Images

Reddish Bands on Europa

This colorized image of Europa is a product of clear-filter grayscale data from one orbit of NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, combined with lower-resolution color data taken on a different orbit.

The blue-white terrains indicate relatively pure water ice, whereas the reddish areas contain water ice mixed with hydrated salts, potentially magnesium sulfate or sulfuric acid.

The reddish material is associated with the broad band in the center of the image, as well as some of the narrower bands, ridges, and disrupted chaos-type features. It is possible that these surface features may have communicated with a global subsurface ocean layer during or after their formation.

The image area measures approximately 101 by 103 miles (163 km by 167 km). The grayscale images were obtained on November 6, 1997, during the Galileo spacecraft’s 11th orbit of Jupiter, when the spacecraft was approximately 13,237 miles (21,700 kilometers) from Europa. These images were then combined with lower-resolution color data obtained in 1998, during the spacecraft’s 14th orbit of Jupiter, when the spacecraft was 89,000 miles (143,000 km) from Europa.

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Venusian Surface and Sky, from Venera 13 (1982)

Credits: Soviet Space Agency – Credits for the additional process. and color.: Dr Don P. Mitchell and Dr Paolo C. Fienga/Lunar Explorer Italia/IPF

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The huge storm churning through the atmosphere in Saturn’s northern hemisphere overtakes itself as it encircles the planet in this true-color view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

This picture, captured on Feb. 25, 2011, was taken about 12 weeks after the storm began, and the clouds by this time had formed a tail that wrapped around the planet. Some of the clouds moved south and got caught up in a current that flows to the east (to the right) relative to the storm head. This tail, which appears as slightly blue clouds south and west (left) of the storm head, can be seen encountering the storm head in this view.

This storm is the largest, most intense storm observed on Saturn by NASA’s Voyager or Cassini spacecraft. It is still active today. As scientists have tracked this storm over several months, they have found it covers 500 times the area of the largest of the southern hemisphere storms observed earlier in the Cassini mission (see PIA06197). The shadow cast by Saturn’s rings has a strong seasonal effect, and it is possible that the switch to powerful storms now being located in the northern hemisphere is related to the change of seasons after the planet’s August 2009 equinox.

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The world heritage nomination of the Qhapaq Ñan (pronounced ca-pac NYAN in the Quechua language of the Incas) is extremely complicated, involving evaluations of 137 sections of the network embodying 273 components, including temples, funerary towers, fortresses and wayside inns, covering about 435 miles of the original 20,000. Only those 435 miles would be designated.

The road system began forming as trails as early as 1000 B.C., Professor Urton at Harvard said, and was developed into a complex network by the Incas in the 15th century A.D., so it was in use for nearly 2,500 years, 3,000 if calculated to the present day.

The Incas, who underwent a spectacular rise to found the largest pre-Columbian empire in South America, expanded these routes into the road network to unite their territory through Cuzco and serve a population of 40,000 spread over thousands of miles, the monuments council evaluation found. Runners carried administrative reports in the form of knotted ropes — the Incas had no written language — traders bought and sold gold and copper, seashells, weapons, feathers, wood, cocoa and textiles, and fresh fish from the Pacific.

After the conquistadors arrived from the north in 1526, they used the roads to subdue the Incas, driving them into remote mountain territories.

“The road network was the life giving support to the Inca Empire integrated into the Andean landscape,” the researchers said.

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Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)

Bruno was one of the most original and colorful thinkers of the Renaissance. The Inquisition considered him a dangerous heretic, and had him burned at the stake in 1600.

The Italian philosopher and mage Giordano Bruno was born in Nola, near Naples, in 1548. He became a Dominican friar in 1563, but was forced to leave the order after accusations of heresy in 1576. From 1576 to 1585 lived in Paris where his book De Umbris Idearum, “the Shadows of Ideas” published in 1582 and lectures on the Art of Memory attracted the attention of the French King Henry III. Bruno took the ars memoria or Art of Memory, a classical technique of mnemonic coding using the measured placement of visual images to new heights exploiting its philosophical and magical possibilities. Here is a translation by Nigel Jackson of forty nine of Bruno’s planetary images from De Umbris Idearum.

From 1583 to 1585 he lived under the protection of the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau. While in England he published a number of works including Cena de le Ceneri, “The Ash Wednesday Supper”, Spaccio della bestia trinofante, “The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast” and De l’Infinito, Universo e Mondi, “On the Infinite Universe and Worlds”. The latter work and his support of a Copernican heliocentric astronomy earned Bruno an entirely undeserved reputation as an early “scientist” and “modern” thinker. In fact, Bruno was clearly a figure of the late medieval and Renaissance, a mage who sought what he saw as the restoration of the true religion, that of Egyptian Hermeticism.

Bruno lived and lectured throughout Germany from 1586 to 1591 when he made the mistake of going to Venice where he was arrested by the Inquisition. After initially recanting his views, after being sent to Rome he abjured his recantation and was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600.

A number of Bruno’s works are available on-line at Jonathan Peterson’s excellent web site, Esoteric Archives though many are in Latin. The Ash Wednesday Supper and the Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast are available in English translation as is “On Magic” and “A General Account of Bonding” which appear in Cause, Principle and Unity edited by Blackwell and De Lucca (Cambridge, 1998). Two excellent secondary sources on Bruno are Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Frances Yates (Chicago, 1964) and Eros and Magic in the Renaissance by Ioan Coulianu (Chicago, 1987).

Bruno’s magic can be considered under two basic categories, that of memory and phantasmic images and that of bonding or enchaining. Bruno has been described as an artist of memory and in his forty nine planetary images we can see his poetic skill at visual description. The scenes described by Bruno are often full of action and are a focused and detailed evocation of the various planetary natures. These visual images are meant to penetrate into the pneuma, the spirit or astral body. There reflected in the mirror of the spiritus they can be apprehended by the soul and the knowledge and wisdom contained in them accepted by it. Bruno emphasizes the importance of the creation of bonds or chains, called vincula in magic. Of these the Erotic bond is supreme. Vinculum quippe vinculorum amor est or “Love is the bond of bonds”.

“All affections and bonds of the will are reduced to two, namely aversion and desire, or hatred and love. Yet hatred itself is reduced to love, whence it follows that the will’s only bond is Eros.”

Giordano Bruno, Theses de Magia, Vol. LVI quoted in Coulianu, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (Chicago, 1987) page 91.

Bruno goes on to say that, “There are three gates through which the hunter of souls [animarum venator] ventures to bind: vision, hearing and mind or imagination. If it happens that someone passes through all three of these gates, he binds most powerfully and ties down most tightly.”

“A General Account of Bonding” from Cause, Principle and Unity, ed. Blackwell & Lucca (Cambridge, 1997) page 155.

We can see the importance of this to the creation and consecration of our astrological images,  “He who enters through the gate of hearing is armed with his voice and with speech, the son of voice. He who enters through the gate of vision is armed with suitable forms, gestures, motions and figures. He who enters through the gate of the imagination, mind and reason is armed with customs and the arts.”

“A General Account of Bonding” from Cause, Principle and Unity, ed. Blackwell & Lucca (Cambridge, 1997) page 155.
Thus images are magical, not only in their ability to communicate with the soul, but also in their use by the magician in the creation of the vincula or chains that are indispensible to this art.

Here are two examples of actual talismans and elections for their construction that rely on Bruno’s planetary images, a Venus talisman and a Sun talisman. Here is a Jupiter image created by Nigel Jackson using Bruno’s planetary description.

Some works

Books in print

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“How ironic it would be to witness the somber rituals of a Spider-Man cult in 2540 A.D. – or to be present at the "strength olympics” held in honor of the Hulk. New myths created in the twentieth century, and scattered by the printing press throughout the world, may well enlarge the giant puzzle that is humanity and make things much more difficult to decipher.“

Jack Kirby writing in the back pages of The Eternals.

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