ovum anguinum

There is also a sort of egg, famous in the provinces of Gaul, but ignored by the Greeks. Innumerable snakes coil themselves into a ball in the summertime. Thus they make it so that it is held together by a bodily secretion and by their saliva. It is called an anguinum. The Druids say that [the snakes] hiss and cast it upwards, and that it is to be caught in a cloak so that it not touch the ground. One must immediately ride off on a horse with it, for the snakes will continue to pursue until the course of a stream blocks their way. If one tests it, the anguinum will float against the current of a river even when covered in gold. And, as the magi will throw a cloak of deception over their trickery, they make out as though the eggs are to be taken only on a particular point in the lunar cycle, as though it was up to human beings to determine the snakes’ role in this procedure. Nonetheless, I have seen one of these eggs myself. It was round the size of a small apple. The shell was cartilaginous, and mottled with cups like the tentacles of a squid. The Druids value it highly: it is praised as insuring success in litigation and in going to audiences with kings. However, this is nonsense; for once a man (a Roman knight and a tribesman of the Vocontii) held one of these eggs against his body during a trial, and was condemned to death by the Emperor Claudius, for that reason alone so far as I can tell.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=F7pZfLUoHJIC&pg=PA279&lpg=PA279&dq=Shepherds%27+crowns,+fairy+loaves+and+thunderstones:+the+mythology+of+fossil+echinoids+in+England&source=bl&ots=vOaKkqEfKL&sig=KgjEwynw9hh9u6PilNtvGn7tzPg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAmoVChMIu_6DvM-DxgIVg0bbCh26kACs#v=onepage&q&f=false

Llhuyd informs us that "the Cornish retain a variety of charms, and have still towards the Land's-End, the amulets of Maen-Magal and Glain-neider, which latter they call Melprer, and have a charm for the snake to make it, when they find one asleep, and stick a hazel wand in the centre of her spirae," or coils. The rings thus generated are called Gleiner-nadroeth, or snake-stones.   

Where is Sisyphus now? Using the analog sticks on the game controller, you move a little character who rolls a ball called a Katamari. The game is called Katamari Damacy.* The name translates roughly as ‘clump spirit’, which might in turn translate as ‘analog’. As the Katamari ball rolls, things stick to it. At first it is small things that stick, household items picked up off the living room floor. The ball gets bigger as things stick, and so it can pick up bigger things. Once your ball is big enough, you move out of the house and into the world. To move the ball, you twizzle the little analog joysticks. Push the sticks forward, and the character rolls the ball forward. Pull the sticks back and the character rolls the ball back. Turn left, turn right — it feels as though the variable pressure on the sticks translates into variable movements. This is analog — a relation of continuous variation. Only it isn’t really. It is a digital game. The game converts the continuous movement of your thumbs on the sticks into a digital code. It turns movements into decisions — back/forwards, left/right, stop/start. An algorithm calculates the outcome of each movement. If you roll your ball over a small object, you pick it up. If you roll your ball over one that is too big, you collide with it, throwing off a few things you have already gathered. Analog spirit becomes digital code (see Fig. D).But in Katamari Damacy, things are different. Rather than the rolling of the ball being entirely useless, now it is entirely purposeful. Time, like space, no longer harbors indifference. Brenda Laurel:”…even the smallest fragments of your idle time have been colonized…”. As you roll your ball around, making it bigger and bigger, an icon in the corner of the screen shows your progress. The icon shows your ball as a circle inside a larger one, which is the size it must grow to if you are to win this level. It grows, gradually, incrementally, but at some point — a decision. Big enough! An analog progression stops at the digital threshold.*katamari

https://echinoids.wordpress.com/https://echinoids.wordpress.com/


 

Porphyrogennetos

...touch through the colour

Porphýra, the Purple Chamber, a pavilion of the Great Palace of Constantinople): no child born anywhere else could legitimately be called Porphyrogénnētos. This pavilion was a free-standing building in the Great Palace complex in Constantinople. As the Porphyrogennētē Anna Komnena described it, the room rested on one of the Palace's many terraces, overlooking the Sea of Marmora and the Bosphorus Strait, "where the stone oxen and the lions stand" (i.e. the Boukoleon Palace), and was in the form of a perfect square from floor to ceiling, with the latter ending in a pyramid. Its walls, floor and ceiling were completely veneered with imperial porphyry, which was "generally of a purple colour throughout, but with white spots like sand sprinkled over it

//www.ancient-egypt.co.uk/people/Imperial%20Porphyry;%20its%20special%20qualities%20which%20influenced%20its%20form,%20function%20and%20use%20in%20antiquity.pdfThe 


mud-purple feeds on rotting slime and the seaweed-purple on seaweed, both being of a very common quality. A better kind is the reef-purple, collected on the reefs of the sea, though this also is lighter and softer as well. The pebble-purple is named after a pebble in the sea, and is remarkably suitable for purple dyes; and far the best for these is the melting-purple, that is, one fed on a varying kind of mud. Purples are taken in a sort of little lobster-pot of fine ply thrown into deep water. These contain bait, cockles that close with a snap, as we observe that mussels do. These when half-killed but put back into the sea gape greedily as they revive and attract the purples, which go for them with outstretched tongues. But the cockles when pricked by their spike shut up and nip the creatures nibbling them. So the purples hang suspended because of their greed and are lifted out of the water.

natural history IX

oxacan purpura dyeing - milking the shellfish

The official fasces and axes of Rome clear a path, and it also marks the honourable estate of boyhood; it distinguishes the senate from the knighthood, it is called in to secure the favour of the gods; and it adds radiance to every garment, while in a triumphal robe it is blended with gold. Consequently even the mad lust for the purple may be excused; but what is the cause of the prices paid for purple-shells, which have an unhealthy odour when used for dye and a gloomy tinge in their radiance resembling an angry sea?

http://www.masseiana.org/pliny.htm#BOOK%20IX

http://www.kremer-pigmente.com/media/files_public/36010e.pdf 

The Capitulation of Gaeta.; SCENES AT THE CLOSE OF THE SIEGE.

In London Paul Pretsch patented a process called "photo-galvanography" for the printed reproduction of photographs.
The first print that Pretsch issued was called "Scene in Gaeta after the Explosion." It was "the first relief half-tone and the first commercial use of half-tone" (Printing and the Mind of Man. Catalogue of the Exhibitions Held at the British Museum and at Earls Court, London [1963] no. 629).

The History of Electrolytic Printmaking

Published: March 2, 1861

Correspondence of the Paris Presse.

CASTELLONE, Thursday, Feb. 7, 1861.

Already the other day a powder magazine burst at the south extremity of the Philippstadt Battery, causing considerable loss to the enemy; but I have now to record a far more terrible explosion. Yesterday, about 5 o'clock in the afternoon a shell from the Predmontese lines on the right penetrated into one of the powder magazines, which blew up and set fire to the great reserve store of projectiles, which blew up likewise. The explosion was so terrible that the report was reechoed from the most distant valleys for a long time. A French vessel, although six miles from Gaeta, felt the shock. I had left the village about 4 o'clock to take a stroll through the mountains leading to Castello Onorato, when, reaching the summit of a small hill which commands a view of the gulf and the whole neighborhood, I was almost thrown to the ground by the effect of the explosion which had just taken place to my left. I turned my gaze towards Gaeta, and was horrified at the immense masses of ruin, some pieces high in the air, amidst a black smoke and tongues of flame which lighted up the spires of the town. It was something horrible, and reminded me of PLINY the Younger's description of an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in a letter to TACITUS, narrating the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii. I hastily descended into the valley, and on reaching Castellone I was informed that the explosion had not only caused the death of some hundred Neapolitan soldiers, but that also a considerable number of living beings were still under the ruins.

During the stillness of the night we could discern the stifled cries of those unfortunate men, as General CIALDINI had humanely ordered all firing to cease. A Neapolitan messenger arrived requesting an armistice of forty-eight hours. He asked for it in the name of humanity, for, he said, it was impossible to ascertain the number of victims buried in the ruins by the explosion. You will easily agree with me that cool reason of interest might have advised CIALDINI to refuse the request of the military Governor of Gaeta. For a bold and daring General like CIALDINI, it was an admirable opportunity to attempt a coup de main, which probably would have succeeded. Not listening to the voice of interest, the Piedmontese General did not hesitate for a moment to grant a suspension of hostilities, on the sole condition that the besieged should not work at repairing the breach made recently by the Piedmontese. We shall thus have an armistice, which will terminate to-morrow morning, and in forty-eight hours I may have great results to record. I do not believe, as is reported here, that FRANCES II, has made any proposals for a capitulation, which must follow sooner or later. The battery on the sea side has been much damaged by the fire from the Sardinian frigate Garibaldi. Her daring Captain took up a position only 1,000 metres from the curtain, and kept up a continual fire for an hour and a-half.

Guidebook / magic mirror

Richmond
Henry VII died here. His blood, which he ordered to be sprinkled on the wall, is still to be seen in the room wherein he died. Many old written and printed books are in the Palace. Also a large circular mirror, in which King Henry VII by means of magic saw what was passing everywhere both by sea and land. The secret passages used by this king were first discovered under Queen Elizabeth.

Notes on England / Johann Jacob Grasser / c 1606

Richmond

In the palace, remark the Library of King Henry VII, for the most part consisting of manuscripts, of which Library nothing was known until the time of Queen Elizabeth. One of the books is on magic or the black art, called "Modus et Ratio Divinae Contemplationis". Here also is a large mirror in which Henry VII was able to see what he wished; but this mirror broke in pieces when the King died. His inkstand is likewise here. A portrait of the King when a young man, together with his wife; also the genealogies of all the Kings of England. King Henry VII's chamber wherein he is said to have died, the wall of which is besprinkled with his blood, but this is not permitted to be seen by everyone.

England as seen by foreigners / William Brenchley Rye / Friedrich I Duke of Wittenberg

Nero's emerald
Pliny (NH 37,64 ):
Iidem plerumque concavi, ut visum conligant. quam ob rem decreto hominum iis parcitur scalpi vetitis. quamquam Scythicorum Aegyptiorumque duritia tanta est, ut non queant volnerari. quorum vero corpus extentum est, eadem qua specula ratione supini rerum imagines reddunt. Nero princeps gladiatorum pugnas spectabat in smaragdo.

'Smaragdi' are generally concave in shape, so that they concentrate the vision. Because of these properties, mankind has decreed that 'smaragdi' must be preserved in their natural state and has forbidden them to be engraved. In any case, those of Scythia and Egypt are so hard as to be unaffected by blows. When 'smaragdi' that are tabular in shape are laid flat, they reflect objects just as mirrors do. The emperor Nero used to watch the fights between gladiators in a 'smaragdus'.1