Livin Your Best Life

Thomas Negovan wrote:Religions, explained in their most simplified form, are the stories we weave around a collection of symbols created to represent and explain our relationship to experiences beyond the material world. From the first moments that humans became aware of our curiosity of, and relationship to, the unseen, we attempted first to capture the ideas in primitive drawings and eventually began communicating theories in progressively more sophisticated artworks; the Renaissance is particularly replete with religious paintings fertile with symbolism.

Albrecht Dürer was one of the first celebrities of the art world, and 500 years later remains one of the most respected and recognized artists of any era, namely in the field of printmaking. Dürer firmly believed—and his work clearly reveals—that a well-developed understanding of the science of geometry was essential for producing the balance, harmony, and resonance required to create masterful and compelling artworks.

Northern European Medieval art before the 15th century had focused on naturalistic studies; Dürer broke new ground by borrowing heavily from the Italian traditions, combining philosophical and theological ideas with advanced skills of proportion and perspective to produce artworks balancing the scientific and the mystical.

St. John Devouring the Book (detail)
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528)
Woodcut, c. 1496-1498

In this artwork, the symbols illustrated are taken directly from the text of the Book of Revelations:

“And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire: And he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth, And cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices…

“And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth. And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey. And I took the little book out of the angel’s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter. And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.”

Matthew 13:13 wrote:This is why I speak to them in parables: ‘Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.’

Goethe wrote:”We can never be too careful in our efforts to avoid drawing hasty conclusions from experiments or using them directly as proof to bear out some theory. For here at this pass, this transition from empirical evidence to judgment, cognition to application, all the inner enemies of man lie in wait: imagination, which sweeps him away on his wings before he knows his feet have left the ground; impatience; haste; self-satisfaction; rigidity; formalistic thought; prejudice; ease; frivolity; fickleness — this whole throng and its retinue. Here they lie in ambush and surprise not only the active observer but also the contemplative one who appears safe from all passion.”

“I would venture to say we cannot prove anything by one experiment or even several experiments together, that nothing is more dangerous than the desire to prove some thesis directly through experiments. ... Every piece of empirical evidence we find, every experiment in which this evidence is repeated, really represents just one part of what we know. ... Every piece of empirical evidence, every experiment, must be viewed as isolated, yet the human faculty of thought forcibly strives to unite all external objects known to it. ...”

“We often find that the more limited the data, the more artful a gifted thinker will become. As though to assert his sovereignty he chooses a few agreeable favorites from the limited number of facts and skillfully marshals the rest so they never contradict him directly. Finally he is able to confuse, entangle, or push aside the opposing facts and reduce the whole to something more like the court of a despot than a freely constituted republic.”

Black Elk wrote:The sun comes forth and goes down in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round.  Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were.  The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.  Our tepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation's hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.

But the (Whites) put us in these square boxes.  Our power is gone: we are dying, for the power is not with us anymore.  You can look at our boys and see how it is with us.  When we were living by the power of the circle in the way we should, boys were men at 12 or 13 years of age.  But now it takes them much longer to mature.
   
Well, it is as it is.  We are prisoners of war while we are waiting here.  But there is another world.

…

I think that I have told you... that a man who has a vision is not able to use the power of it until after he has performed the vision on earth for the people to see.  You remember that my great vision came to me when I was only nine years old, and you have seen that I was not much good for anything until after I had performed the horse dance near the mouth of the Tongue River during my eighteenth summer.... It was even then only after the heyoka ceremony, in which I performed my dog vision, that I had the power to practice as a medicine man, curing sick people; and many I cured with the power that came to me.  Of course it was not I who cured.  It was the power from the outer world, and the visions and ceremonies had only made me like a hole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds.  If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through.  Then everything I could do would be foolish....

Mr. Janus wrote:Jackalope.

I'm in the abyss.

Always have been.

I've only ever struggled.

You have not.

Don't you dare act like you're one of us and conduct yourself in any manner that is contrary.

I do not project, I only mirror.

I am U.

Mr. Janus wrote:“All Things are Full of Gods” presents Hart’s view of reality, which is an ancient idealism.