|
|
 20 Aug 2007 @ 13:43
From whichever angle the seasonal time of late Winter / Spring is approached the auspices seem to remain remarkably similar. Astronomically the equinoxes (equal day length to night length owing to the sun’s position in the hemisphere) fall on 21 March and 23 September. Apparently, both these dates herald difficult times in which one should be careful. Is there a connection with the famous Ides of March warning of the auspices of Julius Caeser’s jealous political foes?
From the veydic sense this time falls between the Autumn/Early winter season which corresponds to one of the three major energies required for all organic life to take place, (including the Human’s) and the season of Summer corresponding to the Fire energetic. The Autumn/Early winter energy is the one of Movement with its inherent outward material characteristics of drying, airy, rough, fading away OR the vital energy which brings forth replenishment in organic matter depending on how the state of this energy is in the person concerned, in balance or a bit out of balance one side or the other (too much or too little – ie not in the mid point). More >
|
|
|
|
 8 May 2007 @ 13:25
- Goddess of all three worlds
This Stotram visualises the material form of Shir MahaTripurasundari. This Mother Mahashakti abides predominantly in the forest where there are many Kadamba trees. The verses give a beautiful description of her form and energy.
Kadamba vana charinim Muni dadamba Kadambinim
Nitamba jita bhu dharma Sura nitambini sevitam
Navamburuha lochanam Abhinavambuda shyamalam
Trilochana kutumbinim Tripura sundarimashraye
Kadamba vana vasinim Kanaka vallaki dharinim
Maharha mani harinim Mukah samulla sadvarunim
Daya vibhava karinim Vishada rochana charinim
Trilochana kutumbinim Tripura sundarimashraye
Kadamba vana shalaya Kuchabharolla sanmalaya
Kuchopamita shailaya Guru Krupa lasadvelaya
Maduruna Kapolaya Madhura gita vachalaya
Kaya pi Ghana nilaya kavachita vayam lilaya
Trilochana kutumbinim Tripura sandarimashraye
…….. for four more verses
The first item of note in transcribing this verse is that it appears to follow the rhyming couplet form, a style used in ancient times in the Mediterranean. This is excepting the fourth line of the 3rd verse which has five lines altogether. The same break in pattern occurs in the following five line verses.
This song is the most beautiful one I have ever had the privilege of hearing even without comprehension of the conveying language, perhaps Sanscrit. The music totally captivates the listener and hopefully the Goddess in the Forest is impressed not just with this dedication but with the continued and constantly repeated performances too, allowing the words which implore beyond implore, absolute begettment for the Nature of all Naturalness’s never to abandon Human kind Her sustenance and Glory. More >
|
|
|
|
 26 Jun 2006 @ 14:33
PreRaphaelite Dreams
The paintings of this movement have always remained singularly unattractive to my appreciation until learning the following.
One of the main inspirations behind the PreRaphaelite Movement was a newly acquired awareness amongst artists and intellectuals on the periphery of the Catholic Emancipation Act (of Parliament). This itself spurred by the famous Oxford Group dissenters from Protentantism in the wake of a new freedom wave declared on Catholicism in England.
The artist considered to be the most sublime of all the Renaissance artists is Raphael, who unfortunately lived a relatively short life. It is now known that many of Raphaels paintings uses as subject matter, Mary Magdalene, often denoted by the colour orange, green and or red of the chemise, or dress on the bodice part of attire and drapery. Attending one such exhibition of paintings at the National Gallery a couple of years ago was a most heart lifting experience. The extent of beauty in each drawing, etching and painting is simply breathtaking. Raphael must have nursed a fascination with Mary Magdalene, and intellectual circles in Italy must have all hummed and buzzed with the newly found realisations of that time of her friendship with Our Lord, and subsequent escape with family to Provence, and a generation later to England at Glastonbury, where the family line continued to show itself in the Arthurian legends as Sir Galahad renowned for his prayer ability, spiritual experiences, and other worldliness. In the recent debate on the Da Vinci code, authors most knowledgeable have not been quoted, one wonders why? Personally, I do believe completely in Mary Magdalene as close friend of Jesus, and mother of children: Can see why a following sprouted in Provence with her arrival, and can see why this would have created a confusion with the Virgin Mary.
The church strongly denies this, to use the same link as used in Jazzolog, Its a Girl fame, I refer to it again here, being the chief inspiration for this log.
[link]
The second link below is about the womem members of the PreRaphaelite movement. It makies extremely interesting reading, and carries notions both of a real struggle and wish these ladies pursued to a new intellectual line. This line seems permanently to remain a secret. The strength of the movement, to judge from the depth and strength of their art, is not matched at all with the few histories made on this group, namely that it was simply another art movement, albeit the first so called Avant Garde one.
[link]
Quote:
""
As so often in the history of PreRaphaelitism, it is William Michael Rossetti who provides the ultimate verdict. 'All the artists whom I best knew and valued deplored her death as a real loss to art', he wrote in 1906; 'they had looked upon her as the leading hope for painting in the hands of a woman'.(44) Yet had William Michael consulted his sister, another ambivalent PreRaphaelite, he might have seen that his apparently handsome conclusion was still inadequate. What Joanna Mary Boyce's life and work attest to most vividly is the struggle for social mobility and intellectual independence that must come before art, if art is to shape culture in the way that PreRaphaelitism is commonly allowed to have done. This struggle dogged the female artist in the orbit of PreRaphaelitism's challenge; and, when male PreRaphaelites are praised as iconoclasts, trend-setters or free-thinkers, it should be remembered by what comparative privilege they attained such positions. . . . . . "
This article carries a palpable mystery woven between the words although accidental of course.
My first introduction to things Mary Magdalen in High Art (apart from that through the Church at Easter each year), and, most importantly after learning about the Black Maria legends in Provence, through the work of Le Corbusier and his links with the Cathars in the Pyrennes, was while visiting an important historical house from Elizabethan times, in which Queen Elizabeth I lived as a child, in the sixteenth century. In this house were two things connecting the previously collected research above. One was a family tree **chart showing the holy blood line (from Jesus) descending down through time to Queen Elizabeth and the other was a collection of medium sized portraits of Mary Magdalene perhaps 6 or 8 in all. Each one of these portraits, showed a different aspect of prayer or adoration or modesty or self containment in the full Renaissance style at a time shortly AFTER Raphael himself. ((** Family Tree charts showing descendency from the Holy family were very much the vogue for at least 1,000 years, mattered in the survival stakes, and are all related to the Magdelen myth)).
The point which struck me was the fascination that this artist obviously held for Mary M. Catholics are only ever shown pictures of Mary mother of Jesus, so it was with total wonder not only to see so many of Mary Magdalen but also that they were so very beautiful too, and almost completely unknown. (More mystery).
I also believe that Leonardo Da Vinci who was simply a more prolific genius in the art of painting than Raphael, had the capability and talent to show a 13 year old St John in the Last Supper painting without giving rise to doubts that he had actually painted a fully grown woman, if that is what he had intended. Un doubtedly the person next to Jesus in this painting looks like a women, demurely looking down, (ie away from the artists gaze, or photographer) because the most important person and people are Jesus and his disciples. If it were a young boy, he would not need to look submissively but be casting his eyes about like any of the other men disciples. As he was to be the most divine of authors for Jesus, he more rightly could have been seen looking in admiration directly at Jesus without crossing boundaries of acceptable behaviour of the times.
I believe this subject matter represents the depths of the PreRaphaelite movement and the suggestions in their haunting paintings. The sudden interest that must have been accorded Women in this time as is shown continously in the painting of this known style to my interpretation. However, a real contradiction of sorts does come out of both the works and histories written in the links supplied, especially as the Rossetti faction is described as being the Spiritual one, which would be the opposite of Mary Magdalen, who is very much the material counterpart to the truly spiritual Virgin Mary.
More than anything else in the civilisation in our Western world, this myth surrounding Magdalen actually underpins the fundamentals of Christianity, by showing what it is NOT based on, ie normal intelligent woman, but rather the regular myths of Virgin Mary and Jesus.
This does not detract in any way from the myth of Magdalen. As with the opposites of Materialism and Spirit say, the Magdalen myth is as important in the whole Christian tale as that of Virgin Mary, in that it is its very opposite in manifestation and this is the very point of BOTH. This is the continous and infinite Mystery which, I am sure, endures and enthralls, and will continue to do as long as Christianity survives.
One last entry on the artists themselves, is an extract from Wikipedia:
More >
|
|
|
