"And then the soul and its world, this psychocosmos, is freed not merely from the Darkness, but for the Darkness. Because there is another Darkness, one that is not merely black, but is a luminous Night, a dazzling Blackness, a Darkness at the approach to the Pole. This is the Black Light of what Corbin calls supraconsciousness. If we do not recognize the existence of this second Darkness pervading all things, this Black Light of Divine Night, we will be forever disoriented among the shadows, unable to distinguish one darkness from another, incapable of that transmutation of the soul that has as its goal the meeting with the celestial Self and the genesis of the celestial Earth."

Fortunately, I saved this article while we had web access. Yes, it's still OFF AGAIN...

Wednesday, December 3, 2008 A

"Greek Column at the Met Museum"
6:55am

I've returned to adding pieces to the gallery of items at the Met museum. It's a good thing to do when the web access is spotty. I wonder if the phone lines were damaged when they lopped off the telephone poles in preparation for the road widening. Even the TV reception seems worse than it used to be.

Meanwhile, I'm about in webland when I can be. Thus I learned of the controversy surrounding various items at the Met museum. Some are saying a few items were 'stolen'. Anyway, I'm glad I had a chance to see this piece while I was there:

Marble column from the Temple of Artemis at Sardis
Greek, Hellenistic, ca. 300 B.C.E.
Gift of The American Society for the Excavation of Sardis, [Turkey] 1926 (26.59.1)

From info card:
"The section of a fluted Ionic column in the center of this room stood over fifty-eight feet high in its original location at the Temple of Artemis. The delicate foliate carving on the capital is unique among extant capitals from the temple, and the torus (foliated base), with its vegetal scale-like pattern, is also exceptionally elaborate. This capital is slightly smaller than others found at the site, indicating that it does not belong to the outer colonnade. Two similar pairs of columns (marked in red on the plan shown nearby) stood in the east and west porches. The column, displayed here with most of the shaft omitted, was probably originally from one or more of those pairs. Alternatively, it may be from the cella (inner room) or from the inner back porch. Parts of the fluted shaft are restored, and the profiled base below the torus is a copy of the original."

There's a stormy background regarding this piece's acquisition, as revealed by the New York Times:

"In 1922, as the Greeks and Turks warred over the port of Izmir, the column was spirited away by American archaeologists along with hundreds of other pieces and sent to the Met. When the hostilities ended, the Turks protested and the theft (or rescue, depending on one's perspective) became an international incident, recorded in State Department archives. After much negotiation, the Turks ceded ownership of the column in exchange for the return of 53 cases of antiquities, also stolen from Sardis."

That's a matter of perspective to say it was 'stolen'. Would it have been better to let the hazards of war damage these pieces? If they "ceded ownership", isn't it securely ours? In any case, hopefully the museum will at least have a plaster copy of this marvelous column. And I'm glad I got to see the real one.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008 B

"Unexpected Set Sightings"
6:55am

I did not suspect that the De Lubicz books I ordered this Sunday would have Set sightings. But the very first book I picked up fell open to a Set sighting!

But perhaps a closer look will reveal something useful.

I had a couple of nice serendipitys: I was looking in Wilkinson's _Reading Egyptian Art_, looking for an odd hieroglyph in one of the Seti II tiles:

    

Wilkinson explains about the brazier:
"Because fire appears to have a life of its own, it may represent life itself - as when the Egyptian king kindled a new flame in his sed (*O23) or jubilee festival. Living fire was embodied in the sun and in its emblem the 'fire-spitting' uraeus(*I12)." (page 161)

Hmmm, if that hieroglyph to the right of the 2 'meri' hieroglyphs is the 'khet' hieroglyph, it may be an adjective for Set, as Set has associations with the flame-like "uraeus which proceeded from Seth, The uraeus which moves back and forth..." (from utterance 570 of the Pyramid Texts).

While on that page, I came across a linear drawing depicting a very familiar piece, the magical wand at the Met museum.

So I scanned it and put it into the page on that.

Not only that, I discovered more about one of the Set images I found recently:

    
The bottom element is not merely decorative, for the bow could express a sort of 'might'.

I think the temple artist is possibly suggesting (among other things) that both the power of Set and the vision of Horus are necessary to be a good archer!

Next, I made an attempt at expressing 'intelligence of the heart'...

From the gut, from the place before words are made, at 'first-sensing', before brain takes off on its own tangent, when intuition holds both image and words-to-come, I hold the key. here is the door to the treasure, the gold-store. Here is where pre-creation awaits, the waiting vision about to form itself. How to see with _these eyes_, the eyes-before-the-eyes, this is what we need to learn.

I think this is essential of 'the heart of darkness': 'where pre-creation awaits'.

Saturday, December 6, 2008 A

"More Clues"
8:42am