So the reasons for the title are threefold. The obvious one is the crazy thunderstorm that consumed the area during the shot. The second is this amazing porter that they had at the local brewery in town and the third reason is my amazing gf's (now fiance's) mood at the time of shooting this one LOL.

 

This was taken up at Avalanche Lake in Glacier National Park. When I had heard that thunderstorms were in the forecast I was ecstatic; like Christmas morning excited. As we made our way up the trail I could tell the light was changing quite a bit and I knew that thundershowers were definitely in the area but I had no idea on the timing with limited cell reception to check the weather maps. My fiance, her dad, and I made our way through the lush undergrowth and eventually popped out into this gorgeous valley. It looked like something straight out of Tolkien. Waterfalls cascaded down on the opposite end of the lake and the water was crystal clear. It was just unreal.

 

As I set up to snag this last exposure I heard some fairly loud booms accompanied by some bright flashes about 5 seconds or so apart. That quickly changed as the thunderstorm literally moved in right on top of us. I was stoked all I could think about was snagging some lightning (which didn't end up happening) when I should have been thinking about packing up and getting the hell out of there. I finished up my last shot just as the deluge began. The rain was coming down in buckets and my fiance was NOT happy; commence the dagger eyes. We took and shelter in the trees and eventually made it down the trail but that grudge lasted a few hours haha. I think it was just relationship building personally grin emoticon anywho hope you enjoy this one!!

 

Avalanche Lake, Glacier National Park, MT

 

Prints: cwexplorationphotography@gmail.com

Benteay Srei, originally called Ishvarapura, is a small elegantly built stone temple, not by any king but by two Brahmins, Yajnavaraha and his younger brother Vishnukumara. The temple constructed in pink sandstone is replete with fine carvings executed with a jeweller's skill. The temple was consecrated in 967 CE and housed Shiva, called here Tribhuvanamahesvara — great lord of the threefold world, in the main sanctuary and Vishnu in the northern tower. Every leaf and every figure in the temple has been finely carved thus giving the temple a reputation of being a jewel among ancient Khmer art. The devatas or apsaras (celestial nymphs) in the temple carvings are models of grace and beauty. The temple was rediscovered in 1914 and restored using the technique called 'anastylosis' which essentially pieces together broken pieces in correct order.

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All my photographs are © Copyrighted and All Rights Reserved.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_skylark

 

The Eurasian skylark (Alauda arvensis) is a passerine bird in the lark family Alaudidae. It is a widespread species found across Europe and Asia with introduced populations in New Zealand, Australia and on the Hawaiian Islands. It is a bird of open farmland and heath, known for the song of the male, which is delivered in hovering flight from heights of 50 to 100 metres (160 to 330 ft). The sexes are alike. It is streaked greyish-brown above and on the breast and has a buff-white belly.

The female Eurasian skylark builds an open nest in a shallow depression on open ground well away from trees, bushes and hedges. She lays three to five eggs which she incubates for around 11 days. The chicks are fed by both parents but leave the nest after eight to ten days, well before they can fly. They scatter and hide in the vegetation but continue to be fed by the parents until they can fly at 18 to 20 days of age. Nests are subject to high predation rates by larger birds and small mammals. The parents can have several broods in a single season.

  

Taxonomy and systematics

  

The Eurasian skylark was described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae and retains its original binomial name of Alauda arvensis.[2] It is one of the four species placed in the genus Alauda.[3] The genus name is from the Latin alauda, "lark". Pliny thought the word was originally of Celtic origin. The specific arvensis is also Latin, and means "of the field".[4] The results of a molecular phylogenetic study of the lark family Alaudidae published in 2013 suggested that Eurasian skylark is most closely related to the Oriental skylark Alauda gulgula.[5]

Formerly, many authorities considered the Japanese skylark as a separate species. It is now usually considered a subspecies of the Eurasian skylark.[6] Alternate names for the Eurasian skylark include northern skylark and sky lark.[7]

 

Subspecies

 

Eleven subspecies are recognized:[3]

•A. a. arvensis Linnaeus, 1758 – northern, western and central Europe

•A. a. sierrae Weigold, 1913 – Portugal, central and southern Spain

•A. a. harterti Whitaker, 1904 – north-western Africa

•A. a. cantarella Bonaparte, 1850 – southern Europe from north-eastern Spain to Turkey and the Caucasus

•A. a. armenica Bogdanov, 1879 – south-eastern Turkey to Iran

•A. a. dulcivox Hume, 1872 – south-eastern European Russia and western Siberia to north-western China and south-western Mongolia

•A. a. kiborti Zaliesski, 1917 – southern Siberia, northern and eastern Mongolia and north-eastern China

•A. a. intermedia Swinhoe, 1863 – north-central Siberia to north-eastern China and Korea

•A. a. pekinensis Swinhoe, 1863 – north-eastern Siberia, Kamchatka Peninsula and the Kuril Islands

•A. a. lonnbergi Hachisuka, 1926 – northern Sakhalin Island

•A. a. japonica Temminck & Schlegel, 1848 – southern Sakhalin Island, southern Kuril Island, Japan and the Ryukyu Islands: the Japanese skylark

Some authorities recognise the subspecies A. a. scotia Tschusi, 1903 and A. a. guillelmi Witherby, 1921.[8] In the above list scotia is included in the nominate subspecies A. a. arvensis and guillelmi is included in A. a. sierrae.

  

Description

  

The Eurasian skylark is 18–19 cm (7.1–7.5 in) in length.[9] Like most other larks, the Eurasian skylark is a rather dull-looking species, being mainly brown above and paler below. It has a short blunt crest on the head, which can be raised and lowered. In flight it shows a short tail and short broad wings. The tail and the rear edge of the wings are edged with white, which are visible when the bird is flying away, but not if it is heading towards the observer. The male has broader wings than the female. This adaptation for more efficient hovering flight may have evolved because of female Eurasian skylarks' preference for males that sing and hover for longer periods and so demonstrate that they are likely to have good overall fitness.

It is known for the song of the male, which is delivered in hovering flight from heights of 50 to 100 m, when the singing bird may appear as just a dot in the sky from the ground. The long, unbroken song is a clear, bubbling warble delivered high in the air while the bird is rising, circling or hovering.[10] The song generally lasts two to three minutes, but it tends to last longer later in the mating season, when songs can last for 20 minutes or more. At wind farm sites, male skylarks have been found to sing at higher frequencies as a result of wind turbine noise.[11]

 

Distribution and habitat

  

This lark breeds across most of Europe and Asia and in the mountains of north Africa. It is mainly resident in the west of its range, but eastern populations are more migratory, moving further south in winter. Even in the milder west of its range, many birds move to lowlands and the coast in winter. Asian birds, subspecies A. a. pekinensis, appear as vagrants in Alaska.[12]

 

Introduced population

 

In the 19th century multiple batches of Eurasian skylarks were released in New Zealand beginning in 1864 in Nelson (in the South Island) and in 1867 in Auckland (in the North Island). The wild population increased rapidly and had spread throughout both the North and South Islands by the 1920s.[13][14]

In Australia the Eurasian skylark was introduced on multiple occasions beginning in 1850.[14] It is now widespread in the southeast of the continent. In New South Wales it mostly occurs south of 33°S. It is widespread throughout Victoria and Tasmania and also occurs in the south-eastern corner of South Australia around Adelaide.[15]

The Eurasian skylark was introduced to the southeastern Hawaiian Islands beginning in 1865. Although once common, it has declined in abundance on Oahu and is no longer found on Kauai. A study published in 1986 found European skylarks remained only on the islands of Hawaii and Maui and estimated a total population of 10,000 individuals.[16][17]

The Eurasian skylark was introduced to Vancouver Island off the west coast of Canada in 1903; additional birds were introduced in 1913.[18] The population grew and by 1962 there were around 1000 individuals.[19] The numbers have subsequently declined due to loss of habitat, and in 2007 there were estimated to be only around 100 individuals spread over four small areas of the Saanich Peninsula.[20][21]

 

Behaviour and ecology

  

Breeding

 

Eurasian skylarks first breed when they are one year of age. Nesting may start in late March or early April. The nest is probably built by the female alone and is a shallow depression in the ground lined with grasses. The clutch is 3 to 5 eggs. The eggs of the nominate subspecies average 23.4 mm × 16.8 mm (0.92 in × 0.66 in) in size and weigh around 3.35 g (0.118 oz). They have a grey-white or greenish background and are covered in brown or olive spots. They are incubated only by the female beginning after the last egg is laid and hatch synchronously after 11 days.[22] The altricial young are cared for by both parents and for the first week are fed almost exclusively on insects.[23] The nestlings fledge after 18 to 20 days but they usually leave the nest after 8 to 10 days. They are independent of their parents after around 25 days. The parents can have up to 4 broods in a season.[22]

Feeding[edit]

The Eurasian skylark walks over the ground searching for food on the soil surface. Its diet consists of insects and plant material such as seeds and young leaves. Unlike a finch (family Fringillidae) it swallows seeds without removing the husk. Insects form an important part of the diet in summer.[24]

Threats

  

In the UK, Eurasian skylark numbers have declined over the last 30 years, as determined by the Common Bird Census started in the early 1960s by the British Trust for Ornithology. There are now only 10% of the numbers that were present 30 years ago. The RSPB have shown that this large decline is mainly due to changes in farming practices and only partly due to pesticides. In the past cereals were planted in the spring, grown through the summer and harvested in the early autumn. Cereals are now planted in the autumn, grown through the winter and are harvested in the early summer. The winter grown fields are much too dense in summer for the Eurasian skylark to be able to walk and run between the wheat stems to find its food.

English farmers are now encouraged and paid to maintain and create biodiversity for improving the habitat for Eurasian skylarks. Natural England's Environmental Stewardship Scheme offers 5 and 10-year grants for various beneficial options. For example, there is an option where the farmer can opt to grow a spring cereal instead of a winter one, and leave the stubble untreated with pesticide over the winter. The British Trust for Ornithology likens the stubbles to "giant bird tables" – providing spilt grain and weed seed to foraging birds.[25]

The RSPB's research, over a six-year period, of winter-planted wheat fields has shown that suitable nesting areas for Eurasian skylarks can be made by turning the seeding machine off (or lifting the drill) for a 5 to 10 metres stretch as the tractor goes over the ground to briefly stop the seeds being sown. This is repeated in several areas within the same field to make about two skylark plots per hectare. Subsequent spraying and fertilising can be continuous over the entire field. DEFRA suggests that Eurasian skylark plots should not be nearer than 24 m to the perimeter of the field, should not be near to telegraph poles, and should not be enclosed by trees.

When the crop grows, the Eurasian skylark plots (areas without crop seeds) become areas of low vegetation where Eurasian skylarks can easily hunt insects, and can build their well camouflaged ground nests. These areas of low vegetation are just right for skylarks, but the wheat in the rest of the field becomes too closely packed and too tall for the bird to seek food. At the RSPB's research farm in Cambridgeshire skylark numbers have increased threefold (from 10 pairs to 30 pairs) over six years. Fields where Eurasian skylarks were seen the year before (or nearby) would be obvious good sites for skylark plots. Farmers have reported that skylark plots are easy to make and the RSPB hope that this simple effective technique can be copied nationwide.

 

In culture

 

When the word "lark" is used without specification, it usually refers to this species.[26] A collective noun for Eurasian skylarks is an "exaltation". Although the Oxford English Dictionary describes this usage as "fanciful", it traces it back to a quotation from John Lydgate dating from about 1430.[27] The verb "skylark", originally used by sailors, means "play tricks or practical jokes; indulge in horseplay, frolic". The verb and noun "lark", with similar meaning, may be related to "skylark" or to the dialect word "laik" (New Shorter OED).

The bird is the subject of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley (To a Skylark), George Meredith (The Lark Ascending), Ted Hughes (Skylarks), and numerous others; of a play by Henrik Ibsen entitled "A Doll's House" and of pieces of music including The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams (inspired by the eponymous poem). It is also the bird emblem of Kumamoto Prefecture.[28] The Skylark of Space is a series of four science fiction novels by E.E. "Doc" Smith.

  

Schachbrettblume:

 

Die Schachblume (Fritillaria meleagris), auch Schachbrettblume oder Kiebitzei genannt, ist eine Pflanzenart aus der Familie der Liliengewächse (Liliaceae).

 

Die Blütezeit reicht von April bis Mai. Die meist einzelnen, selten zu zweit stehenden Blüten sind nickend[3] bis nach unten hängend. Die zwittrigen, dreizähligen Blüten sind fast geruchlos und breit glockenförmig. Die sechs gleichgestaltigen, etwa 4 Zentimeter langen Perigonblätter, deren stumpfe Spitze meist etwas umgebogen ist, sind schachbrettartig purpurrot-weiß oder grünlich-weiß gefleckt. Selbst bei der völlig weißen Form Fritillaria meleagris f. alba ist die namensgebende Musterung noch schwach zu erkennen.

 

Fritillaria meleagris is a Eurasian species of flowering plant in the lily family.[2][3][4] Its common names include snake's head fritillary, snake's head (the original English name), chess flower, frog-cup, guinea-hen flower, guinea flower, leper lily.

 

The flowering period runs from April to May. The mostly single, rarely in pairs standing flowers are nodding [3] to hanging down. The hermaphrodite, threefold flowers are almost odorless and wide bell-shaped. The six equal multiform, about 4 centimeters long tepals whose blunt tip is usually somewhat bent, are checkerboard mottled purple-white or greenish-white. Even with the completely white form Fritillaria meleagris f. Alba the eponymous patterning is barely recognizable.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Kein Kommentar möglich- comment disabled

Da lag einmal ein Ahornblatt,

das eigentlich drei Blätter hat,

zusammen mit zwei andern.

 

There was once a maple leaf,

which was a kind of threefold sieve,

(together with two others).

 

Жил-был кленовый лист,

Собой зеленый гармонист,

Три листочка он имел.

Washington, DC

Listed: 08/05/1988

 

730 12th Street, N.W., a Chesapeake arid Potomac (C&P) Telephone Company building in Washington, D.C., is an expression of the company's corporate image through a distinctive example of commercial architecture of the time. It represents both the physical development of a significant public utility, and the association of the telephone company with the development of the commercial downtown.

 

Built in 1928, 730 12th Street, N.W. is one of many telephone company buildings erected in the Washington, D.C. area during the first half of the century. Designed by the well-known New York City firm of Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker (corporate architects for the Bell system at the time), it was built to accommodate equipment for the newly developed dial system.

 

The building meets Criteria A and C of the National Register. Its significance is threefold. Under Criterion A: 1) it is associated with and is representative of the development of the C&P Telephone Company, a commercial institution of long standing and a leading public utility which has made a significant impact on the local community. Under Criterion C: 2) it was designed by the noted New York firm of Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker, who were the favored corporate architects for the Bell system of New York and New Jersey during the 1920s; and 3) it is a noteworthy extant example of Art Deco styling a decorative form not common to downtown Washington, D.C.

 

National Register of Historic Places

 

Washington, DC Travel Intinerary

The Alhambra (Arabic: الحمراء = Al-Ħamrā; literally "the red one"; the complete name is "Qal'at al-Hambra", which means "The red fortress") is a palace and fortress complex of the Moorish rulers of Granada in southern Spain (known as Al-Andalus when the fortress was constructed), occupying a hilly terrace on the southeastern border of the city of Granada. 37°10′37″N 3°35′24″W37.17686, -3.589901

Once the residence of the Muslim rulers of Granada and their court, the Alhambra is now one of Spain's major tourist attractions exhibiting the country's most famous Islamic architecture, together with Christian 16th century and later interventions in buildings and gardens that marked its image as it can be seen today. Within the Alhambra, the Palace of Charles V was erected by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in 1527. Coordinates: 37°10′36.81″N 3°35′23.95″W

The terrace or plateau where the Alhambra sits measures about 740 m (2430 ft) in length by 205 m (674 ft) at its greatest width. It extends from WNW to ESE and covers an area of about 142,000 m².

Its most westerly feature is the alcazaba (citadel); a strongly fortified position. The rest of the plateau comprises a number of palaces, enclosed by a relatively weak fortified wall, with thirteen towers, some defensive and some providing vistas for the inhabitants.

The river Darro passes through a ravine on the north and divides the plateau from the Albaicín district of Granada. Similarly, the Assabica valley, containing the Alhambra Park on the west and south, and, beyond this valley, the almost parallel ridge of Monte Mauror, separate it from the Antequeruela district.

Completed towards the end of Muslim rule in Spain by Yusuf I (1333-1353) and Muhammed V, Sultan of Granada (1353-1391), the Alhambra is a reflection of the culture of the last days of the Nasrid emirate of Granada. It is a place where artists and intellectuals had taken refuge as Christian Spain won victories over Al Andalus. The Alhambra mixes natural elements with man-made ones, and is a testament to the skill of Muslim craftsmen of that time.

The literal translation of Alhambra "red fortress" derives from the colour of the red clay of the surroundings of which the fort is made. The buildings of the Alhambra were originally whitewashed; however, the buildings now seen today are reddish.

The first reference to the Qal’at al Hamra was during the battles between the Arabs and the Muladies during the rule of the ‘Abdullah ibn Muhammad (r. 888-912). In one particularly fierce and bloody skirmish, the Muladies soundly defeated the Arabs, who were then forced to take shelter in a primitive red castle located in the province of Elvira, presently located in Granada. According to surviving documents from the era, the red castle was quite small, and its walls were not capable of deterring an army intent on conquering. The castle was then largely ignored until the eleventh century, when its ruins were renovated and rebuilt by Samuel ibn Naghralla, vizier to the King Bādīs of the Zirid Dynasty, in an attempt to preserve the small Jewish settlement also located on the Sabikah hill. However, evidence from Arab texts indicates that the fortress was easily penetrated and that the actual Alhambra that survives today was built during the Nasrid Dynasty.

Ibn Nasr, the founder of the Nasrid Dynasty, was forced to flee to Jaén in order to avoid persecution by King Ferdinand and his supporters during attempts to rid Spain of Moorish Dominion. After retreating to Granada, Ibn-Nasr took up residence at the Palace of Bādis in the Alhambra. A few months later, he embarked on the construction of a new Alhambra fit for the residence of a king. According to an Arab manuscript published as the Anónimo de Granada y Copenhague, "This year 1238 Abdallah ibn al-Ahmar climbed to the place called "the Alhambra" inspected it, laid out the foundations of a castle and left someone in charge of its construction…" The design included plans for six palaces, five of which were grouped in the northeast quadrant forming a royal quarter, two circuit towers, and numerous bathhouses. During the reign of the Nasrid Dynasty, the Alhambra was transformed into a palatine city complete with an irrigation system composed of acequias for the gardens of the Generalife located outside the fortress. Previously, the old Alhambra structure had been dependent upon rainwater collected from a cistern and from what could be brought up from the Albaicín. The creation of the Sultan's Canal solidified the identity of the Alhambra as a palace-city rather than a defensive and ascetic structure.

The Muslim rulers lost Granada and Alhambra in 1492 without the fortress itself being attacked when King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile took the surrounding region with overwhelming numbers.

The decorations within the palaces typified the remains of Moorish dominion within Spain and ushered in the last great period of Andalusian art in Granada. With little influence from the Islamic mainland[citation needed], artists endlessly reproduced the same forms and trends, creating a new style that developed over the course of the Nasrid Dynasty. The Nasrids used freely all the display of stylistical resorts that had been created and developed during eight centuries of Muslim rule in the Peninsula as the Calliphal horse-shoe arch, the Almohad sebka or the Almoravid palm, and unused combinations of them, beside novelties as the stilted arches and the capitals of muqarnas, among others. The isolation with the rest of the Islam, and the commercial and political relationship with the Christian kingdoms also influenced in the space concepts. Columns, muqarnas and stalactite-like ceiling decorations, appear in several chambers, and the interiors of numerous palaces are decorated with arabesques and calligraphy. The arabesques of the interior are ascribed, among other kings, to Yusef I, Mohammed V, and Ismail I.

Damage produced in Later Era After the Christian conquest of the city in 1492, the conquerors began to alter the Alhambra. The open work was filled up with whitewash, the painting and gilding effaced, and the furniture soiled[citation needed], torn, or removed. Charles V (1516–1556) rebuilt portions in the Renaissance style of the period and destroyed the greater part of the winter palace to make room for a Renaissance-style structure which has never been completed. Philip V (1700–1746) Italianised the rooms and completed his palace in the middle of what had been the Moorish building; he had partitions constructed which blocked up whole apartments.

Over subsequent centuries the Moorish art was further damaged, and, in 1812, some of the towers were destroyed by the French under Count Sebastiani, while the whole building narrowly escaped the same fate. Napoleon had tried to blow up the whole complex. Just before his plan was carried out, a soldier who secretly wanted the plan of Napoleon — his commander — to fail, defused the explosives and thus saved the Alhambra for posterity.[citation needed] In 1821, an earthquake caused further damage. The work of restoration undertaken in 1828 by the architect José Contreras was endowed in 1830 by Ferdinand VII; and after the death of Contreras in 1847, it was continued with fair success by his son Rafael (d. 1890) and his grandson. Designed to reflect the very beauty of Paradise itself, the Alhambra is made up of gardens, fountains, streams, a palace, and a mosque, all within an imposing fortress wall, flanked by 13 massive towers. [1]

Moorish poets[who?] described it as "a pearl set in emeralds," in allusion to the colour of its buildings and the woods around them. The palace complex was designed with the mountainous site in mind and many forms of technology were considered. The park (Alameda de la Alhambra), which is overgrown with wildflowers and grass in the spring, was planted by the Moors with roses, oranges and myrtles; its most characteristic feature, however, is the dense wood of English elms brought by the Duke of Wellington in 1812. The park has a multitude nightingales and is usually filled with the sound of running water from several fountains and cascades. These are supplied through a conduit 8 km (5 miles) long, which is connected with the Darro at the monastery of Jesus del Valle, above Granada.

In spite of the long neglect, willful vandalism and sometimes ill-judged restoration which the Alhambra has endured, it remains an atypical example of Muslim art in its final European stages, relatively uninfluenced by the direct Byzantine influences found in the Mezquita of Córdoba. The majority of the palace buildings are, in ground-plan, quadrangular, with all the rooms opening on to a central court; and the whole reached its present size simply by the gradual addition of new quadrangles, designed on the same principle, though varying in dimensions, and connected with each other by smaller rooms and passages. Alhambra was added onto by the different Muslim rulers who lived in the complex. However, each new section that was added followed the consistent theme of "paradise on earth." Column arcades, fountains with running water, and reflecting pools were used to make add to the aesthetic and functional complexity. In every case, the exterior is left plain and austere. Sun and wind are freely admitted. Blue, red, and a golden yellow, all somewhat faded through lapse of time and exposure, are the colours chiefly employed.

The decoration consists, as a rule, of stiff, conventional foliage, Arabic inscriptions, and geometrical patterns wrought into arabesques. Painted tiles are largely used as panelling for the walls. The palace complex is designed in the Mudéjar style which is characteristic of western elements reinterpreted into Islamic forms and largely popular during the Reconquista, a period of history in which the Christian kings reconquered Spain from the Muslims.

The Alhambra resembles many medieval Christian strongholds in its threefold arrangement as a castle, a palace and a residential annex for subordinates. The alcazaba or citadel, its oldest part, is built on the isolated and precipitous foreland which terminates the plateau on the northwest. That is all massive outer walls, towers and ramparts are left. On its watchtower, the Torre de la Vela, 25 m (85 ft) high, the flag of Ferdinand and Isabella was first raised, in token of the Spanish conquest of Granada on January 2, 1492. A turret containing a large bell was added in the 18th century and restored after being damaged by lightning in 1881. Beyond the Alcazaba is the palace of the Moorish rulers, or Alhambra properly so-called; and beyond this, again, is the Alhambra Alta (Upper Alhambra), originally tenanted by officials and courtiers.

Access from the city to the Alhambra Park is afforded by the Puerta de las Granadas (Gate of Pomegranates), a triumphal arch dating from the 15th century. A steep ascent leads past the Pillar of Charles V, a fountain erected in 1554, to the main entrance of the Alhambra. This is the Puerta Judiciaria (Gate of Judgment), a massive horseshoe archway surmounted by a square tower and used by the Moors as an informal court of justice. The hand of Fatima, with fingers outstretched as a talisman against the evil eye, is carved above this gate on the exterior; a key, the symbol of authority, occupies the corresponding place on the interior. A narrow passage leads inward to the Plaza de los Aljibes (Place of the Cisterns), a broad open space which divides the Alcazaba from the Moorish palace. To the left of the passage rises the Torre del Vino (Wine Tower), built in 1345 and used in the 16th century as a cellar. On the right is the palace of Charles V, a smaller Renaissance building.

The Royal Complex consists of three main parts: Mexuar, Serallo, and the Harem. The Mexuar is modest in decor and houses the functional areas for conducting business and administration. Strapwork is used to decorate the surfaces in Mexuar. The ceilings, floors, and trim are made of dark wood and are in sharp contrast to white, plaster walls. Serallo, built during the reign of Yusef I in the 14th century, contains the Patio de los Arrayanes. Brightly colored interiors featured dado panels, yesería, azulejo, cedar, and artesonado. Artesonado are highly decorative ceilings and other woodwork. Lastly, the Harem is also elaborately decorated and contains the living quarters for the wives and mistresses of the Arabic monarchs. This area contains a bathroom with running, hot and cold water, baths, and pressurized water for showering. The bathrooms were open to the elements in order to allow in light and air. The Harem also features representations of human forms, which is forbidden under Islamic law. The Christian artisans were most likely commissioned to design artwork that would be placed in the palace and the tolerant Muslim rulers allowed the work to stay.

The present entrance to the Palacio Árabe, or Casa Real (Moorish palace), is by a small door from which a corridor connects to the Patio de los Arrayanes (Court of the Myrtles), also called the Patio de la Alberca (Court of the Blessing or Court of the Pond), from the Arabic birka, "pool". The birka helped to cool the palace and acted as a symbol of power. Because water was usually in short supply, the technology required to keep these pools full was expensive and difficult. The aim of the pools was to give the impression that the pool had mystical powers because it never evaporated, making them form a good opinion of their leader.[citation needed] This court is 42 m (140 ft) long by 22 m (74 ft) broad; and in the centre, there is a large pond set in the marble pavement, full of goldfish, and with myrtles growing along its sides. There are galleries on the north and south sides; that on the south is 7 m (27 ft) high and supported by a marble colonnade. Underneath it, to the right, was the principal entrance, and over it are three windows with arches and miniature pillars. From this court, the walls of the Torre de Comares are seen rising over the roof to the north and reflected in the pond.

The Salón de los Embajadores (Hall of the Ambassadors) is the largest in the Alhambra and occupies all the Torre de Comares. It is a square room, the sides being 12 m (37 ft) in length, while the centre of the dome is 23 m (75 ft) high. This was the grand reception room, and the throne of the sultan was placed opposite the entrance. It was in this setting that Christopher Columbus received Isabel and Ferdinand's support to sail to the New World. The tiles are nearly 4 ft (1.2 m) high all round, and the colours vary at intervals. Over them is a series of oval medallions with inscriptions, interwoven with flowers and leaves. There are nine windows, three on each facade, and the ceiling is decorated with inlaid-work of white, blue and gold, in the shape of circles, crowns and stars. The walls are covered with varied stucco works, surrounding many ancient escutcheons.

The Patio de los Leones (Court of the Lions) is an oblong court, 116 ft (35 m) in length by 66 ft (20 m) in width, surrounded by a low gallery supported on 124 white marble columns. A pavilion projects into the court at each extremity, with filigree walls and light domed roof. The square is paved with coloured tiles, and the colonnade with white marble; while the walls are covered 5 ft (1.5 m) up from the ground with blue and yellow tiles, with a border above and below enamelled blue and gold. The columns supporting the roof and gallery are irregularly placed. They are adorned by varieties of foliage, etc.; about each arch there is a large square of arabesques; and over the pillars is another square of filigree work. In the centre of the court is the Fountain of Lions, an alabaster basin supported by the figures of twelve lions in white marble, not designed with sculptural accuracy, but as symbols of strength and courage.[citation needed]

The Sala de los Abencerrajes (Hall of the Abencerrages) derives its name from a legend according to which the father of Boabdil, last king of Granada, having invited the chiefs of that line to a banquet, massacred them here.[citation needed] This room is a perfect square, with a lofty dome and trellised windows at its base. The roof is decorated in blue, brown, red and gold, and the columns supporting it spring out into the arch form in a remarkably beautiful manner. Opposite to this hall is the Sala de las dos Hermanas (Hall of the two Sisters), so-called from two white marble slabs laid as part of the pavement. These slabs measure 50 by 22 cm (15 by 7½ in). There is a fountain in the middle of this hall, and the roof —a dome honeycombed with tiny cells, all different, and said to number 5000— is an example of the so-called "stalactite vaulting" of the Moors.

Among the other features of the Alhambra are the Sala de la Justicia (Hall of Justice), the Patio del Mexuar (Court of the Council Chamber), the Patio de Daraxa (Court of the Vestibule), and the Peinador de la Reina (Queen's Robing Room), in which there is similar architecture and decoration. The palace and the Upper Alhambra also contain baths, ranges of bedrooms and summer-rooms, a whispering gallery and labyrinth, and vaulted sepulchres.

The original furniture of the palace is represented by the vase of the Alhambra, a specimen of Moorish ceramic art, dating from 1320 and belonging to the first period of Moorish porcelain. It is 1.3 m (4 ft 3 in) high; the ground is white, and the enamelling is blue, white and gold.

Of the outlying buildings in connection with the Alhambra, the foremost in interest is the Palacio de Generalife or Gineralife (the Muslim Jennat al Arif, "Garden of Arif," or "Garden of the Architect"). This villa probably dates from the end of the 13th century but has been restored several times. Its gardens, however, with their clipped hedges, grottos, fountains, and cypress avenues, are said to retain their original Moorish character.[who?] The Villa de los Martires (Martyrs' Villa), on the summit of Monte Mauror, commemorates by its name the Christian slaves who were forced to build the Alhambra and confined here in subterranean cells. The Torres Bermejas (Vermilion Towers), also on Monte Mauror, are a well-preserved Moorish fortification, with underground cisterns, stables, and accommodation for a garrison of 200 men. Several Roman tombs were discovered in 1829 and 1857 at the base of Monte Mauror.

The Alhambra, Generalife and Albayzín of Granada are listed as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

 

Alhambra in literature

Parts of the following novels are set in the Alhambra:

•Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra. It is a collection of essays, verbal sketches, and stories. Irving lived in the palace while writing the book and was instrumental in reintroducing the site to Western audiences.

•Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh

•Amin Maalouf's Leon L'Africain, depicting the reconquest of Granada by the Catholic kings.

•Philippa Gregory's The Constant Princess.

•Langston Hughes's poem "Movies" in his collection Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)

•Federico Garcia Lorca's play Dona Rosita the Spinster, mentioned by title character Dona Rosita in her song/speech to the Manola sisters.

•Paulo Coelho's novel The Alchemist

•Ali Smith's The Accidental

Alhambra in music

Alhambra has directly inspired musical compositions as Francisco Tárrega's famous tremolo study for guitar Recuerdos de la Alhambra (Memories of the Alhambra)[1], Claude Debussy's piece for 2 pianos Lindaraja (composed in 1901) and the prelude La Puerta del Vino (in the 2nd book of preludes, composed 1912-13).[2].

"En los Jardines del Generalife", first movement of Manuel de Falla's Noches en los Jardines de España, and other pieces by composers such as Ruperto Chapí (Los Gnomos de la Alhambra,1891) Tomás Bretón [2] and many others are included in a stream called by scholars "Alhambrismo".[3] [4]

In pop and folk music, Alhambra is the subject of the Ghymes song of the same name.[citation needed] The rock band, The Grateful Dead, released a song called Terrapin Station on the 1977 album of the same name. The song itself was a series of small compositions penned by Robert Hunter and put to music by Jerry Garcia, a lyrical section of this Terrapin Station "suite" was called Alhambra.

In September 2006, Canadian singer/composer Loreena McKennitt performed live at the Alhambra. The resulting footage premiered on PBS and was later released as a three-disc DVD/CD set entitled Nights from the Alhambra.

Alhambra is the title of an EP by Canadian rock band The Tea Party, containing acoustic versions of a few of their songs.[citation needed]

British composer Julian Anderson's Alhambra Fantasy (1999–2000), commissioned by the London Sinfonietta, was influenced by the architecture of the Alhambra Palace. In two sharply contrasting sections the work relates different facets of the Alhambra – the first, rough and energetic, is related to the building of the Palace itself[citation needed], dominated by the sounds of hammering and banging on percussion. Short counterpointed and juxtaposed motifs create, for some, the impression of a mosaic[citation needed]. The second section evokes the beautiful landscape of the Vega[citation needed]. The composer is careful to point out[citation needed] that he has not written programmatic music, although his concern is with the splendour of the palace itself, its place in the landscape and its relevance to the complex and turbulent history of the region.

In 1976, filmmaker Christopher Nupen filmed "The Song of the Guitar" at the Alhambra. It was an hour long program featuring the legendary Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia. It is now available on DVD.

M. C. Escher's visit in 1922 inspired his following work on regular divisions of the plane after studying the Moorish use of symmetry in the Alhambra tiles.

Influence in 19th- and 20th-century architecture

From 19th-century Romantic interpretations until the present day, many buildings and portions of buildings worldwide have been inspired by the Alhambra: there is a Moorish Revival house in Stillwater, Minnesota which was created and named after the Alhambra. Also, the main portion of the Irvine Spectrum Center in Irvine, California, is a postmodern version of the Court of the Lions.

One also recalls the Alhambra Theatre in central Bradford, England [3].

 

The perfect finish to a wonderful day was threefold. Firstly dinner in the company of a lovely couple and the wife's 91 year old father. He had been a senior detective and after retirement ran his own business as a private detective. Also at the table were a lovely elderly couple who had been on many cruises and their experiences were interesting. Again total acceptance just wonderful. Then I went to a show in Carmen"s bar it was Dave Kidd who had done the Tom Jones Tribute act. Here he was singing his favourite songs. I sat with Lillian and Sandra that we had met earlier in the day over coffee. After the show I went to the quiz with Karen.

Following the quiz Karen took this photo for me.

All in all another fantastic day.

The Pillars stand again and frame the Shekinah.

 

If and only if your QBL, or Qabalah takes you to Tarot then maybe you might wish to think of The Fool as Aleph being able to see all potential and never need for it to be made material, as the all and nothing with some of everything fulfils in harmonic continuing equilibrium both with and without matter and The Fool is always looking upon The House of God that is The Magician as Beth is the Aleph-Beth progress of the Hebrew Letters.

 

This is only a vision that is complete within itself. The Holiest of Holies is ever held and adored within. When it finds and fits elements from the without to meet and match the within there is a harmonic balance. The Hermit meets and matches two selves and the possibility of sharing with others in self and in person. [Maybe also think Yod and not one Hermit looking, but two together finding, when The Pillars are standing they create the essence aethyrically betwixt them that is the cloud, the shroud the of the cloaked Hermit from the dowd, cowed and bowed stance the so proud so loud and so avowed can become the endowed over loud unbowed thundercloud that can become vibrant mist capable of all potential. The grey cowl can become the Coat of Many Colours when the situation calls for the transformation.]

 

Boaz is forever broken and Jachin has gone, but their essence can be seen wherever you wish to find your Temple Rise and your Tabernacle host four pillars and veil.

 

Your own Ephod Apron and Hoshen Breast Plate being yours to activate and energise at your will with love such that through love your will is proof enough.

 

Please forgive me for using older religious terms to feature in completely new settings with radically different uses. The language of our forefathers gives us foundation to explore. We are forever searching as The Hermit does, he searches til he finds a span to lower his head, only to raise it again and adore in the threefold pose of Pillars, Branches, The Caduceus and such.

 

The 4 Picture Production is presentation on which Qabalah and Tarot have been placed and set down in the description that hopefully reveals the open potential to the finding everything all the time as the ultimate that can ever be in own individual perception just wherever we wish to choose and to focus.

 

© PHH Sykes 2022

phhsykes@gmail.com

The Pillars stand again and frame the Shekinah.

 

If and only if your QBL, or Qabalah takes you to Tarot then maybe you might wish to think of The Fool as Aleph being able to see all potential and never need for it to be made material, as the all and nothing with some of everything fulfils in harmonic continuing equilibrium both with and without matter and The Fool is always looking upon The House of God that is The Magician as Beth is the Aleph-Beth progress of the Hebrew Letters.

 

This is only a vision that is complete within itself. The Holiest of Holies is ever held and adored within. When it finds and fits elements from the without to meet and match the within there is a harmonic balance. The Hermit meets and matches two selves and the possibility of sharing with others in self and in person. [Maybe also think Yod and not one Hermit looking, but two together finding, when The Pillars are standing they create the essence aethyrically betwixt them that is the cloud, the shroud the of the cloaked Hermit from the dowd, cowed and bowed stance the so proud so loud and so avowed can become the endowed over loud unbowed thundercloud that can become vibrant mist capable of all potential. The grey cowl can become the Coat of Many Colours when the situation calls for the transformation.]

 

Boaz is forever broken and Jachin has gone, but their essence can be seen wherever you wish to find your Temple Rise and your Tabernacle host four pillars and veil.

 

Your own Ephod Apron and Hoshen Breast Plate being yours to activate and energise at your will with love such that through love your will is proof enough.

 

Please forgive me for using older religious terms to feature in completely new settings with radically different uses. The language of our forefathers gives us foundation to explore. We are forever searching as The Hermit does, he searches til he finds a span to lower his head, only to raise it again and adore in the threefold pose of Pillars, Branches, The Caduceus and such.

 

The 4 Picture Production is presentation on which Qabalah and Tarot have been placed and set down in the description that hopefully reveals the open potential to the finding everything all the time as the ultimate that can ever be in own individual perception just wherever we wish to choose and to focus.

 

© PHH Sykes 2022

phhsykes@gmail.com

A prototype transmit/receive module on a single 6x6 mm chip, intended to deliver miniaturised space radar systems for future missions.

 

Traditional transmit/receive modules used on Europe’s Sentinel-1 and comparable radar missions employ separate circuits for the high-power amplifier, the low-noise amplifier and the switch/isolator.

 

The aim, developed for ESA by TNO in the Netherlands, UMS in France, and Airbus Defense and Space in Germany, was to integrate all these functions onto a single chip, while delivering increased efficiency and a threefold increase in radio-frequency power.

 

The added ingredient enabling this was that the chip was made using gallium nitride (GaN) – the most promising semiconductor since silicon. If you have a Blu-ray player than you own a tiny crystal of GaN, used in high-performance blue lasers.

 

GaN can operate with high radio-frequency output power, low noise or at much higher temperatures than silicon. As a plus, it is also inherently resistant to radiation. ESA has been leading the industrialisation of GaN through the GaN Reliability Enhancement and Technology Transfer Initiative consortium.

 

This prototype was developed through ESA’s Basic Technology Research Programme.

 

A follow-up project to integrate the chip into a complete radar module suitable for a future Sentinel-1 successor mission is being undertaken through the Agency’s follow-up General Support Technology Programme.

 

Credit: ESA/TNO

"Two are better off than one, in that they have greater benefit from their earnings. For should they fall, one can raise the other; but woe betide him who is alone and falls with no companion to raise him! Further, when two lie together they are warm; but how can he who is alone get warm? Also if one attacks, two can stand up to him. A threefold cord is not readily broken" Ecclesiastes 4: 9-13.

This demonstration is being carried out by members of the Sealed Knot, an English historical association and charity, dedicated to costumed reenactment of battles and events surrounding the English Civil War.

 

The Sealed Knot takes its name from the original Sealed Knot, a secret association aimed at the restoration of the monarchy, although the modern incarnation has none of the political affiliations of its namesake. Apart from reenactment, it is also involved in research into the history of the Civil War, and education (at the school or college level) about the same.

 

The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians ("Roundheads") and Royalists ("Cavaliers") over, principally, the manner of England's governance. The first (1642–1646) and second (1648–1649) wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third (1649–1651) saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The war ended with the Parliamentarian victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651.

 

The overall outcome of the war was threefold: the trial and execution of Charles I (1649); the exile of his son, Charles II (1651); and the replacement of English monarchy with, at first, the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653) and then the Protectorate under the personal rule of Oliver Cromwell (1653–1658) and subsequently his son Richard (1658–1659). In England, the monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship was ended, whilst in Ireland the victors consolidated the established Protestant Ascendancy. Constitutionally, the wars established the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without Parliament's consent, although the idea of Parliament as the ruling power of England was only legally established as part of the Glorious Revolution in 1688.

 

This deminstration is being carried out at Basing House which was a major Tudor palace and castle in the village of Old Basing in the English county of Hampshire. It once rivalled Hampton Court Palace in its size and opulence. Today only parts of the basement or lower ground floor, plus the foundations and earthworks, remain. The ruins are a Grade II listed building and a scheduled monument.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sealed_Knot_(reenactment)

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basing_House

threefold of indian summer

The Alhambra (Arabic: الحمراء = Al-Ħamrā; literally "the red one"; the complete name is "Qal'at al-Hambra", which means "The red fortress") is a palace and fortress complex of the Moorish rulers of Granada in southern Spain (known as Al-Andalus when the fortress was constructed), occupying a hilly terrace on the southeastern border of the city of Granada. 37°10′37″N 3°35′24″W37.17686, -3.589901

Once the residence of the Muslim rulers of Granada and their court, the Alhambra is now one of Spain's major tourist attractions exhibiting the country's most famous Islamic architecture, together with Christian 16th century and later interventions in buildings and gardens that marked its image as it can be seen today. Within the Alhambra, the Palace of Charles V was erected by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in 1527. Coordinates: 37°10′36.81″N 3°35′23.95″W

The terrace or plateau where the Alhambra sits measures about 740 m (2430 ft) in length by 205 m (674 ft) at its greatest width. It extends from WNW to ESE and covers an area of about 142,000 m².

Its most westerly feature is the alcazaba (citadel); a strongly fortified position. The rest of the plateau comprises a number of palaces, enclosed by a relatively weak fortified wall, with thirteen towers, some defensive and some providing vistas for the inhabitants.

The river Darro passes through a ravine on the north and divides the plateau from the Albaicín district of Granada. Similarly, the Assabica valley, containing the Alhambra Park on the west and south, and, beyond this valley, the almost parallel ridge of Monte Mauror, separate it from the Antequeruela district.

Completed towards the end of Muslim rule in Spain by Yusuf I (1333-1353) and Muhammed V, Sultan of Granada (1353-1391), the Alhambra is a reflection of the culture of the last days of the Nasrid emirate of Granada. It is a place where artists and intellectuals had taken refuge as Christian Spain won victories over Al Andalus. The Alhambra mixes natural elements with man-made ones, and is a testament to the skill of Muslim craftsmen of that time.

The literal translation of Alhambra "red fortress" derives from the colour of the red clay of the surroundings of which the fort is made. The buildings of the Alhambra were originally whitewashed; however, the buildings now seen today are reddish.

The first reference to the Qal’at al Hamra was during the battles between the Arabs and the Muladies during the rule of the ‘Abdullah ibn Muhammad (r. 888-912). In one particularly fierce and bloody skirmish, the Muladies soundly defeated the Arabs, who were then forced to take shelter in a primitive red castle located in the province of Elvira, presently located in Granada. According to surviving documents from the era, the red castle was quite small, and its walls were not capable of deterring an army intent on conquering. The castle was then largely ignored until the eleventh century, when its ruins were renovated and rebuilt by Samuel ibn Naghralla, vizier to the King Bādīs of the Zirid Dynasty, in an attempt to preserve the small Jewish settlement also located on the Sabikah hill. However, evidence from Arab texts indicates that the fortress was easily penetrated and that the actual Alhambra that survives today was built during the Nasrid Dynasty.

Ibn Nasr, the founder of the Nasrid Dynasty, was forced to flee to Jaén in order to avoid persecution by King Ferdinand and his supporters during attempts to rid Spain of Moorish Dominion. After retreating to Granada, Ibn-Nasr took up residence at the Palace of Bādis in the Alhambra. A few months later, he embarked on the construction of a new Alhambra fit for the residence of a king. According to an Arab manuscript published as the Anónimo de Granada y Copenhague, "This year 1238 Abdallah ibn al-Ahmar climbed to the place called "the Alhambra" inspected it, laid out the foundations of a castle and left someone in charge of its construction…" The design included plans for six palaces, five of which were grouped in the northeast quadrant forming a royal quarter, two circuit towers, and numerous bathhouses. During the reign of the Nasrid Dynasty, the Alhambra was transformed into a palatine city complete with an irrigation system composed of acequias for the gardens of the Generalife located outside the fortress. Previously, the old Alhambra structure had been dependent upon rainwater collected from a cistern and from what could be brought up from the Albaicín. The creation of the Sultan's Canal solidified the identity of the Alhambra as a palace-city rather than a defensive and ascetic structure.

The Muslim rulers lost Granada and Alhambra in 1492 without the fortress itself being attacked when King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile took the surrounding region with overwhelming numbers.

The decorations within the palaces typified the remains of Moorish dominion within Spain and ushered in the last great period of Andalusian art in Granada. With little influence from the Islamic mainland[citation needed], artists endlessly reproduced the same forms and trends, creating a new style that developed over the course of the Nasrid Dynasty. The Nasrids used freely all the display of stylistical resorts that had been created and developed during eight centuries of Muslim rule in the Peninsula as the Calliphal horse-shoe arch, the Almohad sebka or the Almoravid palm, and unused combinations of them, beside novelties as the stilted arches and the capitals of muqarnas, among others. The isolation with the rest of the Islam, and the commercial and political relationship with the Christian kingdoms also influenced in the space concepts. Columns, muqarnas and stalactite-like ceiling decorations, appear in several chambers, and the interiors of numerous palaces are decorated with arabesques and calligraphy. The arabesques of the interior are ascribed, among other kings, to Yusef I, Mohammed V, and Ismail I.

Damage produced in Later Era After the Christian conquest of the city in 1492, the conquerors began to alter the Alhambra. The open work was filled up with whitewash, the painting and gilding effaced, and the furniture soiled[citation needed], torn, or removed. Charles V (1516–1556) rebuilt portions in the Renaissance style of the period and destroyed the greater part of the winter palace to make room for a Renaissance-style structure which has never been completed. Philip V (1700–1746) Italianised the rooms and completed his palace in the middle of what had been the Moorish building; he had partitions constructed which blocked up whole apartments.

Over subsequent centuries the Moorish art was further damaged, and, in 1812, some of the towers were destroyed by the French under Count Sebastiani, while the whole building narrowly escaped the same fate. Napoleon had tried to blow up the whole complex. Just before his plan was carried out, a soldier who secretly wanted the plan of Napoleon — his commander — to fail, defused the explosives and thus saved the Alhambra for posterity.[citation needed] In 1821, an earthquake caused further damage. The work of restoration undertaken in 1828 by the architect José Contreras was endowed in 1830 by Ferdinand VII; and after the death of Contreras in 1847, it was continued with fair success by his son Rafael (d. 1890) and his grandson. Designed to reflect the very beauty of Paradise itself, the Alhambra is made up of gardens, fountains, streams, a palace, and a mosque, all within an imposing fortress wall, flanked by 13 massive towers. [1]

Moorish poets[who?] described it as "a pearl set in emeralds," in allusion to the colour of its buildings and the woods around them. The palace complex was designed with the mountainous site in mind and many forms of technology were considered. The park (Alameda de la Alhambra), which is overgrown with wildflowers and grass in the spring, was planted by the Moors with roses, oranges and myrtles; its most characteristic feature, however, is the dense wood of English elms brought by the Duke of Wellington in 1812. The park has a multitude nightingales and is usually filled with the sound of running water from several fountains and cascades. These are supplied through a conduit 8 km (5 miles) long, which is connected with the Darro at the monastery of Jesus del Valle, above Granada.

In spite of the long neglect, willful vandalism and sometimes ill-judged restoration which the Alhambra has endured, it remains an atypical example of Muslim art in its final European stages, relatively uninfluenced by the direct Byzantine influences found in the Mezquita of Córdoba. The majority of the palace buildings are, in ground-plan, quadrangular, with all the rooms opening on to a central court; and the whole reached its present size simply by the gradual addition of new quadrangles, designed on the same principle, though varying in dimensions, and connected with each other by smaller rooms and passages. Alhambra was added onto by the different Muslim rulers who lived in the complex. However, each new section that was added followed the consistent theme of "paradise on earth." Column arcades, fountains with running water, and reflecting pools were used to make add to the aesthetic and functional complexity. In every case, the exterior is left plain and austere. Sun and wind are freely admitted. Blue, red, and a golden yellow, all somewhat faded through lapse of time and exposure, are the colours chiefly employed.

The decoration consists, as a rule, of stiff, conventional foliage, Arabic inscriptions, and geometrical patterns wrought into arabesques. Painted tiles are largely used as panelling for the walls. The palace complex is designed in the Mudéjar style which is characteristic of western elements reinterpreted into Islamic forms and largely popular during the Reconquista, a period of history in which the Christian kings reconquered Spain from the Muslims.

The Alhambra resembles many medieval Christian strongholds in its threefold arrangement as a castle, a palace and a residential annex for subordinates. The alcazaba or citadel, its oldest part, is built on the isolated and precipitous foreland which terminates the plateau on the northwest. That is all massive outer walls, towers and ramparts are left. On its watchtower, the Torre de la Vela, 25 m (85 ft) high, the flag of Ferdinand and Isabella was first raised, in token of the Spanish conquest of Granada on January 2, 1492. A turret containing a large bell was added in the 18th century and restored after being damaged by lightning in 1881. Beyond the Alcazaba is the palace of the Moorish rulers, or Alhambra properly so-called; and beyond this, again, is the Alhambra Alta (Upper Alhambra), originally tenanted by officials and courtiers.

Access from the city to the Alhambra Park is afforded by the Puerta de las Granadas (Gate of Pomegranates), a triumphal arch dating from the 15th century. A steep ascent leads past the Pillar of Charles V, a fountain erected in 1554, to the main entrance of the Alhambra. This is the Puerta Judiciaria (Gate of Judgment), a massive horseshoe archway surmounted by a square tower and used by the Moors as an informal court of justice. The hand of Fatima, with fingers outstretched as a talisman against the evil eye, is carved above this gate on the exterior; a key, the symbol of authority, occupies the corresponding place on the interior. A narrow passage leads inward to the Plaza de los Aljibes (Place of the Cisterns), a broad open space which divides the Alcazaba from the Moorish palace. To the left of the passage rises the Torre del Vino (Wine Tower), built in 1345 and used in the 16th century as a cellar. On the right is the palace of Charles V, a smaller Renaissance building.

The Royal Complex consists of three main parts: Mexuar, Serallo, and the Harem. The Mexuar is modest in decor and houses the functional areas for conducting business and administration. Strapwork is used to decorate the surfaces in Mexuar. The ceilings, floors, and trim are made of dark wood and are in sharp contrast to white, plaster walls. Serallo, built during the reign of Yusef I in the 14th century, contains the Patio de los Arrayanes. Brightly colored interiors featured dado panels, yesería, azulejo, cedar, and artesonado. Artesonado are highly decorative ceilings and other woodwork. Lastly, the Harem is also elaborately decorated and contains the living quarters for the wives and mistresses of the Arabic monarchs. This area contains a bathroom with running, hot and cold water, baths, and pressurized water for showering. The bathrooms were open to the elements in order to allow in light and air. The Harem also features representations of human forms, which is forbidden under Islamic law. The Christian artisans were most likely commissioned to design artwork that would be placed in the palace and the tolerant Muslim rulers allowed the work to stay.

The present entrance to the Palacio Árabe, or Casa Real (Moorish palace), is by a small door from which a corridor connects to the Patio de los Arrayanes (Court of the Myrtles), also called the Patio de la Alberca (Court of the Blessing or Court of the Pond), from the Arabic birka, "pool". The birka helped to cool the palace and acted as a symbol of power. Because water was usually in short supply, the technology required to keep these pools full was expensive and difficult. The aim of the pools was to give the impression that the pool had mystical powers because it never evaporated, making them form a good opinion of their leader.[citation needed] This court is 42 m (140 ft) long by 22 m (74 ft) broad; and in the centre, there is a large pond set in the marble pavement, full of goldfish, and with myrtles growing along its sides. There are galleries on the north and south sides; that on the south is 7 m (27 ft) high and supported by a marble colonnade. Underneath it, to the right, was the principal entrance, and over it are three windows with arches and miniature pillars. From this court, the walls of the Torre de Comares are seen rising over the roof to the north and reflected in the pond.

The Salón de los Embajadores (Hall of the Ambassadors) is the largest in the Alhambra and occupies all the Torre de Comares. It is a square room, the sides being 12 m (37 ft) in length, while the centre of the dome is 23 m (75 ft) high. This was the grand reception room, and the throne of the sultan was placed opposite the entrance. It was in this setting that Christopher Columbus received Isabel and Ferdinand's support to sail to the New World. The tiles are nearly 4 ft (1.2 m) high all round, and the colours vary at intervals. Over them is a series of oval medallions with inscriptions, interwoven with flowers and leaves. There are nine windows, three on each facade, and the ceiling is decorated with inlaid-work of white, blue and gold, in the shape of circles, crowns and stars. The walls are covered with varied stucco works, surrounding many ancient escutcheons.

The Patio de los Leones (Court of the Lions) is an oblong court, 116 ft (35 m) in length by 66 ft (20 m) in width, surrounded by a low gallery supported on 124 white marble columns. A pavilion projects into the court at each extremity, with filigree walls and light domed roof. The square is paved with coloured tiles, and the colonnade with white marble; while the walls are covered 5 ft (1.5 m) up from the ground with blue and yellow tiles, with a border above and below enamelled blue and gold. The columns supporting the roof and gallery are irregularly placed. They are adorned by varieties of foliage, etc.; about each arch there is a large square of arabesques; and over the pillars is another square of filigree work. In the centre of the court is the Fountain of Lions, an alabaster basin supported by the figures of twelve lions in white marble, not designed with sculptural accuracy, but as symbols of strength and courage.[citation needed]

The Sala de los Abencerrajes (Hall of the Abencerrages) derives its name from a legend according to which the father of Boabdil, last king of Granada, having invited the chiefs of that line to a banquet, massacred them here.[citation needed] This room is a perfect square, with a lofty dome and trellised windows at its base. The roof is decorated in blue, brown, red and gold, and the columns supporting it spring out into the arch form in a remarkably beautiful manner. Opposite to this hall is the Sala de las dos Hermanas (Hall of the two Sisters), so-called from two white marble slabs laid as part of the pavement. These slabs measure 50 by 22 cm (15 by 7½ in). There is a fountain in the middle of this hall, and the roof —a dome honeycombed with tiny cells, all different, and said to number 5000— is an example of the so-called "stalactite vaulting" of the Moors.

Among the other features of the Alhambra are the Sala de la Justicia (Hall of Justice), the Patio del Mexuar (Court of the Council Chamber), the Patio de Daraxa (Court of the Vestibule), and the Peinador de la Reina (Queen's Robing Room), in which there is similar architecture and decoration. The palace and the Upper Alhambra also contain baths, ranges of bedrooms and summer-rooms, a whispering gallery and labyrinth, and vaulted sepulchres.

The original furniture of the palace is represented by the vase of the Alhambra, a specimen of Moorish ceramic art, dating from 1320 and belonging to the first period of Moorish porcelain. It is 1.3 m (4 ft 3 in) high; the ground is white, and the enamelling is blue, white and gold.

Of the outlying buildings in connection with the Alhambra, the foremost in interest is the Palacio de Generalife or Gineralife (the Muslim Jennat al Arif, "Garden of Arif," or "Garden of the Architect"). This villa probably dates from the end of the 13th century but has been restored several times. Its gardens, however, with their clipped hedges, grottos, fountains, and cypress avenues, are said to retain their original Moorish character.[who?] The Villa de los Martires (Martyrs' Villa), on the summit of Monte Mauror, commemorates by its name the Christian slaves who were forced to build the Alhambra and confined here in subterranean cells. The Torres Bermejas (Vermilion Towers), also on Monte Mauror, are a well-preserved Moorish fortification, with underground cisterns, stables, and accommodation for a garrison of 200 men. Several Roman tombs were discovered in 1829 and 1857 at the base of Monte Mauror.

The Alhambra, Generalife and Albayzín of Granada are listed as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

 

Alhambra in literature

Parts of the following novels are set in the Alhambra:

•Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra. It is a collection of essays, verbal sketches, and stories. Irving lived in the palace while writing the book and was instrumental in reintroducing the site to Western audiences.

•Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh

•Amin Maalouf's Leon L'Africain, depicting the reconquest of Granada by the Catholic kings.

•Philippa Gregory's The Constant Princess.

•Langston Hughes's poem "Movies" in his collection Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)

•Federico Garcia Lorca's play Dona Rosita the Spinster, mentioned by title character Dona Rosita in her song/speech to the Manola sisters.

•Paulo Coelho's novel The Alchemist

•Ali Smith's The Accidental

Alhambra in music

Alhambra has directly inspired musical compositions as Francisco Tárrega's famous tremolo study for guitar Recuerdos de la Alhambra (Memories of the Alhambra)[1], Claude Debussy's piece for 2 pianos Lindaraja (composed in 1901) and the prelude La Puerta del Vino (in the 2nd book of preludes, composed 1912-13).[2].

"En los Jardines del Generalife", first movement of Manuel de Falla's Noches en los Jardines de España, and other pieces by composers such as Ruperto Chapí (Los Gnomos de la Alhambra,1891) Tomás Bretón [2] and many others are included in a stream called by scholars "Alhambrismo".[3] [4]

In pop and folk music, Alhambra is the subject of the Ghymes song of the same name.[citation needed] The rock band, The Grateful Dead, released a song called Terrapin Station on the 1977 album of the same name. The song itself was a series of small compositions penned by Robert Hunter and put to music by Jerry Garcia, a lyrical section of this Terrapin Station "suite" was called Alhambra.

In September 2006, Canadian singer/composer Loreena McKennitt performed live at the Alhambra. The resulting footage premiered on PBS and was later released as a three-disc DVD/CD set entitled Nights from the Alhambra.

Alhambra is the title of an EP by Canadian rock band The Tea Party, containing acoustic versions of a few of their songs.[citation needed]

British composer Julian Anderson's Alhambra Fantasy (1999–2000), commissioned by the London Sinfonietta, was influenced by the architecture of the Alhambra Palace. In two sharply contrasting sections the work relates different facets of the Alhambra – the first, rough and energetic, is related to the building of the Palace itself[citation needed], dominated by the sounds of hammering and banging on percussion. Short counterpointed and juxtaposed motifs create, for some, the impression of a mosaic[citation needed]. The second section evokes the beautiful landscape of the Vega[citation needed]. The composer is careful to point out[citation needed] that he has not written programmatic music, although his concern is with the splendour of the palace itself, its place in the landscape and its relevance to the complex and turbulent history of the region.

In 1976, filmmaker Christopher Nupen filmed "The Song of the Guitar" at the Alhambra. It was an hour long program featuring the legendary Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia. It is now available on DVD.

M. C. Escher's visit in 1922 inspired his following work on regular divisions of the plane after studying the Moorish use of symmetry in the Alhambra tiles.

Influence in 19th- and 20th-century architecture

From 19th-century Romantic interpretations until the present day, many buildings and portions of buildings worldwide have been inspired by the Alhambra: there is a Moorish Revival house in Stillwater, Minnesota which was created and named after the Alhambra. Also, the main portion of the Irvine Spectrum Center in Irvine, California, is a postmodern version of the Court of the Lions.

One also recalls the Alhambra Theatre in central Bradford, England [3].

  

PRESIDENT OBAMA: President Hollande, Mr. Secretary General, fellow leaders. We have come to Paris to show our resolve. We offer our condolences to the people of France for the barbaric attacks on this beautiful city. We stand united in solidarity not only to deliver justice to the terrorist network responsible for those attacks but to protect our people and uphold the enduring values that keep us strong and keep us free. And we salute the people of Paris for insisting this crucial conference go on -- an act of defiance that proves nothing will deter us from building the future we want for our children. What greater rejection of those who would tear down our world than marshaling our best efforts to save it? Nearly 200 nations have assembled here this week -- a declaration that for all the challenges we face, the growing threat of climate change could define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other. What should give us hope that this is a turning point, that this is the moment we finally determined we would save our planet, is the fact that our nations share a sense of urgency about this challenge and a growing realization that it is within our power to do something about it.Our understanding of the ways human beings disrupt the climate advances by the day. Fourteen of the fifteen warmest years on record have occurred since the year 2000 -- and 2015 is on pace to be the warmest year of all. No nation -- large or small, wealthy or poor -- is immune to what this means. This summer, I saw the effects of climate change firsthand in our northernmost state, Alaska, where the sea is already swallowing villages and eroding shorelines; where permafrost thaws and the tundra burns; where glaciers are melting at a pace unprecedented in modern times. And it was a preview of one possible future -- a glimpse of our children’s fate if the climate keeps changing faster than our efforts to address it. Submerged countries. Abandoned cities. Fields that no longer grow. Political disruptions that trigger new conflict, and even more floods of desperate peoples seeking the sanctuary of nations not their own. That future is not one of strong economies, nor is it one where fragile states can find their footing. That future is one that we have the power to change. Right here. Right now. But only if we rise to this moment. As one of America’s governors has said, “We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change, and the last generation that can do something about it.”I’ve come here personally, as the leader of the world’s largest economy and the second-largest emitter, to say that the United States of America not only recognizes our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it.Over the last seven years, we’ve made ambitious investments in clean energy, and ambitious reductions in our carbon emissions. We’ve multiplied wind power threefold, and solar power more than twentyfold, helping create parts of America where these clean power sources are finally cheaper than dirtier, conventional power. We’ve invested in energy efficiency in every way imaginable. We’ve said no to infrastructure that would pull high-carbon fossil fuels from the ground, and we’ve said yes to the first-ever set of national standards limiting the amount of carbon pollution our power plants can release into the sky.The advances we’ve made have helped drive our economic output to all-time highs, and drive our carbon pollution to its lowest levels in nearly two decades. But the good news is this is not an American trend alone. Last year, the global economy grew while global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels stayed flat. And what this means can’t be overstated. We have broken the old arguments for inaction. We have proved that strong economic growth and a safer environment no longer have to conflict with one another; they can work in concert with one another.

And that should give us hope. One of the enemies that we'll be fighting at this conference is cynicism, the notion we can't do anything about climate change. Our progress should give us hope during these two weeks -- hope that is rooted in collective action. Earlier this month in Dubai, after years of delay, the world agreed to work together to cut the super-pollutants known as HFCs. That's progress. Already, prior to Paris, more than 180 countries representing nearly 95 percent of global emissions have put forward their own climate targets. That is progress. For our part, America is on track to reach the emissions targets that I set six years ago in Copenhagen -- we will reduce our carbon emissions in the range of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. And that's why, last year, I set a new target: America will reduce our emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels within 10 years from now.So our task here in Paris is to turn these achievements into an enduring framework for human progress -- not a stopgap solution, but a long-term strategy that gives the world confidence in a low-carbon future.Here, in Paris, let’s secure an agreement that builds in ambition, where progress paves the way for regularly updated targets -- targets that are not set for each of us but by each of us, taking into account the differences that each nation is facing. Here in Paris, let’s agree to a strong system of transparency that gives each of us the confidence that all of us are meeting our commitments. And let’s make sure that the countries who don’t yet have the full capacity to report on their targets receive the support that they need. Here in Paris, let’s reaffirm our commitment that resources will be there for countries willing to do their part to skip the dirty phase of development. And I recognize this will not be easy. It will take a commitment to innovation and the capital to continue driving down the cost of clean energy. And that’s why, this afternoon, I’ll join many of you to announce an historic joint effort to accelerate public and private clean energy innovation on a global scale.Here in Paris, let’s also make sure that these resources flow to the countries that need help preparing for the impacts of climate change that we can no longer avoid. We know the truth that many nations have contributed little to climate change but will be the first to feel its most destructive effects. For some, particularly island nations -- whose leaders I’ll meet with tomorrow -- climate change is a threat to their very existence. And that’s why today, in concert with other nations, America confirms our strong and ongoing commitment to the Least Developed Countries Fund. And tomorrow, we’ll pledge new contributions to risk insurance initiatives that help vulnerable populations rebuild stronger after climate-related disasters.And finally, here in Paris, let’s show businesses and investors that the global economy is on a firm path towards a low-carbon future. If we put the right rules and incentives in place, we’ll unleash the creative power of our best scientists and engineers and entrepreneurs to deploy clean energy technologies and the new jobs and new opportunities that they create all around the world. There are hundreds of billions of dollars ready to deploy to countries around the world if they get the signal that we mean business this time. Let’s send that signal.That’s what we seek in these next two weeks. Not simply an agreement to roll back the pollution we put into our skies, but an agreement that helps us lift people from poverty without condemning the next generation to a planet that’s beyond its capacity to repair. Here, in Paris, we can show the world what is possible when we come together, united in common effort and by a common purpose.And let there be no doubt, the next generation is watching what we do. Just over a week ago, I was in Malaysia, where I held a town hall with young people, and the first question I received was from a young Indonesian woman. And it wasn’t about terrorism, it wasn’t about the economy, it wasn’t about human rights. It was about climate change. And she asked whether I was optimistic about what we can achieve here in Paris, and what young people like her could do to help.I want our actions to show her that we’re listening. I want our actions to be big enough to draw on the talents of all our people -- men and women, rich and poor -- I want to show her passionate, idealistic young generation that we care about their future. For I believe, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that there is such a thing as being too late. And when it comes to climate change, that hour is almost upon us. But if we act here, if we act now, if we place our own short-term interests behind the air that our young people will breathe, and the food that they will eat, and the water that they will drink, and the hopes and dreams that sustain their lives, then we won't be too late for them.And, my fellow leaders, accepting this challenge will not reward us with moments of victory that are clear or quick. Our progress will be measured differently -- in the suffering that is averted, and a planet that's preserved. And that’s what’s always made this so hard. Our generation may not even live to see the full realization of what we do here. But the knowledge that the next generation will be better off for what we do here -- can we imagine a more worthy reward than that? Passing that on to our children and our grandchildren, so that when they look back and they see what we did here in Paris, they can take pride in our achievement. Let that be the common purpose here in Paris. A world that is worthy of our children. A world that is marked not by conflict, but by cooperation; and not by human suffering, but by human progress. A world that’s safer, and more prosperous, and more secure, and more free than the one that we inherited. Let’s get to work. Thank you very much.

www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/30/remarks-pr...

Nearly 150 global leaders are gathering in Paris amid tight security for a critical UN climate meeting.The conference, known as COP21, starts on Monday and will try to craft a long-term deal to limit carbon emissions.Observers say that the recent terror attacks on the French capital will increase the chances of a new agreement.Around 40,000 people are expected to participate in the event, which runs until 11 December.The gathering of 147 heads of state and government is set to be far bigger than the 115 or so who came to Copenhagen in 2009, the last time the world came close to agreeing a long term deal on climate change.Rallies call for action.While many leaders including Presidents Obama and Xi Jinping were always set to attend this conference, the recent violent attacks in Paris have encouraged others to come in an expression of solidarity with the French people.Unlike at Copenhagen, the French organisers are bringing the leaders in at the start of the conference rather than waiting for them to come in at the end, a tactic which failed spectacularly in the Danish capital.On Sunday thousands of people took part in demonstrations worldwide to demand they take firm action.Considerable differencesDelegates are in little doubt that the shadow cast over the city by the attacks will enhance the chances of agreement."I believe that it will make a deal more likely, because what I feel from the parties is that they are very eager to move," said Amjad Abdulla from the Maldives, who chairs the Alliance of Small Island States in the negotiations.A former UK government adviser on climate change and now chairman of environmental think tank E3G, Tom Burke, believes that some leaders will push the line that, by tackling rising temperatures, you remove one of the causes of terrorism.One key problem is what form an agreement will take. The US for instance will not sign up to a legally binding deal as there would be little hope of getting it through a Senate dominated by Republicans."We're looking for an agreement that has broad, really full participation," said US lead negotiator Todd Stern at a news briefing earlier this week."We were quite convinced that an agreement that required actually legally binding targets would have many countries unable to participate."Many developing countries fundamentally disagree. As does the European Union."We must translate the momentum we have seen on the road to Paris into an ambitious, operational, legally binding agreement," said EU commissioner Miguel Arias Canete, in a statement.As well as the form there are also many issues with the content.There are a wide range of views on what the long-term goal of the agreement should be.While it will ostensibly come down to keeping temperatures from rising more than 2C above the pre-industrial level, how that will be represented in the text is the subject of much wrangling.Some countries reject the very notion of 2C and say 1.5C must be the standard. Others want to talk about decarbonising the world by the middle or end of this century.For major oil producers the very idea is anathema.While the fact that more than 180 countries have put forward national plans to cut emissions is a major strength of this conference, there are still big questions marks about how to verify those commitments that will actually be carried out."People in the negotiations, people outside the negotiations are going to be looking for the capacity to have trust and confidence in what countries say they are doing," Todd Stern told reporters."[You] can't run the system without that."COP 21 - the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties - will see more than 190 nations gather in Paris to discuss a possible new global agreement on climate change, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the threat of dangerous warming due to human activities.While there is some consensus among the parties that the plans will need to be reviewed every five years, there is no question of punitive restrictions if a country doesn't meet its targets.And among the many other issues in dispute, almost inevitably, is money. While rich countries promised they would give $100bn by 2020 to the developing world back in 2009, the cash has been slow in coming. Right now there is no agreement about what happens after 2020.While there is a general air of optimism and a willingness to get a deal done, success isn't guaranteed this time round. Many believe that a country such as India, with close to 300 million people without electricity, will refuse to sign up to a strong agreement that limits future fossil fuel use.If that happens, the whole process could come unstuck, as nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.Tom Burke for one believes that going against the flow will be particularly difficult this time round."I think one of the reasons people will find it hard to hold out at the end will be because of the level of political capital that Obama has invested in climate change, making it clear it is a primary legacy issue for him," he said.

www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34950442

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world as a result of increased CO2 from human activities. This is causing Greenland's ice sheets and glaciers to melt, contributing to sea level rise.On average, global sea level has risen almost 8 inches since 1901, coming from two main sources: rising ocean temperatures that cause water to expand, and melting glaciers and ice sheets which add water to the oceans.The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded the oceans will continue rising in coming decades, conservatively projecting up to a 3 foot increase in global mean sea level by 2100. Other studies project an even higher sea level rise if we stay near our current emissions path for carbon pollution. In our stories, we explore how sea level rise impacts homes, livelihoods, economies, and families around the world.In just 2012, the ice that melted in Greenland and flowed into the ocean was equivalent to the amount of water flowing over Niagara Falls for 5 straight years.

yearsoflivingdangerously.com/topic/sea-level-rise/

Adapting to Sea Level Rise in the Coastal Zone. Rising sea level settles border dispute.In an unusual example of the effects of global climate change, rising sea levels in the Bay of Bengal have helped resolve a troublesome territorial dispute between two of the world's most populated countries, a leading Indian oceanographer says.Sugata Hazra, the head of oceanography at Kolkata's Jadavpur University, says a flat muddy patch of land known as South Talpatti in Bangladesh and New Moore Island in India has disappeared under the Bay of Bengal. The landmass had been claimed by both countries but Professor Hazra says satellite images prove it has gone.''It is now a submerged landmass, not an island,'' Professor Hazra told the Herald.Sea-level rise caused by climate change was ''surely'' a factor in the island's inundation, Professor Hazra said.''The rate of sea-level rise in this part of the northern Bay of Bengal is definitely attributable to climate change,'' he said.

''There is a close correlation between the rate of sea-level rise and the sea surface temperature.''The island was once about 3.5 kilometres long and three kilometres wide and situated four kilometres from the mouth of the Hariabhanga River, the waterway that marks a stretch of the border between south-western Bangladesh and India.Scientists believe the disputed island was formed following a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal in 1970 and both countries laid claim to the land.

Bilateral negotiations were inconclusive and in 1981 the Indian government sent gunboats to the island and members of its Border Security Forces planted an Indian flag there.

The island was not inhabited but Bangladeshi fishermen were reportedly sighted there frequently during the dry season.

''This is a unique instance of how climate resolves a dispute,'' said Professor Hazra.''It also goes to show how climate can affect all of us beyond geographical boundaries.''The Indian government had once sent ships with guns to guard the island.''Now one will have to think of sending submarines to mount a vigil there.''Professor Hazra said sea-level rise, changes in monsoonal rain patterns which altered river flows and land subsidence were all contributing to the inundation of land in the northern Bay of Bengal.The low-lying delta region that makes up much of Bangladesh and the neighbouring Indian state of West Bengal are acutely vulnerable to climate change.The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts rising sea levels will devour 17 per cent of Bangladesh by 2050, displacing at least 20 million people. More than 155 million people live in the country.The Bangladesh non-governmental organisation Coastal Watch says an average of 11 Bangladeshis are losing their homes to rising waters every hour.Professor Hazra predicts that 15 per cent of the Indian Sundarbans region on the northern shore of the Bay of Bengal will be submerged by 2020.''A lot of other islands are eroding very fast,'' he said.The cyclone-prone region is also likely to experience more frequent and extreme storms as the sea-water temperature in the Bay of Bengal rises due to global warming

Read more: www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/rising-sea-leve...

Can we stop the seas from rising? Yes, but less than you think.

One of the main concerns with climate change is that it's causing the oceans to advance. Global sea levels have risen about seven inches over the past century and that pace is accelerating. Not only does this threaten coastal regions, but it also makes storm surges much worse — both for huge hurricanes like Sandy and for smaller storms too.And the oceans are likely to keep creeping up. Scientists project that if we keep warming the planet at our current pace, sea levels could rise between two and seven feet by 2100, particularly as the world's glaciers and ice caps melt. So that raises the question: Is there anything we can do to stop sea-level rise? How much would cutting greenhouse-gas emissions help?As it turns out, reducing our emissions would help slow the rate of sea-level rise — but at this point, it's unlikely that we could stop further rises altogether. That's the upshot of a recent study from the National Center on Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The study estimated that aggressive steps to cut emissions could reduce the amount of sea-level rise by somewhere between 6 and 20 inches in 2100, compared with our current trajectory. That's quite a bit. But sea levels will keep rising for centuries no matter what we do. We can't stop it entirely. We can only slow the pace.As NCAR's Gerald Meehl, a co-author of the study, explained to me by e-mail, it's a lot easier to stabilize global temperatures by cutting carbon emissions than it is to stabilize sea-level rise. The carbon-dioxide that we've already loaded into the atmosphere will likely have effects on the oceans for centuries to come. "But with aggressive mitigation," Meehl added, "you can slow down the rate of sea level rise, which buys time for adaptation measures."There are two ways that global warming causes sea levels to rise. First, as carbon-dioxide traps more heat on the planet, the oceans get warmer and expand in volume. Second, ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica as well as other glaciers start melting, pouring more water into the oceans. Once these processes get underway, they won't stop quickly, even if we ceased putting carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere tomorrow.The NCAR paper estimated that if emissions go unchecked, we could warm the planet 4°C over pre-industrial levels by 2100, causing sea levels to rise between two and five feet. By contrast, if we get really proactive at cutting emissions, we could probably keep the temperature increase below 2°C. But sea levels would still rise by between 11 inches and 3.5 feet. (The wide range is due to the uncertainties in modeling the behavior of glaciers and ice sheets—if the ice sheets destabilize, a bigger rise is possible.) That's progress, but not total victory.We're going to need to adapt to sea-level rise no matter what we do on carbon emissions. Even the "optimistic" scenario in the NCAR paper still envisions sea-levels rising roughly 11 inches by 2100. That's assuming we cut emissions drastically and the ice sheets don't do anything too unpredictable. Even then, New York City will have a bigger flood zone than it does today. Storm surges on the coasts will be much larger. Low-lying areas will be at greater risk. In Bangladesh, for instance, the area prone to severe flooding would increase by 69 percent (pdf) with just a foot of sea-level rise.That said, cutting emissions can make a significant difference this century. Keeping sea-level rise a foot or two lower than it otherwise might be is nothing to sneeze at. As this map of New York City shows, the flood zone increases dramatically with each additional foot of sea-level rise. A city like Norfolk, Va. could get swamped entirely by a Category 3 hurricane if ocean levels rose by two to five feet. Florida's adaptation costs go up by billions of dollars with each additional foot of sea-level rise. Every little bit helps.Sea-level rise is likely a much bigger problem for future generations. Not to get too morbid, but I'll probably be dead by 2100. So will most people reading this blog. So the main question at issue here is whether we want to leave our descendants a relatively stable coastline or an unstable one. According to NCAR projections, sea levels could rise as much as 34 feet, or nine meters, by 2300 if emissions continue unchecked (though modeling projections that far out have very large uncertainties, so don't take this as a definitive number). To get a sense of what a nine-meter rise would look like, check out this interactive map. South Florida would be underwater. So would New Orleans. And Shanghai. And the Netherlands. And Bangladesh. But this is also 200 years in the future. That's a big reason why climate change is such a difficult problem to deal with.

www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/11/01/can...

Les pays du monde entier vont vivre au rythme des négociations climatiques du 29 novembre au 11 décembre 2015. Un accord entre 195 pays doit être trouvé pour maintenir le réchauffement climatique en dessous des 2 degrés, d’ici à 2050. Mais comment se déroulent les négociations derrière les portes du Bourget, où 150 chefs d’états et plus de 40 000 personnes sont attendus? Nous suivons Caroline Tubercule, membre de l’équipe française de négociation dans son marathon pour sauver la planète.

En savoir plus sur www.lemonde.fr/cop21/video/2015/11/29/en-patates-comprend...

Malgré l'interdiction de manifester, 10.000 personnes se sont réunies dimanche à Paris pour participer à une chaîne humaine contre le réchauffement climatique, selon les organisateurs."cette chaîne humaine, c'est un contre-pouvoir citoyen à la conférence officielle qui sera contre-productive car elle est faite avec des industriels dont les intérêts sont contraires à l'écologie."

www.lesechos.fr/paris-climat-2015/actualites/021518198440...

  

DRUNK TANK PINK (n) : A bubblegum-pink color; in the early 1980s, psychologists daubed jail cells with drunk tank pink paint and discovered that the color calmed aggressive prisoners. Soon, enterprising football coaches began painting their visitors’ locker rooms with the same shade, hoping to pacify their opponents. Buses painted their seats pink and discovered that vandalism rates declined; door-to-door charity workers wore pink shirts and their donations rose threefold.

Um texto Bíblico que enaltece o companheirismo e a amizade. Tenho muita alegria em ter conhecido essas três amigas no Flickr. Um grande abraço a cada uma delas!

A Biblical text that pays tribute to companionship and friendship. I have great joy in having known these three friends on Flickr. A big hug every one of them!

 

Eclesiastes 4:9-12

 

9. Melhor é serem dois do que um, porque têm melhor paga do seu trabalho.

10. Pois se caírem, um levantará o seu companheiro; mas ai do que estiver só, pois, caindo, não haverá outro que o levante.

11. Também, se dois dormirem juntos, eles se aquentarão; mas um só como se aquentará?

12. E, se alguém quiser prevalecer contra um, os dois lhe resistirão; e o cordão de três dobras não se quebra tão depressa.

 

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

 

9. Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.

10. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.

11. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone?

12. And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

 

View on Black

 

The love of field and coppice,

Of green and shaded lanes.

Of ordered woods and gardens

Is running in your veins,

Strong love of grey-blue distance

Brown streams and soft dim skies

I know but cannot share it,

My love is otherwise.

 

I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains,

Of ragged mountain ranges,

Of droughts and flooding rains.

I love her far horizons,

I love her jewel-sea,

Her beauty and her terror -

The wide brown land for me!

 

A stark white ring-barked forest

All tragic to the moon,

The sapphire-misted mountains,

The hot gold hush of noon.

Green tangle of the brushes,

Where lithe lianas coil,

And orchids deck the tree-tops

And ferns the warm dark soil.

 

Core of my heart, my country!

Her pitiless blue sky,

When sick at heart, around us,

We see the cattle die-

But then the grey clouds gather,

And we can bless again

The drumming of an army,

The steady, soaking rain.

 

Core of my heart, my country!

Land of the Rainbow Gold,

For flood and fire and famine,

She pays us back threefold-

Over the thirsty paddocks,

Watch, after many days,

The filmy veil of greenness

That thickens as we gaze.

 

An opal-hearted country,

A wilful, lavish land-

All you who have not loved her,

You will not understand-

Though earth holds many splendours,

Wherever I may die,

I know to what brown country

My homing thoughts will fly. - Dorothea Mackellar (1885 - 1968)

 

Visual Clarity Photography

 

iOS Wallpaper Blog: iOS Wallpaper

 

Redbubble

Tiny flowers on a tropical variety of chives. Note the six- an threefold symmetry

The “Main Event” in 2024 was a return to South Africa for what is undoubtedly the last dregs of steam in this wonderful Country.

My inspiration for travel across SA is threefold; The Great Steam Trek (book) the superb website - The Soul of a Railway;

 

sites.google.com/site/soulorailway/soul-of-a-railway/intr...

 

…….and last but by no means least the late/great David Rodgers (RIP).

 

The sun sets on 25NC 3437 ‘Sianni’ as she passes Gruisbank, shortly after departing Perdeburg, on 19/7/24 with the Kimberley to Bloemfontein goods; Farrail charter freight.

  

Jana-Marie, Kiel (Germany) 2021

  

Fujifilm GFX50R & Mamiya Auto Sekor SX 135/2

 

Such a cheap lens with lots and lots of nice, vintage, creamy bokeh. It has a slight vignette on a full GFX sensor but the bokeh on such small budgets makes up for it threefold and more.

  

More about great cheap lenses on the Fujifilm GFX (Google translated): www-schlicksbier-com.translate.goog/altglas-u-a-fuer-die-...

  

Original German version: www.schlicksbier.com/altglas-u-a-fuer-die-fujifilm-gfx100...

Running light engine to Goulburn from Junee, Greentrains' 8037,8049 and 8044 prepare to set off on D131 light engine movement. The triplet of AlCo's had been on ballasting duties in the area.

Woman harvesting fava beans (variety: Threefold white selection Listra) in an organic vegetable garden.

 

License photo

The Lyric Theatre, or simply The Lyric, is the principal, full-time producing theatre in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The theatre was first established as The Lyric Players in 1951 at the home of its founders Mary O'Malley and her husband Pearse in Derryvolgie Avenue, off the Malone Road, and moved to its new site on Ridgeway Street in 1968, between the Stranmillis Road and Stranmillis Embankment. Austin Clarke laid the foundation stone in 1965 a deliberate choice by O'Malley to build a link back to her artistic hero W. B. Yeats.

 

In 1974 the theatre staged Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar, leading to protests. In 1976 Liam Neeson appeared in Brian Friel's Philadelphia Here I Come!. Neeson's association with the Lyric has continued since, and he is currently the theatre's patron. Several of Friel's plays have been staged at the theatre, including Dancing at Lughnasa in 1996 and 2015. A number of Marie Jones plays have been staged there including A Night in November.

 

In 2004 the theatre announced a fundraising campaign to redevelop the theatre on its existing site. In June 2007 a £1m donation by Northern Irish businessman Dr Martin Naughton kickstarted the development. Naughton's donation was the largest in Northern Ireland arts history. He had previously made donations to Queen's University, where the Naughton Gallery is named in his honour.

 

The new theatre opened on 1 May 2011, with a Gala Performance of The Crucible. The new facility features a new main theatre with a seating capacity of almost 400 and a multi-function performance space 'The Naughton Studio' which can seat between 120 and 170. This new theatre was an almost threefold increase in the size of the previous building and the theatre remains the largest employer of actors and other theatre professionals in the region.

 

The Lyric's current Chair is Sir Bruce Robinson who took over in January 2015 from BBC Northern Ireland journalist Mark Carruthers,[9] who received an OBE at Buckingham Palace on 25 March 2011, in recognition of his leadership of the theatre at a highly critical time in its development.

 

Since the theatre re-opened a permanent exhibition of the work of Belfast-born visual artist Colin Davidson (artist) has been on display at the theatre where he personally presented his work to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the President of Ireland during the Royal visit to Northern Ireland on 27 June 2012. This was the occasion, and the Lyric was the chosen site, for a public meeting between Queen Elizabeth II and Martin McGuinness, Deputy First Minister for the Northern Ireland Assembly and a former commander of the IRA. The event is viewed by many as a positive sign for the ongoing peace process in Northern Ireland.

 

In October 2018, as part of the theatre's 50th anniversary on the Stranmillis site, that theme of being "a shared place, a crossroads between communities" was marked at a symposium and over a weekend of celebratory events with the Irish Times noting the Lyric was a cultural bridge in a divided city. [Wikipedia]

Black IPA with Gin Oak. Brewed by Temporal Artisan Ales in collaboration with Boombox Brewing

 

www.temporalales.com

 

Temporal Artisan Ales is a brewing & blending project in Vancouver, BC. Every beer is 100% oak fermented, barrel aged, and given the time it needs to be ready.

 

vancouverbrewersfest.com/boombox-brewing/

 

Boombox Brewing is a hop-forward beer project based in East Vancouver. Last year, we started brewing at Threefold, a new brewery collective at 1507 Powell Street, along with our friends at Slow Hand Beer Co and Temporal Artisan Ales. You can find all of our fresh releases in the Threefold tasting room, with offerings both in cans and on tap.

 

I only got one can of this: I think I will have to go back to Jak to see if they have any more!

Shiva (Sanskrit: Auspicious One), or Siva, is one of the main Deities of Hinduism. Shiva is one of the most complex gods of India, embodying seemingly contradictory qualities. He is the destroyer and the restorer, the great ascetic and the symbol of sensuality, the benevolent herdsman of souls and the wrathful avenger.

 

Shiva was originally known as Rudra, a minor deity addressed only three times in the Rig Veda. He gained importance after absorbing some of the characteristics of an earlier fertility god and became Shiva, part of the trinity, or trimurti, with Vishnu and Brahma.

 

He often holds a trident, which represents the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu. It is also said to represent the threefold qualities of nature: creation, preservation and destruction, although preservation is usually attributed to Vishnu.

 

As the destroyer Shiva is dark and terrible, encircled with serpents and a crown of skulls.

 

The Studebaker Hawk series was introduced in 1955. The styling came from the Loewy Studios drawing boards.

Tall rear fins were introduced for model year 1957.

 

Th Golden Hawk was built till 1958. The Silver Hawk till one year later. For model year 1960 the name additions Golden and Silver were dropped. From that year on, these models were only called Hawk.

Late 1961 the Hawk was succeeded by the Gran Turismo Hawk. It underwent a restyle, mainly at the rear (the tall fins were dropped) done by Brooks Stevens (USA, 1911-1995).

This treatment gave the car a more modern look, and sales increased threefold to 8388 units.

 

It's such a pity I did not make a picture of the rear side.

 

4736 cc V8 engine.

1600 kg.

Production Studebaker Hawk Series: Autumn 1955-1964.

Production Hawk Gran Turismo: Autumn 1961-1964.

Production Hawk Gran Turismo this version: Autumn 1961-1962.

Original first reg. number: Febr. 27, 1962.

New Dutch pseudo-historical reg. number: Nov. 4, 1999.

 

Seen on the Dutch Studebaker Packard Club meeting on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of this club.

See also: www.spcn.nl/

Plus: studebakerdriversclub.com/

 

Bleiswijk, Hoekeindseweg, May 20, 2014.

 

© 2024 Sander Toonen Halfweg | All Rights Reserved

I AM my I AM Presence and I AM One with the I AM Presence of ALL Humanity. As this wondrous Ascension in the Light occurs within me it occurs through every person on Earth, in perfect alignment with his or her Divine Plan and the highest good for all concerned.I AM sitting comfortably in my chair with my arms and legs uncrossed and my spine is as straight as possible. I breathe in deeply and instantly I AM relaxed and peaceful. I empty my mind of all of the thoughts of the day and I KNOW, “I AM That I AM.”

I gently go within to the Divinity of my Heart and focus my attention on my Immortal Victorious Threefold Flame. Within the full embrace of my Threefold Flame, I realize that I have transcended the old Earth and crossed the threshold into the 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar Frequencies of the New Earth. I have truly entered a New Day filled with the full-gathered momentum of Heaven on Earth.

 

Victory is mine! Victory is mine! Victory is mine!

 

With this inner knowing, I realize that I have the awesome responsibility of BECOMING the full manifestation of my I AM Presence while I AM embodied on the New Earth. This literally means Transfiguring my physical, etheric, mental, and emotional bodies into the 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar Light Bodies of my I AM Presence.

 

This Divine Alchemy is occurring within me now at an atomic, cellular level. Every electron, every atom, every subatomic particle and wave of my bodies and all the spaces in between the atoms and molecules of my bodies are being filled with multifaceted 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar Light.

 

My I AM Presence is now able to take full dominion of my Earthly Bodies. As this occurs, my thoughts, feelings, words, actions, memories, and beliefs reflect the Transfiguring Divine Love, Infinite Abundance, Eternal Peace, Bliss, Harmony, and Oneness of my Father-Mother God. My physical reality is transformed, and I now experience at every level the infinite physical perfection of the New Earth.

 

My I AM Presence claims full authority within my Earthly Bodies. I stand forth now as a complete God Being pulsating within the glorious multicolored, multidimensional radiance of my I AM Presence.

 

My feet are planted firmly on the New Earth, and simultaneously I AM One with all of the Ascended Realms of Infinite Perfection. I AM a God Being of resplendent Light, now realizing the fullness of that Light on every level of my Being. As I AM lifted up, all Life is lifted up with me. Therefore, I know that within my I AM Presence, I AM now ALL of Humanity standing forth and realizing that we are God Beings-—Sons and Daughters of God—on every realm associated with the New Earth.

 

Within my I AM Presence, I AM the Ascension Flame and I AM the full Divine Momentum of the Twelve Solar Aspects of Deity blazing in, through, and around every particle and wave of Life. I AM liberating every physical and chemical interaction within the Earthly Bodies of ALL Humanity, the Elemental Kingdom, and the physical, etheric, mental, and emotional strata of Mother Earth. The Ascension Flame is raising all of the energy bonds between atoms and within atoms into the 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar Frequencies of God’s Infinite Perfection.

 

I KNOW and ACCEPT that contained within this flowing electronic pattern of Light is everything necessary to Transfigure the entire physical realm into the patterns of perfection for the New Earth. This unfathomable Light contains everything necessary to set straight the orbit, spin, and electronic charge of every cell, atom, and electron of Life on the old Earth. I feel all energy bonds within the atomic realm now Ascending in vibration toward the frequency of infinite physical perfection. Every cell of Life is now blazing with the full perfection of 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar Light.

 

Within my I AM Presence, I AM the Ascension Flame and the 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar Frequencies of the Twelve Solar Aspects of Deity blazing through every interaction within Humanity and all of the energy bonds therein—this includes the relationships of all people, organizations, races, religions, and nations—liberating these interactions into the harmony of a Higher Order of Being, expanding the Sphere of Humanity’s I AM Presence on Earth.

 

Within the Peace of the Great Solar Quiet, I AM aware of this Higher Reality. I AM now clearly receiving the Divine Promptings, Ideas, and Concepts of my I AM Presence. Daily and hourly, through the Gift of the Ascension Flame, I AM experiencing the Higher Reality of the New Earth within my heart and mind.

 

I AM now a living, Light-filled Temple of Vibrant Health, Eternal Youth, God’s Infinite Abundance, Peace, Harmony, Balance, Happiness, and Abounding Joy. I AM my 5th-Dimensional Crystalline Solar Light Bodies of I AM Consciousness now made manifest on the New Earth. And so it is.

 

I return my consciousness to the room. I become aware of my body, and I allow these Divine Energies to be assimilated into my physical, etheric, mental, and emotional bodies. I breathe deeply and gently as I absorb the bliss of this moment.

 

www.thealchemytemple.com/invocations

Thursday, May 3 2018 at Sabino Canyon.

It looks like this was our last cool day before the foresummer drought and heat here in the Sonaran Desert. The prickly pear and cholla are in full bloom, but except for the trixis most other flowers are relatively muted although not completely absent.

RAW file processed with RAW Theapee.

_5034537

www.flickriver.com/photos/fotograf/

 

The love of field and coppice,

Of green and shaded lanes.

Of ordered woods and gardens

Is running in your veins,

Strong love of grey-blue distance

Brown streams and soft dim skies

I know but cannot share it,

My love is otherwise.

 

I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains,

Of ragged mountain ranges,

Of droughts and flooding rains.

I love her far horizons,

I love her jewel-sea,

Her beauty and her terror -

The wide brown land for me!

 

A stark white ring-barked forest

All tragic to the moon,

The sapphire-misted mountains,

The hot gold hush of noon.

Green tangle of the brushes,

Where lithe lianas coil,

And orchids deck the tree-tops

And ferns the warm dark soil.

 

Core of my heart, my country!

Her pitiless blue sky,

When sick at heart, around us,

We see the cattle die-

But then the grey clouds gather,

And we can bless again

The drumming of an army,

The steady, soaking rain.

 

Core of my heart, my country!

Land of the Rainbow Gold,

For flood and fire and famine,

She pays us back threefold-

Over the thirsty paddocks,

Watch, after many days,

The filmy veil of greenness

That thickens as we gaze.

 

An opal-hearted country,

A wilful, lavish land-

All you who have not loved her,

You will not understand-

Though earth holds many splendours,

Wherever I may die,

I know to what brown country

My homing thoughts will fly.

 

Dorothea Mackellar

 

Stine, Emkendorf (Germany) 2021

 

Fujifilm GFX50R & Mamiya Auto Sekor SX 135/2

 

Such a cheap lens with lots and lots of nice, vintage, creamy bokeh. It has a slight vignette on a full GFX sensor but the bokeh on such small budgets makes up for it threefold and more.

 

More about great cheap lenses on the Fujifilm GFX (Google translated): www-schlicksbier-com.translate.goog/altglas-u-a-fuer-die-...

 

Original German version: www.schlicksbier.com/altglas-u-a-fuer-die-fujifilm-gfx100...

 

Image from the "Broken Body" series. More about this series in issue #2 of my "Thoughts on Photography" zine. Free download in:

English - www.schlicksbier.com/thoughts-on-photography-zine/

German - www.schlicksbier.com/gedanken-zur-fotografie-zine/

The Studebaker Hawk series was introduced in 1955. The styling came from the Loewy Studios drawing boards.

Tall rear fins were introduced for model year 1957.

 

Th Golden Hawk was built till 1958. The Silver Hawk till one year later. For model year 1960 the name additions Golden and Silver were dropped. From that year on, these models were only called Hawk.

Late 1961 the Hawk was succeeded by the Gran Turismo Hawk. It underwent a restyle, mainly at the rear (the tall fins were dropped) done by Brooks Stevens (USA, 1911-1995).

This treatment gave the car a more modern look, and sales increased threefold to 8388 units in the year of introduction.

 

According to provided info by the official Dutch car registration office this car has a 6 cylinder engine. And that's strange while the Hawk Gran Turismo normally has a V8 4736 cc engine. So I don't know if this is correct.

 

It's such a pity I did not make a picture of the rear side.

 

2779 cc L6 engine.

1400 kg.

Production Studebaker Hawk Series: Autumn 1955-1964.

Production Hawk Gran Turismo: Autumn 1961-1964.

Production Hawk Gran Turismo this version: Autumn 1963-1964.

Original first reg. number: June 30, 1964 (estimated).

New Dutch pseudo-historical reg. number: March 26, 1990.

At current owner since May 14, 2004.

 

Seen on the Dutch Studebaker Packard Club meeting on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of this club.

See also: www.spcn.nl/

Plus: studebakerdriversclub.com/

 

Bleiswijk, Hoekeindseweg, May 20, 2014.

 

© 2024 Sander Toonen Halfweg | All Rights Reserved

Detail van een Mustang-tram in Stockholm. De Zweedse vestiging van General Motors bouwde in het midden van de jaren '40 zeventig van deze motorwagens voor Stockholm en tien voor Malmö. Later volgden nog series van andere fabrikanten.

 

Deze museumtram is geschilderd in de Stockholmse kleuren, maar dat is een goedbedoeld stukje geschiedvervalsing. De Stockholmse Mustangs hebben namelijk nooit deuren aan de rechterkant gehad. Precies een halve eeuw geleden, in september 1967, ging Zweden over van links op rechts verkeer. Dat was voor Stockholm een goede aanleiding om een al langer gekoesterd plan te voltooien: het opdoeken van de tram. Malmö daarentegen verbouwde zijn Mustangs nog wel voor rechts verkeer, al werd de tram ook daar in 1973 toch opgeheven. Nummer 71 ging daarna naar Stockholm, waar de tram in het begin van de jaren '90 een come-back begon te maken. Met zijn deuren aan de 'goede' kant kan deze Mustang probleemloos worden ingezet op de historische lijn 7(N) naar Djurgården.

 

Opvallend is de driedubbele achteringang, die ook wel is toegepast in sommige grote steden in andere landen. De tram kon dan op drukke haltes de instappers snel opnemen, zonder te hoeven wachten op het doorlopen langs de zitplaats van de conducteur

 

Detail of a Mustang tram in Stockholm. The Swedish branch of General Motors built 70 of these cars for Stockholm and 10 for Malmö in the mid-1940s. Later some batches followed, built by other suppliers.

 

This museum car is painted in Stockholm livery, what can be considered as a well-meant falsification of history. The Stockholm Mustangs never had doors at their right side. Exactly a half-century ago, in september 1967, Sweden switched from left to right traffic. For Stockholm this was the opportunity to finish a long-held aspiration: closure of its tramway system. Malmö however rebuilt its Mustangs for right traffic, although even there the trams came to their end in 1973. Car no. 71 landed in Stockholm, where the tram made a come-back in the early 1990s. With its doors at the right side, this Mustang can be used without problems on heritage line 7(N) to Djurgården.

 

An interesting feature is the threefold back entrance - applied as well in some other major cities in different countries with modern rolling stock in the conductor era. This reduced boarding times at busy tram stops

The Alhambra (Arabic: الحمراء = Al-Ħamrā; literally "the red one"; the complete name is "Qal'at al-Hambra", which means "The red fortress") is a palace and fortress complex of the Moorish rulers of Granada in southern Spain (known as Al-Andalus when the fortress was constructed), occupying a hilly terrace on the southeastern border of the city of Granada. 37°10′37″N 3°35′24″W37.17686, -3.589901

Once the residence of the Muslim rulers of Granada and their court, the Alhambra is now one of Spain's major tourist attractions exhibiting the country's most famous Islamic architecture, together with Christian 16th century and later interventions in buildings and gardens that marked its image as it can be seen today. Within the Alhambra, the Palace of Charles V was erected by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in 1527. Coordinates: 37°10′36.81″N 3°35′23.95″W

The terrace or plateau where the Alhambra sits measures about 740 m (2430 ft) in length by 205 m (674 ft) at its greatest width. It extends from WNW to ESE and covers an area of about 142,000 m².

Its most westerly feature is the alcazaba (citadel); a strongly fortified position. The rest of the plateau comprises a number of palaces, enclosed by a relatively weak fortified wall, with thirteen towers, some defensive and some providing vistas for the inhabitants.

The river Darro passes through a ravine on the north and divides the plateau from the Albaicín district of Granada. Similarly, the Assabica valley, containing the Alhambra Park on the west and south, and, beyond this valley, the almost parallel ridge of Monte Mauror, separate it from the Antequeruela district.

Completed towards the end of Muslim rule in Spain by Yusuf I (1333-1353) and Muhammed V, Sultan of Granada (1353-1391), the Alhambra is a reflection of the culture of the last days of the Nasrid emirate of Granada. It is a place where artists and intellectuals had taken refuge as Christian Spain won victories over Al Andalus. The Alhambra mixes natural elements with man-made ones, and is a testament to the skill of Muslim craftsmen of that time.

The literal translation of Alhambra "red fortress" derives from the colour of the red clay of the surroundings of which the fort is made. The buildings of the Alhambra were originally whitewashed; however, the buildings now seen today are reddish.

The first reference to the Qal’at al Hamra was during the battles between the Arabs and the Muladies during the rule of the ‘Abdullah ibn Muhammad (r. 888-912). In one particularly fierce and bloody skirmish, the Muladies soundly defeated the Arabs, who were then forced to take shelter in a primitive red castle located in the province of Elvira, presently located in Granada. According to surviving documents from the era, the red castle was quite small, and its walls were not capable of deterring an army intent on conquering. The castle was then largely ignored until the eleventh century, when its ruins were renovated and rebuilt by Samuel ibn Naghralla, vizier to the King Bādīs of the Zirid Dynasty, in an attempt to preserve the small Jewish settlement also located on the Sabikah hill. However, evidence from Arab texts indicates that the fortress was easily penetrated and that the actual Alhambra that survives today was built during the Nasrid Dynasty.

Ibn Nasr, the founder of the Nasrid Dynasty, was forced to flee to Jaén in order to avoid persecution by King Ferdinand and his supporters during attempts to rid Spain of Moorish Dominion. After retreating to Granada, Ibn-Nasr took up residence at the Palace of Bādis in the Alhambra. A few months later, he embarked on the construction of a new Alhambra fit for the residence of a king. According to an Arab manuscript published as the Anónimo de Granada y Copenhague, "This year 1238 Abdallah ibn al-Ahmar climbed to the place called "the Alhambra" inspected it, laid out the foundations of a castle and left someone in charge of its construction…" The design included plans for six palaces, five of which were grouped in the northeast quadrant forming a royal quarter, two circuit towers, and numerous bathhouses. During the reign of the Nasrid Dynasty, the Alhambra was transformed into a palatine city complete with an irrigation system composed of acequias for the gardens of the Generalife located outside the fortress. Previously, the old Alhambra structure had been dependent upon rainwater collected from a cistern and from what could be brought up from the Albaicín. The creation of the Sultan's Canal solidified the identity of the Alhambra as a palace-city rather than a defensive and ascetic structure.

The Muslim rulers lost Granada and Alhambra in 1492 without the fortress itself being attacked when King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile took the surrounding region with overwhelming numbers.

The decorations within the palaces typified the remains of Moorish dominion within Spain and ushered in the last great period of Andalusian art in Granada. With little influence from the Islamic mainland[citation needed], artists endlessly reproduced the same forms and trends, creating a new style that developed over the course of the Nasrid Dynasty. The Nasrids used freely all the display of stylistical resorts that had been created and developed during eight centuries of Muslim rule in the Peninsula as the Calliphal horse-shoe arch, the Almohad sebka or the Almoravid palm, and unused combinations of them, beside novelties as the stilted arches and the capitals of muqarnas, among others. The isolation with the rest of the Islam, and the commercial and political relationship with the Christian kingdoms also influenced in the space concepts. Columns, muqarnas and stalactite-like ceiling decorations, appear in several chambers, and the interiors of numerous palaces are decorated with arabesques and calligraphy. The arabesques of the interior are ascribed, among other kings, to Yusef I, Mohammed V, and Ismail I.

Damage produced in Later Era After the Christian conquest of the city in 1492, the conquerors began to alter the Alhambra. The open work was filled up with whitewash, the painting and gilding effaced, and the furniture soiled[citation needed], torn, or removed. Charles V (1516–1556) rebuilt portions in the Renaissance style of the period and destroyed the greater part of the winter palace to make room for a Renaissance-style structure which has never been completed. Philip V (1700–1746) Italianised the rooms and completed his palace in the middle of what had been the Moorish building; he had partitions constructed which blocked up whole apartments.

Over subsequent centuries the Moorish art was further damaged, and, in 1812, some of the towers were destroyed by the French under Count Sebastiani, while the whole building narrowly escaped the same fate. Napoleon had tried to blow up the whole complex. Just before his plan was carried out, a soldier who secretly wanted the plan of Napoleon — his commander — to fail, defused the explosives and thus saved the Alhambra for posterity.[citation needed] In 1821, an earthquake caused further damage. The work of restoration undertaken in 1828 by the architect José Contreras was endowed in 1830 by Ferdinand VII; and after the death of Contreras in 1847, it was continued with fair success by his son Rafael (d. 1890) and his grandson. Designed to reflect the very beauty of Paradise itself, the Alhambra is made up of gardens, fountains, streams, a palace, and a mosque, all within an imposing fortress wall, flanked by 13 massive towers. [1]

Moorish poets[who?] described it as "a pearl set in emeralds," in allusion to the colour of its buildings and the woods around them. The palace complex was designed with the mountainous site in mind and many forms of technology were considered. The park (Alameda de la Alhambra), which is overgrown with wildflowers and grass in the spring, was planted by the Moors with roses, oranges and myrtles; its most characteristic feature, however, is the dense wood of English elms brought by the Duke of Wellington in 1812. The park has a multitude nightingales and is usually filled with the sound of running water from several fountains and cascades. These are supplied through a conduit 8 km (5 miles) long, which is connected with the Darro at the monastery of Jesus del Valle, above Granada.

In spite of the long neglect, willful vandalism and sometimes ill-judged restoration which the Alhambra has endured, it remains an atypical example of Muslim art in its final European stages, relatively uninfluenced by the direct Byzantine influences found in the Mezquita of Córdoba. The majority of the palace buildings are, in ground-plan, quadrangular, with all the rooms opening on to a central court; and the whole reached its present size simply by the gradual addition of new quadrangles, designed on the same principle, though varying in dimensions, and connected with each other by smaller rooms and passages. Alhambra was added onto by the different Muslim rulers who lived in the complex. However, each new section that was added followed the consistent theme of "paradise on earth." Column arcades, fountains with running water, and reflecting pools were used to make add to the aesthetic and functional complexity. In every case, the exterior is left plain and austere. Sun and wind are freely admitted. Blue, red, and a golden yellow, all somewhat faded through lapse of time and exposure, are the colours chiefly employed.

The decoration consists, as a rule, of stiff, conventional foliage, Arabic inscriptions, and geometrical patterns wrought into arabesques. Painted tiles are largely used as panelling for the walls. The palace complex is designed in the Mudéjar style which is characteristic of western elements reinterpreted into Islamic forms and largely popular during the Reconquista, a period of history in which the Christian kings reconquered Spain from the Muslims.

The Alhambra resembles many medieval Christian strongholds in its threefold arrangement as a castle, a palace and a residential annex for subordinates. The alcazaba or citadel, its oldest part, is built on the isolated and precipitous foreland which terminates the plateau on the northwest. That is all massive outer walls, towers and ramparts are left. On its watchtower, the Torre de la Vela, 25 m (85 ft) high, the flag of Ferdinand and Isabella was first raised, in token of the Spanish conquest of Granada on January 2, 1492. A turret containing a large bell was added in the 18th century and restored after being damaged by lightning in 1881. Beyond the Alcazaba is the palace of the Moorish rulers, or Alhambra properly so-called; and beyond this, again, is the Alhambra Alta (Upper Alhambra), originally tenanted by officials and courtiers.

Access from the city to the Alhambra Park is afforded by the Puerta de las Granadas (Gate of Pomegranates), a triumphal arch dating from the 15th century. A steep ascent leads past the Pillar of Charles V, a fountain erected in 1554, to the main entrance of the Alhambra. This is the Puerta Judiciaria (Gate of Judgment), a massive horseshoe archway surmounted by a square tower and used by the Moors as an informal court of justice. The hand of Fatima, with fingers outstretched as a talisman against the evil eye, is carved above this gate on the exterior; a key, the symbol of authority, occupies the corresponding place on the interior. A narrow passage leads inward to the Plaza de los Aljibes (Place of the Cisterns), a broad open space which divides the Alcazaba from the Moorish palace. To the left of the passage rises the Torre del Vino (Wine Tower), built in 1345 and used in the 16th century as a cellar. On the right is the palace of Charles V, a smaller Renaissance building.

The Royal Complex consists of three main parts: Mexuar, Serallo, and the Harem. The Mexuar is modest in decor and houses the functional areas for conducting business and administration. Strapwork is used to decorate the surfaces in Mexuar. The ceilings, floors, and trim are made of dark wood and are in sharp contrast to white, plaster walls. Serallo, built during the reign of Yusef I in the 14th century, contains the Patio de los Arrayanes. Brightly colored interiors featured dado panels, yesería, azulejo, cedar, and artesonado. Artesonado are highly decorative ceilings and other woodwork. Lastly, the Harem is also elaborately decorated and contains the living quarters for the wives and mistresses of the Arabic monarchs. This area contains a bathroom with running, hot and cold water, baths, and pressurized water for showering. The bathrooms were open to the elements in order to allow in light and air. The Harem also features representations of human forms, which is forbidden under Islamic law. The Christian artisans were most likely commissioned to design artwork that would be placed in the palace and the tolerant Muslim rulers allowed the work to stay.

The present entrance to the Palacio Árabe, or Casa Real (Moorish palace), is by a small door from which a corridor connects to the Patio de los Arrayanes (Court of the Myrtles), also called the Patio de la Alberca (Court of the Blessing or Court of the Pond), from the Arabic birka, "pool". The birka helped to cool the palace and acted as a symbol of power. Because water was usually in short supply, the technology required to keep these pools full was expensive and difficult. The aim of the pools was to give the impression that the pool had mystical powers because it never evaporated, making them form a good opinion of their leader.[citation needed] This court is 42 m (140 ft) long by 22 m (74 ft) broad; and in the centre, there is a large pond set in the marble pavement, full of goldfish, and with myrtles growing along its sides. There are galleries on the north and south sides; that on the south is 7 m (27 ft) high and supported by a marble colonnade. Underneath it, to the right, was the principal entrance, and over it are three windows with arches and miniature pillars. From this court, the walls of the Torre de Comares are seen rising over the roof to the north and reflected in the pond.

The Salón de los Embajadores (Hall of the Ambassadors) is the largest in the Alhambra and occupies all the Torre de Comares. It is a square room, the sides being 12 m (37 ft) in length, while the centre of the dome is 23 m (75 ft) high. This was the grand reception room, and the throne of the sultan was placed opposite the entrance. It was in this setting that Christopher Columbus received Isabel and Ferdinand's support to sail to the New World. The tiles are nearly 4 ft (1.2 m) high all round, and the colours vary at intervals. Over them is a series of oval medallions with inscriptions, interwoven with flowers and leaves. There are nine windows, three on each facade, and the ceiling is decorated with inlaid-work of white, blue and gold, in the shape of circles, crowns and stars. The walls are covered with varied stucco works, surrounding many ancient escutcheons.

The Patio de los Leones (Court of the Lions) is an oblong court, 116 ft (35 m) in length by 66 ft (20 m) in width, surrounded by a low gallery supported on 124 white marble columns. A pavilion projects into the court at each extremity, with filigree walls and light domed roof. The square is paved with coloured tiles, and the colonnade with white marble; while the walls are covered 5 ft (1.5 m) up from the ground with blue and yellow tiles, with a border above and below enamelled blue and gold. The columns supporting the roof and gallery are irregularly placed. They are adorned by varieties of foliage, etc.; about each arch there is a large square of arabesques; and over the pillars is another square of filigree work. In the centre of the court is the Fountain of Lions, an alabaster basin supported by the figures of twelve lions in white marble, not designed with sculptural accuracy, but as symbols of strength and courage.[citation needed]

The Sala de los Abencerrajes (Hall of the Abencerrages) derives its name from a legend according to which the father of Boabdil, last king of Granada, having invited the chiefs of that line to a banquet, massacred them here.[citation needed] This room is a perfect square, with a lofty dome and trellised windows at its base. The roof is decorated in blue, brown, red and gold, and the columns supporting it spring out into the arch form in a remarkably beautiful manner. Opposite to this hall is the Sala de las dos Hermanas (Hall of the two Sisters), so-called from two white marble slabs laid as part of the pavement. These slabs measure 50 by 22 cm (15 by 7½ in). There is a fountain in the middle of this hall, and the roof —a dome honeycombed with tiny cells, all different, and said to number 5000— is an example of the so-called "stalactite vaulting" of the Moors.

Among the other features of the Alhambra are the Sala de la Justicia (Hall of Justice), the Patio del Mexuar (Court of the Council Chamber), the Patio de Daraxa (Court of the Vestibule), and the Peinador de la Reina (Queen's Robing Room), in which there is similar architecture and decoration. The palace and the Upper Alhambra also contain baths, ranges of bedrooms and summer-rooms, a whispering gallery and labyrinth, and vaulted sepulchres.

The original furniture of the palace is represented by the vase of the Alhambra, a specimen of Moorish ceramic art, dating from 1320 and belonging to the first period of Moorish porcelain. It is 1.3 m (4 ft 3 in) high; the ground is white, and the enamelling is blue, white and gold.

Of the outlying buildings in connection with the Alhambra, the foremost in interest is the Palacio de Generalife or Gineralife (the Muslim Jennat al Arif, "Garden of Arif," or "Garden of the Architect"). This villa probably dates from the end of the 13th century but has been restored several times. Its gardens, however, with their clipped hedges, grottos, fountains, and cypress avenues, are said to retain their original Moorish character.[who?] The Villa de los Martires (Martyrs' Villa), on the summit of Monte Mauror, commemorates by its name the Christian slaves who were forced to build the Alhambra and confined here in subterranean cells. The Torres Bermejas (Vermilion Towers), also on Monte Mauror, are a well-preserved Moorish fortification, with underground cisterns, stables, and accommodation for a garrison of 200 men. Several Roman tombs were discovered in 1829 and 1857 at the base of Monte Mauror.

The Alhambra, Generalife and Albayzín of Granada are listed as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

 

Alhambra in literature

Parts of the following novels are set in the Alhambra:

•Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra. It is a collection of essays, verbal sketches, and stories. Irving lived in the palace while writing the book and was instrumental in reintroducing the site to Western audiences.

•Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh

•Amin Maalouf's Leon L'Africain, depicting the reconquest of Granada by the Catholic kings.

•Philippa Gregory's The Constant Princess.

•Langston Hughes's poem "Movies" in his collection Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)

•Federico Garcia Lorca's play Dona Rosita the Spinster, mentioned by title character Dona Rosita in her song/speech to the Manola sisters.

•Paulo Coelho's novel The Alchemist

•Ali Smith's The Accidental

Alhambra in music

Alhambra has directly inspired musical compositions as Francisco Tárrega's famous tremolo study for guitar Recuerdos de la Alhambra (Memories of the Alhambra)[1], Claude Debussy's piece for 2 pianos Lindaraja (composed in 1901) and the prelude La Puerta del Vino (in the 2nd book of preludes, composed 1912-13).[2].

"En los Jardines del Generalife", first movement of Manuel de Falla's Noches en los Jardines de España, and other pieces by composers such as Ruperto Chapí (Los Gnomos de la Alhambra,1891) Tomás Bretón [2] and many others are included in a stream called by scholars "Alhambrismo".[3] [4]

In pop and folk music, Alhambra is the subject of the Ghymes song of the same name.[citation needed] The rock band, The Grateful Dead, released a song called Terrapin Station on the 1977 album of the same name. The song itself was a series of small compositions penned by Robert Hunter and put to music by Jerry Garcia, a lyrical section of this Terrapin Station "suite" was called Alhambra.

In September 2006, Canadian singer/composer Loreena McKennitt performed live at the Alhambra. The resulting footage premiered on PBS and was later released as a three-disc DVD/CD set entitled Nights from the Alhambra.

Alhambra is the title of an EP by Canadian rock band The Tea Party, containing acoustic versions of a few of their songs.[citation needed]

British composer Julian Anderson's Alhambra Fantasy (1999–2000), commissioned by the London Sinfonietta, was influenced by the architecture of the Alhambra Palace. In two sharply contrasting sections the work relates different facets of the Alhambra – the first, rough and energetic, is related to the building of the Palace itself[citation needed], dominated by the sounds of hammering and banging on percussion. Short counterpointed and juxtaposed motifs create, for some, the impression of a mosaic[citation needed]. The second section evokes the beautiful landscape of the Vega[citation needed]. The composer is careful to point out[citation needed] that he has not written programmatic music, although his concern is with the splendour of the palace itself, its place in the landscape and its relevance to the complex and turbulent history of the region.

In 1976, filmmaker Christopher Nupen filmed "The Song of the Guitar" at the Alhambra. It was an hour long program featuring the legendary Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia. It is now available on DVD.

M. C. Escher's visit in 1922 inspired his following work on regular divisions of the plane after studying the Moorish use of symmetry in the Alhambra tiles.

Influence in 19th- and 20th-century architecture

From 19th-century Romantic interpretations until the present day, many buildings and portions of buildings worldwide have been inspired by the Alhambra: there is a Moorish Revival house in Stillwater, Minnesota which was created and named after the Alhambra. Also, the main portion of the Irvine Spectrum Center in Irvine, California, is a postmodern version of the Court of the Lions.

One also recalls the Alhambra Theatre in central Bradford, England [3].

 

The sad story of SimpliCITY

 

On the 26 May 2013, First Glasgow rebranded its services as SimpliCITY and made significant changes to these. The premise of SimpliCITY was threefold - 1. A regular and reliable service 2. Easy to understand routes and 3. Value for money fares. This was one of the biggest shake ups in the Glasgow network for several years and the second such major rebranding undertaken by First.

 

The first such rebranding took place in 1999. Having seen off Stagecoach in the infamous ‘Glasgow Bus War’ of 1997, First decided to use its biggest bus subsidiary as a test bed for its Overground concept. First identified that buses were at a bit of a disadvantage to rail and light rail. Passengers knew that if they stepped on a platform, a train or tram would arrive at some point. Buses didn’t have that feeling of security. In addition, as a result of deregulation, the bus network could be seen be unfamiliar and unfriendly.

 

To be fair there was a degree in truth in this. Many of the bus routes were based on earlier tram and trolley bus routes which had been extended beyond the city boundary into other areas following deregulation. Buses often ran convoluted routes to ensure that they ran through areas that enabled them to pick up as many passengers as possible and routes overlapped and shared common roads and streets. Some parts of the city, which had been recently developed were poorly served whereas other areas, where properties had been demolished as the city evolved, had more buses than they actually needed.

 

First identified key routes and guaranteed a ‘turn up and go frequency’ of ten minutes or less daytime on these. The services would be allocated a specific route colour and the buses would have this colour incorporated into the uniform style of branding on the vehicles, with heavy play on the Overground branding. Ideally, these would be run by low-floor accessible vehicles in First’s new ‘Barbie’ livery. However, Glasgow still had significant numbers of vehicles in its allover and somewhat dreary red livery so overground branding was also added to these. Some routes, such as the 262 (Glasgow - Airdrie), only offered a ten-minute frequency on part of their route but were still afforded full Overground status.

 

One route, the 62 (Baillieston- Faifley) was to be a showcase route. It was to be run with new articulated low-floor buses and had bus stops and road layouts adjusted to accommodate these. It would also have a 24-hour service on it, which mirrored the same route overnight. Previously, night bus services had run their own routes, generally in a loop from the city centre.

 

First Glasgow heavily promoted the Overground concept, which also had a map designed which shamelessly aped the London Underground in that it showed where the buses went, even if the map itself wasn’t quite accurate in terms of geography. Most of the routes ran into Glasgow proper, the exceptions being the 81 (Clydebank - Duntocher Circular) and the 201 (Airdrie - East Kilbride). The plan was that routes wouldn’t be changed for ten years, to give confidence to the public. The Glasgow Overground proved the concept and First rolled out the Overground to other locations where it was the dominant operator, mainly large cities. For smaller locations, it introduced a scaled down version which it called Metro.

 

However, the Overground only really covered around 25 of the services run by First Glasgow. It didn’t cover the others. The Overground saw some of these other services pruned, others withdrawn entirely. What was left was generally run by older vehicles and gave the impression of a two-tier service. Also the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) was less than chuffed at the sudden need to cover lots of extra tendered services which it wasn’t expecting to and led to quite a public spat between the SPT and First Glasgow.

 

Of course, Glasgow has never been a city good at running branded buses and it was this that led to the Overground’s downfall. First Glasgow struggled to keep branded buses on the routes and as buses were repainted or replaced, the branding fell out of use. The routes ‘not changed for ten years’ proved to be somewhat hollow as routes were changed after as little as eighteen months. As the fleet became a sea of Barbie, the Overground branding disappeared and you’d struggle to find much mention of it on the fleet after a few years or indeed what it meant on the odd vehicle that did still carry it.

 

After that, most buses just reverted to plain old corporate Barbie livery and were used on whatever routes the schedulers saw fit to plonk them on. There were some route branding attempts over the years such as Clyde Coaster, the X-Class (for express routes to Cumbernauld), Braehead Bullet and Airlink but most buses just kept whatever corporate livery they happened to have.

 

Fast forward now to 2013. Glasgow has been selected as host city for the Commonwealth Games and First felt it was time for another revamp. This time, the idea was to simplify the Glasgow bus network. Routes were again recast and turn up and go frequencies were promoted. The major difference between the Overground and the new concept - called SimpliCITY - was that some of the routes were renumbered. The idea that the most prominent routes would be lower numbered, for example the aforementioned 62 became the 2. Other routes that shared common parts of the city with other services were combined, such as the 38/38A/38B/38C and 38E which replaced the 39 (38C), 42 (38B) and 213 (38E). This would group services into similar common numbers. This being Glasgow, there were some oddities such as service 40/40A (Clydebank/Milngavie- Easterhouse) which was renumbered 60/60A but the concept was to simplify the bus network.

 

Having learned from the Overground, no route-branding was to be used. In this case a standard branding was to be used, with branding highlighting the high frequency into Glasgow. Oddly, it never mentioned going back out of the city but maybe it was felt that once you went into Glasgow, you didn’t want to leave…It was designed to compliment the recently introduced First Olympia livery. A blue branding was selected but it sat uncomfortably on Barbie coloured buses.

 

It was launched just as First Glasgow was receiving a massive influx of new vehicles, mainly Alexander Dennis Enviro 300s, its biggest intake of vehicles for some years which were the first vehicles to feature First’s new design of interior as well as the new fangled wonder of wi-fi, although some FiG buses had this as far back as 2010. If that seems fancy new technology at the time, bear in mind it’s still not even standard on buses in London today. It was also receiving cascaded former First Games Transport (ex-First London) Dennis/TransBus Tridents and some cascaded Volvo B7TLs direct from First London, to make the fleet more accessible. This produced a notable uplift in fleet quality.

 

The new SimpliCITY branding was heavily promoted on these new to the fleet vehicles and there was to be information packs sent to most Glasgow households and social media was also to be used with cartoon style characters to promote it. Some buses also carried these characters with adverts encouraging use of things such as First’s mobile tickets. Although I must have been one of the households that never got one….

 

However the launch didn’t go exactly to plan. It was done over a weekend and because of that, not all the buses had time to have their electronic destination displays reprogrammed. As such much confusion reigned in the minds of the travelling public, especially when virtually new buses appeared with paper numbers in their windscreens initially. It didn’t present a good start and harked back to the good old days of the Scottish Bus Group where such paper destinations and numbers were commonplace.

 

However, over time SimpliCITY settled down. As more buses received the branding, it became more common, even if it didn’t really make clear what it’s connection was with Greater Glasgow was. Other places got in on the act, such as Leeds, which introduced the Pulse branding, in a similar style to SimpliCITY, but with a bright pink logo. This was to emphasise that First buses were the lifeblood and heartbeat of that lovely city. However, SimpliCITY was unique to Glasgow but in an eerily similar re-run of Overground, some routes were changed barely a year after SimpliCITY was launched. So much for simplification.

 

Only one route was ever route branded under SimpliCITY. This was the 9/9A service between Paisley/Braehead and Glasgow Buchanan Bus Station. This featured ‘SimpliCITY from First’ in the branding and the buses (Volvo B7RLEs/Wright Eclipse Urbans) had pink fronts on First Olympia livery. A similar design, but with pale blue fronts, was used on the 240 service between Glasgow and Lanarkshire. However in this case, a fleet name of First Lanarkshire Connect was used. There was no mention of SImpliCITY. Perhaps that was an omen.

 

However, a new broom in charge at the company arrived in 2017 and one of the first things he did was to launch research into SimpliCITY as to how effective it was. The message that came back was frank. It just hadn’t worked or resonated with the public. Most of the public thought it was another bus company and even its own staff were unsure what it was trying to state. So a decision was made that it would be discontinued in favour of the new First Urban livery and route branding. Bare in mind this was barely four years after it’s launch.

 

One of the few buses still carrying SimpliCITY colours today is 69067 (SF06GYC) seen here on the 7 service rather appropriately, given as it’s one of the routes created under the SimpliCITY, replacing parts of the 12 and 54 routes. This service is shortly to receive route-branded brand new Enviro 200EV’s from First’s large delivery of such vehicles, so I suspect this bus is in the twilight of its time with FIG. It’s missing the SimpliCITY branding on the lower panels between the wheels and some vehicles had the SimpliCITY name on the upper panels where the emergency exit is on the bus. But as the fleet is repainted and upgraded, SimpliCITY will pass into history as no more than a rather sad if slightly less than interesting footnote in the history of public transport in Scotland’s largest and greatest city.

 

One final note. Corgi produced a model of a Gemini in First Glasgow’s SimpliCITY’s branding (37541 - SF58ATY) which can be sourced if you look hard enough. It’s definitely one of the more sought after models and those that do appear are in high demand with premium prices. I suppose maybe that just goes to show there’s a demand for models of other than variations on Borismasters. Perhaps that’s SimpliCITY’s true legacy.

St Mary, Kelvedon, Essex

 

Edith Webster as the Blessed Virgin at the Annunciation by Louis Davis for Powell and Sons, 1898.

 

The angel Gabriel from heaven came,

his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame;

"All hail," said he, "thou lowly maiden Mary,

most highly favored lady," Gloria!

"For know a blessed Mother thou shalt be,

all generations laud and honor thee,

thy Son shall be Emmanuel, by seers foretold,

most highly favored lady," Gloria!

Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head,

"To me be as it pleaseth God," she said,

"my soul shall laud and magnify his holy Name."

Most highly favored lady, Gloria!

Of her, Emmanuel, the Christ, was born

in Bethlehem, all on a Christmas morn,

and Christian folk throughout the world will ever say--

"Most highly favored lady," Gloria!

 

- 17th Century Basque carol, translated by Sabine Baring-Gould.

 

Louis Davis was one of the finest stained glass artists of the Arts & Crafts movement. He was born in 1860 in Abingdon in Oxfordshire, and studied under Christopher Whall. He worked alongside Mary Lowndes in the Glass House, London.

 

In the summer of 1892 when he was in his early thirties, Davis was on a walking holiday in the Norfolk Broads. It was a hot day, and he knocked on a farmhouse door to ask for a drink of water. The door was answered by the farmer's daughter. Her name was Edith Webster. She was 15 years old, and Davis fell in love with her.

 

Edith was born in Honing, Norfolk in March 1877. Her father was a farmer with a particular interest in new techniques and developments. He would have found the friendship of a London artist like Davis fascinating. Davis took the young Ethel to be his pupil, and perhaps his lover, and later they lived as man and wife. But there there is no record that they ever actually married. The suggestion in Davis's biography of a date in the mid-1890s cannot be substantiated. At the time of the 1911 census, Davis would claim that he and Edith had been married for ten years, but there is no record for 1900/01 either.

 

It was not just love. Edith was his muse. The sketches he did of her as a young girl in the early 1890s would provide the figures for his windows for the next thirty years. Again and again the young Edith appears as Faith, Hope, Charity, various angels and above all as the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration.

 

There were no children, and it is possible that their relationship was never sexually consummated. At the time of the 1911 census Edith's younger sister, the 19 year old Ethel, was also living in the household as a companion.

 

In 1915, Louis and Edith were poisoned by coal gas leaking from a faulty fire. She recovered, but he didn't. He suffered a stroke, and, confined to a wheelchair, he had to give instructions to his assistants to create his wonderful windows, many still depicting the young Edith as he had drawn her a quarter of a century before. His worsening health meant that his output became less and less, but he lived to the age of 81 and died in 1941. Edith survived him and also lived on into her eighties, dying in the 1960s.

 

Sabine Baring-Gould was a clergyman, squire, novelist, hymn-writer, social reformer, antiquarian, folklorist and folk song collector. He was born in 1834 on the family estate at Lew Trenchard in Devon. He spent much of his childhood on the Grand Tour, and consequently could speak five languages fluently, as well as Latin and Ancient Greek. From an early age he was fascinated by the past. At the age of 15 he unearthed the floor of a Roman villa in south-western France, and excavated it himself.

 

But his father was obsessed with the Great Exhibition of 1851, and thoroughly disapproved of the young Sabine's desire to read Classics. Instead, he made him study mathematics, but as Sabine would observe in later life, "I cannot add two numbers together, and when there is a bill to be accounted I must take it into the kitchens for one of the maids to account it." His father eventually relented, although they never really spoke to one another again, and after studying Classics at Cambridge University Sabine Baring-Gould took Holy Orders.

 

During this period of estrangement from his father, Sabine Baring-Gould worked in a High Anglican church in the London Docks, where the work of the priests among the desperately poor dregs of society showed him his vocation. He became a curate of a poor industrial parish in Yorkshire, and there, at the age of 30, he fell in love with Grace Taylor, the 16 year old daughter of a millhand. Both families disapproved of the relationship, but Baring-Gould's wise vicar arranged for Grace to be sent to learn middle-class manners for two years before marriage, and in the event theirs was a long and happy marriage, lasting half a century and producing fifteen children.

 

To support himself and his young wife, Baring-Gould began to write novels, which were an instant success. He was inspired by the gothic horrors of the works of Emily Bronte and William Wilkie Collins, although it must be said he was never as good at building up tension as they were. In 1871 he became vicar of East Mersea on Mersea Island in Essex, where he transformed both the parish church and the lives of the poor fishermen. It was on Mersea Island that he wrote his most successful novel, Mehalah, referred to at the time as 'the Wuthering Heights of the Essex salt marshes'.

 

In 1872 his father died and he inherited the Lew Trenchard estate, but it was not until 1881 that Baring-Gould moved his family down to Devon. This was because he waited until the living of Lew Trenchard church became vacant, and he then installed himself as both Squire and Rector. He spent the next 42 years in Lew Trenchard, working on his threefold project - to nurture the parish into a community based on Christian social justice, to rebuild the houses of the Lew Trenchard estate workers so they were fit to live in, and to restore Lew Trenchard church to the medieval integrity destroyed by his uncle when Rector 40 years previously.

 

He continued to write and travel widely, becoming interested in antiquarian aspects of Devon and Cornwall. He collected hundreds of folksongs from the Devon farmworkers and fishermen, a precious record of an oral tradition now lost to us, but donated in its entirety by Baring-Gould to Plymouth city library where it can still be explored today. He wrote hymns, most famously Onward Christian Soldiers and Now the Day is Over. The estate was never well off and he relied on income from his books to pursue his projects. At one time, there were more books by Baring-Gould on the British Library catalogue than by any other living author. Meanwhile, Grace managed the household magnificently.

 

In 1916, during the First World War, Baring-Gould's daughter Mary heard a sermon in London which attacked Onward Christian Soldiers on the grounds that the Church of God, far from being a mighty army, was nothing but an undisciplined rabble. Unsurprisingly perhaps, when she wrote to him about it he agreed with the preacher.

 

The hymn was in the Methodist Hymn Book by the end of the 19th Century, and in another letter to Mary in 1916 he told her that some char-a-bancs from Bude, packed with Methodies (Methodists) and their minister are arriving this morning to see the church, grounds and house. I hope they will not depart singing 'We are not divided, all One Body We' for it would be a lie.

 

The story that when the Bishop of Exeter had objected to the line With the Cross of Jesus Going on Before because it suggested ritualism, Baring-Gould had sarcastically offered to substitute it with With the Cross of Jesus left behind the door, turns out to have been made up by Baring-Gould's son. But there is no doubt that the Bishop did object to the hymn. Baring-Gould was scornful of him, partly because the Bishop fancied himself as a hymn writer, and his verses were excrutiating and thankfully long-forgotten today.

 

Baring-Gould was an old-style paternalistic reformer, and he never really recovered from the First World War, which killed several of his grandsons and devastated English rural life and tradition. His wife Grace died in April 1916, and he buried her under a stone with the inscription Dimidium Animae, 'half my soul'.

 

Sabine Baring-Gould died on 2nd January 1923. He was 89 years old, and he was buried beside his wife in Lew Trenchard churchyard.

_

 

A bright day with a northerly wind might not have been an ideal scenario in which to work my way south to north, but it avoided waiting for connections. So at 0920 I was disembarking at Kelvedon station. Kelvedon cum Feering is a joint village, a large one, larger than some towns, but undoubtedly a village in character. The continuous High Street of both is the old A12, which bypassed it as a dual carriageway to the east in the 1960s, but it still seemed pretty busy to me. The two parts are historically separated by the infant River Blackwater, and the old part of Feering is separated from the rest by the Norwich to London railway line. This makes the village sound hellish, but actually it is very pleasant, with some good late Medieval and Georgian domestic buildings.

 

The two parish churches are at the westerly and easterly extremities of the village, the station about halfway in between. I had already made plans in advance by ringing Kelvedon rectory the day before, where a very nice lady told me that "yes, Kelvedon church is open every day", and she also gave me the contact for Feering, which I had heard was a fortress. So, first to Kelvedon church.

 

Locked. I'd say I couldn't quite believe it, but I always expect this kind of thing to happen. There was no keyholder notice, so if I hadn't rung the rectory the day before, I would just have assumed that Kelvedon was a fortress too. It isn't: I rang the rectory, but there was no answer. I rang the churchwarden whose number I fortunately still had on the same piece of paper, and he was really apologetic. "The Rector usually opens up on a Tuesday, and he's away on retreat. I'll be there in five minutes." And he was, still apologetic, and he unlocked the church and hurriedly left me to it. This is a big urban church, handsome in its setting of a mature, sloping churchyard, but indistinguishable from any other church of its type from Cromer to Calcutta once you get inside. Excellent 1898 window by Louis Davis for Powell & Co, outstanding of its kind. Execrable adjacent window by the same workshop in 1938. I'd arranged to meet the Feering churchwarden at 10, but the delay in getting into Kelvedon made time tight, so I was glad it had little to detain me!

This grand panorama of the Southern Patagonia Icefield (center) was imaged by an Expedition 38 crew member on the International Space Station on one of the rare clear days in the southern Andes Mountains. With an area of 13,000 square kilometers, the icefield is the largest temperate ice sheet in the Southern Hemisphere.

 

Storms that swirl into the region from the southern Pacific Ocean (top) bring rain and snow (equivalent to a total of 2-11 meters of rainfall per year) resulting in the buildup of the ice sheet shown here (center). During the ice ages the glaciers were far larger. Geologists now know that ice tongues extended far onto the plains in the foreground, completely filling the great Patagonian lakes on repeated occasions.

 

Similarly, ice tongues extended into the dense network of fjords (arms of the sea) on the Pacific side of the icefield. Ice tongues today appear tiny compared to the view that an "ice age" astronaut would have seen. A study of the surface topography of sixty-three glaciers, based on Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data, compared data from 2000 to data from studies going back about 30 years (1968-1975). Many glacier tongues showed significant annual "retreat" of their ice fronts, a familiar signal of climate change. The study also revealed that the almost invisible loss by glacier thinning is far more significant in explaining ice loss.

 

The researchers concluded that volume loss by frontal collapse is 4-10 times smaller than that caused by thinning. Scaled over the entire icefield, including frontal loss (so-called calving when ice masses collapse into the lakes), it was calculated that 13.5 cubic kilometers of ice was lost each year over the study period. This number becomes more meaningful compared with the rate measured in the last five years of the study (1995-2000), when the rate increased almost threefold, averaging 38.7 cubic kilometers per year.

 

Extrapolating results from the low altitude glacier tongues implies that the high plateau ice on the spine of the Andes is thinning as well. In the decade since this study the often-imaged Upsala Glacier has retreated a further three kilometers, as shown recently in images taken by crew members aboard the space station. Glacier Pio X, named for Pope Pius X, is the only large glacier that is growing in length.

 

About Crew Earth Observations:

 

In Crew Earth Observations (CEO), crewmembers on the International Space Station (ISS) photograph the Earth from their unique point of view located 200 miles above the surface. Photographs record how the planet is changing over time, from human-caused changes like urban growth and reservoir construction, to natural dynamic events such as hurricanes, floods and volcanic eruptions. A major emphasis of CEO is to monitor disaster response events in support of the International Disaster Charter (IDC). CEO imagery provides researchers on Earth with key data to understand the planet from the perspective of the ISS. Crewmembers have been photographing Earth from space since the early Mercury missions beginning in 1961. The continuous images taken from the ISS ensure this record remains unbroken.

 

Image credit: NASA

 

Original image:

www.nasa.gov/content/southern-patagonia-icefield/

 

More about space station research:

www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

 

View more photos like this in the "NASA Earth Images" Flickr photoset:

www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05

 

________________________________

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...

A Curious Meditation

by James Smith, 1855

 

As I was walking out for exercise in the fields one morning, having been pleading with God to give me some profitable subject for meditation — I suddenly fell into this train of thought, which I afterwards wrote down; and, as it may interest and profit some, it is here inserted.

 

There are three things which I especially desire:

more communion with God,

more likeness to the Lord Jesus, and

more usefulness to his Church.

 

There are three things which I deprecate:

the withering of my gifts,

the decay of my graces, and

to become useless in the Lord's vineyard.

 

There are three things which I dread:

that I should become a proud professor,

that I should become a lukewarm Christian, and

that I should fall into the hands of man.

 

There are three things which I sometimes wish for (but which God will never grant me on earth):

to be totally free from sin,

to be delivered from a daily cross,

and to be always happy.

 

There are three things which I feel sure of:

hatred by the world,

opposition by hypocrites, and

love by spiritual believers.

 

There are three foes which always oppose me:

the world,

the flesh, and

the devil.

 

There are three friends which will always stand by me:

a peaceful conscience,

the bride of Jesus, and

the Lamb of God.

 

There are three deaths which have been experienced by me:

a death in sin,

a death to sin,

a death to the law of God.

 

There are three lives which shall be lived by me:

a temporal life,

a spiritual life, and

an eternal life.

 

There are three things which burden me:

a body of sin and death,

the opposition I meet with, and

my own ingratitude.

 

There are three things which support me:

the Father's love,

the Son's redemption, and

the Spirit's work.

 

There are three things which are a sore trial to me:

an irritable temper,

a flippant tongue, and

self-love.

 

There are three things which bring strong consolation to me:

the open fountain of Christ blood,

the promises of God, and

the Savior's free invitation.

 

There are three things which are especially dear to me:

the Word of God,

the throne of grace, and

the ordinances of the Lord's house.

 

There are three things lacking in me:

perfect penitence,

entire resignation, and

fervent love.

 

There are three books which are very useful to me:

the book of nature,

the book of Holy Scriptures, and

the book of my own experience.

 

There are three teachers which are employed to instruct me:

the Holy Spirit,

a special providence, and

the rod of God.

 

There are three things which are manifested in me:

the nature of sin,

the power of grace, and

the faithfulness of God.

 

There are three things which would be greatly useful to me:

more humility,

spiritual wisdom, and

enlightened zeal.

 

There are three things which characterize me:

weakness,

poverty, and

sinfulness.

 

Yet, there are three things which may be seen in me:

Christ's strength,

God's grace, and

the Spirit's holiness.

 

There are three things which are feared by me:

a stiff neck,

a hard heart, and

a presumptuous spirit.

 

There are three things which are matter of joy to me:

the conversion of sinners,

that my name is written in heaven, and

the glory to be given me at the appearing of Jesus Christ.

 

There are three things which must be renounced by me:

preconceived opinions,

worldly wisdom, and

natural religion.

 

There are three things which must be held fast by me:

the Word of truth,

my confidence in God, and

my profession of the gospel.

 

There are three things which are especially required of me:

to do justly,

to love mercy, and

to walk humbly with my God.

 

There are three things which are promised to me:

tribulation in the world,

sufficient strength in Jesus, and

eternal life at the end of my course.

 

There are three things which the Lord observes and approves in me:

the work of faith,

the labor of love, and

the patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

There is a threefold deliverance which is effected for me:

from the dominion of sin,

from the present evil world, and

from my deserved doom.

 

There are three things which I would trample under foot:

unfounded prejudice,

vain distinctions, and

self-righteousness.

 

There are three things which I would aim at daily:

to exalt Christ,

to glorify God, and

to bring sinners to repentance.

 

There are three things which are still sure to me:

a rough road,

changing experiences, and

safety at last.

 

There are three things which are behind me:

a wicked life,

a broken law, and

the pit of destruction.

 

There are three things which are before me:

death,

perfect conformity to Jesus, and

eternal glory.

 

There are three things which are on my right hand:

Satan to resist me,

the Lord Jesus to save me, and

my own heart set on things above.

 

There are three things which are on my left hand:

the lust of the flesh,

the lust of the eye, and

the pride of life.

 

There are three things which I greatly admire:

the Savior's person,

the promises of God, and

the instruments he employs in carrying on his work.

 

There are three things which much please me:

the doctrines of the gospel,

the witness of the Spirit, and

the light of God's countenance.

 

There are three things which I delight in:

that Jehovah is my God,

the comfort he imparts to me, and

the riches of glory which are set before me.

 

There are three things which I hate:

the cant of hypocrites,

the flattery of friends, and

the pride of professors.

 

There are three things which are good for me:

to draw near to God,

to be afflicted, and

to sing praises unto the Lord.

 

There are three things which often disgust me:

Satan's temptations,

the powerful working of unbelief, and

the conduct of religious professors.

 

There are three things which are prescribed to me:

to believe in God,

to love the saints, and

to observe the Lord's ordinances.

 

There are three things which are too often neglected by me:

self-examination,

diligent reading of the Bible, and

secret prayer.

 

There are three things which are too deep for me to fully know:

the depravity of my heart,

the devices of Satan, and

the manner of the Spirit's working.

 

There are three things which I wish to leave with the Lord:

to choose my lot in life,

to fight my battles, and

to supply all my needs.

 

There are three things which I do not consider worth having:

a form of godliness, without the power,

a name to live, while dead, and

the commendation of the enemies of Christ.

 

There are three things in which I glory:

the cross of Christ,

my saving knowledge of God, and

the everlasting gospel.

 

There are three things which have been taken from me:

proud free will,

vain boasting, and

enmity to God.

 

There are three things which abide with me:

faith,

hope, and

charity.

 

I am made up of three men:

corruption — the old man,

grace — the new man, and

the body — the outward man.

 

I fill a threefold office:

a prophet in the Church of Christ,

a priest before the altar, and

a king anointed to reign with Christ.

 

I wear a threefold garment:

the righteousness of the Lord Jesus,

the graces of the Holy Spirit, and

the garment of humility.

 

I have been condemned in three courts — and yet justified in them all:

the court of conscience,

the Church of God, and

the court of God's justice.

 

I have been justified three times:

at the resurrection of Christ my substitute,

when faith received his righteousness, and

when good works justified my faith before the world.

 

I am the subject of a threefold sanctification:

by the purpose of the Father,

by the blood of the Son, and

by the cleansing operations of the Holy Spirit.

 

I am a free man of three cities:

the present world,

the church below, and

the Jerusalem which is above.

 

I have been an eye-sore to three parties:

the devil,

the world, and

envious professors.

 

I shall have occupied three peculiar seats:

a dunghill by nature,

among the princes in the Church by grace, and

the throne of glory by special privilege.

 

I shall have three grand holidays:

one when the Holy Spirit sets my soul at liberty,

another when death sets me free from this mortal clay, and

and another when Jesus comes to be glorified in his saints.

 

I shall then have appeared in three different characters:

a vile rebel against God,

a supplicating sinner at mercy's footstool, and

a justified son of God before his throne.

 

I shall have had three fathers:

a human father,

the devil, and

Jehovah himself.

 

I shall have received three laws:

the law of nature,

the moral law of God, and

the law of the Spirit of life.

 

I shall have passed through three gates:

the gate of hope,

the gate into Christ's sheepfold, and

the gate of death.

 

I shall have walked in three ways:

the broad road of destruction,

the highway of holiness, and

Jesus Christ the only way to the Father.

 

I shall have conversed with three distinct classes of beings:

carnal men,

spiritual Christians, and

the Lord himself.

 

I shall have made three appearances:

once all black — like the devil,

then speckled — with nature and grace, and

then all pure — whiter than the driven snow!

 

I shall have undergone three momentous changes:

one at regeneration — when I passed from death unto life,

one at death — when my soul shall be admitted into Heaven, and

one at the resurrection — when my body shall be raised powerful, glorious, and immortal.

 

I view three things as pre-eminently excellent:

the fear of the Lord,

a sound judgment, and

Christ formed in the heart, as the hope of glory.

 

There are three things which I may covet:

the best gifts,

a contrite and humble spirit, and

to be filled with all the fullness of God.

 

There are three things which are removed from me:

the burden of sin,

the wrath of God, and

all condemnation.

 

There are three things which I do not know:

what is before me,

how God will provide for me, and

what I shall be.

 

There are three things which I do know:

that in my flesh dwells no good,

that though I was once blind, now I see, and

that I must needs die.

 

There are three things which are prepared for me:

a fountain to cleanse me,

a robe to adorn me, and

a mansion to receive me.

 

There are three things which await me:

a crown of righteousness,

a palm of victory, and

a throne of glory.

 

There are three things which shall be done for me:

God shall wipe away all tears from my eyes,

God shall remove all cause of pain and sorrow from my nature, and

the Lamb in the midst of the throne shall eternally satisfy me.

 

There are three things which shall never be known by me:

the frown of divine justice,

the curse of holy Jehovah, and

the power of God's anger.

 

There are three things which are hurtful to me:

carnal ease,

the flattery of professors, and

fullness of bread.

 

There are three things which benefit me:

temptation,

affliction, and

opposition.

 

There are three things which are pursued by me:

to know more of the Lord,

to live in peace with all men, and

thorough sanctification.

 

Satan tries to thwart me in three things:

by spoiling my comforts,

hindering my usefulness, and

seeking to devour my soul.

 

Satan has three things to expect:

to be disappointed of his prey,

to be judged by the saints, and

to be eternally punished for his wickedness.

 

There are three things which I would never trust:

my own heart,

an arm of flesh, and

my treacherous memory.

 

There are three subjects which I should never meddle with:

the fall of the angels,

the origin of moral evil, and

how God will justify himself.

 

There are three things which I cannot understand:

the nature of God,

the cause of my election, and

how divinity and humanity constitute one person.

 

There are three things which I should often think of:

what I have been,

what I now am, and

what I shall be.

 

A threefold freedom is granted me:

from the law of God,

from the reign of sin, and

to make use of, and enjoy the Lord Jesus.

 

I am an heir of three worlds:

the natural,

the spiritual, and

the eternal.

 

There are three things which will never grieve me:

that I have been poor in this world,

that I have preached the gospel fully, and

that I am related to Jesus Christ.

 

There are three things which comprise all I wish:

to know God, and glorify him,

to see Jesus, and be like him; and

to be united to the saints, and be eternally happy.

 

There are three things which shall never be heard by me:

Christ reproaching me,

God disowning me, and

the devils triumphing in my everlasting destruction.

 

There are three things which shall be eternally enjoyed by me:

the love of God,

the presence of Jesus, and

the company of the saints.

 

There are three things which will eternally delight me:

to be filled with holiness,

to be employed in praising Jehovah, and

to have gained a complete victory over all my foes.

 

There are three things which must come down:

the pride of men,

the devil's kingdom, and

the cause of error.

 

There are three things which will stand:

the house built on the Rock,

the purpose of God, and

the Messiah's kingdom.

 

There are three things which cannot be removed:

the church of God,

the covenant of grace, and

the kingdom we receive.

 

There are three things which will stand the fiery trial:

genuine faith,

the Word of God, and

a real Christian.

 

Lost sinners are like Satan in three things:

their nature,

their employment, and

their end.

 

Three things make Hell:

the wrath of God,

the stings of a guilty conscience, and

black despair.

 

Three things prove a man a Christian:

worshiping God in the spirit,

rejoicing in Christ Jesus, and

having no confidence in the flesh.

 

Three things are never satisfied:

a doubting Christian,

a worldly miser, and

the man of pleasure.

 

Christ fills three offices:

a prophet — for the ignorant,

a priest — for the guilty, and

a king — for the depraved.

 

Christ has been in three states:

ancient glory,

deep humiliation, and

merited dignity.

 

What more shall I say!

 

If you, reader, are a sincere Christian — do three things daily:

search God's Word,

be much at God's throne, and

be diligent in God's work.

 

If you are an unconverted sinner — do three things immediately:

believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,

repent of every sin you have committed,

seek the witness and pledge of the Holy Spirit in your heart, so iniquity shall not be your ruin.

Where Do Mermaids Come From?

Where do mermaids come from? Mermaid legends are told all over the world. We hear of mermaids in Ireland, Scotland, England, Israel, India, Greece, Syria, China, and in Africa. How is it that so many different cultures across the world have their own mermaid legends? How is it that cultures far away from one another have similar tales of mermaids? Most people believe mermaids are mythical creatures fit for a kid’s imagination and nothing more. But legends come from somewhere. Truth lies behind every legend, including the legends of mermaids and where they come from. A new age concept tells us mermaid origins come from lost civilizations like Lemuria and Atlantis. Learn more below.

 

Edgar Cayce on Atlantis I

364-1

2. Atlantis as a continent is a legendary tale. Whether or not that which has been received through psychic sources has for its basis those few lines given by Plato, or the references made in Holy writ that the earth was divided, depends upon the trend of individual minds. Recently, however, the subject has taken on greater import, since some scientists have declared that such a continent was not only a reasonable and plausible matter, but from evidences being gradually gathered was a very probable condition.

3. As we recognize, there has been considerable given respecting such a lost continent by those channels such as the writer of Two Planets, or Atlantis - or Poseida and Lemuria - that has been published through some of the Theosophical literature. As to whether this information is true or not, depends upon the credence individuals give to this class of information.

4. Then, it has seemed well to many of this group, that those channels through which information may be obtained interest themselves in such an undertaking, as to gain through those channels such information that might be applicable in the lives or experiences of individuals interested in such.

5. From time to time, in and through the information obtained for some individuals in their life readings, has come that they, as an entity or individual, occupied some particular place, or performed some activity in some portion of that continent; or emigrated from the continent to some other portion of the earth's surface at the time, and began some particular development. These must have been a busy folk, for with their advent into other climes (as the information runs) they began to make many changes from the activities in that particular sphere in which they entered.

6. Then, if we are to accept such as being a fact or fiction, may truly depend upon what value to the human family knowledge concerning such a peoples would be in the affairs of individuals today. What contribution would information be to the minds of individuals, as to knowing or understanding the better or closer relations to the Creative Forces? Or, to put it another manner, what would information of that nature mean to my SOUL today?

7. Be it true that there IS the fact of reincarnation, and that souls that once occupied such an environ are entering the earth's sphere and inhabiting individuals in the present, is it any wonder that - if they made such alterations in the affairs of the earth in their day, as to bring destruction upon themselves - if they are entering now, they might make many changes in the affairs of peoples and individuals in the present? Are they, then, BEING born into the world? If so, what WERE their environs - and will those environs mean in a material world today?

 

364-3

1. EC: Yes, we have the subject and those conditions. As has been said, much data has been received from time to time through psychic forces as respecting conditions in or through the period, or ages, of this continent's existence. That the continent existed is being proven as a fact.

2. Then, what took place during the period, or periods, when it was being broken up? What became of the inhabitants? What was the character of their civilization? Are there any evidences of those, or any portion of, the inhabitants' escape? The POSITION of the continent, and the like, MUST be of interest to peoples in the present day, if either by inference that individuals are being born into the earth plane to develop in the present, or are people being guided in their spiritual interpretation of individuals' lives or developments BY the spirits of those who inhabited such a continent. In either case, if these be true, they ARE WIELDING - and are to wield - an influence upon the happenings of the present day world.

3. The position as the continent Atlantis occupied, is that as between the Gulf of Mexico on the one hand - and the Mediterranean upon the other. Evidences of this lost civilization are to be found in the Pyrenees and Morocco on the one hand, British Honduras, Yucatan and America upon the other. There are some protruding portions within this that must have at one time or another been a portion of this great continent. The British West Indies or the Bahamas, and a portion of same that may be seen in the present - if the geological survey would be made in some of these - especially, or notably, in Bimini and in the Gulf Stream through this vicinity, these may be even yet determined.

4. What, then, are the character of the peoples? To give any proper conception, may we follow the line of a group, or an individual line, through this continent's existence - and gain from same something of their character, their physiognomy, and their spiritual and physical development.

5. In the period, then - some hundred, some ninety-eight thousand years before the entry of Ram into India [See 364-3, Par. R2] - there lived in this land of Atlantis one Amilius [?], who had first NOTED that of the separations of the beings as inhabited that portion of the earth's sphere or plane of those peoples into male and female as separate entities, or individuals. As to their forms in the physical sense, these were much RATHER of the nature of THOUGHT FORMS, or able to push out OF THEMSELVES in that direction in which its development took shape in thought - much in the way and manner as the amoeba would in the waters of a stagnant bay, or lake, in the present. As these took form, by the gratifying of their own desire for that as builded or added to the material conditions, they became hardened or set - much in the form of the existent human body of the day, with that of color as partook of its surroundings much in the manner as the chameleon in the present. Hence coming into that form as the red, or the mixture peoples - or colors; known then later by the associations as the RED race. These, then, able to use IN their gradual development all the forces as were manifest in their individual surroundings, passing through those periods of developments as has been followed more closely in that of the yellow, the black, or the white races, in other portions of the world; yet with their immediate surroundings, with the facilities for the developments, these became much speedier in this particular portion of the globe than in others - and while the destruction of this continent and the peoples are far beyond any of that as has been kept as an absolute record, that record in the rocks still remains - as has that influence OF those peoples in that life of those peoples to whom those that did escape during the periods of destruction make or influence the lives of those peoples TO whom they came. As they MAY in the present, either through the direct influence of being regenerated, or re-incarnated into the earth, or through that of the MENTAL application on through the influences as may be had upon thought OF individuals or groups by speaking from that environ.

6. In the MANNER of living, in the manner of the moral, of the social, of the religious life of these peoples: There, classes existed much in the same order as existed among others; yet the like of the warlike INFLUENCE did NOT exist in the peoples - AS a people - as it did in the OTHER portions of the universe.

 

364-4

2. EC: Yes, we have the subject here, The Lost Continent of Atlantis.

3. As the peoples were a peaceful peoples, their developments took on rather that form - with the developing into the physical material bodies - of the fast development, or to the using of the elements about them to their own use; recognizing themselves to be a part OF that about them. Hence, as to the supplying of that as necessary to sustain physical life as known today, in apparel, or supplying of the bodily needs, these were supplied through the natural elements; and the DEVELOPMENTS came rather in the forms - as would be termed in the PRESENT day - of preparing for those things that would pertain to what would be termed the aerial age, or the electrical age, and supplying then the modes and manners of transposition of those materials about same that did not pertain to themselves bodily; for of themselves was transposed, rather by that ability lying within each to be transposed in thought as in body.

4. In these things, then, did Amilius [?] see the beginning of, and the abilities of, those of his own age, era, or period, not only able to build that as able to transpose or build up the elements about them but to transpose them bodily from one portion of the universe to the other, THROUGH the uses of not only those RECENTLY re-discovered gases, and those of the electrical and aeriatic formations - in the breaking up of the atomic forces to produce impelling force to those means and modes of transposition, or of travel, or of lifting large weights, or of changing the faces or forces of nature itself, but with these transpositions, with these changes that came in as personalities, we find these as the Sons of the Creative Force as manifest in their experience looking upon those changed forms, or the daughters of men, and there crept in those pollutions, of polluting themselves with those mixtures that brought contempt, hatred, bloodshed, and those that build for desires of self WITHOUT respects of OTHERS' freedom, others' wishes - and there began, then, in the latter portion of this period of development, that that brought about those of dissenting and divisions among the peoples in the lands. With the attempts of those still in power, through those lineages of the pure, that had kept themselves intact as of the abilities of forces as were manifest IN their activities, these BUILDED rather those things that ATTEMPTED to draw BACK those peoples; through first the various changes or seasons that came about, and in the latter portion of the experience of Amilius [?] was the first establishing of the altars upon which the sacrifices of the field and the forest, and those that were of that that SATISFIED the desires of the physical body, were builded.

5. Then, with the coming in or the raising up of Esai [?], with the change that had come about, began in that period when there were the invasions of this continent by those of the animal kingdoms, that brought about that meeting of the nations of the globe to PREPARE a way and manner of disposing of, else they be disposed of themselves by these forces. With this coming in, there came then the first of the destructive forces as could be set and then be meted out in its force or power. Hence that as is termed, or its first beginning of, EXPLOSIVES that might be carried about, came with this reign, or this period, when MAN - or MEN, then - began to cope with those of the beast form that OVERRAN the earth in many places. Then, with these destructive forces, we find the first turning of the altar fires into that of sacrifice of those that were taken in the various ways, and human sacrifice began. With this also came the first egress of peoples to that of the Pyrenees first, OF which later we find that peoples who enter into the black or the mixed peoples, in what later became the Egyptian dynasty. We also find that entering into Og, or those peoples that later became the beginning of the Inca, or Ohum [Aymara'?], that builded the walls across the mountains in this period, through those same usages of that as had been taken on by those peoples; and with the same, those that made for that in the other land, became first those of the mound dwellers, or peoples in that land. With the continued disregard of those that were keeping the pure race and the pure peoples, of those that were to bring all these laws as applicable to the Sons of God, man brought in the destructive forces as used for the peoples that were to be the rule, that combined with those natural resources of the gases, of the electrical forces, made in nature and natural form the first of the eruptions that awoke from the depth of the slow cooling earth, and that portion now near what would be termed the Sargasso Sea first went into the depths. With this there again came that egress of peoples that aided, or attempted to assume control, yet carrying with them ALL those forms of Amilius [?] that he gained through that as for signs, for seasons, for days, for years. Hence we find in those various portions of the world even in the present day, some form of that as WAS presented by those peoples in THAT great DEVELOPMENT in this, the Eden of the world.

6. In the latter portion of same we find as CITIES were builded more and more rare became those abilities to call upon rather the forces in nature to supply the needs for those of bodily adornment, or those of the needs to supply the replenishing of the wasting away of the physical being; or hunger arose, and with the determinations to set again in motion, we find there - then Ani [?] [See the name ANI mentioned on pp. 6, 57, 187 and 324 of the book, MYTHS & LEGENDS OF ANCIENT EGYPT, by Lewis Spence.] [GD's note: I put a question mark because I didn't know whether this was the correct spelling or not.], in those latter periods, ten thousand seven hundred (10,700) years before the Prince of Peace came - again was the bringing into forces that to TEMPT, as it were, nature - in its storehouse - of replenishing the things - that of the WASTING away in the mountains, then into the valleys, then into the sea itself, and the fast disintegration of the lands, as well as of the peoples - save those that had escaped into those distant lands.

7. How, then, may this be applicable to our present day understanding? As we see the effects as builded in that about the sacred fires, as through those of Hermes, those of Arart, those of the Aztec, those of Ohum [Aymara'?], each in their respective sphere CARRYING some portion of these blessings - when they are kept in accord and PURE with those through which the channels of the blessings, of the Creative Forces, may manifest. So, we find, when we apply the lessons in the day - would ye be true, keep that EVERY WHIT thou KNOWEST to do within thine own heart! Knowing, as ye USE that as is KNOWN, there is given the more and more light to know from whence ye came and whither ye go!

8. Ready for questions.

9. (Q) Please give a description of the earth's surface as it existed at the time of Atlantis' highest civilization, using the names of continents, oceans and sections of same as we know them today?

(A) As to the highest point of civilization, this would first have to be determined according to the standard as to which it would be judged - as to whether the highest point was when Amilius [?] ruled with those understandings, as the one that understood the variations, or whether they became man made, would depend upon whether we are viewing from a spiritual standpoint or upon that as a purely material or commercial standpoint; for the variations, as we find, extend over a period of some two hundred thousand years (200,000) - that is, as light years - as known in the present - and that there were MANY changes in the surface of what is now called the earth. In the first, or greater portion, we find that NOW known as the southern portions of South America and the Arctic or North Arctic regions, while those in what is NOW as Siberia - or that as of Hudson Bay - was rather in that region of the tropics, or that position now occupied by near what would be as the same LINE would run, of the southern Pacific, or central Pacific regions - and about the same way. Then we find, with this change that came first in that portion, when the first of those peoples used that as prepared FOR the changes in the earth, we stood near the same position as the earth occupies in the present - as to Capricorn, or the equator, or the poles. Then, with that portion, THEN the South Pacific, or Lemuria [?], began its disappearance - even before Atlantis, for the changes were brought about in the latter portion of that period, or what would be termed ten thousand seven hundred (10,700) light years, or earth years, or present setting of those, as set by Amilius [?] - or Adam.

 

364-5

2. EC: Yes, we have the information as given respecting the continent Atlantis. In the considerations that may be had concerning such information, many are the questions that must naturally arise in the minds of individuals who would consider same in any way or manner. However, will a very close check be kept upon those who evince an interest, these will be found to be those who occupy in the present some influence innate or manifested from their experience or sojourn under or in that environ. As has been given, this would be well to do; for to the analytical or to the research character of mind, there will be little that may escape the attention of such a mind - when spiritual or psychic, or occult, or those kindred subjects are approached - as to how quick there is the desire, that expression of "I know it, but don't know how to tell it, will be in that individual's or entity's feeling, and expression - when one may be obtained at all. They will immediately become the dreamer! Try this!

3. Ready for questions.

4. (Q) Explain the information given regarding Amilius [?], who first noted the separation of the peoples into male and female, as it relates to the story in the Bible of Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden giving the name of the symbols Adam, Eve, the apple, and the serpent.

(A) This would require a whole period of a lecture period for this alone; for, as is seen, that as is given is the presentation of a teacher of a peoples that separated for that definite purpose of keeping alive in the minds, the hearts, the SOUL minds of entities, that there may be seen their closer relationship to the divine influences of Creative Forces, that brought into being all that appertains to man's indwelling as man in the form of flesh in this material world. These are presented in symbols of that thought as held by those peoples from whom the physical recorder took those records as compiled, with that gained by himself in and through the entering into that state where the entity's soul mind drew upon the records that are made by the passing of time itself in a material world. As given, these are records not only of the nature as has been termed or called akashic records (that is, of a mental or soul record), but that in a more material nature as set down in stone, that was attempted to be done - HAS been attempted to be done throughout ALL time! WHY does man NOW set in stone those that are representatives of that desired to be kept in mind by those making records for future generations? There are many more materials more lasting, as is known to many.

In the records, then, as this: There are, as seen, the records made by the man in the mount, that this Amilius [?] - Adam, as given - first discerned that from himself, not of the beasts about him, could be drawn - WAS drawn - that which made for the propagation OF beings IN the flesh, that made for that companionship as seen by creation in the material worlds about same. The story, the tale (if chosen to be called such), is one and the same. The apple, as 'the apple of the eye', the desire of that companionship innate in that created, as innate in the Creator, that brought companionship into the creation itself. Get that one!

In this there comes, then, that which is set before that created - or having TAKEN ON that form, able of projecting itself in WHATEVER direction it chose to take, as given; able to make itself OF that environ, in color, in harmony, in WHATEVER source that makes for the spirit of that man would attempt to project in music, in art, in ANY form that may even be conceivable to the mind itself in what may be termed its most lucid moments, in its most esoteric moments, in its highest animation moments; for were He not the SON of the living God made manifest, that He might be the companion in a made world, in material manifested things, with the injunction to subdue all, BRING all in the material things under subjection - all UNDER subjection - by that ability to project itself IN its way? KNOWING itself, as given, to be a portion OF the whole, in, through, of, by the whole? In this desire, then, keep - as the injunction was - thine self separate: OF that seen, but NOT that seen. The apple, then, that desire for that which made for the associations that bring carnal-minded influences of that brought as sex influence, known in a material world, and the partaking of same is that which brought the influence in the lives of that in the symbol of the serpent, that made for that which creates the desire that may be only satisfied in gratification of carnal forces, as partake of the world and its influences about same - rather than of the spiritual emanations from which it has its source. Will control - inability of will control, if we may put it in common parlance.

 

364-6

1. GC: You will have before you the material and information given through this channel on the lost continent of Atlantis, a copy of which I hold in my hand. You will answer the questions which I will ask regarding this:

2. EC: Yes, we have the information as written here, as given. In following out that as just given, with these changes coming in the experience of Amilius [?] and I [Ai? Ay?], Adam and Eve, the knowledge of their position, or that as is known in the material world today as desires and physical bodily charms, the understanding of sex, sex relationships, came into the experience. With these came the natural fear of that as had been forbidden, that they know themselves to be a part of but not OF that as partook of EARTHLY, or the desires in the manner as were ABOUT them, in that as had been their heritage.

3. Were this turned to that period when this desire, then, becomes consecrated in that accomplished again in the virgin body of the mother of the SON of man, we see this is then crystallized into that, that even that of the flesh may be - with the proper concept, proper desire in all its purity - consecrated to the LIVING forces as manifest by the ability in that body so brought into being, as to make a way of escape for the ERRING man. Hence we have found throughout the ages, so oft the times when conception of truth became rampant with free-love, with the desecration of those things that brought to these in the beginning that of the KNOWLEDGE of their existence, as to that that may be termed - and betimes became - the MORAL, or morality OF a people. Yet this same feeling, this same exaltation that comes from association of kindred bodies - that have their lives consecrated in a purposefulness, that makes for the ability of retaining those of the essence of creation in every virile body - can be made to become the fires that light truth, love, hope, patience, peace, harmony; for they are EVER the key to those influences that fire the imaginations of those that are gifted in ANY form of depicting the high emotions of human experience, whether it be in the one or the other fields, and hence is judged by those that may not be able, or through desire submit themselves - as did Amilius [?] and I [?] to those ELEMENTS, through the forces in the life as about them.

7. (Q) How large was Atlantis during the time of Amilius?

(A) Comparison, that of Europe including Asia in Europe - not Asia, but Asia in Europe - see? This composed, as seen, in or after the first of the destructions, that which would be termed now - with the present position - the southernmost portion of same - islands as created by those of the first (as man would call) volcanic or eruptive forces brought into play in the destruction of same.

8. (Q) Was Atlantis one large continent, or a group of large islands?

(A) Would it not be well to read just that given? Why confuse in the questionings? As has been given, what would be considered one large continent, until the first eruptions brought those changes - from what would now, with the present position of the earth in its rotation, or movements about its sun, through space, about Arcturus, about the Pleiades, that of a whole or one continent. Then with the breaking up, producing more of the nature of large islands, with the intervening canals or ravines, gulfs, bays or streams, as came from the various ELEMENTAL forces that were set in motion by this CHARGING - as it were - OF the forces that were collected as the basis for those elements that would produce destructive forces, as might be placed in various quarters or gathering places of those beasts, or the periods when the larger animals roved the earth - WITH that period of man's indwelling. Let it be remembered, or not confused, that the EARTH was peopled by ANIMALS before peopled by man! First that of a mass, which there arose the mist, and then the rising of same with light breaking OVER that as it SETTLED itself, as a companion of those in the universe, as it began its NATURAL (or now natural) rotations, with the varied effects UPON the various portions of same, as it slowly - and is slowly - receding or gathering closer to the sun, from which it receives its impetus for the awakening of the elements that give life itself, by radiation of like elements from that which it receives from the sun. Hence that of one type, that has been through the ages, of mind - that gives the SUN as the father OF light in the earth. Elements have their attraction and detraction, or those of ANIMOSITY and those of gathering together. This we see throughout all of the kingdoms, as may be termed, whether we speak of the heavenly hosts or of those of the stars, or of the planets, or of the various forces within any or all of same, they have their attraction or detraction. The attraction increases that as gives an impulse, that that becomes the aid, the stimuli, or an impulse to create. Hence, as may be seen - or may be brought to man's own - that of attraction one for another gives that STIMULI, that IMPULSE, to be the criterion of, or the gratification of, those influences in the experience of individuals or entities. To smother same oft becomes deteriorations for each other, as may come about in any form, way or manner. Accidents happen in creation, as well as in individuals' lives! Peculiar statement here, but - true!

9. (Q) What were the principal islands called at the time of the final destruction?

(A) Poseidia and Aryan [?], and Og [?].

10. (Q) Describe one of the ships of the air that was used during the highest period of mechanical development in Atlantis.

(A) Much of the nature, in the EARLIER portion, as would be were the hide of MANY of the pachyderm, or elephants, many into the CONTAINERS for the gases that were used as both lifting and for the impelling of the crafts about the various portions of the continent, and even abroad. These, as may be seen, took on those abilities not only to pass through that called air, or that heavier, but through that of water - when they received the impetus from the NECESSITIES of the peoples in that particular period, for the safety of self. The shape and form, then, in the earlier portion, depended upon which or what skins were used for the containers. The metals that were used as the braces, these were the COMBINATIONS then of what is NOW a lost art - the TEMPERED brass, the temperament of that as becomes between aluminum (as now called) and that of uranium, with those of the fluxes that are from those of the COMBINED elements of the iron, that is carbonized with those of other fluxes - see? These made for lightness of structure, non-conductor OR conductors of the electrical forces - that were used for the IMPELLING of same, rather than the gases - which were used as the lifting. See? For that as in the NATURE'S forces may be turned into even the forces OF that that makes life, as given, from the sun rays to those elements that make for, or find CORRESPONDING reaction in their APPLICATION of same, or reflection of same, TO the rays itself - or a different or changed form of storage of FORCE, as called electrical in the present.

11. We are through for the present.

 

364-7

3. (Q) How is the legend of Lilith connected with the period of Amilius?

(A) In the beginning, as was outlined, there was presented that that became as the Sons of God, in that male and female were as one, with those abilities for those changes as were able or capable of being brought about. In the changes that came from those THINGS, as were of the projections of the abilities of those entities to project, this as a being came as the companion; and when there was that turning to the within, through the sources of creation, as to make for the helpmeet of that as created by the first cause, or of the Creative Forces that brought into being that as was made, THEN - from out of self - was brought that as was to be the helpmeet, NOT just companion of the body. Hence the legend of the associations of the body during that period before there was brought into being the last of the creations, which was not of that that was NOT made, but the first of that that WAS made, and a helpmeet to the body, that there might be no change in the relationship of the SONS of God WITH those relationships of the sons and daughters of men.

In this then, also comes that as is held by many who have reached especially to that understanding of how NECESSARY, then, becomes the PROPER mating of those souls that may be the ANSWERS one to another of that that may bring, through that association, that companionship, into being that that may be the more helpful, more sustaining, more the well- ROUNDED life or experience of those that are a PORTION one of another. Do not misinterpret, but knowing that all are OF one - yet there are those divisions that make for a CLOSER union, when there are the proper relationships brought about. As an illustration, in this:

In the material world we find there is in the mineral kingdom those elements that are of the nature as to form a closer union one with another, and make as for compounds as make for elements that act more in unison with, or against, other forms of activity in the experience in the earth's environ, or the earth's force, as makes for those active forces in the ELEMENTS that are ABOUT the earth. Such as we may find in those that make for the active forces in that of uranium, and that of ultramarine, and these make then for an element that becomes the more active force as with the abilities for the rates of emanation as may be thrown off from same. So, as illustrated in the union, then, of - in the PHYSICAL compounds - that as may vibrate, or make for emanations in the activities of their mental and spiritual, and material, or physical forces, as may make for a GREATER activity in this earth environ. Then, there may be seen that as is in an elemental, or compound, that makes for that as is seen in the material experience as to become an antipathy for other elements that are as equally necessary in the experience of man's environ as in the combination of gases as may produce whenever combined that called water, and its antipathy for the elements in combustion is easily seen or known in man's experience.

So in those unions of that in the elemental forces of creative energies that take on the form of man, either in that of man or woman, with its NATURAL or ELEMENTAL, see? ELEMENTAL forces of its vibration, with the union of two that vibrate or respond to those vibrations in self, create for that ideal that becomes as that, in that created, in the form - as is known as radium, with its fast emittal vibrations, that brings for active forces, principles, that makes for such atomic forces within the active principles of all nature in its active force as to be one of the elemental bases from which life in its essence, as an active principle in a material world, has its sources, give off that which is EVER good - unless abused, see? So in that may there be basis for THOSE forces, as HAS been, as IS sought, thought, or ATTAINED BY those who have, through the abilities of the vibrations, to make for a continued force in self as to meet, know, see, feel, understand, those sources from which such begets that of its kind, or as those that become as an antipathy for another, or as makes for those that makes for the variations in the tempering of the various elements, compounds, or the like; so, as is seen, THESE - then - the BASIS for those things as has been given here, there, in their various ways and manners, as to the companion of, and COMPANIONS of, that that first able - through its projection of itself and its abilities in the creation - to bring about that that was either of its OWN making, or creation, or that given in the beginning to BE the force THROUGH which there might BE that that would bring ever blessings, good, right, and love, in even the physical or material world. See?

4. (Q) How long did it take for the division into male and female?

(A) That depends upon which, or what branch or LINE is considered. When there was brought into being that as of the projection of that created BY that created, this took a period of evolutionary - or, as would be in the present year, fourscore and six year. That as brought into being as was of the creating OF that that became a portion of, OF that that was already created by the CREATOR, THAT brought into being as WERE those of the forces of nature itself. God said, "Let there be light" and there WAS light! God said, "Let there be life" and there WAS life!

5. (Q) Were the thought forms that were able to push themselves out of themselves inhabited by souls, or were they of the animal kingdom?

(A) That as created by that CREATED, of the animal kingdom. That created as by the Creator, with the soul.

6. (Q) What was meant by the Sons of the Highest in Atlantis and the second coming of souls to the earth, as mentioned in a life reading given thru this channel? [See 2802-1 on 5/18/25.]

(A) In this period or age, as was seen - There is fault of words here to PROJECT that as actually OCCURS in the FORMATIONS of that as comes about! There was, with the WILL of that as came into being through the correct channels, of that as created by the Creator, that of the CONTINUING of the souls in its projection and projection - see? while in that as was OF the offspring, of that as pushed itself INTO form to SATISFY, GRATIFY, that of the desire of that known as carnal forces of the SENSES, of those created, there continued to be the war one with another, and there were then - FROM the other SOURCES (worlds) the continuing entering of those that WOULD make for the keeping of the balance, as of the first purpose of the Creative Forces, as it magnifies itself in that given sphere of activity, of that that had been GIVEN the ABILITY to CREATE with its OWN activity - see? and hence the second, or the CONTINUED entering of souls into that known as the earth's plane during this period, for that activity as was brought about. Let's REMEMBER that as was given, in the second, third from Adam, or fourth, or from Amilius, there was "In that day did they CALL UPON the NAME of the Lord" - is right! and ever, when the elements that make for littleness, uncleanness, are crucified in the body, the SPIRIT of the Lord, of God, is present! When these are overbalanced, so that the body (physical), the mental man, the imagination of its heart, is evil, or his purpose is evil, then is that war continuing - as from the beginning. Just the continued warring of those things within self as from the beginning; for with these changes as brought SIN into the world, with same came the FRUITS of same, or the seed as of sin, which we see in the material world as those things that corrupt good ground, those that corrupt the elements that are of the compounds of those of the first causes, or elementals, and pests are seen - and the like, see? So does it follow throughout all creative forces, that the fruits of that as is active brings that seed that makes for the corrupting of, or the clearing of, in the activative forces of, that BEING acted upon.

7. (Q) What was meant by "As in the first Adam sin entered, so in the last Adam all shall be made alive?"

(A) Adam's entry into the world in the beginning, then, must become the savior OF the world, as it was committed to his care, "Be thou fruitful, multiply, and SUBDUE the earth!" Hence Amilius, Adam, the first Adam, the last Adam, becomes - then - that that is GIVEN the POWER OVER the earth, and - as in each soul the first to be conquered is self - then ALL THINGS, conditions and elements, are subject unto that self!

That a universal law, as may be seen in that as may be demonstrated either in gases that destroy one another by becoming elements of the same, or that in the mineral or the animal kingdom as may be found that destroy, or BECOME one WITH the other. Hence, as Adam given - the SON of God - so he MUST become that that would be able to take the world, the earth, back to that source from which it came, and ALL POWER is given in his keeping in the earth, that he has overcome; self, death, hell and the grave even, become subservient unto Him THROUGH the conquering of self in that made flesh; for, as in the beginning was the word, the Word WAS with God, the Word WAS God, the same was IN the beginning. The Word came and dwelt among men, the offspring of self in a material world, and the Word OVERCAME the world - and hence the world BECOMES, then, as the servant of that that overcame the world!

8. (Q) Please give the important re-incarnations of Adam in the world's history.

(A) In the beginning as Amilius, as Adam, as Melchizedek, as Zend [?], as Ur [?] [Enoch? GD's note: Perhaps Ur was prehistory person [364-9, Par. 3-A] who established Ur of the Chaldees? I don't think he was mentioned anywhere else in the readings as an incarnation of Jesus.], as Asaph [?] [Songs of Asaph? See Ps. 81:5 indicating that Joseph and Asaph were one and the same?], as Jesus [Jeshua] - Joseph - Jesus. [See 364-9, Par. 3-A.]

Then, as that coming into the world in the second coming - for He will come again and receive His own, who have prepared themselves through that belief in Him and acting in that manner; for the SPIRIT is abroad, and the time draws near, and there will be the reckoning of those even as in the first so in the last, and the last shall be first; for there is that Spirit abroad - He standeth near. He that hath eyes to see, let him see. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear that music of the coming of the Lord of this vineyard, and art THOU ready to give account of that THOU hast done with thine opportunity in the earth as the Sons of God, as the heirs and joint heirs of glory WITH the Son? Then make thine paths straight, for there must come an answering for that THOU hast done with thine Lord! He will not tarry, for having overcome He shall appear even AS the Lord AND Master. Not as one born, but as one that returneth to His own, for He will walk and talk with men of every clime, and those that are faithful and just in their reckoning shall be caught up with Him to rule and to do JUDGEMENT for a thousand years!

9. (Q) Describe some of the mental abilities that were developed by the Atlanteans at the time of their greatest spiritual development.

(A) Impossible to describe achievements physical in their spiritual development. The use of MATERIAL conditions and spiritual attributes in a material world would, and do, become that as are the miracles of the Son in the material world; for even as with Him in - and as He walked, whether in Galilee, in Egypt, in India, in France, in England, or America - there WERE those periods when the activities of the physical were as was what would be termed the everyday life of the SONS of God in the Atlantean or Eden experience; for as those brought the various changes from the highest of the SPIRITUAL development to the highest of the mental, then of the MATERIAL or physical developments, then the fall - see?

 

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Edgar Cayce on Atlantis II

364-10

1. GC: You will have before you the information given through this channel on the lost continent of Atlantis. You will please continue with this information, and answer the questions which I will ask regarding same.

2. EC: Yes. In understanding, then, in the present terminology, occult science, or psychic science - as seen, this was the natural or nature's activity in that experience, and not termed a science - any more than would be the desire for food by a new born babe. Rather the natural consequence. This explanation may of necessity take on some forms that may possibly be confusing at times, but illustrations may be made through the various types of occult science, or psychic manifestations, that may clarify for the student something of the various types of psychic manifestations in the present, as well as that that was natural in this period.

3. There is, as has been oft given, quite a difference - and much differentiation should be made - in mysticism and psychic, or occult science as termed today.

4. From that which has been given, it is seen that individuals in the beginning were more of thought forms than individual entities with personalities as seen in the present, and their projections into the realms of fields of thought that pertain to a developing or evolving world of matter, with the varied presentations about same, of the expressions or attributes in the various things about the entity or individual, or body, through which such science - as termed now, or such phenomena as would be termed - became manifest. Hence we find occult or psychic science, as would be called at the present, was rather the natural state of man in the beginning. Very much as (in illustration) when a baby, or babe, is born into the world and its appetite is first satisfied, and it lies sleeping. Of what is its dreams? That it expects to be, or that it has been? Of what are thoughts? That which is to be, or that which has been, or that which is? Now remember we are speaking - these were thought forms, and we are finding again the illustrations of same!

5. When the mental body (Now revert back to what you are calling science) - when the mental body, or mind, has had training, or has gone through a course of operations in certain directions, such individuals are called so-and-so minded; as one of an inventive turn, and trained; one of a statistician turn, and trained; one of a theologian turn, and trained; one of philosophical turn, and trained. Of what does the mind build? We have turned, then, to that that has become very material, for the mind constantly trained makes for itself MENTAL pictures, or makes for that as is reasoned with from its own present dimensional viewpoints - but the babe, from whence its reasoning? from whence its dream? From that that has been taken in, or that that has been its experience from whence it came? Oft has it been said, and rightly, with a babe's smile 'Dreaming of angels', and close in touch with them - but what has PRODUCED that dream? The contact with that upon which IT has fed! Don't forget our premise now from which we are reasoning! and we will find that we will have the premise from which those individuals, or the entities, reasoned within the beginning in this land. (We are speaking of Atlanteans, when they became as thought forces.) From whence did THEY reason? From the Creative Forces from which they had received their impetus, but acted upon by the thought FORMS as were in MATERIAL forms about them, and given that power (will) to be one WITH that from what it sprang or was given its impetus, or force, yet with the ability to USE that in the way that seemed, or seemeth, good or well, or pleasing, unto itself. Hence we find in this particular moulding or mouldive stage, that in which there was the greater development of, and use of, that as is termed or called psychic and occult forces, or science - in the present terminology, or age.

6. Illustrating, then, that as to how this was used by those entities, those beings, in the formative stage of their experience or sojourn among that as had been created in all of its splendor to supply every want or desire that might be called forth by that being, with all of its attributes physical, mental AND SPIRITUAL at hand; for, as has been given, even unto the four hundred thousandth generation from the first creation was it prepared for man's indwelling. As we today (turn to today), we find there the developments of those resources. How long have they remained? Since the beginning! How long has man been able to use them for his undoing, or his pleasure, or for his regeneration? Since the knowledge of some source has awakened within its psychic force, or source, of the apparatus, or the form that it takes, either in a physical or mental (for remember, Mind is the Builder - and it moves along those channels through which, and by which, it may bring into existence in whatever dimension or sphere from which it is reasoning, or reasoning toward - see) - and as these may be illustrated in the present:

7. When there is a manifestation of a psychic force, or an occult action, or phenomena, or activity in, upon, of or for, an individual, there is then the rolling back, as it were, or a portion of the physical consciousness - or that mental trained individual consciousness - has been rolled aside, or rolled back, and there is then a visioning - To what? That as from the beginning, a projection OF that form that assumed its position or condition in the earth as from the beginning, and with those so endowed with that as may be called an insight into psychic sources there may be visioned about a body its astral (if chosen to be termed), rather its THOUGHT body, as is projected FROM same in such a state; especially so when there is the induction, or the inducing of, an unconsciousness of the normal brain, or normal mental body. Submerged - into what? Into the unconscious, or subconscious. Sub, in THIS instance, meaning BELOW - not above normal; below - SUBJECTED to the higher consciousness, or to the higher thought, that has been builded - just as sure as has a physical body been builded, from what?

That as has been given from its first nucleus as passed through in its experience. Then there may be visioned by such a body, as may be called with the second sight, or with a vision, that accompanying thought body of such an one, manifesting in much the way and manner as individuals in the Atlantean period of psychic and occult development brought about in their experience. Through such projections there came about that first necessity of the division of the body, to conform to those necessities of that as seen in its own mental vision as builded (MENTAL now - Don't confuse these terms, or else you will become VERY confused in what is being given!).

8. The mental vision by its action upon what body is being builded? On the mental body of the individual in a material world, out of Spirit, out of the ability to have all the attributes of the spiritual or unseen forces - but MATERIALIZED forces, as is necessary from the mental body in a material world MENTALLY trained to, or in, certain directions, or given directions, or following the natural bent of its threefold or threeply body, as is seen in every individual or every entity. As these projected themselves, then we find these DEVELOPMENTS were in this portion of the development in the Atlantean period. How were these used? In much as were from the beginning. Remember there was ever the instruction to those peoples that were to hold to that that would bring for the spiritual forces, rather than the abuses of the abilities - as those with familiar spirits, as those that spoke to or partook of the divinations of those that had passed from the earth's plane, or those that partook of the animal magnetism - that came from the universal consciousness of animal matter as passed into its experience, in its interchange through those periods of integration and disintegration - and the spirit forces possessing those that would lay themselves open to such conditions, for these are as real as physical bodies if the attunements of the entity are such that it may vision them! and they are about you always, sure! These, then, are entities - sure; whether animal or those endowed with the soul - until they pass through those changes - as there ever has been, see? Also there are those that ever make for those channels in the psychic and occult (we are speaking of, through which man - as it reached that stage, or that position that it became farther and farther from its natural sources, through the same CHARACTER of channel may it communicate with that from which it is a portion of, or the Creative Forces), and hence the terminology arose as 'Good Spirits' and 'Bad Spirits'; for there are those that partake of the earth, or of the carnal forces, rather than of those forces that are of the spiritual or CREATIVE. Those that are destruction are of the Earth. Those that are constructive, then, are the good - or the divine and the devilish, bringing for those developments in their various phases. Hence the greater development of that called occult, or psychic forces, during the Atlantean period - and the use of same, and the abuse of same - was during its first thousand years, as we would call light years; not the light of the star, but the sun goes down and the sun goes down - years. That brought about those cycles, or those changes. Hence we have that which has been given through many of the sources of information, or the channels for individuals - and in those, these, the entity - as a voice upon waters, or as the wind that moved among the reeds and harkened, or again as when the morning stars sang together and the sons of God beheld the coming of man into his own, through the various realms as were brought by the magnifying of, or the deteriorating of, the use of those forces and powers as manifested themselves in a MATERIAL area, or those that partook of carnal to the gratification of that that brought about its continual HARDENING and less ability to harken back through that from WHICH it came, and partaking more and more OF that upon which it became an eater of; or, as is seen even in the material forces in the present: We find those that partake of certain elements, unless these become very well balanced WITH all SOURCES - Of what? That of which there were the first causes, or nature, or natural, or God's sources or forces are. Hence ELEMENTS - not rudiments; elements - as are termed in the terminology of the student of the anatomical, physiological, psychological forces within a body - GERMS! Sure they are germs! for each are as atoms of power - From what? That source from which it has drawn its essence upon what it feeds. Is one feeding, then, its soul? or is one feeding its body? or is one feeding that interbetween (its mental body) to its own undoing, or to those foolishnesses of the simple things of life? Being able, then, to partake OF the physical but not a part of same - but more and more feeding upon those sources from which it emanates itself, or of the SPIRITUAL life, so that the physical body, the mental body, are attuned TO its soul forces, or its soul source, its Creator, its Maker, in such a way and manner, as it develops.

9. What, then, IS psychic force? What IS occult science? A developing of the abilities within each individual that has not lost its sonship, or its relation to its Creator, to live upon - or demonstrate more and more through phenomena of whatever nature from which it takes its source, for that individual activity of that entity itself through the stages of development through which it has passed, and giving of its life source that there may be brought INTO being that which gives more knowledge of the source FROM which the entity ESSENCE (Isn't a good word, but signifies that intended to be expressed; not elements, not rudiments, but ESSENCE of the entity itself, ITS spirit and soul - its spirit being its portion of the Creator, its soul that of its entity itself, making itself individual, separate entity, that may be one WITH the Creative Force from which it comes - or which it is! of which it is made up, in its atomic forces, or in its very essence itself!) emanates; and the more this may be manifest, the greater becomes the occult force.

10. To what uses, then, did these people in this particular period give their efforts, and in what directions were they active? As many almost as there were individuals! for, as we find from the records as are made, to some there was given the power to become the sons of God; others were workers in brass, in iron, in silver, in gold; others were made in music, and the instruments of music. These, then, we find in the world today (Today, now - we are reasoning from today). Those that are especially gifted in art - in its various forms; and a real artist (as the world looks at it) isn't very much fit for anything else! yet it is - What? An expression of its concept OF that from WHICH it, that entity, sprang - through the various stages of its evolution (if you choose to call it such) in a material world, or that which it fed its soul or its mental being for its development through its varied experiences IN a material world. These, then, are but manifestations (occult forces) in individuals who are called geniuses, or gifted in certain directions.

11. These, then, are the manners in which the ENTITIES, those BEINGS, those SOULS, in the beginning partook of, or developed. Some brought about monstrosities, as those of its (that entity's) association by its projection with its association with beasts of various characters. Hence those of the Styx, satyr, and the like; those of the sea, or mermaid; those of the unicorn, and those of the various forms - these projections of what? The abilities in the PHYCHIC forces (psychic meaning, then, of the mental AND the soul - doesn't necessarily mean the body, until it's enabled to be brought INTO being in whatever form it may make its manifestation - which may never be in a material world, or take form in a three-dimensional plane as the earth is; it may remain in a fourth-dimensional - which is an idea! Best definition that ever may be given of fourth-dimension is an idea! Where will it project? Anywhere! Where does it arise from? Who knows! Where will it end? Who can tell! It is all inclusive! It has both length, breadth, height and depth - is without beginning and is without ending! Dependent upon that which it may feed for its sustenance, or it may pass into that much as a thought or an idea. Now this isn't ideal that's said! It's idea! see?)

12. In the use of these, then, in this material plane - of these forces - brought about those that made for all MANNERS of the various forms that are used in the material world today. MANY of them to a much higher development. As those that sought forms of minerals - and being able to be that the mineral was, hence much more capable - in the psychic or occult force, or power - to classify, or make same in its own classifications. Who classified them? They were from the beginning! They are themselves! They were those necessities as were IN the beginning from an ALL WISE Creator! for remember these came, as did that as was to be the keeper of same! The husbandman of the vineyard! Each entity, each individual - today, has its own vineyard to keep, to dress - For who? Its Maker, from whence it came! What is to be the report in thine own life with those abilities, those forces, as may be manifest in self - through its calling upon, through what? How does prayer reach the throne of mercy or grace, or that from which it emanates? From itself! Through that of CRUCIFYING, NULLIFYING, the carnal mind and opening the mental in such a manner that the Spirit of truth may flow in its psychic sense, or occult force, into the very being, that you may be one with that from which you came! Be thou faithful unto that committed into thy keeping! Life ITSELF is precious! For why? It is of the Maker itself! That IS the beginning! The psychic forces, the attunements, the developments, going TO that! As did many in that experience. And Enoch walked with God, and he was not for God took him. As was many of those in those first years, in this land, this experience.

13. These in the present, then, do not justly call it science; rather being close to nature. Listen at the birds. Watch the blush of the rose. Listen at the life rising in the tree. These serve their Maker - Through what? That psychic force, that IS Life itself, in their respective sphere - that were put for the service of man. Learn thine lesson, O Man, from that about thee!

 

364-11

1. GC: You will have before you the information given through this channel on the lost continent of Atlantis. You will continue with this information, and will answer the questions which I will ask regarding this:

2. EC: Yes. As to why, then, each individual must be, and is, the keeper of his own vineyard? For there is, as from the beginning, in each entity that - of the Father, or the First Cause - that enables one to make manifest even in the material world through the attributes OF the First Cause, that makes for the manifestation OF that power, or force, in a material world. As to what one does WITH same is an action of the will that entity himself, or herself.

3. As to occult or psychic science, as called, then - it is, as we have found through some manifestations, that these forces are first recognized in or by the individual. Hence, as has been seen, in the beginning these were the natural expressions of an entity. As there developed more of the individual association with material conditions, and they partook of same in such a manner as to become wholly or in part a portion OF same, farther - or more hidden, more unseen - has become occult or psychic manifestations. First there were the occasional harking back. Later by dream. Again we find individuals raised in certain sections for specific purposes. As the cycle has gone about, time and again has there arisen in the earth those that MANIFESTED these forces in a more magnificent, more beneficent, way and manner. And, as has been given, again the time draws near when there shall be seen and known among men, in many places, the manifestations of such forces in the material world; for "As ye have seen him go, so will He return again." Be thou faithful unto those words He has given while yet with you. Hence it behooves every individual to take cognizance of that force that may manifest in their material lives, even in this material age; for those that become ashamed for His sake - for THAT sake - of that that may manifest (which is as the Spirit's manner of activity) through those many channels that are open to those who will look up, lift up - and these, we find, are often in the lowliest of places and circumstances. Why? Since these are forces of the Most High, since these supplied - as of old - those secular things in abundance, and were supplied the needs not only of the physical being but of the mental and spiritual also, contributing to those forces as made for the gratification also of that builded in a material world, does it become any wonder that he that shall be abased and remains true shall wear the Crown of Life? Does it become unreasonable, then, that ye are being chastised for that which has been builded within the material forces of the body itself, that must be tried so as by fire? for the chaff must be burned out! Even as with the use of those sources of information, the abilities to become a portion of those elements that were the creative forces OF the compounds or elements within the universal forces, at that period brought about those forces that made for destruction of the land itself, in the attempt to draw that as was in man then back TO the knowledge; and these brought about those destructive forces (that are known today) in gases, with that called the death ray [See 364-11, Par. R2], that brought from the bowels of the earth itself - when turned into the sources of supply - those destructions to portions of the land. Man has ever (even as then) when in distress, either mental, spiritual OR physical, sought to know his association, his connection, with the divine forces that brought the worlds into being. As these are sought, so does the promise hold true - or that given man from the beginning, "Will ye be my children, I will be thy God!" "Ye turn your face from me, my face is turned from thee", and those things ye have builded in thine own endeavor to make manifest thine own powers bring those certain destructions in the lives of individuals in the present, even as in those first experiences with the use of those powers that are so tabu by the worldly-wise, that are looked upon as old men's tales and women's fables; yet in the strength of such forces do WORLDS come into being!

4. THIS is what psychic force, and so called occult science, DID mean, HAS meant, DOES mean in the world today.

5. Ready for questions.

6. (Q) Describe in more detail the causes and effects of the destruction of the part of Atlantis now the Sargasso sea.

(A) As there were those individuals that attempted to bring again to the mind of man more of those forces that are manifest by the closer association of the mental and spiritual, or the soul forces that were more and more as individual and personal forms in the world, the use of the these elements - as for the building up, or the passage of individuals through space - brought the uses of the gases then (in the existent forces), and the individuals being able to become the elements, and elementals themselves, added to that used in the form of what is at present known as the raising of the powers from the sun itself, to the ray that makes for disintegration of the atom, in the gaseous forces formed, and brought about the destruction in that portion of the land now presented, or represented, or called, Sargasso sea.

7. (Q) What was the date of the first destruction, estimating in our present day system of counting time in years B.C.?

(A) Seven thousand five hundred (7,500) years before the final destruction, which came as has been given.

8. (Q) Please give a few details regarding the physiognomy, habits, customs and costumes of the people of Atlantis during the period just before this first destruction.

(A) These, as we find, will require their being separated in the gradual development of the body and its physiognomy as it came into being in the various portions of that land, as well as to those that would separate themselves from those peoples where there were the indwelling of peoples, or man - as man, in the various areas of the land, or what we call world.

In the matter of form, as we find, first there were those as projections from that about the animal kingdom; for the THOUGHT bodies gradually took form, and the various COMBINATIONS (as may be called) of the various forces that called or classified themselves as gods, or rulers over - whether herds, or fowls, or fishes, etc. - in PART that kingdom and part of that as gradually evolved into a physiognomy much in the form of the present day may (were one chosen of those that were, or are, the nearest representative of the race of peoples that existed in this first period as the first destructions came about). These took on MANY sizes as to stature, from that as may be called the midget to the giants - for there were giants in the earth in those days, men as tall as (what would be termed today) ten to twelve feet in stature, and in proportion - well proportioned throughout. The ones that became the most USEFUL were those as would be classified (or called in the present) as the IDEAL stature, that was of both male and female (as those separations had been begun); and the most ideal (as would be called) was Adam, who was in that period when he (Adam) appeared as five in one - See?

In this the physiognomy was that of a full head, with an extra EYE - as it were - in those portions that became what is known as the EYE. In the beginning these appeared in WHATEVER portion was desired by the body for its use!

As for the dress, those in the beginning were (and the Lord made for them coats) of the skins of the animals.

Indulgenced Prayer to St. John, the Apostle

 

O Glorious Apostle, who, on account of thy virginal purity, wast so beloved by Jesus as to deserve to lay thy head upon his divine breast, and to be left, in his place, as son to his most holy Mother; I beg thee to inflame me with a most ardent love towards Jesus and Mary. Obtain for me from our Lord that I, too, with a heart purified from earthly affections, may be made worthy to be ever united to Jesus as a faithful disciple, and to Mary as a devoted son, both here on earth and eternally in heaven. Amen.

  

(Indulgence 200 days, once a day, Leo XIII, 1897)

   

Prayer for Parents to St. John

  

St. John, chosen and favored disciple of our Lord, selected as the son of His sorrowful Mother, how great your privilege of being allowed to repose on the bosom of Jesus at the Last Supper, and to stand beneath the cross, there to receive Mary for your spiritual Mother! O happy disciple! How did you deserve such great prerogatives and favors? The whole Christian Church knows and acknowledges that it was your carefully guarded virginal purity which made you worthy of the special love of Jesus Christ; and that it was your ardent love and filial reverence toward His Blessed Mother that strengthened your heart to persevere to the end in the way of His holy cross.

 

O happy child of our dear Lady, how greatly I desire that my children and I may resemble you in purity of heart, in love for Jesus, and in devotion towards His Virgin Mother! In you do we place our trust. You will obtain for us this threefold grace. By your intercession you will dispose the Divine Mercy to pour out these graces into our hearts also. You are so highly favored by our Divine Master, He can refuse you nothing, least of all the graces He has so lavishly bestowed upon you. We confidently hope for these graces through your intercession, O chaste disciple of Jesus and devoted son of Mary! When you have obtained them for us, you must likewise watch over them, that we may never again lose them during our whole life. O pure St. John, obtain our request for the honor of Jesus and Mary and your own eternal praise! Amen.

   

Prayer to St. John as your Patron Saint

 

Saint John, whom I have chosen as my special patron, pray for me that I, too, may one day glorify the Blessed Trinity in heaven. Obtain for me your lively faith, that I may consider all persons, things, and events in the light of almighty God. Pray, that I may be generous in making sacrifices of temporal things to promote my eternal interests, as you so wisely did.

 

Set me on fire with a love for Jesus, that I may thirst for His sacraments and burn with zeal for the spread of His kingdom. By your powerful intercession, help me in the performance of my duties to God, myself and all the world.

 

Win for me the virtue of purity and a great confidence in the Blessed Virgin. Protect me this day, and every day of my life. Keep me from mortal sin. Obtain for me the grace of a happy death. Amen

  

Prayer to St. John for the Dying

  

Great Saint, who wast present at the Agony of Jesus, in the Garden of Olives, and upon the Cross, be present also at the agony of His members. Give this charitable assistance to all the dying, for whom I intercede this day, especially to those who have been recommended to our prayers. Intercede for them, and obtain for them, the grace of a holy death. O! beloved disciple of Jesus, ask the same favour for us, and for all dear to us. At the hour of our agony, be near us and protect us. Prepare us by a holy life, and by the imitation of thy virtues, for that great moment which shall decide our eternal destiny. Above all, obtain for us, a tender and real devotion to the Agonizing Heart of Jesus, and to the compassionate Heart of Mary, so that, having honoured them on earth, we may love and praise them eternally with thee in Heaven. Amen.

  

December 27th the Feast Day of

St. John the Apostle

  

It is God Whom we adore at Bethlehem at Christmastime. Thus it was natural that St. John, the chief Evangelist of the Divinity of Christ, should be found beside the crib, to disclose the greatness of the Infant Who reposes therein.

 

It is to him that Jesus wished to entrust His Mother when Joseph will have passed away. The liturgy therefore, likes to show together, beside the Child and His Mother, him whom the Gospel calls the Apostle the Just Man, and whom the Church today honors with the same title.

 

The Infant God in the crib gathers around Him pure souls; Mary is the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph the chaste spouse, St. Stephen the first martyr who washes his robe in the blood of the Lamb. Now behold St. John, the virgin apostle. Crowned with the halo of those who knew how to conquer their flesh, for this reason he became "the disciple whom Jesus loved, and whom also leaned on His breast at supper." Thanks to his angelic purity, he imbibed that wholesome wisdom of which the Epistle speaks and which won for him the halo of Doctor.

 

It is to St. John who wrote a Gospel, three Epistles and the Apocalypse that we owe the most beautiful pages on the Divinity of the Word made flesh; and it is for this reason that he is symbolized by the eagle which sores in the heights. Finally he received the halo of martyr, since he only escaped a violent death by that special protection of which the Gospel speaks and which made man believe that the beloved disciple would not die. Actually, he did not depart this life until all of the other Apostles passed away. His name is mentioned with theirs in the cannon of the mass.

 

The Image is owmed by Ramos Family of Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan

Rudolf Steiner

Steiner um 1905.jpg

BornRudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner

27 (25?) February 1861

Murakirály, Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire (now Donji Kraljevec, Croatia)

Died30 March 1925 (aged 64)

Dornach, Switzerland

Alma materVienna Institute of Technology

University of Rostock (PhD, 1891)

Spouse(s)

Anna Eunicke (1899–1911)

Marie Steiner-von Sivers (1914–1925)

Era20th-century philosophy

RegionWestern philosophy

SchoolMonism

Holism in science

Goethean science

Anthroposophy

Main interests

Metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, esotericism, Christianity

Notable ideas

Anthroposophy, anthroposophical medicine, biodynamic agriculture, eurythmy, spiritual science, Waldorf education, holism in science

Influences[show]

Influenced[show]

Steiner Seven Apocalyptical Seals Transparent.png

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Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (27 (or 25) February 1861[5] – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist.[6][7] Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published philosophical works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy; other influences include Goethean science and Rosicrucianism.[8]

 

In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality.[9] His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions,[10]:291 differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, the movement arts (developing a new artistic form, eurythmy) and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts.[11] In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked to establish various practical endeavors, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture,[12] and anthroposophical medicine.[13]

 

Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang Goethe's world view, in which "Thinking… is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas."[14] A consistent thread that runs from his earliest philosophical phase through his later spiritual orientation is the goal of demonstrating that there are no essential limits to human knowledge.[15]

  

Contents

1Biography

1.1Childhood and education

1.2Early spiritual experiences

1.3Writer and philosopher

1.4Theosophical Society

1.5Anthroposophical Society and its cultural activities

1.6Political engagement and social agenda

1.7Attacks, illness, and death

1.8Spiritual research

1.9Esoteric schools

2Breadth of activity

2.1Education

2.2Biodynamic agriculture

2.3Anthroposophical medicine

2.4Social reform

2.5Architecture and visual arts

2.6Performing arts

3Philosophical ideas

3.1Goethean science

3.2Knowledge and freedom

3.3Spiritual science

3.4Steiner and Christianity

3.4.1Christ and human evolution

3.4.2Divergence from conventional Christian thought

3.4.3The Christian Community

4Reception

4.1Scientism

4.2Race and ethnicity

4.2.1Judaism

5Writings (selection)

6See also

7References

8Further reading

9External links

Biography[edit]

Childhood and education[edit]

 

The house where Rudolf Steiner was born, in present-day Croatia

Steiner's father, Johann(es) Steiner (1829–1910), left a position as a gamekeeper[16] in the service of Count Hoyos in Geras, northeast Lower Austria to marry one of the Hoyos family's housemaids, Franziska Blie (1834 Horn – 1918, Horn), a marriage for which the Count had refused his permission. Johann became a telegraph operator on the Southern Austrian Railway, and at the time of Rudolf's birth was stationed in Murakirály (Kraljevec) in the Muraköz region of the Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire (present-day Donji Kraljevec in the Međimurje region of northernmost Croatia). In the first two years of Rudolf's life, the family moved twice, first to Mödling, near Vienna, and then, through the promotion of his father to stationmaster, to Pottschach, located in the foothills of the eastern Austrian Alps in Lower Austria.[13]

 

Steiner entered the village school, but following a disagreement between his father and the schoolmaster, he was briefly educated at home. In 1869, when Steiner was eight years old, the family moved to the village of Neudörfl and in October 1872 Steiner proceeded from the village school there to the realschule in Wiener Neustadt.[17]:Chap. 2

  

Rudolf Steiner, graduation photo from secondary school

In 1879, the family moved to Inzersdorf to enable Steiner to attend the Vienna Institute of Technology,[18] where he enrolled in courses in mathematics, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and mineralogy and audited courses in literature and philosophy, on an academic scholarship from 1879 to 1883, at the end of which time he withdrew from the Institute without graduating.[2]:122,443,446,456,503[19]:29 In 1882, one of Steiner's teachers, Karl Julius Schröer,[17]:Chap. 3 suggested Steiner's name to Joseph Kürschner, chief editor of a new edition of Goethe's works,[20] who asked Steiner to become the edition's natural science editor,[21] a truly astonishing opportunity for a young student without any form of academic credentials or previous publications.[19]:43

 

Before attending the Vienna Institute of Technology, Steiner had studied Kant, Fichte and Schelling.[22]

 

Early spiritual experiences[edit]

 

Rudolf Steiner as 21-year-old student (1882)

When he was nine years old, Steiner believed that he saw the spirit of an aunt who had died in a far-off town asking him to help her at a time when neither he nor his family knew of the woman's death.[23] Steiner later related that as a child he felt "that one must carry the knowledge of the spiritual world within oneself after the fashion of geometry ... [for here] one is permitted to know something which the mind alone, through its own power, experiences. In this feeling I found the justification for the spiritual world that I experienced ... I confirmed for myself by means of geometry the feeling that I must speak of a world 'which is not seen'."[17]

 

Steiner believed that at the age of 15 he had gained a complete understanding of the concept of time, which he considered to be the precondition of spiritual clairvoyance.[22] At 21, on the train between his home village and Vienna, Steiner met an herb gatherer, Felix Kogutzki, who spoke about the spiritual world "as one who had his own experience therein".[17]:39–40[24] Kogutzki conveyed to Steiner a knowledge of nature that was non-academic and spiritual.

 

Writer and philosopher[edit]

In 1888, as a result of his work for the Kürschner edition of Goethe's works, Steiner was invited to work as an editor at the Goethe archives in Weimar. Steiner remained with the archive until 1896. As well as the introductions for and commentaries to four volumes of Goethe's scientific writings, Steiner wrote two books about Goethe's philosophy: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886),[25] which Steiner regarded as the epistemological foundation and justification for his later work,[26] and Goethe's Conception of the World (1897).[27] During this time he also collaborated in complete editions of the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and the writer Jean Paul and wrote numerous articles for various journals.

  

Rudolf Steiner around 1891/92, etching by Otto Fröhlich

In 1891, Steiner received a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Rostock, for his dissertation discussing Fichte's concept of the ego,[10][28] submitted to Heinrich von Stein, whose Seven Books of Platonism Steiner esteemed.[17]:Chap. 14 Steiner's dissertation was later published in expanded form as Truth and Knowledge: Prelude to a Philosophy of Freedom, with a dedication to Eduard von Hartmann.[29] Two years later, he published Die Philosophie der Freiheit (The Philosophy of Freedom or The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity—Steiner's preferred English title) (1894), an exploration of epistemology and ethics that suggested a way for humans to become spiritually free beings. Steiner later spoke of this book as containing implicitly, in philosophical form, the entire content of what he later developed explicitly as anthroposophy.[30]

  

Marie Steiner 1903

In 1896, Steiner declined an offer from Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche to help organize the Nietzsche archive in Naumburg. Her brother by that time was non compos mentis. Förster-Nietzsche introduced Steiner into the presence of the catatonic philosopher; Steiner, deeply moved, subsequently wrote the book Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom.[31] Steiner later related that:

 

My first acquaintance with Nietzsche's writings belongs to the year 1889. Previous to that I had never read a line of his. Upon the substance of my ideas as these find expression in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, Nietzsche's thought had not the least influence....Nietzsche's ideas of the 'eternal recurrence' and of 'Übermensch' remained long in my mind. For in these was reflected that which a personality must feel concerning the evolution and essential being of humanity when this personality is kept back from grasping the spiritual world by the restricted thought in the philosophy of nature characterizing the end of the 19th century....What attracted me particularly was that one could read Nietzsche without coming upon anything which strove to make the reader a 'dependent' of Nietzsche's.[17]:Chap. 18

 

In 1897, Steiner left the Weimar archives and moved to Berlin. He became part owner of, chief editor of, and an active contributor to the literary journal Magazin für Literatur, where he hoped to find a readership sympathetic to his philosophy. Many subscribers were alienated by Steiner's unpopular support of Émile Zola in the Dreyfus Affair[32] and the journal lost more subscribers when Steiner published extracts from his correspondence with anarchist John Henry Mackay.[32] Dissatisfaction with his editorial style eventually led to his departure from the magazine.

 

In 1899, Steiner married Anna Eunicke; the couple separated several years later. Anna died in 1911.

 

Theosophical Society[edit]

Main article: Rudolf Steiner and the Theosophical Society

 

Rudolf Steiner in Munich with Annie Besant, leader of the Theosophical Society. Photo from 1907

In 1899, Steiner published an article, "Goethe's Secret Revelation", discussing the esoteric nature of Goethe's fairy tale The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. This article led to an invitation by the Count and Countess Brockdorff to speak to a gathering of Theosophists on the subject of Nietzsche. Steiner continued speaking regularly to the members of the Theosophical Society, becoming the head of its newly constituted German section in 1902 without ever formally joining the society.[10][33] It was also in connection with this society that Steiner met and worked with Marie von Sivers, who became his second wife in 1914. By 1904, Steiner was appointed by Annie Besant to be leader of the Theosophical Esoteric Society for Germany and Austria. In 1904, Eliza, the wife of Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, became one of his favourite scholars[34]. Through Eliza, Steiner met Helmuth, who served as the Chief of the German General Staff from 1906 to 1914[35].

 

In contrast to mainstream Theosophy, Steiner sought to build a Western approach to spirituality based on the philosophical and mystical traditions of European culture. The German Section of the Theosophical Society grew rapidly under Steiner's leadership as he lectured throughout much of Europe on his spiritual science. During this period, Steiner maintained an original approach, replacing Madame Blavatsky's terminology with his own, and basing his spiritual research and teachings upon the Western esoteric and philosophical tradition. This and other differences, in particular Steiner's vocal rejection of Leadbeater and Besant's claim that Jiddu Krishnamurti was the vehicle of a new Maitreya, or world teacher,[36] led to a formal split in 1912/13,[10] when Steiner and the majority of members of the German section of the Theosophical Society broke off to form a new group, the Anthroposophical Society. Steiner took the name "Anthroposophy" from the title of a work of the Austrian philosopher Robert von Zimmermann, published in Vienna in 1856.[37] Despite his departure from the Theosophical Society, Steiner maintained his interest in Theosophy throughout his life.[8]

 

Anthroposophical Society and its cultural activities[edit]

RudolfSteiner.jpeg

The Anthroposophical Society grew rapidly. Fueled by a need to find an artistic home for their yearly conferences, which included performances of plays written by Edouard Schuré and Steiner, the decision was made to build a theater and organizational center. In 1913, construction began on the first Goetheanum building, in Dornach, Switzerland. The building, designed by Steiner, was built to a significant part by volunteers who offered craftsmanship or simply a will to learn new skills. Once World War I started in 1914, the Goetheanum volunteers could hear the sound of cannon fire beyond the Swiss border, but despite the war, people from all over Europe worked peaceably side by side on the building's construction. Steiner moved from Berlin to Dornach in 1913 and lived there to the end of his life.[38]

 

Steiner's lecture activity expanded enormously with the end of the war. Most importantly, from 1919 on Steiner began to work with other members of the society to found numerous practical institutions and activities, including the first Waldorf school, founded that year in Stuttgart, Germany. At the same time, the Goetheanum developed as a wide-ranging cultural centre. On New Year's Eve, 1922/1923, the building burned to the ground; contemporary police reports indicate arson as the probable cause.[13]:752[39]:796 Steiner immediately began work designing a second Goetheanum building - this time made of concrete instead of wood - which was completed in 1928, three years after his death.

 

At a "Foundation Meeting" for members held at the Dornach center during Christmas, 1923, Steiner spoke of laying a new Foundation Stone for the society in the hearts of his listeners. At the meeting, a new "General Anthroposophical Society" was established with a new executive board. At this meeting, Steiner also founded a School of Spiritual Science, intended as an "organ of initiative" for research and study and as "the 'soul' of the Anthroposophical Society".[40] This School, which was led by Steiner, initially had sections for general anthroposophy, education, medicine, performing arts (eurythmy, speech, drama and music), the literary arts and humanities, mathematics, astronomy, science, and visual arts. Later sections were added for the social sciences, youth and agriculture.[41][42][43] The School of Spiritual Science included meditative exercises given by Steiner.

 

Political engagement and social agenda[edit]

Steiner became a well-known and controversial public figure during and after World War I. In response to the catastrophic situation in post-war Germany, he proposed extensive social reforms through the establishment of a Threefold Social Order in which the cultural, political and economic realms would be largely independent. Steiner argued that a fusion of the three realms had created the inflexibility that had led to catastrophes such as World War I. In connection with this, he promoted a radical solution in the disputed area of Upper Silesia, claimed by both Poland and Germany. His suggestion that this area be granted at least provisional independence led to his being publicly accused of being a traitor to Germany.[44]

 

Steiner opposed Wilson's proposal to create new European nations based around ethnic groups, which he saw as opening the door to rampant nationalism. Steiner proposed as an alternative "'social territories' with democratic institutions that were accessible to all inhabitants of a territory whatever their origin while the needs of the various ethnicities would be met by independent cultural institutions."[45]

 

Attacks, illness, and death[edit]

The National Socialist German Workers Party gained strength in Germany after the First World War. In 1919, a political theorist of this movement, Dietrich Eckart, attacked Steiner and suggested that he was a Jew.[46] In 1921, Adolf Hitler attacked Steiner on many fronts, including accusations that he was a tool of the Jews,[47] while other nationalist extremists in Germany called for a "war against Steiner". That same year, Steiner warned against the disastrous effects it would have for Central Europe if the National Socialists came to power.[46]:8 In 1922 a lecture Steiner was giving in Munich was disrupted when stink bombs were let off and the lights switched out, while people rushed the stage apparently attempting to attack Steiner, who exited safely through a back door.[48][49] Unable to guarantee his safety, Steiner's agents cancelled his next lecture tour.[32]:193[50] The 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich led Steiner to give up his residence in Berlin, saying that if those responsible for the attempted coup [Hitler and others] came to power in Germany, it would no longer be possible for him to enter the country.[51]

 

From 1923 on, Steiner showed signs of increasing frailness and illness. He nonetheless continued to lecture widely, and even to travel; especially towards the end of this time, he was often giving two, three or even four lectures daily for courses taking place concurrently. Many of these lectures focused on practical areas of life such as education.[52]

  

Steiner's gravestone at the Goetheanum

Increasingly ill, he held his last lecture in late September, 1924. He continued work on his autobiography during the last months of his life; he died on 30 March 1925.

 

Spiritual research[edit]

Steiner first began speaking publicly about spiritual experiences and phenomena in his 1899 lectures to the Theosophical Society. By 1901 he had begun to write about spiritual topics, initially in the form of discussions of historical figures such as the mystics of the Middle Ages. By 1904 he was expressing his own understanding of these themes in his essays and books, while continuing to refer to a wide variety of historical sources.

 

"A world of spiritual perception is discussed in a number of writings which I have published since this book appeared. The Philosophy of Freedom forms the philosophical basis for these later writings. For it tries to show that the experience of thinking, rightly understood, is in fact an experience of spirit." (Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom, Consequences of Monism)

 

Steiner aimed to apply his training in mathematics, science, and philosophy to produce rigorous, verifiable presentations of those experiences.[53] He believed that through freely chosen ethical disciplines and meditative training, anyone could develop the ability to experience the spiritual world, including the higher nature of oneself and others.[32] Steiner believed that such discipline and training would help a person to become a more moral, creative and free individual – free in the sense of being capable of actions motivated solely by love.[54] His philosophical ideas were affected by Franz Brentano,[32] with whom he had studied,[55] as well as by Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, and Goethe's phenomenological approach to science.[32][56][57]

 

Steiner followed Wilhelm Dilthey in using the term Geisteswissenschaft, usually translated as "spiritual science".[58] Steiner used the term to describe a discipline treating the spirit as something actual and real, starting from the premise that it is possible for human beings to penetrate behind what is sense-perceptible.[59] He proposed that psychology, history, and the humanities generally were based on the direct grasp of an ideal reality,[60] and required close attention to the particular period and culture which provided the distinctive character of religious qualities in the course of the evolution of consciousness. In contrast to William James' pragmatic approach to religious and psychic experience, which emphasized its idiosyncratic character, Steiner focused on ways such experience can be rendered more intelligible and integrated into human life.[61]

 

Steiner proposed that an understanding of reincarnation and karma was necessary to understand psychology[62] and that the form of external nature would be more comprehensible as a result of insight into the course of karma in the evolution of humanity.[63] Beginning in 1910, he described aspects of karma relating to health, natural phenomena and free will, taking the position that a person is not bound by his or her karma, but can transcend this through actively taking hold of one's own nature and destiny.[64] In an extensive series of lectures from February to September 1924, Steiner presented further research on successive reincarnations of various individuals and described the techniques he used for karma research.[52][65]

 

Esoteric schools[edit]

See also: Rudolf Steiner's exercises for spiritual development

Steiner was founder and leader of the following:

 

His independent Esoteric School of the Theosophical Society, founded in 1904. This school continued after the break with Theosophy but was disbanded at the start of World War I.

A lodge called Mystica Aeterna within the Masonic Order of Memphis and Mizraim, which Steiner led from 1906 until around 1914. Steiner added to the Masonic rite a number of Rosicrucian references.[66]

The School of Spiritual Science of the Anthroposophical Society, founded in 1923 as a further development of his earlier Esoteric School. This was originally constituted with a general section and seven specialized sections for education, literature, performing arts, natural sciences, medicine, visual arts, and astronomy.[41][43][67] Steiner gave members of the School the first Lesson for guidance into the esoteric work in February 1924.[68] Though Steiner intended to develop three "classes" of this school, only the first of these was developed in his lifetime (and continues today). An authentic text of the written records on which the teaching of the First Class was based was published in 1992.[69]

Breadth of activity[edit]

After the First World War, Steiner became active in a wide variety of cultural contexts. He founded a number of schools, the first of which was known as the Waldorf school,[70] which later evolved into a worldwide school network. He also founded a system of organic agriculture, now known as biodynamic agriculture, which was one of the very first forms of, and has contributed significantly to the development of, modern organic farming.[71] His work in medicine led to the development of a broad range of complementary medications and supportive artistic and biographic therapies.[72] Numerous homes for children and adults with developmental disabilities based on his work (including those of the Camphill movement) are found in Africa, Europe, and North America.[73] His paintings and drawings influenced Joseph Beuys and other modern artists. His two Goetheanum buildings have been widely cited as masterpieces of modern architecture,[74][75][76][77][78] and other anthroposophical architects have contributed thousands of buildings to the modern scene.[79] One of the first institutions to practice ethical banking was an anthroposophical bank working out of Steiner's ideas; other anthroposophical social finance institutions have since been founded.

 

Steiner's literary estate is correspondingly broad. Steiner's writings, published in about forty volumes, include books, essays, four plays ('mystery dramas'), mantric verse, and an autobiography. His collected lectures, making up another approximately 300 volumes, discuss an extremely wide range of themes. Steiner's drawings, chiefly illustrations done on blackboards during his lectures, are collected in a separate series of 28 volumes. Many publications have covered his architectural legacy and sculptural work.

 

Education[edit]

 

The Waldorf school in Verrières-le-Buisson (France)

Main article: Waldorf education

As a young man, Steiner was a private tutor and a lecturer on history for the Berlin Arbeiterbildungsschule,[80] an educational initiative for working class adults.[81] Soon thereafter, he began to articulate his ideas on education in public lectures,[82] culminating in a 1907 essay on The Education of the Child in which he described the major phases of child development which formed the foundation of his approach to education.[83] His conception of education was influenced by the Herbartian pedagogy prominent in Europe during the late nineteenth century,[80]:1362, 1390ff[82] though Steiner criticized Herbart for not sufficiently recognizing the importance of educating the will and feelings as well as the intellect.[84]

 

In 1919, Emil Molt invited him to lecture to his workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart. Out of these lectures came a new school, the Waldorf school. In 1922, Steiner presented these ideas at a conference called for this purpose in Oxford by Professor Millicent Mackenzie. He subsequently presented a teacher training course at Torquay in 1924 at an Anthroposophy Summer School organised by Eleanor Merry.[85] The Oxford Conference and the Torquay teacher training led to the founding of the first Waldorf schools in Britain.[86] During Steiner's lifetime, schools based on his educational principles were also founded in Hamburg, Essen, The Hague and London; there are now more than 1000 Waldorf schools worldwide.

 

Biodynamic agriculture[edit]

Main article: Biodynamic agriculture

In 1924, a group of farmers concerned about the future of agriculture requested Steiner's help. Steiner responded with a lecture series on an ecological and sustainable approach to agriculture that increased soil fertility without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.[12] Steiner's agricultural ideas promptly spread and were put into practice internationally[87] and biodynamic agriculture is now practiced in Europe,[88] North America, South America[89], Africa[90], Asia[88] and Australasia.[91][92][93]

 

A central aspect of biodynamics is that the farm as a whole is seen as an organism, and therefore should be a largely self-sustaining system, producing its own manure and animal feed. Plant or animal disease is seen as a symptom of problems in the whole organism. Steiner also suggested timing such agricultural activities as sowing, weeding, and harvesting to utilize the influences on plant growth of the moon and planets; and the application of natural materials prepared in specific ways to the soil, compost, and crops, with the intention of engaging non-physical beings and elemental forces. He encouraged his listeners to verify his suggestions empirically, as he had not yet done.[91]

 

Anthroposophical medicine[edit]

Main article: Anthroposophical medicine

From the late 1910s, Steiner was working with doctors to create a new approach to medicine. In 1921, pharmacists and physicians gathered under Steiner's guidance to create a pharmaceutical company called Weleda which now distributes natural medical products worldwide. At around the same time, Dr. Ita Wegman founded a first anthroposophic medical clinic (now the Ita Wegman Clinic) in Arlesheim.

 

Social reform[edit]

Main article: Threefold Social Order

For a period after World War I, Steiner was active as a lecturer on social reform. A petition expressing his basic social ideas was widely circulated and signed by many cultural figures of the day, including Hermann Hesse.

 

In Steiner's chief book on social reform, Toward Social Renewal, he suggested that the cultural, political and economic spheres of society need to work together as consciously cooperating yet independent entities, each with a particular task: political institutions should establish political equality and protect human rights; cultural institutions should nurture the free and unhindered development of science, art, education and religion; and economic institutions should enable producers, distributors and consumers to cooperate to provide efficiently for society's needs.[94] He saw such a division of responsibility, which he called the Threefold Social Order, as a vital task which would take up consciously the historical trend toward the mutual independence of these three realms. Steiner also gave suggestions for many specific social reforms.

 

Steiner proposed what he termed a "fundamental law" of social life:

 

The well-being of a community of people working together will be the greater, the less the individual claims for himself the proceeds of his work, i.e. the more of these proceeds he makes over to his fellow-workers, the more his own needs are satisfied, not out of his own work but out of the work done by others.

 

— Steiner, The Fundamental Social Law[95]

He expressed this in the motto:[95]

 

The healthy social life is found

When in the mirror of each human soul

The whole community finds its reflection,

And when in the community

The virtue of each one is living.

Architecture and visual arts[edit]

 

First Goetheanum

  

Second Goetheanum

  

Detail of The Representative of Humanity

 

English sculptor Edith Maryon belonged to the innermost circle of founders of anthroposophy and was appointed to head the Section of Sculptural Arts at the Goetheanum.

 

Steiner designed 17 buildings, including the First and Second Goetheanums.[96] These two buildings, built in Dornach, Switzerland, were intended to house significant theater spaces as well as a "school for spiritual science".[97] Three of Steiner's buildings have been listed amongst the most significant works of modern architecture.[98]

 

His primary sculptural work is The Representative of Humanity (1922), a nine-meter high wood sculpture executed as a joint project with the sculptor Edith Maryon. This was intended to be placed in the first Goetheanum. It shows a central, free-standing Christ holding a balance between the beings of Lucifer and Ahriman, representing opposing tendencies of expansion and contraction.[99][100][101] It was intended to show, in conscious contrast to Michelangelo's Last Judgment, Christ as mute and impersonal such that the beings that approach him must judge themselves.[102] The sculpture is now on permanent display at the Goetheanum.

 

Steiner's blackboard drawings were unique at the time and almost certainly not originally intended as art works.[103] Josef Beuys' work, itself heavily influenced by Steiner, has led to the modern understanding of Steiner's drawings as artistic objects.[104]

 

Performing arts[edit]

See also: Eurythmy

Steiner wrote four mystery plays between 1909 and 1913: The Portal of Initiation, The Souls' Probation, The Guardian of the Threshold and The Soul's Awakening, modeled on the esoteric dramas of Edouard Schuré, Maurice Maeterlinck, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.[105] Steiner's plays continue to be performed by anthroposophical groups in various countries, most notably (in the original German) in Dornach, Switzerland and (in English translation) in Spring Valley, New York and in Stroud and Stourbridge in the U.K.

 

In collaboration with Marie von Sivers, Steiner also founded a new approach to acting, storytelling, and the recitation of poetry. His last public lecture course, given in 1924, was on speech and drama. The Russian actor, director, and acting coach Michael Chekhov based significant aspects of his method of acting on Steiner's work.[106][107]

 

Together with Marie von Sivers, Rudolf Steiner also developed the art of eurythmy, sometimes referred to as "visible speech and song". According to the principles of eurythmy, there are archetypal movements or gestures that correspond to every aspect of speech – the sounds (or phonemes), the rhythms, and the grammatical function – to every "soul quality" – joy, despair, tenderness, etc. – and to every aspect of music – tones, intervals, rhythms, and harmonies.

 

Philosophical ideas[edit]

Live through deeds of love, and let others live understanding their unique intentions: this is the fundamental principle of free human beings.

Rudolf Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom. Chapter 9

 

Goethean science[edit]

See also: Goethean science

In his commentaries on Goethe's scientific works, written between 1884 and 1897, Steiner presented Goethe's approach to science as essentially phenomenological in nature, rather than theory- or model-based. He developed this conception further in several books, The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886) and Goethe's Conception of the World (1897), particularly emphasizing the transformation in Goethe's approach from the physical sciences, where experiment played the primary role, to plant biology, where both accurate perception and imagination were required to find the biological archetypes (Urpflanze), and postulated that Goethe had sought but been unable to fully find the further transformation in scientific thinking necessary to properly interpret and understand the animal kingdom.[108] Steiner emphasized the role of evolutionary thinking in Goethe's discovery of the intermaxillary bone in human beings; Goethe expected human anatomy to be an evolutionary transformation of animal anatomy.[108] Steiner defended Goethe's qualitative description of color as arising synthetically from the polarity of light and darkness, in contrast to Newton's particle-based and analytic conception.

 

Particular organic forms can be evolved only from universal types, and every organic entity we experience must coincide with some one of these derivative forms of the type. Here the evolutionary method must replace the method of proof. We aim not to show that external conditions act upon one another in a certain way and thereby bring about a definite result, but that a particular form has developed under definite external conditions out of the type. This is the radical difference between inorganic and organic science.

 

— Rudolf Steiner, The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, Chapter XVI, "Organic Nature"

Knowledge and freedom[edit]

See also: Philosophy of Freedom

Steiner approached the philosophical questions of knowledge and freedom in two stages. In his dissertation, published in expanded form in 1892 as Truth and Knowledge, Steiner suggests that there is an inconsistency between Kant's philosophy, which posits that all knowledge is a representation of an essential verity inaccessible to human consciousness, and modern science, which assumes that all influences can be found in the sensory and mental world to which we have access. Steiner considered Kant's philosophy of an inaccessible beyond ("Jenseits-Philosophy") a stumbling block in achieving a satisfying philosophical viewpoint.[109]

 

Steiner postulates that the world is essentially an indivisible unity, but that our consciousness divides it into the sense-perceptible appearance, on the one hand, and the formal nature accessible to our thinking, on the other. He sees in thinking itself an element that can be strengthened and deepened sufficiently to penetrate all that our senses do not reveal to us. Steiner thus considered what appears to human experience as a division between the spiritual and natural worlds to be a conditioned result of the structure of our consciousness, which separates perception and thinking. These two faculties give us not two worlds, but two complementary views of the same world; neither has primacy and the two together are necessary and sufficient to arrive at a complete understanding of the world. In thinking about perception (the path of natural science) and perceiving the process of thinking (the path of spiritual training), it is possible to discover a hidden inner unity between the two poles of our experience.[54]:Chapter 4 Truth, for Steiner, is paradoxically both an objective discovery and yet "a free creation of the human spirit, that never would exist at all if we did not generate it ourselves. The task of understanding is not to replicate in conceptual form something that already exists, but rather to create a wholly new realm, that together with the world given to our senses constitutes the fullness of reality."[110]

 

In the Philosophy of Freedom, Steiner further explores potentials within thinking: freedom, he suggests, can only be approached gradually with the aid of the creative activity of thinking. Thinking can be a free deed; in addition, it can liberate our will from its subservience to our instincts and drives. Free deeds, he suggests, are those for which we are fully conscious of the motive for our action; freedom is the spiritual activity of penetrating with consciousness our own nature and that of the world,[111] and the real activity of acting in full consciousness.[54]:133–4 This includes overcoming influences of both heredity and environment: "To be free is to be capable of thinking one's own thoughts – not the thoughts merely of the body, or of society, but thoughts generated by one's deepest, most original, most essential and spiritual self, one's individuality."[10]

 

Steiner affirms Darwin's and Haeckel's evolutionary perspectives but extended this beyond its materialistic consequences; he sees human consciousness, indeed, all human culture, as a product of natural evolution that transcends itself. For Steiner, nature becomes self-conscious in the human being. Steiner's description of the nature of human consciousness thus closely parallels that of Solovyov:[112]

 

Spiritual science[edit]

See also: Anthroposophy and Rudolf Steiner's exercises for spiritual development

 

Rudolf Steiner 1900

In his earliest works, Steiner already spoke of the "natural and spiritual worlds" as a unity.[32] From 1900 on, he began lecturing about concrete details of the spiritual world(s), culminating in the publication in 1904 of the first of several systematic presentations, his Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos. As a starting point for the book Steiner took a quotation from Goethe, describing the method of natural scientific observation,[113] while in the Preface he made clear that the line of thought taken in this book led to the same goal as that in his earlier work, The Philosophy of Freedom.[114]

 

In the years 1903–1908 Steiner maintained the magazine "Lucifer-Gnosis" and published in it essays on topics such as initiation, reincarnation and karma, and knowledge of the supernatural world.[115] Some of these were later collected and published as books, such as How to Know Higher Worlds (1904/5) and Cosmic Memory. The book An Outline of Esoteric Science was published in 1910. Important themes include:

 

the human being as body, soul and spirit;

the path of spiritual development;

spiritual influences on world-evolution and history; and

reincarnation and karma.

Steiner emphasized that there is an objective natural and spiritual world that can be known, and that perceptions of the spiritual world and incorporeal beings are, under conditions of training comparable to that required for the natural sciences, including self-discipline, replicable by multiple observers. It is on this basis that spiritual science is possible, with radically different epistemological foundations than those of natural science. He believed that natural science was correct in its methods but one-sided for exclusively focusing on sensory phenomena, while mysticism was vague in its methods, though seeking to explore the inner and spiritual life. Anthroposophy was meant to apply the systematic methods of the former to the content of the latter[116][117]

 

For Steiner, the cosmos is permeated and continually transformed by the creative activity of non-physical processes and spiritual beings. For the human being to become conscious of the objective reality of these processes and beings, it is necessary to creatively enact and reenact, within, their creative activity. Thus objective spiritual knowledge always entails creative inner activity.[32] Steiner articulated three stages of any creative deed:[54]:Pt II, Chapter 1

 

Moral intuition: the ability to discover or, preferably, develop valid ethical principles;

Moral imagination: the imaginative transformation of such principles into a concrete intention applicable to the particular situation (situational ethics); and

Moral technique: the realization of the intended transformation, depending on a mastery of practical skills.

Steiner termed his work from this period onwards Anthroposophy. He emphasized that the spiritual path he articulated builds upon and supports individual freedom and independent judgment; for the results of spiritual research to be appropriately presented in a modern context they must be in a form accessible to logical understanding, so that those who do not have access to the spiritual experiences underlying anthroposophical research can make independent evaluations of the latter's results.[54] Spiritual training is to support what Steiner considered the overall purpose of human evolution, the development of the mutually interdependent qualities of love and freedom.[10]

 

Steiner and Christianity[edit]

In 1899 Steiner experienced what he described as a life-transforming inner encounter with the being of Christ; previously he had little or no relation to Christianity in any form. Then and thereafter, his relationship to Christianity remained entirely founded upon personal experience, and thus both non-denominational and strikingly different from conventional religious forms.[10] Steiner was then 38, and the experience of meeting the Christ occurred after a tremendous inner struggle. To use Steiner's own words, the "experience culminated in my standing in the spiritual presence of the Mystery of Golgotha in a most profound and solemn festival of knowledge."[118]

 

Christ and human evolution[edit]

Steiner describes Christ as the unique pivot and meaning of earth's evolutionary processes and human history, redeeming the Fall from Paradise.[119] He understood the Christ as a being that unifies and inspires all religions, not belonging to a particular religious faith. To be "Christian" is, for Steiner, a search for balance between polarizing extremes[119]:102–3 and the ability to manifest love in freedom.[10]

 

Central principles of his understanding include:

 

The being of Christ is central to all religions, though called by different names by each.

Every religion is valid and true for the time and cultural context in which it was born.

Historical forms of Christianity need to be transformed in our times in order to meet the ongoing evolution of humanity.

In Steiner's esoteric cosmology, the spiritual development of humanity is interwoven in and inseparable from the cosmological development of the universe. Continuing the evolution that led to humanity being born out of the natural world, the Christ being brings an impulse enabling human consciousness of the forces that act creatively, but unconsciously, in nature.[120]

 

Divergence from conventional Christian thought[edit]

Steiner's views of Christianity diverge from conventional Christian thought in key places, and include gnostic elements.[108] However, unlike many gnostics, Steiner affirms the unique and actual physical Incarnation of Christ in Jesus at the beginning of the Christian era.

 

One of the central points of divergence with conventional Christian thought is found in Steiner's views on reincarnation and karma.

 

Steiner also posited two different Jesus children involved in the Incarnation of the Christ: one child descended from Solomon, as described in the Gospel of Matthew; the other child from Nathan, as described in the Gospel of Luke.[94] He references in this regard the fact that the genealogies in these two gospels list twenty-six (Luke) to forty-one (Matthew) completely different ancestors for the generations from David to Jesus. See Genealogy of Jesus for alternative explanations of this radical divergence.

 

Steiner's view of the second coming of Christ is also unusual. He suggested that this would not be a physical reappearance, but rather, meant that the Christ being would become manifest in non-physical form, in the "etheric realm" – i.e. visible to spiritual vision and apparent in community life – for increasing numbers of people, beginning around the year 1933. He emphasized that the future would require humanity to recognize this Spirit of Love in all its genuine forms, regardless of how this is named. He also warned that the traditional name, "Christ", might be used, yet the true essence of this Being of Love ignored.[108]

 

The Christian Community[edit]

In the 1920s, Steiner was approached by Friedrich Rittelmeyer, a Lutheran pastor with a congregation in Berlin, who asked if it was possible to create a more modern form of Christianity. Soon others joined Rittelmeyer – mostly Protestant pastors and theology students, but including several Roman Catholic priests. Steiner offered counsel on renewing the spiritual potency of the sacraments while emphasizing freedom of thought and a personal relationship to religious life. He envisioned a new synthesis of Catholic and Protestant approaches to religious life, terming this "modern, Johannine Christianity".[94]

 

The resulting movement for religious renewal became known as "The Christian Community". Its work is based on a free relationship to the Christ, without dogma or policies. Its priesthood, which is open to both men and women, is free to preach out of their own spiritual insights and creativity.

 

Steiner emphasized that the resulting movement for the renewal of Christianity was a personal gesture of help to a movement founded by Rittelmeyer and others independently of his anthroposophical work.[94] The distinction was important to Steiner because he sought with Anthroposophy to create a scientific, not faith-based, spirituality.[119] He recognized that for those who wished to find more traditional forms, however, a renewal of the traditional religions was also a vital need of the times.

 

Reception[edit]

See also: Anthroposophy § Reception

Steiner's work has influenced a broad range of notable personalities. These include philosophers Albert Schweitzer, Owen Barfield and Richard Tarnas;[32] writers Saul Bellow,[121] Andrej Belyj,[122][123][124] Michael Ende,[125] Selma Lagerlöf,[126] Edouard Schuré, David Spangler,[citation needed] and William Irwin Thompson;[32] child psychiatrist Eva Frommer;[127] economist Leonard Read;[128] artists Josef Beuys,[129] Wassily Kandinsky,[130][131] and Murray Griffin;[132] esotericist and educationalist George Trevelyan;[133] actor and acting teacher Michael Chekhov;[134] cinema director Andrei Tarkovsky;[135] composers Jonathan Harvey[136] and Viktor Ullmann;[137] and conductor Bruno Walter.[138] Olav Hammer, though sharply critical of esoteric movements generally, terms Steiner "arguably the most historically and philosophically sophisticated spokesperson of the Esoteric Tradition."[139]

 

Albert Schweitzer wrote that he and Steiner had in common that they had "taken on the life mission of working for the emergence of a true culture enlivened by the ideal of humanity and to encourage people to become truly thinking beings".[140]

 

Anthony Storr stated about Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy: "His belief system is so eccentric, so unsupported by evidence, so manifestly bizarre, that rational skeptics are bound to consider it delusional."[141]

 

Robert Todd Carroll has said of Steiner that "Some of his ideas on education – such as educating the handicapped in the mainstream – are worth considering, although his overall plan for developing the spirit and the soul rather than the intellect cannot be admired".[142] Steiner's translators have pointed out that his use of Geist includes both mind and spirit, however,[143] as the German term Geist can be translated equally properly in either way.[144]

 

The 150th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner's birth was marked by the first major retrospective exhibition of his art and work, 'Kosmos - Alchemy of the everyday'. Organized by Vitra Design Museum, the traveling exhibition presented many facets of Steiner's life and achievements, including his influence on architecture, furniture design, dance (Eurythmy), education, and agriculture (Biodynamic agriculture).[145] The exhibition opened in 2011 at the Kunstmuseum in Stuttgart, Germany,[146]

 

Scientism[edit]

See also: Anthroposophy: Scientific basis

Olav Hammer has criticized as scientism Steiner's claim to use scientific methodology to investigate spiritual phenomena that were based upon his claims of clairvoyant experience.[139] Steiner regarded the observations of spiritual research as more dependable (and above all, consistent) than observations of physical reality. However, he did consider spiritual research to be fallible[2]:p. 618 and held the view that anyone capable of thinking logically was in a position to correct errors by spiritual researchers.[147]

 

Race and ethnicity[edit]

Steiner's work includes both universalist, humanist elements and historically influenced racial assumptions.[148] Due to the contrast and even contradictions between these elements, "whether a given reader interprets Anthroposophy as racist or not depends upon that reader's concerns".[149] Steiner considered that by dint of its shared language and culture, each people has a unique essence, which he called its soul or spirit.[139] He saw race as a physical manifestation of humanity's spiritual evolution, and at times discussed race in terms of complex hierarchies that were largely derived from 19th century biology, anthropology, philosophy and theosophy. However, he consistently and explicitly subordinated race, ethnicity, gender, and indeed all hereditary factors, to individual factors in development.[149] For Steiner, human individuality is centered in a person's unique biography, and he believed that an individual's experiences and development are not bound by a single lifetime or the qualities of the physical body.[33] More specifically:

 

Steiner occasionally characterized specific races, nations and ethnicities in ways that have been termed racist by critics.[150] This includes descriptions by him of certain races and ethnic groups as flowering, others as backward, or destined to degenerate or disappear.[149] He presented explicitly hierarchical views of the spiritual evolution of different races,[151] including—at times, and inconsistently—portraying the white race, European culture or Germanic culture as representing the high point of human evolution as of the early 20th century, although he did describe them as destined to be superseded by future cultures.[149]

Throughout his life Steiner consistently emphasized the core spiritual unity of all the world's peoples and sharply criticized racial prejudice. He articulated beliefs that the individual nature of any person stands higher than any racial, ethnic, national or religious affiliation.[13][94] His belief that race and ethnicity are transient and superficial, and not essential aspects of the individual,[149] was partly rooted in his conviction that each individual reincarnates in a variety of different peoples and races over successive lives, and that each of us thus bears within him or herself the heritage of many races and peoples.[149][152] Toward the end of his life, Steiner predicted that race will rapidly lose any remaining significance for future generations.[149] In Steiner's view, culture is universal, and explicitly not ethnically based; he saw Goethe and idealist philosophy in particular as the source of ideas that could be drawn upon by any culture, and he vehemently criticized imperialism.[153]

In the context of his ethical individualism, Steiner considered "race, folk, ethnicity and gender" to be general, describable categories into which individuals may choose to fit, but from which free human beings can and will liberate themselves.[33]

 

Judaism[edit]

During the years when Steiner was best known as a literary critic, he published a series of articles attacking various manifestations of antisemitism[154] and criticizing some of the most prominent anti-Semites of the time as "barbaric" and "enemies of culture".[155] On a number of occasions, however, Steiner suggested that Jewish cultural and social life had lost all contemporary relevance[156] and promoted full assimilation of the Jewish people into the nations in which they lived. This stance has come under severe criticism in recent years.[149]

 

Steiner was a critic of his contemporary Theodor Herzl's goal of a Zionist state, and indeed of any ethnically determined state, as he considered ethnicity to be an outmoded basis for social life and civic identity.[157]

 

Towards the end of Steiner's life and after his death, there were massive defamatory press attacks mounted on him by early National Socialist leaders (including Adolf Hitler) and other right-wing nationalists. These criticized Steiner's thought and anthroposophy as being incompatible with National Socialist racial ideology, and charged him of being influenced by his close connections with Jews and even that he himself was Jewish.[46][155]

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner

“AND THE BUILDING BECOMES MAN”: MEANING AND AESTHETICS IN RUDOLF STEINER’S GOETHEANUM

Carole M. Cusack

Introduction

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), founder of the Anthroposophical Society, is renowned for his work in widely varied fields including education, biodynamic agriculture, politics, banking, poetry, and drama (Hammer 2009: 209). His accomplishments in architecture are among his less well-understood cultural productions. His two greatest achievements – the buildings known as Goetheanum I and Goetheanum II (the latter built after the destruction by fire on 31 December 1922 of the former structure), in the small town of Dornach near Basel in the canton of Jura, Switzerland – have been described as “sculptural architecture,” of a kind similar in Expressionist form to works by his contemporaries Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926), Hermann Obrist (1863-1927), and the younger Hermann Finsterlin (1887-1973) (Sharp 1966). The focus of this chapter, Goetheanum II, is a giant sculpted concrete form four stories high, with sweeping lines that give the effect of a monolith. It is headquarters to the Anthroposophical movement, and contains a one-thousand seat auditorium in which religio-spiritual performances of Eurythmy (Steiner’s movement art, which he initiated in 1912) take place. Contributors to a 1960 issue of the Swiss architectural magazine

Werk featuring the building agreed that its design required “a uniform worldview and lifestyle” (quoted in Steinberg 1976: 4). This is the case: to understand both incarnations of the Goetheanum, built as “Schools for Spiritual Science,” requires an understanding of Anthroposophy and of Steiner himself. Richard A. Peterson has posited that the main “symbol-creating domains most often identified [are] art, science, and religion” (Peterson 1976: 673). Anthroposophy, as developed by Steiner, is a philosophy that integrated all three of these domains, and which formed the basis for an enthusiastic programme of cultural production. This chapter considers the meanings embedded in the aesthetic choices of Steiner in the design and construction of both Goetheanum I and Goetheanum II. Steiner thought that Western Europe needed to re-orientate its Weltanschauung

as a spiritual priority and that art was a crucial part of this regenerative process. David Brain’s argument that cultural production creates society itself is relevant here. Brain states that “[t]he social construction of cultural artefacts entails the production of practices which, in turn, enact their own status in broader social contexts by inscribing both the boundaries of cultural domains and the social status of the author in qualities of the artefact” (Brain 1994: 193). Expressionist artists, some of whom (for example the Russian Wassily Kandinsky) shared Steiner’s Theosophical background, shared his vision for the spiritual renewal of Europe. Steiner could not have been unaware of a range of significant Expressionist philosophies and artistic forms present in Europe during his lifetime, and particularly at the time he was developing Anthroposophy. As a lecturer he travelled extensively, and came into contact with many artists and writers who shared mystical ideas about art. His vision for the headquarters of Anthroposophy was grandiose, like that of many other Expressionists, though unlike most of them he had the opportunity to construct his vision himself. Goetheanum II has also been referred to as a

Gesamtkunstwerk (‘total work of art’), a term associated with Richard Wagner (1813-1883) and with architects such as Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright, who influenced the interiors as well as the exteriors of their buildings (Adams 1992: 182). Yet Steiner wanted something specific for his group; “[n]ot to build in a style born out of our spiritual world view, would mean to deny Anthroposophy in her own house” (quoted in Steinberg 1976: 82). The Goetheanum embodies Anthroposophical ideals, and Anthroposophy inhabited the entire cultural life of its adherents. For Steiner this came in the form of cosmological insights, which could best be achieved in the sculptural shapes and organic forms, derived from the natural world, of the Goetheanum (in both its first and second incarnations). This chapter first considers Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual quest, Anthroposophy, the teaching he developed, and the place of art and cultural production in his vision for a transformed humanity. The creation of seventeen buildings between 1908 and 1925 in Dornach, which in the twenty-first century is a community of approximately six thousand, was a major achievement in embodying the Anthroposophical ideal of revealing a “logic of life” deriving from Goethe’s writings on the natural sciences and esoteric Christianity, in physical forms, and transformed Dornach into something of a pilgrimage centre for Anthroposophists and spiritual seekers (Reese 1965: 146). The meaning and construction of Goetheanum I is explained, then the chapter’s focus shifts to the realised Anthroposophical theology of Goetheanum II, which was designed by Steiner in 1923 but not completed until 1928, three years after his death. This magnificent building is a magnet for tourists and architecture enthusiasts, as quite apart from its Anthroposophical significance, it is a remarkable and beautiful example of Expressionist architecture.

Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was born in Donji Kraljevec, a village in what is now Croatia but was then Hungary, in the Austrian Empire. He was educated by his father, the provincial stationmaster at Pottschach in Lower Austria, and at the local school. In his uncompleted autobiography, Steiner claimed that by the time he turned eight “the reality of the spiritual world was to me as certain as that of the physical,” and that he was able to communicate with the spirits (Davy 1975a: 12). He was heartened to discover that geometry (and mathematics more generally) was about invisible realities that had been discovered by humans. From 1879 to 1883 he studied mathematics and physics at the Technische Hochschule (Institute of Technology) in Vienna. Steiner funded his studies by working as a tutor, chiefly in philosophy, classics, and literature. During this time he met two people who would significantly affect his development; “an old peasant herb-gatherer … [who] possessed faculties of spiritual perception which allowed him to see deep into the secrets of nature and know, for example, the curative properties of herbs” and “Professor Karl Julius Schroer, the great Goethe scholar” (Davy 1975a: 14). After graduation he was employed at the Goethe Archive in Weimar, where he worked on Goethe’s scientific writings under the direction of Joseph Kürschner, who was preparing a new edition of Goethe’s works (Landau 1935: 50). In 1891 Steiner received his doctorate in philosophy from Rostock University and the next phase of his intellectual and spiritual quest began. This was concerned to relate the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) to that of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1742-1832). From 1897 to 1900 Steiner resided in Berlin, where he edited the

Magazin für Literatur

, “visited Nietzsche, [and] wrote introductions to the works of Schopenhauer” (Schwarz 1983: 11). During this period

he became deeply interested in Theosophy and was a key player in the establishment of the Nietzsche Archive. In 1902 Steiner became head of the Theosophical Society in Germany. Yet, his orientation shifted in the first decade of the twentieth century as he embraced a combination of natural science and esoteric Christianity, partly through the influence of Marie von Sivers, an actress and artist of Russian extraction (Davy 1975a: 20). Von Sivers became his second wife in 1914 after the death of Anna Eunicke, whom he had married in 1899 and separated from a few years later. In 1901 von Sivers had asked Steiner “[w]ould it be possible to create a spiritual movement based on European tradition and the impetus of Christ?”

 

The Theosophical Society had always looked to Hinduism and Buddhism, to the East, for spiritual inspiration; Madame Blavatsky’s “Masters” were Tibetan lamas, and Annie Besant, her successor, and her colleague Charles Webster Leadbeater promoted Jiddu Krishnamurti as the next World Teacher (

Maitreya in Buddhism, also known as the “Cosmic Christ”). It was Theosophy’s endorsement of Krishnamurti that caused Steiner to leave the movement, and to form the Anthroposophical Society late in 1912. The first meeting was convened on 13 February 1913. Steiner was convinced of the crucial and unrepeatable nature of the “Christ impulse,” which was introduced into the human soul through the “Mystery of Golgotha” (Steiner 1976: 63). Christ, for Steiner, was the paradigmatic Being, and a human being at that. Anthroposophy means “the wisdom of man,” and is therefore explicitly contrasted with Theosophy, “the wisdom of God.” Steiner thought that modern

spiritual knowledge should depend, not upon external revelations, but rather upon the development of human mental powers … He claimed to teach nothing he had not himself known through … methods of “spiritual scientific” research … Until his death in 1925, he worked … to develop examples of practical applications of anthroposophy in diverse fields, including education, agriculture, economics, medicine – and architecture (Adams 1992: 185).

Steiner taught that modern humans, influenced by empirical science and logical reasoning, had lost the consciousness possessed by ancient humans, in which the individual was understood to be a microcosm of the universe, and life had meaning accordingly. He advocated the gaining of “Initiation knowledge” of “Mysteries,” which involved developing the human will; and cultivating active thinking, which becomes “an organ of touch for the soul, so that we may feel ourselves thinking in the same way that we walk, grasp or touch; so that we know that we are living in a real being” (Steiner 1991; 13-14). Steiner continued to employ Theosophical concepts, including: the notions that human beings have an etheric body beyond the physical, and an astral body beyond the etheric; the existence of higher beings,

karma

and reincarnation, and the essential unity of religion and science. He placed great emphasis on the cultivation of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition, which are creative capacities in ordinary human life. Yet Steiner argued that, like the capacity for love, quotidian experiences of imagination, inspiration, and intuition were only “dim promptings,” a “shadow- picture[s]” of highest cognition, the attainment of which humans must strive toward (Steiner 1991: 25). Like his near contemporary G. I. Gurdjieff (1866?-1949), Steiner spoke of the radical discontinuity between subjective human states, and “objective”

love, art, and so on. Both men, following Madame Blavatsky’s lead, presented their esoteric teachings as occult science, a comprehensive system that restored to modern humans their ancient spiritual birthright, and which had the capacity to create a true self, delivering moderns from the splintered identity they customarily experienced. Both systems were cosmological in orientation, presented the physical world as alive, and engaged in processes of transformation. Steiner argued that sleep and dreams were access points to the supersensible world, where spiritual beings could be encountered, and that these beings could waken dead matter, transforming it into living nature:

[a]ll … in those hills, is expecting that one day it will be able to dream, and so with dream- consciousness to take hold of lifeless matter, and from these rocks and hills to conjure forth once more as embryos, seeds, living plants. It is indeed these beings who bring before our souls a wonderful magic of nature, a creating from out of the spirit (Steiner 1991: 77).

Anthroposophy understands all within the physical world to be evolving into higher forms, and in humans the development of spiritual senses enables the “digestion” of experiences by the soul. With this digestion, certain cosmological realisations are possible; for example, recognition of the interrelatedness of the human being with the whole of creation will lead to the person “becom[ing] a living Zodiac” or absorbing the wisdom of the dead (Steiner 1975: 37). It is crucial that humans learn that “the world [is] a book which the Hierarchies have written for us, in order that we may read in it, then only do we become Man in the full sense of the word” (Steiner 1975: 77). For Steiner, becoming “Man” fully involved the realisation that the human was a microcosm of the macrocosmic cosmos. The logical consequence of this is that the human being is the model for everything; the system that offers the key to all other systems. In 1911, Steiner wrote a poem for Marie von Sivers, which began, “Shaping the world in the self/ Seeing the self in the world/ Is the breath of the soul” (Steiner and Steiner-Von Sivers 1988: 121). The centrality of Christ in Anthroposophy follows from this teaching, and Steiner’s teaching contained many examples of this “fractal” structure in which each component is broken down into components that are smaller models of the whole. The layering of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and Ego is similar, though the underlying principle is not one of size but spiritual development (King 1987 [1986]: 360). Anthroposophists often use homeopathy, a form of holistic treatment developed by Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), which operates on the same principles of intensification through breaking down to minute quantities, reflecting the occult teaching of the

Emerald Tablet

of Thoth (or Hermes), “as above, so below” (Shumaker 1972: 165). Hahnemann believed that like substance should be employed to cure like ailment, and Francis King states that, “[h]ighly dynamized or potentized medicaments are possessed of qualities pertaining to non-material modes of being” (King 1987 [1986]: 64). The cosmological dimension is not neglected either; cosmic data, such as planetary events, are also factored into the process of making remedies within Anthroposophy. Steiner’s debt to his master, Goethe, is everywhere apparent; Goethe had spoken of coming to understanding through “the inner sense” and had asserted that, “every living thing is not an isolated being, but a majority” (quoted in Pehnt 1991: 9). He was notably influenced by Goethe’s notion of metamorphosis; if the archetype of a plant was located, “out of that conceptual archetypal plant one could think out countless numbers of special forms” (Steiner 1938: 3). Chapters in this

volume by Liselotte Frisk and Alex Norman treat other aspects of Steiner’s Anthroposophical teachings.

Steiner’s Teachings on Art

Due to his concentration on the human development of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition, Steiner accorded a prime place to artistic endeavours within his system of esoteric development. He understood that the imaginative capacity was engaged when human consciousness was clear of physical “pictorial impressions” and filled with “etherically pictorial impressions.” When these were cleared from consciousness and the person was aware of the void, “into that state of voidness pour astral impressions” (King 1987 [1986]: 37). This signalled that the inspirational capacity was engaged. When the intuitive capacity was engaged, Steiner claimed that the spiritual has been “brought to full consciousness and has been born to a new life in which he or she is a spirit being dwelling amongst other spirit beings” (King 1987 [1986]: 38). Steiner himself worked in a wide range of creative arts with notable success; he was a poet, sculptor, painter, and architect, “the creator of a new art of movement,” Eurythmy, and a dramatist (Klingborg 1975: 48). Steiner himself allied the arts very closely with true religion, saying “Anthroposophical Spiritual Science is from the beginning so placed, that it flows as one stream from a source out of which both art and religion in their origins can also flow” (Steiner 1938: 7). Steiner’s ideas on the spiritual function of art reflected a wider concern in European society just prior to the outbreak of World War I; for example, the Theosophically-inclined Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), a member of the art movement

Der Blaue Reiter

(“the blue rider”) published the hugely influential

On the Spiritual in Art

(1912), which called for a return to the spiritual as the fundamental inspiration for art and the principal aim of artistic production (Fant, Klingborg and Wilkes et al 1975: 9-10). Steiner commenced writing a series of Mystery Plays in 1909 with Marie von Sivers, who as mentioned above, was an actress. The four resulting plays were pictorial scenes intended to convey spiritual truths, and were performed in theatres. The four titles were “The Portal of Initiation: A Rosicrucian Mystery” (1910), “The Soul’d Probation: A Life Tableau in Dramatic Scenes” (1911), “The Guardian of the Threshold: A Series of Soul Events in Dramatic Pictures” (1912), and “The Soul’s Awakening: A Drama of the Soul and Spirit” (1913) (Steiner 2007). Drama is an embodied art, and in Steiner’s lecture series

The Arts and Their Mission

(1923) he placed great emphasis on the fact that ancient peoples in Greece, Rome, India, and other countries were at harmony with their bodies and did not suffer from the mind- body dualism that plagues modern people. As important as the unity of the mind and body, Steiner asserted, was the “unity of spiritual life and art,” which Goethe deeply apprehended but which is no longer experienced (Steiner 1964: 15). Unsurprisingly, Steiner was critical of mimetic art, claiming that it could only reproduce things in nature, whereas true art could express “kinship with the spiritual world” (Steiner 1964: 16), and was experiential; it was not sufficient to see the colour red but it was necessary to experience “red or blue in the spiritual world” (Steiner 1991: 21). In art, as in spiritual exercises and authentic life experiences, humans were enabled to be truly themselves. Therefore Steiner paid close attention to the body, teaching on food and diet, clothing and costume, and art forms that partook of bodily experience.

The movement art of Eurythmy shared certain qualities with the Mystery Plays, in that both art forms were externalisations of “innermost laws” that were perceived through bodily actions. The first Eurythmy classes were taught in 1912, and by 1919 two courses of training had been developed and Steiner’s eurythmists had toured Europe giving public demonstrations. Marie von Sivers and Lory Smits, an early teacher of the art, contributed significantly to its development. The esoteric meaning of Eurythmy was emphasised by Steiner:

[w]e are setting the human organism in motion; we are making its limbs move. The limbs, more than any other part of the human body, are what pass over into the life of the next incarnation. They point to the future, to what comes after death. But how do we shape the limb movements we bring forth in eurythmy. In the sense realm and in the supersensory realm we study how the larynx and all the speech organs have been brought over from the previous life and shaped by the intellectual potentials of the head and the feeling potentials of the chest. We directly link what precedes birth with what follows death. In a certain sense, we take from earthly life only the physical medium, the actual human being who is the tool or instrument of eurythmy. But we allow this human being to make manifest what we study inwardly … Eurythmy shapes and moves the human organism in a way that furnishes direct external proof of our participation in the supersensory world. In having people do eurythmy, we link them directly to the supersensory world (Steiner 2006: 17).

Eurythmy is thus explicitly cosmological and anthropological, linking the human person’s body as it manifests in this lifetime with their previous and future lives and with the universe of which the person is a microcosm. In Anthroposophical circles Eurythmy has been referred to as the speech of the soul. Steiner wrote extensively on literature, music, and painting, but for the purpose of this chapter his remarks architecture are most relevant. He stated, “[o]h soul, if you wish to leave the physical body in order to regain a relationship with the cosmos, what aspect will you take on? – this was the question. The forms of architecture were, so to speak, answers” (Steiner 1964: 23-24). From the perspective of the production of culture, “the symbolic elements of culture are shaped by the systems within which they are created, distribute, evaluated, taught, and preserved” (Peterson and Anand 2004: 311). In the case of Steiner’s buildings in Dornach, the ‘system’ is Anthroposophy. For Steiner, buildings (like all art forms) should not slavishly imitate forms witnessed in nature, but should rather exhibit organic forms like living nature, and stand in the same mirror relation to nature as the human body does to the macrocosmic universe. For Steiner, in a very real sense, buildings were alive. His application of Goethe’s notion of metamorphosis to architecture meant that, to quote Rex Raab, “the transformation of mass and shape according with a recognisable motive or theme appropriate to the task, creates ‘the appearance of consciousness’” (Raab 1975: 70). For Steiner, the building and its natural setting created “landscape,” which was creative and active, and spiritual power (for example, from the cardinal directions or the heavenly bodies) could be tapped through the strategic design of buildings (Bockemühl 1981: 42). This made environments like Dornach able to facilitate the spiritual development of those people who lived there and interacted with the architecture. In short, human creativity was intimately connected to divine creativity.

Goetheanum I at Dornach .…

During World War I, Steiner and his followers began constructing Goetheanum I on a hill in Dornach. Wolfgang Pehnt observes that, at that time, the Birs valley was open country, “half cultivated nature and half a little world of buildings” (Pehnt 1991: 7). Steiner’s architectural ambition for the Anthroposophical headquarters was initially to erect a twin-domed meeting hall, provisionally called the Johannesbau, in Munich. This was conceived as a Theosophical structure, as he had decorated the interior of the Tonhalle in Munich for the 1907 European Theosophical Congress, and there was enthusiasm for a building in which Steiner’s Mystery Plays, discussed above, could be performed in (Schwarz 1983: 14-26). Architect Carl Schmid-Curtius was engaged to realise Steiner’s design concept. But in May 1913, after Steiner broke with the Theosophical Society, his friend Dr Emil Grosheintz donated land in Dornach to be the site of the building, now to be called the ‘Goetheanum’. There was only one structure on the hill at the time, in which Steiner resided. The foundation stone, which was aligned east-west, was laid with great ceremony (in which Steiner invoked spirit guides and protectors, and noted the stone’s formation “in accordance with the cosmic picture of the human soul”) on 30 September 1913 (Schwarz 1983: 36). Nearly two hundred of Steiner’s pupils, from seventeen different countries, worked on Goetheanum I in 1913 and 1914. The building was 272 feet long, 243 feet wide, and 111 feet high, with a sixty-five thousand cubic metre interior space. It was oriented east-west, with the stage beneath the smaller of the two domes and the seating area beneath the larger. Rex Raab notes the “domes were clad in Norwegian slate, which shone silvery in the Jura landscape” (Raab 1975: 63). A major sculpture,

The Representative of Humanity

, nine metres high and sculpted of wood, by Steiner and his collaborator Edith Maryon, depicted the dark and light aspects of being (which he named for Ahriman, the Zoroastrian “Evil Spirit” and Lucifer, the Biblical angel and “Light Bearer”), stood in the Goetheanum. These figures represented the closed self and the open self, and were united by the central figure of Christ, “The Representative of the Human” (Klingborg 1975: 50). The acoustic qualities of the structure were important in that it was intended for performances. Goetheanum I was built of wood; Rom Landau says that, “Steiner used for its construction the same seven different kinds of wood which are used for the construction of a violin, and the ceiling of the main hall was as buoyant as the walls of a violin” (Landau 1935: 71). In a 1921 lecture, Rudolf Steiner repudiated the idea that Goetheanum I should be read symbolically, rather asserting that it was built according to laws that made possible the “revelation of the supersensible world in the sensible” (Steiner 1938: 9). He further claimed that the organic forms of the structure were an attempt to explore creation itself, in the manner of Goethe’s idea of metamorphosis. The macrocosmic-microcosmic principle described above was present in the first Goetheanum; at one point Steiner, describing the stair-hall, says;

I arrived, through feeling, at the development of these three semi-circular canals standing in the three directions of space at right-angles. If you go up this staircase, you have this calming sensation. It is not copied – that it certainly is not – but afterwards I remembered that the three semi-circular canals of the ear also stand in these three directions of space. When they are injured, man falls down in a faint: they are therefore closely connected to the laws of balance. It did not arise out of a naturalistic desire to copy, but from experiencing the same element by which the aural canals are arranged (Steiner 1938: 12).

This quotation makes it clear that, for Steiner, mimetic art (that which seeks to copy nature and produce “life-like” artistic products) is an inferior, or perhaps entirely

illegitimate form of art. Spiritual art, which brings people into contact with the supersensible through the sensible, is, rather, the production of artworks that embody certain laws that resonate with the embodied viewer. He does allow that the first Goetheanum featured some occult symbolism (for example there were five pointed forms that could be interpreted as pentagrams, though they could also be seen as leaves), but in general the building’s effect was intended to be emotional rather than intellectual. The building’s interior featured just one inscribed word, “Ich.” Of this, Steiner said it referred to “Faust striving towards the fully-conscious ‘I’ – towards the ‘ICH’ embodying itself in the word. The older languages had ‘I’ incorporated in the verb; in this epoch it is right that a separate word for it should appear” (Steiner 1938: 16). The interior of the Goetheanum was flooded with symbolic colours, facilitated by huge red and yellow glass windows and “luminous wall paintings” that exemplified the colour theory of Goethe (Adams 1992: 200). By the time the Goetheanum I was finished, Schmid-Curtius was no longer involved, and the team of Ernst Aisenpreis (who also worked on the Goetheanum II) and Hermann Ratzenberger, assisted by Albert von Baravalle, oversaw the final stages of construction (Schwarz 1983: 51). Goetheanum I was sited among other early buildings at Dornach, including Haus Duldeck (now the archives), the Boiler House (with its dramatic “flame” chimney), and the Glashaus, all constructed between 1913 and 1916. The latter two also featured twin domes, and all exhibited an absence of straight lines and a preponderance of curves and organic forms (Adams 1992: 187-188). On 31 December 1922, New Year’s Eve, a Eurythmy performance was held in Goetheanum I at 5 PM, and at 8 PM Steiner delivered a lecture to the audience. At the close of the evening most people left; shortly after, the building was discovered to be on fire (Anon 1923). It was not possible to save it, and Goetheanum I was destroyed after eight brief years. Anna Samweber, in her memoir of life with Steiner and his wife, describes the rescue of the sculpture, “The Representative of Humanity,” from the flames. She also notes the fear that the nearby Schreinerei, a building “with the halls and Rudolf Steiner’s studio,” might also catch alight (Samweber 1991: 30). Although it was never proven, many Anthroposophists believed that the fire was arson; that “non-Anthroposophists could not bear the beauty that was created for such a unique spiritual group” (Steinberg 1976: 57). Steiner was deeply distressed by the destruction of Goetheanum I, and his health began to decline. He decided that the second Goetheanum would be built entirely in concrete to render it more durable.

Haus Duldeck. There was considerable opposition to the erection of Goetheanum II by the local council, probably motivated by hostility to Steiner and Anthroposophy, despite the movement’s considerable contribution to the local economy (Steinberg 1976: 61-62). Conformity to the building permit resulted in a reduction of height of the west front and a widening of the horizontal wings. The vital importance of the second Goetheanum is evident in the fact that nowadays Anthroposophists call it simply “the Building” (Sharp 1963: 377). Steiner’s considerable talent as an amateur architect is richly evident in the second Goetheanum. The exterior sculptural mass has a plain east end, almost a flat wall, and develops towards the west, with the west front as the “face” of the building opening onto the landscape. It is radically different from the earlier building; some Anthroposophists regard it as a poor substitute. This is partly because Goetheanum I had been funded through donations, whereas Goetheanum II was largely funded through an insurance payout. Additionally, the concrete structure, although larger, spelled “the relinquishment of detailed work by hand, the farewell to a vast sun of invested creativity” (Pehnt 1991: 21). Steiner and his wife acknowledged the tragic loss of Goetheanum I but stressed the need for a second School of Spiritual Science to be erected swiftly, and Steiner’s design for the concrete building utilised the same notion of metamorphosis and transformation from Goethe. Sharp describes it as “a piece of living sculpture” (Sharp 1963: 378) and Hans Hasler, in his discussion of the major conservation operation undertaken between 1993-1996, emphasises the plasticity and dynamism of concrete as a building material (Hasler 1999:9-11). Hagen Biesantz notes that the ground plan retains the cruciform shape of Goetheanum I, but the double space created by the two cupolas has given way to a threefold space, which relates to Steiner’s theory of the “threefold division of the social and human physical organisms” (Biesantz 1979: 59). Only the windows provide some indication of the function of the rooms concealed within the building; for example “the three high side windows tell us that the great hall is behind them” (Pehnt 1991: 7). Writers on the Goetheanum constantly stress its organic forms, and Wolfgang Pehnt argues that the group of Anthroposophical structures in Dornach exemplify Steiner’s theory, taken from Goethe, of “architecture and architectural ensembles as societies of biological species … a biotope” (Pehnt 1991: 9). Although Steiner did not design the interior of Goetheanum II in the same detail that he did for Goetheanum I, Anthroposophical teachings inform the general scheme. The Great Hall has four long windows, which are coloured “as in the first Goetheanum … green, blue, violet and pink” (Biesantz 1979: 69). The Great Hall was actually completed by Johannes Schöpfer, a Stuttgart architect, chosen by competition in 1957. Georg Hartmann’s study of the windows notes that Goetheanum I had nine coloured glass windows, two sets of the above-mentioned four colours, and the central red window over the west entrance. He claims that, “the motives of the coloured glass windows deal with the experiences of the human being, searching for spiritual knowledge” (Hartmann 1972: 17). In Goetheanum II, the huge red window in the west wall features the human face, the four evangelists’ symbols from the New Testament (the lion, bull, eagle, and the man), and occult symbols such as the lotus, the swastika, and planetary images, such as that of Saturn. Olav Hammer notes that when writing about the significance of colour, “Steiner informs us that purple is the color of mysticism, blue calms the soul, red gives a feeling of festivity, while green is associated with the earthly domain” (Hammer 2009: 214). Anthroposophical poet.

 

As Steiner had no formal training as an architect, Anthroposophists have been inclined to treat his achievements in the field as evidence of his extraordinary creativity and spiritual development. Within Anthroposophy it is not acceptable to speak of Steiner being influenced by other architecture of the period, although Dennis Sharp has made an excellent case for the inclusion of Steiner within the category of Expressionist architecture, a sub-field of the broader Expressionist movement in art

(Sharp 1963). Sharp argues that Steiner was influenced by the Art Nouveau style, the Belgian architect Henry van de Velde (1853-1957), and the exuberant Catalan Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926), whose own creations were inspired by his passionate though rather unorthodox Roman Catholicism. Sharp contextualises Goetheanum II with the works of Hermann Obrist (1863-1927) and Hermann Finsterlin (1887-1973) (Sharp 1963). The title of this chapter, “And the Building Becomes Man,” is a motto written over the south window of the model of Goetheanum II on display in Brodbeck House, a house that predated the second Goetheanum and which now has the Eurythmeum built as an addition to it (Turgeniev 2003: 61). It is a romantic notion, yet one that encapsulates the core of Steiner’s Anthroposophical teaching that the human being is the basic unit of the cosmos, the fractal model on which larger and smaller structures are based. Steiner’s architecture, though striking and beautiful and appreciated by architectural experts, casual tourists, and Anthroposophists alike, cannot really be understood without reference to the Anthroposophical worldview and Steiner’s “spiritual science.” Pehnt notes wryly that, “Steiner’s inspiration seems always to be productive in architects who apply his methods without feeling committed to the results achieved at the time” (Pehnt 1991: 39). Brain has argued that “the production of cultural objects can be more closely tied to the to the conditions of possibility for social action in general – not only at the level of meaning, but at the level of the capacity to conceive and enact strategic action” (Brain 1994: 218). Goetheanum II in Dornach is a structure of crucial significance for Anthroposophists the world over, and visiting it (whether to study Eurythmy or some other aspect of Steiner’s spiritual science, or simply to feel close to Steiner and the transformational philosophy of Anthroposophy) is a deeply meaningful experience. Brain continues that cultural objects such as Goetheanum II (and the practices that take place within it, including the visual arts and Euythmy) illuminate “the making of the social world that goes on in the practices through which culture producers inscribe intentions in artefacts, and social actors, generally, make sense

with

things” (Brain 1994: 218). Steiner, of all esoteric and new religious teachers of the early twentieth century, was acutely aware of the peculiar value of cultural production, an activity with which he engaged with tireless energy, and considerable (amateur and professional) skill and achievement. It is true that the majority of architects inspired by Steiner are not Anthroposophists, and have only a limited understanding of the underlying principles of Goetheanum II, being enamoured of its aesthetic qualities alone. This, however, still confirms Goetheanum II as a consummate cultural product of Anthroposophy, and one that continues to amaze and delight all those who are fortunate enough to visit Dornach.

 

www.academia.edu/738542/_And_the_Building_Becomes_Man_Mea...

 

The whole of the Gospel of St. John culminates in that event in human history which we call the “Mystery of Golgotha.” To comprehend this Mystery of Golgotha esoterically predicates also the ability to decipher the deep significance of this Gospel. If we turn our attention to what exists at the very central point of this Mystery and wish to express it in occult terms, we must contemplate the moment of the Crucifixion when the blood flowed from the wounds of the Saviour, and at the same time we must remember something which has often been said in the course of these lectures, that for one who knows the spiritual worlds, all material, substantial, physical objectivity is only the outer expression, the external manifestation of something spiritual. Now let us permit the physical event to arise before our souls: Christ-Jesus upon the Cross, the blood flowing from His wounds. What does this picture, the content of which is a physical event, express for those who are able to understand the Gospel of St. John?

 

This physical event — the occurrence on Golgotha — is the expression, the manifestation of a spiritual event which stands at the central point of all earthly happenings. Anyone interpreting these words according to the present materialistic world concept will not be able to make much out of them, for he will not be able to imagine that at that time something occurred in this unique Event of Golgotha which differs from some other like event, or from one perhaps physically similar. There is a very great difference between all the earthly occurrences which preceded this Event of Golgotha and those that succeed it.

 

If we wish to picture this in the soul in all its detail, we must say that not only has the individual human being, or for that matter any other individual creature, a physical, ether and astral body as we have described it from many aspects in the foregoing lectures, but that cosmic bodies likewise do not consist only of physical substance as they appear to the astronomer and to other physical researchers. A cosmic body has also an ether and an astral body. Our earth has its ether and astral vehicles. If our earth did not possess its own ether body, it would not be able to harbour the plants; if it did not possess its own individual astral body, it would not be able to shelter the animals. If we wish to visualize the earth's ether body, we must imagine its central point exactly at the center of the earth where the physical earth body also has its central point. This entire physical earth body is embedded in its own ether body and these two are again embedded in an astral body. If someone had observed clairvoyantly the astral body of the earth during the course of the earth's evolution, during the course of long epochs of time, he would have seen that, as a matter of fact, this astral body and ether body of the earth have not always remained the same, that they have changed. In order to represent the matter quite pictorially, let us in spirit transplant ourselves outside beyond the earth to some other star, and let us imagine a person with clairvoyant vision looking down upon the earth from this star. He would not only see the earth suspended there as a physical planet, but he would see an aura about it, he would see the earth surrounded by an aura of light, for he would be perceiving the earth's ether and astral bodies. If this clairvoyant person were to remain a long time on this distant star, long enough to have observed the pre-Christian periods of the earth pass by and the Event of Golgotha approaching, the following spectacle would have presented itself to him. Before the Event of Golgotha the aura of the earth, the astral and ether bodies offered a certain aspect of colour and form, but following a particular, definite moment of time, he would have seen the colour of the entire aura changing. What was this particular moment of time? It was the very moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ-Jesus upon Golgotha. All spiritual earthly relationships, as such, changed from this moment.

 

It has been previously stated that what is called the Logos is the sum total of the six Elohim who, united with the sun, present the earth with their spiritual gifts, while externally the physical sunlight is falling upon the earth. Therefore the light of the sun appears to us like the outer physical body of the spirit and soul of the Elohim or of the Logos. At the moment of the Event of Golgotha, that force, that impulse which formerly could only stream down upon the earth as light began to unite with the earth itself. And because the Logos began to unite with the earth, the earth's aura became changed.

 

We shall now consider the Event of Golgotha from still another point of view. We have already reviewed the evolution of the human being and of the earth from various standpoints. We know that our Earth, before it became the Earth, passed through the three embodiments of Saturn, Sun and Moon. Therefore the embodiment just preceding that of our Earth was that of the ancient Moon. When a planet has attained the goal of its evolution, something happens to it similar to what happens to a human being who, in a certain incarnation, has attained his life's goal. The planet passes over into a different invisible existence, a state called a “Pralaya” and then after a time it embodies itself anew. Thus between the previous embodiment of our Earth, the Moon Evolution, and the Earth's present embodiment, there existed an intermediate state. Out of a sort of spiritual, self-animated, externally invisible existence, the Earth gleamed forth in its earliest state and out of this state developed those states which we described yesterday. At that time, in that early age when our Earth gleamed forth, it was still united with all that now belongs to our solar system. It was then so large, that it reached to the furthest planets of this solar system. All was unity, for only later individual planets became segregated. The present earth up to a certain point of time was united with our present sun and moon. Thus we see there was a time when sun, moon and earth were a single body. It was as though you were to take the present moon and sun and stir them together with the earth and thus make one large cosmic body. This was our Earth once upon a time when your astral body and your ego were floating about in a vapour-like form. Even earlier than this the sun, moon and earth were joined together. At that time the forces which are now in the sun — the spiritual and physical forces — were bound up with the earth. Then came a time when the sun separated from the earth; but not only did the physical sun with its physical light which can be seen with physical eyes depart, but with it all its spiritual and soul beings at whose head stood the Elohim, the real Spirits of Light, the denizens of the sun. What was left, was a mixture of the present moon and earth. Then for a time the earth, though separated from the sun, was still united with the moon. It was not until the Lemurian period that the moon separated from the earth, when, as a result, there arose that relationship between these three bodies, sun, moon and earth, that exists today. This relationship had to occur. The Elohim had to act from without. It was necessary for one of them to become Lord of the moon and from there reflect the powerful force of the other Elohim. We live at present upon our earth as though dwelling upon an island in cosmic space which has separated from the sun and moon. But the time will come when our earth will once more unite with the sun and again form one body with it. Then human beings will be so spiritualized that they will again be able to bear the stronger forces of the sun, able to receive them and unite them with themselves. They, together with the Elohim, will then occupy the same field of action.

 

You will ask, what is the force that will bring this about? Had the Event of Golgotha not occurred, the earth and the sun would never be able to reunite. For through the Event of Golgotha, which bound the force of the Elohim in the sun to the earth — in other words the force of the Logos — the impulse was given which will again eventually impel one Logos-force toward the other, and finally once more unite them — sun and earth — in one body. Since the Event of Golgotha, the earth, spiritually observed, is possessed of the force to draw the sun again into a unity with it. Therefore it can be said that through this great Event, the force of the Logos, which formerly radiated down upon the earth from without, was now taken up into its spiritual being. The question may be asked, what existed previously within the body of the earth? It was that force which streamed down upon it from the sun. But since that time, what exists there within the earth? The Logos itself which through Golgotha has become the spirit of the earth.

 

As truly as your soul and spirit dwell within your physical body, do also the soul and spirit of the earth dwell within the body of the earth — that earthly body which consists of stones, plants and animals and upon which you tread. This soul and spirit, this earth spirit is the Christ. Christ is the spirit of the earth. When the Christ spoke to His most trusted disciples on an occasion which can be numbered among the most intimate of such occasions, what did He say to them? With what mystery had He occasion to entrust them? He was able to say to them: “It is as though you can gaze into your own soul from your physical body. Your soul is within. It is the same when you observe the whole earth-sphere. That spirit which for a time now stands here before you in the flesh is also the spirit of the earth and will always continue as such.” He had occasion to point to the earth as to His real body and ask: “When you behold the cornfield and then eat the bread that nourishes you, what in reality is this bread which you are eating? You are eating My body. And when you drink of the plant sap, it is like the blood in your own body; it is the blood of the earth — My Blood!” — These were the very words that Christ- Jesus spoke to His most intimate disciples and we must take them very literally. Then when He called them together and expounded to them symbolically what we shall call the Christian Initiation, He uttered those extraordinary words which we find in the 18th verse of the 13th Chapter of the Gospel of St. John, where He announced that one among them would betray Him:

 

“He who eats My bread treads me under foot.”

 

These words must be taken literally. Men eat the bread of the earth and tread upon the earth with their feet. If the earth is the body of the Earth-Spirit, that is, of the Christ, then men tread with their feet the earth's body, the body whose bread they eat. An immense deepening of the idea of the Last Supper as presented in the Gospel of St. John is granted us, when we learn about the Christ, the Earth-Spirit, and about the bread which is taken from the body of the earth. Christ points to the earth and says: “This is My body!” Just as the muscular human flesh belongs to the human soul, so does bread belong to the body of the earth, that is to the body of the Christ. And the sap that flows through the plants, which pulsates through the vine stalk, is like the blood pulsating through the human body. Pointing to this, the Christ says: “This is my blood!” That this truthful explanation of the Last Supper can cause some of the sanctity to be lost which has always been associated with it can only be imagined by someone possessing no understanding of it or who has neither desire nor capacity for such an understanding. But anyone who wishes to understand will acknowledge that this does not cause it to lose in holiness, but that through it the whole of the earth-planet becomes sanctified. What powerful feelings can be engendered in our souls, if we can behold in the Last Supper the greatest mystery of the earth, the connection between the Event of Golgotha and the entire evolution of the earth; if we can learn to feel that in the Last Supper the flowing of the blood from the wounds of the Saviour had not only a human, but a cosmic significance, that is, it gave to the earth the force to carry forward its evolution.

 

Anyone who understands the profound meaning of the Gospel of St. John will feel not only united through his physical body with the physical body of the earth, but as a psycho-spiritual being will feel united with the psycho-spiritual being of the earth which is the Christ Himself, and then he will feel how the Christ, as the Spirit of the Earth, flows through his body. When we have this experience, we are able to ask: what illuminated the writer of the Gospel of St. John at that moment when he was able to behold the profound mysteries which have to do with Christ-Jesus? He beheld the forces, the impulses which are present in Christ-Jesus, and he perceived how these impulses must be active in mankind, if only mankind will receive them.

 

In order to understand this quite clearly, we must once more bring before our souls the way in which human evolution actually takes place. The human being consists of physical, ether and astral bodies and an ego. How does this evolution occur? By the ego gradually working through the other three members, purifying and strengthening them. The ego is called upon gradually to purify the astral body, to cleanse it and to raise it to a higher level. When the entire astral body has been purified and strengthened by the special forces of the ego, it becomes Manas or Spirit-Self. When the ether or life-body has been thoroughly worked over and strengthened by the force of the ego, it becomes Budhi, or Life-Spirit. When the physical body has been fully overcome and conquered by the ego, it becomes Atman or Spirit-Man. Then will the human being have reached the goal which above all lies in store for him. That, however, will be attained only in the far distant future. Moreover, we wish it to be quite clear that the ego acts in full consciousness in what has just been described; namely, that the human being consisting of the four members — physical, ether and astral bodies and ego — works by means of the ego upon the other three members, transforming them into Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. For the most part this is not yet the case with present humanity which, as a matter of fact, is just beginning, fully conscious, to work a little of Manas into its astral body. The human being is doing this now. Through the help of higher beings he has already, although unconsciously, worked upon his three lower members during this Earth evolution. In ancient times he unconsciously worked over the astral body, and this then became permeated by the Sentient Soul. The ego unconsciously worked into the ether body and this unconsciously re-formed ether body is what you will find described in regular sequence in my book Theosophy as the Intellectual Soul, and that part of the physical body, unconsciously worked upon by the ego, you will find described there as the Consciousness Soul. The Consciousness Soul only came into being toward the end of the Atlantean period when the ether body — previously outside the physical body in the head region — gradually drew wholly within it. Through this the human being learned to utter the word “I.” Thus variously-membered, he gradually passed over into the post-Atlantean period. It is the task of our age to work Manas or Spirit-Self by degrees into what had previously been received unconsciously. The human being must, as it were, develop Manas within himself by means of all the forces he has acquired by virtue of possessing a physical, an ether and an astral body, a sentient, an intellectual and a consciousness soul; by means of all the forces which these various members can give him, he must develop Manas and also, although in a very small degree, the germ of a Life-Spirit or Budhi. Therefore our post-Atlantean age has the important task of helping the human being to develop consciously these higher members of his being (Manas or Spirit-Self, Budhi or Life-Spirit and Atman or Spirit-Man) in the distant future when he will at last have reached his goal. He must from now on, by degrees, develop within himself the force to evolve his higher members out of his lower.

 

Let us now ask: what has been the condition of the human being that has kept him from already developing these higher members, and what will be the difference in the future? How will the humanity of the future differ from that of the present?

 

When at last the whole of the higher man has been developed, the entire astral body will be so completely purified that it will simultaneously become Manas or Spirit-Self; the ether body so thoroughly purged that it will simultaneously become Life-Spirit or Budhi, and the physical body will be so greatly metamorphosed that it will, at the same time, be as actually a Spirit-Man, Atman, as it is now a physical body. The greatest force will be needed to conquer this lowest body, hence the conquest and transformation of the physical means the greatest victory for the human being. When mankind has fully perfected the physical body, this physical man will then become Spirit-Man or Atman. All this is at present only in germ within the human being, but a time will come when it will live in him in its fulness. And by lifting his gaze to the Christ Personality, to the Christ Impulse, by energizing and strengthening himself through this Christ Impulse, he draws into himself the force that can accomplish this transformation.

 

Since humanity of the present has not yet perfected this metamorphosis, what is the result? Spiritual Science makes this very clear. Because this katharsis of the astral body has not yet been accomplished, that is, the astral body has not yet transformed itself into Spirit-Self, selfishness or egotism is possible. Because the ether body has not yet been strengthened by the ego, lying and error are possible; and because the physical body has not yet been fortified by the ego, sickness and death are possible. In a once fully developed Spirit-Self, there will be no more selfishness; no sickness and death, but just health and salvation in the fully developed Spirit-Man, that is, in the fully evolved physical body. What does it mean for the human being to take the Christ into himself? It means that he has learned to understand the forces that are in the Christ, which if taken into himself make it possible for him to become master even of his physical body.

 

Imagine for example that someone could receive the Christ Impulse fully into himself, that it could completely pass over upon him. The Christ Himself might stand directly in the presence of this person and the Christ Impulse be transmitted to him. What does that signify? If the person were blind, he would yet be able to see by means of the direct influence of this Christ Impulse, for the final goal of evolution is the conquest of the forces of sickness and death. When the writer of the Gospel of St. John speaks of the healing of the man born blind, he is then speaking out of the depths of the Mysteries, he is demonstrating, by means of an example, that the force of the Christ is a healing force when it appears in full power. It may be asked: Where is this force? It is in the body of the Christ, in the earth! But this earth must, in truth, be fully permeated by the being of the Christ Spirit or of the Logos. Let us see if the writer of the Gospel recounts the story with this meaning. How does he relate it?

 

Standing there is the blind man. The Christ takes some earth, insalivates it and lays it upon the blind man's eyes. He lays His body, the earth, permeated with His spirit upon the blind man. In this description, the writer of the Gospel indicates a mystery which he very well understands. Now laying aside all prejudice, let us talk a little more in detail of this sign — one of the greatest performed by the Christ — in order that we may learn to know more exactly the nature of such a thing and not be disturbed because our very clever contemporaries will consider what has just been said to be sheer madness or folly! There are, however, in the world great and mighty mysteries which mankind is not yet entitled to know. Human beings of the present day, even though they may be sufficiently developed, are not yet strong enough to go through the great Mysteries. They can know of them, they can understand them when they are able to experience them spiritually; but our present humanity, so deeply immersed in matter, is not yet capable of converting them into their physical expression.

 

All life is, in fact, made up of antitheses and extremes. Life and death are just such extremes. For the thought and feelings of the occultist, there is something very extraordinary in seeing, for example, a corpse and a living human being side by side. When we have a living, waking human being before us, we know that a soul and spirit dwell within him. But as far as consciousness is concerned, this soul and spirit are, as it were, cut off from any connection with the spiritual world; they cannot look into it. If we have a corpse before us, we have the feeling that the spirit and soul which once belonged to it are passing over into the spiritual worlds where consciousness, or the light of those worlds is flashing up within them. Thus the corpse becomes a symbol of what is taking place in the spiritual world. But in the physical world also, there are reflections of what is happening in the spiritual world, but they are of an extraordinary character. When a human being descends again into physical birth, his bodily part must be reconstructed; material substance must, so to say, rush together in order that a body be created for him. For the clairvoyant, this rushing together of physical substance represents the death of consciousness in the spirit world. There it dies — here it becomes alive. In the rushing together of substance to form a physical human body can be seen, in a certain sense, the dying of a spiritual consciousness; while on the other hand, at the moment of decomposition or of the burning of the physical body, when the parts disintegrate and dissolve, the opposite actually becomes manifest in the spiritual world, that is, the awakening of a spiritual consciousness occurs. Physical dissolution is spiritual birth. Therefore all processes of decay and dissolution mean something more than just decay and dissolution to the occultist. A churchyard, spiritually observed, where physical bodies are in the process of dissolution, is the scene of remarkable processes, the continuous flashing up and glistening of spiritual birth; (I am now speaking of what is taking place spiritually in the churchyard itself apart from the human beings there).

 

Let us imagine for example that a person were to give himself up physically to a certain training — naturally no one would recommend this, for the present physical body could not possibly endure it — to a schooling in which he would train his body to breathe in putrified air for a certain prescribed length of time with the conscious intent of taking in the spiritual processes which have just been described. If he does this in the proper way, then in his following incarnations — it cannot be done in one — he can be incarnated with that force which offers restorative and health-giving impulses. Breathing putrid air belongs to a schooling which gradually gives strength to the spittle, when mixed with the ordinary earth, to become the healing substance which the Christ rubbed upon the eyes of the blind man. This mystery through which a person consumes, eats or inhales death, by which he acquires the power to heal, is the mystery to which the writer of the Gospel refers when he describes such signs as the healing of the man born blind. Instead of declaring without cessation that such and such a thing should be interpreted to mean thus and so, it would be much better were people to learn that such a thing as is described in the healing of the blind man is literally true, that it exists, and that it is possible to have respect for such a personality as the writer of the Gospel and be able to say: “There was such a person who was thoroughly initiated into this mystery about which we must try to acquire an understanding.”

 

It was, moreover, necessary to call attention beforehand to the fact that we are here in an anthroposophical group in which many prejudices have been eliminated, thus making it possible to speak of such real mysteries as the insalivation of the earth's soil for healing purposes, and to say that such an incident has a literal significance.

 

However, let us now try to comprehend how, by knowing these facts, we unite with the idea that occupies us today namely, that the Christ is the Spirit of the earth and that the earth is His Body. We have seen the Christ spiritualizing the etheric element in one instance and have seen Him giving up something of Himself in order to perform the miracle we arc considering. Now let us consider something else. Besides what has been said today, let us take what the Christ Himself said: “The most profound mystery of My being is the I AM, and the true and eternal might of the I AM or of the Ego which has the force to permeate other bodies must flow into human beings. It dwells within the Earth Spirit.” Let us hold this clearly in mind and take very earnestly, quite seriously, the fact that, because the Christ wishes to bestow the true ego upon every human soul, He will awaken the God in it and gradually enkindle the Spirit of the Lord and King in everyone. What does this signify? We have here nothing more nor less than the fact that the Christ brings to expression, in the highest sense, the idea of Karma, the karmic law. For when anyone fully understands the idea of Karma, he will understand it in this Christian sense. It means that no man should set himself up as a judge of the inner soul of another human being. Unless the idea of Karma has been understood in this way, it has not been grasped in its deepest significance. When one man judges another, the one is always placing the other under the compulsion of his own ego. However, if a person really believes in the “I AM” in the Christian sense, he will not judge. He will say: “I know that Karma is the great adjuster. Whatever you may have done, I do not judge it!”

 

Let us suppose that a transgressor is brought before a person who really understands the Christ-Word. What will be his attitude toward the transgressor? Let us suppose that all those who would like to be Christians were to accuse him of a terrible sin. The real Christian would say to them: “Whether what you maintain has been done by him or not, makes no difference, the I AM must be respected; it must be left to Karma, to the great law which is the law of the Christ-Spirit Himself. Karma is fulfilled in the course of earthly evolution. We can leave it to this earthly evolution to determine what punishment Karma shall inflict upon a human being.” He would perhaps turn to the earth and say to the accusers: — “Pay heed to yourselves, it is the duty of the earth to inflict the punishment. Let us inscribe it then upon the earth where it has, moreover, been registered as Karma.”

 

Jesus went up to the Mount of Olives.

 

And early in the morning He came again into the temple and all the people came unto Him and He sat down and taught them.

 

And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto Him a woman taken in adultery; and they placed her in their midst.

 

They said unto Him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned; but what sayest Thou?

 

This they said, tempting Him, that they might accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground.

 

So when they continued asking Him, He lifted Himself up and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

 

And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.

 

But when they heard this, being convicted by their own conscience, they went out one by one, beginning at the eldest even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.

 

When Jesus had lifted

The Studebaker Hawk series was introduced in 1955. The styling came from the Loewy Studios drawing boards.

Tall rear fins were introduced for model year 1957.

 

Th Golden Hawk was built till 1958. The Silver Hawk till one year later. For model year 1960 the name additions Golden and Silver were dropped. From that year on, these models were only called Hawk.

Late 1961 the Hawk was succeeded by the Gran Turismo Hawk. It underwent a restyle, mainly at the rear (the tall fins were dropped) done by Brooks Stevens (USA, 1911-1995).

This treatment gave the car a more modern look, and sales increased threefold to 8388 units.

 

4736 cc V8 engine.

1600 kg.

Production Studebaker Hawk Series: Autumn 1955-1964.

Production Hawk Gran Turismo: Autumn 1961-1964.

Production Hawk Gran Turismo this version: Autumn 1961-1962.

Original first reg. number: Febr. 27, 1962.

New Dutch pseudo-historical reg. number: Nov. 4, 1999.

 

Seen on the Dutch Studebaker Packard Club meeting on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of this club.

See also: www.spcn.nl/

Plus: studebakerdriversclub.com/

 

Bleiswijk, Hoekeindseweg, May 20, 2014.

 

© 2024 Sander Toonen Halfweg | All Rights Reserved

SimpliCITY....a potted history....

 

On the 26 May 2013, First Glasgow rebranded its services as SimpliCITY and made significant changes to these. The premise of SimpliCITY was threefold - 1. A regular and reliable service 2. Easy to understand routes and 3. Value for money fares. This was one of the biggest shake ups in the Glasgow network for several years and the second such major rebranding undertaken by First.

 

The first such rebranding took place in 1999. Having seen off Stagecoach in the infamous ‘Glasgow Bus War’ of 1997, First decided to use its biggest bus subsidiary as a test bed for its Overground concept. First identified that buses were at a bit of a disadvantage to rail and light rail. Passengers knew that if they stepped on a platform, a train or tram would arrive at some point. Buses didn’t have that feeling of security. In addition, as a result of deregulation, the bus network could be seen be unfamiliar and unfriendly.

 

To be fair there was a degree in truth in this. Many of the bus routes were based on earlier tram and trolley bus routes which had been extended beyond the city boundary into other areas following deregulation. Buses often ran convoluted routes to ensure that they ran through areas that enabled them to pick up as many passengers as possible and routes overlapped and shared common roads and streets. Some parts of the city, which had been recently developed were poorly served whereas other areas, where properties had been demolished as the city evolved, had more buses than they actually needed.

 

First identified key routes and guaranteed a ‘turn up and go frequency’ of ten minutes or less daytime on these. The services would be allocated a specific route colour and the buses would have this colour incorporated into the uniform style of branding on the vehicles, with heavy play on the Overground branding. Ideally, these would be run by low-floor accessible vehicles in First’s new ‘Barbie’ livery. However, Glasgow still had significant numbers of vehicles in its allover and somewhat dreary red livery so overground branding was also added to these. Some routes, such as the 262 (Glasgow - Airdrie), only offered a ten-minute frequency on part of their route but were still afforded full Overground status.

 

One route, the 62 (Baillieston- Faifley) was to be a showcase route. It was to be run with new articulated low-floor buses and had bus stops and road layouts adjusted to accommodate these. It would also have a 24-hour service on it, which mirrored the same route overnight. Previously, night bus services had run their own routes, generally in a loop from the city centre.

 

First Glasgow heavily promoted the Overground concept, which also had a map designed which shamelessly aped the London Underground in that it showed where the buses went, even if the map itself wasn’t quite accurate in terms of geography. Most of the routes ran into Glasgow proper, the exceptions being the 81 (Clydebank - Duntocher Circular) and the 201 (Airdrie - East Kilbride). The plan was that routes wouldn’t be changed for ten years, to give confidence to the public. The Glasgow Overground proved the concept and First rolled out the Overground to other locations where it was the dominant operator, mainly large cities. For smaller locations, it introduced a scaled down version which it called Metro.

 

However, the Overground only really covered around 25 of the services run by First Glasgow. It didn’t cover the others. The Overground saw some of these other services pruned, others withdrawn entirely. What was left was generally run by older vehicles and gave the impression of a two-tier service. Also SPT was less than chuffed at the sudden need to cover lots of extra tendered services which it wasn’t expecting to and led to quite a public spat between the SPT and First Glasgow.

 

Of course, Glasgow has never been a city good at running branded buses and it was this that led to the Overground’s downfall. First Glasgow struggled to keep branded buses on the routes and as buses were repainted or replaced, the branding fell out of use. The routes ‘not changed for ten years’ proved to be somewhat hollow as routes were changed after as little as eighteen months. As the fleet became a sea of Barbie, the Overground branding disappeared and you’d struggle to find much mention of it on the fleet after a few years or indeed what it meant on the odd vehicle that did still carry it.

 

Fast forward now to 2013. Glasgow has been selected as host city for the Commonwealth Games and it was time for another revamp. This time, the idea was to simplify the Glasgow bus network. Routes were again recast and turn up and go frequencies were promoted. The major difference between the Overground and the new concept - called SimpliCITY - was that some of the routes were renumbered. The idea that the most prominent routes would be lower numbered, for example the aforementioned 62 became the 2. Other routes that shared common parts of the city with other services were combined, such as the 38/38A/38B/38C and 38E which replaced the 39 (38C), 42 (38B) and 213 (38E). This would group services into similar common numbers. This being Glasgow, there were some oddities such as service 40/40A (Clydebank/Milngavie- Easterhouse) which was renumbered 60/60A but the concept was to simplify the bus network.

 

Having learned from the Overground, no route-branding was to be used. In this case a standard branding was to be used, with branding highlighting the high frequency into Glasgow. It was designed to compliment the recently introduced First Olympia livery. A blue branding was selected but it sat uncomfortably on Barbie coloured buses.

 

However, a new broom at the company arrived in 2017 and one of the first things he did was to launch research into SimpliCITY as to how effective it was. The message that came back was frank. It just hadn’t worked or resonated with the public. Most of the public through it was another bus company and even its own staff were unsure what it was trying to state. So it has been discontinued in favour of the new First Urban livery and route branding. As more and more buses are repainted out of the colours, SimpliCITY becomes another footnote in the transport history of Glasgow.

 

One of the few buses still carrying SimpliCITY colours is 37536 (SN08SNU). It’s missing the branding at the top of the upper deck front window and some of the side branding has fallen victim to the bus wash.

 

Corgi produced a model of a Gemini in First Glasgow’s SimpliCITY’s branding (37541 - SF58ATY) which can be sourced if you look hard enough.