists Space, NY; Nelson Gallery, UC Davis; Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston. She holds a BA from Brandeis University and an MFA from Yale University. She teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design and is represented by Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York.
This painting was seen and photographed on display at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco in an exhibit entitled 'Jewish Folktales Retold: Artist as Maggid.'
Aphrodisias (/æfrəˈdɪsiəs/;[1] Ancient Greek: Ἀφροδισιάς, romanized: Aphrodisiás) was a Hellenistic Greek city in the historic Caria cultural region of western Asia Minor, today's Anatolia in Turkey. It is located near the modern village of Geyre, about 100 km (62 mi) east/inland from the coast of the Aegean Sea, and 230 km (140 mi) southeast of İzmir.
Aphrodisias was named after Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, who had here her unique cult image, the Aphrodite of Aphrodisias. According to the Suda, a Byzantine encyclopedic compilation, before the city became known as Aphrodisias (c. 3rd century BC) it had three previous Greek names: Lelégōn Pólis (Λελέγων πόλις, "City of the Leleges"),[2] Megálē Pólis (Μεγάλη Πόλις, "Great City"), and Ninóē (Νινόη).[3]
Sometime before 640, in the Late Antique period when it was within the Byzantine Empire, the city was renamed Stauropolis (Σταυρούπολις, "City of the Cross").[4]
In 2017, it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list.[5]
History
Aphrodisias was the metropolis (provincial capital) of the region and Roman province of Caria.[6]
White and blue-grey Carian marble was extensively quarried from adjacent slopes in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, for building facades and sculptures.[citation needed] Marble sculptures and sculptors from Aphrodisias became famous in the Roman world. Many examples of statuary have been unearthed in Aphrodisias, and some representations of the Aphrodite of Aphrodisias also survive from other parts of the Roman world, as far afield as Pax Julia in Lusitania.[7]
The city had notable schools for sculpture, as well as philosophy, remaining a centre of paganism until the end of the 5th century.[6] It was destroyed by earthquake in the early 7th century, and never recovered its former prosperity, being reduced to a small fortified settlement on the site of the ancient theatre.[6] Around the same time, it was also renamed to Stauropolis (Greek: Σταυροῡπολις, "city of the Cross") to remove pagan connotations, but already by the 8th century it was known as Caria after the region, which later gave rise to its modern Turkish name, Geyre.[6][8] In Byzantine times, the city was the seat of a fiscal administrative unit (dioikesis).[8]
Aphrodisias was sacked again by the rebel Theodore Mankaphas in 1188, and then by the Seljuk Turks in 1197. It finally fell under Turkish control towards the end of the 13th century...WIKIPEDIA
Did some 3D CGI representations of this farm earlier in the year (for example):
www.flickr.com/photos/lazlowoodbine/52083001224/in/datepo...
www.flickr.com/photos/lazlowoodbine/52074005255/in/datepo...
www.flickr.com/photos/lazlowoodbine/52073185299/in/datepo...
As we were passing I stopped off to take a couple of shots for comparison. Though the reality is obviously a lot better, and I can now see some mistakes/bits of artistic licence, I don't think I did too bad a job if I say so myself (I wasn't really going for photorealism, more a painterly things, but I think you could tell where it is!).
than alarming representations of its approach :-)
William Benton Clulow, Horæ Otiosæ, 1833
HMM!!
camellia, 'Shibori Egao', j c raulston arboretum, ncsu, Raleigh, north carolina
Moros y cristianos festival, la foto presentada es del 2016 Mojacar pueblo
2017 Moors and Christians Fiesta Programme
FRIDAY JUNE 9. FROM 12:00 NOON.
SATURDAY JUNE 10. FROM 11:00 A.M.
SUNDAY JUNE 11. FROM 11:00 A.M.
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EDUCATIONAL WORKSHOPS
From June 5 to 9 Mojácar’s Bartolomé Flores School will be running various activities and educational workshops related to the Moors and Christians Fiesta which will be adapted according to educational level and age. The specific objectives for this project are to:
1. Learn about and participate in the town’s traditional fiestas.
2. Discover the origins and history of the celebration of the Moors and Christians Fiesta in Mojácar.
3. Gain some knowledge about the Middle Ages i.e. life, customs, society.
4. Appreciate the various parts of the entire Moors and Christians event: acts, representations, parades, important characters and, to respect each one’s collaborative rules.
5. Enjoy and recognize different types of marching or fiesta music, as well as the musical instruments involved and the different groupings.
6. Respect other cultures and ways of life.
Also to learn through workshops about; shields and masks, medieval costume making, theatre, creation of comparsa groups, music ….., which will culminate on Friday June 9 with a Moors and Christians Fiesta, during which the school will become a “Culture Market” where the items made by the children in the different workshops will be exhibited, brought alive by music and decoration of the era.
Overall, the aim of this educational project is to help the children understand and value of Mojácar’s traditional fiestas, whilst keeping them keen to participate and preserve them.
MEDIEVAL MARKET
FRIDAY JUNE 9. FROM 12:00 NOON.
SATURDAY JUNE 10. FROM 11:00 A.M.
SUNDAY JUNE 11. FROM 11:00 A.M.
The MEDIEVAL MARKET opens at 12:00 Noon on Friday June 9 in the Plaza Nueva and Calle Glorieta in Mojácar Pueblo.
On their stalls, the merchants dressed in medieval attire will have all kinds of hand made products for sale.
This is a great opportunity to stroll through our streets and imagine the medieval times, whilst enjoying the breath-taking views from our village which is undoubtedly, unique throughout the Mediterranean.
COMMEMORATIONS AND HISTORICAL REPRESENTATIONS
FRIDAY JUNE 9.
9:30 p.m. Trabuqueros with their blunderbusses gather at the Centro de Usos Múltiples at La Fuente.
9:45 p.m. Troops assemble in La Fuente.
The Moorish King delivers the key to the Town to the Christian King.
10:30 p.m. LA FUENTE. The troops march noisily up to the Pueblo, announcing the presence of hostile troops in the vicinity. The comparsas with the largest number of members will go first, presided over by their respective captains, accompanied by music, fireworks and the sound of random gunfire.
11:00 p.m. PUEBLO. Entry of the troops into the Town, followed by the traditional PREGÓN DE LAS FIESTAS read out by the junior and adult ambassadors, followed by fireworks.
11:45 p.m. PUEBLO. Opening of the various groups’ Kábilas and Barracks presided over by their ambassadors, accompanied by live music and a party until dawn.
SATURDAY, JUNE 10.
4:30 p.m. Trabuqueros gather at Playa Del Lance, in front of the Pueblo Indalo.
6:00 p.m. PLAYA DEL LANCE: Horse Riding and dressage exhibition. Moorish and Christian troops are engaged with shots from the sea and land. Medieval Tournament where Moors and Christian knights try to get the largest number of handkerchiefs, worn by ladies on both sides.
Finally, the troops march from Chiringuito Ankara to the Red Cross with dancing and a fire show.
11:45 p.m. PUEBLO. The Kábilas and Barracks re-open, presided over by their ambassadors, accompanied by live music and a party until dawn.
SUNDAY, JUNE 11.
12:00 noon ALONG THE SEAFRONT. Bands of Moorish and Christian Trabuqueros roam noisily along the beach.
6:30 p.m. PUEBLO. SPECTACULAR MOORS AND CHRISTIANS PARADE, WITH FULL GALA AND MILITARY COSTUMES, ACCOMPANIED BY NUMEROUS BANDS, POMP AND CEREMONY.
ORDER OF THE PARADE:
CHRISTIAN GROUP: 1ST CISNEROS, 2ND TEMPLARIOS 3RD BANDOLEROS (CAPTAIN)
MOORISH GROUP: 1ST MOROS VIEJOS 2ND TUAREG MOXACAR 3RD MORISCOS ALI OLE 4TH ALJAMA MUDEJAR (CAPTAIN)
Il bacio is an 1859 painting by the Italian artist Francesco Hayez. It is possibly his best known work. This painting conveys the main features of Italian Romanticism and has come to represent the spirit of the Risorgimento. It was commissioned by Alfonso Maria Visconti di Saliceto, who donated it to the Pinacoteca di Brera after his death.
After the defeat of Napoleonic France in the 19th century, the Congress of Vienna was held in 1815 to redraw the map of Europe. Italy had a very marginal role compared to other European countries and was slated to be divided into several states. Every state was either ruled directly, or strongly influenced, by the Habsburgs of the Austrian Empire. That fragmentation went against the growing nationalist sentiment for Italy's unification, and caused the creation of secret societies with democratic-radical orientations, such as the Carboneria and Young Italy. Although those associations were unsuccessful, their role was fundamental in shaping public opinion.
The first war of Italian independence (1848) was a failure but, by 1859, the secret agreement between Napoleon III and Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour stipulated the formation of an anti-Austrian alliance. The contribution of France was considered crucial, because the Austrian armies were defeated by the alliance in the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia. That victory initiated the unification process, and the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed a few years later, in 1861.
It was during that period that Francesco Hayez painted The Kiss. Mindful of the bloody repression of the nationalist movement, the artist decided to disguise the ideals of conspiracy and the struggle against the invaders under a representation of past events. The use of ambiguous, opaque metaphors allowed the artist to avoid censorship by the authorities.
The first version of The Kiss was commissioned by Count Alfonso Maria Visconti of Saliceto. Hayez, who was very well known amongst Milanese patriots, was asked by the Count to depict the hopes associated with the alliance between France and the Kingdom of Sardinia.
The artwork was created in 1859 and presented at the Pinacoteca di Brera on 9 September. It was hung as a decoration in the luxurious residence of the Visconti family for more than twenty-five years. It was only in 1886, a year before his death, that the Count presented the canvas to the Pinacoteca di Brera, where it is still exhibited today, in Room XXXVII.
Although the oil version is the most famous, Hayez produced two other versions of the painting, one in oil and one watercolor. The second version was painted in 1861 for the Mylius family, and was sent to Paris to be exhibited in the Exposition Universelle in 1867. In 2008, that version was sold at Sotheby's for 780,450 pounds. The difference between the second painting and the previous one is that the woman’s dress is colored white. The third version is the only one to have been rendered in watercolor on paper. Painted in 1859, it has an oval shape, and was donated by Hayez to Carolina Zucchi. It is now exhibited at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan.
The last painting differs from the original because of the addition of a white cloth lying on the steps beside the couple, and the bright green paint used for the man's mantle.
The painting represents a couple from the Middle Ages, embracing while they kiss each other. It is among the most passionate and intense representations of a kiss in the history of Western art. The girl leans backwards, while the man bends his left leg so as to support her, simultaneously placing a foot on the step next to him as though poised to go at any moment. The couple, though at the center of the painting, are not recognizable, as Hayez wanted the action of the kissing to be at the center of the composition. In the left part of the canvas shadowy forms lurk in the corner to give an impression of conspiracy and danger.
The geometric and perspective scheme of the Kiss is set on a series of diagonals which follow the course of the steps and converge to the vanishing point, placed to the left of the two lovers. These lines represent the framework of the painting and brings the observer’s attention to the couple.
The chromatism of the painting is inherited from the Renaissance schools of the Venetian masters where Hayez conducted his first studies. The brown of the cloak and the red of the boy's tights blend harmoniously with the light blue in the dress of the girl, while the neutral shades of the background help the couple stand out. A light, coming from an external source placed to the left of the picture, hits the whole scene homogeneously: its reflections enhances the silky dress of the girl, emphasizing also the pavement and the bricks on the wall.
This painting has been regarded as a symbol of Italian Romanticism, of which it encompasses many features. On a more superficial level, the painting is the representation of a passionate kiss, which puts itself in accordance with the principles of Romanticism. Therefore, it emphasizes deep feelings rather than rational thought, and presents a reinterpretation and reevaluation of the Middle Ages in a patriotic and nostalgic tone. Some art historians also suggest that one of the political meanings that Il Bacio can carry is that a young Italian soldier, going off to fight for Italy against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, says goodbye to his love kissing her for one last time.
On a deeper level, the painting symbolizes the romantic, nationalist and patriotic ideals of the Risorgimento; this interpretation is endorsed by several iconographic elements.
The imminent farewell between the lovers is suggested by the man’s foot temporarily resting on the step and the tight grasp with which his beloved is holding him. This represents both the necessity that he must leave whilst showing the danger of being a patriot. Other elements are the dagger hidden in the mantle, a sign of the imminent rebellion against the Habsburg invader, and the date of the painting (1859), the year of the second war of independence. However the most obvious allegory in the painting is its chromatic range, which summarizes the political changes that involved Italy in the 19th century. In the Brera version, the blue of the woman's dress and the bright red of the young man's tights allude to the colors in the French flag.
Hayez intended to pay tribute to the French nation, now allied with Italy. In the three subsequent versions the allegorical-patriotic connotations became even more obvious: in the 1861 version, the dress of the girl assumed a neutral white tone, as a tribute to the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy. In the fourth version, Italy manifests itself instead in the clothes of the man, who now wears a green cloak, symbolizing the Italian national banner.
The Kiss has enjoyed extensive popularity from its exhibition onward, especially in Italy, and has been the subject of much commentary. In the 1920s the art director of Perugina, one of Italy's leading chocolate manufacturers, revised the image of the painting and created the typical blue box of the popular "Baci" chocolates with the picture of two lovers. In 1954 the great Italian director Luchino Visconti took inspiration from the painting for one of the leading scenes of his masterpiece movie, Senso.
These models are representation of mankind from the chapters prior to the invention, and integration of the written word - so late neolithic to early bronze age.
The sadness on the faces of these life-sized models is utterly heart-breaking and feeds a narrative that humans from prior to the invention of writing were lost and missing something.
The written texts that define the word 'history' and its antithesis 'prehistory' are as varied as people and situations. Written texts can be to do with transaction, protocol, rite, story, glory, exaggeration, humour, insight or lie.
People sing, tell stories, laugh out loud, cry with fear or sorrow and generally express emotions as individuals, and that is the case from either side of the great history/prehistory divide and seeing only one quality in such a wide group affords a false impression.
photo rights reserved by B℮n
Wat Phra That Suthon Mongkhon Khiri, also known as Wat Phra That Suthon, is a Buddhist temple located in Nakhon Ratchasima Province, northeastern Thailand. This temple has a special significance due to its historical and religious value, as well as its breathtaking architecture and location. The temple is famous for its beautiful and imposing stupa, which is the central feature of the complex. The stupa, also called chedi in Thai, is a tower-like structure that houses Buddhist relics and sacred objects. Wat Phra That Suthon's stupa is covered in shimmering mosaics and decorative features, making it a striking visual feature in the landscape. Wat Phra That Suthon serves as an important pilgrimage site for Buddhists due to its cultural and historical significance. In addition to a panoramic view, there is also a remarkable Buddha statue. This Buddha statue is known for its detailed and refined artistic work, especially in the representation of the feet. The Buddha statue with the carefully carved feet may be an example of a Phra Phutthabat, which translates to Buddha's footprint. These are artistic representations of Buddha's feet commonly found in Buddhist temples. These statues often display symbolic details, such as the lotus pattern on the soles of the feet and markings representing the various characteristics of Buddha. Besides the stupa and Buddha statues, there are also statues of elephants accompanied by warriors. These sculptures add an extra layer of historical and cultural significance to the temple. Elephants have always been an important symbol in Thai culture, and they are often associated with power, royalty and spiritual meanings.
Wat Phra That Suthon Mongkon Khiri, found in Nakhon Ratchasima Province, Thailand, is a temple worth visiting. One thing that makes it popular is its big lying-down Buddha outside. It's the first thing you see when you arrive. Next to its feet, there are stairs that look like a snake going up to a special room. Inside the temple, there's a tall tower and some statues with lots of details. As you go higher, you'll see more statues of Buddha. This temple mixes different styles and looks really nice in pictures. If you look closely, you might find pictures and things that tell stories about different times and ideas that are not only about Buddhism. This temple is a mix of different cultures and ideas. For people who like to notice small things in buildings and learn about different cultures, Wat Phra That Suthon Mongkon Khiri is a good place to explore.
Wat Phra That Suthon Mongkhon Khiri, ook bekend als Wat Phra That Suthon, is een boeddhistische tempel die zich bevindt in de provincie Nakhon Ratchasima, in het noordoosten van Thailand. Deze tempel heeft een speciale betekenis vanwege zijn historische en religieuze waarde, evenals zijn adembenemende architectuur en ligging. De tempel is beroemd om zijn prachtige en imposante stoepa, die het centrale kenmerk is van het complex. De stoepa, ook wel chedi genoemd in het Thais, is een torenachtige structuur die boeddhistische relikwieën en heilige voorwerpen herbergt. De stoepa van Wat Phra That Suthon is bedekt met glinsterende mozaïeken en decoratieve elementen, waardoor het een opvallend visueel kenmerk is in het landschap. Wat Phra That Suthon dient als een belangrijk bedevaartsoord voor boeddhisten vanwege zijn culturele en historische betekenis. Naast een panoramische uitzicht, bevindt zich ook een opmerkelijk boeddha beeld. Dit boeddha beeld staat bekend om zijn gedetailleerde en verfijnde artistieke bewerking, vooral in de weergave van de voeten. Het boeddha beeld met de zorgvuldig bewerkte voeten kan een voorbeeld zijn van een Phra Phutthabat, wat zich vertaalt naar Boeddha's voetafdruk. Dit zijn artistieke representaties van Boeddha's voeten die vaak worden aangetroffen in boeddhistische tempels. Deze beelden vertonen vaak symbolische details, zoals het lotuspatroon op de voetzolen en markeringen die de verschillende kenmerken van Boeddha vertegenwoordigen. Naast de stoepa en boeddha beelden, zijn er ook beelden van olifanten vergezeld door krijgers. Deze sculpturen voegen een extra laag van historische en culturele betekenis toe aan de tempel. Olifanten zijn altijd een belangrijk symbool geweest in de Thaise cultuur, en ze worden vaak geassocieerd met kracht, royalty en spirituele betekenissen.
I wasn't sure whether these representations of me would be popular but they have been -thank you. By way of background, the top, cardigan and skirt were bought at the same time. That was 2004. I was still searching for an image that defined me and it took me until 2011 to find it. The reason I bought the clothes in the photo is that I was drawing on influences from schoolteachers that I had when I was 5 to 10 years old. I met one of those teachers about 10 years ago and as we chatted I told her she had been a big influence on me. She was delighted. I didn't spoil the delight by telling her exactly how she had inspired me.
Real wonder of Chiang Mai the Wat Sri Suphan whose construction dates back to the beginning of the sixteenth century It has since 2008 a ubosot (ordination hall of the monks) entirely covered with silver.
The life of Buddha is on the walls but also the life of the people as well as representations of some countries with the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, etc...
A maintenance and repair workshop is inside and it is possible to see monks and craftsmen working there.
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Véritable merveille de Chiang Mai le Wat Sri Suphan dont la construction remonte au début du XVIè siècle Il possède depuis 2008 un ubosot (salle d'ordination des moines) entièrement recouvert d'argent.
La vie de Bouddha est sur les murs mais aussi la vie des gens du peuple ainsi que des représentations de certains pays avec la tour Eiffel ,la statue de la liberté,etc...
Un atelier d'entretien et de réparation se trouve à l'intérieur et il est possible de voir des moines et des artisans y travailler.
Representations Of People is the 8/31/13 topic for Our Daily Challenge, and these shadows represent Roma and me out on our regular morning walk.
St. Michael the Archangel slaying Satan (aka Lucifer) and lower demons (or fallen angels) with his sword is carved in bas-relief. The bas-relief is just beneath the South choir’s dome of The Exaltation of the Holy Cross church.
The archangel is represented as anthropomorphic, flying with wings and a halo around his head. This old bas-relief is very rare, since in Greek Orthodox churches Angels’ and Saints’ representations are almost always painted (as either icons or wall-paintings, aka frescoes), instead of being carved.
The church was once the katholikon (main church) of an Abbey (aka “Monastery”). It is a vaulted three-aisled basilica of a singular architectural style all of its own, measuring 72.8 × 43.3 ft (22.2 × 13.2 m without apses and choirs). The church is defined by its thirteen domes and still stands within a picturesque fir-trees’ forest at an altitude (elevation) of 3,609 ft (1,100 m). It was built in c.1770 or 1792. Severe damages were caused by the Nazi Germans during the occupation in WWII. The Exaltation of the Holy Cross is dependent on St. Stephen’s monastery (Meteora).
The church is located between two villages—Dholianá and Kraniá. Both villages are in the greater area of Aspropótamos (Greek for “White River,” toponym of river Acheloos) in Trikala county, Greece.
I Wish You A Happy and Prosperous New Year 2019!
La multi ani 2019!
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New Year's period in Romania is unique. Ancient times customs are piously kept at the countryside.
There are more then 2000 year-old customs from the Dacian ancestors mixed or overlapped with Christian's traditions
The most colorful New Year’s Eve traditions are however the mask-dances, magical ceremonials of death and rebirth, with a variety of representations from the animal world like goats, horses or bears, fictional characters like the devil and symbolic personages like the ugly, the beautiful, the elder, the military, the gypsy, the bride, the emperor and many more.
Each role and performance has a special meaning attached to the past cultural reality of Romanian villages.
In Romanian folk tradition, New Year's Day falls in the middle of the twelve days of Christmas (December 25 through January 6). New Year's Day thus divides the twelve days of Christmas into two six-day sections.
The first half of the 12-day cycle begins on Christmas day and is considered a dangerous or evil period. The night grows longer, causing the spirits of the dead ancestors to wander around on the earth.
Symbolically, these spirits represent the attempt by nature to return to its chaotic state of darkness and cold.
In some rural regions, orgiastic rituals attempt to drag nature back from the edge of chaos and to give birth to a new year.
The day of January 6 is the traditional celebration of Epiphany (baptism of Christ). This signals the successful conquest of light over darkness.
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Many Thanks to the +8,940,000 visitors of my photographic stream
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© Ioan C. Bacivarov
All the photos on this gallery are protected by the international of copyright and they are not for being used on any site, blog or forum, transmitted or manipulated without the explicit written permission of the author. Thank you in advance
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Reservation and information : www.theatre-du-printemps.fr/representations/festival-nori...
Our next show!
Ladies and gentlemen, we are pleased to introduce our next piece: We Have All The Same Story.
Ladies, we are also preparing a video (broadcast during the show) and we would need you !! If you like (and I would be very happy: p), you could appear in the video. The only thing to do, send me (via my personal email I can give you in private message) a video of you or not, where you could hear this phase: "We all have the same story." Regardless of the format (phone, tablet, computer, camera...), no limits to your creativity. You do what you want.
Then we'll edit the video with all your videos (I already have a few...). Of course, since I'm poor, I can not pay you an airline ticket / hotel but instead for the show will be free for you (really)... ;))
SORRY FOR MY ENGLISH!! :))
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Notre prochain spectacle.
Mesdames et Messieurs, nous sommes heureux de vous présenter notre prochaine pièce : Nous Avons Toutes La Même Histoire.
Mesdemoiselles et Mesdames, nous préparons également un vidéo (diffuser durant le spectacle) et nous aurions besoin de vous !! Si vous le souhaitez (et j'en serais très heureux :p), vous pourriez apparaître dans la vidéo. La seule chose à faire, me faire parvenir (via mon mail perso que je peux vous donner en message privé) une vidéo de vous, ou sans, où l'on pourrait entendre cette phase : "Nous avons toutes la même histoire". Peu importe le format (téléphone, tablette, ordinateur, caméra...), aucune limite dans votre créativité. Vous faites ce que vous voulez.
Ensuite, nous allons monter la vidéo avec toutes les vidéos de vous (j'en ai déjà quelques unes...). Bien entendu, vu que je suis pauvre, je ne peux vous payer un billet d'avion/hotel mais la place pour le spectacle sera gratuit pour vous (vraiment)... ;)
Une bonne occasion de créer ensemble et peut-être même de se rencontrer !?
A good opportunity to create together and maybe even meet?
I've always loved visual representations of things. When we say words like "forever" and "infinity"… how can we visually represent something like that? It's challenging. When I say I write a lot, I wanted to be able to visually capture that.
I have the pages of my journal yes to represent my writing, but there's much more writing I do than just in my journal. I wanted to collect the pens that I used for all of my writing and be able to showcase them. This trio of display boxes allows me to display what I have written, while giving room for the future.
Theme: Re-Creation
Year Thirteen Of My 365 Project
Two potential neolithic representations of a 'tension boat' followed by a model representation of a wooden plank boat. See how the innovation of the wood hull stops the boat from ripping on rocks, as it might for models consisting of stretched leather over basket and frame (imagine advanced directional coracles, or slow and heavy-build Kayaks). Stretching and tension ask for an even curve of the boats bow, whereas planks ask for a point or, a wide range of advanced metal tools and steaming (a big ask for the neolithic). All three seem to have representations of thwarts, with the left hand thwart faint but visible in other images of the series - above the four carved circles. The sculptured granit to the left is from the Costa Brava in Spain (I have named it 'The tension boat of the wild coast'), the middle image is from a photo by Gianni Careddu, and is of the central stone of a Sardinian giants grave (Tomba dei giganti di Imbertighe) - a typical example from many, with the right image being a hobby model of a row boat. The representation on the left is in truth horizontal and allows through the interpretation that the Sardinia megaliths are representations of up-turned boats - venerated transport that brought clans to their new life and stopped as a vertical 'halt' ?
Despite the fact that the granit to the left is lacking the peck marks of iron tools (using copper or bronze on just such a scale of granit would be in my mind ridiculous), it is currently listed under the Medievalist category of 'Sacrificial stone'. The Sardinian megaliths are often likened in texts to boats, but as, up until now, there has yet to be a cross reference of a curved bow in a horizontal aspect, comments tend to be stilted as decorative asides. If the form is recognized, other megaliths align with similar outlines (see the calcolithic cist photographed below as a token example of many).
AJM 24,7,18
Votive relief with representations of Zeus and the Apollonian Trinity, that is Leto and her children, Apollo and Artemis. Zeus is shown seated on the left side of the relief. He wears an himation (mantle) that covers only the lower part of his body. His right arm is elevated in a manner suggesting he was holding a scepter, which most likely rendered in color. The other deities stand in front of Zeus facing right. Leto wears a Doric peplos (heavy dress made of wool) with a lavish overfold and a himation (mantle) covering part of her head. The spear she held in her left hand was also rendered in color. Apollo is beardless and his himation (mantle) is wrapped around his left arm and leaves the upper part of his body exposed. Artemis wears a chiton (light robe, usually made of linen) tied around her waist. She is apparently running towards the left but her head faces the opposite direction. She likely held bronze reins in her clasped palms. The feet of two animals can be discerned on the right end of the relief. The representation most likely concluded with Iphigenia, whose head has survived separately. The entire composition appears to have been influenced by the sculpture of the Parthenon, the masterpiece of the Classical period. On the missing part of the scene, female head part of the relief and, possibly, representing Iphigenia carved with Orestes on a chariot drawn by two deer.
Source: Museum WEB notice
Pentelic marble relief
L. 1,09 m, H. 0,81 m, W 0,19 m
Early 4th century BC
From the Stoa of the Sanctuary of Brauron
Brauron, Archaeological Museum, inv. NN. 1180 – 1179
Australian representations of Alco 48209 built for New South Wales Government Railways and EMD powered GM1 built for the Commonwealth Railways are side by side during shunting at Parkes on 28-9-2016.
GM1 was in Parkes to be transferred to the Streamliners 2016 event at Goulburn a couple of days later.
les statues ou représentations du Christ sont voilées
the statues or representations of Christ are veiled
Group in limestone with two representations of Ramses II, kneeling face to face and holding what appears to be a kind of altar.
The summit of this one presents a cavity or was fixed some object of worship, probably an image of the solar boat with the god Khepri, perhaps in gold or in silver. The altar, whose sides carry the cartouches of Ramses II, rests on the head of a character with high arms. The king's two kneeling representations bore scarabs on their heads, indicating that Ramses II was identified with the god Khepri.
The motif of the scarab, either large or small, carved in high relief on the head of the pharaoh is found on a small number of royal statues. All of these statues are attributed to kings of the Ramesside Period, with only one exception, a statue from the late phase of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
The inscriptions on a group statue of Ramesses II with a scarab on the head of the king contain mainly the names and epithets of Ramesses II associated with Atum, Re-Horakhty, Khepri and Geb, without any clarification of the role or the religious symbolism of the scarab.
The religious symbolism of a scarab sculpted on the top of a royal head was new in royal statuary of the New Kingdom, especially in the Ramesside Period. It signified the wish to
be reborn after death, a renewal. The power of Khepri was transferred to the pharaoh as a guarantee of a prosperous and renewed Egypt. The king was identified with the sun god and as such, he was regenerated overnight, just like the daily rising of the morning sun. It is noticeable that the kings of the New Kingdom, especially of the 19th and 20th dynasties, preferred this concept endowing the kings with the role of the Creator God, and therefore also with that of the god Khepri, and used it in their iconography.
(A Fragmentary Statue of Ramesses II with a Scarab on the Head, Mahmoud Kassem, Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw, 2006)
Karnak, 19th dynasty
Egyptian Museum, Cairo
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow by night with the statue of St. Mungo, the patron saint of Glasgow, flanked by representations of Art and Music. #kelvingrove #kelvingroveartgalleryandmuseum #kelvingroveartgallery #stmungo #saintmungo #pattonsaint #glasgowpatronsaint #glasgow #glasgow850 #glasgowestend #westendglasgow#glasgowphotographer #glasgowphotography
I believe the Galactic Civil War never would have happened had all the leaders worn Mickey Mouse Ears.
View with your Mickey Mouse Ears on
for
Our Daily Challenge: Representations Of People
Representations of seals can be seen engraved into the walls of the grottes du Cosquer in the Callanque behind Marseilles from around 27 000 and 19 000 ybp. There is also and engraving at the end of a bone from Brassempouy (the site famous for its Venus head). Further north, in the Grotte de Montgaudier, other depictions of seals were engraved onto bone.
The Horsey site is managed so that the beaches are clear of humans.
The below text was copied from the abstract of the French report titled 'Grey and harbour seals in France...'
'These rates of increase in grey seal numbers are not linked to local pup production and most probably result from seal movements from the southwest British Isles and the North Sea, (...) Grey seals moved much greater distances (than harbour seals), reaching up to 1200 km from their capture site' So, it seems that the success of British conservation zones like Horsey has outreach.
AJ
Italien / Toskana - Populonia
Parco Archeologico di Baratti e Populonia
Populonia or Populonia Alta (Etruscan: Pupluna, Pufluna or Fufluna, all pronounced Fufluna; Latin: Populonium, Populonia, or Populonii) today is a frazione of the comune of Piombino (Tuscany, central Italy). As of 2009 its population was 17. Populonia is especially noteworthy for its Etruscan remains, including one of the main necropolis in Italy, discovered by Isidoro Falchi.
Description
Modern Populonia is located within a small portion of the walled acropolis of a large ancient city, which covered the entire north end of Monte Massoncello, a promontory, its northern slopes down to the Bay of Baratti, and the shores of the bay, which was its port. The city was an industrial one, smelting copper ore brought from the Colline Metallifere, the "ore-bearing hills" inland, and iron ore from nearby Elba, in beehive blast furnaces. Over the thousand years of its life it came to cover the entire southern shore of the bay with slag, piling it over abandoned residences and cemeteries, until it lost its utility as a metals manufacturer. Then it was abandoned.
The metal-rich slag was reworked for its content by Feromin Co., 1929–1969, which cleaned the shore of the bay and left but little behind. During the process Etruscan necropoleis and other buildings were uncovered. They attracted the attention of the archaeologists. Soon it was realized that not only Populonia but the entire Val di Cornia, Valley of the nearby Cornia River, had been densely populated in Etruscan times. Moreover, the Val had been populated continuously from Paleolithic times. In recognition of the area's importance to archaeology, a system of parks was created, the Parchi della Val di Cornia, with a key park being the Parco archeologico di Baratti e Populonia, the "Baratti and Populonia Archeological Park", which covers the hill with the acropolis and the entire Bay of Baratti and its shores. Another is the Archaeological Area of Poggio del Molino.
The port has long since been replaced by the city of Piombino on the southern slopes of Monte Massoncello, which is the departure point of maritime traffic leading to Elba and elsewhere. The parks and museums host large numbers of visitors; the village at the top has mainly a caretaker function. The heights feature a massive fortress built in the 15th century by the Appiani lords of Piombino, with stones taken from Etruscan remains. The hill has been kept in a disarmingly forested and rural condition. It was once clear and populated. The remains of a city wall go around the top.
Considerable remains of its town walls, of large irregular, roughly rectangular blocks (the form follows the natural spalling of the local schistose sandstone), still enclose a circuit of about 2.5 kilometers. The remains existing within them are entirely Roman—a row of vaulted substructures, a water reservoir and a mosaic with representations of fishes. Strabo mentions the existence here of a lookout tower for the shoals of tuna-fish. There are some tombs outside the town, some of which, ranging from the Villanovan period (9th century BC to the middle of the 3rd century BC), were explored in 1908. In one, a large circular tomb, were found three sepulchral couches in stone, carved in imitation of wood, and a fine statuette in bronze of Ajax committing suicide. Close by was found a horse collar with fourteen bronze bells.
The remains of a temple, devastated in ancient times (possibly by Dionysius I of Syracuse in 384 BC), were also discovered, with fragments in it of Attic vases of the 5th century BC, which had served as ex votos. Coins of the town have also been found in silver and copper. The iron mines of Elba, and the tin and copper of the mainland, were owned and smelted by the people of Populonia; hot springs too lay some 10 km to the east (Aquae Populaniae) on the coastal high road —Via Aurelia. At this point a road branched off to Saena (Siena). According to Virgil, building on a tradition of an ancient alliance with Rome, the town sent a contingent to the help of Aeneas; in historical times it furnished Scipio the Elder with iron in 205 BC. It offered considerable resistance to Sulla, who took it by siege; and from this dates its decline, which Strabo, who describes it well (v. 2, 6, p. 223), already notes as beginning, while four centuries later Rutilius Claudius Namatianus describes it as in ruins.
Etruscan Fufluna
Name
The name of the Etruscan city is known from its coins. It has been suggested that it was named after a god, Fufluns, as other Etruscan cities were named after divinities. It would mean, then, "the city of Fufluns." The word was written in Hellenistic times with the Etruscan letter f, only introduced then. Before then Etruscans and Romans made do with a p, resulting in such spellings as Pupluna or Populonia, but the pronunciation must have been Fufluna. It has been further suggested that Pliny's mention of a statue of Zeus at Populonia carved from one vine (hence very ancient, possible hundreds of years) suggests a pre-metallurgical wine industry flourishing at the time Fufluna was officially named.
Foundation
The earliest evidence of Etruscans at Fufluna is from two necropoleis containing material of the Villanovan culture, which was Iron Age and began about 900 BC. Except for some cities that probably began in the Proto-Villanovan, 900 is the foundation time for the majority of Etruscan urbanizations. The cemeteries are San Cerbone on the south shore of the Bay of Baratti and Piano e Poggio della Granate further north on the bay. The presence of the cemeteries can only be explained by a large settlement nearby, which can only have been Fufluna.
The acropolis of the city extended over two hills at the top of the promontory: Poggio del Castillo, the site of the castle and modern structures, and Poggio del Telegrafo, also called, confusingly, Poggio del Molino, not the only hill of that name in the area. Remains of a Roman villa, Villa le Logge, share Telegrafo with an excavation last conducted in the seasons of 2003–2005, which uncovered among other things postholes from a village of huts of the same date as the Villanovan cemeteries, about 900 BC.
The presence of a few Proto-Villanovan tombs at Villa del Barone on another Poggio del Molino near Punta del Stellino just to the north of Baratti indicates the foundation population was proto-Etruscan. It was excavated in the 1980s by the University of Florence. The Bronze Age Proto-villanovan (which is not part of the Villanovan) began as early as 1200 BC.
Another excavation at another Roman villa on Poggio del Molino near Baroni began in 2009. A report from the second season, 2010, mentions that a Bronze Age village of huts was found under the villa. The excavators date it to "the Late Bronze Age" by the pottery, tentatively assigning it to 1200–1100 BC, a time falling within the Final Bronze Age of the Italian system and also within the Proto-Villanovan Period. They have not yet made any such distinctions. The village is assumed to have been associated with the Populonian population. Throughout the Val di Cornia are remains much older. It cannot be presumed, however, just because the archaeology of the region goes back to the Stone Age, that their populations represent the Proto-Etruscans.
The Poggio del Molino (or Mulino, "the mill") north of Baratti must be associated with Fufluna because of a geographical barrier, not there now, once termed Lake Rimigliano. In Etruscan times it was a lagoon fringed by a barrier island (the current beach area) extending from San Vincenzo in the north southward to the foot of Poggio del Molino, where it was broken by an egress point (today the mouth of an irrigation channel). The lake went as far inland as the mines at Campiglia Marittima, an easy route for ore barges between there and the Bay of Baratti. The lagoon eventually became a swamp, disappearing in favor of agricultural land in 1832. The lagoon and its swamps would have created conditions conducive to malaria, meaning that free Etruscans who could afford it would have preferred to live on the heights.
Around 600 BC, the city joined the confederate Etruscan League or twelve cities. It served as one of the only two port cities.
Proto-historic foundation myths
A number of stories about the foundation of Populonia promulgated by the classical authors concerning these events removed from their times by at least several hundred years, the better part of it prehistoric, have been found to have no basis in any known archaeological fact. Maurus Servius Honoratus in his commentary on Vergil's Aeneid says that Populonia was founded later than the other cities by Corsicans, who were driven out by Etruscans from Volterra or by Volterraneans without the Corsican interlude. However, Populonia, is Villanovan in provenience. Moreover, no material remains of any Corsicans have been found or excavated, the tombs are unlike those of Volterra, and finally, between Populonia and Volterra, the former was by far the major settlement.
Strabo claimed that Populonia was the only Etruscan coastal city; the others were removed from the coast by several miles. He may not have known that Pisa had been a major Etruscan city before it was Roman. Pisa was built also in the Villanovan period on the delta of the Arno River and was a port during the floruit of Etruscan civilization. Spina also had been placed at the edge of the Po River. It has been termed by moderns the Etruscan Venice. As far as minor settlements are concerned, Pyrgi and Gravisca were Etruscan ports as early as any. By Strabo's time, the Romans had seized the entire coastline and had ejected the Etruscans from it. It is true that Etruscans preferred the most defensible positions on inland escarpments. If none were convenient or available they did not hesitate to settle in the plain or at the water's edge whether of lake or sea.
The metals industry
In geology, the "Tuscan metallogenic province" derived from volcanic intrusions into southern Etruria due to extension of the crust there (which also created a karst topography in western Italy) from the late Miocene to the Pleistocene. This process emplaced iron oxide deposits on Elba, pyrite in southern Tuscany and various kinds of skarn including copper-bearing in the Colline Metallifere, called Etruria Mineraria in the Middle Ages. The ancient slag-heaps are estimated to weigh 2–4 million tons, representing an annual iron production of between 1,600–2,000 and 10,000 tons, according to varying modern estimates.
Especially of interest to the Etruscans and later Romans of Populonia were the polymetallic ores of Campiglia Marittima, which contain copper, lead, zinc, iron, silver and tin; in short, all the ingredients bronze and steel with the added bonus of silver. The modern mine there descends from the ancient.
Feromin Co. removed mainly the iron slag from the shores of the Gulf of Baratti. Copper slag remains on the beach, which has been dated to the 9th and 8th centuries BC by radiocarbon methods; in other words, the city may have been founded to process ore.
Roman Populonia
Under Roman rule the harbour continued to be of some importance, and the place was already an episcopal see in the 6th century. The city was destroyed in 570 by the Lombards. The few survivors, led by bishop St. Cerbo, fled to the island of Elba, off the coast.
In literature
Populonia is mentioned in Horatius, the poem by English author Lord Macaulay: "From seagirt Populonia,/Whose sentinels descry/Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops/Fringing the southern sky", although Macaulay wrongly wrote that Sardinia is visible from it.
(Wikipedia)
The Archaeological Park of Baratti and Populonia is located in the township of Piombino (Province of Livorno) and covers about 80 hectares between the slopes of the promontory of Piombino and the Gulf of Baratti coast. It is part of The Parks of Val di Cornia and was opened in 1998 for visitors to view some of the archaeological sites and remains found in the new digs archaeological conducted in the area since 1996.
The park includes several areas from the ancient Etruscan city of Populonia, the necropolis of San Cerbone, Casone and the grotto, and the cave of calcarenite. Inside the park is an experimental archeological laboratory.
There are currently several proposed routes:
San Cerbone necropolis, with tombs from the 7th-6th century BC;
the "Via delle Cave": from fields of the Arpa, a path leading to Etruscan cave of calcarenite (or stone bench), with tombs carved into the rock of the necropolis from the 4th-3rd BC
the "Via del Ferro" a path along the coast with the experimental archeology laboratory, which offers a glimpse into the industrial districts of the city, where housing buildings for the manufacture of iron can be found dating from the (6th-3rd century BC);
nature trails along the edge of the Caves.
In 2007 a third area of the park was opened, the acropolis, which is located at the Castle in upper Populonia and includes remains from the most ancient Etruscans, up to the Romans.
(Wikipedia)
Populonia ist ein alter Ort an der toskanischen Küste in Italien, der administrativ zur Stadt Piombino in der Provinz Livorno gehört.
Geografie
Der Ort liegt auf einem Vorgebirge hoch über dem Golf von Baratti ca. 8 km nördlich des Hauptortes Piombino auf 170 m. Im Jahr 2001 hatte der Ort 17 Einwohner. Er liegt im Bistum Massa Marittima-Piombino.
Populonia Alta
Populonia Alta ist der heute noch bewohnte Teil von Populonia und liegt auf der heute Poggio Castello genannten Anhöhe, die erst später von den Etruskern besiedelt wurde. Die mittelalterlichen Mauern, die den Ort umgeben, sind noch sehr gut erhalten. Sie dienten damals vor allem dem Schutz vor Piraten. Die Burg selber wurde am Anfang des 15. Jahrhunderts von Jacopo II. Appiani gebaut und im 18. Jahrhundert restauriert. Ein Rundgang durch die Gassen führt auch zum Turm der Festung, von dessen Spitze aus man einen Rundumblick auf das Meer bis hin nach Elba und auf das toskanische Festland hat. Die nahe dem Festungseingang liegende Kirche Santa Maria della Croce enthält Fresken aus dem Jahr 1516. Sie entstammen dem Umfeld des Sodoma. Die beiden von hier stammenden Leinwandgemälde Trasporto di san Cerbone (18. Jahrhundert) und Vergine con Bambino (14. Jahrhundert) befinden sich heute im Museo diocesano d’arte sacra Andrea Guardi im Dom von Piombino. Unweit davon in der Via di Sotto liegt das Museo Archeologico Gasparri. Die staatlich anerkannte Privatkollektion stammt aus der Sammlung des Curzio Desideri und wurde 1959 eröffnet
Die antike Stadt
Das antike Populonia entstand zunächst auf der heute Poggio del Telegrafo genannten Anhöhe und war eine etruskische Ansiedlung, genannt Pupluna oder Fufluna. Es war die einzige etruskische Stadt, die sich an der Küste entwickelt hat. Es war das größte Zentrum der Eisenverarbeitung des gesamten Mittelmeerraumes. Dort wurde das Eisenerz verhüttet, das von der nahe gelegenen Insel Elba stammte und im Hafen an der Bucht von Baratti angelandet wurde.
Eine Vorstellung vom Umfang der industriellen Erzverarbeitung, die mehr als achthundert Jahre (9. Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis 1. Jahrhundert v. Chr.) anhielt, gibt die Menge des Schlackenabraumes von mehr als einer Million Kubikmetern. Während des Ersten Weltkrieges führte der verstärkte Bedarf nach Metall zum Abbau dieser Rückstände, die wegen der mangelhaften antiken Verfahren noch die Weiterverarbeitung lohnten. Die eigens zu diesem Zweck gegründete Firma Ferromin stellte ihre Tätigkeit erst nach der vollständigen Ausbeutung der Schlacken im Jahre 1969 ein. Durch diese Abtragungen kamen erste Reste von Tholos-Gräbern ans Tageslicht, sie markieren damit den Beginn der Wiederentdeckung des antiken Populonia.
Archäologischer Park
Der archäologische Park fasst die Akropolis auf der Anhöhe und die Hochöfen und Werkstätten zur Eisenerzverhüttung sowie die Nekropolen in der Ebene zusammen, deren Standorte einige Kilometer voneinander entfernt liegen. Auf gut beschilderten Rundwegen kann man die Überreste der Erzverarbeitung und verschiedene Nekropolen besichtigen, wobei dem unteren Gelände ein Besucherzentrum mit Buchladen und Selbstbedienungsrestaurant und ein Experimentiergelände für Schüler angegliedert ist.
Die Necropoli delle Grotte liegt an den Abhängen des Hügels, auf dem sich die Akropolis befindet. Sie datiert aus der hellenistischen Epoche vom 4. bis zum 2. Jahrhundert vor Christus. Hier wurde eine mächtige Anlage in Gestalt einer Felswand mit aus dem Kalkstein geschlagenen Höhlengräbern freigelegt. Daneben finden sich dort etliche Grüfte, die in Form schmaler, ebenfalls aus dem Fels herausgearbeiteter Gänge mit steil aufragenden Seitenwänden in die Tiefe zu kleinen Grabkammern führen, in denen die Leichname bestattet waren.
In der Totenstadt San Cerbone in der Ebene nahe der Küste finden sich drei Formen von Grabstätten aus dem 7. bis 6. Jahrhundert vor Christus. Es handelt sich um Tumuli verschiedener Größen, Sarkophage und Totenhäuser in denen zahlreiche kleinere Gegenstände aus Silber und Bronze gefunden wurden. Der Tumulus Tomba dei Carri misst 28 Meter im Durchmesser. Er birgt in seinem Zentrum eine kuppelförmige Grabkammer und daneben zwei kleinere Kammern, in denen die Überreste zweier hölzerner, bronzeverkleideter Streitwagen gefunden wurde. Mehrere andere, kleinere Tumuli sind in verschiedenen Erhaltungszuständen in der Nähe verstreut, und am Rande des Gräberfeldes steht, umgeben von Sarkophagen, ein Totenhaus in der Bauweise eines Tempelchens.
Auf einem speziellen Pfad, der Via del Ferro, der Eisenstraße, wird der Besucher mit den Resten der Werkstätten bekannt gemacht, in denen die Erzverarbeitung stattfand. Es finden sich auch Reste von Hochöfen und Schmelzrückstände aus der damaligen Produktion.
Die Akropolis stellt die Oberstadt der römischen Siedlung dar. Auf dem Hügel gegenüber dem bestehenden Ort finden sich die frühesten Spuren der etruskischen Besiedlung. Darunter gruppieren sich um einen zentralen Platz die Reste römischer Tempel. Eine breite gepflasterte Straße führt gesäumt von Gebäuden hangaufwärts. Bei einem Rundgang tritt an einigen Stellen die Ringmauer zutage, die die Stadt umgab. In etruskischer Zeit erstreckte sich die Ansiedlung von der Oberstadt über bebaute Terrassen hügelabwärts bis zum Hafen und den Industriegebieten und Nekropolen in der Ebene nahe der Küste.
(Wikipedia)
Mehndi or henna is a paste that is bought in a cone-shaped tube and is made into designs for men and women. Mehndi is derived from the Sanskrit word mendhikā.[1] The use of mehndi and turmeric is described in the earliest Hindu Vedic ritual books. It was originally used for only women's palms and sometimes for men, but as time progressed, it was more common for women to wear it. Haldi (staining oneself with turmeric paste) as well as mehndi are Vedic customs, intended to be a symbolic representation of the outer and the inner sun. Vedic customs are centered on the idea of "awakening the inner light". Traditional Indian designs are representations of the sun on the palm, which, in this context, is intended to represent the hands and feet.
There are many variations and types in mehndi designs which are categorized, such as Arabic mehndi designs,[2] Indian mehndi designs,[3] and Pakistani mehndi designs. Women usually apply variations of henna or mehndi design patterns on their hands and feet.[4]
Mehndi is the local variant of henna designs in India and neighboring countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, women use mehndi for festive occasions, such as weddings, religious events and traditional ceremonies. ref: Wikipedia
Bastia - CORSICA
Le centre culturel a été inauguré en septembre 2015. Tête de pont de la politique culturelle de la ville, au même titre que le théâtre municipal, l’ambition de ce lieu de culture, à la frontière du centre-ville et d’espaces plus urbains en voie de requalification, est à la fois de proposer une offre culturelle exigeante et diversifiée au cœur d’un quartier prioritaire mais également de rapprocher les entités bastiaises (centre-ville et quartiers périphériques), en travaillant sur les représentations et la valorisation de l’image du quartier. L’alb’oru trait d’union entre le centre-ville et les quartiers Sud, est un outil au service des habitants.
The cultural center was inaugurated in September 2015. A bridgehead for the city's cultural policy, just like the municipal theater, the ambition of this place of culture, on the border of the city center and more open spaces urban areas in the process of requalification, is both to offer a demanding and diversified cultural offer in the heart of a priority district but also to bring together the Bastia entities (city center and peripheral districts), by working on the representations and promotion of the image of the neighborhood. The alb’oru, a link between the city center and the southern districts, is a tool serving residents.
Considered by many to be the most magnificent residence in all of New York City, Brooklyn’s Gingerbread House is one of the finest representations inside and out of the Arts and Crafts style still standing in America.
Here are the facts you ought to know:
– built in 1916-17
– designed by architect James Sarsfield Kennedy (who also designed the Picnic House in Prospect Park and the boathouse for the Crescent Club, an athletic facility now part of Fort Hamilton High School, across the street)
– commissioned by shipping magnate Howard E. Jones and his wife Jessie
– official name: The Howard E. and Jessie Jones House
– also referred to as: The Mushroom House, The Hansel & Gretel House, The Witch House
– rooms: 6 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, full basement
– living area: 5,743-square-feet
– material: uncut stone
– listed at $10.5 million in 2014 (down from $13 million in 2010)
The home was actually a cottage house to a larger, pink, Mediterranean-style mansion that sat across the street on Narrows Avenue. That mansion was torn down in the 1950s or 1960s, and five homes now stand in its place.
There are three bedrooms on the second floor, a two-bedroom guest suite on the first floor overlooking the pond, fountain and gardens, and a bedroom (labeled the chauffeur’s room on the floor plan) in the basement.
The master bedroom is about 800 square feet, and has five walk-in closets, a powder room and two stone terraces flanking a fireplace.
The den is about 650 square feet, the kitchen is 570 square feet and features 50 feet of countertops, there is also a 20-foot-long butler’s pantry.
The basement includes a recreational room/theater, workshop and wine cellar. Despite the local legend, there is no bowling alley.
On the southern edge of the house, the hearth (chimney) rises three stories high and serves three wood-burning fireplaces.
The roof was designed to imitate the thatch roofs of English rural cottages, but is actually made from asphalt shingles laid randomly – there are no straight lines.
The parlor room has wood-beamed ceilings and carved woodwork.
Floors are made of Burmese mahogany.
Stained glass windows are scattered about the home and have been preserved by the homeowners.
Ceiling panels in the dining room are hand painted.
There is an original turning platform in the garage — to turn a parked car around, so it wouldn’t have to be backed out of the garage.
The 4th owners, the Fishmans bought the home in 1985 for less than $1 million. They did not make changes to the floorplan, but did upgrade bathrooms, the kitchen, appliances and wiring. They also added central air conditioning, rebuilt the roof and added tile floors. As a young boy, Jerry Fishman attended Fort Hamilton High School, which sits across the street from the gingerbread home. He recalls: “I had to have the house. I flunked English because I was looking out the school window at the house all the time.” Obsessed with the house, Fishman took his future wife Diane to see it on their very first date.
The Fishmans put the house up for sale in 2010 for $13 million. In 2014 the listing was lowered to $10.5 million.
The house became an official city landmark in 1989 – it was the first building in Bay Ridge to be designated a landmark.
Tired of people constantly asking to take a peek inside the house, the owners removed the doorbell back in the 1980’s. They have not re-installed it since.
I've previously done a couple of digital representations of these Army 'Green Goddess look-alikes' - but here's the real thing courtesy of Philip Kirk of the Kithead Trust (www.kitheadtrust.org.uk). This is a Plaxton archive photograph, digitally-coloured but otherwise unmodified. Plaxton was one several bodybuilders to receive substantial orders from the Home Office for this standard design of auxiliary fire tender in the 1950s, originally on the 4x2 Bedford S-Type chassis and later on the R-Type as illustrated. The later style grille with chrome surround was unique to vehicles supplied to the Army Fire Service and the Irish Auxilliary Fire Service (13-Dec-15).
All rights reserved (do not post to Facebook or anywhere else without prior written permission). Please follow the link below for additional information about my work:
www.flickr.com/photos/northernblue109/6046035749/in/set-7...
Model: Lilah Flowers
Set designer: Daisy Lang
This work is about acceptance.
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www.instagram.com/sophiedituri
More representations of "America" from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
National Historical Museum.
Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
from poetic prose… to watercolor paintings… to high-resolution 3D models .
The cell is a crucible of magical marvels accumulated over millennia. These authors and artists have tried to convey that in various media over time. Perhaps because I am a visual thinker, the richer representations are easier to remember than related text I read many years ago. I’ll share my favorite quotes and images.
Next, we turn to the watercolor paintings of David Goodsell (an eponymous homonym) in The Machinery of Life, first published in 1993. His accurate portrayals belie the simple block diagrams from our grade school textbooks as misleading, much like the spacing of the planets in most solar system representations. Nanomachines also defy our senses and intuition from statistical physics, yet reveal a homologous beauty across structural biology and biochemistry.
“The nanoscale world of molecules is separated from our everyday world of experience by a daunting million-fold difference in size, so the world of molecules is completely invisible. I created the paintings in this book to help bridge this gulf and allow us to see the molecular structure of cells.”
“Cells are small, crowded places with many things happening at once” (25)
“Cells live in a world of thick viscous water, almost oblivious to gravity.” (65)
The images below in the comments feature the common gut bacteria E.Coli and its rotary motors:
“E.Coli cells swim using long corkscrew-shaped flagella, which act like propellers. The cells push through water typically moving 10-15 cell lengths/second. But when they stop turning the flagella, they don’t keep coasting along the way a ship or submarine would. Instead, the surrounding water instantly stops them in less than the diameter of a water molecule!
The flagellar motor is one of the wonders of the biomolecular world. The motor spans the entire cell wall, rotating at speeds of up to 18,000 RPM. Each rotation is powered by the flow of 1000 hydrogen ions across the inner membrane. Amazingly, the motor can turn the flagellum in either direction on demand. When it turns in one direction, all of the flagella get tangled into a bundle, and together they propel the cell through the surrounding water. If the motor switches direction, however, the flagella separate and flail in different directions, causing the cell to stop and tumble in place.” (65)
Before modern imaging, we have the poetry of Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell, originally typed in 1973. The cover is but a sketch, the pages sculpted prose:
"Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us." (58)
“My mitochondria comprise a very large proportion of me. I cannot do the calculation, but I suppose there is almost as much of them in sheer dry bulk as there is the rest of me. Looked at in this way, I could be taken for a very large, motile colony of respiring bacteria, operating a complex system of nuclei, microtubules, and neurons for the pleasure and sustenance of their families, and running, at the moment, a typewriter.” (72)
“Inflammation and immunology must indeed be powerfully designed to keep us apart; without such mechanisms, involving considerable effort, we might have developed as a kind of flowing syncytium over the earth, without the morphogenesis of even a flower.” (10)
“The genes for the marking of self by cellular antigens and those for making immunologic responses by antibody formation are closely linked. It is possible that antibodies evolved from the earlier sensing mechanism needed for symbiosis, to keep the latter from getting out of hand.” (41)
“Pathogenicity is not the rule. Indeed, it occurs so infrequently and involves such a relatively small number of species, considering the huge population of bacteria on the earth, that it has a freakish aspect. Disease usually results from inconclusive negotiations for symbiosis, an overstepping of the line by one side or the other, a biologic misinterpretation of borders.” (76)
“We tear ourselves to pieces because of symbols, and we are more vulnerable to this than any host of predators. We are, in effect, at the mercy of our own Pentagons, most of the time.” (80)
“The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.”
It reminds me of Juan Enriquez’s definition of life: the imperfect transmission of code.
“The nature of biologic information not only stores itself up as energy but also instigates a search for more. It is an insatiable mechanism.” (93)
“Ambiguity seems to be an essential, indispensable element for the transfer of information from one place to another by words, where matters of real importance are concerned. It is often necessary, for meaning to come through, that there be an almost vague sense of strangeness and askewness. Speechless animals and cells cannot do this. Only the human mind is designed to work in this way, programmed to drift away in the presence of locked-on information, straying from each point in a hunt for a better, different point.
“If it were not for the capacity for ambiguity, for the sensing of strangeness, the words in all languages provide, we would have no way of recognizing the layers of counterpoint in meaning, and we might be spending all our time sitting on stone fences, staring into the sun. To be sure, we would always have had some everyday use to make of the alphabet, and we might have reached the same capacity for small talk, but it is unlikely that we would have been able to evolve from words to Bach. The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.” (95)
“It is in our collective behavior that we are the most mysterious. We won't be able to construct machines like ourselves until we've understood this, and we're not even close. All we know is the phenomenon: we spend our time sending messages to each other, talking and trying to listen at the same time, exchanging information. This seems to be our most urgent biological function; it is what we do with our lives. All 3 billion of us are being connected by telephones, radios, television sets, airplanes, satellites, harangues on public-address systems, newspapers, magazines, leaflets dropped from great heights, words got in edgewise. We are becoming a grid, a circuitry around the earth.” (112, this was written in 1973, before the internet)
“Although we are by all odds the most social of all social animals, we do not often feel our conjoined intelligence.” (14).
“Science is instinctive behavior. You can measure the quality of the work by the intensity of astonishment.” (102, 119)
“Individual organisms might be self-transcending in their relation to a dense society.” (128)
“It is permissible to say this sort of thing about humans: they do resemble, in their most compulsively social behavior, ants at a distance. It is, however, quite bad form in biological circles to put it the other way round, to imply that the operation of insect societies has any relation at all to human affairs.” “Ants are so much like humans as to be an embarrassment.” (11)
“It is from the progeny of this original parent cell that we take our looks; we still share genes around, and the resemblance of the enzymes of grasses to those of whales is a family resemblance. The viruses, instead of being single-minded agents of disease and death, now begin to look more like mobile genes. Evolution is still an infinitely long and tedious biologic game, with only the winners staying at the table, but the rules are beginning to look more flexible. We live in a dancing matrix of viruses; they dart, rather like bees, from organism to organism, from plant to insect to mammal to me and back again, and into the sea, tugging along pieces of this genome, strings of genes from that, transplanting grafts of DNA, passing around heredity as though at a great party. They may be a mechanism for keeping new, mutant kinds of DNA in the widest circulation among us.” (5)
“Our cilia gave up any independent existence long ago, and our organelles are now truly ours, but the genomes controlling separate parts of our cells are still different genomes, lodged in separate compartments; doctrinally, we are still assemblages.” (125)
“It is illusion to think that there is anything fragile about the life of the earth; surely this is the toughest membrane imaginable in the universe, opaque to probability, impermeable to death. We are the delicate part, transient and vulnerable as cilia. Nor is it a new thing for Man to invent an existence that he imagines to be above the rest of life; this has been his most consistent intellectual exertion down the millennia. As illusion, it has never worked out to his satisfaction in the past, any more than it does today.” (3)
“We should credit the sky for what it is: for sheer size and perfection of function, it is far and away the grandest product of collaboration in all of nature. It breathes for us, and it does another thing for our pleasure. Each day, millions of meteorites fall against the outer limits of the membrane and are burned to nothing by the friction. Without this shelter, our surface would long since have become the pounded powder of the moon. Even though our receptors are not sensitive enough to hear it, there is comfort in knowing that the sound is there overhead, like the random noise of rain on the roof at night.” (the closing paragraph, 148)
If the gods of time are multiple like Aïon (that of eternity), or Chronos (the god of time, the son of Ouranos), to differentiate from his homophone Cronos (the equivalent of Saturn, who devoured his children), there is one that invites us to seize the moment, opportune, ephemeral...": Kaïros. A mythological figure close to Hermes and Eros, he is a true gift for feeling "the right moment". Unlike that of the Devil ("dividing one"), the function of Kaïros comes under the symbol ("putting together"), allowing to evaluate very quickly what presents itself and what should be done. Because it provides a disposition to discernment, to work in multiple fields (medicine, navigation, rhetoric, etc.), it allows to make a decision, quickly and well, among multiple possible ones. Few iconographic representations have illustrated him: he was a young man whose only tuft of hair on his head had to be grasped when he passed by... in order to seize the opportunity! Without seeing it or doing nothing, we passed by... Relevant to both secular decisive time and sacred time, it has the particularity of being in relation to synchronicity, synchronizing two events without causal link between them where time and action combine. The difficulty is to seize this time in a timely fashion, this time just right. Symbolic tools can help us, such as images, dreams, archetypal representations or other media, such as astrology or tarots. Kaïros is no stranger to astrology, an area that Jung also looked into at the beginning of his research. Thus in Paracelsica, or The Roots of Consciousness, Jung evokes the possibility of raising the patient's theme during his cure. The celestial symbolism of the birth theme can prove to be a formidable road map of the psyche's time. But Kaïros, god of the "right moment", can also be compared to the Tarots de Marseille, whose cards - in a particular draw - present the constellation of the "moment" for whoever consults them: is it time to seize or not what is presented? Far from the predictable linear physical time (Chronos), Kaïros acts on temporality, it mobilizes our ability to evaluate the circumstances in order to act neither too early nor too late. Kairos (καιρός) is an ancient Greek word meaning the right or opportune moment (the supreme moment). The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos referring to sequential time, and kairos, a moment of indeterminate time in which events happen: mood of universal destruction and renewal...has set its mark on our age. This mood
makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially, and philosophically. We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos- the right moment- for a "metamorphosis of the gods,"
of the fundamental principles and symbols. We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos- the right moment- for a 'metamorphosis of the gods', of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious human within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science....So much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of the modern human.
C. G. Jung
“…what is time? Who can give that a brief or easy answer? Who can even form a conception of it to be put into words? Yet what do we mention more often or familiarly in our conversation than time? We must therefore know what we are talking about when we refer to it, or when we hear someone else doing so. But what, exactly, is that? I know what it is if no one asks; but if anyone does, then I cannot explain it.”
-Saint Augustine, Confessions (book 11, chapter 3) (~400CE)
One thing is for sure, whatever the ego thinks time is—whatever spell it tries to cast with its alphabetic magic to capture it—it will almost certainly miss the mark. Whatever time is, we should admit we are mostly unconscious of it. In fact, it seems to me that there is an intimate connection, perhaps even an identity, between time and the Jungian notion of the unconscious, a connection that archetypal cosmology obviously substantiates. Despite time’s unconscious depths and ineffability, I am after all a philosopher, and we love nothing more than to try to “eff” the ineffable.
In the 15 brief minutes I have with you, I want to introduce, with help from the Ancient Greek language, 3 different modalities of temporality, or rather, I want to introduce you to 3 Gods, each with a powerful hand in shaping our experience of time: Chronos, Kairos, and Aion. In concrete experience, each mode appears to me at least to be co-present and interwoven; I only separate them abstractly to help us get a better sense for the anatomy of time. Of course, we should remember all the while that “we murder to dissect” (Wordsworth).
I therefore humbly ask for the blessing of the Gods of time as I embark on this short journey into their meanings. May you grant us entry into your mysteries.
A Brief History of (the Idea of) Time:
1. Plato suggests in the Timaeus that time is brought forth by the rhythmic dancing of the Sun, Moon, and five other planets then known upon the stage of 12 constellations. Through the cooperative and friendly circling of these archetypal beings, eternity is permitted entry into time. Time, in other words, is said to emerge from the harmonious or regular motion of the heavens—motion regulated by mathematical harmonies. Plato’s ancient vision of a perfect cosmic order had it that the motion of the 7 known planetary spheres was in mathematical harmony with the 8th supraplanetary sphere of fixed constellations, that the ratios of their orbits added up to one complete whole, finding their unity in what has been called the Platonic or Great Year (known to us today as the 26,000 year precession of the equinoxes). This highest of the heavenly spheres was the God known to the ancients as Aion.
2. Aristotle critiqued Plato’s idea of time as produced by motion. Aristotle argued that time couldn’t possibly be produced by motion, because motion itself is something we measure using time. Motion can be fast or slow, he argued, but time always flows at the same rate. Time is simply a way of measuring change. Aristotle’s conception of time, then, is chronic, rather than aionic. His was the beginning of the scientific view of time as a merely conventional measurement, rather than a cosmic motion, as with Plato.
3. Galileo’s view of the universe was, on the face of it, a complete rejection of Aristotle’s physics. Remember that Aristotle still held a teleological view of chronological time: an apple falls to the ground, for Aristotle, because it desires to do so, because earth is its natural home; for Galileo, nothing in the apple compels it to fall, it is simply a blind happening working according to mechanical laws. Galileo, like Newton and Descartes, rejected the idea of purposeful, meaningful time. Time became for them merely a function in a differential equation. In a sense, then, though the early scientists rejected Aristotle’s view of teleological time, they only further formalized Aristotle’s view of time as a measure of motion. Time became t, a variable quantity used to calculate the precise velocity of material bodies through space. 4. Einstein’s theory of relativity revealed how time and space are intimately related, since, strange as it may seem, as speed increases, time slows. But still, time is understood not on its own terms, but is reduced to a linear, easily measurable and quantifiable function. The reduction of time to Chronos may have begun with Aristotle, but was carried to new extremes by modern materialistic science. 5. Today we know things are quite a bit more chaotic than earlier thinkers, including Plato, let on: we live in a chaosmos, not a perfect cosmos; an open spiral not a closed circle. The orbital periods of the planets shift ever so slightly as the years pass, and the “fixed” stars are actually not fixed at all. Our universe is very strange, and measuring time is no easy matter. Even merely chronological time is extremely counter-intuitive: A day on Venus, for instance, is longer than a Venusian year. Everything is spinning around everything else. Time is then not a moving image of eternal perfection; rather, time is what happens when divinity loses its balance and gets dizzy. But don’t worry, there is nowhere to fall over in the infinite expanses of space. What is happening when referring to kairos depends on who is using the word. While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative, permanent nature. The union of kairos and logos is the philosophical task set for us in philosophy and in all fields that are accessible to the philosophical attitude. The logos is to be taken up into the kairos, universal values into the fullness of time, truth into the fate of existence. The separation of idea and existence has to be brought to an end. It is the very nature of essence to come into existence, to enter into time and fate. This happens to essence not because of something extraneous to it; it is rather the expression of its own intrinsic character, of its freedom. And it is essential to philosophy to stand in existence, to create out of time and fate. It would be wrong if one were to characterize this as a knowledge bound to necessity. Since existence itself stands in fate, it is proper that philosophy should also stand in fate. Existence and knowledge both are subject to fate. The immutable and eternal heaven of truth of which Plato speaks is accessible only to a knowledge that is free from fate—to divine knowledge. The truth that stands in fate is accessible to him who stands within fate, who is himself an element of fate, for thought is a part of existence. And not only is existence fate to thought, but so also is thought fate to existence, just as everything is fate to everything else. Thought is one of the powers of being, it is a power within existence. And it proves its power by being able to spring out of any given existential situation and create something new! It can leap over existence just as existence can leap over it. Because of this characteristic of thought, the view perhaps quite naturally arose that thought may be detached from existence and may therefore liberate man from his hateful bondage to it. But the history of philosophy itself has shown that this opinion is a mistaken one. The leap of thought does not involve a breaking of the ties with existence; even in the act of its greatest freedom, thought remains bound to fate. Thus the history of philosophy shows that all existence stands in fate. Every finite thing possesses a certain power of being of its own and thus possesses a capacity for fate. The greater a finite thing’s autonomous power of being is, the higher is its capacity for fate and the more deeply is the knowledge of it involved in fats. From physics on up to the normative cultural sciences there is a gradation, the logos standing at the one end and the kairos at the other. But there is no point at which either logos or kairos alone is to be found. Hence even our knowledge of the fateful character of philosophy must at the same time stand in logos and in kairos. If it stood only in the kairos, it would be without validity and the assertion would be valid only for the one making it; if it stood only in the logos, it would be without fate and would therefore have no part in existence, for existence is involved in fate.What are the deep stirrings in the collective psyche of the West? Can we discern any larger patterns in the immensely complex and seemingly chaotic flux and flow of our age? Influenced by the depth psychology tradition founded a century ago by Freud and Jung,and especially since the 1960s and the radical increase in psychological self-consciousness that era helped mediate, the cultural ethos of recent decades has made us well aware how important is the psychological task of understanding our personal histories. We have sought ever deeper insight into our individual biographies, seeking to recover the often hidden sources of our present condition, to render conscious those unconscious forces and complexes that shape our lives. Many now recognize that same task as critical for our entire civilization. What individuals and psychologists have long been doing has now become the collective responsibility of our culture: to make the unconscious conscious. And for a civilization, to a crucial extent, history is the great unconscious- history not so much as the external
chronology of political and military milestones, but as the interior history of a civilization: that unfolding drama evidenced in a culture's evolving cosmology, its philosophy and science, its religious consciousness, its art, its myths. For us to participate fully and creatively in shaping our future, we need to better understand the underlying patterns and
influences of our collective past. Only then can we begin to grasp what forces move within us today, and perhaps glimpse what may be emerging on the new millennial
horizon. I focus my discussion here on the West, but not out of any triumphalist presumption that the West is somehow intrinsically superior to other civilizations and thus most worthy of our attention. I do so rather because it is the West that has brought forth the political,technological, intellectual, and spiritual currents that have been most decisive in
constellating the contemporary world situation in all its problematic complexity. For better or worse, the character of the West has had a global impact, and will continue to do
so for the foreseeable future. Yet I also address the historical evolution of Western consciousness because, for most of us reading these words, this development represents
our own tradition, our legacy, our ancestral cultural matrix. Attending carefully and critically to this tradition fulfills a certain responsibility to the past, to our ancestors, just as
attempting to understand its deeper implications fulfills a responsibility to the future, to our children. A paradox confronts every sensitive observer about the West: On the one hand, we cannot fail to recognize a certain dynamism, a brilliant, heroic impulse, even a nobility, at work in Western civilization and in Western thought. We see this in the great
achievements of Greek philosophy and art, for example, or in the Sistine Chapel and other Renaissance masterpieces, in the plays of Shakespeare, in the music of Bach or Beethoven. We see it in the brilliance of the Copernican revolution, with the tremendous cosmological and even metaphysical transformation it has wrought in our civilization's
world view. We see it in the unprecedented space flights of a generation ago, landing men on the moon, or, more recently, in the spectacular images of the vast cosmos coming
from the Hubbell telescope and the new data and new perspectives these images have brought forth. And of course the great democratic revolutions of modernity, and the
powerful emancipatory movements of our own era, vividly reflect this extraordinary dynamism and even nobility of the West. Yet at the same time we are forced to admit that this very same historical tradition has caused immense suffering and loss, for many other cultures and peoples, for many people within Western culture itself, and for many other forms of life on the planet. Moreover, the West has played the central role in bringing about a subtly growing and seemingly
inexorable crisis on our planet, a crisis of multidimensional complexity: ecological, political, social, economic, intellectual, psychological, spiritual. To say our global civilization is becoming dysfunctional scarcely conveys the gravity of the situation. For humankind and the planet, we face the possibility of great catastrophe. For many forms of life on the Earth, that catastrophe has already taken place. How can we make sense of this tremendous paradox in the character and meaning of the West? If we examine many of the intellectual and cultural debates of our time, particularly near the epicenter of the major paradigm battles today, it is possible to see looming behind them two fundamental interpretations, two archetypal stories or metanarratives, concerning the evolution of human consciousness and the history of the Western mind. In essence these two metanarratives reflect two deep myths in the collective psyche- and let us define myths here not as mere falsehoods, nor as collective fantasies of an arbitrary sort, but rather as profound and enduring patterns of meaning that inform the human psyche and constellate its diverse realities. These two great myths in the collective psyche structure our historical self-understanding in very different ways. One could be called the myth of progress, the other the myth of the fall. The first, familiar to all of us from our education, describes the evolution of human consciousness, and particularly the history of the Western mind, as an extraordinary progressive development, a long heroic journey from a primitive world of dark ignorance,
suffering, and limitation to a brighter modern world of ever increasing knowledge, freedom, and well-being. This great trajectory of progress is seen as having been made possible by the sustained development of human reason, and above all by the emergence of the modern mind. We recognize this view whenever we encounter a book or program whose title is something like "The Ascent of Man" or "The Discoverers" or "Man's Conquest of Space," and so forth. The direction of history is seen as onward and upward. Humanity is here often personified as "man," and imaged, at least implicitly, as
a solar masculine hero of Promethean character: bold, restless, brilliantly innovative, ceaselessly pressing forward with his intelligence and will, breaking out of the structures
and limitations of the past, forever seeking greater freedom and new horizons, ascending to ever higher levels of development. The apex of human achievement in this vision
begins with the ascendance of modern science and individualistic democracy. The view of history is one of progressive emancipation and empowerment. It is a vision that emerged fully in the course of the European Enlightenment, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though its roots are as old as Western civilization itself. In many respects our modern consciousness is so fully identified with this myth that it has become our common sense, the lineaments of our self-image as modern humans.The first, familiar to all of us from our education, describes the evolution of human consciousness, and particularly the history of the Western mind, as an extraordinary progressive development, a long heroic journey from a primitive world of dark ignorance,suffering, and limitation to a brighter modern world of ever increasing knowledge, freedom, and well-being. This great trajectory of progress is seen as having been made
possible by the sustained development of human reason, and above all by the emergence of the modern mind. We recognize this view whenever we encounter a book or program whose title is something like "The Ascent of Man" or "The Discoverers" or "Man's Conquest of Space," and so forth. The direction of history is seen as onward and upward. Humanity is here often personified as "man," and imaged, at least implicitly, as a solar masculine hero of Promethean character: bold, restless, brilliantly innovative, ceaselessly pressing forward with his intelligence and will, breaking out of the structures and limitations of the past, forever seeking greater freedom and new horizons, ascending
to ever higher levels of development. The apex of human achievement in this vision begins with the ascendance of modern science and individualistic democracy. The view
of history is one of progressive emancipation and empowerment. It is a vision that emerged fully in the course of the European Enlightenment, in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, though its roots are as old as Western civilization itself. In many respects our modern consciousness is so fully identified with this myth that it has become
our common sense, the lineaments of our self-image as modern humans. The other view, whose presence has become much stronger in our cultural discussion in
recent years, though it was always present to one extent or another as a compensatory countercurrent to the progressive view, describes this story in quite opposite terms. In the
form this myth has taken in our era, the evolution of human consciousness and the history of the Western mind are seen as a tragic story of humanity's radical fall and separation
from an original state of oneness with nature and with being. In its primordial condition, humankind had possessed an instinctive knowledge of the profound sacred unity and
interconnectedness of the world; but under the influence of the Western mind, and especially intensifying with the ascendance of the modern mind, the course of history has
brought about a deep schism between humankind and nature, and a desacralization of the world. This development has coincided with an increasingly destructive human
exploitation of nature, the devastation of traditional indigenous cultures, and an increasingly unhappy state of the human soul, which experiences itself as ever more
isolated, shallow, and unfulfilled. In this perspective, both humanity and nature are seen as having suffered grievously under a long domination of thought and society associated
with both patriarchy and modernity, with the worst consequences being produced by the oppressive hegemony of Western industrial societies empowered by modern science and technology. The nadir of this fall is seen as the present time of planetary ecological disaster, moral disorientation, and spiritual emptiness, which is the direct consequence of human hubris as embodied above all in the structure and spirit of the modern Western mind and ego. Here the historical perspective is one which reveals a progressive impoverishment of human life and the human spirit, a fragmentation of original unities, a ruinous destruction of the sacred community of being.
cosmosandpsyche.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/revision-rite...
I would check out this particular stall selling wooden Buddha representations at the markets in Beijing every time I visited. I was overwhelmed how an inanimate object could ooze such serenity and calm….
Taken September 26, 2010
Panjiayuan Markets, Beijing, China
If there is a trinket, however tacky, found anywhere in China, rest assured you will find it at beijing's Panjiayuan Markets. It used to be called the “dirt market” because originally peasants would cart in objects they supposedly unearthed themselves, squat in the market’s open field and hawk their wares.
Today, from Mao caps to Ming pottery, Yinxing teapots to military binoculars, Panjiayuan has everything, including Tibetan trunks, bronze door knobs, antique locks, wooden puppets, even actual kitchen sinks. Much of it of course is reproduction, mass produced, simply fake or of dubious origins and haggling on price is par for the course - a multitude of traps for the inexperienced. But it is an intrepid browser’s paradise. This marvelous mélange of miscellany is a major part of Panjiayuan’s particular charm.
For all of these reasons, it is also a photographer’s paradise. It must be said however, that with increasing tourist traffic, I regularly got the distinct impression that vendors would rather you buy their merchandise than photograph it, to the point that some obstructively maneuver themselves between your lens and object of fancy.
See comments for other captures from the colourful Beijing markets….
My Tumblr blog, SINOPHILE, features photo series and images from my China portfolio......
(The enforced hiatus from photo-taking due to the predictably unpredictable weather continues, so I intend to continue some reposts though this time of what I consider my favourite twenty images (in no particular order and in batches of five). I have now surpassed 10000 images in my photostream, so have plenty to choose from. Invariably, these will not be images that have been particularly well received on their initial appearance in my photostream, but have significance to me maybe because of the circumstances related to their capture, as images I have a sentimental, nostalgic and/or emotional connection to or perhaps just what I consider to be a good shot.)
Representations of children at Zōjō-ji Buddhist Temple in Tokyo, Japan. In Japanese culture, it is a sin for the child to pass away before the parents. Therefore, the parents of these "cursed" children dress the statues with red hats and pinwheels to ward off evil spirits in hopes of giving the child a peaceful path to heaven.