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Photo by Joan Halifax
"Love and death" are the great gifts that are given to us; mostly they are passed on unopened."
Gisela received the immutable diagnosis of melanoma on September six. Ten days later, after letting go, moment after moment, she died with utter grace. Her body was in repose for three days and sangha members sat with her, most of us gazing into her luminous face, which stayed radiant even as we delivered her into her Fire Samadhi. She said to me: "This is easier than I thought." Later she remarked: "I am in another space." I asked her what kind of space? And she replied: "Spacious." When she died, rainbows appeared. In the temple, as we marked her passing with a full zendo and rich ceremony, the heavens opened up with rain, followed by one of fthe most vivid lightning storms I have ever seen. From the utter quiet of death to the fire of heavens, Gisela's passing has been an experienced marked by love, or in the words of Lama Lhodro Dorje: "brilliance, goodness and sadness." Her ashes will go with us to Tibet, taken by Dick and me, and to be left perhaps at Yilhun Lhatse, one of the most sacred lakes in Kham.
Here is a poem I read at the service last night, composed by Rengetsu, rerendered by me for our dear friend:
The leaves, _
in an act of faith,_
Let go of the trees_
And fall majestically._
Gisela let go _
Of this world _
So gracefully.
Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
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Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
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Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
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Farm at Bilitt, Toten, in winter.
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Tok en liten kjøretur før skole-henting i dag, og tror kanskje jeg fikk noen gode bilder? Regner med fotografiet ovenfor går igjennom hos Adobe Stock Photo, så ber om at evt. interesserte kjøper bildet av dem, eller aller helst direkte av PermaLiv. Men det går nok noe tid før det kommer opp hos Adobe, da godkjenningen deres går tregt, får godkjent et par-tre bilder nå og da, så frykter det kan ta hele 2021 før alle bildene mine er gjennomgått. For bildet av gamlefar som plukker epler i hagen lenger ned her, fikk jeg beskjed om at han først må undertegne en modell-erklæring, så får prøve å få ordnet dette i jula.
Vi går mot slutten av katastrofe-året 2020, hvor vårt fedreland og hele den vestlige sivilisasjon falt sammen med et brak, men så hadde da også hele rammeverket blitt markspist gjennom årtier, så annet var vel ikke å vente.
Nå, i ruinene av den vestlige sivilisasjon, er det viktigste vi kan gjøre å minnes, selv om de fleste helst ser ut til å ville glemme. Men PermaLiv skal gjøre sitt beste for å samle minner fra den skjønne tiden, med sine kamera(ter).
Som sivilisert menneske er det litt vanskelig å stå på bar bakke, uten noen sivilisasjon under føttene, i alle fall ikke noen høysivilisasjon. Men, foruten å samle minner, må vi også prøve å forstå hvordan det kunne gå så fryktelig galt? Her har The Catholic World Report mange gode analyser, hvor de nå igjen trår til med et dypdykk, for å forstå hvor vi sporet av:
- Atheism: The core of modern Western culture in the thought of Augusto del Noce
"Here Del Noce surprises us yet again. What emerged in the West was not the victory of liberty or democracy (as interpreted ad nauseum by contemporary media), but rather a “new totalitarianism,” along with a new atheism, in a sense more pernicious than those served up by the older atheistic totalitarianism in the East. To those accustomed to reduce democracy to the vote, Del Noce’s claim appears ludicrous. Yet again, Del Noce’s thought goes to the depths. The deepest roots of totalitarianism are not the mere absence of ballot boxes, but the curtailing of rationality, the ultimate denial of reason’s scope and depth. If there is no transcendent, immutable truth that our reason has access to, then there is no immutable ethics determined by reason, and political authority is in a position to define for itself the right and the wrong. Ethics and culture become subsumed by politics. Under this regime, anyone who attempts to formulate an argument against the state cannot do on any recognizably rational basis. The attempted criticism will be interpreted along the lines of the class/ race/ gender triumvirate. The state need not even get involved in “exposing” such critics. There is never any shortage of academics who are happy to do it; to reveal the class, race and gender biases of “conservatives”puts them on the cutting edge. This is the deepest root of totalitarianism, and Del Noce saw it progressively taking hold in the West. The only truth that exists is that defined by the scientistic-technocratic way of thinking that came to the fore once scientific positivism came to prevail." - Dr. Thomas R. Rourke
Gjentar:
"This is the deepest root of totalitarianism, and Del Noce saw it progressively taking hold in the West. The only truth that exists is that defined by the scientistic-technocratic way of thinking that came to the fore once scientific positivism came to prevail."
Kommunalsjefen i et nøtteskall! Han mener rett og slett at den eneste sannhet som eksisterer, er den som er definert av vitenskapelig-teknokratisk tenkning. Med andre ord har ikke PermaLiv rett til å tenke, eller i alle fall har ikke PermaLivs tenkning rett til å bli tatt på alvor, fordi PermaLiv ikke baserer seg på hva James Kalb definerer som scientisme. Men da denne tenkningen har som kjerne å erstatte Gud med mennesket og tradisjonene med scientisme, synes PermaLiv at satanisme er et bedre begrep på den tenkningen som bedrives nede i kommunen.
Nei, takke meg til tenketanken i Holmstadengen!
Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
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All things are possible up to a certain point. Then they become impossible.
Maybe that blue dot represents eating a ham and cheese baguette under the Eiffel Tower in three months. But as time approaches the now moment, the chance of it happening eventually falls outside of the cone of possibility.
History is a single wavering line, forever immutable.
Rabbit seems pretty relaxed and happy out here. She's been here since Thanksgiving of last year. She loves her yard and wants to be outside on sunny days. She's a fast runner and barks briefly and appropriately when her territory is challenged. (A bit of a change from our former, much-loved coonhounds.)
She and the Pyrs get along when Rabbit obeys the Immutable Laws of the Pasture, and that's most of the time.
Rabbit tried to touch Waccamaw the duck with her nose one day. Mouse appeared out of nowhere and decked her in about a tenth of a second. No bite, just a body slam and a brief grip around the neck.
Mouse let her right up and Rabbit seems to have learned her lesson. She and Mouse get along well otherwise.
She still has nightmares occasionally, and she's afraid of swinging doors. Even a one-ounce touch from a door makes her yelp. Maybe she got caught in a door once. She runs to me or Molly whenever she's scared of something.
She's a really sweet girl, always ready for a hug.
Rising from a black, polished base, is a 142-foot flagpole flanked by two winged figures, which Norwegian-born American naturalized sculptor Oskar J.W. Hansen calls the Winged Figures of the Republic. They express "the immutable calm of intellectual resolution, and the enormous power of trained physical strength, equally enthroned in placid triumph of scientific accomplishment."
The winged figures are 30 feet high. Their shells are 5/8-inch thick, and contain more than 4 tons of statuary bronze. The figures were formed from sand molds weighing 492 tons. The bronze that forms the shells was heated to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, and poured into the molds in one continuous, molten stream.
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Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
Great Food and Music Highly Recommended
Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
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Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Tonic Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
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"A scientific mode of thinking that imperiously surveys the world and which objectifies and dominates nature must be supplanted by a philosophy that understands the world as a dynamic, living organism 'pregnant' with myriad of potentialities. By refusing to sever the 'organic bonds' that link us immutably to external nature, we can come to the realization that we are part of an 'eternal body', a generalized flesh that can never expire. Evoking Bergson, Merleau-Ponty argues that our body reaches out to the stars and is co-extensive with the universe as a whole, thereby constituting a 'primordial We. As he writes: 'There is a kinship between the being of the earth and that of my body. This kinship extends to others, who appear to me as other bodies, to animals whom I understand as variants of my embodiment, and finally even to terrestrial bodies' (Merleau-Ponty, 1970: 122-3)" (Michael Gardiner)
Wise words that feel so true in my flesh. In city life where we have learned to believe so firmly in effectiveness, growth and traditional natural scientific thinking, it is easy to go along to treating nature, world and other people as "resources" and assuming an operative and instrumental attitude towards the world. Bigger perspective gets lost easily and life becomes narrow and self-centered. In nature things that seem so important in everyday city life return back to a vast and deep perspective where they belong: feeling the pulse of the world and losing oneself into the fabric of being that is the whole world makes reducing the world into our western everyday beliefs impossible. That's one of my reasons for loving being in nature and countryside.
An Idea Map created by Luther college student Cassandra Chalhoub on the book “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing” by Al Ries and Jack Trout.
One of the "Winged Figures of the Republic" at Boulder Dam. Sculpted by Norwegian born Oskar Hansen who interprets the figures as "They express the immutable calm of intellectual resolution, and the enormous power of trained physical strength, equally enthroned in placid triumph of scientific accomplishment."
Plus you can rub their toes for good luck...
HyperLedger is a project that is initiated by The Linux Foundation in collaboration with IBM. The aim of the project is to develop an open source platform for #Blockchain development. #HyperLegder Fabric is the codebase that combines the blockchain technology with the execution of smart contracts. The distributed ledger technology of blockchain along with transparency and immutability is ideal to increase the efficiency and security of various industries like supply chain, logistics, financial payments, safe record keeping and so on. www.capitalinvestor.biz/what-is-hyperledger/
Το 375 μ.Χ. μία σεισμική δόνηση απέκοψε τη χερσόνησο δημιουργώντας ένα βράχο που έμελλε να μείνει στη θάλασσα αγέρωχος και αναλλοίωτος στην αιωνιότητα, φυσικό φρούριο, προστάτης ψυχών, διακηρυγμένος πόθος των μεγαλύτερων αυτοκρατοριών που γνώρισε ο πλανήτης. Αυτός ο βράχος, κάποτε μονοπάτι του Μυκηναϊκού και του Μινωικού πολιτισμού, χάρη στη μία και μοναδική πρόσβαση (μόνη έμβαση) που τον ενώνει με την Πελοπόννησο ονομάστηκε Μονεμβάσια.
In 375 AD an earthquake cut off the peninsula, creating a rock that was to remain at sea cocky and immutable in eternity, a natural fortress, professed desire of the largest empires the world has known. This rock, sometimes the path of the Mycenaean and Minoan culture, through a single access who joins the Peloponnesus, called Monemvasia.
The Course of Empire is a five-part series of paintings created by Thomas Cole in the years 1833–36. It is notable in part for reflecting popular American sentiments of the times, when many saw pastoralism as the ideal phase of human civilization, fearing that empire would lead to gluttony and inevitable decay. The theme of cycles is also one that Cole returned to frequently, such as in his The Voyage of Life series.
The series was acquired by The New-York Historical Society in 1858 as a gift of the New-York Gallery of Fine Arts and comprises the following works: The Course of Empire – The Savage State; The Course of Empire – The Arcadian or Pastoral State; The Course of Empire – The Consummation of Empire; The Course of Empire – Destruction; and The Course of Empire – Desolation.
The series of paintings depicts the growth and fall of an imaginary city, situated on the lower end of a river valley, near its meeting with a bay of the sea. The valley is distinctly identifiable in each of the paintings, in part because of an unusual landmark: a large boulder is precariously situated atop a crag overlooking the valley. Some critics believe this is meant to contrast the immutability of the earth with the transience of man.
Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
Met up with some friends, some of which I had only "met" online, to see two unusual orchid spikes, with this unusual interflorance.
Very striking plants, and well worth the scramble to and back from their well-hidden location.
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Pelorism is the term, said to be first used by Charles Darwin, for the formation of 'peloric flowers'[1] which botanically is the abnormal production of radially symmetrical (actinomorphic) flowers in a species that usually produces bilaterally symmetrical (zygomorphic) flowers.[2] These flowers are spontaneous floral symmetry mutants. The term epanody is also applied to this phenomenon.[3] Bilaterally symmetrical (zygomorphic) flowers are known to have evolved several times from radially symmetrical (actinomorphic) flowers, these changes being linked to increasing specialisation in pollinators.
elorism has been of interest since a five-spurred variety of the common toad-flax (Linaria vulgaris L.) was first discovered in 1742 by a young Uppsala botanist on an island in the Stockholm archipelago and then in 1744 described by Carl Linnaeus. The mutant, spreading vegetatively, had five spurs rather than the usual one; however, the rest of the plant was normal. Linnaeus found that this variety was contrary to his concept that genera and species had universally arisen through an act of "original creation and remained unchanged since then". Linnaeus called this type of mutant a 'Peloria', the Greek for 'monster' or 'prodigy', because of the huge implications for the then current belief that species were immutable. He wrote that "This is certainly no less remarkable than if a cow were to give birth to a calf with a wolf's head." The peloric plant fascinated Linnaeus to the extent that he grew it at his summer residence in Hammarby and his explanation for it was that a toad-flax had been pollinated by another species.[5] Charles Darwin, Charles Victor Naudin, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Hugo de Vries amongst others analysed and wrote about.
Peloria derives from both new Latin and from the Greek word pelōros, meaning 'monstrous'
Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
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Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
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Previously, on the last episode of Sofa Free:
Sofa Free: That isn't a sofa!! That's a seat!
Me: noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Sofa Free: Find me a free-range sofa!
Me: Yes sir!
Near roadwork in San Francisco, you see people driving sofas down the street all the time. They've got little retractable excavator arms hidden under the cushions that they can use to dig up the road, and can be quickly converted for recreational use when break time comes around.
Taken with the immutable bendycam 19.
Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band
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© david morris dtmphotography.co.uk
Llandrindod Wells is an amalgam of two very different settlements. Early Llandrindod in the
form of the old parish church and Llandrindod Hall occupies a spur sandwiched between
valleys that drop down towards the Ithon from the high ground to the east. One kilometre to
the north-west on lower ground which has been ridged and hollowed by several streams is the
Victorian and modern creation of Llandrindod Wells.
This brief report examines Llandrindod’s emergence and development up to 1750. For the
more recent history of the settlement, it will be necessary to look at other sources of
information and particularly at the origins and nature of the buildings within it.
The accompanying map is offered as an indicative guide to the historic settlement. The
continuous line defining the historic core offers a visual interpretation of the area within
which the settlement developed, based on our interpretation of the evidence currently to hand.
It is not an immutable boundary line, and may need to be modified as new discoveries are
made. The map does not show those areas or buildings that are statutorily designated, nor
does it pick out those sites or features that are specifically mentioned in the text.
We have not referenced the sources that have been examined to produce this report, but that
information will be available in the Historic Environment Record (HER) maintained by the
Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust. Numbers in brackets are primary record numbers used in
the HER to provide information that is specific to individual sites and features. These can be
accessed on-line through the Archwilio website (www.archwilio.org.uk).
History of development
The name refers to the 'Church of the Trinity', but the former name of the church and its
parish was Llandow in 1283 and Lando in 1291 meaning ‘church of God’. Llandynddod
appears only in 1535, but the change to the Trinity is one that can be recognised in several
other churches in Wales.
The earlier focus occupies a spur overlooking this area. Whether the church represents an
early medieval foundation is unclear. The 'llan' prefix might suggest this but there is no
corroborative evidence. Its later history, too, is uncharted. The occurrence of platforms
opposite the church hints at more than just an isolated church, but the evidence as yet is not
compelling.
Llandrindod Hall by the old church was converted into a large hotel in about 1749, but it
functioned for less than forty years and was demolished by its proprietor, reportedly because
of its unsavoury clientele. It was replaced in the 19th century by a farmstead.
Reportedly the origins of the spa town go back to the late 17th century. Cae-bach Chapel
(30000; Grade II listing) in Brookland Road was founded in 1715. Saline and sulphur springs
were discovered in the 1730s and these were noted in various publications in the following
twenty years. But the emergence of Llandrindod Wells is essentially a 19th-century
phenomenon and thus falls outside the scope of this report, although in expanding over
Llanerch Common, the town enveloped the Llanerch Inn, which has some 17th-century
features.
The heritage to 1750
The old parish church of Holy Trinity (16027) lies more than 1km south-east of the town and
was sited on the edge of an extensive tract of common upland. It originally had a single
chamber of 13th/14th-century build with a south porch and small west spire. It was completely
rebuilt in 1894, after the archdeacon of Llandrindod had removed the roof in order to
'encourage' townspeople to attend the new church in the town. The old church houses several
18th and 19th-century monuments but its 'sheel-na-gig' (5960) uncovered during building work
in 1894 and presumably of medieval origin, is now in the local museum.
The churchyard (16199) is irregular in design, its shape on the west and south dictated by the
natural topography. The Tithe map depicts a smaller enclosure around the church, a short
distance away from the road and no longer distinguishable at ground level, but may not be an
accurate representation. A holy well (81710) lay close to the churchyard, though the story
attached to it point to a healing well.
The spur on which the old church sits is naturally irregular with rock outcrops protruding.
North of the church on land that was common until the 19th century are several flat terraces
some of which are certainly artificial constructions that probably supported dwellings
(16094); there is at least one authentic platform and perhaps two others, together with
enclosure boundaries and a trackway. Further earthworks (16095), the most obvious a low
curvilinear bank of unknown function, are apparent just to the south-east of Llandrindod Hall
(30020).
Capel Maelog (2055) which was excavated between 1984 and 1987 lay off Cefnllys Lane less
than 1km east of the town centre. Its foundations have now been reconstructed near County
Hall.
Information can be found here
Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
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Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
Great Food and Music Highly Recommended
Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
Great Food and Music Highly Recommended
Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
Light, endless Light! Darkness has room no more.
Life's ignorant gulfs give up their secrecy:
The huge inconscient depths unplumbed before
Lie glimmering in vast expectancy
Light, timeless Light immutable and apart!
The holy sealed mysterious doors unclose.
Light, burning Light from the Infinite's diamond heart
Quivers in my heart where blooms the deathless rose.
Light in its rapture leaping through the nerves!
Light, brooding Light! Each smitten passionate cell
In a mute blaze of ecstasy preserves
A living sense of the Imperishable.
I move in an ocean of stupendous Light
Joining my depths to His eternal height.
Light by Sri Aurobindo
"Here is a true riverworld. It pervades everything, provides nearly everything, and although constantly moving is immutable. It is THE force of nature."
Journal excerpt, June 1999
Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology, published in 1877, is a book of esoteric philosophy and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's first major self-published major work text and a key doctrine in her self-founded Theosophical movement.It is nineteen centuries since, as we are told, the night of Heathenism and Paganism was first dispelled by the divine light of Christianity; and two-and-a-half centuries since the bright lamp of Modern Science began to shine on the darkness of the ignorance of the ages. Within these respective epochs, we are required to believe, the true moral and intellectual progress of the race has occurred. The ancient philosophers were well enough for their respective generations, but they were illiterate as compared with modern men of science. The ethics of Paganism perhaps met the wants of the uncultivated people of antiquity, but not until the advent of the luminous “Star of Bethlehem,” was the true road to moral perfection and the way to salvation made plain. Of old, brutishness was the rule, virtue and spirituality the exception. Now, the dullest may read the will of God in His revealed word; men have every incentive to be good, and are constantly becoming better.
This is the assumption; what are the facts? On the one hand an unspiritual, dogmatic, too often debauched clergy; a host of sects, and three warring great religions; discord instead of union, dogmas without proofs, sensation-loving preachers, and wealth and pleasure-seeking parishioners’ hypocrisy and bigotry, begotten by the tyrannical exigencies of respectability, the rule of the day, sincerity and real piety exceptional. On the other hand, scientific hypotheses built on sand; no accord upon a single question; rancorous quarrels and jealousy; a general drift into materialism. A death-grapple of Science with Theology for infallibility—“a conflict of ages.”
At Rome, the self-styled seat of Christianity, the putative successor to the chair of Peter is undermining social order with his invisible but omnipresent net-work of bigoted agents, and incites them to revolutionize Europe for his temporal as well as spiritual supremacy. We see him who calls himself the “Vicar of Christ,” fraternizing with the anti-Christian Moslem against another Christian nation, publicly invoking the blessing of God upon the arms of those who have for centuries withstood, with[Pg x] fire and sword, the pretensions of his Christ to Godhood! At Berlin—one of the great seats of learning—professors of modern exact sciences, turning their backs on the boasted results of enlightenment of the post-Galileonian period, are quietly snuffing out the candle of the great Florentine; seeking, in short, to prove the heliocentric system, and even the earth’s rotation, but the dreams of deluded scientists, Newton a visionary, and all past and present astronomers but clever calculators of unverifiable problems.[4]
Between these two conflicting Titans—Science and Theology—is a bewildered public, fast losing all belief in man’s personal immortality, in a deity of any kind, and rapidly descending to the level of a mere animal existence. Such is the picture of the hour, illumined by the bright noon-day sun of this Christian and scientific era!
Would it be strict justice to condemn to critical lapidation the most humble and modest of authors for entirely rejecting the authority of both these combatants? Are we not bound rather to take as the true aphorism of this century, the declaration of Horace Greeley: “I accept unreservedly the views of no man, living or dead”?[5] Such, at all events, will be our motto, and we mean that principle to be our constant guide throughout this work.
Among the many phenomenal outgrowths of our century, the strange creed of the so-called Spiritualists has arisen amid the tottering ruins of self-styled revealed religions and materialistic philosophies; and yet it alone offers a possible last refuge of compromise between the two. That this unexpected ghost of pre-Christian days finds poor welcome from our sober and positive century, is not surprising. Times have strangely changed; and it is but recently that a well-known Brooklyn preacher pointedly remarked in a sermon, that could Jesus come back and behave in the streets of New York, as he did in those of Jerusalem, he would find himself confined in the prison of the Tombs.[6] What sort of welcome, then, could Spiritualism ever expect? True enough, the weird stranger seems neither attractive nor promising at first sight. Shapeless and uncouth, like an infant attended by seven nurses, it is coming out of its teens lame and mutilated. The name of its enemies is legion; its friends and protectors are a handful. But what of that? When was ever truth accepted à priori? Because the champions of Spiritualism have in their fanaticism magnified its qualities, and remained blind to its imperfections, that gives no excuse to doubt its reality. A forgery is impossible when we have no model to forge after. The fanaticism of Spiritualists is itself[Pg xi] a proof of the genuineness and possibility of their phenomena. They give us facts that we may investigate, not assertions that we must believe without proof. Millions of reasonable men and women do not so easily succumb to collective hallucination. And so, while the clergy, following their own interpretations of the Bible, and science its self-made Codex of possibilities in nature, refuse it a fair hearing, real science and true religion are silent, and gravely wait further developments.
The whole question of phenomena rests on the correct comprehension of old philosophies. Whither, then, should we turn, in our perplexity, but to the ancient sages, since, on the pretext of superstition, we are refused an explanation by the modern? Let us ask them what they know of genuine science and religion; not in the matter of mere details, but in all the broad conception of these twin truths—so strong in their unity, so weak when divided. Besides, we may find our profit in comparing this boasted modern science with ancient ignorance; this improved modern theology with the “Secret doctrines” of the ancient universal religion. Perhaps we may thus discover a neutral ground whence we can reach and profit by both.
It is the Platonic philosophy, the most elaborate compend of the abstruse systems of old India, that can alone afford us this middle ground. Although twenty-two and a quarter centuries have elapsed since the death of Plato, the great minds of the world are still occupied with his writings. He was, in the fullest sense of the word, the world’s interpreter. And the greatest philosopher of the pre-Christian era mirrored faithfully in his works the spiritualism of the Vedic philosophers who lived thousands of years before himself, and its metaphysical expression. Vyasa, Djeminy, Kapila, Vrihaspati, Sumati, and so many others, will be found to have transmitted their indelible imprint through the intervening centuries upon Plato and his school. Thus is warranted the inference that to Plato and the ancient Hindu sages was alike revealed the same wisdom. So surviving the shock of time, what can this wisdom be but divine and eternal?
Plato taught justice as subsisting in the soul of its possessor and his greatest good. “Men, in proportion to their intellect, have admitted his transcendent claims.” Yet his commentators, almost with one consent, shrink from every passage which implies that his metaphysics are based on a solid foundation, and not on ideal conceptions.
But Plato could not accept a philosophy destitute of spiritual aspirations; the two were at one with him. For the old Grecian sage there was a single object of attainment: REAL KNOWLEDGE. He considered those only to be genuine philosophers, or students of truth, who possess the knowledge of the really-existing, in opposition to the mere seeing; of[Pg xii] the always-existing, in opposition to the transitory; and of that which exists permanently, in opposition to that which waxes, wanes, and is developed and destroyed alternately. “Beyond all finite existences and secondary causes, all laws, ideas, and principles, there is an INTELLIGENCE or MIND [νοῦς, nous, the spirit], the first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which all other ideas are grounded; the Monarch and Lawgiver of the universe; the ultimate substance from which all things derive their being and essence, the first and efficient Cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty, and excellency, and goodness, which pervades the universe—who is called, by way of preëminence and excellence, the Supreme Good, the God (ὁ θεός) ‘the God over all’ (ὁ επι πασι θεός).”[7] He is not the truth nor the intelligence, but “the father of it.” Though this eternal essence of things may not be perceptible by our physical senses, it may be apprehended by the mind of those who are not wilfully obtuse. “To you,” said Jesus to his elect disciples, “it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but to them [the πολλοὶ] it is not given; ... therefore speak I to them in parables [or allegories]; because they seeing, see not, and hearing, they hear not, neither do they understand.”[8]
The philosophy of Plato, we are assured by Porphyry, of the Neo-platonic School was taught and illustrated in the MYSTERIES. Many have questioned and even denied this; and Lobeck, in his Aglaophomus, has gone to the extreme of representing the sacred orgies as little more than an empty show to captivate the imagination. As though Athens and Greece would for twenty centuries and more have repaired every fifth year to Eleusis to witness a solemn religious farce! Augustine, the papa-bishop of Hippo, has resolved such assertions. He declares that the doctrines of the Alexandrian Platonists were the original esoteric doctrines of the first followers of Plato, and describes Plotinus as a Plato resuscitated. He also explains the motives of the great philosopher for veiling the interior sense of what he taught.[9]
[Pg xiii]
As to the myths, Plato declares in the Gorgias and the Phædon that they were the vehicles of great truths well worth the seeking. But commentators are so little en rapport with the great philosopher as to be compelled to acknowledge that they are ignorant where “the doctrinal ends, and the mythical begins.” Plato put to flight the popular superstition concerning magic and dæmons, and developed the exaggerated notions of the time into rational theories and metaphysical conceptions. Perhaps these would not quite stand the inductive method of reasoning established by Aristotle; nevertheless they are satisfactory in the highest degree to those who apprehend the existence of that higher faculty of insight or intuition, as affording a criterion for ascertaining truth.
Basing all his doctrines upon the presence of the Supreme Mind, Plato taught that the nous, spirit, or rational soul of man, being “generated by the Divine Father,” possessed a nature kindred, or even homogeneous, with the Divinity, and was capable of beholding the eternal realities. This faculty of contemplating reality in a direct and immediate manner belongs to God alone; the aspiration for this knowledge constitutes what is really meant by philosophy—the love of wisdom. The love of truth is inherently the love of good; and so predominating over every desire of the soul, purifying it and assimilating it to the divine, thus governing every act of the individual, it raises man to a participation and communion with Divinity, and restores him to the likeness of God. “This flight,” says Plato in the Theætetus, “consists in becoming like God, and this assimilation is the becoming just and holy with wisdom.”
The basis of this assimilation is always asserted to be the preëxistence of the spirit or nous. In the allegory of the chariot and winged steeds, given in the Phædrus, he represents the psychical nature as composite and two-fold; the thumos, or epithumetic part, formed from the substances of the world of phenomena; and the θυμοειδές, thumoeides, the essence of which is linked to the eternal world. The present earth-life is a fall and punishment. The soul dwells in “the grave which we call the body,” and in its incorporate state, and previous to the discipline of education, the noëtic or spiritual element is “asleep.” Life is thus a dream, rather than a reality. Like the captives in the subterranean cave, described in The Republic, the back is turned to the light, we perceive only the shadows of objects, and think them the actual realities. Is not this[Pg xiv] the idea of Maya, or the illusion of the senses in physical life, which is so marked a feature in Buddhistical philosophy? But these shadows, if we have not given ourselves up absolutely to the sensuous nature, arouse in us the reminiscence of that higher world that we once inhabited. “The interior spirit has some dim and shadowy recollection of its antenatal state of bliss, and some instinctive and proleptic yearnings for its return.” It is the province of the discipline of philosophy to disinthrall it from the bondage of sense, and raise it into the empyrean of pure thought, to the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty. “The soul,” says Plato, in the Theætetus, “cannot come into the form of a man if it has never seen the truth. This is a recollection of those things which our soul formerly saw when journeying with Deity, despising the things which we now say are, and looking up to that which REALLY IS. Wherefore the nous, or spirit, of the philosopher (or student of the higher truth) alone is furnished with wings; because he, to the best of his ability, keeps these things in mind, of which the contemplation renders even Deity itself divine. By making the right use of these things remembered from the former life, by constantly perfecting himself in the perfect mysteries, a man becomes truly perfect—an initiate into the diviner wisdom.”
Hence we may understand why the sublimer scenes in the Mysteries were always in the night. The life of the interior spirit is the death of the external nature; and the night of the physical world denotes the day of the spiritual. Dionysus, the night-sun, is, therefore, worshipped rather than Helios, orb of day. In the Mysteries were symbolized the preëxistent condition of the spirit and soul, and the lapse of the latter into earth-life and Hades, the miseries of that life, the purification of the soul, and its restoration to divine bliss, or reünion with spirit. Theon, of Smyrna, aptly compares the philosophical discipline to the mystic rites: “Philosophy,” says he, “may be called the initiation into the true arcana, and the instruction in the genuine Mysteries. There are five parts of this initiation: I., the previous purification; II., the admission to participation in the arcane rites; III., the epoptic revelation; IV., the investiture or enthroning; V.—the fifth, which is produced from all these, is friendship and interior communion with God, and the enjoyment of that felicity which arises from intimate converse with divine beings.... Plato denominates the epopteia, or personal view, the perfect contemplation of things which are apprehended intuitively, absolute truths and ideas. He also considers the binding of the head and crowning as analogous to the authority which any one receives from his instructors, of leading others into the same contemplation. The fifth gradation is the most perfect felicity arising from hence, and, according[Pg xv] to Plato, an assimilation to divinity as far as is possible to human beings.”[10]
Such is Platonism. “Out of Plato,” says Ralph Waldo Emerson, “come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought.” He absorbed the learning of his times—of Greece from Philolaus to Socrates; then of Pythagoras in Italy; then what he could procure from Egypt and the East. He was so broad that all philosophy, European and Asiatic, was in his doctrines; and to culture and contemplation he added the nature and qualities of the poet.
The followers of Plato generally adhered strictly to his psychological theories. Several, however, like Xenocrates, ventured into bolder speculations. Speusippus, the nephew and successor of the great philosopher, was the author of the Numerical Analysis, a treatise on the Pythagorean numbers. Some of his speculations are not found in the written Dialogues; but as he was a listener to the unwritten lectures of Plato, the judgment of Enfield is doubtless correct, that he did not differ from his master. He was evidently, though not named, the antagonist whom Aristotle criticised, when professing to cite the argument of Plato against the doctrine of Pythagoras, that all things were in themselves numbers, or rather, inseparable from the idea of numbers. He especially endeavored to show that the Platonic doctrine of ideas differed essentially from the Pythagorean, in that it presupposed numbers and magnitudes to exist apart from things. He also asserted that Plato taught that there could be no real knowledge, if the object of that knowledge was not carried beyond or above the sensible.
But Aristotle was no trustworthy witness. He misrepresented Plato, and he almost caricatured the doctrines of Pythagoras. There is a canon of interpretation, which should guide us in our examinations of every philosophical opinion: “The human mind has, under the necessary operation of its own laws, been compelled to entertain the same fundamental ideas, and the human heart to cherish the same feelings in all ages.” It is certain that Pythagoras awakened the deepest intellectual sympathy of his age, and that his doctrines exerted a powerful influence upon the mind of Plato. His cardinal idea was that there existed a permanent principle of unity beneath the forms, changes, and other phenomena of the universe. Aristotle asserted that he taught that “numbers are the first principles of all entities.” Ritter has expressed the opinion that the formula of Pythagoras should be taken symbolically, which is doubtless correct. Aristotle goes on to associate these numbers with the “forms” and “ideas” of Plato. He even declares that Plato said:[Pg xvi] “forms are numbers,” and that “ideas are substantial existences—real beings.” Yet Plato did not so teach. He declared that the final cause was the Supreme Goodness—το ἀγαθόν. “Ideas are objects of pure conception for the human reason, and they are attributes of the Divine Reason.”[11] Nor did he ever say that “forms are numbers.” What he did say may be found in the Timæus: “God formed things as they first arose according to forms and numbers.”
It is recognized by modern science that all the higher laws of nature assume the form of quantitative statement. This is perhaps a fuller elaboration or more explicit affirmation of the Pythagorean doctrine. Numbers were regarded as the best representations of the laws of harmony which pervade the cosmos. We know too that in chemistry the doctrine of atoms and the laws of combination are actually and, as it were, arbitrarily defined by numbers. As Mr. W. Archer Butler has expressed it: “The world is, then, through all its departments, a living arithmetic in its development, a realized geometry in its repose.”
The key to the Pythagorean dogmas is the general formula of unity in multiplicity, the one evolving the many and pervading the many. This is the ancient doctrine of emanation in few words. Even the apostle Paul accepted it as true. “Εξ αυτοὺ, και δι᾽ αυτοῦ, και εις αυτὸν τὰ πάντα”—Out of him and through him and in him all things are. This, as we can see by the following quotation, is purely Hindu and Brahmanical:
“When the dissolution—Pralaya—had arrived at its term, the great Being—Para-Atma or Para-Purusha—the Lord existing through himself, out of whom and through whom all things were, and are and will be ... resolved to emanate from his own substance the various creatures” (Manava-Dharma-Sastra, book i., slokas 6 and 7).
The mystic Decad 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 is a way of expressing this idea. The One is God, the Two, matter; the Three, combining Monad and Duad, and partaking of the nature of both, is the phenomenal world; the Tetrad, or form of perfection, expresses the emptiness of all; and the Decad, or sum of all, involves the entire cosmos. The universe is the combination of a thousand elements, and yet the expression of a single spirit—a chaos to the sense, a cosmos to the reason.
The whole of this combination of the progression of numbers in the idea of creation is Hindu. The Being existing through himself, Swayambhu or Swayambhuva, as he is called by some, is one. He emanates from himself the creative faculty, Brahma or Purusha (the divine male), and the one becomes Two; out of this Duad, union of the purely[Pg xvii] intellectual principle with the principle of matter, evolves a third, which is Viradj, the phenomenal world. It is out of this invisible and incomprehensible trinity, the Brahmanic Trimurty, that evolves the second triad which represents the three faculties—the creative, the conservative, and the transforming. These are typified by Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, but are again and ever blended into one. Unity, Brahma, or as the Vedas called him, Tridandi, is the god triply manifested, which gave rise to the symbolical Aum or the abbreviated Trimurty. It is but under this trinity, ever active and tangible to all our senses, that the invisible and unknown Monas can manifest itself to the world of mortals. When he becomes Sarira, or he who puts on a visible form, he typifies all the principles of matter, all the germs of life, he is Purusha, the god of the three visages, or triple power, the essence of the Vedic triad. “Let the Brahmas know the sacred Syllable (Aum), the three words of the Savitri, and read the Vedas daily” (Manu, book iv., sloka 125).
“After having produced the universe, He whose power is incomprehensible vanished again, absorbed in the Supreme Soul.... Having retired into the primitive darkness, the great Soul remains within the unknown, and is void of all form....
“When having again reünited the subtile elementary principles, it introduces itself into either a vegetable or animal seed, it assumes at each a new form.”
“It is thus that, by an alternative waking and rest, the Immutable Being causes to revive and die eternally all the existing creatures, active and inert” (Manu, book i., sloka 50, and others).
He who has studied Pythagoras and his speculations on the Monad, which, after having emanated the Duad retires into silence and darkness, and thus creates the Triad can realize whence came the philosophy of the great Samian Sage, and after him that of Socrates and Plato.
Speusippus seems to have taught that the psychical or thumetic soul was immortal as well as the spirit or rational soul, and further on we will show his reasons. He also—like Philolaus and Aristotle, in his disquisitions upon the soul—makes of æther an element; so that there were five principal elements to correspond with the five regular figures in Geometry. This became also a doctrine of the Alexandrian school.[12] Indeed, there was much in the doctrines of the Philaletheans which did not appear in the works of the older Platonists, but was doubtless taught in substance by the philosopher himself, but with his usual reticence was not committed to writing as being too arcane for promiscuous publication. Speusippus and Xenocrates after him, held, like their great master, that the[Pg xviii] anima mundi, or world-soul, was not the Deity, but a manifestation. Those philosophers never conceived of the One as an animate nature.[13] The original One did not exist, as we understand the term. Not till he had united with the many—emanated existence (the monad and duad) was a being produced. The τίμιον, honored—the something manifested, dwells in the centre as in the circumference, but it is only the reflection of the Deity—the World-Soul.[14] In this doctrine we find the spirit of esoteric Buddhism.
A man’s idea of God, is that image of blinding light that he sees reflected in the concave mirror of his own soul, and yet this is not, in very truth, God, but only His reflection. His glory is there, but, it is the light of his own Spirit that the man sees, and it is all he can bear to look upon. The clearer the mirror, the brighter will be the divine image. But the external world cannot be witnessed in it at the same moment. In the ecstatic Yogin, in the illuminated Seer, the spirit will shine like the noon-day sun; in the debased victim of earthly attraction, the radiance has disappeared, for the mirror is obscured with the stains of matter. Such men deny their God, and would willingly deprive humanity of soul at one blow.
Professor Max Müller sees in this Mandala “at last, something like a theogony, though full of contradictions.”[36] The alchemists, kabalists, and students of mystic philosophy will find therein a perfectly defined system of Evolution in the Cosmogony of a people who lived a score of thousands of years before our era. They will find in it, moreover, a perfect identity of thought and even doctrine with the Hermetic philosophy, and also that of Pythagoras and Plato.
In Evolution, as it is now beginning to be understood, there is supposed to be in all matter an impulse to take on a higher form—a supposition clearly expressed by Manu and other Hindu philosophers of the highest antiquity. The philosopher’s tree illustrates it in the case of the zinc solution. The controversy between the followers of this school and the Emanationists may be briefly stated thus: The Evolutionist stops all inquiry at the borders of “the Unknowable;” the Emanationist believes that nothing can be evolved—or, as the word means, unwombed or born—except it has first been involved, thus indicating that life is from a spiritual potency above the whole.
Fakirs.—Religious devotees in East India. They are generally attached to Brahmanical pagodas and follow the laws of Manu. A strictly religious fakir will go absolutely naked, with the exception of a small piece of linen called dhoti, around his loins. They wear their hair long, and it serves them as a pocket, as they stick in it various objects—such as a pipe, a small flute called vagudah, the sounds of which throw the serpents into a cataleptic torpor, and sometimes their bamboo-stick (about one foot long) with the seven mystical knots on it. This magical stick, or rather rod, the fakir receives from his guru on the day of his initiation, together with the three mantrams, which are communicated to him “mouth to ear.” No fakir will be seen without this powerful adjunct of his calling. It is, as they all claim, the divining rod, the cause of every occult phenomenon produced by them.[37] The Brahmanical fakir is entirely[Pg xxxiii] distinct from the Mussulman mendicant of India, also called fakirs in some parts of the British territory.
Hermetist.—From Hermes, the god of Wisdom, known in Egypt, Syria, and Phœnicia as Thoth, Tat, Adad, Seth, and Sat-an (the latter not to be taken in the sense applied to it by Moslems and Christians), and in Greece as Kadmus. The kabalists identify him with Adam Kadmon, the first manifestation of the Divine Power, and with Enoch. There were two Hermes: the elder was the Trismegistus, and the second an emanation, or “permutation” of himself; the friend and instructor of Isis and Osiris. Hermes is the god of the priestly wisdom, like Mazeus.
Hierophant.—Discloser of sacred learning. The Old Man, the Chief of the Adepts at the initiations, who explained the arcane knowledge to the neophytes, bore this title. In Hebrew and Chaldaic the term was Peter, or opener, discloser; hence, the Pope, as the successor of the hierophant of the ancient Mysteries, sits in the Pagan chair of “St. Peter.” The vindictiveness of the Catholic Church toward the alchemists, and to arcane and astronomical science, is explained by the fact that such knowledge was the ancient prerogative of the hierophant, or representative of Peter, who kept the mysteries of life and death. Men like Bruno, Galileo, and Kepler, therefore, and even Cagliostro, trespassed on the preserves of the Church, and were accordingly murdered.
www.gutenberg.org/files/68705/68705-h/68705-h.htm
The work has often been criticized as a plagiarized occult work, with scholars noting how Blavatsky extensively copied from many sources popular among occultists at the time.[1] Isis Unveiled is nevertheless also understood by modern scholars to be a milestone in the history of Western esotericism.[2][3][4][5][6][7]
Overview
The work was originally entitled The Veil of Isis, a title which remains on the heading of each page, but had to be renamed once Blavatsky discovered that this title had already been used for an 1861 Rosicrucian work by W. W. Reade. Isis Unveiled is divided into two volumes. Volume I, The "Infallibility" of Modern Science, discusses occult science and the hidden and unknown forces of nature, exploring such subjects as forces, elementals, psychic phenomena, and the Inner and Outer Man. Volume II, Theology, discusses the similarity of Christian scripture to Eastern religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, the Vedas, and Zoroastrianism. It follows the Renaissance notion of prisca theologia, in that all these religions purportedly descend from a common source; the ancient "Wisdom-Religion".[7] Blavatsky writes in the preface that Isis Unveiled is "a plea for the recognition of the Hermetic philosophy, the anciently universal Wisdom-Religion, as the only possible key to the Absolute in science and theology."[8]
Isis Unveiled is argued by many modern scholars such as Bruce F. Campbell and Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke to be a milestone in the history of Western Esotericism.[2] Blavatsky gathered a number of themes central to the occult tradition—perennial philosophy, a Neo-Platonic emanationist cosmology, adepts, esoteric Christianity—and reinterpreted them in relation to current developments in science and new knowledge of non-Western faiths. In doing so, Isis Unveiled reflected many contemporary controversies—such as Darwin's theories on evolution and their impact on religion—and engaged in a discussion that appealed to intelligent individuals interested in religion but alienated from conventional Western forms.[3] Blavatsky's combination of original insights, backed by scholarly and scientific sources, accomplished a major statement of modern occultism's defiance of materialist science.
In later theosophical works some of the doctrines originally stated in Isis Unveiled appeared in a significantly altered form,[note 1] drawing out confusion among readers and even causing some to perceive contradiction. Specifically, the few and—according to many—ambiguous statements on reincarnation as well as the threefold conception of man as body, soul and spirit of Isis Unveiled stand in contrast to the elaborate and definite conception of reincarnation as well as the sevenfold conception of man in The Secret Doctrine (1888). Blavatsky later asserted the correctness of her statements on reincarnation and the constitution of man in Isis Unveiled, attributing the resulting confusion and alleged contradictions to the more superficial or simplified conceptions of the ideas in Isis Unveiled compared to those of later works.[note 2][note 3]
Modern Theosophists hold the book as a revealed work dictated to Blavatsky by Theosophy's Masters.[12]
Cybele (/ˈsɪbəliː/ SIB-ə-lee;[1] Phrygian: Matar Kubileya/Kubeleya "Kubileya/Kubeleya Mother", perhaps "Mountain Mother";[2] Lydian Kuvava; Greek: Κυβέλη Kybélē, Κυβήβη Kybēbē, Κύβελις Kybelis) is an Anatolian mother goddess; she may have a possible forerunner in the earliest neolithic at Çatalhöyük. She is Phrygia's only known goddess, and was probably its national deity. Greek colonists in Asia Minor adopted and adapted her Phrygian cult and spread it to mainland Greece and to the more distant western Greek colonies around the 6th century BC.
In Greece, Cybele met with a mixed reception. She became partially assimilated to aspects of the Earth-goddess Gaia, of her possibly Minoan equivalent Rhea, and of the harvest–mother goddess Demeter. Some city-states, notably Athens, evoked her as a protector, but her most celebrated Greek rites and processions show her as an essentially foreign, exotic mystery-goddess who arrives in a lion-drawn chariot to the accompaniment of wild music, wine, and a disorderly, ecstatic following. Uniquely in Greek religion, she had a eunuch mendicant priesthood.[3] Many of her Greek cults included rites to a divine Phrygian castrate shepherd-consort Attis, who was probably a Greek invention. In Greece, Cybele became associated with mountains, town and city walls, fertile nature, and wild animals, especially lions.
In Rome, Cybele became known as Magna Mater ("Great Mother"). The Roman state adopted and developed a particular form of her cult after the Sibylline oracle in 205 BC recommended her conscription as a key religious ally in Rome's second war against Carthage (218 to 201 BC). Roman mythographers reinvented her as a Trojan goddess, and thus an ancestral goddess of the Roman people by way of the Trojan prince Aeneas. As Rome eventually established hegemony over the Mediterranean world, Romanized forms of Cybele's cults spread throughout Rome's empire. Greek and Roman writers debated and disputed the meaning and morality of her cults and priesthoods, which remain controversial subjects in modern scholarship.
Anatolia
Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük, flanked by large felines as arm-rests, c. 6,000 BC
No contemporary text or myth survives to attest the original character and nature of Cybele's Phrygian cult. She may have evolved from a statuary type found at Çatalhöyük in Anatolia, of a "corpulent and fertile" female figure accompanied by large felines, dated to the 6th millennium BC and identified by some as a mother goddess.[4] In Phrygian art of the 8th century BC, the cult attributes of the Phrygian mother-goddess include attendant lions, a bird of prey, and a small vase for her libations or other offerings.[5]
The inscription Matar Kubileya/Kubeleya[2] at a Phrygian rock-cut shrine, dated to the first half of the 6th century BC, is usually read as "Mother of the mountain", a reading supported by ancient classical sources,[2][6] and consistent with Cybele as any of several similar tutelary goddesses, each known as "mother" and associated with specific Anatolian mountains or other localities:[7] a goddess thus "born from stone".[8] She is ancient Phrygia's only known goddess,[9] the divine companion or consort of its mortal rulers, and was probably the highest deity of the Phrygian state. Her name, and the development of religious practices associated with her, may have been influenced by the Kubaba cult of the deified Sumerian queen Kubaba.[10]
In the 2nd century AD, the geographer Pausanias attests to a Magnesian (Lydian) cult to "the mother of the gods", whose image was carved into a rock-spur of Mount Sipylus. This was believed to be the oldest image of the goddess, and was attributed to the legendary Broteas.[11] At Pessinos in Phrygia, the mother goddess—identified by the Greeks as Cybele—took the form of an unshaped stone of black meteoric iron,[12] and may have been associated with or identical to Agdistis, Pessinos' mountain deity.[13][14] This was the aniconic stone that was removed to Rome in 204 BC.
Images and iconography in funerary contexts, and the ubiquity of her Phrygian name Matar ("Mother"), suggest that she was a mediator between the "boundaries of the known and unknown": the civilized and the wild, the worlds of the living and the dead.[15] Her association with hawks, lions, and the stone of the mountainous landscape of the Anatolian wilderness, seem to characterize her as mother of the land in its untrammeled natural state, with power to rule, moderate or soften its latent ferocity, and to control its potential threats to a settled, civilized life. Anatolian elites sought to harness her protective power to forms of ruler-cult; in Phrygia, the Midas monument connects her with king Midas, as her sponsor, consort, or co-divinity.[16] As protector of cities, or city states, she was sometimes shown wearing a mural crown, representing the city walls.[17] At the same time, her power "transcended any purely political usage and spoke directly to the goddess' followers from all walks of life".[18]
Some Phrygian shaft monuments are thought to have been used for libations and blood offerings to Cybele, perhaps anticipating by several centuries the pit used in her taurobolium and criobolium sacrifices during the Roman imperial era.[19] Over time, her Phrygian cults and iconography were transformed, and eventually subsumed, by the influences and interpretations of her foreign devotees, at first Greek and later Roman.
Greek Cybele
From around the 6th century BC, cults to the Anatolian mother-goddess were introduced from Phrygia into the ethnically Greek colonies of western Anatolia, mainland Greece, the Aegean islands and the westerly colonies of Magna Graecia. The Greeks called her Mātēr or Mētēr ("Mother"), or from the early 5th century Kubélē; in Pindar, she is "Mistress Cybele the Mother".[20] In Homeric Hymn 14 she is "the Mother of all gods and all human beings." Cybele was readily assimilated with several Greek goddesses, especially Rhea, as Mētēr theōn ("Mother of the gods"), whose raucous, ecstatic rites she may have acquired. As an exemplar of devoted motherhood, she was partly assimilated to the grain-goddess Demeter, whose torchlight procession recalled her search for her lost daughter, Persephone; but she also continued to be identified as a foreign deity, with many of her traits reflecting Greek ideas about barbarians and the wilderness, as Mētēr oreia ("Mother of the Mountains").[21] She is depicted as a Potnia Theron ("Mistress of animals"),[22] with her mastery of the natural world expressed by the lions that flank her, sit in her lap, or draw her chariot.[23] This schema may derive from a goddess figure from Minoan religion.[24] Walter Burkert places her among the "foreign gods" of Greek religion, a complex figure combining a putative Minoan-Mycenaean tradition with the Phrygian cult imported directly from Asia Minor.[25]
Seated Cybele within a naiskos (4th century BC, Ancient Agora Museum, Athens)
Cybele's early Greek images are small votive representations of her monumental rock-cut images in the Phrygian highlands. She stands alone within a naiskos, which represents her temple or its doorway, and is crowned with a polos, a high, cylindrical hat. A long, flowing chiton covers her shoulders and back. She is sometimes shown with lions in attendance. Around the 5th century BC, Agoracritos created a fully Hellenised and influential image of Cybele that was set up in the Metroon in the Athenian agora. It showed her enthroned, with a lion attendant, holding a phiale (a dish for making libations to the gods) and a tympanon (a hand drum). Both were Greek innovations to her iconography and reflect key features of her ritual worship introduced by the Greeks which would be salient in the cult's later development.[26][27]
For the Greeks, the tympanon was a marker of foreign cults, suitable for rites to Cybele, her close equivalent Rhea, and Dionysus; of these, only Cybele holds the tympanon. She appears with Dionysus, as a secondary deity in Euripides' Bacchae, 64 – 186, and Pindar's Dithyramb II.6 – 9. In the Bibliotheca formerly attributed to Apollodorus, Cybele is said to have cured Dionysus of his madness.[28]
Cybele in a chariot driven by Nike and drawn by lions toward a votive sacrifice (right); above are heavenly symbols including a solar deity, Plaque from Ai Khanoum, Bactria (Afghanistan), 2nd century BC; Gilded silver, ⌀ 25 cm
Their cults shared several characteristics: the foreigner-deity arrived in a chariot, drawn by exotic big cats (Dionysus by tigers or panthers, Cybele by lions), accompanied by wild music and an ecstatic entourage of exotic foreigners and people from the lower classes. At the end of the 1st century BC Strabo notes that Rhea-Cybele's popular rites in Athens were sometimes held in conjunction with Dionysus' procession.[29] Both were regarded with caution by the Greeks, as being foreign,[30] to be simultaneously embraced and "held at arm's length".[31]
Cybele was also the focus of mystery cult, private rites with a chthonic aspect connected to hero cult and exclusive to those who had undergone initiation, although it is unclear who Cybele's initiates were.[32] Reliefs show her alongside young female and male attendants with torches, and with vessels for purification. Literary sources describe joyous abandonment to the loud, percussive music of tympanon, castanets, clashing cymbals, and flutes, and to the frenzied "Phrygian dancing", perhaps a form of circle-dancing by women, to the roar of "wise and healing music of the gods".[33]
In literary sources, the spread of Cybele's cult is presented as a source of conflict and crisis. Herodotus says that when Anacharsis returned to Scythia after traveling and acquiring knowledge among the Greeks in the 6th century BC, his brother, the Scythian king, put him to death for celebrating Cybele's mysteries.[34] The historicity of this account and that of Anacharsis himself are widely questioned.[35] In Athenian tradition, the city's Metroon was founded to placate Cybele, who had visited a plague on Athens when one of her wandering priests was killed for his attempt to introduce her cult. The earliest source is the Hymn to the Mother of the Gods (362 AD) by the Roman emperor Julian, but references to it appear in scholia from an earlier date. The account may reflect real resistance to Cybele's cult, but Lynne Roller sees it as a story intended to demonstrate Cybele's power, similar to myth of Dionysus' arrival in Thebes recounted in The Bacchae.[36][37][38] Many of Cybele's cults were funded privately, rather than by the polis,[25][39] but she also had publicly established temples in many Greek cities, including Athens and Olympia.[40] Her "vivid and forceful character" and association with the wild, set her apart from the Olympian deities.[41] Her association with Phrygia led to particular unease in Greece after the Persian Wars, as Phrygian symbols and costumes were increasingly associated with the Achaemenid empire.[42]
Conflation with Rhea led to Cybele's association with various male demigods who served Rhea as attendants, or as guardians of her son, the infant Zeus, as he lay in the cave of his birth. In cult terms, they seem to have functioned as intercessors or intermediaries between goddess and mortal devotees, through dreams, waking trance, or ecstatic dance and song. They include the armed Curetes, who danced around Zeus and clashed their shields to amuse him; their supposedly Phrygian equivalents, the youthful Corybantes, who provided similarly wild and martial music, dance and song; and the dactyls and Telchines, magicians associated with metalworking.[43]
Cybele and Attis
Main article: Attis
Roman Imperial Attis wearing a Phrygian cap and performing a cult dance
Cybele's major mythographic narratives attach to her relationship with Attis, who is described by ancient Greek and Roman sources and cults as her youthful consort, and as a Phrygian deity. In Phrygia, "Attis" was not a deity, but both a commonplace and priestly name, found alike in casual graffiti, the dedications of personal monuments, as well as at several of Cybele's Phrygian shrines and monuments. His divinity may therefore have begun as a Greek invention based on what was known of Cybele's Phrygian cult.[44] His earliest certain image as deity appears on a 4th-century BC Greek stele from Piraeus, near Athens. It shows him as the Hellenised stereotype of a rustic, eastern barbarian; he sits at ease, sporting the Phrygian cap and shepherd's crook of his later Greek and Roman cults. Before him stands a Phrygian goddess (identified by the inscription as Agdistis) who carries a tympanon in her left hand. With her right, she hands him a jug, as if to welcome him into her cult with a share of her own libation.[45] Later images of Attis show him as a shepherd, in similar relaxed attitudes, holding or playing the syrinx (panpipes).[46] In Demosthenes' On the Crown (330 BC), attes is "a ritual cry shouted by followers of mystic rites".[47]
Attis seems to have accompanied the diffusion of Cybele's cult through Magna Graecia; there is evidence of their joint cult at the Greek colonies of Marseilles (Gaul) and Lokroi (southern Italy) from the 6th and 7th centuries BC. After Alexander the Great's conquests, "wandering devotees of the goddess became an increasingly common presence in Greek literature and social life; depictions of Attis have been found at numerous Greek sites".[37] When shown with Cybele, he is always the younger, lesser deity, or perhaps her priestly attendant. In the mid 2nd century, letters from the king of Pergamum to Cybele's shrine at Pessinos consistently address its chief priest as "Attis".[48][49]
Roman Cybele
Republican era
Votive altar inscribed to Mater Deum, the Mother of the Gods, from southern Gaul[50]
Romans knew Cybele as Magna Mater ("Great Mother"), or as Magna Mater deorum Idaea ("great Idaean mother of the gods"), equivalent to the Greek title Meter Theon Idaia ("Mother of the Gods, from Mount Ida"). Rome officially adopted her cult during the Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC), after dire prodigies, including a meteor shower, a failed harvest, and famine, seemed to warn of Rome's imminent defeat. The Roman Senate and its religious advisers consulted the Sibylline oracle and decided that Carthage might be defeated if Rome imported the Magna Mater ("Great Mother") of Phrygian Pessinos.[51] As this cult object belonged to a Roman ally, the Kingdom of Pergamum, the Roman Senate sent ambassadors to seek the king's consent; en route, a consultation with the Greek oracle at Delphi confirmed that the goddess should be brought to Rome.[52] The goddess arrived in Rome in the form of Pessinos' black meteoric stone. Roman legend connects this voyage, or its end, to the matron Claudia Quinta, who was accused of unchastity but proved her innocence with a miraculous feat on behalf of the goddess. Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, supposedly the "best man" in Rome, was chosen to meet the goddess at Ostia; and Rome's most virtuous matrons (including Claudia Quinta) conducted her to the temple of Victoria, to await the completion of her temple on the Palatine Hill. Pessinos' stone was later used as the face of the statue of the goddess.[53] In due course, the famine ended and Hannibal was defeated.
Silver tetradrachm of Smyrna
Most modern scholarship agrees that Cybele's consort, Attis, and her eunuch Phrygian priests (Galli) would have arrived with the goddess, along with at least some of the wild, ecstatic features of her Greek and Phrygian cults. The histories of her arrival deal with the piety, purity, and status of the Romans involved, the success of their religious stratagem, and power of the goddess herself; she has no consort or priesthood, and seems fully Romanised from the first.[54] Some modern scholars assume that Attis must have followed much later; or that the Galli, described in later sources as shockingly effeminate and flamboyantly "un-Roman", must have been an unexpected consequence of bringing the goddess in blind obedience to the Sibyl; a case of "biting off more than one can chew".[55] Others note that Rome was well versed in the adoption (or sometimes, the "calling forth", or seizure) of foreign deities,[56] and the diplomats who negotiated Cybele's move to Rome would have been well-educated, and well-informed.[57]
Romans believed that Cybele, considered a Phrygian outsider even within her Greek cults, was the mother-goddess of ancient Troy (Ilium). Some of Rome's leading patrician families claimed Trojan ancestry; so the "return" of the Mother of all Gods to her once-exiled people would have been particularly welcome, even if her spouse and priesthood were not; its accomplishment would have reflected well on the principals involved and, in turn, on their descendants.[58] The upper classes who sponsored the Magna Mater's festivals delegated their organisation to the plebeian aediles, and honoured her and each other with lavish, private festival banquets from which her Galli would have been conspicuously absent.[59] Whereas in most of her Greek cults she dwelt outside the polis, in Rome she was the city's protector, contained within her Palatine precinct, along with her priesthood, at the geographical heart of Rome's most ancient religious traditions.[60] She was promoted as patrician property; a Roman matron – albeit a strange one, "with a stone for a face" – who acted for the clear benefit of the Roman state.[61][62]
1st century BC marble statue of Cybele from Formia, Lazio
Imperial era
Augustan ideology identified Magna Mater with Imperial order and Rome's religious authority throughout the empire. Augustus claimed a Trojan ancestry through his adoption by Julius Caesar and the divine favour of Venus; in the iconography of Imperial cult, the empress Livia was Magna Mater's earthly equivalent, Rome's protector and symbolic "Great Mother"; the goddess is portrayed with Livia's face on cameos[63] and statuary.[64] By this time, Rome had absorbed the goddess's Greek and Phrygian homelands, and the Roman version of Cybele as Imperial Rome's protector was introduced there.[65]
Imperial Magna Mater protected the empire's cities and agriculture — Ovid "stresses the barrenness of the earth before the Mother's arrival.[66] Virgil's Aeneid (written between 29 and 19 BC) embellishes her "Trojan" features; she is Berecyntian Cybele, mother of Jupiter himself, and protector of the Trojan prince Aeneas in his flight from the destruction of Troy. She gives the Trojans her sacred tree for shipbuilding, and begs Jupiter to make the ships indestructible. These ships become the means of escape for Aeneas and his men, guided toward Italy and a destiny as ancestors of the Roman people by Venus Genetrix. Once arrived in Italy, these ships have served their purpose and are transformed into sea nymphs.[67]
Stories of Magna Mater's arrival were used to promote the fame of its principals, and thus their descendants. Claudia Quinta's role as Rome's castissima femina (purest or most virtuous woman) became "increasingly glorified and fantastic"; she was shown in the costume of a Vestal Virgin, and Augustan ideology represented her as the ideal of virtuous Roman womanhood. The emperor Claudius claimed her among his ancestors.[68] Claudius promoted Attis to the Roman pantheon and placed his cult under the supervision of the quindecimviri (one of Rome's priestly colleges).[69]
Critical reception
William Emmette Coleman
Detractors often accuse the book of extensive plagiarism, a view first seriously put forth by William Emmette Coleman shortly after publication and still expressed by modern scholars such as Mark Sedgwick.[13] Similarly, historian Geoffrey Ashe noted that Isis Unveiled combines "comparative religion, occultism, pseudoscience, and fantasy in a mélange that shows genuine if superficial research but is not free from unacknowledged borrowing and downright plagiarism."[14] Indeed, Isis Unveiled makes use of many sources popular among occultists at the time, often directly copying significant amounts of text. Historian Bruce Campbell concluded that the large number of borrowed lines suggested plagiarism "on a large scale."[15] Modern copies of Isis Unveiled are often annotated, fully delineating Blavatsky's sources and influences.
Historian Ronald H. Fritze considers Isis Unveiled to be a work of pseudohistory.[16] Likewise, Henry R. Evans, a contemporaneous journalist and magician, described the book as a "hodge-podge of absurdities, pseudo-science, mythology and folk-lore, arranged in helter-skelter fashion, with an utter disregard of logical sequence."[17]
One of Blavatsky's original goals in writing Isis Unveiled and founding the Theosophical Society was to reconcile contemporary advances in science with occultism, and this synthesis was one of the main appeals of Blavatsky's work for individuals interested in religion but alienated from conventional Western forms at the time.[2][18][19]
K. Paul Johnson has suggested that many of the more mythical elements of Blavatsky's works, like her later Masters, rather than being outright inventions, were reformulations of preexisting esoteric ideas and the casting of a large group of individuals—who helped, encouraged, or collaborated with her—under a mythological context; all driven by Blavatsky's search for spiritual truth.[4][12]
Sten Bodvar Liljegren notes that in addition to contemporaneous occult sources and the prevailing orientalism of the period, the novels of Edward Bulwer-Lytton heavily influenced Blavatsky's Theosophical ideas.[20]
"I had a finer and a grander sight, however, where I was. This was the mighty dome of the Jungfrau softly outlined against the sky and faintly silvered by the starlight. There was something subduing in the influence of that silent and solemn and awful presence; one seemed to meet the immutable, the indestructible, the eternal, face to face, and to feel the trivial and fleeting nature of his own existence the more sharply by the contrast. One had the sense of being under the brooding contemplation of a spirit, not an inert mass of rocks and ice--a spirit which had looked down, through the slow drift of the ages, upon a million vanished races of men, and judged them; and would judge a million more--and still be there, watching, unchanged and unchangeable, after all life should be gone and the earth have become a vacant desolation." -- Mark Twain, "A Tramp Abroad" (seen from Interlaken Switzerland)
Awakening is that, it is this Awareness conscious of itself, immutable, quiet, understanding, peace, this freedom ofwatching what is manifested, knowing it is like that and it can not be any otherway. So all this weight disappears, all this sense of exclusion disappears, this whole sense of isolationism, separatism, of inadequacy disappears. ~Master Gualberto ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Despertar é isso, é essa Consciência ciente dela própria, imutável, silêncio, compreensão, paz, essa liberdade de olhar para aquilo que se manifesta, sabendo que é assim, que não pode ser de outra forma. Então, todo esse peso desaparece, todo esse sentido de exclusão desaparece, todo esse sentido de isolacionismo, separatividade, de inadequação, desaparece. ~Mestre Gualberto ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ #ramanashramgualberto #mestregualberto #satsang #ramana #ramanamaharshi #awakening #advaita #nonduality #mahadeva #arunachala #artedeviver #jefffoster #ramdass #mooji #guidance #spiritualawekening #medidate #pray #prayers #mind #destiny #oracao #devotion #devocao #love #amor #liberdade #freedom #surrender #yoga⠀⠀
Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
Great Food and Music Highly Recommended
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Ellipsis - Welcome: lnkd.in/e7gibv7f
Niki's Oasis Restaurant & Jazz Bar 138 Bree Street Newtown Cultural Precinct Johannesburg South Africa with Simnikiwe Sondlo and Bushy Dubazana Jazz Band with the Immutable Themba Fassie
Το κάστρο της Μονεμβασιάς
Το 375 μ.Χ. μία σεισμική δόνηση απέκοψε τη χερσόνησο δημιουργώντας ένα βράχο που έμελλε να μείνει στη θάλασσα αγέρωχος και αναλλοίωτος στην αιωνιότητα, φυσικό φρούριο, προστάτης ψυχών, διακηρυγμένος πόθος των μεγαλύτερων αυτοκρατοριών που γνώρισε ο πλανήτης. Αυτός ο βράχος, κάποτε μονοπάτι του Μυκηναϊκού και του Μινωικού πολιτισμού, χάρη στη μία και μοναδική πρόσβαση (μόνη έμβαση) που τον ενώνει με την Πελοπόννησο ονομάστηκε Μονεμβάσια.
The castle of Monemvasia
In 375 AD an earthquake cut off the peninsula, creating a rock that was to remain at sea cocky and immutable in eternity, a natural fortress, professed desire of the largest empires the world has known. This rock, sometimes the path of the Mycenaean and Minoan culture, through a single access who joins the Peloponnesus, called Monemvasia.
From Instagram "Sex, like race, is a visible, immutable characteristic bearing no necessary relationship relationship to ability" reading about the #notoriousRBG #law #feminism #equality #usa
The rain
How it rings
the chopped streets
the umbrellad bicycles
the tires of cars
And the trees
How they terrace it
and the roofs
How they avalanche it
So dark and so sog!
yet how lovely
the feel of it
and the sound!: Peet
please pit peet please pit
Art at Parker Center
Sook Jin Jo, 2009. Parker Center, 150 N. Los Angeles Street near Parker Center.
Text from the plaque: There are three primary elements in this public art project: columns, bells, and ribbons. The numbers associated with these elements carry a unique meaning, from the nine columns (consisting of five larger and four smaller columns) to the 108 bells and ribbons suspended from the central trellis system. The number 5 references the five-member Board of Police Commissioners, and the number 4 references the four-star insignia of the Chief of Police. When added together, the numbers 5 and 4 create the number 9. Across various cultures, the number 9, as the highest single digit number, suggests perfection, immutable truth, and a triumph of stability and balance over volatility and disparity. The bells symbolize elements of renewal, peace, harmony, freedom, protection and spirituality. Each ribbon hanging from the bells is etched with text contributed by the community. As part of the Japanese-Buddhist culture, beginning on New Year's Eve and continuing into New Year's Day, it is tradition to ring bells 108 times to commemorate the passing of the old year and the coming of the new year, and of the 108 human desires that are thought to be the cause of human suffering, one desire is dispelled with each tolling of the bells.
By Haroon Mirza
A Chamber for Horwitz,
Sonakinatography Transcriptions in Surround Sound, 2015
Wall work: Channa Horwitz
Sonakinatography Composition III, 1996
Haroon Mirza (born 1977, UK) has won international acclaim for installations that test the interplay and friction between sound and light waves and electric current. Transcribing a complex working drawing by LA-based artist Channa Horwitz (1932–2013), Mirza turns her notational sequences and matrices into a multi-coloured, sonic score. The electric noise of the currents that light the LEDs in one of the eight possible configurations and colour combinations, as marked by Horwitz, is simul-taneously translated via speakers to audible noise pulses in different octaves. Together, these acoustic, visual interpretations of the Horwitz data result in a choreographed, compositional concert, which is at once computer-programmed and man-made – both ‘live’ and historic.
A Chamber for Horwitz; Sonakinatography Transcriptions in Surround Sound is a conceptual development of an earlier piece by Mirza, titled Adam, Eve, Others and a UFO (2013).
[everythingatonce.com]
Part of Everything at Once
Presented by Lisson Gallery and The Vinyl Factory at the Store Studios, 180 The Strand
October-December 2017
Lisson Gallery opened on Bell Street in 1967, a year after John Cage’s pronouncement on the changing conditions of contemporary existence. In celebration of this anniversary, the gallery is partnering with The Vinyl Factory to stage ‘EVERYTHING AT ONCE’, an ambitious group exhibition inspired by these words, which could very well apply to our current anxiety-ridden age of ceaseless communication. Through new and historical works by 24 of the artists currently shown by Lisson Gallery (out of more than 150 to have had solo shows over the past 50 years), this extensive presentation aims to collapse half a century of artistic endeavour under one roof, while telescoping its original aims into an unknowable future.
As Cage predicted, we increasingly live in an all-at-once age, in which time and space are no longer rational or linear concepts and great distances can be traversed with an instantaneous click. More than ever before, contemporary art, like life, assaults us simultaneously from all angles and from anywhere on the globe, existing also as multisensory visions of an accelerated world.
In response, ‘EVERYTHING AT ONCE’ is neither a chronological exhibition nor an encyclopaedic history of the gallery’s activities since 1967, rather it is an interconnected journey incorporating 45 works exploring experience, effect and event, invoking immediacy and immutability. Ranging from text to installation, painting, sculpture, performance and sound, the selection presents some of Lisson’s leading artists, of both the past and present...
[Lisson Gallery]
Three of my co-workers unknowingly portraying the three fates......
The Moirae, Moerae or Moirai (in Greek Μοῖραι – the "apportioners", often called The Fates), in Greek mythology, were the white-robed incarnations of destiny (Roman equivalent: Parcae, euphemistically the "sparing ones", or Fata; also equivalent to the Germanic Norns). Their number became fixed at three.
The Greek word moira (μοῖρα) literally means a part or portion, and by extension one's portion in life or destiny. They controlled the metaphorical thread of life of every mortal from birth to death.
Zeus and the Moirae
Even the gods feared the Moirae. Zeus also was subject to their power, the Pythian priestess at Delphi once admitted. Hesiod referred to "the Moirai to whom wise Zeus gave the greatest honor",[1] though no classic writing clarifies as to what exact extent the lives of immortals were affected by the whims of the Fates themselves, and it is to be expected that the relationship of Zeus and the Moirae was not immutable over the centuries.
A supposed epithet of the greek is legit Zeus Moiragetes, meaning "Zeus Leader of the Moirae" was inferred by Pausanias from an inscription he saw in the 2nd century AD at Olympia: "As you go to the starting-point for the chariot-race there is an altar with an inscription to the Bringer of Fate.[2] This is plainly a surname of Zeus, who knows the affairs of men, all that the Fates give them, and all that is not destined for them."[3] At the Temple of Zeus at Megara, Pausanias inferred from the relief sculptures he saw "Above the head of Zeus are the Horai and Moirae, and all may see that he is the only god obeyed by Moira." Pausanias' inferred assertion is unsupported in cult practice, though he noted a sanctuary of the Moirae there at Olympia (v.15.4), and also at Corinth (ii.4.7) and Sparta (iii.11.8), and adjoining the sanctuary of Themis outside a city gate of Thebes[4]
H. J. Rose writes that Nyx ("Night") was also the mother of the Moirae[5] as she was of the Erinyes, in the Orphic tradition.
When they were three,[6] the three Moirae were:
Clotho ( /ˈkloʊθoʊ/, Greek Κλωθώ [klɔːˈtʰɔː] – "spinner") spun the thread of life from her distaff onto her spindle. Her Roman equivalent was Nona, (the 'Ninth'), who was originally a goddess called upon in the ninth month of pregnancy.
Lachesis ( /ˈlækɪsɪs/, Greek Λάχεσις [ˈlakʰesis] – "allotter" or drawer of lots) measured the thread of life allotted to each person with her measuring rod. Her Roman equivalent was Decima (the 'Tenth').
Atropos ( /ˈætrəpɒs/, Greek Ἄτροπος [ˈatropos] – "inexorable" or "inevitable", literally "unturning",[7] sometimes called Aisa) was the cutter of the thread of life. She chose the manner of each person's death; and when their time was come, she cut their life-thread with "her abhorred shears".[8] Her Roman equivalent was Morta ('Death').
References
1.^ Hesiod, Theogony, 901.
2.^ The Greek is Moiragetes (Pausanias, 5.15.5).
3.^ Pausanias, v.15.5.
4.^ "There is a sanctuary of Themis, with an image of white marble; adjoining it is a sanctuary of the Fates, while the third is of Zeus of the Market. Zeus is made of stone; the Fates have no images." Not very promising in these days. (Pausanias, ix.25.4).
5.^ H.J. Rose, Handbook of Greek Mythology, p.24
6.^ The expectation that there would be three was strong by the second century CE: when Pausanias visited the temple of Apollo at Delphi, with Apollo and Zeus each accompanied by a Fate, he remarked "There are also images of two Moirai; but in place of the third Moira there stand by their side Zeus Moiragetes and Apollon Moiragetes."
7.^ Compare the ancient goddess Adrasteia, the "inescapable".
8.^ "Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears, / And slits the thin spun life." John Milton, Lycidas, l. 75.