Celestial Realm Research Articles

Exile practices applied to prostitution in the late Ottoman Empire and the voice of Minoş

Exile stands as one of the most ancient punitive measures employed by human societies. Within the framework of creationist perspectives, the narrative of humanity’s inception unfolds significantly through the motif of exile. The narratives of the Jewish exile from Palestine and the migration of Muslims from Mecca to Medina exemplify the enduring historical relevance of human migration, underscoring its universal presence across diverse societies. Notably, Christianity places considerable emphasis on the expulsion of Adam from the celestial realm. Consequently, it can be posited that humans are, in essence, residing in a state of exile on Earth. The primary objective of this study is not to undertake a comprehensive analysis of exile on a broad scale but, rather, to trace the nexus between women engaged in prostitution and exile in the late Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, it aims to scrutinize a noteworthy case that deviates from conventional practices within this context.

Study on the Incense Burners Unearthed from the Tomb of Marquis of Haihun of the Han Dynasty: Focusing on Boshanxianglu with Phoenix and Tortoise Designs

This paper explores the stylistic features and artistic significance of the “Boshanxianglu with Phoenix and Tortoise Designs” unearthed from the recently discovered Han dynasty burial site (92~59 BCE) of Liu He, the Marquis of Haihun, located in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, China. It discusses the incense burner’s function, consumer group, and cultural context that contributed to its widespread adoption.Liu He, the grandson of Emperor Wu, held the titles of King of Changyi and Marquis of Haihun. He was also deposed as an emperor. The sixteen bronze incense burners found in his tomb are a testament to the prevalent beliefs in immortality and the aspirations of the royal family. The symbolism of the phoenix and tortoise on the “Boshanxianglu with Phoenix and Tortoise Designs” encapsulates the themes of longevity and immortality, hinting at a journey to the celestial realm. As Confucianism-based rationalism gained traction during the later Han dynasty, notions of ascension evolved, leading to a decline in the popularity of incense burners adorned with phoenix and tortoise motifs. This type of incense burner was discovered in upper-class males’ study chambers or reception areas, suggesting their predominant usage among men.In Nangnang, a Han commandery on the Korean Peninsula, various incense burners influenced by Chinese styles were used. The standout discovery of the “Boshanxianglu with Phoenix and Tortoise Designs” at the Sŏgamni No. 9 site, suggests a tailored approach to incense selection and usage based on individual preferences, purposes, and consumption habits within Nangnang society.

Fallen Angels and the Christian Body in Tertullian’s On the Veiling of Virgins: A Multispecies Exploration

Abstract Drawing on insights from posthuman theory, this article analyzes the role of fallen angels in Tertullian of Carthage’s On the Veiling of Virgins. In this treatise, Tertullian argues that unveiled virgins stand in danger of sexual attack by fallen angels and must don the veil to protect themselves. I examine how ancient understandings of connections between humans and (fallen) angels undergird Tertullian’s textual logics. I call attention to angels’ (1) hyper-sexual desire for human women, (2) cosmic positioning in the intermediary celestial realm, and (3) gawkish observance of humanity. I outline how each of these aspects of angelic nature serve as key supports for Tertullian’s construction of the human (female) body. I close the article by noting that Tertullian’s invocation of fallen angels likely served to counter the unveiled virgins’ own appeals to (benevolent) angelic corporeality, thus positioning Tertullian’s On Veiling as a kind of “counter-angelology.”

｢김원전｣의 흥미 요소 고찰

Kimwonjeon is a story of a protagonist, Kim Won, who wins the confrontation with the evil character through his extraordinary ability and the help of a supporting character and ends up in an amicable relationship with the two female characters. This story organically structured the plot by arranging various types of characters rather than simply enumerating the motifs. It implies that the interest factors of tales familiar to the readership are developed into novelistic features. Firstly, the protagonist was embodied by inheriting the narrative tradition of heroic characters. The story structure of a hero's journey whose life undergoes trials at a young age but escapes from the crisis with helpers and achieves something great based on his outstanding abilities. Kim Won's oviparity and conquest were used to enhance his heroism. Secondly, the antagonist in the story was put into a process called characterization to create an adversary of the protagonist. What draws readers' attention is the enormous appearance and power of the monster and the detailedly described underworld while simultaneously arousing curiosity about how Kim Won would defeat such a strong presence. The stunning portrayal of the antagonist is to embody the protagonist's activities against it in a more exciting way. Thirdly, female characters in the story play a role in making the narrative more vivid. The princess contributes to exterminating the monster, devotes herself to Kim Won, and supports her parents-in-law. The princess of the Sea God even leaves her hometown at Kim Won's request and plays a significant role in reviving him. In this way, the two female characters, the princess and the princess of the Sea God, are actively involved in making the story more interesting. By embracing narrative elements into the classic novel, Kimwonjeon established a worldview that readers would be enthusiastic about. The protagonist who descended from the celestial realm defends the ideology of loyalty, filial piety, and fidelity in the process of performing heroic activities in unique spaces such as the underground world and the underwater world, and returning to the earthly world to enjoy wealth and glory. The Confucian perspective was set up so that the protagonist and female characters protect it, naturally pleasing readers' desires.

Girolamo Cardano’s Meteorological Predictions: Hippocratism, Weather Signs, Winds, and the Limits of Astrology

AbstractThe subject of meteorology was central to Girolamo Cardano’s thought. It held together his encyclopedism by tying the celestial realm to the sublunary world and human action. Meteorology, for Cardano, links abstract knowledge to the practical and operative. While many of his Aristotelian predecessors understood weather prediction as distinct from meteorology as a natural philosophical field, Cardano’s profound interest in conjectural arts and probabilistic reasoning led him to tie causal explanations to methods of forecasting future conditions of the air and their effects on humans, especially regarding health and disease. While it might be expected that Cardano would have emphasized astrological tools for weather forecasting, instead he went in a different direction, namely, embracing the ancient tradition of weather signs and revising Aristotelian theories of winds. At the end of his career, which he mostly spent writing commentaries on Hippocratic writings, he integrated his understanding of weather signs with Hippocratic rules of prognosis, revising traditional understandings of the causes of winds.

A Theological Approach to the Simplest Mathematical Explanation of the Dynamics of the Temporal Universe

Guided heuristically by the theism of ancient Egypt where religion underpinned cosmology, to explain the dynamics of the temporal universe (gravitation, rotation, and translation), this paper starts from the existence of individualities and the law of causality to build a cosmological argument, into a natural systematic theology (NST). According to this NST, God (the greatest possible being) includes the creator as one of his celestial manifestations. One deduces from the NST that, manifesting an individuality included in the indivisible and immutable God, the creator expresses the fullness of the Most High in an individual manner. This fullness (the Logos) is thus, like God, a constant power working in the creator. The existence of the temporal universe in God requires the existence of a principle of the mutability of God at the occurrence of creation ex nihilo; in accord to the law of causality this principle must greater than God, which is impossible. Moreover, the existence of creation outside of God implies an entity greater than God including him and creation, this is also impossible as God is the greatest possible being. Therefore, the temporal universe exists in the temporal consciousness of the creator as a mere appearance of, or perspective on, the celestial reality. Thus, the NST dictates the existence of an absolute space-time that includes the Euclidean space-time known in Newtonian physics and corresponds to the temporal consciousness of the creator. The NST proves that to create, the creator had first to leave the eternal plane for the temporal one. Then on, as a constant power, the Logos impels the creator to accelerate back toward the celestial-eternal level. This isotropic acceleration of the creator causes the absolute space-time to accelerate towards its nothingness, its non-existence in the celestial realm. Therefore, this background acceleration of the absolute space-time is the simplest, exhaustive, deterministic, and mathematical explanation of the dynamics of the temporal universe (gravitation, rotation, translation). This explanation offers the advantage of using elementary notions of algebra and analysis and the result applies to the astronomical level as well as to the subatomic one.

Envisioning Paradise

Abstract The majority of the murals at Dunhuang that depict Maitreya are dominated by his three assemblies, thereby emphasizing the salvific power of the future Buddha after he has descended to earth. This article examines scenes from the Maitreya murals, highlighting details appearing across the murals that allow us to understand how adherents imagined life in an earthly paradise. Most scenes in the murals accentuate the magnificence of life in Maitreya's terrestrial Buddhaland, characterized by manageable yet rewarding labor and a long life that never ends suddenly, all in a clean urban environment. Hence, in this realm some labor is still required and social hierarchies are maintained. Unlike the celestial realm of Amitābha Buddha, Maitreya's land is ruled by an ideal leader, the Wheel-Turning King Saṅkha. The article concludes by examining the tension between the power of the religious leader and the political ruler, evident even though the paintings do not include representations of Saṅkha himself. Rather, they depict his regalia, his gift, and his family in prominent positions, near Maitreya, thus suggesting that the future Buddha absorbed Saṅkha's political power, which parallels contemporaneous political and religious developments.

Reshaping the World: Debates on Mesoamerican Cosmologies

Mesoamerican cosmology is characterized by three concepts: a universe consisting of layered realms, the sacred 260-day calendar, and the reciprocal relationship between gods and people. The concept of a multilayered universe has dominated modern scholarship, which has often depicted the cosmos as three separate, multilayered tiers. The authors of Reshaping the World: Debates on Mesoamerican Cosmologies challenge this long-standing pan-Mesoamerican model. This compelling collection of essays revises our understanding of the connections between the earth, sky, and underworld by emphasizing the fluidity and dynamic interplay between these spaces. As suggested by the volume subtitle's use of the plural (“cosmologies”) and the cover image (a muwieri, a relatively unexplored Wixarika object), Mesoamerican cosmological systems were varied and ever evolving.Within the evangelization process of New Spain, ancient cosmological structures were reconfigured by the Spanish in an effort to render them comprehensible within preexisting and dominant worldviews. In the early twentieth century, Eduard Seler proposed that the Mexica cosmos were composed of thirteen celestial layers and a nine-layered underworld, an interpretation that became the standard for the entirety of Mesoamerica. Using this historiographical context as a point of departure, Reshaping the World contains nine chapters split between three thematic parts, spanning from the Classic period (250–900 CE) through the twenty-first century. Ana Díaz's insightful introduction distills the volume's three objectives: redefine ancient Mesoamerican cosmological structures as put forth by the colonial documentary record, reevaluate the prevailing notion that the universe is composed of thirteen and nine vertically structured levels, and propose new cosmological models for this diverse region (p. 5). The authors support their arguments by skillfully connecting archaeological, anthropological, ethnohistoric, epigraphic, and iconographic evidence from across Mesoamerica. This refreshing approach to a long-debated topic reinforces and elaborates on existing insights into the processes of religious transformation in the Americas.The volume's first part explores central Mexico through the lens of early modern texts, both Indigenous manuscripts and European books. The first essay, by Jesper Nielsen and Toke Sellner Reunert, asserts that the prevailing interpretation of the Mesoamerican cosmos was heavily influenced by the Dantean worldview of Franciscan and Dominican friars in the sixteenth century. Sergio Botta's contribution transports readers to Italy by exploring the beguiling character who incorporated the Codex Vaticanus A's religious iconography into existing Renaissance works, in an effort to craft a global religious history. Ana Díaz's essay highlights the incongruities of cosmological descriptions in Nahua manuscripts. Díaz's most compelling point is her characterization of the Nahua cosmos as a living, dynamic entity with corporeal qualities.The inextricable connections between calendar systems and cosmological spaces are next discussed, with a strong emphasis on ritual structure. Gabrielle Vail's contribution disentangles the confluence of cosmological terminology and the shifting classification of deities in Postclassic Maya codices and colonial Yucatec sources. David Tavárez, addressing the extant corpus of Northern Zapotec material, identifies a direct correlation between the 260-day calendar and the three-tiered cosmographical structure. In direct opposition to previous essays, Tavárez argues that the celestial realm and underworld have nine fixed layers, which further underscores the variance of cosmology in Mesoamerica. (It is worth nothing that many studies on Mesoamerican conceptions of time are dominated by discussions of Aztec and Maya calendar systems; this makes Tavárez's work a necessary and welcome inclusion in the volume.) Kerry Hull's essay employs a linguistic and ethnographic methodology to produce an emic understanding of contemporary Ch'orti’ Maya cosmovision. Hull highlights how the Ch'orti’ Maya's ritual and daily activity is influenced by their cosmological structure.The final section features three distinct case studies. Pivoting from the time frames of the preceding chapters, Alexandre Tokovinine's contribution is the only one firmly rooted in ancient Mesoamerica. Through analyses of Classic Maya hieroglyphic texts, Tokovinine charts narratives of travel to mythic (“deep-time”) and historic locales in order to demonstrate how pilgrimage to these locations was often intertwined. Katarzyna Mikulska's essay, which zeroes in on Nahua worldviews of the Late Postclassic and early colonial era, argues that Nahua cosmological imagery only differentiates between primordial space and a human world, which is in diametric opposition to medieval cosmological schema. The volume concludes with a timely essay by Johannes Neurath. In urging readers to critically approach the relationship between cultural continuity and acts of resistance, Neurath suggests that the Wixaritari's cosmological structures are concurrently forming and formed by sacred acts.Like all well-coordinated edited volumes, these essays resonate with one another, especially in their attention to language and ritual performance. With its rich body of evidence and sharp analyses, this work breaks down the rigid boundaries between cosmologies, chronology, and cultures in Mesoamerica. We may never fully comprehend the totality of Mesoamerican cosmologies and worldviews; such reconstructions require material that has yet to be unearthed or has since been destroyed. The authors of this volume, however, considerably advance our current understanding.

ДАВАТЬ, ПРИКАЗЫВАТЬ, ПОДТВЕРЖДАТЬ. ВЛАСТЬ ФРАНЦУЗСКИХ ПРЕЛАТОВ XIII ВЕКА

As corpora of medieval texts became available online, and platforms for textometric analysis (TXM, among others) were developed in the last decade, it has become possible to explore old historiographical issues from a new perspective. This study explores the actions of medieval dominants and the forces they used to perform those actions. The author unites a corpus of the author unites a corpus of the charters of prelates of the French dioceses from the period following the “documentary revolution”, because the general increase in the number of charters since the 12th century enables the author to work at the level of particular social groups. The charters of bishops and archbishops and the charters of abbots and abbesses of the 13th century were collected from online editions of medieval French cartularies (from the Chartae Galliae, the Cartulaires d'Île-de-France, and the Cartulaire blanc). The author generated lists of the most frequent verbs and nouns in the ablative and examined the most common adverb co-occurrences for the most frequent verbs of the two corpora. As a result of the study, a number of observations were obtained. 1) Along with the group of verbs that denote the activity of creating a charter and of disseminating the information, the most frequent verbs refer to the activities of giving, ordering and confirming in the corpus of bishops. These three main activities were distinguished by analyzing the structure of verb binomials in the corpus. 2) The activities of abbots appear to be different from those of bishops: the verbs of ordering are far less frequent, while the verbs of selling and exchanging are more common. While bishops form the dominant group within the whole society, the activities of the abbots in society are less conspicuous (abbots dominate within their monasteries). 3) The auctoritas, although an important power force that enables the majority of power actions, is not the only one used by prelates: members of the Church acted by voluntas; a large amount of actions requires consent or counsel. Finally, the promise requires the force of fides, etc. 4) The 13th century society was the one where all actions were judged as more or less spiritual, and where the less spiritual power actions and practices of the prelates were also ‘spiritualised’. Although different groups of verbs attract different kinds of adverbs (e.g. one should serve ‘honestly and devotedly’, one possesses ‘peacefully’, one commands and orders ‘firmly and rigorously’), they all have positive connotations. The charters serve to reproduce a system where the spiritual plays a dominant role and where attaining the celestial realm is the central goal of all actions (documents on the exercise of power belong to the same system as theological texts).

ARSITEKTUR RELIGI PESTA TIWAH DAYAK NGAJU SEBAGAI DAYA TARIK WISATA BUDAYA DI KALIMANTAN TENGAH


 
 
 Title: The Religious Architecture of Tiwah Feast among Dayak Ngaju as Cultural Tourism Attractions in Central Kalimantan
 The belief to a transcendent space among Dayak Ngaju people, especially for Kaharingan believers in Central Kalimantan, leads to the Tiwah Feast, a secondary funeral ceremony to transmit the soul of the dead to a celestial realm called The Lewu Tatau. The Tiwah Feast manifests in many meaningfulness of sacred symbols. There are certain rules in the implementation, particularly on the physical symbols and its religious architectures. This article emphasize the uniqueness of the symbols on the religious architecture of Tiwah Feast, which has the potential to become tourist attraction in the development of cultural tourism products. Using qualitative methods, data obtained through in-depth interviews, participant observation, and documentation, in two different locations, in Tumbang Koling and Ramang Village. Sacred symbols on its religious architecture include Sapundu and Sandong. A sapundu manifests in the form of a human or animal figure, regarding to the personification of the ancestral spirit. It shows the way for the soul towards Lewu Tatau. Meanwhile, Sandong is a secondary burial coffin to put the ancestral bones. The construction and architecture should concern on foundation, size, height, carvings, and ornaments. This local wisdom is potential to be developed as a cultural tourism attraction. However, the sacredness of the Tiwah Feast must be maintained and preserved from cultural commercialization and commodification issues.
 
 

Reflections on Raphael

Reflections on Raphael PAUL BAROLSKY The essence of all appreciation and analysis of art is the translation of visual perceptions into compelling verbal form. —Ralph Lieberman cultural unity Horace Walpole, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Eugène Delacroix, Honoré Balzac, Friedrich Hegel, Charles Baudelaire, Friedrich Nietzsche, Pierre Renoir, Nathaniel Hawthorne, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Heinrich von Kleist, Franz Grillparzer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder , George Eliot, Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, Roger Fry, Bernard Berenson, Theodor Hetzer, Roberto Longhi, Heinrich Wölfflin, and Stendhal are among the many essayists, critics, novelists, poets, painters and art historians who have responded to Raphael’s work as painter, architect or archeologist over the centuries. I can well imagine all of those listed above, among many others, united in an imaginary painting similar to the School of Athens—in other words, a vision that reconciles their various views of the world in a harmony analogous to the unity of philosophers in Raphael’s great fresco. Raphael is a towering figure in the history of European culture . The year 2020 was the 500th anniversary of the death of the great painter in Rome at the age of thirty-seven. In the wake of recent exhibitions that commemorated the artist’s achievement , I propose to touch briefly and lightly on a few aspects arion 28.2 fall 2020 100 reflections on raphael of Raphael’s life and works. Please think of these remarks as a series of suggestions, not attempts at definitive interpretation. I think of this essay as a rather experimental piece. THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS i should like to begin with a few brief remarks on what must be Raphael’s most famous work of art. I mean his School of Athens (fig. 1), which is, like Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Last Supper or like Michelangelo’s David and Creation of Adam, an image widely known and admired. What more is there to say about The School Of Athens, one of the central images in the Stanza della Segnatura? You might spend the rest of your life reading about this great work and never understand it fully. Nevertheless, I want to focus for a moment on a central detail of the work and, on the basis of my description, point to a significant aspect of the fresco that has been universally overlooked. First the description, then the aperçu. Fig. 1. School of Athens. Ca. 1510–1512. Photo Credit : Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY. Paul Barolsky 101 At the center of the School of Athens we behold the two great philosophers of classical antiquity: Plato and Aristotle. Plato holds a copy of his Timaeus, a dialogue that concerns the harmony of the heavens; Aristotle holds a copy of his Ethics, a work that pertains to human relations in this world. It was the goal of Renaissance thinkers to create a harmony or concord of the thought of these philosophers: a Concordia Platonis et Aristotelis. Raphael’s fresco, as is well known, presents the visual ideal of such harmony. Whereas Aristotle gestures downward, alluding to this world, in which his Ethics matter, Plato points heavenward, evoking the order of the cosmic realm described in Timaeus. Raphael makes visible the ideal of concordia when he movingly pictures the way in which the two philosophers gaze into each other’s eyes, as if to suggest this harmony. Borrowing from the language of Raphael ’s friend, Baldassare Castiglione, Raphael renders “the joining” of their souls. The monumental architecture of the scene, which echoes Bramante and has taproots in Piero della Francesca and Perugino , consists of three barrel-vaults beyond which we see patches of blue sky and puffs of cloud (fig. 2). The grandiose architecture of the image magnifies Raphael’s philosophers. Within this architectural framework, Plato’s gesture is deeply meaningful, since it prompts the viewer to look up and thus ascend toward the perfection of the celestial realm, beyond the imperfections of the physical world. Above the first barrel vault in the fresco we behold a section of the drum of a dome which is open to the sky. Within this section of drum there are two columns that are lined up directly...

Reflections on Raphael

Reflections on Raphael PAUL BAROLSKY The essence of all appreciation and analysis of art is the translation of visual perceptions into compelling verbal form. —Ralph Lieberman cultural unity Horace Walpole, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Eugène Delacroix, Honoré Balzac, Friedrich Hegel, Charles Baudelaire, Friedrich Nietzsche, Pierre Renoir, Nathaniel Hawthorne, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Heinrich von Kleist, Franz Grillparzer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder , George Eliot, Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, Roger Fry, Bernard Berenson, Theodor Hetzer, Roberto Longhi, Heinrich Wölfflin, and Stendhal are among the many essayists, critics, novelists, poets, painters and art historians who have responded to Raphael’s work as painter, architect or archeologist over the centuries. I can well imagine all of those listed above, among many others, united in an imaginary painting similar to the School of Athens—in other words, a vision that reconciles their various views of the world in a harmony analogous to the unity of philosophers in Raphael’s great fresco. Raphael is a towering figure in the history of European culture . The year 2020 was the 500th anniversary of the death of the great painter in Rome at the age of thirty-seven. In the wake of recent exhibitions that commemorated the artist’s achievement , I propose to touch briefly and lightly on a few aspects arion 28.2 fall 2020 100 reflections on raphael of Raphael’s life and works. Please think of these remarks as a series of suggestions, not attempts at definitive interpretation. I think of this essay as a rather experimental piece. THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS i should like to begin with a few brief remarks on what must be Raphael’s most famous work of art. I mean his School of Athens (fig. 1), which is, like Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Last Supper or like Michelangelo’s David and Creation of Adam, an image widely known and admired. What more is there to say about The School Of Athens, one of the central images in the Stanza della Segnatura? You might spend the rest of your life reading about this great work and never understand it fully. Nevertheless, I want to focus for a moment on a central detail of the work and, on the basis of my description, point to a significant aspect of the fresco that has been universally overlooked. First the description, then the aperçu. Fig. 1. School of Athens. Ca. 1510–1512. Photo Credit : Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY. Paul Barolsky 101 At the center of the School of Athens we behold the two great philosophers of classical antiquity: Plato and Aristotle. Plato holds a copy of his Timaeus, a dialogue that concerns the harmony of the heavens; Aristotle holds a copy of his Ethics, a work that pertains to human relations in this world. It was the goal of Renaissance thinkers to create a harmony or concord of the thought of these philosophers: a Concordia Platonis et Aristotelis. Raphael’s fresco, as is well known, presents the visual ideal of such harmony. Whereas Aristotle gestures downward, alluding to this world, in which his Ethics matter, Plato points heavenward, evoking the order of the cosmic realm described in Timaeus. Raphael makes visible the ideal of concordia when he movingly pictures the way in which the two philosophers gaze into each other’s eyes, as if to suggest this harmony. Borrowing from the language of Raphael ’s friend, Baldassare Castiglione, Raphael renders “the joining” of their souls. The monumental architecture of the scene, which echoes Bramante and has taproots in Piero della Francesca and Perugino , consists of three barrel-vaults beyond which we see patches of blue sky and puffs of cloud (fig. 2). The grandiose architecture of the image magnifies Raphael’s philosophers. Within this architectural framework, Plato’s gesture is deeply meaningful, since it prompts the viewer to look up and thus ascend toward the perfection of the celestial realm, beyond the imperfections of the physical world. Above the first barrel vault in the fresco we behold a section of the drum of a dome which is open to the sky. Within this section of drum there are two columns that are lined up directly...

Gateways to Power and Paradise

Twin gate towers (que) were a characteristic feature of urban and palatial architecture in Chinese cities from the Warring States period onward. Although they initially served the practical military purpose of strengthening the defensive characteristics of gates in the city walls, they rapidly acquired symbolic significance through their association with political power. This article examines the development of twin towers from the Warring States period to the Eastern Han dynasty, showing how their ability to define political or sacred space was adapted to a variety of different social, political, and religious contexts, from city walls and palaces to imperial shrines and tombs. After the First Qin Emperor and Emperor Wu of the Han erected twin towers at the palaces they built in their pursuit of immortality, twin towers also became signifiers of the celestial realm. Finally, in the Eastern Han dynasty, the newly prominent merchant and local gentry classes who rose to assume political and administrative roles in the government adopted the architectural vocabulary of twin towers by constructing smaller-scale stone mimics at their own family tombs, appropriating the imperial prestige of this form to flaunt their social and financial success and construct their own identities as local elites. By examining this long historical development, I show how a functional element of urban architecture could acquire new symbolic meanings as different social and political actors adapted it to serve a wide variety of ends.

BATTLE DESCRIPTION IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIANS, PART I: STRUCTURE, ARRAY, AND FIGHTING

When Endymion, king of the Moon, devised war upon Phaethon, king of the Sun, he decreed that a race of spiders as big as the Cyclades should weave a web between Venus and his lunar dominion, to serve as the battlefield for their regal rumble. And in that region of the heavens he arrayed his army: the king himself led his elite Hippo-vultures in the clouds on the right wing, 80,000 strong; his other cavalry, mounted on giant birds with wings like lettuce leaves, held the left. The Moon's stalwart infantry held the centre, posted on the spider web: Millet-launchers and Garlic-fighters, and his light-armed Flea-archers and Wind-runners, whose long tunics carried them about like sailboats in the fierce winds of the celestial realm. To Endymion's Hippo-vultures, Phaethon opposed the Sun's Hippo-ants (and near two hundred feet long were the insects that bore these cavalry). On the opposite flank of the solar array came the Air-mosquitoes and the formidable radish-flinging Air-dancers. The spears of Phaethon's phalanx, in the centre, were stalks of asparagus, and their round shields were mushrooms. Phaethon's allies, the Cloud-centaurs, expected at any moment from the Milky Way, had not arrived in time for battle.

Musical Heaven and Heavenly Music: At the Crossroads of Liturgical Music and Mystical Texts

The following study concentrates on the relationship between liturgy, visionary space, and the theoretical implications of music as cosmological order in the medieval mystical tradition. It examines musical instances in mystical accounts by elucidating the ways in which mystical texts engage with music and dance as something that forms a bridge to the celestial realm. Performance aspects of mystical accounts can be seen as part of a creative reception of the scriptures, especially when embedded in ceremonial acts such as the liturgy. In mystical texts, musical sound is used to represent and reproduce the theoretically ineffable union between soul and God. Mapping between source material from medieval Germany, especially focusing on the mystic Christina of Hane, and medieval music theory, it becomes apparent how scholastic and theological ideas were negotiated, reshaped, and developed in the monastic practice.

Richard C. McCoy Faith in ShakespeareFaith in Shakespeare. Richard C. McCoy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. xvii+194.

<i>Richard C. McCoy</i> Faith in Shakespeare<i>Faith in Shakespeare</i>. Richard C. McCoy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. xvii+194.

Islam, Arabs, and the Intelligent World of the Jinn (review)

Reviewed by: Islam, Arabs, and the Intelligent World of the Jinn Emilie Savage-Smith Keywords jinn, Islam, pre-Islam, Sufism, angels, magic, poetic inspiration Amira El-Zein . Islam, Arabs, and the Intelligent World of the Jinn. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2009. Pp. xxiii + 215. The actions of the shape-shifting jinn found in Arabic and Persian literature (most famously, perhaps, in The Thousand and One Nights), and the methods by which their malevolent influences could be curtailed or their beneficent energies channeled, have been the topic of considerable medieval and modern speculation. Yet surprisingly few monographs are devoted to this [End Page 124] complex topic. The present volume surveys both the historical and the modern role of jinn in the Muslim (and to a large extent Sufi) view of the universe, in which there is constant renewal of the universe by the Creator and a fusion of the mental and physical realms. In this context, the jinn are the bridge between the seen and unseen worlds, constantly reminding humans that physical reality is not the only reality. To understand this world of the jinn, one must understand the traditional Islamic hierarchical view of the cosmos, in which the universe is composed of three realms: the celestial realm, the intermediate or imaginal realm, and the terrestrial or material realm of human existence. The jinn occupy the intermediate or sublunary realm, and while they cannot trespass into the celestial realm above them (the realm of angels), they can operate in the terrestrial realm. Jinn are usually invisible, but can be invested with a physical corporeality, often taking the forms of animals or even humans. There could in fact be love affairs between humans and jinn, and the author devotes an entire chapter to this fascinating topic. Presenting a range of stories to illustrate this jinn activity, for the most part taken from The Nights, El-Zein characterizes the actions of the jinn as a "game of shape shifting" (p. 109) in which the swift metamorphosis of the jinn bewilders the human partner. The jinn, who were created before humans, were forbidden to bear news from heaven to Earth, for that role was left to the angels. Considerable space is devoted to the relationships and similarities between jinn and angels. Both are of the invisible realm, but angels are made of light and jinn of fire. Both are disembodied spirits. Both are "shape-shifters," but angels appear only in beautiful forms while jinn can take any possible form, even ugly ones. Angels are immortal, while the jinn can die. Before considering the effect of the advent of Islam on attitudes toward jinn, El-Zein discusses angels, gods, and jinn in the pre-Islamic period. She argues convincingly (p. 35) against Toufic Fahd, who had asserted that pre-Islamic Arabs were entirely ignorant of the concept of angels.1 This reviewer would have liked for her to address the ideas and attitudes of Joseph Henninger's study of pre-Islamic and early Islamic belief in spirits and jinn2—a [End Page 125] study that seems to have completely escaped the author's attention, although an English translation has been published in a book cited elsewhere in this volume. With the advent of Islam, the jinn (or at least some of them) were made subservient to the One God. In the Qur'ān it is twice said that jinn listened to the Prophet Muhammad, heard the Qur'ān, and accepted the revelation. The jinn were described as mere shapes, wrapped in blackness. These passages generated controversy as to whether the Prophet actually saw the jinn, or only heard them, but they were generally interpreted as asserting the submission of jinn (or some of them) to God. It was the jinn who had not converted to Islam that were dreaded by humans, for they could be malevolent spirits. Because the jinn could exist in both the invisible and visible realms, they could intervene and interfere in the daily lives of Muslims at any time and at any place. They could enter houses, roam the streets, even get into food and drink. People turned to magical techniques to provide protection. El-Zein reviews some...

Light Echoes of Transients and Variables

SummaryTycho Brahe's observations of a supernova in 1572 challenged the contemporaneous European view of the cosmos that the celestial realm was unchanging. 439 years later we have once again seen the light that Tycho saw, as some of the light from the 1572 supernova is reflected off dust and is only now reaching Earth. These light echoes, as well as ones detected from other transients and variables, give us a very rare opportunity in astronomy: direct observation of the cause (the supernova explosion) and the effect (the supernova remnant) of the same astronomical event. Furthermore, in some cases we can compare light echoes at different angles around a supernova remnant, and thus investigate possible asymmetry in the supernova explosion. In addition, in cases where the scattering dust is favorably positioned, the geometric distance to the SN remnant can be determined using polarization measurements. These techniques have been successfully applied to various transients in the last decade, and the talk gave an overview of the scientific results and techniques, with a particular focus on the challenges we will face in the current and upcoming wide-field time-domain surveys.

Celestiales palabras: considering the sky in Federico García Lorca's Poeta en Nueva York

The elevating of thoughts, or raising of eyes to contemplate the heavens is a relatively common feature of Poeta en Nueva York that can easily be taken for granted. Yet these shifts in perspective, whether fleeting or sustained, involve complex factors which shed significant light on the work's core themes and preoccupations. By analysing relevant textual examples, this discussion aims to elucidate how such changes of focus serve not only to place the collection's urban environment in a broader context but also to bring Lorca's poetry closer to methods and motifs characteristic of a contemporary pictorial and literary avant-garde. The speaker or spectator's consciousness of higher things, his upward glance or gaze, reveal a fusion of the internal and external that has implications for Nature, spirituality and identity. Indeed, Lorca's view of the celestial realm constitutes an invaluable lens through which to see some often cryptic verse with unaccustomed clarity.

Aristotle and the Science of Nature: Unity without Uniformity (review)

Reviewed by: Aristotle and the Science of Nature: Unity without Uniformity Scott Rubarth Andrea Falcon. Aristotle and the Science of Nature: Unity without Uniformity. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xvii + 139. Cloth, $75.00. Andrea Falcon argues that Aristotle considered natural science to be a coherent, systematic, and unified program while at the same time maintaining that the object of the study consists of a two-world system based on essentially different and incompatible substances. He sums up his model with the slogan, “unity without uniformity.” This short but rich monograph wrestles with important issues in Aristotelian philosophy of science, epistemology, and cosmology with some attention to psychology and biology. The issues at stake are significant: To what degree is Aristotle’s science of nature programmatic? How can Aristotle maintain a single physical science if his universe rests on two mutually exclusive material substances that are spatially distinct, unmixed, and in many ways opposites? And finally, at what point does Aristotle limit his inquiry due to the lack of perceptual data regarding celestial phenomena? While answering these questions, Falcon also offers an explanation of why subsequent philosophers, including many members of the Lyceum, rejected his position on the celestial simple body, and how Stoic cosmology benefited from the perceived difficulties in Aristotle’s position. Two basic ideas drive the investigation: First, that Aristotle’s science of nature is a single, unified inquiry and not simply a collection of relatively independent treatises. Secondly, that although the science is unified (methodologically, thematically, ontologically, and epistemologically), the natural world is not uniform. Falcon uses the prologue to the Meteorology to establish the unity of Aristotle’s project. Reading the passage normatively, Falcon concludes that Aristotle prescribed an ideal sequence for the study of natural science beginning with the Physics, followed by the De Caelo, De Generatione et Corruptione, and Meteorology, and concluding with the zoological works. This sequence is justified by the belief that inquiry must mirror the direction of causal explanation in nature. Surprisingly, De Anima is not part of this program. Chapters two and three present a careful analysis of the logic of the simple bodies and simple motions, showing why Aristotle held each of the five elements to be necessary substances and why there can only be two kinds of natural motion. Aristotle’s cosmology [End Page 632] is presented not as creative speculation, but as deductive inferences drawn from basic principles. The result is a two-world system that is unlike Plato’s two-world system, which struggles to tell a causal story. Falcon also emphasizes the “crucial, though too often neglected truth: the celestial motion that is naturally performed by the celestial bodies is not the circular motion that is naturally performed by the celestial simple body” (83). This position requires Aristotle to exploit the commonly-held belief that the celestial bodies are alive and intelligent. Celestial bodies operate with voluntary motion which is not “non-natural” since the principle of motion comes from within, and thus is not forced. In the fourth and final chapter, Falcon addresses the problem of the epistemic limits of this unified but not uniform science of nature. This includes a return to issues central to the De Anima. Wisely, the question of the nature of the unmoved mover is avoided; but Falcon continues to raise questions concerning the cognitive status of celestial bodies. Although, alive, intelligent, and happy, celestial bodies do not have phantasiai since they have no organs of sense. Their motion seems to be connected to desire; however, desire usually entails sensory provocation. How does one make sense of this? In contrast to sublunary animals, which navigate their environment with progressive motion guided by sensory awareness, the celestial intelligences do not navigate the heavens; instead they move in accordance with rational desire. We have now reached (or exceeded) the boundary of what can be known about the heavens. Falcon concludes by examining the epistemic limitations in Aristotle’s cosmology. Aristotle recognizes that the natural philosopher is severely compromised due to the remoteness and inaccessibility of the celestial bodies. However, we cannot simply concede ignorance and refrain from studying the celestial realm if the direction of inquiry and...