Month: May 2015

Jean Antoine Marie Idrac

 

Jean Antoine Marie Idrac, “Mercury Inventing the Caduceus”, 1878, Marble, Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Jean Antoine Marie Idrac was born in Toulouse, France, in 1849. He studied under painter Albert Guillaume and sculptor Alexandre Falguière at the French Academy in Rome. Idrac won the first Prix de Rome for sculpture in 1873 and exhibited at the Salon from 1877, winning a first class medal in 1879 for his “Mercury Inventing the Caduceus”. He was also made a Knight of the Legion of Honor.

Idrac died at the age of thirty-six before finishing a commissioned equestrian monument on the Quai de Gesvres to honor Etiennne Marcel, the prevost of the merchants of Paris. He was buried in Paris in the Pére-Lachaise Cemetery.

Mason West: “Our Escape from the Darkness into the Light”

Photographer Unknown, (Stairway to Heaven)

“On our side of the house a gnarled and ancient oak tree spread its reach across the back facade of the house as if to shade and protect us. One of the massive branches of its principal fork reached invitingly right up to our window to offer to take us wherever we wanted to go. This great limb, with circumference grander than both of us together, was our stairway to heaven and our secret exit to the ground; it was our biplane in the Great War of our imaginations and a magic carpet to Araby; it was our lookout post and the clubhouse of our most secret fraternal order; it was our secret passageway through the imaginary castle we made of our house. It was our escape from the darkness into the light.”

― Mason West

Charlie

Photographer Unknown, (Charlie)

“Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book, and creed, and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free. Mankind will be enslaved until there is mental grandeur enough to allow each man to have his thought and say. This earth will be a paradise when men can, upon all these questions, differ and yet grasp each other’s hands as friends. It is amazing to me that a difference of opinion upon subjects that we know nothing with certainty about, should make us hate, persecute, and despise each other.”

― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

The Uffizi Wrestlers

The Uffizi Wrestlers, Marble, Florence, Italy

The Uffizi Wrestlers is a famous Roman marble sculpture copied after a lost Greek original of the 3rd century BC. The sculpture was found in Rome near the gate of St. John Lateran in April, 1583. It is now housed in the Uffizi collection, Florence. The two young men are engaged in the sport called Pankration, similar to the present-day sport of ‘mixed martial arts’. The two figures are clutching one another, and one seems to have the upper hand, holding the other down and twisting his arm back. Their muscular structure is very defined and exaggerated due to their physical and sustained effort.

Carlos Castaneda: “What Counts for a Warrior is Being Alive”

Photographer Unknown, (Being Alive)

“A warrior must cultivate the feeling that he has everything  needed for the extravagant journey that is his life. What counts for a warrior is being alive. Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete.Therefore, one may say without being presumptuous that the experience of experiences is being alive.”

-Carlos Castaneda

Linkin Park, “In The End”

Linkin Park, “In The End”

Linkin Park is an American rock band from Agoura Hills, California. Formed in 1996, the band rose to international fame with their debut album Hybrid Theory, which was certified Diamond by the RIAA in 2005 and multi-platinum in several other countries.[1] Their following studio album Meteora continued the band’s success, topping the Billboard 200 album chart in 2003, and was followed by extensive touring and charity work around the world.[2] In 2003, MTV2 named Linkin Park the sixth-greatest band of the music video era and the third-best of the new millennium.[3

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Phallic Totems

Phallic Totems,  Xiuyan Jade Carvings, China, Date Unknown, Each is Unique

The phrase “palad khik” means “honorable surrogate penis”. These amulets range from a few inches to several feet long in length. They originated in India and relate to the Hindu god Shiva, whois usually represented by the Shiva Linga. The amulets were brought to Southeast Asia via the Cham people and remained in the area ever since.

The palad khik can be made from wood, metal, bone, horn or ivory, and they are created by monks who specialize in them. Engraving the sacred inscriptions is an important ritual and can take many days to complete. The amulets must be empowered by the repetition of incantations, which Thais call ‘Kata Bucha’, derived from the Devanagari ‘ghata pooja’. The incantations depend on the creator’s lineage in each school of traditional non-Buddhist animist magic.