El concepto de Árbol de la vida como árbol de muchas ramas que ilustra la idea de la vida en la tierra, se ha utilizado en la ciencia, la religión, la filosofía, la mitología, y en otras áreas. El Árbol de la vida tallado, pintado, bordado o impreso ha existido desde el comienzo de la historia.

Un Árbol de la vida puede referirse a:

un motivo en las teologías, mitologías y filosofías de distintas partes del mundo;

un concepto místico en alusión a la interconexión de toda la vida en nuestro planeta; y

una metáfora de la descendencia común en el sentido de la evolución.

Generalmente, simboliza el poder de la vida y sus orígenes, la importancia de las raíces y el desarrollo de la vida. Se asocia a veces con las personas y / o animales (aves, mamíferos).

Según la Enciclopedia Británica, el árbol del conocimiento, que une el cielo y el inframundo, y el árbol de la vida, que conecta todas las formas de creación, son formas del árbol del mundo o árbol cósmico.Para algunos pensadores, el árbol de la vida y el árbol del conocimiento del bien y del mal, representado en diversas religiones y filosofías, son el mismo árbol.

The concept of a tree of life has been used in science, religion, philosophy, and mythology. A tree of life is a common motif in various world theologies, mythologies, and philosophies. A mystical concept alluding to the interconnection of all life on our planet; and a metaphor for common descent in the evolutionary sense. The term tree of life may also be used as a synonym for sacred tree.

The tree of knowledge, connecting to heaven and the underworld, and the tree of life, connecting all forms of creation, are both forms of the world tree or cosmic tree, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica,and are portrayed in various religions and philosophies as the same tree.

Hamburg - Moments

Author: Ángel Manuel Rodríguez

What biblical symbolism is associated with the four cardinal directions?

Cardinal compass points in the Bible are rich in meaning. Knowing their symbolism can help interpret some biblical passages. We often orient ourselves by facing north. In the ancient world the point of orientation was east. The east was before them, the west behind, the south to the right, and the north to the left. The future wasn’t in front, but behind, that is to say invisible. 1. The East: The importance of the east as the main point of orientation may be related to the rising of the sun and its importance in the religions of the ancient Near East. In the Bible its symbolism emerges for the first time in Genesis. The Garden of Eden was placed in the East (chap. 2:8), and its entrance faced the east (chap. 3:24). After sinning, Adam and Eve left the garden and went toward the east (chap. 3:24). This eastward movement continued with Cain (chap. 4:16) and culminated in the movement of the human race toward the east (chap. 11:2-4). Within this context the east is symbolically ambivalent. The garden placed there symbolized safety and security. After sin, when it was the direction of the exile, it represented a condition of alienation from God. It was also the place of the wilderness, from which destructive winds came, threatening life (Ps. 48:7; Eze. 27:26). To the prophets the east was a symbol of Babylonian exile and the saving presence of God. He traveled to Babylon and ultimately redeemed His people (Eze. 10:18, 19; 11:22, 23). The east became a place where God intervened on behalf of His people, bringing them salvation (cf. Rev. 16:12). 2. The West: The west symbolizes both negative and positive elements. To the west of the land was the sea, representing evil and death (Dan. 7:2, 3). In fact, the term “sea” often referred to the west (Num. 3:23). It is also the place of darkness because that’s where the sun sets (Ps. 104:19, 20). The positive meaning is its association with the Israelite tabernacle/Temple. Although it faced east, access to it required movement toward the west. In that sense the west pointed toward restored unity with God; a return to the Garden of Eden. When the Israelites traveled to and worshipped in the Temple they faced the west and had the rising sun behind them. This movement to the west began with Abram, who left the east and went to Canaan in the west in obedience to God (Gen. 11:31). It is a symbol of divine blessing. Once the exiles were liberated from their enemies in the east, they traveled west, to the land of Israel. In that journey, the Lord Himself traveled with them (Eze. 43:2-5). 3. The North: Bible students have suggested that the north is a symbol of the permanent or the eternal, perhaps because the polar stars were permanently visible in the sky. It is the place of God’s celestial dwelling (Isa. 14:13) and from which His glory descends (Job 37:22) with blessings or judgments (Eze. 1:4). He is the true King of the North. But the north—represented by the left hand—is also a symbol of disaster. The enemy of God’s people came from the north (Jer. 1:14, 15; Eze. 38:6), bringing destruction. In a sense, the enemy was the false king of the north who tried to usurp God’s role and is finally destroyed by the Lord (Zeph. 2:12; Dan. 11:21-45).

4. The South: The south is primarily a negative symbol. But the fact that it is represented by the right hand makes it also a positive one. It is negative because to the south of Israel was the wilderness, a region where life does not prosper (Isa. 30:6). To the south was Egypt, which opposed God’s power and oppressed His people. But the south was also the place where the Lord appeared to Moses, went with Him to Egypt, liberated His people, and appeared to them on Mount Sinai (e.g., Deut. 33:2). The ambivalent nature of the symbols of the four cardinal directions seems based on the fact that evil was perceived to be present everywhere and that God’s saving presence was always accessible to His people from any corner of the world (Ps. 139:7-12). In a sense they pointed beyond the points of the compass to the cosmic conflict between good and evil. Copyright: Copyright © Biblical Research Institute General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists® The Four Symbols were given human names after Daoism became popular. The Azure Dragon has the name Meng Zhang (孟章), the Vermilion Bird was called Ling Guang (陵光), the White Tiger Jian Bing (監兵), and the Black Turtle Zhi Ming (執明). In 1987, a tomb was found at Xishuipo (西水坡) in Puyang, Henan. There were some clam shells and bones forming the images of the Azure Dragon, the White Tiger, and the Big Dipper. It is believed that the tomb belongs to the Neolithic Age, dating to about 6,000 years ago. The Rongcheng Shi manuscript recovered in 1994 gives five directions rather than four and places the animals quite differently: Yu the Great gave banners to his people marking the north with a bird, the south with a snake, the east with the sun, the west with the moon, and the center with a bear.

Cardinal directions in Chinese language: their cultural, social and symbolic meanings.Introduction In his discussions of dominant Ndembu ritual symbols, Victor Turner points out that one major property of symbols is polarization of meanings. That is to say symbols possess two clearly different poles of meanings - the physical and physiological (the sensory pole), and the abstract and ideological (the ideological pole) (Turner, 1967, p.28). At the sensory pole, the meanings represent "the natural and physiological phenomena and processes" and "arouse desires and feelings." At the ideological pole, the meanings represent "components of the moral and social orders, to principles of social organization, to kinds of corporate grouping, and to the norms and values inherent in structural relationships" (Turner, 1967, p.28).

 

The same kind of polarization of meanings can be detected in cardinal directions of the Chinese symbolic system. However, Turner did not focus his discussions on the interrelations between the sensory and the ideological poles of symbolic meanings. Durkheim's and Mauss's Primitive Classification represented one school of thought on this issue. They argued that the origin of logical classification was a result and an aspect of social classification (Durkheim and Mauss, 1963, p.84). In the case of cardinal directions, more evidence has indicated that the sensory pole of meanings determines the ideological pole rather than the other way around. In this article the author first applies etymological method to study the meanings of direction words in Chinese language. The author believes such analyses help to understand how directions have been perceived in the history of the written language. The latter part of the article discusses how cardinal directions and other orientation concepts are used as part of traditional Chinese symbolic system. Following Jung's definitions of "signs" vs. "symbols" (Turner, 1963), we can say the directional words are signs of the known meanings of directions, whereas directions and other orientation concepts are symbols of the unknown universe.Etymological studies of directional words allow us to trace the evolution of the Chinese characters, whose hieroglyphic nature is particularly conservatory of the ideological evolution of the words. The etymological data are mostly collected from a variety of well-recognized dictionaries and online dictionary sites in both English and Chinese. The semantic units in Chinese language arc words and characters. However, graphemes and phonemes of the characters have been studied in some cases in order to understand the origin of meanings. In addition, idioms and phrases are also informational sources as it usually takes a long time for them to be established. Hence, they are used to trace ancient meanings of the words as well. Space and time are two of the most fundamental concepts in all cultures, the essential reality of human life. Like the air we breathe and the water we drink every day, they are the daily necessity we could never do without but usually take for granted. Perception of space and time defines the essence of a culture's worldview, which differs in geography and in periods of history. It is especially so in Chinese culture, as cardinal directions have become an integrative part of its symbolic classification system that defines the physical and the social reality. Studying perception of space and time would allow us to tap into the depth of a culture's worldview. The Chinese Characters Before starting the discussions of the direction words, the author would like to give a brief introduction of some major etymological and linguistic principles of the Chinese writing system. This will provide the theoretical foundation for some later discussions. If we are to divide the writing systems in the world into three types: the logographic system (in which the minimal complete unit is a logogram), the syllabic system (in which the minimal complete unit is a syllable) and the alphabetic system (in which the minimal complete unit is an alphabet) (Writing system, Wikipedia), the Chinese writing system is a typical logographic system. According to Shuowen Jiezi, one of the earliest and most well recognized etymological dictionaries in Chinese, the ancient Chinese characters can be divided into six different categories in terms of how they were developed or formed (Xu, Shuowen Jiezi online; Shuowen Jiezi, Wikipedia; Zhongwen.com, online). The first category is the pictographs (xiangxing, [??]) (1), which are direct graphical depiction of the objects they denote. Examples include [??] (ri; the archaic form [??]) meaning the sun. The second category is ideographs (zhishi, [??]; or xiangshi, [??]) that represent abstract notions. For instance, the concepts of "above" and "below" are expressed as (shang, [??]) and (xia, [??]). They use signs like the dashes and dots to express abstract ideas. The third category is called logical aggregates (huiyi, [??]; or xiangyi, [??]) in which two or more parts are combined to indicate the meanings. One example would be the character for brightness (ming, [??]), which is a combination of the characters of the sun ([??]) and the moon (yue, [??]). The fourth group is phonetic complexes (xingsheng, [??] or xiangsheng, [??]), which are composed of phonetics that are indicative of the pronunciation and radicals that are indicative of the semantic category. An example of this category is (bei, [??]), which means the back of the body. It is a combination of a phonetics (bei, [??]) and a radical (yue, [??]), which indicates flesh. The fifth type of characters is called transferences (zhuanzhu, [??]) in which more abstract and complicated meanings are derived from the original concrete meanings of words. For an example, the word [??] (bei, the back of the body) gradually adopts the meanings of "turn one's back" and "betray and desert somebody or something." The last principle that Chinese characters developed is false borrowing (jiajie, [??]) in which words take on totally unrelated meanings from the original either intentionally or accidentally. There are two major writing systems used by Chinese language speakers in modern days. One of them is the simplified writing system currently used in Mainland China, which has been adopted as the standard writing system of the People's Republic of China since 1956. The other is the traditional and comparatively more complex writing system that is used by Chinese language speakers in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and other Chinese diasporas around the world. The simplified Chinese is a further evolution over the traditional Chinese, and is therefore less preservatory of the original meanings. All Chinese characters used in this article are simplified unless stated otherwise. Direction Words in Chinese Cardinal directions are some of those abstract concepts that do not lend themselves easily to pictorial representations. In Chinese, the meanings of direction words are mostly combinations of graphemes and phonemes, although some parts of the words are pictographs. The author believes the relations between the formation and the meaning of the direction words could be of cultural significance and indicative of some cognitive characteristics of the culture. Traditionally there are three sets of orientation terms in Chinese culture: si mian and ba fang , which are two-dimensional' and liu he , which is three-dimensional. Si mian, literally four sides, designates the four cardinal directions and is sometimes thought of as including a fifth point, the center. Ba fang, on the other hand, denotes eight directions, the four cardinal compass points plus northeast, southwest, northwest and southeast. In addition to the two dimensional systems is the three dimensional concept of liu he, which literally means unity of six. It is the four cardinal directions and up (heaven) and down (earth) and is used to refer to the universe.

The simplified Chinese characters for the five cardinal points are (east, south, west, north and the middle) or (east, west, south, north and the middle), in the particular orders of the five. (dong, the east). is the simplified character for the east that is currently used in mainland China. The script no longer shows its original connections with the meaning of east. However, its comparatively older form does. is an example of a logical aggregate, which can be broken up into two graphemes - (ri, the sun) and (mu, a tree). The combination of the two pictographs depicts vividly the sun rising behind a tree (Karlgren, 1923, p.324; Xu, Shuowen Jiezi online; zhongwen.com, online). In contemporary Chinese there are at least three characters that are formed by different combinations of the same two graphemes (the sun) and] (a tree). In addition to the cardinal direction word (the east), the other two are (gao ) and (yao). The character (gao) represents the sun above a tree, hence its meaning being bright and being high. (yao), which is the sun below a tree, means being deep and far, losing contact with somebody. Its more archaic meaning is darkness as implied by the combination of the graphemes. The two examples prove that the relative positions between the pictorial components of (the sun) and (a tree) is significantly indicative of the semantic meanings of the characters. In the character (the east) the position of the sun is between the root and the top of the tree, indicating the sun is rising. The composition of the logogram strongly indicates that the concept of east in the language is associated with the observation of the sun's movements in the environment. (xi, the west). The ancient form of this character is , showing a bird roosting on its nest (Karlgren, 1923, p.234; Xu, Shuowen Jiezi online; zhongwen. com, online). According to Shuowen Jiezi, the pictograph indicates that "when the sun is in the west, the birds perch over the nest" (Xu, Shuowen Jiezi online). The explicit meanings of the script are "being at home" and "being at rest." In Chinese idioms "birds returns to their nests" is usually associated with the meanings of dusk and sunset. Here the concept of sunset is borrowed to indicate the concept of the direction of sunset, the west. It is the concept of time that makes the logical link between this pictograph and its directional meaning. In many civilizations, the movements of celestial bodies define the concepts of time and space. Ancient people must have observed how the movement of the sun influences things in their environment. The sun creates days and nights, light and shadow, the seasons, and cycle of life, which all have great impact on people's livelihood. Records from all early civilizations show that ancient people established the first measurements of passage of time based on the movements of celestial bodies. For an example, the ancient Chinese read the positions of the shadow of a dial to tell the hours of a day. Our current 365 days solar calendar relies on the movements of the sun. The earliest Egyptian calendar depended on the movements of the moon. The Mayans of the Central America developed their 260 days calendar according to the movements of the Sun, the Moon and the Venus. In Chinese, the spatial division of east and west both contain some implications of time. East is connected to the beginning of a day, a year, and a life, whereas west to the end of work, a day, and a life. The Chinese character for the sun also means a day, daytime, and years. It also appears in many compound words and idioms with indications of time. Connecting east with sunrise and dawn and west with sunset and evening are common in many other languages as well. The English word east comes from Eastre, the name of a pagan dawn goddess whose festival was celebrated at vernal equinox almost at the same time as the Christian Easter (Weiner, 1989, p.36; Flexner and Hawk, vol. 5, 1993, p.615; Webster, 2002, p.716). In Latin and Greek among some other old Indo-European languages, the stem for east means dawn (Weiner, vol. 5, 1989, p.36). In English "go west" means "to die." There is exactly the same phrase in Chinese that means exactly the same thing. (nan, the south). is composed of a radical [??] and a phonetic [??] (Karlgren, 1923, p.203; Xu, Shuowen Jiezi online; zhongwen.com, online). The archaic form of [??] (bo) is [??], a picture of lianas indicating abundant and tangled vegetation. Living in the North hemisphere, ancient Chinese have observed that the southern side of a mountain, a tree, and a house receives more sunshine than the northern side. Vegetation is therefore more flourishing and abundant on the southern side. South is the direction where vegetation grows more luxuriantly. The phonetics [??], pronounced as (ren), is used as the phonetic in several other tree names (Karlgren, 1923, p.203). (bei, the north). The older form of this character is which indicates two persons positioned back to back (Karlgren, 1923, p.216; Xu, Shuowen Jiezi online; zhongwen.com, online). The picture strongly points to the meaning of back. In modern Chinese, another phonetic complex (bei) is used for the meaning of the back of human body, in which [??] (north) functions as the phonetic and ((flesh) as the radical. In some dictionaries the word it has two pronunciations, bei and bei (Guoyu Cidian, online; Xu, Shuowen Jiezi online). The meaning associated with the first pronunciation is "an equivalence to the back of human body." North and back in Chinese share the same pronunciation and the same meaning in archaic Chinese. The meaning associated with the second pronunciation can be an adjective "being disagreeable and harsh," or a verb "to flee," or "to be defeated, to turn back on." The pictograph of north is linked to the observer-centered concept of back. In Chinese, back means being opposite to front, being the back of or being in the shadow. North is linked to back in all three senses. North is opposite to the sun and the south. That is why it is in the shadow and darkness. This is similar to the back of a person. In Chinese culture, the north side of a building is usually its back, for gates and doors are opened on the south to receive more sunshine. Light and shadow are the major dichotomous concepts associated with north and south in Chinese. The characters of north and south indicate that north is the shadowed side whereas south is the lit side. The geography and landscape of the country stresses the dichotomous divisions. All major rivers and mountains in China run west-and-eastward, which divide the land into parallel stripes. The ancient Chinese have learned to tell directions by looking at the positions of light and shadow. The saying goes "the shadowed side of a mountain is north and the shadowed side of a river is south." The two characters for being in shadow and being lighted by the sunlight are (shadow; Yin) and (light; Yang) respectively. The two words are also used for the dialectic philosophical concepts of yin-yang, which classify things, phenomena, and their traits into dichotomy in many eastern cultures. The two concepts are often represented by two signs,--(a broken line, yin)--(a solid line, yang). The symbols are stacked together to create eight trigrams like . Legend has it that one ancient Chinese king developed the eight trigrams into a system of sixty-four hexagrams to represent different processes in divination. His theory was written in a well-known book, Yi Jin (I Ching), another classic work of the ancient Chinese symbolic system. (the middle or the center, zhong). The ideograph could be interpreted as a vertical line bisecting an enclosure or an arrow hitting the center of a target (Karlgren, 1923, p.360; Xu, Shuowen Jiezi online; zhongwen.com, online). It denotes the meaning of the center or in between.

The fact that the concept of the center or the middle is depicted by an ideograph instead of a pictograph indicates to some extent that it is comparatively more abstract than the other four cardinal directions. A boundary is required before the center could be defined. Limited geographical boundary was not uncommon among ancient people who had no efficient way of transportation to travel widely. The center is a concept relative to the periphery. When the center or the middle is present, the four directions become the relative periphery or the frontiers. In Chinese, China means the Middle Kingdom. The name comes from the country's geographical position in early history when the core territory was surrounded by frontiers on all directions. The Five Elements System In addition to the Yin-Yang and the eight diagrams, another major part of the primitive Chinese symbolic system is the Five Elements System (Wu Xing, Wikipedia). The five elements refer to metal, wood, water, fire and earth. Each of these elements is matched to many other aspects of the material world (See table 1). For example, five planets, five colors, seasons of the year, organs of the body, sense organs, flavors, and animals to mention just a few. The four cardinal directions plus a center are an integral part of the system, which is critical and widely applied in many areas of traditional Chinese culture. Traditional Chinese medicine is one area in which the Five Elements System plays a pivotal role. Five major blood circulation organs, five major digestion organs, and other parts of the human bodies are corresponded with the five elements based on similar attributes. Things belonging to the same category are considered as related with each other. For an example, patients suffering from liver problem usually have weaker sight, crave sour food, are easy to get angry, sometimes show unhealthy dark greenness in skin tone and more likely fall victim of the disease in springtime.The Five Elements System is also a fairly sophisticated symbolic system that uses the concrete relationships between the five material elements in nature to represent and explain the abstract interactions and relationships of all phenomena . In general the system specifies four kinds of relationships. Two of the four relationships create a positive balance state. They are called generating (mothering) relationship (Sheng), and restraining or counterbalancing (fathering) relationships (Ke, . The other two exist when there is a negative out-of-balance state either because one element is too strong or too weak. In a restraining relationship, if the restraining element overpowers and hence over-limits the restrained element, there is an over-restraining relationship (Cheng, . On the other hand, if the restrained overpowers the restraining, it could not be contained but instead controls the restraining element. This would break the balance of the system and create a humiliating relationship (Wu) The picture illustrates the four relationships among the five elements. Clockwise, each element in the circle is generated by the previous element and in turn generates the following one, restricts the third one and is restrained by the fourth one. For instance, fire is fueled (created) by wood, creates earth (ashes), melts (restrains) metal, and is extinguished (restrained) by water. Orders of Cardinal Directions The juxtaposition of the four Chinese cardinal directions, sometimes five, is an idiom in itself, a synonym to "everywhere" and "direction." This idiom has two forms, east-south-west-north and east-west-south-north. When present, the word for the middle is the last character in both arrangements. The orders of the four cardinal directions are different from that in English, which is usually north, south, east and west. Statistically speaking, there are twenty-four permutations for four cardinal directions. It is culturally significant that only one or two orders are used. It is not known why these particular orders exist to the exclusion of the other possibilities. The first order is clockwise starting from the east, which happens to imitate the movement of the sun in the sky. It represents a continuous cycle in both time and space. In the ancient Chinese classificatory system, the directions are matched with the seasons, east to spring, south to summer, west to autumn, and north to winter. The clockwise order of the cardinal directions also coincides with the chronological order of the four seasons. Again, space and time are inseparable from each other. East, a spatial concept standing out originally as the place where the sun rises, takes on the meaning of a start in time. The day starts at the east. The east wind from the seas brings warmth and rain, an indication of the advent of spring. Spring is taken as the beginning of a year, which starts the annual farming cycle. The Chinese New Year is called the Spring Festival. The matching between directions and seasons results in substitution between the two sets of concepts. East wind is almost a synonym of spring wind, spring fanning is called east activities, and East Emperor is a literate alias of the god of spring. Correspondingly, west harvest means autumn harvest, and west wind usually refers to autumn wind that sweeps away leaves from the trees. The matching is certainly related to China's geographical and climatic situations. Warm and damp wind comes from the east and the south, and cold and dry wind from the north and the west. The former brings spring, the latter the winter. It's interesting to compare the Chinese classification with a similar one in the Zuni culture. The Zuni also attributes seasons, colors and animals to spatial divisions (Durkheim and Mauss, 1963, p.43). They also add the center to the four cardinal directions, and have zenith and nadir in their basic spatial divisions. Also like the Chinese, the Zuni associate winter with north, and fire and summer with south. This is reasonable as both peoples live in the northern hemisphere. However, the Zuni "attributed water, the spring and its damp breezes, to the west; ... the earth, seeds, the frosts which bring the seeds to maturity and end the year, to the east." (Durkheim and Mauss, 1963, p.43) This is exactly the opposite to the Chinese's. For the Zuni, who lived in Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico, damp breezes and rain come from the west and frosts come from the east. The differences and similarities of the two systems provide strong evidence for how people's perceptions of spatial divisions are shaped by their environments. In the second Chinese order the cardinal directions are organized into two dimensions: east-west and south-north. The east-west dimension always comes before the south-north dimension in such an order. Southeast and Northwest are * Eastsouth and * Westnorth in Chinese. [??] (east-west) also means things in Chinese. That is because, as is explained in an ancient Chinese book, "things are produced in the four cardinal regions but are called briefly as east-west; that's similar to history being called briefly as spring-autumn though it records four seasons." (Guoyu Cidian, Online) In this case east and west stand for all the four cardinal points. This points to the comparative prominence of the east-west axis over the north-south axis. Within the axis, east always comes before west and south before north. Chinese has plenty of idioms with the structures of "east ... west ..." and "south ... north. ..." There are exceptions, of course, but the proportion is too small to be cognitively significant. The comparatively more dominant status of east and south can also be understood from a political and economic perspective. Due to its geographical features, the western parts of the country were mainly deserts and barren plateaus, and the north was associated with bitterly cold weather and infertile frozen lands while in the southeast parts the fertile rice fields that were the grain barn of the country. The north and the west were important only in terms of military defense. In a culture with a long history of agricultural civilization, it is understandable that the east and the south were more preferred and more important economically, politically, and culturally.

Social Orders of Cardinal Directions Facing south adopts cultural and social significance over time in ancient China. The general pattern of traditional Chinese building complexes and room arrangements look like a square, with the front gates facing the south in order to be warmed and lighted by the sun. This pattern can be seen in residential houses, palaces and temples. The southern side of buildings has front gates, doors and wide open windows. On the north side, there are merely walls and small windows. In a building complex the main rooms face south with the wings facing east and west. There are back doors on the north sides of buildings in a complex, but they are for convenience of connection between rows of buildings. Some units do have doors facing north, but these are called the reversed houses (daoxia) (Cao, 1996, pp.29-59) and are considered atypical. The arrangement of furniture is confined and determined by this architectural pattern and so is the order of seating. In this way the practicality of facing south becomes symbolically important.

The north seat that faces south is reserved for persons with the highest social status. In the imperial court the emperor's "dragon chair" was not only significantly elevated but also invariably facing south. Court officials stood underneath his feet on the east and the west sides of the hall. Because the emperors' thrones always faced south, the phrase "facing south" came to be used as a proper noun designating an emperor. "To face south" means to become the emperor or the king. Accordingly, to face north meant to be a subject of an emperor or a king. Being bright was an adjective to praise the rule of a good emperor. As the saying goes "a good emperor faces south to listen to the discussions of national affairs and rules brightly." Such seating arrangements were copied in military and civil courts at all levels, in schools, and even in family lineages. The person who dominated the group took the north seat that was usually elevated but not as significantly as was the imperial throne. In military and civil courts it was for the official with the highest rank. In a lineage this south-facing seat was reserved for the eldest and most influential male or female member of the lineage. In schools the south-facing chair was for the teacher. The expression "facing north to somebody/something" was a figurative expression meaning to submit oneself as a subordinate, or, in the context of schools, to be a student. The phrase "the white-haired still face the north" indicates an old person who is still a student. The person with the second highest rank was positioned on the east side. The individual ranked third in the gathering was located on the west side facing the second ranking person. Then, back and forth, east and west, all the way down through for all present. In Chinese, the east is a synonym of the host whereas the west also means the guest. Custom had it that when the host and his guests entered a house, the host used the eastern stairway while the guest entered by the stairway on the west. Hence, the host is called "dong dao" (east road). The landlord is "fang dong" (east of the house); the master, "dong jia" (east family); and the hotel owner, "dian dong" (east of the hotel). To be one's treat is "zuo dong" (being the east) in Chinese. In "xi xi" (west seat) and "xi bin" (west guest, west is related to the meaning of guest. This usage, still prevailing in contemporary common language, can be traced back to an ancient custom that the host sat on the east and the guest on the west. In the system the relative spatial concepts of left and right are also interwoven with the absolute system of directions and became substitutes for east and west. The Chinese characters for left and right are [??] (zuo) and [??] (you). In older manuscripts, these are written as and . The two icons represent a hand facing different directions. Thus left and right are related to the two hands and indirectly to the two sides of the body. This substitution is no longer active in contemporary Chinese culture. However, traces of this tradition are still found in a few idioms and place names. "You di" (right lands) means west lands. "Shan zo" (left of the mountains) and "shan you" (to the right of the mountains) refers to Shandong and Shanxi provinces that are located on the east and the west sides of the Taihang Mountains respectively. In like fashion "he you" and "jiang you" (both meaning to the right of the river) designate the area west of the Huanghe River (the Yellow River) in the first case and to the west of Changjiang River (the Yangtze River) in the second. Conversely, "he zo" and "jiang zo" (both meaning to the left of the river) are the areas east of these two rivers. Like east and west, left and right are also social status indicators. Facing south, the right side is the east and the left side the west. The right seat was considered more respectable than the left one. "Lu zo" (left side of the street) is equivalent to the other side of the tracks in Anglo culture of North America. In older times, the wealthy lived on the right side of the street and the poor inhabited the left. "You xing" (right surnames), "You qi" (right relatives) and "You zhi" (right positions) referred to the aristocracy, the imperial families and the high-ranking official positions (Contemporary Chinese Dictionary, 1996). The right has also taken on the meaning of being better as is in the idiom "no one is on his right," which means no one is better than he. An exception to the prominence of right is encountered in carriage where the person with the highest social status occupies the seat on the left. That is the source of the idiom "waiting with the left seat empty," which is a signal of showing respect to someone not yet present. Another pair of directional concepts are up and down. The two characters for up and down are [??] (shang) (Karlgren, 1923, p.251) and [??] (xia) (Karlgren, 1923, p.69). They are iconic signs. The long dash, the base line, represents the horizon (zhongwen.com, online). The short stroke to the right is above the horizon for shang and below it for xia. Up symbolizes high social status and down the reverse. To reinforce the imperial authority, feudal rulers elevated their thrones in the audience halls. Last but not least, the cultural significance of [??] (zhong, the center or the middle). The long history of highly centralized feudal regime stressed the cultural significance of centralization in the culture. The centralized pattern of feudal political regime is clearly embodied in the design of the capital cities and the imperial palaces. Beijing and its Forbidden City, the best-preserved imperial capital and palace, best illustrates the idea of centralization. The old city of Beijing is a fortified square with well-aligned grids running along the two axis of north-south and east-west. The imperial palace, the Forbidden City, occupies the central area of the city proper. The major palaces inside the Forbidden City line up in a row, forming a north-to-south line dividing the city into two symmetrical parts of east and west. Being at the middle is also an important philosophical concept in Chinese culture. Confucianism highly advocates the doctrine of being at the middle, or not going to the extremes, in attitudes as well as in actions. Conclusion These etymological analyses of Chinese direction terms show how observation of the celestial bodies and their impact on natural environment underlies the initial ancient Chinese definition of the cardinal directions. Comparisons with similar primitive classification systems originating in different natural environments also provide some evidence of how perception of time and space are significantly determined by the geography and landscape of the motherland. The limitations and definitions by the environment gradually come to impact other aspects of ancient Chinese livelihood as the culture developed. For instance, the environmental influences helped to define the architectural styles and structures in ancient China, which over time influenced social behavioral norms. As directions were integrated as an important part of the symbolic system, they become dominant symbols in the culture, which can be seen in the usage of directional terms in a variety of idioms and phrases as well as in many areas of the traditional culture. Medicine and divinations are two examples. Data from the study provide further evidence to support Victor Turner's theory that symbols possess bipolar meanings - one clusters around the physical and concrete, and the other the abstract and ideological. Durkheim and Mauss refuted Frazer's argument that the social relations of mean are based on logical relations between things, and argued that it is the social relations that have provided the prototype for the latter. (Durkheim and Mauss, 1963, p.82) In their article Durkheim and Mauss stressed the role of social organizations and social relations in human cognition. They believed the essential cognitive characteristics underlying the primitive classification are the same as that of the modern scientific classification, which both result from human tendencies to unify knowledge, to know as social beings and groups, and to extend the unity of knowledge to the universe. (Durkheim and Mauss, 1963, pp.81-84) In the case of cardinal directions, the Chinese characters clearly indicate the influences of the natural phenomena on people's understanding of them. The ancient Chinese architectural styles and structures were influenced by the environment, which in turn influenced the social lives of people. However, the study does not intend to deny that human beings see things from their own perspectives and understand the universe within the limitations of their perceptions. The limitations also exist for any anthropological interpretation of cultures, just as Victor Turner discussed in Forest of Symbols. It is the case in this current study as well. Generally speaking, the modern views of orientation terms are not often the same as what was originally meant in antiquity. Our understanding of the direction concepts must have drifted away from the empirical perceptions of the ancient people. Therefore, when trying to make sense of why things become what they are, sometimes it is inevitable that our understanding is limited by our perception of here and now. This is a paradox for all anthropological studies of the "other" cultures (both culture of the others, and the other culture of ourselves). Ancient Chinese culture is baffling to modern Chinese who are confronted with a similar paradox - try to understand the perceptions of the ancient Chinese but have to do it from the perspective of a modern Chinese. In this article, the author uses the four cardinal direction words and the fifth, the centrum, to present an outline of the primitive Chinese classification system. Yet it must be said that the Chinese classification system is far more complicated than what can be explained in this essay. Concepts of the Yin-Yang dichotomy, the eight trigrams, and the Five Element System are all phenomena worthy of an independent study. However, as an interesting and inseparable part of the symbolic system, the orientation words help to show the interconnections between the several important concepts of the ancient Chinese symbolic system. COPYRIGHT 2009 Institute of General Semantics

 

Copyright 2009 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.

      

Dynamic potential

Interest provocation

Varies accordingly

 

My Website : Twitter : Facebook : Instagram : Photocrowd

 

A photo of the 7m diameter revolving 'Gaia' art installation in Southwark Cathedral.

 

I saw Gaia earlier in the year in Oxford but unfortunately despite making a special trip to see it on it's last day I got there only to realise I didn't have a battery in my camera....... Luckily I knew the installation toured so I'd hoped to catch it again at some point. Currently there's two of these installed in Grimsby and Leeds and if it's going to be in your area it's definitely worth a visit with your (battery filled) camera.

 

More info and touring dates for Gaia here : my-earth.org/tour-dates/

 

From the website, "Gaia is a touring artwork by UK artist Luke Jerram. Measuring seven metres in diameter and created from 120dpi detailed NASA imagery of the Earth’s surface* the artwork provides the opportunity to see our planet, floating in three dimensions.

 

The installation aims to create a sense of the Overview Effect, which was first described by author Frank White in 1987. Common features of the experience for astronauts are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment.

 

The artwork also acts as a mirror to major events in society. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the artwork may provide the viewer with a new perspective of our place on the planet; a sense that societies of the Earth are all interconnected and that we have a responsibility toward one another. After the lockdown, there has been a renewed respect for nature."

 

© D.Godliman

*Copyright © 2013 Lélia Valduga, all rights reserved.

 

To get to Jalapão you should leave Palmas by TO-020 northbound (108 km long), with access to the New Agreement. You can also travel on the TO-030 (100 km long), interconnection with Taquaruçu and Santa Tereza do Tocantins. So, is moving forward, even attractive, always on dirt roads - which makes advisable the use of 4x4 vehicles.

To view more of my images, of Sissinghurst Castle & Gardensl, please click "here" !

 

Vita Sackville-West, the poet and writer, began the transforming Sissinghurst Castle in the 1930s with her diplomat and author husband, Harold Nicolson. Harold's architectural planning of the garden rooms, and the colourful, abundant planting in the gardens by Vita, reflect the romance and intimacy of her poems and writings. Sissinghurst Castle was the backdrop for a diverse history; from the astonishing time as a prison in the 1700s, to being a home to the women’s land army. It was also a family home to some fascinating people who lived here or came to stay. Today you can take in the ruined architecture of the extensive original buildings, vast panoramic views from the top of the Tower, the current working farm and the 450-acre wider estate along with Vita and Harold's gardens. Now we're well into our new season there are lots of events for you to enjoy. The National Trust took over the whole of Sissinghurst, its garden, farm and buildings, in 1967. The garden epitomises the English garden of the mid-20th century. It is now very popular and can be crowded in peak holiday periods. In 2009, BBC Four broadcast an eight-part television documentary series called Sissinghurst, describing the house and garden and the attempts by Adam Nicolson and his wife Sarah Raven, who are 'Resident Donors', to restore a form of traditional Wealden agriculture to the Castle Farm. Their plan is to use the land to grow ingredients for lunches in the Sissinghurst restaurant. A fuller version of the story can be found in Nicolson's book, Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History (2008). The garden at Sissinghurst Castle in the Weald of Kent, in England at Sissinghurst village, is owned and maintained by the National Trust. It is among the most famous gardens in England. Sissinghurst's garden was created in the 1930s by Vita Sackville-West, poet and gardening writer, and her husband Harold Nicolson, author and diplomat. Sackville-West was a writer on the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group who found her greatest popularity in the weekly columns she contributed as gardening correspondent of The Observer, which incidentally—for she never touted it—made her own garden famous. The garden itself is designed as a series of 'rooms', each with a different character of colour and/or theme, the walls being high clipped hedges and many pink brick walls. The rooms and 'doors' are so arranged that, as one enjoys the beauty in a given room, one suddenly discovers a new vista into another part of the garden, making a walk a series of discoveries that keeps leading one into yet another area of the garden. Nicolson spent his efforts coming up with interesting new interconnections, while Sackville-West focused on making the flowers in the interior of each room exciting. For Sackville-West, Sissinghurst and its garden rooms came to be a poignant and romantic substitute for Knole, reputedly the largest house in Britain, which as the only child of Lionel, the 3rd Lord Sackville she would have inherited had she been a male, but which had passed to her cousin as the male heir. The site is ancient— "hurst" is the Saxon term for an enclosed wood. A manor house with a three-armed moat was built here in the Middle Ages. In 1305, King Edward I spent a night here. In 1490, Thomas Baker purchased Sissinghurst. The house was given a new brick gatehouse in the 1530s by Sir John Baker, one of Henry VIII's Privy Councillors, and greatly enlarged in the 1560s by his son Sir Richard Baker, when it became the centre of a 700-acre (2.8 km2) deer park. In 1573, Queen Elizabeth I spent three nights at Sissinghurst. Rose arbour in Sissinghurst's White Garden room, which set a fashion for 'white gardens' After the collapse of the Baker family in the late 17th century, the building had many uses: as a prisoner-of-war camp during the Seven Years' War; as the workhouse for the Cranbrook Union; after which it became homes for farm labourers. Sackville-West and Nicolson found Sissinghurst in 1930 after concern that their property Long Barn, near Sevenoaks, Kent, was close to development over which they had no control. Although Sissinghurst was derelict, they purchased the ruins and the farm around it and began constructing the garden we know today. The layout by Nicolson and planting by Sackville-West were both strongly influenced by the gardens of Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens; by the earlier Cothay Manor in Somerset, laid out by Nicolson's friend Reginald Cooper, and described by one garden writer as the "Sissinghurst of the West Country"; and by Hidcote Manor Garden, designed and owned by Lawrence Johnston, which Sackville-West helped to preserve. Sissinghurst was first opened to the public in 1938.

  

To view more of my images, of Sissinghurst Castle & Gardensl, please click "here" !

 

Vita Sackville-West, the poet and writer, began the transforming Sissinghurst Castle in the 1930s with her diplomat and author husband, Harold Nicolson. Harold's architectural planning of the garden rooms, and the colourful, abundant planting in the gardens by Vita, reflect the romance and intimacy of her poems and writings. Sissinghurst Castle was the backdrop for a diverse history; from the astonishing time as a prison in the 1700s, to being a home to the women’s land army. It was also a family home to some fascinating people who lived here or came to stay. Today you can take in the ruined architecture of the extensive original buildings, vast panoramic views from the top of the Tower, the current working farm and the 450-acre wider estate along with Vita and Harold's gardens. Now we're well into our new season there are lots of events for you to enjoy. The National Trust took over the whole of Sissinghurst, its garden, farm and buildings, in 1967. The garden epitomises the English garden of the mid-20th century. It is now very popular and can be crowded in peak holiday periods. In 2009, BBC Four broadcast an eight-part television documentary series called Sissinghurst, describing the house and garden and the attempts by Adam Nicolson and his wife Sarah Raven, who are 'Resident Donors', to restore a form of traditional Wealden agriculture to the Castle Farm. Their plan is to use the land to grow ingredients for lunches in the Sissinghurst restaurant. A fuller version of the story can be found in Nicolson's book, Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History (2008). The garden at Sissinghurst Castle in the Weald of Kent, in England at Sissinghurst village, is owned and maintained by the National Trust. It is among the most famous gardens in England. Sissinghurst's garden was created in the 1930s by Vita Sackville-West, poet and gardening writer, and her husband Harold Nicolson, author and diplomat. Sackville-West was a writer on the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group who found her greatest popularity in the weekly columns she contributed as gardening correspondent of The Observer, which incidentally—for she never touted it—made her own garden famous. The garden itself is designed as a series of 'rooms', each with a different character of colour and/or theme, the walls being high clipped hedges and many pink brick walls. The rooms and 'doors' are so arranged that, as one enjoys the beauty in a given room, one suddenly discovers a new vista into another part of the garden, making a walk a series of discoveries that keeps leading one into yet another area of the garden. Nicolson spent his efforts coming up with interesting new interconnections, while Sackville-West focused on making the flowers in the interior of each room exciting. For Sackville-West, Sissinghurst and its garden rooms came to be a poignant and romantic substitute for Knole, reputedly the largest house in Britain, which as the only child of Lionel, the 3rd Lord Sackville she would have inherited had she been a male, but which had passed to her cousin as the male heir. The site is ancient— "hurst" is the Saxon term for an enclosed wood. A manor house with a three-armed moat was built here in the Middle Ages. In 1305, King Edward I spent a night here. In 1490, Thomas Baker purchased Sissinghurst. The house was given a new brick gatehouse in the 1530s by Sir John Baker, one of Henry VIII's Privy Councillors, and greatly enlarged in the 1560s by his son Sir Richard Baker, when it became the centre of a 700-acre (2.8 km2) deer park. In 1573, Queen Elizabeth I spent three nights at Sissinghurst. Rose arbour in Sissinghurst's White Garden room, which set a fashion for 'white gardens' After the collapse of the Baker family in the late 17th century, the building had many uses: as a prisoner-of-war camp during the Seven Years' War; as the workhouse for the Cranbrook Union; after which it became homes for farm labourers. Sackville-West and Nicolson found Sissinghurst in 1930 after concern that their property Long Barn, near Sevenoaks, Kent, was close to development over which they had no control. Although Sissinghurst was derelict, they purchased the ruins and the farm around it and began constructing the garden we know today. The layout by Nicolson and planting by Sackville-West were both strongly influenced by the gardens of Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens; by the earlier Cothay Manor in Somerset, laid out by Nicolson's friend Reginald Cooper, and described by one garden writer as the "Sissinghurst of the West Country"; and by Hidcote Manor Garden, designed and owned by Lawrence Johnston, which Sackville-West helped to preserve. Sissinghurst was first opened to the public in 1938.

 

An oast, oast house or hop kiln is a building designed for kilning hops as part of the brewing process. They can be found in most hop-growing areas and are often good examples of vernacular architecture. Many redundant oasts have been converted into houses

"Interconnections" , Liège , Belgium , 04.2012

 

Facebook Fan Page Now , Thanks ;)

Gaia in the nave of Bristol Cathedral

 

Gaia is a touring artwork by UK artist Luke Jerram. Measuring seven metres in diameter and created from 120dpi detailed NASA imagery of the Earth’s surface* the artwork provides the opportunity to see our planet, floating in three dimensions.

 

The installation aims to create a sense of the Overview Effect, which was first described by author Frank White in 1987. Common features of the experience for astronauts are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment. Watch this great film about the phenomenon.

 

When presented indoors, the Earth artwork slowly revolves. A specially made surround sound composition by BAFTA award winning Composer Dan Jones is played alongside the sculpture. In Greek Mythology Gaia is the personification of the Earth.

  

St Pancras International Station

 

Oh yes I know, another St Pancras photo but for those who have been here before you will know why, this place is just awesome. Very similar to this one I took

 

www.flickr.com/photos/turnipfarmer/4859167369/

 

Maybe not as good but I wanted to try a colour version to see what it came out like.

 

Hope you all have a great weekend!

 

Also view this photo on black, I prefer it on a black background

 

Information

 

St Pancras railway station, also known as London St Pancras and since 2007 as St Pancras International is a central London railway terminus celebrated for its Victorian architecture. The Grade I listed building stands on Euston Road in St Pancras, London, between the British Library, King's Cross station and the Regent's Canal. It was opened in 1868 by the Midland Railway as the southern terminus of that company's Midland Main Line, which connected London with the East Midlands and Yorkshire. When it opened, the arched Barlow train shed was the largest single-span roof in the world.

 

After escaping planned demolition in the 1960s, the complex was renovated and expanded during the 2000s at a cost of £800 million with a ceremony attended by the Queen and extensive publicity introducing it as a public space. A security-sealed terminal area was constructed for Eurostar services to Continental Europe—via High Speed 1 and the Channel Tunnel—along with platforms for domestic connections to the north and south-east of England. The restored station houses fifteen platforms, a shopping centre and a bus station, in addition to London Underground services from King's Cross St Pancras tube station. St Pancras is owned by London and Continental Railways along with the adjacent urban regeneration area known as King's Cross Central.

 

The station is the terminus of East Midlands Trains for services from London to the cities of Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield, and smaller towns in between. The station provides direct passenger interconnection with Eurostar’s high-speed services to Paris, Brussels and Lille and First Capital Connect trains on the cross-London Thameslink route, which stop at platforms beneath the station and offer services going south to Gatwick Airport and Brighton, or north as far as Bedford. Domestic services to Kent (run by Southeastern) began in December 2009.

 

St Pancras is often termed the 'cathedral of the railways', and includes two of the most celebrated structures built in Britain in the Victorian era. The main train shed, completed in 1868 by the engineer William Henry Barlow was the largest single-span structure built up to that time. The frontage of the station is formed by St Pancras Chambers, formerly the Midland Grand Hotel (by George Gilbert Scott, 1868–1877) an impressive example of Victorian gothic architecture.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Pancras_railway_station

I haven't had a proper ramble for ages, well not a public one anyway. In fact there hasn't been any action, from me, out here in cyberspace, for quite a while.

 

I'm quite prone to introspection, you may have noticed if you hadn't been staring at your own bellybutton. And it is both a gift and a bind. But it is something wrapped up within my insides, feeling tightly wrapped around like I have been rolled over and over inside a carpet so it clasps the whole of my being.

 

Perhaps introspection is another name for sensitivity, perhaps even hypersensitivity. I crave peace and quiet, loud noises jolt me with impatience and I baulk at how the non-sensitives will shout into their mobile phone whilst sat next to you, or park themselves adjacently to your long-searched-for-solitude on a remote beach ovelooking the sea.

 

At the hinges of the seasons I feel my sensitivities even more and they career between overwhelm and near blissful wonder at the world.

 

As autumn begins I feel this the most strongly. My feeling for the world is so fiercely overwhelmed but amongst the raw and vulnerable feelings are glimpses of infinity and heaven. But what can be imagined and intellectually understood is not the same as the experience itself. As to live through a hyper-sensitive episode is to be within it, rather than an impassioned observer of its trials and wonders.

 

Here's something I wrote just as a stream of conciousness back in September, when I was staying away from home for work and felt the full force of autumnal sensitivity.

 

"I ache, I ache all over.

 

People watching: what is it to be old, what is it to be young, transporting my enquiring mind into theirs to live their lives for a brief moment. Looking into each persons eyes through my dark glasses, looking at them looking at me, looking at them. Too many interconnections, too interconnected. Need to turn the volume down.

 

The inxplicable ache of beauty. An impossible Tsumani of creativity and experience, overwhelming sensitivity. Want to bottle it in a jar, keep it and live with it always but also be able to put the lid on so I can breathe and take a break. Sensitivity is such a paradox. While you ache, things take on such infinite proportions, whether you ache for a break, for the world not to keep rushing you with such force, or whether beauty makes you ache, grabs you and affixes its beauty to your soul so you cannot escape, like your brain is being pulled out through your eyes. The aches oscillate between positive and negative each with pull like a powerful magnet, pulling into its clutches or repelling you strongly.

 

Hard to escape and hard to resist, a trap so overlwhelming you want it to stop and yet when the pain is gone, back comes mundanity. You don't feel the absence of pain, only at the moment it recedes, when the relief replaces the sensitivity. And yet when it's gone you ache once more, you miss it once it's gone, you want it back. You want to feel alive to your core, once again.

 

Thoughts and interconnections tumble out of your mind, such a thrill if you can catch a ride on one but so often, you just want to pres the pause button and see what it is like to watch and experience what it is you are experiencing. To sit back and watch yourself deluged in a sensitive flow of tumbling thoughts so you can make sense of them, take a step back, have them happen whilst be able to witness the flow, see them for what they are, bring them altogether, condense and channel them. But as soon often in life your instrospection does not allow you to silently witness the flow, you are ungulfed in its midst a passenger in the torrent."

 

"I am writing this sat in a hotel room on a sunny Sunday. What a day to be hyper sensitive.

 

Away from home for work, with no outlet except a pouring out of words into my laptop, like an ever open ear. Earlier I sat in a pub and ordered myself lunch and attempted to read my Sunday newspaper. My brain on overdrive, I could only muster two paragraphs before my eyes would lift and scan around me to see what was happening, jittery and unfocused, the tsunami gathering momentum all the time.

 

Battling self conciousness, sat on my own, the sad travelling worker. Newspaper and sunday lunch, pint with billy no mates. And yet the feeling of exposure, the looking at people and the lives, and their ways, their companions and them looking back at me. It heightened it all, the flow of words, the introspection. the self loathing, the strong feeling of the utter transience of existence, the overwhelming power of inexplicable beauty in the world, what it is to be alive, what it is to be sensitve, what it is to trying to make sense of all these things, trapped in a wave crashing onto the shore, tumbled over and over and over.

 

Me watching them, watching me, whathcing myself, always trying to draw back one more level to make sense of it all, put a box round it and be a witness, so desperate to make sense of it all.

 

And yet when you think you make sense of it, one of two things happens, it suddenly diminishes, to explain is to take out the mystery, to extinguish its flame or sometimes the opposite happens.

 

Sometimes it is a revelation as two parts of your mind speak to one another for the first time, like an explosion of inspiration, a never bofore made connection opens up an entire new world.

 

The world comes spinning back and the wave you were once engulfed in is just one roller hitting the shore, there are 100's more following it in, to engulf you once more.

 

But what becomes so evidently clear is these words are futile, a nothingness, a distraction in pointlessness. My imagination cannot bottle up those and replay them to me at will, I cannot take them home in a little box tied up with string. I need to be living them now, in the here and now, they are there while they're there and it is then when you feel them in your soul. The memory is bitter sweet, it isn't that thing, it has none of its intensity but it has enough of a clue to remind you to go back and feel it once again.

 

And this leads me to the ache I feel most of all. the transience of existence. Just as a flower is transient so is a thought, so is a life, looking back is neither here nor there, it is all present in the here and now in its infinite beauty and variety.

 

But each moment is gone as quickly as it arrives as will be my life, my existence. Embrace the brevity for it is all you have. One day soon you and I will be gone."

Singer-songwriter Chloe Charles performing in The Hague during the Crossing Border Festival 2013. Crossing Border is an inspiring cultural event based in The Hague with a unique combination of spoken word, music, special film screenings and visual arts. Over the years Crossing Border has evolved to become one of the foremost international, interdisciplinary literature and music festivals in Europe. Every edition the Crossing Border Festival presents a mix of writers, poets, musicians, filmmakers and performers. Besides renowned names from the literature and music industry, the festival focuses on artists yet to be discovered, highlighting new developments in literature and music and their interconnection with other arts.

---

Crossing Border behoort tot eén van de belangrijkste internationale evenementen op het gebied van muziek en literatuur in Europa. Tijdens het spraakmakende festival zoeken schrijvers, dichters, muzikanten, filmers en artiesten steeds weer naar unieke combinaties van gesproken woord, muziek, film en beeldende kunst. Op de eerste avond van Crossing Border Den Haag 2013 was zonder twijfel het prachtige, sprankelende optreden van zangeres Chloe Charles één van de hoogtepunten

Rover Metro GS (1980-97) Engine 1275cc BMC A Series 72bhp

 

Registration Number F 743 EHA (Dudley)

ROVER SET

 

www.flickr.com/photos/45676495@N05/sets/72157623690660271...

 

At the end of 1987, the Austin marque was shelved. Rover management never allowed Rover badges on the Montego or the Maestro in their home market, They wore badges that were the same shape as the Rover longship badge, but which did not say "Rover". The Metro did too until May 1990, when it was officially relaunched as the Rover Metro, heavily revised and fitted with a new range of engines.The ageing 998 cc and 1275 cc A-Series engines were replaced giving way to the 1.1 and 1.4 8 valve K Series engines. and a 16 valve engine in the GTi (early variants are 95 bhp (71 kW) SPi while the later MPi version has 103 bhp) and the early GTa. All models used Peugeot-designed end-on gearboxes.

 

In 1993, a 1.4 PSA TUD diesel from the Citroën AX / Peugeot 106 was launched. The Hydragas suspension was finally modified to accept front to rear interconnection in the way that Alex Moulton so desperately wanted to bring the car back up to standard in terms of handling and ride quality.

 

In 1993, a 1.4 PSA TUD diesel from the Citroën AX / Peugeot 106 was launched. The Hydragas suspension was finally modified to accept front to rear interconnection in the way that Alex Moulton so desperately wanted to bring the car back up to standard in terms of handling and ride quality.

 

Diolch am 75,089,647 o olygfeydd anhygoel, mae pob un yn cael ei werthfawrogi'n fawr.

 

Thanks for 75,089,647 amazing views, every one is greatly appreciated.

 

Shot 14.07.2019 at Walsall Classic Car Show, Walsall Arboretum, Walsall 143-193

   

The garden at Sissinghurst Castle in the Weald of Kent, near Sissinghurst village, is owned and maintained by the National Trust. It is among the most famous gardens in England.

 

Sissinghurst's garden was created in the 1930s by Vita Sackville-West, poet and gardening writer, and her husband Harold Nicolson, author and diplomat. Sackville-West was a writer on the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group who found her greatest popularity in the weekly columns she contributed as gardening correspondent of The Observer, which incidentally—for she never touted it—made her own garden famous. The garden itself is designed as a series of "rooms", each with a different character of colour and/or theme, the walls being high clipped hedges and many pink brick walls. The rooms and "doors" are so arranged that, as one enjoys the beauty in a given room, one suddenly discovers a new vista into another part of the garden, making a walk a series of discoveries that keeps leading one into yet another area of the garden. Nicolson spent his efforts coming up with interesting new interconnections, while Sackville-West focused on making the flowers in the interior of each room exciting.

 

For Sackville-West, Sissinghurst and its garden rooms came to be a poignant and romantic substitute for Knole, reputedly the largest house in Britain, which as the only child of Lionel, the 3rd Lord Sackville she would have inherited had she been a male, but which had passed to her cousin as the male heir.

 

The site is ancient— "hurst" is the Saxon term for "an enclosed wood". A manorhouse with a three-armed moat was built here in the Middle Ages. By 1305, Sissinghurst was impressive enough for King Edward I to spend the night. In 1490, Thomas Baker purchased Sissinghurst.The house was given a new brick gatehouse in the 1530s by Sir John Baker, one of Henry VIII's Privy Councillors, and hugely enlarged in the 1560s by his son Sir Richard Baker, when it became the centre of a 700-acre (2.8 km2) deer park. In 1573, Queen Elizabeth I spent three nights at Sissinghurst.

Second Best "52 Weeks Project"

Since I have been joining the 52 Weeks Project on Flickr it has happened several times that I had to chose between two or more self portraits that week. A difficult choice. The solution is to create a set of all good alternatives. Life is full of choices and sometimes a week has too much opportunities. This is one of those alternatives, the second best. And sometimes just as good.

 

For the first time in my personal history I took an "OV Fiets" together with Andy...it's not the last time. I like it!

Location: Zegerplas in Park Zegersloot in Alphen aan den Rijn (NL). In the background the Edelstenenbuurt of Alphen aan den Rijn. Along the Westkanaalweg.

Coordinates: Copy/paste on Google Maps:

52.133582562214194, 4.687779300329164

Reason: A day on the rental bicycle from the station of Alphen aan den Rijn to Ter Aar including a touristic loop around the Zegerplas (lake). In total: 22 kilometers

OV Fiets: The Netherlands has a single nationwide bike sharing program, called OV-fiets, which means 'public transport bike'. The system has 20,500 bikes in 300 locations, mainly train stations, all over the country. Membership is required (annual fee €0.01, €3.85 per rental day) and can be combined with an OV-chipkaart. The program, which started on a small scale in 2003, has enjoyed a steadily increasing popularity with over 4 million rides registered in 2018. The nature of the Dutch bike sharing program differs from that of programs in other countries partly because the already high bike ownership of the population. Its interconnection with the public transport network allows it to fill the need of people who also want to continue traveling by bike from the station of their destination.

Annual ridership = 4.2 million (2018), number of stations/locations: 305, operation started: 2003, number of vehicles: 21.700 (2020).

[ Wikipedia - OV Fiets ]

Zegerplas: The Zegerplas is a 70-hectare lake on the Aarkanaal in the municipality of Alphen aan den Rijn. The depth is on average 18 meters. The lake was created from 1964 by the extraction of sand for the construction of the Ridderveld district in Alphen aan den Rijn. Sand extraction from the lake continued into the 1990s, including for the construction of the Kerk en Zanen district and the N11 national road. The peat river De Kromme Aar used to run through an open polder area on site.

A circle around the lake is a much-used hike that is 3.92 kilometers long. This is generally referred to as a "rondje meer" in Alphen.

Guest Star: Andy

Official "52-Weeks" of this week: 11/52 Ommetje

Actually this is the second 'second 52-Weeks', the first alternative is:

[11/52 2021 (1)] Biker's Shadow

Weather: Partly cloudy, 8° C

To Listen: À bicyclette - Yves Montant (Youtube)

Self-portrait technics: Camera placed on my cross-over bag which acted as a tripod. Timer on 10 seconds

Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics focused on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, and were once thought to have completely random states of disorder and irregularities.Chaos theory states that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnection, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization.

..........

3d art tool, digital hand painting and gimp manipulation.

The Zagtouli substation was established by the Burkinabe National Electricity Company (SONABEL) upon the completion of the 225kV interconnection from Côte d'Ivoire at the end of 2009. This installation has significantly alleviated the electricity needs of the cities of Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso, as well as those of certain secondary localities along the route. The site has changed a lot in recent years with the commissioning of the Zagtouli solar power plant with a capacity of 33 MW (2017) and then the arrival of a second 225kV interconnection line from Ghana in 2018. The Zagtouli substation is also connected to a line leading to the Gounghin thermal power plant and a 90 kV line to Ouahigouya (2017). There are currently projects for interconnection with Mali and Ghana in 330 kV, as well as the construction of additional solar power plants, some of which are already underway.

 

La sous-station de Zagtouli a été mise en place par la Société Nationale Burkinabé d'Electricité (SONABEL) avec l'arrivée fin 2009 de l'interconnexion 225Kv depuis la Côte d'Ivoire. Cette installation a fortement soulagé les besoins en électricité de la ville de Ouagadougou tout comme celle de Bobo-Dioulasso et certaines localités secondaires le long du tracé. Le site a beaucoup changé ces dernières années avec la mise en service de la Centrale solaire de Zagtouli d'une puissance de 33 MW (2017) puis l'arrivée d'une deuxième ligne d'interconnexion 225Kv depuis le Ghana en 2018. La sous-station de Zagtouli est également connectée à une ligne en direction de la centrale thermique de Gounghin et une ligne 90Kv en direction de Ouahigouya (2017). Il y a actuellement des projets d'interconnexion avec le Mali et le Ghana en 330Kv ainsi que de réalisation de centrales solaires supplémentaires dont certaines déjà en cours.

The garden at Sissinghurst Castle in the Weald of Kent, in England at Sissinghurst village, is owned and maintained by the National Trust. It is among the most famous gardens in England and is grade I listed.

 

Sissinghurst's garden was created in the 1930s by Vita Sackville-West, poet and gardening writer, and her husband Harold Nicolson, author and diplomat. Sackville-West was a writer on the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group who found her greatest popularity in the weekly columns she contributed as gardening correspondent of The Observer, which incidentally—for she never touted it—made her own garden famous. The garden itself is designed as a series of 'rooms', each with a different character of colour and/or theme, the walls being high clipped hedges and many pink brick walls. The rooms and 'doors' are so arranged that, as one enjoys the beauty in a given room, one suddenly discovers a new vista into another part of the garden, making a walk a series of discoveries that keeps leading one into yet another area of the garden. Nicolson spent his efforts coming up with interesting new interconnections, while Sackville-West focused on making the flowers in the interior of each room exciting.

 

For Sackville-West, Sissinghurst and its garden rooms came to be a poignant and romantic substitute for Knole, reputedly the largest house in Britain, which as the only child of Lionel, the 3rd Lord Sackville she would have inherited had she been a male, but which had passed to her cousin as the male heir.

 

The site is ancient; "hurst" is the Saxon term for an enclosed wood. A manor house with a three-armed moat was built here in the Middle Ages. In 1305, King Edward I spent a night here. It was long thought that in 1490 Thomas Baker, a man from Cranbrook, purchased Sissinghurst, although there is no evidence for it. What is certain is that the house was given a new brick gatehouse in the 1530s by Sir John Baker, one of Henry VIII's Privy Councillors, and greatly enlarged in the 1560s by his son Sir Richard Baker, when it became the centre of a 700-acre (2.8 km2) deer park. In August 1573 Queen Elizabeth I spent three nights at Sissinghurst.

 

After the collapse of the Baker family in the late 17th century, the building had many uses: as a prisoner-of-war camp during the Seven Years' War; as the workhouse for the Cranbrook Union; after which it became homes for farm labourers.

 

Sackville-West and Nicolson found Sissinghurst in 1930 after concern that their property Long Barn, near Sevenoaks, Kent, was close to development over which they had no control. Although Sissinghurst was derelict, they purchased the ruins and the farm around it and began constructing the garden we know today. The layout by Nicolson and planting by Sackville-West were both strongly influenced by the gardens of Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens; by the earlier Cothay Manor in Somerset, laid out by Nicolson's friend Reginald Cooper, and described by one garden writer as the "Sissinghurst of the West Country"; and by Hidcote Manor Garden, designed and owned by Lawrence Johnston, which Sackville-West helped to preserve. Sissinghurst was first opened to the public in 1938.

 

The National Trust took over the whole of Sissinghurst, its garden, farm and buildings, in 1967. The garden epitomises the English garden of the mid-20th century. It is now very popular and can be crowded in peak holiday periods. In 2009, BBC Four broadcast an eight-part television documentary series called Sissinghurst, describing the house and garden and the attempts by Adam Nicolson and his wife Sarah Raven, who are 'Resident Donors', to restore a form of traditional Wealden agriculture to the Castle Farm. Their plan is to use the land to grow ingredients for lunches in the Sissinghurst restaurant. A fuller version of the story can be found in Nicolson's book, Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History (2008).

 

For further information please visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sissinghurst_Castle_Garden and www.nationaltrust.org.uk/sissinghurst-castle-garden

 

The garden at Sissinghurst Castle in the Weald of Kent, near Sissinghurst village, is owned and maintained by the National Trust. It is among the most famous gardens in England.

 

Sissinghurst's garden was created in the 1930s by Vita Sackville-West, poet and gardening writer, and her husband Harold Nicolson, author and diplomat. Sackville-West was a writer on the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group who found her greatest popularity in the weekly columns she contributed as gardening correspondent of The Observer, which incidentally—for she never touted it—made her own garden famous. The garden itself is designed as a series of "rooms", each with a different character of colour and/or theme, the walls being high clipped hedges and many pink brick walls. The rooms and "doors" are so arranged that, as one enjoys the beauty in a given room, one suddenly discovers a new vista into another part of the garden, making a walk a series of discoveries that keeps leading one into yet another area of the garden. Nicolson spent his efforts coming up with interesting new interconnections, while Sackville-West focused on making the flowers in the interior of each room exciting.

 

For Sackville-West, Sissinghurst and its garden rooms came to be a poignant and romantic substitute for Knole, reputedly the largest house in Britain, which as the only child of Lionel, the 3rd Lord Sackville she would have inherited had she been a male, but which had passed to her cousin as the male heir.

 

The site is ancient— "hurst" is the Saxon term for "an enclosed wood". A manorhouse with a three-armed moat was built here in the Middle Ages. By 1305, Sissinghurst was impressive enough for King Edward I to spend the night. In 1490, Thomas Baker purchased Sissinghurst.The house was given a new brick gatehouse in the 1530s by Sir John Baker, one of Henry VIII's Privy Councillors, and hugely enlarged in the 1560s by his son Sir Richard Baker, when it became the centre of a 700-acre (2.8 km2) deer park. In 1573, Queen Elizabeth I spent three nights at Sissinghurst.

Born in Bogota, Colombia, Uribe lives and works in Miami. His artwork resists classification. Rooted in the craft of sculpture and paint, it rises from intertwining everyday objects in all possible and surprising ways, but still with a formal reference to the history and tradition of classical art.

 

Uribe creates sculptures which are not sculpted but constructed and weaved, in curious and unpredictable, repetitive and almost compulsive ways. They follow the classical canons of figurative and abstract art, but the result is absolutely whimsical, yet contains enormous efficacy and communicability. When observed from close, his works reveal various kinds of interpretations; invites us to touch them, to discover the detail and connection between one element and another. When viewed from further away, they offer volumes, forms, textures and color. Distance, proximity and perception are key factors in the interconnection between Uribe’s work and its viewers.

This theory holds that all forms of life on Earth are interconnected; even the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings in the Amazon can be indirectly associated with a typhoon in Hong Kong…...

 

Second in the series

 

Photography by - Pryere

 

♫ - Bliss - Love, Peace & Wisdom

 

Acrylic paints, enamel & inks on paper

 

for Flickriver - Sophie Shapiro

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examines the complex interconnections between human beings and our physical world, and reveals the artist's fascination with the measurement of time. P1004867 copy

The garden at Sissinghurst Castle in the Weald of Kent, near Sissinghurst village, is owned and maintained by the National Trust. It is among the most famous gardens in England.

 

Sissinghurst's garden was created in the 1930s by Vita Sackville-West, poet and gardening writer, and her husband Harold Nicolson, author and diplomat. Sackville-West was a writer on the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group who found her greatest popularity in the weekly columns she contributed as gardening correspondent of The Observer, which incidentally—for she never touted it—made her own garden famous. The garden itself is designed as a series of "rooms", each with a different character of colour and/or theme, the walls being high clipped hedges and many pink brick walls. The rooms and "doors" are so arranged that, as one enjoys the beauty in a given room, one suddenly discovers a new vista into another part of the garden, making a walk a series of discoveries that keeps leading one into yet another area of the garden. Nicolson spent his efforts coming up with interesting new interconnections, while Sackville-West focused on making the flowers in the interior of each room exciting.

 

For Sackville-West, Sissinghurst and its garden rooms came to be a poignant and romantic substitute for Knole, reputedly the largest house in Britain, which as the only child of Lionel, the 3rd Lord Sackville she would have inherited had she been a male, but which had passed to her cousin as the male heir.

 

The site is ancient— "hurst" is the Saxon term for "an enclosed wood". A manorhouse with a three-armed moat was built here in the Middle Ages. By 1305, Sissinghurst was impressive enough for King Edward I to spend the night. In 1490, Thomas Baker purchased Sissinghurst.The house was given a new brick gatehouse in the 1530s by Sir John Baker, one of Henry VIII's Privy Councillors, and hugely enlarged in the 1560s by his son Sir Richard Baker, when it became the centre of a 700-acre (2.8 km2) deer park. In 1573, Queen Elizabeth I spent three nights at Sissinghurst.

 

Reflecting in those puddle after the rain we should examined in the light of the Ageless Wisdom teachings, we are reminded of the great occult maxim "As Above So Below" The mural shows the right eye, the left eye and the middle eye. This tower is the symbol for not only all three schools, but also the meaning and purpose of life itself. Vertical rods/constructs are considered archetypal symbols of the phallus. As the dual serpents address the concept of gender, the staff serves as an emissary of transference between body and mind, physically and spiritually. The rod could also be viewed as a conduit between the mundane and ethereal.. The puddle is male, the tower is female and the horizontal line is the child, the source of both the other building, for we all begin life as a child. The upper side, the feminine pathway, explores the human nature of emotions and feeling, both positive and negative, sexual energy and birthing, death, certain psychic energy, and everything that is not logical.As guided from within, outwards. “As above, so below” and vice versa, Solar Systems are born, die and come to birth anew in cycles of activity and rest, as does wo-man. There is a constant flaming out and dying down of activity in every department of nature, corresponding to the alternations of ebb and flow, day and night, summer and winter, life and death. In the beginning of a Day of Manifestation it is taught that a certain Great Being (designated in the Western World by the name of God, but by other names in other parts of the earth) limits Himself to a certain portion of space, in which He elects to create a Solar System for the evolution of added self-consciousness. He includes in His own Being hosts of glorious Hierarchies of, to us, immeasurable spiritual power and splendor. They are the fruitage of past manifestations of this same Being and also other Intelligences, in descending degrees of development down to such as have not reached a stage of consciousness as high as our present humanity, and therefore these latter will not be able to finish their evolution in this System. In God — this great collective Being — there are contained lesser beings of every grade of intelligence and stage of consciousness, from omniscience to an unconsciousness deeper than that of the deepest trance condition. During the period of manifestation with which we are concerned, these various grades of beings are working to acquire more experience than they possessed at the beginning of this period of existence. Those who, in previous manifestations, have attained to the highest degree of development, work on those who have not yet evolved any consciousness. They induce in them a stage of self-consciousness from which they can take up further work themselves. Those who had started their evolution in a former Day of Manifestation, but had not progressed far at the close, now take up their task again, just as we take up our daily work in the morning where we left off the previous night. All the different Beings, however, do not take up their evolution at the early stages of a new manifestation. Some must wait until those who precede them have made the conditions which are necessary for their further development. There are no instantaneous processes in nature. All is an exceedingly slow unfolding, a development which, though so exceedingly slow, is yet absolutely certain to attain ultimate perfection. Just as there are progressive stages in the human life — childhood, youth, manhood or womanhood, and old age — so in the macrocosm there are different stages corresponding to these various periods of the microcosmic life. A child cannot take up the duties of fatherhood or motherhood. Its undeveloped mental and physical condition render it incapable of doing such work. The same is true of the less evolved beings in the beginning of manifestation. They must wait until the higher evolved have made the proper conditions for them. The lower the grade of the intelligence of the evolving being, the more it is dependent upon outside help. At the Beginning, then, the highest Beings — those who are the farthest evolved — work upon those who have the greatest degree of unconsciousness. Later, they turn them over to some of the less evolved entities, who are then able to carry the work a little further. At last self-consciousness is awakened. The evolving life has become Woman-Man. The right eye is controlled by the left brain; it’s male knowledge. Although the right eye “sees” directly to the right brain, this is not what the Egyptians were communicating. It is not the “seeing” but rather the interrupting of the “seeing” information that was important here. It is the left brain that makes this interruption of what is seen; it controls the right side of the body, and vice versa. In the same manner, the Left Eye of Horus, controlled by the right brain, is female knowledge.What happens on one level of reality also happens on every other level; the microcosm and macrocosm behave alike. A revolution occurred during the 20th century in our understanding of the nature of the physical universe. This change is extremely important to religion, for it eliminates a basic conflict between science and religious belief. Prior to this change, our scientific beliefs were based on an approach that was initiated in the 17th century: "We live in a mechanical universe, and we are simply complex machines." This scientific notion that man was purely a mechanical system contradicts what is probably the core of religious belief, namely the idea that mind-like or spirit-like factors can make a difference in human behavior. The religious outlook assumes that a human being, acting on basis of conscious choices, is NOT equivalent to a mechanical system, whose every action is completely determined by direct interaction between tiny neighboring bits of matter. 20th century science, however, has shown that the earlier mechanical concept of reality to be incompatible with empirical facts. To cope with this failure of earlier ideas, physicist made a breakthrough change. Physical theory was converted from a theory about the physical world itself into a theory of WHAT ONE COULD KNOW about the physical world. Human experience was introduced into the theory and made fundamental. This was to be later known as the Copenhagen interpretation. It had drawbacks.For example, while it brought human knowledge into physical theory, it also renounced the possibility of understanding the underlying physical reality. It set our limits of understanding. It was the eminent mathematician John von Neumann and Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner to reincorporate physical reality. They did this by casting the new physics into a theory of the interaction between our conscious thoughts and our physical brains. This was known as von Neumann-Wigner formation of quantum theory, and rationally incorporated conscious thoughts into the basic dynamics. Physics was not yet ready to tackle the problem of interaction between our thoughts and our brain. It was some time before this was scientifically feasible for this kind of proof. Now however, there is a huge and rapidly growing field of experimental data on this question of the connection between minds and brains.

This shift in science is important significance to religion. It removes the basic contradiction between the older scientific claim that human beings are essentially mechanical robots, while religion maintains than man is not ruled by matter alone. The new physics now dynamically entangles our conscious thoughts with the quantum representation of the physical world. There is a plethora of competing theories arising from many disciplines to account for the psychophysical expressions of consciousness in function and structure. The only comprehensive theory must be one that is based in nondualism, and accounts for such self-organizing mindbody manifestations as spontaneous healing or self-recovery, or even the placebo effect. The mind-matter connection is intimately linked to any speculations we can make about alleged mind-over-matter phenomena. In fact all psi phenomena, including such nonlocality demonstrations as the “simple connections” of telepathy, ESP, or synchronicity in general are related to this problem of an underlying or connecting field through which information exchange is instantaneous and unimpeded.The leading contender for such a field, vacuum fluctuation or quantum foam, was proposed by David Bohm. Turbulent motion in this highly excited, subquantal field leads to the emergence from virtuality into actuality of quantum entities which just as quickly dissolve back into the subquantal sea. This same ocean of virtual or metaphysical “stuff” has the property of containing, storing, and transmitting information about the nature of matter and even thought. The observables of nonlocality and psi cry out for some form of interconnection between phenomenon separated in space and/or time. The concept most generally used in physics to account for spatial and temporal interconnection is that of a field. Fields themselves cannot be observed, and so can be considered meta- or beyond physical. Yet the influences propagating through them are observable, eventually. Mind, memory, and consciousness may be such phenomena. Is there one massive holographic field that actually exists in nature in the sense of Bohm’s holomovement? And if so, how does this relate to our consciousness and our relationship to the cosmos. And what is the mechanism by which this universal force interfaces within our organism? When we recognize that we really are that, that nature lies within our deepest structure and function, we come to understand that we are not separate from the whole of creation. We recognize that “I AM THAT I AM.” Everything including ourselves, is deeply connected in one holy movement. The quantum vacuum, the energy-field that characterizes the ground state of the universe, possibly furnishes the indicated ‘fifth field,’ the hidden variables of chaotic yet deterministic micromotion that bootstraps all energy/matter into existence. This plenum could transmit as-yet-unknown effects. This quantum foam, which Wheeler called superspace, consists of a pure massless charge-flux.

We argue, along with Laszlo that, “The conclusion to be derived from the considerations presented here is that the four-demnsional manifold Einstein described as spacetime is likely to be more than a geometrical abstraction. As the energetically superdense quantum vacuum, it may be a physically real field, limiting the velocity of light and other matter-particles and transmittingg a variety of effects, including, but not limited to, gravitation and electromangetism. We may well ask, then, whether the field would also transmit the kind of effects associated with psi.”

Waves of this purely informational (scalar) force could create a potential gradient where quantal motion triggers scalar waves in the vacuum, and these propagate by alternately compressing and rarefying its virtual-particle gas. Scalars are neither ‘light’ nor ‘matter’, but longitudinally propoagating fluctuations below the energy-threshold of particle pair-creation.This produces a self-generating cosmological feedback cycle which translates into interference patterns created by the motion of charged particles modifying the local topology of the vacuum. The modified vacuum field modifies in turn the motion of the particles, (Laszlo, 1993, 1994).Fourier show that any three-dimensional pattern can be analyzed into a set of regular, periodic oscillations that differ only in frequency, amplitude, and phase. Specific waveforms can be exact representations of spatiotemporal objects--thus we have a “Holographic Universe.” Analysis shows that the signals transmitted through the vacuum field are precisely of the psi variety, because information in that field is holographic, and because the propagation of the holographic interference patterns is quasi-instantaneous. Therefore, this virttual field might provide a metaphysical foundation for a broad range of psi phenomena and psychophysical interaction, including self-organization and healing. The quantum vaccum is a highly anomlous universal energy realm of pure potential. It is both the source and destination of all matter in the universe, and thus of any form of consciousness which may emerge through its autopoeitic process. The human brain, with its pronounced and constant state of chaos, could receive and amplify such signals, expressed both consciously and unconsciously in our biophsyical self and our ephemeral thoughts and intuitions.The von-Neumann-Wigner formulation provides the basic logical principles that govern the interaction between thoughts and the brain. It provides prima facie evidence that human thoughts are linked to nature by nonlocal connections. What a person chooses to do in one region seems immediately to effect what is true elsewhere in the universe. This nonlocal aspect can be understood by conceiving the universe to be not a collection of tiny bits of matter, but rather a growing compendium of "bits of information." This profound shift about the nature of reality has not yet sunk in culturally. It will happen by the promotion of understanding of the radical shifts wrought by quantum theory. Most quantum physicists are interested more in applications of quantum theory than in its deep implications. Most now agree that a conception of physical reality is informational in character, not material. Our conscious thoughts ought eventually to be understood within science and that when properly understood, our thoughts will be seen to DO something; they will be efficacious. From what most quantum physicists now understand, certain ontological claims can now be made. 1. The "physical world," as understood in quantum theory, is a store of information, and this information is NOT imbedded in hordes of tiny particles (as they were in classical theory). The information is stored in a mathematically described structure that specifies propensities for certain events to occur. This events (paradigms) include the acquision of information by human agents.2. Conscious events should eventually be understood in science, and these events should be efficacious. They should have a real effect on our actions. The von Neumann-Wigner formulation of quantum theory achieves these ends. It has never been seriously broached in science, not because it was considered unimportant, but because it was deemed too difficult. Pertinent data seemed insufficient and restrictive. This has changed because science has changed.The six sided star in the structural support of the tower incorporates the Duality, Male and Female (Unity), the Blade (upward pointing triangle) and Chalice. The blade represents the Physical, and the Chalice represents the Spiritual realm. It is sometimes referenced as the fire and water triangle as well. Moloch, Chiun and Remphan are all names for the star god, Saturn, whose symbol is a six pointed star formed by two triangles. Saturn was the supreme god of the Chaldeans. The hexagram is referred to the talisman of Saturn. The hexagram was brought to the Jewish people by Solomon when he turned to witchcraft and idolatry after his marriage to Pharaoh’s daughter. It became known as the Seal of Solomon in Egyptian magic and witchcraft. The six pointed star was adopted as the family crest or shield by the Rothschild family during the 19th century,he helped to finance Eiffel. Heavily associated with alchemy, Leo, the Lion, the Double Lion, Routi, refers directly to the Sun as being a source of knowledge. Leo, is one of the constellations of the Zodiac. The Zodiac, is a direct reference to the Sun. The Sun’s position at midday during the time of the Egyptians coincided with the midsummer solstice. Leo was a constellation of the summer.

The theme of Illumination, Knowledge, or Secrets being kept “under the Lion’s Paw” is a recurring motif.There are lions on the first floor belly. The spiral effect the descending forces of the tower, that indicates an expansion of knowledge, and the undulating dance of cosmic forces. Such dualities include:

Asleep/Awake Illness/Health Separation/Unity Male/Female

Left/Right Binding/Loosing Wax/Wane Water/Fire Sun/Moon

Yin/Yang Light/Dark Good/Evil Upper/Lower. If you take it a step further, you notice the dual intertwined snakes form a double helix DNA strand; Serpent DNA specifically. If the serpent is a biological anthropomorphism of DNA, then we can attribute the Ouroboros to cycles of DNA change.Let us examine this slide which I feel holds many secrets. First you have the sun and moon in opposite positions which proves the world has been put on a purposeful pole shift done at the hands of man.

 

In the East where the sun is supposed to rise you now have the moon or crescent where there is a Brother with a sword with an eagle or falcon upon it where he is shielding his eyes from the light because it is either too bright or he cannot see because he is blinded by the darkness.

 

In the West where the sun is supposed to set, you now have the sun with a brother who can see clearly what is going on as he holds the staff and serpent.

 

In the middle is the LORD OR LORDS and KING OF KINGS who represent the union of both and has risen above the Abyss on the wings of destiny. The Phoenix or Rex Mundi who represents not only the union of East and West, but also AS ABOVE SO BELOW.

So what does it mean?

 

The microcosm is oneself, and the macrocosm is the universe. The macrocosm is as the microcosm, and vice versa; within each lies the other, and through understanding one you can understand the other. The primary idea behind this is that the “above” refers to what is visible in the sky. The below, refers to Earth. This creates an equality as it explains how the Earth is a microcosm of the configuration of the planets in the solar system. It draws the connection that the Earth is affected by planetary orbits. This concept also affects various levels of reality: physical, emotional, and mental What happens on any level happens on every other.

 

The concept has not only been a practice, but an attempt to replicate and do a better job then YHWH himself. This is why alchemy and astrology play such an important role in the Illuminati.

 

In Alchemy, there is a process which Mercury and Lead can supposedly turned to Gold. The Gold isn’t the main goal. It’s to understand the process of how mercury or lead changes into gold. Man wants to replicate and modify what is on the Earth into their standards.

 

The same goes for Astrology. The elite not only observe all of the astrological signs, but use them to construct the architecture of this tower.

 

There will come a time when it will have been in vain that Egyptians have honored the Godhead with heartfelt piety and service; and all our holy worship will be fruitless and ineffectual. The Elohim will return from earth to heaven; Egypt will be forsaken, and the land which was once the home of religion will be left desolate, bereft of the presence of its deities.

 

They will no longer love this world around us, this incomparable work of YHWH, this glorious structure which HE has built, this sum of good made up of many diverse forms, this instrument whereby the will of YHWH operates in that which he has made, ungrudgingly favoring man’s welfare.

 

Darkness will be preferred to light, and death will be thought more profitable than life; no one will raise his eyes to heaven; the pious will be deemed insane, the impious wise; the madman will be thought a brave man, and the wicked will be esteemed as good.

 

As for the soul, and the belief that it is immortal by nature, or may hope to attain to immortality, as I have taught you; all this they will mock, and even persuade themselves that it is false. No word of reverence or piety, no utterance worthy of heaven, will be heard or believed.

 

And so the Elohiym will depart from mankind – a grievous thing and only evil angels will remain, who will mingle with men, and drive the poor wretches into all manner of reckless crime, into wars, and robberies, and frauds, and all things hostile to the nature of the soul.

 

Then will the earth tremble, and the sea bear no ships; heaven will not support the stars in their orbits, all voices of the Elohiym will be forced into silence; the fruits of the Earth will rot; the soil will turn barren, and the very air will sicken with sullen stagnation; all things will be disordered and awry, all good will disappear.

 

But when all this has befallen, then YHWH the Creator of all things will look on that which has come to pass, and will stop the disorder by the counterforce of his will, which is the good. HE will call back to the right path those who have gone astray; he will cleanse the world of evil, washing it away with floods, burning it out with the fiercest fire, and expelling it with war and pestilence.The double tetrahedron visible in the structural's forms of the tower can be referred to as the interdimensional vehicle for travel, the Merkaba. It also incorporates the Duality, Male and Female, the Blade (upward pointing triangle) and Chalice. The blade represents the Physical, and the Chalice represents the Spiritual realm. The Star of Solomon can also represent Jerusalem.The Square and Compass is the Blade and Chalice, God and Goddess in the act of Creation, and within the Star we find the Heavenly Luminaries or the Eyes or Spirits of God (the Planets). The symbols on the star represent the astrological portion of the symbol, Jupiter, Venus, the Moon, Mercury, Mars and Saturn, with the Sun being at the center. Zoroaster’ teachings mentioned earlier in the thread as Thoth or Hermes, would be responsible for the seven petal flower depicted at the center.

 

in5d.com/all-about-as-above-so-below-illustrated/

One to the top gardens in the UK, this is just one of several sections. The property was purchased by a celebrity couple (Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson) in 1930 as a ruin with only a tower (in the background), stable and a few cottages. Working together, they transformed the site into a beautiful garden with hundreds of varieties of flowers and herbs. It's now owned by the National Trust.

 

"The garden itself is designed as a series of "rooms", each with a different character of colour and/or theme, the walls being high clipped hedges and many pink brick walls. The rooms and "doors" are so arranged that, as one enjoys the beauty in a given room, one suddenly discovers a new vista into another part of the garden, making a walk a series of discoveries that keeps leading one into yet another area of the garden. Nicolson spent his efforts coming up with interesting new interconnections, while Sackville-West focused on making the flowers in the interior of each room exciting." [Wikipedia]

Power Distribution System for MILS (like) modules.

 

Features:

- Micro usb female connector: for main power input

- 4-contact connectors, 8mm mobile battery connectors secured in place by hot glue: distribute power from module to module creating a network of power

- connector hubs, 0.1" pin arrays, isolated with hot glue: interconnects contacts and consumers (lights, motor) together within a module

 

It is a very cheap solution for power interconnections where components for each MILS module can sum from 1 to 3 eur, approximately.

The Deutsches Historisches Museum presents its exhibitions in two buildings: the unique Baroque Zeughaus (armoury) on the avenue Unter den Linden and the adjacent modern Exhibition Hall designed by the Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei.

The Exhibition Hall of I.M. Pei can be reached by passing through the inner courtyard. Transparency, light and movement are the architectonic programme of this urban masterpiece with its impressive perspectives and spatial interconnections. By constructing sight lines from one building to the other, I.M. Pei has created an achitectonic correspondence between past and present.

Rusty rails

Southern Railway of British Columbia Limited.

 

Suncrest, Burnaby, British Columbia

 

The Southern Railway of British Columbia, branded as SRY Rail Link (reporting mark SRY) is a Canadian short line railway operating in the southwestern British Columbia. The main facility is the port at Annacis Island with major import of cars, export of forestry products, and other shipments. The railway has interconnections with three Class I railroads, including Canadian Pacific (CP), Canadian National (CN) and Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF). It operates a fleet of 29 locomotives, mostly consisting of EMD GP-9 & SW900 locomotives. It also rosters 5 unique Ex. Canadian National Railway GMD-1 locomotives, and also runs 3 SD38-2 locomotives, and 1 SD38AC. The railroad also operates a fleet 2,000 rail cars, hauling approximately 70,000 carloads per year. It operates around 123 miles (198 km) of track, 62 miles (100 km) of which is mainline track.

   

Grande musica ma soprattutto grande sequenza fotografica

 

INTERCONNESSIONI_Cavi, fili, panni, mura, case, genti, si intersecano fra loro formando una moderna-arcaica rete. Adesso fatta anche di culture, di odori, di suoni. L'odore del ragù, del bucato si mischia con l'odore speziato proveniente da paesi lontani.

Musiche neomelodiche si mixano in un nuovo rap metropolitano con litanie arabe e percussioni africane.

The garden at Sissinghurst Castle in the Weald of Kent, near Sissinghurst village, is owned and maintained by the National Trust. It is among the most famous gardens in England.

 

Sissinghurst's garden was created in the 1930s by Vita Sackville-West, poet and gardening writer, and her husband Harold Nicolson, author and diplomat. Sackville-West was a writer on the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group who found her greatest popularity in the weekly columns she contributed as gardening correspondent of The Observer, which incidentally—for she never touted it—made her own garden famous. The garden itself is designed as a series of "rooms", each with a different character of colour and/or theme, the walls being high clipped hedges and many pink brick walls. The rooms and "doors" are so arranged that, as one enjoys the beauty in a given room, one suddenly discovers a new vista into another part of the garden, making a walk a series of discoveries that keeps leading one into yet another area of the garden. Nicolson spent his efforts coming up with interesting new interconnections, while Sackville-West focused on making the flowers in the interior of each room exciting.

 

For Sackville-West, Sissinghurst and its garden rooms came to be a poignant and romantic substitute for Knole, reputedly the largest house in Britain, which as the only child of Lionel, the 3rd Lord Sackville she would have inherited had she been a male, but which had passed to her cousin as the male heir.

 

The site is ancient— "hurst" is the Saxon term for "an enclosed wood". A manorhouse with a three-armed moat was built here in the Middle Ages. By 1305, Sissinghurst was impressive enough for King Edward I to spend the night. In 1490, Thomas Baker purchased Sissinghurst.The house was given a new brick gatehouse in the 1530s by Sir John Baker, one of Henry VIII's Privy Councillors, and hugely enlarged in the 1560s by his son Sir Richard Baker, when it became the centre of a 700-acre (2.8 km2) deer park. In 1573, Queen Elizabeth I spent three nights at Sissinghurst.

 

All the prints, Daniel Vicario's shop

society6.com/flowlover/prints

And I think so many poems exist in liminal spaces and they begin with the idea of, oh, that’s a place where you’re often quiet, right?

 

Sanctuary

Ada Limón

 

Suppose it’s easy to slip

　 into another’s green skin

bury yourself in leaves

 

and wait for a breaking,

　 a breaking open, a breaking

out. I have, before, been

 

tricked into believing

　 I could be both an I

and the world. The great eye

 

of the world is both gaze

　 and gloss. To be swallowed

by being seen. A dream.

 

To be made whole

　 by being not a witness,

but witnessed.

 

If I Could Tell You

from the vault / Yanni

 

'How fragile we are, between the few good moments.'

 

— Jane Hirshfield.

 

♡ ° thoughts-emotions not even paraphrase-able and yet we tend to live (and rush) like a prose, like foraging a linear time; if the slowing down, we encounter poetry between the lines... therein lies our sadness, therein lies our joy.

 

let resilience be not a forgotten language and path of lost steps.

to just live in rational mind & time (perpetual restlessness) becomes a remote and further a unlit space of being/belonging (a trap that does not permit forgiveness); and to live and feel at home, liminal/musical spaces invite us to touch the resilient self. sure, the questions live there but so does wonder! (sustained with worthy efforts, practice and patience)

 

such an metabolized engagement brings in a significant change, in subtle, inconspicuous and almost imperceptible ways wherein ego (along with unbearable emotions like guilt, anger, shame, embarrassment) gradually wears out like the sole of the shoes/or the shoe itself; and the undesirable clingings also wear out soon, like it happens when any manure that is stuck on the soles gets cleared out, while walking on a rough pathway.

 

infused with love, a message (with rhythms, images and associations) perched on one's own breath of immortal transience - a gateless gateway that is some inches more open to connection & interconnection; a bit more soul.

 

staying here (wanting to live here), artfully and heartfully, we open up beyond our first responses, first thoughts, first desires, first ambits, to a realm/being of kind happiness that begets more happiness; of a unflappable kind. ♡ °

 

　 　 Felitsa

 

"Yet even today, to look at a tree

and ask the story Who are you? is to be transformed."

 

*---- --° Jane Hirshfield, from Metampsychosis

　 ◎

 

Gifts

 

I gave my first love laughter,

I gave my second tears,

I gave my third love silence

Thru all the years.

 

My first love gave me singing,

My second eyes to see,

But oh, it was my third love

Who gave my soul to me.

 

--° Sara Teasdale

 

Spaces \ Outside/First Love, Inside/Second Love,

Liminal/Third Love

　 ◎

♡ Opening an Envelope within yourself ♡

 

Although the wind

blows terribly here,

the moonlight also leaks

between the roof planks

of this ruined house.

 

— Izumi Shikibu

Feeling out an idea. I like the simplicity of this, but I also think about incorporating other creatures to show how the salmon is the keystone for the west coast forest.

Benjamin Huynh est un.e artiste visuel.le pluridisciplinaire. Son parcours artistique a commencé en 2015 lorsqu’iel quitte sa région natale, la Côte d’Azur, pour poursuivre sa formation artistique à Toulouse et plus tard à l’École de recherche graphique (ERG) à Bruxelles. D’abord attiré.e par la performance, l’exploration artistique de Benjamin s’est orientée vers la peinture, l’installation et le travail du textile en arrivant à Bruxelles. Son travail sert de plateforme de recherche et d’exploration, approfondissant des thèmes tels que l’identité queer, la culture selfie, le recyclage et la positivité de l’espace.

Dans le paysage complexe de la peinture contemporaine, les frontières traditionnelles sont remises en question par des concepts tels que le network painting et transitive painting, qui incitent à réévaluer la structure hiérarchique historique du médium. Le travail de Benjamin Huynh s’inscrit dans cette transformation, cherchant à explorer le potentiel de la peinture dans un paradigme horizontal et interconnecté. L’horizontalité devient un nœud central à travers lequel son travail examine les concepts de care, d’inclusion et soft activism entrelacés avec les enjeux politiques queer contemporains. Ces notions fonctionnent comme des stratégies de survie essentielles dans le capitalisme tardif et font émerger la proposition faite pour la BIP 2024.

Les travaux présentés ici partent de collaborations avec des ami.e.s pour générer des matériaux sources, en particulier des selfies, une approche qui vise à être positive et à remettre en question la représentation des corps. Par ce biais, la peinture sert d’outil pour traverser les mondes des images, oscillant ici entre l’histoire de la peinture figurative occidentale et l’autoreprésentation du XXIe siècle par la photographie.

Rééxaminant l’esthétique traditionnelle et les assignations de genre, le travail de Benjamin Huynh, implique activement les personnes peintes dans une relation horizontale avec l’artiste. Cette proposition met en rapport la peinture et la question du dispositif, les œuvres résistent à leur sanctification conventionnelle par une approche positive de l’espace. Le travail textile et l’installation deviennent des outils pour s’affranchir de la toile tout en redéfinissant la muséographie et l’exposition comme un lieu de passage. La peinture figurative perturbe alors l’interaction distance-objet, culminant dans des installations où les travaux et les regardeur.euse.s convergent. Au cœur de cette exploration se trouve une approche tentaculaire, qui tisse des thèmes contemporains d’interconnection, de vie privée et d’auto-représentation. Les images de référence dérivées des selfies servent de canal pour explorer l’identité, l’incarnation des corps et l’impact de l’ère numérique sur l’expression de soi. La pratique de Benjamin Huynh n’est donc pas conçue comme une série, mais plutôt comme une collection d’objets interconnectés, chacun engageant un dialogue avec les autres. Ce sont des pièces qui interagissent et qui, comme un rhizome, prolifèrent.

 

Benjamin Huynh is a multidisciplinary visual artist. His artistic journey began in 2015 when he left his native region, the Côte d'Azur, to continue his artistic training in Toulouse and later at the School of Graphic Research (ERG) in Brussels. Initially attracted to performance, Benjamin's artistic exploration shifted to painting, installation and textile work upon arriving in Brussels. His work serves as a platform for research and exploration, delving into themes such as queer identity, selfie culture, recycling and the positivity of space.

In the complex landscape of contemporary painting, traditional boundaries are being challenged by concepts such as network painting and transitive painting, which prompt a reevaluation of the historical hierarchical structure of the medium. Benjamin Huynh's work is part of this transformation, seeking to explore the potential of painting in a horizontal and interconnected paradigm. Horizontality becomes a central node through which his work examines the concepts of care, inclusion and soft activism intertwined with contemporary queer political issues. These notions function as essential survival strategies in late capitalism and bring to light the proposal made for BIP 2024.

The works presented here start from collaborations with friends to generate source materials, in particular selfies, an approach which aims to be positive and to question the representation of bodies. In this way, painting serves as a tool to cross the worlds of images, oscillating here between the history of Western figurative painting and the self-representation of the 21st century through photography.

Reexamining traditional aesthetics and gender assignments, Benjamin Huynh's work actively involves the people painted in a horizontal relationship with the artist. This proposal connects painting and the question of the device, the works resist their conventional sanctification through a positive approach to space. Textile work and installation become tools to free oneself from the canvas while redefining museography and the exhibition as a place of passage. Figurative painting then disrupts the distance-object interaction, culminating in installations where the works and the viewers converge. At the heart of this exploration is a sprawling approach, which weaves together contemporary themes of interconnection, privacy and self-representation. Reference images derived from selfies serve as a channel to explore identity, the embodiment of bodies, and the impact of the digital age on self-expression. Benjamin Huynh's practice is therefore not conceived as a series, but rather as a collection of interconnected objects, each engaging in a dialogue with the others. These are parts that interact and, like a rhizome, proliferate.

 

My Website : Twitter : Facebook : Instagram : Photocrowd

 

A 'flipped' version of this night time photo of the 7m diameter 'Floating Earth'' art installation as seen at the Canary Wharf Winter Lights Festival. I saw it last Autumn installed in Southwark Cathedral so seeing it floating on one of the docks made for an interesting contrast, not least as whilst it was tethered it was still bouncing about a bit like a beachball in a swimming pool.

 

More info and touring dates for Gaia here : my-earth.org/tour-dates/

 

From the website, "Gaia is a touring artwork by UK artist Luke Jerram. Measuring seven metres in diameter and created from 120dpi detailed NASA imagery of the Earth’s surface* the artwork provides the opportunity to see our planet, floating in three dimensions.

 

The installation aims to create a sense of the Overview Effect, which was first described by author Frank White in 1987. Common features of the experience for astronauts are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment.

 

The artwork also acts as a mirror to major events in society. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the artwork may provide the viewer with a new perspective of our place on the planet; a sense that societies of the Earth are all interconnected and that we have a responsibility toward one another. After the lockdown, there has been a renewed respect for nature."

 

© D.Godliman

Tramvía Metropolità S.A.: el 10 de diciembre de 2024 se inauguró la prolongación de la red tranviaria conocida como Trambesòs, entre la Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes y la parada de Verdaguer, donde enlaza con la línea 4 del metro y varias líneas de autobuses. Es el primer tramo de la tan esperada interconexión de las dos redes tranviarias de Barcelona.

 

Todo este nuevo tramo ha sido dotado del sistema de alimentación por el suelo APS de Alstom, por lo que carece de línea aérea de contacto.

 

En la parada de Glòries, el tranvía 04 (Alstom Citadis 302) acaba de bajar su pantógrafo, para continuar su servicio en la línea T4 hacia Verdaguer usando el sistema APS.

____________________________________________________

 

Tramvía Metropolità S.A.: on December 10, 2024, the extension of the tram network known as Trambesòs was inaugurated, between Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes and the Verdaguer stop, where it connects with metro line 4 and several bus lines. It is the first section of the long-awaited interconnection of the two tram networks in Barcelona.

 

This entire new section has been equipped with Alstom's APS ground-based power supply system, so it does not have an overhead contact line.

 

At the Glòries stop, tram 04 (Alstom Citadis 302) has just lowered its pantograph, to continue its service on line T4 towards Verdaguer using the APS system.

The cathedral of Le Puy-en-Velay in Auvergne (central France) is one of the major Romanesque buildings of the Middle Ages and of the Western World. Built between the late 1000s and the mid-1200s, it is a UNESCO World heritage monument.

 

There would be so much to say about this magnificent church that I’d rather refer those people interested to the Wikipedia page, which is reasonably detailed: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Puy_Cathedral.

 

I will upload several other photos of my last visit to the cathedral over the following days.

 

This is easily the most intriguing artifact inside the cathedral: it is a black basalt polished stone table, roughly 3 × 2 meters, which is rumored to have been the top part of a dolmen (this is Breton language for “table of stone”) that had existed since time immemorial on the hilltop where the original cathedral was built when Christendom took over. Its name is The Stone of Fevers, because as legend would have it, lying on it helped cure fever-related illnesses.

 

One still often sees bona fide (no pun intended) believers lying face down on this stone for minutes to, I suppose, pray, or maybe just meditate. I even saw a nun doing it once! This is a rare place where one can actually see nowadays the interconnection between pagan and Christian rites.

 

Panorama shot made up of 2 separate handheld exposures, stitched with PT Gui.

Two trees connected by a robe, obe holding the other. But is the old big tree stabilizing the young and thin one ... or vice versa

Austin Metro City 310 Van (1980-*90) Engine 998cc S4 Tr. OHV

Registration Number J 5776 PDV (Exeter)

AUSTIN SET

www.flickr.com/photos/45676495@N05/sets/72157623759808208...

The Austin Metro was launched in 1986, as a 3 and 5 door hatchback and 3 door light delivery van.

Some of the Mini's underpinnings were carried over into the Metro, namely the 998 cc and 1275 cc A-Series engines, much of the front-wheel drivetrain and four-speed manual gearbox, and suspension subframes. The Metro used the Hydrolastic suspension system found on the Allegro but without front to rear interconnection. The hatchback body shell was one of the most spacious of its time and this was a significant factor in its popularity. Initially, the Metro was sold as a three-door hatchback only, with a choice of 998cc (1.0 litre) or 1275cc (1.3 litre) petrol engines.

Badged as Austin Metro until 1986 when an update and corporate reshuffle saw the cars re-launched as Rover Metro's though they never carried the Rover badge and were officially recognised and badged simply as Metro

 

Thankyou for a massive 58,249,907 views

 

Shot 30.04.2017 at Catton Hall Car Show REF 125-382

 

Austin Metro 1.3 HLE(1980-97) Engine 1275cc S4 OHV Tr. Production 2,078,218 (includes Rover 100)

 

Registration NumberD 958 TFM (Chester)

AUSTIN SET

 

www.flickr.com/photos/45676495@N05/sets/72157623759808208...

 

introduced the Austin mini Metro. It was intended as a big brother, rather than as a replacement, for the Mini, Some of the Mini's underpinnings were carried over into the Metro, namely the 998 cc and 1275 cc A-Series engines, much of the front-wheel drivetrain and four-speed manual gearbox, and suspension subframes. The Metro used the Hydragas suspension system found on the Allegro but without front to rear interconnection. The hatchback body shell was one of the most spacious of its time and this was a significant factor in its popularity. Initially, the Metro was sold as a three-door hatchback, followed later by the five door model.

 

The Metro range was expanded in 1982 to include the luxury Vanden Plas and higher performance MG versions. The Vanden Plas featured higher levels of luxury and equipment, while the slightly more powerful MG Metro 1.3 sold as a sports model. The Vanden Plas variant received the same MG engine from 1984 onwards (with the exception of the VP Automatic, which retained the 63 bhp version, The luxury fittings marking out the Metro Vanden Plas took the form of a radio-cassette player, electric front windows, an improved instrument panel with tachometer, and a variety of optional extras such as trip computer, leather trim, remote boot release, and front fog lamps

 

Diolch yn fawr am 67,253,138 o olygfeydd anhygoel, mwynhewch ac arhoswch yn ddiogel

 

Thank you 67,253,138 amazing views, enjoy and stay safe

 

Shot 02.09.2018 at Himley Hall, Wolverhampton Ref 136-029

      

To view more of my images, of Sissinghurst Castle & Gardensl, please click "here" !

 

Vita Sackville-West, the poet and writer, began the transforming Sissinghurst Castle in the 1930s with her diplomat and author husband, Harold Nicolson. Harold's architectural planning of the garden rooms, and the colourful, abundant planting in the gardens by Vita, reflect the romance and intimacy of her poems and writings. Sissinghurst Castle was the backdrop for a diverse history; from the astonishing time as a prison in the 1700s, to being a home to the women’s land army. It was also a family home to some fascinating people who lived here or came to stay. Today you can take in the ruined architecture of the extensive original buildings, vast panoramic views from the top of the Tower, the current working farm and the 450-acre wider estate along with Vita and Harold's gardens. Now we're well into our new season there are lots of events for you to enjoy. The National Trust took over the whole of Sissinghurst, its garden, farm and buildings, in 1967. The garden epitomises the English garden of the mid-20th century. It is now very popular and can be crowded in peak holiday periods. In 2009, BBC Four broadcast an eight-part television documentary series called Sissinghurst, describing the house and garden and the attempts by Adam Nicolson and his wife Sarah Raven, who are 'Resident Donors', to restore a form of traditional Wealden agriculture to the Castle Farm. Their plan is to use the land to grow ingredients for lunches in the Sissinghurst restaurant. A fuller version of the story can be found in Nicolson's book, Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History (2008). The garden at Sissinghurst Castle in the Weald of Kent, in England at Sissinghurst village, is owned and maintained by the National Trust. It is among the most famous gardens in England. Sissinghurst's garden was created in the 1930s by Vita Sackville-West, poet and gardening writer, and her husband Harold Nicolson, author and diplomat. Sackville-West was a writer on the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group who found her greatest popularity in the weekly columns she contributed as gardening correspondent of The Observer, which incidentally—for she never touted it—made her own garden famous. The garden itself is designed as a series of 'rooms', each with a different character of colour and/or theme, the walls being high clipped hedges and many pink brick walls. The rooms and 'doors' are so arranged that, as one enjoys the beauty in a given room, one suddenly discovers a new vista into another part of the garden, making a walk a series of discoveries that keeps leading one into yet another area of the garden. Nicolson spent his efforts coming up with interesting new interconnections, while Sackville-West focused on making the flowers in the interior of each room exciting. For Sackville-West, Sissinghurst and its garden rooms came to be a poignant and romantic substitute for Knole, reputedly the largest house in Britain, which as the only child of Lionel, the 3rd Lord Sackville she would have inherited had she been a male, but which had passed to her cousin as the male heir. The site is ancient— "hurst" is the Saxon term for an enclosed wood. A manor house with a three-armed moat was built here in the Middle Ages. In 1305, King Edward I spent a night here. In 1490, Thomas Baker purchased Sissinghurst. The house was given a new brick gatehouse in the 1530s by Sir John Baker, one of Henry VIII's Privy Councillors, and greatly enlarged in the 1560s by his son Sir Richard Baker, when it became the centre of a 700-acre (2.8 km2) deer park. In 1573, Queen Elizabeth I spent three nights at Sissinghurst. Rose arbour in Sissinghurst's White Garden room, which set a fashion for 'white gardens' After the collapse of the Baker family in the late 17th century, the building had many uses: as a prisoner-of-war camp during the Seven Years' War; as the workhouse for the Cranbrook Union; after which it became homes for farm labourers. Sackville-West and Nicolson found Sissinghurst in 1930 after concern that their property Long Barn, near Sevenoaks, Kent, was close to development over which they had no control. Although Sissinghurst was derelict, they purchased the ruins and the farm around it and began constructing the garden we know today. The layout by Nicolson and planting by Sackville-West were both strongly influenced by the gardens of Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens; by the earlier Cothay Manor in Somerset, laid out by Nicolson's friend Reginald Cooper, and described by one garden writer as the "Sissinghurst of the West Country"; and by Hidcote Manor Garden, designed and owned by Lawrence Johnston, which Sackville-West helped to preserve. Sissinghurst was first opened to the public in 1938.

 

An oast, oast house or hop kiln is a building designed for kilning hops as part of the brewing process. They can be found in most hop-growing areas and are often good examples of vernacular architecture. Many redundant oasts have been converted into houses

Austin Metro HLE (1980-97) Engine 1275cc S4 OHV Tr. Production 2,078,218 (includes Rover 100)

 

Registration Number A 464 KEA (Dudley)

 

AUSTIN SET

 

www.flickr.com/photos/45676495@N05/sets/72157623759808208...

 

introduced as the Austin Mini Metro. It was intended as a big brother, rather than as a replacement, for the Mini, Some of the Mini's underpinnings were carried over into the Metro, namely the 998 cc and 1275 cc A-Series engines, much of the front-wheel drivetrain and four-speed manual gearbox, and suspension subframes. The Metro used the Hydragas suspension system found on the Allegro but without front to rear interconnection. The hatchback body shell was one of the most spacious of its time and this was a significant factor in its popularity. Initially, the Metro was sold as a three-door hatchback, followed later by the five door model.

 

The Metro range was expanded in 1982 to include the luxury Vanden Plas and higher performance MG versions. The Vanden Plas featured higher levels of luxury and equipment, while the slightly more powerful MG Metro 1.3 sold as a sports model. The Vanden Plas variant received the same MG engine from 1984 onwards (with the exception of the VP Automatic, which retained the 63 bhp version, The luxury fittings marking out the Metro Vanden Plas took the form of a radio-cassette player, electric front windows, an improved instrument panel with tachometer, and a variety of optional extras such as trip computer, leather trim, remote boot release, and front fog lamps

 

Thankyou for a massive 54,627,382 views

 

Shot 03.07.2016 at Cars in the Park, Beacon Park, Lichfield REF 121-076

 

Shiva, meaning "The Auspicious One"), also known as Mahadeva ("Great God"), is a popular Hindu deity. Shiva is regarded as one of the primary forms of God. He is the Supreme God within Shaivism, one of the three most influential denominations in contemporary Hinduism. He is one of the five primary forms of God in the Smarta tradition, and "the Destroyer" or "the Transformer" among the Trimurti, the Hindu Trinity of the primary aspects of the divine.

 

Shiva has many benevolent and fearsome forms. At the highest level Shiva is limitless, transcendent, unchanging and formless. In benevolent aspects, he is depicted as an omniscient Yogi who lives an ascetic life on Mount Kailash, as well as a householder with wife Parvati and his two children, Ganesha and Kartikeya and in fierce aspects, he is often depicted slaying demons. Shiva is also regarded as the patron god of yoga and arts.

 

The main iconographical attributes of Shiva are the third eye on his forehead, the snake Vasuki around his neck, the crescent moon adorning, the holy river Ganga flowing from his matted hair, the trishula as his weapon and the damaru as his instrument.

 

Shiva is usually worshiped in the aniconic form of Lingam. Temples of Lord Shiva are called shivalayam.

 

ETYMOLOGY & OTHER NAMES

The Sanskrit word Shiva (Devanagari: शिव, śiva) comes from Shri Rudram Chamakam of Taittiriya Samhita (TS 4.5, 4.7) of Krishna Yajurveda. The root word śi means auspicious. In simple English transliteration it is written either as Shiva or Siva. The adjective śiva, is used as an attributive epithet not particularly of Rudra, but of several other Vedic deities.

 

The other popular names associated with Shiva are Mahadev, Mahesh, Maheshwar, Shankar, Shambhu, Rudra, Har, Trilochan, Devendra (meaning Chief of the gods) and Trilokinath (meaning Lord of the three realms).

 

The Sanskrit word śaiva means "relating to the God Shiva", and this term is the Sanskrit name both for one of the principal sects of Hinduism and for a member of that sect. It is used as an adjective to characterize certain beliefs and practices, such as Shaivism. He is the oldest worshipped Lord of India.

 

The Tamil word Sivan, Tamil: சிவன் ("Fair Skinned") could have been derived from the word sivappu. The word 'sivappu' means "red" in Tamil language but while addressing a person's skin texture in Tamil the word 'Sivappu' is used for being Fair Skinned.

 

Adi Sankara, in his interpretation of the name Shiva, the 27th and 600th name of Vishnu sahasranama, the thousand names of Vishnu interprets Shiva to have multiple meanings: "The Pure One", or "the One who is not affected by three Gunas of Prakrti (Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas)" or "the One who purifies everyone by the very utterance of His name."Swami Chinmayananda, in his translation of Vishnu sahasranama, further elaborates on that verse: Shiva means "the One who is eternally pure" or "the One who can never have any contamination of the imperfection of Rajas and Tamas".

 

Shiva's role as the primary deity of Shaivism is reflected in his epithets Mahādeva ("Great God"; mahā "Great" and deva "god"), Maheśvara ("Great Lord"; mahā "great" and īśvara "lord"), and Parameśvara ("Supreme Lord").

 

There are at least eight different versions of the Shiva Sahasranama, devotional hymns (stotras) listing many names of Shiva. The version appearing in Book 13 (Anuśāsanaparvan) of the Mahabharata is considered the kernel of this tradition. Shiva also has Dasha-Sahasranamas (10,000 names) that are found in the Mahanyasa. The Shri Rudram Chamakam, also known as the Śatarudriya, is a devotional hymn to Shiva hailing him by many names.

 

The worship of Shiva is a pan-Hindu tradition, practiced widely across all of India, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

 

ASSIMILATION OF TRADITIONS

The figure of Shiva as we know him today was built up over time, with the ideas of many regional sects being amalgamated into a single figure. How the persona of Shiva converged as a composite deity is not well documented. According to Vijay Nath:

 

Visnu and Siva [...] began to absorb countless local cults and deities within their folds. The latter were either taken to represent the multiple facets of the same god or else were supposed to denote different forms and appellations by which the god came to be known and worshipped. [...] Siva became identified with countless local cults by the sheer suffixing of Isa or Isvara to the name of the local deity, e.g., Bhutesvara, Hatakesvara, Chandesvara."

 

Axel Michaels the Indologist suggests that Shaivism, like Vaishnavism, implies a unity which cannot be clearly found either in religious practice or in philosophical and esoteric doctrine. Furthermore, practice and doctrine must be kept separate.

 

An example of assimilation took place in Maharashtra, where a regional deity named Khandoba is a patron deity of farming and herding castes. The foremost center of worship of Khandoba in Maharashtra is in Jejuri. Khandoba has been assimilated as a form of Shiva himself, in which case he is worshipped in the form of a lingam. Khandoba's varied associations also include an identification with Surya and Karttikeya.

 

INDUS VALLEY ORIGINS

Many Indus valley seals show animals but one seal that has attracted attention shows a figure, either horned or wearing a horned headdress and possibly ithyphallic figure seated in a posture reminiscent of the Lotus position and surrounded by animals was named by early excavators of Mohenjo-daro Pashupati (lord of cattle), an epithet of the later Hindu gods Shiva and Rudra. Sir John Marshall and others have claimed that this figure is a prototype of Shiva and have described the figure as having three faces seated in a "yoga posture" with the knees out and feet joined.

 

This claim has been criticised, with some academics like Gavin Flood and John Keay characterizing them as unfounded. Writing in 1997 Doris Srinivasan said that "Not too many recent studies continue to call the seal's figure a 'Proto-Siva'", rejecting thereby Marshall's package of proto-Siva features, including that of three heads. She interprets what John Marshall interpreted as facial as not human but more bovine, possibly a divine buffalo-man. According to Iravatham Mahadevan symbols 47 and 48 of his Indus script glossary The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables (1977), representing seated human-like figures, could describe Hindu deity Murugan, popularly known as Shiva and Parvati's son.

 

INDO-EUROPEAN ORIGINS

Shiva's rise to a major position in the pantheon was facilitated by his identification with a host of Vedic deities, including Purusha, Rudra, Agni, Indra, Prajāpati, Vāyu, and others.

 

RUDRA

Shiva as we know him today shares many features with the Vedic god Rudra, and both Shiva and Rudra are viewed as the same personality in Hindu scriptures. The two names are used synonymously. Rudra, the god of the roaring storm, is usually portrayed in accordance with the element he represents as a fierce, destructive deity.

 

The oldest surviving text of Hinduism is the Rig Veda, which is dated to between 1700 and 1100 BCE based on linguistic and philological evidence. A god named Rudra is mentioned in the Rig Veda. The name Rudra is still used as a name for Shiva. In RV 2.33, he is described as the "Father of the Rudras", a group of storm gods. Furthermore, the Rudram, one of the most sacred hymns of Hinduism found both in the Rig and the Yajur Vedas and addressed to Rudra, invokes him as Shiva in several instances, but the term Shiva is used as an epithet for the gods Indra, Mitra and Agni many times. Since Shiva means pure, the epithet is possibly used to describe a quality of these gods rather than to identify any of them with the God Shiva.

 

The identification of Shiva with the older god Rudhra is not universally accepted, as Axel Michaels explains:

 

Rudra is called "The Archer" (Sanskrit: Śarva), and the arrow is an essential attribute of Rudra. This name appears in the Shiva Sahasranama, and R. K. Sharma notes that it is used as a name of Shiva often in later languages.

 

The word is derived from the Sanskrit root śarv-, which means "to injure" or "to kill", and Sharma uses that general sense in his interpretive translation of the name Śarva as "One who can kill the forces of darkness". The names Dhanvin ("Bowman") and Bāṇahasta ("Archer", literally "Armed with arrows in his hands") also refer to archery.

 

AGNI

Rudra and Agni have a close relationship. The identification between Agni and Rudra in the Vedic literature was an important factor in the process of Rudra's gradual development into the later character as Rudra-Shiva. The identification of Agni with Rudra is explicitly noted in the Nirukta, an important early text on etymology, which says, "Agni is also called Rudra." The interconnections between the two deities are complex, and according to Stella Kramrisch:

 

The fire myth of Rudra-Śiva plays on the whole gamut of fire, valuing all its potentialities and phases, from conflagration to illumination.

 

In the Śatarudrīya, some epithets of Rudra, such as Sasipañjara ("Of golden red hue as of flame") and Tivaṣīmati ("Flaming bright"), suggest a fusing of the two deities. Agni is said to be a bull, and Lord Shiva possesses a bull as his vehicle, Nandi. The horns of Agni, who is sometimes characterized as a bull, are mentioned. In medieval sculpture, both Agni and the form of Shiva known as Bhairava have flaming hair as a special feature.

 

INDRA

According to Wendy Doniger, the Puranic Shiva is a continuation of the Vedic Indra. Doniger gives several reasons for his hypothesis. Both are associated with mountains, rivers, male fertility, fierceness, fearlessness, warfare, transgression of established mores, the Aum sound, the Supreme Self. In the Rig Veda the term śiva is used to refer to Indra. (2.20.3, 6.45.17, and 8.93.3.) Indra, like Shiva, is likened to a bull. In the Rig Veda, Rudra is the father of the Maruts, but he is never associated with their warlike exploits as is Indra.

 

The Vedic beliefs and practices of the pre-classical era were closely related to the hypothesised Proto-Indo-European religion, and the Indo-Iranian religion. According to Anthony, the Old Indic religion probably emerged among Indo-European immigrants in the contact zone between the Zeravshan River (present-day Uzbekistan) and (present-day) Iran. It was "a syncretic mixture of old Central Asian and new Indo-European elements", which borrowed "distinctive religious beliefs and practices" from the Bactria–Margiana Culture. At least 383 non-Indo-European words were borrowed from this culture, including the god Indra and the ritual drink Soma. According to Anthony,

 

Many of the qualities of Indo-Iranian god of might/victory, Verethraghna, were transferred to the adopted god Indra, who became the central deity of the developing Old Indic culture. Indra was the subject of 250 hymns, a quarter of the Rig Veda. He was associated more than any other deity with Soma, a stimulant drug (perhaps derived from Ephedra) probably borrowed from the BMAC religion. His rise to prominence was a peculiar trait of the Old Indic speakers.

 

LATER VEDIC LITERATURE

Rudra's transformation from an ambiguously characterized deity to a supreme being began in the Shvetashvatara Upanishad (400-200 BCE), which founded the tradition of Rudra-Shiva worship. Here they are identified as the creators of the cosmos and liberators of souls from the birth-rebirth cycle. The period of 200 BCE to 100 CE also marks the beginning of the Shaiva tradition focused on the worship of Shiva, with references to Shaiva ascetics in Patanjali's Mahabhasya and in the Mahabharata.

 

Early historical paintings at the Bhimbetka rock shelters, depict Shiva dancing, Shiva's trident, and his mount Nandi but no other Vedic gods.

 

PURANIC LITERATURE

The Shiva Puranas, particularly the Shiva Purana and the Linga Purana, discuss the various forms of Shiva and the cosmology associated with him.

 

TANTRIC LITERATURE

The Tantras, composed between the 8th and 11th centuries, regard themselves as Sruti. Among these the Shaiva Agamas, are said to have been revealed by Shiva himself and are foundational texts for Shaiva Siddhanta.

 

POSITION WITHIN HINDUISM

 

SHAIVISM

Shaivism (Sanskrit: शैव पंथ, śaiva paṁtha) (Kannada: ಶೈವ ಪಂಥ) (Tamil: சைவ சமயம்) is the oldest of the four major sects of Hinduism, the others being Vaishnavism, Shaktism and Smartism. Followers of Shaivism, called "Shaivas", and also "Saivas" or "Saivites", revere Shiva as the Supreme Being. Shaivas believe that Shiva is All and in all, the creator, preserver, destroyer, revealer and concealer of all that is. The tantric Shaiva tradition consists of the Kapalikas, Kashmir Shaivism and Shaiva Siddhanta. The Shiva MahaPurana is one of the purāṇas, a genre of Hindu religious texts, dedicated to Shiva. Shaivism is widespread throughout India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, mostly. Areas notable for the practice of Shaivism include parts of Southeast Asia, especially Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.

 

PANCHAYATANA PUJA

Panchayatana puja is the system of worship ('puja') in the Smarta sampradaya of Hinduism. It is said to have been introduced by Adi Shankara, the 8th century CE Hindu philosopher. It consists of the worship of five deities: Shiva, Vishnu, Devi, Surya and Ganesha. Depending on the tradition followed by Smarta households, one of these deities is kept in the center and the other four surround it. Worship is offered to all the deities. The five are represented by small murtis, or by five kinds of stones, or by five marks drawn on the floor.

 

TRIMURTI

The Trimurti is a concept in Hinduism in which the cosmic functions of creation, maintenance, and destruction are personified by the forms of Brahmā the creator, Vishnu the maintainer or preserver and Śhiva the destroyer or transformer. These three deities have been called "the Hindu triad" or the "Great Trinity", often addressed as "Brahma-Vishnu-Maheshwara."

 

ICONOGRAPHY AND PROPERTIES

 

ATTRIBUTES

Shiva's form: Shiva has a trident in the right lower arm, and a crescent moon on his head. He is said to be fair like camphor or like an ice clad mountain. He wears five serpents and a garland of skulls as ornaments. Shiva is usually depicted facing the south. His trident, like almost all other forms in Hinduism, can be understood as the symbolism of the unity of three worlds that a human faces - his inside world, his immediate world, and the broader overall world. At the base of the trident, all three forks unite.

 

Third eye: (Trilochana) Shiva is often depicted with a third eye, with which he burned Desire (Kāma) to ashes, called "Tryambakam" (Sanskrit: त्र्यम्बकम् ), which occurs in many scriptural sources. In classical Sanskrit, the word ambaka denotes "an eye", and in the Mahabharata, Shiva is depicted as three-eyed, so this name is sometimes translated as "having three eyes". However, in Vedic Sanskrit, the word ambā or ambikā means "mother", and this early meaning of the word is the basis for the translation "three mothers". These three mother-goddesses who are collectively called the Ambikās. Other related translations have been based on the idea that the name actually refers to the oblations given to Rudra, which according to some traditions were shared with the goddess Ambikā. It has been mentioned that when Shiva loses his temper, his third eye opens which can destroy most things to ashes.

 

Crescent moon: (The epithets "Chandrasekhara/Chandramouli")- Shiva bears on his head the crescent moon. The epithet Candraśekhara (Sanskrit: चन्द्रशेखर "Having the moon as his crest" - candra = "moon"; śekhara = "crest, crown") refers to this feature. The placement of the moon on his head as a standard iconographic feature dates to the period when Rudra rose to prominence and became the major deity Rudra-Shiva. The origin of this linkage may be due to the identification of the moon with Soma, and there is a hymn in the Rig Veda where Soma and Rudra are jointly implored, and in later literature, Soma and Rudra came to be identified with one another, as were Soma and the moon. The crescent moon is shown on the side of the Lord's head as an ornament. The waxing and waning phenomenon of the moon symbolizes the time cycle through which creation evolves from the beginning to the end.

 

Ashes: (The epithet "Bhasmaanga Raaga") - Shiva smears his body with ashes (bhasma). The ashes are said to represent the end of all material existence. Some forms of Shiva, such as Bhairava, are associated with a very old Indian tradition of cremation-ground asceticism that was practiced by some groups who were outside the fold of brahmanic orthodoxy. These practices associated with cremation grounds are also mentioned in the Pali canon of Theravada Buddhism. One epithet for Shiva is "inhabitant of the cremation ground" (Sanskrit: śmaśānavāsin, also spelled Shmashanavasin), referring to this connection.

 

Matted hair: (The epithet "Jataajoota Dhari/Kapardina") - Shiva's distinctive hair style is noted in the epithets Jaṭin, "the one with matted hair", and Kapardin, "endowed with matted hair" or "wearing his hair wound in a braid in a shell-like (kaparda) fashion". A kaparda is a cowrie shell, or a braid of hair in the form of a shell, or, more generally, hair that is shaggy or curly. His hair is said to be like molten gold in color or being yellowish-white.

 

Blue throat: The epithet Nīlakaṇtha (Sanskrit नीलकण्ठ; nīla = "blue", kaṇtha = "throat"). Since Shiva drank the Halahala poison churned up from the Samudra Manthan to eliminate its destructive capacity. Shocked by his act, Goddess Parvati strangled his neck and hence managed to stop it in his neck itself and prevent it from spreading all over the universe, supposed to be in Shiva's stomach. However the poison was so potent that it changed the color of his neck to blue. (See Maha Shivaratri.)

 

Sacred Ganges: (The epithet "Gangadhara") Bearer of Ganga. Ganges river flows from the matted hair of Shiva. The Gaṅgā (Ganges), one of the major rivers of the country, is said to have made her abode in Shiva's hair. The flow of the Ganges also represents the nectar of immortality.

 

Tiger skin: (The epithet "Krittivasana").He is often shown seated upon a tiger skin, an honour reserved for the most accomplished of Hindu ascetics, the Brahmarishis.

 

Serpents: (The epithet "Nagendra Haara" or 'Vasoki"). Shiva is often shown garlanded with a snake.

 

Deer: His holding deer on one hand indicates that He has removed the Chanchalata of the mind (i.e., attained maturity and firmness in thought process). A deer jumps from one place to another swiftly, similar to the mind moving from one thought to another.

 

Trident: (Trishula): Shiva's particular weapon is the trident. His Trisul that is held in His right hand represents the three Gunas— Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. That is the emblem of sovereignty. He rules the world through these three Gunas. The Damaru in His left hand represents the Sabda Brahman. It represents OM from which all languages are formed. It is He who formed the Sanskrit language out of the Damaru sound.

 

Drum: A small drum shaped like an hourglass is known as a damaru (ḍamaru). This is one of the attributes of Shiva in his famous dancing representation known as Nataraja. A specific hand gesture (mudra) called ḍamaru-hasta (Sanskrit for "ḍamaru-hand") is used to hold the drum. This drum is particularly used as an emblem by members of the Kāpālika sect.

 

Axe: (Parashu):The parashu is the weapon of Lord Shiva who gave it to Parashurama, sixth Avatar of Vishnu, whose name means "Rama with the axe" and also taught him its mastery.

 

Nandī: (The epithet "Nandi Vaahana").Nandī, also known as Nandin, is the name of the bull that serves as Shiva's mount (Sanskrit: vāhana). Shiva's association with cattle is reflected in his name Paśupati, or Pashupati (Sanskrit: पशुपति), translated by Sharma as "lord of cattle" and by Kramrisch as "lord of animals", who notes that it is particularly used as an epithet of Rudra. Rishabha or the bull represents Dharma Devata. Lord Siva rides on the bull. Bull is his vehicle. This denotes that Lord Siva is the protector of Dharma, is an embodiment of Dharma or righteousness.

 

Gaṇa: The Gaṇas (Devanagari: गण) are attendants of Shiva and live in Kailash. They are often referred to as the bhutaganas, or ghostly hosts, on account of their nature. Generally benign, except when their lord is transgressed against, they are often invoked to intercede with the lord on behalf of the devotee. Ganesha was chosen as their leader by Shiva, hence Ganesha's title gaṇa-īśa or gaṇa-pati, "lord of the gaṇas".

 

Mount Kailāsa: Mount Kailash in the Himalayas is his traditional abode. In Hindu mythology, Mount Kailāsa is conceived as resembling a Linga, representing the center of the universe.

 

Varanasi: Varanasi (Benares) is considered to be the city specially loved by Shiva, and is one of the holiest places of pilgrimage in India. It is referred to, in religious contexts, as Kashi.

 

LINGAM

Apart from anthropomorphic images of Shiva, the worship of Shiva in the form of a lingam, or linga, is also important. These are depicted in various forms. One common form is the shape of a vertical rounded column. Shiva means auspiciousness, and linga means a sign or a symbol. Hence, the Shivalinga is regarded as a "symbol of the great God of the universe who is all-auspiciousness". Shiva also means "one in whom the whole creation sleeps after dissolution". Linga also means the same thing—a place where created objects get dissolved during the disintegration of the created universe. Since, according to Hinduism, it is the same god that creates, sustains and withdraws the universe, the Shivalinga represents symbolically God Himself. Some scholars, such as Monier Monier-Williams and Wendy Doniger, also view linga as a phallic symbol, although this interpretation is disputed by others, including Christopher Isherwood, Vivekananda, Swami Sivananda, and S.N. Balagangadhara.

 

JYOTIRLINGA

The worship of the Shiva-Linga originated from the famous hymn in the Atharva-Veda Samhitâ sung in praise of the Yupa-Stambha, the sacrificial post. In that hymn, a description is found of the beginningless and endless Stambha or Skambha, and it is shown that the said Skambha is put in place of the eternal Brahman. Just as the Yajna (sacrificial) fire, its smoke, ashes, and flames, the Soma plant, and the ox that used to carry on its back the wood for the Vedic sacrifice gave place to the conceptions of the brightness of Shiva's body, his tawny matted hair, his blue throat, and the riding on the bull of the Shiva, the Yupa-Skambha gave place in time to the Shiva-Linga. In the text Linga Purana, the same hymn is expanded in the shape of stories, meant to establish the glory of the great Stambha and the superiority of Shiva as Mahadeva.

 

The sacred of all Shiva linga is worshipped as Jyotir linga. Jyoti means Radiance, apart from relating Shiva linga as a phallus symbol, there are also arguments that Shiva linga means 'mark' or a 'sign'. Jyotirlinga means "The Radiant sign of The Almighty". The Jyotirlingas are mentioned in Shiva Purana.

 

SHAKTI

Shiva forms a Tantric couple with Shakti [Tamil : சக்தி ], the embodiment of energy, dynamism, and the motivating force behind all action and existence in the material universe. Shiva is her transcendent masculine aspect, providing the divine ground of all being. Shakti manifests in several female deities. Sati and Parvati are the main consorts of Shiva. She is also referred to as Uma, Durga (Parvata), Kali and Chandika. Kali is the manifestation of Shakti in her dreadful aspect. The name Kali comes from kāla, which means black, time, death, lord of death, Shiva. Since Shiva is called Kāla, the eternal time, Kālī, his consort, also means "Time" or "Death" (as in "time has come"). Various Shakta Hindu cosmologies, as well as Shākta Tantric beliefs, worship her as the ultimate reality or Brahman. She is also revered as Bhavatārini (literally "redeemer of the universe"). Kālī is represented as the consort of Lord Shiva, on whose body she is often seen standing or dancing. Shiva is the masculine force, the power of peace, while Shakti translates to power, and is considered as the feminine force. In the Vaishnava tradition, these realities are portrayed as Vishnu and Laxmi, or Radha and Krishna. These are differences in formulation rather than a fundamental difference in the principles. Both Shiva and Shakti have various forms. Shiva has forms like Yogi Raj (the common image of Himself meditating in the Himalayas), Rudra (a wrathful form) and Natarajar (Shiva's dance are the Lasya - the gentle form of dance, associated with the creation of the world, and the Tandava - the violent and dangerous dance, associated with the destruction of weary worldviews – weary perspectives and lifestyles).

 

THE FIVE MANTRAS

Five is a sacred number for Shiva. One of his most important mantras has five syllables (namaḥ śivāya).

 

Shiva's body is said to consist of five mantras, called the pañcabrahmans. As forms of God, each of these have their own names and distinct iconography:

 

Sadyojāta

Vāmadeva

Aghora

Tatpuruṣha

Īsāna

 

These are represented as the five faces of Shiva and are associated in various texts with the five elements, the five senses, the five organs of perception, and the five organs of action. Doctrinal differences and, possibly, errors in transmission, have resulted in some differences between texts in details of how these five forms are linked with various attributes. The overall meaning of these associations is summarized by Stella Kramrisch:

 

Through these transcendent categories, Śiva, the ultimate reality, becomes the efficient and material cause of all that exists.

 

According to the Pañcabrahma Upanishad:

 

One should know all things of the phenomenal world as of a fivefold character, for the reason that the eternal verity of Śiva is of the character of the fivefold Brahman. (Pañcabrahma Upanishad 31)

 

FORMES AND ROLES

According to Gavin Flood, "Shiva is a god of ambiguity and paradox," whose attributes include opposing themes.[168] The ambivalent nature of this deity is apparent in some of his names and the stories told about him.

 

DESTROYER AND BENEFACTOR

In the Yajurveda, two contrary sets of attributes for both malignant or terrific (Sanskrit: rudra) and benign or auspicious (Sanskrit: śiva) forms can be found, leading Chakravarti to conclude that "all the basic elements which created the complex Rudra-Śiva sect of later ages are to be found here". In the Mahabharata, Shiva is depicted as "the standard of invincibility, might, and terror", as well as a figure of honor, delight, and brilliance. The duality of Shiva's fearful and auspicious attributes appears in contrasted names.

 

The name Rudra (Sanskrit: रुद्र) reflects his fearsome aspects. According to traditional etymologies, the Sanskrit name Rudra is derived from the root rud-, which means "to cry, howl". Stella Kramrisch notes a different etymology connected with the adjectival form raudra, which means "wild, of rudra nature", and translates the name Rudra as "the wild one" or "the fierce god". R. K. Sharma follows this alternate etymology and translates the name as "terrible". Hara (Sanskrit: हर) is an important name that occurs three times in the Anushasanaparvan version of the Shiva sahasranama, where it is translated in different ways each time it occurs, following a commentorial tradition of not repeating an interpretation. Sharma translates the three as "one who captivates", "one who consolidates", and "one who destroys". Kramrisch translates it as "the ravisher". Another of Shiva's fearsome forms is as Kāla (Sanskrit: काल), "time", and as Mahākāla (Sanskrit: महाकाल), "great time", which ultimately destroys all things. Bhairava (Sanskrit: भैरव), "terrible" or "frightful", is a fierce form associated with annihilation.

 

In contrast, the name Śaṇkara (Sanskrit: शङ्कर), "beneficent" or "conferring happiness" reflects his benign form. This name was adopted by the great Vedanta philosopher Śaṇkara (c. 788 - 820 CE), who is also known as Shankaracharya. The name Śambhu (Sanskrit: शम्भु), "causing happiness", also reflects this benign aspect.

 

ASCETIC AND HOUSEHOLDER

He is depicted as both an ascetic yogi and as a householder, roles which have been traditionally mutually exclusive in Hindu society.[185] When depicted as a yogi, he may be shown sitting and meditating. His epithet Mahāyogi ("the great Yogi: Mahā = "great", Yogi = "one who practices Yoga") refers to his association with yoga. While Vedic religion was conceived mainly in terms of sacrifice, it was during the Epic period that the concepts of tapas, yoga, and asceticism became more important, and the depiction of Shiva as an ascetic sitting in philosophical isolation reflects these later concepts. Shiva is also depicted as a corpse below Goddess Kali, it represents that Shiva is a corpse without Shakti. He remains inert. While Shiva is the static form, Mahakali or Shakti is the dynamic aspect without whom Shiva is powerless.

 

As a family man and householder, he has a wife, Parvati and two sons, Ganesha and Kartikeya. His epithet Umāpati ("The husband of Umā") refers to this idea, and Sharma notes that two other variants of this name that mean the same thing, Umākānta and Umādhava, also appear in the sahasranama. Umā in epic literature is known by many names, including the benign Pārvatī. She is identified with Devi, the Divine Mother; Shakti (divine energy) as well as goddesses like Tripura Sundari, Durga, Kamakshi and Meenakshi. The consorts of Shiva are the source of his creative energy. They represent the dynamic extension of Shiva onto this universe. His son Ganesha is worshipped throughout India and Nepal as the Remover of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings and Lord of Obstacles. Kartikeya is worshipped in Southern India (especially in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka) by the names Subrahmanya, Subrahmanyan, Shanmughan, Swaminathan and Murugan, and in Northern India by the names Skanda, Kumara, or Karttikeya.

 

Some regional deities are also identified as Shiva's children. As one story goes, Shiva is enticed by the beauty and charm of Mohini, Vishnu's female avatar, and procreates with her. As a result of this union, Shasta - identified with regional deities Ayyappa and Ayyanar - is born. Shiva is also mentioned in some scriptures or folktales to have had daughters like the serpent-goddess Manasa and Ashokasundari. Even the demon Andhaka is sometimes considered a child of Shiva.

 

NATARAJA

he depiction of Shiva as Nataraja (Tamil: நடராஜா,Kannada: ನಟರಾಜ, Telugu: నటరాజు, Sanskrit: naṭarāja, "Lord of Dance") is popular. The names Nartaka ("dancer") and Nityanarta ("eternal dancer") appear in the Shiva Sahasranama. His association with dance and also with music is prominent in the Puranic period. In addition to the specific iconographic form known as Nataraja, various other types of dancing forms (Sanskrit: nṛtyamūrti) are found in all parts of India, with many well-defined varieties in Tamil Nadu in particular. The two most common forms of the dance are the Tandava, which later came to denote the powerful and masculine dance as Kala-Mahakala associated with the destruction of the world. When it requires the world or universe to be destroyed, Lord Śiva does it by the tāṇḍavanṛtya. and Lasya, which is graceful and delicate and expresses emotions on a gentle level and is considered the feminine dance attributed to the goddess Parvati. Lasya is regarded as the female counterpart of Tandava. The Tandava-Lasya dances are associated with the destruction-creation of the world.

 

DAKSHINAMURTHY

Dakshinamurthy, or Dakṣiṇāmūrti (Tamil:தட்சிணாமூர்த்தி, Telugu: దక్షిణామూర్తి, Sanskrit: दक्षिणामूर्ति), literally describes a form (mūrti) of Shiva facing south (dakṣiṇa). This form represents Shiva in his aspect as a teacher of yoga, music, and wisdom and giving exposition on the shastras. This iconographic form for depicting Shiva in Indian art is mostly from Tamil Nadu. Elements of this motif can include Shiva seated upon a deer-throne and surrounded by sages who are receiving his instruction.

 

ARDANARISHVARA

An iconographic representation of Shiva called (Ardhanārīśvara) shows him with one half of the body as male and the other half as female. According to Ellen Goldberg, the traditional Sanskrit name for this form (Ardhanārīśvara) is best translated as "the lord who is half woman", not as "half-man, half-woman". According to legend, Lord Shiva is pleased by the difficult austerites performed by the goddess Parvati, grants her the left half of his body. This form of Shiva is quite similar to the Yin-Yang philosophy of Eastern Asia, though Ardhanārīśvara appears to be more ancient.

 

TRIRUPANTAKA

Shiva is often depicted as an archer in the act of destroying the triple fortresses, Tripura, of the Asuras. Shiva's name Tripurantaka (Sanskrit: त्रिपुरान्तक, Tripurāntaka), "ender of Tripura", refers to this important story.[216] In this aspect, Shiva is depicted with four arms wielding a bow and arrow, but different from the Pinakapani murti. He holds an axe and a deer on the upper pair of his arms. In the lower pair of the arms, he holds a bow and an arrow respectively. After destroying Tripura, Tripurantaka Shiva smeared his forehead with three strokes of Ashes. This has become a prominent symbol of Shiva and is practiced even today by Shaivites.

 

OTHER FORMS, AVATARS IDENTIFICATIONS

Shiva, like some other Hindu deities, is said to have several incarnations, known as Avatars. Although Puranic scriptures contain occasional references to "ansh" avatars of Shiva, the idea is not universally accepted in Saivism. The Linga Purana speaks of twenty-eight forms of Shiva which are sometimes seen as avatars. According to the Svetasvatara Upanishad, he has four avatars.

 

In the Hanuman Chalisa, Hanuman is identified as the eleventh avatar of Shiva and this belief is universal. Hanuman is popularly known as “Rudraavtaar” “Rudra” being a name of “Shiva”. Rama– the Vishnu avatar is considered by some to be the eleventh avatar of Rudra (Shiva).

 

Other traditions regard the sage Durvasa, the sage Agastya, the philosopher Adi Shankara, as avatars of Shiva. Other forms of Shiva include Virabhadra and Sharabha.

 

FESTIVALS

Maha Shivratri is a festival celebrated every year on the 13th night or the 14th day of the new moon in the Shukla Paksha of the month of Maagha or Phalguna in the Hindu calendar. This festival is of utmost importance to the devotees of Lord Shiva. Mahashivaratri marks the night when Lord Shiva performed the 'Tandava' and it is the day that Lord Shiva was married to Parvati. The holiday is often celebrated with special prayers and rituals offered up to Shiva, notably the Abhishek. This ritual, practiced throughout the night, is often performed every three hours with water, milk, yogurt, and honey. Bel (aegle marmelos) leaves are often offered up to the Hindu god, as it is considered necessary for a successful life. The offering of the leaves are considered so important that it is believed that someone who offers them without any intentions will be rewarded greatly.

 

BEYOND HINDUISM

 

BUDDHISM

Shiva is mentioned in Buddhist Tantra. Shiva as Upaya and Shakti as Prajna. In cosmologies of buddhist tantra, Shiva is depicted as active, skillful, and more passive.

 

SIKHISM

The Japuji Sahib of the Guru Granth Sahib says, "The Guru is Shiva, the Guru is Vishnu and Brahma; the Guru is Paarvati and Lakhshmi." In the same chapter, it also says, "Shiva speaks, the Siddhas speak."

 

In Dasam Granth, Guru Gobind Singh have mentioned two avtars of Rudra: Dattatreya Avtar and Parasnath Avtar.

 

OTHERS

The worship of Lord Shiva became popular in Central Asia through the Hephthalite (White Hun) Dynasty, and Kushan Empire. Shaivism was also popular in Sogdiana and Eastern Turkestan as found from the wall painting from Penjikent on the river Zervashan. In this depiction, Shiva is portrayed with a sacred halo and a sacred thread ("Yajnopavita"). He is clad in tiger skin while his attendants are wearing Sodgian dress. In Eastern Turkestan in the Taklamakan Desert. There is a depiction of his four-legged seated cross-legged n a cushioned seat supported by two bulls. Another panel form Dandan-Uilip shows Shiva in His Trimurti form with His Shakti kneeling on her right thigh. It is also noted that Zoroastrian wind god Vayu-Vata took on the iconographic appearance of Shiva.

 

Kirant people, a Mongol tribe from Nepal, worship a form of Shiva as one of their major deity, identifying him as the lord of animals. It is also said that the physical form of Shiva as a yogi is derived from Kirants as it is mentioned in Mundhum that Shiva took human form as a child of Kirant. He is also said to give Kirants visions in form of a male deer.

 

In Indonesia, Shiva is also worshiped as Batara Guru. His other name is "Sang Hyang Jagadnata" (king of the universe) and "Sang Hyang Girinata" (king of mountains). In the ancient times, all kingdoms were located on top of mountains. When he was young, before receiving his authority of power, his name was Sang Hyang Manikmaya. He is first of the children who hatched from the eggs laid by Manuk Patiaraja, wife of god Mulajadi na Bolon. This avatar is also worshiped in Malaysia. Shiva's other form in Indonesian Hindu worship is "Maharaja Dewa" (Mahadeva). Both the forms are closely identified with the Sun in local forms of Hinduism or Kebatinan, and even in the genie lore of Muslims. Mostly Shiva is worshipped in the form of a lingam or the phallus.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Rover Metro GTa (1990-95) Engine 1275cc BMC A Series

 

Registration Number G 20 GTA (Personalised number originally allocated for Exeter)

ROVER SET

 

www.flickr.com/photos/45676495@N05/sets/72157623690660271...

 

At the end of 1987, the Austin marque was shelved. Rover management never allowed Rover badges on the Montego or the Maestro in their home market, They wore badges that were the same shape as the Rover longship badge, but which did not say "Rover". The Metro did too until May 1990, when it was officially relaunched as the Rover Metro, heavily revised and fitted with a new range of engines.The ageing 998 cc and 1275 cc A-Series engines were replaced giving way to the 1.1 and 1.4 8 valve K Series engines. and a 16 valve engine in the GTi (early variants are 95 bhp (71 kW) SPi while the later MPi version has 103 bhp) and the early GTa. All models used Peugeot-designed end-on gearboxes.

 

In 1993, a 1.4 PSA TUD diesel from the Citroën AX / Peugeot 106 was launched. The Hydragas suspension was finally modified to accept front to rear interconnection in the way that Alex Moulton so desperately wanted to bring the car back up to standard in terms of handling and ride quality.

 

In 1993, a 1.4 PSA TUD diesel from the Citroën AX / Peugeot 106 was launched. The Hydragas suspension was finally modified to accept front to rear interconnection in the way that Alex Moulton so desperately wanted to bring the car back up to standard in terms of handling and ride quality.

 

Thankyou for a massive 58,249,907 views

 

Shot 30.04.2017 at Catton Hall Car Show REF 125-381

Rover Metro GS (1980-97) Original Engine 1275cc BMC A Series 72bhp

Race Prep Engine 1380cc S4

Rave Number - Driver 29 Keith Waters (Swadlincote)

Registration Number G 96 SNN (Nottingham)

ROVER SET

 

www.flickr.com/photos/45676495@N05/sets/72157623690660271...

 

This car competed at Curborough in Class 1A - Road Going Modified Saloons and Sports Cars up to 1400cc

 

At the end of 1987, the Austin marque was shelved. Rover management never allowed Rover badges on the Montego or the Maestro in their home market, They wore badges that were the same shape as the Rover longship badge, but which did not say "Rover". The Metro did too until May 1990, when it was officially relaunched as the Rover Metro, heavily revised and fitted with a new range of engines.The ageing 998 cc and 1275 cc A-Series engines were replaced giving way to the 1.1 and 1.4 8 valve K Series engines. and a 16 valve engine in the GTi (early variants are 95 bhp (71 kW) SPi while the later MPi version has 103 bhp) and the early GTa. All models used Peugeot-designed end-on gearboxes.

 

In 1993, a 1.4 PSA TUD diesel from the Citroën AX / Peugeot 106 was launched. The Hydragas suspension was finally modified to accept front to rear interconnection in the way that Alex Moulton so desperately wanted to bring the car back up to standard in terms of handling and ride quality.

 

In 1993, a 1.4 PSA TUD diesel from the Citroën AX / Peugeot 106 was launched. The Hydragas suspension was finally modified to accept front to rear interconnection in the way that Alex Moulton so desperately wanted to bring the car back up to standard in terms of handling and ride quality.

 

Diolch am 76,892,541 o olygfeydd anhygoel, mae pob un yn cael ei werthfawrogi'n fawr.

 

Thanks for 76,892,541 amazing views, every one is greatly appreciated.

 

Shot 08..09.2019 at Curborough Sprint course, Curborough, Lichfield, Staffordshire 143-818

       

Info from the Cathedral site:

 

Gaia at Chester Cathedral

Gaia is a touring artwork by UK artist Luke Jerram.

Measuring six metres in diameter, Gaia features 120dpi detailed NASA imagery of the Earth’s surface*. The artwork provides the opportunity to see our planet on this scale, floating in three-dimensions.

The installation creates a sense of the Overview Effect, which was first described by author Frank White in 1987. Common features of the experience for astronauts are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment. Watch this great film about the phenomenon.

The artwork also acts as a mirror to major events in society. In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the artwork may provide the viewer with a new perspective of our place on the planet; a sense that societies of the Earth are all interconnected and that we have a responsibility toward one another. After the lockdown, there has been a renewed respect for nature.

A specially made surround sound composition by BAFTA award winning Composer Dan Jones is played alongside the sculpture. In Greek Mythology Gaia is the personification of the Earth.

Gaia has been created in partnership with the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), Bluedot and the UK Association for Science and Discovery Centres.

 

Gaia at Chester Cathedral opens on Tuesday 7 February to Sunday 5 March 2023.

 

Entry to view Gaia is free of charge, however, donations are welcome. Your donation to Chester Cathedral helps us to maintain our magnificent building and its estate for future generations, but also enables us to host events such as Gaia.

 

For more information see:

chestercathedral.com/gaia/

 

Luke Jerram’s multidisciplinary practice involves the creation of sculptures, installations and live arts projects. Living in the UK but working internationally since 1997, Jerram has created a number of extraordinary art projects which have excited and inspired people around the globe. Jerram has a set of different narratives that make up his practice which are developing in parallel with one another. He is known worldwide for his large scale public artworks.

 

Learn more about Luke here:

chestercathedral.com/gaia-luke-jerram/

 

#ChesterCulture

The Grand Canyon is more than a great chasm carved over millennia through the rocks of the Colorado Plateau. It is more than an awe-inspiring view. It is more than a pleasuring ground for those that explore the roads, hike the trails, or float the currents of the turbulent Colorado River.

 

This canyon is a gift that transcends what we experience. Its beauty and size humbles us. Its timelessness provokes a comparison to our short existence. In its vast spaces we may find solace from our hectic lives.

 

The Grand Canyon we visit today is a gift from past generations. Take time to enjoy this gift. Sit and watch the changing play of light and shadows. Wander along a trail and feel the sunshine and wind on your face. Attend a ranger program. Follow the antics of ravens soaring above the rim. Listen for the roar of the rapids far below. Savor a sunrise or sunset.

 

As the shadows lengthen across the spires and buttes, time passing into the depths of the canyon, understand what this great chasm passes to us - a sense of humility born in the interconnections of all that is and a willingness to care for this land. We have the responsibility to ensure that future generations have the opportunity to form their own connections with Grand Canyon National Park.