While there are not many neuromorphic hardware makers, those on the market (or in the research device sphere) are still looking for ways to run more

We used to believe our brains were hardwired. Now we believe we can will them to change. Is that true? Will Storr analyses the truth and hokum about 'neuroplasticity'.

Today's humans carry the genes of an ancient, unknown ancestor, left there by hominin species intermingling perhaps a million years ago.

Researchers report genetic influences on head circumference remain stable during development and are correlated with genetic factors which contribute to intracranial volume.

Skoltech scientists and their colleagues from Germany and the United States have analyzed the metabolomes of humans, chimpanzees, and macaques in muscle, kidney, and three different brain regions. The team discovered that the modern human genome undergoes mutation which makes the adenylosuccinate lyase enzyme less stable, leading to a decrease in purine synthesis. This mutation did not occur in Neanderthals, so the scientists believe that it affected metabolism in brain tissues and thereby strongly contributed to modern humans evolving into a separate species. The research was published in the journal eLife. Credit: Pavel Odinev/Skoltech The predecessors of modern humans split from their closest evolutionary relatives, Neanderthals and Denisovans, about 600,000 years ago, while the evolutionary divergence between our ancestors and those of modern chimpanzees dates as far back as 65 million years ago. Evolutionary biologists are after the particular genetic features that distinguish modern humans from their ancestors and may give a clue as to why humans are what they are. Researchers from the Skoltech Center for Neurobiology and Brain Restoration (CNBR) led by Professor Philipp Khaitovich and their colleagues from the Max Planck Institutes in Leipzig, Dresden and Cologne and the University of Denver studied metabolic differences in the brain, kidney and muscle of humans, chimpanzees, and macaques. The research supervisor was a renowned evolutionary biologist, Professor Svante Paabo, who earlier on had discovered the Denisovan and led the Neanderthal Genome Project. The team looked at an interesting human mutation that leads to amino acid substitution in adenylosuccinate lyase, an enzyme involved in the synthesis of purine inside DNA. This substitution reduces the enzyme's activity and stability, which results in a lower concentration of purines in the human brain. The team showed that the new mutation is typical for humans only and does not appear in other primates or Neanderthals. The researchers proved that this mutation is indeed the reason for the metabolic peculiarities in humans by introducing it into the mouse genome. The mice subjected to mutation produced fewer purines, whereas an ancestral gene, when introduced into human cells, led to apparent metabolic changes. "Although a powerful tool for scientists, the decoded human genome, unfortunately, cannot account for all the phenotypic differences between humans. The study of the metabolic composition of tissues can give clues about why functional changes occur in humans. I am delighted that we have succeeded in predicting the metabolic characteristics of modern humans and validated our hypotheses on mouse and cell models, even though we did not have 'live Neanderthals' to work on," says lead author and Skoltech PhD student Vita Stepanova. Source: Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) [May 24, 2021] Support The Archaeology News Network with a small donation! Labels Anthropology, Early Humans, Genetics, Human Evolution TANN you might also like Newer Post Older Post

The continued emergence of highly pathogenic viruses, which either thwart immune- and small molecule-based therapies or lack interventions entirely, mandates alternative approaches, particularly for prompt and facile pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis. Many highly pathogenic viruses, including coronaviruses, employ the six-helix bundle heptad repeat membrane fusion mechanism to achieve infection. Although heptad-repeat-2 decoys can inhibit viral entry by blocking six-helix bundle assembly, the biophysical and pharmacologic liabilities of peptides have hindered their clinical development. Here, we develop a chemically stapled lipopeptide inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 as proof-of-concept for the platform. We show that our lead compound blocks infection by a spectrum of SARS-CoV-2 variants, exhibits mucosal persistence upon nasal administration, demonstrates enhanced stability compared to prior analogs, and mitigates infection in hamsters. We further demonstrate that our stapled lipopeptide platform yields nanomolar inhibitors of respiratory syncytial, Ebola, and Nipah viruses by targeting heptad-repeat-1 domains, which exhibit strikingly low mutation rates, enabling on-demand therapeutic intervention to combat viral outbreaks. The ongoing emergence of highly pathogenic viruses that evade immune-based therapies or lack interventions mandates new approaches, especially for on-demand prophylaxis. Here the authors provide a stapled lipopeptide platform for the rapid development of viral fusion inhibitors to combat outbreaks.

Justin Sun, founder of the Tron blockchain and cryptocurrency, purchased Maurizio Cattelan’s controversial artwork “Comedian” for $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction on Wednesday. The artwork, featuring a banana duct-taped to a wall, previously sold for between $120,000 and $150,000 at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019. About the piece: Cattelan, who created the piece as a commentary on the art world, has stated that the work is “a sincere commentary and a reflection on what we value.” The banana is regularly replaced by the owner as it decays, and Sun will receive a 14-page manual with instructions on how to display the artwork. “Comedian” sparked debate about the definition of art and the value placed on it, drawing comparisons to works by Marcel Duchamp and Damien Hirst. Sun’s purchase adds another layer to the artwork’s evolving narrative, which includes previous instances of the banana being eaten. Bound for space: Sun, who purchased a $20 million Picasso painting in 2021, outbid six other contenders for the duct-taped banana, exceeding the pre-bidding estimate of $1.5 million. While he said he intends to “complete the decentralized cycle of this artwork” by eating the artpiece, he also expressed interest in donating “Comedian” to Elon Musk. “I’m willing to donate my banana to Elon Musk, tape it to the body of a SpaceX rocket, and send it to both Mars and the Moon,” he wrote on an X post.

From postcity to downturns in farming. Presently, city growth does not depend on time alone. Neither does it depend on population or necessity. Growth now responds to opportunistic interests and governmental collusion. There are no longer limits between (post)city and nature. While traditional cities established a symbiosis with the land, generally fertile fields, new spread-out cities have introduced the concept of “nature” into the collective mindset. It has become difficult to tell where nature ends and where property begins: Nature is being globalized; it is polluted at a rate and a magnitude characteristic of an artificially world to which it does not belong. Postcity This project begins with a critique of the postcapitalistic model that has governed society for the last 50 years, and has generated a continuous growth of Madrid’s “building footprint”, leading to a progressive reduction in agricultural land. As a consequence, society has lost its traditional identity in favour of a purely mercantile model. The intervention The project discusses agricolizing an obsolete area of the city through the implementation of the self-run social model that is a cooperative, recovering the social relationships of a consolidated society. The project proposes combining traditional and postcapitalist values in the regeneration of the selected area. To do so, it suggests the implementation of a closed-production model in the early part of the Alcorcón industrial park. The intervention will incorporate two different agricultural models: conventional, extensive farming to recover traditional land use, and modern, intensive farming, carried out at elevation, and introduced into interstitial zones between warehouses, without interupting the production of said warehouses. Outdoor agriculture The intervention is conceived as a productive garden, starting out with a highly rigid plot which is densified and cleared along the populated land, giving way to varying densities based on topography and pre-existing trees. The landscape is accessible by foot, creating a picturesque system that makes the intervention doubly beneficial, both productive and experiential. The species that are introduced were chosen not only for the production capacity, but also for their ability to transform the terrain over time: the different flowers, textures, colours and scents create a continuously evolving cultural landscape. Closed-cycle production These devices are conceived as inhabited infrastructures that are capable of controlling the production cycle, from planting to resource management, including water usage. Artificial topographies are implanted in response to the existence of commonly flooded zones: These are filled with species that require large quantities of water, turning them into cool spaces for the summer. The water will be collected in ditches, allowing for the reuse of both rainwater and industrial waste water in the irrigation system as it is stored in cisterns throughout the intervention. Both surface irrigation and drip irrigation techniques are employed. The infrastructure The devices employ high-density production technology with the greenhouse construction determining the formal aspects of the project. The heavy part of the project is underground. It is tied to movement and storage in silos, which are built of concrete walls in the form of lines, domes, and vaults. The ground floor is used as a transition zone between elevated farms, in addition to establishing a relationship with the goings-on of the industrial warehouses. The upper level is made up of a highly repetitive structure which is broken down into different parts, aiming to achieve maximum lightness while at the same time bringing traction and compression together. Interior agriculture The high-intensity production is carried out using aeroponics agriculture, which increases production by 40% and reduces water usage by 90%. An indoor landscape is thus created in which there is a contrast between formal repetition and the evolving backdrop. The constant change makes for an enriched picturesque experience when inhabiting this infrastructure. Housing: collective and private spaces The houses will be located on the upper level, clumping together in different densities within the infrastructure. They are conceived as an abstraction of traditional Spanish homes, differentiating between public and private areas. As such, there will be collective spaces such as living rooms and communal kitchens, encouraging the inhabitants to spend time together and develop traditional social values of communal living. Conclusion The project accepts that current city layouts are not able to manage the volume of energy that is stored, and thus this intervention aspires to develop a neotraditional model of relationships with Nature in which vegetation is allowed to colonize the land that humanity stole, and giving way to elevated living. We thus abandon the urban development model that has prevailed for the last 50 years.

"Mortgage Anatomy 101" ...  the Current Mortgage Process, Part 1      There's no doubt about it ... the current mortgage transaction bares little resemblance to the transaction that took place even a few years ago.  The process has definitely evolved.      I liken these changes, to say Fred Flintstone evolving into Iron Man.  Initially fairly simplistic, with few details ... eventually turning into very sophisticated and advanced.        For clients that have navigated a mortgage process even a few years ago or prior, the current process may seem almost unrecognizable.  They'll face a vast learning curve when Refinancing or buying a new home now.      Much has been made of all the changes that have occurred.  And I think that some of the talk has taken a toll on the psyche of those contemplating entering it.  It might haven even scared a number of them off.  That's not good.      So, I decided a "Mortgage Anatomy 101" class regarding the mortgage process might be in order.  Within my post, I'm going to try to break down and explain the process from start to finish with the hopes that by doing so, it will take some of the fear factor away.  That potential Home Buyers (and those contemplating Refinance) will see that the process does NOT have to be painful or scary.      I preface the following "Mortgage Anatomy 101" by saying that not all mortgage processes at all Lenders are identical.  There is, however, a basic timeline for most new loans.  Since the majority of all loans are Conventional, conforming (conforms to Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Guidelines), I will layout that process, and assume a Purchase transaction for the following.      I will also add that I personally believe that anyone even remotely considering a home purchase or Refinance should get in touch with a Mortgage Lender well in advance of starting their home search, especially if that Buyer is a First-Time Home Buyer.        My recommended sequence of steps allows Buyers ample time for Pre-Qualification  ... or at minimum a credit check, guidance for credit repair/improvement, and preparation to enter the financing process at maximized buying/credit potential at some point in the future.        In most cases though, I find that the Realtor is still the first point of contact for those looking to Buy a Home ... and the info provided below will reflect that.             "Mortgage Anatomy 101"      You've found a home!  What next?            *  Realtor(s) will guide you to a secure Contract.      *  Your Loan Officer is notified.      *  Should Pre-Qualification still be needed at this point, that is performed now.      *  If Pre-Qualification has been done prior to this point, a Full Loan Application is now needed.  Loan Application can be completed in a number of ways, if you're my client ... either by Mail, Internet, over the phone, or in person.        *  Loan options, gathering of additional information, Contract Terms, Type and Structure of the Loan, and Loan Documentation will be gathered and/or discussed at this time.             Mortgage Application:      *  Mortgage Application should take place within 5 days after  Contract Acceptance.      *  Documents to be covered during the Application appointment will be:  The Mortgage Application itself, the  Good Faith Estimate, the Truth-in-Lending, and supporting disclosures (about 40 documents).      *  The Application Fee/Appraisal Fee is collected at this time.      *  The Loan Officer will gather ALL Borrower documents supporting:          A.  Income          B.  Employment          C.  Assets          D.  Identification          E.  Credit (if not already obtained)          F.  Other relevant explanations (known as Letter of Explanation (LOX)          G.  Bank Deposit History, etc.      Note:  Other discussions between Loan Officer and Borrower will take place at this time.        Those discussions can surround:          A.  Escrow/No Escrow  (Escrow required above 80% LTV)          B.  Lock Rate  -or-  Float?          C.  Term of Mortgage Loan  (30 year, 15 year, etc.)          D.  Cash needed for Closing          E.  Total Monthly Payment          F.   Homeowners Insurance Policy Requirements/Proof of Insurance/payment      Summary of Loan Application:      Well-prepared Loan Officers and well-prepared Borrowers equate to a smoother Mortgage Process and a shorter time for Loan Approval.        It's typically at this point that Loan Officers or their Assistants submit your file for Automated Underwriting Approval through the appropriate agency's (Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac) Loan Approval System.      Getting "Approval" or "Acceptance" means it's okay to move your transaction and file forward to the Loan Processor and eventually Underwriting, where a confirmation of the "accuracy" and "reality" of the data supplied at the time of your Application and entry into the system, is performed.       During the Processing:      *  Verifications of Employment, Deposits, Rent, Social Security Numbers, Credit Supplement, Earnest Money, Flood Certifications, Homeowners Insurance, Title (if not ordered by Seller's Attorney), and Appraisal are all addressed now.      A second layer of review for Accuracy of Loan Application data, Borrower-supplied Tax Returns, W-2's, Bank Statements, Pay Stubs, Identification, Divorce Decrees, Bankruptcy documents, Student Loan Payments, Mortgage verification (if applicable), is performed.      The Loan Processor assembles all of the ordered and received documentation and then advises the Loan Officer of any missing items, or items of concern BEFORE submitting the Loan File to Underwriting.        Remember:  The ultimate goal for everyone involved in the transaction is to provide ALL the necessary documentation required by an Underwriter, so they can make a well-informed decision to Approve, Suspend, or Deny a Loan Application ... and do so in a logical and timely manner.      In "Mortgage Anatomy 101" ... the Current Mortgage Process, Part Two, I will explain what awaits my clients (and referral partners) during the Underwriting portion of the mortgage process ... and beyond.       *  Hoping to Buy, Build, or Refinance a Chicago-area home?  Contact me today!  I'll put my 37 years of mortgage experience and expertise hard to work on your behalf.      I can be conveniently found at: Direct:  815.524.2280 Cell/Text:  708.921.6331 [email protected] www.genemundt.com  eFax:  815.524.2281                              Gene Mundt, Mortgage Lender, a Lender with 37 years of mortgage experience, will offer you exemplary mortgage service and advice when seeking:  Conventional, FHA, VA, Jumbo, USDA, and Portfolio Loans in Chicago and the greater Chicagoland region, including:   The Lincoln-Way Area, Will County, (New Lenox, Frankfort, Mokena, Manhattan, Joliet, Shorewood, Crest Hill, Plainfield, Bolingbrook, Romeoville, Naperville, etc.), DuPage County, the City of Chicago, Cook County, and elsewhere within IL.  Your Referrals are Greatly Appreciated!

Description Long time ago i released BSG chart but it wasnt perfect and i was to make new one, but never did. So now i decide to make new one this time for my finished story BSG: Operation Exodus. Ships on chart were not mine, most of them belong to late David „Canis“ Briedis, and other members of the Canis Shipyard. You can also check my story: here www.fanfiction.net/s/7276237/1… Many of ships in this chart apears in this story, while some that apears are not on chart.   SANCTUARY CLASS – WARSTAR: 3600m Ships built: 1 (Sanctuary)   Biggest and strongest ship ever built by humans, Sanctuary was powerful warstar created. Designed originally to serve as command ship, or larger exploration ship if needed Sanctuary carriers massive amount of guns of all sizes, dozens of missile launchers for standard and also nuclear warheads. It was to be great success but to Colonials end great failure. She was outfited with experimental long range FTL engines and during her maiden voyage she dissapeared without trace. Over a year later after Atlantis expedition was launched she would be found by Atlantis. Most of her crew survived and take refuge on nearby planet, ship itself was heavily damaged by jump itself and by attack by unkown forces (Harvesters) while ship manage to destroy all attackers she was crippled. She would be recovered, repaired and returned to active service and will play vital role during later part of second Cylon war.   NOVA CLASS – COMMAND BATTLESTAR: 2000m Ships built: 4 (Nova, Atlantia, Prometheus and Theseus), 2 additional ships were also to be built but were never completed. New generation of battlestar intended to replace some of the older class, including even first few of the Mercury class which itself were not even that old. New Nova class was true marvel as it carried most advanced technologies on bord. During the second Cylon war, Nova was kept as testbed ship at secret station, while Prometheus would lead expedition and colonize new planet outside Cyrannus system, later Nova would be taken together with station by Prometheus crew and will become part of new Copernicus defense force. Atlantia would be destroyed during final battle in Cyrannus over Virgon while Theseus would be taken from another shipyard by crew of Atlantis.   HECATE CLASS – BATTLESTAR: 1850m Ships built: pre-war  1 (Hecate), post war 2 (Nike and Galactica) with at least eight more under construction or planned by Avalon Defense forces. Heavily armored this powerful battlestar was to serve as supplement to Nova class. These two classes were slowly to remove Mercuries and Glrorious classes out of service. But only Hecate was built by the time of Cylon attack and she was shut down thanks to CNP backdoor and destroyed during the opening of war. Admiral Stryker (later Fleet Admiral) would order construction of two new battlestars in orbit of Avalon, Nike and Galactica after Adama's ship was retired). These two ships will see heavy combat during later part of the war, eight to ten additional ships would be built, and those ships will see combat against Harvesters.   NEMESIS CLASS – DREADNOUGHT: 1960m Ships built: 1 (Nemesis). Experimental dreadnought built on enlarged Mercury frame with smaller pods that each could hold fifteen Raptors. Despite her heavy armor and armaments she was destroyed by Cylon forces when they attacked Scorpia shipyards, disabled by virus and nuked.   ANDRASTE CLASS – HEAVY BATTLESTAR: 1900m Ships built: 2 (Andraste and Argona). Pair of heavy battlestars war ordered to patrol the outer part of Cyrannus system, close to border with Cylons. It was to be act of intimidation to Cylons. At the beginning of second Cylon war, Andraste was on patrol near the border with several other ships. Cylons launched full scale attack against battlegroup, disabling most of the group with exception of Andraste herself. Due her highly advanced anti-virus systems she retain most of her functions, however  Cylons swarm her with missiles, many of those been nuclear, despite damage she manage to send warning to the HQ and take down two of the Cylon basestars while third was destroyed after she exploded by massive chunk of her pod. Argona on the other hand survived as been part of Atlantis expedition.  After colonizing Avalon, (during that time) Atlantis would receive long range communication from home about attack, Atlantis, Argona and Pleiades would rush home leaving Sword and escorts to guard colony. Argona will destroy dozens of Cylon ships during the rest of war and will survive the last battle, she would often be paired with massive Warstar Sanctuary and older Warstar Daedalus.   PACIFICA CLASS - BATTLESTAR: 1820m Ships built: 2 (Pacifica and Oceania).  New generation of battlestar, inteded to work with Nova and Hecate classes. In time to retire the Mercuries. Only two ships would be built both which will be lost early during second Cylon war due CNP backdoor. Two new ships would be ordered to replace losses during the last month of the second Cylon war by fleet Admiral Stryker, new Pacifica and Neptune would be under construction at one of the large mobile drydock. They would not be ready till the end of war but they would participate in war against Harvesters.   MERCURY CLASS – BATTLESTAR: 1790m Ships built: 24 (Block I: Mercury, Hades, Polaris, Ithaca, Pegasus, Block II: Hera, Sobek, Challenger, Helios, Atlas, Rhiannon, Ares, Jupiter, Vanguard, Trinity, Chimera, Bellerophon, Chronos, Ulysses, Juno, Apollo, Artemis, Block III: Atlantis, Astute). By the time second Cylon war started, twenty four Mercury class battlestars would be in service with two been under construction and four other been planned. However with new more advanced classes entering service, two last ships under construction were to be last of Mercury class. Class was indeed powerful, having great offensive and defensive capabilities, and also been able to carry up to 200 Vipers and 40 raptors. Block I and II usually carried up to 180 Vipers and 40 Raptors, while Block III ships Atlantis and Astute could carry 200 even 220 Vipers and 40-50 Raptors. Cylons saw this ships one of greatest dangers and tried to destroy them at the very beginning, however this didn't happen. Many ships would survive the begining of the war, atlhough some will later be destroyed. Atlantis the only surviving member of the Block III and her commanding officer Marcus Stryker will be responsible for downfall of Cylons, although at the coast of Atlantis during the last battle. At the end of the war, there were still seven ships in service with the Avalon defense force. During later part of the war neve subtype or Block IV would be launched, with first ship been Invictus, six to eight additional ships were to be built and join the fleet. These ships will saw heavy combat during Avalon-Harvester war. While most of the ship body was of the Mercury class, her engines came from Pacifica class.   MINERVA CLASS – BATTLESTAR: 1700m Ships built: 11, Type IA: 1 ship (Minerva), Type IB: 5 ships (Pleiades, Vesta, Diana, Fortuna, Calypso), Type II: 3 ships (Hesperides, Bellona, Ceres), Type III: 2 ships (Hyades, Achilles), Minerva class was first introduced several years after the first Cylon war and continue evolving during next few years. Total of eleven ships would be built, in three main variants, multiple subtypes as almost all ships had some differences from another. Despite many modifications and variants, Minerva class perform quite well. They carry quite impressive armament, heavy armor and over 140 Vipers and 20 Raptors. By the beginning of second Cylon war, almost all ships were in service except Hyades which was damaged in accident 10 years earlier and was retired. Only three ships would survive the opening part of war, Minerva, Pleiades and Calypso, with Calypso been destroyed during the final battle against Cylons, remaining two ships remain in service, by the time Avalon-Harvester war started two ships receive heavy upgrades.  Heavly improved version was in plan to be built as Type IV, however while that was only intermediate decision to boost the number of fleet, it was highly unlikely that they would be built as many new designs were proven far better, including highly manuverable Arvak class battlestars.   INDRA CLASS – BATTLESTAR: 1620m Ships built: 4 (Indra, Durga, Brahma and Surya). Four ships were built as part o fleet modernisation some twenty two yeras prior to Cylon attack. However new and larger Mercury to enter service, only four would be built. Indra and Brahma saw no combat during second Cylon war, as due CNP they were shut down and destroyed. Durga would saw final combat in orbit of Virgon where she will destroy single basestar and several smaller support ships before been destroyed. Surya would engage Cylon forces. Before she was destroyed, she manage to destroy two Cyclon basestars.   BANSHEE CLASS – STEALTHSTAR: 1300m Ships built: 1 pre-war, 1 post war. Heavily armored warship built with advanced stealth coating on its hull. Banshee was suppose to be forward operating base close to the Cylon territory and monitoring the border, however due many technical issues newly commissioned Banshee was placed in reserve by Fleet admiral Torres. In fact she was part of Operation Exodus. Operation created by Fleet Admiral Torres and later his successor Fleet Admiral Nagala and their allies who finance this entire operation. They predicted Cylon attack and even possible inflitration by Cylons thus many ships were retired and not scrapped but simply placed in active reserves, these ships many of them that is would end in hands of Colonial military remnant lead by Captain (then) Stryker. Another ship would be under construction during the last battle, the Shadow Fox, which together with her older sister will be activly used during Avalon-Harvester war.   MADRIGAL CLASS – BATTLESTAR: 1590m Ships built: 1 (Madrigal). Shortly after commission of first of the Mercury class battlestars, Mercury herself, Colonial command wanted slightly smaller but equally powerful variant of Mercury. However development didn't start until President Adar took office. He believed that less ships would not provote cylons into attack. The truth was that one of Adar's aid was Cylon, model number 5, Doral. Adar itself naive as he was, didn't saw real reason why his aide would suggest such suggestions, like installation of CNP, reducing number of warships in fleet. Previous president was not naive. Cylons couldnt use sudden death situation on former president but number of fake files, some controversional made previous president step down and Adar stepped in. Adar become popular with citizens but not with military. Influenced by Cylon aid (which he of course didn't know it was Cylon), military would suffer greatly. In the end with over 70% of ships having CNP on bord, almost 90% of Vipers and Raptors also have it, Colonial fleet was doomed.   Madrigal itself was to be built in larger numbers, at least 20 or so but with Adar taking office, only one ship was built, instead additional Mercuries were built. Madrigal would be lost during battle of Picon, where ship would be shut down and destroyed.   GLORIOUS CLASS – BATTLESTAR: 1550m Ships built: 4 (Glorious, Furious, Andromeda and Dauntless). Glorious class was one of classes introduced around the same time as Mercury, however unlike Mercury which was highly successful, Glorious class was plagued by technical problems. Furious and Dauntless especially had problems with its FTL engines.  From total of 10 ships that were supposed to be built, four were only constructed as four frames were layed down. During last years the two ships were still had problems that president Adar even wanted them to be put in reserve, however ships remain in service and just when all ships finally start to work as they should Cylons attacked. Taking that three ships from four had CNP, only Andromeda survived initial attack and jump to Virgon where Colonial forces make last stand. She was destroyed during the battle.   ATLAS CLASS – BATTLESTAR: 1520m Ships built: 5 (Atlas, Selene, Night Flight, Sword and Pomona). Built few years after the end of first Cylon war, Atlas class was designated as support battlestar, however due her large flight pods she would even assume role of assault ship. Night Flight was only ship that receive stealth coating and was intended to patrol the outer part of Cyrannus system. Atlas class could carry up to 180 Vipers and 20 Raptors. However once new Mercury class enter service, Atlas itself was placed in reserve and would be used as transport from time to time as new Mercury class battlestar was named Atlas.  By the time of Cylon attack irronically both ships would be in service, new Atlas with main fleet and old one as transport and academy ship. Both ships were destroyed early during second Cylon attack. Selene would be destroyed during the Virgon, Pomona would be inactive due overhaul of her systems and would easly be destroyed and Night Flight would be shut down and destroyed before it could even respond near Tauron, only Sword which was part of Atlantis expedition would survive. Sword would participate in many battles during later part of second Cylon war, she would survive the war and remain in service with Avalon Defense force. By the time of Avalon-Harvester war she would mostly be used as patrol battlestar.   THANATOS CLASS – BATTLESTAR: 1280m Ships built: 2 (Thanatos and Theseus). Both ships enter service during last week of first Cylon war, ships survived the war and remain in service but no new ships of class was built. They receive many new technologies over the decades including heavy modifications to their flight pods where they were no longer needed retracted to jump. Unfortuantley  some ten years prior to second Cylon war, Theseus would be forced in earlier retirement after incident in which she lost her port flight pod. She would be scrapped by the time of attacked and new Nova class battlestar will be named Theseus. Thanatos would continue service but it would be destroyed over Virgon.   DAEDALUS CLASS – WARSTAR: 1680m Ships built: 1 (Daedalus). Relic from early part of first Cylon war, Daedalus served as command ship for many operations  during the war. She was only of her class to ever built and was by far strongest ship built by humans at that time. By the time of second war, she would be retired, upgraded and preserved. She would be taken and used in combat against Cylons. After the end of war, she would become mobile space station and would not participate in war against Harvesters. Despite her heavy armament she would deemed to old.   COLUMBIA CLASS – BATTLESTAR: 1438m Ships built: 23,  Block I (Columbia, Athena, Galactica, Rycon, Acropolis, Cerberus, Pacifica, Prometheus, Solaria, Triton, Olympia, Atlantia), Block II (Phoebe, Ouroboros, Olduvai, Acheron), Block III (Heracles, Themis, Chronos, Morpheus, Jupiter), Block IV (Titan, Ephimeteus). Second generation of battlestars built after many of first generation Jupiter class were destroyed early during the first Cylon war. Originally twelve battlestars were built like twelve Jupiters one for each colony, however by the later part of war more of the Columbia class battlestars enter service. One year after the first Cylon war Block III Columbia class battlestars were built and shortly after all four were built, additional two uncoplete hulls were completed as Block IV. Total of 23 ships of this class would be built and by the time they were largest and most numerious battlestars (although that would quickly be surpass by Valkyire class battlestars. By the beginning of second Cylon war, there were not many left in service. Columbia, Acropolis, Pacifica and Olympia were lost during the first Cylon war Solaria, Cerberus, Triton, Rycon, Atlantia, Chronos and Jupiter would be retired in around ten years prior to the second Cyclon war. Galactica was scheduled for retirement at the same day Cylons attacked, while rest of fleet was still in service.  Acheron, Morpheus, Themis, Heracles and Ephimeteus would be destroyed during the attack, some shut down but Heracles and Ephimeteus during battle of Virgon.  Ouroboros and Olduvai would survive and join newly established Copernicus colony defense but they to would be destroyed in combat against Cylons. Atlantia, Galactica,  Phoebe and Titan would remain as the sole survivors of the class, however during later part of war Athena and Phoebe would be lost to and Galactica would be retired as new Galactica enter service by Avalon Defense force, leaving only Titan as sole survivor of Columbia class. She would remain in service, surviving the war but like Sword would not participate openly in war against Harvesters. With Titan acutally been one of youngest she would still have decade or two in front of and she and her sister Ephimeteus were most armored and armed in the class but their fighter and support craft carrying capabilities were the same as other ships of the class.   ARVAK CLASS – BATTLESTAR: 1410m Total built: 4 built pre-war (Arvak, Skinfaxi, Concordia, Sleipnir), two built post war by Avalon Defense force (Naglfar and Sigurd) and two planned or under construction by ADF (Alsvid and Hrimfaxi).  Probably one of most advanced battlestar classes ever to be built. Arvak was fast, manuverable and carried most advanced weapon and defense systems that Colonials had. Her armor was new generation while not heavy as on larger battlestars highly resistant on Nukes and in a way stealthy. Arvak class was originally to be intelligence battlestar, used to scout and spy with her great Dradis capabilities. While all ships had CNP on bord, Sleipnir was the only ship not carrying Baltar's CNP. Ships would nevertheless play quite a role during the war. Arvak and Sleipnir were built as Type I variant, having extended Dradis capabilities while Concordia and Skinfaxi will be more combat oriented, lacking additional sensor-dradis capabililties of the Arvak and Sleipnir but still advanced. During the attack, Arvak would be destroyed as Cylons manage to shut her down, while Skinfaxi would go down fighting,  Sleipnir and badly damaed Concordia manage to survive and were later picked by Atlantis. They would serve well during later part of war by the end of war two additional members, Naglfar and Sigurd would join the fleet, with at least two more under construction or planned. During the war with Harvesters they would be used as scouting battlestars.   MORRIGAN CLASS – BATTLESTAR: 1420m Total built: 2 (Morrigan and Cu Chulain). Experimental class of battlestar, built on Columbia frame. This class built as artillery battlestar, concept of massive railgun stuck in front capable to destroy anything from long ranges. At the time it was highly expensive project and only two ships were acutally completed. None of the Morrigans had CNP on board during the cylon attack, making them highly dangerous ships. Morrigan would be destroyed during battle of Virgon where her railgun weapon will destroy several Cylon warships while Cu Chulain would be ambushed during her outer patrol, both ships will score kills before been destroyed. They carried the same number of Viper's and Raptors like standard Columbia class.   MANTICORE CLASS – LIGHT BATTLESTAR: 1350m Total built: 16 (Manticore, Chimera, Basilisk, Kitsune, Griffin, Wyvern, Hydra, Minotaur, Centaur, Phoenix, Unicorn, Dragon, Medusa, Gorgon, Cyclops and Golem). Production of this ship started during the last year of the first Cylon war as supplement to larger battlestars. Unfortuantley cheaper usually mean less quality and this ships will be bugged with problems, Basilisk and Minotaur would be destroyed during the war with Unicorn, Dragon, Medusa, Gorgon, Cyclops and Golem would be built after war. By the time of cylon attack (second cylon war), many of them would still be in service, although Griffin, Phoenix and Chimera would be retired by that time. Almost all ships would be destroyed early during second Cylon war as they had CNP on bord, only Manticore and Golem would actually survive to see the battle at Virgon where both ships to will be destroyed.   VALKYIRE CLASS – LIGHT BATTLESTAR: 670-700m Total built: 60 ships (8 lost during first Cylon war) 52 would be in service by the time of second Cylon war, eight ships that were lost were replaced with new ships of Valkyire class also carrying original names. They were built several types with Type I would be most numerious of them, built in two variants with and without sensor pod. 35 ships of this class were: (without the sensor pod) Valkyire, Heimdall, Yashuman, Universal, Sol, Tyr, Thor, Hestia, Dionysus, Asgard, Vanir, Einherjar, Esir, Bifrost, Hel, Jotunn, Celestial, Odin, Ramses, Erasmus, Icaris, Theia, (with sensor pod), Poseidon, Osiris, Freya, Sif, Midgard, Yggdrasil, Xnathus, Buchepalus, Forseti, Rindr, Kvasir, Frigg and Summanus. Type II class which was introduced some times after war was to be faster variant with slightly modified hull, ten ships were built:  Ares (retired shortly due explosion which crippled the ship), Ceres, Mars, Vulcan, Freyr, Mimir, Horus, Caelus, Libertas and Hermes (due heavy damage in one accident ship was retired). Type III was heavily upgraded variant designed to carry more Vipers and Raptors and also having two sensor pods on her engines (one upper one lower) only five ships were built: Loki, Verminius, Silvanus, Aion and Pontus and finally Type IV wich is furter upgrade of the Valkyire class, this type carry modified double pods, same engine with sensor pod configuration but carrying two addional engines, only two ships of this type were built: Sigurd and Nemesis. Four additional improved Type I and two Type IV's were under construction at the time of Cylon attack. Few ships of Valkyire class survived initial attack but only two ships would survive by the end of Cylon war, Valkyire itself and Poseidon, although Poseidon would be heavily damaged and possibly retired. Avalon Defense force consider new generation of Valkyire class ships to be built but production of this so called Type V wont start till the end of the war, with only few been in service by Avalon-Harvester war.   BERZERK CLASS – SUPPORT CRUISER: 650m to 1400m (depends on type) Total built: 145+ Berzerk class was first introduced several years prior to the first Cylon war, class was very popular with military but also civilians who used civilian variant that was built in large numbers. Class saw many variants during its long service ranging from 650m in length to 1400m in length depending on type. From small freighters, to carriers, cruisers and so on. By the time of second Cylon war, class was in its last years and there were no more then twenty or so in service, with several larger 1400m size ships and most been smaller ones.  However many more existed at naval yards stored. Only eight or so would remain in service after second Cylon war started, and most of those removed from naval storages, by the end of war only four smaller ones would remain in service and those ships to would end in civilian hands as transports shortly after second Cylon war was over.   HERMES CLASS – STRIKESTAR: 1600m Total built: 18 (4 under construction at the time of attack and 4 other planned). One of most advanced strikestars ever built, Hermes were fast, manuverable for their size, heavily armored and armed and on top of that capable of carrying up to twenty four Vipers and at least ten Raptors. Ironically only three ships will survive initial Cylon attack and those would later become part of Copernicus defense force.   TIGER CLASS – DESTROYER: 1438m Total built: 14 Tigers were built on Columbia frame as such they were as large as Columbia class battlestars, however they were built as brawlers. Not capable to carry Vipers and Raptors as battlestar could, they were designed to go toe vs toe with anything Cylons trow and win. They carry same main armament Columbia class battlestars carry but double the number of missiles and defensive PDC's. By the end of war, eight ships would be built with remaining six built shortly after war. Over half of the Tigers would be retired when Adar take office and only five would remain in service. Tiger's would never have CNP as all of them were scheduled to be retired and this five ships would prove hard nut to crack for Cylons. At least two ships were salvaged by Atlantis expedition but both of those ships would eventually be destroyed during later part of war.   TIGER II(III) CLASS – DESTROYER: 1450m Total built: 6 pre-war  (2 additional ships under construction at the time of attack) 12 would be ordered by Avalon Defense force as Tiger III's, only few would be built by the time of last battle with Cylons while rest would be complete after the war. These ships would see heavy combat during war with Harvesters. Built to replace old Tiger I's Tiger II was heavily armored class, capable of fighting multiple targets at same time, comparing to Tiger I, Tiger II could carry at least one Viper squadron and few Raptors. Unfortuantley for the class, all six ships were destroyed during initial attacks as all had CNP on board.   TITAN CLASS (I,II,III) – GUNSTAR – 1390m Total built: 35 (6 more under construction with at least 20 planned). Titans were most capable Gunstars built by Colonial fleet and most versatile. Built on frame of old Sentinel Defensers (later called Gunstars) Titans were built to be fast, powerful and also to carry some Vipers and Raptors if needed. Several of this ships would end with Copernicus Defense force, with at least additional five surviving will join Atlantis expedition. During the war with Cylons, Admiral Stryker will order additional ships of this class to be built, while most Titan I would be destroyed, 90% of all survivors will be so called Titans II, at the peak of their number during later part of war, there would be fifteen Titan II gunstars in service with Avalon Defense fore, although some would be destroyed during last battle. New batch now called Titan III would be under production. These ships (15 of them) would be far superior to previous Titans, requiring less crew and expenses, they would all serve the Harvester wars together with new Aesir and Aegir class gunstars which were basically improved Titan III but instead called Titan IV,receiving new name as two variants were built they were named Aesir and Aegir classes.   SENTINEL CLASS – GUNSTAR: 720m Total built: 120 (multiple variants) One of oldest class of ships still in service by the beginning of second Cylon war, Sentinel (defenders) were built over twenty years prior to first Cylon war. These old ships would serve during entire first cylon war, with dozens been destroyed. Many more were built after the war some with and some without the fight pods. By the time of second Cylon war, over two dozen would be in civilian services. At least one civilian variant would end with Galactica fleet, two with Atlantis fleet but these ships would never be used in combat.   FURY CLASS – HEAVY GUNSHIP: 720m Total built: 40. Built near the end of first Cylon war, Fury class was fast and manuverable brawler, capable fighting even twice the sized ships. Class perform quite well during the later part of war and would remain in service for decades. But eventually they would be replaced by new designs. At least eight of this ships would find its way to Atlantis expedition, thanks to Admiral's Torres and Nagala Exodus plan, some will be destroyed during later part of war but none will be used against Harvesters.  Fury's were capable of carrying total of forty Vipers and ten Raptors.   KOINER CLASS – GUNSHIP: 670m Total built 4 (plus 10 under construction). New generation of gunship, powerful and capable but was not built to carry fighters. Only four ships would be built before attack, and all four would be destroyed during the Battle of Virgon.   DEFIANT CLASS – GUNSHIP: 670m Total built: 2 (2 additional ships under construction, unknown number planned) At least 20 serving during Harvester wars. Post war design that enter service at the end of second cylon war. Class didn't participate in last battle but would participate in war against Harvesters. Class was designed to replace surviving Harrier and Fury class gunships, older Escortstars and patrolstars and firestars, all types of ships introduced during first war but none in service by second war, all of those ships (while not on this chart) were taken from different depots and upgraded. Defiant production kicked shortly after second Cylon war was over.     CYGNUS CLASS – GUNSHIP: 660m Total built: 30 (several additional built by Avalon Defense force). Built as new generation of Gunships twenty years after end of first Cylon war, this ships would serve well with Colonial fleet for next fifteen years, however several ships would be retired by Fleet Admiral Torres (as part of Operation Exodus), at least eight would be retired and two or three more would survive the initial attack, rest would be destroyed. New ships would alter be built and this class would participate in every battle during later part of second Cylon war as well Harvesters war.   TRIDENT CLASS – LIGHT GUNSHIP: 610m Total built: 10 (plus 4 under construction, more on order), post war design, created to replace old firestars, patrolstars in service. Class would came to late to participate in later part of second Cylon war but they would participate in Harvesters war. Ship was designed and built partiary on Valkyire hulls.

In 1939, the time period when Schiaparelli launched the perfume "Snuff," the world was on the brink of World War II. This era was characterized by a blend of elegance and practicality in men's fashion, reflecting a society poised between the opulence of the pre-war years and the impending austerity of wartime. Tweed suits were particularly fashionable, embodying a rugged yet refined aesthetic suitable for both formal occasions and outdoor pursuits. Elsa Schiaparelli, known for her innovative approach to fashion, also ventured into the realm of men's fragrances with "Snuff." The name "Snuff" was inspired by the color brown, which Schiaparelli whimsically dubbed "Snuff," likening it to the fine, powdered tobacco used for sniffing. This choice of name cleverly tied the fragrance to a sense of tradition and sophistication, evoking an image of old-world charm and refinement. "Scent" would appeal to men who appreciated classic, understated elegance. The fragrance itself was classified as dry, woodsy-mossy, perfectly complementing the rugged yet polished style associated with tweed suits and outdoor activities. It would likely resonate with gentlemen who valued subtlety and timeless sophistication in their grooming choices. The word "Snuff" evokes images of finely ground tobacco, old leather-bound books, and perhaps even the rustic charm of a gentleman's study. It carries connotations of tradition, refinement, and a hint of nostalgia for a bygone era of masculine elegance. Those who wore "Snuff" would likely have responded to its fragrance with appreciation for its understated complexity and its ability to enhance their personal style without overpowering it. It would have been perceived as a scent for a discerning gentleman who appreciates quality craftsmanship and timeless appeal in both fashion and fragrance. In summary, "Snuff" by Schiaparelli, launched in 1939, represents a fragrance tailored to the tastes of the sophisticated man of that era, aligning perfectly with the rugged elegance of tweed suits and outdoor pursuits, and evoking images of tradition, refinement, and masculine nostalgia. Original Fragrance Composition: So what does it smell like? It was classified as a dry, woodsy-mossy scent for men. Perfect to be worn with tweed suits and for outdoor activities. Top notes: Scottish heather, Provencal artemisia, Spanish thyme, Calabrian bergamot, fruity notes, green notes, oregano, mint and Provencal lavender Middle notes: Zanzibar clove, new mown hay, French carnation, Grasse jasmine, Egyptian geranium, Singapore patchouli, Florentine orris root, Atlas cedar, and Aleppo pine Base notes: eucalyptus, cypress, Virginian blond tobacco, Russian birch bark, Arabian opoponax, Yugoslavian oakmoss, Tibetan musk, ambergris, Mysore sandalwood, Mexican vanilla, Arabian olibanum, Java vetiver, Omani myrrh and Russian leather L'Amour de l'art, 1950: "Snuff by Schiaparelli: fresh and distinctly masculine scents. Scottish heather combined with the smell of tweed brew in a whiff of 'Snuff': it's a crystal pipe where the tobacco disappears to become perfume." Scent Story: The grand salon of Elsa Schiaparelli's Parisian maison is transformed into a rustic haven, filled with the robust scents of fresh herbes de Provence, vibrant geraniums, and soothing lavender. The air is redolent with these fragrant notes, mingling with the elegance of high fashion. As I step inside, I am greeted by the sight of masculine sportswear, tweed suits, and polished leather boots, each meticulously crafted and arranged to showcase Schiaparelli’s bold vision. The guests are equally stylish, their attire reflecting the daring and avant-garde spirit of the designer. Mme. Schiaparelli herself, dressed in a striking tweed suit, stands at the center of the room. She introduces her latest creation, Snuff, her first fragrance for men. Snuff is presented in a unique and luxurious crystal pipe-shaped bottle, a playful nod to René Magritte's famous painting "The Treachery of Images," which declares, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe." The bottle, while resembling a pipe, contains a sophisticated fragrance, a reminder that appearances can be deceiving. She explains that Snuff was designed to be worn with her masculine fashions, perfectly complementing the rugged yet sophisticated style of her collection. The scent of Snuff fills the room, an intricate blend that captivates my senses. The top notes are a fresh, invigorating mix of Scottish heather, Provencal artemisia, Spanish thyme, Calabrian bergamot, fruity notes, green notes, oregano, mint, and Provencal lavender. The complexity of these ingredients creates an immediate impression, a vibrant introduction to the olfactory journey. As I explore further, the middle notes unfold, rich and textured. The scent of Zanzibar clove spices up the composition, adding an exotic warmth that complements the rest of the blend. The aroma of new-mown hay brings a comforting, earthy quality, reminiscent of the countryside. French carnation adds a spicy floral nuance, while the opulent sweetness of Grasse jasmine and the fresh, slightly minty scent of Egyptian geranium blend harmoniously. Singapore patchouli and Florentine orris root introduce a deeper, more grounded quality, and the resinous aroma of Aleppo pine and Atlas cedar adds a final touch of ruggedness. Mme. Schiaparelli explains the costliness and rarity of these raw materials, each sourced from different corners of the world. She speaks passionately about the Virginian blond tobacco and Russian birch bark that lend a smoky, leathery depth to the base notes. The sharp, medicinal aroma of eucalyptus and the fresh, slightly camphoraceous scent of cypress add to the complexity. The exotic warmth of Arabian opoponax and Yugoslavian oakmoss intertwine with the sensual musk from Tibet and the animalic allure of ambergris. Mysore sandalwood and Mexican vanilla add a creamy, woody sweetness, while Arabian olibanum and Omani myrrh infuse a mystical, resinous quality. The earthy robustness of Java vetiver and the rich, leathery aroma of Russian leather complete the composition, grounding it with a strong, masculine finish. The salon hums with the soft murmur of conversation, punctuated by bursts of laughter and the clinking of glasses. The taste of hors d'oeuvres and fine wine lingers on my palate, enhancing the sensory experience. As I run my fingers over the luxurious fabrics of the tweed suits and feel the smooth, supple leather of the boots, I am immersed in the tactile richness of Schiaparelli’s world. The culmination of all these elements—the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures—creates an unforgettable experience. Snuff by Schiaparelli is more than a fragrance; it is an embodiment of her bold, avant-garde vision, a perfect complement to her masculine fashion line, and a testament to her mastery in blending fashion and fragrance into a seamless, sensory masterpiece. The crystal pipe-shaped bottle of Snuff, a piece of art in itself, is a fitting vessel for such a sophisticated scent, capturing the essence of Schiaparelli's innovative spirit and dedication to excellence. As I look at the bottle, I am reminded of Magritte's famous painting—indeed, this is not a pipe, but a beautiful illusion, much like the art of fragrance itself. Gentry, 1954: "Schiaparelli's Snuff , most attractively bottled in a container that looks like a pipe and in a package resembling a cigar box. This crisp, distinctively masculine scent is reminiscent of tobacco flowers. $12." Harper's Bazaar, 1964: "Christmas for the cock-of-the-walk man: Snuff — marvelously dashing, altogether male eau de cologne — was created by Schiaparelli for her personal friends when she opened her boutique in Paris." Bottles: Snuff is presented in a unique and luxurious crystal pipe-shaped bottle, a playful nod to René Magritte's famous painting "The Treachery of Images," which declares, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe." The bottle, while resembling a pipe, contains a sophisticated fragrance, a reminder that appearances can be deceiving.  The bottle was housed inside of a hinge-lid presentation box made to resemble a cigar box, complete with excelsior stuffing.  Modern Packaging, 1945: "Schiaparelli adds a big, chunky cake of Snuff soap to her line of quality toiletries for men just in time for the Christmas gift trade. Like the other Snuff products, perfume and eau de cologne, the soap is packaged in a modern version of a ..." Cue, 1954: "Shaped like a pipe is the handsome bottle in which Schiaparelli is offering its male-aimed Snuff perfume ($12) or cologne ($5 and $9). And the Snuff Gift Sets, containing cologne, after-shave lotion and talc for $9.50, look for all the world like cigar boxes." Glamour, 1957: "Snuff ” men's toiletries by Schiaparelli now come in a leather case which serves a long after - life as a stud box." Eau de Cologne & After-Shave Lotion:  In 1944, Schiaparelli expanded her Snuff fragrance line to include an Eau de Cologne, housed in a uniquely designed pinch bottle. The bottle's distinctive shape, inspired by the robust and compact forms often associated with men's grooming products, was accentuated by a chunky wooden cap, lending a tactile and masculine feel to the design. The seal that kept the container closed and prevented tampering was a reproduction of an enlarged cigar band, a clever nod to the fragrance's sophisticated and mature character. This design detail not only enhanced the bottle's aesthetic appeal but also reinforced the brand's commitment to quality and authenticity. The same bottle shape was used for the Snuff After-Shave Lotion and Talcum, each infused with the same masculine aroma that defined the original Snuff fragrance. The scent profile was reminiscent of young tobacco leaves, with a sharp-sweet undertone that evoked the raw, earthy qualities of freshly cured tobacco. This distinctive aroma was further spiced with a citron-y dash, adding a tingle of freshness that invigorated the senses and provided a crisp, clean finish. The combination of these elements created a fragrance that was both robust and refined, perfectly suited to the modern man. By 1954, Schiaparelli's Snuff line had gained significant recognition, as noted in the Saturday Review, Volume 37. The publication highlighted the introduction of the Snuff After-Shave Lotion, emphasizing its place within Schiaparelli's expanding line of men's toiletries. The review noted the $2.50 price tag, acknowledging that while it might initially seem steep, the premium was justified by the product's quality and distinctive character. The tangy, sharp-sweet scent of Snuff, combined with the elegant design of the bottle that resembled a modern cigar box, offered a sensory experience that was both luxurious and uniquely masculine. The Snuff After-Shave Lotion and Talcum were more than just grooming products; they were statements of style and sophistication. The sharp-sweet aroma, spiced with a touch of citrus, provided an invigorating post-shave experience that left the skin feeling refreshed and lightly scented. The talcum, with its silky texture, provided a smooth, comforting finish to the grooming routine, leaving the skin feeling soft and subtly fragranced. Incorporating the iconic scent of Snuff into these everyday grooming essentials allowed men to carry a piece of Schiaparelli's avant-garde elegance with them, transforming their daily routines into moments of luxury and refinement. The chunky wooden cap, the cigar band seal, and the robust bottle design all contributed to the overall experience, making each use a reminder of the careful craftsmanship and artistic vision that defined Schiaparelli's brand. Saturday Review, Volume 37, 1954: "Did you know that Schiaparelli had added an after-shaving lotion for men to her line of toiletries? ... "Snuff' is its brand name, and although the $2.50 price tag may be a deterrent at first isn't it worth a premium really to smell as tangy and look like a modern version of a cigar box..." Esquire - Volume 51, 1959: "Snuff cologne and soap, Schiaparelli, $9" Soap, 1962: "Mary Chess, Inc., of New York, buys Seaforth toiletry line....  Two other lines of men's toiletries, the "Chivalry" line, originally the "Chessman" line, and Schiaparelli's "Snuff" line. Esquire, 1963: "Treasure chest with pull-out drawer contains cologne, after-shave lotion, bath soap, brushless shave cream, hair groomer, deodorant stick and talc, Snuff de Schiaparelli, $15." Fate of the Fragrance: Snuff, the iconic masculine fragrance by Elsa Schiaparelli, experienced a hiatus before making a comeback with a modern twist. After being discontinued for a few years, the scent was reformulated with contemporary ingredients, breathing new life into the beloved aroma. This modern iteration retained the essence of the original fragrance but with updated notes that appealed to the evolving tastes of the time. The relaunched Snuff was available as an eau de toilette and an after-shave, maintaining its position as a staple in men's grooming routines. The new packaging was a nod to its heritage while embracing a more modern aesthetic. The bottles featured a distinctive pipe on the caps, a subtle yet sophisticated detail that paid homage to the original design and the playful spirit of Schiaparelli. This pipe motif served as a reminder of the fragrance's luxurious and unique character, blending the past and the present in a single elegant gesture. Despite its fresh update and stylish new look, Snuff faced another discontinuation. However, the fragrance was not forgotten. In 1977, it was relaunched once again, with hopes of capturing the hearts of a new generation of men. The 1977 version retained the refined packaging with the pipe on the cap, ensuring that the fragrance remained instantly recognizable to its loyal fans. Each relaunch of Snuff was a testament to its enduring appeal and the timeless quality of Schiaparelli's creations. The fragrance, with its sharp-sweet scent reminiscent of young tobacco leaves and a spiced citron-y dash, continued to evoke a sense of sophistication and elegance. Despite its multiple discontinuations, the legacy of Snuff remained strong, cherished by those who appreciated its unique blend of tradition and modernity. CLICK HERE TO FIND SNUFF BY SCHIAPARELLI

As a photographer, you are always looking for skills to develop. Learning how to professionally capture portrait photography is one of them. Portrait photography can be used as a business idea or a way to capture your own personal and family life. Good portrait photographers are sought after and well respected. What Is Portrait Photography? Portrait photography is all about people. How to show them at their best is a challenge. No matter if it's for business headshots or arranging a dozen family members for a group image. Of course, if photography portraits were as simple as shouting 'cheese!', we'd all be doing it. But it's not; there are a ton of little intricacies to it. From choosing the right gear and location, to posing the model and adjusting your composition. Even after mastering light, there is the polishing stage in Photoshop. Not only is the interaction with your subject difficult. But you also have to think about the equipment. You have to know it all to master portraiture. That's what we're going to cover right here. Portrait Photography Gear How to Choose the Best Camera for Portrait Photography Having the right camera is important. It will come down to what you will do with the images you capture. You can capture good portraits using anything. From a simple smartphone to a pricey Hasselblad. The majority of people reading this will be using a DSLR. This article takes you through the things you should be looking for in a DSLR. Especially for photography portraits. It takes your level of experience and price sensitivity into consideration. What Is the Best Lens for Portraits? Will you be shooting groups of people often? How much available space do you have? Do you want to take outdoor portraits with plenty of bokeh? Do you plan on carrying a few prime lenses? Or do you want a single zoom lens? This comprehensive article runs you through key questions you should be asking yourself. It will help when you're looking for an ideal portraiture lens. You will find a roundup of the best Canon and Nikon lenses for portraits. Along with their specifications. 14 Recommended Lighting Setups A big part of portrait photography involves manipulating lighting setups. Good portrait photographers know how to adjust every little detail. They can control the quality, quantity, and direction of light. Adding and using lighting tools they have at their disposal. They can even adjust to fit situations where they have limited or no control over the ambient light. 14 Recommended Lighting Setups goes over a few of the things to think about when buying your lighting gear. We cover some fundamental studio lighting patterns in the ‘Portrait Lighting’ section of this guide. On top of this, we look at how to use natural and ambient light in non-studio situations. Either in tandem with portable flash units or without. How to Set Up a Home Portrait Photography Studio Your studio is where all the gear comes together. This is your controlled environment. It is where you set up your camera, lighting, and other accessories. So you can take portraits in the style and manner that suits you. If you're getting started with studio portraiture, you'll want to set up a home portrait photography studio. This is a (somewhat) affordable way to begin practising. Of course, setup isn't everything. You will still need to work with the subjects in the studio. Especially to get the look, feel, and the effect that you want in the portrait. But all that happens in this setting. The sooner you can get comfortable with working in the context of the studio, the better. You'll improve your portraiture skills to no end. Read our guide to set up your home studio. How to Choose the Right Camera Settings for Portraits Setting your camera up for portraiture is a straightforward process. As long as you remember this one key idea. Emphasise the subject of the portrait above all else. This means that you want to expose in a correct way. This is to achieve the highest level of quality and clarity. Your settings will vary depending on many factors. Whether you are photographing in a studio, what light is available and the aim of the shoot. If you remember to expose your subject you can always balance your aperture, shutter speed, and ISO accordingly. Here is our detailed article to choose the right camera settings for portraits. Portrait Lighting Of all the different niches of photography, photography portraits are the most demanding. Here, it is beneficial to have as much control over lighting situations as possible. This is because the positioning and intensity of the light is the main factor. Especially in how you call attention to your subject in a portrait scenario. The articles in this section cover the basics of working with light. Both natural and artificial sources. 10 Stunning Portrait Lighting Patterns Possible With Just One Light Sometimes you only have a single flash to work with. This does limit the kinds of lighting setups you will be able to create. But you are free to use the flash you do have in combination with natural and ambient light. These combinations will help you produce many appealing effects. Assuming that your camera is an off-camera flash that you can operate by remote.  Presuming you have access to a reflector, you can them both to achieve every light condition you need. These range from a dramatic, high-contrast image to one that's balanced and evenly-lit. Read our article for 10 stunning portrait lighting patterns, using one light. How to Use Light Reflectors (Cheap Hack for Well-Lit Photos!) Reflectors are a cheap and easy way to add more light to your photography portraits. They are affordable, lightweight and easy to use objects. They don't need batteries, meaning they can go anywhere. There are many different types you can buy. Most will come with combined styles, such as gold, silver and diffused. They all have a different effect on the added light hitting your subject. Use them to bounce the available light back into the scene. A little extra light makes all the difference. Read on here to learn more about using reflectors. Must-Know Portrait Lighting Patterns and Tips Entire books have been written on the many lighting patterns available. These are what photographers use in different scenarios. They can be very specific to fields, for example, in product or portrait photography. Here is a set of very basic lighting patterns. Perfect guidelines for the beginning portrait photographer. These are: Split lighting Loop lighting Rembrandt lighting Butterfly lighting Broad lighting Short lighting These patterns are among the most useful and easy to create with basic lighting gear. Many more advanced lighting setups are variations on these basic ones. Memorise these and you'll have a solid foundation of lighting choices. Perfect for any portrait session. With these basics mastered you'll be better prepared. Learn more about the portrait lighting patterns here. How to Use Window Light for Portraits One of the best portrait photography tips we can give you is to use natural light. Using natural light which enters through a window is a great way to get soft light to an indoor subject. This lighting costs nothing. And is often overlooked as a viable source. The effect of the window on the outdoor light is the same as that of a softbox on a flash. Done right, the effect can be very impressive and professional-looking. But since this is a natural light source, you'll need to pay close attention to its quality. The quality and intensity are dependent on the time of day and weather. On top of that, it comes down to how you position your subject in relation to the natural light. Read this article to know how to use window light for portraits. Portraiture Lighting Terms Studio lighting for photography portraits is a vast topic unto itself. There is a large amount of terminology that you'll encounter when dealing with it. Becoming familiar with the vocabulary of lighting will help you understand light better. This, in turn, helps your knowledge of the types of light sources, patterns, and tools grow. These are all very important areas when you come to capture portraits. This short glossary is a handy reference that you can refer to when assembling your lighting kit. How to Use Butterfly Lighting for Portraits One of the best things about the butterfly lighting setup is its simplicity. You need very little gear to pull it off. The least you’ll need is one off-camera flash and a set of triggers. A reflector can also help direct the light towards the subject. It is a simple lighting technique. The key light sits above the camera and points directly at your subject. Read our article on how and when to use this technique. How To Use Ambient Lighting For Atmospheric Portraits If you are looking to capture some interesting portraits, try manipulating the light. Light, as you can imagine is the most important aspect of photography. Without it, every image would be unusable. By using simple props and situations, you can create some interesting patterns. Use these to add atmosphere into your images. Check out this article to learn how to use ambient light to enhance your portraits. How to Capture Great Portrait Photography How To Use Photography Props for Great Portraits Props help you boost the idea behind the portrait, making it more realistic and believable. On top of this, it helps to create an easier environment to capture the person in front of the camera. It also gives the hands something to do. They can be serious, or add some humour to the image. Read our article on how to add props successfully. How to Create Cinematic Looking Portraits With the film industry producing countless hits, it is no wonder we look towards them for inspiration. A cinematic portrait has many attributes. The main one being the difference in the aspect ratio. Cinematic scenes have a 16:9 ratio, whereas most digital camera images use 3:2. On top of this, there are color grades you can add and simple rules of compositions. Read here for all the information you'll need. The 10 Different Types of Portrait Photography You Should Know If you were wondering what kind of portrait photography that might interest you, we have the help you need. It might motivate you in the right direction. There are 10 different types of portrait photography. Each one needs different tips, techniques, and approaches. You might already a successful portrait photographer. But knowing about other possibilities can help you break into new markets. Read our article for more information. Shooting During Twilight Taking a good low-light photo portrait outdoors is a tricky proposition. As you might have guessed, there is a little bit more involved than showing up with a flash setup. You will need to assess your surroundings to see what kind of ambient light will be in your composition. Then, you'll have to adjust your settings and position your model to fit. Twilight is a great time to take portrait pictures outdoors. You'll still have the faintest of light in the sky after the sun has gone below the horizon line. This article walks you through six very important steps. These will help you to take great-looking photos during this time of day. How To Shoot Atmospheric Night Portrait Photography Night portrait photography is challenging due to the lack of light. But don't let that stop you from being creative. The best images are well exposed with a little imagination thrown in for good measure. Creating something atmospheric will come down to a few things. Namely the Mise-en-scène of your setting. This means the clothing, hair, and makeup of your subject. On top of those, the location in which you shoot and how it looks are as important. They should come together to create an image of harmony or juxtaposition. Learn how to capture atmospheric night portraits. How To Shoot Neon Portrait Photography the Easy Way One portrait photography trend of recent years has been to use ambient nighttime light. Neon lights from shop windows are one area you can find them. More and more photographers use them as they are still interesting and unusual. They give off that electric and futuristic feel that fits our era and idea of technology. You can use the neon lights in any number of ways. You only need to get outside when the sun is down. Check out here how to shoot neon portrait photography. How to Shoot Long Exposure Portraits If you want to make your portrait photography more creative, you need to try long exposure portraits. You can create dreamy photos by using this technique. Long exposure means that the camera shutter stays open for a longer time. Like for several second or even minutes. This blurs the motion and results in surrealistic effects. Read our step-by-step guide to learn how to shoot long exposure portraits. Portrait Posing and Composition Once you've set up your shooting environment for your portrait, you're ready to compose the actual image. Portraits are all about the person or people you are photographing. Composition, thus, will involve working with them on poses. They need to highlight what you are trying to achieve in your portrait. Posing your subject can be one of the tougher aspects of portraiture. It requires a separate competency from the rest of your photographer skill set. Here we've provided a few starting points for you to learn how to pose your subjects effectively. Posing People in Photographs When shooting models, it's your responsibility to give them the guidance they need. After all, it is your aim to help them look their best in front of the camera. This applies regardless of whether you're shooting professional models or family members. Follow these tips when giving directions from behind the camera. How to Pose Men In Photography Portraits Posing men involves highlighting angles and emphasizing implied power. Strength and sharp, defined lines are key. This means emphasizing the V-shaped torso and the jawline. Downplaying round shapes and non-dominant body language is also important. The prominence of these lines is easily controlled. So are the features of the subject's physique. It all comes down to the subject's position. A pose should show broad, stable shapes with a clear structure. This gives the composition a visual strength that communicates the idea that the subject himself is strong. Read our guide on how to pose men in portraits. How to Pose Women In Photography Portraits Women's poses in portraits highlight the curves of the female form. In contrast with men's poses, women's avoid straight lines and hard angles. The key thing to remember when posing women is that the eye should move easily around the portrait. You guide it along with the curves that you introduce throughout the pose. Subtle curves can be created by bending the wrists, elbows, and knees. You are looking for positions that are harmonious with the model's form. The ‘S Curve’ is a classic pose. It guides the viewer's eye down the frame from the face, to the arms and hands, following on to the model's legs. Check out this article for more advice on posing women. How to Pose for Family Portraits At its most basic, the family portrait is a group photo. Here, the subject comprises of members of the same family. It's a record of who's part of the family. It will also highlight the relationship between the people in it. The classic family photography portrait often shows the family in a studio. Posing as a group, in a line, and facing the camera. The important thing to remember is to keep the composition balanced. You're working with many people in a single image. This article presents some ideas that will help you create poses for the family. 10 Classic Tips For More Interesting Portraits So you have grasped the basics of shooting portraits. Now you will likely want to start experimenting with the form of your images. Your aim is to make them more visually interesting and different. These suggestions will give you some ideas of what aspects of portraiture you can play around with. Once you learn this, you can find out how to do it. The key is to challenge some conventions of portrait photography.  This includes, yet not exclusive to composition, lighting, and posing. You'll want to do this while retaining others. Your image will still be recognisable as a portrait, but with a ‘twist’. How to Crop Portrait Photography Photos: Easy Guide Deciding where to crop your subject isn't always an intuitive process. This is especially true if you're new to portraiture. This handy cheat sheet is a visual guide to places where it's ‘OK’ to crop a subject in a portrait photo. You'll see the areas you should avoid cropping. Refer to this if you're not sure where to crop when composing your photo. Self Portraiture 21 Creative Self Portrait Ideas for Photographers Self- Portraiture is where you turn the camera on to the person who is usually behind it. You! Here, you photograph yourself. You may find this a little daunting. But since you gave so much direction to others, you know what you need to do. If you don’t know where to start, you’ve come to the right place. The tips and tricks in this article will teach you how to find inspiration. It will also help you know how to invest in the right equipment. Get ready to transform yourself into someone different. How To Get Creative With Fairy Light Photography The simple straight forward portrait photography shot works for professional headshots. But what if you are looking for something more creative? Adding props and interesting lighting ideas can help to make your images special. Fairy lights are only one idea. If you feel creative, and you have some fairy lights - use them to your advantage. They might provide that kick you've been looking for. Check out here how to use them. 7 Fun and Creative Self Portrait Locations Finding locations for your self-portraiture can be difficult. The setting and background are as important as your subject. Anywhere can be a location. But does it give you inspiration and fill your image with something interesting? Look at your setting as a continuation of your mood and feeling. Use negative space to place a stronger focus on the subject. Color also has an impact, whether juxtaposed or otherwise. Read our article here to become inspired. You'll find better locations for your self-portrait photography. Styles of Portraits A Guide to Black and White Portrait Photography Shooting in black and white can give your portraits a classic, timeless look. When you remove color, details of texture, shape, and positioning stand out even more. It also helps to place an emphasis on the person. The textures that you see in black and white portraits reveal the character of a person’s face. Everything you've learned about portraiture still applies. Black and white photography portraits are special. It forces you to think even more about light and shadow in your compositions. And about capturing without the distraction that color sometimes can bring. Read our guide to black and white portrait photography. How to Take Fun and Natural Family Portraits This article talks more about the basics of capturing traditional family portrait photography. You will learn about what to consider when choosing a location. Also, how to arrange the people in the photos. How to light the group and highlight relationships are some examples of what you need to be aware of. Also, experience working with kids may be necessary. And of course, there is the question of what camera settings you'll want to use. 10 Things Your Photography Contract Must Include A photography contract for portrait photography is to ensure both parties retain their rights. It makes sure that neither side can do anything with the images that were not pre-discussed and agreed upon. One rule for photographing people is to get a model release. This is a contract between both parties, allowing the use of the model's image. Most stock photography requires this if you wish to sell the images online. Read here for the other nine tips on what your portrait photo contract needs to have. Post-Processing & Sharing Portraits The aim of post-processing portraits is to strengthen your images. They allow you to keep the subject of your photograph in the central focus. On top of that, post-processing can help fix the areas you missed during the shoot.  Here, you have another chance to ensure your subjects look attractive and appealing. Here, you can cut distracting things such as blemishes and noisy background elements. Pixieset - An Image Sharing Platform  As a professional photographer, delivering quality images on time is crucial. That's where Pixieset comes in. This is a platform that allows you to share large files with your clients. This all comes at a monthly fee. The website holds your images, issuing a URL ad password for your clients. They use this to view and select the images they want. Not only does it save you time. Your clients will be happy, satisfied, and likely to work with you again! It's definitely one of the top options for file sharing. For the full review, and information on how to get started, read our article here. Processing Portraits in Lightroom Adobe Lightroom is great for the majority of your portraiture post-processing. It affords you a smaller toolset than Photoshop. But it enables an easier workflow and archiving process through its organisational features. For global changes to an image, Lightroom has all your bases covered. Plus, if you are working with a batch of files that need editing, Lightroom will often be more useful to you. It has the ability to apply presets to many photos and adds metadata and notes to your files. This guide gives you a solid overview of how to organize your portrait files. And how to perform the major corrections and edits that portraits often need. How to Photoshop Portrait Photography When you think of removing bags under your subject's eyes, or removing unflattering marks and stray hairs. Perhaps even warming up flat skin tones - you're thinking of ‘retouching’. Retouching portraits is an essential skill. Adobe Photoshop is your go-to tool for these kinds of edits. It's often the final stage of portrait photography before you have a finished product. This article has tutorials on some of the most commonly used retouching techniques. These include spot healing, frequency separation, and dodging & burning, et al. Conclusion Portrait photography is an exciting and always-evolving photography genre. You need time and practice to master it. But seeing the surprise and excitement in clients' eyes when they see the portrait of themselves is worth the effort. Also, you keep meeting clients and building relationships, so it's not a lonely job like product or landscape photography. Use our complete guide to learn everything you need to know about portrait photography.

“If the Black Death caused the Renaissance, will COVID also create a golden age?” Versions of this question have been going around as people, trying to understand the present crisis, reach for history’s most famous pandemic.  Using history to understand our present is a great impulse, but it means some of the false myths we tell about the Black Death and Renaissance are doing new damage, one of the most problematic in my view being the idea that sitting back and letting COVID kill will somehow by itself naturally make the economy turn around and enter a period of growth and rising wages. Brilliant Medievalists have been posting Black Death pieces correcting misconceptions and flailing as one does when an error refuted 50 times returns the 51st (The Middle Ages weren’t dark and bad compared to the Renaissance!!!).  As a Renaissance historian, I feel it’s my job to shoulder the other half of the load by talking about what the Renaissance was like, confirming that our Medievalists are right, it wasn’t a better time to live than the Middle Ages, and to talk about where the error comes from, why we think of the Renaissance as a golden age, and where we got the myth of the bad Middle Ages. Only half of this is a story about the Renaissance.  The other half is later: Victorian Britain, Italy’s unification, World Wars I and II, the Cold War, ages in which the myth of the golden Renaissance was appropriated and retold.  And yes, looking at the Black Death and Renaissance is helpful for understanding COVID-19’s likely impact, but in addition to looking at 1348 we need to look at its long aftermath, at the impact Yersinia Pestis had on 1400, and 1500, and 1600, and 1700.  So: This post is for you if you’ve been wondering whether Black Death => Renaissance means COVID => Golden Age, and  you want a more robust answer than, “No no no no no!” This post is for you if you’re tired of screaming The Middle Ages weren’t dark and bad! and want somewhere to link people to, to show them how the myth began. This post is for you if you want to understand how an age whose relics make it look golden in retrospect can also be a terrible age to live in. And this post is for you if want to ask what history can tell us about 2020 and come away with hope. Because comparing 2020 to the Renaissance does give me hope, but it’s not the hope of sitting back expecting the gears of history to grind on toward prosperity, and it’s not the hope for something like the Renaissance—it’s hope for something much, much better, but a thing we have to work for, all of us, and hard. I started writing this post a few weeks ago but rapidly discovered that a thorough answer will be book-length (the book’s now nearly done in fact).  What I’m sharing now is just a precis,  the parts I think you’ll find most useful now.  So sometimes I’ll make a claim without examples, or move quickly over important things, just linking to a book instead of explaining, because my explanation is approaching 100,000 words.  That book will come, and soon, but meanwhile please trust me as I give you just urgent parts, and I promise more will follow. Now, to begin, the phrase “golden age” really invokes two different unrelated things: (1) an era that achieved great things, art, science, innovation, literature, an era whose wondrous achievements later eras marvel at, (2) a good era to live, prosperous, thriving, stable, reasonably safe, with chances for growth, social ascent, days when hard work pays off, in short an era which—if you had to be stranded in some other epoch of history—you’d be likely to choose. The Renaissance fits the first—we line up to see its wonders in museums—but it absolutely positively no-way-no-how fit the second, and that’s a big part of where our understandings of Renaissance vs. Medieval go wrong.  So, our outline for today: Renaissance Life was Worse than the Middle Ages (super-compressed version) Where did the myth come from in the first place? (a Renaissance story) Why is the myth of a golden Renaissance retold so much? (a post-Renaissance story) Conclusion: We Should Aim for Something Better than the Renaissance Leading my study abroad Florence students on our THIRD Uffizi visit. It’s also important to begin this knowing that I love the Renaissance, I wouldn’t have dedicated my life to studying it if I didn’t, it’s an amazing era.  I disagree 100% with people who follow “The Middle Ages weren’t really a Dark Age!” with “The Renaissance sucks, no one should care about it!”  The Renaissance was amazing, equally amazing as the Middle Ages, or antiquity, or now.  I don’t love the Renaissance for being perfect.  I love it because it was terrible yet still achieved so much.  I love it because, when I read a letter where a woman talks of a nearby city burning, and armies approaching, and a friend who just died of the plague, and letter also talks about ideas for how to remedy these evils, and Xenophon’s advice for times of war, and how Plato and Seneca differ in their advice on patience, and the marvelous new fresco that’s been finished in the city hall.  To find these voices of people who faced all that yet still came through it brimming with ideas and making art, that makes me love the human species all the more.  And gives me hope. In Florence, there are little kiosks near the David where you can buy replicas of it, and alongside the plain ones they have copies dipped in glitter paint, so the details of Michelangelo’s design are all obscured with globs of sparkling goo.  That’s what the golden age myth does to the Renaissance.  So when I say the Renaissance was grim and horrible, I’m not saying we shouldn’t study it it, I just want you to scrape off the glitter paint and see the details underneath: damaged, imperfect, a strange mix of ancient and new, doing its best to compensate for flaws in the material and mistakes made early on when teamwork failed, and violent too—David is, after all, about to kill an enemy, a celebration of a conquest, not a peace.  Glitter drowns all that out, and this is why, while the myth of the golden Renaissance does terrible damage to how we understand the Middle Ages, it does just as much damage to how we understand the Renaissance.  So let’s take a quick peek beneath the glitter, and then, more important, let’s talk about where that suffocating glitter comes from in the first place. Part 1: Renaissance Life was Worse than the Middle Ages (super-condensed version) The Renaissance was like Voldemort, terrible, but great. On February 25th 1506, Ercole Bentivoglio, commander of Florence’s armies, wrote to Machiavelli.  He had just read Machiavelli’s Deccenale primo, a history in verse of the events of the last decade. Bentivoglio urged Machiavelli to continue and expand the history, not for them, but for future generations, so that: “knowing our wretched fortune in these times, they should not blame us for being bad defenders of Italic honor, and so they can weep with us over our and their misfortune, knowing from what a happy state we fell within brief time into such disaster.  For if they did not see this history, they would not believe what prosperity Italy had before, since it would seem impossible that in so few days our affairs could fall to such great ruin.” Of these days of precipitous ruin, Burkhardt, founder of modern Renaissance studies, wrote in 1869: “The first decades of the sixteenth century, the years when the Renaissance attained its fullest bloom, were not favorable to a revival of patriotism; the enjoyment of intellectual and artistic pleasures, the comforts and elegancies of life, and the supreme interests of self-development, destroyed or hampered love of country.” (The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, end of Part 1) Burkhardt seems to be describing a different universe from Bentivoglio, so desperate to prove to posterity that he tried his failing best to defend his homeland’s honor.  Yet this was the decade that produced Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s David, Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin, Bramante’s design for the new St. Peter’s Basilica, Josquin des Prez’s El grillo (the Cricket), the first chapters of Ariosto’s epic Orlando Furioso, and Castiglione’s first courtly works at the court of Urbino, soon to be immortalized in the Courtier as the supreme portrait of Renaissance culture.  These masterworks do indeed seem to project a world of enjoyment and artistic pleasure in utter disconnect with Bentivoglio’s despair.  Can this be the same Renaissance? This double vision is authentic to the sources.  If we read treatises, orations, dedicatory prefaces, writings on art or courtly conduct, and especially if we read works written about this period a few decades later—like Vasari’s Lives of the Artists which will be the first to call this age a rinascita—we see what Jacob Burkhardt described, and what popular understandings of the Renaissance focus on: a self-conscious golden age bursting with culture, art, discovery, and vying with the ancients for the title of Europe’s most glorious age.  Burkhardt’s assessment was correct, if we look only at the sources he was looking at.  If instead we read the private letters which flew back and forth between Machiavelli and his correspondents we see terror, invasion, plague deaths, a desperate man scrambling to even keep track of the ever-moving threats which hem his fragile homeland in from every side, as friends and family beg for frequent letters, since every patch of silence makes them fear the loved one might be dead. Published lament for the assassination of one of the Dukes of Milan – not the same murders Ercole’s parents were directly involved with, but a cousin, and another link in the long and bloody chain. Machiavelli’s correspondent, Ercole Bentivoglio, typifies the tangled political web which shaped these years.  His father had been Sante Bentivoglio, who began as a blacksmith’s son and common laborer but was identified as an illegitimate member of the Bentivoglio family that dominated Bologna (remember Gendry in Game of Thrones?), so Sante was called to rule Bologna for a while when the only other adult Bentivoglio was murdered in an ambush, and young Ercole grew up in a quasi-princely court with all the grandeur we now visit in museums.  Ercole’s mother was Ginevra Sforza, an illegitimate niece of Francesco Sforza who had recently conquered Milan, replacing the earlier Visconti dukes who had in turn seized the throne by treachery fifty-five years before.  Renaissance politics isn’t turtles all the way down, it’s murders and betrayals all the way down. Why was life in the Renaissance so bad?  This is going to be a tiny compressed version of what in the book will be 100 pages, but for now I’ll focus on why the Renaissance was not a golden age to actually live in, even if it was a golden age in terms of what it left behind. Let’s look at life expectancy:  In Italy, average life expectancies in the solidly Medieval 1200s were 35-40, while by the year 1500 (definitely Renaissance) life expectancy in Italian city states had dropped to 18. Images of swaddled infants, from the Innocenti foundling hospital in Florence It’s striking how consistently, when I use these numbers live, the shocked and mournful silence is followed by a guy objecting: those numbers are deceptive, you’re including infant mortality—voiced as if this observation should discredit them.  Yes, the average of 18 does include infant mortality, but the Medieval average of 35 includes it too, so the drop is just as real.  If you want we can exclude those who die before age 12, and we do get a smaller total drop then, average age of death 54 in the 1200s dropping to 45-48 in 1500, so only a 12-16% drop instead of 48%, but the more we zoom the grimmer the Renaissance half proves.  Infant mortality (within 12 months) averaged 28% both before and after 1348, so the big drop from Medieval to Renaissance Italy is actually kids who made it past the first year, only to die in years 2-12 from new diseases.  We also think of the dangers of childbirth as lowering women’s lifespans, but death from childbirth stayed steady from Medieval to Renaissance at (for Tuscany) 1 death per 40 births, while the increase in war and violence made adult male mortality far higher than female even with the childbirth threat.  If we look at the 20% of people who lived longest in Renaissance Italy it’s almost entirely widows and nuns, plus a few diehards like Titian, and poor exiled Cardinal da Costa of Portugal languishing in Rome to the age of 102, with everyone he’d known in the first 2/3rds of his life long gone.  Kids died more in the Renaissance, adults died more, men died more, we have the numbers, but I find it telling how often people who hear these numbers try to discredit them, search for a loophole, because these facts rub against our expectations.  We didn’t want a wretched golden age. (Demographics are, of course, an average, and different bits of Europe varied, but I’m using the numbers for the big Italian city-states precisely because they’re the bit of Europe we most associate with the golden Renaissance, so if it’s true there, it’s true of the Renaissance you were imagining.) Why did life expectancy drop?  Counter-intuitively the answer is, largely, progress. Look what we can make now! A pistol that shoots nine random directions at once! (Bargello museum) War got worse, for one.  Over several centuries, innovations in statecraft and policy (which would continue gradually for centuries more) had increased the centralization of power in the hands of kings and governments, especially their ability to gather funds, which meant they could raise larger armies and have larger, bloodier wars.  Innovations in metallurgy, chemistry, and engineering also made soldiers deadlier, with more artillery, more lethal weapons, more ability to knock a town’s walls down and kill everyone inside, new daggers designed to leave wounds that would fester, or anti-personnel artillery designed to slice a line of men in half.  Thus, while both the Middle Ages and Renaissance had lots of wars, Renaissance wars were larger and deadlier, involving more troops and claiming more lives, military and civilian—this wasn’t a sudden change, it was a gradual one, but it made a difference. Economic growth also made the life expectancy go down.  Europe was becoming more interconnected, trade increasing.  This was partly due to innovations in banking (which had started in the 1100s), and partly, yes, the aftermath of the Black Death which caused a lot of economic change—not growth but change—some sectors growing, others shrinking, people moving around, people trying to stop people from moving around, markets shifting.  There were also innovations in insurance, for example insuring your cargo ship so if it sinks you don’t go bankrupt like our Merchant of Venice.  This meant more multi-region trade. For example, weaving wool into fine-quality non-itchy thread required a lot of oil, without which you could only make coarse, itchy thread.  England produced lots of wool but no oil (except walnuts), so, in the Renaissance, entrepreneurs from England, instead of spinning low-profit itchy wool, started exporting their wool to Italy where abundant olive oil made it cheap to produce high-quality cloth and re-export it to England and elsewhere.  This let merchants grow rich, prosperity for some, but when people move around more, diseases move more too.  Cities were also growing denser, more manufacturing jobs and urban employment drawing people to crowd inside tight city walls, and urban spaces always have higher mortality rates than rural.  Malaria, typhoid, dysentery, deadly influenza, measles, the classic pox, these old constants of Medieval life grew fiercer in the Renaissance, with more frequent outbreaks claiming more lives. The Black Death contributed too—in school they talk as if the plague swept through in 1348 then went away, but the bubonic plague did not go away, it remained endemic, like influenza or chickenpox today, a fact of life.  I have never read a full set of Renaissance letters which didn’t mention plague outbreaks and plague deaths, and Renaissance letters from mothers to their traveling sons regularly include, along with advice on etiquette and eating enough fennel, a list of which towns to avoid this season because there’s plague there.  Carlo Cipolla (in the fascinating yet tediously titled Before the Industrial Revolution) collected great data for the two centuries after 1348, in which Venice had major plague bursts 7% of years, Florence 14% of years, Paris 9% of years, Barcelona 13% of years, and England (usually London) 22% in the earlier period spiking to 50% in the later 1500s, when England saw plague in 26 out of 50 years between 1543 and 1593.  Excluding tiny villages with little traffic, losing a friend or sibling to plague was a universal experience from 1348 clear to the 1720s, when plague finally diminished in Europe, not because of any advance in medicine, but because fourteen generations of exposure gave natural selection time to work, those who survived to reproduce passing on a heightened immune response, a defensive adaptation bought over centuries by millions of deaths. The real villain: Y. Pestis, the bacterium that causes plague Today thousands of cases of Y. pestis (the plague bacterium) still occur each year, largely in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia where it was not endemic so immunities didn’t develop.  And if geneticist Mihai Netea is correct that the immune mutation which helps those of European descent resist Y. pestis also causes our greater rate of autoimmune disorders, then the Black Death is still constantly claiming lives through the changes it worked into European DNA over 400 years (and literally causing me pain as I type this, as my own autoimmune condition flares).  While the 1348 pandemic was Medieval, most of the Middle Ages did not have the plague—it’s the Renaissance which has the plague every single day as an apocalyptic lived reality. Economic growth also made non-military violence worse.  Feuds (think Montagues and Capulets) were a Medieval constant, but the body count of a feud depends a lot on how wealthy the head families are, since the greater their wealth and the larger their patronage network, the larger the crowd of goons on stage in the opening scene of Romeo & Juliet when partisans of the two factions are biting their thumbs at each other, and the larger the number of unnamed men who also get killed in the background while Romeo fights Tybalt.  In Italy especially, new avenues for economic growth (banking and mercenary work) quickly made families grow wealthy enough to raise forces far larger than the governments of their little city states, which made states powerless to stop the violence, and vulnerable to frequent, bloody coups.  The Bentivoglios of Bologna and Sforza of Milan (whose marriage alliance produced Ercole who wrote that letter to Machiavelli) had risen by force, ruled by force, and were in turn overthrown by force, several times each, in fact, as rulers were killed, then avenged by returning sons or nephews, and cities flip-flopped between rival dynasties every few years: Look what happens with the Dukes of Urbino 1440s-1530s In the 1400s most cities in Italy saw at least four violent regime changes, some of them as many as ten or twelve, commixed with bloody civil wars and factional massacres, until all Italy’s ruling houses were so new that the Knights Hospitaller—who normally required knights to have been noble four generations to join—let Italians in with only two generations because otherwise there would have been no one.  Petrarch talked about this in his poem Italia Mia, which we think was written by 1347 (i.e. before the Black Death); he described Italy’s flesh covered with mortal wounds, caused by “cruel wars for light causes, and hearts, hardened and closed/ by proud, fierce Mars,” and his poor poem begging Italy’s proud, hard-hearted people for, “Peace, peace, peace.”  It sounds just like what Ercole described to Machiavelli, doesn’t it?   Well, Petrarch’s poem is as far from Machiavelli’s history as Napoleon’s rise from Yuri Gagarin’s space flight, a long time during which the wars grew worse, armies bigger, cities richer, plagues more frequent, steady escalation of the same things Petrarch feared would wipe out Italy 150 years before. Important: none of this was new in the Renaissance!  These were all gradual developments: banking, trade, centralization, the cultural produce of the Renaissance too (paintings, cathedrals, music, epics), these had all been gradually ramping up for centuries, changing the character of Europe decade by decade.  Banking innovations started in the 1100s, insurance innovations in the 1300s, economic shifts before as well as after 1348, political shifts accumulated centuries, it’s all incremental. Thus, when I try to articulate the real difference between Renaissance and Medieval, I find myself thinking of the humorous story “Ever-So-Much-More-So” from Centerburg Tales (1951).  A traveling peddler comes to town selling a powder called Ever-So-Much-More-So.  If you sprinkle it on something, it enhances all its qualities good and bad.  Sprinkle it on a comfy mattress and you get mattress paradise, but if it had a squeaky spring you’ll never sleep again for the noise.  Sprinkle it on a radio and you’ll get better reception, but agonizing squeals when signal flares.  Sprinkle it on the Middle Ages and you get the Renaissance.  All key qualities were already there, good things as well as bad, poetry, art, currents of trade, thought, finance, law, and statecraft changing year by year, but add some Ever-So-Much-More-So and the intensity increases, birthing an era great and terrible.  Many different changes reinforced each other, all in continuity with what came before, just higher magnitude, the fat end of a wedge of cheese, but it’s the same cheese on the thin end too.  The line we draw—our slice across the cheese—we started drawing because people living in the Renaissance started to draw it, felt it was different, claimed it was different, and their claims reordered the way we think about history. Some more quick un-fun facets of Renaissance life: while the Medieval Inquisition started in 1184, it didn’t ramp up its book burnings, censorship, and executions to a massive scale until the Spanish Inquisition in the 1470s and then the printing press and Martin Luther in the 1500s (Renaissance); similarly witchcraft persecution surges to scales unseen in the Middle Ages after the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum in 1486 (Renaissance); and the variety of ingenious tortures being used in prisons increased, rather than decreasing, over time.  Rule of thumb: most of the scary practices we think of as “Medieval” were either equally true of the Renaissance, worse in the Renaissance, or only started in the Renaissance. If you want corrupt popes, they too can be more terrible as they get richer. And pre-sanitation, the more luxury goods traveled, the more people grew wealthy, the wider the variety of food people ate, and with more kinds of foods came more different kinds of parasites living in your intestines eating your from the inside out, hooray!  Even in the Middle Ages we can tell your social class from the variety of parasite eggs in your preserved feces (the more you know!), but in the Renaissance the total could go up, and the frequency and intensity of chronic pain with it (not to mention a wider variety of horrible toxic things doctors would try to feed you as a cure; before sanitation more doctors = bad, not good). In sum, if you’re a time traveler and you’re being banished, don’t pick the Renaissance. Florence’s Gates of Paradise As for how an age so terrible to live through produced the masterpieces and innovations we still hold in awe, my ultrashort answer is that Renaissance art and culture was also a gradual ramp-up from ever-changing Medieval art and culture, and that the leaps we seem to see in the later period are the desperate measures of a desperate time. Legitimacy is a key concept here.  The secret we all know is that governments, countries, laws, they’re all just a bunch of stuff we made up.  They exist only as long as we all keep agreeing they exist, and act accordingly.  Far more than Tinkerbell, regimes and governments need us to believe in them or they die.  Sometimes this death takes the form of people just ignoring old structures, like in the Hellenic age when a remote Greek colony might hear from the founding city so infrequently that it starts ignoring the empire and just makes its own government.  A more common consequence when people stop believing in governments is that some rival will take advantage of that lack of confidence, and rise up to claim power instead, whether through an electoral primary challenge or a bloody civil war. For this reason, regimes to work hard to gain legitimacy, that is to acquire any and all things that make people agree the regime is real, and has the right to rule.  When a usurper murders the old king but marries his widow, sister, or daughter, that’s an attempt to secure legitimacy in a world where people are used to government going with blood right.  When no local royal-blood bride is available, the usurper might instead marry a princess from a famous distant kingdom, and fill his court with expensive, exotic treasures and other indications that he’s connected to foreign powers and money—this is another bid at legitimacy since it implies the new ruler has strong allies and the means to bring prosperity and trade. There are lots of other ways to project legitimacy: getting trusted local elites to work for you, getting religious leaders to bless you, publishing your pedigree (fake or real) with mighty ancestors, cracking down on crime and having showy trials, paying an astrologer to circulate your horoscope with great predictions, mounting a big parade, building an equestrian statue of yourself in the square that everyone walks past, receiving ambassadors in a showy way so everyone sees how much foreign powers honor you, repairing bridges and caring for orphans so people talk about your generosity and virtue, even a modern city funding a zoo and orchestra and art museum is that city projecting legitimacy with the trappings we associated with cultured power.  When a regime has lots of sources of legitimacy, it makes people more willing to go along with that regime continuing.  Some sources of legitimacy tie into a culture’s traditional ideas about what makes power lawful (religion, heredity, virtue, particular values), while other sources of legitimacy, like a collection of exotic animals or a fancy palace, just impress people, and make them feel that life under this regime will probably be good, and that overthrowing it would probably be difficult if it has money to throw away on palaces and elephants. Here’s Henry III of England depicted receiving the crown from two very legitimate bishops. In Richard III Shakespeare has Richard arrange to be found at prayer standing between two priests when he’s trying to convince the people to make him king — a classic bid for legitimacy which Shakespeare knows is often insincere. Thus the radical oversimplification is that, when times get desperate, those in power pour money into art, architecture, grandeur, even science, because such things can provide legitimacy and thus aid stability.  Intimidating palaces, grand oratory, epics about the great deeds of a conqueror, expensive tutors so the prince and princess have rare skills like Greek and music, even a chemical treatise whose dedication praises the Duke of Such-and-such, these were all investments in legitimacy, not fruits of peace but symptoms of a desperate time.  In an era when a book cost as much as a house (it really did!), and Florence’s Laurenziana library cost more per GDP than the Moon Landing, you don’t get that level of investment unless elites think they’re going to get something out of it.  Just as today giant corporations fund charities or space tech because they get something out of it, publicity raising their stock prices, so a mighty merchant family might repair a church or build a grand public square and put their coat of arms on it, drawing investment and intimidating rivals. Don’t YOU want a trade deal with the people who can build THAT? Culture is a form of political competition—if war is politics by other means, culture is too, but lower risk.  This too happened throughout the Middle Ages, but the Renaissance was ever-so-much-more-so in comparison, and whenever you get a combination of (A) increasing wealth and (B) increasing instability, that’s a recipe for (C) increasing art and innovation, not because people are at peace and have the leisure to do art, but because they’re desperate after three consecutive civil wars and hope they can avoid a fourth one if they can shore up the regime with a display of cultural grandeur.  The fruits fill our museums and libraries, but they aren’t relics of an age of prosperous peace, they’re relics of a lived experience which was, as I said, terrible but great. All this I’ll explore further in the book, but if you want more info in the meantime you can get an excellent overview of the period in Guido Ruggiero’s The Renaissance in Italy, and a look at how this fed philosophical innovation and birthed Renaissance humanism in James Hankins’s Virtue Politics.  For today, though, our goal isn’t to look deeply at the David, it’s to look at the glitter we just scraped off it, and to understand where that glitter comes from. Part 2: Where did the Myth Come From in the First Place? (A Renaissance Story) The moment when all Medievalists *facepalm* Whenever I’m with Medievalists and the subject turns to one of the bad things people say about the Middle Ages (dark age, backwards, superstitious, stagnant, oppressive, enemy of progress, all homogenous), I make a point of speaking up and saying, “Yeah, that’s my guys’s fault.  Sorry.”  It was a joke the first time, and it’s still half a joke, but I keep doing it because there’s this special smile under the resulting chuckle, this pause, warming, affirming, on the Medievalist’s face that says: I’ve always felt I deserved an apology from the Renaissance!  Thank you! Because the beginning of the problem was the Renaissance’s fault. Pretty-much every culture, when it tells its history, divides it into parts somehow (reigns, eras, dynasties).  These labels may not seem like a big deal, but they have a huge effect on how we imagine things.  Think of how the discourse about boomers vs. Gen-X vs. millennials affects people’s self-identities, who associates with whom, and the kinds of discourse we can have with those terms that we couldn’t have with different ones.  The lines and labels in our history are powerful.  In my Terra Ignota science fiction novels I mention that the people in my 25th century society debate whether World War I ended in 1945 or 1989, and it always blows readers’ minds for a few seconds, and then follows the reflection: yeah, I could see WWI and WWII being considered one thing, like the Wars of the Roses.  My first exposure to the way this makes your brain go *whfoooo* was as a kid and hearing Eugen Weber provocatively call WWI and WWII “The Second Thirty Years War”.  Feels weird, right?  Weird-powerful. Interesting choices made in this timeline of where to divide this timeline. Many other choices could be made. Google for “European History Timeline” and you’ll find dozens. Modern illustration of a Medieval mystery play, enacting battles between good and evil for the audience’s moral edification – just like history. People living in the European and Mediterranean Middle Ages generally (oversimplification) divided history into two parts, BC and AD, before the birth of Jesus and after.  For finer grain, you used reigns of emperors or kings, or special era names from your own region, i.e. before or after a particular event, rise, reign, or fall.  There was also a range of traditions subdividing further, such as Augustine’s six ages of the world which divided up biblical eras (Adam to Noah, Noah to Abraham, etc.), though most of those subdivisions are pre-historical, without further subdivision post Christ’s Incarnation.  The Middle Ages also had a sense of the Roman Empire as a phase in history, but it was tied in with the BC-to-AD tradition, and with ideas of Providence and a divine Plan.  Rome had not only Christianized the Mediterranean and Europe through the conversion of Constantine c. 312 CE, but authors like Dante stressed how the Empire had been the legal authority which executed Christ, God’s tool in enacting the Plan, as vital to humanity’s salvation as the nails or the cross.  Additionally, many Medieval interpreters viewed history itself as a didactic tool, designed by God for human moral education (not the discipline of history, the actual events).  In this interpretation of history, God determined everything that happens, as the author of a story determines what happens.  The events of the past and life were like the edifying pageant plays one saw at festivals: God the Scriptwriter introduces characters in turn—a king, a fool, a villain, a saint—and as we see their fates we learn valuable lessons about fickle Fortune, hypocrisy, the retribution that awaits the wicked, and the rewards beyond the trials and sufferings of the good.  The Roman Empire had been sent onto the world’s stage just the same, a tool to teach humanity about power, authority, imperial majesty, law, justice, peace, offering a model of supreme power which people could use to imagine God’s power, and many other details excitedly explored by numerous Medieval interpreters.  (Many Renaissance interpreters still view history this way, and the first who really doesn’t do it at all is Machiavelli.) The two people most directly responsible for inventing the Middle Ages are two men from Tuscany: Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304-1374), and Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444). Fresco of Petrarch Petrarch was the first person to talk about the era after the Roman empire as a separate, bad period of shadow, misery, darkness, and decay.  Petrarch gained his fame with his Italian poetry, and popularized the sonnet (though we have a long time still to wait for Shakespeare), but later in his life he was part of a circle of Italian scholars who loved, loved, loved, loved Cicero, and read his political works intensively as they thought about questions of republicanism and statecraft.  Petrarch described himself as having been born in exile.  He was born in exile in space quite literally, while his parents were in banishment, and he grew up in Avignon in the period the papacy was there in French control.  But he also considered himself an exile in time, exiled from that community of antiquity which was the true home of his spirit.  I already quoted his lament Italia Mia, and his sense of the degeneration of his era was enhanced by the feeling that France’s control of the papacy had ravaged and spoiled Rome and Italy.  He also lived through the Black Death, and lost almost all his scholar-friends in it.  Two surviving friends wrote to him after the main wave had passed to plan a precious reunion—they were attacked by bandits on the way, and one murdered, while the other escaped but was missing for many months.  You can understand why Petrarch, reading of the Pax Romana when the ancient texts claim you could walk in safety from one end of Rome’s empire to the other, might see his age as one of ash and shadow.  He projected that ash and shadow back on everything since Rome, lumping together for the first time the long sequence we now refer to as the Middle Ages. Fresco depiction of young Cicero reading in his Roman home; raising the next generation of Italy’s rulers the same way was Petrarch’s plan to save Italy and Europe from an age of ash and shadow. Petrarch, importantly, did not claim his era was already a golden age, nor did he use the word Renaissance; he claimed his era needed to have a transformation, that desperate times called for desperate measures, and that if Italy was to have any hope of healing it must look to its ancient past, to Rome, the Pax Romana, that dream age when there were no bandits on the road or pirates in the sea.  The lost arts that nurtured the age of Emperors were languishing in ancient tomes waiting to be restored if only people reached for them.  We know the Renaissance as the era that revived a lot of lost Roman technologies, geometry, engineering, large-scale bronze work, and those were important, but what Petrarch really thought would change things were people, intellectual technologies, not science or engineering tools.  Petrarch wanted the library that educated Cicero, and Seneca, and Caesar.  When we today look at ancient Rome we’re often struck most by the wicked Emperors, Caligula, Nero, the anecdotes of decadent corruption, but Petrarch instead saw the republican Brutus, who executed his own sons when they conspired to take over the state—in a world where city after city was falling to monarchal coups, and Lord Montague was used to using his great influence to make the Prince let Romeo get away with murder, the thought of Brutus putting Rome before his family felt like a miracle.  (Unhelpfully, Petrarch didn’t write a single clear treatise where he spelled this out, but if you want a sample try his letters and invectives, or for the mega-thorough scholarly version see James Hankins’ Virtue Politics). Important: even using antiquity wasn’t new in the Renaissance.  Medieval people had been reading Seneca, and Cicero, and Virgil the whole time, and imitating and reusing ancient stuff, they just used the classics differently from how Petrarch did, just as the classics are also used differently in the 17th century, and the 19th century, and today. There were some major innovations in Renaissance engagement with the classics (several stages of innovation in fact), that differentiate them from Medieval, but those are complexities for another day. Stunning portrait face of Leonardo Bruni, from his tomb in Santa Croce. Leonardo Bruni was the next step.  He was child when Petrarch died, and grew up in the era of heady excitement of trying to use classical education to create the golden age Petrarch proposed.  Bruni studied Latin with a focus (as Petrarch encouraged) on imitating ancient Latin instead of Medieval Latin whose grammar and vocabulary had evolved (as any language does) over the centuries.  Bruni served as Chancellor of Florence, and imitated ancient Roman historians in writing his History of the Florentine People, which for the first time formally divided history into three parts: ancient, middle, and modern, which we now call Renaissance.  He also filled his history with analysis and deep interpretation, which many Renaissance scholars will tell you was the first modern history, the first history of a post-classical time/place, and the first truly analytic history written since antiquity, and then Medievalists will scream at them and pile up examples of Medieval chronicles full of framing and moral analysis, which absolutely are doing sophisticated interpretive work, and vary enormously from each other, but Bruni’s is recognizably as different.  Why?  Largely because Bruni actively wanted his history to seem innovative and different, and wrote with that as a goal, in a new kind of Latin, with new structure, setting out to make something everyone would look at and say: Wow, it’s like what the Romans did! Illuminated manuscript of a French translation of Bruni’s history; every court had to have it, and make one of their own. With Bruni we had three periods—ancient, medieval, and the new age.  That new age wasn’t called rinascita until Vasari’s Lives of the Artists in 1550 (more than a century after Bruni) and renaissance proper was coined by Jules Michelet in 1855, but Bruni’s idea of three periods, and that this new one could be a golden age, caught on quickly because of its potential for… (da da da daaa!) …legitimacy!  Back then, as now, claiming that you’re the start of a new golden age is an ideal way to make your (teetering, illegitimate) regime seem exciting, full of momentum, glorious.  History-writing modeled on Bruni quickly became all the rage, and you could awe people with a history of how great your city/people/family is, get them excited about a golden age, make yourself seem legitimate.  And Bruni’s history writing had another power too. One set of events Bruni described in his Florentine History were the conquests of Gian Galeazzo Visconti the “Viper of Milan” (1351-1402), a man who lived up in every way to his badass family crest of a serpent swallowing a helpless little dude. After ambushing and supplanting his uncle, the Viper seized Milan (bribing appropriate powers to make him duke), then took Verona, Vicenza, Padua, and tried for all of northern Italy including Bologna and Florence, securing a great victory at the Battle of Casalecchio in 1402.  But then (according to Bruni) brilliant Florentine cunning arranged the would-be conqueror’s defeat and downfall.  When Bruni’s history circulated in 1444, the Viper’s grandson Duke Filippo Maria Visconti did a spit take: “What the?!  We didn’t lose that war!  Granddad dropped dead of a f*ing fever and the troops had to go home!  The Florentines never beat us in a single battle!  They can’t say won the war!”  They can.  They did. It turns out history isn’t written by the winners; history is written by the people who write histories. So, what are you going to do about it, grandson of the Viper of Milan?  There’s only one thing to do: hire one of these new classically-educated humanisty types to write a history of your city and your family framed your way, and replacing the murdered-his-uncle bribed-the-king totally-illegitimate conquest-by-force narrative with a glorious lineage that constantly kicked Florence’s ass!!  That’s what he did—that’s what everybody did, Milan, Venice, France, England, Hungary, Naples; everybody had to have a history, and all the histories claimed there had been a bad middle age, that it was over, and that we were now in the glorious classical-revival-powered new age which had the potential to surpass it thanks to the virtues and glories of [Insert Prince Here].  This is why, up in England, baby King Henry VI’s uncle Duke Humphrey of Gloucester tried to hire Leonardo Bruni to come to England and work for him, and write a history that would shore up the tenuous Lancastrian claim to the throne (we’re entering the Wars of the Roses here).  And this is why, while Bruni stayed in Florence, another major Florentine figure Poggio Bracciolini actually was lured by the high pay to go to England and work for Humphrey’s rival Cardinal Beaufort.  And all these histories pick and choose details to make the current regime/ruler look great and legitimate, at the expense of making the newly-invented middle age look bad. No no no no, please, just no… This is why all Medievalists, deep down inside, know they deserve an apology from the Renaissance. One attempt at a solution is dropping the term Renaissance, but that doesn’t actually solve the problem, since it leaves us with antiquity and a period from then to… what?  Is the dividing line the Enlightenment?  Industrialization?  Colonialism?  The Industrial Revolution?  The Agricultural Revolution?  The French Revolution?  WWI?  No matter how late you push the line, any of these divisions is still accepting Bruni’s ancient-middle-modern division, and involves making a claim about what begins the modern.  Normal parlance in history now is “early modern” which begins with [insert-scholarly-squabble-here] and ends roughly with the French Revolution, which is generally agreed to kick off “modern” proper.  While “early modern” does avoid accepting claim that the Middle Ages were bad and needed a rebirth, and I use it myself, I also think it’s a dreadful term, since (A) it’s confusing (“early modern” sounds like the Crystal Palace, not Shakespeare’s Globe), and (B) the term actively worsens the degree to which your selected start date is a judgment call about what makes us modern.  Because the real problem with the myth of the bad Middle Ages versus golden Renaissance is not what Petrarch and Bruni created within the Renaissance itself—it’s what happened later to entangle both terms with an equally problematic third term: modern. Part 3: Why is the Myth of a Renaissance Golden Age Retold so Much? (a post-Renaissance story) The thing about golden ages—and this is precisely what Petrarch and Bruni tapped into—is that they’re incredibly useful to later regimes and peoples who want to make glorifying claims about themselves.  If you present yourself, your movement, your epoch, as similar to a golden age, as the return of a golden age, as the successor to a golden age, those claims are immensely effective in making you seem important, powerful, trustworthy.  Legitimate. In sum, one of the most powerful tools for legitimacy is invoking a past golden age.  Under my rule we will be great like X was great!  Whether it’s a giant golden age (Rooooome!) or a tiny golden age (the US 1950s!), if you can claim to be bringing it back, you can make a very clear, appealing case for why you should have power.  This claim can be made by a king, a duke, a ruling council, a political party, an individual, or a whole movement.  It can be made explicitly in rhetoric (I am the new Napoleon!) or implicitly by borrowing the decorative motifs, vocabulary, and trappings of an era.  An investment banking service that uses a Roman coin profile as its logo, names its different mutual funds after Roman legions, and has a pediment and columns on its corporate headquarters is trying to project legitimacy from the idea of antiquity as a golden age of power and stability. The newborn United States of America when it decided to make the Washington Monument be a giant obelisk, that was another bid at legitimacy and projecting power by invoking the golden ages of ancient Egypt and conquering Rome, combined in the Washington Monument’s case with other things like, instead of the traditional gold tip on top, using high-tech more-expensive-than-gold aluminum, mixing golden age with power claims about wealth and science. So… Painting of the Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest, by Willem van Haecht, 1628 …because the Renaissance had called itself a golden age, by the 17th century it had joined the list of epochs that you can invoke to gain legitimacy, and has been invoked that way many times.  This is why 18th and especially 19th and earlier 20th century governments and elites raced to buy up Italian Renaissance art treasures and display them in their homes and museums.  This is why Mussolini, while he mostly invoked imperial Rome, used the Renaissance too, and even made special arrangements to meet Hitler inside the Vasari Corridor in Florence to show off the art treasures of the Uffizi.  And this is why the US Library of Congress building is painted all over inside with imitations of Renaissance classicizing frescos and allegorical figures in Renaissance style even though the quotations they include and values they celebrate are largely not Renaissance. Mussolini takes Hitler on a tour of the Uffizi One consequence of golden ages being so powerful is that powers squabble over them: “I’m the true successor of [XXX]!”  “No, I’m the true successor!”  You see this in the fascinating modern day dispute over the name Macedonia in which both Greece and the country now called North Macedonia both want to be seen as the land of Alexander the Great, and argued over the name tooth and nail, dragging in both the UN and NATO.  Since golden ages are mythical constructions (the events are real but the golden age-ness is mythmaking) they’re easy to redefine to serve claims of true successor status—all you have to do is claim that the true heart that made the golden age great was X, and the true spirit of X flourishes most in you.  Any place (past or present) that calls itself a new Jerusalem, new Rome, or new Athens is doing this, usually accompanied by a narrative about how the original has been ruined by something: “Greece today is stifled by [insert flaw here: conquest, superstition, socialism, lack of socialism, a backwards Church, whatever], but the true spirit of Plato, Socrates and the Examined Life flourish in [Whateverplace]!” Brutus or Caesar, you can pick either one! Ancient Rome is particularly easy to use this way because Rome had several phases (republic, empire, Christian Rome) so if some rival has done a great job declaring itself the New Roman Empire you can follow up by saying the Empire was the corrupt decadent period and the Roman Republic was the true Rome!  Simply quote Cicero and talk about wicked emperors and you can appropriate the good Rome and characterize your rivals as the bad Rome.  If republic, empire, and Christian Rome are all claimed, you can do something more creative like the 19th century romantic movement which claimed the archaic pastoral Rome of Virgil’s Georgics, replacing pediments and legionary eagles with garlands and shepherds and claiming a mythic golden age no one had been using lately. The same is true of claiming Renaissance.  If you can make a claim about what made the Renaissance a golden age, and claim that you are the true successor of that feature of the Renaissance, then you can claim the Renaissance as a whole.  This is made easier by the fact that “the Renaissance” is incredibly vague.  When did it start? 1400? 1350? 1500? 1250? 1550? 1348? When did it end? 1600? 1650? 1700?  You can find all these dates if you dig through books about “the Renaissance” written in different countries and different fields (art history, literary history).  I pointed out that Petrarch’s Italia Mia is as far from Ercole’s Bentivoglio’s letter to Machiavelli as Napoleon’s rise from Yuri Gagarin’s space flight, but even at Machiavelli we’re still only half-way through the large, vague period that different people label Renaissance.  On my own university campus, if I drop by different departments and ask colleagues when Renaissance begins, I get 1200 or 1250 from the Italian lit department (some of whom say Machiavelli is already “modern”), but in the English building I might get 1450 or even 1500.  I think drawing a line after Black Death makes sense for Italy at least, or maybe at 1400, but there are plenty of counter-arguments, and people on campus who identify as Medievalists who study things later than some things I work on.  I think it’s great for Medieval and Renaissance to overlap, since I—looking mainly forward—ask different questions about someone like Petrarch from the questions my Medievalist colleagues ask.  The only “wrong” answer to where the line falls, in my opinion, is to believe there is a clear line. And if we zoom into this long, vague period, when was the “high Renaissance” i.e. the best part, the most characteristic part?  If you ask a political scientist it’s usually the very early 1400s, when Bruni and other innovative political thinkers were writing; if you ask an art historian it’s the decades right after 1500 when ¾ of the Ninja Turtles overlapped; if you ask a theater scholar it’s Shakespeare who was born fully 200 years later than Bruni and his peers discussing politics.  It all depends on what you think defines the Renaissance, so if you have a different focus then different dates feel like periphery or core. So, just as when we invoke Rome we can pick republican Rome, imperial Rome, pastoral Rome, Christian Rome, the conquering Rome of Julius Caesar or the peaceful Rome of the Pax Romana, similarly there are a huge range of Renaissances one can invoke: Bruni’s, Raphael’s, Machiavelli’s, Luther’s, Shakespeare’s.  But choosing your Renaissance is an especially potent question because of… (drumroll please)… the X-Factor. Okay, deep breath. Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett Version) with his pocket Petrarch After the Renaissance, in the period vaguely from 1700 to 1850, everyone in Europe agreed the Renaissance had been a golden age of art, music, and literature specifically.  Any nation that wanted to be seen as powerful had to have a national gallery showing off Renaissance (mainly Italian) art treasures, and capital buildings with Renaissance neoclassical motifs, while an individual with elite ambitions had to know classicizing Latin, and a bit of Greek, and have opinions about Raphael, Titian, Petrarch, and the polyphonic motets of Lassus.  Seriously: in the original Doyle Holmes stories, so 1850-1910, after having Watson establish Holmes’s “Knowledge of literature—nil. Philosophy—nil.” still has Holmes carry a pocket Petrarch and write a monograph on the polyphonic motets of Lassus, because that’s what a smart, impressive person did in 1850.   This also meant that Renaissance art treasures were protected and preserved more than Medieval ones—if you’re valorizing the Renaissance you’re usually criticizing the Middle Ages in contrast, so these generations learned to think of Renaissance art as good taste and the periods on both sides (Medieval and baroque) as bad taste, and a lot of great Medieval art was left to gather dust, or rot, or was even actively destroyed, since nothing invokes the Renaissance like sweeping away the “bad” medieval.  As a result, the Renaissance became a self-fulfilling source base: go to a museum today and you see much more splendid Renaissance art than Medieval, leading to the natural conclusion that the Renaissance produced more art in general, but Middle Ages did make splendid art, it’s just that later centuries didn’t preserve it as carefully, so less survives, and what survives is more likely to be in storage than in the main gallery. The transition from people being excited about Renaissance art and culture to being excited about the Renaissance as an era came in the mid-1800s, primarily with the work of Swiss historian Jacob Burkhardt, and his 1869 The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.  It’s a gorgeous read, unskimmably rich prose, and Burkhardt’s work was a major breakthrough moment for the practice of history as a whole, because he showed how you could write a history, not of a country or a person, but of a culture, discussing the practices and ideas of an era, examining art and artists side-by-side with authors, soldiers, and statesmen as examples of people of a period and the way they thought, acted, and lived.  The book pioneered cultural history, the practice of trying to study societies and their characteristics, acknowledging the interrelationship of politics with art and culture instead of examining them separately.  Cultural history remains a major field, and one where some of the best work on once-neglected topics like women, pop culture, and non-elites has flourished.  But… Burkhardt was also the main figure who popularized the terms “modernity” and “modern.”  He argued that the Renaissance was the birth of “modern man,” and that modern man was defined by a powerful sense of human excellence and human potential.  According to Burkhardt, the core of this change—the spirit of the Renaissance which sparked the triumphant path of progress toward modernity—was the rise of individualism.  As he says in the beginning of Part II: In the Middle Ages both sides of human consciousness—that which was turned within as that which was turned without—lay dreaming or half awake beneath a common veil. The veil was woven of faith, illusion, and childish prepossession, through which the world and history were seen clad in strange hues. Man was conscious of himself only as member of a race, people, party, family, or corporation—only through some general category. In Italy this veil first melted into air; an objective treatment and consideration of the state and of all the things of this world became possible. The subjective side at the same time asserted itself with corresponding emphasis; man became a spiritual individual, and recognized himself as such. The Medievalists reading this are gnashing their teeth, and yes, this moment is core to the persistence of the myth of the bad, backward, stagnant, sleepy middle ages, and equally core to the myth of the Renaissance Man: awake, ambitious, aware of his own power, rational, ripping through the cobwebs of superstition, desirous of remaking the world but also of intentionally fashioning him or herself into something splendid and excellent.  A human being who realizes human beings can be their own masterpieces. In the mid-19th-century, when Burkhardt wrote, Europe was very enamored of individualism, of new democratic ideas of government, of nationalism and ideas of individual consciousness and national consciousness, and of the notions of genius, both genius individuals and the geniuses of peoples.  Thus, Burkhardt’s claim that the Renaissance was born from individualism gave all sorts of 19th century movements the ability to claim the Renaissance golden age as an ancestor.  Germany, Britain, the young United States, despite having little to do with Italy, they could all claim to be the true inheritors of Renaissance greatness if they could claim that individualism and the opportunity to be a self-made man prospered more truly among their peoples than in Italy. But there was more: by claiming that the Renaissance—and all its glittering art and innovation—was caused by individualism, Burkhardt was really advancing a claim about the nature of modernity.  Individualism was an X-Factor which had appeared and made a slumbering world begin to move, sparking the step-by-step advance that led humanity from stagnant Medieval mud huts to towers of glass and iron—and by implication it would also define our path forward to an even more glorious future.  In other words, the X-Factor that sparked the Renaissance was the defining spirit of modernity.  If individualism was responsible, not only for the Renaissance, but for the wonders of modernity, then logically those regimes of Burkhardt’s day which most facilitated the expression of individualism could claim to be the heart of human progress and to hold the keys to the future; those nations which did not advance individualism (where socialism prospered, for example, or “collectivism” which was how 19th century Europe characterized most non-Western societies) were still the slumbering Middle Ages, in need of being awakened to their true potential by those nations which did possess the X-Factor of human progress. I hope you winced a few times in the previous paragraph, recognizing toxic 19th century problems (eurocentrism, orientalism, “White Man’s Burden” thinking), as well as basic historical errors (spoiler: you can find plenty of individualism in Medieval texts, and lots of things that are absolutely not individualism in Renaissance ones).  But those specifics aren’t the big problem.  The big problem was how entrancing the idea of an X-Factor was, the notion that there is one true innovative spirit which defines both Renaissance and modern, and advances in a grand and exponential curve from Petrarch through Leonardo and Machiavelli on to [insert modern hero here].  Thus Burkhardt birthed what I call the quest for the Renaissance X-Factor.  Because when the first scholars disagreed with Burkhardt, they didn’t objcet to the idea that the Renaissance was caused by a great defining X-Factor, they loved that idea, they simply argued about what exactly the X-Factor was. (Note: If you haven’t read it already I recommend you also look at my post On Progress and Historical Change, discussing the history of ideas of progress.) Thanks to Burkhardt, the Renaissance came to be defined as the period after Medieval but before Enlightenment when something changed and pushed things toward modernity—the moment that the defining spirit of modernity appeared.  From that point on, claiming you were the successor to the Renaissance didn’t just mean claiming a golden age like Rome, it let you also claim that modernity itself was somehow especially yours.  If you could argue that the reason the Renaissance was great was that it did the thing you do, then you are the heart of modernity and progress, even of the future, while those who don’t celebrate that spirit are the enemies of progress.  Thus every time someone proposed a new X-Factor, a different explanation for what made Renaissance different from Medieval, that made it possible to make new claims about the nature of modernity, and which nations or movements have it right.  This model even lets one claim the future: the X-Factor was born in the Renaissance, grew in the Enlightenment and in modernity, and is the key to unlocking the next glorious age of human history as it unlocked both Renaissance and modern.  This lets you advance teleological arguments about the inevitable triumph of [democracy, nationalism, atheism, capitalism, whatever].   It’s a version of history that’s not only legitimizing but comforting, since it lets you feel you know where history is headed, what will happen, who will win. Savonarola is one of many Renaissance figures appropriated by many later movements, including revolutionaries in the Italian unification movement. To give specific examples, if we’re in the middle of the Cold War, and an influential historian publishes a book arguing that the X-Factor that sparked the Renaissance was double-entry bookkeeping, i.e. the rise of banking and the merchant class, America can say: “The Renaissance X-Factor was the birth of capitalism!  The fact that it was a golden age proves capitalism will make a golden age too, and the true successor of this golden age is our alliance of modern capitalist regimes!”  If, on the other hand, we’re in a nationalist wave, say in 1848 or 1920, and someone argues that the X-Factor that sparked the Renaissance was the call for national unity articulated in Petrarch’s Italia Mia or Savonarola’s sermons (this is Pasquale Villari), and that what ended the Renaissance golden age was when Italy was conquered and divvied up among the Bourbons and Hapsburgs, then the Renaissance can be claimed as a predecessor by the Italian unification movement, the German unification movement, any nationalist movement anywhere can claim that uniting peoples into nations is what drives modernity.  If we claim the Renaissance was birthed by the rise of secular thought, that Renaissance geniuses were the first people to break through the bonds of superstition, and that Leonardo and Machiavelli were secret atheists (this is Auguste Comte), then we can claim that secularization and the secular state is the heart of human progress and modernity.  And if someone claims the X-factor was republican proto-democratic thought, the political writings and discourse of civic participation unique to the Italian city republics, Florence, Venice (this is Hans Baron), then we can claim that republican democracy is the key to human progress, that modern democracies are the heart of modernity, and everything else is backwards, outside, Medieval, bad, and needs to be replaced. To this day, every time someone proposes a new X-Factor for the Renaissance—even if it’s a well-researched and plausible suggestion—it immediately gets appropriated by a wave of people & powers who want to claim they are the torch-bearers of that great light that makes the human spirit modern.  And every time someone invokes a Renaissance X-Factor, the corresponding myth of the bad Middle Ages becomes newly useful as a way to smear rivals and enemies.  As a result, for 160 years and counting, an endless stream of people, kingdoms, political parties, art movements, tech firms, banks, all sorts of powers have gained legitimacy by retelling the myth of the bad Middle Ages and golden Renaissance, with their preferred X-Factor glittering at its heart. Recommended reading for more, or see my page of History book recommendations We scholars do our best to battle this, to introduce a complex and un-modern Renaissance, but the very usefulness of the myth guarantees that it will be repeated much more broadly than our no-fun efforts to correct it.  A lot of Renaissance historians today reject the idea of a single X-Factor and try instead to talk about combinations of mixing factors.  Many of us also try to argue that the Renaissance was not fundamentally modern, that it was its own distinctly un-modern thing.  But it’s a hard sell, because the narrative of a special spirit launching us from Petrarch to the Moon Landing is enchanting, and because a complicated, messy, un-modern Renaissance snatches away the golden Renaissances most people meet first.  Nobody in this century has read about the French Invasion of 1494, or even about the Guelphs and Ghibellines, before meeting the genius cults of Leonardo and Michelangelo. Scraping the glitter off to reveal the imperfect and violent David underneath is an assault on our understandings of our past and present, on what it means to be ourselves, even on our sense of where the future is heading.  People find that unsettling.  And people who look to Renaissance celebrities as role models and intellectual ancestors don’t like to hear about their rough un-modern sides.  So people get hostile, or unsettled, they keep telling the myths, and use cherry picked sources to glob the glitter-paint back on.  It’s not always done in bad faith—if from early childhood you’ve always learned the Renaissance was sparkling and golden, and you see a bare patch where the glitter has come off, of course you’ll think that bare patch is the error, that the still-sparkly parts are the real thing.  You treat the oddball patch as damage, and keep believing what that documentary or museum label told you years ago when you saw your first Renaissance masterpiece and fell in love.  So the myth persists, and for every attempt to correct it we’re up against a dozen tour guide scripts, and TV specials, and corporate statements, and outdated textbooks, and new books (fiction and nonfiction alike) that glob the glitter on.  So you can understand why, from time to time, Renaissance and Medieval specialists alike just have to stop and scream like Sisyphus. David gets his regular scrub. He needs it. Conclusion: We Should Aim for Something Better than the Renaissance This, in not-very-brief, is why we keep telling the myth of the golden Renaissance, and bad Middle Ages. The Wheel of Fortuna, which turns, elevating men from beggar, to townsman, to king, then falling again in a chaotic cycle representing life. Notice the ABSENCE of an idea of the world getting better OVERALL. Now, let’s look again at our other starting question: “If the Black Death caused the Renaissance will the COVID pandemic cause a golden age?”  You see the problems with the question now: the Black Death didn’t cause the Renaissance, not by itself, and the Renaissance was not a golden age, at least not the kind that you would want to live in, or to see your children live in.  But I do think that both Black Death and Renaissance are useful for us to look at now, not as a window on what will happen if we sit back and let the gears of history grind, but as a window on how vital action is. The Black Death first: it didn’t cause the Renaissance, no one thing caused the Renaissance, it was a conjunction of many gradual and complicated changes accumulating over centuries (banking, legal reform, centralization of power, urbanization, technology, trade) which came together to make an age like the Medieval but ever-so-much-more-so.  The idea that the Black Death caused a prosperity boom comes from old studies which showed that wages went way up after the Black Death, creating new possibilities for laborers to gain in wealth and rise in status (like the golden 1950s).  But those were small studies from a few places (mainly bits of England), and we have newer studies now that show that wages only rose in a few places, that in other places wages didn’t rise, or actually went down, or that they started to rise but elites cracked down with new laws to control labor, creating (among other things) the first workhouses, laws limiting freedom of movement, and other new forms of unfreedom and control.  What the Black Death really caused was change.  It caused regime changes, instability letting some monarchies or oligarchies rise, or fall.  It caused policy and legal changes, some oppressive, some liberating.  And it caused economic changes, some regions or markets collapsing, and others growing. It’s Viking time! If you really want to know what COVID will do, I think the place to look is not Renaissance Italy, but the Viking settlements in Greenland, which vanished around 1410.  Did they all die of the plague?  No.  We’re pretty sure they never got the plague, they were too isolated.  But the Greenland settlements’ economy had long depended on the walrus trade: they hunted walruses and sold the ivory and skins, and ships would come from Norway or Iceland to trade for walrus, bringing goods one couldn’t make in Greenland, like iron, or fine fabric, or wheat.  But after 1348 the bottom dropped out of the walrus market, and the trading ships stopped coming.  By 1400 no ships had visited Greenland for years except the few that were blown off-course by storm.  And meanwhile there were labor shortages and vacant farms on the once-crowded mainland.  So we think the Greenland Vikings emigrated, asked those stray ships to take them with them back to Europe, as many as could fit, abandoning one life to start another.  That’s what we’ll see with COVID: collapse and growth, busts for one industry, booms for another, sudden wealth collecting in some hands, while elsewhere whole communities collapse, like Flint Michigan, and Viking Greenland, and the many disasters in human history which made survivors abandon homes and villages, and move elsewhere.  A lot of families and communities will lose their livelihoods, their homes, their everythings, and face the devastating need to start again.  And as that happens, we’ll see different places enact different laws and policies to deal with it, just like after the Black Death.  Some places/regimes/policies will increase wealth and freedom, while others will reduce it, and the complicated world will go on being complicated. That’s why I say we should aim to do better than the Renaissance. Because we can.  We have so much they didn’t.  We know so much. For one thing, we know how pandemics work.  We know about germs, viruses, contagion, hand-washing, sanitation, lowering the curve.  We can make plans, take action that does something.  Forget 1348, even in 1918 we didn’t understand how to treat influenza, how it moved, and hand washing was still controversial. 1918 was a US election year but we didn’t discuss delaying or changing the election, there was nothing we could do to make it safer, we didn’t know about six-feet-apart, or sanitizing voting booths, or have the infrastructure to consider vote-by-mail, all we could do was let men (women still had two more years to wait) vote and die.  We’ve come a long way. Suffragettes at the 1918 election. This year, 2020, this is the first time in the history of this planet that any species has faced a pandemic knowing what it is, and how to take effective action.  We aren’t taking perfect action, and we absolutely should be criticizing and condemning the many flaws—some small, some huge—in how it’s being dealt with, but there is real, efficacious action we can take.  As an historian, not just of the plague of 1348, but of  the plagues of 1435, and 1485, and 1494, and 1503, and 1596, and 1630, and 1656, what I see is those many generations who not only had to live through this over and over, but who had no hope that their children would ever be free of it.  We know about vaccines, and that we’ll make one—it’ll take a while, and we’ll mess up various ways along the way, but none of us is afraid our grandchildren will grow up spending one year in ten locked up in their homes like this as COVID-19 spreads; we will solve it.  We know we’ll solve it, and any other age in history would treasure that confidence like miracle.  Because all Petrarch could say after losing his world in 1348 was that, the next time plague comes back, we should console ourselves by thinking of it as dying with much good company. We know about mental health now too.  We’re talking about the mental health crisis of COVID, the mental health costs of fear, poverty, racial injustice—in 1918 we were still excited by electroshock, and debating the radical new idea that outpatient psych treatment might be a thing, instead of doing only institutionalization.  We have the language to talk about the mental cost of crisis, and that language alone opens so many possibilities for helping, acting, aiding that previous eras never had.  Without the concept, we couldn’t start to try to treat it—now we can. And we have more language: social safety net, social welfare, social services, concepts for thinking how state and society can put structures in place to relieve human suffering.  We have economics now, not the kind of economics that’s trying to prognosticate the stock market, the basic kind with terms like GDP, and unemployment rate, and wealth gap, and retirement age, and inflation.  There were economies in 1348, and even social services, hospitals, orphanages, city grain supplies, but we didn’t have a science for discussing it, vast banks of data comparing how different systems work, or help, or harm.  After the Black Death when different places tried different policies for their recovery, they didn’t have comparisons, examples—we do.  We won’t be guessing in the dark when each nation decides its recovery plan for this pandemic—we won’t be omniscient, but even partial knowledge makes us powerful.  That raises the stakes. Youth climate strikers in New York City, featured in an article in Forbes Because, like after 1348, there is about to be big change.  There are many options before us, different things that states can do post-COVID, some of which will help with poverty, empower labor, lend a helping hand to those exhausted Greenland Vikings as they start again, and there are other things states can do that will instead widen the gaps, entrench elites, help the rich get richer and see the disempowered locked more inescapably into modern versions of workhouses.  Different places will make different choices.  Some places will see regime changes, others just policy shifts, but there aren’t vast wheels of history that lock a pandemic into automatically yielding a boom or bust.  There is no automatic outcome.  Rather, all nations in the world are about to make a set of choices which will have a far larger, deeper impact on the next decades, on lives, rights, options, everything, than the normal choices states make in a normal year.  The stakes are higher.  Unlike in 1348 we have a lot of knowledge, answers, options, concepts we could try like safety nets, or UBI, or radical free markets, many very different things.  Which means that acting now, demanding now, voting, pushing, proposing change, we’re shaping policies that will affect our big historical trajectory more than normal—a great chance to address and finally change systemic inequalities, or to let them entrench.   There is no predetermined outcome of pandemic; pandemic is a hallway leading to a room where something big is going to be decided—human beings decide. I love space exploration. I’ve written novels about it, and a song that makes everyone cry, I make myself tear up thinking about it all the time, especially civilian spaceflight and the hope that this chapter of history might be advanced by curiosity, teamwork, and human hope, not war or competition.  But after looking forward to it for so long, the recent SpaceX launch was the first I’ve watched in a long time without tearing up.  Because watching a space ship launch while looters are smashing shops outside my window (and cops ignoring them in favor of harassing peaceful protestors & giving carte blanche to the gunwielding vigilante on the corner) feels a lot like Leonardo painting the Mona Lisa while cities around were literally burning (and rich merchants’ private goons guarding their wealth & allies as faction dictated).  This year, this specific year, 2020, with the world shut down by plague, and civil strife, and fire in the streets, and teetering distrust in governments, this is the first time our present has reminded me of the Renaissance.  But we aren’t the Renaissance—we have social science, and efficacious medicine, and the Enlightenment under our belts, when we learned we can analyze our laws and institutions, and step by step replace them with better ones.  We aim for better. At the Renaissance Society of America Conference some years ago, two scholar friends got into a debate about whether Machiavelli’s world was fundamentally pre-modern, different from our own, or whether fundamentally it faced the same problems we do.  Responding to the claim that the Renaissance was far more violent than our present, the advocate of Renaissance-as-modern quoted the statistic that modern Chicago had as many murders every year as Renaissance Florence.  The rebuttal that surged in my mind was that the population of Florence was less than 100K, so Chicago’s millions have far fewer murders per capita, but the other speaker had a far better answer.  We’re working to change that murder rate.  We study it, understand it, plan interventions, act.  We believe it’s a problem we can solve, should solve, that citizen and state should act, and if the state will not the state should change.  We have policy studies, plans, alternatives. Voltaire, 1763 “Treatise on Tolerance,” written in his outrage over the judicial murder of Jean Calas. Petrarch wanted to end the cruel wars for light causes that were wounding Italy, but had no plan beyond sending his poem out into the world, and urging elites to have their kids read Cicero. Machiavelli also wanted to end the cruel wars for light causes, and seeing that reading Cicero had failed he proposed a new way of evaluating history, collecting examples of what worked and didn’t in the past, basing our statecraft and actions on them so the next time we try things we’ll choose more wisely.  It was the birth of social science.  It took us a long time for us to get good at it, to turn the observations in The Prince into big databases and systematic studies, just as it took a long time for medicine to get from the four humors to our confidence that we can make a vaccine, but we can make one.  We can make good social policy.  Will we do it perfectly?  No.  Many bad policies will be advanced, just as vaccines and treatments will be distributed unfairly and slowed down by bigotry and selfishness.  But we can do it, we have tools, as real in our hands and libraries as the knowledge of vaccines is real—tools Machiavelli and Petrarch would have given anything to have.  We can aim for better than another Renaissance. Let’s try.   Share

LE CORBUSIER: AN ATLAS OF MODERN LANDSCAPES SPANS THE ENTIRE RANGE OF LE CORBUSIER’S ARTISTIC OUTPUT AT MUSEUM OF MODERN ART June 15, 2013 - September 23, 2013 LE CORBUSIER: AN ATLAS OF MODERN LANDSCAPES SPANS THE ENTIRE RANGE OF LE CORBUSIER’S ARTISTIC OUTPUT AT MUSEUM OF MODERN ART June 15, 2013 - September 23, 2013 Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes, the largest exhibition ever produced in New York of the protean and influential oeuvre of Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, French, b. Switzerland, 1887–1965), encompasses his work as an architect, interior designer, artist, city planner, writer, and photographer, and is on view from June 15 through September 23, 2013. This major exhibition draws on MoMA’s own collection, and extensively on exclusive loans from the Paris-based Le Corbusier Foundation. Following a path from his youth in the Swiss Jura mountains to his death on the shores of the French Riviera, the exhibition focuses on four types of landscapes, observed or conceived at different scales, and documented in all the genres. Le Corbusier pursued during six decades: the landscape of found objects; the domestic landscape; the architectural landscape of the modern city; and the vast territories he planned. MoMA is the only U.S. venue for the exhibition, which will travel to Fundació " la Caixa " in Barcelona (January 28–May 11, 2014), and to Fundació " la Caixa " in Madrid ( June 11–October 13, 2014 ). It is organized by guest curator Jean-Louis Cohen, Sheldon H. Solow     Professor in the History of Architecture, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, with Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA. Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes reveals the ways in which Le Corbusier observed and imagined landscapes throughout his career, using all the artistic mediums and techniques at his disposal, from early watercolors of Italy, Greece, and Turkey, to sketches of India, and from photographs of his formative journeys to architectural models of his large-scale projects. Bringing together around 320 objects, all of these dimensions of Le Corbusier’s artistic process, including major paintings and four reconstructed interiors, are presented in MoMA’s first comprehensive exhibition of his work. Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes is divided into five sections, and begins with one of four room-sized interiors built especially for the exhibition. Featuring original furniture, the interiors vividly present Le Corbusier’s concepts for domestic landscapes, and the notion of houses operating as machines to view landscapes. The first interior on view is the Cabanon of Le Corbusier from Roquebrune-Cap-Martin (1951–52), installed in the area outside the Tisch galleries. A cabin built on the coast of the gulf of Monte Carlo as a summer haven for Le Corbusier himself, the Cabanon’s interior dimensions are based on those of the Modulor, a system of harmonic proportions Le Corbusier had created in the 1940s. The Cabanaon features rustic elements—bark-covered exterior planks and furniture—crafted by the carpenter Charles Barberis. http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1321 FROM THE JURA MOUNTAINS TO THE WIDE WORLD The first section within the galleries is devoted to Le Corbusier’s early life, in his hometown of La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Under the direction of his teacher, Charles L’Eplattenier, Le Corbusier learned to draw, exploring the landscape of the Jura mountains, before focusing on architecture and completing his first house at the age of 20. Over the next five years Le Corbusier discovered the horizons of Europe. In 1907 he made an initial study trip to Italy, followed by a visit to Vienna. In 1908–09 he worked in the Paris studio of the Perret brothers, pioneers in the use of reinforced concrete. He then travelled to Germany in order to study urbanism, working in Berlin in the studio of Peter Behrens, and in 1911 journeyed to Greece and Istanbul via the Balkans. These travels around Europe are represented in the exhibition with an extraordinary selection of watercolors and pencil drawings. Sketchbooks, both large and small, reveal through hundreds of drawings the time spent observing landscapes of cities and the countryside. Upon returning to La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1912, Le Corbusier began teaching architecture and interior design. He also built several houses in which he drew upon the experiences of his travels, such as the Villa Jeanneret-Perret, also known as the Maison Blanche, which he designed for his parents. Blueprints from his time in La Chaux-de-Fonds and a room-sized interior of the Maison Blanche (1912) with the original furniture are both on view. Based on a collection of shapes observed during his journeys, the house was a break from the regional style of the area and Le Corbusier’s first work as an independent architect. http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1321 THE CONQUEST OF PARIS The second section focuses on Le Corbusier’s time in Paris, whose sites and monuments he drew tirelessly. In addition to his prolific writing at this time, Le Corbusier painted assiduously, arranging on the canvas objects of daily life as if they were forming landscapes. Among these are La Cheminée (1918), his first painting, Still Life (1920), Guitare verticale – premiere version (1920), and Nature morte du Pavillon de l’Esprit nouveau (1924). In 1922 he opened an architecture studio with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret (1896–1967). They would work together until 1940, as he conducted two sets of projects in parallel. On the one hand, he developed theoretical schemes, such as the “Citrohan” house (1920), the “immeublevillas” (villa apartments), the “Ville contemporaine” (Contemporary City) (1922), and the “Plan Voisin” for Paris (1925), each of which is represented in the exhibition through drawings. On the other, Le Corbusier built villas for the elite of the French capital, in which he experimented with his provocative ideas for a new architecture made possible by reinforced concrete. These are represented in the exhibition through models and drawings. The third room-sized interior on view is from one such villa, the Pavilion for the Villa Church in Ville d’Avray (1927–29), a project for an American couple, Henry and Barbara Church. Working with a pre-existing neoclassical structure, Le Corbusier transformed it into a music pavilion with a library in which a rectangular window delimited the view of the surrounding garden as if it were a painting. Surrounded by a largeframe, the window provided the backdrop for an interior landscape where furniture designed in 1928 by Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier, and Pierre Jeanneret was used in a domestic setting for the first time. RESPONDING TO LANSCAPE FROM AFRICA TO THE AMERICAS The third section focuses on the late 1920s, when Le Corbusier abandoned the prismatic forms he used in his houses of that decade and developed an architecture that was more attentive to landscape, echoing transformations in his painting style, which is represented here by a number of canvases. He greatly expanded the geographic range of his endeavors while continuing to work on his projects for Paris. His first European success came in 1928 during a triumphant visit to Moscow, where he received the commission for a ministry building, the Centrosoyuz, completed in 1936 (though he was defeated in the competition for the Palace of the Soviets in 1932, the original model of which—from MoMA’s own collection—is on view). Le Corbusier’s accomplishments reverberated around the globe due to the success of his books, which in turn increased the impact of his buildings. His encounters with new landscapes transformed his way of thinking. In 1929 his successful lecture tour of South America led him to develop plans for Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, and São Paulo. However, the enthusiastic welcome of local elites did not guarantee the success of his projects. Le Corbusier sought in vain for 12 years to carry out his provocative plan for Algiers, shown in the exhibition through numerous drawings, sketches, and an original 1945 model of the skyscraper he designed for Algiers. Among the diverse techniques used by Le Corbusier to persuade the public of the truth of his analyses and projects, lectures played a prominent role. It was in front of the audience that he developed directly, drawing on long sheets of paper, his main ideas and proposals; some of these monumental drawings are on view in the section. http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1321 You may visit my blog to see Moma's past exhibitions news  Japanese Contellation, Conception of Space,and Le Corbusier: Atlas of Modern Landscapes to click below links. http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2016/04/a-japanese-constellation-toyo-ito-sanaa.html http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2014/09/conception-of-space-at-museum-of-modern.html http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2013/08/cut-n-paste-from-architectural.html  A PHILIPS PAVILION BRUSSELS 1958 PHILIPS PAVILION BRUSSELS 1958 URBAN PLAN FOR RIO DE JANEIRO 1929  PLANS FOR ALGIERS AND BARCELONA AND 'VERTICAL GARDEN CITY' 1927 PLAN OBUS - ALGIERS 1932 CHAPELLE NOTRE – DAME DU HAUT, RONCHAMP 1950 – 1955 CHAPELLE NOTRE-DAME DU HAUT RONCHAMP 1950-1955 Top to bottom: Elevation of the East Facade (Inverted), Elevation of the  Southwest Facade Corner, and Transverse North-South Section with Campanile. Pencil, Colored Pencil, and Pastel on Vellum. Dimensions: 58.4 x 55.2 cm Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris. © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / FLC FROM INTERNATIONAL TO TERRITORY: THE PROJECT OF AN ATLAS BY BARRY BERGDOLL Le Corbusier was introduced to New York audiences in Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, the inaugural architecture exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, in 1932. In this exhibition he was identified as a leading proponent of the International Style; indeed, he would soon be one of the rare architects to have built on three continents before the advent of commercial intercontinental jet service. By 1932 he had already designed or built projects in France, Switzerland, Germany, the Soviet Union, and Tunisia, and his influence had been in the ascendant in South America since his 1929 trip to Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. This influence only deepened with his role in designing the Ministry of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro (1936) and with the construction of the house for Dr. Curutchet in La Plata, Argentina (1949–54). The conquest of two more continents followed. In 1952, with the vast project at Chandigarh, he began a new and profound engagement with a landscape unlike any he had experienced to date, and he was subsequently able to draw on his decades-long studies of exhibition space in designs for the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo (1954–59). And in 1962, thirty years after Le Corbusier’s introduction to American audiences at MoMA, he saw the opening of his first and only building in North America, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University. Only Australia and Antarctica were never on the itineraries of this globe-traversing architect, although the former has not been beyond the reach of his influence.1 Yet already in 1932, in The International Style, the popular book published at the same time as MoMA’s exhibition, there were unmistakable hints that his buildings did not always conform fully to Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson’s definition of the new style, nor to its suggestion of a universalist architectural aesthetic, unvaried by site or locale. If the Villas Stein–de Monzie (1926–28) and Savoye (1928–31) seemed near-perfect embodiments of Hitchcock and Johnson’s three points of the International Style, as well as of Le Corbusier’s Five Points, the load-bearing rough masonry walls of the Villa de Mandrot (1929–31) at Le Pradet were clearly earthbound, related to the Mediterranean vernacular of nearby farm buildings on the southern coast of France. And the roof terrace of the apart[1]ment for Charles de Beistegui (1929–31), off the Champs-Élysées, was a confirmation of Le Corbusier’s claim that “the outside is always an inside,” as well as an evocative composi[1]tion of built and planted forms set in a very calculated and unexpected relationship with mon[1]uments on the horizon, including the Arc de Triomphe at the head of Paris’s grandest axis. Neither at ground nor sky level did Le Corbusier create an architecture divorced from its ndscape, even if his practice and views had moved quite far from the mnemonic abstrac[1]tions of nature and the integrated site plans of his early adherence to the style sapin (fir tree style) of his native La Chaux-de-Fonds.2  To organize a new generation of research, analysis, and interpretation of Le Corbusier’s practice using the metaphor and, in part, the form of an atlas, as we have done here, is not, however, to return to the notion of an international practice, either in the sense of the International Style—pitted polemically as it was against the growing attractions of region[1]alism in the arts in Depression-era America—or in the sense of the last twenty years of globalizing practices, in particular of so-called starchitects, whose signature branded forms are intended to be recognized no matter where they are set down. Rather it is to acknowl[1]edge a profound relationship between practice and place in Le Corbusier’s life and work, one that entails nothing less than his concept of vision, of the way he looked at the world on journeys first by traditional means, across the Balkans to Greece and Turkey, and then in the airplanes that for him were as much an extension of his retina as a means of convey[1]ance. Airplanes were an integral part of the way he conceived of his buildings as instruments for crafting both optical and bodily relationships to landscapes; the notion of the landscape encompassed everything from the physical occupation of an interior to the projected occupa[1]tion of an exterior framed by any number of devices, from the fenêtre en longueur (ribbon window) to cuts through walls or hedges that frame a larger exterior, a distant view, or dis[1]tant horizon into something easily apprehended by the eye and the mind. And while these techniques remain integral to a set of compositional strategies that Le Corbusier developed over decades, they were not invariable in his adaptation of them to specific places and specific cultures. What is revealed in this atlas—which is as much a sur[1]vey of the last twenty years of revisionist thinking, by scholars who have devoted themselves to retracing the contours of Le Corbusier’s practice in different venues—is the extent to which Le Corbusier’s travels and artistic practice were not to be dissociated. From the time of his voyage d’Orient in 1911 to his discovery of the landscapes and cultures of Chandigarh and Ahmedabad, which are vastly different one from another and would be the venues for a substantial portion of his post–World War II built production, Le Corbusier was engaged not with the ways in which things are similar around the world but rather with the ways in which they are distinct, with layers of culture that resonate even in worlds in mutation from the forces of modernization. Having abandoned the “pack donkey’s way,” by rejecting the nostalgia clinging to the city-design philosophy of Camillo Sitte that had so infatuated him as an young architect, Le Corbusier would find his greatest opportunity for building in the Punjab, where the donkey was one of the prime instruments of construction. His view of the landscape and of architecture’s place in it could not but be affected.  This atlas confirms, then, a major realignment currently underway in the study of the masters of modern architecture, both in the interwar and postwar years, one in which place, cultural specificity, and attention to landscape have displaced the idea of modern universals. Already by 1952 Hitchcock felt some misgiving about the polemical oversimplification of the International Style, and he admitted that the concept could not accommodate the shifts in Le Corbusier’s subsequent evolution; a few years after the Museum hosted a summit, in 1948, on the issue of what was happening to modern architecture, he wrote in a reflection on the twentieth anniversary of the 1932 show, “No one has done more than Le Corbusier ever since to extend and loosen the sanctions of the International Style.”3 But even here Hitchcock remained within the logic of the taxonomic definition of style inherited from nine[1]teenth-century architectural history, which would remain his intellectual frame for his entire career, and within the logic of the architectural object as a largely autonomous work of spa[1]tial art. Indeed, what is striking about the floor plans provided for every building reproduced in The International Style, which in countless editions has served several generations of twentieth-century readers and architecture students, is not only that all are redrawn and sim[1]plified for greater clarity but also that they are systematically isolated from their sites. A decade ago, to explore a substantial revision of our understanding of the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, another of the great so-called form-givers of modern archi[1]tecture, Terence Riley and I organized Mies in Berlin, an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, which contextualized the work of his Berlin years, from 1905 to 1933, in its German setting.4 This meant not simply considering the architect in the cultural milieu of the German capital at its great moment of intellectual and artistic experimentation. It also entailed situating his designs, both realized and proposed, in the specific urban and suburban landscapes for which they were created, beginning with the earliest neo-Biedermeier villas in Babelsberg, where both Mies and Le Corbusier worked in Peter Behrens’s studio. Also in 2001 Sarah Williams Goldhagen published the first major monographic study of Louis I. Kahn to break with the formalist reading of his work and understand the stakes of place and culture in a practice that spanned from Philadelphia to Bangladesh. Goldhagen identified Kahn’s “situated modernism,” thereby making clear that to speak of even the most formally rigorous projects of twentieth-century modernist architecture in relationship to landscape was not simply to speak of the formal relationships between buildings and gardens, although these had often been overlooked in the consideration of modern architecture as paradig[1]matic and transportable rather than culturally contingent.5 Le Corbusier had passed through the very culture of the architectonic garden that was to have such a profound influence, in the same year, on the young Mies’s early residential designs in Wilhelmine Berlin. And like Le Corbusier, Mies had a lifelong interest in cultivating a relationship between abstraction and place that could make buildings into frames for a different kind of modern awareness or even consciousness.6 Both house and garden in the remarkable Villa Favre-Jacot (1912–13) in Le Locle, Switzerland, are a direct working-out of this culture, absorbed in Behrens’s office and in traveling through Germany and Austria. But he went beyond the tight interweaving of nterior and exterior rooms to an understanding of the building as a type of viewing device for the landscape beyond it, a means, therefore, of making the landscape into an object of contemplation in ways quite distinct from the picturesque tradition he had absorbed in his student days under Charles L’Eplattenier, in La Chaux-de-Fonds. These techniques, echoed as well in Le Corbusier’s use of photography and film, soon merged with those most modern forms of capturing the landscape, both static and moving, of recording the changing haptic and optic relationships between viewer and viewed.7 The experi[1]ence and cultural meaning of landscape was in many ways as central to Le Corbusier’s vision of design and his conception of architecture and cities as it was to architects more commonly associated with the organic, such as Alvar Aalto or Frank Lloyd Wright. As landscape histo[1]rian Caroline Constant has noted, in a compendium of two decades of essays that attempt to reweave the historiographically frayed entwining of modern architecture and landscape, “Indeed, the notion of genius loci was crucial even to an iconoclast such as Le Corbusier. . . . Unlike his approach to architecture and urbanism, which evolved as his radical a priori theo[1]retical assumptions were tested through his built work, Le Corbusier’s approach to landscape evolved a posteriori from practice. Thus, despite the militant tone of his utopian urban pro[1]nouncements, Le Corbusier carefully calibrated his building designs to their specific locales.”8 hat this atlas contains, then, is both a tour of Le Corbusier’s international activi[1]ties and an accounting of the diverse and sometimes contradictory relationships he developed with places, from his native alpine birthplace to his refuge on the Mediterranean coast, a voyage that took him from mountains to sea, from a snowbound climate to one of year-round vegetation. But this was not solely a European journey, for it was in Chandigarh more than anywhere else (other than perhaps the pilgrimage church at Ronchamp) that Le Corbusier developed, in the final decade and a half of his practice, a more profound notion of the archi[1]tect as one whose work encompasses the relationship of people to physical environment. The aim of this “atlas of modern landscapes” is to revisit some of the most influential works of twentieth-century architecture and expand our understanding of them, by both embedding them in specific geographies and relating them to the common horizons that were central to Le Corbusier’s experience of the world and the frames of experience he sought to embody. 1.      “Le Corbusier and Australia: Reaction and Reception in the Antipodes,” a esearch project, is currently under[1]way at the University of Queensland. See www.uq.edu.au/atch/ le-corbusier-and-australia. 2.      See Helen Bieri Thomson, ed., Le Style sapin: Une Expérience Art Nouveau à La Chaux-de-Fonds (Paris: Somogy, 2006). 3.      Henry-Russell Hitchcock, “The International Style Twenty Years After,” Architectural Record 110, no. 2 (August 1951): 89–98. Reprinted in Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style, rev. ed. (1932; New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), p. 250. 4.      Terence Riley and Barry Bergdoll, eds., Mies in Berlin (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2001). 5.      Sarah Williams Goldhagen, Louis Kahn’s Situated Moderism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). 6.      See also Christophe Girot, ed., Mies als Gärtner (Zurich: gta Verlag, 2011). 7.      Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994). 8.      Caroline Constant, The Modern Architectural Landscape (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), p. 20.  A POLYHEME 1955 Black ink, Newspaper and Collage on Paper Dimensions : H : 0,635 m x L : 0,48 m Fondation Le Corbusier Paris CAPITOL COMPLEX CHANDIGARH 1951 - 1965 Ink and Pencil on Vellum. Dimensions: 89 x 152 cm Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / FLC BONJOUR CALDER 1958 Wool Tapestry Dimensions : H : 2,20 m x L : 2,98 m Fondation Le Corbusier Paris ETUDE QUATRE MAINS 1955 Oil on Canvas Dimensions : H : 038 m x L : 0,46 m Fondation Le Corbusier Paris PALACE OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS –GENEVA 1927 Axonometric View From the West. Gelatin Print on Paper With Ink, Airbrush and Collage Additions. Dimensions: 135.5 x 147 cm Institut fur Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur, ETH Zurich NATURE MORTE ( STILL LIFE ) 1920 Oil on Canvas. Dimensions: 80.9 x 99.7 cm The Museum of Modern Art, New York.Van Gogh Purchase Fund, 1937. © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / FLC MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK Founded in 1929 as an educational institution, The Museum of Modern Art is dedicated to being the foremost museum of modern art in the world. Through the leadership of its Trustees and staff, The Museum of Modern Art manifests this commitment by establishing, preserving, and documenting a collection of the highest order that reflects the vitality, complexity and unfolding patterns of modern and contemporary art; by presenting exhibitions and educational programs of unparalleled significance; by sustaining a library, archives, and conservation laboratory that are recognized as international centers of research; and by supporting scholarship and publications of preeminent intellectual merit. Central to The Museum of Modern Art’s mission is the encouragement of an ever-deeper understanding and enjoyment of modern and contemporary art by the diverse local, national, and international audiences that it serves. You may read more about MoMA’s entire information to click below link. http://press.moma.org/about/ DR. GLENN D. LOWRY DIRECTOR OF MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK DR. GLENN D. LOWRY DIRECTOR OF MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK MUSEUM IN AHMEDABAD HIGH COURT CARPENTER CENTER LA MAIN OUVERTE 1954 Watercolour and Paper Mounted on Paper Dimensions : H : 0,21 m x L : 0,27 m Fondation Le Corbusier Paris LES DES SONT JETES 1960 Wool Tapestry Dimensions : H : 2,18 m x L : 3,55 m Fondation Le Corbusier Paris PLAN FOR BUENOS AIRES 1929 Profile View From the Rio de la Plata. Pastel on paper.30 11/16 x 44 7/8” (78 x 114 cm). Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris. © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris/FLC TROIS FEMMES SUR FOND BLANC 1950 Wool Tapestry Dimensions : H : 2,20 m x L : 3,00 m Signed and dated at middle bottom Le Corbusier 50 Fondation Le Corbusier Paris PEINTURE MURALE, 35 RUE DE SEVRES A PARIS 1948 Oil on Plywood Dimensions : H : 3,82 m x L : 3,50 m Fondation Le Corbusier Paris MUSIC PAVILION FOR VILLA CHURCH – VILLE D’AVRAY 1927 - 1929 General Axonometric View of the Pavilion in the Site, 1927 Ink, Pencil and Colored Pencil on Tracing Paper Dimensions: 92 x 44 cm Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris. © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris/FLC ASSEMBLY CHANDIGARH 1961 - 1964 Model of the Roof Structure, 1964. Plaster and Painted Wood Dimensions: 81 x 114.5 x 115.5 cm The Museum of Modern Art.Gift of Barbara Jakobson and the Architecture & Design Purchase Fund, 2010. © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris/FLC UNITED’HABITATION MARSEILLE 1946 – 1952 UNITE D’HABITATION MARSEILLE 1946 - 1952 View of the Model of the Roof Terrace, Mounted on a Background of the Provence Landscape. Silver Gelatin Print Mounted on Paper Dimensions: 10 x 18 cm Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / FLC LE CORBUSIER AT HIS PARIS STUDIO 1954 PHOTOGRAPH BY ERNST SCHEIDEGGER VOISIN PLAN FOR PARIS 1925 Axonometric View With the Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin Gates Ink, Pencil, and Colored Pencil on Paper Dimensions: 74 x 102 cm Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris. © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / FLC CENTER OF LE CORBUSIER NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WESTERN ART  TOKYO VILLA SAVOYE POISSY 1928 – 1931 VILLA SAVOYE, POISSY 1928 - 1931 Patio - Photograph 2012. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown. Photo © 2013 Richard Pare VILLA SAVOYE POISSY 1928 – 1931 Photograph 2012 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown. Photo © 2013 Richard Pare VILLA JEANNERET – PERRET, LA CHAUX DE FONDS 1912 Photograph. 2012. © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris/FLC Photo © Richard Pare CHANDIGARH: A NEW URBAN LANDSCAPE FOR INDIA After 1945 Le Corbusier would face new frustrations when the headquarters of the United Nations in New York were built by Wallace K. Harrison, based on sketches by Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer. But he finally managed to design an entire city, the only one in his career, as the result of a commission from the Indian government. Le Corbusier developed the plan for Chandigarh, the new capital of the Indian state of Punjab, a project that enabled him to implement, over a vast territory, ideas developed 30 years earlier in relation to ancient Rome. Numerous drawings, sketches, and models of Chandigarh are on view. The flights he took twice a year between Europe and India provided the opportunity for him to practice “the view of the airplane,” as he termed it. The sketches on view retain the countless traces of his observations of continents, islands, and mountains. If the architecture of the 1920s was strongly related to his paintings, that of the 1950s echoed his sculptures, from works in wood produced by the Breton cabinet-maker Joseph Savina to sand-casts he developed in Long Island with Costantino Nivola. Le Corbusier also continued his work as an author, publishing numerous books. With the Modulor, a system of harmonic proportions unveiled in New York in 1947, and on behalf of the "Synthesis of the Arts," he aimed to become the central figure of a modern architecture that was almost universally accepted by that time. TOWARD THE MEDITERRANEAN, OR THE ETERNAL RETURN During the last 15 years of his life, Le Corbusier appeared to achieve many of the objectives he had been pursuing for decades. He finally realized a building in the United States, the Carpenter Center at Harvard University, as well as five large residential units, including his building in Marseille. This project for a “unité d'habitation” (“housing unit”), or a “vertical garden city,” was developed in 1945 and commissioned for the rehousing of people left homeless by the war. In Marseille, for the 337 double-height apartments assembled on a reinforced concrete frame, Le Corbusier used the proportions of the Modulor to design the elements of the building. The roughness of the surfaces and the traces of wooden formwork that resulted from the lack of sufficient skilled labor led him to assert the beauty of “rough” concrete. The interiors resulted from a collective effort. The built-in kitchen cupboards, designed by Charlotte Perriand, and the steel stairways, designed by Jean Prouvé, are complemented by elegant shelves. The loggias became an intermediary space between the interiors and the Provencal landscape. The building is represented in the exhibition through models, photos, drawings, and the final room-sized interior. Toward the end of his career the question of landscape remained central to Le Corbusier's work, and he strove to respond to geography whether in the east of France, at Ronchamp, or in the region of Lyon at La Tourette. The hospital that he designed in Venice beginning in 1962 transposed the reflections he had made during the 1930s, and is represented through drawings, models, and plans. http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1321 You may visit MoMA’s Architectural department exhibitions news of Conceptions of Space and Cut 'n' Paste From Architectural Assemblage to Collage City  both curated by Pedro Gadanho  to click below links. http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2014/09/conception-of-space-at-museum-of-modern.html http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2013/08/cut-n-paste-from-architectural.html LE CORBUSIER 1887 – 1965 ( French, Born Switzerland )

'The Universe', Sengai "...the entire eighth, my son, and the souls that are in it, and the angels, sing a hymn in silence..."  -The Ogdoad and Ennead Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man, Salvador Dali (1943) Those who walk the golden path know from experience that it is one of great illumination and propels one through a course of Initiations that simply cannot be fully expressed to one who has not 'broken ground' within themselves enough to appreciate the higher, and subsequently deeper levels of being we become attuned to and aware of through ritual work, reading, communicating and experimenting. Beginning to get on the 'path' is one of the most difficult stages, and environmental factors play a major role in that as well. There are many different ways to ignite the Black Flame within, ranging from art, to music, plants, sensory derangement - these all may serve as a 'switch' which affects the regular mode of operation allowing one to analyze both the familiar mode and the new mode, or perspective - the goal being to obtain a higher gnosis or 'profound view' of the mundane mind and its habituated instinct of identifying only with that which one sees with their eyes and opening the ego up to the range known as the 'higher mind', technically also including the subconscious, which on the Tree of Life is Yesod (the Moon). Over time, usually the period of many years, and with much effort in gaining knowledge from various sources and working with it, a second-knowledge is developed, a knowledge not based merely on action-reaction/cause-effect of factors in the microcosm, but the actions and reactions of causes and effects that span over the course of long spans of time and the impulses behind them and which they carry. There are many times in our lives where we feel a profound sense of belonging, like we are at the 'right place at the right time', and that everything in the universe must have been right on track for some fateful event to have happened in the particular way it did. Deja vu itself is like a magnified form of this in that its like we are realizing or reawakening to the path that we seem to have passed through before. The Bruce Codex - Gnosis.org  See also The Gnosis of the Light by Rev. F. Lamplugh and The Gnosis Or Ancient Wisdom in the Christian Scriptures by William Kingsland (PDF). Archetypal patterns are the fractal templates in and of themselves which carry on along the spiral currents of manifestation and sometimes our waking mind receives flashes of this pattern which reduces like a net infinitely great or infinitely small. This 'net' is that which Egyptian initiates would 'master' through their various practices, and this is the same practice that is happening in any gnostic yoga practice which seeks to unify (as a 'yoke' in an egg) as well as encompass (as the cosmic egg itself), and therefore become conscious living embodiments of the two extremes (yin and yang), and the 7 rays between them which alchemically mutate from light (spirit) into matter and then Spirit and Matter unified in balance. The Balance is symbolized by Atu VIII (8), and therefore Maat directly rules the balance of the Egg/Toroid of space-time. The symbol above which is similar to that of the Ankh shows the Wheel of Time, with the 'T' being the cross of directions, Past, Present, and Future with the 'wheel' being that which is 'rolling' (i.e. the luni-solar-stellar interplay of light and shadow which affects psychic and physical functions.) 8 or ∞ is related to the egg which has been 'imploded', that is - opened from the inside rather than the out. The center of the torus has opened and the Egg which was one universe to its own has awakened to find but another seemingly infinite universe right outside its shell. The 8 is symbolic of Eternity and the figure of Woman and the Ankh is that of Eternal Life and the figure of a Man. The figurative Serpent who put emnity between them is the spiral of 'time' at the center of the 'garden' (the toroid), the center of the Circle being figured as 359 (ShTN, 'Satan'), one less than the full circle which opens the Gate of the Qliphoth creating the movement of the revolution of Light signified by the Seven Aeons or Rays - the 8ths being the Great Ray of 'Time'/Chronos/Abraxas, and the 9th being that of distinction in solidarity or homogenization to re-open on a higher-level in 10, Malkuth, the Material plane. The Hexagram is symbolic of the union of opposites creating the Seventh Ray which illumines the 8th. It is the central shining light of GOLD in which used in Banishing and High Magick. Note also that the Hebrew word for this symbol is מגנ דוד, and thus equivalent to GOLD in the number 107, and of course reduces to 8, but shows the separation of the 1 from the 7 by the O, or Wheel of Time.  See Clearing the Aiwaves for the Qabalistic Cross The 8th Ray is known in the Gnostic Aeonology as the super-celestial aeon beyond the lower seven aeons and represents the stepping beyond the fractal 'net' through the path opened through duality and into the timeless astral region of Σοπηια (Wisdom, 369) or Αβραξας (365). The 'faculty of Abraxas' to which this post receives its name refers to the faculty which is generated over time through understanding and wisdom, to step across the 'abyss' of the fractal and tap into the source-energy of the Matrix itself - and thereby receive the power of the Ennead, a direct line of contact between ones 'self' (microcosm) and the core macrocosm of Infinity (in the center of the circle which is the Heart/Sun/Star center reflected by its own Light). The triple extension of 8 as 888 is the number of Ιηςους, 'Jesus' the carrier of THE COSMIC CHRIST force of Chrysos (GOLD), the 'Gold Light of Spirit itself manifested into THE FULLNESS OF INFINITY fit neatly into THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE, that infinitely subtle but infinitely powerful substance (THE AZOTh = 888) which is the One Substance upon which all is but a mutation of the HOLOGRAPHIC SOUL which projects both inward and outward. It was just recently mentioned by physicists that certain changes in their models show that the Universe may be infinite, and I think it's funny because I recently found that 888 is THE ETERNAL OVUM MUNDI UNIVERSE, Ovum Mundi being the Egg of the World or the Universe itself - 'The Cosmic Egg' corresponding to the 888 of 'It's All in the Egg'. THE TIME DOOR + O is 888 as well showing that the Ayin (Ajna) is the Door of Time which is merely the projector of the kalas of maya or the illusion of time (THE LION'S GATE - Abraxas being the Lion-headed Serpent). Thus 888 is the THE TIMELESS TIMELINES OF ABRAXAS, THE ENCODED LOGOS-LANGUAGE which stands beyond time. Particularly related to the Gnostic idea of the 'Demiurge' which is associated particularly with the interplay of the 8 and 9 (89 being the 'GVPh', or place between Manifestations), is that 888 is itself THE GNOSTIC DEMIURGE - and THE DEMIURGE + THE AEONS and THE DEMIURGE INTELLIGENCE which is exhibited throughout the fractal cosmos and condensed in the Logos of Humanity. THE TREE OF LIFE IS A FRACTAL IN THE GOLD EGG = 888. Being one (111 = RAY in Greek as ΡΑΙ, Rho Alpha Iota) ray above 777, 888 rules THE LIGHT WORLD (=777) which is equivalent to the OVLM HQLIPVTh, or 'World of Shells' which is the shadow of the Light. The Seven Seals of REVELATION are the cosmic-fractal connection between the 7 major Chakras and the 7 major Rays of Light which combine in 888 and condense in 999 - THE ALIGNMENT of the All in One and One and All (Frater Achad's motto which had the value of 777 in Latin). Notice this is all above 666 and also above the 'physical' once entering into 777, The Light World. The Spectrum of the Nine Chambers is very dense and only just now beginning to be deciphered and disseminated - no doubt there will be people trying to plagiarize this Knowledge - THE SUPREME KNOWLEDGE - but technically it's not 'mine' anyway, though I do seem to be the only one to have deciphered this key and found personal profound revelations prompting me to find more and present it to what I find as a decaying community which I think could be greatly 'refreshed' with this very dense but still very telling information. The Faculty of Abraxas is mentioned in a few different prominent Masonic works of the 1800's and along my search for more about it they each gave a little more information. While not referring to Abraxas in particular, Helena Blavatsky discusses the nature of the 8th Aeon as being related to that which opens beyond time in The Secret Doctrine (Vol. II page 563.): "We are reminded in King's "Gnostics" that the Greek language has but one word for vowel and voice; and this has led the uninitiated to many erroneous interpretations. On the simple knowledge, however, of that well-known fact a comparison may be attempted, and a flood of light thrown upon several mystic meanings. Thus the words, so often used in the Upanishads and the Puranas, "Sound" and "Speech," may be collated with the Gnostic "Vowels" and the "Voices" of the Thunders and Angels in "Revelation." The same will be found in Pistis Sophia, and other ancient Fragments and MSS. This was remarked even by the matter-of-fact author of "The Gnostics and their Remains." Through Hippolytus, an early Church Father, we learn what Marcus -- a Pythagorean rather than a Christian Gnostic, and a Kabalist most certainly -- had received in mystic revelation. It is said that "Marcus had it revealed unto him that 'the seven heavens'* . . . . sounded each one vowel, which, all combined together, formed a complete doxology"; in clearer words: "the Sound whereof being carried down (from these seven heavens) to earth, became the creator and parent of all things that be on earth." (See "Hippolytus," vi., 48, and King's Gnostics, p. 200.) Translated from the Occult phraseology into still plainer language this would read: "The Sevenfold LOGOS having differentiated into seven Logoi, or creative potencies (vowels) these (the second logos, or "Sound") created all on Earth. Assuredly one who is acquainted with Gnostic literature can hardly help seeing in St. John's Apocalypse, a work of the same school of thought. For we find John saying (chap. x. 3, 4), "Seven thunders uttered their voices . . . and I was about to write . . . (but) I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, 'Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.' " The same injunction is given to Marcus, the same to all other semi and full Initiates. Yet the sameness of equivalent expressions used, and of the underlying ideas, always betrays a portion of the mysteries. We must always seek for more than one meaning in every mystery allegorically revealed, especially in those in which the number seven and its multiplication seven by seven, or forty-nine, appear.  Now when the Rabbi Jesus is requested (in Pistis Sophia) by his disciples to reveal to them, "the mysteries of the Light of thy (his) Father" (i.e., of the higher SELF enlightened by Initiation and Divine knowledge), Jesus answers: "Do ye seek after these mysteries? No mystery is more excellent than they which shall bring your souls unto the Light of Lights, unto the place of Truth and Goodness, unto the place where there is neither male nor female, neither form in that place but Light, everlasting, not to be uttered. Nothing therefore is more excellent than the mysteries which ye seek after,saving only THE MYSTERY of the seven vowels and their FORTY AND NINE POWERS, and their numbers thereof; and no name is more excellent than all these vowels." "The Seven Fathers and the Forty-nine Sons blaze in DARKNESS, but they are the LIFE and LIGHT and the continuation thereof through the Great Age" -- says the Commentary speaking of the "Fires." Now it becomes evident that, in every esoteric interpretation of exoteric beliefs expressed in allegorical forms, there was the same underlying idea -- the basic number seven, the compound of three and four, preceded by the divine THREE (△) making the perfect number ten. Also, these numbers applied equally to divisions of time, to cosmography metaphysical and physical, as well as to man and everything else in visible nature. Thus these Seven vowels with their forty-nine powers are identical with the three and the Seven Fires of the Hindus and their forty-nine fires; identical with the numerical mysteries of the Persian Simorgh; identical with those of the Jewish Kabalists. The latter, dwarfing the numbers (their mode of blinds), made the duration of each successive renewal (what we call in esoteric parlance Round) of the seven renewals of the globe only of 7,000 years, instead of, as is more likely, 7,000,000,000, and assigned to the total duration of the universe 49,000 years only. (Compare § "Chronology of the Brahmins.") Now, the Secret Doctrine furnishes a key which reveals to us on indisputable grounds of comparative analogy that Garuda, the allegorical and monstrous half-man and half-bird, -- the Vahan or vehicle on which Vishnu (who is Kala, "time") is shown to ride -- is the origin of all other such allegories. He is the Indian phoenix, the emblem of cyclic and periodical time, the "man-lion" Singha, of whose representations the so-called "gnostic gems" are so full.* [*As confessed by King, the great authority on Gnostic antiquities, these gnostic gems are not the work of the Gnostics, but belong to pre-christian periods, and are the work of magicians (p. 241).] "Over the seven rays of the lion's crown, and corresponding to their points, stand, in many cases, the seven vowels of the Greek alphabet [Gk char], testifying to the Seven Heavens." This is the Solar lion and the emblem of the Solar cycle, as Garuda* is that of the great cycle, the "Maha-Kalpa" co-eternal with Vishnu, and also, of course, the emblem of the Sun, and Solar cycle. This is shown by the details of the allegory. At his birth, Garuda is mistaken for Agni, the God of Fire, on account of his (Garuda's) "dazzling splendour," and called thereupon Gaganeswara, "lord of the sky." Again, his being represented as Osiris, and by many heads of allegorical monsters on the Abraxas (gnostic) gems, with the head and beak of an eagle or a hawk (solar birds), denotes Garuda's solar and cyclic character. His Son is Jatabu, the cycle of 60,000 years. As well remarked by C. W. King: -- "Whatever the primary meaning (of the gem with the solar lion and vowels) it was probably imported in its present shape from INDIA, that true fountain head of gnostic iconography" (Gnostics, p. 218). The mysteries of the seven gnostic vowels, uttered by the thunders of St. John, can be unriddled only by the primeval and original Occultism of Aryavarta, brought into India by the primeval Brahmins, who had been initiated in Central Asia. And this is the Occultism we study and try to explain, as much as is possible in these pages. Our doctrine of seven Races and Seven Rounds of life and evolution around our terrestrial chain of spheres, may be found even in Revelation.** When the seven "thunders," or "sounds," or "vowels" -- one meaning out of the seven for each such vowel relating directly to our own Earth and its seven Root-Races in each Round -- "had uttered their voices" -- but forbidden the Seer to write them, and made him "seal up those things" -- what did the Angel "standing upon the sea and upon the earth" do? He lifted his hand to heaven "and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever . . . . that there should be time no longer." "But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel when he shall begin to sound, the Mystery of God (of the Cycle) should be finished" (x 7), which means, in theosophic phraseology, that when the Seventh Round is completed, then Time will cease. "There shall be time no longer" very naturally, since pralaya shall set in and there will remain no one on earth to keep a division of time, during that periodical dissolution and arrest of conscious life." The Egyptologist and historian Gerald Massey also gives somewhat similar comments in a relevant vein showing his own Abractic Gnosis having studied as wide a frame of references as is necessary to truly gain the necessary inferences and insights to truly appreciate the 365, or worldwide daily powers as they manifest across the sphere in its multitudinous formats which apparently some cannon seem to appreciate. 365 = THE TREE OF LIFE = SEPARATED = TRANSLATE  Μενος – ‘Strength/Force’ (From Proto-Indo-European *ménos (“mind”), from *men- (“to think”). Cognates include Avestan (manō) and Sanskrit मनस् (mánas).) =  Mειθρας – ‘Mithras’ = Aβραξας – ‘Abraxas’ (Gk. ΑΒΡΑΞΑΣ, variant form Abrasax, ΑΒΡΑΣΑΞ) was a word of mystic meaning in the system of the Gnostic Basilides, being there applied to the “Great Archon” (Gk., megas archōn), the princeps of the 365 spheres (Gk., ouranoi). The seven letters spelling its name may represent each of the seven classic planets—Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.) "It is affirmed that our Freemasons conceal, among other secret arts, what they term the ‘faculty of Abrac,' which is obviously a reduced form of the word Abraxas, the six-sided stone (sas or kas, Eg.) of the Ab-ra or Af-ra (Eg.) the Chnubis sun. The Abraxas stone with six sides is the foundation stone of the Masonic degree of R.A.M. [Royal Arch Mason]. This stone was fabled to have been brought by Adam out of the lost Paradise of a foreworld, and was passed on until Solomon used it as the foundation stone for his temple. The seal of Solomon is a double triangle, Y, looking like a six-pointed star. It is sometimes called the shield of David. The Hindu sri yantra contains the same figure, which is also found in ancient English churches, where the builders have made a Masonic mark. This figure is a symbolic part of the Royal Masonic Arch; and the seal of Solomon or shield of David is an extant illustration of the lunar character of David (the Egyptian Taht), and of the soli-lunar origin of Solomon the son. The double triangle of the sixfold one was also continued in a form of the divine nimbus worn by God the Father, which is represented in a fresco at Mount Athos, and upon an 'Epigonation' worn by a great image of St. Nicholas in the chief convent of Meteora in Thessaly, near Triccala. Building the temple of the heavens is the great mystery of Masonry, and they retain the chief figures accordingly. The number 5, for example, in which the first planetary heaven was completed, is one of the sacreds. This five runs into the six in the 'Five Orders,' of what are termed the 'Six Periods, the Grand Architects;' which expression is used [p.82] to designate the six days of the creation. Their mysteries reveal the same system as mythology. The building of the temple is one of the Masonic mysteries. Masons who know nothing of the mythical, that is astronomical, origin of these mysteries think this was the temple of an historical Solomon. But the mystic sen (Eg.) or brotherhood of Mâ is indefinitely older than the times of the supposed Solomon. Universal symbols found in all forms of the mysteries did not originate with the Jews a few centuries before the present era. Besides which, the 'Venerable Mah' of the Masons is one with the Hebrew Chokmah (המכח), the personification of wisdom, or Sophia, who acts the part of the builder in creation that Mâ does in the creation with Taht and Ptah. Chokmah was the 'founder of the earth.'When the heavens were prepared and a circle was set on the face of the deep, and the decree was given that the waters should not pass their appointed limit, Chokmah was there. She was the builder from the beginning, who first built the house of the seven pillars, and, therefore, like Ma, can be traced back to the goddess of the seven stars, the first measurer and maker of a circle in heaven. Chokmah denotes the skill of an artificer, but, personified, she is the feminine artificer. One mode of creating is described as checking the waters. This, in Egyptian, is khekh, to expel, turn back, or check. In the cuneiform description of creation, as part of the process, the waters were gathered into one place, where they are yet, in the three water-signs of the zodiac, and in the meh of the north. The words on the Babylonian tablet are mi, istinish, ikkique. Mi, is waters; istinish, one place; and ikhique answers to the Hebrew chaq (קח), a defined andappointed limit. Chit, in Phoenician, means encompassing. Kiki, Maori, is confined. Kuku, Fiji, to hold. Ciko, Zulu, is the woman's word for a stopper; as we have it in stopcock. To cag, English, is to bind, limit,imprison. Kakhya, in Sanskrit, denotes enclosure; kachcha, shores; ciug, Irish, the circle; kac, Breton, enclosure, whence the kay. One khekh (Eg.) sign was a collar with nine beads which, as the collar of Isis, signified the nine months of gestation and breath (or the put-circle of the nine gods). The nine dry months of the khekh, and the inundation, represented by the three water-signs, made a year, in the figure of which the waters were checked, limited, and confined to the meh, the abyss and water-girth of the northern quarter. On this the earth described by the Hebrew writers and Diodorus was founded in the nine dry signs, the antithesis of the waters. On this abyss of the waters was established the put-circle of the nine gods, the creation of Ptah who wrought in conjunction with Mâ, the Hebrew Chokmah, the Masonic 'Venerable Mah.' It is the mythical origin alone that affords any solution in such a case as this where the historical becomes fraudulent. Solomon, the Prince of Peace, was but a form of the solar or luni-solar manifestor. The demiurgic Ptah, the architect who built the temple of the heavens in conjunction with Mâ, according to one of the particular patterns, of which there were several, stellar, lunar, and solar, has a son who takes the name of Iu-em-hept, the bringer of peace. This was the Egyptian Solomon, the Ecclesiasticus or Iu-su, the coming son of the Apocrypha that was brought out of Egypt. He who comes with peace or fulfilment is the Solomon by name. The Egyptian Solomon was the typical builder and designer, the original, i.e., divine, modeller of the celestial temple. It is said in an inscription that the Temple of Edfu was 'restored as it is in the book of the model of the temple composed by Prince Iu-em-hept, eldest son of Ptahi.Prince Iu-em-hept is the prince who comes with peace, and is the Solomon who became the typical architect and healer in Israel. This establishes the link with the god Ptah, the solar architect whose assistants, the seven khnemu, are the fraternity of the seven builders of mythology. The sovereignty of Sebek (or Atum-Ra) as the seventh was founded on the six previous creations typified by the Ab-ra-xas stone; and the fact of the year having been established on those six creations and the luni-solar six divisions and then completed in 365 days, was conveyed by the 'faculty of Abraxas' in the numbers of the name, after the mode of the mysteries. This name is Abraxas in Latin and Αβρασάξ in Greek, A b r a x a s = 365 1 2 100 1 60 1 200 Such being the numeral value of the letters in Greek and Coptic, and therefore, still earlier, in Egyptian. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, affirmed that Orpheus composed a poem of 365 gods one for every day of the year. Justin Martyr puts the number at 360. Both are numbers of the year, and both show the phenomenal foundations in the time reckonings. The Gnostics, says Irenaeus, make out the local positions of 365 heavens. They hold that their chief is Abraxas, and on this account the word contains in itself the numbers amounting to 365. Lastly, the legends show that man was created in the likeness of the types belonging to the mythos at various stages of its evolution; and as, according to the Targum of Palestine, the Adamic man was created in the image of the Lord, with 365 nerves, the divine image was the solar god of the complete year of 365 days or divisions described as nerves. That is, Adam was formed in the likeness of Atum-Ra and of the Af-Ra, the sun of the three realms, the sixfold division of heaven and of the perfected year of solar time. This was not a primary but almost the final creation. Here is another link with the Masonic six, the great seisor of the Irish Druids. Acacian is a title signifying a Mason, but not because άκακία [p.84] means innocence. The acacia (Mimosa nilotica of Linnaeus) is the Masonic typical tree, the Nile name of which is sas (ses, or sesso wood), the same as the number 6 and the division of time by six. The cube sas or was was squared in acacia wood, as well as stone, on account of its hardness, as a figure of the sixfold foundation. In 'passing the veils' in the Masonic mysteries the candidate proceeds from the figure of six, the double triangle, and at the figure of nine—the triple triangle—the word is communicated by the companions. The Masonic north is the Void or Abyss. It appears to me that their temple of the heavens ranges from the heaven of the seven stars to that of the seven planets. The sanctum sanctorum is a place of the seven, which are typified by a candlestick with seven branches. Here the initiate is shown the Ark of the Seven and of the Covenant; 'the Ark to build, the Covenant to Keep.' It is the same ark of the seven as that of the seven Rishis, the seven Hohgates, the seven companions of Arthur, the seven stars of the earliest circle and covenant made in heaven. Synesius observes that the Egyptian hierophants had κωμαστήια, which are arks concealing, as they say, the spheres. The later planetary seven are illustrated by the seven steps and seven degrees of ascent. There are seven steps in the Scottish ritual of the degree called the 'Knight of Kadosh,' the names of which are chiefly Hebrew. Also, the ladder of seven rounds ascends from the Red Room, red being the colour of the goddess Ma, and of the nocturnal sun. Ne plus ultra is written at the foot of the ladder. This is considered the highest mystery. It was the top of attainment in relation to the later and superior ogdoad of gods consisting of the seven planetary gods and their manifestor, the 'Star (eight-rayed) of the Pleroma.' Both systems are combined in the account given by Celsus, preserved by Origen, who says: 'After this, Celsus desiring to exhibit his Learning in his treatise against us, quotes also certain Persian mysteries, where he observes:—"These things are obscurely hinted at in the accounts of the Persians, and especially in the mysteries of Mithras, which are celebrated amongst them. For in the latter there is a representation of the two heavenly revolutions of this movement, viz., of the fixed stars, and of that which takes place among the planets, and of the passage of the soul through these." The representation is of the following nature:—There is a ladder with lofty gates, and on the top of it an eighth gate. The first gate consists of lead, the second of tin, the third of copper, the fourth of iron, the fifth of a mixture of metals, the sixth of silver and the seventh of gold. The first gate they assign to Saturn, indicating, by the lead, the slowness of this star; the second to Venus, comparing her to the splendour and softness of tin; the third to Jupiter, being firm and solid; the fourth to Mercury, for both mercury and iron are fit to enclose all things, and [p.85] are money-making and laborious; the fifth to Mars, because, being composed of a mixture of metals, it is varied and unequal; the sixth of silver, to the Moon; the seventh of gold, to the Sun; thus imitating the different colours of the two latter." He next proceeds to examine the reasons of the stars being arranged in this order, which is symbolised by the names of the rest of matter. Musical reasons, moreover, are added and quoted by the Persian theology; and to these, again, he strives to add a second explanation connected also with musical considerations.' There are data, then, in all the different creations and points of departure which range from the motherhood of the seven elementaries to the final fatherhood established on earth and in heaven, as it was under Atum-Ra or in the second gnostic 'Hebdomad which surrounds the Father,' the planetary seven represented by Iao-Sabaoth. The development, changes, and readjustments can all be traced according to the data yet extant. This was preserved by the Gnostics, amongst others of those who knew, the men who were supposed, by the Christian Idiotes, to be mere plagiarists and heretics that sprang up in the second century of the present era. The Gnostics and Neo-Platonists brought on the whole matter with the connecting links. They have the primary ogdoad consisting of the Mother Sophia and the 'Inferior Hebdomad' of the seven elementaries who dwelt upon the mount of Am-Smen. 'This Mother they (the Gnostics) also call Ogdoad, Sophia, Terra, Jerusalem, Holy Spirit, and, with a masculine reference, Lord.' Proclus also says: 'The Goddess Rhea is a Monad, Duad, and Heptad, comprehending in herself all the Titannidae.' Valentinus maintained that the power of the seven who gave life to this world after the likeness of the first hebdomad was represented by Arrhetos, whose name is composed of seven letters (with one duplicate) to indicate the sevenfold nature of the one. Arrhetos, the sevenfold, answers to Sebti (or Sut) and Sevekh, both of which names contain the number seven. There was a certain dyad, or twofold being, he said, who is inexpressible by any name, of whom one part should be called Arrhetos (that is ineffable), and the other Sige (Silence); this was the source of the Ogdoad. -pg. 81 The Natural Genesis, Gerald Massey The Rectangle (or Square), Triangle and the Circle are related to IAO and the Ogdoad by way of the fact that, for one, they resemble the letters IAO, and the angles of the rectangle (4), triangle (3), and the circle taken as 1 enumerates the Ogdoad. IAO has a H.E.G. value of 81, which is 9, the serpent, cubed but also THE AJNA which is the central Eye which in a sense acts as a microcosmic version of the Prism of Daath being as it is the focal point of the inner vision which first shows itself as a thin thread of light which can unravel to reveal the mask of the fabric of what we consider reality (maya). 81 in Jewish Gematria is both 'Gold' and 'Ra', signifying the root-light of the 9x9 serpent-grid. The Kundalini/Chnoubis as the Lion Headed Serpent. In its Greek valuation, ΙΑΩ is 811, and a temurah of Αιω, meaning 'to Live', 'Breathe', 'Know'. 811 is also THE LIGHT SOURCE of THE SHEKINAH, Shekinah being the 'holy dwelling' or 'holy place' of God (i.e. manifestation), and since 811 combines the 8 and 11 which are both related to Daath (counting up from Malkuth, and counting it last), it refers to the Egg (11) of 8 (Infinity), i.e. the Egg of Abraxas which as a form of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, is 'ever-coming'. Note 800/Ω itself is 'INSIDE THE EGG' and 'THE EGG OF EVERYTHING', THE PRISM of the SERPENT which is centered in the EPIPHYSIS (Third Eye) through the alignment with XIN.  (In China, the word, xin 心 (often translated as ‘heart’) is frequently used and its concept is central to Chinese culture. However, its meaning is not exactly the same as ‘heart’ in English. Using qigong as the context, this article aims to explore the meaning of xin as a cultural keyword in order to gain an indepth understanding of Chinese culture and knowledge within that cultural system. Qigong is a Chinese health maintenance system and healing tradition which integrates physical activity with training of the mind and self-cultivation. One of qigong’s basic components is xin adjustment. It is impossible to convey the full meaning of this concept without understanding the meaning of xin. In Chinese culture, xin is the root of physical and mental life. It is the seat of all emotions, and embodies the inherent goodness of human nature and wisdom. Xin helps to guide the individual’s way of life and attitude, and can lead one to deep contentment.)  This is the alchemical process known as 'Theurgy', which in the west is the central aim of the a prominent Buddhist sect, that of MAHAYANA-BUDDHISM, by creating the 'Great'/Maha 'Vehicle'/Yana of Awakening which the Egg, Diamond, Torus, Dodecahedron, etc. are all types of. (Though it is said that the Mahayana school is a much lengthier route to Atma-Vidya/Self-Knowledge and true Enlightenment than the Vajrayana which focuses primarily on the Diamond body and the Diamond realm. There is also Therevada, Navayana, and many other forms of Buddhism which have their own unique perspective and all are very interesting and very useful for the Chaos-mage, Experimentalist, or the like.) Each path is essentially all one which leads by way of silence out of the gross mundane world of matter and ego into THE LIGHT WORLD of what could be termed 'LUCIFER CONSCIOUSNESS', for when one realizes their inextricable unity between mind and matter all is seen to be Light and THE COILED SERPENT-ANGEL OF LIGHT awakens in a way that can only be withstood for short periods either as flashes or full on raptures but may also open wider in the dream-state which is itself composed purely of the Light of Consciousness.  "The Gnostic Serpent Wheel pictured above represents the eight Aeons of Gnosticism. It is a emblem of the cycles of time and is a symbol of the Gnostic messiah- the eighth Aeon who brings awakening and restores unity. It is closely related to the eight-spoked catholic baptismal cross- the Sunday of the resurrection was for early Christians an eighth day, and symbolized regeneration. This cycle was represented for some Gnostics by the serpent, who was associated with the “self-begotten” Deity by virtue of its ability to “give birth to itself” by the shedding of its skin." -SymbolDictionary.com See Isis Unveiled Vol. II, page 461 & The Rosicrucians by Hargrave Jennings LAM is integral to these many different currents spanning the course of human history, and being enumerated as 71, Lam is a form of the Kundalini having stepped beyond the Seven Aeons into the 8th. Lam is the Mantra of the Root Chakra, the most dense relating to physical matter which is the mantra itself serves to open or loosen for entry into the more subtle layers. The Mask of LAM as given by Crowley is thus the face or head of the Kundalini (generalized of course) which has its reflection in Malkuth as M.A.L., the distiller and reviver of this core of ageless wisdom. Having been placed as the frontispiece to his commentated version of Blavatsky's The Voice of the Silence a clue is given as to the nature of what this all means, for in the Gnostic text 'The Discourse On the Eighth and the Ninth' which discusses in mystical terms the transition of the 8th to the 9th Aeonic Ray is done by a mode of 'singing in silence'.  "Hermes' son soon had ecstatic experiences of his own, and his comments make clear that visionary experiences were located as experiences of the Ogdoad or Eighth, while intellectual intuitions were located in the Ninth. In the Hermetic system, a person who was having a vision had transcended his bodily senses and had, as such, ascended beyond the physical realm of the seven planetary heavens. The Hermetists' mind or self found itself in a condition of existence that was entirely literal, even though it was mental rather than bodily. Visionary experience was not a state of consciousness but a state of being, a discrete rank or stage in the great chain of being. The Eighth cosmic region was, in Corbin's (1972) sense of the term, an "imaginal" realm, with its own epistemic and ontic integrity. We might best approximate the Hermetic nuance in modern idiom by speaking not of an Eighth celestial region, but of an Eighth "dimension." To go on to reach the Ninth cosmic region, the imaginal realm of forms had itself to be transcended. Both meditations and mystical experiences had to be limited to intellectual abstractions: "Trismegistus, let not my soul be deprived of the great divine vision. For everything is possible for you as master of the universe." Evolution - Adrian Kenyon "Return to , my son, and sing while you are silent. Ask what you want in silence." When he had finished praising he shouted, "Father Trismegistus! What shall I say? We have received this light. And I myself see this same vision in you. And I see the eighth and the souls that are in it and the angels singing a hymn to the ninth and its powers. And I see him who has the power of them all, creating those in the spirit" (Disc. 8-9 59-60; Robinson 1988:325). Abraxas - Josip Csoor The assertion that "he enters into the understanding of the eighth that reveals the ninth" (Disc. 8-9 63; Robinson 1988:326) epitomizes this part of the mystical technique. Visualization practices were used to induce visions of images that had forms. The visualizations were known to be fabricated, but the visions that they triggered were thought to be unfabricated. These reflections on the visions were made during the visionary state while in the company of the envisioned souls and angels. Due presumably to the visions' coherence or intelligibility, initiates postulated the reality of a Mind that was responsible for ideas that took visionary form as images. This Mind was not manifest to the initiate, but the images that manifested its ideas were. The text does not mention whether Mind, in this context, was human or divine. Once the ninth had been postulated on the basis of the evidence of the eighth, the initiate was ready to move on to the ninth itself. The postulation of Mind was to be used to induce a purely intelligible experience of the divine Creator of "those in the spirit." Having perceived the intellectual necessity, during visionary experience, of postulating a Mind beyond one's own, a Hermetist was to accomplish a final ontological movement by proceeding from vision to union. The initiand was to verify the divinity of the human mind, and its equivalence to divine Mind, by seeking an intellectual mystical experience. Corpus Hermeticum XIII described the experience as follows: "Father, I see the universe and I see myself in mind." "This, my child, is rebirth: no longer picturing things in three bodily dimensions. (C.H. XIII.13; Copenhaver 1992: 52)" pages 88-89, Stages of Ascension in Hermetic Rebirth, Dan Merkur Because Abraxas represents the cycle or circuit of the Earth-year it signifies revolution, which through time moves in a spiral fashion. The Spiral is related to the Cone and thus also the Triangle of ABRACADABRA itself which is said by many to be directly related to Abraxas. In An Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and Its Kindred Sciences Vol. I by Albert G. Mackey, William J. Hughan & Edward L. Hawkins thjere is an entry on Abrac on page 6: "Abrac. In the Leland MS. it is said that the Masons conceal "the way of wynninge the facultye of Abrac." Mr. Locke (if it was he who wrote a commentary on the manscript) says, "Here I am utterly in the dark." It means simply "the way of acquiring the science of Abrac." the science of Abrac is the knowledge of the power and use of the mystical abraxas, which see; or very likely "Abrac" is merely an abbreviation of Abracadabra." And on page 260 there is an entry on the faculty of Abrac as well:   "Faculty of Abrac. In the so-called Leland Manuscript, it is said that Masons "conceal the way of wynninge the facultye of Abrac." That is, that they conceal the method of acquiring the powers bestowed by a knowledge of the magical talisman that is called Abracadabra." In this Freemason's Magazine from 1796 a whole section which mentions the Abrac/Abracadabra connection referring to what also Mackey refers which is The Leland Manuscript (sometimes called The Locke Manuscript "in consequence of the suppositous annotations appended to it by that metaphysician", see The Leland Manuscript by Mackey.) "THE FREEMASONS' MAGAZINE, AN EXPLANATION OF THE  FACULTYE OF ABRAC. See Vol. III. p. 82. TO THE EDITOR.    SIR, I WAS extremely delighted with the copy of that ancient and venerable manuscript concerning Free-masonry with which you obliged to the public. Mr. Locke's notes and explanatory remarks do the paper great honour, and his declaration and the lady's have contributed to encrease the number of Masons in several lodges. There are however some passages so obscure that Mr. Locke himself knows not what to make of them. The way of wynning the facultye of Abrac is one; which I shall endeavour to elucidate. I apprehend, that by the facultye of Abrac is meant the chimerical virtues ascribed to the magical term ABRACADABRA, written or repeated in a particular manner. This fanciful charm is supposed to have been invented by the elder Serenus Samoniacus, in the time of the Emperors Severus and Caracalla; and was though to be efficacious in curing agues, and preventing other diseases. ---The way of writing it was thus: A    B     R     A     C     A     D     A     B     R     A A     B     R     A     C     A     D     A     B     R A     B     R     A     C     A     D     A     B A     B     R     A     C     A     D     A A     B     R     A     C     A     D A     B     R     A     C     A A     B     R     A    C A     B     R     A A     B     R A     B A  A paper so inscribed was tied about the neck of the patient. It is the more probable that this may be the true explanation of the facultye of Abrac, because we see that several of the mysteries of masonry enumerated in this old piece, are obscurely, imperfectly, or corruptly expressed. For instance, Peter Gower. Who would imagine that Peter Gower was Pythagoras in disguise? Yet how naturally and satisfactory is the corruption accounted for, by the medium which Mr. Lock has so happily discovered? Pythagoras seems to have been fated to transmigrations. The transmigration of Euphorbus into Pythagoras seems scarce more incredible, than (at first sight) the transmigraiton of Pythagoras into Peter Gower.   Another explanation of the above is to be seen in Mr. Hutchinson's Spirit of Masonry. p. 33, and in Brother Preston's Illustrations of Masonry." There is also Illustrations of Masonry, by William Preston & George Oliver,  in pages 95-97 which says:   "Mr. Lock has made several judicious observations on the answer which is given to the question here proposed. His being in the dark concerning the meaning of the faculty of Abrac, I am not surprised at, nor can I conceive how he could otherwise be. ABRAC is an abbreviation of the word ABRACADABRA. In the days of ignorance and superstition, that word had a magical signification; but the explanation of it is now lost. [Mr. Hutchinson, in his ingenious treatise, entitled The Spirit of Masonry, gives the following explanation of the word ABRAC; which, as it is curious, I shall here insert in that gentleman's own words: "ABRAC, or ABRACAR, was a name which Basilides, a religious of the second century, gave to God; who, he said, was the author of three hundred and sixty-five. "The author of this superstition is said to have lived in the time of Adrian, and that it had its name after ABRASAN, or ABRAXAS, the denomination which Basilides gave to the Deity. He called him the Supreme God, and ascribed to him seven subordinate powers or angles, who presided over the heavens: and also, according to the number of the days in the year, held, that three hundred and sixty-five virtues, powers, or intelligences, existed as the emanations of God; the value, or numerical distinction of the letters in the word, according to the ancient Greek numerals, made 365. Α    Β    Ρ    Α    Ξ    Α    Σ   1    2    100   1   60   1   200 "Among Antiquaries, ABRAXAS is an antique gem, or stone, with the word ABRAXAS engraved on it. There are a great many kinds of them, of various figures and sizes, mostly as old as the third century. Persons professing the religious principles of Basilides wore this gem with great veneration as an amulet, from whose virtues, and the protection of the Deity, to whom it was consecrated, and with whose name it was inscribed, the wearer derived health, prosperity, and safety. "There is deposited in the British Museum such a gem, which is a besil stone, of the form of an egg. The head is in cameo, the reverse in intaglio. "In church history, ABRAX is noted as a mystical term, expressing the Supreme God; under whome the Basilidians supposed three hundred and sixty-five dependent deities; it was the principle of the Gnostic hierarchy, whence sprang their multitudes of thæns. From ABRAXAS is proceeded their PRIMOGENIAL MIND; from the primogenial mind, the Logos, or Word; from the Logos, the PHRONÆSIS, SOPHIA and DYNAMIS, or Wisdom and Strength; from these two proceeded PRINCIPALITIES, Powers, and ANGELS; and from these, other angels, to the number of three hundred and sixty-five, who were supposed to have the government of so many celestial orbs committed to their care." So, we can see that as far back as the 17-1800's the 'facultye of Abrac', or Abraxas was at least somewhat known about, though the Gnostic discourse mentioned above ("The Eighth Reveals the Ninth", as it is called here since it's actual name is not fully given.) was not discovered until 1945 [= 'The Way of Abraxas' - reflecting on a newer level this year in 2015 as 'The Way of the Lama Serpent', or Serpent Lama or SERPENT LAM = 1111] and deciphered until 1947 [=THE SECRET HAS BEEN REVEALED]. The Ogdoadic and Enneadic traditions however go clear back to the Egyptian dynasties and span up to the present day with the Golden Dawn system largely of the Septuagint (7), the Ordo Astrum Solis of the Ogdoad (8) and the presently developing Enneadic Revival (9) on Malkuth with the 9 Typhonian Trilogies imparted by Kenneth Grant being a great foundational concentration and balance of the Horus and Set energies of Thelema fused with the primary keys of many of the important systems of the world and even tapping into the transplutonic, or otherworldly Gnosis which is slowly becoming more of a reality with both technological as well as psycho-philosophical advancements. The 9 pointed Star is known to Masons as the symbol of the 33rd Degree, and therefore it symbolizes the full flowering of the human soul, 33 being the two triangles forming the Hexagram of the Heart/Xin as well as the full Tree of Life including the Knowledge of Daath with it's full implications of the 'double tree', i.e. the double-headed Phoenix who is associated with Abraxas.  'The Highest Aeon Transcending Time' = 999 = 'The Aeon of Maat Outside Time' The 8 pointed Star is known as the Star of Ilu but it goes back to Sumeria where it is known as the Dingir which resembles the  Chaos magick star with the I/Eye/9 in the center and the Chinese bagua. There are 8 directions including the inbetween spaces of the cardinal directions, and 9 is 3 x 3 or the three dimensions projected into the grid # which veils the 8 directions with the 9th central square opened in the fractal expansion. 8 and 9 together are 17, the 1 divided from the 7, or Set with the Phallus of Osiris - which is unified by Isis (8+1) giving 9, the totality waking up or being reborn in Malkuth with the rising of the sun. 17 is related to Osiris who is also related to Orion and there are 17 stars in Orion that are visible to the naked eye. 17 is specifically related to reincarnation or resurrection (The Light [7] resurrected in Malkuth [10]), and 107 is The Egg of Daath which recurs cyclically through time, the nature of which is nearly 'Unspeakable' though may be intuited if one goes around the cyclical path enough to recognize the nature of the fractal wheel of Abraxas.  Note: Using Greek - ΑΒΡΑΓ or 'ABRAC' = 107, the primary number of the Egg explored in this blog. Heaven and Hell - Dennis Konstantin THE HUMAN FORM = THE FIVE = 437 = 'The Pentagram' = FREEMASON = THE 418 418 is the value of Crowley's rendering of the Abracadabra formula as Abrahadabra with HAD at the heart which he wrote about extensively in various works. 418 is the number also of Aiwass in Greek Αιvαςς, as well as the ChIT - 'pure consciousness'. In his book to Frater Achad, Liber Aleph; The Book of Wisdom or Folly, Crowley veils certain things relating to Abrahadabra: DE HAC FORMULA CONSIDERATIONES KABBALISTICAE. Behold moreover, my Son, the Oeconomy of this Way, how it is according to the Tao, fulfilling itself wholly within thine own Sphere. And it is utterly in Tune with thine own Will on every Plane, so that every Part of thy Nature rejoiceth with every other Part, communicating Praise. Now then learn also how this Formula is that of the Word ABRAHADABRA. First, HAD is the Triangle erect upon twin Squares. Of Hadit need I not o write, for He hath hidden Himself in "The Book of the Law". This Substance is the Father, the Instrument is the Son, and the Metaphysical Ekstacy is the Holy Ghost, whose Name is HRILIU. These are then the Sun, Mercury, and Venus, whose sacred letters are R-ר, B-ב, and D-ד. But the last of the Diverse Letters is H-ה, which in the Tarot is the Star whose Eidolon is D-ד; and herein is that Arcanum concerning the Tao of which I have already written. Of this will I not write more plainly. But mark this, that our Trinity is our Path inwards in the Solar System, and that H being of our Lady Nuith starry, is an Anchor to this Magick which else were apt to deny our wholeness of Relation to the Outer as to the Inner. My son, ponder these Words, and profit by them; for I have wrought cunningly to conceal or to reveal, according to thine Intelligence, o my Son! Crowley mentions something else that is odd in The Wake World about 418 being a 'Charioteer' who is 19 years, which is odd because I turned 19 the year of my deeper Initiation with the reception of the 107 Egg in 2011 which was 102 years years Liber 418 was written in 1909, 102 being the number of Mayan the Magician also mentioned in that work being also the Future Mage mentioned by Nema, and the one to carry on certain work mentioned in Liber 729: The ABRAHADABRA Key "Abrahadabra," which is a most mysterious word, because it has eleven letters in it.... The charioteer is a most curious person; he is a great big crab in the most lovely glittering armour, and he can just drive!  His name is the mysterious name I told you {Nomen [Yod Heh Vau Aleph] = 22    22x19 = 418 = Abrahadabra} about with eleven letters in it, but we call him Jehu for short, because he's only nineteen years old." Note that NINETEEN = 184 which is A-Ch-D, Achad, 'unity', the unity of 1 through 9 in the 'Egg'=19, and a temurah of 418, both of which reduce to 13. NINETEEN in its highest Hebrew-English Gematria form with N final = 700 is 1225, or 35 x 35 - the Double KEY, the KEY cubed or the KEY of the Cube. ) 19 is said to be 'The Secret Code of God' for a number of reasons, but spelled out as 1225 it is equivalent with the HUMAN LOGOS of 'The Seven Archons' of the Πνευμα Μητρας, 'Spirit Matrix' which is Ενας Σε Ολα Τα Ολα Σε Ενα, 'One in All-All in One', one of Achad's formulas for the Universe. [Note 19 is also the number of IACh, a form of IAO.] 1225 is also the sum, or triangular number of 1 through 49, 49 being 7x7 or 'Light Cubed' (The fractal extension of the manifestation of Light). Both 1225 and 19 reduce to Unity, and so it is significant that it is also the value of a Hebrew title of Kether : עתיקא דעתיקינ, 'The Ancient of the Ancient Ones'; and a verse from the Bible, Exodus 3:15: זֶה שְּׁמִי לְעֹלָם וְזֶה זִכְרִי לְדֹר דֹּר, This is My eternal name-and this is My memory from generation to generation. Thus being One with the Logos all is known by the Over-mind of 'God' which is symbolized by the 1 in 10 and 10 in 1, or 'One in All/All in One'. In Binary, 110101 is '53', the number of both DMT and Ακακια, the holy wood of immortality use for the Ark of the Covenant which contains DMT, a substance created by the pineal gland when one achieves the state of 'one-in-all-all-in-one' (Note 5x3 = 15, 'Ayin'-O, the Ajna), and 53 is also the degree of the angle of the Pythagorean triangle where Horus and Osiris meet (See Maat and Masonry). 53 is also ABN, the Stone, which connects back to 184 which is also the CHINTAMANI - the Stone which Achad concerned himself with as the MA-ION. MAION as 171 is 13 (AChD) less than 184 (A-Ch-D), but counting them all together as the MAION ABN CHINTAMANI the number 408 is obtained which is The Sapphire Stone itself, אבן הספיר - ABN H'SPhIR as the 'Maion Abn/Stone Chintamani - and if you subtract 'FRATER' from 408 -13 (negative AChD) is obtained, as if to show that Frater Achad is right there 'beyond the 0/Abyss', or inside the Egg. THE COMING OF LAM'S EGG = 418 = 'The Egg of Mu' Certainly he was on to something with his calculations, he just happened to die two years later (after 1948) and wasn't able to fully expand upon it. Kenneth Grant was the main person to carry this further, as well as a little bit of work done by various Maatians, such as Bertiaux, Greenfield, and others - but it really took awhile to develop and 'gestate' in egg a while for things to really be able to be put in scope and developed by someone with the inner-connections to these cyclically manifesting cosmic currents. I was 19 when I began this blog and the Egg was hatched in 2012, the year which the Mayan's prophesized Kukulkan (=102 = my name in Simple Gematria) would bring the SERPENT LINK (=999, K=500) to humanity at large. This has effectively been done yet is still in its formative stages. Kenneth Grant reformulates Abrahadabra in Beyond the Mauve Zone as ABRAChADABRA exchanging Heh for Cheth making AChD/'Unity' central to the formula instead of HAD, bringing the total value up from 418 to 421 the value of THE EGG which re-manifested, as a re-incarnation of Aiwass precisely on April 2, 2011 carrying on THE WORK OF THE EGG. This also makes the formula more consistent with it's ancient relations to Abrac/Abrax/Abraxas. Returning to the subject at hand, the value of ABRAC using Cheth is 212, the number of the Boiling Point in degrees Fahrenheit - 'The Boiling Water Degree', as well as 'Zero-Point Energy'. 212 is the value of ZHR, the Hebrew form of 'Zohar' which means 'Splendour' or 'Radiance', the same title as the Eighth sephira Hod associated with Abraxas - the 'radiance' from the Zero-Point - 'THE KEY OF MAGICK' or THEE MAGICKAL FACULTYE. 212 x 11 (Od/Aud, The Magick Power) = 2332, which happens to be the sum of the triangle of ABRAChADABRA in Hebrew-English Gematria. A    B     R     A     C     A     D     A     B     R     A = 421 A     B     R     A     C     A     D     A     B     R = 420 A     B     R     A     C     A     D     A     B =  220 A     B     R     A     C     A     D     A = 218 A     B     R     A     C     A     D =  217 A     B     R     A     C     A =  213 A     B     R     A    C = 212 A     B     R     A = 204 A     B     R = 203 A     B = 3 A = 1 Total = 2332 THE FACULTY OF ABRAXAS is 911, a number which has been stigmatized like 666 and associated with negativity such as the police and the events of September 11th, however it is a number of power being that of THE ZERO POINT which is active when it is the Pointed Zero (☉/10) form between the 9 and 11. 911 is also the formula of LAM-IPSOS / IPSOS-LAM [M final = 600], mentioned by Grant in Outside the Circles of Time (page 280) as 'The Maatian formula for evoking Lam', 10 being Malkuth/Muladhara/Lam which is a 'mask' of the Zero-point. 911 is also 'THE SECRET WORD WHICH I HAVE GIVEN UNTO HIM', that word being MA-ION [N final = 700], which as 821 is 90 less than 911, and therefore THE LAM-MAION is 911, 821 being THE GEMATRIA CODES of THE CHILD OF LIBER AL. Most importantly however, 911 is Αξων, 'Wheel', 'Axis', 'Pole' - the Axis or Axle being the center of the torus and therefore the heart of Abraxas - the Ομφαλος, 'Omphalos' or 'Center' from which is drawn the Ακμων, 'Meteoric Stone'/'Thunderbolt' (i.e. Magickal Creative Power of the 'Divine Light').  Azathoth - John Coulthart In the course of writing this post I had a dream just last night wherein I was doing a banishing ritual in an astral ritual chamber levitating as I do very often in my dreams above and surrounded by an empty vacuum of space. This is the timeless realm of the Egg of Abraxas which is co-terminous with the Ma-Ion, the astral K'rla Cell beyond space-time which is developed and empowered as the fractal Diamond-Light Rainbow Body. After remembering I had this dream today I calculated simply 'THE BANISHING RITUAL IN A DREAM' and just like many things that come to me almost like 'transmissions' from THE GENIUS MIND (=888), the 'received' phrase has a value of 777. 777 being the Light World of the 7 Rays it is also THE ASTRAL SEA of the ASTRAL PLANE DREAMS, each of which are like a 'BUBBLES' (=107) of AZATHOTH (=107) as what Crowley called "aggregates of experience". The ability to awaken in this way is the Faculty of Abraxas for it is the aligning with the Higher Self  and having calculated many Buddhist things and finding many things that = 777 it is significant to see it's also THE VAJRAYANA SIGHT of THE SEVEN PRIMAL RAYS of THE PHOENIX LIGHT, the re-incarnating, or re-creative eternal light.  The generation of the power of Abrax can be done with the method given in the Chinese Book of Life as expanded upon by Wilhelm and Jung in The Secret of the Golden Flower which gives the method of the Circulation of Light to create the golden elixir of 'chin' or Xin. XIN is 800 and is secreted from the GLAND (88). The XIN GLAND-888 is specifically related to the THE CIRCULATION+THE LIGHT. THE GOLDEN FLOWER which blossoms as a result of this is 889, THE INVISIBLE JEWEL of THE HOLY GUARDIAN ANGEL - the One in the midst of the 8th Gnostic Aeon. Adding OM to THE GOLDEN FLOWER which is unfolded by it's utterance gives 999, THE HIGHER POWER of THE HIGHEST UNITY UTTERMOST SHOWED of THE GOLD TAO EGG of the PERFECT MANI-STONE which arrived to me on April 2nd, 2011 as a talismanic manifestation of my having aligned with the Current of Maat (The Perfect-Ion) on September 9, 2009 (9-9-9) successfully channeling THE SUPREME KNOWLEDGE without my conscious awareness at the time. More of this Knowledge will be disseminated as it is more properly integrated and much more is to be published soon expanding on many more different routes of analysis using this frame of context. Bibliography and additional reading: ۞ Illustrations of Masonry by One of the Fraternity who has devoted Thirty Years to the Subject - William Morgan (1827) Illustrations of Masonry - William Preston (1867) The New Free-mason's Monitor Or, Masonic Guide - James Hardie (1819) The Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry - George F. Fort (1884) Free Masonry: Its Pretensions Exposed In Faithful Extracts Of Its Standard Authors - Henry Ward (1827) Lightfoot's Manual of the Lodge or Monitorial Instructions in the Three Degrees of Symbolic Masonry, as Exemplified in the Grand Jurisdiction of Texas - Jewel Lightfoot The Mystery of the Royal Arch Word - Arturo de Hoyos, 33° Occultic and Masonic Influence in Early Mormonism - Joel B. Groat The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth - The Nag Hammadi Library Hermetic Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth - Angel at Gnostic-Unrest Stages of Ascension in Hermetic Rebirth - Dan Merkur Election of Hermes Trismegistus from The Discourse on the Eighth & Ninth - Rennaissance Astrology