in the garden

down among the growing things (icon by Frederick Carl Frieseke & header by Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky)

[389]

The Changing of the Seasons By Saint Hildegard

[omgellendean]

Miniature à transformation, "a transforming miniature", is a type of a 17th-century curiosity popular among the European upper class. It's a miniature portrait with a set of costumes painted on thin mica panels, allowing the owner to essentially play dress up with a person portrayed. Due to their fragility, very few of such sets survived to our days.

Sources:

Un seul visage… seize identités

Miniature à transformation, portrait vers 1650

L’art de la transformation

Miniature « à transformations »

Miniature dite à transformation XVIIe

[dracula61]

[ashstatic]

check out her page, it is so cool. this is the link to this specific video: deville.design

[magpie-trove]

There surely are universal imperatives. We all know them. Don’t murder. Don’t injure the innocent. Don’t rob or steal. Don’t lie. Those are the rules we learned as children, and if we failed to learn them, others quickly taught us. The interesting part of the moral life, the grown-up part, comes not in universals but particulars.11 It speaks to me, here, now: this person, in this situation, at this time. It knows my name. It calls to me, not to the person next to me. It says: there is an act only you can do, a situation only you can address, a moment that, if not seized, may never come again. God commands in generalities but calls in particulars. He knows our gifts and he knows the needs of the world. That is why we are here. There is an act only we can do, and only at this time, and that is our task. The sum of these tasks is the meaning of our life, the purpose of our existence, the story we are called upon to write. God’s call is almost inaudible. I translate the biblical phrase, ‘a still, small voice’ (1 Kings 19:12) as ‘the voice we can only hear if we are listening’. But it is there, and if, from time to time throughout our lives, we create a silence in the soul, we will hear it. There is no life without a task; no person without a talent; no place without a fragment of God’s light waiting to be discovered and redeemed; no situation without its possibility of sanctification; no moment without its call. It may take a lifetime to learn how to find these things, but once we learn, we realize in retrospect that all it ever took was the ability to listen. When God calls, he does not do so by way of universal imperatives. Instead, he whispers our name – and the greatest reply, the reply of Abraham, is simply hineni: ‘Here I am’, ready to heed your call, to mend a fragment of your all-too-broken world.

—Jonathan Sacks

[lascitasdelashoras]

Josef Stoitzner - Trees in the snow

[anineillustration]

Hunters in the snow

[dailyclassicart]

Hasui Kawase - "Snow at the Shrine Entrance, Hakone Gongen" (1949)

[queerasfact]

Father in heaven, who did miracles for our ancestors with fire and water, You changed the fire of Chaldees so it would not burn hot, You changed Dina in the womb of her mother to a girl, You changed the staff to a snake before a million eyes, You changed [Moses’] hand to [leprous] white and the sea to dry land. In the desert you turned rock to water, hard flint to a fountain. Who would then turn me from a man to woman? Were I only to have merited this, being so graced by your goodness.

-Qalonymos ben Qalonymos, Even Bochan, c.1322, translation from Wrestling With God & Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition by Rabbi Steven Greenberg, p.118-120

In late 1322 or early 1323, French Jewish poet Qalonymos ben Qalonymos completed their book Even Bochan, which features this passage, describing the author's discontent with living as a man, and desire to live as a woman.

You can read a longer version of the passage here, and listen to our podcast on Qalonymos and their place in trans Jewish history here

[ptitsatart]

recent dnd sketches with myriel

[quayrund]

Max Ernst. "Forest and Sun," 1927.

[gogandmagog]

a girl’s bedroom, oakland c. 1898

[blackinmotionpictures]

  “Fieldwork Footage”, dir. Zora Neale Hurston (1928 - 29)

[alwayswasalwayswillbeourland]

I was today years old when I learnt about what those symbols in Aboriginal art represented I honestly can't believe we never got taught that, even when I was studying art. I always assumed they had meaning but no one [no white person] had ever bothered to mention it. I'm glad I learnt something new today.

Yeah, I think a lot of people tend to look down on Aboriginal art because they think it's a form of abstract art that is just lines and shapes but almost all of them tell a story. Sometimes it's a very obvious story, such as the emu dreaming where the waterhole flooded, and sometimes it's more symbolic.

the circle in the middle is a waterhole/dam or billabong. The squiggly lines coming out of it are small rivers. the dots represent the earth but because they are in neat lines, it almost feels as if they have been flattened by the flooded water, especially as the vector lines draw out from the waterhole in the middle. the emu tracks are heading toward the waterhole, and the three lines in the middle are marks left by their tail, implying that they are wading through the mud to get there.

It's a birdseye view of a moment just after the waterhole floods and afterwards the emus go looking for food.

It's Interesting, because the original artist D. J. Ross was from Yuendumu which is in central australia, so this would have been a rare time that there was enough rain to flood the waterhole.

Dreaming stories, kinship links, sacred rites, keeping track of biodiversity and songlines are some other topics covered by Aboriginal art.

In the same way monet painted the middle class and the local landscape in the late 1800's/early 1900's Aboriginal people also paint the average lifestyle of our people. It just looks different.

For example, this picture shows a LOT of activity. The men at the top left of the picture are doing a cultural burn near and around a sacred site, the women at the bottom left are digging for food. across the river, on the right the people are preparing food and in the center, two people (presumably elders) are preparing for a ceremony.

I wouldn't say these all happened at the same time, more that this was a common undertaking over a set of time.

it takes time to understand and not all symbols are the same in all areas, but once you do understand them it becomes easier to see the story being told.

So yeah, I hope this gives you the chance to look at Aboriginal art with new eyes

[chechula]

the night at ruins on the monastery for folktale week challenge ♥

[twirld]

The Sarcophagus of the Amazons from Tarquinia, Etruscan (detail, ca. 4th Century BC)

[magpie-trove]

The first question asked in lectures and books on ethics is usually: ‘Why be moral?’ – as if the greatest roadblock on the way were selfishness, egocentricity, indifference. I suspect, however, that the real question is ‘Why me?’ Who am I to do the noble deed, the courageous act? I am just an ordinary person, not the kind you read about in books. But the great people, the lamed-vovniks, those who change lives and mend the fractures of the world, just are ordinary persons who think there is nothing special about them and what they do.

—Jonathan Sacks

[magpie-trove]

“[T]wo social scientists, Bibb Latané and J. M. Darley, staged a series of ‘emergencies’ (physical collapse, fire alarms, thefts) in stores and offices and came to a remarkable discovery. In every case, a lone bystander was more willing to intervene and help than was a group of bystanders. Often, we fail to act because we think someone else will, or should, or is better qualified than I am. More than evil or indifference, the fundamental moral problem is, ‘Why me?’ What connects me to this person in need? What gives me the right or duty to intervene? The hassidic master Rabbi Solomon of Karlin (1738–92) said something beautiful and unexpected: ‘The greatest yetser hara [inhibition against doing good] is that we forget that we are children of the King.’ We are not no one. We are here because God brought us into being in love and gave us work to do, saying in his still, small voice: ‘Bring a fragment of my presence into other lives.’ What made Moses and Jeremiah and David special was not that they had a high opinion of themselves – the opposite was the case – but that they heard and heeded the cry of human suffering. For them, injustice was not a fact but a call. They believed, not in themselves, but in the cause. They knew that when someone is drowning, you don’t stop to ask who is the best swimmer. You jump in. Leadership is response-ability, the ability to respond.”

—Jonathan Sacks

[hellcheerful]

‘Well, she does it so imperceptibly that I don’t think I shall mind much. She is the sort of woman who knows how to rule well in fact, I rather like it, for she winds one round her finger as softly and prettily as a skein of silk, and makes you feel as if she was doing you a favour all the while.’