For J.D.P  and Paul -14 November 2025

In construction….

The term “Frisian heart” refer often  to two distinct yet related concepts: the symbolic heart
seen on the Frisian flag and the genetic heart condition prevalent among those of Frisian
ancestry.

The  machine, is the term used by novelist, poet, and essayist Paul Kingsnorth to  present how a force that’s hard to name, but which we all feel, is reshaping what it means to be human. A wholly original―and terrifying―account of the technological-cultural matrix enveloping all of us. With insight into the spiritual and economic roots of techno-capitalism, Kingsnorth reveals how the Machine, in the name of progress, has choked Western civilization, is destroying the Earth itself, and is reshaping us in its image. From the First Industrial Revolution to the rise of artificial intelligence, he shows how the hollowing out of humanity has been a long game―and how your very soul is at stake.

See more on Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity

Waht is generally saidin the time of the machins::
Symbol on the Frisian Flag
The Frisian flag, official in Friesland (Fryslân), features seven red, heart-shaped symbols called “pompeblêden” that actually represent leaves of the yellow water lily native to the region. These seven symbols are arranged diagonally across white stripes and are deeply associated with the region’s historic maritime territories. While commonly interpreted as hearts, they are not intended as romantic or anatomical symbols but carry cultural significance tied to Frisian history and identity.

Genetic Heart Condition: PLN Mutation
There is also a specific hereditary heart condition linked to Frisian descent—the PLN
(phospholamban) gene mutation. This genetic variant, first appearing in a Frisian ancestor
about 700 years ago, causes a form of cardiomyopathy leading to heart rhythm disorders,
potential heart failure, and even sudden cardiac death in undiagnosed cases. Symptoms can include reduced stamina, palpitations, arrhythmias, and cardiac arrest. It is estimated that 1 in 1,400 to 1,500 people in Friesland and nearby regions carry the mutation, with about 10,000–15,000 carriers in the Netherlands. The PLN mutation is passed down in families and is regarded as a “founder mutation,” with all modern carriers tracing their ancestry to Friesland.
Summary Table
Both meanings connect to Friesland’s distinctive cultural and genetic legacy: one in symbolic
art, the other in hereditary health. If referring to medical risk within Frisian families, genetic
counseling and screening for the PLN mutation is recommended. If referring to symbolism, the “Frisian heart” represents historical pride rooted in centuries-old maritime identit

Origin and meaning of the Frisian pompeblêden

The Frisian pompeblêden—widely recognized as heart-shaped symbols on the flag of Friesland— actually represent stylized leaves of the yellow water lily native to the region, not hearts as often mistaken by outsiders

Origin
The tradition of using pompeblêden dates back at least to the Middle Ages. According to Frisian legend, the symbol originated with Friso, the legendary ancestor of the Frisians, who supposedly carried a weapon adorned with seven red leaves from the yellow water lily when settling the area.Medieval sources and heraldic documentation show the motif takes inspiration from coastal and maritime symbolism found in the Frisian region and neighboring parts of Scandinavia and Germany, most notably associated with water, lilies, and marshes. Early references can be found in epic poems and coats of arms from the 13th century, with Scandian and German cities using similar seeblatt (lake leaf) designs as the Fleur de Lys

.

Meaning
The seven pompeblêden on the flag refer symbolically to the “seven Frisian sea countries”:
independent territorial regions stretching from Alkmaar in the Netherlands to the Weser in
Germany, united historically in defense against external threats like the Vikings and Normans. While legend describes seven actual regions or the seven sons of Friso, historians note there may never have been exactly seven administrative units; in regional tradition, “seven” means “many” or “a large number”. The water lily leaves thus symbolize both the maritime nature of Friesland and its historical unity and autonomy across numerous independent districts.

• But outside that we have much more Traditional wisdom  about it but totally ignored by he machine or modern universities:

Craft as Sacred Knowledge

René Guénon viewed traditional craft not as utilitarian labor but as a means of cosmic participation. The traditional craftsman, for Guénon, was engaged in work that reflected the divine order:

“A craft is not merely a technique, but a transmission of a traditional knowledge, the application of principles that are ultimately metaphysical.”

In traditional civilizations, there was no division between the sacred and the secular in labor. Every craft, from carpentry to stonemasonry, was infused with symbolic meaning. The tools themselves—like the compass, the square, or the chisel—served as metaphors for universal truths. The craftsman, through repeated and intentional action, participated in the divine act of creation.

Work and contemplation were not separate in traditional societies. A craftsman worked not just with his hands but also with an awareness of the symbolic and spiritual meaning of his work.

The tool, the material, and the process had symbolic dimensions. For instance, in masonry or metalwork, the transformation of raw material symbolized the transformation of the soul.

Initiation and Guilds

Guénon emphasized the role of initiatic craft guilds—especially in the West, such as medieval masonry guilds—which preserved esoteric teachings and transmitted initiatic knowledge through symbols, rituals, and oral transmission.

These guilds were structured hierarchically and transmitted cosmological knowledge embedded in tools, geometry, architecture, and ritual.

The compass and square, for example, symbolized heaven and earth or spirit and matter.

The architecture of temples or cathedrals followed sacred geometry, aligning physical structures with cosmic principles.

Degeneration in Modernity

Guénon argued that in modern times, the loss of sacred and symbolic understanding has led to the degeneration of crafts into mere technical skills, disconnected from their metaphysical roots.

This reflects his larger thesis: modernity is a descent into materialism, fragmentation, and loss of spiritual orientation””. The disappearance of guilds, desacralization of labor, and mass industrialization exemplify this decline.

Read Here: The Arts and their Traditional Conception

Art That Expresses Truth

Ananda Coomaraswamy, deeply rooted in both Eastern and Western traditions, emphasized that the traditional artist or craftsman was not creating to express individuality, but to reveal the timeless: “The traditional craftsman did not ‘express himself,’ he expressed truths.”

Coomaraswamy rejected the modern cult of originality and innovation. For him, traditional art and craft were “vehicles for eternal wisdom“. The form was not arbitrary—it was a symbolic expression of metaphysical principles, passed down through sacred traditions. Every detail, from proportions to ornamentation, had a purpose that reached beyond aesthetics.

“Work is for the sake of the work done, and not for the profit therefrom.”

In this sense, “work was prayer “—a form of contemplation, a discipline of the soul.

Read here: Primitive Mentality: The myth is not my own, I had it from my mother.

Beauty as a Path to the Divine

Frithjof Schuon* extended these insights by focusing on the spiritual essence of traditional art. For Schuon, beauty itself was a reflection of the Divine:
“The beauty of a traditional object reflects the eternal archetypes; it speaks in silence to the soul.”

Craftsmanship, when aligned with traditional forms, becomes a contemplative path. Whether it’s a sacred icon, a hand-carved door, or a woven textile, its power lies in its “participation in the eternal “. For Schuon, even in a world that has largely lost its traditional frameworks, the sacred can still be accessed through ” form, beauty, and right intention:

“A sacred form, however simple, is a vessel of grace.”

A Living Tradition

What unites Guénon, Coomaraswamy, and Schuon is the belief that “”true craft is never arbitrary”. It arises within a living tradition, where every gesture, pattern, and proportion reflects a metaphysical reality. In contrast, modern craftsmanship—stripped of symbolism and spiritual orientation—becomes hollow, reduced to commerce or self-expression.

Their critique is not simply nostalgic. It is a call to recover the sacred dimension of human making—to reintegrate craft into a vision of life that is oriented toward the transcendent.

To make with the hands, in the traditional sense, is to align oneself with the cosmos. Craft, then, becomes more than labor—it becomes liturgy. The Traditionalist vision invites us to see again with sacred eyes: to recognize that a pot, a wall, a song, or a loom, when shaped by truth and beauty, can become a path toward the eternal.

Made for use versus made for sale, creation versus production. Human being valued versus machine being valued.. When the human being is valued, there is integrity in the work. There is dignity in the freedom to work for purpose, and satisfaction knowing the effort is respected. When the human being is removed from the actual creation or building of the thing itself, the spirit of the work, whatever it is, is disconnected if not all together removed making the being servile to the method of production.
The ‘maker’ thus becomes a salesperson for something they have had manufactured for them to sell as their own to make an individual profit. The purpose is then not the benefit or betterment of humanity, but the betterment and advancement of oneself. And this
form applies now to almost all forms of artistic creation be it painting, dance, music, fashion,
design, architecture, interior design and so on; they all have become templated ideas easily
reproduced without much prerequisite of fundamental knowledge or originality.

Read here: Why Exhibit Works of Art?

For more info about Craft and Sacred Architecture read:

An Hermeneutic Exploration of René Guénon’s Symbolism of the Cross Applied to Sacred Architecture.

The Thread-Spirit Doctrine:An Ancient Metaphor in Religion and Metaphysics with
Prehistoric Roots

The Essential Titus Burckhardt: Reflections on Sacred Art, Faiths, and Civilizations

Cosmology_and_architecture_in_premodern Islam

Symbolism-of-the-stupa

Buildings Without Architects:

Buildings Without Architects is a wonderfully informative reference on vernacular styles, from adobe pueblos and Pennsylvania barns to Mongolian gers and European wooden churches. This small but comprehensive book documents the rich cultural past of vernacular building styles. It offers inspiration for home woodworking enthusiasts as well as architects, conservationists, and anyone interested in energy-efficient building and sustainability.
The variety and ingenuity of the world’s vernacular building traditions are richly illustrated, and the materials and techniques are explored. With examples from every continent, the book documents the diverse methods people have used to create shelter from locally available natural materials, and shows the impressively handmade finished products through diagrams, cross-sections, and photographs. Unlike modern buildings that rely on industrially produced materials and specialized tools and techniques, the everyday architecture featured here represents a rapidly disappearing genre of handcrafted and beautifully composed structures that are irretrievably “of their place.” These structures are the work of unsung and often anonymous builders that combine artistic beauty, practical form, and necessity. Read Here

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That Flower is His property, It does not belong to anyone else. If you understand these two aspects properly, you will get True Divine Luminous Wisdom,

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen —

More than four others – Frisian Folkstale

At that time there lived in the Grinzer Pein (Friesland) a young man who was called out  that he was not afraid of anything. When a ferry had to be dug, he got a job there. He joined the team with twenty westerners. Those twenty westerners were as lazy as duckweed. They wanted him to do the work, so he got into trouble with them. Then they said, “If you don’t work, we’ll cut you in pieces.” But the young man laughed and said, “You should try that first.” And then those twenty westerners came up to him with open knives , but he knocked them down one by one, for he was not afraid. And that same evening, near the new ferry, one of the Westerners was found cut into strips. But that joung man had not done that, his own comrades wanted to get rid of that westerner. And because the young servant  had fought with him, they thought, he will be blamed.

That turned out to be the case, because the nineteen westerners testified that he must have been the murderer of their comrade. He went to court, and because he would not confess, he was put on the rack, but he maintained his innocence, for he was not afraid of anything, not even the pain. Desesperate, they called a wizard, a real wizard. He had to scare him so he confessed. The wizard had him tied on a chair; then he was powerless. But they had tortured him so much that he could hardly speak.

And then he was given a cup of warm milk to drink. The magician looked straight at him and said, ‘Look at the ground in front of you!’ And then the young man noticed that his ten toes had turned into ten snakes. They grew out of his toes, they grew bigger and bigger and came closer and closer to his head. But he made those snakes drink one by one from the hot milk from the cup he had in his hands. The snakes writhed together again and fell asleep at his feet.

The wizard asked, “Aren’t you scared yet?” But he replied, “You haven’t got any of those beasts yet, because my cup isn’t empty yet.” Then the wizard turned the boy’s hair into flames and said that he would be consumed by these flames. But the young man asked: ‘Do you have tobacco in your pocket? I don’t have any tobacco with me, but my pipe does. Stop it in front of me for a moment, so I can at least light it on the flames and don’t have to use a match’.

And the third was that the sorcerer sat before him and said: If you will not confess, you will be sent to hell. ‘But the young servant laughed, for he was not afraid. The wizard looked straight at him and then the young man noticed that his body was turning into a skeleton. The magician said:

“Aren’t you scared yet? Remember – this is how you go to hell and stay there!” “Oh,” he said, “why should I be afraid? Such an old charnel house as I am now – there is no one in hell who knows me.” And he did not bow the neck.

However, he was sentenced to death. The executioner appeared and he was to be cut into four. He was already on the block to be chopped in four, then they asked him if he wasn’t scared yet. “No,” he said, “why should I be afraid? Our father always said I was worth more than four others. And if you cut me in four here, you’ll be dealing with not one, but four men in a minute.’ And he was not quartered, but they took him back to the cell.

That same night the devil came to him and left nothing to frighten him. He told him the most horrible stories and transformed himself into the most horrible forms. The devil became an old woman, with teeth as large and as sharp as razors, and threatened to bite his throat. The devil became a dragon with seven heads that spewed fire at him. He became a very large snake, with a mouth so wide that it could eat it in one sitting. But the young servant was not afraid. Only when the devil finally asked him if he felt any fear at all did he say, “No, I don’t, but you do!

And he began to tease him so furiously, he made such hideous noises, and he drew such crooked faces, that even the devil became frightened and threw himself to the ground and blew the retreat.

The judges came to the conclusion that a person that even the devil

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  –  Spiral

Spirals have been found in the form of pictographs or petroglyphs in most countries and cultures throughout the world. A simple design, it’s possibly the most common rock art motif in Colombia,appearing more times in the form of a petroglyph than a pictograph.

The white man Goes into his church house and talks about Jesus; The Indian Goes into his teepee and talks to Jesus. J.S. Slotkin

The shaman´s role in society
The role of the shaman in hunter-gatherer and horticultural societies has been written in detail by many authors (e.g.Vitebsky 1995). Generally speaking, the shaman is the tribal religious leader-healer who acquires supernatural powers, including power songs, from animals, birds, or reptiles during an initiation when he goes on a vision quest by entering a trance.
The shaman’s role encompasses tribal issues that are serious and need to be resolved. A community may be starving from lack of animals, crop failure due to flooding, freezing conditions, an extended drought or a tribal member may be very sick. The shaman is consulted to find the cause of illness and cure it. He may determine that the community has done something to cause an unbalanced cosmos, the soul has been stolen from a person or an evil object has entered the body of a person causing them to be sick.
Everyday illnesses and problems are resolved using chants, magical prayers, and incense. Using secret herbal potions, dances, power songs and rituals, the shaman summons his spirit helpers during a trance where he dies, is reborn, then battles and defeats hostile spirits causing the problem. He may suck a foreign object directly from the body of the ill patient to cleanse it of impurities or blow tobacco smoke on the patient.

During his spirit journey the shaman may fly up to the sky world or down to the underworld to plead with the spirit causing the problem, ask advice from deceased ancestors, physically battle evil spirits or win debates to gain concessions. The flight is usually upward to the heavens. When the shaman triumphs, h air or isolates him in a container or place where he can’t cause any more trouble.
After returning from this alternate reality, many researchers believe that shamans, or people under their direction, painted or engraved their visions, or symbols relating to them, on rocks One author wrote “It is probably extremely significant that the designs in many of the aspects of modern Indian artistry in the northwest Amazon are similar to or the same as those found in many of the rock engravings… Studies have indicated that these designs…are suggested by visions experienced during the
intoxication produced by caapi (Banisteriopsis Caapi),… There is no reason to doubt that the ancient artisans who made these rock-engravings had used the same drugs and had the same experiences as the natives of today” (Schultes 1988:80) (Figure 3b). These shamans enter the spirit world through a tunnel or spiral vortex portal and many believe that they actually pass through the stone surface at rock art site.

Trance stages
Modern studies of the brain have found that its main function is to make images. Under normal circumstances, external stimuli gathered by our sensory organs (eyes, ears, nose, skin, etc.) are received by the brain and processed.
The food we eat is the energy source used by the brain to perform its function. If external stimuli are blocked (e.g. isolation), or the food source is blocked or changed, in the case of toxins, or absent in the case of starvation, the brain reacts only to internal stimulation, and “abnormal” images are created.
These images, and those caused by physical pressure on the retina, are generally called entoptic phenomena and are composed of “phosphenes” (visual effects produced by mechanical pressure on the eye or electrical stimulation of the brain) and “form constants” (specific geometric shapes originating from other parts of the optic system away form the eye).
The brain may cut off reception of some external stimuli when its “normal” food source is not available and rely more heavily on internal stimulation. In the case of dreaming, for instance, the brain continues to do its job of making images using available stimuli to create a different “reality.”
The word Reality is difficult to define since each of us perceives the same material world in a similar, but slightly different way. One person may look at a tree and focus on the leaves, while another would concentrate on the bark. An artist may look at the general form of the tree or carefully note the root system or branches.
Altered Reality or Trance is a term used to describe a state where the brain has created images when its normal process has been interrupted by toxins, fatigue, starvation or a super-saturation of stimuli such as drumming, chanting, or dancing.

Spiral Symbolism

Clottes and Lewis-Williams (Clottes and Lewis-Williams 18) feel strongly that the three stages of a shamanic trance are universal and are an integral part of the human nervous system. One investigator has shown that the group of psychoactive drugs known as hallucinogens commonly used by shamans owe their activity to a very few types of chemical substances that act in a specific way upon a definite part of the central nervous system. Hallucinogens produce effects such as deep changes in the sphere of experience, in perception of reality, even of space and time and in consciousness of self.
Depersonalization may occur.
The trance state is short-lived, and lasts only until the causative substance is changed through digestion or excreted from the body. The effects of different hallucinogens vary according to the way they are prepared, the setting in which they are taken, the amount ingested, the number and kinds of additives, and the purposes for which they are used, as well as the ceremonial control exercised by the shaman. But all hallucinogens have similar trance STAGES as opposed to mood modifying psychoactive drugs such as analgesics and euphorics, sedatives and tranquilizers, and hypnotics (Schultes 13,14).
Therefore, apparently all trances induced by hallucinogenic plants have a transitional stage where shamans pass through a similar spiral or vortex tunnel. Waiká Indian shamans have stated that the most important part of their trance state is the transportation of their soul to other worlds (Schultes170). This implies that the spiral tunnel of the transition between stages 2 and 3 plays an important part of shamanic alternate reality visions and may have been recorded in rock art symbolizing the transitional stage, just as geometric shapes in rock art could be images from Stage 1, and realistic or floating animals in rock art could be created from Stage 3 images.
Anthropologists have proved that some Indians (e.g. Colombian Barasana shamans), reproduce geometric patterns in the sand that represent visions seen during their trances and paint their visions on the walls of their huts (Waimaja shamans). Interpretation of these design motifs is believed to be culture bound but, on the other hand, what is actually seen and recorded is controlled by specific biochemical effects of the active principles in the plant (Schultes 124).
Physiologically speaking, spirals seen during trances are caused by capillary circulation. The Tunnel Effect arises partly from the foveal cones and environing rods being smaller and more closely arranged than those of the periphery and in consequence the geometric figures perceived are likely to be smaller in the center than at the periphery (Marshall 300)

SEE;The colombian rock art spiral. A shamanic tunnel

• Tom Bree – Dante’s Journey In Gothic Cathedral Design

The eastward journey through a cathedral forms a symbolic ascent climbing towards the place of the rising sun. However for the soul to return to its heavenly origin a certain lightness and buoyancy is required as attested to by the image of St Michael in which he weighs human souls on judgement day.

Within Dante’s poem, Commedia, such a preparation for ascent requires him to first descend to the Inferno so as to face the very lowest reaches of the soul’s potential. Only then can he slowly begin his rise back upwards, first to the surface of the earth followed then by an ascent to Eden which lies at the summit of the Mountain of Purgatory. Finally he ascends through the heavens to the Empyrean where he becomes reunited with the soul’s divine origin.

Dante’s journey is made in emulation of Christ because he descends to the inferno from Jerusalem on the afternoon of Good Friday and then re-ascends to the surface of the earth again on the morning of Easter Sunday. In this way he personally re-encounters the Harrowing of Hell which is Christ’s necessary descent into the underworld prior to His Resurrection on Easter Sunday and eventual ascent into heaven 40 days thereafter.

This illustrated talk will demonstrate how the three stages that characterise Dante’s journey are also present in the design of the ground plan of the first English Gothic cathedral. In this sense the beginning of the journey through Wells Cathedral is actually one of descent and only then can there subsequently be an eastward ascent towards the rising of the Bright Morning Star.

IN Purgatory, time and process are all-important. The souls are hastening to complete their purgation, and their cry is always, “Lose no time! Pray that my time be shortened! Hinder me not!”—so eager are they to speed their progress from circle to circle up the height. Into this realm, Virgil could not go without Dante; he is still his companion but no longer in the strict sense his guide. […] The journey takes us up the Mountain, past the souls of the excommunicate and the late-repentant who are anxiously waiting to begin their purification, up the three steps through St. Peter’s Gate, up by the seven cornices where the stain of the seven Capital Sins is cleansed away, till we come to the bird-haunted forest at the summit. And here Dante meets Beatrice.

LITERALLY, the [“enchanted”] Wood [i.e. the Garden] is the Earthly Paradise—the Garden of Innocence from which Adam and Eve were driven, through their own fault, at the Fall. It is the original starting-point of mankind. That is the crux of the matter; it is a starting-point. It is the point from which Man ought to have started his journey to God—from which every individual man would start now, but for the legacy of original sin, which has exiled him and obliges him to start as best he can from the wilderness, and sometimes from the Dark Wood which is sin’s deadly substitute for that other. It is also the point to which every man must return, in order to make his fresh start. It is reached by way of the Mountain of Ascent. Some —those who have kept in the right way—are able to take “the short way up the Hill—del bel monte it corto andar”; others who, like Dante, have gone so far out of the way that they cannot pass the Beasts, can only come to it by the long way that leads through Hell and up the Purgatorial path on the other side of the world, which is also the road taken by the blessed Dead. They come to the Earthly Paradise, but they do not stay there. Once there, once purged and restored to the lost innocence of their original nature, they start again, where Adam started, on the road that Adam should have taken. All the journey, all the toil, all the passing through the little and the greater death, is done that man may come back to his true beginning, to the original starting-place from which he may “leap to the stars”.

See The Cosmos in Stone: the Ascent of the Soul and Cosmology in Sufism

– Brain , gut…and the Heart

Although it can’t compose poetry or solve equations, this extensive network uses the same chemicals and cells as the brain to help us digest and to alert the brain when something is amiss. Gut and brain are in constant communication.

“There is immense crosstalk between these two large nerve centers,” says Braden Kuo, MD, MMSc ’04, co-executive director of the Center for Neurointestinal Health at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “This crosstalk affects how we feel and perceive gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms and impacts our quality of life.”

Normally, when we see something tasty, the brain signals the gut to prepare for incoming food. When we feel anxious or stressed, we might experience these as abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea, or “butterflies.” Messages travel from gut to brain, too. This helps explain why, when we eat something that makes us sick, we instinctively avoid the food and even the place we found it.These everyday activities can go awry when gut nerves are damaged or malfunction. The Center for Neurointestinal Health treats patients with life-altering conditions such as chronic constipation, extreme bloating, and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Center physician-scientists also contribute to the exciting basic, clinical, and translational research happening across HMS to understand the gut-brain connection.

Messages travel from gut to brain, too. This helps explain why, when we eat something that makes us sick, we instinctively avoid the food and even the place we found it.

For example, Kuo and colleagues are measuring brain activity in patients with chronic nausea using functional MRI, which detects blood-flow changes. Their discovery that nausea and pain involve similar nerve centers has prompted new treatment plans for certain patients, potentially improving their quality of life.

Center researchers are also investigating how the trillions of bacteria in the gut (the gut microbiome) interact with the enteric nervous system (a component of the autonomic nervous system) and ultimately with the central nervous system, notes center co-leader Allan M. Goldstein, MD ’93, Marshall K. Bartlett Professor of Surgery at HMS and chief of pediatric surgery at MGH. “Increasing evidence is showing that bacteria in the gut, and the byproducts they produce, affect mood, cognition, and behavior.”

HMS Instructor in Medicine Kyle Staller, MD ’09, MPH ’15, is studying how abnormal body image and eating disorders in adolescents influence the likelihood of developing IBS and other GI problems in adulthood. These patients, he says, typically perceive normal digestion sensations, like the gut’s expansion with food and stool, as abnormal and may seek a doctor’s help for bloating.

Kuo has also co-led a pilot study that found the “relaxation response,” a state of deep rest induced by practices such as meditation and yoga, helped relieve symptoms in some patients with IBS and inflammatory bowel disease.

With the brain and gut so intertwined, it makes sense for clinicians treating gastrointestinal disorders to include cognitive approaches such as talk therapy, hypnosis, or relaxation response in their recommendations, and for clinicians treating cognitive symptoms to consider what’s happening in the patient’s gut.

• From the pont of view of traditional wisdom, the brain is seen as an adverary to fight against for spiritual grow to reach the Heart

To start our Migration to the Spiritual Land of Peace ,  we look  at an old text  known as papyrus 3024 from the Berlin Museum, known  as “Man arguing with his Soul” or the “Rebel in the Soul” we can perhaps study one of the earliest accounts of the confrontation with the ego.

 – Rebel in the Soul: An ancient Egyptian dialogue between a Man and his Soul

and The Rebel in The Soul: The Wisdom of Ordinariness

The Weighing of the Heart Ceremony & Its Role in the Egyptian Afterlife
The Weighing of the Heart ceremony was an essential step in passing from the world of the living to the realm of the dead in ancient Egypt.

One of the most famous scenes surviving from ancient Egyptian art is the Weighing of the Heart Ceremony, during which the heart of the deceased was weighed against the feather of Ma’at. If the heart was lighter than the feather, they passed into ancient Egypt’s paradisical afterlife. If it was heavier than the feather, they were devoured by the monster Ammit and resigned to oblivion. This belief was so important to Egyptian culture from at least the New Kingdom onwards that it was immortalized in Egypt’s most common literary text, the Book of the Dead.

apophis god serpent

Apophis (also called Apep) is a giant serpent deity in ancient Egyptian mythology, representing chaos, darkness, and destruction, and is the primordial enemy of the sun god Ra. Every night, as Ra’s solar barge traverses the underworld, Apophis attempts to devour it and prevent the sun’s rise, threatening to plunge the world into darkness.​​

Name(s)DescriptionSymbolismOpponent(s)NatureApophis, ApepGiant Serpent GodChaos, DarknessRa (aided by Set, Isis, others)Destructive evil, cosmic adversary

Apophis’s myth exemplifies ancient Egypt’s deep concern with the cosmic struggle between light and darkness, order and chaos, embodied in the nightly contests of sun and serpent.​​

What myths explain Apophis’s origin and role

Apophis’s origin and role in Egyptian mythology are explained by several creation myths and ritual traditions, each emphasizing his identity as the primordial enemy of order and the sun god Ra.​

Unlike other deities, Apophis was not worshipped but was ritually repelled, emphasizing his role as an immortal and fearsome force of destruction whose existence continually challenges cosmic harmony. Egyptians enacted rituals to weaken him, symbolically defeating chaos and reaffirming the triumph of order with each sunrise.​

Symbolic and Ritual Significance

Comparison with Other Near Eastern Chaos Serpents

Other chaos serpents appear in ancient Near Eastern mythologies with similar symbolic functions but differing visual and narrative contexts:

• Tiamat (Babylonian): Portrayed as a primordial sea dragon or multi-headed serpent, Tiamat is both chaos and creation. Following her defeat by Marduk, Tiamat’s corpse becomes the fabric of the cosmos—her skin forms the sky, her tail creates the Milky Way, and her body parts shape rivers and mountains. Tiamat’s imagery is more ambiguous, evolving from watery chaos to explicit dragon motifs especially in later texts and art.​
• Lotan/Leviathan (Canaanite/Hebrew): Lotan and Leviathan are sea monsters or serpents with seven heads. They are shown battling storm gods (Hadad/Baal in Ugaritic myth; Yahweh in Hebrew texts), serving as metaphors for the containment of cosmic disorder. Leviathan’s depiction often carries connotations of monstrous power and is referenced allegorically as Babylon or other enemies. Lotan is sometimes associated with rivers and rain—his defeat symbolizes the restoration of balance.​
• Vritra (Vedic): Although not as prominent visually as Apophis, Vritra is a serpent or dragon holding back the waters and sunlight, slain by Indra in a cosmic duel akin to Apophis’s nightly battles with Ra.​

Table: Apophis vs. Other Chaos Serpents

NameCultureForm/DepictionSymbolismOpponent(s)Apophis (Apep)EgyptianColossal serpent, flint head, coiled, under attackChaos, darkness, destructionRa, Set, gods​​TiamatBabylonianSea dragon, multi-headed serpent, ambiguous formsPrimordial chaos, sea, creationMarduk​Lotan/LeviathanCanaanite/HebrewMonster serpent, many-headed, river associationsCosmic disorder, enemy powerHadad/Baal, Yahweh​VritraVedicSerpent, dragonWaters withheld, darknessIndra​

Apophis’s iconography and mythic role are echoed in—but distinct from—other Near Eastern chaos serpents, sharing the theme of cosmic conflict where order must eternally battle the serpentine force of chaos.​

compare with brain

Apophis as a mythic figure can be metaphorically compared to the brain’s function in terms of representing the challenge between order and chaos within a complex system.

Comparison: Apophis and the Brain

• Apophis as Chaos: Apophis embodies primordial chaos, darkness, and the threat of destruction to cosmic order, continuously challenging the stability and function of the universe (through the sun god Ra). This can be likened to intrusive, chaotic elements that challenge an orderly system.​
• Brain as Order: The brain, especially its higher cognitive functions, represents complex order, control, and regulation. It processes information, maintains homeostasis, and orchestrates coherent behavior to sustain life and well-being.
• Conflict and Balance: Just as Apophis is the unstoppable force of chaos requiring constant vigilance and defense by ordered cosmic forces, the brain must constantly manage internal and external “chaotic” stimuli—such as stress, emotional turmoil, or neurological disruptions—by employing regulatory mechanisms (e.g., the prefrontal cortex mediating emotional responses).
• Cycle of Threat and Recovery: Apophis’s nightly assault and defeat symbolize the recurring cycles of disruption and restoration of order—analogous to how the brain manages repeated challenges like stress, illness, or trauma, restoring equilibrium.

Mythic Symbolism in Cognitive Terms

• Apophis can be viewed as a symbol of disruptive neural or psychological forces (e.g., fear, anxiety, or disorder) that threaten the “light” of consciousness and rationality.
• The gods defending Ra are akin to neural networks or regulatory brain centers that maintain mental and physiological order.
• The persistent nature of Apophis’s threat reflects how challenges to brain regulation are ongoing and require active coping and resilience.

This metaphor highlights the ancient conception that cosmic order requires constant defense against chaos, much like brain function necessitates continual regulation against disorder to sustain life and consciousness.​

compare with heart

Apophis can also be fruitfully compared metaphorically with the heart, especially in symbolic and mythic terms relating to the struggle between order and chaos within the core of life and consciousness.

Comparison: Apophis and the Heart

• Apophis as Threat to Life: Apophis represents chaos, darkness, and destruction seeking to devour the sun and plunge the cosmos into disorder and death. Similarly, the heart is the vital organ that sustains life through circulation; any disruption to its rhythm or function threatens life itself.​
• Heart as Center of Vital Order: Symbolically and physiologically, the heart governs the flow of life-force (blood, energy) and symbolizes emotional and spiritual centers in many traditions. It embodies balance, vitality, and the sustaining power of order in an organism.
• Chaos Versus Harmony: Apophis’s role as a constant menace can be likened to factors that threaten the heart’s harmony—stress, fear, anxiety, or physical illness that disrupt the heart’s steady beating. In mythic terms, Apophis represents those disruptive forces that must be kept at bay to maintain the living order and vitality sustained by the heart.
• Duality in Symbolism: Just as Apophis’s chaotic nature opposes the sun’s ordered life-giving light, the heart symbolizes the sustenance of life and emotional equilibrium—undermined by chaotic emotional states or physical dangers. Apophis’s repeated defeats mirror the resilience of the heart to overcome threats and maintain steady rhythm.
• Emotional and Spiritual Dimensions: In esoteric symbolism and many religious traditions, the heart is the seat of virtues, love, and divine spirit, while Apophis personifies the dark, destructive unconscious forces that challenge these qualities.

The heart has long been thought to be controlled solely by the autonomic nervous system, which transmits signals from the brain. The heart’s neural network, which is embedded in the superficial layers of the heart wall, has been considered a simple structure that relays the signals from the brain. However, recent research suggests that it has a more advanced function than that.

The heart has long been thought to be controlled solely by the autonomic nervous system, which transmits signals from the brain. The heart’s neural network, which is embedded in the superficial layers of the heart wall, has been considered a simple structure that relays the signals from the brain. However, recent research suggests that it has a more advanced function than that.heart connect to virtues neuron
There is emerging evidence that the heart is intimately connected to the formation and experience of virtues at a neural level, influencing moral emotions, decision-making, and cognition via heart-brain interactions and specialized neural networks.

Heart-Brain Neural Networks
The heart possesses an intrinsic cardiac nervous system (ICNS) composed of about 40,000 sensory neurites, which communicate with the brain through afferent signals carried mainly by the vagus nerve. This feedback influences brain processes that shape emotional responses, mood regulation, and even higher cognitive functions such as decision-making and short-term/long-term memory, suggesting that the heart’s neural activity participates in virtue-related cognition.

Virtue and Moral Emotion Processing
Neuroscience has demonstrated that moral emotions and virtues activate specific brain areas, notably the default mode network (DMN), orbitofrontal cortex, and related regions associated with moral cognition and prosocial behaviors. Heart-generated signals can modulate these regions, for instance by heartbeat-evoked responses (HERs), strengthening the link between physiological states and neural processing of moral virtues.

The heart’s neural feedback may play a subtle role in decision-making, intuition, and emotional adaptation—qualities central to virtue ethics. Cardiac neural input can affect the robustness and connectivity of brain networks linked to compassion, moral indignation, and other virtuous responses, suggesting a bidirectional system where the heart shapes cognition and moral self.

Clinical and Philosophical Perspectives
This heart-brain connection opens new pathways for understanding not only cardiovascular disease treatment but also how emotional intelligence and moral development can be holistically cultivated. Virtue ethics grounded in both neuroscience and classic philosophy now considers heart-neuron networks as integral for moral flourishing and character.

In summary, the heart’s neural system, through communication with the brain, is increasingly recognized as foundational to the realization and neural embodiment of human virtues, offering a bridge between physiology, emotion, and ethics.

– Prunning the brain with the wisdom of the Heart

Posted on 23 oktober 2024

During infancy, billions of brain cells form connections with one another, blooming like a tree. Like a gardener trimming the excess branches, synaptic pruning clears away unneeded connections. Too much or too little pruning can contribute to a range of psychiatric disorders.

An inside look reveals the adult brain prunes its own branches

May 2, 2016 / Karen Ring

Did you know that when you’re born, your brain contains around 100 billion nerve cells? This is impressive considering that these nerve cells, also called neurons, are already connected to each other through an intricate, complex neural network that is essential for brain function.

Here’s how the brain does it. During development, neural stem cells produce neurons that navigate their way through the brain. Once at their destination, neurons set up shop and send out long extensions called axons and branched extensions called dendrites that allow them to form what are called synaptic connections through which they can communicate through electrical and chemical signals.

Studies of early brain development revealed that neurons in the developing brain go on overdrive and make more synaptic connections than they need. Between birth and early adulthood, the brain carefully prunes away weak or unnecessary connections, and by your mid-twenties, your brain has eliminated almost half of the synaptic connections you started out with as a baby.

This synaptic pruning process allows the brain to fine-tune its neural network and strengthen the connections between neurons that are important for brain function. It’s similar to how a gardener prunes away excess branches on fro0uit trees so that the resulting branches can produce healthier and better tasting fruit.

The brain can make new neurons

It was thought that by adulthood, this process of pruning excess connections between neurons was over. However, a new study from the Salk Institute offers visual proof that synaptic pruning occurs during adulthood similarly to how it does during development. The work was published today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, and it was funded in part by CIRM.

The study was led by senior author and Salk Professor Rusty Gage. Gage is well known for his earlier work on adult neurogenesis. In the late 90’s, he discovered that the adult brain can in fact make new neurons, a notion that overturned the central dogma that the brain doesn’t contain stem cells and that we’re born with all the neurons we will ever have.

There are two main areas of the adult brain that harbor neural stem cells that can generate new neurons. One area is called the dentate gyrus, which is located in the memory forming area of the brain called the hippocampus. Gage and his team were curious to know whether the new neurons generated from stem cells in the dentate gyrus also experienced the same synaptic overgrowth and pruning that the neurons in the developing brain did.

Pruning the Adult Brain

They developed a special microscope technique that allowed them to visually image the development of new neurons from stem cells in the dentate gyrus of the mouse brain. Every day, they would image the growing neurons and monitor how many dendritic branches they sent out.

Newly generated neurons (green) send out branched dendritic extensions to make connections with other neurons. (Image credit: Salk Institute) After observing the neurons for a few weeks, they were amazed to discover that these new neurons behaved similarly to neurons in the developing brain. They sent out dozens of dendritic branches and formed synaptic connections with other neurons, some of which were eventually pruned away over time.

This phenomenon was observed more readily when they made the mice exercise, which stimulated the stem cells in the dentate gyrus to divide and produce more neurons. These exercise-induced neurons robustly sent out dendritic branches only to have them pruned back later.

First author on the paper, Tiago Gonçalves commented on their observations:

“What was really surprising was that the cells that initially grew faster and became bigger were pruned back so that, in the end, they resembled all the other cells.”

Rusty Gage was also surprised by their findings but explained that developing neurons, no matter if they are in the developing or adult brain, have evolved this process in order to establish the best connections.

“We were surprised by the extent of the pruning we saw. The results suggest that there is significant biological pressure to maintain or retain the dendrite tree of these neurons.”

A diagram showing how the adult brain prunes back the dendritic branches of newly developing neurons over time. (Image credit: Salk Institute).

Potential new insights into brain disorders

This study is important because it increases our understanding of how neurons develop in the adult brain. Such knowledge can help scientists gain a better understanding of what goes wrong in brain disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, and epilepsy, where defects in how neurons form synaptic connections or how these connections are pruned are to blame.

Gonçalves also mentioned that this study raises another important question related to the regenerative medicine applications of stem cells for neurological disease.

“This also has big repercussions for regenerative medicine. Could we replace cells in this area of the brain with new stem cells and would they develop in the same way? We don’t know yet.”

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Related Links: Adult brain prunes branched connections of new neurons

– Growth and pruning: the brain of a child

Translated by Rumia Bose

This post is a revised version of “Growth and pruning” published on 9-11-2017

A newborn baby is well-equipped to eat and sleep, but not much more than this. It cannot speak, can hardly see at all, and has but minimal voluntary controlled movements of its arms and legs. All this changes quite quickly. At one year of age, a child can see a lot, can direct the use of its arms and legs remarkably well, and makes its first attempts to walk and talk.
Previously it was believed that, at birth, the brain was ready for all these tasks (nature), and that the child only had to learn through experience (nurture). The brains of a newborn are however prepared for the tasks to come, but still need to grow. By adulthood they are two or three times as big. That growth is controlled by the genes and by experience, the interaction with the environment. The genes are most important in the first year of life; from here onwards the environment becomes increasingly important¹.

Critical periods

A newborn baby can very quickly identify its mother; soon after that it also recognises her facial expressions. There are critical periods for everything a child learns. In this period he has to acquire the basic skills for that function. After the first year the critical period for basic visual functions – such as depth vision, colours and movement – are laid down in the brain. But if you were to leave a baby in the dark for its first year, then it would never learn to see well.

The more complicated the cognitive function, the longer it takes before it is fully developed, and the longer the critical period lasts. The critical period takes longest for executive functions such as goal-directed planning and impulse suppression. This lasts till beyond the first twenty years. These functions are essential for rational thinking and the modulation of urges and risky behaviour, and all these are therefore only fully established when one is past the age of twenty.

Growth….

What happens in a child’s brain during critical periods? At first the brain cells or neurones have few dendrites in the part of the cerebral cortex that accounts for that particular function. When the critical period starts, the dendritic trees grow and the number of interneuron connections increase. This is the time of growth. Later the number of interneuron connections reduces drastically. That is the period of pruning².

During the period of growth of interneurone connections, the child learns all sorts of new skills, such as facial recognition. Learning and the growth of the cortex go hand in hand. Learning to see is facilitated by this growth, and the growth occurs as the child learns. A requirement for the latter is that the child is presented with new visual information. For instance, seeing the mother’s face often, but also other colourful moving objects.
The basic structure of the brain with the basic functions has been formed around the second year of life. This is especially the case for areas involved in perception or locomotion, such as the visual and motor cortex. The frontal cortex-which is of importance for rational thinking-takes a lot longer. The critical periods therefore correspond to the age at which growth and pruning takes place in the relevant areas of the cortex.

… and pruning

After a while the connections that are of little or no use are cleared away. The most important effect of this clearing is that the pruned cortex works far more efficiently. In order to recognise mother’s face quickly, all impressions that are somewhat similar have to be examined. Clearing away unimportant impressions results in a shorter search.
It is thought that the advantage of this process of growth and pruning is that it allows for a more flexible adjustment to the specific environment than a fully-programmed brain at birth, as seen in simpler forms of animal life, such as insects. The growth allows for fast, extensive and directed learning, while the subsequent pruning makes way for the most efficient application of what has been learnt.

Learning at a later age

All of this seems to suggest that the child can only acquire various skills such as seeing or language in its first years of life. This is naturally not true. Learning a language after five years of age is possible, of course, but it needs more effort, and one can almost never speak the language with the authentic native accents. Top musicians almost always start learning to play their instrument(s) of choice at a very young age³. The critical periods are especially important in learning basic skills, and not for learning subtle variations on a theme.
The critical period can even be “reopened” at a later age. Someone who has lost the ability to speak as a result of cerebral haemorrhage can learn to speak again if the damage is not too extensive. The lost skills of speech are then laid down in other areas of the cortex, mostly those adjacent to the damaged area⁴. This takes more effort than learning in childhood, but is essentially based on the same process of growth and pruning of neurones and interneuron connections.

• Bonsai Trees in Your Head: How the Pavlovian System Sculpts Goal-Directed Choices by Pruning Decision Trees

abstract

When planning a series of actions, it is usually infeasible to consider all potential future sequences; instead, one must prune the decision tree. Provably optimal pruning is, however, still computationally ruinous and the specific approximations humans employ remain unknown. We designed a new sequential reinforcement-based task and showed that human subjects adopted a simple pruning strategy: during mental evaluation of a sequence of choices, they curtailed any further evaluation of a sequence as soon as they encountered a large loss. This pruning strategy was Pavlovian: it was reflexively evoked by large losses and persisted even when overwhelmingly counterproductive. It was also evident above and beyond loss aversion. We found that the tendency towards Pavlovian pruning was selectively predicted by the degree to which subjects exhibited sub-clinical mood disturbance, in accordance with theories that ascribe Pavlovian behavioural inhibition, via serotonin, a role in mood disorders. We conclude that Pavlovian behavioural inhibition shapes highly flexible, goal-directed choices in a manner that may be important for theories of decision-making in mood disorders.

https://neurosciencenews.com/slk-dendrites-19389/embed/#?secret=ynsWfaYVzj#?secret=aEVfKJEKU4

• The Heart: Threshold Between Two Worlds

Excerpted from The Knowing Heart, A Sufi Path of Transformation

Anyone who has probed the inner life to a certain extent, who has sat in silence long enough to experience the stillness of the mind behind its apparent noise, is faced with a mystery. Apart from all the outer attractions of life in the world, there exists at the heart of human consciousness something else, something quite satisfying and beautiful in itself, a beauty without features. The mystery is not so much that these two dimensions exist–an outer world and the mystery of the inner world–but that the human being is suspended between them–as a space in which both meet. It is as if the human being is the meeting point, the threshold between two worlds. Anyone who has explored this inwardness to a certain degree will know that it holds a great beauty and power. In fact, to be unaware of this mystery of inwardness is to be incomplete.

According to the great formulator of Sufi psychology, Al-Ghazalli:

There is nothing closer to you than yourself. If you don’t know your self, how will you know others? You might say, “I know myself,” but you are mistaken…. The only thing you know about your self is your physical appearance. The only thing you know about your inside (batin, your unconscious) is that when you are hungry you eat, when you are angry, you fight, and when you are consumed by passion, you make love. In this regard you are equal to any animal. You have to seek the reality within yourself…. What are you? Where have you come from and where are you going. What is your role in the world? Why have you been created? Where does your happiness life? If you would like to know yourself, you should know that you are created by two things. One is your body and your outer appearance (zahir) which you can see with your eyes. The other is your inner forces (batin). This is the part you cannot see, but you can know with your insight. The reality of your existence is in your inwardness (batin, unconscious). Everything is a servant of your inward heart.

In Sufism, “knowing” can be arranged in seven stages. These stages offer a comprehensive view of the various faculties of knowledge within which the heart comprises the sixth level of knowing:

1. Hearing about something, knowing what it is called. “Having a child is called ‘motherhood.’”

2. Knowing through the perception of the senses. “I have seen a mother and child with my own eyes.”

3. Knowing “about” something. “This is how it happens and what it is like to be a mother.”

4. Knowing through understanding and being able to apply that understanding. “I have a Ph.D. in mothering and my studies show…”

5. Knowing through doing or being something. “I am a mother.”

6. Knowing through the subconscious faculties of the heart. “It’s difficult to put into words everything a mother experiences and feels.”

7. Knowing through Spirit alone. This is much more difficult to describe and perhaps it’s foolhardy to try, but it may be something like this: “I am not a mother, but in the moment when all separation dissolves, I am you.”

The outer world of physical existence is perceived through the physical senses, through a nervous system that has been refined and purified by nature over millions of years. We can only stand in awe of this body’s perceptive ability.

On the other hand, the mystery of the inner world is perceived through other even subtler senses. It is these “senses” that allow us to experience qualities like yearning, hope, intimacy, or to perceive significance, beauty, and our participation in the unity.

When our awareness is turned away from the world of the senses, and away from the field of conventional human thoughts and emotions, we may find that we can sense an inner world of spiritual qualities, independent of the outer world.

Our modern languages lack precision when it comes to describing or naming that which can grasp the qualities and essence of this inner world. Perhaps the best word we have for that which can grasp the unseen world of qualities is “heart.” And what we understand by the word “heart” is an intelligence other than intellect, a knowing that operates at a subconscious level. The sacred traditions have sometimes delineated this subconscious knowing into various modes of knowing. What are known in some Sufi schools as the latifas (literally, the subtleties, al-lataif) are subtle subconscious faculties that allow us to know spiritual realities beyond what the senses or intellect can offer. This knowing is called subconscious, because what can be admitted into consciousness is necessarily limited and partial.

These latifas are sometimes worked on by carrying the energy of zhikr (remembrance) to precise locations in the chest and head in order to energize and activate these faculties. Once activated, they support and irradiate each other.

The five spiritual senses are connected.
They’ve grown from one root.
As one grows strong, the others strengthen, too:
each one becomes a cupbearer to the rest.
Seeing with the eye increases speech;
speech increases discernment in the eye.
As sight deepens, it awakens every sense,
so that perception of the spiritual
becomes familiar to them all.
When one sense grows into freedom,
all the other senses change as well.
When one sense perceives the hidden,
the invisible world becomes apparent to the whole.

[Rumi, Mathnawi II, 3236-3241]

According to one model, the heart is understood as the totality of subtle, subconscious faculties; according to another model, it is the subtlest faculty of them all, sharing in all the knowledge of the others. Essentially, however, we can consider the heart a mostly subconscious knowing of spiritual realities or qualities.

A Universe of Qualities

The heart is the perceiver of qualities. What we mean by qualities are the modifiers of the things. If we say for instance that a certain book has a particular number of pages on a certain subject by a particular author, we have described its distinguishing outer characteristics. If we say, however, that the book is inspiring, depressing, boring, fascinating, profound, trivial, or humorous, we are describing qualities. Although qualities seem to be subjective and have their reality in an invisible world, they are more essential, more valuable, because they determine our relationship to a thing. Qualities modify things. But where do qualities originate if not in an inner world? And is that inner world completely subjective, contained within the individual brain? Or are qualities, somehow, the objective features of another “world,” another state of being?

The answer of the tradition is that Absolute Reality–which cannot be described or compared to anything–possesses qualities, or attributes. All of material existence manifests these qualities, but the qualities are prior to their manifestation in forms. Forms manifest the qualities of an inner world. A cosmic creativity is overflowing with its qualities which eventually result in the world of material existence.

The human being is an instrument of that cosmic creativity. The human heart is the mirror in which divine qualities and significances may appear. And the world is the mirror in which these qualities are reflected and known more clearly. The cosmic creativity manifests itself in and through the human heart which has the capacity for interpreting the forms and events of material existence.

From the point of view of the human being, qualities are projected on things, recognized in the outer world. Things lose or gain importance for us as they are qualified by qualities whose immediate source is the human heart, but whose ultimate source is the divine treasury. A cheap, mass-produced teddy-bear becomes an object of love because it has been qualified by the affection of a child’s heart.

This subject may seem elusive because we are so conditioned to project qualities onto the things and events of the world that we overlook that everything of true significance is happening within us. Furthermore, the qualities that we experience in relation to the outer, material world also have a reality beyond both ourselves and the things of outer world. That which becomes the object of our affection, for instance, is receiving a projection of the capacity for affection contained within the individual heart. Affection, itself, is a quality that exists in Reality itself and transcends both the heart and the object of affection. Another way of saying it is that we live in an affectionate universe and we know this through the relationship between the individual heart and the object of its affection.

A mature enlightenment is seeing all these projections for what they are: the heart, because of its nearness to the divine treasury, is primary; the world is the shadow. We need not then withdraw these qualities into ourselves, because the mirror of the world receiving the projection of the heart has received the qualities of the divine source. This divine source, the heart, and outer existence together form a unified Whole.

Between Ego and Spirit, Fragmentation and Wholeness

The heart could be called the child of the marriage of self and spirit. The heart occupies a position intermediate between ego and God. It becomes a point of contact between the two. Like a transformer, it receives the spiritualizing energy of the spirit and conveys it to the self. Like the physical heart it is the center of the individual psyche. If it is dominated by the demands of the ego-self, the heart is dead; it is not a heart at all. If it is receptive to spirit, then it can receive the qualities of spirit and distribute these according to its capacity to every aspect of the human being, and from the human being to the rest of creation. If it is receptive to spirit, a heart is sensitive, living, awake, whole. It becomes the treasury of God’s qualities.

In this, behold, there is indeed a reminder for everyone whose heart is wide-awake–that is who lends ear with conscious mind. [Qur’an 50:37]

It is through the heart that the completion of the human psyche is attained. The heart always has an object of love; it is always attracted to some sign of beauty. Whatever the heart holds its attention on, it will acquire its qualities. Those qualities are as much within the heart as within the thing that awakens those qualities in the heart. The situation is like two mirrors facing each other, while the original reflection comes from a third source. But one of these mirrors, the human heart, has some choice as to what it will reflect. Rumi said, “If your thought is a rose, you are the rose garden. If your thought is a thorn, you are kindling for the bath stove.”¹ Being between the attractions of the physical world and the ego, on the one hand, and spirit and its qualities on the other, the heart is pulled from different sides. Rumi addressed this issue in a conversation recorded and presented in Fihi ma fihi² (Herein is what is herein):

All desires, affections, loves, and fondnesses people have for all sorts of things, such as fathers, mothers, friends, the heavens and the earth, gardens, pavilions, works, knowledge, food, and drink–one should realize that every desire is a desire for food, and such things are all “veils.” When one passes beyond this world and sees that King without these “veils,” then one will realize that all those things were “veils” and “coverings” and that what they were seeking was in reality one thing. All problems will then be solved. All the heart’s questions and difficulties will be answered, and everything will become clear. God’s reply is not such that He must answer each and every problem individually. With one answer all problems are solved.³

There are countless attractions in the world of multiplicity. Whatever we give our attention to, whatever we hold in this space of our presence, its qualities will become our qualities. If we give the heart to multiplicity, the heart will be fragmented and dispersed. If we give the heart to spiritual unity, the heart will be unified.

Ultimately what the heart desires is unity in which it finds peace.

Truly, in the remembrance of God hearts find peace.

The ego desires multiplicity and suffers the fragmentation caused by the conflicting attractions of the world. Rabi’a, perhaps the greatest woman saint of the Sufi tradition, said, “I am fully qualified to work as a doorkeeper, and for this reason: What is inside me, I don’t let out. What is outside me, I don’t let in. If someone comes in, he goes right out again– He has nothing to do with me at all. I am a doorkeeper of the heart, not a lump of wet clay.”⁴ We can assume the responsibility of being the doorkeeper of our own heart, choosing what we wish to keep within the intimate space of our own being.

Purity of Heart

The heart is our deepest knowing. Sometimes that deepest knowing is veiled, or confused by more superficial levels of the mind: by opinions, by desires, by social conditioning, and most of all by fear. Like a mirror it may become obscured the veils of conditioned thought, by the soot of emotions, by the corrosion of negative attitudes. In fact we easily confuse the ego with the heart. Sometimes, in the name of following our hearts, we actually follow the desires and fears of the ego.

The heart may be sensitive or insensitive, awake or asleep, healthy or sick, whole or broken, open or closed. In other words, its perceptive ability will depend on its capacity and condition.

Both spirit and the world compete to win the prize of the human heart. As Junayd said, “The heart of the friend of God is the site of God’s mystery, and God does not reveal his mysteries in the heart of one who is preoccupied with the world.”⁵ The traditional teachers agree that one of the consequences of preoccupation with the world is the death of the heart. If the heart assumes the qualities of whatever attracts it, its attraction to the dense matter of the world only results at best in a limited reflection of the divine reality. At worst, the heart’s involvement with the purely physical aspects of existence results in the familiar compulsions of ego: sex, wealth, and power.

In The Alchemy of Happiness, Al-Ghazzali describes the human being in the following metaphor:

The body is like a country. The artisans are like the hands, feet, and various parts of the body. Passion is like the tax collector. Anger or rage is like the sheriff. The heart is the king. Intellect is the prime minister. Passion, like a tax collector using any means, tries to extract everything. Rage and anger are severe, harsh and punishing like the police and want to destroy or kill. The ruler not only needs to control passion and rage, but also the intellect and must keep a balance among all these forces. If the intellect becomes dominated by passion or anger, the country will be in ruin and the ruler will be destroyed.

Rumi echoes the same theme when he describes the role of Conscious Reason in keeping a balance among our various desires:

God has given you Conscious Reason
as an instrument for polishing the heart until its surface reflects.
But you, prayerless, have bound the polisher
and freed the two hands of sensuality.
If you can restrain sensuality, you will free the polisher….
Until now you have made the water turbid, but no more.
Do not stir it up, let the water become clear enough
for the moon and stars to be reflected in it.
For the human being is like the water of a river:
when muddied you cannot see the bottom.
The river is full of jewels and pearls.
Do not cloud the water that was pure and free.
[Mathnawi IV, 2475-2477, 2480-2482]

The attractions of the outer world are only a small distraction compared to the promptings of egoism which distract us from within. Bayazid Bistami said, “The contraction of the heart comes with the expansion of the ego, and vice versa.”

When our hearts soften at the remembrance of God [39:23], the ego acquires the qualities of servanthood and humility in relation to the Divine Majesty, and the heart becomes sensitive and expansive–expansive enough, in fact, to contain the whole universe.⁶

The healthy heart requires the nourishment of spiritual foods. When the heart is healthy, its desires will be healthy. Muhammad said, “The heart of the faithful is the throne of the Merciful.” When the heart has nourished itself only on the desires of physical existence, it is deprived of life-giving nourishment, and its own desires become less sound, more sickly.

Sufi wisdom offers several traditional cures for an ailing heart. One of these is the contemplating the meanings of the revealed Holy Books and the words of the saints, since these perform an action upon the heart, removing its illusions, healing its ills, restoring its strength.

Another cure for the heart is keeping one’s stomach empty. Muhammad said that an excess of food hardens the heart. Fasting is the opposite of the addictions, subtle and not so subtle, with which he numb ourselves to the heart’s pain. When through fasting we expose the heart’s pain to ourselves, we become more emotionally vulnerable and honest. Only then can the heart can be healed.

Keeping a night vigil until dawn is a practice that is unfamiliar outside of Islamic culture, but it has been a mainstay of the Sufis. It has been said that in the early hours before the dawn “the angels draw near to the earth,” and our prayers can better be answered. Another explanation is that in these early morning hours the activity of the world has been reduced to its minimum, the psychic atmosphere has become still, and we are more able to reach the depths of concentration upon our own unconscious.

Finally, keeping the company of those who are conscious of God can restore faith and health to the heart. “The best among you are those who when seen remind you of God.”⁷

It is only a matter of degree to move from the ailing heart to the purified heart. This eventual purification could be understood to proceed through four primary activities or stages:

Liberating ourselves from the psychological distortions and complexes that prevent us from forming a healthy, integrated individuality.

Freeing ourselves from the slavery to the attractions of the world, all of which are secondary reflections of the qualities within the heart. Through seeing these attractions as veils over our one essential yearning, the veils fall away and the naked reality remains.

Transcending the subtlest veil which is the self and its selfishness.

Devoting oneself and one’s attention to God; living in and through God, Reality, Love.

The first three of these are virtually impossible without the fourth. Without the power of Love, we can only love our egos and the world. Without the Center, we suffer fragmentation, dispersion in the multiplicity.

By living in and through the Center we become still and at peace. Then all the things of the world will run after us. But if while sitting, we are engaged with the attractions of the world, we are not sitting but running after the world. The Prophet Muhammad said, “Make all your cares into a single care, and God will attend to all your cares.” The real friends of God are not occupied with power, self-importance or acquisition, because they are with God.

Moses said, “O Lord, are you close enough for me to whisper in your ear or so distant that I should shout?”

And God said, “I am behind you, before you, at your right and at your left. O Moses, I am sitting next to my servant whenever he remembers me, and I am with him when he calls me.”⁸

Ali Ibn Abu Talib, may God be pleased with him, was once asked if he had ever seen God. “How could I worship what I have not seen?,” Ali said. “Our eyes cannot see God directly, but the heart can see God through the realities of faith.”

Those who turn toward their own heart may enter the world of spiritual qualities, and they may find there the source of every quality that they projected onto the outer world. And all that they are looking for may truly be within themselves.

It is they on whose hearts He has inscribed faith, and whom He has strengthened with inspiration from Himself. [Qur’an 58:22]

Outer and Inner

There must be a reason for our being embodied in this world other than to escape it. The perspective of Sufism is always a non-dual wholeness.

If the human heart is a space in which two worlds meet, in which two kinds of senses operate, then it is possible to be in both worlds simultaneously: the world of the senses and the world of inner spiritual qualities. Our humanness would consist, then, in that presence, that receptivity to what is offered both by the senses and the spiritual qualities, and finding our right relationship to the outer and the inner dimensions.

In this life, no pleasure is entirely physical or spiritual, outer or inner. The most outer, material pleasures would mean nothing if there were not some quality of anticipation, association, personal relationship. Likewise for a living human being, the most spiritual pleasure is nevertheless experienced through the mediation of the human nervous system. We experience the spiritual qualities as states of relaxation, of heart expansion, of coming alive.

The word for heart in Arabic is qalb and literally means that which fluctuates; the heart expands and contracts, and even in its purified condition passes through many states. The Prophet said, “The hearts of the children of Adam are as if between the two fingers of the Infinitely Compassionate. He turns each however He wishes. O God, O Turner of hearts, tour our hearts toward obedience to You.”

Ibn ‘Arabi says:

God made the heart the locus of this longing to bring actualization of this reality near to the human being, since there is fluctuation in the heart. If this longing were in the rational faculty, the person might seem to be in a constant state. But since it is in the heart, fluctuation comes upon him always. For the heart is between the two fingers of the Compassionate, so its situation is not to remain in a single state. And so it is within this fluctuation, witnessing the way the fingers cause it to fluctuate. [II 532.30]

The heart as the locus of longing experiences constant expansion and contraction, but if the heart is awake, it begins to grasp the Divine Reality through all these changes of state, through the intoxication of expansion and through the aridity of contraction. The heart is always occupied with some object of longing through which it is coming to know the essential Beauty, the longing behind all longings.

The goblet is the lover’s heart, not his reason or sense perception. For the heart fluctuates from state to state, just as God–who is the Beloved–is “Each day upon some task” [55:29]. So the lover undergoes constant variation in the object of his love in keeping with the constant variation of the Beloved in His acts. The lover is like the clear and pure glass goblet which undergoes constant variation according to the variations of the liquid within it. The color of the lover is the color of the Beloved. This belongs only to the heart, since reason comes from the world of delimitation; that is why it is called reason, a word derived from “fetter.” …[L]ove has many diverse and mutually opposed properties. Hence nothing receives these properties except that which has the capacity to fluctuate along with love in those properties. This belongs only to the heart…. The wine is precisely what becomes actualized in the cup. And we have explained that the cup is identical with the locus of manifestation, the wine is identical with the Manifest within it, and the drinking is that which is actualized from the Self-discloser if His locus of self-disclosure.⁹[II 113.33]

The heart is not an accessory to life. It is not a switch to be turned on or off, a box to be open or closed. The fathoming of the human heart and the disclosure of spiritual qualities within it is the work of all life, art, spirituality. Our purpose in life is to know the heart without the veils of our fears, preoccupations, desires, and strategies. A human being with a heart is the hologram of the seen and unseen universes. If we have seen such a person we have seen everything. Everything is a part of him or her who has fully known the reflection of the Infinite within the heart. If we keep the mystery of spirit, “God,” present in our hearts, that “God” will become our reality. This Essence will become our essence. This Power will become our power. God’s wholeness is our wholeness.

The heart can be understood as the center of the unconscious, the potential integrative power at our core. It is the point at which the individual human being is closest to the Divine Reality, to Wholeness. The heart is the center of our motivation and our knowing, possessing a depth and strength of will that the personality lacks. The heart may even know what the conscious mind denies. When we say that the heart has an integrative power, we are not talking in abstract, metaphorical, or merely intellectual terms. The realization and purification of the heart both opens a doorway to the Infinite, and also results in a restructuring of neural pathways, a refinement and reorganization of our entire nervous system without which we are not completely human.

Living from the Heart

We have proposed that the heart includes a spectrum of subconscious faculties for knowing reality immediately and qualitatively. In other words, the heart is intuitive. The heart, however, is obscured, or “veiled” from its intuitive knowing by most of our habitual thoughts and emotions, particularly in so far as these are derived from the false self.

In the condition we find ourselves, life presents us with so many ambiguous situations. How can we know whether we are following the concealed desire of the false self or the guidance of the heart? We cannot afford to sentimentalize the heart, which is not only tender but fierce, which is both in submission and in absolute freedom at the same time.

Reason, which is the wise and skillful use of the conscious mind, can be used to clear the mirror of the heart from the distortions of compulsion, defensiveness, and illusion. To some extent this is the work of a true psychotherapy, a process which is a “healing of the soul.” While the effects of past wounds can be mitigated by bringing contents into consciousness and psychotherapy, an authentic spirituality can awaken the healing forces of humbleness, gratitude, and love. For these qualities, however, to be authentic and spontaneous, and not merely the outcome of a moral obligation, it is necessary to live from the heart. The complete healing of the soul is possible through the soul’s contact with Wholeness through the heart.

Purity of the heart refers to the heart’s overall soundness and health. The heart, if it is truly a heart, is in contact with Spirit, but to achieve this rapport with Spirit it must be renovated and made receptive all the way down to the subconscious levels. Only then can it reliably respond to the spiritual qualities within are reflected within itself.

Living from the heart is responding to the inner guidance of Love and Wisdom in the heart. This guidance may appear to be irrational and even counter to one’s own apparent self-interests. That is its beauty and power. It does not come cheap. It does not depend on emotion. It submits faithfully, spontaneously and joyfully to the requirements of the moment. It knows no fear and always submits to the Wholeness.

– Qalb

In Islamic philosophy, the qalb (Arabic: قلب), or heart, is the origin of intentional activities, the cause behind all humans’ intuitive deeds. While the brain handles the physical impressions, qalb (the heart) is responsible for deep understanding within the sadr (the chest).^[1] Heart and brain work together, but it is the heart where true knowledge can be received.

In Islamic thought, the heart is not the seat of feelings and emotions,^[2] but of rūḥ (Arabic: روح): the immortal cognition, the rational soul.^[3]

Qalb (قَلْب) literally means to turn about. So what is the connection between “turn about” and “the heart”? When something turns about, it does not remain the same and so does our heart. Our feelings and thoughts change all the time and that is why it is called Qalb (قَلْب).

In the Quran, the word qalb is used more than 130 times.^{[citation needed]}

Stages of taming qalb

Qalb also refers to the second among the six purities or Lataif-e-sitta in Sufi philosophy. To attend Tasfiya-e-Qalb, the Salik needs to achieve the following sixteen goals.

1. Zuhd or abstention from evil
2. Taqwa or God-consciousness
3. War’ a or attempt to get away from things that are not related to Allah.
4. Tawakkul or being content with whatever Allah gives
5. Sabır or patience regarding whatever Allah Subhanahu wa ta’âlâ does
6. Şukr or gratefulness for whatever Allah gives
7. Raza or seeking the happiness of Allah
8. Khauf or fear of Allah’s wrath
9. Rija or hope of Allah’s blessing
10. Yaqeen or complete faith in Allah
11. Ikhlas or purity of intention
12. Sidq or bearing the truth of Allah
13. Muraqabah or total focus on Allah
14. Khulq or humbleness for Allah
15. Dhikr or remembrance of Allah
16. Khuloot or isolation from everyone except Allah

—————————————————–

HEALING OF THE HEART WITH THE MEDICINE OF ZIKR, -Lecture by Sultan ul Awliya Shaykh Muhammad Nazim Adil Al Haqqani Q.S (Alyaa Rehma), Lecture dated 01.07.1983, Lefke, Cyprus

Dit delen:

– The Vision of Heavenly Harmony

Biological life is now thought to have appeared on this planet not long after its formation. It seems that the bacterial reeds for the process may have flown in on the tail of a cornet or meteor. Speculation is again rife about life under the surface of Mars, on jupiter’s icy moon Europa and indeed anywhere the sacred substance of liquid water is known to exist.

(Earth Matters) Plant growth is governed by the Fibonacci sequence, which can be understood as a law of accumulation. The role of the Fibonacci sequence in the growth of plants is an intriguing example of the unifying order behind all creation. These patterns exist at all levels and permeate the universe, reminding us that the same swirling energy is shaping, sunflowers, whirlpools, spinning galaxies, and our own DNA.

The science of the cosmos has changed irnmeasurably since the (Greek and medieval vision of circles of planetary spheres. But with great cosmic schemes out of fashion, and with dragons and unicorns dismissed, the Earth has become a modern mystery.

No modem theory exists to explain the miracle of conscious life nor the cosmic “coincidences” which surround our planet. Why do the Sun and Moon appear the same size in the sky? There are ancient answers to such questions, however, and these invoke liberal arts like music and geometry. See Geometry of Human Life ,Geometry of pants, and Geometry of zoology

This suggests there is fundamental relationships between space, time and life which have not yet been understood or forgotten. These days we scan the skies listening for intelligent radio signals and looking for remote planets a little like our own. Meanwhile, our closest planetary neighbours are making the most exquisite patterns around us, in space and in time and no scientist has yet explained why. Is it all just a coincidence or do the patterns perhaps explain the scientists’s educated ignorance without wisdom?

– Dance of Planets:

Ujjwal Suryakant Rane from India says :” A picture is worth a thousand words and an animation? . . . probably as many pictures! That’s what this channel uses – graphics and animation – to deliver core concepts in Physics, Math, Engineering and Astronomy. Such geometric/graphical approach results in an intuitive and deeper understanding, that is retained better. Used in classrooms and in one to one sessions at levels ranging from middle school to engineering, this approach yielded success in both India and the United States over a period of 24 years.

I f you want to learn more look here

• The kiss of Venus

Venus and Earth form a beautiful Spirograph pattern with their orbits. The pattern of Venus around the Earth portrays a 5-petalled rose when viewed from the geocentric position. This beautiful pattern reveals the essence of Venus in her role of celestial guardian of love and beauty to those of us here on Earth. Have a look…

Other than the Sun and Moon, the brightest point in the sky is Venus, morning and evening star. She is our closest neighbour, ldssing us every 584 days as she passes between us and the Sun. Each time one of these kisses occurs the Sun, Venus and the Earth line up two-fifths of a circle further around the starry zodiacal circle so pentagram of conjunctions is drawn. Seen from Earth the Sun moves round the zodiac white Venus whirls around the Sun drawing an astonishing pattern over exactly eight years (99.9%) (01 thirteen Venusian-years (99_9%)). Small loops are made when Venus in her dazzling kiss seerns briefly to reverse direction against the background Stars (shown below as seen from Earth).

Notice the Fibonnacci numbers we have just met, 5, 8 and 13. The periods of Earth and Venus are also loosely related as 1.618:1 (99.6%). This `phi’-fold nature of Venus and Earth’s dance extends to their closest and furthest distances from each other. Opposite we see Venus’ perigee and apogee defined by two pentagrams, 2.618:1 (99.9%). All these diagrams also apply to Venus’ experience of Earth.

If you want more look Here

Modern astronomers peer at distant galaxies, but know that they have lost track of human meaning. We are here concerned with what is seen and experienced within our local region of space; and have argued that, using modern observations to four or even five-figure accuracy, we are in some way re-gaining a Pythagorean/Platonic view. Twenty-five centuries ago, Greeks took the word Kosmos which meant beauty, as in ‘cosmetic’, and applied it to the universe. Heracleitos the ancient Greek philosopher wrote, in that century:
‘For those who are awake the cosmos is one and common, but those who sleep turn away each into a private world. We should not speak and act like sleeping men.’

Herakleitos lived circa 545BC to 485BC – exactly at the time Greek civilisation began to rise towards its Golden Age. But Herakleitos was not a great statesman or soldier or sculptor; he looked at the world without wanting to change it or bring it under his control or make beautiful stone images of it. He simply wanted to understand it. So he thought about it: how things come to be and how things pass away…and he saw that nothing is really separate at all – all matter, everywhere, simply changes form, in an endless cycle of transformation. What we experience as individual forms are but fleeting interlocking brush strokes in a picture too big for our normal human vision to grasp. Herakleitos, though, did grasp this mystic vision of unity. And he intuitively understood that every brush stroke in the picture can only occur if there is an underlying unseen pattern. This pattern he called the Logos. Observing that human problems and failures are caused by living separately, and thus out of harmony with Logos to the attention of all. The methods he chose were the methods anyone might resort to when describing something previously unknown: similes, riddles, metaphors, aphorisms, allegories and…when those failed, browbeating and exasperated criticism! Herakleitos’ own words are the starting place as the reader is taken on a voyage of discovery through philosophy and physics, through time and space, through human behaviour and consciousness – to arrive at a new vision of the nature of reality.. Look here Herakleitos : Logos Made Manifest

Read here: Heraclitus on Logos Language, Rationality and the Real; and DE BETEKENIS VAN LOGOS BIJ HERAKLEITOS VOLGENS DE TRADITIE ( Dutch)

The Logos of the Greek is the same as the Viritas of Hildegard of Bingen: the greening power of the Divine:

An acclaimed geometer explores the fundamental connections between space, time, and life that have not yet been fully understood.

A most unusual guide to the solar system, A Little Book of Coincidence suggests that there may be fundamental relationships between space, time, and life that have not yet been fully understood. From the observations of Ptolemy and Kepler to the Harmony of the Spheres and the hidden structure of the solar system, John Martineau reveals the exquisite orbital patterns of the planets and the mathematical relationships that govern them. A table shows the relative measurements of each planet in eighteen categories, and three pages show the beautiful dance patterns of thirty six pairs of planets and moons. Read Here

The essential pocket guide to the marriage of the Sun and the Moon. Read here

The principles of the universal order are traced through the religiophilosophical reasoning of how Being emerged from non-Being, and how original Unity gave birth to an inexhaustible multiplicity. Here explore specifically the generative “move” from unity to triplicity and quadrature, seen as a central cosmogonic paradigm of simultaneous proliferation and synthesis. The move is explored in a variety of contexts and manifestations.

The first trace of this move unfolds the metaphysial order, which is then traced in the cosmic order, which is in turn traced in the architectural order.

Spatially, the move refers to the deployment of space from a central point along the three axes of what the French philosopher and metaphysician René Guénon describes as the “threedimensional cross.” This study shows how this conception formed the cornerstone of spatial sensibility in premodern Islam. It also shows how the manifold manifestations and interrelatedness of this primary spatial order unfold a complex web of meanings and intricate patterns of correspondence that at once govern the world and materialize the order inscribed in the divine exemplar…. Read more here: Cosmology in Sufism and Islam

The classic study of the cosmological principles found in the patterns of Islamic art and how they relate to sacred geometry and the perennial philosophy. Read here

• Frisian Heart , epitrochoid, mill, craft

An example of an epitrochoid appears in Dürer’s work Instruction in measurement with compasses and straight edge(1525). He called them spider lines because the lines he used to construct the curves looked like a spider.

These curves were studied by la Hire, Desargues, Leibniz, Newton and many

Epitrochoids are geometric curves traced by a point on a smaller circle rolling around the outside of a larger fixed circle. In the Middle Ages, these curves emerged in Ptolemaic astronomy as mathematical models for planetary motion, particularly in explaining retrograde loops via epicycles on deferents.

Around 210 BCE, Apollonius of Perga formalized epicycles—small orbits on larger deferents—that produce epitrochoid-like paths to model planets’ apparent retrograde motion from Earth’s geocentric view. Ptolemy’s 2nd-century CE Almagest refined this system, influencing medieval Islamic and European scholars like Al-Battani and Sacrobosco.

Epitrochoid shapes found limited but notable applications outside astronomy in medieval contexts, primarily in mechanical devices and mathematical modeling rather than widespread practical use. Their geometric properties—curves generated by a point on a rolling circle outside a fixed one—influenced early engineering and artisanal designs, though explicit references remain scarce before the Renaissance.

Mechanical Devices
The Antikythera mechanism (c. 100 BCE, known through medieval copies and study) incorporated epicyclic gears producing epitrochoid paths to simulate planetary positions and predict eclipses, extending beyond pure astronomy into calendrical computation. Medieval Islamic scholars like Al-Biruni adapted similar gear trains for astrolabes, where epitrochoid-like motions calibrated dials for timekeeping and navigation.

Geometry and Crafts
In pure mathematics, epitrochoids appeared in studies of roulettes by medieval European and Islamic geometers, such as in Campanus of Novara’s 13th-century work on cycloids, inspiring symbolic knotwork and tracery in Gothic rose windows that mimicked looped curves. Craftsmen used rudimentary compasses to approximate epitrochoids for ornamental metalwork and tile patterns in mosques, evoking infinite loops akin to your interest in sacred knots.

Engineering Precursors
Water wheels and early millsas we find it in Frieland and in medieval monasteries employed epicyclic motion for irregular grinding paths, prefiguring epitrochoids in cam designs, though formalized later in clockworks by Richard of Wallingford (c. 1320s). These applications bridged astronomy’s legacy to practical mechanics, emphasizing uniform circularity as a divine principle.

See The wisdom of Frisian Craftmanship and The Frisian Thread of Wisdom

– Prometheus, Narcissus and AI (artificial intelligence)

The ancient Greek myths of Prometheus and Narcissus appear to have been resurrected in Renaissance thought, and for this reason they share a common impulse with humanism, which defines the human individual by what is horizontal and relative rather than what is vertical and Absolute.

These two myths provide an instrumental allegory of the New Age Movement and the Human Potential Movement as they bring to light the inner workings of the human psyche in a way that is congruent with the teachings of all times and places. We recall that it was Prometheus who
revolted against the Heavens to steal fire from Zeus, and Narcissus who became self- possessed with his own egoity through his reflection in the forest pool.

These two impulses—the first, a rebellion against all norms, including spiritual authority, and the second, an all-consuming self-absorption that imprisons the individual within their own self-image to the degree that it negates the very existence of the other—are expressions of the inversion of the human condition that have become everyday diagnosable criteria. As a result it has been declared that: “Modern [and postmodern] Western man understands himself according to the paradigm of Prometheus, a creature of Earth who has rebelled against Heaven” (Nasr & Jahanbegloo 2010:xix). Coupled with the following observation, one can see their significant roles in shaping the contemporary milieu: “Self-absorption defines the moral climate of contemporary society . . . . Narcissism has become one of the central themes of American culture” (Lasch 1978:25). Few would argue that rebelliousness and self-absorption are two defining characteristics of the New Age and the Human Potential Movement—if not the globalizing West as a whole.
The emergence of the Human Potential Movement is inseparable from the New Age Movement, as both emerged during the milieu of the 1960s counterculture. Some hold them to be synonymous with one other, yet this is not entirely the case as they do appear to have noticeable diff erences. The passage of time has been a testimony to their deep-rooted effect upon the collective psyche, one which is still palpable today. What is interesting is that both of these movements… Read here :Prometheus and Narcissus in the Shadows of the Human Potential Movement by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos

• AI (artificial intelligence) has always plagued mankind – By Jacob Howland – UnHerd

Technological arrogance brought about our Fall

Why are the countries of the West sliding toward electronically enhanced totalitarianism? Was it inevitable that government employees and corporate technicians wielding digital and psychological tools would promote a false conspiracy theory to cripple a sitting American president, and suppress and discredit news to aid a favoured candidate? Or that public health officials in Europe and the English-speaking world would use what may have been the deliberate release of a Chinese bioweapon to infringe civil liberties and hijack representative democracy?

Many factors have contributed to this predicament. But the ultimate cause lies in human intelligence, the germ and sap of the great hard oak that is, or was, the West (it’s old now, and growing soft with rot). That intelligence is a curse as well as a blessing was clear enough to the ancient Greeks and Hebrews, whose oldest legends drew vital meaning from the black earth, the primordial fundament of early human experience.

The origin myths of Genesis and Hesiod explain how the first human beings, wanting more, broke with God or the gods. It was a kind of primitive artificial intelligence that caused this quarrel: the combination of art and artifice that has always characterised the schemes of the human mind. Impelled not just by need, but by ungoverned desires, we came to rely on cunning deception and the use of tools to imitate things and living beings — skills that have always been essential, for example, in hunting, fishing, and warfare. The myths also teach that each advance — fossil-fuel power plants, for example, or the free-for-all of the internet — produces real or perceived problems that invite increasingly large-scale scientific and political “solutions”.

Seen in this light, recent developments such as the rush of American and European governments to transition to clean energy and electric vehicles, the emerging threat of a stealthy, two-pronged attack by electronic as well as biological viruses, the extensive manipulations or “nudges” of post-modern technocracy, and the employment of AI for the purpose of “information warfare”, are entirely unsurprising.

Hesiod tells a story from the Golden Age, before poverty, sickness and death came into the world, and gods and men (there were no women then) feasted together. The Titan Prometheus was the priestly master of ceremonies, in charge of dividing and distributing meat to the two parties, mortals and immortals. This office suited his presumably impartial nature: he was a god, but a philanthropic one with a recognisably human mind. In fact, he is not easily distinguished from man himself. Prometheus means Forethought, yet he saw only what was visible in the blaze of his cleverness. This is why, in myth, his brother Epimetheus — Afterthought — follows him through the dark like a comet’s tail of foolishness, constantly spoiling his work with unintended consequences. Read more here

• Narcissus 2.0: The Narcissistic Trance and Modern Technology 

The effect of TV – the ‘message’ of TV – is quite independent of the programme. That is, there is a huge technology involved in TV which surrounds you, physically, and the effect of that huge service environment on you, personally, is vast. The effect of the programme is incidental.

Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the ‘content’ of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.  This is like the voice of the literate man, floundering in a milieu of ads, who boasts, ‘Personally, I pay no attention to ads.’  The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance.  As Blake knew, we become what we behold.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/UoCrx0scCkM?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=nl&autohide=2&wmode=transparentA great man. The dialogue gets more poignant as time goes on and the more questions are asked. We have the great privilege of looking back at his words now in the light of an entirely new medium; the internet. Bear in mind he said all of this before the internet was a medium that existed. read here

Marshall McLuhan is widely regarded as the father of communications and media studies and a prophet of the information age. The above article is an excerpt from his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. To find out more about his work, please click here.

look also: Prometheus, Narcissus and AI (artificial intelligence)

• Conclusion: All the world is awhirl but the machine is against it

“Everything is whirling.” The first time that we heard the master the Grandsheikh Sultan Muhammad Nazim al Haqqani an-Naqshbandi say these words, we did not understand them. It would take years to see the truth hidden in that deceptively simple teaching. “Our soul is whirling in a completely different dimension, but even here every atom is whirling,” he says. He expands on the idea, pointing to the rotation of the earth itself, that of the moon trapped in orbit around it, and the two spinning around the sun. “Even the Milky Way is turning,”

At the heart of his whirling practice is the seeking of the divine. Explaining one of the key tenets of Sufism he says: “In the Sufi way we are not speaking, but we try to listen to our hearts.” He believes this is something that all religions have in common, and that buried under our grasping for material wealth and worldly success, everyone has the spark of the divine, the ability to love unconditionally and fully. “You look to our essence, and you will see all love leads to one unity,” he says.

Though he says his religion acknowledges only one God – Allah – he believes that every religion has something in common which is the belief that every human being is beloved to God. When we look in the mirror, we recognize our reflection is an illusion, similarly the physical body itself is a reflection of our spiritual, secret selves. The goal of the practice is to connect once again with the sacred spirit within. “Nobody needs to learn how to whirl,” he says, “you are already whirling.”

the act of whirling is a request for connection and love with the divine, but even as the whirler receives this love, he gives it away, freely and joyfully. The notion will resonate with those familiar with the Buddhist practice of Metta Bhavana or loving kindness. This love is his religion’s response to all the turmoil in the world. He says such practices, like honey, are both nourishing to the spirit and profoundly healing. He describes the veils that prevent us from seeing clearly, and says that whirling is a door, an active form of meditation, that allows a pure connection with God. He describes what he feels when he is whirling both as being embraced by a divine presence, and as the self simply melting away.

In traditional civilizations, there was no division between the sacred and the secular in labor. Every craft, from carpentry to stonemasonry, was infused with symbolic meaning. The tools themselves—like the compass, the square, or the chisel—served as metaphors for universal truths. The craftsman, through repeated and intentional action, participated in the divine act of creation.

Work and contemplation were not separate in traditional societies. A craftsman worked not just with his hands but also with an awareness of the symbolic and spiritual meaning of his work.

The tool, the material, and the process had symbolic dimensions. For instance, in masonry or metalwork, the transformation of raw material symbolized the transformation of the soul.

Initiation and Guilds

Guénon emphasized the role of initiatic craft guilds—especially in the West, such as medieval masonry guilds—which preserved esoteric teachings and transmitted initiatic knowledge through symbols, rituals, and oral transmission.

These guilds were structured hierarchically and transmitted cosmological knowledge embedded in tools, geometry, architecture, and ritual.

The compass and square, for example, symbolized heaven and earth or spirit and matter.

The architecture of temples or cathedrals followed sacred geometry, aligning physical structures with cosmic principles.

Degeneration in Modernity

Guénon argued that in modern times, the loss of sacred and symbolic understanding has led to the degeneration of crafts into mere technical skills, disconnected from their metaphysical roots.

This reflects his larger thesis: modernity is a descent into materialism, fragmentation, and loss of spiritual orientation””. The disappearance of guilds, desacralization of labor, and mass industrialization exemplify this decline.

The Frisian Heart reprent this wisdom with all his craftmanship. Concious or unconcious they kept their craftmaship , the Frisian Freedom and the “Thing” a very long time in life

If we are open to the whirling of life , we have to accept or recognize that we are ignorant  of our own ignorance . without the guiding principle of the One , we shall collapse as the machine  shall sure do very soon.

It shall  become an desastrous apocalypse  and not a joyfull  Revelation. see Perspectives on the End of Times

But if we listen  to the wisdom of the past , we see that the Frisian  Heart can help us  to live a sincere and loving life, in little communities,  listening to the Nature and the One God , becoming a real  humanbeing using fully the potential   given by God.

•  To be the child of God is to be loved, liked, and completely cared for.
• So how can you live in response to God’s word? How can you get out of the mindset of an orphan? You must have faith that God is who he says he is and believe he will do what he’s promised to do. Romans 10:17 says that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” You have heard the word of the Lord today. You are his child. He promises to provide for you. So have faith! Faith isn’t something you just conjure up. It’s a response to God’s faithfulness. God has and will be faithful to you. Allow his word to stir up faith within you today. Live in response to his promises and allow the peace and joy of being God’s child to lay an unshakable foundation for you today.

Goethe and his poem “Hegir” : Hijra

FROM Goethe, the “refugee” and his Message for our times

when one speaks of the Hijra one is not merely speaking of a journey from Mecca to Medina, or the starting point of a calendar;  but one is  also speaking of a new start for humanity. And Johann Wolfgang von Goethe make his Hijra, his emigration and take refuge in Islam. He became a “Refugee”.

The Hijra is symbolic of changing those conditions that cause problems and that clash with ideals and beliefs, as well as the search for new opportunities.

In this caravan poem, Goethe gives us a picture of the restless nomad existence which early Arabian poetry had enabled him to envision.

The whole “West-East Divan” is shot through with something of this nomadic restlessness. Already in the first great poem entitled “Hegir” the poet alludes to Arabian life and traditions. He is a True Pelgrim. He turns to the wisdom of the Sufis as Hafiz.

His own “Hedschra” is an inteliectual emigration to a simpler state of existence which seems to him to be purer and righter than his own immediate world. Thus he calls out to himself:

“Hegira”

North and South and West are quaking,

Thrones are cracking, empires shaking;

Let us free toward the East

Where as patriarchs we’ll feast:

There in loving, drinking, singing

Youth from Khidr’s well is springing.

Seeing rightly, seeing purely,

There I’ll penetrate most surely,

To the origin of nations,

When on earth the generation

Heard God’s words with human senses,

Heedless of their formal tenses.

When to fathers they gave honours

And rejected foreign manners;

I’ll rejoice in youth’s demotion:

Wider faith, narrower notion–

Words weighed then as value’s token

Since the word was one that’s spoken.

With the herdsmen I’ll go questing,

In oasis freshness resting,

Roam in caravans wide ranging

Coffee, shawls, and musk exchanging;

Every track my footstep traes

Through the sands to market-places.

On the mountain’s desolation

Hafis, you give consolation

When our guide, afraid of capture

High upon his mule in rapture

Sings, to set the stars a-blazing,

Startled thieves with dread amazing.

You at wells and inns I’ll ponder,

Holy Hafis, thinking fonder

When my love unveiled caresses,

Strewing fragrant amber tresses.

Yes, the poet’s whispered yearning

Even starts the Huris burning.

If your envy this despises,

Of belittles precious prizes,

Think awhile that poet’s diction

Is no commonplace of fiction,

Hovering soft in heaven’s portal

Life it seeks that is immortal.

 What the Emigration Demands of Us

Starting from a narrow family-tribal environment Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) underwent 13 years of hardship and torment in Meccan society; with the immigration (Hijra) to Medina, a new stage began. This stage, if one takes into consideration the time that it took all religions to spread, is the starting point of one of the fastest religious developments in recorded history. In this sense, when one speaks of the Hijra one is not merely speaking of a journey from Mecca to Medina, or the starting point of a calendar; one is speaking of a new start for humanity.

The Hijra is symbolic of changing those conditions that cause problems and that clash with ideals and beliefs, as well as the search for new opportunities.

The Hijra, as is expressed in a variety of verses, was extrication from a difficult and stressful situation with the aim to widen the belief and the ideals, and a search for new possibilities and new places. From this aspect, the Hijra is not something that was realized as part of a certain process or a completed historical event in the life of Muslims. The Hijra is symbolic of changing those conditions that cause problems and that clash with ideals and beliefs, as well as the search for new opportunities. Thus, the Hijra, which includes certain preconditions, is a moral duty and responsibility for every individual.

Prophet Muhammad placed the Hijra in the minds and hearts of the Islamic community with a hadith (Prophetic tradition) that expresses two basic interconnected matters.

The first is a general principle which, in particular, is considered to be one of the reference points in the evaluation of laws for Islamic jurists. This principle is connected to intentions in behavioral values, as it is the intention that gives behavior direction. As we know the Hijrawas the first and most important social movement of the young Islamic society.

As is to be expected with all social movements, it is only natural that there were people who had different intentions when participating in the emigration led by Prophet Muhammad. Prophet Muhammad drew attention to this situation and stated that those who performed the same action received different responses, each according to their intention. The matter expressed in the hadiths is concerned with a Meccan Muslim who had joined the emigration and come to Medina to marry the woman he loved. The ruling that Prophet Muhammad gave concerning this person can be considered to be a universal principle compulsory for all Muslims to take into account when performing an action.

Prophet Muhammad said: “Actions are according to intentions, whoever emigrates to Allah and His Prophet, that emigration is to Allah and His Prophet, whoever emigrates to marry a woman, his emigration is to marry a woman...” The idea of actions and behavior being judged according to intention is the clearest and most immutable rule that stands against those who desire to hide their personal or prosaic intents behind ideals and virtues.

The most important principle to learn from the Hijra is the constant observation of intention. In particular, Sufis consider the constant observation and control of intent to be a basic principle for attaining ikhlas (sincerity). From this aspect, Sufism can be considered to be a total investigation and interrogation of intention.

In other words, the thing that determines the value of a person’s action is the intention, and nothing else. In this direction, the most important principle to learn from the Hijra is the constant observation of intention. In particular, Sufis consider the constant observation and control of intent to be a basic principle for attaining ikhlas (sincerity). From this aspect, Sufism can be considered to be a total investigation and interrogation of intention.

There is another dimension to the hadiths; in particular, this aspect is widely interpreted by the Sufis. In the above hadith, Prophet Muhammad said “Whoever emigrates to Allah and the Prophet.” The Sufis carefully emphasize the phrase “Emigration to Allah and His Prophet.” What does emigration to Allah mean? Here, while speaking the emigration to Medina, the direction is changed and the Prophet speaks of “emigration to Allah and His Prophet”. This approach alone gives the possibility that the Hijra is something that every Muslim can repeat over and over again. While the emigration to Medina was a historical event, emigration to Allah and His Prophet is not limited by history or location, and thus is always possible.

In this sense Hijra gains a meaning that is parallel to the Sufi term of tawba, adding a wider interpretation to the Hijra. The general meaning of tawba (repentance) means “to repent of a sin and to decide not to repeat the sin.” The Sufis have added a special meaning to this general definition; tawba has come to mean “turning” and is thought of as an action. But, what are people turning to? To find the answer to this question we need to contemplate the question of where do people go when they sin and why they are considered to have left somewhere. When people sin, they distance themselves from Allah and they are left with their nafs. Sufis see the nafs and its desires as something that straitens people and limits them. In contrast to this, repentance turns people back to Allah; that is, it turns them to the wide expanse of the divine after the straits of the nafs and its desires. In this situation tawba and hijra take on the same meaning. Thus, for Sufis, the Hijra is the action that every person constantly experiences, internally and externally. People emigrate from bad actions and evil morals to virtues and good behavior. In this situation the emigration is towards Allah, and in response Allah turns to us.

Thus, there are two important principles or duties that the Hijra demands of us.

The first is to constantly control our intentions; we must establish our “personal place and stance”. Everyone is responsible only for their own intentions and actions, and it is these same intentions and actions that will save them.

The second principle is to remove the connection of the Hijra with actual places and times. Hijra is a turning and a change in the mind, belief, action or morals; everybody can do this at any time and in any place.

See more info : Seven Levels of Beings

• Feast of the Ass

The Feast of the Ass (Latin: Festum Asinorum, asinaria festa; French: Fête de l’âne) was a medieval, Christian feast observed on 14 January, celebrating the Flight into Egypt. It was celebrated primarily in France, as a by-product of the Feast of Fools celebrating the donkey-related stories in the Bible, in particular the donkey bearing the Holy Family into Egypt after Jesus’s birth.^[1]

This feast mLord of Misruleay represent a Christian adaptation of the pagan feast, Cervulus, integrating it with the donkey in the nativity story.^[2] In connection with the biblical stories, the celebration was first observed in the 11th century, inspired by the pseudo-Augustinian Sermo contra Judaeos c. 6th century.

In the second half of the 15th century, the feast disappeared gradually, along with the Feast of Fools, which was stamped out around the same time. It was not considered as objectionable as the Feast of Fools. ^{Read more Here}

here the concert René Clemencic – La Fête de L’ Âne : Procession (IV)

• Lord of Misrule

In England, the Lord of Misrule – known in Scotland as the Abbot of Unreason and in France as the Prince des Sots – was an officer appointed by lot during Christmastide to preside over thttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOJ0OrqyiZohe Feast of Fools. The Lord of Misrule was generally a peasant or sub-deacon appointed to be in charge of Christmas revelries, which often included drunkenness and wild partying. In the spirit of misrule, identified by the grinning masks in the corners, medieval floor tiles from the Derby Black Friary show a triumphant hunting hare mounted on a dog.

The Church in England held a similar festival involving a boy bishop.^[1] This custom was abolished by Henry VIII in 1541, restored by the Catholic Mary I and again abolished by Protestant Elizabeth I, though here and there it lingered on for some time longer.^[2] On the Continent it was suppressed by the Council of Basel in 1431, but was revived in some places from time to time, even as late as the eighteenth century. In the Tudor period, the Lord of Misrule (sometimes called the Abbot of Misrule or the King of Misrule)^[1] is mentioned a number of times by contemporary documents referring to revels both at court and among the ordinary people.^[3][4][5]

Boy bishop is the title of a tradition in the Middle Ages, whereby a boy was chosen, for example among cathedral choristers, to parody the adult Bishop, commonly on the feast of Holy Innocents on 28 December. This tradition links with others, such as the Feast of Fools and the Feast of Asses.

• Feast “Holy Innocents”
• The Massacre of the Innocents is the incident in the nativity narrative of the Gospel of Matthew (2:16–18) in which Herod the Great, king of Judea, orders the execution of all male children two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem. The Catholic Church regards them as the first Christian martyrs, and their feast – Holy Innocents’ Day (or the Feast of the Holy Innocents) – is celebrated on 28 December.^[3] A majority of Herod biographers, and “probably a majority of biblical scholars,” hold the event to be myth, legend, or folklore.^[4]

The commemoration of the massacre of the Holy Innocents, traditionally regarded as the first Christian martyrs, if unknowingly so,^[20][b] first appears as a feast of the Western church in the Leonine Sacramentary, dating from about 485. The earliest commemorations were connected with the Feast of the Epiphany, 6 January: Prudentius mentions the Innocents in his hymn on the Epiphany. Leo in his homilies on the Epiphany speaks of the Innocents. Fulgentius of Ruspe (6th century) gives a homily De Epiphania, deque Innocentum nece et muneribus magorum (“On Epiphany, and on the murder of the Innocents and the gifts of the Magi”).^[c]

Today, the date of Holy Innocents’ Day, also called the Feast of the Holy Innocents or Childermas or Children’s Mass, varies. It is 27 December for West Syrians (Syriac Orthodox Church, Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, and Maronite Church) and 10 January for East Syrians (Chaldeans and Syro-Malabar Catholic Church), while 28 December is the date in the Church of England (Festival),^[21] the Lutheran Church and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. In these latter Western Christian denominations, Childermas is the fourth day of Christmastide.^[22] The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates the feast on 29 December.^[23]

From the time of Charlemagne, Sicarius of Bethlehem was venerated at Brantôme, Dordogne as one of the purported victims of the Massacre.^[24]

In the Roman Rite, the 1960 Code of Rubrics prescribed the use of the red vestments for martyrs in place of the violet vestments previously prescribed on the feast of the Holy Innocents. The feast continued to outrank the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas until the 1969 motu proprio Mysterii Paschalis replaced this Sunday with the feast of the Holy Family.

In the Middle Ages, especially north of the Alps, the day was a festival of inversion involving role reversal between children and adults such as teachers and priests, with boy bishops presiding over some church services.^[25] Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens suggest that this was a Christianized version of the Roman annual feast of the Saturnalia (when even slaves played “masters” for a day). In some regions, such as medieval England and France, it was said to be an unlucky day, when no new project should be started.^[26]

There was a medieval custom of refraining where possible from work on the day of the week on which the feast of “Innocents Day” had fallen for the whole of the following year until the next Innocents Day. Philippe de Commynes, the minister of King Louis XI of France tells in his memoirs how the king observed this custom, and describes the trepidation he felt when he had to inform the king of an emergency on the day.^[27]

In Spain, Hispanic America, and the Philippines,^[28] December 28 is still a day for pranks, equivalent to April Fool’s Day in many countries. Pranks (bromas) are also known as inocentadas and their victims are called inocentes; alternatively, the pranksters are the “inocentes” and the victims should not be angry at them, since they could not have committed any sin. One of the more famous of these traditions is the annual “Els Enfarinats” festival of Ibi in Alacant, where the inocentadas dress up in full military dress and incite a flour fight.^[29]

Massacre of the Innocents (Bruegel):

See also Bruegel Tales of Winter – The Art of Snow and Ice

Bruegel: an Interpreter of Ultimate Reality and Meaning

• Tudor Lord of isrule: How Edward VI Resurrected a Raucous Christmas Tradition

Antiquary John Stowe wrote of the popular Medieval tradition of the Lord of Misrule, explaining that:

“In the feast of Christmas, there was in the King’s house, wheresoever he was lodged, a Lord of Misrule, or Master of merry disports, and the like had ye in the house of every noble man of honour, or good worship, were he spiritual or temporal.”

He went on to explain that the Mayor of London and his sheriff also had their Lords of Misrule and that these lords would begin their ‘rule’ and organise “the rarest pastimes to delight the beholders” on All Hallows Eve (Hallowe’en) and end their rule on the day after Candlemas Day, at the beginning of February. The revelry, Stowe explained, consisted of “fine and subtle disguisings, maskes and mummeries, with playing at cards for counters, nails and points in every house, more for pastimes than for gain.”

Oxford and Cambridge universities, and Lincoln’s Inn, would also appoint Lords of Misrule, as would the royal court, although their ‘rule’ tended to be limited to the 12 days of Christmas. Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch, continued the Medieval tradition, electing a Lord of Misrule for every Christmas of his reign. His son, Henry VIII, also embraced the tradition, going so far as to appoint a separate Lord of Misrule for the young Princess Mary’s household at Christmas, 1525. However, it was in the reign of Henry VIII’s son, the boy king Edward VI, that the tradition reached its zenith under the patronage of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who was Lord President of the Privy Council from 1550 to 1553. The tradition had declined in the latter years of Henry VIII’s reign – an ambassador to Edward VI’s court remarked in January 1552 that a Lord of Misrule had not been appointed for “15 or 16 years” – but it was resurrected with great gusto at the royal court in the Christmas seasons of 1551-1552 and 1552-1553, the final Christmases of Edward’s reign.

Portrait miniature of Edward by an unknown artist, c. 1543–46

While the king’s uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and former Lord Protector, languished in the Tower of London awaiting execution as a traitor to the crown, the Duke of Northumberland sought to distract and divert both king and court with a programme of entertainment and revelry for the 12 days of Christmas. In December 1551, Northumberland appointed George Ferrers, a lawyer, courtier, MP, former servant of Somerset and a poet of some renown, as Lord of Misrule. Sir Thomas Cawarden, Master of the Revels, was informed of the appointment and asked to do all he could to aid Ferrers. Cawarden, who may well have felt slighted by the appointment of Ferrers instead of himself, had to be spurred into action by letters of complaint from both Northumberland and Ferrers regarding his inaction and the quality of items he had provided. In Cawarden’s defence, he was expected to provide a long list of apparel and items at very short notice indeed.

Although the Revels Accounts in the Loseley Manuscript are incomplete, they do show that the revels of these two Christmas seasons took the tradition of Lord of Misrule to new heights. Never before had the Lord of Misrule entered the City of London in a huge and elaborate procession that mimicked the procession of a monarch. Ferrers demanded a large retinue which, in January 1553, included no fewer than six councillors, a ‘dizard’ (talkative fool), jugglers, tumblers, a divine, a philosopher, an astronomer, a poet, a physician, an apothecary, a master of requests, a civilian, friars, two gentleman ushers and “suche other” as he needed. The fools included the “Lord Misrule’s ape”, his “heir apparent” and children.
Both of Edward VI’s final Christmases were spent at Greenwich Palace, the 15th century abode situated on the bank of the River Thames. Ferrers made his entry to the royal court at the palace under a canopy, presumably like a royal canopy of estate, and in one piece of pageantry at court he appeared “out of the moon”.

On 2 January 1552, Ferrers presided over a drunken mask at court for which he was furnished with eight “visars” (perhaps vizards or masks), eight swords and daggers, headpieces decorated with serpents and clubs that were full of “pykes” (spikes). The Christmas festivities also included the “Tryumphe of Horsemen”, in which 18 answerers ran six courses each against the Earl of Warwick, Henry Sidney, Sir Henry Gates and Sir Henry Neville as challengers. “Rich hangings” from the “King’s timber houses” were cut up and used for 12 bards for the challengers’ great horses, and caparisons and trappings for their eight light horses. A mock Midsummer Night festival was held that night and the furnishing of “as many Counterfett harnesses & weapons as ye may spare and hobby horsses” suggests that the entertainment included a mock joust. According to the Revels Accounts, other entertainment over the Christmas period included a mask of “Greek worthyes”, a mask of apes, a mask of bagpipes, a mask of cats and “a mask of medyoxes, being half man, half deathe.”

Two masked revellers by Jacob de Gheyn, circa 1595. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum

On the night of 3 January 1552, there was a mock midsummer that required six hobby horses to be supplied, and then on 4 January the Lord of Misrule made his entry into the City of London. WR Streitberger points out that this entry was not only a parody of traditional royal entries into the capital but also “partly a burlesque of the power vested in royalty to dispense justice”. Diarist and merchant Henry Machyn gives a detailed contemporary account of Ferrers’ entry, writing of how Ferrers landed at Tower Wharf with a great number of young knights and gentlemen on horseback, “every man having a baldric of yellow and green about their necks”. They went first to Tower Hill, accompanied by a procession consisting of a standard of yellow and green silk with St George, guns and squibs, trumpet players, bagpipe players, flautists and other musicians, morris dancers, and the Lord of Misrule’s councillors in “gownes of chanabulle lyned with blue taffata and capes of the same”. Then came the Lord of Misrule, apparelled in a fur-trimmed cloth of gold gown, 50 men of the guard dressed in red and white, and a cart carrying a pillory, gibbet and stocks. The procession then made its way to the Cross at Cheapside where a great scaffold had been erected. There, a proclamation was made of Ferrers’ “progeny”, his “great household” and his “dignity”, before a beheading took place. Thankfully, it was a symbolic beheading; the ‘head’ of a hogshead of wine was “smitten out” for everyone to drink. After that, the Lord of Misrule enjoyed a sumptuous feast with the Lord Mayor before visiting the Lord Treasurer at Austin Friars and then taking a barge back from Tower Wharf to Greenwich.

As well as the pillory, gibbet and stocks described by Machyn as being part of the Lord of Misrule’s entry into London, the Revels Accounts list joints for a pair of stocks with hasps and staples, locks for the pillory and stocks, keys, manacles with a hanging locks, a “hedding ax” and “hedding block”. As well as symbolising the power of the monarch – or the Lord of Misrule at Christmas – to dispense justice, these items and the scaffold at Cheapside my well have alluded to the forthcoming execution of the Duke of Somerset.

On Twelfth Night 1552, a tourney was held during the day, and that evening, following a play performed by the King’s Players, there was a contest or feat of arms between Youth and Riches, with them arguing over which of them was better. It is thought to have been devised by Sir Thomas Chaloner, the statesman and poet. Sir Anthony Browne, Lord Fitzwater, Ambrose Dudley, Sir William Cobham and two other men fought on Youth’s side against Lord Fitzwarren, Sir Robert Stafford and four others on the side of Riches. “All these fought two to two at barriers in the hall. Then came in two apparelled like Almains [Germans]. The Earl of Ormonde and Jacques Granado, and two came in like friars, but the Almains would not suffer them to pass till they had fought. The friars were Mr Drury and Thomas Cobham.” It is not clear whether this contest between Germans (Protestants) and Catholic friars was, in fact, devised to ridicule the Catholic Church. This mock combat was followed by a mask of men and a mask of women, and then a banquet of 120 dishes. “This was the end of Christmas”, is how the account ends.

Two masked musicians perform for a noblewoman, by Jacob de Gheyn, circa 1595. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum

The allusion to the Duke of Somerset’s scheduled execution was not the only controversial element of the Lord of Misrule’s programme of entertainment that year. Jehan Scheyfve, the imperial ambassador, recorded what he obviously saw as an anti-papist display. According to Scheyfve, a procession of mock priests and bishops “paraded through the Court, and carried, under an infamous tabernacle, a representation of the holy sacrament in its monstrance, which they wetted and perfumed in most strange fashion, with great ridicule of the ecclesiastical estate”. He wasn’t the only one upset about this affront to the Catholic Church; he wrote that “Not a few Englishmen were highly scandalised by this behaviour; and the French and Venetian ambassadors, who were at Court at the time, showed clearly enough that the spectacle was repugnant to them”. One can only assume, however, that the king was happy with this procession and the programme of festivities, for, as historian Jennifer Loach points out, the Revels Accounts show that the king took an active involvement in directing the entertainment and that changes were often made as “declared and commaunded by his highenes or his pryvie counsell” in order “to serve the kinge and his counsells pleasure and determinacion”. The King’s Printer, Richard Grafton, in writing about how well Ferrers was received at court as the Lord of Misrule, commented that he was “very well liked… But best of al by the yong king himselfe, as appered by his princely liberalitie in rewarding that service.” Ferrers was rewarded for his service with a payment of £50 from Northumberland and in September 1552 was appointed as Lord of Misrule for the 1552-1553 Christmas season.

The Christmas season of 1552-1553 began on with Ferrers sending his “solemn ambassador” to court, accompanied by a herald, trumpeter, “an orator speaking in a straunge language” and an interpreter. The ambassador’s mission was to speak to the king and ask for an audience for the Lord of Misrule. This audience was granted and the next day, Ferrers travelled to court along the Thames in the king’s brigantine, which was decorated in blue and white, escorted by other vessels and boys dressed as Turks and playing drums. At Greenwich, he was met by Sir George Howard, the Lord of Misrule’s Master of the Horse, who had come with a horse for Ferrers and who was accompanied by four pages of honour carrying Ferrers’ headpiece, shield, sword and axe. Ferrers writes of how he had taken Hydra, the serpent with seven heads, as his coat of arms, a holly bush as his crest and ‘Semper ferians’ (always keeping the holiday) as his motto.

Entertainments over Christmas and New Year included a pageant in which Ferrers emerged from “vastum vacuum” (a vast airy space), which must have been some kind of pageant car; a feat of arms; a mock midsummer show and joust of hobby horses, presumably like the previous year; a day of hunting and hawking, and masks of “covetus men with longe noses”, “women of Diana hunting”, “babions faces of tinsel black and tawny”, “pollenders”, “matrons” as well as soldiers.

University of Leicester Special Collections. ‘Lord of Misrule’ from: William Sandys, Christmastide: its History, Festivities and Carols, (London, [1852], SCM 12913.Ferrers ordered five different suits of apparel via Cawarden for the festive season: one to wear on both his entry to court and his entry into London, two for the next “hallowed daies”, another for New Year and a final one for Twelfth Night. He also ordered a fool’s coat and hood for John Smith, who was playing the Lord of Misrule’s “heir apparent”, a hunting costume consisting of a coat of cloth of gold decorated with red and green checkerwork, a cloth of gold hat decorated with green leaves, and six sets of outfits complete with horns for his attendants. Other items included “Irish apparel” for both a man and woman, costumes for members of his retinue, maces for his sergeant-at-arms, and hobby horses, one of which he ordered to be made with three heads.

Henry Machyn records the Lord of Misrule’s entry into London on 4 January 1553, writing that he was met at Tower Wharf by the Sheriff’s Lord of Misrule, who took a sword and bore it before Ferrers, who was dressed in royal purple velvet furred with ermine, his “robe braided with spangulls of selver full”. Ferrers was accompanied by a large retinue dressed in a livery of blue and white. As well as musicians, fools and morris dancers, there were once again gaolers armed with a pillory, stocks, an axe, shackles and bolts, and prisoners, presumably actors, who were “fast by the leges and sum by the nekes”. They processed through Gracechurch Street and Cornhill, and once again made their way to a scaffold. After a proclamation had been made, Ferrers gave the Sheriff’s Lord of Misrule a gown of gold and silver before knighting him. The two Lords of Misrule toasted each other and as they proceeded onwards, Ferrers’ cofferer distributed silver and gold. The day ended with a feast at the Lord Mayor’s home, a visit to the Sheriff’s house and a banquet course at the Lord Treasurer’s house.
Twelfth Night was celebrated with “The Triumph of Cupid, Venus and Mars”, which, according to Cawarden’s correspondence, was a play devised by Sir George Howard, who was also Master of the Henchmen. Enid Welsford believes that this play was an imitation of the Italian ‘trionfi’, a triumphal procession, and it appears that Venus did indeed enter in a triumphal chariot accompanied by a mask of ladies followed by the marshal and his band. Venus rescued Cupid from the marshal with some kind of mock combat, and at some point, Mars also made his triumphal entry. Thus ended the Twelve Days of Christmas. Once again, the King was pleased his Lord of Misrule and George Ferrers was granted an estate at Flamstead in Hertfordshire.

Although Sydney Anglo makes the point that few records survive detailing the Lord of Misrule’s entertainments in other years, we know from the accounts of Edward VI’s reign that £500 was spent on the revels of Christmas 1551-1552 and £400 on that of 1552-1553, compared to £150 in 1547-1548 and £11 in 1548-1549. The entertainment of George Ferrers’ time as Lord of Misrule was pageantry at its most lavish. Historian Ronald Hutton concludes that the spectacle of Ferrers’ entries into London, for example, “was one of the most elaborate in Tudor history”. It is a shame that the incomplete records only give us a tantalising glimpse into the revelry.

• Dance Away  Evil Spirits : Folklores of the Kukeri in Bulgaria, the Mamuthones in  Sardinia and St Georges in Europe

Return of Spring Sacrifice

The ancient custom of sacrificing divine kings is played out in both Bulgarian and Sardinian festivals in the Dionysian mode by distributing virtual fragments of their mutilated bodies over village fields, thus ensuring the return of a fertile spring. The tradition, which associates the sacrifice of the king or his children with a great scarcity of crops, points to the belief that the king is responsible for the weather and harvests. The spilled blood evokes rainfall for the parched earth, essential for collective survival. According to Frazer, when gods are killed, they take on the role of scapegoat, sweeping away disease, death, and sin from the community, and are eaten symbolically in order to be assimilated.

In the carnival enacted in Samugheo, Sardinia, a related character called S’urtzu-Dioniso, symbolizes the god to be sacrificed. He appears as a goat, which according to legend, is how Dionysus often appeared. Under the goat skin is a bladder filled with blood and water. When he is hit and falls, the bladder breaks and red blood soaks the ground. After this sacrifice, new life emerges.

Kukerovden, which translates as ‘Day of the Kukers’, is a Bulgarian mystery play within the festival, in which each player bears a strong symbolic connection to an archetypal aspect of nature. The Neolithic ritual is designed to bind heaven and earth together by telling a human story that echoes the greater, universal drama.

The wine-fueled Kukerovden ritual includes a tsar or king and a human couple along with a team of attendant kukeri. In an act of bawdy pantomime, the groom impregnates his bride as the kukeri charge, dance and interact with the crowd, jabbing, thrusting, and chasing girls with their long, red poles. Two kukeri are then yoked to a wooden plow, goaded by the tsar as they ritually till three concentric rings. The tsar scatters grain seeds symbolizing the sowing of fields.

The heated climax occurs when the tsar is struck down with the spindle of destiny. Raising his body announces the arrival of spring. By now the bride, a male disguised with kerchief and comically bulging dress is ready to give birth. When the child pops out, usually represented by an androgynous rag doll, the ceremony is complete.

The ritual seems to have originated as an initiation for young Kukeri, historically, boys and young bachelors. Through phallic thrusting and sowing movements. older men would convey the ways of the world and their community. Maimon is the name by which Dionysus is invoked in Sardinia. In Orotell, Maimones mime cultivation by dragging a plow behind them. The deep, indissoluble bond is indicated by ropes that bind the farmers to the yoke. It is no coincidence that Dionysus was especially adored by farmers who considered him the inventor of the plow and the one who had taught men how to lure oxen to ease their labour.

The Koukeri tradition recreates the connection between Nature and Man: earth – woman; ploughing the soil – taking the woman; sowing – inseminating; grain – semen; passing of winter – killing of the Tsar; coming of spring – the Tsar’s resurrection. The Koukeri’s moves bear the signs of sacral code: The stabbings with the red-painted swords represent the phallic copulation moves; the hopping and jumping are to make the wheat grow tall; the body swaying – to make the wheat sway with heavy grain; the rolling on the ground – for Man to take from Earth’s strength; the bells noise – to scare and chase away the evil spirits.

The Koukeri custom was part of the game cycle that prepared the young men for their future roles of husbands and land workers. It was an important rite-of-passage, which gave them the opportunity to learn about and experience life after marriage. A lad, who had not participated in the Koleda, Sourva and Koukeri games, would be considered a “second rate” marriage candidate, and would be put in the same group with the nwith the non-healthy and widowed men. He could only marry a “second rate’ woman – non-healthy, widowed, or one left by her husband.

The main actors of the Koukeri group are: a Tsar (king), a newly wedded couple or an elderly couple, koukeri. They have a chariot or a cart, in which they drive the Tsar around; a plough, with which they ritually till the soil; a wooden pot, full of grain, which the Tsar sows; wooden swords and a club, perceived as phallic symbols; a doll. Despite the regional variances, in the past, the ritual comprised the following sequence of actions: The Koukeri, only young single men, led by the Tsar, a man of respectable age and social standing – prosperous, with a family and children, gathered in the centre of the village, from where, with the musicians in front, they would go to all houses, offering blessings for health, fertility and prosperity. The Bride tries to sweep and clean up the front yard, but does it so clumsily that only causes disorder. The Hosts give the Koukeri food, wine and/ or money, and thank them cordially for the blessings. In turn, the Bride kisses the Host’s hand. After the house rounds have been completed, the Koukeri group, followed by villagers, return to the village square, where they perform their ancient ritual. First, they engage in a battle with the evil spirits by running around, waving arms and swords wildly, and making noise with their bells, thus chasing the evil forces away. The Groom / Old Man use the scuffle to “make love to and inseminate” the Bride / Old Woman. The Koukeri return from the battle and give their Tsar three pieces of bread. Then three circles of ritual ploughing take place. The Tsar walks behind the plough and sows grain, followed by the main group, who are jumping and waving their swords in the air. Upon completion of the tilling, the Tsar blesses the congregation for good health and prosperity, and is then killed by a Kouker. All Koukeri gather above him and resurrect him. The Bride/ Old Woman gives birth to a child, and the Koukeri celebrate with hopping and dancing. During the enactment of the custom, the Koukeri exchange jokes with the spectators. At the end, the Koukeri gather for a dinner with the food and wine, given to them by the villagers. It’s a joyous and elevating event.

In our days, the Koukeri Day is just a festive reminder of times gone by, a merry holiday, whose main importance is to gather people for a joyful celebration of life.

See also The archaic substratum of the end of year celebrations: the traditional significance of the 12 days between Christmas and the Epiphany

The Sardinian version of carnival is called Carrasecare,’meat carried in a cart to be dismembered’. But the term care does not mean meat for butchery, which is always called petta or petza. The term suggests human meat, revealing the arcane function of traditional Sardinia carnivals. Maskers continue to play out the roles, though with different intentions. They are sad events that require a victim or a stand-in effigy to be torn apart, incarnating the deity who had been eaten by Titans, then resurrected by his mother.

The cart also serves as the platform for enacting the consummation of the divine union between the Neolithic Great Mother and her consort-son in Bulgaria. They reappear in Minoan myth as either Demeter or Semele, depending upon the version, as the stand-in for the Great Mother and her consort- son, Dionysus in bull form, representing male virility.
Ensured through these mini-dramas is the fertility of the fields, fruit trees and grape vines, the source of the wine that keeps the excitement of the festivals alive. The magic of these long-repeated rituals seem to be regarded as guarantee for a rich harvest, health and fertility for humans and their domesticated animals with chaos subdued and evil spirits chased away. Read more here

• Nativity Fast

In Christianity, the Nativity Fast—or Fast of the Prophets in Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church—is a period of abstinence and penance practiced by the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Church and Catholic Church in preparation for the Nativity of Jesus on December 25.^[1] Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches commence the season on November 24 and end the season on the day of Ethiopian Christmas, which falls on January 7.

The corresponding Western season of preparation for Christmas, which also has been called the Nativity Fast^[2] and St. Martin’s Lent, has taken the name of Advent. The Eastern fast runs for 40 days instead of four (in the Roman Rite) or six weeks (Ambrosian Rite) and thematically focuses on proclamation and glorification of the Incarnation of God, whereas the Western Advent focuses on three comings (or advents) of Jesus Christ: his birth, reception of his grace by the faithful, and his Second Coming or Parousia.

The Byzantine fast is observed from November 15 to December 24, inclusively. These dates apply to the Eastern Catholic Churches, and Eastern Orthodox churches which use the Revised Julian calendar, which currently matches the Gregorian calendar. For those Eastern Orthodox churches which still follow the Julian calendar—the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Georgian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Macedonian Orthodox Church, Mount Athos, the Portuguese Orthodox Church, and all Old Calendarists, as well as some parishes of the Romanian Orthodox Church, of the Polish Orthodox Church, and of the Orthodox Church of America—the Winter Lent does not begin until November 28 (Gregorian) which coincides with November 15 on the Julian calendar. The Ancient Church of the East fasts dawn til dusk from December 1 until December 25 on the Gregorian calendar.

• January 14 is “Feast of the Ass” Day

• On January 14, medieval Christians celebrated Feast of the Ass Day, although perhaps not the type of “ass” you may be thinking of!  It actually celebrated the various accounts in the Bible where a donkey (or ass) is mentioned, especially the one that supposedly carried Mary and the baby Jesus to Egypt.

Digging Deeper

Not surprisingly, like many or even most Christian holidays, the Feast of the Ass had its origins in Paganism, being derived from the religious feast called Cervulus.

Flight into Egypt by Gentile da Fabriano

During this bestial-based holy day, a ceremony often took place in which a girl with a baby (or a pregnant girl) was led through a village on a donkey, followed by churchgoers answering the priest with “hee-haws” during the related church service or Mass.  In some accounts, the priest himself would bray. 

Amazingly, this nifty holiday fell out of favor around 1500 along with its sister feast, the Feast of Fools.  Apparently some thought the titles and actions of these two celebrations were less than “Christian.” 

Perhaps they should bring this particular feast back and give people a valid excuse, at least one day a year, to make an “ass” / donkey of themselves and ourselves in church or everywhere else in life outside. 

• Landscape as an Image of the Pilgrimage of Life :

Look at the donkey in The Rest on the Flight into Egypt of the “Holy Refugees” by Joachim Patinir…

..he is smiling in his heart…

It depends of the sturburness of our Ego, the Donkey.

In the Spiritual Land of Peace, the donkey, our ego is quiet, he submits totally to the “Holy Refugee” and eats the “Greenness” of the spiritual field of the Land watered by the Eternal Water of Life….

Corona or Covid- is like a rehab intervention that breaks the addictive hold of normality. To interrupt a habit is to make it visible; it is to turn it from a compulsion to a choice. The phenomenon follows the template of initiation: separation from normality, followed by a dilemma, breakdown, or ordeal, followed (if it is to be complete) by reintegration and celebration. Now the question arises: Initiation into what? What is the specific nature and purpose of this initiation? The popular name for the pandemic offers a clue: coronavirus. A corona is a crown. “Novel coronavirus pandemic” means “a new coronation for all.”
A Choice or a possible migration to the Spiritual Land of Peacet

To become a Refugee, a Holy Refugee through an emigration to Sincerity or uprightnees of Love

see:

• Landscape of the soul, as an Image of the Pilgrimage of Life
• Spiritual exercise for the “Refugee” of our Times
• To Become a “Refugee”: Emigration to Sincerity or “uprightness” of Love

We are not the first generation to know that we are destroying the world.  But  we could be the last that can do anything about it, not with the vanity of  earthly knowledge and so called democratic solidarity and wisdom here on earth  as the commercial of WWF wants to convince us, but with asking humbly the help of Divine Wisdom so realising in us the image of the man who painfully transcends his material ego: The birth of his soul. It is a test. It’s time to decide! 

• Treatise on Unification by Ibn al Arabi
  In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Blessings
  upon our master, Muhammad, and upon his family and companions. This is a noble treatise in which I have consigned a tremendous discourse.
  From my incompleteness to my completeness, and from my inclination to my equilibrium
  From my grandeur to my beauty, and from my splendour to my majesty
  From my scattering to my gathering, and from my exclusion to my reunion
  From my baseness to my preciousness, and from my stones to my pearls
  From my rising to my setting, and from my days to my nights
  From my luminosity to my darkness, and from my guidance to my straying
  From my perigee to my apogee, and from the base of my lance to its tip

From my waxing to my waning, and from the void of my moon to its crescent
From my pursuit to my flight, and from my steed to my gazelle
From my breeze to my boughs, and from my boughs to my shade
From my shade to my bliss, and from my bliss to my wrath
From my wrath to my likeness, and from my likeness to my impossibility
From my impossibility to my validity, and from my validity to my deficiency.
I am no one in existence but myself, so –
Whom do I treat as foe and whom do I treat as friend?
Whom do I call to aid my heart, pierced by a penetrating arrow,
When the archer is my eyelid, striking my heart without an arrow?
Why defend my station? It matters little to me; what do I care?
For I am in love with none other than myself, and my very separation is my union.
Do not blame me for my passion. I am inconsolable over the one who has fled me.

In this book I never cease addressing myself about myself and returning in it to myself from myself.
From my heaven to my earth, from my exemplary practice to my religious duty,

From my pact to my perjury, from my length to my breadth.

---

From The Universal Tree and the Four Birds by Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi,

Ethiopian Christmas is celebrated on 7 January (Tahsas 29 in the Ethiopian calendar) as the day of Jesus’ birth, alongside the Russian, Greek, Eritrean and Serbian Orthodox Churches. It is also celebrated by Protestant and Catholic denominations in the country.

Ethiopian Orthodox Christians are expected to fast for 43 days, a period known as Tsome Nebiyat or the Fast of the Prophets. Fasting also includes abstaining from all animal products and psychoactive substances, including meat and alcohol. Starting on 25 November, the fast believed to be “cleansing the body of sin” as they await the birth of Jesus.

Nativity Fast

Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches commence the season on November 24 and end the season on the day of Ethiopian Christmas, which falls on January 7. The corresponding Western season of preparation for Christmas, which also has been called the Nativity Fast^[2] and St. Martin’s Lent, has taken the name of Advent. The Eastern fast runs for 40 days instead of four (in the Roman Rite) or six weeks (Ambrosian Rite) and thematically focuses on proclamation and glorification of the Incarnation of God, whereas the Western Advent focuses on three comings (or advents) of Jesus Christ: his birth, reception of his grace by the faithful, and his Second Coming or Parousia.

The Byzantine fast is observed from November 15 to December 24, inclusively. These dates apply to the Eastern Catholic Churches, and Eastern Orthodox churches which use the Revised Julian calendar, which currently matches the Gregorian calendar. 

It is also known as the Feast of Theophany, a cornerstone in Orthodox Christianity. It’s a time when the air buzzes with anticipation, as believers prepare to commemorate a pivotal moment in Christian faith: the baptism of Jesus Christ.

The Significance of Theophany in Orthodox Christianity

This feast is far more than a mere commemoration; it’s a celebration of Jesus Christ’s baptism in the Jordan River. This event marks the manifestation of God as the Holy Trinity to the world — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — providing a profound revelation of Divine truth that resonates with believers.

Theophany stands as a pivotal point where heaven meets earth. During the liturgical services, especially through the Great Blessing of the Waters. This ritual is not only about purification but also signifies the sanctification of the entire creation. Orthodox theology teaches that when the waters are blessed, they become a means of spiritual renewal, symbolizing the washing away of sins.

Indeed, every aspect of Theophany is imbued with deep symbolism which adherents internalize and reflect upon. The icons depicting the feast portray the voice of God the Father proclaiming Jesus as His beloved Son, the Holy Spirit descending as a dove, and the figures of angels in awe. These are not just static images but invitations for us to contemplate the mystery of God becoming manifest in the world.

Orthodox Christians believe that participating in Theophany services invokes a renewal of their own baptismal vows. The prayers and hymns are designed to draw us closer to the heart of our faith, a personal call to embrace the transformative teachings of the gospel. It’s during Theophany that we reaffirm our commitment to live a life in accordance with Christ’s example.

By observing Theophany, we are reminded of the unity between the cosmic and the personal elements of faith. The feast illustrates that salvation history is not confined to the past but is an ongoing narrative that continues within the life of every believer. Through this understanding, we grasp the scope of God’s redemptive work, which is both intimate and universal.

The Roots of Theophany in Christian Tradition

The history of Theophany stretches back to the earliest days of Christianity. In the Christian tradition, the feast commemorates not only Christ’s baptism but also His first public manifestation to the world. Theophany’s origins are tightly interwoven with the liturgical traditions that emerged in the early Church.

Liturgical records from as early as the 4th century detail the observance of the feast, illustrating its ancient roots and enduring importance. It was considered a major feast, sometimes even correlated with the celebration of Easter, accentuating its significance in the context of Christian redemptive events.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Theophany is often referred to as ‘Epiphany,’ a term that signifies a divine revelation. The feast is deeply rooted in the scriptural accounts of the Gospels, particularly in the works of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These texts detail the event of Jesus’s baptism by John the Baptist at the Jordan River, marking it as an occasion where the Heavens opened and the Holy Spirit descended like a dove upon Jesus, while a voice from Heaven proclaimed Him as the beloved Son.

Celebrated on January 6th, this feast not only observes the baptism but also Christ’s first miracle at the wedding of Cana, which occurs shortly thereafter according to the Gospel of John. This dual focus on baptism and miracle underscores the multifaceted nature of divine manifestation and the profound mystery of God’s presence.

Orthodox Christians recognize this event as a cornerstone of their faith, as it reveals the Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — to the world, and establishes the foundation for the sacrament of baptism. By looking at the roots of Theophany and its establishment in the early Christian Church, one gains a deeper appreciation for its central place in Orthodox ritual and doctrine. It continues to resonate through centuries as a powerful expression of faith, an acknowledgement of the divine mystery, and a call to a life transformed by the recognition of Jesus Christ’s divinity.

The Baptism of Jesus Christ: A Pivotal Moment

In the rich tapestry of Orthodox Christianity, the Feast of Theophany stands out, particularly for its commemoration of the baptism of Jesus Christ. This moment in the Jordan River signifies far more than a mere ritual. It marks the beginning of Christ’s public ministry and the divine approval of his mission on Earth. When I reflect upon this event, I’m moved by its profound significance, encapsulated in the voice from heaven declaring Jesus as the beloved Son.

Scripture recounts this pivotal moment with poignant clarity. As Saint John the Baptist lowers Jesus into the waters, the heavens open, and the Holy Spirit descends like a dove — a scene capturing the full revelation of God’s triune nature.

Beyond its doctrinal import, the baptism also symbolizes a model for personal transformation. In Orthodox tradition, followers re-commit to spiritual renewal, mirroring the purifying act that Jesus himself underwent. This moment beckons the faithful to embody Christ’s virtues and fosters a profound connection to his journey.

Moreover, the baptism induces a ripple effect throughout the liturgical year. It’s not merely an isolated event but a gateway to the subsequent narratives of Christ’s life and teachings. Each year, we are reminded of the seasons that follow — each echoing the resonant themes introduced by the baptism.

As the story of the baptism unfolds, the multifaceted themes interwoven in the Theophany celebration emerge starkly. Through liturgy and iconography, the Orthodox Church encapsulates the transformative power of water, the inauguration of Christ’s ministry, and a life led by example. These threads bind the observance, not only to the past but also to our contemporary journey in faith. The baptism of Jesus Christ remains an enduring call to renew and deepen our spiritual lives in alignment with the core precepts of Orthodoxy.

The Symbolism of Water in Theophany

Water plays a central role in Theophany, symbolizing purity, life, and transformation. It’s perceived not only as a physical substance but also as a spiritual one, carrying profound connotations within Orthodox Christianity. During Theophany, water is blessed and believed to take on holy properties, becoming a conduit for sanctification and an emblem of divine grace.

As I delve into the scriptures, it’s clear that water carries a duality of destruction and regeneration. In the Old Testament, it is seen in the great flood that cleanses the world of sin, and in the New Testament, it appears as the waters of the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized. This baptismal water signifies a new beginning, washing away the old self and refreshing the spirit akin to the rebirth of Creation after the deluge.

The practice of blessing bodies of water during Theophany also holds symbolic weight. Orthodox Christians often gather at rivers, lakes, or seas, where the blessing is performed. This ritual signifies the sanctification of nature and is a reminder of the participation of all creation in the redeeming act of Christ’s baptism.

Moreover, theophany water is used throughout the year for various sanctifying purposes, reinforcing its significance far beyond the feast day:

• Blessing homes
• Healing purposes
• During other sacraments and rituals

In baptism, the symbolism of water reaches its zenith. It represents a tomb and a womb simultaneously — a tomb for dying to sin and a womb for giving birth to new life in Christ. Orthodox faithful view their own baptism as a personal participation in Jesus’ baptism. They’re reminded that through the waters, they’re initiated into the faith, emerging as changed individuals ready to embark on their spiritual journey.

In the liturgy, the use of water serves as a material and mystical link between the physical and the divine. The blessing of the waters during Theophany is a vivid enactment of divine incarnation and sanctification, encapsulating the essence of God’s closeness and the transformative power of His presence in the world.

The Sacred Rituals of Theophany

Theophany isn’t just a day for reflection; it’s marked by a rich tapestry of sacred rituals that engage the faithful in a profound spiritual journey. Among these, the Great Blessing of the Waters stands out as a pivotal moment. This ceremony is performed twice: once on the eve and then on the day of Theophany itself. During this ritual, the priest proceed to sprinkle holy water, a sign of divine presence, on the congregation, symbolizing the washing away of sins.

In many Orthodox communities, there’s a tradition of throwing a cross into a body of water. The bravest among the faithful dive in — regardless of the chilling temperatures — to retrieve it. This act of retrieving the cross signifies Christ’s baptism and serves as a public declaration of faith.

I’m also intrigued by house blessings, a practice where the sanctified waters from Theophany are used to bless and protect the homes of parishioners. A priest typically visits homes with a container of Theophany water, sprinkling each room while reciting prayers. This custom underlines the belief that God’s grace permeates every aspect of our lives.

These rituals aren’t simple ceremonies; they’re acts that bind the community together. They root Orthodox Christians in their faith, allowing them to participate physically in the mysteries of Theophany. Each droplet of water becomes a symbol of the Holy Spirit’s renewing power — connecting the earthly with the heavenly.

Clearly, Theophany’s rich liturgy and communal practices go beyond mere remembrance. They’re about engaging with faith at the deepest levels, where holy water isn’t just a symbol — it’s a living, breathing testament to belief, renewal, and the enduring promise of sanctification.

Conclusion

The Feast of Theophany holds a profound place in Orthodox Christianity, not just as a historical commemoration but as a living, communal experience. Through the Great Blessing of the Waters and other cherished rituals,we are reminded of the depth of our faith and the transformative power of God’s presence. As the holy water touches our lives, we’re renewed and united in the divine mystery. Theophany isn’t simply an event to remember — it’s an invitation to step into a renewed life, a moment where heaven touches earth and sanctifies our journey.

Note:Ablution – ritual of Purity in Islam

Wuduʾ (Arabic: الوضوء, romanized: al-wuḍūʼ, lit. ‘ablution’ [wuˈdˤuːʔ] ^ⓘ) is the Islamic procedure for cleansing parts of the body, a type of ritual purification, or ablution. The steps of wudu are washing the hands, rinsing the mouth and nose, washing the face, then the forearms, then wiping the head, the ears, then washing or wiping the feet, while doing them in order without any big breaks between them.

Wudu is an important part of ritual purity in Islam that is governed by fiqh,^[1] which specifies hygienical jurisprudence and defines the rituals that constitute it. Ritual purity is called tahara.

Wudu is typically performed before Salah or reading the Quran.

Wudu is often translated as “partial ablution”, as opposed to ghusl, which translates to “full ablution”, where the whole body is washed. An alternative to wudu is tayammum or “dry ablution“, which uses clean sand in place of water due to complete water scarcity or if one is suffering from moisture-induced skin inflammation or illness or other harmful effects on the person.

Qur’an 2:222 says “For God loves those who turn to Him constantly and He loves those who keep themselves pure and clean.”^[2:222]

Qur’an 5:6 says “O believers! When you rise up for prayer, wash your faces and your hands up to the elbows, wipe your heads, and wash your feet up to the ankles. And if you are in a state of full impurity, then take a full bath. But if you are ill, on a journey, or have relieved yourselves, or have been intimate with your wives and cannot find water, then purify yourselves with clean earth by wiping your faces and hands. It is not Allah’s Will to burden you, but to purify you and complete His favor upon you, so perhaps you will be grateful.”

The Blessing Of The Waters – A Perennial New Beginning

• Each year at Theophany we perform the service of the Great blessing of the waters. With this holy water or Agiasmos, as we call it, the priest blesses the people and their homes in a “pilgrimage” through their homes lasting sometimes more than a month. For the modern person that, has lost any sense of the sacred under the influence of the protestant theology and the secular society, all this seems a rather odd habit to say at least.

But even for the secular man the water has tremendous importance. According to the evolution theory life has started in the water. It is also an essential component of the life cycle, without it nothing can grow or live. Man himself is made 50-65% from water and although one can survive weeks without food, without this essential liquid man surely dies in a matter of days.

So how do we respond to the raised eyebrow of the secular man when we bring the Holy Water into discussion?

The first and obvious answer lays the very meaning of Theophany that incorporates the Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ in the River Jordan. The entrance of the Lord Himself into the water and all the events that followed, the flowing back of the river and the revelation of the Holy Trinity should be for us a good enough explanation.

But there is more to add because this is not the first time when water plays a central role in the Holy Scripture. Since the beginning of times water was used by God in various occasions. At the very creation of the world we read that “the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Gen 1:2). We remember the Great Flood that prevailed upon the earth drowning a mankind that was already sinking into un-repented sin. We see Moses parting the Red see with his staff so the people of Israel can be freed from the slavery of the Egyptian Pharaoh, while the pagan armies are destroyed by the same waters. We also acknowledge water as part of the purification rituals of the Mosaic Law.

The complete meaning of the importance of the water however is fully revealed in the water of Baptism. The key is the hymn we sing as we joyfully walk around the table with the Gospel at the end of the service: As many of you have been baptized in Christ you have put on Christ. As we are baptized in the water by a thrice immersion in the name of the Holy Trinity, we become Christ like. By dying as sinners in the water like in a tomb – three times, like three days – we are able thereafter to rise like Christ into incorruption, as members of the Church now and citizens in potentiality of the Kingdom of Heaven. Christ the New Adam, through the water of Baptism, is re-creating us in the Spirit, giving us again the choice that our forefathers failed so lamentably: a life in grace or a life in sin.

We recognize here the creation power of Genesis, the wrath of the Lord during the Flood and the liberating power of the Red Sea commanded by the wood of the Cross.

“Creation, Fall and Redemption, Life and Death, Resurrection and Life Eternal: all the essential dimensions, the entire content of the Christian faith, are thus united and hold together”

Through the descent of the Holy Spirit during Baptism and in the similar way during the Great Blessing of the Waters, the water regains its full potential and is transformed in a vehicle of renewal, a vehicle of change leading everything it touches toward the meeting with our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is possible because the Sacrament of Baptism is not to be understood as separated from Communion and Holy Liturgy, although the current liturgical practice does not really help in this respect, but the two should be considered as they really are: intimately linked. As Fr. Alexander Schmemann accurately states:

“Baptism is a personal Pascha and a personal Pentecost, as the integration into the laos, the people of God, as a passage from an old life into a new one and finally as an epiphany of the Kingdom of God.”

The Holy Communion is the earnest of the very goal of the Christian life: the Kingdom of Heaven. Each person that enters through baptism into the body of the Church starts living for the fulfillment of this promise, which is pre-tasted during the Holy Liturgy in the partaking of the Eucharist. The water of baptism makes all of this to happen by giving back to man his original potential.

Each year at Theophany we take part again and again in the reactivation of the spiritual properties of water by witnessing the river Jordan running backwards to its source, to its origins, symbolically reverting our lives to our true sacred roots. The Agiasmos consecrated at Theophany has the power to take us back were we belong, to renew into us the true Spirit of God and, paradoxically, instead of extinguishing, fueling the flame of our faith.

This Holy Water however does not work magically without our participation, but it demands involvement and requires a renewal of our dedication to Christ and His Church. It is for us a remembrance and a reaffirmation of our baptismal vows, it is a perennial new beginning that we embark in every time we use it. Without this understanding the sprinkling of Agiasmos is nothing else but an unwanted cold shower, devoid of any true significance.

Let us therefore receive the water of Baptism in our homes in the hope that the New Year will bring us closer to Christ and to one another. Let us all pray that the Holy Spirit that fills all things will also fill our lives with His peace and grace and that at the end of our lives we will be found worthy to join the rightful flock at the right hand of the Father.

Three Kings Day

Epiphany , Epiphany or Epiphany of the Lord ( Solemnitas Epiphaniae Domini in Latin ) is a Christian holiday celebrated annually on January 6 ( or on the first Sunday after January 1 – see below ) commemorating the Biblical event ( Matt. 2:1-18) of the wise men from the East who saw a rising star and went out to seek the King of the Jews. They arrived in Bethlehem and found Jesus , the newborn King of the Jews. This probably alludes to the vision of Balaam, the seer in Moab who saw a star rising out of Jacob ( Numbers 24:17).

The three wise men were given names. In Greek they were Apellius, Amerius and Damascus, in Hebrew Galgalat, Malgalat and Sarathin, but they became known by their Latinized Persian names Caspar , Melchior and Balthasar . They are said to have been 20, 40 and 60 years old respectively, numbers symbolizing the life periods of the adult.

In the Catholic liturgy in Belgium and the Netherlands, the feast of the Epiphany of the Lord is celebrated on the first Sunday after January 1. In many southern European countries, Epiphany is a holiday and Epiphany is celebrated on the day itself. The Epiphany of the Lord is the first of three feasts, together with the Baptism of the Lord and the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple ( February 2 ), that belong to the Christmas cycle , the time of Jesus’ childhood and youth.

Read more here: Three Kings: Uses in different countries

example :The Netherlands

In some parts of the Netherlands, children walk in groups of three dressed up with a crown along the doors on the evening before Epiphany; one of them has a blackened face. They carry lanterns and sing. A well-known song goes:

Three cooonings, three cooonings,give me a new (h)ood.My old one is worn out,my mother may not eat it again.My father has the money,counted down on the counter.

Originally the last sentence read: “counted on the [russel] grid.” Counting on the grid here means: not having money or not being able to keep track of it. ^[ 6 ] This version is still sung in Flanders.

The last two lines also read: “My father has no money, isn’t that a bad situation?”

As a reward for singing, they receive food, sweets and money . The lanterns are a remnant of an old pagan custom, in which torches were carried to drive away evil spirits. The sweets that are handed out originate from pagan sacrificial meals. The Germans were not allowed to eat legumes (their staple food) during the twelve nights of the New Year’s festivities and the ‘holy bean’ marked the end of that fasting period.

In the house, Epiphany was celebrated with food, drink and song. Jan Steen depicted this in the painting The Feast of the Three Kings .

The king’s bread or king’s cake that is baked is well-known; a brown bean or coin is hidden in it and the person who finds it is “king(in)” that day. A custom is that the person who is the king may be the boss in the house that day. The bean in the cake is also derived from pagan customs.

The king’s letter was also known , both in the home and at a large official party. One could grab from a barrel of papers and the one who drew the king’s letter was treated by everyone and was the boss. Letters were also drawn for the position of councillor, steward, secretary, singer, musician, cook, porter, cupbearer and fool and foolish woman. According to a legend, King Francis I of France heard about such a king’s letter for the first time in 1521, he declared war on the ‘king’ and went there, but was received with snowballs , apples and eggs . A drunken man even threw a piece of burning wood , but King Francis saw how foolish he had made a fool of himself and refused to prosecute the man.

In the past, it was common practice to leave the Christmas tree up until Epiphany. According to tradition, taking down the tree before Epiphany would bring bad luck. Nowadays, however, most Christmas trees are taken down before Epiphany. ^[ 7 ] In the past, it was also common practice not to put the Epiphany figures in the nativity scene right away, but only on January 6, at Epiphany. The figures were moved a step closer to the nativity scene every day, because they were still ‘on their way’ and would not reach the scene until January 6. ^{[ 8 ] [ 9 ]}

At churches or in the church porch a play was performed around Epiphany with Mary , Joseph , the baby Jesus , the donkey , the ox , Herod and the Three Wise Men. In Protestant areas this also happened inside the church.

In Maastricht (organised by the parish of Our Lady Star of the Sea ) and ‘s-Hertogenbosch (by the ‘s-Hertogenbosch Three Kings Foundation), live Three Kings processions pass through the city centre every year. Fully costumed, the kings ride through the city on camels and horses. The procession also includes shepherds with donkeys and sheep and of course Mary and Joseph with the baby Jesus. Children (whether or not in costume) are invited to walk along with lanterns. The service concludes in the basilica, during which the Kings offer their gifts to the baby Jesus and traditional Three Kings songs are sung. In ‘s-Hertogenbosch, a new tradition was added in 2015: the fourth gift. Children could bring toys that still looked new, to be collected in St. John’s Cathedral and donated to children who were less fortunate.

In Enkhuizen, among other places, the Three Kings Star was known. A fragile object made of paper and wood that was carried along the houses on Epiphany. With the star on the stick, the bearer sang a song and collected small amounts. The Zuiderzee Museum has recordings of songs, eyewitness accounts, photos of the owner in action and two stars, one of which has been restored to its former glory.

In the 21st century, the tradition of Epiphany is considered lost in the Netherlands. ^[ 10 ] However, the tradition still lives on in Maastricht, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Tilburg and Lierop. In 2012, the Brabant Epiphany singing was added to the Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Netherlands . ^[ 11 ] In addition, the Heemkundekring Tilborch is committed to keeping the festival alive. According to Ineke Strouken, director of the Dutch Centre for Folk Culture, about Epiphany as intangible heritage: ‘It is dynamic heritage that must be given space to grow with the times and acquire new meanings.’

See also 14 january: The Feast of the Ass