Stained glass

Valenti Angelo, San Francisco Illustrator (b.1897- d.1982)

Original issuu post, view here

From Thomas a Kempis, "The Imitation of Christ" (Mt. Vernon, NY: Peter Pauper Press, ca. 1947), by San Francisco illustrator, Valenti Angelo. His life in his own words. Best books: Valenti Angelo: Author, Illustrator, Printer and Con Amore: Valenti Angelo: A Bibliography, 1971-1982

Herman Wirth's Books of Wonders

In our search for the origins of what is now the Greek letter "Phi" ϕ, we earlier discovered "Die Heilige Urschrift der Menschheit" (rough trans: "Sacred Original Writings of Mankind"), a two volume symbolist opus by Herman Wirth, published in 1936, Leipzig. The Dutch symbolist Wirth's research was sponsored by the Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler during this period (1935-1938). Wirth is rather infamous for "advocated the Swastika as 'species-specific sign of salvation'" in 1925. A very difficult set of volumes to find, WorldCat shows about four sets in USA libraries and four in Germany - here is a sampling of the first 15 of 400 illustrated pages of the second volume, "Bilderatlas". Below, Wirth's earlier, 635 page, volume from 1928.

Ruth Cozen Snyder and "Maypoles"

Ruth- Thank you for a lovely and unexpected Mayday morning!  Such a lovely body (pun) of work.  And, as you mentioned, inspired by the maypole motif.  And thank you for the instruction to find the living  Maypole just down the street on Sunset Blvd. (photo below).  Unbelievable!

Here are some links for your granddaughter to show to her that yours is a 13,000 year old oeuvre:
13,000 year old Maypoles- click to enlarge photos - reindeer head on left, read commentary.
Egyptian Maypoles-
TODAY's most famous Maypole- (how be it upsidedown in this image) and its related historical "Phi" symbols - set one, set two (The "Phi" symbol also denotes the Golden Ratio of 1.61803398874989)
Chinese Maypoles-
Schuster's Maypoles-
Advanced Maypoles-
Cowboy Maypoles-
Islamic Maypoles-
Christian Maypoles-
My Maypoles-

Lilith - Adam's first wife

So briefly, most recall the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, little knowing the true story of Adam's first wife, Lilith. Apparently, in a dispute over which, Adam or Lilith, should be sexually "on top", Lilith leapt into the air (with instant wings) and flew off to the Red Sea. God, making his usual rounds that evening learned the entire odd story from His new creations and dispatched two angels to sweet talk Lilith into coming back to the Garden. Unable to dissuade her, our two clever ambassadors threatened to kill her first 100 children each day to which Lilith retorted that she would birth 1000 children every day. Our two angels return to the Almighty, related the situation and the Allknowing One, after a couple more attempts (three's a charm), sorts a more compliant Eve for Adam. Not being around for the Apple / Snake shakedown, Lilith is immortal and still with us today - though needing, with feet like those, some extra daily help with gathering semen to make those 1000 babies.  She and her female offspring (ie the succubi) spend the nights causing and harvesting wet dreams 'round the world. Beats Santa Claus or maybe they. . . So, I got to be making this up? not! Robert Graves and Raphael Patai's excellent account and the wonderful and long lived Lilith website of Alan Humm - thank you again, Alan.

From the British Museum- "Queen of the Night" in old Babylon, 1800-1750 BC (southern Iraq)
 This large plaque is made of baked straw-tempered clay, modelled in high relief. The figure of the curvaceous naked woman was originally painted red. She wears the horned headdress characteristic of a Mesopotamian deity and holds a rod and ring of justice, symbols of her divinity. Her long multi-coloured wings hang downwards, indicating that she is a goddess of the Underworld. Her legs end in the talons of a bird of prey, similar to those of the two owls that flank her. The background was originally painted black, suggesting that she was associated with the night. She stands on the backs of two lions, and a scale pattern indicates mountains. The figure could be an aspect of the goddess Ishtar, Mesopotamian goddess of sexual love and war, or Ishtar's sister and rival, the goddess Ereshkigal who ruled over the Underworld, or the demoness Lilitu, known in the Bible as Lilith. The plaque probably stood in a shrine. The same goddess appears on small, crude, mould-made plaques from Babylonia from about 1850 to 1750 BC. Thermoluminescence tests confirm that the 'Queen of the Night' relief was made between 1765 and 45 BC.

The relief may have come to England as early as 1924, and was brought to the British Museum in 1933 for scientific testing. It has been known since its publication in 1936 in the Illustrated London News as the Burney Relief, after its owner at that time. Until 2003 it has been in private hands. The Director and Trustees of the British Museum decided to make this spectacular terracotta plaque the principal acquisition for the British Museum's 250th anniversary.

Photo above: The plaque as it looks now compared to a reconstruction image created by Mark Timson of the British Museum's New Media Unit, with the guidance of Dominique Collon, curator in the Department of the Ancient Near East.

Best books: Siegmund Hurwitz "Lilith, the first Eve" and Raphael Patai "Hebrew Goddess".

Visible Vagina NYC thru March 20, 2010

Rather rough group showing on an otherwise excellent subject. Split between (no pun) two galleries in NYC, The Visible Vagina from January 28 (Imbolc) to March 20 (equinox) 2010 at David Nolan 527 West 29th St (showing Gladys Nilsson's Stream 2009, left) and Francis Naumann 24 West 57th St, Ste 305 (includes Carol Cole's Back in the Womb, right).  The Nolan Gallery's web is worth the visit, skip the Naumann site  (what happened!?).

From the press release - "As the title of the exhibition suggests, the show is designed to make visible a portion of the female anatomy that is generally considered taboo―too private and intimate for public display. If shown at all, this part of a woman's body is usually presented in an abject fashion, generally within the context of pornography, intended, in almost all cases, for the exclusive pleasure of men. The goal of this exhibition is to remove these prurient connotations, implicit even in works of art, ever since the pudendum was prudishly covered by a fig leaf. This gesture of false modesty, it should be noted, was devised and enforced entirely by men (not only in the case of classical sculpture, but also in the Bible, in which, immediately after their disobedience in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve cover their genitalia with fig leaves). Indeed, until recently, men made virtually all depictions of the frontal nude female figure, but as this exhibition will demonstrate, that has changed dramatically in recent years."

Wiki Wonkas

Enjoy!

František Kupka, Museo Picasso Málaga, 15 February - 25 April 2010

NEW: Kupka moves from Museo Miro to Museo Picasso Málaga. The exhibition will show for the [second!] time in Spain a selection of around 80 paintings and drawings by the Czech artist, all from the Centre Georges Pompidou, and documents from the collection of Pierre Brullé, a leading expert on Kupka, who was considered the first painter to explore the concept of abstract act. The splendid collection of works from the Centre Georges Pompidou, mostly donated by the artist's widow in 1963, shows very clearly the development of Kupka's art from his early Symbolist paintings to his final years. František Kupka (1871-1957) began his artistic career at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he learned an academic style. Later on, in Vienna, he began to take an interest in Symbolism and allegorical art. After moving to Paris in 1896, Kupka worked as a press and advertising illustrator while at the same time making contact with the early avant-garde movements such as Fauvism and Cubism, though maintaining his independence and his own personal language. His interest in Futurist writings meant that around 1910 his work started to become increasingly abstract, with the idea of reflecting movement and studying the effects of colour and the relationship between music and painting. This led to the publication of the book La Création dans les arts plastiques in 1913. Despite his links to the "isms" of the period, Kupka always felt himself to be a lone experimenter. In 1931, together with Auguste Herbin, Jean Hélion and other artists he founded the Abstraction-Création group, which defended abstract art against the Surrealist movement led by André Breton.


The František Kupka exhibition at the Foundation seeks to highlight the artist's particular contributions, such as the combination of Austrian fin-de-siècle motifs with the early avant-garde exploration of form and the depiction of movement, which very soon led him to abstraction. This sensibility means that Kupka's work occupies a leading place in the history of modern European art.  Major exhibitions of Kupka's art have been held in the main museums in France the United States and Japan, but he has never had a retrospective in Barcelona. It is in order to redress this unjustified omission that the Foundation is now presenting this show that will enable us to appreciate and understand the stylistic evolution and working methods of this key painter in the development of early abstract art.

Notes: Links to the entire Kupka collection of Centre Pompidou as photo above right, enter there, "kupka", into box at left. Early exhibition on the La Fundació Joan Miró site page . The second largest collection of František Kupka is located in his native country, the beautiful Museum Kampa, Prague, however images of his work on this site seem to be lacking.

". . .with bells on!"

EROS - From Hesiod's Theogony to Late Antiquity This major archeological exhibition will focus on Eros, the archaic deity of reproduction, and on the historical progression of the concept ―from the first references made in Hesiod’s texts dating from the 6th century B.C. up until the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. The exhibition includes 270 artifacts from 45 archaeological museums and institutions from Greece, Cyprus, Italy and the Louvre in France. It is important to note that over 100 of the items on display will be available for public view for the first time. The exhibition provides insight into the archeology and history of more than 10 centuries in the ancient world, making it an exhibition of true historic, scientific, cultural and artistic value. Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens GR  December 10th 2009 to April 6th, 2010.

The Codex Sinaiticus Project

Online since July 2009. The Codex Sinaiticus Project is an international collaboration to reunite the entire manuscript in digital form and make it accessible to a global audience for the first time. Drawing on the expertise of leading scholars, conservators and curators, the Project gives everyone the opportunity to connect directly with this famous manuscript. [Find out more about the Codex Sinaiticus Project.]

I was asked by Océ UK to submit lighting designs for this project (alas, designs not accepted). Good to see the project reach fruition (but the lighting?!).

Enter Year X, Millennium 3

In the beginning God created heaven and earth.
That was where the trouble started.
Before, there was chaos,
Which is what the wise man still seeks.
He divided light from darkness, dry land from sea,
But we got sea and darkness anyway.
Silly blundering old bugger,
Why couldn’t he have left well enough alone. 
  - Northrop Frye  
Excerpts from Frye's annotated library.

Perspective

Menstrual Envy 101

I have argued earlier regarding the ankh-like cravat as "power symbol".  And while we have not yet taken up this subject directly, recent news provided a splendid visual lecture on male menstrual envy - with the notable exception of Germany's Guido, what's up with yellow?

From NYTimes.com: "US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (C) speaks with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen (L) and Britain's foreign secretary David Miliband (R), German Foreign Affairs minister Guido Westerwelle (Back-C) during a family photo during a NATO Foreign ministers meeting at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels. (photo: AFP/John Thys)"

псевдоним Юзефа Теодора Конрада Коженёвского

"God is for men and religion is for women." - Joseph Conrad

Swiss Pissing Contests

Surprising in CGJ's own country - photo left: typical Swiss alpine 'Christian' steeple. Photo right - captioned by Reuters (Italics mine): "Walter Wobmann, president of the committee 'Yes for a Ban on Minarets,' gave a thumbs-up in Egerkingen, Switzerland, on Sunday." Not entirely missed by SVP parliamentarian Oskar Freysinger, who is reported as saying, "The minaret is the power symbol of political Islam." Yes, and your thumb, er, steeple, sir?

November 29, 2009
Swiss Voters Projected to Back Minaret Ban
By REUTERS Filed at 9:09 a.m. ET

GENEVA (Reuters) - Swiss voters have approved a right-wing-backed proposal to ban construction of new minarets, initial projections showed on Sunday, a surprise result that could damage Switzerland's economic ties with Muslim states.
If confirmed, the result would be a huge embarrassment for the neutral Swiss government, which had warned that amending the constitution to ban construction of minarets could serve could "serve the interests of extremist circles."
"The initiative would appear to be accepted, there is a positive trend. It's a huge surprise," French-language Swiss television said, 30 minutes after polls closed at midday.
A majority of voters as well as cantons appeared to have approved the initiative, it said, citing exit polls carried out by the Berne-based Institute Gfs.
Both the Swiss government and parliament had rejected the initiative as violating the Swiss constitution, freedom of religion and the nation's cherished tradition of tolerance. The United Nations human rights watchdog had also voiced concerns.
A group of politicians from the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), the country's biggest party, and Federal Democratic Union gathered enough signatures to force the vote on the initiative which opposes the "Islamisation of Switzerland."
Its campaign poster showed the Swiss flag covered in missile-like minarets and the portrait of a woman covered with a black chador and veil associated with strict Islam.
"We just want to stop further Islamisation in Switzerland, I mean political Islam. People may practice their religion, that is no problem," Walter Wobmann, who is president of a committee of initiative backers, told Reuters on Sunday.
"We want to stop the further developments -- minarets, (the call to prayer), Sharia law," SVP parliamentarian said at a rally of supporters in the town of Egerkingen near Berne.
"The minarets is the power symbol of political Islam and Sharia law."
The Alpine country of nearly 7 million is home to more than 300,000 Muslims, mainly from Bosnia, Kosovo and Turkey.
Four mosques have minarets including those in Geneva and Zurich. The call to prayer is banned in the country.
An opinion poll carried out Nov 9-14 had showed a steady 53 percent opposed the initiative. Some 37 percent were in favor, against 34 percent a month earlier, with 10 percent undecided.
SVP parliamentarian Oskar Freysinger, a driving force in the campaign, says minarets bring the Muslim faith out into the public domain and reflect a demand for political power.
"If it's really just something decorative and secondary to them, why are they clinging so tightly to that symbol? It's a strong symbol for them, it's to show their territorial hold and I think for now, we'd rather not have that in our country," Freysinger told Reuters in Berne earlier this week.
In Geneva, home to U.N. humanitarian agencies, voters appeared overwhelmingly to have rejected the initiative by nearly 60 percent, according to Swiss television.
"I rejected the initiative, it's against Swiss law and against what I believe in. It's against the freedom of religion we have, so I voted against the initiative," one man in Geneva told Reuters Television as he left the polls.
Another Geneva voter, Antonio Spagnolo, said: "I'm shocked by this initiative, by this answer I've given you my position, I'm against this initiative because I think it's intolerance."
Tensions ran high ahead of the referendum as voters grappled with sensitive issues linked to immigration being aired across much of Western Europe.
Geneva's mosque was defaced with spray paint on Thursday, the latest incident after rocks had been thrown at the door.
"Islam in Switzerland and in the Western world brings various questions. But it doesn't call for aggression and that islamophobic propaganda," Youssef Ibram, imam of Geneva's mosque, told Reuters Television last week.
(With additional reporting by Catherine Bosley in Egerkingen and Anne Richardson in Geneva)

Margaret Magnus "Gods of the Word"

Revolutionary idea, this book published in 1999 is presently out of print. With Margaret's permission I am slowly PDFing the entire 140 pages from my closest library copy borrowed from Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah (who knew). Here, the first thirty pages (above), Margaret Magnus' website link and her description of "Gods of the Word"-

In 1993, as part of a computer project I was working on, I found myself reading an English dictionary and dividing all the words into prefixes, suffixes and roots. I had read studies in linguists which suggested that the initial consonants of a word had a set of meanings, and the remaining rhyming part also had a set of meanings. One 'sense' of 'str-' is linearity: string, strip, stripe, street, etc. And one sense of '-ap' is flat: cap, flap, lap, map, etc. If you put them together, you get a flat line: 'strap'. The idea fascinated me, and since I was marking all these words anyway, I decided to keep an eye out for these classes which have similar meaning and pronunciation both. It turns out that it is possible by means of a series of repeatable experiments to show that certain meanings hang out with certain phonemes and others do not. I have been working on a dictionary which outlines this data for English in much more detail rather formally and scientifically. But I also have many thoughts which I seem to express more openly and cheerfully when I voice them in a separate book. My purpose here is therefore not to prove anything, but to summarise my most important findings in plain English and to philosophise freely and naively on their significance.

Update March 2011:   Margaret has self published through Amazon (link above) at a very nice price - enjoy the "preview" above.

Thank you, Leonard Shlain

Dr. Leonard Shlain, surgeon/author of, among others, the book Alphabet Vs the Goddess, unfortunately passed away in May.  For me, a left-handed, dyslexic, ex-divinity student cum image maker, Alphabet Vs the Goddess proved my most influential book in the last ten years - the title itself sent shivers up my spine when spied thirty yards away in Denver's Tattered Cover bookstore - even before I got to wading through its erudite contents.  It's the sort of book where you immediately buy a half dozen to gift to your last five best friends - missionary to the saints. Dr. Shlain also proved a kind and patient correspondent during my continuing novitiate. I have just learned of his several recorded lectures, here is one - entitled "The Big O" - enjoy the next hour:

William Blake at Morgan NYC: "A New Heaven Is Begun"

from the Morgan Library site- Visionary and nonconformist William Blake (1757–1827) is a singular figure in the history of Western art and literature: a poet, painter, and printmaker. Ambitiously creative, Blake had an abiding interest in theology and philosophy, which, during the age of revolution, inspired thoroughly original and personal investigations into the state of man and his soul. In his lifetime Blake was best known as an engraver; he was later recognized for his innovations across many other disciplines.

See Online Exhibition In the Morgan's first exhibition devoted to Blake in two decades, former director Charles Ryskamp and curators Anna Lou Ashby and Cara Denison have assembled many of Blake's most spectacular watercolors, prints, and illuminated books of poetry to dramatically underscore his genius and enduring influence. William Blake's World: "A New Heaven Is Begun"—the subtitle a quote from Blake referring to the significance of his date of birth—is on view from September 11, 2009, to January 3, 2010.

The show includes more than 100 works and among the many highlights are two major series of watercolors, rarely displayed in their entirety. The twenty-one watercolors for Blake's seminal illustrations for the Book of Job—considered one of his greatest works and revealing his personal engagement with biblical texts—were created about 1805–10. Also on view are twelve drawings illustrating John Milton's poems L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, executed about 1816–20. Both series were undertaken for Blake's principal patron, Thomas Butts. Also see University of North Carolina's Blake Archive

Stonehenge Depicts Female Genitalia (Reuters)

TORONTO, Canada (Reuters) July 8 2003 -- Stonehenge is a massive female fertility symbol, according to Canadian researchers who think they have finally solved the mystery of the ancient monument in southern England. In the arrangement of the stones, the researchers say they have spotted the original design: female genitalia. The theory is laid out in a paper entitled "Stonehenge: a view from medicine" in an issue of Britain's Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. "To the builders of the henge, the most critical events in life were birth and death," Anthony Perks, a retired professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of British Columbia, wrote in the paper, published earlier this year. He noted there was no evidence of tombs built by the original builders. "Of birth, we could expect little evidence. However, evidence may be there but so large as to be overlooked."  National Geographic image above by Joe McNally/Sygma

Nuovo segno d'infinito, M. Pestoletto, 2003

Terzo Paradiso [Third Heaven]
Nel marzo del 2004 l'Università di Torino conferisce a Pistoletto la laurea honoris causa in Scienze Politiche. In tale occasione Pistoletto annuncia pubblicamente quella che costituisce la fase più recente del suo lavoro, denominata Terzo Paradiso , il cui simbolo è il Nuovo segno d'infinito da lui creato nel 2003.  [In March 2004, the University of Turin Pistoletto conferred an honorary degree in Political Science. On that occasion Pistoletto announced publicly what is the most recent phase of his work, Third Heaven, whose symbol is the New infinity sign he created in 2003.]
Nel 2005 il Terzo Paradiso viene presentato quale evento nell'ambito dalla 51a Biennale di Venezia, come opera del soggetto artistico collettivo Cittadellarte, attraverso una mostra intitolata “L'isola interiore: l'arte della sopravvivenza”, curata da Achille Bonito Oliva, nel corso della quale sono organizzati - sull'isola di San Servolo, sul rimorchiatore Impetus e in altri luoghi della città - eventi, incontri e workshop con la partecipazione, tra gli altri, di Gilberto Gil in qualità sia di musicista che di Ministro della Cultura del Brasile. [In 2005, the Third Heaven is presented as an event in the 51st Venice Biennale, as a work of collective artistic subject Cittadellarte, through an exhibition entitled "The inner island: the art of survival", curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, in at which they are organized - the island of San Servolo, tug on the Impetus and elsewhere in the city - events, meetings and workshops with the participation, among others, of Gilberto Gil as both a musician and the Brazilian Minister of Culture.]
Relativamente al Terzo Paradiso e alla ricerca condotta in questi ultimi anni da Pistoletto sul piano dei simboli, si rimanda a due recenti colloqui tra Pistoletto e Massimo Melotti: Simbolo e arte , in Sul simbolo (Luca Sossella Editore, Roma 2004) e Il nuovo segno d'infinito, simbolo del Terzo Paradiso (Cittadellarte, Biella 2005). [With regard to the Third Heaven and the research conducted in recent years by Pistoletto in terms of symbols, refer to two recent talks between Pistoletto and Massimo Melotti: Symbol and art, the symbol (Sossella Luca Editore, Rome 2004) and the new sign infinity, a symbol of the Third Heaven (Cittadellarte, Biella 2005).]
"Ho tracciato sulla sabbia il nuovo segno d'infinito che sostituisce il simbolo tradizionale formato da una linea continua che si interseca descrivendo due anse. Il nuovo segno incrocia la linea due volte formando non più soltanto due ma tre cerchi. Quello centrale descrive un ventre gravido, prodotto dall'accoppiamento dei due cerchi che costituivano il vecchio simbolo. Questo ventre rappresenta la generazione del Terzo Paradiso. Cos'è il Terzo Paradiso? È l'accoppiamento fertile tra il primo e il secondo paradiso. Il primo è il Paradiso Terrestre, che precede il morso della mela. È il paradiso naturale dove tutto è regolato dall'intelligenza della natura. Il secondo è il Paradiso Artificiale, quello sviluppato dall'intelligenza umana attraverso un processo lentissimo che ha raggiunto nel corso degli ultimi due secoli una dimensione sempre più vasta ed esclusiva. Questo paradiso è fatto di bisogni artificiali, di comodità artificiali, di piaceri artificiali e di ogni altra forma di artificio. Si è formato un vero e proprio mondo artificiale che continua a crescere consumando e deteriorando in modo sempre più drastico il pianeta naturale. Il pericolo di una sempre più imminente tragica collisione fra queste due sfere è ormai annunciato in ogni modo. Ed è per evitare di proseguire verso questo catastrofico avvenimento che si deve concepire il progetto globale che chiamo Terzo Paradiso. (...) Il riferimento biblico non ha finalità religiose ma è assunto come messaggio per dare senso e forza al concetto di trasformazione sociale responsabile e motivare un grande ideale che unisce in un solo impegno l'arte, la scienza, l'economia, la spiritualità e la politica." ["I have drawn on the sand the new infinity sign replaces the traditional symbol formed by a continuous line that intersects describing two loops. The new sign crosses the line twice, forming not just two but three circles. What defines a central belly pregnant, product of two circles that made up the old symbol. This belly is the generation of the Third Heaven. What is the Third Heaven? fertile and coupling between the first and second heaven. The first is the Earthly Paradise, preceding the bite of the apple. It is a natural paradise where everything is regulated by the intelligence of nature. The second is the artificial paradise, the one developed by human intelligence through a very slow process which has achieved over the past two centuries size increasingly broad and exclusive. This paradise is made of artificial needs, comfort artificial artificial pleasures and any other form of artifice. It has formed a true artificial world that continues to grow, consuming and deteriorating ever more drastic the natural planet. The danger of an ever more imminent tragic collision between these two spheres has been announced in any way. And that is to continue to avoid this catastrophic event which must conceive of the global project called the third heaven. (... ) The biblical reference is not religious purposes but is taken as a message to give meaning and strength to the concept of responsible social transformation and motivate a great ideal that unites in a single engagement the art, science, economics, spirituality and politics.](M. Pistoletto, The Third Heaven, "Journal 8", Cittadellarte, Biella 2004, p. 5) Foto soto: J.E.S.

Jung's Red Book

From the Philemon Foundation - "During WWI, Jung commenced an extended self-exploration that he called his “confrontation with the unconscious.” During this period, he developed his principal theories of the collective unconscious, the archetypes, psychological types and the process of individuation, and transformed psychotherapy from a practice concerned with the treatment of pathology into a means for reconnection with the soul and the recovery of meaning in life. At the heart of this endeavor was his legendary Red Book, a large, leather bound, illuminated volume that he created between 1914 and 1930, and which contained the nucleus of his later works. While Jung considered the Red Book, or Liber Novus (New Book) to be the central work in his oeuvre, it has remained unpublished till this day, and unavailable for study and unseen by the public at large. The work can be best described as a work of psychology in a literary and prophetic form. It is possibly the most influential unpublished work in the history of psychology. Its publication is a watershed that inaugurates a new era in the understanding of Jung’s life and work.

"The years … when I pursued the inner images were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life.
"Everything later was merely the outer classification, the scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then.”
— C. G. Jung

YouTube video by Digital Fusion, Los Angeles

Publishers' notes on the Red Book.

PUBLICATION DATE OCTOBER 7, 2009
The Red Book: Liber Novus
C. G. Jung
Edited and Introduced by Sonu Shamdasani
Translated by Mark Kyburz, John Peck and Sonu Shamdasani
With a forward by Ulrich Hoerni
The folio size (11.57 inches by 15.35 inches) volume consists of 205 pages of text in Jung’s masterful calligraphic hand and, from his skilled brush, stunning paintings. Of them, 53 pages are full images, 71 pages contain both text and 81 images and pages are pure calligraphic text.  Preview how the book was produced at: DigitalFusion LA Captures History for Carl Jung’s Red Book and the larger YouTube version. 

Now a "holiday" book review from the New York Times (03 Dec 09) by KATHRYN HARRISON with an exceptionally succinct excerpt quoted below. Read entire review.

"In fact, reading “The Red Book” is like visiting a foreign place of worship. To understand Jung’s text — to meet and listen to the creatures of his unconscious — requires solitude, silence, concentrated effort. At the beginning of the book (which is divided into “Liber Primus,” “Liber Secundus” and “Scrutinies”), Jung rediscovers his soul, alienated while he “had served the spirit of the time.” With it, he embarks on a series of adventures and meets, among others, Elijah, Salome, a serpent and the Devil. The narrative proceeds like a blend of biblical prophecy and dialectic, in places unexpectedly funny, as when, in “The Castle in the Forest,” he encounters a woman from the kind of novels he had “spat on long ago.” “I am truly in Hell,” Jung remarks, “the worst awakening after death, to be resurrected in a lending library!” But the conventional heroine who fills Jung with disgust has something to teach him: what he considers “banal and hackneyed contains the wisdom” he seeks. The heroine trapped in a castle in a forest is an archetype — one that, in this instance, challenges his intellectual snobbery.

"“Individuation” is the word Jung used for the integration of conscious and unconscious required for a person to reach psychological wholeness, an evolved state of being he did not consider within the reach of every person. Rather than breaking with convention, the “insufficiently creative,” as Shamdasani calls them, should remain within the “collective conformity” of society, which encourages us to assume that all cosmologies, all myths and religions, lie without rather than within ourselves. But, as Jung argued, the collective unconscious, even deeper than the personal, is a realm into which we can travel to discover all we contain, making the beauty, terrors and wisdom of the unconscious available to consciousness."

Dawkins, Armstrong & the Wall Street Journal

from The Wall Street Journal/LIFE & STYLE/SEPTEMBER 12, 2009
on the web with illustrations here.

We commissioned Karen Armstrong and Richard Dawkins to respond independently to the question "Where does evolution leave God?" Neither knew what the other would say. Here are the results.

Karen Armstrong says we need God to grasp the wonder of our existence-

Richard Dawkins has been right all along, of course—at least in one important respect. Evolution has indeed dealt a blow to the idea of a benign creator, literally conceived. It tells us that there is no Intelligence controlling the cosmos, and that life itself is the result of a blind process of natural selection, in which innumerable species failed to survive. The fossil record reveals a natural history of pain, death and racial extinction, so if there was a divine plan, it was cruel, callously prodigal and wasteful. Human beings were not the pinnacle of a purposeful creation; like everything else, they evolved by trial and error and God had no direct hand in their making. No wonder so many fundamentalist Christians find their faith shaken to the core.

But Darwin may have done religion—and God—a favor by revealing a flaw in modern Western faith. Despite our scientific and technological brilliance, our understanding of God is often remarkably undeveloped—even primitive. In the past, many of the most influential Jewish, Christian and Muslim thinkers understood that what we call "God" is merely a symbol that points beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence, whose existence cannot be proved but is only intuited by means of spiritual exercises and a compassionate lifestyle that enable us to cultivate new capacities of mind and heart.

But by the end of the 17th century, instead of looking through the symbol to "the God beyond God," Christians were transforming it into hard fact. Sir Isaac Newton had claimed that his cosmic system proved beyond doubt the existence of an intelligent, omniscient and omnipotent creator, who was obviously "very well skilled in Mechanicks and Geometry." Enthralled by the prospect of such cast-iron certainty, churchmen started to develop a scientifically-based theology that eventually made Newton's Mechanick and, later, William Paley's Intelligent Designer essential to Western Christianity.

But the Great Mechanick was little more than an idol, the kind of human projection that theology, at its best, was supposed to avoid. God had been essential to Newtonian physics but it was not long before other scientists were able to dispense with the God-hypothesis and, finally, Darwin showed that there could be no proof for God's existence. This would not have been a disaster had not Christians become so dependent upon their scientific religion that they had lost the older habits of thought and were left without other resource.

Symbolism was essential to premodern religion, because it was only possible to speak about the ultimate reality—God, Tao, Brahman or Nirvana—analogically, since it lay beyond the reach of words. Jews and Christians both developed audaciously innovative and figurative methods of reading the Bible, and every statement of the Quran is called an ayah ("parable"). St Augustine (354-430), a major authority for both Catholics and Protestants, insisted that if a biblical text contradicted reputable science, it must be interpreted allegorically. This remained standard practice in the West until the 17th century, when in an effort to emulate the exact scientific method, Christians began to read scripture with a literalness that is without parallel in religious history.

Most cultures believed that there were two recognized ways of arriving at truth. The Greeks called them mythos and logos. Both were essential and neither was superior to the other; they were not in conflict but complementary, each with its own sphere of competence. Logos ("reason") was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled us to function effectively in the world and had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external reality. But it could not assuage human grief or find ultimate meaning in life's struggle. For that people turned to mythos, stories that made no pretensions to historical accuracy but should rather be seen as an early form of psychology; if translated into ritual or ethical action, a good myth showed you how to cope with mortality, discover an inner source of strength, and endure pain and sorrow with serenity.

In the ancient world, a cosmology was not regarded as factual but was primarily therapeutic; it was recited when people needed an infusion of that mysterious power that had—somehow—brought something out of primal nothingness: at a sickbed, a coronation or during a political crisis. Some cosmologies taught people how to unlock their own creativity, others made them aware of the struggle required to maintain social and political order. The Genesis creation hymn, written during the Israelites' exile in Babylonia in the 6th century BC, was a gentle polemic against Babylonian religion. Its vision of an ordered universe where everything had its place was probably consoling to a displaced people, though—as we can see in the Bible—some of the exiles preferred a more aggressive cosmology.

There can never be a definitive version of a myth, because it refers to the more imponderable aspects of life. To remain effective, it must respond to contemporary circumstance. In the 16th century, when Jews were being expelled from one region of Europe after another, the mystic Isaac Luria constructed an entirely new creation myth that bore no resemblance to the Genesis story. But instead of being reviled for contradicting the Bible, it inspired a mass-movement among Jews, because it was such a telling description of the arbitrary world they now lived in; backed up with special rituals, it also helped them face up to their pain and discover a source of strength.

Religion was not supposed to provide explanations that lay within the competence of reason but to help us live creatively with realities for which there are no easy solutions and find an interior haven of peace; today, however, many have opted for unsustainable certainty instead. But can we respond religiously to evolutionary theory? Can we use it to recover a more authentic notion of God?

Darwin made it clear once again that—as Maimonides, Avicenna, Aquinas and Eckhart had already pointed out—we cannot regard God simply as a divine personality, who single-handedly created the world. This could direct our attention away from the idols of certainty and back to the "God beyond God." The best theology is a spiritual exercise, akin to poetry. Religion is not an exact science but a kind of art form that, like music or painting, introduces us to a mode of knowledge that is different from the purely rational and which cannot easily be put into words. At its best, it holds us in an attitude of wonder, which is, perhaps, not unlike the awe that Mr. Dawkins experiences—and has helped me to appreciate —when he contemplates the marvels of natural selection.


But what of the pain and waste that Darwin unveiled? All the major traditions insist that the faithful meditate on the ubiquitous suffering that is an inescapable part of life; because, if we do not acknowledge this uncomfortable fact, the compassion that lies at the heart of faith is impossible. The almost unbearable spectacle of the myriad species passing painfully into oblivion is not unlike some classic Buddhist meditations on the First Noble Truth ("Existence is suffering"), the indispensable prerequisite for the transcendent enlightenment that some call Nirvana—and others call God.

—Ms. Armstrong is the author of numerous books on theology and religious affairs. Her latest, "The Case for God,".

Richard Dawkins argues that evolution leaves God with nothing to do-

Before 1859 it would have seemed natural to agree with the Reverend William Paley, in "Natural Theology," that the creation of life was God's greatest work. Especially (vanity might add) human life. Today we'd amend the statement: Evolution is the universe's greatest work. Evolution is the creator of life, and life is arguably the most surprising and most beautiful production that the laws of physics have ever generated. Evolution, to quote a T-shirt sent me by an anonymous well-wisher, is the greatest show on earth, the only game in town.

Indeed, evolution is probably the greatest show in the entire universe. Most scientists' hunch is that there are independently evolved life forms dotted around planetary islands throughout the universe—though sadly too thinly scattered to encounter one another. And if there is life elsewhere, it is something stronger than a hunch to say that it will turn out to be Darwinian life. The argument in favor of alien life's existing at all is weaker than the argument that—if it exists at all—it will be Darwinian life. But it is also possible that we really are alone in the universe, in which case Earth, with its greatest show, is the most remarkable planet in the universe.

What is so special about life? It never violates the laws of physics. Nothing does (if anything did, physicists would just have to formulate new laws—it's happened often enough in the history of science). But although life never violates the laws of physics, it pushes them into unexpected avenues that stagger the imagination. If we didn't know about life we wouldn't believe it was possible—except, of course, that there'd then be nobody around to do the disbelieving!

The laws of physics, before Darwinian evolution bursts out from their midst, can make rocks and sand, gas clouds and stars, whirlpools and waves, whirlpool-shaped galaxies and light that travels as waves while behaving like particles. It is an interesting, fascinating and, in many ways, deeply mysterious universe. But now, enter life. Look, through the eyes of a physicist, at a bounding kangaroo, a swooping bat, a leaping dolphin, a soaring Coast Redwood. There never was a rock that bounded like a kangaroo, never a pebble that crawled like a beetle seeking a mate, never a sand grain that swam like a water flea. Not once do any of these creatures disobey one jot or tittle of the laws of physics. Far from violating the laws of thermodynamics (as is often ignorantly alleged) they are relentlessly driven by them. Far from violating the laws of motion, animals exploit them to their advantage as they walk, run, dodge and jink, leap and fly, pounce on prey or spring to safety.

Never once are the laws of physics violated, yet life emerges into uncharted territory. And how is the trick done? The answer is a process that, although variable in its wondrous detail, is sufficiently uniform to deserve one single name: Darwinian evolution, the nonrandom survival of randomly varying coded information. We know, as certainly as we know anything in science, that this is the process that has generated life on our own planet. And my bet, as I said, is that the same process is in operation wherever life may be found, anywhere in the universe.

What if the greatest show on earth is not the greatest show in the universe? What if there are life forms on other planets that have evolved so far beyond our level of intelligence and creativity that we should regard them as gods, were we ever so fortunate (or unfortunate?) as to meet them? Would they indeed be gods? Wouldn't we be tempted to fall on our knees and worship them, as a medieval peasant might if suddenly confronted with such miracles as a Boeing 747, a mobile telephone or Google Earth? But, however god-like the aliens might seem, they would not be gods, and for one very important reason. They did not create the universe; it created them, just as it created us. Making the universe is the one thing no intelligence, however superhuman, could do, because an intelligence is complex—statistically improbable —and therefore had to emerge, by gradual degrees, from simpler beginnings: from a lifeless universe—the miracle-free zone that is physics.

To midwife such emergence is the singular achievement of Darwinian evolution. It starts with primeval simplicity and fosters, by slow, explicable degrees, the emergence of complexity: seemingly limitless complexity—certainly up to our human level of complexity and very probably way beyond. There may be worlds on which superhuman life thrives, superhuman to a level that our imaginations cannot grasp. But superhuman does not mean supernatural. Darwinian evolution is the only process we know that is ultimately capable of generating anything as complicated as creative intelligences. Once it has done so, of course, those intelligences can create other complex things: works of art and music, advanced technology, computers, the Internet and who knows what in the future? Darwinian evolution may not be the only such generative process in the universe. There may be other "cranes" (Daniel Dennett's term, which he opposes to "skyhooks") that we have not yet discovered or imagined. But, however wonderful and however different from Darwinian evolution those putative cranes may be, they cannot be magic. They will share with Darwinian evolution the facility to raise up complexity, as an emergent property, out of simplicity, while never violating natural law.

Where does that leave God? The kindest thing to say is that it leaves him with nothing to do, and no achievements that might attract our praise, our worship or our fear. Evolution is God's redundancy notice, his pink slip. But we have to go further. A complex creative intelligence with nothing to do is not just redundant. A divine designer is all but ruled out by the consideration that he must at least as complex as the entities he was wheeled out to explain. God is not dead. He was never alive in the first place.

Now, there is a certain class of sophisticated modern theologian who will say something like this: "Good heavens, of course we are not so naive or simplistic as to care whether God exists. Existence is such a 19th-century preoccupation! It doesn't matter whether God exists in a scientific sense. What matters is whether he exists for you or for me. If God is real for you, who cares whether science has made him redundant? Such arrogance! Such elitism."


Well, if that's what floats your canoe, you'll be paddling it up a very lonely creek. The mainstream belief of the world's peoples is very clear. They believe in God, and that means they believe he exists in objective reality, just as surely as the Rock of Gibraltar exists. If sophisticated theologians or postmodern relativists think they are rescuing God from the redundancy scrap-heap by downplaying the importance of existence, they should think again. Tell the congregation of a church or mosque that existence is too vulgar an attribute to fasten onto their God, and they will brand you an atheist. They'll be right.

—Mr. Dawkins is the author of "The Selfish Gene," "The Ancestor's Tale," "The God Delusion." His latest book is "The Greatest Show on Earth."


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Mammon Trumps Knowing

As if the boys had not already "screwed" things up enough all by themselves. Where is Dan Brown when we need him?

NY Times | July 02, 2009
U.S. Nuns Facing Vatican Scrutiny By Laurie Goodstein
The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns, leaving some fearful that they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition.

Project Book Listing with Amazon/Abebooks Links

Purchases made through these links support this blog and slog effort. Both Amazon and Abebooks offer new books, but Abebooks offers more extensive access to rare and used books - some listed here might be a bit arcane. Kindly suggest additions.

    Abbot, Elizabeth A History of Celibacy Da Capo Press (2001) ISBN:0306810417
    Angier, Natalie Woman: An Intimate Geography Anchor (2000) ISBN:0385498411
    Bettelheim, Bruno Symbolic Wounds, Puberty Rites and the Envious Male Collier Books (1962)
    Bishop, Clifford Sex and Spirituality: Ecstacy, Ritual and TabooDuncan Baird Publishers (2004) ISBN:1844830187
    Blackledge, Catherine The Story of V: Opening Pandora's BoxPhoenix Paper (2004) ISBN:0753817764
    Blank,Joani FemaliaDown There Press (1993) ISBN:0940208156
    Briffault, Robert “ The Mothers; A Study of the Origins of Sentiments and Institutions original 3 vols: 1927) Paper abridged edition: The Kessinger Publishing(2004) ISBN:076618692X; Hard: Howard Fertig(1993) ISBN:0865273987
    Brown, Norman Oliver Love's BodyUniversity of California Press; a reissue of 1966 edition (1990) ISBN:0520071069
    Camphausen, Rufus The Encyclopedia of Sacred Sexuality : From Aphrodisiacs to Yoni Worship and Zap-Lam YogaInner Traditions (1999) ISBN:0892817194
    Camphausen, Rufus The Yoni: Sacred Symbol of Female Creative PowerInner Traditions (1996) ISBN:0892815620
    Cattrall and Levinson Satisfaction: The Art of the Female OrgasmWarner Books (2002) ISBN:0446530719
    Chalker, Rebecca The Clitoral Truth: The Secret World At Your FingertipsSeven Stories Press; ASIN:0965172597
    Clare, Daniel Odier Desire: The Tantric Path to AwakeningInner Traditions (2001) ISBN:0892818581
    Corinne, Tee Cunt Coloring BookLast Gasp Press (1988) ISBN:0867193719
    Danielou, Alain The Phallus: Sacred Symbol of Male Creative PowerInner Traditions (1995) ISBN:0892815566
    Dijkstra, Bram Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siecle CultureOxford University Press (1988) ISBN:0195056523
    Encyclopedia of Archetypal Symbolism (Vol 1) editor, Beverly Moon Shambhala 1997 ISBN:1570622507 An Encyclopedia of Archetypal Symbolism: The Body (Vol 2)editor, George Elder Shambhala 1996 ISBN:1570620962
    Fletcher, Alan The Art of Looking SidewaysPhaidon Press 2001 ISBN:0714834491
    Fontenrose, Joseph Python: A Study of the Delphic Myth and Its Origin University of California Press 1959 (Reprint 1980 ISBN:0520040910)
    Frazer, Sir James George “Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion” Kessinger Publishing Kessinger Publishing(reprint: 1927 edition, 732 pgs. 2003) ISBN:0766158128; abridged: The Touchstone Books(1996) ISBN:0684826305
    Friedman, David A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the PenisPenguin (2003) ISBN:0142002593
    Giedion, Siegfried, The Eternal Present (2 volumes) Volume I The Beginnings of Art; Volume II The Beginnings of Architecture Pantheon New York 1962
    Gimbutas, Marija The Language of the GoddessThames & Hudson (2001) ISBN:0500282498
    Gimbutas, Marija The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old EuropeHarperCollins Publishers 1994 ISBN:0062508040
    Graves, Robert The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic MythFarrar, Straus and Giroux; (1966) ISBN:0374504938
    Graves, Robert and Raphael Patai Hebrew Myths Paper: Anchor 1989 ISBN:0385263309 Out of print Hard: The Carcanet Press Ltd.2005 ISBN:185754661X
    Jaynes, Julian The Origin of Consciouness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral MindMariner Books 1990 ISBN:0395563526
    Mann, A. T. Sacred SexualityVega (2003) ISBN:1843335832
    Merritt, Natacha Digital DiariesTaschen (2000) ISBN: 382286398X
    Miles, Margaret R. Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness & Religious Meaning in the Christian WestVintage 1991 ISBN:0679734015
    Neret, Gilles PussycatsTaschen America (2003) ISBN:3822824607
    Neumann, Erich The Great MotherBollingen (1972) ISBN:0691017808
    Newman, Barbara From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (The Middle Ages Series)
University of Pennsylvania Press 1995 ISBN0812215451
    Patai, Raphel “Man and Temple” Ktav 1947
    Ridley, Matt The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human NaturePerennial (2003) ISBN: 0060556579
    Shlain, Leonard Sex, Time and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human EvolutionViking Press; (2003) ISBN:0670032336
    Shlain, Leonard The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and ImageArkana (1999) ISBN:0140196013
    Stevens, John The Cosmic Embrace: An Illustrated Guide to Sacred SexShambhala (1999) ASIN:1570621713
    Squiers, Jennifer Pearson Peek : Photographs from the Kinsey InstituteArena Editions 2000 ISBN1892041359
    Thompson, William The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of CultureMacmillan (1996) ISBN: 0312160623
    Twain, MarkLetters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings (Perennial Classics)especially Letter 8, originally published in 1963; Perennial (2004) ISBN:0060518650
    Vermaseren, Maarten Cybele and Attis Thames and Hudson, 1977 ISBN:0500250545
    Walker, Barbara G. The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and SecretsHarperSanFrancisco (1983) ISBN:006250925X
    Warner, Marina Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin MaryVintage (1976) ISBN:0394711556
    White, David Gordon Kiss of the YoginiUniversity Of Chicago Press (2003) ISBN:0226894835
    Wolkstein and Kramer Inanna, Queen of Heaven and EarthPerennial (1983) ISBN:0060908548