Category Archives: Cultures

Sounds of Byzantine Churches

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Absolutely beautiful. I probably had a past life as a monk or a priest. I LOVE music like this!

Mapping the Sounds of Greek Byzantine Churches: How Researchers Are Creating “Museums of Lost Sound”

 

“Unless you’re an audio engineer, you’ll have little reason to know what the term “convolution reverb” means. But it’s a fascinating concept nonetheless. Technicians bring high-end microphones, speakers, and recording equipment to a particularly resonant space—a grain silo, for example, or famous concert hall. They capture what are called “impulse responses,” signals that contain the acoustic characteristics of the location. The technique produces a three dimensional audio imprint—enabling us to recreate what it would sound like to sing, play the piano or guitar, or stage an entire concert in that space. As Adrienne LaFrance writes in The Atlantic, “you can apply [impulse responses] to a recording captured in another space and make it sound as though that recording had taken place in the original building.”

More: http://www.openculture.com/2016/03/mapping-the-sounds-of-greek-byzantine-churches-how-researchers-are-creating-museums-of-lost-sound.html

White City: The new urban blight is rich people

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Source: White City: The new urban blight is rich people

Ha Ha!! This is a funny way of looking at things! And SO TRUE!!

 

April 2, 2016

Alexander Nazaryan
Newsweek

“Have you heard that Pittsburgh is the new Austin? San Antonio, they’re saying, is the new Queens, while Staten Island is the new Brooklyn. Oakland? Totally over—the action is now all in Modesto. Seattle is done, Yuppie Central—better buy in Walla Walla while there’s still time. Portland? Really? That’s so…2011. Edmonton, man, you should check out Edmonton. Though, honestly, I’ll tell you a secret: Hartford, Connecticut. ”

“But any intellectual movement must encounter a backlash, and the one to the New Urbanism is only growing, in part because it’s now mature enough for us to see its effects. On the face of it, the New Urbanism is very pretty: Court Street in Brooklyn looks splendid, as does San Francisco’s Valencia Street. The aforementioned travel section of The New York Times has a column, called “Surfacing,” that frequently resorts to profiling some forlorn, blighted neighborhood suddenly graced by taxidermy shops that double as yoga studios. I am, as a matter of fact, writing this from a Whole Foods in West Berkeley, California, a formerly industrial district that was recently “Surfaced” in the Times. The coffee I am drinking was roasted about 20 feet away from my Apple laptop. How’s that for local?

Problem is, surfacing is usually whitening: Gentrification by any other name would taste as hoppy, with the same notes of citrus peel. There is really only one strike against the New Urbanism, but it’s a strike thrown by Nolan Ryan: It turns cities into playgrounds for moneyed, childless whites while pushing out the poor, the working-class, immigrants, seniors and anyone else not plugged into “the knowledge economy.” Right around the time that Michael Bloomberg was remaking Manhattan as a hive for stateless billionaires, I saw a slogan that captured perfectly the new glimmer of the city: “New York: If you can make it here, you probably have a trust fund.”

ĒOSTRE: THE RETURN OF THE GODDESS

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J. MacLugash's avatarLIGHTNING WARRIORS

“Here, in this moment of balance, I honor and recognize the sacred mystery of existence. I am a part of a cosmic dance. A holy and blessed music fills the world. The light and the darkness shift from this moment onward. As it is on the land, so it is in my being. I follow the movement of the Mother, and She works a transformation in me. Be it new beginnings or resolution, the Equinox is a point of transition; of change. I embrace the change.”

– Teo Bishop: “The Solitary Druid Fellowship’s Equinox Devotional”
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For the people of the ancient world, especially those living in Northern Europe, the changing of the seasons was of particularly great significance. The lengthening of the days that began after the winter solstice gave the anticipation of the beginning of the end of what were at times long and perilous winters- which for some…

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World’s Oldest Melody

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“Dating back to 1400 BC, this is the oldest surviving melody. The Hurrian songs are a collection of music inscribed in cuneiform on clay tablets excavated from the ancient Amorite Canaanite  city of Ugarit which date to approximately 1400 BC. One of these tablets, which is nearly complete, contains the Hurrian hymn to Nikkal ,making it the oldest surviving substantially complete work of notated music in the world. While the composers’ names of some of the fragmentary pieces are known, h.6 is an anonymous work.”

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Source: https://m.thevintagenews.com/2016/01/01/43554/

From Youtube: The Oldest known musical melody performed by the very talented Michael Levy on the Lyre. This ancient musical fragment dates back to 1400 B.C.E. and was discovered in the 1950’s in Ugarit, Syria. It was interpreted by Dr. Richard Dumbrill. He wrote a book entitled “The Archaeomusicology of the Ancient Near East.” Here is a link to it:

http://sas.academia.edu/RichardDumbri…

Check out Michael Levy’s website, anancientlyre.com! Here’s a link to it:

http://www.ancientlyre.com

For more information on the Hurrian Hymn no.6 text, click on the link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrian_…

There were 29 musical texts discovered in the ruins of Ugarit, but only text H6 was in good enough condition to allow for academic interpretation. Here is Dr. Dumbrill’s interpretation:

http://www.clintgoss.com/flutopedia.c…

Here’s 10 Incredible Gnostic, Alchemical and Occult Mandalas

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Here’s 10 incredible and mind-expanding mandalas drawn from Alchemy, Gnosticism, Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism and the Occult

Source: Here’s 10 Incredible Gnostic, Alchemical and Occult Mandalas

“Mandalas are sacred, esoteric diagrams that are present in almost all world religions. They’re often meant to represent the entire cosmos, or the role of divinity in the world. As such, they can be incredible aids to meditation and self-discovery: Either by contemplating them, or even drawing or painting them yourself. The psychologist Carl Jung was a connoisseur of mandalas—not only writing about them, but painting them, as well, as we see in the image below from his famous Red Book. Jung, who was fascinated by alchemy and Gnosticism, felt that mandalas could lead the way to psychological wholeness.

Below, check out nine incredible mandalas drawn from some of the world’s religious traditions—alchemy, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and more. (The first mandala is even by Jung himself.) Whether you’re a believer or not, you’ll certainly be impressed with the ornate beauty of these artistic creations.”

Here’s Carl Jung’s:

carl-jung-mandala

Mandala by Carl Jung

The Goddess Isis

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Isis

 

 Isis is a goddess who is a totally timeless expression of the Divine Feminine; she is as relevant today as she was in ancient times. Devoted to empowering others, Isis supports the awakening of humanity as we head into a new World Age. She brings value and respect to the roles of wife and mother, is the patron of magic, nature, and healing, and is considered a protector of the dead. As a matter of fact, the singer Rihanna recently had a very large tattoo done below her breasts of Isis with her wings outstretched as a tribute to her late grandmother. It is said that Isis stretches her wings over the foot of the casket to protect the dead…

Deborah King – read more here.

“There are a million words one could write about all this but my point tonight is that i saw this and was once again perplexed/furious at the appropriation of this word/term by a group that would be better known by the increasingly used Daesh.   Click that link to get why it’s important.

Meanwhile, Isis as well as being a powerful witch and shaman, one of the original Goddesses and associated with possibly the most powerful soul-mating saga ever, is an asteroid – number 42, if you care to look yours up on Astrodienst.

She is currently at 15 Libra, lined up nicely (see Horoscopes for more on this) for the Venus/Mars bingle with Uranus/Pluto over the next month and opposite Uranus right now.

If you look at enough images of her you can see how she was transmuted into the Hebrew Lilith and/or the Celtic Morrigan – winged women, the both of them. And sundry demons of course – don’t forget that even the name for Venus as Morning Star (Venus Lucifer – Lucifer means light-bearer) got massively warped.”

From Mystic Medusa