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 Πρωτόκλητος, 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.

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.

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

flea circus: the marvelous performing Savitsky cats, via Everlasting Blört

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

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 (ταρταρόω) 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 κατελθόντα είς τά κατώτατα (descendit ad inferos—to those below) but was far from unproblematic—prompting the need for a third estate, that of Limbo, a liminal place.

7x7

alltid öppet: McDonald’s franchises in Sweden (previously) install insect hotels in their signage and billboards

.xlsx: a concerning amount of scientific research contains data misinterpreted by spreadsheet software

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

k2-18β: 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

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.

7x7

because internet: a study into how online culture is shaping language

nuuk nuuk: Trump cancels Denmark state reception over Greenland snub

conflagration: São 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

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.

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.”

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.

gopher wood

Preciously, we learn from amicus curiæ, 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.

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 (የኢትዮጵያ : ኦርቶዶክስ : ተዋሕዶ : ቤተ : ክርስቲያን), 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.

decalogue

The always inspired and insightful This American Life reprises acts from earlier episodes to reflect on the Ten Commandments just after Pesach and Easter and the way those fundamental rules bind and perpetuate social order and how transgressions are addressed.
All of the stories are interesting but it was especially the first vignette, a memory by Shalom Auslander, in which a pupil at Chabad (Jewish Religious School) is informed that he bears one of the seven-two names of God and as the third Commandment directs, “shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” Peace was not the most common epithet for the divine but a strict interpretation of the law and customs (chumra) dictate that not only must special care be taken to avoid blasphemy and not to invoke God’s name to do harm, writing it down created something holy out of the profane and had to be handled in a fitting fashion. Ephemera and papers bearing the name of God were to be collected in a shaimos (name) box and once full, buried respectably in a storage structure (genizah) at a synagogue or cemetery according to tradition. School assignments and paper lunch bags from Auslander were permanently archived along with retired torah and prayers.

throwing down the gauntlet

We’ve yet to see the concluding chapters of the Avengers’ franchise and only know of Death-Dealing Thanos (no spoilers, please) but have been exposed enough to the references and artefacts to appreciate the resemblance that the super villain’s glove has to this reliquary which holds the uncorrupted hand of Teresa of Ávila (*1515 – †1582).
A noble woman whose Jewish ancestors were coerced to convert during the Spanish Inquisition, this Doctor of the Church was called to the monastic and contemplative life and after canonisation was a candidate for the patron saint of Spain—just edged out by James (Santiago de Zebedeo) and Catherine of Siena (whose Feast Day is coincidentally today). The well-travelled reformer succumbed to illness on the way to Alba de Tormes, just as most of Europe was switching from the Julian to Gregorian calendar so there’s some debate as to the time of her death and when to observe her Saint’s Day—15 October according to liturgical calendars, and her exumed body was dismembered and spread as relics to holy sites and the convents that she founded, her left eye and right hand going to Ronda in Andalusia, the later pictured next to the cinematic prop being kept by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, sort of like the Lance of Longinus, until his death when the treasure was restored to the nunnery.

osterbrunnen

Sourced back as a tradition expanding outward from the Fränkische Schweiz (Franconian Switzerland) region in the early 1900s when public fountains started to lose a measure of their civil importance as more homes were being retrofitted with modern plumbing, decorating them and the village centre with eggs, ribbon and garlands for Eastertide has spread to other areas in Germany.

Though the ritual of well-dressing is a custom that goes back much further, communities have grown acutely aware and proud of their handiwork, since the 1950s generally put out on the day before Palm Sunday, that continues to evolve as a teachable and instagrammable lesson—plastic eggs having become the norm due to vandalism but many are returning to more authentic materials to celebrate the season and the rites of Spring.

sakoku

Within a couple decades after Commodore Perry compelled Japan to open its doors to the West with the Treaty of Shimoda, Japanese society was beginning to relax its taboos against the consumption of meat other than seafood signalled by Emperor Mutsuhito’s 1872 New Year’s repast of beef—which caused much consternation among devout Buddhists who had helped cultivate the prohibition for over twelve centuries.
The Meiji administration changed its policy of isolation and was eager to adopt Western ways and technologies, effectively rescinding a decree from Emperor Tenmu in the seventh century not to eat useful animals during the farming season, which came to be a general avoidance (a heavy penance was put in place or transgression) for practical reasons as well as the belief in transmigration of the soul and the chance that would could be reincarnated as a cow or boar.

sunday drive: kloster kreuzberg

Built on the western-face of Franconia’s “holy mountain” with some six hundred thousand visitors and host to eighty pilgrimages yearly and not to mention one our favourite nearby locales, I was a bit taken aback to find that I had neglected to make mention of the Franciscan Kreuzberg Cloister beforehand—but will make amends for the place we went to again today, taking advantage of the sunny and clear though cold day.
Until Irish missionaries arrived in the mid-seventeenth century, the mountain was known as Aschberg (after a warlike race of Norse gods Æsir, like the titans as distinct from the Olympians, and not the tree, however) and ostensibly the site of a tree-worshiping cult before being rebranded in the native language after Golgotha.  A convent was later formed and in the early 1700s, the brothers were granted a charter to brew beer (it is hard to object to a group of sequestered individuals who earn their keep through prayer and beer), which is still a major attraction to this day.
After making sport in the snow or hiking the trails, most repair to the guesthouse for a beer and refreshments. The monks also raise Saint Bernards to rescue the wayward, but the newest additions in the kennel were not in the mood to have their pictures taken.  We are sure to return another time when the place is a bit less crowded and once again more conducive to exploring.

ōmisoka

Having adopted the Western solar system of timekeeping as its official civil calendar at the beginning of the Meiji dynasty in 1873, Japanese new year’s customs are a rich fusion of traditional and adopted customs and rituals.
In addition to purification rites and sharing a bowl of long noodles with neighbours that symbolically bridge the span between new and old, areas with a Buddhist temple will ring their bells to atone for the one-hundred and eight earthly temptations that are the cause of human suffering. These enumerated kleshas (煩悩) are mental states (greed, sloth, pulverbatching, being hangry, irusu,  Vemödalen, and so forth) that are the mind-killers and manifest in poor decisions and destructive behaviour, and are in the broadest sense ignorance, attachment and aversion. Though it’s far beyond my cursory familiarity to wade further into the subject, it’s nonetheless comforting to know that the bonshō are tolling for us.

þorláksmessa

Though not officially recognised as part of the Calendar of the Saints until Pope John Paul II made it official in 1984 and followed up with a visit to the island, Saint Þorlákur Þórhallsson—Thorlak Thornhallsson, Bishop of Skálholt, had been considered the patron of Iceland for the greater part of a millennia.

His feast day, today, the anniversary of his death in 1193, marked the end of the customary Christmas time of fasting and signaled for households to prepare for Christmas in earnest, doing the last-minute shopping and finishing decorating the tree. Traditionally, Icelanders have skate, a sort of ray-like fish, on this evening—Thorlak also being the patron of fisherman and currently under consideration, informal investigation for being nominated as the patron saint of Autism, apparently as his interventions (we’re not exactly sure why but everyone needs a cause and a champion) have proved especially helpful for those on the spectrum.

the funk of forty-thousand years

I can’t exactly pin-point the appeal of this vintage audio grimoire—released by Capitol Records in 1969 as a double eight-track tape—except to say that people respond to stories and can’t exactly vouch for the accuracy of the history and witch culture presented, but this recording from Vincent Price, “Witchcraft-Magic: An Adventure in Demonology” is incredibly soothing and somehow enchanting.  With interstitials by the witches’ chorus from Hamlet, Price masterfully delivers anecdotes and instructional lessons of how to summon the unseen, as well as the antithetical, graphic explanation for witch-hunts over the fragility of the male ego and challenging the hierarchy.