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En el Monte Tabor, en el norte de Israel, se encuentra la Basílica de la Transfiguración, en donde los cristianos creen que es el sitio donde la Transfiguración de Jesús tuvo lugar, un evento descrito en el Evangelio en el que Jesús se transfigura en una montaña sin nombre y habla con Moisés y Elías.
On Mount Tabor, in northern Israel, is the Basilica of the Transfiguration, where Christians believe it is the site where the Transfiguration of Jesus took place, an event described in the Gospel in which Jesus is transfigured into a mountain without a name and talks with Moses and Elijah.
Jacopo del Sellaio (Jacopo di Arcangelo - Florence, about 1441 - Florence, 1493) - Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (1465-73) 122.5 x 81.6 cm. - Alte Pinakothek, Munich
La storia di san Sebastiano nelle arti è una tra le più lunghe e ricche, forse può essere considerato uno dei santi più rappresentati della Chiesa cattolica.
Riconoscibile a colpo d'occhio, per via dell'iconografia che lo riguarda, costituita dalle frecce che gli penetrano il corpo, questa immagine ha subito nel corso del tempo una notevole evoluzione, passando dall'originaria figura di uomo barbuto di mezza età che indossa l'armatura a quella di adolescente muscoloso con un corpo intatto seminudo ed inerme, fino a trasfigurarsi in una vera e propria icona gay diventando il "santo protettore degli omosessuali".
Nelle rappresentazioni del primo millennio lo si vede indossare la clamide militare come si conveniva alla sua professione di soldato, e sempre senza barba: un guerriero armato di scudo e spada. Durante l'epoca dell'arte gotica appare con un'armatura di maglie metalliche alla moda del tempo, ma presto anche con un ricco abito da nobile romano e di solito con la barba. Da allora in poi si è cominciato inoltre a rappresentarlo nudo al momento di essere colpito dalle frecce; soprattutto i gotici olandesi e tedeschi lo raffigurano ricoperto di ferite e col corpo magro ben evidenziato. Il primo attributo personale di riconoscimento è la corona di fiori in mano; a partire dall'alto Medioevo una freccia e un arco tra le mani.
Dal tardo XV secolo gli artisti hanno scelto sempre più spesso di presentare la figura del santo come un giovinetto denudato, ancora completamente imberbe, con le mani strettamente legate al tronco di un albero o alla cima di una colonna mentre offre del tutto indifeso il petto alle frecce del carnefice.
The history of Saint Sebastian in the arts is one of the longest and richest, perhaps it can be considered one of the most represented saints of the Catholic Church.
Recognizable at a glance, due to the iconography that concerns him, consisting of the arrows that penetrate his body, this image has undergone a considerable evolution over time, passing from the original figure of a bearded middle-aged man who wears the armor to that of a muscular teenager with an intact half-naked and defenseless body, until he transfigured into a real gay icon becoming the "patron saint of homosexuals".
In the representations of the first millennium he is seen wearing the military clamide as befits his profession as a soldier, and always without a beard: a warrior armed with a shield and sword. During the epoch of the Gothic art he appears with an armor of fashionable metal mesh of the time, but soon also with a rich Roman nobleman's dress and usually with a beard. From then on he also began to represent him naked at the moment of being hit by arrows; above all the Dutch and German Gothic represent him covered with wounds and with the lean body well highlighted. The first personal attribute of recognition is the wreath of flowers in hand; from the early Middle Ages an arrow and a bow in his hands.
Since the late fifteenth century, artists have increasingly chosen to present the figure of the saint as a naked boy, still completely beardless, with his hands closely tied to the trunk of a tree or to the top of a column while offering his chest completely defenseless. executioner's arrows.
Let us go then
Where we have never had to go before
Straight down into the heart of the horror
Of half-deserted, blasted, bloody streets
With the earth shuddering beneath our feet
We watch the memory of the lights that have vanished
From these Twin Towers of man's belief
In humanity and world peace, fade...
Seeing as we've never seen before
Our transfigured anger redeeming our sight
The diffuse visualization of justice
Blossoming from that anger seeking the light
Our hearts of darkness breaking
From the sound of rolling thunder
Asking the eternal question
“What is wrong?” “What is right?”
Those who were living are now dead
We who are living are now dying
Moment by moment
With little patience for mercy or regret
Wondering, is the very air we live by safe
This is the end of innocence
The time for saving grace.
©2001, Michael Hillmer
"VIDEO KILLED THE RADO STAR?"
Well, just about, I'm a tad knackered at the moment!
G’day, I’ve been a wee bit quiet for the past few weeks as I reviewed movies at this year’s 2007 Melbourne (Australia) International Film Festival. I broadcast the reviews over about two and a half hours all up on my show, Zero-G: Science Fiction, Fantasy & Historical Radio, on 3RRR FM. (rrr.org.au)
The above picture is the sign on the Erwin Rado Theatre at 211 Johnson Street, Fitzroy, where the MIFF has its headquarters. The building's nothing much to look at from outside, really! But the sign...well, THAT has character!
Below the MIFF offices, the theatre, named after the director of the Film Festival from 1957 - 1983, has a charming old 69 seat cinema that can screen 16mm and 35mm film as well as DVD, LaserDisc, VHS, Data and MiniDV.
The MIFF’s access to the theatre expired at the end of 2007 and, ideally, it really should have its own dedicated screening facility, as other major city’s film festivals have. Still, the office itself has now moved to a more central location in Melbourne, which is handy!
To find out more about the MIFF go here:
www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au/
Anyway, I thought I’d post some of reviews here, inspired by films that I particularly enjoyed at this year’s event.
The full transcripts can be found at:
-AACHI & SSIPAK-
SOUTH KOREA
This continuously violent South Korean animated adult feature presents a future where human excrement is an energy source. Citizens have a monitoring chip attached to their arses and particularly productive individuals are rewarded with addictive drug laced munchies called Juicy Bars.
I shit you not.
The story begins with a roadwarrior highway battle as the swarming blue mutant Diaper Gang (!) attempts to truckjack a cargo of Juicy Bars, only to encounter a devastatingly lethal cyborg enforcer who makes Judge Dredd look like a human rights campaigner.
Headshot bodies fall at a rate that would impress Aeon Flux and Samurai Jack combined as the repressive government, assorted roving bands of bandits and con men, including the title characters Aachi and Ssipak (pronounced ‘she-pock’) along with a feisty would-be actress, all compete for the Juicy Bars.
Given the outrageous level of mayhem and the giggling concept that lies at the, er, bottom of the plot, it’s hardly worth noting that the animators cheerfully raid pop culture for many sequences, including the films Aliens and Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom. The latter is extensively overmined for one tunnel chase set up.
The animation is quite stylistically vigorous while the off the wall social commentary reminds me a little of the kind of thing that animator Ralph Bakshi attempted in his Fritz The Cat days, well before the likes of South Park and its shock-anime kin. There’s also something to be said for the biting political satire that runs through the narrative, which results in the government and gang leader being merely two opposite sides of the same ruthless coin.
People with kids could have pointless fun banning them from seeing this film, but apparently MTV’s thinking of doing a telly series based on it anyway, so, futile or what?
Subtle it isn’t, but it is a species of wicked fun that will gather bums on seats!
Director Joe Bum-jin
2006/90mins
-A FEW DAYS IN SEPTEMBER-
ITALY/FRANCE/PORTUGAL
The first film directed by screenwriter Santiago Amigorena, A Few Days In September
(Quelques Jours en Septembre), is a laid back but quite charming French spy thriller that makes espionage a family affair...and a realistically bickering family at that.
Elliot, mostly alluded to or played as an off screen voiceover by Nick Nolte until near the film’s conclusion, is an ex-CIA agent with knowledge about the upcoming 911 attacks. He hopes to trade the information for a stake that will enable him to reunite and live with his biological daughter and step-son, legacies of two seperate cover identity marriages in France and the U.S.
Much sought after by various factions, Elliot entrusts his grown up children, Orlando (Sara Forestier) and David (British actor Tom Riley) to the capable care of Irène, a cool, experienced French secret agent who used to be Elliot’s colleague. The potentially overwhelming meta-story takes a back seat to the character relationships, which makes a nice change to the usual breathless adventures that would normally puff up this kind of story into a by-the-numbers action thriller.
Juliette Binoche brings marvelous, stylish depth to her role as world wise spy Irène, providing a wryly sophisticated setting for her charges’ inevitable romance. (What IS it with the French anyway? After Irène’s arm is injured she turns up wearing a chic scarf as a sling, but of course!) Always gorgeous, the actress pitches the character as being adept enough at her deadly trade so that she can afford to enjoy herself while she works. Forestier is all sharp edged, angry eyed angst as she works through father/daughter issues while Riley nervously cooks (his character worked in a restaurant) for the two formidable women who have abruptly complicated his life with their Amazonian expertise with firearms. I also very much enjoyed the arch Franco/American banter between Orlando and David.
Seeking Elliot through the medium of his children is William Pound, a whacko ‘wet work’ assassin who has a penchant for poetry, drives a florist’s delivery van and has a mobile phone plagued by the world’s most annoying ringtone. Pound’s character is tightly wound by John Turturro, who played one of the convicts in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and also an equally obsessive relative of the title character in the television series Monk.
A Few Days In September benefits from first rate cinematography, including some playful soft focus shots that whimsically render Venice and Paris, cheekily explained by Irène’s habit of removing her glasses to ‘see things differently’. There’s also a cracking good shot through the dark framed doorway of a Venetian Chapel which reminded me of a signature frame from a John Ford Western, only instead of Mesas and sagebrush we get the Venice Lagoon and a passing ocean liner.
Although this film lingers perhaps a little too lovingly on the wrangling entanglements of its main characters I still found it pleasant and rewardable viewing. Amigorena certainly knows how to inject off-beat life into his characters.
Director/Screenwriter Santiago Amigorena
2006/115 mins
-BUG-
USA
When down on her luck small town waitress Agnes White (played by Ashley Judd) invites eccentric drifter Peter Evans into her seedy motel room she receives much more than she bug-aned for!
Director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, & The French Connection) gets almost unbearably psychological in this cross genre movie that wisely adds no excess fat to the one set, pressure cooker Tracy Lett’s play that it’s adapted from. As the two main characters’ relationship slowly emerges from a far too tightly spun chrysalis the film builds to one of the most intensely wound paranoic conclusions seen on screen.
Michael Shannon is gauntly convincing as Evans, a role that he pioneered in the original stage play and intially at least, reminds me a little of a young Steve McQueen or perhaps, Joachim Phoenix. Harry Connick Junior has a supporting part in the film as Agne’s ex-convict, ex-husband.
Bug’s maddeningly paced escalating tension is supported by an appropriately chittering score, composed by Brian Tyler, who also gave us soundtracks for the films Constantine, Bubba Ho-Tep, the Children of Dune miniseries, as well as episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise and the upcoming Aliens Versus Predator 2: Survival Of The Fittest. Speaking of Star Trek, Ashley Judd also played Ensign Robin Lefler in Star Trek: Next Generation.
Bug is a film that creeps up on you and by its final scuttling rush will definitely get under your skin...one way or another.
Director- William Friedkin
Screenwriter-Tracy Letts
2006/101mins
-EL TOPO-
(MEXICO)
El Topo (“The Mole”) was director Alejandro Jodorowsky's third film. The infamous Mexican allergorically surreal Eastern/Western is presented at the festival in a very fine new restoration (a bit of a shock for those used to seeing it in its customary raddled grindhouse/cult prints!) along with its natural companion piece, The Holy Mountain.
This comprehensively startling but compelling film begins, not unlike the Lone Wolf And Cub Samurai series, with the black clad, flute playing gunslinger El Topo (played by the director himself) riding across the wastelands in company with a taciturn child companion. After a blood drenched encounter with drunkenly bestial bandits El Topo replaces the boy with a seductively manipulative woman who urges him to become the greatest shootist in the world by seeking out and defeating four master gunfighters.
As with the wuxia martial arts films that this story frequently references the quest for the masters proves dangerous, difficult, baffling and wonderous.
The gunslinger’s odyssey to achieve enlightment and mastery is populated with exotic encounters and inventive, symbolically charged imagery. Deflating balloons signal the start of duels, capering outlaws with shoe fetishes rape feminised sand paintings and carve bananas with sabres, civilised townsfolk prove more depraved and debauched than the wasteland bandits, herds of rabbits mysteriously die at El Topo’s feet, incestuously deformed trogalytes living in oil drums tunnel to escape their underground prison, and live bullets are caught and deflected by butterfly nets.
This visual melange is supported by Jodorowskys and Nacho Méndezs evocative music which, by turns soothing or jarring, echoes across the many desert based sequences and permeates the locations, which frequently read more like artistic installations than sets grounded in any kind of mundane reality. In fact, there is a timeless anachronistic feel to the desert that makes you question whether this is nominally a period Western or indeed set in some kind of post-apocalyptic Stephen King future.
El Topo is rendered even stranger by its renowned mid-film gear change, one of several enigmatic transformations that can be interpreted as Buddhist inspired reincarnations of the title character.
Just imagine what might have been if Jodorowsky had pulled off his mid-70s adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune, with its intended cast of Salvidor Dali as the Emperor, Mick Jagger playing Feyd Rautha and Orson Welles as Baron Harkonnen? As it is the Acid Western tradition at least got another outing in Jim Jarmusch's more recent film, Dead Man, which, for all its many remarkable charms, by comparison to El Topo is cast into monochrome shade.
A bizarre chimera even by Zero-G's notoriously unhinged standards El Topo is a cult classic given gloriously grotesque new life by its own recent transfiguring restoration.
Director/Screenwriter Alejandro Jodorowsky
1971/125mins
-FIDO-
Canada/USA
Fido fiendishly expands upon the gag featured in Shaun of the Dead (amongst other films) that zombies could be domesticated to perform simple tasks. Zombies helping in the kitchen? Uh-oh, better make sure they keep those rotting fingers are kept hygenically away from food preparation surfaces with a pair of crisp, clean white cotton gloves....
In an alternate 1950s the all encompassing ZomCom, which apparently helped win the Zombie War, protects and serves the walled small towns of America. Now, we all know that the only reason to provide zombies with clever electronic control collars is so that the gadgets can malfunction; cue zombie outbreak! It’s the slyly subversive juxtaposition of wholesome mom and apple-pie Leave It To Beaver sitcom with Zombie killing procedural that lends this consistently bemusing film a wicked Addams Family style where Pop naturally reads Death Magazine and scenes shot in cars are filmed using good old fashioned rear screen projection.
Not that we’re talking Black and White telly, nosirree Bob! Fido is filmed in full, glorious technicolour, complete with ginormous finned automobiles, two toned shoes and compliant Stepford housewives who wait at the front door for their patriarchal hubbies to take the martini from their submissive, manicured hands. Happily, Carrie Anne-Moss in one of the main roles, as Helen Robinson, is more of a buddingly feisty Desperate Housewife after the armed and dangerous example of Bree Hodge. (From The Matrix to a zombie packed Pleasantville is indeed an ironic career path!) It’s not long before Helen kicks over the domestic traces following the example of her young son, Timmy (knowingly played by the intriguingly named K’Sun Ray) and his new pet zombie, the Fido of the title, embodied by Billy Connolly. Connolly plays the long suffering Fido with toothy glee, moaning and groaning and lurching in the throes of what could easily double as a hangover of fatally heroic proportions.
Keep an eye out (easy to do in a zombie film) for Dylan Baker, as the nervously cheerful Bill Robinson. Baker has had the sleeper part of Doctor Curt Connors in the Spider-Man films and, as comic book fans anticipate, should eventually get to mutate into the super-villain, The Lizard.
Fido is my genre pic of the Festival, in the tradition of another year’s shambling B-schlock spoof, The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra. I ask you, how can I not enjoy sinking my teeth into a film where a pet zombie is addressed with a line like: “What’s that Fido? Timmy’s in trouble?”
It’s enough to make Lassie dig her way out of her grave!
Director- Andrew Currie
Screenwriters- Robert Chomiak, Andrew Currie, Dennis Heaton
2006/91mins
-HANSEL & GRETEL-
GERMANY
If you go down to the woods today.....you’d better take your copy of the Brothers Grimm Cookbook For Baking Independent Elderly Female Cannibal Sorceresses.
German director Anne Wild and screenwriter Peter Schwindt settle for a straightforward retelling of the classic rural ‘stranger danger’ story wherein the devious Gretel proves the most resourceful of two deliberately lost children who end up on the menu of the obligatory member of the local Guild of Almagamated Wicked Witches & Confectioners.
Deliberately lost? How do you think the kids got to be wandering around in Blair Witchburg in the first place? Sometimes tactfully omitted from modern retellings of this familiar story is the neglected element of child abandonment, a practice forced upon starving families in situations of plague, famine, wars and other social upheavals. In this case, it’s the pragmatic step-mother who pushes her more sentimental but nontheless compliant woodcutter husband into cutting loose the kids.
In early versions of the story it’s usually just the natural mother who suggests jettisoning the offspring...a much more useful cautionary tale for parents to use as and Awful Threat when disciplining naughty anklebiters.
Leaving aside observations about how Hansel and Gretel underlines the historical distrust of skilled single women of independent means this is actually a moderately creepily staged film. The woods are suitably threatening, and the witch herself, though certainly not up to Buffy The Vampire Slayer standards is a reasonably nasty albeit dimwitted piece of work...
I never can figure out quite why witchy poo needed to go Hannibal Lector on kiddies when she was capable of whipping up enough food to fatten a small army, not to mention all that square footage of gingerbread real estate. Let’s just assume it’s an alternative lifestyle choice, along the lines of supergenius Wile. E. Coyote yearning after Roadrunner drumsticks in spite of the fact that he had enough credit to order truckloads of expensive gadgets from the ACME Corporation.
(On the subject of ghoulish folks developing a fondness for ‘long pig’ just what DID those darling children do with the oven fired witch after they fried her arse?)
We all know how this ends, after making off with the witch’s portable property the kids, in a remarkable act of forgiveness, share their taxfree windfall with their deadbeat dad...though their step mother has obligingly dropped dead in the meanwhile.
Hmm, did anyone actually see step-mama and Ms Witch in the same room at the same time?
Don’t expect a Post-Modern fractured fairytale from Hansel and Gretel and you won’t be led astray by what’s essentially a traditionally told, moderately unsettling film.
Director- Anne Wild
Screenwriter- Peter Schwindt
2006/76mins
-THE HOLY MOUNTAIN-
MEXICO
If you thought Alejandro Jodorowsky’s third film, El Topo, was weird...well, no caca Sherlock!
Wait until you get a load of this....
His next surreally allegorical outing, 1973’s The Holy Mountain, scales even more whackily experimental heights. Like El Topo, The Holy Mountain has also been recently, lovingly restored, all the better to trip out on the eye bulging psychedelic imagery!
Again, as with El Topo, the nominal protagonist is on a messianic quest to achieve enlightment. Even more ironically symbolic in this case since the central thief character bears a strong and exploitable resemblance to the traditional representation of Jesus Christ.
Horácio Salinas plays the hapless thief, leaving Jodorowsky himself the catalytic role of a tower dwelling alchemist who charges him to accompany seven influential but materialistic powerbrokers to Lotus Island where they will achieve eternal life once they have climbed the eponymous Holy Mountain.
Initially the dialogue is thin on the ground but soon ramps up to cheerfully inexplicable levels where a line like “hypersexed brown native vampires” can pass without comment or indeed comprehension. Politics, art, sexuality, and filmmaking, amongst many other subjects, all cop a satirical hiding in this extraordinary film which relies heavily upon fantasy imagery drawn from tarot cards, astrology and religion.
Just listing a few of the oddball ideas gives you an idea of the unique scope of Jorodowsky’s fevered imagination.
Two women are ‘cleansed’ of clothing, make-up, jewellery, false nails, and hair by a black robed priest who himself has ebony varnished fingernails. A screaming man lies covered in tarantulas...no big acting stretch there! The Invasion of Mexico is renacted by lizards dressed in Mezoamerican costumes battling frogs wearing Conquistador armour and missionary robes. (I have my doubts about this sequence, it sure looks like the poor frogs are really being blown up by explosives?) A mulitple amputee writes cryptic messages in the dirt with a severed animal leg. Parading prostitutes turn out to be just as holy as priests. Roman soldiers cast the thief in plaster and create a line of life-sized crucifiction merchandise. Art factory paint coated nude backsides stamp out images on a production line while live body painted nudes are built into installations so they can be fondled by gallery patrons. Gas masked soldiers attend dances and machine guns and hand grenades are painted in rainbow colours. Spartan like warriors pursue a cunning plan to emasculate 1000 heroes to create a shrine of 1000 testicles....and nevermind what they did with the other 1000! Eviscerated victims spill chicken guts....and I mean they literally pull chickens from their wounds’ while Liederhosen wearing Teutonics trip on drugs and strongmen are able to turn intangible and teleport through entire mountains.
Distantly reminiscent of Fellini’s Satyricon, and to some extent Roma, The Holy Mountain also boasts the most startling Orgasmatron machine since the erotic cult film Barbarella, in the form of a Giant mechanical vagina that’s manipulated like a theramin.... well, if a theramin was played by a giant dildo!
Is it any surprise, really, in the wake of the cult success of El Topo, that The Holy Mountain’s producer Allen Klein also managed The Beatles and that those fans of all things psychedelic, John Lennon and Yoko Ono helped fund the movie?
Landmark or landfill experimental film? The Holy Mountain remains an obvious precursor to movies like Eraserhead, The Cremaster Cycle, and The Qatsi Trilogy.
Climb it at your own peril. (You know you want to!)
Director/Screenwriter Alejandro Jodorowsky
1973/114mins
-lLS-
France
Clementine (Olivia Bonamy) and Lucas (Michael Cohen) live happily in pastoral rural isolation in a rundown chalet in the Romanian woods, until one night they are attacked by....THEM! No, not by lurching giant ants from a 1950s horror film but by...well, that would be telling. Some horror films take their time building suspense but Moreau and Palud’s shiversome first feature nails you straight to the wall and keeps you hanging there for the economical just-over-an-hour’s running time. And I do mean ‘running’.
The adept direction and unrelating pace set within the atmospheric confines of the old chalet (a dream of a location to create nightmares in) is ramped up by genuinely unnerving sound effects design, an evocatively tense soundtrack, solid if necessarilly Spartan performances by the two leads, and the teasing revelation of the nature of the besiegers.
There’s nothing particularly new about the ingredients stirred into this terrifying mix. In fact, you could, after the credits have rolled and the lights come up again, sit back and tick off the horror cliches one by one, starting with the usually tiresome pronouncement, “Based On A True Story”. Commentators seem uncertain about the veracity of that, but in this case it adds to the overall feel of unease that permeates the ending of this film. I found myself thinking, “Y’know, I can see how that could actually happen....brrrr!”
Ils...it took me a while to realise that the title is merely the French word for “Them”... is one of the most disturbing horror films I’ve seen in some time, and all without buckets of blood or lashings of sickly inventive torture porn. With its efficient minimalist approach it’s very close in tone to the best of the New Wave of Japanese horror that burst upon the West several years ago now.
Directors/ Screenwriters- David Moreau and Xavier Palud
2006/70 mins
-ISLAND OF LOST SOULS-
DENMARK
A big budget supernatural fantasy for young adults that's part Spielberg, part Lucas, with an added dash of Harry Potter, but which ultimately wears its ample CGI well to create an enjoyable and in a few places reasonably scary film.
When two children move to a quiet country town the last thing they expect to find is a haunted island plagued by a supernatural confluence of kidnapped souls. When a young girl taps into the mystic mayhem it results in her brother being possessed by the spirit of a centuries dead member of an ancient order of sorcerous crimefighters.
The film's young actors are capable and ‘self possessed’ in the face of some quite formidable magical opposition, including a new and nasty take on that familiar player from Central Horror Casting, the living Scarecrow, along with a necromancer who could be brother to both Nosferatu and the Star Wars Emperor, right down to the cadaverous features and handy ability to cast Sith lightning from his fingies! I especialy liked the offbeat character of the trainspotting psychic investigator who inevitably comes to the kid’s aid in their hour of dire peril.
A fun little romp that’s no longer than it should be at an economical 100 minutes.
Director- Nikolaj Arcel
Screenwriter- Ramsus Heisterberg
2007/100mins
Sessions
Sun, 12th of August, 1:00 PM
ACMI
-KHADAK-
Belgium/Germany/The Netherlands
Bagi, played by Batzul Khayankhyarvaa, is a young nomad, who, along with his family are wrenched from their nomadic existence by the Mongolian government who want to consolidate people in towns, villages and cities as the fledgling democracy gears up to enter the 21st century’s global economy. After rescuing Zolzaya (Tsetsegee Byamba), a beautiful female coal thief, Bagi boldly goes where nomad has gone before on a shamanistic quest that culminates in fantastical revelations about Mongolia’s future relation with the environment.
Khadak is underpinned by a hypnotically compelling narrative fascination with magic realism that often contrasts the shabby reality of the concrete high rises with the colourfully organic traditional nomadic traditional yurt dwellings.
The film overflows with powerful imagery, including a simple but effective camera roll that causes an iconistic prayer-scarf draped tree to turn upside down as the land itself is inverted by mineral exploitation and pollution. A deserted town, in reality an abandoned former Soviet barracks, stands in for one potential future. Tractors, used to haul the disassembled yurts, are started and allowed to run aimlessly free across the steppes as the government agents burn the nomads’ links to their former lifestyle behind them.
Khadak doesn’t always offer too nostalgic a view of the nomadic struggle; many of the former rural folk cheerfully adapt to their new circumstances and some seem to pragmatically thrive, especially Bagi’s mother, who ends up running heavy machinery at the coal mine where immense draglines swing with saurian grace across the screen.
The film’s reverberating score resonates across the wind blown, echoing steppes, giving way to some moments of pure musical bliss, especially when some of the newly urbanised young people get together for astonishing ‘jam’ sessions.
Both lyrical and hard edged Khadak is a film, like Martin Scorsese’s Kundan, whose exotic sights and sounds will be welcome guests in my yurt for as long as they choose to stay.
Directors/Screenwriters- Peter Brosens, Jessica Hope Woodworth
2006/105mins
-LAST WINTER, THE-
USA/Iceland
It’s damn cold in Northern Alaska but not cold enough, as tough but soft centered Ron Perlman’s advance oil drilling preparation crew discover when they set out to re-open an isolated test drilling site that may be viable in the face of looming energy shortages. The arctic circle tundra is thawing rapidly, unleashing the kind of environmental horror movie that used to be in vogue back in the 1970s and which is all too timely now as global warming makes its presence felt in the real world.
Perlman, as usual, is excellent, giving the kind of inflected performance that graced Hellboy, Cronos, City Of Lost Children and his impressive work in the television fantasy series Beauty & The Beast. The ensemble players are also deftly sketched in, often in a low key fashion that adds realism.
Director Larry Fessenden successfully follows up and even references in one brief bit of dialogue, Wendigo, one of his earlier, not entirely disimilar horror outings. As with some other genre films in this year’s festival the horror elements are timeless; from the simmering sexual and tensions and hostility between the boffins and the bluecollars to the classic scenario of the besieged ice station. The latter is a character in itself, in the ‘Thingy’ tradition of both Howard Hawks and John Carpenter’s seperate adaptations of John W. Campbell’s seminal very Cold War science fiction novella, Who Goes There? Best possible use is made of this stunning location, as the screen often becomes an overwhelmingly vast white or dark canvas to trap and diminish the hapless blue collar workers.
Crystal clear sound design helps ‘sell’ the visuals and the impressive CGI special effects are first rate, without ever detracting from the practical drama of the sheer dangers of living and working in such an extreme environment.
The Last Winter is a cunningly ambiguous chiller that cleverly maintains a plausible alternative explanation for the film’s lethal events up to and possibly including the final admirably restrained frame which begs teasingly to be opened out into a wider shot but leaves the audience wanting more, leaving room for a possible but unecessary sequel.
Oil be back!
Director- Larry Fessenden
Screenwriters- Larry Fessenden, Robert Leaver
2006/107mins
-MEN AT WORK-
IRAN
A carload of Iranian buddies on their way down the mountains from a skiing holiday stop for a toilet break at a precipitous roadside layover and discover a monolithic rock
that just HAS to be tumbled down the slopes.
If you’re a bloke, you automatically know how it is.
If you’re a woman, equally, you KNOW how we are!
An amusing exploration of male bonding and stubborness this happily crazy film is guaranteed to contain no sociopolitical allegory whatsoever (really!) and the Iranian writer/director has asked that the U.S please refrain from invading his leg of the Axis of Evil until he has finished his next project.
Director/Screenwriter- Mani Haghighi
2006/75mins
-SEVERANCE-
UK
When completely politically incorrect arms merchant Palisade Defence rewards its crack Euro Sales division with a team-building weeked in the woods of Eastern Europe the mismatched but archtypal bickering office workers soon find that they’re not quite the ‘gun’ group that they thought they were.
Yes, the comparison of choice is The Office meets Deliverance and that’s fair enough because what makes this movie so gormlessly funny is the inept Brits Abroad schtick combined with an equally knowing, wickedly timed take on the horror slasher genre that puts most inept Hollywood fun with fear spoofs to more shame than ever. The only time this film ever really fumbles is when it takes the horror too seriously, which is not all that frequently, though more noticably and perhaps inevitably, in the apocalyptic last reel.
Oddly, Severence’s particularly grungy baddies who get to fold, spindle and mutilate our heroic twonks remind me very much of the “Stalkers” from the recent popular video game, which itself references the Tarkovsky film and the less well known science fiction novel that classic is itself based on, Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic.
The heavyweight British ensemble cast is a real corker here, and one of the most enjoyable in the festival films I’ve seen this year, including at least one former Bond villain (Toby Stephens who was Gustav Graves in Die Another Day) and the always wetly amusing Tim McInnerny who plays to his well known Blackadder type (He was both Lord Percy and Captain Darling) as the incompetent boss of the Palisade’s party.
I won’t be the last reviewer to note that Eastern Europe has become destination of choice for horror filmmakers of late. Attracted by threatening woodlands, abandoned buildings and low cost production facilities the exotic locales also perhaps wallow in a degree of smug and possibly premature Western superiority in the wake of the economic collapse of former Eastern Bloc foes. For the moment, these once hard to access countries are providing filmmakers with a place to set their stories ‘beyond the glow of the streetlights’. Again, as with other festival genre films, Severence does benefit from a marvelously decrepit Old Dark house of a location.
Severence is laced with joyfully understated sight gags, dialogue to listen for, and a good deal of well meaning irony regarding corporate responsibility. The icing on the cake is a musical score that fiddles with both ominous gypsy curses, pop tunes and even riffs off We’ll Meet Again as featured in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, to which black comedy there’s more than one reference.
Severance gives awful new meaning to the term, “You’e fired!”
Director- Christopher Smith
Screenwriters- James Moran, Christopher Smith
2006/90mins
-STILL LIFE-
HONG KONG/CHINA
An intimate but involving look at the disapora of displaced persons produced by China's Three Gorges Dam mega-engineering project as seen through the eyes of two people.
In the first part of the film coal miner Han Sanming (played by Sanming Han) returns after 16 years absence to his former home town of Fengjie, only to find its 2000 years of history submerged beneath the waters of the dam. Taking a temporary job in demolition, he searches for news of his ex wife, whom he hasn’t seen for 16 years.
Still Life never wanders far from the dominating horizontal visuals of the mighty Yangtze River and the monolithic concrete and steel dam. The apocalyptic rubble of the yet-to-be flooded part of the town forms another powerful metaphor, a full stop to the flow of linear time represented by the River, which itself has been given pause by the immense project.
It’s a hard life for Han, though undoubtedly far less dangerous than the notoriously hazardous Chinese coal mining industry, and it provides some extraordinary imagery.
Men in supposedly protective suits with sanitising back pack sprayers wander through gutted homes. Friends are made amongst workmates to the jaunty ringtones of their mobile phones as they exchange numbers...a socialising ritual that later prompts one of the film’s most poignant moments when a mobile ‘s unanswered ringing signals a tragic accident. Condemned buildings collapse with tired grace in the distant background as they receive explosive coup de grâces.
The second half of the film segues into another quest for closure, as Nurse Shen Hong (Tao Zhao) journeys to the town looking for her own estranged husband.
Again, the dam is another defining presence in the story, providing a backdrop for the final resolution of Shen Hong’s search.
One baffling scene (and I’d welcome any light that anyone can shed on this!) sees Shen staring at a large monument in the distance. It appears to be a Chinese alphabetical character, rendered in concrete. As she turns away, rocket motors ignite at its base and the whole giant structure lifts off into the skies. I assume this is some kind of reference to the recent successes of the Chinese manned space programme but am not sure as to why it’s relevant to the story? Unless it’s just a bit of triumphalism? Or indeed, because Shen does ignore the startling sight, perhaps it’s meant to be ironic? Enquiring minds need to know!
Actually, the overall philosophical conclusion drawn at the end of Still Life does read a little bit like some kind of inspirational tract to me....but that may just reflect my own bias, or again it could be ironic, and I won’t spoil the ending by going further into detail. (Well, cross cultural puzzles have always attracted me to World Cinema!)
Still Life is a beautifully visualised, thoughtful film with a measured pace that aptly reflects the larger elements that form the canvas that its smaller, but no less important, human dramas are played out against.
Director/Screenwriter- Jia Zhang-ke
2006/108mins
-THE WAR TAPES-
USA
Rather than be 'embedded' in a U.S military unit in Iraq filmmaker Deborah Scranton chose to give cameras to three National Guardsmen to record their own experiences deployed with Charlie Company, 3rd of the 172nd New Hampshire Mountain Infantry. Scranton provided additional remote directorial aid via text messaging and email to the three soldiers, Sgts. Stephen Pink and Zack Bazzi, and Specialist Michael Moriarty, whose stories were chosen from an overall pool of 1000 hours of footage.
The soldiers’ personal and professional accounts are sobering and revelatory and never less than enlightening.
Though it does this remarkably cohesive documentary something of a disservice to cherry pick material out of its sturdily engineered overall context it’s necessary to give some idea of the range of material included in the film.
We see several ambush eye views of the destructive force of roadside Improvised Explosive Devices which, though initiated and responded to with varying degrees of control by both combatant forces, usually result in chaos and confusion, death and destruction, for bystanders. One soldier matter-of-factly tours a vast graveyard of combat lossed vehicles, shattered and gutted by I.E.Ds, casting in an increasingly ironic light President Bush’s triumphantly naive 2003 announcement that “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended...”
The complexity of night operations are mirrored in the silvered eyed stare of soldiers seen through the eerie but tactically invaluable lenses of night vision equipment , rendering one formation of troops strikingly like a formation of stolid Terracotta Warriors. The detached professionalism of the soldiers understandably falters when a night time convoy kills a woman who was then struck repeatedly by each truck in turn.
The irony of soldiers and hired civilians (drivers and security guards) risking and losing their lives to protect re-supply cargos of, for example, cheese for hamburgers, is not lost on the troopers who wonder loudly if the complex and highly profitable logistical tail is wagging the policy dog? In fact, they’re refreshingly unguarded in their speculations about what they see, from their perspective as boots on the ground, as the reasons behind the ongoing war. Their observations are pithy, and to the point...or, rather, multiple points, as the individual opinions cover the entire spectrum of current controversy, from oil driven conspiracy to patriotic war on terror.
Soldiers will always enthusiastically relish the opportunity to grouse about their lot, reserving special venom for the shortcomings of their equipment, training, rations and orders. One complaint amongst many was that these soldiers received little or no cultural instruction to help prepare them for operating in the Iraq theatre, which ommission makes it hard to both know the enemy or understand your friends. Even a simple misunderstanding over a commonly used hand gesture for ‘Stop’ can, in the local environment, be fatally mistaken for ‘Hello!”
The fact that the Iraq conflict is, in reality, fought amongst peoples homes rather than some spiffily titled combat theatre, warzone or neutrally termed area of operations is thoughtfully underlined by frequent segues to the soldiers’ American homes, either when the troops have returned or during their absence. Surface impressions notwithstanding there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of difference between U.S and Iraqi civilians; folks, it seems, are alike all over. Stateside sequences touch upon the complicated effects that the deployment had on civilian family members, the problems of post traumatic stress disorder suffered by the veterans, and the more obvious physical injuries. For example, one of the soldiers has carpal tunnel syndrome in his hands, the result of vibration transmitted through the grips of his vehicle mounted machine gun on patrol. He also has to cope with back pain from wearing body armour in a confined space.
Crammed with ‘real time’ feedback from ongoing conflict The War Tapes makes a provocative companion piece with the 2005 documentary Gunner Palace. For balance I would also add to the recommended viewing list: Control Room (2004), Baghdad ER (2006), and My Country, My Country (2006)
Director- Deborah Scranton
2006/97mins
-WELCOME TO NOLLYWOOD-
USA/NIGERIA
Never heard of the Nigerian film industry? This inspiringly cheeky doco will rectify that and should be seen by all budding filmmakers seeking new ways to practice their art.
Something like 2400 movies per year are produced in Nigeria, making it the third most prolific film industry in the world. Film? Well, that’s a nostalgically generic term to describe the Nigerians’ enthusiastic bypassing of conventional film stock and its complex and expensive infrastructure in favour of digital video distributed directly and cheaply at local marketplaces on DVD or VCD.
The 300 or so Nigerian directors have an already rich tradition of oral storytelling to draw upon, and have embraced multiple genres usually lensing them through an action adventure filter, which has fostered a support industry of movie fight Action Camps where actors can learn the stunt fight business. Although one director claims “We don’t do science fiction” Nollywood nevertheless loves fantasy, especially religious based melodramas with plenty of demons and angels, sorcererors and witches.
Period films set in Nigeria often have a luridly portrayed but understandably anti-slavery element, which alongside with the witchcraft angle concerns some commentators who argue that focusing on these aspects promotes stereotypes.
A visit to the set of a film grounded in the recent Liberian war shows the Nigerian director, who at least partly funded the movie himself, putting his actors through boot camps to learn how to fill out their soldierly roles, including veteran advisors from both sides of the original conflict. The actors go through production hell but ironically are brought low by a botched contract with the caterers...
Nollywood; not entirely different from Hollywood!
Director- Jamie Meltzer
2007/58mins
-U-
FRANCE
A lyrical French animated feature with fluidly drawn artwork and an equally languid, but elegant plot as a Princess Mona is faced with choosing between new love and a beloved friend, who happens to be a unicorn. The charming, anthropomorphic animal cast could have been drawn by Dr Seuss, and the story is a souffle of flirtatious love with a playful musical topping.
Directors- Grégoire Solotareff, Serge Elissalde
Screenwriter- Grégoire Solotareff
2006/71mins
Beneath the gentle shadow of a hand laid across the face like a silken veil, a visage blooms within the twilight. The eye peering through parted fingers catches the light with the tenderness of a forgotten dream, wavering between confession and concealment. There is a fragile duality in this gesture—the wish to hide from the world and yet to gaze upon it, half-anxious, half-conspiratorial.
The skin, textured by shadows and highlights, becomes a secret landscape, where childhood lingers beneath the traces of time. The slightly parted lips hint at the whisper of a smile, the promise of a word held back, a secret being sown. Here, the hand becomes a threshold, a curtain, a bridge—it filters reality, transfigures it, softens it, makes it almost ungraspable.
The gaze, half-revealed, seems to play hide and seek with clarity. It is a portrait of intimacy, a celebration of mingled shyness and boldness, as if light itself hesitated to unveil everything. To contemplate mystery, to listen to what remains unsaid, to caress what lingers half-naked in the shadow of the hand.
PELERINAGE DU 15 AOÛT 2018
Etape ORCIVAL
Pour accompagner la Fête de ce Jour 22 Août
SAINTE MARIE REINE
Fête de mémoire, instituée par le Pape PIE XII en 1954
qui rappelle que Marie Elle aussi, participe au titre tout spécial de la Royauté du Christ.
Ainsi transfigurée, suprêmement, elle participe de la Rédemption en parfaite plénitude.
Elle nous aide à porter ici-bas et par là, nos propres fruits royaux par nos oeuvres de miséricorde bonnes, nos prières, notre dévotion à sa condition, notre vie sainte et pieuse, sincère, simple remplie d'amour et de joie.
Les hommes d'Eglise l'ont couronnée ici-bas, tangiblement, en rappel de la Royauté acquise par ses mérites lors de sa vie terrestre.
Marie a été couronnée au Ciel par son propre Fils , lui même Roi de la Royauté céleste et terrestre et que l'Ecriture nous signifie clairement : Il est Celui "dont le Règne n'aura pas de fin".
ORCIVAL l'a bien compris et ne manque pas de couronner Marie en mémoire royale, aux jours de sollennité liturgique.
Je n'avais encore jamais assisté à ce geste hautement symbolique.
C'était une première. Beau cadeau et signe pour mon anniversaire.
Saluons à genoux NOTRE REINE et Mère, Maman, afin qu'Elle nous envoie faire des oeuvres fécondes et hautes autour de nous.
A ORCIVAL, tout spécialement, les innombrables faits de Marie sont particulièrement marquants et de différents types : bienfaits, guérisons, délivrance, grâces, conversions, rendu d'un membre manquant, pardon, et même un mort revenu à la vie !!!
Tout cela est consigné dans "le livre des miracles d'Orcival".
Ave Maria.
Mertola, Beja, Portugal.
Ten kilometers south of the revolved section of Pulo do Lobo the Guadiana river reaches Mértola and makes it hard to believe the amazing transformation in this small journey. In that village, on the outskirts, or from the top of the whitewashed tower that rises in one of the turrets of the wall since the sixteenth century, we can already witness a navigable river, a pier with boats, tide lines marked on the rocks and sand, seagulls in the sky and the revisited smell of salty air.
Mértola, Beja, Portugal.
Dez quilómetros a sul do revolto troço do Pulo do Lobo o Rio Guadiana chega a Mértola e custa a crer que nesse pequeno percurso ele se transfigure tanto. Naquela vila, na periferia ribeirinha, ou do alto da alva Torre do Relógio que se ergue desde o século XVI num dos torreões da muralha, já podemos ver um rio navegável, um cais com barcos ancorados, as linhas das marés marcadas nas rochas e nos areais, gaivotas no céu e sentir um revisitado cheiro a maresia.
Exposure: 0.1 sec (1 / 10) - Aperture: f/5.6 - Focal Length: 55 mm - ISO 200 - No tripod - 05:53 AM -
The agricultural worker (buoy the Cold Brazil) won by days worked during the week and currently receive $ 35.00 reais (equivalent to $ 17dólares) per work day and receive their money every Saturday when they arrive crop! They are the workers who were kicked out of the fields, will be a mass of temporary workers (flywheel) residing in urban peripheries. Migrate from one region to another farm, following the production cycle of different cultures. Are farmers in various fields but do not have their own lands. Can be considered rural proletarians, reproducing the alienating conditions of capitalist production in the field.
History: The association of the agricultural sector to industrial and guided by policies and measures aimed at increasing production and attentive to the needs of domestic and foreign markets, from the 60's, the employee has left the rural heritage of social and political exclusion transfigured in agricultural modernization. Thus, the state, not to hinder the growth of the economy, implement actions that result in the development of capitalist relations in the field.
Features: - The day laborers are conducted without security, usually in the back of trucks, vans or pickup trucks from home to the plantations. The locations vary with the seasons and harvest times.
The name comes from the fact that these workers bring with them their own meals (slang, float) in containers without insulation since leaving home early in the morning, which means they are already cold at lunchtime.
In recent years, there have been several complaints and cases of migrant farm workers caught in the exploitation of slave labor or semi-slave, which makes this class a constant theme in the struggle for human rights.
And they live in low-paid jobs, constantly moving from job to have money to survive.
The buoys Cold arose mainly by wage labor on farms. They were small landowners who earned very little from what they produced, and when large landowners began to offer payment, and not part of production, these small farmers sold their land and were working in plantations, mainly sugar cane.
They usually work only in times of sowing and harvesting.
FROM: pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boia-fria
O trabalhador rural (boia-fria brasileiro) ganha pelos dias trabalhados durante a semana e atualmente recebem R$35,00 reais, (equivalente a $17dólares), por dia de trabalho e recebem seu dinheiro todos os sábados logo que chegam das lavouras! Eles são os trabalhadores que, expulsos dos campos, vão constituir uma massa de trabalhadores temporários (volantes) residindo nas periferias urbanas. Migram de uma região agrícola para outra, acompanhando o ciclo produtivo das diversas culturas. São agricultores em diversas lavouras mas não possuem suas próprias terras. Podem ser considerados proletários rurais, reproduzindo as condições alienantes de produção capitalista no campo.
História: A associação do setor agropecuário ao industrial, orientado por medidas e políticas com vistas a um aumento da produção e atento às necessidades do mercado interno e externo, a partir da década de 60, legou ao trabalhador rural a herança da exclusão social e política, transfigurada em modernização agrícola. Dessa forma, o Estado, para não obstaculizar o crescimento da economia, implementa ações que resultam no desenvolvimento de relações capitalistas no campo.
Características:- Os bóias-frias são conduzidos sem segurança, geralmente nas carrocerias de caminhões, peruas ou camionetes de casa até as plantações. Os locais variam de acordo com as épocas do ano e as épocas de colheita.
O nome advém do fato de estes trabalhadores levarem consigo suas próprias refeições (na gíria, bóia) em recipientes sem isolamento térmico desde que saem de casa, de manhã cedo, o que faz com que elas já estejam frias na hora do almoço.
Em anos recentes, houve diversas denúncias e casos de bóias-frias flagrados sob exploração de trabalho escravo ou semi-escravo, o que faz desta classe um tema constante na luta por direitos humanos.
E vivem de trabalhos mal remunerados, mudando constantemente de trabalho para que tenham dinheiro para sobreviver.
Os bóias-fria surgiram principalmente pelo trabalho assalariado nas propriedades rurais. Eles eram pequenos proprietários de terras que ganhavam muito pouco com o que produziam, e quando os grandes proprietários de terras passaram a oferecer pagamento, e não parte da produção, esses pequenos proprietários venderam suas terras e foram trabalhar nas lavouras, principalmente de cana.
Normalmente eles trabalham apenas em tempos de semeadura e colheita.
... in the upper half of the painting; Jesus is transfigured as a voice from Heaven proclaim Him to be the “Son".
In the Gospels, Jesus and the Apostles Peter, James, and John are on a mountain when Jesus, flanked by the Prophets Moses and Elijah is bathed in a radiance of bright light and "transfigured".
Below the three Apostles who had accompanied Jesus witness the scene.
Room VIII, Pinacoteca, Vatican Museums; July 2019
The eyes of Brunelleschi on the City: The big Lantern of Florence: Metamorphosis of a photo
I was proud to publish this my personal photographic project
This project was born thanks to my facebook photography group, called 365project; this group was born two years ago by a few photography enthusiasts with the idea of publishing a photo a day, taken by us with a weekly theme. During this time we, also, try something new to stimulate each other.
This work in particular, wants to develop the creativity of members, to stimulate, during two months, a personal creative view to express each other in full freedom.
So: I took advantage of the fact that I was moving from my old home, to our new home in the same neighborhood, not so far from the center of this wonderful city. There I discovered with great joy, that from the window of my bedroom, you can see in the distance the lantern of Brunelleschi's dome, in the center of the city. At begging my idea was to take photos of this subject in several time situations, like morning, sunset, night, cloudy, foggy, etc. But I discovered with time that was a little boring. So I try also something different.
The fulcrum of everything is the lantern which, like a protector, looks at the city from above ... until it is transfigured
This is what came of it, from the first click to last!
Gli occhi di Brunelleschi sulla Città: Il Lanternone, metamorfosi di una foto
Sono orgogliosa di presentare questo mio progetto fotografico personale
.
L'idea nasce grazie ad un gruppo di appassionati in fotografia formatosi su facebook da ormai due anni, chiamato 365project. Lo scopo iniziale del 365project è quello di pubblicare una foto al giorno, scattata da noi stessi con un tema settimanale. Durante questi anni però abbiamo provato a creare qualcosa di nuovo per stimolarci a vicenda.
Questo lavoro fa parte dei nuovi input che ci vengono proposti. Questo in particolare, si proponeva di stimolare tutti noi membri nell’arco di due mesi, a creare un progetto personale per esprimersi in piena libertà.
Ho sfruttato il fatto che mi stavo trasferendo dalla mia vecchia casa, alla nostra nuova casa nello stesso quartiere, non così lontano dal centro di questa meravigliosa città. Lì ho scoperto con grande gioia, che dalla finestra della mia camera da letto, si vede in lontananza la lanterna della cupola del Brunelleschi, nel centro della città.
Al momento, la mia idea era di scattare foto di questo soggetto in diverse situazioni temporali, come mattina, tramonto, notte, nuvoloso, nebbioso, ecc. Ma dopo poco l’ho travato un po' noioso e sterile. Quindi ho provato anche qualcosa di diverso.
Fulcro di tutto è il lanternone che come un protettore, guarda la città dall’alto…fino a trasfigurarsi
Questo è ciò che ne è venuto fuori, dal primo clic all'ultimo!
La vita dipinta a quattro mani #4HandPainting #ElisabettaMeneghello #PeterSeelig
2016-11-17 - 2017-01-08
Coffee Art And Cigarettes
Cafe Hegelhof, Johannesgasse 16, A-1010 Wien
A designed organism
Roberto Borghi
Elisabetta Meneghello and Peter Seelig create their works four-handedly, following their own inspiration and at the same time leaving room for chance. However, there is a huge difference between chance and arbitrariness. What makes the first something more than mere confusion is the possibility of identifying an underlying pattern to it, a deeper meaning and a range of creational options that somehow lead to enlightening outcomes.
Meneghello and Seelig’s paintings remind me of the montage theory of Sergei Eisenstein – the director, among other things, of the epic Battleship Potemkin. According to Eisenstein, editing a film is a bit like writing in Japanese, the editing of the shots resembling the juxtaposing of ideograms. In both circumstances, the result is more than just the sum of its components. In fact, the result amounts to a whole new entity, an image endowed with its own meaning that sums up but at the same time transcends that of the pre-existing ones.
In Meneghello and Seelig’s works, this new entity results from what the two artists individually contribute to the same pictorial surface. I like to call it a “designed organism”, where the word “organism” ought be interpreted in a non-anatomical sense. This organism is not, in other words, a part of a body, but rather – inevitably and paradoxically – a segment of a figure, or a whole figure in its own right. Thus understood, the final work evokes somatic impressions, and as such it can be perceived as an organism while at the same time keeping its immaterial nature: it tends to give itself a structure and to coalesce into a geometry. From the seeming internal chaos new images are born, yet behind them one can identify visual patterns that disentangle the inextricable accumulation of colors and shapes.
More often than not, the intertwinement of shapes inevitably evokes the infantile sphere, the absolute freedom of play. Nonetheless, to play a game one needs rules, just as one needs to develop a central theme in order to make a point. Through these paintings runs a theme that is not merely metaphorical: to appreciate them fully one needs to identify the beginning of the pictorial mark, follow its path all the way through vortices, accumulations of silhouettes, amoeboid shapes, sketchy primordial beasts…
At times, the painting takes the form of a plan(t). Here the ambiguity of the term is deliberate: the “plan(t)” is a new notion that conflates and transfigures, like Japanese ideograms, two pre-existing semantic elements: a botanical one – the plant as a tree – and an architectural one – the plan as a design for a building. Let us pause on the latter for a moment. As shown by the drawings of many early twentieth-century architects (most notably Le Corbusier), architectural plans can assume the shape of a face. Lest we forget, some of the paintings presented here seem to remind us of the deep link between architecture and the features of a face, as attested by the origin of the word “façade”. So there, the faces that emerge from some of Meneghello and Seelig’s paintings really look like enigmatic, intriguing façades.
The argument pursued so far was purportedly as paradoxical as the title of the exhibition it sought to introduce. QuiNonÈAdesso – HereIsNotNow – means for the two authors primarily the non-identity of space and time, the mismatch of recollection and experience, the questionable reliability of one’s own intuitions and actions. However, “here” and “now” may also be conceived of as two Japanese ideograms: we do not know what would result from juxtaposing them. We may even think of them as two frames from a creative, ever-evolving footage that are edited into an open-ended film. But remember: the film’s ending is by no means arbitrary. Quite the opposite. It aims at communicating a message.
Un organismo architettato
Roberto Borghi
Elisabetta Meneghello e Peter Seelig realizzano le loro opere a quattro mani seguendo l'istinto e lasciando spazio al caso. Ma si sa che ciò che distingue la casualità dall'arbitrarietà, ciò che insomma la salva dall'essere mera confusione, è la possibilità di rintracciare al suo interno delle traiettorie, dei percorsi di senso, delle modalità creative che in qualche modo aprano a intuizioni illuminanti.
I dipinti di Meneghello e Seelig mi hanno fatto tornare in mente la teoria del montaggio cinematografico di Sergej Ejzenstejn, il regista tra l'altro della famigerata - ma in realtà bellissima - Corazzata Potémkin. Secondo Ejzenstejn montare un film è un po' come scrivere in giapponese: l'accostamento dei fotogrammi crea qualcosa di simile alla giustapposizione degli ideogrammi. In entrambe le situazioni il contatto tra i due elementi non genera la loro semplice somma, ma un terzo elemento, una terza immagine dotata di un significato che li ingloba e li trascende allo stesso tempo.
Nel caso delle opere di Meneghello e Seelig, l'entità terza, scaturita dai singoli apporti dei due artisti sulla medesima superficie pittorica, a mio avviso può essere definita un organismo architettato. Il termine organismo va qui inteso in un'accezione non anatomica: non necessariamente quindi come la parte di un corpo, ma inevitabilmente - e paradossalmente - come una porzione di figura, o una figura nella sua interezza. Questa dimensione che evoca delle sensazioni somatiche, e che quindi viene percepita come organica pur rimanendo qualcosa di incorporeo, tende a darsi una struttura, aspira ad assestarsi in una geometria. Nascono così delle immagini dall'apparente disordine interno, dentro alle quali tuttavia è possibile scorgere itinerari visivi che districano l'accumulo avviluppato di forme e colori.
Spesso l'intreccio delle forme si richiama inevitabilmente all'universo infantile, alla libertà del gioco: ma ogni gioco degno di questo nome ha delle regole, così come ogni discorso che si rispetti ha un filo conduttore. In questi dipinti il filo è qualcosa di non soltanto metaforico: per guardarli in profondità infatti bisogna rintracciare al loro interno l'origine del segno, e seguirne l'andamento, vederlo dispiegarsi mentre traccia vortici, accatastamenti di sagome, forme
ameboidi, profili di animali primordiali ...
Talvolta il dipinto sembra assumere l'aspetto di una pianta: un termine anch'esso terzo, in cui si fondono, e si tramutano come fossero ideogrammi giapponesi, un elemento semantico di ordine biologico - la pianta come sinonimo di albero - e uno di natura architettonica - la pianta come disegno in scala della sezione orizzontale di un edificio -. Questa singolare pianta, come già è avvenuto nei progetti di alcuni architetti di inizio Novecento - su tutti Le Corbusier - può avere l'aspetto di un viso. Come dimenticare - e alcune opere sembrano qui per ricordarcelo - che la relazione tra architettura e lineamenti del volto è già segnalata dalla parola facciata? Ecco: le facce che affiorano in alcuni dipinti hanno l'aspetto di enigmatiche, intriganti facciate.
Questo discorso si muove sul filo di un paradosso analogo a quello del titolo della mostra a cui si riferisce. QuiNonÈAdesso per i due artisti significa anzitutto la non coincidenza di spazio e tempo, lo sfasamento spiazzante tra sensazioni vissute e ricordate, il dubbio sulla possibilità di vivere "in diretta" con le proprie intuizioni e azioni. Però qui e adesso possono anche essere immaginati come due ideogrammi giapponesi da accostare l'uno all'altro per stare poi a vedere quale dimensione terza può scaturire, possono essere considerati fotogrammi di una creatività in divenire che vengono montati in un film dal finale aperto. Un finale però che non si accontenta del caso e aspira a comunicare un significato.
Roberto Borghi Milano, 22 giugno 2016
Claude Monets ( 1840 - 1926 ) water lilies pond ( Giverny - France ) is full of asymmetries and curves.
..........It was inspired by the Japanese gardens that Monet knew from the prints he collected avidly.
.....He drew his inspiration from here, and was always looking for mist and transparencies, dedicating himself less to flowers than to reflections in water, a kind of inverted world transfigured by the liquid element.
"The outer wings of the Isenheim Altarpiece were opened for important festivals of the liturgical year, particular those in honour of the Virgin Mary. Thus are revealed four scenes: the left wing represents the Annunciation during which the archangel Gabriel comes to announce to Mary that she will give birth to Jesus, the son of God. The Virgin Mary is depicted in a chapel to indicate the sacred character of the event. In the central corpus, the Concert of Angels and the Nativity are not independent scenes but instead fit within a unified concept: the viewer witnesses Christ's coming to earth as a newborn baby, who will be led to combat the forces of evil personified by certain of the angels, disturbing in their physical appearance. A number of symbols provide keys to aid in interpretation: the enclosed garden represents Mary's womb and is a sign of her perpetual virginity, the rose bush without thorns refers to her as free of original sin, the fig tree symbolises mother's milk. The bed, the bucket and the chamber pot underscore the human nature of Christ. Lastly, the right wing shows the Resurrection, in which Christ emerges from the tomb and ascends into Heaven bathed in light transfiguring the countenance of the Crucified into the face of God. The Resurrection and the Ascension are therefore encapsulated in a single image." (Wikipedia)
Czech Republic - After the Transfigured Night from Arnold Schönberg - Conductor Mr.Alfonso Scarano and North Czech Philharmonic Teplice
They were in a very privileged state. Of all the multitudes of spiritual beings in the universe, how many of them are able to have such a close and daily contact with the Creator God? Just very few — probably those associated with the throne itself such as the Cherubim and the twenty-four elders. But in the Garden were two human beings in the closest of association with God Himself. It must have been like a heaven on earth! And indeed, that’s just what it was, in a symbolic way. It was as if God’s celestial palace temporarily had come to earth. Even the Garden, the Cherubim of the Garden, the altar built by Cain and Abel, the land of Eden, and the land of Nod are all connected with the temple symbolism and are direct images of God’s heavenly abode. And for the brief period of time before the sin of Adam and Eve, "heaven” was really here on earth. In the Garden our first parents were able to talk face to face with God. But note an important point. They only had conversations with Him at certain times of the day. They did not see Him on all occasions. It was “in the cool of the day” that they came into “the presence of the Lord” (Genesis 3:8). The expressions “cool of the day” and “the presence of the Lord” were a part of temple language. 7 “The cool of the day” was the period when the Sun got lower in the sky and the cool sea breezes normally swept over the Palestinian region. This was the time of the evening sacrifice (1 Kings 18:36; Daniel 9:21) — about three in the afternoon. This was the time when the animals were being regularly sacrificed (and also in the morning about nine o’clock). At these times the people were then reckoned as being “in the presence of God” (2 Chronicles 20:19). As the Kingdom of Heaven is increasingly seen as a highly advanced extraterrestrial/alien civilization from a scientific perspective, so too will the collective ...... These so-called extraterrestrial "aliens" have been known to reveal that they originate from the Pleiades, Zeti Reticuli, Arcturus, Aldebaran and Sirius, among others.. Arian allegedly is the name of a planet that circles Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri), and that’s inhabited by a humanoid civilization. Arian would be the 4th planet circling Aldebaran. Older estimates situate it approx. 60 LY away, which is in line with the 59 LY Martin Wiesengrün mentions. Note that there are – thus far unconfirmed reports – of a possible brown dwarf companion, in which case Aldebaran would be a binary system. Allegedly the natives call their sun Raula. Arian’s orbit around it would take approx. 20.2 earth years to complete.Thus Jerusalem's holiest spot is a rock that the ancient Jews saw as the center of the Earth, the axis of the universe, the pivot that joined Heaven and Earth, and Earth with the ..... DOME: The dome over the Temple Mount, Old Jerusalem, and the entire city corresponds to Aldebaran, the alpha star and eye of the bull Taurus.
The term New Jerusalem occurs twice in the New Testament, in verses Rev 3:12 and Rev 21:2 of the Book of Revelation. A large portion of the final two chapters of Revelation deals with John of Patmos' vision of the New Jerusalem. He describes the New Jerusalem as "'the bride, the wife of the Lamb'", where the river of the Water of Life flows.After John witnesses the new heaven and a new earth "that no longer has any sea", an angel takes him "in the Spirit" to a vantage point on "a great and high mountain" to see the New Jerusalem's descent. The enormous city comes out of heaven down to the New Earth. John's elaborate description of the New Jerusalem retains many features of the Garden of Eden and the paradise garden, such as rivers, a square shape, a wall, and the Tree of Life.ccording to John, the New Jerusalem is "pure gold, like clear glass" and its "brilliance [is] like a very costly stone, as a stone of crystal-clear jasper." The street of the city is also made of "pure gold, like transparent glass". The base of the city is laid out in a square and surrounded by a wall made of jasper. It says in Revelation 21:16 that the height, length, and width are of equal dimensions - as it was with the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle and First Temple - and they measure 12,000 furlongs which is approximately 1500.3 miles). John writes that the wall is 144 cubits, which is assumed to be the thickness since the length is mentioned previously. 144 cubits are about equal to 65 meters, or 72 yards. It is important to note that 12 is the square root of 144. The number 12 was very important to early Jews and Christians, representing the 12 tribes of Israel and 12 Apostles of Jesus Christ.Part of Jerusalem's significance and holiness to Muslims derives from its strong association with Abraham, David, Solomon, and Jesus. They are all regarded as Prophets of Islam and their stories are mentioned in the Qur'an. Jerusalem served as the first qibla (direction of prayer) for Muslims. Whilst Muslims were in Mecca, and also for 17–18 months in Medina, Muslims prayed towards Jerusalem. Early mosques in Medina were built to face Jerusalem. In 625, the qibla was changed to the Kaaba in Mecca.[21][Quran 2:142–151] After Muhammad, many of his Companions lived in Jerusalem, and upon their death they were buried there The four sides of the city represented the four cardinal directions (North, South, East, and West.) In this way, New Jerusalem was thought of as an inclusive place, with gates accepting all of the 12 tribes of Israel from all corners of the earth.There is no temple building in the New Jerusalem. God and the Lamb are the city's temple, since they are worshiped everywhere. Revelation 22 goes on to describe a river of the water of life that flows down the middle of the great street of the city from the Throne of God. The tree of life grows in the middle of this street and on either side, or in the middle of the street and on either side of the river. The tree bears twelve fruits, or kinds of fruits, and yields its fruit every month. According to John, "The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." This inclusion of the tree of life in the New Jerusalem harkens back to the Garden of Eden. The fruit the tree bears may be the fruit of life. John states that the New Jerusalem will be free of sin. The servants of God will have theosis, and "His name will be on their foreheads." Night will no longer fall, and the inhabitants of the city will "have need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light." John ends his account of the New Jerusalem by stressing its eternal nature: "And they shall reign forever and ever."There are twelve gates in the wall oriented to the compass with three each on the east, north, south, and west sides. There is an angel at each gate, or gatehouse. These gates are each made of a single pearl, giving them the name of the "pearly gates". The names of the twelve tribes of Israel are written on these gates. The (four) New Jerusalem (cardinal) gates may bear some relation to the gates mentioned in Enoch, Chapters 33 - 35, where the prophet reports (from four) "heavenly gates opening into heaven;" {(like) the extremities of the whole earth (reaching)}, "three (more gates) distinctly separated." [33, 3.] (All four of the gates) of the four major compass directions (are involved in the separating into 3 more gates, thus giving 12 gates total).[ref. Laurence translation, Book of Enoch.]The wall has twelve foundation stones, and on these are written the names of the Twelve Apostles. Revelation lacks a list of the names of the Twelve Apostles, and does not describe which name is inscribed on which foundation stone, or if all of the names are inscribed on all of the foundation stones, so that aspect of the arrangement is open to speculation. The layout of the precious stones is contested. All of the precious stones could adorn each foundation stone, either in layers or mixed together some other way, or just one unique type of stone could adorn each separate foundation stone. This latter possibility is favored by tradition, as each gate presumably stands on one foundation stone, and each of the twelve tribes has long been associated with a certain type of precious stone. These historical connections go back to the time of Temple worship, when the same kinds of stones were set in the golden Breastplate of the Ephod worn by the Kohen Gadol, and on the Ephod the names of each of the twelve tribes of Israel were inscribed on a particular type of stone.
It is interesting to note that the translated meanings of the various sorts of foundation stones have varied through the centuries: those in King James Version are differently named in later translations. "18: And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass. 19: And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; 20: The fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst." Rev 21:18-20 with the more modern, New Jerusalem Bible version, "18 The wall was built of diamond, and the city of pure gold, like clear glass. 19 The foundations of the city wall were faced with all kinds of precious stone: the first with diamond, the second lapis lazuli, the third turquoise, the fourth crystal, 20 the fifth agate, the sixth ruby, the seventh gold quartz, the eighth malachite, the ninth topaz, the tenth emerald, the eleventh sapphire and the twelfth amethyst." In 21:16, the angel measures the city with a golden rod or reed, and records it as 12,000 stadia by 12,000 stadia at the base, and 12,000 stadia high. A stadion is usually stated as 185 meters, or 607 feet, so the base has dimensions of about 2220 km by 2220 km, or 1380 miles by 1380 miles. In the ancient Greek system of measurement, the base of the New Jerusalem would have been equal to 144 million square stadia, 4.9 million square kilometers or 1.9 million square miles (roughly midway between the sizes of Australia and India). If rested on the Earth, its ceiling would be inside the upper boundary of the exosphere but outside the lower boundary.. By way of comparison, the International Space Station maintains an orbit with an altitude of about 386 km (240 mi) above the earth.The Book of Revelation was composed during the end of the 1st century AD, sometime during the later end of the reign of Emperor Nero Domitius (54 to 68 CE). The work is addressed to the “seven churches that are in Asia” (1:4). Revelation is normally broken into three sections: the prologue (1:1-3:22), the visions (4:1-22:5), and the epilogue (22:6-20). This study is principally concerned with chapter 21. The author of Revelation was both a Jew by birth and a believing Christian. For the author and the addressees of Revelation, they are searching for the Lord to vindicate them and judge the “inhabitants of the earth,” for their suffering (6:10). The fall of Jerusalem coupled with the Neronian persecutions form the tension within the subtext of Revelation. Throughout Revelation, several references to the Temple are made REV 3:12,7:15,11:19,14:15,16:1. This Temple appears to be of heavenly origin. When the eschaton arrives in REV 21:1, the reader expects the temple to come down from heaven with the New Jerusalem. Revelation 21 even contains typical New Jerusalem terminology that accompanies a restored Temple. Specific measurements are given for the new city (Ezekiel 40-48, 4Q554), and the city is built with gold, sapphires, and emeralds (Isaiah, Tobit). In addition, 21:21 references the “twelve gates.” Revelation maintains another typically aspect of New Jerusalem tradition – the reunification of the twelve tribes of Israel (Ezekiel 48:33-34, 4Q554).
Verse 22 marks a sudden and remarkable shift in New Jerusalem apocalyptic rhetoric: “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb.” Following with the tradition of 3 Baruch and 4 Sibylline Oracles, Revelation foresees an eschaton without the Temple. Why has the Revelation suddenly denied an eschatological Temple? Verse 23 sheds light on this disparity. Verse 23 proclaims, “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is the light, and its lamp is the lamb.” For the author of Revelation, there is no need for a Temple because the Lord will be the New Jerusalem’s eternal light and Jesus (the lamb) will be its lamp. This re-interpretation utilizes Isaiah to make its case: “The LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. Your sun shall no more go down, or your moon withdraw itself; for the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended.” (Isaiah 60:19) The Temple is discarded in the eschaton because the Lord will provide illumination for the New Jerusalem, and Christ will be the glory for its residents. Henceforth, Christians believed that the New Jerusalem no longer required a Temple. For Christians, their Lord sufficiently replaced the Temple.The Babylonian threat to the Kingdom of Judah began as the Babylonian Empire conquered Assyria and rose to power from 612-609 BCE. Jerusalem surrendered without major bloodshed to Babylon in 597. An Israelite uprising brought the destruction of Nebuchadnezzar’s army upon Jerusalem in 586 BCE. The entire city, including the First Temple, was burned. Israelite aristocrats were taken captive to Babylon. The Book of Ezekiel contains the first record of the New Jerusalem. Within Ezekiel 40-48, there is an extended and detailed description of the measurements of the Temple, its chambers, porticos, and walls. Ezekiel 48:30-35 contains a list of twelve Temple gates named for Israel’s tribes. The Book of Zechariah expands upon Ezekiel’s New Jerusalem. After the Second Temple was built after the exile, Jerusalem’s population was only a few hundred. There were no defensive city walls until 445 BCE.[7] In the passage, the author writes about a city wall of fire to protect the enormous population. This text demonstrates the beginning of a progression of New Jerusalem thought. In Ezekiel, the focus is primarily on the human act of Temple construction. In Zechariah, the focus shifts to God’s intercession in the founding of New Jerusalem.
New Jerusalem is further extrapolated in Isaiah, where New Jerusalem is adorned with precious sapphires, jewels, and rubies. The city is described as a place free from terror and full of righteousness. Here, Isaiah provides an example of Jewish apocalypticism, where a hope for a perfected Jerusalem and freedom from oppression is revealed. As the original New Jerusalem composition, Ezekiel functioned as a source for later works such as 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, Qumran documents, and the Book of Revelation. These texts used similar measurement language and expanded on the limited eschatological perspective in Ezekiel.Judaism sees the Messiah as a human male descendant of King David who will be anointed as the king of Israel and sit on the throne of David in Jerusalem. He will gather in the lost tribes of Israel, clarify unresolved issues of halakha, and rebuild the Holy Temple in Jerusalem according to the pattern shown to the prophet Ezekiel. During this time Jews believe an era of global peace and prosperity will be initiated, the nations will love Israel and will abandon their gods, turn toward Jerusalem, and come to the Holy Temple to worship the one God of Israel. Zechariah prophesied that any family among the nations who does not appear in the Temple in Jerusalem for the festival of Sukkoth will have no rain that year. Isaiah prophesied that the rebuilt Temple will be a house of prayer for all nations. The city of YHWH Shamma, the new Jerusalem, will be the gathering point of the world's nations, and will serve as the capital of the renewed Kingdom of Israel. Ezekiel prophesied that this city will have 12 gates, one gate for each of the tribes of Israel. The book of Isaiah closes with the prophecy "And it will come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, all flesh will come to worship before Me, says YHWH"
At the core, apocalypses are a form of theodicy. They respond to overwhelming suffering with the hope of divine intercession and a perfected World to Come. The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 meant an end to Second Temple Judaism. Naturally, apocalyptic responses to the disaster followed. This section will first cover 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch. Fourth Ezra and 2 Baruch are important for two reasons. First, they look for a Temple in Heaven, not the eschaton. Second, these texts exhibit the final new Temple texts in Judaism. Jewish texts like 3 Baruch began to reject a restored Temple completely. However, these texts were deemed to be apocryphal by the Rabbis who maintained the belief in a Third Temple as central to Rabbinic Judaism. The Jewish apocalypse of 4 Ezra is a text contained in the apocryphal book 2 Esdras. The genre of 4 Ezra is historical fiction, set thirteen years after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem. Fourth Ezra is dated approximately in 83 CE, thirteen years after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. The story follows Ezra’s period of mourning following Jerusalem’s fall. Ezra is Job-like in his criticism of God’s allowance of Jerusalem’s downfall. In Ezra’s deep state of grief, he meets a woman lamenting over Jerusalem. Ezra consoles the woman, and tells her to, “shake off your great sadness, and lay aside your many sorrows… the Most High may give you rest.” (4 Ezra 10:24). Suddenly, the woman is transfigured in an array of bright lights. She transforms into the New Jerusalem being rebuilt. As a bereaved widow she convinced Ezra to apply solace to himself through the image of a New Jerusalem. Fourth Ezra has two clear messages. First, do not grieve excessively over Jerusalem. Second, Jerusalem will be restored as a heavenly kingdom. Fourth Ezra also uses the title “Most High,” throughout the apocalypse to emphasis that the Lord will once again reign and reside in Jerusalem. The apocalypse of 2 Baruch is a contemporary narrative of 4 Ezra. The text also follows the same basic structure 4 Ezra: Job-like grief, animosity towards the Lord, and the rectification of Jerusalem that leads to the comfort of the Job-figure. Second Baruch is historical fiction, written after the Roman destruction but set before the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. Baruch is distressed when the Lord informs him of Jerusalem’s impending doom. Baruch responds with several theological questions for God. For this study, Baruch’s inquiry about the future of Israel and the honor of the Lord are most pertinent (2 Baruch 3:4-6). Baruch learns that the Lord will destroy the city, not the enemy. Baruch also learns of a pre-immanent heavenly Temple: “[The Temple] was already prepared from the moment I decided to create paradise.” And I showed it to Adam before he sinned.” (2 Baruch 4:3). This Temple was created before Adam, and shown to him before Adam’s fall.
Two important conclusions come from 2 Baruch. First, the author dismisses hopes for an earthly re-built Temple. The focus is entirely on the heavenly Temple that pre-dated the Garden of Eden. This may be a device to express the supremacy of the heavenly Temple as a sanctuary built before Eden (the traditional location of the earthly Temple). Second, Baruch believes that restoration for the people of Israel exists in heaven, not on earth. The apocalypse of 3 Baruch is the anomaly among post-revolt New Jerusalem texts. Unlike 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, the text exemplifies an alternative tradition that lacks a restored Temple. Like other apocalypses, 3 Baruch still mourns over the Temple, and re-focuses Jews to the heavens. Yet 3 Baruch finds that the Temple is ultimately unnecessary. This move could be polemical against works which afforded the Temple with excessive veneration. In the passage, an angel comes to Baruch and consoles him over Jerusalem: “Where is their God? And behold as I was weeping and saying such things, I saw an angel of the Lord coming and saying to me: Understand, O man, greatly beloved, and trouble not thyself so greatly concerning the salvation of Jerusalem.” (3 Baruch 1:3) Third Baruch certainly mourns over the Temple. Yet 3 Baruch is not ultimately concerned with the lack of a Temple. This text goes along with Jeremiah and Sibylline Oracles 4 to express a minority tradition within Jewish literature. In the first Christian apocalypse, the Book of Revelation coincides with this perspective on Jerusalem. The study will now move to early Christian perspectives on the Temple and the apocalyptic response in Revelation.Since Christianity originated from Judaism, the history of Jewish places of worship and the currents of thought in ancient Judaism described above served in part as the basis for the development of the Christian conception of the New Jerusalem. Christians have always placed religious significance on Jerusalem as the site of The Crucifixion and other events central to the Christian faith. In particular, the destruction of the Second Temple that took place in the year 70, a few decades after Christianity began its split from Judaism, was seminal to the nascent Christian apocalypticism of that time. In the Olivet discourse of the Gospels, Jesus predicts the destruction of Herod's Temple, and promises that it will precede the return of the Son of Man, commonly called the Second Coming. This prophecy of the renewal of Jerusalem by the messiah echoes those of the Jewish prophets. John of Patmos' vision of the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation draws on the Olivet discourse and all the historical precursors mentioned above.
Based on the Book of Revelation, premillennialism holds that, following the end times and the second creation of heaven and earth (see The New Earth), the New Jerusalem will be the earthly location where all true believers will spend eternity with God. The New Jerusalem is not limited to eschatology, however. Many Christians view the New Jerusalem as a current reality, that the New Jerusalem is the consummation of the Body of Christ, the Church and that Christians already take part in membership of both the heavenly Jerusalem and the earthly Church in a kind of dual citizenship.In this way, the New Jerusalem represents to Christians the final and everlasting reconciliation of God and His chosen people, "the end of the Christian pilgrimage." As such, the New Jerusalem is a conception of Heaven, see also Heaven (Christianity).Christianity interprets the city as a physical and/or spiritual restoration or divine recreation of the city of Jerusalem. It is also interpreted by many Christian groups as referring to the Church to be the dwelling place of the saints.
John of Patmos describes the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation in the Christian Bible, and so the New Jerusalem holds an important place in Christian eschatology and Christian mysticism, and has also influenced Christian philosophy and Christian theology. Such a renewal of Jerusalem, if a reconstruction, is an important theme in Judaism, Christianity, and the Bahá'í Faith. Renewed Jerusalem bears as its motto the words Ad librum (Latin: "as by the book".) Many traditions based on biblical scripture and other writings in the Jewish and Christian religions, such as Protestantism, and Orthodox Judaism, expect the literal renewal of Jerusalem to some day take place at the Temple
The dome over the Temple Mount, Old Jerusalem, and the entire city corresponds to Aldebaran, the alpha star and eye of the bull Taurus. The Foundation Stone within the Dome of the Rock is the center of this dome. Aldebaran, the thirteenth brightest star in our galaxy, is a first magnitude star located sixty-eight light years from Earth, forty times larger than our Sun and 125 times more luminous. It's usually described as rosy or pale reddish-orange in color, a quality the Hindu astronomers noted in their name, Rohini, which means "the Red One" or "the Red Deer." In Hindu star myths, Rohini is the female antelope, the daughter of the male antelope, Prajapati, the Lord of Generation (the constellation Orion). Its name, from the Arabic Al Dabaran, means "the Follower," or "Bright One of the Follower," a reference to how its appearance in the sky follows just after the rising of the Pleiades or perhaps the Hyades, both in Taurus; it also sets immediately following the setting of these two star clusters. To the Mesopotamian astronomers, Aldebaran was one of the four royal stars, or "Watchers," along with Antares in Scorpio, Regulus in Leo, and Fomalhaut in Piscis Austrinus (the Southern Fish). The Babylonians knew it as Ikuu, "the Leading Star of Stars," the Akkadians as Gisda, "the Furrow of Heaven."
Appropriately, with respect to the attributions of the Flood, tehom, and the cosmic waters to the Foundation Stone, in various cultures Aldebaran was associated with the gods of the rain and the Earth's fertility. An interesting astronomical aspect of Aldebaran is that it is one of the few first-magnitude stars that are eclipsed regularly by our Moon, sometimes, as happened in 1978, every month for a year. It would be a useful study to correlate the schedule of occultations by the Moon of Aldebaran with political events in Jerusalem to see if the astronomical events coincide with earthly happenings. GRAIL CASTLE: To understand what is meant by the statement that the Even HaShetiyah was set over the tehom to keep the waters of chaos from inundating the land, you need to reverse the relationships. The physical stone, which is part of the rock outcropping of Mount Moriah, is not the issue or the important player in this activity; it marks the spot.
The Foundation Stone does not keep the subterranean waters below the Temple Mount from rising up and flooding Jerusalem; rather, the Stone, which is an astral device, is the "plug" on the cosmic bathtub upstairs in the higher worlds. It is the realm of the ether, the primordial "waters" of creation, in which water is an esoteric code word for ether and primeval creative substance or matrix, for a level of undifferentiated consciousness-surely chaos to us.
The Temple Mount on Mount Moriah is the equivalent of Mount Ararat, the legendary resting place for Noah's Ark after the Deluge. There are in fact 144 such resting points for the Ark, for the resting place, the "Mount Ararat," is the staging ground for the ascent into the Grail Castle which is the same as the Ark. There the Ark floats, high above us, in the exalted dimensions, floating safely on the top of the Flood waters released in the interregnums between vast periods of creation and destruction Days and Years of Brahma, in the Vedic time system. The Ark, or Grail Castle, is the repository of all the information from the previous epochs of cosmic existence; the extent of this knowledge is almost unfathomable, almost incomprehensible, almost unattainable-except it isn't. The attainment of this inestimable, mind-dilating knowledge is the goal of the Grail Quest; it is the riches in the Celestial City of Lord Kubera of the North; it is the diverse contents of Noah's Ark; it is the cosmic wisdom of the Fish that towed the boat of Matsya-avatara to the northern mountain as the Flood subsided. The real Foundation Stone is the regulator for the flow from above to below of the cosmic waters, which when they flow, inundate human consciousness with the living, consciousness energizing wetness of the spiritual worlds. You could say that this Stone regulates how much deep cosmic memory and awareness can enter the human continuum at a given time without driving people mad. Too much transcendental knowledge is like chaos; it can be a deadly poison. But when the land has gone dry with an intellectualism and atheistic materialism, when it has become the Wasteland, as periodically happens, then it's appropriate to let a little water moisten the land. One master of this water-world was King Solomon, who, with his wife, fashioned the Ship of Time, using wood from the original Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. Solomon placed King David's sword (the one he claimed from giant Goliath after he slew him) on the Ship of Time, which was an Ark, or repository, outside of space-time, to arrive, much later in planetary history, at the Celtic King Arthur's Camalate in England to be used by the Christed Knight, Sir Galahad."'
The connections will not be clear yet, but this is about the alpha and omega of the Temple of Jerusalem, the original Jerusalem temple in that holy city in the planet's early days, and the New Jerusalem to come at Glastonbury in England. King David's "sword" is the knowledge of how to activate and use the Jerusalem temple; this knowledge was obtained from the giant Goliath, who is a symbol for the Elohim, the angelic family whose members were the consummate masters of the geomantic temple and conservators of its mysteries. MYSTERIES OF THE EMERALD: As Jacob and Muhammad discovered, the Stone is also the launching pad for a remarkable Miraj into the higher spiritual worlds. The Stone itself-the real Even HaShetiyah-is the ladder into the higher worlds. It is the emerald, the true foundation and Foundation Stone of Jerusalem. It is the green stone brought by the angels from Heaven to Earth, the Stone by which the Phoenix is burned to ashes and restored to life, the stone that is "forever incorruptible" and whose "essence is most pure," known as the Grail, as Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote. The emerald is the Heart within the heart chakra, an esoteric dimension between the outer and inner aspects of this chakra. It is a six-sided double-terminated green stone standing vertically on one of its terminations; seen from the bottom up it is also a green cube. The entire Earth energy matrix is bounded by this emerald; it exists within every human; and it is one of the jewels from the crown of the Lord of Light. It is the essence of the Jerusalem temple as an archetype of the consummate heavenly city, the divine ideal.
In practical terms, the emerald as a subtle light form sits magnificently upon the physical Foundation Stone within the Dome of the Rock on Temple Mount. Its size is irrelevant and flexible; it is easier to interact with if you allow yourself to see it as perhaps the size of a skyscraper. That way it is easier to enter, which you may do through any of its six fluidic, permeable walls. There are other geomantic emeralds like this around the planet, but this one is special because its location is special. Only two places on Earth have the right combination of geomantic elements that allow this emerald (meaning, this emerald's special functions) to operate as intended. Only two places are designated for this seed to sprout: the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the Tor in Glastonbury England. These are the Old Jerusalem and the New Jerusalem, both based on what we might call the once and future archetype of Jerusalem. Here I mean not the physical Israeli city, nor the architectural details of the First and Second Temple of Jerusalem, but the celestial original for this temple, from the light pattern library from which our reality is created. The existence of the two physical Temples of Jerusalem for a time embodied and grounded this heavenly ideal, enabling it to function in the material world, and that was centrally important for the Earth. Here is one reason why. The planet's twelve Vibrating Stones all lead here, to the Jerusalem temple archetype grounded at Temple Mount. Each stone grounds one of the Oroboros Lines that encircle the planet; each stone is coordinated with the celestial Jerusalem as overlaid on the Earth at the Temple Mount. There is one stone per one-twelfth division of the planet's surface, each of which is a Pentagon. To each Pentagon was assigned one of the twelve tribes of Israel; this was not a diaspora, but rather a code, a metaphor, for energies and holders of those energies assigned to each of the Earth's pentagons. If you were standing by one of the stones-at Delphi in Greece or in Glastonbury-you could follow its energy connections and find yourself in the original Temple of Jerusalem. That temple, and its archetype, had twelve gates: the twelve Vibrating Stones are also twelve gates, and lead into the archetype of the Temple of Jerusalem, which for a time was coincident with the two physical Temples. In practical geomantic terms, this meant that the twelve Oroboros Lines and the twelve zodiacal energies they represented were grounded at the Foundation Stone. Insofar as the twelve lines comprise twelve out of the fifteen prime energy lines that are the armature of the Earth's energy matrix, this central grounding point was potentially pivotal for the health, welfare, and destiny of the planet. A paradise on Earth-or something less exalted and uplifting-could be created or sustained from here. The myths are true in saying the world was created from this Foundation Stone, with all things spreading out from this point. Energetically the Earth is inside the emerald, the original Foundation Stone. Every aspect of the planet's complex geomantic structure is subsumed in this single planet-sized emerald; everything that comprises the Earth's geomythic matrix comes out of the emerald, and returns to it. When the Temple of Jerusalem is physically grounded on the Earth, things are in the process of returning to their source within the emerald; everything that spread out from the Foundation Stone at the beginning of creation is now magnetically being recalled to its point of origin. Seen over vast stretches of Earth time, it is like a shape turning itself inside out, over and over, cycling in on itself like a torus, Jerusalem manifest, then unmanifest, then manifest again."'
THE ARK OF THE COVENANT. What about the Ineffable Name of God inscribed on the Foundation Stone and the Ark of the Covenant, which resided in the Holy of Holies (the Devir, a perfect cube of twenty cubits), said to be over the Stone? Jewish belief says that the location of the Ark "marks the exact center of the world, or God's footstool. The Ark is understood to have been a container, a portable rectangular box or wooden chest lined with gold with long parallel handles, measuring about four feet long, two feet high, and two feet wide. It held the tablets of the Ten Commandments, both the shattered first version and the intact second one, as well as Aaron's magical rod and a small quantity of manna (a miraculous angelic food). At the time he received the Commandments while on Mount Sinai, Moses received instructions from God to construct the Ark of the Covenant to house the tablets. In many respects, Solomon built the Temple of Jerusalem to house the Ark. The Ark was the holiest of objects, said to possess extraordinary magical powers capable of protecting the Jews from danger. Biblical references–the Old Testament has two hundred–indicate that the Ark blazed with fire and lightning, emitted sparks, produced tumors or severe burns, could stop rivers, blast armies, destroy cities, and level mountains. It issued a moaning sound and was capable of rising off the ground and rushing at the enemies of the Jews in battle. God was said to descend and sit in the miniature Mercy Seat atop the Ark. The Ark of the Covenant is one of the mysteries of the Earth, and it is presumptuous to speculate as to its true nature. However, it was a device that had to do with a combination of sound and energy, and there was only one Ark. We can try approaching the matter sideways, as it were, through metaphor. The Ark was the voice of magic, the Word, the Ineffable Name uttered, all the living letters of the Hebrew alphabet spoken correctly, at once, the electric current that turned the system on. The system was the Earth grid, its armature of Oroboros Lines, its multiple linked emeralds-the "modem." It could make twelve Oroboros Lines into a single twelve-stringed instrument, played from here at the Foundation Stone. It could make all the elements of the Earth's energy matrix cohere, turn inside out, and become part of the Temple of Jerusalem. It was perhaps like a recording of the Word that was in the beginning, all the sacred syllables and sounds in perfect pronunciation-a magic wand of sound. When this sound touched the Even HaShetiyah, it animated the Earth's spiritual body and remarkable things happened and were possible.;When it was "on," it made not just the Temple but the entire Earth the Morning and Evening Star, the Foundation of Venus-Heaven on Earth realized, the celestial Jerusalem Temple fully manifest in matter. The downside was misuse, as J. R. R. Tolkien said of another unique magical device in The Lord of the Rings, "One ring to rule them ... and in the darkness bind them." The Earth had witnessed such a misuse, a malfeasance remembered in Grail myth as the Dolorous Stroke by which the Fisher King had misused the Sword of David (the Elohim's celestial codes for operating the system), wounded himself, and precipitated the Wasteland, The plug was put back in securely to block the flow of the tehom into the human world. Access to the Grail Castle was curtailed, and its reality eventually disbelieved, forgotten. INIMICAL ENERGIES AT THE TEMPLE MOUNT- We should not be surprised to find a fair concentration of what we could label dark and negative energies marshaled at the Temple Mount to block or distort access. Two giant astral beings are locked in mortal battle atop the Mount, swords clashing, wounds gaping; they are primitive beings of a male valence, and all they do is fight, striving to kill each other. This energy permeates Jerusalem. Numerous alien ships high above the city quarantine the Mount in a ring of beams broadcast like laser shafts. These energies help maintain the energies and functions of several circles of reptilian beings and giant astral snakes that surround the Mount, facing outwards into Jerusalem, discouraging access, keeping the energies combative, fragmented, bent on isolation and conflict. Behind them and also facing away from the Mount is another circle of large demonic control beings; their function too is to dissuade the fainthearted, to inflame those on the edge, to confuse or scare the rest, to keep the Mount and Stone from being used again as intended. The dome directly over the Mount and encompassing all of Jerusalem is damaged. Part of its crown is severed, like a yarmulke riding the side of the head by the ears instead of the occiput. The two cords linking the dome to the master dome at Avebury are damaged; one of them is not "hooked up" at all. The damages mean that Jerusalem through its dome is not receiving the beneficial cosmic energies of both Sirius and Canopus through Avebury as they are meant to; this allows other inimical energies to exert the predominant influence. The dome can be repaired, but it requires human assistance in conjunction with the angelic realm, and such repair could only be undertaken if the spiritual worlds judged it appropriate or karmically possible. (For information about another damaged dome, see Clingman's Dome, Tennessee.)
LUCIFER BINDING SITE: Coincident with the decommissioning of the Jerusalem Temple was the binding of Lucifer, Lord of Light, under the Foundation Stone. The Foundation of Venus, the Jerusalem new, old, and archetypal, is his light realm.
Elsewhere in Christendom, the tendency was to bury Lucifer under the granite weight of a massive Gothic cathedral, such as at Lincoln in England. For Jerusalem as the city to be healed, Lucifer, its foundation, will have to be unbound, and for the New Jerusalem to manifest on the planet, the Lord of Light will have to be restored to his pre-Fall position as God's chief archangel. This is not meant to be a definitive listing of the geomantic features of Jerusalem, for it has many others. Notable among these is one of the Earth's twelve Crowns of the Ancient of Days at Golgotha, the Hill of Skulls, and an eighteen-mile wide Landscape Zodiac on the periphery of the Old City.
“I'm terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I 'do' anything or not. In a way I may believe, deep down, that doing nothing acts as a brake on 'time's - it doesn't of course. It merely adds the torment of having done nothing, when the time comes when it really doesn't matter if you've done anything or not.”
― Philip Larkin, Letters to Monica
Lady December: Lady on the Moon is a vision of celestial sovereignty—an earthly figure transfigured into lunar myth. Her cream-colored gown, embroidered with red and gold at the waist, becomes a garment of starlight, while her flame-like hair burns against the darkened void. She is poised as if standing upon the threshold of the cosmos, a goddess whose presence bridges winter’s hush and the eternal silence of space. The slit of her dress reveals both vulnerability and strength, echoing the moon’s dual nature—hidden and revealed, shadow and light. This portrait is not merely fashion, but a mythic ascension: December herself enthroned upon the moon, radiant, eternal, and sovereign of endings that birth beginnings.
Lady December: Lady on the Moon
She stands upon the silver silence,
her gown a hymn to winter’s breath,
her hair a flame against the void.
The original:
www.flickr.com/photos/193091759@N04/53689149432/in/datepo...
A sovereign crowned by lunar light,
her presence bends the darkness,
her gaze a constellation reborn.
The embroidered waist glimmers,
red and gold like sacred fire,
a relic of earth carried skyward.
Her slit dress reveals the secret—
that strength is never without
the vulnerability of flesh.
Lady December ascends the moon,
her footsteps echo in eternity,
each fold of fabric a tide.
The cosmos listens in silence,
stars bow like priestesses,
planets circle her throne.
She is the hush between seasons,
the ember that refuses to fade,
the goddess of endings and seeds.
Her hair burns against the void,
a flame wrapped in snow,
a myth enthroned in the stars.
The moon cradles her presence,
its surface a chalice of light,
its shadows a veil of mystery.
She is not cold, but eternal,
her warmth hidden in silence,
her fire clothed in frost.
Each breath she takes
becomes a tide upon the earth,
a rhythm of renewal and release.
Her gown whispers of winter,
woven from frost and memory,
stitched with threads of time.
The red and gold embroidery
is a covenant of flame,
a promise of dawn within dusk.
She gazes beyond horizons,
her eyes twin lanterns,
guiding pilgrims through night.
The stars gather like roses,
their petals shimmering,
their thorns hidden in shadow.
Her silence is not absence,
but the fullness of waiting,
the pause before renewal.
The moon becomes her altar,
its surface consecrated,
its light a hymn of devotion.
She is both priestess and queen,
both flame and frost,
both ending and beginning.
Her presence bends the cosmos,
time itself kneels,
seasons bow in reverence.
The slit of her dress
is a doorway of revelation,
a threshold of strength unveiled.
Her hair flows like fire,
a river of embers,
a crown of eternal flame.
The void is not empty,
but filled with her song,
a hymn only silence can hear.
She is the sovereign of endings,
the keeper of beginnings,
the goddess of thresholds.
Her gown drapes like eternity,
folds of time and memory,
woven into celestial cloth.
The stars are her witnesses,
the planets her choir,
the cosmos her cathedral.
She burns in the dark sky,
not consumed, but eternal,
a flame wrapped in snow.
Her presence is a covenant,
a promise of renewal,
a myth that lingers in silence.
The moon bows beneath her,
its craters become chalices,
its light a crown of fire.
She is the pause between breaths,
the silence between words,
the ember between seasons.
Her gaze pierces the void,
revealing constellations,
summoning forgotten myths.
Lady December ascends eternal,
her throne the silver silence,
her crown the flame of winter.
And when the cosmos fades,
her myth will remain,
a flame enthroned upon the moon.
Veiled Tragedies Act I - The Veiled Nike by Daniel Arrhakis (2024)
Veiled Tragedies Act I - A creative project with a Futuristic Gothic Surrealistic mood for a future sculpture / photo exhibition or for a scenery of a play ...
The tragedies of the past transfigured in this surreal contemporary world of ours as if they were timeless metamorphoses...
Voûte de la nef, fresque d'Andrea Pozzo (1685). Cette fresque en trompe-l'œil de 16 mètres sur 36 représente l’apothéose d’Ignace de Loyola et l’allégorie de l’œuvre missionnaire des Jésuites : le saint est accueilli par le Christ et la Vierge Marie. Parmi les figures qui l’entourent, apparaissent des allégories des quatre continents transfigurées par leur conversion due aux missions jésuites, d’autres jésuites sanctifiés, éloignés d’Ignace en fonction de leur rang, ainsi que des orants. La manière dont Pozzo mêle l’espace réel quasiment plat de l’édifice et l’espace virtuel très profond du ciel peint, qui donne l’impression d'une hauteur remarquable, rend impossible de distinguer l’un de l'autre.
Vault of the nave, fresco by Andrea Pozzo (1685). This trompe-l'oeil fresco of 16 meters by 36 represents the apotheosis of Ignatius of Loyola and the allegory of the missionary work of the Jesuits: the saint is welcomed by Christ and the Virgin Mary. Among the figures surrounding it, appear allegories of the four continents transfigured by their conversion due to the Jesuit missions, other sanctified Jesuits, distant from Ignatius according to their rank, as well as prayers. The way in which Pozzo mixes the almost flat real space of the building with the very deep virtual space of the painted sky, which gives the impression of a remarkable height, makes it impossible to distinguish one from the other.
En el Monte Tabor, en el norte de Israel, se encuentra la Basílica de la Transfiguración, en donde los cristianos creen que es el sitio donde la Transfiguración de Jesús tuvo lugar, un evento descrito en el Evangelio en el que Jesús se transfigura en una montaña sin nombre y habla con Moisés y Elías.
On Mount Tabor, in northern Israel, is the Basilica of the Transfiguration, where Christians believe it is the site where the Transfiguration of Jesus took place, an event described in the Gospel in which Jesus is transfigured into a mountain without a name and talks with Moses and Elijah.
In my mind this is the second scene of the encounter, the room approaches, and looks more at her, stretching out her hand to touch him, the gaze transfigured between beauty and love and the immense desire to touch her angel.
{ The theme of angels is a classic in the shots that photographers make on SL. Recreating something cute is easy enough, there are beautiful wings for sale in the marketplace. Personally, by taking this sequence, playing as a single photo and becoming a sequence in a natural way during the shootings, I wanted to start from another concept, not the classic one of purity and angelic love, but that of two souls in love, which meet in dreams, while both are sleeping in real life. It's an interesting comparison with that of SL itself, virtual lives derived from a real world, so who can tell what the reality is, and what do our avatar do in the midst of when we are not there? I'm a romantic, and I think when we're not connected, my avatar and Valentine's are hiding in solitaire sims, and they enjoy a lot. Dhalgren always occasionally looks at me with the accomplice look of who knows her long but silent. And I smile at my side. }
TECH NOTES: Raw Shot, done using my own Windlight and Graphic custom preset of the best viewer of all, in 6K resolution.
This painting is a mix of colors and techniques including collage and palette knife work, which add a rich texture and visual dynamism to the work and bring to life a transfigured face. The predominance of red and black create a vibrant contrast, while the use of lighter colors and pastel shades add depth. The work recalls a face that captures the emotion or essence of a subject rather than his precise physical details and therefore goes beyond his identity.
The contrast between the areas of dense paint and the lighter, more transparent ones symbolizes the complexity of emotional states or the elusive nature of memory and identity.
Hans Holbein the Elder (Augsburg, 1460 - Issenheim, 1524) - Altar of St. Sebastian; right wing Saint Elizabeth; Left wing Saint Barbara (1516) - Alte Pinakothek, Munich
La storia di san Sebastiano nelle arti è una tra le più lunghe e ricche, forse può essere considerato uno dei santi più rappresentati della Chiesa cattolica.
Riconoscibile a colpo d'occhio, per via dell'iconografia che lo riguarda, costituita dalle frecce che gli penetrano il corpo, questa immagine ha subito nel corso del tempo una notevole evoluzione, passando dall'originaria figura di uomo barbuto di mezza età che indossa l'armatura a quella di adolescente muscoloso con un corpo intatto seminudo ed inerme, fino a trasfigurarsi in una vera e propria icona gay diventando il "santo protettore degli omosessuali".
Nelle rappresentazioni del primo millennio lo si vede indossare la clamide militare come si conveniva alla sua professione di soldato, e sempre senza barba: un guerriero armato di scudo e spada. Durante l'epoca dell'arte gotica appare con un'armatura di maglie metalliche alla moda del tempo, ma presto anche con un ricco abito da nobile romano e di solito con la barba. Da allora in poi si è cominciato inoltre a rappresentarlo nudo al momento di essere colpito dalle frecce; soprattutto i gotici olandesi e tedeschi lo raffigurano ricoperto di ferite e col corpo magro ben evidenziato. Il primo attributo personale di riconoscimento è la corona di fiori in mano; a partire dall'alto Medioevo una freccia e un arco tra le mani.
Dal tardo XV secolo gli artisti hanno scelto sempre più spesso di presentare la figura del santo come un giovinetto denudato, ancora completamente imberbe, con le mani strettamente legate al tronco di un albero o alla cima di una colonna mentre offre del tutto indifeso il petto alle frecce del carnefice.
The history of Saint Sebastian in the arts is one of the longest and richest, perhaps it can be considered one of the most represented saints of the Catholic Church.
Recognizable at a glance, due to the iconography that concerns him, consisting of the arrows that penetrate his body, this image has undergone a considerable evolution over time, passing from the original figure of a bearded middle-aged man who wears the armor to that of a muscular teenager with an intact half-naked and defenseless body, until he transfigured into a real gay icon becoming the "patron saint of homosexuals".
In the representations of the first millennium he is seen wearing the military clamide as befits his profession as a soldier, and always without a beard: a warrior armed with a shield and sword. During the epoch of the Gothic art he appears with an armor of fashionable metal mesh of the time, but soon also with a rich Roman nobleman's dress and usually with a beard. From then on he also began to represent him naked at the moment of being hit by arrows; above all the Dutch and German Gothic represent him covered with wounds and with the lean body well highlighted. The first personal attribute of recognition is the wreath of flowers in hand; from the early Middle Ages an arrow and a bow in his hands.
Since the late fifteenth century, artists have increasingly chosen to present the figure of the saint as a naked boy, still completely beardless, with his hands closely tied to the trunk of a tree or to the top of a column while offering his chest completely defenseless. executioner's arrows.
God on the Other Side of a Shipwreck
by Jonathon Martin, from How to Survive a Shipwreck
Meet Jonathon Martin
Your faith will not fail you
You’re Still Here
The first things overboard when your ship wrecked were all the reasons you ever had for sailing. And when the life you knew is a life you know no longer, and the ship that took you on a thousand adventures before can no longer even keep you afloat, you are right to wonder if there is anything left worth having.
There used to be so many things that we could not live without! How could you live without this person? How could you live without this job? How could you live without this relationship? How could you live without this house? How could you live without your dignity? How could you live without your good reputation? And then death came to someone you loved, or you lost the job, or you sabotaged the relationship or felt your love sabotaged you, or you suffered public humiliation, or you lost your all-important sense of honor. And you thought you really would die.
There was a part of you, maybe even a really large part of you, that really did. There are some losses that in their way mark you forever, and some things you never get over. And because you loved this person or this life and career you built, or valued your dignity, when the bow broke, everything in you screamed. While the sails were ripping and the boards splitting, you heard the sound of your spirit dying. The life you had was over. But to your own shame, you were not over, as much as you may have wanted to be.
Maybe like a proud samurai, it seemed the best thing you could do on the other side of the shipwreck was to fall on your own sword and stage a protest against anything you once found beautiful. Because you were so sad. Because you were so guilty. Because you were so scared that in the loss of something outside yourself, you lost your own heart to the sea’s black rage.
And then came what might be the worst discovery: You didn’t die — not really. You walked away from the accident, whether or not you think you or God or the devil or the fates are somehow responsible for it. You just knew you would die, and at times it felt like something in you did.
But not you. Not all of you, anyway.
The ship may have gone down, but miracle of miracles, you’re still here.
Can you remember the first time after the funeral, after you could not bear to eat or drink, that the pangs of hunger overwhelmed you? Did you feel incredulous at yourself, at the animal part of you that still wanted food after such a thing? What about when there was a particular taste you wanted, because it was a taste that on some level you actually desired? However much fog, however much sorrow, however much grief — the experience of loss may have altered your taste buds forever. But it hardly killed them.
You watched dreams you cradled in your arms with the strength of all your tenderness descend into the sea. All that animated you, all that moved you before, could move you forward in the world no longer. The water filled your mouth and your nostrils, and you choked at the taste of it. But when the grief or the guilt or the loss recedes into the night and your soul sets sail again, you still dream — despite yourself. There is still a kind of music you will hear that stirs within you an unspeakable longing. There is still an ache, not just for all you lost, but to see and know and be seen and known still, to explore and imagine and create.
However much the longing for the past may assault your senses, it is not the only longing that remains. There is still a part of you that wants to make love, to feel yourself somehow connected. There is still a part of you that yearns for something outside yourself. You felt yourself out to sea, and yet some kind of desire, for something or another, bears you along, and you find yourself still somehow here — almost against your own wishes. And even in the moments when anything that felt like conscious desire went out with the tide, there is still some kind of near-morbid curiosity of how your life and story are going to turn out — even if you are lost enough to only behold what’s left of your life as a kind of bystander.
Somewhere between your body’s animal refusal to go down quietly, your mind’s refusal to stop imagining, and your heart’s refusal to stop dreaming, in the tangled mess of synapses and memories and impulses, there lies God.
In whatever remains in you that wants to create, to make, to birth something new, in whatever corner that longs for some kind of resurrection on the other side of death, something divine quietly snaps, fires, clicks, flickers. This is the Spirit of God, lurking in your own broken spirit.
You may find that your grief and sense of loss over the world you once knew seem endless. And yet there are possibilities and potentialities within you that are more endless still.
What is this unseen force that carries you forward despite yourself? Why can you not seem to choke, always and forever, your own irrational yearning, this buried but still breathing hope for more?
This ache is God’s fingerprint.
The stirring to create, to love, to live, to give of yourself when there is no self left to give — this comes from the Spirit.
You were created in the image of God. Before you knew anyone or did anything, everything was in you necessary to live at home in divine love. However buried that image of God is within you, that part of you that knows what it is to be perfectly loved, held, and known — it is still very much there. There is a part of you that does not need anything else, or anyone else in particular, to be alive. There is a part of you that knows this — part of you that has always known this — but has long since forgotten.
The God who sustains all created things with love sustains you. The God who created the world not to be exploited, dominated, or needed, but to love and to enjoy without clinging, is awake in your belly. And so in you is the capacity to love and to live without needing the world to work out a certain way in order for you to be okay. Your life, your existence, is contingent on that Spirit. But it is not contingent on anyone else, or anything else.
This is the liberating, terrifying discovery of life on the other side of the shipwreck. That while you are a creature — humble, dependent, small, in need of love and food and Shelter — you didn’t need anything else as much as you thought you did. That the things you knew would kill you don’t actually kill you. That the fire in you the sea should have drowned out, burns within you yet, if you do not let yourself smother it (and maybe even if you do). So much of the world you have known is no more. But if there is any truth in any of this at all, the shipwreck that threatened to destroy you utterly may be the thing that saves you yet. It may not drown you; it may transfigure you.
And if there is something truthful, something larger, about this irrational lust for life that is forged in the fires of death, it says something too about the people you lost. For if there is a God who not only creates but sustains and resurrects, then there can yet be life on the other side of death for all things. Then there is hope, not only for the yearning in you to drive you into union with God, but to be realized in union with those others. If death is not the final word, and chaos produces creation rather than destroys it, then many of the stories of the life you thought were long over are far from over yet.
Believing this won’t mean you won’t still feel the weight of deep, sharp, piercing grief, or that you should feel guilty when you do. On the contrary, people who don’t experience deep pain have not experienced deep love and are not to be envied. That doesn’t mean they are shallow — all of our souls surely have something of the same depths — they just may not be aware of their own yet. That day will come for them. But when you feel your own deep capacity for passion, compassion, mourning, even rage, you are glimpsing something of your soul’s own infinite capacity to know, to feel, and to become. Within the depths of all you feel the most deeply, something of the Spirit’s own immortal depths is reflected in you.
We have a capacity for love and hope and beauty seemingly too big for our heads and hearts, because we are created in the image of God.
Excerpted from How to Survive a Shipwreck by Jonathan Martin, copyright Jonathan Martin.
This is the last time I use a manila folder for a backdrop. Something about the color makes everything look bad...
left: Minotaur
A man cursed to be a minotaur by an evil sword. It's still fused with his right hand. Poor guy hardly even knows anything about fighting. Fortunately one of his companions knows most anything about swordplay...
Middle: Avatar of a minor god.
Tricked by a fellow god into possessing a man preforming during a popular festival, he was locked into the man's body. Summoning his legendary equipment, the god seeks to undo the seal and save (and duly reward) the man whose body he has inhabited. The problem? He can't take off the pig suit the man was preforming in. Nobody takes him seriously, aside from his companions, who still take everything he says with a grain of salt.
Right: Fishwife
The wife of a captain who was transfigured by a sea witch - for dealing the killing blow on a massive sea serpent that attacked their ship. Despite her and her husband's far reaching efforts to find a cure, they could not seem to discover anything useful. Then one day a man in a pig suit wandered into town with an insane story...
The circle reminds us of eternal cycles.
Solid rock formed from Jurassic dunes
Transfigured in time, turns to sand.
La Ventana Natural Arch at El Malpaís National Monument on a cloudy day near Grants, NM on Feb 15 November 2019.
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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.
Carp pool in the garden centre - the fish swimming in reflections. No photoshopping, just a little colour balancing.
Koi.
Round and round
endlessly
they swim, huge
in the small pool,
dim shapes in the murk,
briefly flashing orange, or gleaming olive green
or speckled white.
They are aimless in their circling,
confined in their concrete prison,
dull in the darkness beneath the weed.
The winter sun suddenly transforms the day:
clouds and blue materialise from the uniform grey,
the pool transfigured.
Sunlight bounces from bricks
turning the surface gold,
is reflected from bamboo fencing,
striping the water in waving indigo verticals,
the cascading water-feature producing scarlet bubbles.
The fish move languidly as before,
but illuminated, their orange fieriness
hidden in the vivid world,
disguised by an intensity of colour:
unknowingly, they swim in jewelled light.
When the doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw "the tree with the lights in it." It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The lights of the fire abated, but I'm still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells unflamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had my whole life been a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. I have since only rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment when the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam.
--Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974).
This was the moment that the sun crested the mountain—a sudden unobstructed fire. It outlined the young people’s backs with a faintly furred halo, while here, in the garden, it caught the head of a silver dandelion, fiercely, tenderly transfigured into light. I experienced a bliss of thought, new and inevitable, and I said, “Lieber Gott, if I ever ask you for anything, you don’t even have to listen, because nothing is necessary except this.” I knew that was right because of my vast happiness, and then my father called me and we walked out of the garden and started up the road.
Wooden coffin, and associated mummy of a woman. The coffin is in a shape known as 'anthropoid' or 'mummiform', representing the deceased in a transfigured, god-like form. The coffin has a gilded face and a tripartite wig, painted blue. Scenes of deities and hieroglyphic inscription decorate the entire surface of the coffin lid and base.
The mummy is well preserved and fully wrapped, with a linen-and-plaster (cartonnage) chestpiece over her abdomen. An X-ray taken in the 1970s suggests that there may be an amulet in place under the wrappings of the chest area. in the past has shown evidence of a possible protective amulet under the linen across the chest.
Hieroglyphic texts on coffin, not translated.
[Ptolemaic period | Manchester Museum | Acc. No. 13783 | 99 x 201 x 70 cm]
The Secret of Cosmic Blood Flow: Plasma
The Pentagram and the Ether Streams
Steiner describes, in “From the Contents of Esoteric Classes“, the pentagram with:
We’re always surrounded by five ether streams in the world around us on earth. They’re called earth, water, fire, air and thought ethers. These etheric streams are also active in man: earth either from the head to the right foot, from there water ether to the left hand, from there fire ether to the right hand, from there air ether to the left foot, and then thought ether back to the head. This is the occultist’s sacred pentagram, the symbol of man. Its point is directed upwards, which indicates that the spirit streams to man from the heights. The pentagram is present in many flowers and other things in nature. The sign of black magic is a pentagram with one point at the bottom, through which magicians attract bad forces from the earth and send them out of the two top horns into the environment by means of their bad will in order to use soul and nature forces for their own egotistical, evil purposes.
The cosmic blood flow is currently recognized as a characteristic of the Electric Bridge and it is now possible, in parallel, to focus on the form that is constructed and sustained through this fluid, electrical support.
As it is well known, the basis of all organic life is carbon and one of the secrets contained in the ability of carbon to form long polymer chains and build organic forms, is the magnetic power inherent in it. Until now, scientific theory considered it impossible to magnetize carbon at room temperature because of its electron configuration; the "magnetic club" was an exclusive group that included only a few prestigious members: copper, cobalt, nickel and a few rare alloys. But now, with the result of sophisticated research on light, carbon is officially recognized as part of this group: science and technology are working to bring together the world of magnetism and that of carbon - something that the high priests of alchemy had long done.
Magnetism is an "order phenomenon" - for scientists and occultists alike, it will be used to transfigure the structure of form into a home more appropriate for the mind. Magnetic carbon has a central role to play in this process because it is the hidden and long sought-after key to the philosopher's stone. The relationship between inner and outer man focuses on the alchemy of carbon and current research on the electronic and magnetic functioning of carbon has immense implications for the future; it will help humanity to transcend the physical plane through new conceptions of time and space, and with the words of the Tibetan...: "We will see each other, as well as all forms of divine manifestation, as units of light of different degrees of luminosity and we will reason more and more in terms of electricity, voltage, intensity and energy. »
There are seven basic types of electrical power that the spiritualized and creative human being can use and seven corresponding types of matter, and the resulting construction work lies at the heart of a future electrical alchemy where "temples will be built that will not be made with hands. "The current discoveries concerning carbon and their application in nanotechnologies are an external symbol of this science: future spiritual art. When humanity as a whole has progressed to a more spiritual state of consciousness, the electrical manipulation of carbon will be widely practiced through the natural abilities dormant in each individual. Humanity will then begin to work consciously as one, to transform the earth, and later, the entire solar system, into a living temple. It will be a temple of transfigured carbon and humanity will express itself through it, as a living diamond, as a kingdom of souls.
The key to implementing this great Alchemic undertaking lies in understanding the "seventh ray in connection with the phenomena of electricity, by means of which the solar system is coordinated and vitalized... When the great work is accomplished, we will see the Temple of God, the solar system, organized objectively and subjectively; its sacred places will then be accessible to the sons of men, who will then be able to work unimpeded and have free access to all parts of the building. Through the magic of the Word, which will then have been found, all doors will open, and man's consciousness will respond to every divine manifestation. »
It is not only an enigmatic and mystical vision, but an intensely practical vision, an understanding of the fundamental role of carbon in the electric bridge that will reveal :
"Every manifestation is only electricity, "the mystery of electricity" to which H.P.B. referred in the "Secret Doctrine". In Nature, everything has an electric nature. Life itself is electricity. But the electricity that we currently know and use is only physical electricity, inherent in the physical and etheric matter of all forms, and linked to this matter... The secret lies therefore in future scientific discoveries. »
The discovery of the magnetic properties of carbon and its ability to respond to electrical manipulation is one of these secrets, but much more is about to be revealed...
Steiner describes, in "From the Contents of Esoteric Classes", the pentagram with :
We are always surrounded by five ether currents in the world around us on earth. They are called earth, water, fire, air and thought ethers. These etheric currents are also active in man: the earth is from head to right foot, from there the ether of water to left hand, from there the ether of fire to right hand, from there the ether of air to left foot, then the ether of thought to head. It is the sacred pentagram of the occultist, symbol of man. Its point is pointing upwards, which indicates that the spirit is flowing towards man from the heights. The pentagram is present in many flowers and other things in nature. The sign of black magic is a pentagram with a dot at the bottom, through which magicians attract the evil energies of the earth and send them out of the two upper horns into the environment through their evil wills in order to use the forces of the soul and nature for their own selfish and evil ends.
"Bereshit bara elohim eth âchamaîm veéth âaretç" (Gen 1:1), which is commonly translated as : "In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. "The first two words are "Bereshit" and "bara". With regard to the first term, it should be noted that, in their respective interpretations, both Saint Augustine and Maimonides identify the beginning with the principle[10][10] They thus distinguish themselves from Saint Thomas Aquinas, who.... This is the reason why the first bed: "In principle you made heaven and earth" (in principio fecit Deus coelum et terram)[11][11] Saint Augustine, Confessions, XI, 3, 5. and the second: "In principle God created the top and bottom of the universe. "Maimonides opposes the notion of principle[rechit] - derived from rock, the head, to the notion of priority[té'hilla] Maimonides, Le guide des égarés, trad. S. Munk, Verdier,...; as the second term applies to something prior in time.
We are all born into a particular flow of energy that determines many parameters of our lives
We are all born in an "astrological field", in a particular flow of energy which determines many parameters of our life: our personality, our potential, etc. In Hebrew this is referred to as "Mazal", which means "alignment of celestial bodies". But this term can also mean "luck", as when one wishes someone "Mazal Tov"
A person's Mazal is determined at birth. Now in the paracha of Lekh-Lekha, God makes Abraham leave his tent and enjoins him "to try to count the stars". God then changed Abraham's name and raised him metaphorically above the stars to realign his destiny.
Why did Abraham deserve this special treatment? The dominant vision of the time was idolatry. Abraham, having perceived the falsity of this vision, had risen above social norms. In response to his transcendent act, God raised Abraham above the laws of nature, "beyond the stars.
From this moment flowed an eternal principle: the Jews would be above the Mazal. We will no longer have to follow the fate dictated by the stars. History has clearly confirmed this: Jews survived the great empires that were the Romans or the Greeks. Even today, the Jews of Israel defy nature by their flourishing presence on a land surrounded by enemies.
But beyond national considerations, this idea has profound implications in our personal lives as well. The Talmud tells us that Rabbi Aquiva's daughter was to die on her wedding day. During the wedding meal, the bride froze the needle of her bun in the wall behind her, killing a snake that was there and was about to bite her. When the body of the beast was discovered and it was realized what it had just escaped, it was asked to recall the events of the day. She told how in the middle of the festivities she had noticed poor people waiting outside, and she had left her own wedding to bring them food. An extraordinary act of charity!
This is where we can see how this rule works. This woman's superhuman act had elevated her above the pre-programmed system, which altered her destiny and changed her life. If we aspire to it, we can also benefit from it.
... Hermes, 237-238 Moses: as alchemist, 187; competition with Pharaoh's magicians, ... 197; alchemical uses of, 190-191; in Paracelsus, 185; Pico's interest in, 17; ... longevity of due to alchemy, 188 pentagram: force of against demons, 144; ...
What is the shared core of all religious and esoteric traditions?
To continue the tale of the serpents lets look at the Kundalini Fire from India. The Kundalini system looks like the Caduceus Staff with the two Serpents around the spine: Kundalini with Chakras The serpents has two different colors like the two outer pillars in the Kabbalah Tree of Life, and they have the same interpretations as the Feminine and Masculine energies. Seven Lotus Flowers or Chakras, which are spiritual organs, are placed on the spine.
Macrocosmic Man: Left side of Man is the masculine side and the right side is the feminine side, as we see the Tree of Life from the front, the macrocosmic man.
The correspondence between the Chakras (see later) and the Sephirots: Sahasrara or the Crown Chakra, corresponds to Keter. Ajna, the Third Eye , or the Brow Chakra corresponds to Chokmah, and the back head chakra with Binah.
Vishuddha or the Throat Chakra corresponds to Chesed and Ta Chui, The Neck Chakra, with Gevurah.
Ahanhata or the Heart Chakra corresponds to Tiferet
Manipura or the Navel Chakra, where Hod corresponds to the Liver and Netzach corresponds to the Stomach
Svadhistana or the Sacral Chakra corresponds to Yesod
Muladhara, the base of spine, the Root Chakra, corresponds to Malkhu. From the heart and up the feminine and masculine energies are nearly in Equilibrium with the heart near the center. 5. Chesed, 6. Gevurah, 7. Chokmah, 8. Binah, 9. Daat, 10. Kether
Microcosmic Man: Rudolf Steiner describes the two sides of man as being a kind of fight between Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers, where Lucifer is the masculine power (Yang) and Ahriman is the feminine power (Yin). Both described in the literature as Serpents or Dragons. Lucifer represents The Right Pillar, and Ahriman The Left Pillar. They are on Earth seen as Evil powers, but they are necessary factors in our development, as we both need the Feminine and Masculine influence, but we need to find the balance between them. From The Balance in the World and Man, Lucifer and Ahriman:
The left part of you — your left man, as it were — is the fortification set up by Lucifer, and your right man is the fortification set up by Ahriman. And the whole art of life consists in finding the true balance between them.
See also an extended Collection of Steiner texts about Lucifer and Ahriman(pdf) . The energy flows from the left side to the right side, from the Luciferic or Masculine side to the Ahrimanic or Feminine side.
Spiritual AnatomyMicrocosmic Man
Crossed arms or legs shortcuts the natural streams and should be avoided, except where specified in meditative practices. From The Kingdom of God from www.adishakti.org/
“Now this Kundalini is the power which is placed in the sacrum bone, nowhere else… And imagine this bone is called sacrum; “sacrum” means “sacred. So they knew there was something in it… This is the primule, is the germinating power within us. Now this fact has been accepted for thousands of years in India and elsewhere. For in the Bible also … they talk of the Tree of Life. That is the same as this… So this is the thing that is being described in our ancient books, in all the scriptures, even in the Qur’an they are described as Ruh, R,U,H, Ruh. “Ruh” means the “cold breeze”, the “cool breeze”. The cool breeze of the Holy Ghost is described in the Bible also.
Japanese Mitsudomoe: The Mitsudomoe represents the trinity of the Shinto religion: Sky, Man, and Earth, which is the same as the three Pillars of Kabbalah: first, second and third, or Steiners Lucifer, Christ, and Ahriman, or the Hindi Rajas, Sattva, and kimgraaemunch.wordpress.com/tag/ether-streams/treams/
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Sarcophagus lateral panel with a rare representation of the metamorphosis of the Meleagridis, Melanippe and Eurymed, two of the four sisters of Meleager. The two young women, with loose hair and wearing long robes, are mourning their brother's fate near his tomb marked by a garlanded stele. As Ovid tells:
post cinerem cineres haustos ad pectora pressant
adfusaeque iacent tumulo signataque saxo
nomina conplexae lacrimas in nomina fundunt.
[met. 8: 538 – 541]
“And, when he is ashes, they gather the ashes and press them to their hearts, throw themselves on his tomb in abandonment of grief and, clasping the stone on which his name has been carved, they drench the name with their tears.”
Artemis, satisfied with her revenge and moved by the deep pain of the two sisters, will transform the two Meleagridis into guinea-hens: birds with black plumage and white spots on the chest representing the tears poured for Meleager; their mournful cheeping resembles a funeral lament. The goddess will entrust the two metamorphosed Meleagridis to the wind.
[Latonia] … natis in corpore pennis
adlevat et longas per bracchia porrigit alas
corneaque ora facit versasque per aera mittit.
[met. 8: 538 – 541]
“[Artemis] … made feathers spring on their bodies stretched out long wings over their arms, gave them a horny beak, and sent them transfigured into the air.”
Translation: Frank Justus Miller, “Ovid - Metamorphoses”
Source: Exhibition notice
Marble sarcophagus panel
H. 70 cm., L. 78 cm.
Ca. 170 – 180 AD
Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale
Exhibition: “Ovidio: Loves, Myths & Other Stories”
Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome
Hopefully, most of us have settled into the discipline of Lent.
As we get out of bed each morning, we are getting more accustomed to looking ahead to some special practice we have decided on for the day, whether it is meeting with a Lenten discussion group, or joining with a friend to visit a nursing home, or just spending a little more time listening to the Lord in prayer.
Lent provides endless opportunities for personal growth and bonding with the Body of Christ. Hopefully, we are within reach of a daily Mass that fits our schedule. More frequent Eucharist is really the crown of Lenten practice—the sacred liturgy focuses our minds on the Word, nourishes our whole person with the grace of Holy Communion, and gives joy and purpose to the whole day. Some parishes offer Scripture reading and a Communion service on certain days.
The first readings last week and this week are about our spiritual ancestors. Why is it so important for us to keep them in front of our eyes? Like all stories of ancestors, they teach us to live by avoiding their mistakes and imitating their virtues. Adam made a big mistake—disobedience. In contrast, Abram (or Abraham) shows us a huge virtue—faith. Disobedience lost us a garden of delights, while obedient faith won us a wonderful holy ground called the Promised Land. Lent, I think, is about fleeing sin, and journeying to holy places—places of prayer, challenge, and growth.
The Gospel is about the "high places" in our journey, pointing to light and resurrection. Arriving at new levels in life can be frightening. Notice how afraid Peter, James, and John are when they see Jesus transfigured in light. Jesus is at ease when talking with Moses and Elijah, both of whom had experienced light in their encounters with God on earth. The great Lawgiver and the great Prophet talk to Jesus who is the Law, to Jesus who fulfills all prophecy. We wonder what they talked about. Perhaps Jesus is telling them that soon, He will bring them to everlasting encounter with light, as soon as He has risen from death.
That is the purpose of this experience, to let Peter, James and John know that the days of darkness ahead will only lead to light. The Father, thundering from heaven, validates the truth of Jesus. He will come back and bring us with Him one day! We just have to be patient. If we wish to live in everlasting light, we must be light for the world on earth. That will be painful, like Jesus' own Passion and Death, but it will not last long.
If we are really serious about Lent, we will take the Transfiguration experience as Jesus intended. As He taught a lesson in patience and hope to Peter, James, and John, so He teaches us to listen and wait, to let the message of Jesus soak into our lives so that we can live it better.
Lent is really exciting! No wonder that it is the favorite time of year for so many people!
--- Msgr. Paul Whitmore | email: pwhitmore29@)yahoo.com
________________________________
"Life is what you choose to make of it. You can always find the good. Or you can always look to the worst in Mankind, Nature, and the Material World. Choice and Free Will are yours alone to exercise. Make the Most! Enjoy the good, the bad, and the ugly, for the exterior casing (body, looks, or braces) does not the inner soul, mind, personality, emotions, life goals make, unless you let it in a juvenile mood.
When do we grow up? When are we mature in all things?"
--- by Anonymous
EXPLORE # 270 on initial list on Sunday, February 17, 2008; # 342 on 02-18-2008.
"Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of other realities, but in the end when we become used to the new light, we gain a new view of all reality transfigured and elevated in the light itself."
~ Thomas Merton ~
MOIS DE MARIE, LE PLUS JOLI, QUI RETOURNÉE DIT :
A I M E R
PETITE RÉTROSPECTIVE DES VIERGES VISITÉES ET HONORÉES SUR LES ANNÉES PLUS SPÉCIALEMENT.
BrÖk et PLUME
CE JOUR LÀ, COMME TRANSFIGURÉE PAR UN SOLEIL PRESQUE SURNATUREL. L'ASTRE FIGURE AUSSI SON FILS, LUMIÈRE DU MONDE.
POUR NOUS PEUT-ÊTRE...
JE CROIS À CES CHOSES.
L'AZUR LUI AUSSI A VRAIMENT LA COULEUR DE MARIE.
MERVEILLE
MERCI
DÉSOLÉE POUR LES TÂCHES..
LE PETIT COMPACT A FAIT DES SIENNES.
MAIS J'AI PASSÉ OUTRE.
MARIE L'EMPORTE DANS CETTE BEAUTÉ SUBLIME.
PLUME