Showing posts with label gold. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gold. Show all posts
Sunday, 11 November 2018
Thursday, 6 September 2018
Moda Ficción
Eduardo Costa // Moda Ficcion
https://www.macba.cat/es/expo-oscar-masotta-la-teoria-como-accion/1/exposiciones/expo
https://www.macba.cat/es/expo-oscar-masotta-la-teoria-como-accion/1/exposiciones/expo
Saturday, 18 November 2017
Tuesday, 16 August 2016
The Defense of Poesy Sir Philip Sidney
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The questions were ‘Whether gold can be made by art?’ and ‘Whether the imagination can produce real effects?’ These were followed by two positions in moral philosophy, given out by the King himself; one that it is greater to defend than to enlarge the bounds of an empire; and the other, that just and unjust are not constituted by law only, but by nature.
Sunday, 24 April 2016
poets are useless
"You will remember how Plato deals with poets in his ideal state: he banishes them from it in the public interest. He had a high conception of the power of poetry, but he believed it harmful, superfluous - in a perfect community, of course. The question of the poet's right to exist has not often, since then, been posed with the same emphasis; but today it poses itself. Probably it is only seldom posed in this form, but it is more or less familiar to you all as the question of the autonomy of the poet, of his freedom to write whatever he pleases... A more advanced type of writer does recognize this choice. His decision, made on the basis of class struggle, is to side with the proletariat... Such writing is commonly called tendentious. Here you have the catchword around which has long circled a debate familiar to you. Its familiarity tells you how unfruitful it has been, for it has not advanced beyond the monotonous reiteration of arguments for and against: on the one hand, the correct political line is demanded of the poet; on the other, one is justified in expecting his work to have quality. Such a formulation is of course unsatisfactory as long as the connection between the two factors, political line and quality, has not been perceived. Of course, the connection can be asserted dogmatically. You can declare: a work that shows the correct political tendency need show no other quality. You can also declare: a work that exhibits the correct tendency must of necessity have every other quality. This second formulation is not uninteresting, and, moreover, it is correct. I adopt it as my own. But in doing so I abstain from asserting it dogmatically. It must be proved... the tendency of a literary work can be politically correct only if it is also literarily correct. That is to say, the politically correct tendency includes a literary tendency. And I would add straightaway: this literary tendency, which is implicitly or explicitly contained in every correct political tendency of a work, alone constitutes the quality of that work."
("The Author as Producer")
A 3D illustration of a metasurface skin cloak made from an ultrathin layer of nanoantennas (gold blocks) covering an arbitrarily shaped object. Light reflects off the cloak (red arrows) as if it were reflecting off a flat mirror.
Monday, 28 March 2016
Friday, 18 September 2015
Wednesday, 22 April 2015
in memoriam Eduardo Galeano /// thanks SW
1520: Brussels Durer
These things must be emanations from the sun, like the men and women who made them in the remote land they inhabit: helmets and girdles, feather fans, dresses, cloaks, hunting gear, a gold sun and a silver moon, a blowgun, and other weapons of such beauty that they seem made to revive their victims.
The greatest draftsman of all the ages does not tire of staring at them. This is part of the booty that Cortes seized from Moctezuma: the only pieces that were not melted into ingots. King Charles, newly seated on the Holy Empire's throne, is exhibiting to the public the trophies from his new bits of world.
Albrecht Durer doesn't know the Mexican poem that explains that the true artist finds pleasure in his work and talks with his heart, because he has one that isn't dead and eaten by ants. But seeing what he sees, Durer hears those words and finds that he is experiencing the greatest happiness of his half century of life.
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The Mexica (Aztec) king Motecuhzoma greeted
Hernan Cortés in 1519 with gifts of gold, silver, and precious stones, including jewelry, ornaments, headpieces, disks, garments, shields, and helmets. Cortés sent
the tribute to Charles V, king of Spain and emperor of the
Holy Roman Empire, who placed them on exhibit in 1520.
Albrecht Dürer viewed the
exhibit in Brussels and extolled its beauty in his
travel journal:
At Brussels is a very splendid Townhall, large and covered with beautiful carved stonework, and it has a noble, open tower. . . . I saw the things which have been brought to the King from the new land of gold, a sun all of gold a whole fathom broad, and a moon all of silver of the same size, also two rooms full of armor of the people there, and all manner of wondrous weapons of theirs, harness and darts, very strange clothing, beds, and all kinds of wonderful objects of human use, much better worth seeing than prodigies [myths, fairy tales]. These things were all so precious that they are valued at 100,000 florins [guilders] All the days of my life I have seen nothing that rejoiced my heart so much as these things, for I saw amongst them wonderful works of art, and I marvelled at the subtle Ingenia of men in foreign lands. Indeed I cannot express all that I thought there.
-->It is quite clear from the passage that Dürer’s admiration is of riches, curiosities, and craft. When he discusses Western “art” he uses different terms, such as proportion, or alludes to comparisons with antiquity. Contrary to usual interpretations, he doesn’t marvel at the “art” of the New World, he marvels at the “curiosities” and “craft.”
Yet by the eighteenth century what were “heathen idols” had become art. Europe was more secular and Mexico was less afraid of native religious revivals. When three Aztec sculptures came to light in the construction in the Zócalo of Mexico City in 1790, two were left visible and eventually moved to a new museum devoted to antiquity. The third, a colossal idol-like female figure, was reburied for some time for fear of its effect on the natives. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, it had found its place in the museum too. Plaster casts were made of the sculptures and exhibited in 1824 in London for a public eager to see exotic monuments.
http://www.columbia.edu/~ep9/articles_thinking.html
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Sunday, 4 January 2015
cargo cult science / rich as croesus
Midas rejoiced in his new power, which he hastened to put to the test. He touched an oak twig and a stone; both turned to gold. Overjoyed, as soon as he got home, he ordered the servants to set a feast on the table. "So Midas, king of Lydia, swelled at first with pride when he found he could transform everything he touched to gold; but when he beheld his food grow rigid and his drink harden into golden ice then he understood that this gift was a bane and in his loathing for gold, cursed his prayer" (Claudian, In Rufinem).
![]() |
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_Museum_gold_coin_of_Croesus.jpg |
In a version told by Nathaniel Hawthorne in A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (1852), Midas found that when he touched his daughter, she turned to gold as well.
Now, Midas hated the gift he had coveted. He prayed to Dionysus, begging to be delivered from starvation. Dionysus heard his prayer, and consented; telling Midas to wash in the river Pactolus. Then, what ever he put into the water would be reversed of the touch.
Midas did so, and when he touched the waters, the power flowed into the river, and the river sands turned into gold. This explained why the river Pactolus was so rich in gold, and the wealth of the dynasty claiming Midas as its forefather no doubt the impetus for this aetiological myth. Gold was perhaps not the only metallic source of Midas' riches: "King Midas, a Phrygian, son of Cybele, first discovered black and white lead".[17]
Midas, now hating wealth and splendor, moved to the country and became a worshipper of Pan, the god of the fields and satyr. Roman mythographers asserted that his tutor in music was Orpheus.
Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they're missing. But it would be just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school--we never say explicitly what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
Feynman http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html
The Vailala Madness also took a rigid line on the abandonment of the great cycle of initiations that were formerly a centre of social life in the Papuan Gulf. The cycle, known as hevehe and semese, would take over a decade to complete and involved the building of a huge man's cultic house, known as the eravo, in which were put ritual paraphernalia that were prohibited to women. The Vailala Madness destroyed the paraphernalia, and often the first step towards this was displaying the forbidden items to the non-initiated.
https://www.isca.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/ISCA/JASO/Archive_1997/28_1_Lienhardt_2.pdf
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Wednesday, 17 December 2014
**I am ridiculous.
But, whether he had not noticed the trick, or did not dare to attempt it,
the "new fellow," was still holding his cap on his knees even after
prayers were over. It was one of those head-gears of composite order, in
which we can find traces of the bearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin
cap, and cotton night-cap; one of those poor things, in fine, whose dumb
ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile's face. Oval,
stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in
succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band;
after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon covered with
complicated braiding, from which hung, at the end of a long thin cord,
small twisted gold threads in the manner of a tassel. The cap was new; its
peak shone.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2413/2413-h/2413-h.htm
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2413/2413-h/2413-h.htm
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
QLIPHOTH / QLIPPOTH
shell centre / southbank / harmless travellers / dirty fossils
->
QLIPHOTH/QLIPPOTH Lit. "shells" (singular: qliphah). Shades of the
dead whose names appear in the books of Dyzan or Thoth, or the Book of the
Law (AL). They may contain formulae of magical powers. RAW calls them
"souls of those who died insane... the tulpas of Tibet... avatars of
Coyote, the American Indian prankster-god." RAW also identifies them with the
Celtic "little people" or faeries. Some of the twenty-two qliphotic
entities of the Black Tarot, as envisioned by Grant, are defined herein
under separate entries, although strictly speaking, the qlippoth are the
names of the guardians of the tunnels, not the tunnels themselves. To understand the qliphothic atus
fully and to do them justice can be more deleterious to the artist or
researcher than one might suspect. Conceivably, such complete
understanding could result in the destruction of the ego without restoration in
the Oversoul and therefore lead to actual madness. Dealing with the Qliphoth is
the psychic equivalent of working with toxic wastes, dangerous animals or high
voltage wires. To invoke any force
is to invoke automatically its opposite as well. In the more conventional
sense, qliphoth are negative cosmic energies equating with the ten positive
Sephiroth (e.g., Lilith is the evil counterpart of Malkuth). All positive aspects
of divinity have their "excremental" sides, or demons: Beelzebub,
Satanas, etc. The difference between metamorphosis and excretion is
thinner than you might guess. From the universal lexicon:
scall
English scab
chale
Cupeno husk,
shell
skalli Icelandic a peeled head
geled
Hebrew
skin
kulit
Malay skin
skull
English the
"shell" of the brain
azal
Basque peeling
soale
Hausa to peel
off
scale, shell English
scalp
Stone was "that which all men
despise" -- and this in turn led the puffers to experiment with
various types of excrement in order to see if that substance, perchance,
could possibly yield the Secret of the Ages, since nothing so far had succeeded
in doing so. And of course all such experiments accomplished was to mark the
nadir of human folly. What is this
word "excrement", after all? It's from Latin, excernere, "to
separate." It is a separation, a peeling away, as when we peel away a
scab or a blister, making it no longer a part of ourselves. German
scheiden/schieden (divide, separate, divorce) is simply another form of the
word Scheisse (Fr. chier, Engl. shit) or its Greek equivalent schizo,
"to split." Latin cutis
(skin), we should notice, first of all, is a cognate of Greek skatos (dung).
Like the snake, what we throw away begins with the "skin" -- a word
which probably represents a form of one of the universal roots. Compare
Peruvian kina (the bark, or tree peeling, whence we get quinine) and Malay
sisek (fish scales). Perhaps even the Austrian Kakadu word, kŠngir meaning
"skin" is distantly related. At any rate, kŠngir is almost
certainly the origin of "kangaroo," particularly since the Australian
Warramunga word, nguru, meant
"foreskin." These two are clearly connected and themarsupial
associations are plain enough.The puffers didn't understand that excrement
isn't exactly what all men despise. Or to be more precise, what matters isn't so
much what is discarded and thrown away, but the value we place on the kept, as
opposed to the trash. That faulty decision itself is where the problem lies. In
fact, the Finnish proverb: Kulta kultainen v“lkkya roskatta, "gold glitters
in
what is thrown away", is a sentiment well understood by shamans, witches and other marginal people, who are drawn to the rubbish heaps and middens, much as the money-vultures circle the stock market. What all men despise is "that out there," that is to say, the world. And they try incessantly to dissociate themselves from it. Yet, obviously, if we really were one with the world, then we'd have in hand "the universal solvent," we'd have
immortality because the world is immortal. In the world's all-powerful Nature is the very secret of turning lead into gold.Instead man tries desperately to throw out everything that is not self.Part of the problem is that the verb "to be" has two meanings (as in Spanish): one is an expression of permanent identityor equivalence to something else and the other an expression of a changing, on-going process. When we accept the error that we are not gods, we cease all self-examination, self-disciplines and self-improvement. We define god as an embodiment of "pefection" (or completion) instead of as the avenue of evolution and becoming. Only idols are perfect.Not even Odin ever thought of himself as perfect: he had to make many sacrifices in order to gain wisdom. Ditto Osiris, who was so far from being "together" that he was chopped up into little pieces. Granted, Jehovah is perfect, or thinks He is, but He is also a difficult God to respect, for that same reason. When you say we are not gods, you mean we are not idols. But an idol is precisely what modern man has made of himself. He worships himself, even though gods never
worship themselves. Obviously, they don't have to. Only man worships himself, though not really as a god or potential god. He worships himself just as he is: as a fatted, golden pig wearing Gucci shoes. The reason people push gods "outside" is the same reason they shove everything else outside, separating everything and calling it evil because it is unwanted. Anything which is not self, including the planet earth, is felt to be of no real value. in fact, matter is simply unwanted "dirt." Most of the self is thrown away, at least that part of the self which demands the most work or struggle. All that may remain is the momentary gratification of physical need: food, drink, sex, rest, entertainment. To put a god into that strait-jacket, even a minor one, is to disrupt the routine, to interfere with the direct line of ice cream to mouth. Besides, the puffing up of an imaginary personal ego is a thousand times easier than the expression of difficult, real Divinity. Standing far enough away from the world empowers objectivity to serve as the perfect defense of the ego. Here ego cannot be challenged and "Science" and "Reason" become the last refuges of Subjective Solipsism. In the Qabalah this peeling away of the self, this separation or "excrement" is called a Qlipha (pl. qlipphoth). The qliphoth are the negative personifications. All the expressions of Divinity have their "qlipphoth": Samael, Beelzebub, Satanas, etc., as we've said. And, in truth, these are what people actually bow down to: these idols that are made up out of excrement. Divinity that lies outside of self is not divinity. in contemporary Occidental man's desperate struggle to separate himself we would do well to remember Alan Watts' comparison of the self to an onion. You can peel and peel until there is nothing left.
what is thrown away", is a sentiment well understood by shamans, witches and other marginal people, who are drawn to the rubbish heaps and middens, much as the money-vultures circle the stock market. What all men despise is "that out there," that is to say, the world. And they try incessantly to dissociate themselves from it. Yet, obviously, if we really were one with the world, then we'd have in hand "the universal solvent," we'd have
immortality because the world is immortal. In the world's all-powerful Nature is the very secret of turning lead into gold.Instead man tries desperately to throw out everything that is not self.Part of the problem is that the verb "to be" has two meanings (as in Spanish): one is an expression of permanent identityor equivalence to something else and the other an expression of a changing, on-going process. When we accept the error that we are not gods, we cease all self-examination, self-disciplines and self-improvement. We define god as an embodiment of "pefection" (or completion) instead of as the avenue of evolution and becoming. Only idols are perfect.Not even Odin ever thought of himself as perfect: he had to make many sacrifices in order to gain wisdom. Ditto Osiris, who was so far from being "together" that he was chopped up into little pieces. Granted, Jehovah is perfect, or thinks He is, but He is also a difficult God to respect, for that same reason. When you say we are not gods, you mean we are not idols. But an idol is precisely what modern man has made of himself. He worships himself, even though gods never
worship themselves. Obviously, they don't have to. Only man worships himself, though not really as a god or potential god. He worships himself just as he is: as a fatted, golden pig wearing Gucci shoes. The reason people push gods "outside" is the same reason they shove everything else outside, separating everything and calling it evil because it is unwanted. Anything which is not self, including the planet earth, is felt to be of no real value. in fact, matter is simply unwanted "dirt." Most of the self is thrown away, at least that part of the self which demands the most work or struggle. All that may remain is the momentary gratification of physical need: food, drink, sex, rest, entertainment. To put a god into that strait-jacket, even a minor one, is to disrupt the routine, to interfere with the direct line of ice cream to mouth. Besides, the puffing up of an imaginary personal ego is a thousand times easier than the expression of difficult, real Divinity. Standing far enough away from the world empowers objectivity to serve as the perfect defense of the ego. Here ego cannot be challenged and "Science" and "Reason" become the last refuges of Subjective Solipsism. In the Qabalah this peeling away of the self, this separation or "excrement" is called a Qlipha (pl. qlipphoth). The qliphoth are the negative personifications. All the expressions of Divinity have their "qlipphoth": Samael, Beelzebub, Satanas, etc., as we've said. And, in truth, these are what people actually bow down to: these idols that are made up out of excrement. Divinity that lies outside of self is not divinity. in contemporary Occidental man's desperate struggle to separate himself we would do well to remember Alan Watts' comparison of the self to an onion. You can peel and peel until there is nothing left.
THE MAGICIAN'S DICTIONARY An Apocalyptic Cyclopaedia of Advanced M/magic(k)al Arts and Alternate Meanings
EE. Rehmus
Saturday, 16 February 2013
Iskra
“Wealth inestimable is ever flowing through these
workshops, and the hands that have been stained with gold-dust, as
likely as not, some day extend themselves in petition for a crust.”
In 1966 Johnnie Williamson pointed to the first translation by Helen MacFarlane of The Communist Manifesto hanging on the wall protected in glass casing. “A frightful hobgoblin stalks through Europe. We are haunted by a ghost, the ghost of Communism “ is how she rendered the passage more familiarly known to us as “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism.” Look into the etymology or the philology of “hobgoblin” and “spectre” and you’ll find the difference between revolutionary intellectual abstraction and the gothic of the peasant’s lore of the commons. Be that as it may.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/01/archiving-with-may-day-rooms/#.UQ_Ga2QCs7k.facebook
In 1966 Johnnie Williamson pointed to the first translation by Helen MacFarlane of The Communist Manifesto hanging on the wall protected in glass casing. “A frightful hobgoblin stalks through Europe. We are haunted by a ghost, the ghost of Communism “ is how she rendered the passage more familiarly known to us as “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism.” Look into the etymology or the philology of “hobgoblin” and “spectre” and you’ll find the difference between revolutionary intellectual abstraction and the gothic of the peasant’s lore of the commons. Be that as it may.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/01/archiving-with-may-day-rooms/#.UQ_Ga2QCs7k.facebook
herobrine // he is a persn who likes 2 destroy mc worlds
Sunday, 23 December 2012
conchology
Wednesday, 12 December 2012
Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness
And he said unto them, Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not in three days expound the riddle.
See here a helmet which a fearless soldier previously wore and which was often spattered with enemy blood. After peace was won, it retired to be used as a narrow hive for bees; it holds honey-combs and nice honey. - Let weapons lie far off; let it be right to embark on war only when you cannot in any other way enjoy the art of peace.
Samson went down to Timnah together with his father and mother. As they approached the vineyards of Timnah, suddenly a young lion came roaring toward him. 6 The Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him so that he tore the lion apart with his bare hands as he might have torn a young goat. But he told neither his father nor his mother what he had done. 7 Then he went down and talked with the woman, and he liked her.
8 Some time later, when he went back to marry her, he turned aside to look at the lion’s carcass, and in it he saw a swarm of bees and some honey. 9 He scooped out the honey with his hands and ate as he went along. When he rejoined his parents, he gave them some, and they too ate it. But he did not tell them that he had taken the honey from the lion’s carcass.
10 Now his father went down to see the woman. And there Samson held a feast, as was customary for young men. 11 When the people saw him, they chose thirty men to be his companions.
12 “Let me tell you a riddle,” Samson said to them. “If you can give me the answer within the seven days of the feast, I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty sets of clothes. 13 If you can’t tell me the answer, you must give me thirty linen garments and thirty sets of clothes.”
“Tell us your riddle,” they said. “Let’s hear it.”
14 He replied,
“Out of the eater, something to eat;
out of the strong, something sweet.”
out of the strong, something sweet.”
For three days they could not give the answer.
15 On the fourth day, they said to Samson’s wife, “Coax your husband into explaining the riddle for us, or we will burn you and your father’s household to death. Did you invite us here to steal our property?”16 Then Samson’s wife threw herself on him, sobbing, “You hate me! You don’t really love me. You’ve given my people a riddle, but you haven’t told me the answer.”
“I haven’t even explained it to my father or mother,” he replied, “so why should I explain it to you?” 17 She cried the whole seven days of the feast. So on the seventh day he finally told her, because she continued to press him. She in turn explained the riddle to her people.
18 Before sunset on the seventh day the men of the town said to him,
“What is sweeter than honey?
What is stronger than a lion?”
What is stronger than a lion?”
Samson said to them,
“If you had not plowed with my heifer,
you would not have solved my riddle.”
you would not have solved my riddle.”
19 Then the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him. He went down to Ashkelon,
struck down thirty of their men, stripped them of everything and gave
their clothes to those who had explained the riddle. Burning with anger, he returned to his father’s home. 20 And Samson’s wife was given to one of his companions who had attended him at the feast.
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Tuesday, 11 December 2012
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