another year gone by

and for the other one to come,
may it be filled with everything you love ♡

focus

del detallismo extremo

al suave distendido relax

i like

the fact that the people working at the post office are witnesses of our love story.

1 is a mistake

2 a coincidence, 3 a pattern 

Solía tener las más descriptivas teorías

Sobre mi, el mundo y la vida
solía tener toda la quietud y silencio que quería
when the nights were young and nimble
filled with anticipation

Chinese vs Greek star gazing

This Fabric

This tightly woven
fine-spinned thread
of hearts, masks and hands
in hand
that tights
the Earth with the Skies

Déjà vu

A hole
in this tightly knit fabric of Space
and Time folds over itself
actively remembering,
stoking softly the surface
of the coded mystery of Life

an interstellar love affair

Shrine of the Virgin Mary, Aachen Germany

Notre Dame de Paris

Chaos

In the Greek creation myths, more specifically the initial "gap" created by the original separation of heaven and earth. Meaning "emptiness, vast void, chasm, abyss", from the verb χαίνω, "gape, be wide open, etc.", whence English yawn.

Edades y sus frutos

Si a los 20 no eres hermoso Ni a los 30 fuerte Ni a los 40 rico Ni a los 50 sabio Ya nunca serás hermoso, ni fuerte, ni rico...

Kopimism religion

The Church of Kopimism, a religion based on file sharing and the free flow of information.

Kopimism’s central tenets are the following:

1. Copying of information is ethically right.
2. Dissemination of information is ethically right.
3. Copymixing (copying and then remixing) is a sacred act because it expands the existing wealth of information, and is seen as an act of respect.
4. The internet is holy.
5. Code is law.

My experience in #venturelab: how to participate in the diverse, random, virtual environment that is the internet

par·tic·i·pate/pärˈtisəˌpāt/

Verb:	Take part.
Synonyms:	partake - share - take part - enter

takeaway number 1: you get as much as you give.
takeaway number 2: interpersonal connection comes from within.
takeaway number 3: get out of your box.

Cosas que quedan mejor con el tiempo:

El buen vino, el cuero, el verso Y el silencio

i heard it in a dream

"I don't know your bro's abouts"
said the guardian of the gate's
hidden secret door

instrucciones para la vida

1. the importance of the notepad (or the pad or the pod or the phone)
2. lo que la gente se arrepiente es de lo que no hizo
3. el humor tiene periodos de hasta 1 año
4. estamos para evolucionar

otro lema personal

El que sabe, sabe.

El firmamento

Un reloj y una brujula puede ser reemolazo de la trayectoria del sol en el firmamento.

"We will make it all happen once again …"

–said the mayan priest.

#mentalNote

It feels good when people believe in you.

Morning has broken... #equinox2012

Ayer y hoy (casualmente?) me despierto al momento en que los rayos del sol rebotan en ese edificio y consecuentemente en luz dorada el loft se empapa.
Mientras en Buenos Aires ocurría análogamente en el living al atardecer. ☀

rolling

like waves rolling on,
like water flowing through,
dump, dark, crisp
soaking up
letting in
-baby, deep within-
in wisdom nourishing.

roll

This is the mood i like for a song: melancholic with a "quiet desperation" aftertaste.
Ps, I've always thought myself as a roller.

Standing ovation model

T : threshold to stand
Q : quality of the show
S : signal S = Q + Error (or diversity)

initial rule,
if S > T, stand
subsequent rule
if X% stand, stand

La vida

Viene en play y sin control remoto

El espacio

en funcion de la ℜealidad:
un escenario para su acontecer

my generation

ॐ नमः शिवाय - Om Namah Sivaya

Salutations to Shiva, who wears the king of snakes as a garland, the
three-eyed god, whose body is smeared with ashes, the great lord, the
eternal and pure one, who wears the directions as his garment, and who
is represented by the syllable ``na ''

I bow to Shiva, who has been worshiped with water from the Ganga
(Mandakini) and anointed with sandalwood paste, the lord of Nandi, the
lord of the host of goblins and ghosts, the great lord, who is worshiped
with Mandara and many other kinds of flowers, and who is represented by
the syllable ``ma. ''

Salutations to Shiva, who is all-auspiciousness, who is the sun that
causes the lotus face of Gauri (Parvati) to blossom, who is the
destroyer of the yajna of Daksha, whose throat is blue (Nilakantha),
whose flag bears the emblem of the bull, and who is represented by the
syllable ``shi. ''

Vasishhtha, Agastya, Gautama, and other venerable sages, and Indra and
other gods have worshipped the head of (Shiva's linga). I bow to that
Shiva whose three eyes are the moon, sun and fire, and who is
represented by the syllable ``va. ''

salutations to Shiva, who bears the form of a Yaksha, who has matted
hair on his head, who bears the Pinaka bow in his hand, the primeval
lord, the brilliant god, who is digambara (naked), and who is
represented by the syllable ``ya. ''

meaning of om namah sivaya

The meaning of the Namaḥ Śivāya mantra was explained by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami:

Na is the Lord's concealing grace, Ma is the world, Śi stands for Śiva, Va is His revealing grace, Ya is the soul. The five elements, too, are embodied in this ancient formula for invocation. Na is earth, Ma is water, Śi is fire, Vā is air, and Ya is ether, or Ākāśa. Many are its meanings.
Namaḥ Śivāya quells the instinct, cuts through the steel bands and turns this intellect within and on itself, to face itself and see its ignorance.

The book "The Ancient Power of Sanskrit Mantra and Ceremony: Volume I" by Thomas Ashley-Farrand defines Om Namah Shivaya as:
"This mantra has no direct translation. The sounds relate directly to the principles which govern each of the first five chakras on the spine...Earth, water, fire, air, ether. Notice that this does not refer to the chakras themselves which have a different set of seed sounds, but rather, the principles which govern those chakras in their place. A very rough, non-literal translation could be something like, 'Om and salutations to that which I am capable of becoming.' This mantra will start one out on the path of subtle development of spiritual attainments. It is the beginning on the path of Siddha Yoga, or the Yoga of Perfection of the Divine Vehicle."
"Na" refers to the Gross Body (annamayakosa), "Ma" refers to the Pranic Body (pranamayakosa), "Shi" or "Chi" refers to the Mental Body (manonmayakosa), "Va" refers to the Intellectual Body (vignanamayakosa) and "Ya" refers to the Blissful Body (anandamayakosa) and "OM" or the "silence" beyond these syllables refers to the Soul or Life within.

Maha Shivaratri

It literally means the great night of Shiva or the night of Shiva. It is celebrated every year on the 13th night/14th day of the Maagha or Phalguna month of Hindu calendar.

According to the Shiva Purana, the Mahashivaratri worship must incorporate six items:
Bathing the Shiv Linga with water, milk and honey, and Wood apple or bel leaves added to it, representing purification of the soul;
The vermilion paste applied on the Shiv linga after bathing it, representing virtue;
Offering of fruits, which is conducive to longevity and gratification of desires;
Burning incense, yielding wealth;
The lighting of the lamp which is conducive to the attainment of knowledge;
And betel leaves marking satisfaction with worldly pleasures.
Tripundra refers to the three horizontal stripes of holy ash applied to the forehead by worshippers of Lord Shiva. These stripes symbolise spiritual knowledge, purity and penance (spiritual practice of Yoga), so also they represent the three eyes of Lord Shiva.

creencias personales

cuando era chica pensaba que dios era un numero, que el misterio de la vida se simplificaba en una ecuacion matematica y que estudiando fisica o matematica o astronomia, uno podia estar en contacto con muchos misterios.
ahora pienso que hay numeros personales. que los numeros son abstractos y que solo representan algo mas, algo totalmente real.

Cosmic serpents Cosmic serpents Cosmic serpents Cosmic serpents Cosmic Serpent

The serpent, when forming a ring with its tail in its mouth, is a clear and widespread symbol of the "All-in-All", the totality of existence, infinity and the cyclic nature of the cosmos. The most well known version of this is the Aegypto-Greek Ourobouros. It is believed to have been inspired by the Milky Way, as some ancient texts refer to a serpent of light residing in the heavens.

In Hindu mythology Lord Vishnu is said to sleep while floating on the cosmic waters on the serpent Shesha. In the Puranas Shesha holds all the planets of the universe on his hoods and constantly sings the glories of Vishnu from all his mouths. He is sometimes referred to as "Ananta-Shesha," which means "Endless Shesha". In the Samudra manthan chapter of the Puranas, Shesha loosens Mount Mandara for it to be used as a churning rod by the Asuras and Devas to churn the ocean of milk in the heavens in order to make Soma (or Amrita), the divine elixir of immortality. As a churning rope another giant serpent called Vasuki is used.

In pre-Columbian Central America Quetzalcoatl was sometimes depicted as biting its own tail. The mother of Quetzalcoatl was the Aztec goddess Coatlicue ("the one with the skirt of serpents"), also known as Cihuacoatl ("The Lady of the serpent"). Quetzalcoatl's father was Mixcoatl ("Cloud Serpent"). He was identified with the Milky Way, the stars and the heavens in several Mesoamerican cultures.

Serpent

Fertility and rebirth
In religion, mythology, and literature, serpents and snakes represent fertility or a creative life force. As snakes shed their skin through moulting, they are symbols of rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing. The ouroboros is a symbol of eternity and continual renewal of life.
In the Abrahamic religions, according to the Rabbinical tradition, in the Garden of Eden, the serpent represents sexual passion. In Hinduism, Kundalini is a coiled serpent, the residual power of pure desire.

skywatcher

soñada noche de verano austral

heavenly night amidst the austral summer
jupiter and venus escorting
the setting waxing crescent moon
while mars stumbles eastward and stammers.

Orion's witness from far above
the romance in the air that gently blows
the touch, the lovely chat, the memoir
of the elusive summer nights with astroboy
and the naughty deeds of the solar gods.

---

soñada noche de verano austral
escoltada por jupiter y venus,
la luna en el oeste se esconde
y marte celoso balbucea de espaldas.
orion es testigo
del romance en el aire que sopla dulcemente
como las caricias, las palabras, el recuerdo
de las noches de verano con astroboy
y las travesuras de los astros.

y yo extraño a mi romeo cuando me plantaron
la pirada, la veleta, la falluta y la pajera

"i should only believe in a god that would know how to dance"

-Friedrich Nietzsche

"Shiva the world dancer. he's dancing on a little dwarf whose name is forgetfulness. that's ourselves, forgetful of our eternal identity with shiva.
one of his right hands holds a little drum. and the drum goes tic tic tic tic that is the tic of time which creates the world of time. and the world of time is like a veil thrown across the face of eternity. and we cannot penetrate it. eternity is not a long time, it has nothing to do with time, it is the dimension that is aclueded from our own experience by the veil of time.
his left hand holds a flame, and that is a flame to burn away the veil of time.
the lower right hand says "do not be afraid".
the other left hand is called the elephant hand or the teaching hand, it points to the lifted left foot, which means release. the right foot on the back of forgetfulness.
so this dance with creation, destruction and passing time, holds in the center the still point of the head, and this is what lives in us. we don't feel the weight of shiva, his foot on the back anymore than the little dwarf does. but he is there and his dance is to call us to that knowledge."

-Joseph Campbell

Don't be shy, dance.

follow your bliss

"there is no rules, an individual needs to find what electrifies and enlivens his own hearts and wakes him."

"and i have a firm belief in this now, not only in terms of my own experience but in knowing of the experiences of other people. when you follow your bliss, and by bliss i mean the deep sense of being in it and doing what the push is out of your own existence, you follow that and door will open where you wouldn't have thought there were going to be doors, and where there wouldn't be a door for anybody else. there is something about the integrity of a life and the world moves in and helps."

-joseph campbell

the passion

since both judaism and christianity are mythologically structured orders of symbols.
[the reading of the symbols] is an immediate attitude of YOU to LIFE.
for instance, the crucifixion, (...) as the zeal of eternity for incarnation in time, which involves the breaking up of the ONE into the many and the acceptance of the sufferings of the world.
-joseph campbell

on poetry

poetry's power to do the thing which always is and always will be to poetry’s credit: the power to persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousness of its rightness in spite of the evidence of wrongness all around it, the power to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values, that our very solitudes and distresses are creditable, in so far as they, too, are an earnest of our veritable human being.
-Seamus Heaney, Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966–1996

♥ w. b. yeats

I believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreed to call magic, in what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are, in the power of creating magical illusions, in the visions of truth in the depths of the mind when the eyes are closed; and I believe in three doctrines, which have, as I think, been handed down from early times, and been the foundations of nearly all magical practices. These doctrines are:---
(1) That the borders of our mind are ever shifting, and that many minds can flow into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind, a single energy.
(2) That the borders of our memories are as shifting, and that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.
(3) That this great mind and great memory can be evoked by symbols.
---Yeats, "Magic" (1901)

When I try to put all into a phrase I say, 'Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.' I must embody it in the completion of my life. The abstract is not life and everywhere draws out its contradictions. You can refute Hegel but not the Saint or the song of experience.
---Yeats, letter to Elizabeth Pelham, January 4, 1939

teoria sobre mitologia y religion -a draft

se me ocurre que la mitologia, y la religion dentro de esta categoria, son historias. la humanidad siempre busco eternizar los logros de grandes personalidades -heroes- en canciones, pinturas, cuentos.
y de la misma manera en que se transmite un chisme, un relato semi-extra-natural, ciertas historias fueron pasando de boca en boca, de libro en libro.
estas historias son como ondas en un lago, cuando, al juntarse dos iguales, duplican su magnitud. de esta forma estas olas de sabiduria popular, a lo largo de los tiempos, de civulizaciones, fueron magnificandose y convirtiendose en arquetipos de conocimiento.

on the idea of god:

the absolute, the origin, the beyond, the void....
toys of our minds to make sense
of the otherness in our own world.

There is no need for a father,
i might as well just call it LIFE
"on the surface and un-adorable",
the fierce force that pulls and throws
and rocks and rolls.

on frost

---Frost was the first American poet to live a considerable living exclusively through poetry, a man paid simply for being a poet (for readings, in universities; the public bard we saw images of last week). Poetry was always a mode of work for Frost, and work was a model of poetic activity. Meaning is always something made, what the poet works on and for. Frost's modernity consists in the idea that truth is concrete and contingent, not a metaphysical matter, not an ideal principle; it is only available in the act (the moment) of deriving it, or constructing it, an act that is ordinary, incompletable, and thus necessarily repeated, an ongoing task. Frost is a materialist who calls attention to the circumstances of imagination: poetry is an encounter between fact and desire, focusing the terms, or conditions, on which something can be known. Tools are in Frost an image of those enabling conditions, and they include, in poetry, meter, rhyme, and all the technical resources of verse, the materials of language.

Professor Langdon Hammer

robert frost's sound of sense

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense. Now it is possible to have sense without the sound of sense (as in much prose that is supposed to pass muster but makes very dull reading) and the sound of sense without sense (as in Alice in Wonderland which makes anything but dull reading). The best place to get the abstract sound of sense is from voices behind a door that cuts off the words. . . .
. . . The sound of sense, then. You get that. It is the abstract vitality of our speech. It is pure sound--pure form. One who concerns himself with it more than the subject is an artist. But remember we are still talking merely of the raw material of poetry. An ear and an appetite for these sounds of sense is the first qualification of a writer, be it of prose or verse. But if one is to be a poet he must learn to get cadences by skillfully breaking the sounds of sense with all their irregularity of accent across the regular beat of the metre. Verse in which there is nothing but the beat of the metre furnished by the accents of the pollysyllabic words we call doggerel. Verse is not that. Neither is it the sound of sense alone. It is the resultant from those two. There are only two or three metres that are worth anything. We depend for variety on the infinite play of accents in the sound of sense.
--Frost to John Bartlett, July 1913


My versification seems to bother people more than I should have expected--I suppose because I have been so long accustomed to thinking of it in my own private way. It is as simple as this: there are the very regular pre-established accent and measure of blank verse; and there are the very irregular accent and measure of speaking intonation. I am never more pleased than when I can get these into strained relation. I like to drag and break the intonation across the meter as waves first comb and then break stumbling on the shingle. That's all but it's no mere figure of speech though one can make figures enough about it.
--Frost to John Cournos, July 1914

Romanticismo

El eje del pensamiento occidental esta en las dicotomías. La vida como el romance de Venus y Marte denmanera ilustrativa.

Cronología de la femeneidad

La mujer mas famosa de la humanidad es la virgen maria.

Occidente

Lo que hacemos en Occidente es poner las cosas en cajas, hacer catálogos, arboles, gráficos, infografias. Nombrar. Decir las cosas por su nombre. Escribir teorías.

مريم بنت عمران - Maryam bint ʿImran

María hija de ʿImran (Joaquín en la Biblia), y de Hannā (حنـّا Ana), o también Maryam bint Dāwud (María hija de David), por proceder del linaje del rey David según la tradición. Es considerada ejemplo de mujer virtuosa y tiene tanta relevancia como su hijo Jesús (ʿIsà عسى), a cuyo nombre se añade casi siempre el laqab o filiación "ibn Maryam" (بن مريم), esto es, "hijo de María". A María está dedicada una de las azoras o capítulos del Corán, la que lleva por título آل عمران Āl ʿImrān, esto es, la familia de Imran.

Según el Corán; la madre de María, esperaba tener un hijo varón a quien dedicar al servicio del Templo, siguiendo la tradición familiar. Dio a luz a una niña, en quien sin embargo se cumpliría la tradición, pues fue asignada al servicio sagrado. Fue confiada a la tutela del profeta Zacarías (necesariamente un personaje distinto al Zacarías bíblico), quien se sorprendía, al visitar a su ahijada en el oratorio en el que ésta se encontraba retirada, de que siempre contara con alimentos que le eran enviados por Dios.

Como en la tradición cristiana, a María le fue anunciada la concepción sobrenatural de Jesús por un ángel. El Corán insiste, sin embargo, en que aunque tuvo un hijo por voluntad de Dios sin la intervención de un varón, Jesús no era en modo alguno un hijo del ser supremo. En el Corán no existe José: María dio a luz sola en el desierto, al que se había retirado con este propósito y en el que se alimentaba de dátiles y del agua de un riachuelo colocados allí por Dios. El hijo, por su parte, tiene en el Islam la consideración de profeta o enviado de Dios.

paradojas marianas

Por ser la madre de Cristo –considerado el Verbo encarnado, Dios mismo–, María es:

• la que "dio el ser al creador de todo",
• la que "engendró al mismo que la había creado a ella",
• la que existía antes que Dios... se encarnara,
• la que encerró en su seno al Inmenso e Infinito,
• aquella que encerró en sus entrañas a quien no cabe en todo el mundo,
• la que sostuvo en sus brazos al que todo lo sustenta,
• la que tuvo obligación de ejercer vigilancia materna sobre el que todo lo ve,
• la que tuvo a su cuidado al Dios que cuida de todos,
• la que tocó los confines de quien no tiene fin.

Edipo

La iglesia es consorte de cristo

tellus - ara pacis augustae

roma and the famous representation of tellus/pax, the peace giving earth mother. she is holding playing children in her arms, fruit is lying in her lap, and an ox and a sheep are peacefully resting on the ground. air and water are depicted allegorically; in fact the entire relief is an allegory to the peace granted by augustus, which provided growth, prosperity and peaceful co-existence to the people.

scarab

Scarabs were popular amulets in ancient Egypt. According to ancient Egyptian myths, the sun (Ra) rolls across the sky each day and transforms bodies and souls. Modeled upon the Scarabaeidae family dung beetle, which rolls dung into a ball for the purposes of eating and laying eggs that are later transformed into larva, the scarab was seen as an earthly symbol of this heavenly cycle.

The Eye of Horus

an ancient Egyptian symbol of protection.

Horus was the ancient Egyptian sky god who was usually depicted as a falcon. His right eye was associated with the sun Ra. The sun was an eye of Horus (the other eye, semi-blind, was the moon), "when he opens his eyes, he fills the universe with light, and when he closes them, darkness is created".

In one myth, when Set and Horus were fighting for the throne after Osiris's death, Set gouged out Horus' left eye. The eye was restored by either Hathor or Thoth.

In the Ancient Egyptian measurement system, the Eye Of Horus defined Old Kingdom number one (1) = 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64, by throwing away 1/64 for any rational number. Eye of Horus numbers created six-term rounded-off numbers.

ankh

a.k.a. key of life, the key of the Nile or crux ansata, was the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic character that read "eternal life".

book of coming forth by day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_the_Dead

Anubis, the god of the dead, assisted the deceased at the judgement where the latter's heart was weighed against a feather.  After the deceased has passed the test he was considered "justified" and "transfigured" which gave him access to the fields od Aaru. The alternative was to be devoured by Ammit "devoured of the dead", a monster part crocodile, part big cat and part hippopotamus. 

nefertiti

Epitome of Egyptian and timeless beauty.

a theological power position

Hymn to the Sun

Thy dawning is beautiful,
In the horizon of the sky,
O living Aton, Beginning of life.
When thou risest in the eastern horizon,
Thou fillest every land,
With thy beauty.
Thou art beautiful,
Great,
Glittering,
High above every land,
Thy rays,
They encompass the land,
Even all that thou hast made.

Thou art Re,
and thou carriest them all away captive;
Thou bindest them by thy love.

Though thou art far away,
Thy rays are upon earth;
Though thou art on high,
thy footprints are the day.

(...)

the Kanon of Polykleitos

His aesthetic theories of the mathematical bases of artistic perfection.
The aim of the Canon, was not simply to explain a statue but also to achieve to kallos, "the beautiful” and to eu (the perfect or the good) in it. The secret of achieving to kallos and to eu lay in the mastery of symmetria, the perfect "commensurability" of all parts of the statue to one another and to the whole.

A Reconstructed Outline of the Kanon of Polykleitos
From the quotations, paraphrases, and comments on the Canon extant from antiquity, an outline of the Canon treatise can be reasonably inferred as follows:

1. Perfection comes about little by little through many numbers (Philo of Byzantium, Belopoeica 4.1).
2. The numbers must all come to a congruence through some system of commensurability and harmony, for ugliness is immediately ready to come into being if only one chance element is omitted or inserted out of place (Plutarch, Moralia 45C).
3. Perfection is the exact Mean in each particular case —human, horse, ox, lion, and so on (Galen, de Temperamentis 1.9; Ars medica 14; de Optima nostri corporis constitutione 4).
4. So the perfect human body should be neither too tall nor too short, nor too stout or too thin, but exactly well proportioned (Galen, Ars medica; Lucian, de Saltatione 75).
5. Such perfection in proportion comes about via an exact commensurability of all the body’s parts to one another: of finger to finger and of these to the hand and wrist, of these to the forearm, of the forearm to the upper arm; of the equivalent parts of the leg; and of everything to everything else (Galen, de Temperamentis 1.9; Ars medica 14; de Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis; de Usu partium 17.1; de Optima nostri corporis constitutione 4).
6. This perfection requires scrupulous attention to replicating the body’s anatomy; not a single error can be tolerated (Galen, de Usu partium 17.1).
7. In bronze work, such precision is most difficult when the clay is on/at the nail (Plutarch, Moralia 86A and 636B-C; cf. Galen, de Usu partium 17.1).

Polyclitus's idea of symmetria and the pursuit of the to kallos and to eu was influenced by exposure to the ideas of Pythagoras of Samos.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, I.5.986a22: “Members of this school [the Pythagoreans] say there are ten principles, which they arrange into two columns of cognates, thus:

limited and unlimited
odd and even
one and plurality
right and left
male and female
rest and movement
straight and curved
light and darkness
good and bad
square and oblong

Zeus

circa 432 BC on the site where it was erected in the Temple of Zeus, Olympia, Greece. It was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

According to Pausanias, in Zeus' right hand there was a small statue of crowned Nike, goddess of victory, and in his left hand, a sceptre inlaid with gold, on which an eagle perched.

Plutarch, when he beheld the statue, “was moved to his soul, as if he had seen the god in person,” while the 1st century AD Greek orator Dio Chrysostom declared that a single glimpse of the statue would make a man forget all his earthly troubles.

Athena Parthenos

Ἀθηνᾶ Παρθένος; literally, "Athena the Virgin". The most renowned cult image of Athens.

(...)The statue itself is made of ivory, silver and gold. On the middle of her helmet is placed a likeness of the Sphinx ... and on either side of the helmet are griffins in relief. ... The statue of Athena is upright, with a tunic reaching to the feet, and on her breast the head of Medusa is worked in ivory. She holds a statue of Victory about four cubits high, and in the other hand a spear; at her feet lies a shield and near the spear is a serpent. This serpent would be Erichthonius(*). On the pedestal is the birth of Pandora in relief.

Description by Pausanias.

*  "troubles born from the earth", was a mythological early ruler of ancient Athens. Athena visited the smith-god Hephaestus to request some weapons, but Hephaestus was so overcome by desire that he tried to seduce her in his workshop. Determined to maintain her virginity, Athena fled, pursued by Hephaestus. Despite Hephaestus' lameness, he caught Athena and tried to rape her, but she fought him off. During the struggle, his semen fell on her thigh, and Athena, in disgust, wiped it away with a scrap of wool (ἔριον, erion) and flung it to the earth (χθών, chthôn). As she fled, Erichthonius was born from the semen that fell to the earth. Athena, wishing to raise the child in secret, placed him in a small box.

a flowchart to religion

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