Category: Gold
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“Ye therefore, who seek in science a means to satisfy your passions, pause in this fatal way: you will find nothing but madness or death.”
This is the meaning of the vulgar tradition that the devil ends sooner or later by strangling sorcerers. Eliphas Levi, Transcendental Magic Also… “We have said that impassioned ecstasy may produce the same results as absolute superiority, and this is true as to the issue but not as to the direction of magical operations. Passion…
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Isaac Asimov’s Thiotimoline
Thiotimoline is a fictitious chemical compound conceived by American biochemist and science fiction author Isaac Asimov. Isaac Asimov (1920 – 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the “Big Three” science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000…
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The Goldfinch in art
The goldfinch is a widespread and common seed-eating bird in Europe, North Africa, and western and central Asia. As a colourful species with a pleasant twittering song, and an associated belief that it brought health and good fortune, it had been domesticated for at least 2,000 years. Pliny recorded that it could be taught to do tricks, and in the…
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Goldfinch in art
The bird that repeatedly, almost obsessively, turns up in Renaissance religious painting is the European Goldfinch Carduelis carduelis, almost always in the hands of the Infant Jesus, and symbolising variously the soul, resurrection, sacrifice and death, but with a particular further dimension of meaning, following the plagues of the fourteenth century, as an augur (and hence…
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Thistle tubes, thistle feeders, distelfinks and goldfinches
A thistle tube is a piece of laboratory glassware consisting of a shaft of tube, with a reservoir and funnel-like section at the top. Thistle tubes are typically used by chemists to add liquid to an existing system or apparatus. Thistle funnels are used to add small volumes of liquids to an exact position. Thistle funnels are found with or without taps. Since they’re…
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Herculaneum was an ancient Roman town buried under volcanic ash and pumice in the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
Herculaneum (Neapolitan and Italian: Ercolano) was an ancient Roman town, located in the modern-day comune of Ercolano, Campania, Italy. Herculaneum was buried under volcanic ash and pumice in the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Like the nearby city of Pompeii, Herculaneum is famous as one of the few ancient cities to be preserved nearly intact, as the ash that blanketed the town protected it against…
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Umbilicus and Mundus (Roman Forum) and a depiction of Ceres holding a caduceus on a CSA $10 note
The Umbilicus Urbis Romae (“Navel of the City of Rome”) was the symbolic centre of the city from which, and to which, all distances in Ancient Rome were measured. It was situated in the Roman Forum where its remnants can still be seen. These remains are located beside the Arch of Septimius Severus and the Vulcanal, behind the Rostra. Originally covered in marble, the Umbilicus is…
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Alkekengi aka Chinese lantern is a species of flowering plant in the nightshade family
Scientific classification Kingdom: Plantae Clade: Tracheophytes Clade: Angiosperms Clade: Eudicots Clade: Asterids Order: Solanales Family: Solanaceae Subfamily: Solanoideae Tribe: Physaleae Genus: AlkekengiMill. Species: A. officinarum Binomial name Alkekengi officinarumMoench Alkekengi officinarum, the bladder cherry, Chinese lantern, Japanese-lantern, strawberry groundcherry, or winter cherry, is a species of flowering plant in the nightshade family Solanaceae. It is a close relative of the new world Calliphysalis carpenteri (Carpenter’s groundcherry) and a somewhat more distant…
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Sanxingdui (‘Three Star Mound’)
Sanxingdui (Chinese: 三星堆; pinyin: Sānxīngduī; lit. ‘Three Star Mound‘) is an archaeological site and a major Bronze Age culture in modern Guanghan, Sichuan, China. Largely discovered in 1986, following a preliminary finding in 1927, archaeologists excavated artifacts that radiocarbon dating placed in the twelfth–eleventh centuries BC. The archaeological site is the type site for the Sanxingdui culture that produced these artifacts, archeologists have identified the locale with the ancient kingdom of Shu. The artifacts are displayed in the Sanxingdui Museum located…
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Jason and the Argonauts and the dove
The Symplegades or Clashing Rocks, also known as the Cyanean Rocks, were, according to Greek mythology, a pair of rocks at the Bosphorus that clashed together whenever a vessel went through. They were defeated by Jason and the Argonauts, who would have been lost and killed by the rocks except for Phineus‘ advice. Jason let a dove fly between the rocks to see exactly how fast…
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Seven heavens notes
In religious or mythological cosmology, the seven heavens refer to seven levels or divisions of the Heavens. The concept, also found in the ancient Mesopotamian religions, can be found in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; a similar concept is also found in some other religions such as Hinduism. Some of these traditions, including Jainism, also have a concept of seven earths or seven underworlds both with the metaphysical realms of deities and with observed…
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The dove and the raven and the flood notes
According to the biblical story (Genesis 8:11), a dove was released by Noah after the Flood in order to find land; it came back carrying a freshly plucked olive leaf (Hebrew: עלה זית alay zayit),[Gen 8:11] a sign of life after the Flood and of God’s bringing Noah, his family and the animals to land. Rabbinic literature interpreted the olive leaf as “the young shoots of…
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A columbarium is a structure for the reverential and usually public storage of funerary urns holding cremains of the dead
A columbarium (pl. columbaria) is a structure for the reverential and usually public storage of funerary urns holding cremains of the dead. The term comes from the Latin columba (dove) and originally solely referred to compartmentalized housing for doves and pigeons, also called dovecotes. Background Roman columbaria were often built partly or completely underground. The Columbarium of Pomponius Hylas is an ancient Roman example, rich in frescoes, decorations, and…
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Jade burial suit
A jade burial suit (Chinese: 玉衣; pinyin: yù yī; lit. ‘jade clothing’) is a ceremonial suit made of pieces of jade in which royal members in Han dynasty China were buried. Construction Of the jade suits that have been found, the pieces of jade are mostly square or rectangular in shape, though triangular, trapezoid and rhomboid plaques have also been found. Plaques are often joined by means of…
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Lazarus of Bethany aka Righteous Lazarus, the Four-Days Dead
Lazarus of Bethany (Latinised from Lazar, ultimately from Hebrew Eleazar, “God helped”), also venerated as Righteous Lazarus, the Four-Days Dead in the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the subject of a sign of Jesus in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus restores him to life four days after his death. The Eastern Orthodox and Catholic traditions offer varying accounts of the later events of his life. In the context of…
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The rich man and Lazarus aka the parable of Dives and Lazarus
The rich man and Lazarus (also called the parable of Dives and Lazarus) is a parable of Jesus from the 16th chapter of the Gospel of Luke. Speaking to his disciples and some Pharisees, Jesus tells of an unnamed rich man and a beggar named Lazarus. When both die, the rich man goes to Hell and implores Abraham to send Lazarus from his side in Heaven to warn the rich…
