“… it is also a doorway or portal between worlds….” . . .
See also the previous post.
Monday, May 3, 2021
Intersection Theory
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Monday, July 27, 2020
Intersections Galore
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Saturday, October 24, 2015
The Academy Strikes Back
The previous two posts touched on two academic
pursuits, mathematics and football. These are united
in the vesica piscis symbol. See posts tagged
"Universe of Discourse."
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Saturday, March 17, 2012
The Purloined Diamond
The diamond from the Chi-rho page
of the Book of Kells —
The diamond at the center of Euclid's
Proposition I, according to James Joyce
(i.e., the Diamond in the Mandorla) —
“He pointed at the football
on his desk. ‘There it is.’”
– Glory Road
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Thursday, July 14, 2011
ART WARS continued:
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Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Happy Bastille Day…
To the leftist philosophers of Villanova
From "Make a Différance"
(Women's History Month, 2005)—
"Our proposal includes the lozenge (diamond) in between the names, because in the relationship / non-relationship that is established among them, a tension is created that implies simultaneously a union and a disjunction, in the perspective of a theoretical encounter that is at the same time necessary and impossible. That is the meaning of the lozenge that joins and separates the two proper names…. What prevails between both of them is the différance, the Derridean signifier that will become one of the main issues in this presentation."
“He pointed at the football
on his desk. ‘There it is.’”
– Glory Road
Quodlibet*
Compare and contrast
the diamond in the football
with the jewel in the lotus.
* "A scholastic argumentation upon a subject chosen at will, but almost always theological. These are generally the most elaborate and subtle of the works of the scholastic doctors." —Century Dictionary
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Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Tuesday January 13, 2009
The Mists of
Brooklyn
Brooklyn
“Typically, each piece depicts a monumentally sized object that often comments archly on its surroundings….”
|
Architectural |
Arch at |
For some context, see
- an entry of Nov. 25, 2002, that contained the above two images
- and the two entries of last Sunday, with their references to Marion Zimmer Bradley and to the Brooklyn Bridge.
The ashes of Bradley,
who wrote about Camelot
in The Mists of Avalon,
are said to have been
scattered at Glastonbury Tor.
For material on the afterlife
and Brooklyn, see
Only the Dead.
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Thursday, February 21, 2008
Thursday February 21, 2008
Class
Galore
Galore
The New Yorker's Anthony Lane reviewing the new film "Jumper"–
"I wasn’t expecting Ernst Gombrich, but surely three writers, among them, could inject a touch of class."
The "Jumper" theme, teleportation, has been better developed by three other writers– Bester, Zelazny, and King–
"As a long-time fan of both Alfie Bester and Roger Zelazny, I was delighted to find this posthumous collaboration. Psychoshop is, I think, true to both authors' bodies of work. After all, Bester's influence on Zelazny is evident in a a number of works, most notably Eye of Cat with its dazzling experimental typography so reminiscent of what Bester had done in The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination."
— Amazon.com customer review
"'This is the last call for Jaunt-701,' the pleasant female voice echoed through the Blue Concourse of New York's Port Authority Terminal."
— Stephen King, "The Jaunt"
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From another "Jaunt-701"– Log24, Feb. 7:
The Football
Mandorla New York Lottery, 2008: "He pointed at the football "The |
"What happened?"
one of the scientists shouted….
"It's eternity in there,"
he said, and dropped dead….
— Stephen King, "The Jaunt"
As
for Ernst
Gombrich, see
his link in the
Log24 entries
of June 15,
2007.
for Ernst
Gombrich, see
his link in the
Log24 entries
of June 15,
2007.
Related material:
the previous entry.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Sunday July 1, 2007
Object Lesson
continued…
continued…
|
"Three times the concentred self takes hold, three times The thrice concentred self, having possessed The object, grips it in savage scrutiny, Once to make captive, once to subjugate Or yield to subjugation, once to proclaim The meaning of the capture, this hard prize, Fully made, fully apparent, fully found."
— "Credences of Summer," VII, |
For a religious
interpretation
of 265, see
Sept. 30, 2004.
For a religious
interpretation
of 153, see
Fish Story.
A quotation from
the Eater of Souls:
"That's how it is, Easy," my Coach went on, his voice more in sorrow than in anger. "Yardage is all very well but you don't make a nickel unless you cross that old goal line with the egg tucked underneath your arm." He pointed at the football on his desk. "There it is. I had it gilded and lettered clear back at the beginning of the season, you looked so good and I had so much confidence in you– it was meant to be yours at the end of the season, at a victory banquet."
— Glory Road,
by Robert A. Heinlein
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Saturday, June 30, 2007
Saturday June 30, 2007
November 2004–
Controversial "Desperate Housewives"… ranks No. 5 among all prime-time shows for ages 12-17. ("Monday Night Football" is No. 18.) This may explain in part why its current advertisers include products like Fisher-Price toys, the DVD of "Elf" and the forthcoming Tim Allen holiday vehicle, "Christmas With the Kranks." Those who cherish the First Amendment can only hope that the Traditional Values Coalition, OneMillionMoms.com, OneMillionDads.com and all the rest send every e-mail they can to the F.C.C. demanding punitive action against the stations that broadcast "Desperate Housewives." A "moral values" crusade that stands between a TV show this popular and its audience will quickly learn the limits of its power in a country where entertainment is god. — "The Great Indecency Hoax," a New York Times column by Frank Rich quoted in Log24 on Nov. 26, 2004 |
The entertainment continues. A rabbi's obituary in today's New York Times (see previous entry) served as ad-bait for "Joshua," a Fox Searchlight film opening July 6.
A search for a less sacrilegious memorial to the rabbi yields the following:
The "Project MUSE" link above
works only at
subscribing libraries.
It seems that here, too,
the rabbi is being
used as bait.
For a perhaps preferable
reference to bait, in the
context of St. Peter as
a "fisher of men," see
the Christian "mandorla"
or "vesica piscis,"
a figure hidden within
the geometry of Rome's
St. Peter's Square–
which, despite its name,
is an oval:
For the geometric
construction of the
Roman oval, see
"ovato tondo" in
Rudolf Arnheim's
The Power of the Center.
For a less theoretical account
of the religious significance
of the mandorla, see
the 2001 film
The Center of the World.
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Thursday, March 2, 2006
Thursday March 2, 2006
Father Figure
Women’s History Month
continues…
continues…
“My father is, of course,
as mad as a hatter.”
— Diana Rigg in “The Hospital,”
as transcribed at
script-o-rama.com
“A vesicle pisces* is the name that author Philip K. Dick gave to a symbol he saw (on February 2**, 1974) on the necklace of a delivery woman.
PKD was probably conflating the names of two related symbols, the ichthys consisting of two intersecting arcs resembling the profile of a fish… used by the early Christians as a secret symbol, and the vesica piscis, from the centre of which the ichthys symbol can be drawn.”
Related material at Wikipedia:
Related material at Log24:
Related material elsewhere:
* Wikipedia’s earliest online history for this incorrect phrase is from 25 November, 2003, when the phrase was attributed to Dick by an anonymous Wikipedia user, 216.221.81.98, who at that time apparently did not know the correct phrase, “vesica piscis,” which was later supplied (16 February, 2004) by an anonymous user (perhaps the same as the first user, perhaps not) at a different IP address, 217.158.203.103. Wikipedia authors have never supplied a source for the alleged use of the phrase by Dick. This comedy of errors would be of little interest were it not for its strong resemblance to the writing process that resulted in what we now call the Bible.
** Other accounts (for instance, Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick, by Lawrence Sutin, Carroll & Graf paperback (copyright 1989, republished on August 9, 2005), page 210) say Dick’s encounter was not on Groundhog Day (also known as Candlemas), but rather on February 20, 1974.
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Monday, November 25, 2002
Monday November 25, 2002
ART WARS
Driving the Point Home
From
SUSAN WEIL
From Finnegans Wake,
by James Joyce, p. 293:
The Vesica Piscis,
also known as
The Ya-Ya:
See also the
Geometries of Creation
art exhibit at the University of Waterloo.
Monday November 25, 2002
The Artist’s Signature
This title is taken from the final chapter of Carl Sagan’s novel Contact.
“There might be a game in which paper figures were put together to form a story, or at any rate were somehow assembled. The materials might be collected and stored in a scrap-book, full of pictures and anecdotes. The child might then take various bits from the scrap-book to put into the construction; and he might take a considerable picture because it had something in it which he wanted and he might just include the rest because it was there.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief
“Not games. Puzzles. Big difference. That’s a whole other matter. All art — symphonies, architecture, novels — it’s all puzzles. The fitting together of notes, the fitting together of words have by their very nature a puzzle aspect. It’s the creation of form out of chaos. And I believe in form.”
— Stephen Sondheim, in Stephen Schiff, Deconstructing Sondheim,” The New Yorker, March 8, 1993, p. 76
“All goods in this world, all beauties, all truths, are diverse and partial aspects of one unique good. Therefore they are goods which need to be ranged in order. Puzzle games are an image of this operation. Taken all together, viewed from the right point and rightly related, they make an architecture. Through this architecture the unique good, which cannot be grasped, becomes apprehensible. All architecture is a symbol of this, an image of this. The entire universe is nothing but a great metaphor.” — Simone Weil, sister of Princeton mathematician André Weil, First and Last Notebooks, p. 98 |
This passage from Weil is quoted in
Gateway to God,
p. 42, paperback, fourth impression,
printed in Glasgow in 1982 by
Fontana Books
“He would leave enigmatic messages on blackboards,
signed Ya Ya Fontana.”
— Brian Hayes on John Nash,
The Sciences magazine, Sept.-Oct., 1998
“I have a friend who is a Chief of the Aniunkwia (Cherokee) people and I asked him the name of the Creator in which
he replied… Ya Ho Wah. This is also how it is spoken in Hebrew. In my native language it is spoken
Ya Ya*,
which is also what Moses was told
at the ‘Burning Bush’ incident.”
— “Tank” (of Taino ancestry), Bronx, NY, Wednesday, April 17, 2002
From a website reviewing books published by
Fontana:
“Master and Commander (Patrick O’Brian)”
1/17/02: NEW YORK (Variety) – Russell Crowe is negotiating to star in 20th Century Fox’s “Master and Commander,” the Peter Weir-directed adaptation of the Patrick O’Brian book series.
Hmmm.
*For another religious interpretation of this phrase, see my note of October 4, 2002, “The Agony and the Ya-Ya.”
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Friday, October 4, 2002
Friday October 4, 2002
ART WARS:
The Agony and the Ya-Ya
Today's birthdays:
- Charlton Heston
- Anne Rice
- Patti LaBelle
To honor the birth of these three noted spiritual leaders, I make the following suggestion: Use the mandorla as the New Orleans Mardi Gras symbol. Rice lives in New Orleans and LaBelle's classic "Lady Marmalade" deals with life in that colorful city.
What, you may well ask, is the mandorla? This striking visual symbol was most recently displayed prominently at a meeting of U.S. cardinals in the Pope's private library on Shakespeare's birthday. The symbol appears in the upper half of a painting above the Pope.
From Church Anatomy:
The illustration below shows how Barbara G. Walker in her excellent book "The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" describes the mandorla.
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The Agony Based on a novel by Irving Stone, this 1965 movie focuses on the relationship between Michelangelo (Charlton Heston) and Pope Julius II (Rex Harrison), who commissioned the artist to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
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Vesica piscis Mandorla, "almond," the pointed-oval sign of the yoni, is used in oriental art to signify the divine female genital; also called vesica piscis, the Vessel of the Fish. Almonds were holy symbols because of their female, yonic connotations. Christian art similarly used the mandorla as a frame for figures of God, Jesus, and saints, because the artists forgot what it formerly meant. I. Frazer, G.B., 403 |
For further details on the mandorla (also known as the "ya-ya") see my June 12, 2002, note The Ya-Ya Monologues.
A somewhat less lurid use of the mandorla in religious art — the emblem of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, taken from the website of St. Michael's Church in Charleston — is shown below.
