It goes without saying that there is a backstory to this Vesica-Piscis / Mandorla tradition in Marian iconography. Early christian artists had adopted the motif of a full-body aureole from Buddhist artists, in the same way that they'd borrowed the head-centred aureole (whence cometh halos). Then the theoreticians and commissars of Formalised State Art ret-conned a rationale, borrowing the Vesica Piscis image from Pythagorean and Neo-Platonist thought to symbolise the Intersection of Realms of Existence.After @SmutClyde stepped into Goop, I cannot unsee this vaginal virgin birth with God as clitoris pic.twitter.com/kaKP7jG51n— Leonid Schneider (@schneiderleonid) January 7, 2020
It was totally not because of Another Kiwi taking the Riddled Time Machine back to the Council of Choronzon in C.E. 397 in search of fresh dates for the Christmas Ale, and offering the locals his old 1960s New Maths textbooks (with all the Venn diagrams) in exchange.*
* The Whackyweedia entry on Venn diagrams (as elaborations of Euler diagrams) traces the trail of prefigurements back to Leibnitz and Llull... but not to the Neo-Platonists chiz chiz.
Okay, first of all, as a person who spent most of a year without an internet connection — or with an internet connection that was about as good as 1996 dial-up, the Public Utilities Commission actually ended up intervening with the phone company on my behalf, it was very exciting — I implore you to update your blog to the "new" Blogger templates (or move to Medium). I wasn't able to get to your blog contents for nearly 14 months because if I was online I was always on a shitty mobile phone, which deprecates your c.2004 layout in the same way the Allies deprecated Dresden in 1945. On the rare occasions when I could actually connect to Riddled at home, the page would vanish after the first image failed to load. Turning off images helped some, of course, but I never did get a whole post. A modern American tragedy.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of which: I used to kind of like Gwyneth Paltrow! Back when she was like a boyish update of Mia Farrow, and all anybody knew about her was that she was Blythe Danner's daughter and not bad at acting. Then this happened, poor child. At least Bo Derrick became an animal rights activist, post-cinema property.
There's a lot of this kind of weird, pseudo-spiritual horseshit endemic to modern white-lady capital-F feminism; I think it's more or less what the wider suburban capitalist American subculture at large went through in the 1970s — the belief that somehow the misery of proud self-objectification as a cog in a global exploitation regime that makes chattel slavery look quaint, can be attributed to the loss of hidden secrets from other times and other cultures that ought to have been our birthright. If we delve downward and outward successfully, somehow the world will become (or at least look) different without our having to change anything about our own terrible lives or the predatory culture that makes them possible. Embarrassing. These are the people who get angry at you if you use a disposable straw, but who live in the biggest possible expensive house and buy the most expensive possible (electric) car and take their Magnetic Vitality beds if urban planning strategists try to have single-family dwellings outlawed in city centers. The pricks!!!!
I actually like the 4-class Venn diagram as a religious symbol. It looks a bit like butterfly/moth wings. If you have any takers, post about it so I can join whatever religion it is. Idk why more religions don't make use of self-evidently symbolic organisms like butterflies; why are we always stuck with fucking sheep & goats? Christians dangling the instrument of their Messiah's torture around their necks as a form of emotional comfort is one of the most bizarre phenomena in modern history.
Speaking of which: A vagina is a nice enough anatomical element in a human being, but I find I draw the line exactly at the point of it becoming an anthropomorphized entity in its own right. I was eating, you know (cavatappi with mushroom cream sauce, play Taps for me now) (now, goddamit).
P.S. — Do you know that Blogger comments don't allow del, strike, OR s tags? That's some shit!
Christians dangling the instrument of their Messiah's torture around their necks as a form of emotional comfort is one of the most bizarre phenomena in modern history.
ReplyDeleteIKR? Alexei Sayle liked to imagine a world where Romans had used electric chairs for executions instead of crucifixion, so vicars and priests were blessing their parishioners with the sign of the Muscle-Spasm-&-BZZZZT-Noise.
Blogger comments don't allow del, strike, OR s tags?
ReplyDelete"Might as well be in Eastern Europe!" as my much-missed friend Claire was wont to say.
somehow the misery of proud self-objectification as a cog in a global exploitation regime that makes chattel slavery look quaint, can be attributed to the loss of hidden secrets from other times and other cultures that ought to have been our birthright.
ReplyDeleteThis is far more elegant and insightful than anything I could even aspire to write. You should defo start a blog.