"We put the sex in sextets."
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
For San Joaquin, whose feast day is June— Oops,* July— 26.
* Update at 11:32 PM ET June 26 —
The date correction suggests a look at the real San Joaquin feast day.
See (for instance) earlier posts tagged July 26 2004.
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
For Judy Chicago, Née Cohen
From the University of Chicago Press…
The Nutshell:
Related Narrative:
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Sunday, January 22, 2023
The Stillwell Dichotomies
| Number | Space |
| Arithmetic | Geometry |
| Discrete | Continuous |
Related literature —
From a "Finite Fields in 1956" post —
The Nutshell:
Related Narrative:
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Sunday, May 6, 2007
Sunday May 6, 2007
Almonds
— Nabokov: Speak, Memory;
Vintage paperback, 1989
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Sunday, June 6, 2004
Sunday June 6, 2004
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From
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick Juliana said, “Oracle, why did you write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy? What are we supposed to learn?” “You have a disconcertingly superstitious way of phrasing your question,” Hawthorne said. But he had squatted down to witness the coin throwing. “Go ahead,” he said; he handed her three Chinese brass coins with holes in the center. “I generally use these.” She began throwing the coins; she felt calm and very much herself. Hawthorne wrote down her lines for her. When she had thrown the coins six times, he gazed down and said: “Sun at the top. Tui at the bottom. Empty in the center.”
“Do you know what hexagram that is?” she said. “Without using the chart?” “Yes,” Hawthorne said. “It’s Chung Fu,” Juliana said. “Inner Truth. I know without using the chart, too. And I know what it means.” From 12:5 … and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets
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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.
