As Paris and the world approaches the one-year anniversary of the conflagration that engulfed Notre Dame last year, there will be a small, closed service (only seven clerics and worshippers in attendance) and meditation broadcasted in remembrance and solidarity for those suffering because of the spread of the corona virus, also responsible for the small and non-existent audiences at this and other communities around the world. This day marking the crucifixion of Jesus, the brief mass inside the cathedral will also focus on its most celebrated relic, the Crown of Thorns, which was gifted by Baldwin II, Emperor of Constantinople (called the Broke) to King Louis IX of France in 1248, and was saved by the city’s Fire Brigade last April.
Friday 10 April 2020
saint et grand vendredi
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ซ๐ท, holidays and observances, religion
Saturday 4 April 2020
tigernach mac coirpri
Criminally anglicised as Tierney, today marks the feast day of Tigernach (†549), patron saint of the town of Clones in County Monaghan, part of the border region of Ulster. Born of an unsanctioned and scandalised affair between one of the princesses (Der Fraรญch) of Farley (Fermag) and a mercenary warrior called Coirpre allied to her father the king, Tigernach was fostered by Saint Brigid of Kildare, whom gave him his name—meaning “princely”—and saw to that the child received a good education. Brought up in a parochial environment, Tigernach was dispatched to Rome to retrieve some relics to found a church and monastery and was eventually, the relationship with his grandfather the king reconciled, offered the rank of bishop in his home territory. As that would mean the ejection of the incumbent in Clones, Tigernach choose instead to retreat to life on a hillside as a hermit, cultivating the grace and wherewithal to perform the accounts of miracles attributed to him including raising from the dead the archbishop of neighbouring Armagh.
Sunday 29 March 2020
skirting the issue
Fast Company has a brief but circumspect survey of how fashion has informed and enforced social distancing through the ages with hoop skirts and hijabs and masquerades and mukena as interventions to communicability. What other dress do you think keeps diseases and unwanted suitors at bay? I wonder what sorts of accessories might come out of this latest push for separation.
Sunday 15 March 2020
graffito blasfemo
Believed to be among the earliest surviving depictions of Jesus was rediscovered in 1857 through excavation work on the Palatine Hill of Rome at a site that was the palace of Caligula prior to becoming a finishing school and it during this phase of the structure’s history some pupil presumably etched the graffiti into the wall plaster depicting a young man prostrating to a donkey-headed figure on a crucifix with the caption, apparently meant to mock a fellow student, ฮฮฮ ฮพฮฮฮฮฮฯน ฯนฮฮฮฮคฮ ฯฮฮฮ “Alexamos worships [his] god.” The standard method of execution until abolished by Constantine in the fourth century, Roman society found it incredulous that Christian would follow a figure so basely undone, conflated with the belief by contemporary Romans (around the second century) believed that Christians and other religious minorities practised onolatry—that is, donkey worship. In the next chamber, there is a seeming retort with no accompanying image but the inscription in Latin and by a different hand—presumably the victim of this ridicule: ฮฮฮฮพฮฮฮฮฮฯน FIDELIS—that is, Alexamenos is faithful.
Wednesday 29 January 2020
mantra-rock dance
Tuesday 14 January 2020
missioners
catagories: ๐บ๐ธ, libraries and museums, religion
Sunday 29 December 2019
suspended judgment
Via the always excellent Nag on the Lake, we find ourselves affronted with those awful low-points of anti-scholasticism that makes one bid good riddance to the past decade, which in many ways has all the hallmarks of regression and should have by all rights set our species on the trajectory to the cutting-room floor—and perhaps still will. Take solace while perusing this hall of shame that you don’t rank among them—the climate change deniers, the flat-earthers, the anti-vaxxers, the incels and their ilk and hopes that one never does. Condemnation of what’s wrong and misguided is of course justified but can also serve to cement one’s beliefs, grounded or baseless.
Saturday 7 December 2019
body thetan
Roughly a decade after Keith Richards somnambulistically developed the tune and Mick Jagger writing the lyrics at the poolside created the song “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” while staying at the Clearwater, Florida resort, the Fort Harrison Hotel had fallen into disrepair and the operators had gone bankrupt, and the property was purchased by the Church of Scientology.
The building was converted into a spiritual centre with lodgings for visiting practitioners and in some cases controversially as a rehabilitation and re-programming facility for its more deviant members and for those who would stray from the flock. This day on the church’s calendar of holidays is celebrated as the opening of the church’s headquarters compound in 1975. Another important holiday falls at the end of the month, 30 December as Freedom Day when in 1974 the US government accorded the organization tax-exempt status as a religious institution.
catagories: ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ถ, holidays and observances, religion, ⓦ
Saturday 30 November 2019
andreasnacht
The apostle opting to be crucified saltire to differentiate his martyrdom from that of Jesus and patron of Greece, Russia, Ukraine, Scotland, Romania, Barbados, Burgundy, miners (hence the crossed pick and hewer that symbolises the trade), fishmongers, pregnant women, rope-makers, butchers and singers—interceding on counts of sore throat and other respiratory distress and incidence of lycanthropy, this day and evening marks the Feast of Saint Andrew.
Brother of Peter and as fishermen become fishers of men, Andrew is referred to as ฮ ฯฯฯฯฮบฮปฮทฯฮฟฯ, the First-Called, apostolic succession in the Orthodox tradition following him rather than his sibling (Andrew introduced Peter to Jesus), as it does in the Roman Catholic Church. Syncretically recognised as the beginning of Advent and marking the end of pre-winter slaughter of livestock, before seasonal trappings overtook folk superstitions, this night was especially viewed as an ideal occasion for divination, carromancy—predicting the future by interpreting the form hot candle wax takes cooled in water (see also)—especially, and magic spells. Furthermore, it was believed that from this night until the eve of the Feast of Saint George, it was a particularly active time for vampires and werewolves, with the latter being granted the license to prey on whatever they choose and, natural or supernatural, the power to speak to humans on this night.
catagories: ☦️, holidays and observances, myth and monsters, religion
Wednesday 27 November 2019
this is my last resort
Though we need little reminder of how beastly and gruesome people can be, this day marks the veneration of the sainted martyr James Intercisus (whose name comes from the Latin for “cut into pieces”) tortured by being slowly dismembered before beheading in 421 AD in what is near the present day city of Dezful in southeastern Iran by the Shanhanshah Bahram V, a political counsellor of the preceding King of Kings Yazdegerd, of the Sassanid empire.
The method of maximising suffering is goes by various names and this alleged (possibly greatly exaggerated for dissuasive ends) death by a thousand cuts (James was unincorporated by only twenty-eight) and is representative of the wider prosecution of Christians in Persia (only provoked due to their attacking Zoroastrian temples) and was used as a pretext, casus belli by the Eastern Roman Empire to invade and conscript replacement troops to defend against the raids of the Huns in the north. James’ story is recounted in the Book of Psalms and the Golden Legend. An uneasy treaty was brokered a year later, returning everything to the state it was before the war—or status quo ante bellum.
catagories: holidays and observances, Middle East, religion
Tuesday 19 November 2019
8x8
mudras: nifty exercises for your hands and wrists
holy rollers: A reformed, formerly anti-LGBTQ fast food franchise announces it will make amends
konmari: life style guru and evangelist of de-cluttering now wants to fill that tchotchke-shaped void in your soul
between two ferns: eight-two famous and infamous interviews animated
anti-archiv: a massive cache of photographs and home movies from the DDR, via Things magazine
discerning audiences: light entertainment from 1972
self-policing: a browser extension uses machine learning to highlight AI generated content, via Waxy
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐, ๐ณ️๐, ๐, ๐ท, ๐บ, ๐ค, religion, sport and games
Tuesday 12 November 2019
fire and brimstone
Though the fallen angels of the Bible are incarcerated and consigned to the same fate as the Titans, there’s no mention of Tartarus in the New Testament, with either the Greek abode of the dead, Hades, or the small valley in Jerusalem where child-sacrifice occurred, Gehenna (Hinnom), invoked for the concept, though the former is more neutral and would be better represented as the underworld.
There is however one instance that it sort of slips in—this homage to Antiquity—in verbal form: in the Second Epistle of Peter, condemning false prophets, the apostle uses the word (making an ensample of wickedness) tartaroo (ฯฮฑฯฯฮฑฯฯฯ) for “to cast into Hell.” The original Greek rendering of the Apostles’ Creed that provides for and establishes among other things the harrowing of Hell, Jesus’ descent into the underworld to rescue all the righteous who had perished and were condemned prior to salvation, took the more pedestrian verb ฮบฮฑฯฮตฮปฮธฯฮฝฯฮฑ ฮตฮฏฯ ฯฮฌ ฮบฮฑฯฯฯฮฑฯฮฑ (descendit ad inferos—to those below) but was far from unproblematic—prompting the need for a third estate, that of Limbo, a liminal place.
catagories: ๐ฌ, myth and monsters, religion, ⓦ
Friday 13 September 2019
7x7
alltid รถppet: McDonald’s franchises in Sweden (previously) install insect hotels in their signage and billboards
glory to hong kong: protestors create their own anthem and rallying cry
metallic wood: researchers create a porous nickel-based matrix (see also) as strong as titanium though exceedingly light
schism: Pope Francis unafraid of conservative groups calling his leadership too progressive
k2-18ฮฒ: astronomers detect water vapour in the atmosphere of a distant super earth that could harbour life as we know it
gravy train: bug-based pet food better for canine and feline companions and for the environment
Wednesday 4 September 2019
first do no harm
We really appreciated this primer on cultivating the practise of meditation and mindfulness from Open Culture and found the segue, introducing our urge to conflate what’s by its nature simple with what’s easy and effortless, especially resonant and a draws one into reading the rest of the article.
Easier said than done, vice is far more amenable to marketing and branding than virtue, and our intuitive senses fail us along with patience and persistence and the advice we dispense to ourselves. Like misapprehending the better for the Good, we imperil ourselves with overexposure to the vulnerabilities of denying gradualism in favour of the illusion of big and sudden change and instant results. We cannot avail our compassion, I think without some impossibly big ask of enlightenment that’s unreasonable to expect of novices just muddling through, for institutional, caretaker sort of change and progress without sacrificing or compromising something of ourselves. Much more to contemplate at the link up top.
Wednesday 21 August 2019
7x7
because internet: a study into how online culture is shaping language
nuuk nuuk: Trump cancels Denmark state reception over Greenland snub
conflagration: Sรฃo Paulo experiences a daytime blackout as smoke from the burning Amazon rolls in
404 - not found: an abandoned Chinese nuclear model city in the Gobi
jurassic park: undisclosed paleontology site in Nevada will take centuries to sift through—via Kottke’s Quick Links
the vindicator is my only friend: another veteran newspaper shuts down in a reeling blow to social justice
dieu et humanitie: the unexpected gospel of Victor Hugo
Tuesday 30 July 2019
noma
Though I suspect that religion is still a bit of a butinsky in human affairs, we can appreciate the elegant and simple formulation first developed in a 1997 essay by science historian and communicator Stephen Jay Gould.
Each nonoverlapping magisteria represents distinct domains and lines of inquiry, fact and valued respectively, and neither can claim jurisdiction over the other. What do you think? It’s hardly a settled matter and there’s of course a long continuum when the two certainly commingled and invocation is still practised but sometimes it’s helpful to lean heavily into the paradox to arrive at better and more emphatic conclusions.
Saturday 20 July 2019
statio tranquillitatas
Yet embroiled in a lawsuit levied against the US space agency by the founder of the American Atheist association for the astronauts’ recitation during Apollo 8’s lunar orbit during Christmas Eve of the first ten verses of the Book of Genesis and demanded that they refrain from evangelising while in space, after touching down on the Moon, in the six-hour interim before stepping outside the lander, flight engineer Buzz Aldrin—in that spirit—took Sunday communion in private.
A church elder of a Presbyterian congregation, his kit was prepared ahead of time by his pastor and the chalice used during the lunar ceremony is in possession of the church near Galveston, Texas where Johnson Space Center exists today. The chalice is used for a special commemoration on the Sunday closest to the original date each year. The remander of the time was a designated sleep-period, but too excited, the break was cut short. “This is the LM [Landing Module] pilot,” Aldrin said, taking the com, “I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.”
Thursday 27 June 2019
milagro
Nag on the Lake directs our attention to an exhibit that features a moving collection of Mexican religious icons known as retablos (previously)—from the Latin retro-tabula for “behind the altar” or votive offerings of gratitude meant for display and inspection by the congregation, that document in painting and some captioning turning-points in the lives of those who’ve been on the recipients of divine intercession, which was for many in this show miraculously safe passage crossing the border into the US. Peruse a whole gallery and find much more to explore at the links above.
Friday 7 June 2019
gopher wood
Preciously, we learn from amicus curiรฆ, Lowering the Bar, that the under-construction Ark Encounter Christian theme park in Kentucky are suing their insurance underwriters for failing to honour claims of flood damage.
The faithful recreation of Ark of Noah (with technical details as specified in the Book of Genesis, except gopher wood due to it being a hapax legomenon and no one really knows what tree it is sourced from, if it in fact survived the deluge) was not damaged itself but rather a service road was affected by heavy rainfall and an ensuing landslide that caused work stoppage and outlays of around a million dollars to shore up the slope and to restore the access path, and it remains unclear whether the park’s policy might have an “acts of God” exclusion. Much more to explore at the link above.
Wednesday 22 May 2019
sacred grove
The once lushly forested landscape of Ethiopia that has been critically depleted from the start of the twentieth century onward is preserved in tens of thousands of tiny pocket parishes of the ancient and revered Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (แจแขแตแฎแตแซ : แฆแญแถแถแญแต : แฐแแแถ : แคแฐ : แญแญแตแฒแซแ), a congregation in communion with the Coptic tradition and representing some of the earliest Christians. Sacred buildings are traditionally surrounded by a thicket of trees and thus have become the foci of biodiversity for the land, with the belief that the trees prevented prayer from dissipating too quickly. Local priests are hoping to make their oases into something more contiguous and bring Nature back to Ethiopia. Learn more at Amusing Planet at the link above.
catagories: ๐, environment, religion