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Sculptor: Manya Konolei (1883-1968), born Mary Connelly and married Arthur Barnwell in 1910, but they soon separated with no children. She studied and worked in Paris in the 1920's. There is one piece signed, "Manta Konolei, Paris", and this sculpture likewise originated in Paris.
The Casting was by Alexis Rudier in 1925. It was on display at the Salon de Paris for several years. It was sent to New York from France for the New York World’s Fair. A conflicting story says it was brought to New York in 1930 and displayed as part of a one woman show at the New York Fine Arts Gallery.
Either way it ended up in storage which was allowed to lapse. It was then purchased by the Stuart Woman’s Club in 1949 for the cost of back owed storage fees.
This sculpture has been in Stuart, Florida since 1949 where it initially raised some controversy since the partially clothed figure was purchased site unseen. It was moved to it's current location in 1991.
I just noticed today the sculpture has a Hindu or Indian Face. I have found two other wooden sculptures by the same artists and both have the distinctive Asian figuration in the eyes. An interesting choice for an American artist.
I also believe the sculpture intended the figure to appear pregnant. She has a noticeable swelling of her belly. This could also be an allusion to Lakshmi, the Indian goddess who is attributed with "..wealth, fortune, power, beauty, fertility and prosperity..."
Also of note is the base which has 4 cornucopia and are associated with the Roman Deity, Abundantia who has the same virtues as Lakshmi.
Neither of these two figures are associated with grape vines or water.
Two significant figures from the 1916 era, Grace Plunkett (nee Gifford) and Sir William Orpen the artist. A very posed photograph - but what can we find out about it apart from what has been added to the catalogue?:
"Grace Gifford Plunkett, holding a brush and artist's palette, and William Orpen, three-quarter length portrait, printed on postcard. Grace Gifford studied under the Irish artist William Orpen at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art between 1904 and 1907."
Today's contributors link us primarily to the Wikipedia entries for Grace Gifford and William Orpen. Both artists from Dublin they are pictured perhaps around the time of William's 1907 portrait of his then student. Within a decade of that portrait, Irish and global events would take these two on different paths. Orpen became a prolific war artist and would capture the horrors of the Somme during 1916/1917. Grace became a caricature artist, and involved with Joseph Plunkett and the Rising during Easter 1916. Grace famously married Plunkett in Kilmainham Jail, just hours before his death...
Photographers: Various
Collection: Irish Political Figures Photographic Collection
Date: c.1904-1910.
NLI Ref: NPA POLF253
You can also view this image, and many thousands of others, on the NLI’s catalogue at catalogue.nli.ie
SN/NC: Caesalpinia Pluviosa Var. peltophoroides, Fabaceae Family
This tree is popularly known as sibipiruna or false brazilwood, is an ornamental species with wood potential and with great distribution in Brazil. The genus Caesalpinia has more than five hundred species, most of which have not yet been studied for their pharmacological potential. Several species of the genus are known for their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. Therefore, it was possible to verify that sibipiruna did not present antimutagenic activity, but a plant with possible mutagenic action in the concentrations used.
Conhecida popularmente como Sibipiruna, Coração-de-negro, Sebipira, Sibipira é uma árvore ornamental da Família das Fabáceaes. É nativa do Brasil e está presente em toda a América do Sul e outras áreas. Muito usada na jardinagem e no urbanismo brasileiro pode atingir mais de 20m de altura. A sibipiruna é uma árvore semidecídua, de rápido crescimento e florescimento ornamental. Nativa da mata atlântica, ela é uma espécie pioneira ou secundária inicial, ou seja é uma das primeiras espécies a surgir em uma área degradada. Seu porte é alto, podendo atingir de 8 a 25 m de altura. O tronco é cinzento e se torna escamoso com o tempo, seu diâmetro é de 30 a 40 cm. A copa é arredondada, ampla, com cerca de 15 m de diâmetro. Suas folhas são compostas, bipinadas, com folíolos elípticos e verdes. No inverno ocorre uma queda quase total das folhas, que voltam a brotar na primavera. A floração ocorre de setembro a novembro, despontando inflorescências eretas e cônicas, do tipo espiga e com numerosas flores amarelas que abrem gradativamente da base em direção ao ápice. Os frutos que se seguem são do tipo legume, achatados, pretos quando maduros e contêm cerca de 3 a 5 sementes beges, também achatadas, em forma de gota ou elípticas. A dispersão ocorre pela ação do vento.
Caesalpinia pluviosa, sebipira es una especie botánica de árbol leguminosa de la familia de las Fabaceae. Se halla endémico de Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Colombia. Está amenazado por pérdida de hábita. Muy usada en las calles de ciudades brasileñas por ser muy bellas en su floreada. Tiene las hojas son bipinnadas con el eje central de 20-25 cm de largo, con 8-9 pares de pinnas, cada una con alrededor de 11 a 13 pares de foliolos de 10-12 mm. La floración ocurre entre de agosto y se extiende hasta el final del verano, produciendo inflorescencias cónicas en racimos erectos de flores amarillas. Las vainas de las frutas da lugar a dos válvas compuestas leñosa seca larga y correosa, con 7,6 a 12,0 cm de largo por 2.7 a 3.1 cm de ancho. Cuando están maduras, las vainas se abren girando en una explosiva dehiscencia expulsando 1-5 semillas. Estas son comprimidas, irregularmente circulares, transversales, ovato-obovadas o orbiculares a subglobosas con un frente muy duro y rígido, claro, espesa o sin albúmina, provisto de una boquilla en el hilio y con margen. Pueden vivir más de cien años. Caesalpinia pluviosa fue descrito por Augustin Pyrame de Candolle y publicado en Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis Caesalpinia: nombre genérico que fue otorgado en honor del botánico italiano Andrea Cesalpino (1519-1603). pluviosa: epíteto latino que significa "lluviosa". Sin. caesalpinia parensis, caesalpinia peltophoroides. Conocida por Momoqui, sebipira o sepipiruna.
Deze boom staat in de volksmond bekend als sibipiruna of vals brazilwood, is een siersoort met houtpotentieel en met een grote verspreiding in Brazilië. Het geslacht Caesalpinia heeft meer dan vijfhonderd soorten, waarvan de meeste nog niet zijn onderzocht op hun farmacologische potentieel. Verschillende soorten van het geslacht staan bekend om hun antioxiderende en ontstekingsremmende activiteiten. Daarom was het mogelijk om te verifiëren dat sibipiruna geen antimutagene activiteit vertoonde, maar een plant met mogelijk mutagene werking in de gebruikte concentraties.
Cet arbre, communément connu sous le nom de sibipiruna ou faux bois du Brésil, est une espèce ornementale avec un potentiel ligneux et une grande distribution au Brésil. Le genre Caesalpinia compte plus de cinq cents espèces, dont la plupart n’ont pas encore été étudiées pour leur potentiel pharmacologique. Plusieurs espèces du genre sont connues pour leurs activités antioxydantes et anti-inflammatoires. Ainsi, il a été possible de vérifier que la sibipiruna ne présentait pas d'activité antimutagène, mais une plante avec une possible action mutagène dans les concentrations utilisées.
Questo albero è popolarmente conosciuto come sibipiruna o falso legno brasiliano, è una specie ornamentale con potenziale legnoso e con grande distribuzione in Brasile. Il genere Caesalpinia comprende più di cinquecento specie, la maggior parte delle quali non sono state ancora studiate per il loro potenziale farmacologico. Diverse specie del genere sono note per le loro attività antiossidanti e antinfiammatorie. È stato quindi possibile verificare che la sibipiruna non presentava attività antimutagena, ma una pianta con possibile azione mutagena nelle concentrazioni utilizzate.
Dieser Baum ist im Volksmund als Sibipiruna oder falscher Brasilholzbaum bekannt und eine Zierart mit Holzpotenzial, die in Brasilien weit verbreitet ist. Die Gattung Caesalpinia umfasst mehr als fünfhundert Arten, von denen die meisten noch nicht auf ihr pharmakologisches Potenzial untersucht wurden. Mehrere Arten dieser Gattung sind für ihre antioxidative und entzündungshemmende Wirkung bekannt. Daher konnte nachgewiesen werden, dass Sibipiruna keine antimutagene Wirkung aufweist, sondern dass es sich bei der Pflanze um eine Pflanze mit möglicher mutagener Wirkung in den verwendeten Konzentrationen handelt.
تُعرف هذه الشجرة شعبيًا باسم Sibipiruna أو شجرة خشب البرازيل الزائفة وهي من أنواع الزينة ذات إمكانات الأخشاب المنتشرة على نطاق واسع في البرازيل. يشمل جنس Caesalpinia أكثر من خمسمائة نوع، معظمها لم تتم دراستها بعد لمعرفة إمكاناتها الدوائية. العديد من الأنواع في هذا الجنس معروفة بتأثيراتها المضادة للأكسدة والمضادة للالتهابات. ولذلك كان من الممكن إثبات أن سيبيبيرونا ليس له تأثير مضاد للطفرات، بل أن النبات نبات له تأثيرات مطفرة محتملة في التركيزات المستخدمة.
この木はシビピルナまたは偽ブラジルウッドとして一般に知られており、木材としての可能性を秘めた観賞用の種であり、ブラジルに広く分布しています。 Caesalpinia 属には 500 以上の種があり、そのほとんどはその薬理学的可能性についてまだ研究されていません。この属のいくつかの種は、抗酸化作用と抗炎症作用で知られています。したがって、シビピルナは抗変異原性活性を示さないが、使用した濃度において変異原性作用を示す可能性のある植物であることを検証することができた。
SN/NC: Delonix Regia, Fabaceae Family
Astounding view of a great tree very abundant in Brazil. This one is pictured in the Condominium Forest Hills area.
Malinche o Árbol de Fuego, Chivato, Árbol de Lumbre, Josefino dentre otros son algunos de los nombres de este árbol muy presente en toda América Central. De Madagascar para el mundo...
Flamboyant... é o nome dela no Brasil. Sempre bonita e sem se esconder devido ao seu show de cores, está muito presente na América Central. Esta foto foi feita na região de Jandira, em nosso Condominio.
I remember first coming across an article in a magazine on mono, ultra long exposures by the talented Lee Frost a couple of years or so ago. I studied each of the images shown with admiration, and devoured the text relinquishing the technique and equipment used - here was something unexpectedly innovative, fresh and genuinely exciting! The photographs shown had remarkably fluid characteristics; gaseous and liquid elements took on wild, surreal and hitherto unrealised shapes and forms, whilst the solidity of various anchor points grounded each shot in this world despite outward appearance.
I couldn't wait to try and emulate (yes - we all want to be original, but we all begin by emulation surely?) the work I'd seen, and so embarked on searching out and capturing suitable subjects that might lend themselves well to this type of study. I think it's good to be your own critic, and whilst I now despise some of what I've done, I have perhaps five or six images in this vein that I'm truly happy with - although it frustrates me hugely that I'm not as competent, skilled or accomplished as I would hope to be given time, experience and learning. I don't consider this a bad hit rate, and although it's possible to produce a slew of 'ok' photographs, I like to think that in years to come I might create something that I can be justifiably proud of.
Recently it has occurred to me that this increasingly popular strand of photography is suffering the detrimental side effects of many others - that is, repetition desensitises the viewer to the medium itself. I note with interest that this has been a theme picked up also by several of you whose work I admire greatly. There is a continuing expectation to strive for originality, to break new ground with imaginative subjects, conditions and so forth. I am as guilty as anyone of the obligatory 'sticks adrift in a misted sea' shot, and sometimes I rebuke myself for this and try harder to invigorate my work.
However, I do think there is a lot to be said for striving to do something well - better than it's been done before despite it being done many times. I will continue to try and develop myself as a long exposure landscape photographer, and this shot is the result of my wanting to achieve something subtly different. Mind you, the next time I see potential for some sticks adrift in a misted sea I will probably take a picture of the scene. But I will do my best to do it better than it's been done before. I will undoubtedly fail, but perhaps at least I'll come up with an improved end result over those I myself have captured previously...
16 random facts about me
1. I can see the Japan Sea from my window.
2. I studied programming at the university.
3. English is my third language.
4. The second one is French.
5. I’m going to move to France in 3 years.
6. Time difference between me & my love is… 15 hours o_O
7. “Harry Potter” is not just a book or movie, it is the perfect universe to escape grey daily routine for me.
8. I’m a daydreamer.
9. Sometimes I can be very inattentive person.
10. My idol in the past is my good friend at the present time.
11. Edited: I’m listening to his song on the radio and jumping like an idiot :-)
12. He’s reading this and laughing. Hi there btw! *waves* :D
13. I was a mad postcrosser (www.postcrossing.com)
14. I’m often too hard on myself but I see no other way to move forward.
15. “You’re crazy” is probably the best compliment for an artist. :p
16. I’ll remember about 10 cool facts after posting this.
Doing this shot was stupid but funny.
I studied these two for a few minutes. She was laughing, he seemed to be chatting away. The drinks, the setting, the body language. They were on a date and a successful one by the looks of it.
Glendalough
Gleann Dá Loch
Monastery information
Order Catholic
Established 6th century
Disestablished by English troops in 1398
History of Glendalough
Kevin, a descendant of one of the ruling families in Leinster, studied as a boy under the care of three holy men, Eoghan, Lochan, and Eanna. During this time, he went to Glendalough. He was to return later, with a small group of monks to found a monastery where the 'two rivers form a confluence'. Kevin's writings discuss his fighting a "monster" at Glendalough; scholars today believe this refers to his process of self-examination and his personal temptations.[1] His fame as a holy man spread and he attracted numerous followers. He died in about 618. For six centuries afterwards, Glendalough flourished and the Irish Annals contain references to the deaths of abbots and raids on the settlement.[2]
At the Synod of Rath Breasail in 1111, Glendalough was designated as one of the two dioceses of North Leinster.
The Book of Glendalough was written there about 1131.
St. Laurence O'Toole, born in 1128, became Abbot of Glendalough and was well known for his sanctity and hospitality. Even after his appointment as Archbishop of Dublin in 1162, he returned occasionally to Glendalough, to the solitude of St. Kevin's Bed. He died in Eu, in Normandy in 1180.[2]
In 1214, the dioceses of Glendalough and Dublin were united. From that time onwards, the cultural and ecclesiastical status of Glendalough diminished. The destruction of the settlement by English forces in 1398 left it a ruin but it continued as a church of local importance and a place of pilgrimage.
Glendalough features on the 1598 map "A Modern Depiction of Ireland, One of the British Isles" by Abraham Ortelius as "Glandalag".
Descriptions of Glendalough from the 18th and 19th centuries include references to occasions of "riotous assembly" on the feast of St. Kevin on 3 June.[2]
The present remains in Glendalough tell only a small part of its story. The monastery in its heyday included workshops, areas for manuscript writing and copying, guest houses, an infirmary, farm buildings and dwellings for both the monks and a large lay population. The buildings which survive probably date from between the 10th and 12th centuries.
SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA.
Anselm Kiefer (born 8 March 1945) is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Joseph Beuys and Peter Dreher during the 1970s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan have played a role in developing Kiefer's themes of German history and the horror of the Holocaust, as have the spiritual concepts of Kabbalah.In his entire body of work, Kiefer argues with the past and addresses taboo and controversial issues from recent history. Themes from Nazi rule are particularly reflected in his work; for instance, the painting "Margarethe" (oil and straw on canvas) was inspired by Paul Celan's well-known poem "Todesfuge" ("Death Fugue").
His works are characterised by an unflinching willingness to confront his culture's dark past, and unrealised potential, in works that are often done on a large, confrontational scale well suited to the subjects. It is also characteristic of his work to find signatures and/or names of people of historical importance, legendary figures or historical places. All of these are encoded sigils through which Kiefer seeks to process the past; this has resulted in his work being linked with the movements New Symbolism and Neo–Expressionism.Kiefer has lived and worked in France since 1992. Since 2008, he has lived and worked primarily in Paris[3] and in Alcácer do Sal, Portugal.The son of a German art teacher,[5] Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen two months before the end of World War II. In 1951, his family moved to Ottersdorf, and he attended public school in Rastatt, graduating high school in 1965. He entered University of Freiburg, and studied pre-Law and Romance languages. However, after 3 semesters he switched to Art, studying at Art academies in Freiburg, Karlsruhe, and Düsseldorf. In Karlsruhe, he studied under Peter Dreher, an important realist and figurative painter.[6] He received an Art degree in 1969.Kiefer moved to Dusseldorf in 1970. In 1971 he moved to Hornbach, in southwestern Germany, where he established a studio. He remained there until 1992; his output during this first creative time is known at The German Years. In 1992 he relocated to France.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anselm_Kiefer
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Anselm Kiefer (born March 8, 1945) is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Joseph Beuys and Peter Dreher during the 1970s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan have played a role in developing Kiefer's themes of German history and the horror of the Holocaust, as have the spiritual concepts of Kabbalah.In his entire body of work, Kiefer argues with the past and addresses taboo and controversial issues from recent history. Themes from Nazi rule are particularly reflected in his work; for instance, the painting "Margarethe" (oil and straw on canvas) was inspired by Paul Celan's well-known poem "Todesfuge" ("Death Fugue").His works are characterized by an unflinching willingness to confront his culture's dark past, and unrealized potential, in works that are often done on a large, confrontational scale well suited to the subjects. It is also characteristic of his work to find signatures and/or names of people of historical importance, legendary figures or places particularly pregnant with history. All of these are encoded sigils through which Kiefer seeks to process the past; this has resulted in his work being linked with a style called New Symbolism.Kiefer has lived and worked in France since 1991. Since 2008, he has lived and worked primarily in Paris and in Alcácer do Sal, Portugal.
theartstack.com/artist/anselm-kiefer/freimaurer-freemason
Throughout his career, the German artist Anselm Kiefer has confronted the weight of the past and the power of myth on a monumental scale. As the RA stages a major retrospective, Martin Gayford chronicles the extraordinary vision and transformative force of this colossus of contemporary art.Walking down a hillside in the foothills of the Cévennes, we come across a group of massive towers. Multi-storeyed, irregular, almost tottering, these look at once old and new. The material they are made from – cast concrete – gives them the appearance of a contemporary shanty town or some haphazard industrial structure. Their form and presence, silhouetted against the clear southern French sky, suggest the architecture of Dante’s Italy or medieval Greece.
Kiefer is both spiritual and extremely well read, as well as unexpectedly jolly. A conversation with him might begin with medieval philosophy, and progress, via alchemy, to architecture. In origin, he is a Catholic, from Donaueschingen in the Black Forest, near the border with France and Switzerland (in contrast to Richter and Baselitz, who come from the Protestant north-east, almost another country from southern Germany). You could not, he told me, “imagine anywhere more Catholic” as Donaueschingen. He was an altar boy: “I’ve forgotten a lot of the poems I learned by heart but I still know the mass in Latin.”As befits someone who once assisted at the mystery of transubstantiation, in which bread and wine become the body of Christ, Kiefer has a metaphysical approach to materials. No doubt he relishes lead for its physical attributes: its enormous weight and sombre matt-grey surface. But he likes it as much for its metaphorical qualities. As Soriano explains: “Lead is the basest of materials but also it is changeable. If you heat it up, it bubbles, it is constantly in flux. Above all, to Kiefer’s mind, there’s its weight: he considers it the only material heavy enough to carry the weight of human history.”Kiefer uses lead paradoxically. He makes it into the kinds of objects you would least employ it for from a practical point of view: aeroplanes too heavy to fly, boats that would immediately sink, books whose pages would require huge effort to turn. At the entrance to the Royal Academy exhibition will stand a new sculpture, incarnating this paradox: lead books with wings (The Language of the Birds, 2013).
Gopika studied Design Innovation and Environmental Design at University in Chennai in India and is now completing her Masters degree at Nottingham University
SN/NC: Caesalpinia Pluviosa Var. peltophoroides, Fabaceae Family
This tree is popularly known as sibipiruna or false brazilwood, is an ornamental species with wood potential and with great distribution in Brazil. The genus Caesalpinia has more than five hundred species, most of which have not yet been studied for their pharmacological potential. Several species of the genus are known for their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. Therefore, it was possible to verify that sibipiruna did not present antimutagenic activity, but a plant with possible mutagenic action in the concentrations used.
Conhecida popularmente como Sibipiruna, Coração-de-negro, Sebipira, Sibipira é uma árvore ornamental da Família das Fabáceaes. É nativa do Brasil e está presente em toda a América do Sul e outras áreas. Muito usada na jardinagem e no urbanismo brasileiro pode atingir mais de 20m de altura. A sibipiruna é uma árvore semidecídua, de rápido crescimento e florescimento ornamental. Nativa da mata atlântica, ela é uma espécie pioneira ou secundária inicial, ou seja é uma das primeiras espécies a surgir em uma área degradada. Seu porte é alto, podendo atingir de 8 a 25 m de altura. O tronco é cinzento e se torna escamoso com o tempo, seu diâmetro é de 30 a 40 cm. A copa é arredondada, ampla, com cerca de 15 m de diâmetro. Suas folhas são compostas, bipinadas, com folíolos elípticos e verdes. No inverno ocorre uma queda quase total das folhas, que voltam a brotar na primavera. A floração ocorre de setembro a novembro, despontando inflorescências eretas e cônicas, do tipo espiga e com numerosas flores amarelas que abrem gradativamente da base em direção ao ápice. Os frutos que se seguem são do tipo legume, achatados, pretos quando maduros e contêm cerca de 3 a 5 sementes beges, também achatadas, em forma de gota ou elípticas. A dispersão ocorre pela ação do vento.
Caesalpinia pluviosa, sebipira es una especie botánica de árbol leguminosa de la familia de las Fabaceae. Se halla endémico de Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Colombia. Está amenazado por pérdida de hábita. Muy usada en las calles de ciudades brasileñas por ser muy bellas en su floreada. Tiene las hojas son bipinnadas con el eje central de 20-25 cm de largo, con 8-9 pares de pinnas, cada una con alrededor de 11 a 13 pares de foliolos de 10-12 mm. La floración ocurre entre de agosto y se extiende hasta el final del verano, produciendo inflorescencias cónicas en racimos erectos de flores amarillas. Las vainas de las frutas da lugar a dos válvas compuestas leñosa seca larga y correosa, con 7,6 a 12,0 cm de largo por 2.7 a 3.1 cm de ancho. Cuando están maduras, las vainas se abren girando en una explosiva dehiscencia expulsando 1-5 semillas. Estas son comprimidas, irregularmente circulares, transversales, ovato-obovadas o orbiculares a subglobosas con un frente muy duro y rígido, claro, espesa o sin albúmina, provisto de una boquilla en el hilio y con margen. Pueden vivir más de cien años. Caesalpinia pluviosa fue descrito por Augustin Pyrame de Candolle y publicado en Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis Caesalpinia: nombre genérico que fue otorgado en honor del botánico italiano Andrea Cesalpino (1519-1603). pluviosa: epíteto latino que significa "lluviosa". Sin. caesalpinia parensis, caesalpinia peltophoroides. Conocida por Momoqui, sebipira o sepipiruna.
Deze boom staat in de volksmond bekend als sibipiruna of vals brazilwood, is een siersoort met houtpotentieel en met een grote verspreiding in Brazilië. Het geslacht Caesalpinia heeft meer dan vijfhonderd soorten, waarvan de meeste nog niet zijn onderzocht op hun farmacologische potentieel. Verschillende soorten van het geslacht staan bekend om hun antioxiderende en ontstekingsremmende activiteiten. Daarom was het mogelijk om te verifiëren dat sibipiruna geen antimutagene activiteit vertoonde, maar een plant met mogelijk mutagene werking in de gebruikte concentraties.
Cet arbre, communément connu sous le nom de sibipiruna ou faux bois du Brésil, est une espèce ornementale avec un potentiel ligneux et une grande distribution au Brésil. Le genre Caesalpinia compte plus de cinq cents espèces, dont la plupart n’ont pas encore été étudiées pour leur potentiel pharmacologique. Plusieurs espèces du genre sont connues pour leurs activités antioxydantes et anti-inflammatoires. Ainsi, il a été possible de vérifier que la sibipiruna ne présentait pas d'activité antimutagène, mais une plante avec une possible action mutagène dans les concentrations utilisées.
Questo albero è popolarmente conosciuto come sibipiruna o falso legno brasiliano, è una specie ornamentale con potenziale legnoso e con grande distribuzione in Brasile. Il genere Caesalpinia comprende più di cinquecento specie, la maggior parte delle quali non sono state ancora studiate per il loro potenziale farmacologico. Diverse specie del genere sono note per le loro attività antiossidanti e antinfiammatorie. È stato quindi possibile verificare che la sibipiruna non presentava attività antimutagena, ma una pianta con possibile azione mutagena nelle concentrazioni utilizzate.
Dieser Baum ist im Volksmund als Sibipiruna oder falscher Brasilholzbaum bekannt und eine Zierart mit Holzpotenzial, die in Brasilien weit verbreitet ist. Die Gattung Caesalpinia umfasst mehr als fünfhundert Arten, von denen die meisten noch nicht auf ihr pharmakologisches Potenzial untersucht wurden. Mehrere Arten dieser Gattung sind für ihre antioxidative und entzündungshemmende Wirkung bekannt. Daher konnte nachgewiesen werden, dass Sibipiruna keine antimutagene Wirkung aufweist, sondern dass es sich bei der Pflanze um eine Pflanze mit möglicher mutagener Wirkung in den verwendeten Konzentrationen handelt.
تُعرف هذه الشجرة شعبيًا باسم Sibipiruna أو شجرة خشب البرازيل الزائفة وهي من أنواع الزينة ذات إمكانات الأخشاب المنتشرة على نطاق واسع في البرازيل. يشمل جنس Caesalpinia أكثر من خمسمائة نوع، معظمها لم تتم دراستها بعد لمعرفة إمكاناتها الدوائية. العديد من الأنواع في هذا الجنس معروفة بتأثيراتها المضادة للأكسدة والمضادة للالتهابات. ولذلك كان من الممكن إثبات أن سيبيبيرونا ليس له تأثير مضاد للطفرات، بل أن النبات نبات له تأثيرات مطفرة محتملة في التركيزات المستخدمة.
この木はシビピルナまたは偽ブラジルウッドとして一般に知られており、木材としての可能性を秘めた観賞用の種であり、ブラジルに広く分布しています。 Caesalpinia 属には 500 以上の種があり、そのほとんどはその薬理学的可能性についてまだ研究されていません。この属のいくつかの種は、抗酸化作用と抗炎症作用で知られています。したがって、シビピルナは抗変異原性活性を示さないが、使用した濃度において変異原性作用を示す可能性のある植物であることを検証することができた。
We studied maps, tides, weather forecasts as we wanted to shoot a vertical wide angle image right above the Angel on top of the Mont St Michel.
The Angel (Michel Angel) raises at 157 meters (520 feet), and the idea was to bring the kite and camera right above it. This was my first VHF radio assisted autoKAP session... with Heidy radio-guiding me on the other side of the Mont. (almost as efficient as a video link!)
The Ricoh GX 200 was attached 100 meters (300 feet) below the Dan Leigh Delta R8 to get some “clean” air, most of the shots were made from 15 to 50 meters (50 to 150 feet) above the angel and I had close to 400 meters (1300 feet) of line out. Thanks to Emmanuel (alias Maneke) for his assistance!
Dan Leigh Delta R8 – Ricoh GX 200 – Wide Angle adapter (19 mm equivalent) – Travel autoKap rig designed by Brooks Leffler- 130 kilos Cousin Dyneema line
It was hard to capture the splendour of the ice. I was cold and tired, and having to dodge a trio of giggling middle-aged Danes taking selfies. So my camera settings weren’t what they should have been and this panorama took more post-processing than it should have. Still, it's not too bad.
According to UNESCO:
Located on the west coast of Greenland, 250 km north of the Arctic Circle, Greenland’s Ilulissat Icefjord is the sea mouth of Sermeq Kujalleq, one of the few glaciers through which the Greenland ice cap reaches the sea. Sermeq Kujalleq is one of the fastest and most active glaciers in the world. It annually calves over 35 km3 of ice, i.e. 10% of the production of all Greenland calf ice and more than any other glacier outside Antarctica. Studied for over 250 years, it has helped to develop our understanding of climate change and icecap glaciology. The combination of a huge ice-sheet and the dramatic sounds of a fast-moving glacial ice-stream calving into a fjord covered by icebergs makes for a dramatic and awe-inspiring natural phenomenon.
Brief synthesis
Located on the west coast of Greenland, 250 km north of the Arctic Circle, Greenland’s Ilulissat Icefjord is a tidal fjord covered with floating brash and massive ice, as it is situated where the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier calves ice into the sea. In winter, the area is frozen solid. One of the few places where ice from the Greenland ice cap enters the sea, Sermeq Kujalleq is also one of the fastest moving (40 m per day) and most active glaciers in the world. Its annual calving of over 46 cubic kilometres of ice, i.e. 10% of all Greenland calf ice, is more than any other glacier outside Antarctica, and it is still actively eroding the fjord bed. The combination of a huge ice-sheet and the dramatic sounds of a fast-moving glacial ice-stream calving into a fjord full of icebergs make for a dramatic and awe-inspiring natural phenomenon.
The Greenland ice cap is the only remnant in the Northern Hemisphere of the continental ice sheets from the Quaternary Ice Age. The oldest ice is estimated to be 250,000 years old, and provides detailed information on past climatic changes and atmospheric conditions from 250,000 to around 11,550 years ago, when climate became more stable. Studies made over the last 250 years demonstrate that during the last ice age, the climate fluctuated between extremely cold and warmer periods, while today the ice cap is being maintained by an annual accumulation of snow that matches the loss through calving and melting at the margins. This phenomenon has helped to develop our understanding of climate change and icecap glaciology.
Criterion (vii): The combination of a huge ice sheet and a fast moving glacial ice-stream calving into a fjord covered by icebergs is a phenomenon only seen in Greenland and Antarctica. Ilulissat offers both scientists and visitors easy access for a close view of the calving glacier front as it cascades down from the ice sheet and into the ice-choked fjord. The wild and highly scenic combination of rock, ice and sea, along with the dramatic sounds produced by the moving ice, combine to present a memorable natural spectacle.
Criterion (viii): The Ilulissat Icefjord is an outstanding example of a stage in the Earth’s history: the last ice age of the Quaternary Period. The ice-stream is one of the fastest (40 m per day) and most active in the world. Its annual calving of over 46 km3 of ice accounts for 10% of the production of all Greenland calf ice, more than any other glacier outside Antarctica. The glacier has been the object of scientific attention for 250 years and, along with its relative ease of accessibility, has significantly added to the understanding of ice-cap glaciology, climate change and related geomorphic processes.
This panorama was stitched from four hand-held photographs with PTGUI Pro, processed with Color Efex, and touched up in Affinity Photo and Aperture.
Original size: 16453 × 5148 (84.7 MP; 363.39 MB).
Location: Ilulissat Icefjord, Anannaata, Greenland
Having studied these wild house mice that live in our garden and love to feed on our blackberries Here are 2 facts 1: they can use there tails as a grip similar to harvest mice 2: they prefer the red blackberries rather than the darker ones
Commentary.
Its geology is studied greatly and fascinating.
Its geography is intertwined with the landscape
that is very much centred on its geology.
Its history goes back millions of years, but in human terms,
at least tens of thousands of years.
Yet, all of this, counts for not one jot
compared to its aesthetic value.
It is an outstanding and beautiful stretch of coastline,
simply world-class.
End of.
P.S.(And one of my very favourites.)
studied hard today, but time to chil right now!
off to family and making some fun:)
© Copyright 2010 Piejie Photography, All Rights Reserved. Images may not be reproduced, copied, or used in any way without permission.
I took it easy for a few days - flicked through books, studied Japanese art a little.
- Gustav Klimt
Although even when I am being idle I have plenty of food for
thought both early and late - thoughts both about and not
about art.
- Gustav Klimt
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PHOTO;
Tel Aviv"s Spring through my window.
This exotic tree is blossoming near my window for
already several weeks......
Tiny cicadas are singing among it"s crimson flowers
and...
Sometimes it can be seen how one old black crow is
splitting (by it"s huge beak) those unopened green
cones of future ruby-red flowers - surely, for the gourmet- food............
It looks very Japan-esque, indeed.........This blossoming
on an old dried tree..........
BTW, this is one of the most profound definitions in
aesthetics of Zen-Art, especially - of the
Noh-theater( yes, I mean, the blossoming of an old
dried tree...... really, it is considered to be the moment
of a true enlightenment, when "at night the Sun
meets the Moon",
i.e. a moment of true "satori")
Taken 20 March, 2007............ Tel Aviv, Israel
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From an idea by Daniel Nimmervoll, whose Kindle book I nought and studied to learn to do droplet photography. This is a somewhat clumsy and quick-n-dirty photoshop montage from a series of photographs in this album.
A word for y'all aspirant liquid artists about experts and authors who report via books, articles, youtube vlogs or blogs on this type of photography. It's quite useful what they tell you but I find they spend a lot of time telling you about things you already know, for instance, what backgrounds to use, and how to position your flashes to create this infinite effect and subject colours (thru usage of colourful gels) we often see in product photography. It's all right to have that knowledge, but droplet photography is not about this in the first place. It is about practical things like what should the height of the nozzle from the surface the drop hits should eventually be, how it impacts the forms it creates, how to calculate the time from drop exit from the nozzle to the impact with water for Tats and what follows next analytically. Quite a few people try to explain how they did certain shot, but they will never tell you that whatever they did was 10% by design and 90% by accident. This is an important element of this type of photography. Given a drop, and the best calculated parameters for certain planned outcome, the photographer was the first to be surprised by those outcomes. The photographer's creative work starts after God, nature and its laws, and chaos theory had finished their toil. That post processing consists simply of a selection of the best shots, the healing out of stray drops that defocus the viewer from the main subject, and adjusting the shot's colours via controls that packages like LR CC, Luminar and above all Photoshop have to offer. Of course, the photographer also designs the background and lighting, but that's not the hard part of such a project. It's the easiest in fact.
A method about Tats should preferably start by explaining the steps in the drop 'lifecycle', that is from the moment it impacts the surface and what happens next. Very few people will tell you that in a detailed and comprehensive manner. They do tell you about bits and pieces of the lifecycle but they all select and pick what they want to tell you about it, and you are left wondering. You need to google and read many sources to make sense of it. I should say, you start with Youtube as there are good clips about the phenomenon that people videoed with high speed video cameras and they show droplet lifecycles really as nature decided them to be. Even so, they only cover a few use cases and none of what I saw told me anything about how to reach a tall Worthington jet, just to mention something rather important... And you have to make some assumptions yourself, now that you have the whole thing deploying in front of your eyes, and calculate the distance in millisec from impact to say the jet formation and its highest point. So, I reckoned that the total duration between impact and collision with the following drop is in the range of 120 to 160 millisec. My own empirical experiments later confirmed that assumption. In another Flickr post about it, I gave a simple method to calculate the time needed for a drop to hit the surface after its nozzle exit. This helps a lot because, at least it gives you a first parameter to work with in your drop lifecycle controller, what it is, Pluto, Miops, etc... I was able in most cases that I tested to fall within the smallest unit of my system, one millisec that is, in my prediction of the touch down as I called it. Actually the only unknown scientifically that is impossible to calculate is the air resistance that for heights between 60 and 40 cm it turned out to be between 20 and 25 millisec. The good thing is that it is linear, so if you figure out the amount of resistance for 42 cm it's a simply analogy to calculate the corresponding resistance for say, 56 cm. I have designed shots based on this formula that I could capture drops barely touching the surface in their last few millisec before impact. Provided you are so close to the start of the process, and if you have a reasonable knowledge of what it takes in millisec to go to the following stage, then you are reasonably in control of what happens when. This will save you time, stress and battery life (your speed-lights that is) in your quest to reach the moment of creation.
Suppose you are trying to figure out in how many millisec after impact your system will generate a Worthington jet. And at which point does this jet reach its maximum height. As an example, I spent in one session more than three hours trying to figure out, at the given configuration I was trying, with only one drop coming out of the nozzle, as during all this time all my shots for millisec after millisec came out with a short Worthington of a few cm never reaching a descent height to have it collide with drop number two, and all the shots came out with the seven dwarfs but no Snowhite, if you know what I mean. It took me sometime to realise that what makes Worthingtons shoot high is more the liquid composition of both the basin and the falling drops than a part in the lifecycle that I was chasing for hours, as I was convinced that in my combination of liquids, parameters and heights from the basin there ought to be a descent jet hidden somewhere. Also the size of the surface and volume of the basin should play a role, although one celebrity artist wrote that this is irrelevant as the cavity a falling drop creates will only go as deep as a couple of cm. Dream on dude. In Ship Building (from which I graduated as a PhD some 40 years ago) we had a whole chapter of manoeuvrability in shallow waters. It's an entirely different world. I strongly believe the size of the basin and the depth of the water mass plays a certain role in the magnitude of the jet. Can't mathematically prove it, but this is something my shipbuilder's intuition tells me. The jet is created by the falling drop that creates a cavity, and it is the hydrostatic pressure that pushes water back to the cavity and creates the jet. In a super shallow basin you'll never be able to create a jet. Also a small basin with very little water in it, like a glass of water. I don't know, but they don't tell you these things. So you keep trying and wasting battery life, until, if you are lucky enough and get to the ultimate creative moment, where nature feels sorry about you and starts creating its beauties for you to admire and share in Flickr. Unfortunately, real science has very little to tell us about the phenomenon itself, therefore we are left out in the cold to figure out by ourselves what makes jets shoot high and what mostly causes them to remain shorties! Like I said, no expert is sharing his/her experiences to that level, and you are left guessing, and even worse, you are left admiring those wonderful boyz 'n gals for their abilities... (luck I should better say).
We studied three weeks, we love three months, we dispute three years, we tolerate thirty years and the children start again....Taine (Hippolyte)
Original size-
Hello everyone!
I'm frequently complimented and credited for my exceptional range of kitchen designs and layouts. From when I studied at Swinburne University, I was mainly focusing on floor-plans and layouts for kitchens, since they are what typically sell a home. Since I'm sharing with you some of my blogging secrets, I thought it'd be favourable for me to share with you, on how I do my kitchens before I crack into the finish pieces resulting in the final product. Hopefully this will become helpful to anyone who's just starting building or wants to know how to kick off. I use this technique so that I can work out a plan/layout before I begin purchasing materials and whatnot. This way, if anything needs changing or projects are cancelled, I can at least say that I haven't wasted a Linden.
Please, I apologise for the intervals with my vocals, I took them in sections.
Social Link; www.jackhanbyinteriors.com/
I have lived, studied, worked and played around this street for 30 years now, never seen it like this! The first of this year's 'Make Sundays Special' events in Bristol (where central roads are closed for the people to take back the streets from the traffic chaos Bristol suffers from!) started with a bang today with a giant water slide down Park street. Only 360 tickets were available for this event, disappointing a large number of the 90,000 who applied. Still, I think a fair proportion of them turned up on the day for a look! (Water slide's blue tarpaulin just visible among the crowds!)
File: 2016005-0020
In my back garden, Worcestershire, England, United Kingdom. Taken in the morning of Friday 15th November 2016.
Note: My camera was incorrectly set to the wrong year, the EXIF recorded the year as 2015, but it is really 2016.
About this photograph.
This is Marie, whom was known as LadyArtist on the model booking websites.
Marie was booked for a two hours photo-shoot project at my home. The first hour was to be standard modelling as part of a graphic design project, and the second hour was to be glamour kind of modelling.
The first hour was split into two parts. The first part was to be a general winter style fashion wear, modelling in fur coats, wearing a scarf, with jeans tucked into knee-length boots. Those can be found in my Photostream and Albums. Most of the shoots were to be used in various graphic design projects, such as magazines, catalogues, adverts, etc.
Now about the second part…
I explained to her that for this task, I needed a fictional female singer/songwriter posing for a fictional CD album art cover as part of my graphic design project. The character she pretends to be, would be a singer/songwriter, is a guitarist, and plays rock / alternative rock / soul or thereabouts. Say for example, the likes of Sharleen Spiteri, Sheryl Crow, etc.
It is not just only for a CD album art cover, but also for anything else related to the album, like tour poster, advert, magazine interview, etc, in additional to the mock-up CD case.
I asked her to pose in this black fur jacket, while keeping the rest of her outfit as she worn, carry my acoustic guitar, and stand beside the back wall of the outbuilding. The reason for this location, the need for this kind of background, is because I may want to create the album’s title on it in the form of a writing on the wall.
I may be deaf with speech impaired, so communications can sometimes be difficult, but as a very good and experienced model herself, she was able to understand my project, my plan, and my instructions, and carried out her task very well. I got the kind of shots I planned for and hoped for.
After that, bearing in mind that I was a busy full-time single parent, I did manage to get some graphic design artwork done while the kids were at school. But that task was done using CorelDRAW software on my old 32-bit Windows XP computer, and I later upgraded to a new computer with 64-bit Windows 7 Professional Edition, so sadly the old CorelDRAW software was incompatible with the new computer. As a result of this, I took the opportunity to switch to Adobe software (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.,) but I have not yet had a chance to try to convert the old Corel files into the new Adobe format. I also consider on redoing the project, by improving it.
So, this is the story of the photo-shoot.
About LadyArtist.
Marie was a model (either professional or amateur, I forgotten which), and adverted on a few of the model booking websites like PurplePort and similar, under her handle of LadyArtist. But at least two years after this photo-shoot I did, she had passed away of cancer or something. I only found out two years after her death (four years after the photo-shoot), when I saw her online account was turned into some kind of a memorial by her husband. I believe by now, most of her accounts have been deactivated.
About my project.
In 1987-89, I studied traditional graphic design at college, while working for a professional photographer as a darkroom technician and photographer’s assistant. After leaving college, it was difficult to get a job because of discrimination, due to my being a deaf person. Because the college did not have much computers, the graphic design I did was the old fashion way, pencils, pens, masking tapes, prints, glue, etc., so while unemployment and seeking a job, I did self-study in digital graphic design.
For me, photography is not a hobby. I do enjoy doing photography, but not as a hobby, I would prefer it should be as a career. I considered photography as my first choice, while graphic design as my secondary choice. When I became single parent, I put it all on hold to look after the kids.
At first, when the kids were old enough, I attempted to do some graphic design for myself, mostly to keep my skills going, and to keep a portfolio full of fresh ideas to show to employers during interviews. Or if needed, I would consider going freelance for myself.
Most of my graphic design projects are generally more of publicity and media, like posters, book covers, DVD covers, etc., Often I would design CD album art covers, and this photo-shoot is part of the project. Usually I prefer to try to use my own photographs rather than rely on stock images.
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The Basilica of San Vitale is a late antique church in Ravenna, Italy. The sixth-century church is an important surviving example of early Byzantine art and architecture, and its mosaics in particular are some of the most-studied works in Byzantine art. It is one of eight structures in Ravenna inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Its foundational inscription describes the church as a basilica, though its centrally-planned design is not typical of the basilica form. Within the Roman Catholic Church it holds the honorific title of basilica for its historic and ecclesial importance.
The church's construction began in 526 on the orders of Bishop Ecclesius of Ravenna. At the time, Ravenna was under the rule of the Ostrogoths. Bishop Maximian completed construction in 547, preceding Justinian's creation of the Exarchate of Ravenna, which followed his partial re-conquest of the Western Roman Empire.
The construction of the church was sponsored by local banker and architect Julius Argentarius. Very little is known of Julius, but he also sponsored the construction of the nearby Basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe at around the same time. A donor portrait of Julius Argentarius may appear among the courtiers on the Justinian mosaic. The final cost amounted to 26,000 solidi[3] equal to 36.11 lbs of gold. It has been suggested that Julius originated in the eastern part of the Byzantine Empire, where there was a long-standing tradition of public benefactions.
The central vault used a western technique of hollow tubes inserted into each other, rather than bricks. This method was the first recorded structural use of terra-cotta forms, which later evolved into modern structural clay tile. The ambulatory and gallery were vaulted only later in the Middle Ages.
The Baroque frescoes on the dome were made between 1778 and 1782 by S. Barozzi, Ubaldo Gandolfi and Jacopo Guarana.
he main building of the church is laid out octagonally. The building combines Roman and Byzantine elements. The dome, shape of doorways, and stepped towers are typical of Roman style, while the polygonal apse, capitals, narrow bricks, and an early example of flying buttresses are typical of the Byzantine. The church is most famous for its wealth of Byzantine mosaics. St Vitale boasts the largest and best-preserved mosaics outside of Istanbul. The church is of extreme importance in Byzantine art, as it is the only major church from the period of the Emperor Justinian I to survive virtually intact. Like the Church of Saints Sergios and Bacchos in Constantinople, it's overall design is a "double-shelled octagon."
Some speculate that it reflects the design of the Byzantine Imperial Palace Audience Chamber, of which nothing at all survives. The bell tower has four bells. The tenor bell dates to the 16th century. According to legends, the church was erected on the site of the martyrdom of Saint Vitalis. However, there is some confusion as to whether this is the Saint Vitalis of Milan, or the Saint Vitale whose body was discovered (together with that of Saint Agricola) by Saint Ambrose in Bologna in 393.
The central section is surrounded by two superposed ambulatories. The upper one, the matrimoneum, was possibly reserved for married women. A series of mosaics in the lunettes above the triforia depict sacrifices from the Old Testament:[8] the story of Abraham and Melchizedek, and the Sacrifice of Isaac; the story of Moses and the Burning Bush, Jeremiah and Isaiah, representatives of the twelve tribes of Israel, and the story of Abel and Cain. A pair of angels, holding a medallion with a cross, crowns each lunette. On the side walls the corners, next to the mullioned windows, have mosaics of the Four Evangelists, under their symbols (angel, lion, ox and eagle), and dressed in white. Especially the portrayal of the lion is remarkable in its ferocity.
The cross-ribbed vault in the presbytery is richly ornamented with mosaic festoons of leaves, fruit and flowers, converging on a crown encircling the Lamb of God. The crown is supported by four angels, and every surface is covered with a profusion of flowers, stars, birds and animals, including many peacocks. Above the arch, on both sides, two angels hold a disc and beside them a representation of the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. They symbolize the human race (Jerusalem representing the Jews, and Bethlehem the Gentiles).
All these mosaics are executed in the Hellenistic-Roman tradition: lively and imaginative, with rich colours and a certain perspective, and with a vivid depiction of the landscape, plants and birds. They were finished when Ravenna was still under Gothic rule[citation needed]. The apse is flanked by two chapels, the prothesis and the diaconicon, typical for Byzantine architecture.
Inside, the intrados of the great triumphal arch is decorated with fifteen mosaic medallions, depicting Jesus Christ, the twelve Apostles and Saint Gervasius and Saint Protasius, the sons of Saint Vitale. The theophany was begun in 525 under bishop Ecclesius. It has a great gold fascia with twining flowers, birds, and horns of plenty.
The apse mosaic centers on a youthful depiction of Jesus Christ, seated on a blue globe, robed in purple, flanked by angels, offering with his right hand the martyr's crown to Saint Vitale, while on his left Bishop Ecclesius offers a model of the church, in his role as the symbolic donor of the church.
At the foot of the apse side walls are two famous mosaic panels, completed in 547. On viewer left (but privileged right side from perspective of Christ in apse) is a mosaic depicting the East Roman Emperor Justinian I, clad in Tyrian purple with a golden halo, standing next to court officials, generals Belisarius and Narses, Bishop Maximian, palatinae guards and deacons. The halo around his head gives him the same aspect as Christ in the dome of the apse, but is part of the tradition of rendering the imperial family with haloes described by Ernst Kantorowicz in The King's Two Bodies. Justinian himself stands in the middle, with soldiers on his right and clergy on his left, emphasizing that Justinian is the leader of both church and state of his empire. The later insertion of Bishop Maximian's name above his head suggests that the mosaic may have been modified in 547, replacing the representation of the prior bishop with that of Maximian's.
The gold background of the mosaic perhaps shows that Justinian and his entourage are inside the church. The figures are placed in a V shape; Justinian is placed in the front and in the middle to show his importance with Bishop Maximian on his left and lesser individuals being placed behind them. This placement can be seen through the overlapping feet of the individuals present in the mosaic.
On the opposite wall, the more elaborate panel shows Empress Theodora solemn and formal, with a golden halo, crown and jewels, and a group of court women as well as eunuchs. The Empress holds the Eucharistic vessel for the Precious Blood, and her panel differs from that of Justinian in having a more complex background, with a fountain, cupola, and lavish hangings. They are adorned with intricately patterned textiles, possibly luxurious silks imported from the Sassanian Persian Empire. One scholar has argued that Theodora was depicted after her death in 548, but that theory has not been widely accepted due to other evidence that the mosaics were completed by 547 when the church was consecrated. This is the only certain image of the Empress Theodora, and stands in contrast to her depiction in some of the political rhetoric of the era.
First successful attempt at repositioning.
:)
I studied a few tutorials and did my best, I feel that with time I can progress further.
Duke Arcturus sat on the plush sofa in the Granough house and looked up from the hurriedly penned letter from the Breens and studied what had once been the sitting and dining room. He thought, with a bitter smile, that the room hadn't been used properly in decades. He remembered asking Ashley if he had ever taken a meal at the grand table. The boy, after a moment's thought, had answered that he had just once. That conversation had turned to the old witch, who, it seemed, still needed to eat. Good to know, in case their struggles ever stray from dragons to the castle again.
Arcturus had turned the space into an office to manage mountains of neglected paperwork, but these tasks were abandoned, too, when the room was repurposed into barracks and a war room for his small band of men after his injury from the pirate. Now, the manor was nearly empty; everything useful had been carried to the cave in the forest. Efforts to befriend and care for Ashley's dragon were well underway, and the cave was being made habitable for humans—though his grandson had managed well on his own. Once the adults stepped in, the cave was quickly and quietly transformed and stocked with anything and everything they might need to weather the worst storm. It was close to the castle, which was what Arcturus wanted.
What did he want? Not to die to a dragon, certainly, but he could not run either. He flexed his fingers around the letter, the paper crackling softly in his grip. With a sad smile, he realised his choice had been made.
Now, he had to give that choice to his men, friends, and brothers, some of whom he had trained from angry youths. He did not expect them to stay at his side, but when he explained the situation, not one man stood to leave; it seemed their choices had already been made, too.
Twenty villagers had arrived downstairs, staying, or perhaps just claiming to in the hope of looting the grand townhouse, and lied to stay out of trouble. Either way, they were there now, and Duke Granough had to act fast.
He stood, feeling the weight of exhaustion in his bones, and wrote his own letter to the Breens. After sending it off with the guard, he ordered James and George to open the passageway downstairs. There was no point in delaying the journey any longer.
The manor felt colder as he moved through it. Arcturus was the last to descend the stairs, pausing at the landing to frown at the portrait of the witch's father. The grinding stones in the training hall below and the shuffle of feet of guards, peasants, merchants, and children echoed up the stairwell. None had taken the ship to escape the dragons and the witch; their fates now his responsibility. The old duke pushed through the crowded hallway, watching as people grabbed at decorative weapons and the last of the food in the kitchen. With a weary sigh, he slipped into Ashley's bedroom and closed the door behind him.
The room was tidy from when the elf took Ashley on the expedition, a journey Arcturus had agreed to with reluctance. The child had either been thrown into danger or saved by this trip. He took a steadying breath. Ashley could use a sword, but the thought of the boy needing to fight hurt his heart. Lady Darra claimed some skill, but the two of them alone against a horde of beasts seemed hopeless. He pushed the thought away and went to the bed, collecting the plush dragon toy from the pillow, surprised it had been left behind. He carefully took the carved stag and horseshoe from the dresser, bundled them in shirts, and added them to the blanket on the bed, tying the makeshift bag closed.
He wrote a letter to his grandson and heir and hid it away in the crawlspace in the wall that Ashley had found so long ago. With a final look at the room, he gathered the bag and turned away, hoping the boy would find the letter if and when he and Lady Darra returned to the manor. As he left, he found James and George with old Argos waiting for him. Together, they made their way through the passage into the tunnel. Arcturus handed the bag to James, took Argos's lead, scratched the old dog behind the ear, and watched the secret door close. He turned away to begin the long walk through the tunnel to the cave that would be their home until the witch, her faction of guards and pirates, and her dragons were dealt with once and for all.
South African coucal described by William John Burchell a British naturalist who studied African flora and fauna during the 18th century (see also Burchell's zebra). Centropus burchelli
Commentary.
Its geology is studied greatly and fascinating.
Its geography is intertwined with the landscape
that is very much centred on its geology.
Its history goes back millions of years, but in human terms,
at least tens of thousands of years.
Yet, all of this, counts for not one jot
compared to its aesthetic value.
It is an outstanding and beautiful stretch of coastline,
simply world-class.
End of.
P.S. (And one of my very favourites.)
Commentary.
Since the 1950’s I wonder how many Geography students,
like myself in the 1970’s, visited this river or studied it in “O” AND “A” Level text books.
It was such a classic example of fluvial erosion and deposition.
I say “was” because a straighter, more navigable river has been channelled making the former meanders, lakes for kayakers!
Wide, sweeping meanders and “U”-shaped ox-bow lakes
were the star attractions. The river’s course and its levees
migrated laterally and longitudinally along the flood plain
between steeper river terraces on the periphery.
“Enough,” I hear you cry!!!
And, yes, I too, would much rather consider the aesthetic qualities of this place than the geomorphological minutiae that demanded my attention for over nine years.
Poem.
Endless swarms of day-trippers, tourists, students,
geographers, photographers and many others,
ply the several paths from Exceat to the river mouth at Cuckmere Haven.
Blue arcs of “switch-back” meanders.
Chalk hills of the South Downs are crowned by a beige and brown fringe of leafless deciduous trees, part of Friston Forest.
Vehicles, bumper to bumper, cautiously negotiate
the twists, turns and inclines of the busy A.259 linking Newhaven, Seaford and Eastbourne.
And then the bottle-neck of a single-track bridge crossing the river!
The striking azure curves contrast photogenically
with the bright orange-tiled roofs of the barns,
museum, café and dwellings at Exceat and Westdean.
A sublime stretch of coastline for cliffs, beaches, valleys, rivers
and a rural hinterland of arable and grazing fields.
Such is the Cuckmere Valley and the “Seven Sisters” of East Sussex.
Stars are often born in clusters, in giant clouds of gas and dust. Astronomers have studied two star clusters using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and infrared telescopes and the results show that the simplest ideas for the birth of these clusters cannot work, as described in our latest press release.
This composite image shows one of the clusters, NGC 2024, which is found in the center of the so-called Flame Nebula about 1,400 light years from Earth. In this image, X-rays from Chandra are seen as purple, while infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are colored red, green, and blue.
A study of NGC 2024 and the Orion Nebula Cluster, another region where many stars are forming, suggest that the stars on the outskirts of these clusters are older than those in the central regions. This is different from what the simplest idea of star formation predicts, where stars are born first in the center of a collapsing cloud of gas and dust when the density is large enough.
The research team developed a two-step process to make this discovery. First, they used Chandra data on the brightness of the stars in X-rays to determine their masses. Next, they found out how bright these stars were in infrared light using data from Spitzer, the 2MASS telescope, and the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope. By combining this information with theoretical models, the ages of the stars throughout the two clusters could be estimated.
According to the new results, the stars at the center of NGC 2024 were about 200,000 years old while those on the outskirts were about 1.5 million years in age. In Orion, the age spread went from 1.2 million years in the middle of the cluster to nearly 2 million years for the stars toward the edges.
Explanations for the new findings can be grouped into three broad categories. The first is that star formation is continuing to occur in the inner regions. This could have happened because the gas in the outer regions of a star-forming cloud is thinner and more diffuse than in the inner regions. Over time, if the density falls below a threshold value where it can no longer collapse to form stars, star formation will cease in the outer regions, whereas stars will continue to form in the inner regions, leading to a concentration of younger stars there.
Another suggestion is that old stars have had more time to drift away from the center of the cluster, or be kicked outward by interactions with other stars. Finally, the observations could be explained if young stars are formed in massive filaments of gas that fall toward the center of the cluster.
The combination of X-rays from Chandra and infrared data is very powerful for studying populations of young stars in this way. With telescopes that detect visible light, many stars are obscured by dust and gas in these star-forming regions, as shown in this optical image of the region.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., controls Chandra's science and flight operations.
Original caption/more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2014/flame/
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/K.Getman, E.Feigelson, M.Kuhn & the MYStIX team; Infrared:NASA/JPL-Caltech
Read more about Chandra:
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
_____________________________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
The celestial object that is displayed in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week is NGC 7496, a galaxy located over 24 million light-years away in the constellation Grus (The Crane). NGC 7496 is a dusty spiral galaxy with a bar of stars stretching across its centre. Adding to its intrigue is an active galactic nucleus: a supermassive black hole that feasts on gas at the very heart of the galaxy.
Astronomers have observed NGC 7496 at wavelengths from radio to ultraviolet in order to study the galaxy’s active galactic nucleus, dust clouds, and star formation. Hubble first observed this galaxy as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) programme. This programme has enlisted the abilities of several powerful astronomical observatories, including the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA), the Very Large Telescope, and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, in addition to Hubble. NGC 7496 was the first galaxy in the PHANGS sample that Webb observed.
Each of these observatories offers a different perspective on this well-studied galaxy. With its unique ultraviolet capabilities and fine resolution, Hubble’s view reveals young star clusters bursting with high-energy radiation. Hubble’s observations of NGC 7496 help to reveal the ages and masses of these young stars, as well as the extent to which their starlight is blocked by dust.
A previous Hubble image of NGC 7496 was released in 2022. Today’s image incorporates new data that highlight the galaxy’s star clusters, which are surrounded by glowing red clouds of hydrogen gas. Astronomers collected these data in order to study nebulae like those that massive stars leave behind when they explode as supernovae and those from which newborn stars are made.
[Image Description: A spiral galaxy featuring a bright, glowing core that is crossed by a horizontal bar of yellowish light. Spiral arms emerge from each end of this bar and wrap around it, creating a disc that is stretched out to the right. Some areas, mostly along the arms, glow pink where stars are forming in nebulae. Webs of dark reddish dust also follow the arms. A star in our galaxy shines prominently, off to the right.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Chandar, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST team; CC BY 4.0
In the box on the left, coeval to the other, there is an instrument with mixed mechanical-pneumatic transmission dating back to 1909 and is the work of the Veronese artisan Domenico Farinati. At the end of the sixteenth century, Felice Brusasorzi painted the doors of the chest with Four Holy Bishops inside and Dormizione di Maria outside and it is also his painting of the balustrade of the choir, depicting Old Testament Stories. The instrument was restored by B. Formentelli in 1994; currently it is not usable and several recovery projects are being studied.
Орган, расположенный в левом нефе собора, заслуживает отдельного внимания. Он декорирован красивой росписью, на которой можно увидеть библейскую сцену — успение Пресвятой Богоматери, а также изображения четырех епископов города. Эта уникальная роспись была выполнена в 16 веке.
Good to have a wife, who had studied marine science :-)
Scorpaena scrofa, common name the red scorpionfish, Bigscale scorpionfish, or large-scaled scorpion fish is a venomous marine species of fish in the family Scorpaenidae, the "scorpionfish".
Scorpaena scrofa is the largest eastern Atlantic scorpion fish. Colouration ranges from brick-red to a light pink, and it has dark coloured blotches on its body. It has venomous spines, can achieve a maximum weight of approximately 3 kilograms (6.6 lb). It can grow to a maximum length of 50 centimetres (20 in), but is commonly around 30 cm (12 in).
It has 12 dorsal spines, 9 dorsal soft rays, 3 anal spines, and 5 soft rays. It often has a dark spot on its spinous dorsal spines between the 6th and 11th. It has long supraorbital tentacles.
He studied me for a few seconds. Then returned to his small friendship group. Unfortunately I'm not in the group yet. Hope to get closer sometime.
A Yi woman in a traditional cape and hat shucking corn cobs at Tu Wu village.
On Facebook at www.facebook.com/RemoteAsiaPhoto. More on my website www.remoteasiaphoto.com.
Excerpt from brainproject.ca:
Free Thinker
The much studied, yet little understood human brain is the most complex system known to us. Composed of more than a billion neurons making countless connections, one cannot underestimate our unlimited human potential. The butterfly goes through countless changes to become the free and beautiful creature it is. Symbolic of renewal, expansion and growth, the swirling butterflies in Free Thinker remind us to forgo limiting thoughts, to transcend our challenges, to reach for our highest potential.
Brain Scan
PET, MRI and CT scans can use colour and shades to help detect brain activity to help us understand conditions we all might have. In PET scans, red stimulates high activity and cool colours show low activity.
Genius Tomorrow
Artist Tanya Besedina dedicates her project to a loved one who was diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum disorder, as well as many, many others who are suffering from the same problem.
The wonderful person who is being honoured has the most unique view of the world and keeps surprising those around her every day with her unexpected talents.
At dawn, the evolution of the world appeared to me
Biomaterials in dialogue with our cells, intra-ocular implants, stem-cell tissue re-creation, organ substitution with the use of technology like 3D printers, neuro-prothesis, a brain-computer interface implanted in the human body.
If our brain becomes a machine, what will happen with our emotions? What do we lose by enhancing the human? How will we preserve a definition of who we are? What would become of individual and collective thought, of beauty, of creativity?
ODC-Zodiac Sign
I studied astrology and did people's charts for years. That was before computers did all the calculations for you. I found it most fascinating. I am a Scorpio. My sign says I'm mysterious and intense, but I have more Libra signs in my chart which makes me more harmonious and balanced. Astrology is like baking a cake, it's made of many different components, not just one! That's why humans are so complex!
Sri Astari (b. 1953) studied painting at the University of Minnesota in the United States and at the Royal College of Art, London, but went on to expand into sculpture and installation. Astari is concerned with the re-reading of Javanese traditions, its symbolism and values. Inspired by social and political issues as well as consumerism and lifestyle, she continues to challenge stereotypes and cultural construction, with a tinge of humor, giving new meaning to Javanese traditional symbolism. Her work pays special attention to the position of a woman within her cultural traditions. Recurrent themes have been the kebaya and its accessories, both repressive and protective, and branded bags as a metaphor for modern fetishism. Lately she has given the kebaya new meaning, calling it “armor for the soul”. Her recent works show a more philosophical tendency, highlighting the need to reconcile the self with nature and the universe.
Within the Javanese cultural and philosophical realm, Sakti symbolises the power of the South Sea Queen, who’s strength is believed to be behind the Sultan’s power, as well as within each person. This became the artist’s metaphor expressed in the pavilion installation Pendopo: Dancing the Wild Seas with seven Bedoyo dancers. The Pendopo is the fundamental element of Javanese architecture. In the palace there used to be the sacred space where the Sultan was anointed with the South Sea Queen’s invisible presence, power and blessing. In the commoners’ house, pendopo is where visitors are welcomed and ceremonial events are held, a sort of ante chamber. For Sri Astari, it is a metaphor for the soul. To find one’s identity, one has to look intrinsically to find the power that is believed to be present within. According to Astari, it is essential for everyone to “switch on” that power if the human race is to survive beyond materialism.
artintheheartofsummer.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/sakti-the-...
Strangely, Elizabeth Thompson, whose painting 'The roll call' met with such unprecedented success in 1874, had nothing military or Imperialistic in her background; indeed, her mother, who had been a concert-pianist before being introduced by Dickens to Thomas James Thompson, a friend of his, was distressed that her elder daughter should wish to paint nothing but soldiers and battles. Both Elizabeth and her younger sister Alice (who is perhaps better known as Alice Meynell, the poet) had an unusual upbringing; their father, having studied at Cambridge and twice stood unsuccessfully for Parliament as a Free-Trade candidate, became a man of leisure and letters, living off inherited income from property in Lancashire and the West Indies, and devoting his attention to the education of his two daughters. This, in his view, entailed travel, and Elizabeth's childhood was spent in a succession of temporary homes, particularly on the Italian Riviera above Genoa. The literary and artistic talents of the two daughters were carefully fostered by their parents, and Elizabeth studied painting with a tutor, Mr Standish, and then at the South Kensington School of Art; from the start, her subject-matter was confined to soldiers, horses and battles.
She exhibited watercolours at the Dudley Gallery in London, and, during a long family visit to Rome in 1870 at the time of the first Vatican Council (she, her mother and her sister had been converted to Roman Catholicism), exhibited a painting of 'The Magnificat' (also known as 'The Visitation') at the International Exhibition there, receiving an honourable mention; this painting was subsequently submitted to the Royal Academy in 1871, but rejected, as was the painting she submitted in 1872. 'Missing', an imaginary scene of the aftermath of a battle of the Franco-Prussian War, was accepted by the Academy in 1873, but was 'skied' (hung so high on the Academy walls as to be virtually lost to the public view); this painting did, however, bring Mr Galloway's commission for 'The roll call'.
In her Autobiography , Lady Butler recounts in detail the story of the success of this work; one of the Academy Selecting Committee, J.R. Herbert, wrote of the outcome of their deliberations when the painting was up for consideration: 'I was so struck by the excellent work in it that I proposed that we should lift our hats and give it and you, though, as I thought, unknown to me, a round of huzzahs, which was generally done.' She wrote to her father, 'You know that "the elite have been presented to me this day, all with the same hearty words of congratulation on their lips and the same warm shake of the hand ready to follow the introductory bow.'
Following the success of 'The roll call' in 1874, Elizabeth Thompson in 1875 exhibited 'Quatre Bras', which took as its subject the encounter in a field of rye between the 28th Regiment and the French cavalry, two days before Waterloo. This painting earned high praise from John Ruskin, whose opinion was still capable of making or breaking an artist's reputation. In his 1875 Academy Notes , Ruskin wrote:
I never approached a picture with more iniquitous prejudice against it than I did Miss Thompson's; partly because I have always said that no woman could paint; and, secondly, because I thought that what the public made such a fuss about must be good for nothing. But it is amazon's work this; no doubt of it, and the first fine Pre-Raphaelite picture of battle we have had; - profoundly interesting, and showing all manner of illustrative and realistic faculty. Of course, all that need be said of it, on this side, must have been said twenty times over in the journals; and it remains only for me to make my tardy genuflexion, on the trampled corn, before this Pallas of Pall Mall.
Writing in his Academy Notes 1875 , Henry Blackburn suggested: 'The interest attaching to this much talked of picture is in the study and delineation of character, conceived, as it is, in the truly Hogarthian spirit of analysis... The spectator is, as it were, in the very thick of the fight, with the dead, the wounded, and the fainting, on the ground around him.'
The same year, Elizabeth Thompson met Major William Butler, and two years later, in June 1877, they were married at the Servite Fathers' Church in London, by Cardinal Manning. Born in 1836 into the Irish Catholic gentry, William Butler had by 1877 already served in Burma, Madras, Canada, the Ashanti campaign, and in Natal with Sir Garnet Wolseley; he had published several books, including a history of his regiment, the 69th, two books on his arduous journeys in the Canadian Northwest (The Great Lone Land and The Wild North Land ), and an account of his experiences in the Ashanti campaign, provocatively entitled Akim-Foo: the History of a Failure . In James Morris's words, he had emerged from these experiences 'an intuitive sympathiser with rebel nationalists all over the Empire'. In November,1875 he had joined headquarters staff as deputy quartermaster-general.
Butler's subsequent military career took him to Zululand, Egypt, the Sudan and South Africa just before the outbreak of the Boer War; he rose in rank to lieutenant-general (1900) and was awarded the KCB in 1886 and the GCB in 1906, but his career was clouded by a serious conflict with Milner during his command in South Africa in 1899, leading to his resignation. Butler retired to Bansha Castle, Co. Tipperary, in 1905, and died in June 1910; his later books include an account of the Gordon Relief Expedition, The Campaign of the Cataracts , biographies of Gordon, Napier and Colley, an autobiography, and further accounts of his travels in Canada and South Africa.
Lady Butler's life from 1877 followed the dictates of her husband's career; she went with him to Egypt and South Africa, lived in Ireland and at home in military residences in Devonport, Aldershot, Farnborough and Dover Castle, and made occasional journeys to Italy and France. They had six children; she survived her husband by twenty-three years, and spent her last years with her youngest daughter (who had married Lord Gormanston) in Gormanston, Co. Meath, and Flax Bourton, near Bristol. Two of her sons took part in the First World War, one of them (Richard Butler, ordained into the Benedictine Order in 1911) as a Roman Catholic Chaplain; the other son, Patrick, was seriously wounded in November 1914 in the first Battle of Ypres.
She published three books - Letters from the Holy Land (1903, a travel-book consisting mostly of letters written to her mother during her journey to Palestine with her husband in 1891), From Sketchbook and Diary (1909, impressions of her travels in Ireland, Egypt, South Africa and Italy) and An Autobiography , published in 1923; the latter book is a very reticent and fragmentary account of her life, drawing Victorian veils of discretion over much that would have been of interest, and relying heavily on diaries and letters recording rather superficial impressions of her various journeys (Lady Butler was not one of the world's great travel-writers). The Autobiography is a book that belongs to the Victorian age, that is filled with its attitudes and evasions.
Lady Butler continued to paint large, meticulously-executed canvases of scenes of battles and military manoeuvres, at the rate of one a year, which she exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy. They were well received (at least up to the end of the century), but became increasingly anachronistic: when the First World War began, it was not the rhetorically representational paintings of Lady Butler, such as 'The charge of the Dorset Yeomanry at Agagia, Egypt' and 'The Canadian bombers on Vimy Ridge', but the fragmented and explosive visions of Bomberg and Nevinson which adequately expressed a war which was light-years away from the colonial wars which had so fascinated her in her youth. She herself became an anachronism - in a foreword to her Autobiography (surely written with her approval), M.E. Francis wrote that 'In this age of insistent ugliness, when the term "realism" is used to cloak every form of grossness and degeneracy, it is a privilege to commune with one who speaks of her "experiences of the world's loveliness" and describes herself as "full of interest in mankind"... a worshipper of beauty in its spiritual as well as its concrete form'. Such attitudes belonged to an age long buried. In 1924 the painting she submitted to the Royal Academy (exactly fifty years after 'The roll call') was rejected.
'Balaclava' (1875-6) and 'The return from Inkermann' (1876-7) returned to the period of 'The roll call', while 'Listed for the Connaught Rangers', painted in 1877 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1879, drew on her experiences of living in Ireland. 'Remnants of an army', painted in 1879 and exhibited in the same year, is one of her most evocative paintings; the full title was 'The remnants of an army, Jellalabad, January 13th, 1842', and the picture shows Dr William Brydon, a surgeon of the Army Medical Corps, the sole survivor of the disastrous retreat under General Elphinstone of the 16,500-strong British garrison allowed by Akhbar Khan to leave Kabul, approaching the walls of Jellalabad. The painting is a powerful image of the endurance of all armies, of survival and tragedy in a barren and merciless land which has soaked up the blood of many such armies.
The next painting was 'Scotland for ever!', completed in 1881 and exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, in the same year (Lady Butler's Autobiography speaks mysteriously of a law-suit that prevented exhibition at the Royal Academy); it was occasioned by a visit to the Grosvenor Gallery, which was the stronghold of the Aesthetic movement, with which she could have no sympathy:
I owe the subject to an impulse I received that season from the Private View at the Grosvenor Gallery, now extinct. The Grosvenor was the home of the 'Aesthetes' of the period, whose sometimes unwholesome productions preceded those of cur modern 'Impressionists'. I felt myself getting more and more annoyed while perambulating those rooms, and to such a point of exasperation was I impelled that I fairly fled and, breathing the honest air of Bond Street, took a hansom to my studio. There I pinned a 7-foot sheet of brown paper on an old canvas and, with a piece of charcoal and a piece of white chalk, flung the charge of 'The Greys' upon it. Dr Pollard who still looked in during my husband's absences as he used to do in my maiden days to see that all was well with me, found me in a surprising mood.
Scotland for ever!', now in the collection of the Leeds City Art Gallery, is Lady Butler's finest painting, a spectacularly successful image of an army charging straight out of the canvas towards the viewer, heavy white horses thundering forward beneath a tempestuous sky; it is a magnificent image of momentum and glory, and a memorial to a certain conception of war held by a past age. Lady Butler writes, 'I twice saw a charge of the Greys before painting "Scotland for ever!" and I stood in front to see them coming on. One cannot, of course, stop too long to see them close.' As in a Kipling story, the soldiers are individualised, a tight-packed confused mass of men and horses in an overwhelming mass-experience. An indication of the power of Lady Butler's painting is the fact that a version of the work, with the helmets and uniforms suitably altered to represent those of the Prussian cavalry, was used on a New Year greeting card sent by the German troops in 1915.
Painting 'Scotland for ever! ' was interrupted by a Royal Commission - through Sir Henry Ponsonby, Queen Victoria asked Lady Butler to paint her a much more contemporary battle-scene, and 'The defence of Rorke's Drift' was painted in 1879, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1880; for this painting, Lady Butler made studies from survivors of the 24th Regiment, but 'The Zulus were a great difficulty... Mr Pollard got me a sort of Zulu as a model from a show in London'. It is a disappointing painting, weak in composition and merely rhetorical in effect, and fails to come to terms with the intense drama of the scene. It did, however, meet with the Queen's approval: 'I was counselled to give Her Majesty the description of every figure. She spoke very kindly in a very deep guttural voice, and showed so much emotion that I thought her all too kind, shrinking now and then as I spoke of the wounds, etc'. 'Floreat Etona!', exhibited in 1882, 'look as its subject a true incident from the First Boer War - in the charge at Laing's Neck, Elwes and Monck are shown at the moment when Elwes tried to inspire his colleague with memories of their ald school, moments before being shot dead; it is a scene reminiscent of the ethos of Newbolt's 'Vitai Lampada': 'The voice of the schoolboy rallies the ranks: "Play up! play up! and play the game!" '
The remainder of Lady Butler's later paintings are generally concerned with past events - 'A desert grave' (1886), 'Forced march: the retreat to Corunna' (1892), 'The native Camel Corps at Cairo' (1893), 'The reveil in the bivouac of the Scots Greys on the morning of Waterloo: early dawn' (1895), 'Steady the drums and fifes! ' (1877), 'Within the sound of the guns', and 'Rescue of wounded, First Afghan War' all evoke the military glories of the past; only two paintings, 'An eviction in Ireland' (1890) and 'Homeward in the afternoon: a Cistercian shepherd in medieval England' (1908) are outside this mould. In all, she exhibited twenty-four paintings at the Royal Academy between 1873 and 1920.
Lady Butler lived into old age; her Autobiography appeared in 1923, a year after T. S. Eliot published The Waste Land and long after the representational artistic tradition of centuries had been shattered by the Cubists, Futurists and Dadaists; it is an echo of a past age, resonant with her incomprehension of the present. But her images of Imperial glory remained popular long afterwards, in the form of coloured prints on classroom walls and illustrations in school history-books. Her paintings, once regarded as true and valid images of the events they portrayed, are now eloquent of how the age saw itself - the imagery that fed an insatiable popular appetite for national glory, and which helped provide the popular support for the imperial adventures of the military heroes of the Victorian age.
By Krzysztof Z. Cieszkowski
Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron (17 January 1612 – 12 November 1671) was a general and parliamentary commander-in-chief during the English Civil War.
Born at Denton Hall, near Otley, Yorkshire, on the 17 January 1612, Fairfax was the eldest son of Ferdinando Fairfax, 2nd Lord Fairfax of Cameron. He studied at St John's College, Cambridge (1626–29),[1] and then proceeded to the Netherlands to serve as a volunteer with the English army in the Low Countries under Sir Horace (Lord) Vere. This connection led to one still closer; in the summer of 1637 Fairfax married Anne Vere, the daughter of the general.
The Fairfaxes, father and son, though serving at first under King Charles I (Thomas commanded a troop of horse, and was knighted by the king in 1640), were opposed to the arbitrary prerogative of the Crown, and Sir Thomas declared that "his judgment was for the Parliament as the king and kingdom's great and safest council". When Charles endeavoured to raise a guard for his own person at York, intending it, as the event afterwards proved, to form the nucleus of an army, Fairfax was employed to present a petition to his sovereign, entreating him to hearken to the voice of his parliament, and to discontinue the raising of troops. This was at a great meeting of the freeholders and farmers of Yorkshire convened by the king on Heworth Moor near York. Charles evaded receiving the petition, pressing his horse forward, but Fairfax followed him and placed the petition on the pommel of the king's saddle.
As a soldier he was exact and methodical in planning, in the heat of battle "so highly transported that scarce any one durst speak a word to him" (Whitelocke), chivalrous and punctilious in his dealings with his own men and the enemy. Honour and conscientiousness were equally the characteristics of his private and public character. But his modesty and distrust of his powers made him less effectual as a statesman than as a soldier, and above all he is placed at a disadvantage by being both in war and peace overshadowed by his associate Cromwell.
Fairfax had a taste for literature. He translated some of the Psalms, and wrote poems on solitude, the Christian warfare, the shortness of life, etc. During the last year or two of his life he wrote two Memorials which have been published – one on the northern actions in which he was engaged in 1642-1644, and the other on some events in his tenure of the chief command. At York and at Oxford he endeavoured to save the libraries from pillage, and he enriched the Bodleian with some valuable manuscripts.
The metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell authored "Upon Appleton House, To My Lord Fairfax", nominally about Fairfax's home, but also his character as well as England during his era.
Lord Fairfax of Cameron's only daughter, Mary Fairfax, was married to George Villiers, the profligate duke of Buckingham of Charles II's court.
LCF223139 Thomas (1612-71) 3rd Lord Fairfax (oil on canvas) by Walker, Robert (1607-60) (circle of)
oil on canvas
59.7x49.5
© Trustees of Leeds Castle Foundation, Maidstone, Kent, UK
English, out of copyright
♫ ♫ ♫ Bellini has studied music in Naples
♫ ♫ ♫ Vincenzo Bellini - Norma - Casta Diva
www.youtube.com/watch?v=knlxT4rr4w0
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Vesuvius
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Mount Vesuvius is an Italian volcano to a height of 1281 meters, bordering the Bay of Naples, east of the city. It is the only volcano in continental Europe to be erupted during the past hundred years, even if it is currently dormant, its last eruption in 1944.
He is responsible for the destruction of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabia Oplontis, buried 24 August 1979 under a rain of ash and mud, thus, has survived to this day their ancient state. It has erupted many other times during recent millennia and is considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of its explosive trend and especially the large population living along it.
Vesuvius rises to 1281 meters altitude in the Italian region of Campania, above the Bay of Naples (Tyrrhenian Sea), about nine miles east of the heart of the second largest urban area countries with four million inhabitants. It is located south of the main chain of the Apennines.
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Via Cesaro Console - Near the square of the Plebiscite - Napoli - Italia
Commentary.
Its geology is studied greatly and fascinating.
Its geography is intertwined with the landscape
that is very much centred on its geology.
Its history goes back millions of years, but in human terms,
at least tens of thousands of years.
Yet, all of this, counts for not one jot
compared to its aesthetic value.
It is an outstanding and beautiful stretch of coastline,
simply world-class.
End of.
P.S.(And one of my very favourites.)
Description: The Crab Nebula is an iconic object in space that has been studied intensely by both telescopes on the ground and those in space. This image of the Crab combines data from three of NASA's Great Observatories. X-rays from Chandra (blue) have been combined with optical images from Hubble (red and yellow) as well as infrared data from Spitzer (purple). Together, these three telescopes provide a striking view of this famous cosmic source.
Creator/Photographer: Chandra X-ray Observatory
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, is the most sophisticated X-ray observatory built to date. The mirrors on Chandra are the largest, most precisely shaped and aligned, and smoothest mirrors ever constructed. Chandra is helping scientists better understand the hot, turbulent regions of space and answer fundamental questions about origin, evolution, and destiny of the Universe. The images Chandra makes are twenty-five times sharper than the best previous X-ray telescope. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Medium: Chandra telescope x-ray
Date: 2009
Persistent URL: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/crab/
Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Gift line: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/F.Seward; Optical: NASA/ESA/ASU/J.Hester & A.Loll; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. Minn./R.Gehrz
Accession number: crab_440
“Władysław Teodor Benda (1873-1948) studied art at the Kraków College of Technology and Art in Poland and at the School of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria. He emigrated to the United States in 1899, where he further studied art at the Art Students League of New York and the William Merritt Chase School. He became a U.S. citizen in 1911. Benda illustrated for many magazines, including ‘The Saturday Evening Post,’ ‘Collier’s,’ and ‘Good Housekeeping.’ He also was well-known as a costume and mask designer for theater productions and eventually wrote a book on making masks.” – Saturday Evening Post Archives
When I studied abroad in London, I discovered I liked Amy Winehouse’s music. However, her greatness is tainted because of her constant and negative publicity. This picture of Winehouse shows her as a docile and desexualized underling. Yet, the appearance of her hands in her pants show her masculine side. Thus, she is revealing to the public that, though she is a woman, who has been demoralized and degraded all throughout her career, she can still survive in a male dominated occupation and society. In summary, this picture shows how a woman has to ultimately take on the role of a man to survive in the world.
Three thousand years ago there was a human being, just like you and me, who lived near a city surrounded by mountains. This human being studied to become a shaman, to learn the knowledge of his ancestors, but he did not fully agree with everything he learned. In her heart I felt there must be something else.
One day, while sleeping in a cave, he dreamed that he saw his own body sleeping. He left the cave on a full moon night. The sky was clear and he saw an infinity of stars. Then, something happened inside her that transformed her life forever. He looked at his hands, felt his body and heard his own voice saying: "I am made of light; I'm made of stars.
He looked at the sky again and realized that it is not the stars that create the light, but it is the light that creates the stars. "Everything is made of light, and the space in the middle is not empty." And he knew that everything that exists is a living being, and that light is the messenger of life, because it is alive and contains all the information.
Then he realized that, although it was made of stars, he was not those stars. I'm in the middle of the stars, he thought. So he called to the stars the tonal and the light that was between the stars the nagual, and knew that what created the harmony and the space between both is the Life or Attempt. Without Life, tonal and nagual would not exist. Life is the force of the absolute, the supreme, the Creator of all things.
This is what he discovered: all that exists is a manifestation of the living being whom we call God; All things are God. And he came to the conclusion that human perception is only light that perceives light. He also realized that matter is a mirror, everything is a mirror that reflects light and creates images of that light, and the world of illusion, the Dream, is only like a smoke that prevents us from seeing what we really are . "What we really are is pure love, pure light," he said.
This discovery changed his life. Once he knew what he really was, he looked around and saw other humans and the rest of nature, and he was astonished by what he saw. He saw himself in all things: in every human being, in every animal, in every tree, in the water, in the rain, in the clouds, on the Earth ... And he saw that Life blended tonal and nagual In different ways to create millions of manifestations of Life.
In those moments he understood everything. He felt excited and his heart was full of peace. He was eager to reveal to his people what he had discovered. But there were no words to explain it. He tried to describe it to the others, but they did not understand. They saw that he had changed, that something very beautiful was radiating from his eyes and his voice. They found that he was no longer making judgments about anything or anyone. Was no longer like anybody. He understood them all very well, but nobody understood him. They believed that it was an incarnation of God; When he heard it, he smiled and said, "It's true. I am god. But you are. We are all the same. We are images of light. We are God. " But people still did not understand.
He had discovered that it was a mirror for others, a mirror in which he could see himself. "Each one is a mirror," he said. He was seen in all, but no one saw himself in it. And he realized that they all dreamed but did not realize it, not knowing what they really were. They could not see themselves in it because there was a wall of fog or smoke in the mirrors. And that wall of fog was built by the interpretation of the images of light: the Dream of human beings.
Then he knew that he would soon forget everything he had learned. He wanted to remember all the visions he had had, so he decided to call himself "Smoky Mirror" to always remember that matter is a mirror and that the smoke in the middle is what prevents us from knowing what we are. He said: "I am a Smoky Mirror because I see myself in all of you, but we do not recognize each other because of the smoke that is between us. That smoke is the Dream, and the mirror is you, the dreamer. "
In 1917 the occultist Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorf, the Gurdjeff disciple Karl Haushofer, the ace pilot Lothar Waisz, Prelate Gernot of the secret "Societas Templi Marcioni" (The Inheritors of the Knights Templar) and Maria Orsic, a transcendental medium from Zagreb met in Vienna. They all had extensively studied the "Golden Dawn", its teachings, rituals and especially its knowledge about Asian secret lodges. Sebottendorf and Haushofer were experienced travellers of India and Tibet and much influenced by the teachings and myths of those places. During the First World War Karl Haushofer had made contacts with one of the most influential secret societies of Asia, the Tibetan Yellow Hats" (dGe-lugs-pa). This sect was formed in 1409 by the Buddhist reformer Tsong-kha-pa. Haushofer was initiated and swore to commit suicide should his mission fail. The contacts between Haushofer and the Yellow Hats led in the Twenties to the formation of Tibetan colonies in Germany.
The four young people hoped that during these meetings in Vienna they would learn something about the secret revelatory texts of the Knights Templar and also about the secret fraternity Die Herren vom Schwarzen Stein ("The Lords of the Black Stone"). Prelate Gernot was of the "Inheritors of the Knights Templar", the only true Templar society. They are the descendants of the Templars of 1307 who passed on their secrets from father to son - until today. Prelate Gernot apparently told them about the advent of a new age - the change-over from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius.
They discussed that our solar year - according to the twelve revolutions of the moon - was divided into twelve months and thus the revolution of our sun around the great central sun (the Black Sun of ancient myths) was also divided into twelve parts. Together with the precession of the cone-shaped proper movement of the Earth due to the inclination of the axis this determines the length of the world age. Such a "cosmic month" is then 2,155 years, the "cosmic year" 25,860 years long. According to the Templars the next change is not just an ordinary change of the age, but also the end of a cosmic year and the start of an absolutely new one.
The main part of the discussions dealt with the background of a section of the New Testament, Matthew 21:43. For there Jesus addressed the Jews:
Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.
The complete original text that is kept in the archives of the "Societas Ternpli Marcioni" says it even more clearly. But the point is: In that text Jesus actually names the "people", He talks to Teutons serving in the Roman legion and he tells them that it is THEIR people that he had chosen. That was what Sebottendorf and his friends wanted to know for sure: That the Teutonic, i.e. the German, people were commissioned to form the realm of light upon Earth - in the "Land of the Midnight Mountain" (Germany). The place where the ray would meet the Earth was given as the Untersberg near Salzburg.
What was the legend of the Untersberg mountain, at which Hitler spent many hours gazing from his study in the Berghof? Historians guess that, like King Arthur, Frederick Barbarossa is buried there, waiting for a call to arise from the dead to come to his country's aid in its hour of need. That is not the legend of the Untersberg, though.
In 1220, Templar Komtur Hubertus Koch, returning with a small party from the Crusades, passed through Mesopotamia, and near the old city of Nineveh in modern Iraq, received an apparition of the goddess Isais (first child of goddess Isis and god Set). She told him to withdraw to the Untersberg mountain, build a house there and await her next apparition.
Whether that is true or not, in 1221, Koch erected his first Komturei at the foot of Ettenberg near Markt Schellenberg. A second, larger structure followed. It is believed that over the next few years, underground galleries were excavated into various areas of the Untersberg, and in one of them a temple to Isais was built.
A second apparition occurred in 1226 and were repeated on occasions until 1238. During this period the Templars received Die Isais Offenbarung, a series of prophesies (recently published) and information concerning the Holy Grail. The Templars at Jerusalem had knowledge of these visitations, over which the Church drew a veil of silence. What follows is only tradition, but may be of interest.
It is the German tradition that the Templars were ordered to form a secret scientific sect in southern Germany, Austria and northern Italy to be known as "Die Herren vom Schwarzen Stein" - The Lords of the Black Stone - or DHvSS for short, and this is said to be the true, hidden meaning of SS.
The Holy Grail ("Ghral" is holy stone, Persian-Arabic) was said to be a black-violet crystal, half quartz, half amethyst, through which Higher Powers communicated with humanity. It was given into the safe-keeping of the Cathars, and smuggled out of the last stronghold at Montsegur, France, and hidden, by four Cathar women on the night of 14 March 1244. There is a Cathar legend that 700 years after the destruction of the Cathar religion the Holy Grail would be returned to its rightful holders, DHvSS, or the SS?
Ruins of Montsegur
the "Teehaus"
It may be of interest to note in this connection that the Tea House designed by Hitler and built atop the Mooslahnerkopf at Obersalzberg, the stone pavillion still standing today, bears a striking resemblance to Montsegur when viewed at certain angles from the foot of the great rocky outcrop. Whether this was a coincidence remains in the mind of the beholder.
At the end of September 1917 Sebottendorf met with members of the "Lords of the Black Stone" at the Untersberg to receive the power of the "Black-Purple Stone" after which the secret society was named.
The "Lords of the Black Stone" who formed out of the Marcionite Templar societies in 1221 led by Hubertus Koch who had set as their aim the fight against evil and the building of Christ's realm of light.
A circle formed around Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorf, who wrote about this in a book that was later banned by the Nazi’s Bevor Hitler Kam (Before Hitler Came), that via the "Teutonic Order" in 1918 in Bad Aibling became the "Thule Gesellschaft".
The themes they tried to link to politics were scientific magic, astrology, occultism and Templar knowledge as well as "Golden Dawn" practices like Tantra, Yoga and Eastern meditation.
The Thule-Gesellschaft believed, following the Revelation of Isais, in a Coming Saviour (German: Heiland = the Holy One), the "Third Sargon" who would bring to Germany glory and a new Aryan culture.
Guido von List (1905)
Some of the most important teachings influencing the Thule-Gesellschaft was the Aryo-Germanic construction of religion (Wihinei) by the philosopher Guido von List, the Glacial Cosmology by Hans Hörbiger and a leaning towards the anti-Old Testament early Christianity of the Marcionites. The innermost circle at any rate had vowed to fight World Judaism and Freemasonry and its lodges.
In the eyes of the Thule Gesellschaft, from which later emerged the DAP (German Workers' Party), the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party), the SS (Schutzstaffel), the Jewish people who had been charged by the Old Testament god JAHVEH to "raise havoc on Earth" were the reason why the world was always caught up in war and discord.
Far from being a fringe secret society, the Thule Gesellschaft had members that reached into the German Aristocracy. It essentially had all of the beliefs expounded by Rosenberg and was the group that Hitler first came to at the beginnings of his rise to power.
It was exclusively a rich man’s society and drew its members from the upper echelons of Bavarian Society, and was not open to the middle class or the workers of Germany
Indeed one had to show pure Aryan lineage back to the 30 Years War in order to join, one could not be deformed or even be just plain old ‘ugly’, one had to be one of the ‘beautiful people’. It was at this time that the Prime Minister of the Bavarian government, Kurt Eisner (a Jew) was assassinated by a disgruntled young count Anton Graf Arco, who had been refused admission to the Thule Society, presumably because he was of Jewish decent. One of the prime suspects that the police questioned was the Society’s leader. Here we can understand that elitism and racism was an important part of the belief systems of those who formulated the early Nazi doctrine. The assassination transpired in an atmosphere of general fear among the Bavarian elite that Bolsheivism (communism, and with it wealth confiscation) was making important inroads at the end of the war and that there was too much ‘Jewish influence’. This was ‘confirmed’ by the election of the Jewish socialist, Kurt Eisner.
Sebottendorff, the leader of the Thule society, was known as an adept at astrology, alchemy divining rods and other occult practices and it was his belief that the Jews were really in control of the Freemasonic lodges that probably led to their eventual seizure and closure when the Nazi’s took power. Indeed, the whole idea of brotherhood that typified freemasonic beliefs was at odds with what the Thulists believed. Indeed Sebottendorff went so far as to say that ‘equality is death’; Thus, freemasons were also singled out by the Nazi’s. He spread his propaganda through Der Münchener Beobachtera newspaper that he purchased because he needed an avenue with which to spread his profane doctrine.
As conditions in Germany worsened, it became clear that much of the population was ready for a change. Food had become very scarce and most Germans were hungry and some were even starving. People were reduced to eating dog biscuits and horsemeat. The mark had lost most of its value and discontent was spreading. It was in this atmosphere in which many began to long for and fanaticize for a better world and fundamental change in Germany. There were fights in the streets and beer halls as well as fights between occult and political groups.
Members of these groups were not averse to using terrorism to gain their political aims and to put it as briefly as possible, the Thulists wanted to bring together all the anti-Semitic forces in Germany into forceful political action, both legal (elections) and illegal (terrorism).
The common theme of the more successful occult groups has always been to hold economic views in keeping with the politics and interests of the wealthier classes. In so doing wealthy patrons and converts can help finance the movement and give it an air of legitimacy. This was violently demonstrated when Hitler betrayed the S.A. who were the working class Germans that assisted Hitler on his way to power. The German elite as well as the SS wanted to rid themselves of this proletarian riff-raff and thus, during the night of the long Knives, the SA (or Brownshirts) was done away with by Hitler and the Elitist SS.
It all started with the Thule Gesellschaft, pagan, anti-Semitic, right-wing aristocratic society founded by a Freemason and Eastern mystic named Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorff. They met every Saturday in Munich’s Four Season’s Hotel to discuss things like runes (an old German alphabet), racial evolution, Nordic mythology and German nationalism. Registered under the name "Thule Gesellschaft" as a "literary-cultural society", in order to fool the communist Red Army now controlling Munich, this group had originally been known as the Germanenorden, or the German Order of the Holy Grail.
The Germanenorden had an impressive series of initiatory rituals, replete with knights in shining armor, wise kings, mystical bards and forest nymphs, including a Masonic-style program of secrecy, initiation and mutual cooperation. But they were not copying the ideological aspects of Freemasonry. What the Germanenorden became was, essentially, an anti-Masonry: a Masonic-style society dedicated to the eradication of Freemasonry itself. Their symbol was a Swastika on top of a long dagger, and their beliefs had been influenced largely by the writings of Guido von List and Lanz von Liebenfels.
Liebenfels had founded the neo-pagan, Sswastika-waving "Order of the New Templars" on Christmas Day, 1907, along similar ideological lines. In that same year, occult researcher Guido von List began The List Society, part of a then-developing "völkish" (folkish) movement extolling the virtues of Norse heritage, heritage which could be traced by reading the Edda, a compilation of Icelandic legends which Hitler would later take great interest in. The völkish movement itself was based in part on the ideas of Madame Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society famous for her books Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine. She wrote that humanity was descendant from a series of imperfect races which had once ruled the earth, and which all had a common Atlantean origin dating back millions of years, culminating in the Aryan race, which had at one point possessed supernatural powers but had since lost them. She also romanticized about the occult significance of the Swastika, of Lucifer, "The Light-Bearer", and of a cabal of spiritual "Hidden Masters" called the Great White Brotherhood, who guided human evolution from their abode in the Himalayas and who Blavatsky herself purported to channel during her many self-induced trances.
And the philosophy of List and Liebenfels took this a bit further, to the extent that the Aryan race was the only "True" humanity, and that the Jews, along with a host of other undesirables, or "minderwertigen" ("beings of inferior value") were sapping the race of its strength and purity through the evil machination of Christianity, Freemasonry, capitalism and Communism. They believed that the Aryan race had come from a place called Thule, the north pole, where there was an entrance to a vast underground area populated by giants. Among the völkish cults it was believed that - as soon as the Germans had purified the planet of the pollution of the inferior races - these Hidden Masters, these Supermen from Thule, would make themselves known, and the link which had been lost between Man and God would be forged anew.
These were the beliefs of the members of the Thule Gesellschaft when they met on November 9, 1918 to discuss something of immediate concern; The Communist control of Munich. After a rousing speech by Sebottendorf, the Thule Society began to prepare for a counter-revolution, stockpiling weapons and forming alliances with other like-minded groups, such as the Pan-Germans, the German School Bund and the Hammerbund.
The following year, on April 7, a Bavarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed in Munich, causing the Prime Minister of Bavaria to run off to Bamberg in order to prevent a total Communist take-over of the government. Six days later the Thule-Organized Palm Sunday Putsch failed to overcome the Communists in Munich, and now the Thule members were on the Red Army’s Most Wanted list. Sebottendorf got busy organizing an army of Freikorps (Freekorps) to counter-attack. (One of the units of the Freikorps, the Ehrhardt Brigade, later became part of the German Army, and eventually, part of the S.S.)
On April 26, the Red Army raided Thule headquarters and began making arrests, including the well-connected Prince von Thurn und Taxis. On April 30, Walpurgisnacht, they were executed in the Luitpold High School courtyard. The following day, their obituaries were published in Sebottendorf’s newspaper Münchener Beobachter (which would evolve one year later in to the official Nazi publication, Völkischer Beobachter.)
The citizens of Munich became outraged.
The Thule Society organized a citizen rebellion, which was joined by the 20,000-member Freikorps, and together they marched, "beneath a Swastika flag, with Swastikas painted on their helmets, singing a Swastika hymn." By May 3, after much bloodshed and destruction, the Communists in Munich were defeated. But there was much work to be done. The Soviet threat was still very real.
With the help of the local police and military, the Thule began organizing a more full-scale national revolt, using connections with societies of wealthy intellectuals. They also began recruiting among Germany’s working class, by forming a group called the German Worker’s Party, which met regularly in beer halls to discuss the threat of Jews, Communists, and Freemasons. This group would later become the National Socialist German Workers’ Party - The Nazi Party, and in November 1923, they would make their first attempt at national takeover, the failed Beer Hall Putsch, led by a man who had originally been sent by the German Army to spy on them - Adolf Hitler.
We all know what the Nazi party went on to accomplish. What most people do not know is the extent to which those actions were inspired by the occult beliefs of their perpetrators. The most extreme aims of the Thule Society would all eventually become official policy of the Third Reich, while its purely metaphysical and occult characteristics were adopted wholeheartedly by the S.S.
Hitler himself was fascinated by the occult. While he was a college student he began reading Von Liebenfels’ magazine, Ostara. Later in 1909, while he was living in poverty in a men’s dormitory and hawking his paintings on the street, Hitler actually met Liebenfels in his office, looking "so distraught and so impoverished that the New Templar himself gave Hitler free copies of Ostara and bus fare back home."
Hitler’s friend Josef Greiner recalls in his memoirs how obsessed young Adolf was with astrology, religion, occultism, magic and yoga. Hitler loved Wagner, as we know, especially The Ring Cycle, Parsifal, Lohengrin and Rienzi. It was from Wagner that Hitler gained his affinity for knighthood, chivalry, and the Quest of the Holy Grail, a pagan, Teutonic Grail. In 1915, Hitler was at war, and while in the trenches, wrote a poem, one which "sings the praises of Wotan, the Teutonic Father God, and of runic letters, magic spells, and magic formulas." So there is no doubt that Hitler’s interest in occultism and paganism ran deep. There is doubt, however, as to whether or not Hitler actually performed any magical operations himself. Tthis was not in his nature, a nature inclined towards action, doing stuff, accomplishing things here on Earth, in the 3rd dimension. He did not have the time and the patience necessary for real spiritual endeavors. Hitler was a paranoid and the occult holds special attractions for the paranoid. But Hitler as a cultist? As a black-robed, ritual-performing, invocation-chanting priest of Satan? Probably not.
But Hitler as a tool of other cultists? Probably so.
In fact, a number of people deeply involved in the occult would have great influence on him and play essential roles in the development of the Third Reich. It would do us well to examine them one by one.
Dietrich Eckart
Hitler, while working as the leader of the German Worker’s Party, became friends with Thulist Dietrich Eckart, who published a newspaper called Auf Gut Deutsch (In Good German), which ranks with the Völkischer Beobachter as a racist sheet with intellectual pretensions. Eckart had a tremendous effect on Hitler, and it was he who first introduced Hitler to all the wealthy and powerful people he needed make his crusade possible, including Henry Ford, who would later contribute "vital financial support" to the Nazi party. From Eckart, Hitler learned a great deal about the esoteric sciences, and it is said that they occasionally attended seances and talked to ghosts. Eckart, who died after the Beer Hall Putsch, is quoted as saying, "Hitler will dance, but it is I who play the tune."
Alfred Rosenberg
Eckart protegé, and soon Hitler’s as well, was Alfred Rosenberg, a man who would later become one of the architects of official Nazi policies. One of these policies was that all of the Masonic temples in all of the Nazis occupied territories were to be raided, and the goods shipped back to Rosenberg himself. This was done by Franz Six and Otto Ohlendorf, both occultists. Rosenberg was also friends with another occultist named Walther Darré, who became agricultural minister of the Third Reich. Together they ran around the nation drumming up support for an official state religion based on the worship of the Old Gods, a religion that included purifying the Aryan race of elements that were in the process of polluting it and diluting the strength of its blood.
Erik Jan Hanussen
In 1932, after his Nazi Party had lost much ground in the Reichstag, and his mistress Eva Braun had shot herself on Halloween Night, Hitler turned to his friend Erik Jan Hanussen, a well-known astrologer and occultist whom he had met back in 1926. Hanusen is supposed to have taught Hitler a number of exaggerated gestures to use in public speaking, ones which could be seen and understood from far away, and which would communicate a message through body language even if a person could not hear what he was saying. Hanussen had never read Hitler’s stars before, but on this occasion in 1932, upon request, he drew up an astrological chart for the future Führer, and told Hitler that his troubles stemmed from an evil hex that someone had cast on him. Furthermore, he said, the only way to get rid of it was for someone to go to a butcher’s backyard located in Hitler’s hometown -- at midnight, on a full moon -- and pull a mandrake out of the ground.
For those who don’t know, a mandrake is a "man-shaped" root with supposed medicinal properties which, according to European folklore, will emit an ear-shattering scream upon being uprooted. Sometime a dog would be sent on a suicide mission to pull the root while the magician plugged his own ears.
Hanussen performed the ritual himself, and on January 1st of 1933 came to Hitler predicting that he would return to power on the 30th of that month, a date roughly equivalent to the pagan sabbat of Oimelc. Of course, as is known to history, that is exactly what happened. A few weeks later, during a seance held on February 26, Hanussen predicted that the Communists would make another attempt at revolution in Germany, one that would begin by setting an important government building on fire. The next day the Reichstag was in flames and Hitler had all the excuse he needed to go from Chancellor of Germany to Führer of the Third Reich. Six weeks later, Hanussen was mysteriously murdered.
Wilhelm Gutberlet
There was also another astrologer, a shareholder in the Völkischer Beobachter who had been Hitler’s close friend since the days of the German Worker’s Party in 1919. In the memoirs of Walter Schellenberg he is described as "a Munich physician who belonged to the intimate circle around Hitler". Gutberlet believed in the ‘sidereal pendulum’, an astrological contraption, and claimed that this had given him the power to sense at once the presence of any Jews or persons of partial Jewish ancestry, and to pick them out in any group of people. Hitler availed himself of Gutberlet’s mystic power and had many discussions with him on racial questions.
Rudolf Hess
A friend of Hitler’s from way back, he had been arrested at the Beer Hall Putsch with him in 1923, and had transcribed Hitler’s Mein Kampf (originally titled Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice) while they were both in prison. He later became Hitler’s Deputy Führer. He was an "intimate" of the Thule Society and was way into the occult. Hess introduced Hitler to one of his professors, Karl Haushofter, a man with an interest in astrology who claimed clairvoyance. Haushoffer later came to wield considerable power in Germany by founding the Deutsche Akadamie, and by heading the University of Munich’s Institute Geopolitik -- "A kind of think tank-cum-intelligence agency", according to Levenda. He was vital in forming the Nazi alliances with Japan and South America, and was responsible for the adoption of the Lebensraum ("Living Space") policy, which stated that "a sovereign nation, to ensure the survival of its people, had a right to annex the territory of other sovereign nations to feed and house itself."
Himmler and the S.S.
The S.S. (Schutzstaffel) was originally formed as a personal bodyguard to Hitler, and numbered around 300 when Heinrich Himmler joined. But when he rose to its leadership in 1929, things changed a bit. Four years later, membership had soared to 52,000. He established headquarters at a medieval castle called Wewelsburg, where his secret inner order met once a year. According to Walther Schellenberg’s memoirs:
Each member had his own armchair with an engraved silver nameplate, and each had to devote himself to a ritual of spiritual exercises aimed mainly at mental concentration. The focal point of Wewelsburg, evidently owing much to the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, was a great dining hall with an oak table to seat twelve picked from the senior Gruppenführers. The walls were to be adorned with their coats of arms.
Underneath this dining hall there was kept a so-called "realm of the dead", a circular well in which these coats of arms would be burnt and the ashes worshipped after the "knight" had died. (There are tales of Himmler using the severed heads of deceased S.S. officers to communicate with ascended masters). In addition to this, each knight had his own room, "decorated in accordance with one of the great ancestors of Aryan majesty." Himmler’s own room was dedicated to a Saxon King Henry the Fowler, whose ghost Himmler sometimes conversed with.
Outside of the inner order, SS officers were discouraged from participating in Christian ceremonies, including weddings and christenings, and celebrated the Winter Solstice instead of Christmas. The traditional day of gift exchange was switched to the day of the summer solstice celebration. These ceremonies were replete with sacred fires, torchlit processions, and invocations of Teutonic deities, all performed by files of young blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan supermen. Although Himmler admired the ceremonial nature of Catholicism and modeled the S.S. partially on the Order of the Jesuits, he also despised Christianity for what he considered its weak, masochistic nature. He held further resentment because of the persecution of German witches during the Inquisition.
Himmler, along with Richard Darré, was responsible for absorbing The Ahnenerbe Society "a kind of seminary and teaching college for the future leaders of the Thousand Year Reich", into the S.S. The Ahenenerbe was devoted to some odd völkish studies, each of which had a subdivision dedicated to it: Celtic Studies, Externsteine (near Wewelsburg), where the world-tree Yggdrasil was supposed to reside, Icelandic research; Tibetan research, Runic studies; a strange new twist on physics called the "World Ice Theory", an archeological research in an effort to find evidence of past Aryan presence in remote locations all over the world, such as South America, giving rise to "Aryans discovered America" stories.
Another theory propounded by Himmler was that babies that had been conceived in cemeteries would inherit the spirits of whoever was buried there, and actually published lists of cemeteries that were good for breeding because of the Teutonic heroes resting therein. Himmler was obsessed with the concept of the Holy Grail, and hired researchers to try and prove that the Grail was actually a Nordic pagan artifact.
The Allied Occult Offense
Himler was obsessed by the idea that British Intelligence was being run by the Rosicrucian order, and that occult adepts were in charge of MI5. Whether or not that was true, the Germans were certainly not the only participants in the war using the power of magick to their advantage. Levenda provides the details of a "Cult Counterstrike" organized by the intelligence agencies of the U.S. and Britain, an effort centering around the "most evil man in the world", the Great Beast 666, Aleister Crowley.
Crowley had gone to live in New York during WWI after being rejected for military service by the British government, and began writing "pro-German propaganda" for a magazine called The Fatherland, published by George Viereck. Crowley took over as editor. He later claimed that he had really been working for British Intelligence, because his articles were so outlandish that the journal was reduced to absurdity, a caricature of serious political discussion, which would help the British cause more than harm it.
There is some evidence to suggest that Crowley was working for MI5 during this time, spying on his fellow OTO initiate Karl Germer, a German intelligence agent, so perhaps his excuse for working for The Fatherland is sound. Whatever the case, he was definitely hired by MI5 during WWII.
Crowley had become friends with author Dennis Wheatley, well-known for a number of fiction and non-fiction books based on the occult who had once worked for Winston Churchill’s Joint Planning Staff. He had been introduced to Crowley by a journalist named Tom Driberg, who would later become a spy for MI5 as well, and who would come into possession of Crowley’s diaries shortly after his death in 1947. Wheatley also introduced Crowley to yet another MI5 agent, Maxwell Knight.
Knight was the real historical figure behind the fictional character "M" in all the James Bond novels, written by Knight’s friend in the Department of Naval Intelligence, Ian Fleming. Crowley met Knight for dinner at Wheatley’s house, and it was there that Crowley agreed to take them both on as magick students. Later, Ian Fleming dreamed up a way to use Crowley’s expertise in a scheme against the Germans.
The scheme involved an Anglo-German organization known as "The Link", a supposed "cultural society" which had once been under the leadership of Sir Barry Domville, Director of Naval Intelligence from 1927 to 1930. The Link had been investigated by Maxwell Knight in the 1930s because of its involvement in German spy operations, and was soon dissolved after much incriminating evidence was found.
As Levenda describes, Fleming "thought that the Nazis could be made to believe that the The Link was still in existence, they could use it as bait for the Nazi leadership. The point was to convince the Nazis that The Link had sufficient influence to overthrow the Churchill government and thereby to install a more pliable British government, one which would gladly negotiate a separate peace with Hitler."
The suggestion came in the form of fake astrological advice passed on to the gullible Rudolf Hess, who was already under the delusion that only he could talk the British into peace with Germany, and that it was his destiny to do so. One of his staff astrologers, Dr. Ernst Schulte-Strathaus, under British employ, encouraged Hess to make his mission to England on May 10, 1941 a significant date because of a rare conjunction of six planets in the sign of Taurus. The Duke of Hamilton was also enlisted to let Hess know that he would be happy to entertain him should he plan to go through with such an endeavor.
So Hess, a trained pilot, embarked on a rather dangerous solo flight to the British Isles, parachuting into Scotland donned in various occult symbols, where he was immediately arrested by the waiting Brits.
Fleming tried to obtain permission for Crowley to debrief Hess in order to develop intelligence on the occult scene in the Third Reich and particularly the Nazi leadership. But this permission was denied, and Hess spent the rest of his days in prison not being much use to anybody. What could have been a major propaganda coup against the Nazis went utterly wasted, as if by tacit agreement on both sides.
After Hess’ arrest, Hitler denounced him as a crazed madman, and began persecuting astrologers and occultists in his own domains more so than ever before. Crowley continued trying to help the Allied cause, but most of his ideas were rejected.
One, however, while initially dismissed, was later implemented. This involved dropping occult pamphlets on the German countryside that predicted a dire outcome for the war and depicted the Nazi leadership as Satanic. A forgery of a popular German astrological magazine called Zenit was created and dropped onto enemy battlefields. It was set for full-scale distribution, but the delivery was intercepted by the Gestapo before it could be completed.
Besides Crowley, there were other occultists involved in the fight against the Third Reich. One of Crowley’s protegés, Jack Parsons, who was the Head of the Agapé O.T.O. Lodge in California as well as a charter member of both Cal-Tech and the Jet propulsion Laboratory, invented the "Greek Fire" rocket propellant which was widely used by the United State Navy between 1944 and 1945. It was a solution that could have only come from someone with a working knowledge of the arcane lore of alchemy and magic.
[Parsons later killed himself in an accident involving fulminate of mercury. He had been driven crazy and proclaimed himself the Anti-Christ after becoming involved with one "Frater H", who was actually a spy sent by Naval Intelligence to infiltrate the O.T.O. That spy’s name was L. Ron Hubbard!]
There was also a Golden dawn initiate named Sam Untermyer, an attorney and wealthy philanthropist once called a "Satanist" by a British newspaper. Untermyer started the "Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League to Champion Human Rights" and the "World-Anti-Nazi Council", which both promoted the boycott of German products. He also donated money to the hunt for Nazi agents coming into New York. And with the help of a man named Richard Rollins, he started a secret society called "the Board" which engaged in counterespionage against Nazi groups who were recruiting in the United States.
World War II was a magick war, and a holy war, a war in which both sides consider themselves to be fighting the forces of evil. It was a war operated behind the scenes by mystical adepts using their esoteric knowledge of symbolism, astrology, meditation, astral travel, clairvoyance, and mind control against the enemy. A war inspired by age-old beliefs in the Elder Gods of Europe’s ancient past.