For over 700 years Muslims have performed a devotional worship, a form of sema, whirling in continual remembrance of their Creator. This tradition of whirling became commonly known through the Sufi Mystic Poet Maulana Jalal’ud-din Rumi. The word sema, which is arabic for “sound” is described best by Shamsi Tabriz, Maulana Jalal’ud-din’s master and shaykh saying,

“There comes a Sound, from neither within nor without,

From neither right nor left, from neither behind nor in front,

From neither below nor above, from neither East nor West,

Nor is it of the elements: water, air, fire, earth, and the like;

From where then? It is from that place thou art in search of;

Turn ye toward the place where from the Lord makes His appearance.

From where a restless fish out of water gets water to live in,

From the place where the prophet Moses saw the divine Light,

From the place where the fruits get their ripening influence,

From the place where the stones get transmuted to gems,

From the place which even an infidel turns in distress,

From the place to which all men turn when they find this world a vale of tears.

It is not given to us to describe such a blessed place;

It is a place where even the heretics would leave off their heresies.”

Notes from an exhibit in Venice in 2019.

The wallpaper room created by Nadia Myre to welcome visitors consists of three walls and a heart-shaped sculpture woven over with beads. Guided by a soundscape evoking a mythical origin story of the universe beginning with a single sound, the visitor enters a built environment that mixes European and Native elements around which mutually shared stories were variably passed on by American peoples and Europeans each in their own way. Contextual elements such as ships, sections of maps, and other culturally relevant icons displayed on Myre’s design walls furnish the background for the centre piece of her installation: a human heart covered with Murano beads. Presented in much the same way as a man-made object in a Renaissance cabinet of curiosity this three-dimensional piece is emblematic of the relationship that Venice has indirectly had with indigenous North Americans over the centuries. Beads are here a marker or difference and identity simultaneously. Europeans conquered with Venice beads the hearts and imagination of Native peoples who eagerly welcomed this new trade good since the early contact phases. Historically appreciated for their brilliance and versatility, indigenous women created artworks of accomplished skill and beauty. Myre’s glass-covered heart continues in a long-standing artistic tradition that poignantly reminds us of the centrality of women in shaping history. If, as proven by commercial records and economic history, Venetians saw the North American bead trade as a lucrative enterprise, it is equally true that indigenous women’s desire for this merchandise was the incentive for Venetians to produce more, and as a consequence, make more profits. Equally treated as both a commodity and a colonial tool, beads have historically been the means by which European imperial powers established diplomacy and trade with Native North Americans. Used as the soft arm of colonisation, beads are therefore not just trade items, but agents of historical change in a cross-cultural conversation that Myre here invites us to peruse and ponder over.

Myre calls upon deep mythologies and re-examines European claims to a ‘discovery’ of the New World. For Myre, the exhibit brings to mind an ordinary sound--a sort of zero-vibration, an uncontained note or utterance--that recalls the many creation myths wherein the world was formed around an unending aural reverberation. Calling on this notion of an unfettered, ever-expanding energy as a point of origin, Nadia Myre’s works in this exhibition juxtapose Native creation stories with European contact history. These works investigate the role that European print media, especially maps, played in imposing a new, colonial origin story on North America’s Indigenous peoples; one that was rooted in a Eurocentric narrative of discovery and ignored existing modes of self-determination and historical record. Jumping off from her practice’s continual interrogation of transcultural mutation, these works focus on critically reversing the gaze of the othering eye through remixing and Indigenizing symbols of control and production of knowledge that formed a legacy of European nation states as the centre of the world.

Depicted in Myre’s damask-patterned wallpaper is a woman falling through a dark, vast expanse to begin human life on earth. To the Haudenosaunee, Sky Woman signifies a matrilineal line of descent which traces the people of Turtle Island to North America. Cradled, framed, or entrapped by images of European ships and mapping motifs, Sky Woman continues her fall to earth, enduring amidst the impending colonial origin narrative of discovery. Here, Myre translates a typical floral damask motif into colonial and indigenous signifiers, whose forms reflect, repeat and oscillate between evocations of growth, nature, violence and destruction, forming a doubled narrative of struggle, resilience, and layered points of origin. Based on the decorative double-sided textile from the Middle East, damask, as a popular luxury wall covering in Renaissance Italy, resonates with thematics of mirroring, cultural transmutation, and power. Through her incorporation of an ornamental circular motif used in Giacomo Gastaldi’s 1556 Map to delineate Hochelaga (Montreal), Myre uses the decorative and narrative nature of this wallpaper to abstract devices of circumscription and colonial naming of territory in a move to reject settler cartographic and claiming practices towards a consciousness of Indigenous knowledge of land and history. Aptly positioned as the nucleus of the installation is a terracotta sculpture of a human heart--standing in for the hungry heart of capitalism, greed, empires and colonies--covered in an Anishinaabe floral pattern made with Venetian trade beads. Used as ballast in slave/trade ships, beads were an important economic currency and exchanged for both goods and services as well as people. As a call to indigenization--a return to a focus on the environment and relational ways of knowing--the wounded heart, blanketed with beads, reminds us to centre with respect and love on all our relations. As a haunting story of the start of the world from a zero-point that precedes humanity, life, and form alike, the soundscape in Myre’s installation is a representation of the mythic original sonic vibration--rethinking the ways beginnings are identified, inscribed, written, and read. Points of origin are chosen; they do not indicate an end to nothingness, but only an inability to read what previously existed. Engaging creation stories are powerful tools of self-determination, cultural definition, and expression of value.

When a step sends us sliding on a glass land,

we learn wariness.

We’ll believe second, letting others take the lead;

examining the benefits of believing -

an environment much won.

As life’s afternoons disappear

and the daily dark comes so soon,

we mark any opposite with warning -

too busy alive, being one...

A thin divide,

we step out onto glass each waking day,

an average magazine couple

come in years to material age,

learning the new dozen mean words

we use along the red answer -

and that’s

only consistent

with how we see ourselves and our lives

on the hungry edge...

not much more than idea animals

of spot purpose and chance effect.

And that glass plane so square

we try to walk on...

Wouldn’t we stick suggested to what felt familiar?

Glass like ice, cold for space...

Beneath us lies a proper place

for hungry lives to go for nourishment...

We, an all-season age

entered upon

now huge minutes;

a found notice lay growing;

a solution of bread and fishes to hunger,

seeing the glass now clear and limitless beneath -

and that makes us question

what we’ve believed to be...

what we’ve believed to be

those fatal edges where the drop has horror to it...

Maybe they’re there – maybe not...

and even if they are – those limits so like walls

despite their opposite fall –

now we know, seeing clear beneath us,

that down there beneath us,

where we for so long

have lived apart

only on the sliding surface,

used to choring effort just to keep a level pace –

that down there beneath us...

grows the rest of us...

alive in this same life...

as much of us as any waking day can win,

and more than we can ever know...

and if we didn’t try to find that out –

what more we may become –

what opens up our afternoons,

multiplies our hunger in so many other ways -

even as our taste is satisfied by fishes

and miraculous bread...

if we didn’t try to find that out –

as worlds swing open wide –

where’s the fun in that?

© Keith Ward 2006

Hit Head On

Re: "On A Glass Land" - Punctuation has been revised from the version of the poem appearing in my book "Hit Head On." Also, italics was added for this online version. Originally I added italics to simulate the way I deliver the poem in oral presentation, but it seemed to muddy the reading of it more than clarify a difficult poem; so I removed the "emphasis" italics.

The photo was taken at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, on Monday March 27. I'd completed the second weekend class in a course on Life Coaching - something that feels closer than anything encountered in my 50 years to being what I want to do when I grow up - and took Monday off too. There was percolating from the weekend goin' on. I drove west in the early morning, not knowing where I would end up or what I'd be doing exactly - just that I wanted to walk, to think, to contemplate, to take pictures, and to read the course materials. On impulse I turned off Route 81 and entered the city, and by following something undefined in me, parked near the college. I walked for a long time - through the campus, then out into residential streets. It was a mulling stroll, not my usual exercise walk (when I do walk, that is - I've been out of the habit lately). The rest of the morning was spent reading, most of the time outside in the sun, sitting in a chair in a grassy courtyard at the law school, the wind clicking the branches of the trees.

I'm on a glass land alright... It's not been once and done - discovering my layer habitat, then keeping that learning. Relearning, I've found, has had to be built into my way of living - reinforcement of knowing - or else it fades... unknowing.... "Life is always pulling you away from the understanding of life." (Anne Morrow Lindbergh) Don't I know it! :)

On the way back to my car I noticed the reflection in the window you see in the photo, stopping abruptly a few paces past the window, then walking backwards to bring the reflection again into view. I might wish for a shot where the window's crosspieces were more symmetrical. But then the reflection wouldn't be like this. I worked with what I had, and made it what you see, enhancing the color and bringing out the blacks and oranges more. The trees reflected in the window were distorted in the first place, the window making them more so. (Check it out on the larger size setting - the intricate lines and the colors are really cool.)

There's something about the photo that speaks to me... the separate panes too... It's not what I originally had in mind for a photo accompanying "On A Glass Land" - I'd thought I'd use something that was definitely evocative of a walking surface - something that would match the theme of there being a "beneath." This photo isn't like that. Literally, anyway. Yet it seems to work with the poem.

And that's one of the best qualities of life and living, ya know? The possibilities... The never knowing from one moment to the next what sure plan will marvelously transmute in a sense of wonder... and through that wonder, for that moment and maybe longer yet, it all feels different... the world... you... You know with certainty that the world and you and everything really is like this - the way you now see it... and potential fills where habit and daily plodding normally live...

There's the fun in that...

There were queues down the staircase from this tattoo parlour after the Manchester Arena bombing and bee tattoos were in demand as a sign of solidarity with the victims.

Demre (Myra), 50 km (31 miles east of Kaş and 80 km (50 miles) southwest of Çıralı (map), is the town where Santa Claus (Noel Baba in Turkish) first brought joy.

Actually, it was St Nicholas, a 4th-century Bishop of Myra, who lived and worked here, and who was later transmuted into the jolly Christmas elf called Sinterklaas in Holland (and similar names in other European countries), and later Santa Claus in North America.

Santa Claus (St Nicholas) Museum

An 11th-century church in Demre, now the Santa Claus Museum (Noel Baba Müzesi), once held his earthly remains, but in 1087 most of his bones were taken by force to Bari in Italy, and the remainder taken to Venice in 1100. (Churches were built in both cities to preserve the purloined relics. In 2009 the Turkish government demanded the return of the relics to Demre.)

Nicholas was born in nearby Patara, became a priest, rose to the rank of bishop, and did much of his good work here in the Roman town then called Myra, a name derived from myrrh.

Legend has it that he'd drop small bags of gold coins down the chimneys of houses with poor girls who were old enough to marry, but had no dowry. Another story says he'd leave gold coins in the shoes of the poor who put them out for him. Sanctified for his good works, he became the patron saint of virgins, sailors, children, pawnbrokers and Holy Russia.

Transmutation

E = mc2, energy and mass are equivalent and transmutable 😎

♥ Explore ♥ .... 3-5-09.... Best Position #86.... Thank you Everyone!

Compassion and Authentic Joy

What is compassion, that x-factor that every faith (the founders, if not the followers) exalts as a supreme virtue? When the Dalai Lama says, “My only religion is kindness,” and the Pope calls for a “civilization of love,” it can’t be just mealy-mouthed piety. Kindness and love are powers unto themselves, able to transmute even the most relentless enmity. Nelson Mandela once remarked he befriended his jailers, those grim, khaki-clad overseers of his decades of hard labor in a limestone quarry, by “exploiting their good qualities.” Asked if he believed all people were kind at their core, he responded, “There is no doubt whatsoever, provided you are able to arouse their inherent goodness.” If that sounds like wishful thinking, well, he actually did it.

Why bother? Sure it’s better to reach out than to turn a blind eye. And yes, if you’re trying to get to heaven, it’s probably the route with the fewest traffic delays. But there’s another reason: A compassionate life is more fulfilling. If happy people can be believed—not my-fabulous-life-is-going-great happy, or new-age-Happy-Face happy, but those who emanate true contentment—it’s only when the ego bows out that the curtain rises on real life. That it’s more blessed to give than to receive is not just a moral nostrum, they say, but a prescription for authentic joy. *

*Excerpt from "Field Notes on the Compassionate Life," by Marc Ian Barasch

NOTE:THANK YOU FRIENDS for your continual support of my photography, your lovely comments and encouragement and most of all for your enduring friendship. I hope everyone has a wonderful and compassionate Thursday! ♥

newspaper, wire, used teabags, wax

其中一位盂蘭勝會的 “雜工”在烈日當空下工作， 賺取每日港幣500 的收入。

One of the many ground support curator at the event, earning a daily wages of HK$500.

=====

The Ghost Festival, also known as the Hungry Ghost Festival, or Yu Lan is a traditional Chinese festival and holiday celebrated by Chinese in many countries. In the Chinese calendar (a lunisolar calendar), the Ghost Festival is on the 15th night of the seventh month (14th in southern China).

In Chinese tradition, the fifteenth day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar is called Ghost Day and the seventh month in general is regarded as the Ghost Month (鬼月), in which ghosts and spirits, including those of the deceased ancestors, come out from the lower realm.

Distinct from both the Qingming Festival (in spring) and Chung Yeung Festival (in autumn) in which living descendants pay homage to their deceased ancestors, on Ghost Day, the deceased are believed to visit the living.

On the fifteenth day the realms of Heaven and Hell and the realm of the living are open and both Taoists and Buddhists would perform rituals to transmute and absolve the sufferings of the deceased. Intrinsic to the Ghost Month is ancestor worship, where traditionally the filial piety of descendants extends to their ancestors even after their deaths.

Activities during the month would include preparing ritualistic food offerings, burning incense, and burning joss paper, a papier-mâché form of material items such as clothes, gold and other fine goods for the visiting spirits of the ancestors

=====

Follow my rediscovery of the Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival here:

七月盂蘭 Mid Summer Ghost Story

For my past visits to the Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival here:

Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival

More Chinese Temples images here:

Caves & Temples

=====

The King Playing with the Queen, 1944

Bronze

Max Ernst, born Germany, active Germany, France, USA, 1891-1976

In 1944, Ernst developed an important body of sculptural work related to the game of the chess.

Using cones, cylinders, and other geometric shapes, he created this work, one of hist best-known. The horned king reveals the influence of the Hopi Kachina dolls, which the artist collected, while the geometric , schematized arms resemble anthropomorphic flutes made by the Mossi people of West Africa. The king is presented both as a literal chess player and as stand-in for the artist himself, transmuting forms through the creative act.

Israel Museum

Recreating Isaac Levitan (1860-1900) Challenge - June 2020

Enter and participate in our new Challenge - Recreating Isaac Levitan (1860-1900) in our group Recreating Masters :

In this challenge we pay tribute to the tremendous contribution that Russian artists have made to impressionist and realist art.

________________________________________________

Work based in images of paintings (*) of Isaac Levitan (1860-1900) in Wikipedia in Public Domain :

* Self Portrait (1880)

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Isaac_Levitan...

* Bridge. Savvinskaya sloboda near Zvenigorod (1884)

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Zbvenigorod_S...

Demre (Myra), 50 km (31 miles east of Kaş and 80 km (50 miles) southwest of Çıralı (map), is the town where Santa Claus (Noel Baba in Turkish) first brought joy.

Actually, it was St Nicholas, a 4th-century Bishop of Myra, who lived and worked here, and who was later transmuted into the jolly Christmas elf called Sinterklaas in Holland (and similar names in other European countries), and later Santa Claus in North America.

Santa Claus (St Nicholas) Museum

An 11th-century church in Demre, now the Santa Claus Museum (Noel Baba Müzesi), once held his earthly remains, but in 1087 most of his bones were taken by force to Bari in Italy, and the remainder taken to Venice in 1100. (Churches were built in both cities to preserve the purloined relics. In 2009 the Turkish government demanded the return of the relics to Demre.)

Nicholas was born in nearby Patara, became a priest, rose to the rank of bishop, and did much of his good work here in the Roman town then called Myra, a name derived from myrrh.

Legend has it that he'd drop small bags of gold coins down the chimneys of houses with poor girls who were old enough to marry, but had no dowry. Another story says he'd leave gold coins in the shoes of the poor who put them out for him. Sanctified for his good works, he became the patron saint of virgins, sailors, children, pawnbrokers and Holy Russia.

For decades my conservation Bible has been Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac. Leopold mentioned the prothonotary as "the jewel of my disease-ridden woodlot", "as proof that dead trees are transmuted into living animals, and vice versa. When you doubt the wisdom of this arrangement, take a look at the prothonotary." Our beautiful world, pass it on.

Magister of Transformations (Transmutations) - work in process...

photo by Alexey Geets

One roads leads to two and suddenly there is a junction for traffic and the scope for decision, revision and division til contemplation arrives at cognition and transmigration induced by transmutation, we can somewhat transmogrified continue our transportation.

The metamorphosis that awaits at the cross roads, or the junction of ways gives us a chance to look at the roads not chosen as different fates, or potential we have the chance to transmogrify into the pupa and to transfigure through the imago and transmute into the butterfly that flutters down the right road, or the best road, or the only road beating our wind evoking wings as we proceed and progress in due procession to our ultimate goal.

The Chthonic Hekate is underwhelmed in the underworld by the sparkle of the above and the dark intentions from below that make some of the sparkle. She knows the outcome of each of the ways ways available to us. She might like to be acknowledged, but that does not mean that she will share her knowledge, unfortunately she is happy to leave us in self-knowledge that is mis-knowledge. The Triple Form of Hekate is full within the three phases and yet there is also a Forth Form. Her light in the darkness includes sparking, lighting, spluttering and also none igniting. Her symbol of three Moon in reflected illumination is also a symbol brightly obscuring her other form within the Dark, or New Moon. She is happy in the dark with her unilluminated vision and her brightness in the Full Moon also knows the New Moon visible on the horizon for just a few moments. Called for and sought at the Trivia Three Ways and crossroads also asked for and answered within the home where all junctions are started and ended and where insight and protection are often most required. From the ignition of Fresh Flame to Full Light through Dying Embers and within Extinguished Ashes she is never absent always available if you call on her without subconscious desire, rather with intent to take her hand with resolve to lead you on towards where you aspire.

© PHH Sykes 2022

phhsykes@gmail.com

But then apparently I might be a witch so might explain a few things. [Like talking to the animals and plants I live with? Helping scobies transmute sugary tea into an amazing probiotic drink that has many uses. e.g left for longer to make vinegar that is great in salad dressings and as a hair rinse. At 20 cents a litre a LOT cheaper than the crazily packaged alternatives! I digress].

Here's a photo I took of the sky last night. We had a frost yesterday and I'd heard my existing camera would allow me to capture some pretty sky action. Took this at F2.8, ISO3200 and shutter 30 seconds.

I have yet to indulge in detailed post processing to really bring out what is there. Gonna do that once I've captured crisper images. So exciting to have this night world open up. A gadget to capture star trails is also rather enticing!

Happy Thursday xx

For over 700 years Muslims have performed a devotional worship, a form of sema, whirling in continual remembrance of Allah.

This tradition of whirling became commonly known through the Sufi Mystic Poet Maulana Jalal’ud-din Rumi. The word sema, which is arabic for “sound” is described best by Shamsi Tabriz, Maulana Jalal’ud-din’s master and shaykh saying,

“There comes a Sound, from neither within nor without,

From neither right nor left, from neither behind nor in front,

From neither below nor above, from neither East nor West,

Nor is it of the elements: water, air, fire, earth, and the like;

From where then? It is from that place thou art in search of;

Turn ye toward the place where from the Lord makes His appearance.

From where a restless fish out of water gets water to live in,

From the place where the prophet Moses saw the divine Light,

From the place where the fruits get their ripening influence,

From the place where the stones get transmuted to gems,

From the place which even an infidel turns in distress,

From the place to which all men turn when they find this world a vale of tears.

It is not given to us to describe such a blessed place;

It is a place where even the heretics would leave off their heresies.”

Through the alchemy of a late summer's evening, river water transmutes to liquid gold.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Locale: Milwaukee River at Estabrook Park (south of the rapids below the Beer Garden) - Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.

Year & Season: 2014 ; Mid summer

Time of Day: Early evening

Illumination Aids: (none)

Object **Distance: About ?? feet

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Camera: Canon PowerShot SX50 (bridge camera with integrated zoom lens ; 24-1200mm equivalent)

Sensor: 1/2.3"

IBIS: n/a ; OIS: ON

Support: Hand-held

Lens: Integrated zoom lens (24-1200mm equivalent)

Filters: (none)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Exposure Program: Aperture priority

Metering Mode: Average | Center-weighted

Drive/Focus Mode: Single-shot/Auto focus

Focus Region: Spot

Exposure Quality: Raw (Lightroom DNG)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Processing: Lightroom 6.12 (CR 9.12)

Lightroom Presets: (none) ; Processing Plug-Ins: (none)

Original File Aspect & Size: 4:3 ; 12.0MP (4000 x 3000)

Crop: (none)

JPG Size: 3.15MP (2048 x 1536)

File ID: RiverScape1 Deep(Clr)V01R00 Milw.Prk.Estabrk.20140818-01-04 StdShrp.jpg

One roads leads to two and suddenly there is a junction for traffic and the scope for decision, revision and division til contemplation arrives at cognition and transmigration induced by transmutation, we can somewhat transmogrified continue our transportation.

The metamorphosis that awaits at the cross roads, or the junction of ways gives us a chance to look at the roads not chosen as different fates, or potential we have the chance to transmogrify into the pupa and to transfigure through the imago and transmute into the butterfly that flutters down the right road, or the best road, or the only road beating our wind evoking wings as we proceed and progress in due procession to our ultimate goal.

The Chthonic Hekate is underwhelmed in the underworld by the sparkle of the above and the dark intentions from below that make some of the sparkle. She knows the outcome of each of the ways ways available to us. She might like to be acknowledged, but that does not mean that she will share her knowledge, unfortunately she is happy to leave us in self-knowledge that is mis-knowledge. The Triple Form of Hekate is full within the three phases and yet there is also a Forth Form. Her light in the darkness includes sparking, lighting, spluttering and also none igniting. Her symbol of three Moon in reflected illumination is also a symbol brightly obscuring her other form within the Dark, or New Moon. She is happy in the dark with her unilluminated vision and her brightness in the Full Moon also knows the New Moon visible on the horizon for just a few moments. Called for and sought at the Trivia Three Ways and crossroads also asked for and answered within the home where all junctions are started and ended and where insight and protection are often most required. From the ignition of Fresh Flame to Full Light through Dying Embers and within Extinguished Ashes she is never absent always available if you call on her without subconscious desire, rather with intent to take her hand with resolve to lead you on towards where you aspire.

© PHH Sykes 2022

phhsykes@gmail.com

Este año venían como alquimistas. “Con el lema de la vida eterna y la transmutación de los metales, sentando las bases en la vida moderna”.

Pink camellia with white picotee, transmuted with LightRoom, Pixlr textures and frames, and Flickr Android app. The person who just bought the house with this garden delight had no idea what was growing in her yard, but she found it all very exciting and offered to cut a few for me. So sweet.

Magister of Transformations (Transmutations) - work in process...

photo by Alexey Geets

其中一位盂蘭勝會的 “雜工”在烈日當空下工作， 賺取每日港幣500 的收入。

One of the many ground support curator at the event, earning a daily wages of HK$500.

=====

The Ghost Festival, also known as the Hungry Ghost Festival, or Yu Lan is a traditional Chinese festival and holiday celebrated by Chinese in many countries. In the Chinese calendar (a lunisolar calendar), the Ghost Festival is on the 15th night of the seventh month (14th in southern China).

In Chinese tradition, the fifteenth day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar is called Ghost Day and the seventh month in general is regarded as the Ghost Month (鬼月), in which ghosts and spirits, including those of the deceased ancestors, come out from the lower realm.

Distinct from both the Qingming Festival (in spring) and Chung Yeung Festival (in autumn) in which living descendants pay homage to their deceased ancestors, on Ghost Day, the deceased are believed to visit the living.

On the fifteenth day the realms of Heaven and Hell and the realm of the living are open and both Taoists and Buddhists would perform rituals to transmute and absolve the sufferings of the deceased. Intrinsic to the Ghost Month is ancestor worship, where traditionally the filial piety of descendants extends to their ancestors even after their deaths.

Activities during the month would include preparing ritualistic food offerings, burning incense, and burning joss paper, a papier-mâché form of material items such as clothes, gold and other fine goods for the visiting spirits of the ancestors

=====

Follow my rediscovery of the Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival here:

七月盂蘭 Mid Summer Ghost Story

For my past visits to the Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival here:

Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival

More Chinese Temples images here:

Caves & Temples

=====

Transmutation by Arturo Gonzales and Maria Izaguirre, based on Mexican folk art

Chatsworth Park, Derbyshire

leiacale.wordpress.com/2018/02/19/transmutation/

猶如燈塔，這燈籠可以說是普渡燈，用意在於指引好兄弟方向，讓鬼魂能夠靠著燈篙找到方位，來到祭典會場。

This lantern is called the Light of Summon, day and night, sending invitation to the spiritual "good brothers" from far to join this salvation ceremony, the higher it hangs on the bamboo, the further it will summon and relatively, more oblation materials are to be prepared.

Therefore, the scale of the ceremony can be seen through the height of this lantern.

=====

The Ghost Festival, also known as the Hungry Ghost Festival, or Yu Lan is a traditional Chinese festival and holiday celebrated by Chinese in many countries. In the Chinese calendar (a lunisolar calendar), the Ghost Festival is on the 15th night of the seventh month (14th in southern China).

In Chinese tradition, the fifteenth day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar is called Ghost Day and the seventh month in general is regarded as the Ghost Month (鬼月), in which ghosts and spirits, including those of the deceased ancestors, come out from the lower realm.

Distinct from both the Qingming Festival (in spring) and Chung Yeung Festival (in autumn) in which living descendants pay homage to their deceased ancestors, on Ghost Day, the deceased are believed to visit the living.

On the fifteenth day the realms of Heaven and Hell and the realm of the living are open and both Taoists and Buddhists would perform rituals to transmute and absolve the sufferings of the deceased. Intrinsic to the Ghost Month is ancestor worship, where traditionally the filial piety of descendants extends to their ancestors even after their deaths.

Activities during the month would include preparing ritualistic food offerings, burning incense, and burning joss paper, a papier-mâché form of material items such as clothes, gold and other fine goods for the visiting spirits of the ancestors

=====

Follow my rediscovery of the Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival here:

七月盂蘭 Mid Summer Ghost Story

For my past visits to the Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival here:

Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival

More Chinese Temples images here:

Caves & Temples

=====

"TrackMania² Canyon"

-3500x3500 (Nvidia custom resolutions)

-TrackMania² Replay Editor

-ReShade (filmgrain)

Magister of Transformations (Transmutations) - work in process...

photo by Alexey Geets

from the series "transmuting news" which endeavours to find the optimum context for news to evolve. Maybe in this shape?

in the exhibition "Altering News"

27.4. -6.5.2018

Dachauer Wasserturm

transmutation

=====

The Ghost Festival, also known as the Hungry Ghost Festival, or Yu Lan is a traditional Chinese festival and holiday celebrated by Chinese in many countries. In the Chinese calendar (a lunisolar calendar), the Ghost Festival is on the 15th night of the seventh month (14th in southern China).

In Chinese tradition, the fifteenth day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar is called Ghost Day and the seventh month in general is regarded as the Ghost Month (鬼月), in which ghosts and spirits, including those of the deceased ancestors, come out from the lower realm.

Distinct from both the Qingming Festival (in spring) and Chung Yeung Festival (in autumn) in which living descendants pay homage to their deceased ancestors, on Ghost Day, the deceased are believed to visit the living.

On the fifteenth day the realms of Heaven and Hell and the realm of the living are open and both Taoists and Buddhists would perform rituals to transmute and absolve the sufferings of the deceased. Intrinsic to the Ghost Month is ancestor worship, where traditionally the filial piety of descendants extends to their ancestors even after their deaths.

Activities during the month would include preparing ritualistic food offerings, burning incense, and burning joss paper, a papier-mâché form of material items such as clothes, gold and other fine goods for the visiting spirits of the ancestors

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Follow my rediscovery of the Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival here:

七月盂蘭 Mid Summer Ghost Story

For my past visits to the Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival here:

Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival

More Chinese Temples images here:

Caves & Temples

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Magister of Transformations (Transmutations) - work in process...

photo by Alexey Geets

And transmuted or not, this is still my Staff!

Visit this location at Shambhala Sanctuary, Realm of Muses, Mystery & Magic in Second Life

Today is my birthday so I want to show my personal project which I worked from time to time just for fun. This is work in process and will be developed much more.

70cm tall, Ladoll Premix mixed with Darwi Roc.

Magister of Transformations (Transmutations)

All photo by Alexey Geets

13/52

Self-portrait; Transmutations, Inc.

Continuing my series about the connection between man and nature.

If you like my work Add my Facebook page: Link

Feedback appreciated.

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Copyright © Bassam Allam, All rights reserved. My work is not to be editted, distributted, sold or uploaded anywhere without my written expressed permission. You may not use, print, distribute, reproduce, alter, edit, or manipulate my work in any way, either in it's entirety, or in portion, without express written consent and license from me.

Dolan Springs, Arizona

Cinestill 50Daylight (Pushed 2 Stops)

Nikon F3

Nikkor 50mm 1.4

Processed @ Oscar's Photo Lab

The Painter of Black ~ Soulages ~ Musée d'Art Moderne ~ Paris ~ MjYj

MjYj© All rights reserved

Transmute: change in form, nature or substance. Gainesville Florida 9/3/24

Outrenoir de Soulages - En hommage à Léonard Cohen.

"Un jour je peignais, les différences de textures réfléchissaient plus ou moins faiblement la lumière et du sombre émanait une clarté, une lumière picturale dont le pouvoir émotionnel particulier animait mon désir de peindre. Mon instrument n'était plus le noir mais cette lumière secrète venue du noir. Pour ne pas la limiter à un phénomène optique j'ai inventé le mot Outrenoir, au-delà du noir, une lumière transmutée par le noir et, comme Outre-Rhin et Outre-Manche désignent un autre pays, Outrenoir désigne aussi un autre pays, un autre champ mental que celui du simple noir."

Ion Mystical Principles - The Spiritual Transmutation of Forms by Daniel Arrhakis (2022)

With the music : Atom Music Audio - Spirit | Epic Beautiful Hybrid Vocal Music

Thinking You're Invincible.

Смертельный пожар, ставящих под угрозу бесконечные последовательности злейшими проглотил раскаяние,

adrannau amherffaith yn manylu meddyliau trychinebau cywasgedig erchylltra dinistrio unigol yn,

healdan intemperate drunk characteristics of changing the present destructive sects fell silent appearance peevish,

ineffabiles inde offensus partes Iouis uesci quod indefinite utantur adiunctis unguibus peste,

rigorose erhöhten Ausbrüche verächtlichen Elend Launenhaftigkeit träumt abscheulichen Besorgungen gefolgt,

επιθυμητό προσθήκες σφοδρή επιθυμία ανεξέλεγκτη καύση φώτα ανήμπορους κατάκτηση δυσανάλογη επιχειρήματα εγγενή εγώ,

renforcer les connexions dominateurs transmutations plaisirs exclusifs mastering limites soulevées acquisitive,

irregolarità imbarazzato tentativi compulsivo gedwonge sfogo scandali accattivante insensibili trascendentale moda,

controverse de imagini care afectează impulsiv reevaluări simbolice fracodoþ fluiditate cerebral poezia predestinarea lui anxietate,

妙技スペクトル寓話攻撃修道院の儀式の攻撃交感神経路の翻訳の禁欲主義教訓アイデア.

Steve.D.Hammond.