Generative Space PlanningTermite Nest is a plugin that provides multiple fascinating utilities for space planning. With the advantage of the termite nest's G...

认知科学—学习

Squaring the Circle in the Creation of Sacred Space

A semicircular stacked bar chart. Focus is on the current year, while 2004 is visible from the inner circle, where the negative space gives an indication of the development.

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Graphic Design, Digital Art, Processing

gooood是中国第一影响力与最受欢迎的建筑/景观/设计门户与平台。坚信设计与创意将使所有人受益，传播世界建筑/景观/室内佳作与思想；赋能创意产业链上的企业与机构。

This study is about conformal circle packing. I used conformal mapping of a hexagonal grid in hyperbolic space to approximate circle packing

Perfect for adding some 'back to nature' style into your space, The Jute circle rug boasts a classic, timeless appeal. Renewable, recycleable and reversible, Jute is the perfect material to make your space a bit more eco-conscious. With a low-profile, hard-wearing composition Jute Circle is perfect for sitting under furniture. On opening, re-roll your rug pile out and leave in a warm room for 24 hours before putting in place to help reduce wrinkles and curling from packing. Do not pull any loose threads, please cut carefully with scissors to remove. Avoid prolonged exposure to direct sunlight as this may cause fading of the colour. Turn your rug regularly to ensure even wear and to reduce pressure marks from furniture. Don’t forget to buy our anti-slip mat here, available in choice of sizes.

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About this item Boho Curtains: Schweek floral window curtains is a delicate fusion of nature's beauty and elegant design. Made from a natural linen blend fabric, this stylish set brings the outdoors in with a captivating neutral floral pattern. These curtains go perfectly with a wide range of styles including bohemian, farmhouse, country, and modern. 2 Panels Farmhouse Curtains: Schweek tassel linen curtains package includes 2 panels, each measuring 52"W & 96"L (104"W for pair). You can slide the curtain rod through the rod pocket, or you can hang these panels from the rod with clip rings for the illusion of added length (clip rings not include), easy to install and slide. Semi Sheer Curtains: This light filtering curtains are filtering out most of the harsh light, allowing natural diffused light and breezes to pass through the window, while providing adequate privacy and view blockage. Giving you a comfortable hazy feeling of space and a soft view. It provides a natural, airy and private feel to your living room, bedroom, nursery, office and study Linen Blends Curtains: Schweek boho printed curtains panel set. Inspired by nature, this delicately designed floral window curtains graces your home with a lovely farmhouse and cottagecore style. Giving the curtains a natural look with drape and beauty. It is not fading, creasing or fraying after long useatural. Perfect for the dining room sliding doorway closet in your home. Easy Care: These bedroom curtains can be machine washable in cold water, mild detergent no bleaching, use a gentle circle and tumble dry on a low setting. There may be creases due to packing and storage which can be pressed by light ironing or steaming. › See more product details

A few days ago my next door neighbor emailed me asking for a favor.  Now I need to tell you, my next door neighbor is awesome.  I totally won the next-door-neighbor lottery.  If she ever moves, I'm going to sell my house and follow her.  (Because that's not at all creepy...) But as I was saying... she emailed with a favor.  She wanted to know if I could help her brainstorm ideas for her four-year-old daughter's birthday party.  Now this is the kind of thing that I frequently offer to do for people and I am always thrilled when they realize I'm serious and take me up on it.  As it happened, I had recently seen something on Pinterest that I was dying to try. Image from Pinterest via http://blog.celebratethebigandsmall.com PINNERS: If you would like to pin THIS image PLEASE pin it from the site I've linked to above. The rest of the images in this post are mine and can be pinned from my blog but I want her to get credit for her image. THANK YOU! The idea was initially pinned from here and she was apparently inspired by this.  It's called a "Punch Box" and it's a great alternative to a pinata.  (Four-year-olds with big sticks can be a little scary sometimes.)  Instead of beating on a pinata with a stick, each child punches through one of the pretty colored circles in order to grab the prize inside.   I set out to make one using some guidance from the originators plus a few of my own ideas.  I also decided to document the process with the intention of doing a tutorial.  It's my first one, so bear with me.   I started by gathering up some supplies.  I was really lucky in that I had almost everything I needed in my garage.  The most important item (which I forgot to photograph) was the box.  I got my husband a bike rack for Christmas and he had been meaning to disassemble the box it came in for awhile.  I'm glad he didn't. The first thing I did were some rough measurements of the box.   I knew I wanted ten circles.  I debated whether line them up or to put them in a random pattern.  I decided to go with the lines.  Ultimately I used my circle cutter to make a template from a brown paper bag.  This helped me plan out the spacing. Then I used the circle cutter to score the box. (You can buy your own circle cutter here.) Sorry about the dark pictures. My intention was actually to cut the box with the circle cutter but the cardboard was too thick.  So I ended up making the actual cuts with a box cutter: As you can see, the cuts weren't perfect, but I decided the four-year-olds wouldn't notice.  ;) I had to take the box apart to do this.  Other bloggers made their own boxes.   I just took mine apart and then reassembled it. Then I needed to attach tissue paper to the back of each hole.  At first I tried staples, but they went all the way through to the front of the box and I decided that they might cut one of the children.  Can you see all those little holes?  Yeah, so could I.  Kind of a bummer but I decided not to freak out about it.   So I turned to my good friend hot glue.  And scotch tape.  Here's a picture of the covered holes: And here's how they looked from the front.  I used old tissue from my garage-area wrapping station so it's a little rumply-looking: Pretty cool, huh?  At this point I had already glued on these: Again, that's a crummy picture, but the letters are called "Twinkle Type," and I had a box of them in my garage.  They were originally purchased at Michael's.  I decided to add them because I thought the middle of the box needed a little extra somethin'-somethin' Then I flipped the box an added toys on top of each piece of tissue:    After that, I took paper bags and cut them like so: And I taped a bag over each toy.  (Why I didn't think of masking tape for the tissue paper is beyond me..) It was a hot mess back there with all that tape.  Kind of like a sausage factory; you really don't want to know what's going on inside.   Finally I reassembled the box using packing tape.  (The one thing I didn't have; fortunately my neighbor did.) And here is the finished product: Unfortunately we couldn't make the party but I heard it was a hit.  Here's what remains of the box.  I think I can reuse it: Please let me know if you attempt one; I'd love to see your pictures! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Are you interested in seeing new projects as I post them? Simply enter your email address in the space below and then click "submit". Thanks! FOLLOW BY EMAIL:

fondazione querini stampalia, restoration of the palazzo ground floor, venice 1961-1963. architect: carlo scarpa, 1906-1978. - in the garden of the querini stampalia, scarpa placed an ancient well-head of the kind travellers to venice will recognise immediately. I crawled into it to bring you this photo of a strange detail at the bottom: two brass cylinders cut in half and reconnected to support the two halves of the well above a concrete base. the modernists drew apart the individual elements of a building to establish a new relationship of discrete parts. obvious examples would be a floating roof or a free-standing lift/elevator - I am sure you can continue the list. this is what we might call the analytical aspect of the language of modern architecture. it was developed by early masters like frank lloyd wright and mies van der rohe for both formal, spatial and practical purposes. wright even called it exploding the box, meaning the box of the conventional house. scarpa was, to a unique degree, respectful of the language of the early modern masters, its grammar and syntax, its inner order and logic, and few architects took more care to separate parts and reconnect them with both intellectual clarity and playfulness. in doing so, scarpa fixated on the gap, the separation itself, and developed the joint as a personal art form. these jewel-like pieces in brass and steel which at once connect and keep apart are the main reason we speak of scarpa as an architect of details. there are theories of his entire oeuvre based entirely on the analysis of his joints. the fascination is well founded - you'll notice how I only managed to photograph the detail here - yet scarpa did so much else that perhaps we should allow ourselves to forget scarpa's details, if only for a moment, and look above the edge of the well to better see the complete architect. one little thing is how the well is placed. you can see it as a circle in luis ruiz' sketch of the garden below. the venetians who lived out at sea had made an art of well design, shaping and layering the underground of every square and court to gather and filter rain water. scarpa, apparently, makes no reference to this. rather than placing it in the centre of the court as would likely have been its original position, scarpa used it as a pivot in his composition of paths and waterways along the edge of the space. what is going on? john ruskin, the greatest writer on venetian architecture ever to sail its streets, made the highly emotional point that buildings cannot be restored without being destroyed, and that - as with people - there is no coming back from the dead. ruskin added, with a 19th century sense of the uncanny, that restoration even leaves us with a false version or double of the lost house. historically, restorations have entailed the partial or, on occasion, the complete demolition of the original structure as in this frightening photo here on flickr of zettervall's infamous, destructive restoration of lund cathedral. it shows how far 19th century architects went in redefining mediaeval europe by replacing its ancient fabric with new construction. (I never could make myself explain to american tourists that our monuments are often no older than theirs). ruskin had witnessed this first hand in a venice which was physically falling apart after a longer period of decline and the final defeat of the venetian republic at the hands of french troops in 1797. in the following decades, many palazzi had been abandoned and torn down while others suffered fates like that of the lund cathedral. to ruskin, these should rather have been left to die. aspects of carlo scarpa's mature work and of his writings reveal that he accepted many of the categories and demands made on architecture in general and venetian architecture in particular by ruskin. yet ruskin's profound pessimism concerning the afterlife of old buildings must have been unbearable to scarpa who as an aspiring venetian master had to come to terms with the teachings of his british precursor. the complexity of scarpa's answer to ruskin is bewildering, but the way he placed the well-head in a modernist composition of stones new and found allows us to grasp his confidence that buildings and their parts may live on if they are reused, reassembled and reinterpreted by a later and equal culture. the boldness of scarpa within the increasingly museum-like venice cannot be overstated. there is a catch, though, that the age of individualism could not guarantee the culture of the individual architect or client, but that was never scarpa's problem; he had plenty, and the layers of history, of time, of old and new, came to life under his hands, put together and clearly separated by his jewel-like joints in steel and brass. the scarpa set.

Saturday, March 15, 2014 - Embarkation  I woke up that morning as the sun was rising and decided to take the opportunity to get a few more long exposures from our balcony. We noticed later that we could see the bow of the Norwegian Getaway. We got ready and went downstairs for our complimentary breakfast as Diamond members.... or Diamond member guests, at least. The breakfast buffet was wonderful - definitely the best hotel breakfast I've ever had. Mainly because if I ever eat a hotel breakfast, it's probably free, and it usually sucks. I actually didn't bring my D7100 to breakfast because I thought it might be a little embarrassing, but I couldn't resist an iPhone photo... We were finishing up our breakfast when the check came. Opened it up.... $60 for the two of us. It was a good hotel breakfast, but it wasn't that good. Max decided that he was going to take the bill to the front desk to see what we were supposed to do about it. Yeah, we were obviously new to this. It turns out that the breakfast was complimentary for Diamond members, but they gave us a bill so that we could tip because the tip wasn't included. So our breakfast was covered, we just needed to tip extra. Phewww! The guy at the front desk must have gotten a real kick out of us. We finished packing and said good-bye to our fabulous room. Here we come, Carnival Breeze! We were driving on this bridge, and I was taking this photo when the cab that was in front of us (in the previous photo) had its hood fly open. It was crazy. And I wasn't able to get a photo of it. Hello, cruise ships! The Port of Miami is much different than Port Canaveral and Port Everglades. There aren't any security checkpoints before going in, which is a little concerning. So we were really just trying to follow the signs to see where to go, but the Carnival Breeze wasn't on any signs. We drove to the Norwegian Epic and asked a traffic officer there who sent us on to Terminal D. Now this ship looks like fun..... Max had asked me to please stop messing with my camera and help him read the signs. But of course, I was paying too much attention to my camera and too little to the signage that I caught the sign to Terminal D too late. "I thought we were going to park?" "We have to drop off our bags first!" "Why can't we just carry our bags?" "Because we have too many to carry! They are too heavy!" "They're on wheels!" "No, Max, just circle back around." "I'm parking." "No! You'll regret it! Circle back around!" "Why can't we just carry them?" And then the truth comes out.... "Because I don't want to get all sweaty!" It turns out that circling back around was no big deal. The porter unloaded our bags and we headed to park. "Wait - we just gave him our bags. How does he know where they go?" "I put bag tags on them. They'll bring them to our room." "Oh, okay, you're really on top of this." I mean... every once in a while. The parking garage was packed out. The only place we could find a spot was on the top level. We arrived at the port around 11:30 which I thought was rather early considering Carnival sent us an email asking us to not arrive until 1:00 PM. I wonder what the people who couldn't find a place in the parking garage did.... We did not get Faster To The Fun because by the time I realized what "FTTF" meant, it was already sold out. I wasn't really bummed because we didn't have any tender ports, and I've never really had any problems with embarkation. Carnival's embarkation is a little different than what I'm used to. We first entered a line and got to these little temporary carts where our passports were scanned. We were told that we'd complete our check-in and get our keys after we went through security. Security was possibly the quickest part. The check-in line wasn't too bad, though. We were told that our rooms would be ready at 12:30, but it was 12:15 when we finished taking our embarkation picture. So the entire process of embarkation (crazed parking and luggage argument included) was approximately 45 minutes. Not too bad. I didn't feel like I missed out at all not having Faster to the Fun. FINALLY! We made it! (Almost) Also, this was the only photo I bought, and it was a very last-minute decision. I never even bothered looking for our other photos. We entered the ship in the atrium, and I was a little surprised to see that the bar was already surrounded by people trying to get drinks! It was rather chaotic. We decided to head on to our room since it was almost 12:30. The cabin stewards were in the halls scurrying to get everything ready, and I felt a bit obtrusive. When we found our room, the door was propped open, and I expressed my concern to Max that it might not be ready. He was ready to ditch the bags, though. We asked one of the cabin stewards in the hall if it was okay for us to enter, and she said that it was fine and un-propped the door for us. Max is rather accustomed to my photo reviews, now. He knows not to run and jump on the bed as soon as he gets in the room...... naturally, he opted to sit in the window. My first impression was that the room was really bland. Perhaps I was too adjusted to the more contemporary and plush rooms on the Royal Princess and Norwegian Epic. The decor on the Breeze is very plain and basic. I was no fan of the brown pleather they used on the couch, but I did have a good idea of what our room would look like already (and already knew that I would not like the couch) from other CCer's photo reviews. What we did have was outstanding storage space. We had four closets, and between the two of us, we only used three (hanging space for each of us and we shared the closet with the shelves). There was a spot for everything, and we even had leftover storage. I believe this is the cleanest I have ever kept a stateroom, and I give credit to the fabulous amount of storage. And perhaps Max is just easier to pick up after than Rachel.... It was a spacious cabin and I believe larger in square footage than our deluxe balcony cabin on the Royal Princess. And the other wonderful (yet completely unnecessary for two people) thing about our cabin was that we had split bathrooms - with two showers! Yes, Max and I each had our own shower! It didn't make that much of a difference for us because Max doesn't take as long as me to get ready, so being able to shower at the same time and each have our own sink didn't really speed up our preparation time. However, this would be a wonderful thing to have when sharing a room with my sister, and it would also be really helpful for families with children because not only are there two bathrooms, but one bathroom has a bathtub. I took the bathroom with the tub. And the other bathroom had the typical cruise ship shower with a toilet and larger vanity. I do like Carnival's graphics. I think they are doing a great job with their branding. Overall, I really enjoyed our room. We had a great amount of space and storage - honestly more than we needed for the two of us, but having more is never a bad thing... I think this would be a great room for families and that you could comfortably fit a child or two in this room. There was no pullman bunk, so I'm wondering if the room has a maximum capacity of three or if the sofa converts into a double bed. By the end of the week, I was no longer turned off by the lack of sleek, plush decor. The room was very comfortable and works well for a cruise vacation. (But the brown pleather couch.... still not a fan!) After settling into our cabin, we went to the Lido deck to get lunch. Boy, was it a madhouse up there! The lines were ridiculously long and people were still toting around extra baggage. Max got in line for pizza while I went to the bar to try to purchase the soda package. The bar at the aft pool was ridiculously understaffed. There were two bartenders working there, and it was swamped. Not to mention, they weren't paying much attention as to who arrived when, so you had to be really aggressive if you wanted service. I was not aggressive enough. In the time that I sat down, three men came and were served before me. After guy three (and his wife and three children) passed me, I had had enough. I left the bar and rejoined Max in the pizza line which hadn't moved at all. I was at my breaking point and complaining to Max that the bar was understaffed and it was too crowded and I really hoped that it wouldn't be like this all week. The woman in front of me turned and told me that it would all calm down because everyone would get drunk and then be passed out or hungover in the morning. Well, that's reassuring! Finally, they started cranking out pizzas and Max and I were able to sit down and enjoy our lunch. Max asked me what I wanted to do after lunch, and I suggested that we explore the ship. It's funny... we first found ourselves in the arcade which we thought we could walk through, but it turned out to be a dead end. Here is the teen club - The Ovation Theater - I do like the set-up of Carnival's theaters with the benches and tables. And I think their multi-level theater with two floors of entry works much better than the single entry-level theaters on Princess ships. The atrium bar was still very crowded, but it had definitely calmed down since we boarded. Perhaps more people were finding the way to their staterooms. One thing I love about this ship is the wrap-around outdoor deck with seating and cantilevered hot tubs on deck 5 (my dad's favorite thing about the Carnival Dream was the cantilevered hot tubs, and to this day, he still mentions how he really liked the hot tubs on the Dream). I would say that Bonsai Sushi was my favorite part of the ship in the way of overall design. I also really enjoyed the tropical theme and overall atmosphere of the RedFrog Pub. Max really liked the Liquid Nightclub. They also have a few cages for dancing in..... thought I should point that out just in case someone's fun time includes cage dancing - there is something for you! Fun for All and All for Fun!!! Liquid Nightclub also opens up to the wrap-around deck, and there is seating outside. The piano bar was packed out every night. Everyone must have been drunk because the pianist was a terrible vocalist. Seriously... Max and I found it excruciatingly painful to listen to. Max really thought that the high-top bench seating not only in the piano bar but also in the buffet and Limelight Lounge was really cool. And the Limelight Lounge - We decided to purchase the soda package in the casino bar which was open. It was still surprisingly busy and understaffed. We sat down at tables waiting to be served... and then I realized that there was only one bartender working and had to go up to the bar. The soda package is called "Bottomless Bubbles" which I find to be a ridiculously silly name. I'm all about cute and creative naming, but there comes a time when cute can become confusing and things should just be named for what they are. If you told me that you purchased the Bottomless Bubbles package, I might think that included soap and a rubber ducky. (Perhaps I should also note that I hate it when restaurants give their food items ridiculously stupid names because I feel like an idiot ordering a "Joey Bag of Donuts" or a "Homewrecker"... just give me a burrito!!) I suppose they felt the need to distinguish between their two drink packages after they added the alcohol package (called Cheers! which is not nearly as content-confusing or embarrassing to order), but a name like "Bottomless Bubbles" makes me think endless champagne rather than soda. I digress... When I ordered this absurdly named soda package, I remembered having read that Carnival uses cans rather than fountains to fill the soda. What I did not know is that Carnival takes room temperature cans - some already open and have been sitting there for who knows how long - and pours them over ice. And it's not a pour that a normal person would take with the care of trying to retain as much carbonation... or bubbles... in the soda as possible. No - the bartenders flip the can completely upside down in attempt to fill the glass as quickly as possible. Max and I are Diet Coke Divas. And we were not happy. Perhaps I am only bitter about the name "Bottomless Bubbles" because our Diet Cokes CONTAINED NO BUBBLES!!!! Note: I am a Diet Coke addict. As is my boyfriend. As is my roommate. Ask anyone I know, and they can tell you - don't mess with Victoria's Diet Coke. Max's first cruise was the Norwegian Epic in the Mediterranean. Mediterranean cruises are quite different from Caribbean cruises in that guests can embark and disembark in several different ports. Since we embarked in Civitavecchia (most embarked in Barcelona), our muster was quite relaxed and just the 40 or so of us who had embarked that day met in the theater where we were told what to do in an emergency and then they showed us a slideshow presentation about everything the ship had to offer. I was a little disappointed that Max still didn't get to experience a "true" muster with life jackets. Will he ever? Most cruise lines seem to be doing away with that. Princess had us bring our life jackets to muster where we met in indoor venues, but the last time I remember lining up at our muster stations outside of the lifeboats was on the Monarch of the Seas in 2012.... and we didn't even have our life jackets with us at the time. Max and I mustered in the Blush dining room which was one floor above us and also where we were assigned to dinner. I was shocked that there was absolutely no check-in of any sort. At no time during the drill did they take our names or our folio numbers or our stateroom numbers. They never scanned our cards or checked us off of a list. All they did was put the appropriately labeled wristbands on the children that attended. This would be a very easy drill for passengers to skip out on because we were never accounted for, and there was no mandatory make-up. They even made an announcement as most of us were gathered in the dining room - "To the passengers on the pool deck, in the hot tubs, and on your balconies... come to muster. We can see you!" Ummm.... why are you making an announcement over the loudspeaker? Carnival should have crew members clearing these areas, and they should be taking note of who is there and enforcing a make-up muster. Safety is something that I value greatly, and I am absolutely shocked that with the number of incidents that Carnival Cruise Line and Carnival Corp have had in the past two years that they aren't enforcing muster. Now off my safety soapbox and on to the sail away party... Miami is a beautiful port to sail out of. Definitely a gorgeous skyline. I got my sail away drink from Blue Iguana Tequila Bar, and Max went over to Red Frog Rum Bar. The service and number of bartenders at the bar was definitely improved for the sail away party. The party is cutely named, "Adios, Miami.... Hello, Fun!" The pool deck was packed with party people. This is the best attended sail away party I've been to lately. The entertainment crew (in the red polos) on the Carnival Breeze is great. They are all really energetic and encourage people to get involved. After watching Miami Vices be beautifully constructed in glasses split red/white all the way down earlier that day at the aft pool bar (yes, while I was attempting to purchase the Coke package), I had to order one. I was disappointed that mine was not crafted with precision and instead red poured over white. Max discovered Guy's Burgers and had to give one a try. He wasn't a huge fan of the fries, but the burger was delicious.... though lacking a bit in presentation. For dinner, we had the second seating at 8:15 PM in the Blush dining room (it was our only option, as early seating and anytime were unavailable when we booked). I found this to be the more attractive dining room as it had more elegant chandeliers and the beautiful aft view. Unfortunately, we were in a seating situation very similar to that on my recent Royal Princess sailing. Our table was 502 which was a table for two and shoved in the corner by the emergency exit door and on the other wall of a work station. The tables blocking us into this corner were occupied by a large family or traveling group of some sort.... they all knew each other and spoke loudly across tables. When they weren't in the dining room (we were rather glad that this family missed a few nights), we had the joy of listening to the constant buzz of the automatic revolving door. This was my view... Guess I can't complain too much. The first night, I was worried about the service for the rest of the week. We didn't get the normal introduction of head waiter or assistant waiter. He just came and took our order. Throughout the first night, I believe we were only attended to by our head waiter, and I could tell that he was strewn very thin across tables because our interactions were very brief. Max and I started making plans to perhaps eat sushi one night or try out the steakhouse. We did delay our meal a bit by ordering the wine package. We got the minimum package, which I don't think is that great of a deal. Looking back, we probably would have done just as well just ordering a bottle as we wished. However, I do find it incredibly painful to purchase a 750-ml bottle for $26 when you can purchase a liter of the same wine for $10 at the grocery store. So my brand to avoid this week was Yellowtail (on the Princess cruise, it was Woodbridge), though I'm sure the other wines were just as poor of a value. Experience, Victoria... you're buying experience. Max picked this Pinot Grigio and loved it. We ordered it twice that week. I'll be sure to look for it at Total Wine & More. For a starter, I chose the fruit sampler offered on the everyday menu. Max had some sort of shrimp cocktail. We had the same entree... Though Max requested two macaronis - And he also ordered the jumbo shrimp. This is on the everyday menu, as well. He ordered it a couple of times throughout the week. Max went for the chocolate melting cake - And I had some sort of chocolate cake with ice cream filling... I wish I recall the name, because it was the best dessert I had all week. After dinner, we went to the adult comedy show at the Punchliner Comedy Club (Limelight Lounge). It was standing room only... these shows are incredibly popular. This night was a preview of the two comedians they had on board for the first part of the week, Just June and Tom Foss. We weren't fans of Just June - both found her to be vulgar rather than funny. Her humor just didn't really apply to us. Max thought Tom Foss was hilarious. I thought he was just okay at the preview show. We then headed to Liquid Nightclub. It was the electric white night, so they were passing out glow bracelets. Max really enjoyed the venue and the drinks menu. It was a fun atmosphere..... our only complaint is DJ JonCarlos. He stinks. I don't know why he was ever hired or how he is maintaining his job. Max is the music guru, so I'm going to share his opinion on the matter: I wanted to like him. He looked like he was going to be a good DJ, and he might start out with a great song. And then he'd kill it. Not only was he terrible at blending songs and leading one into another, but he would play a popular song that would get everyone onto the dance floor, and then he would kill the vibe by playing some crappy slow song or a song that no one knew. He didn't understand how to create a mood and maintain it, and I don't think he was up-to-date on what songs are popular right now and what songs people like to dance to. Also, I should mention that it was that night that Max discovered the wonders of room service. I was long asleep, but he was flipping through the television and decided to check out the room service menu. He saw the prices were "No Charge" and decided to order a grilled cheese to the room. A grilled cheese which was amazing, he said. NEXT: Fun Day at Sea

TRACEY EMIN: I FOLLOWED YOU TO THE END AT WHITE CUBE BERMONDSEY September 19, 2024 – November 10, 2024 TRACEY EMIN: I FOLLOWED YOU TO THE END AT WHITE CUBE BERMONDSEY September 19, 2024 – November 10, 2024 Tracey Emin returns to White Cube Bermondsey with her solo exhibition, ‘I followed you to the end’, a presentation of new paintings and sculptures that journey through love and loss, mortality and rebirth. Drawing from a recent, transformative experience, Emin continues her exploration of life’s most profound and intimate moments, with renewed intensity. The exhibition celebrates Emin’s expressive painterly vocabulary, focusing on the medium that has occupied and engaged the artist in recent years. Deft, impulsive strokes capture figures in the throes of becoming, while a palette of carmine, ivory, deep blues and black temper the volatility of physical and emotional states with intervals of contemplation and stillness. Serving as a fulcrum for the exhibition’s psychical journey, the titular painting I Followed you to the end (2024) elicits the plaintive anguish wrought from the complexities of love. Bathed in a tempest of red and black, the outline of a solitary female figure is framed by a handwritten exhortation to the lovers that have mistreated her: ‘You made me like this. All of you – you – you men that I so insanely loved so much. You are the ones that made me feel so alone. All of you – each of you in your individual way. I – I – I – was at fault to keep loving you. Like a fool I followed love to the end. Like the sad haunted soul that I am, I followed you to the end’. From this wounded indictment, tensions emerge in other works, where the mourning of lost love is countered by a visceral drive for self-preservation. In the diptych My Dead Body – A Trace of Life (2024), the female subject lies supine, her pelvis thrust upward while her head founders beneath a crimson tide. This horizon line extends to the second canvas, where a passage avows: ‘I don’t want to have sex because my body feels dead’. Informed, in no small measure, by the artist’s recent confrontation with life-threatening illness, the work also speaks frankly of Emin’s personal reckoning with mortality. The private spaces that Emin’s subjects inhabit – beds and baths – transform into sepulchral vessels, securing the figure within. In I Kept Crying (2024), the figure, shrouded in a cascade of red paint, reclines in a bath that might also be read as a burial ground, with the taps transfiguring into crucifixes. Elsewhere, allusions to Charon, the ferryman of the Greek underworld, emerge in the red sails of Time to Go (2024) – a motif that, like many others, surfaced from the subconscious during the creative act. In several of the works, the veil between life and death is thin and permeable, a diaphanous threshold through which the artist’s figures appear to make contact with the Beyond. Likewise, Emin’s instinctive process involves veiling and unveiling: she often paints an image on canvas only to obscure it later with additional layers of white, leaving behind a spectral impression of the over writ form, as can be seen in Take me to Heaven (2024). Here, the subject assumes a tranquil repose, as if drifting into another realm. To the left, a pale lavender presence – conjured through this technique – appears beside the protagonist, serving as a proxy for the artist’s deceased mother. Depicted within a room adorned with blue floral-patterned wallpaper, the serenity of the scene is abruptly ruptured by a violent gush of red from the subject’s torso, wrenching the transcendent moment back to the immediacy of the present. Similar decorative motifs appear in works such as The End of Love, More Dreaming and Our World (all 2024), which draw inspiration from the intricate designs of Turkish rugs collected by the artist, who is of Turkish heritage herself. This patterning represents a different form of mark-making, one led by a meditative impulse as opposed to the frenetic and urgent fervour that often characterises her paintings. Influenced by the evocative interior domestic scenes of Edvard Munch, the settings within these compositions become as integral to the narrative as the figures themselves. Autobiographical markers are woven throughout, as in The Bridge (2024), where an undulating landscape – insinuated by the silhouette of a sofa – symbolically connects the artist’s two hometowns of Margate and London, with the sofa posts evoking the structural supports of the Medway Bridge. Throughout the exhibition, the artist’s faithful familiars – her cats – reappear across both the large canvases and small-scale paintings, either gathered around the solitary figure or standing as stoic sentinels, silently keeping watch. In The End of Love, they serve as surrogate subjects, filling the void left by the stained silhouette of the two lovers, now erased and absent from the bed. Emin approaches her paintings without preliminary sketches or a predetermined vision, engaging with the canvas as though it were a medium of divination, coaxing hidden truths to the surface through the process of painting. The images that emerge function as an interface, to resurrect former versions of the self; to revisit defining events from her life; to weave together the spectrum of her experience into an ever-present moment. A recurring motif in Emin’s recent work is intimately tied to the artist’s bodily reality. Following a diagnosis of aggressive bladder cancer in 2020, Emin underwent major surgery to remove the affected organ and a substantial portion of the surrounding abdominal organs. During the procedure, her ureters were rerouted to a surgically constructed passage in her abdomen. A candid video, filmed by the artist herself and displayed in the gallery’s auditorium, reveals in vivid detail the stoma she now lives with – a pulsing, sunset-red orifice that may be variously identified in the surgent valves, halos and potent reds that punctuate Emin’s paintings. Though painting has become increasingly central to Emin’s practice in recent years, she has continued to create sculpture, as evidenced by the two new bronze works featured in this exhibition. The smaller counterpart, Ascension (2024), presents a female torso in repose and echoes the figure depicted in My Dead Body – A Trace of Life, although mounted on the wall in a manner reminiscent of a crucifixion. The monumental sculpture, I Followed You To The End (2024), commands the central space of the South Galleries. At first glance, its form appears abstract, with textured ridges and dimpled impressions suggestive of a rugged landscape. Navigating around and drawing back from the work, the lower anatomy of a figure reveals itself, with sprawled legs ambiguously parted as tender invitation or brutal subjugation. With its deeply worked surfaces directly capturing the imprints from moulding by the artist’s hand, the sculpture evokes a sensuous intimacy that belies its vast scale. https://www.whitecube.com/gallery-exhibitions/tracey-emin-bermondsey-2024 I FOLLOWED YOU TO THE END, 2024 Acrylic on Canvas Dimensions: 182.2 x 120.1 cm | 71 3/4 x 47 5/16 in. Image Credit: © Tracey Emin. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2024. I FOLLOWED YOU TO THE END, 2024 (DETAIL) I FOLLOWED YOU TO THE END, 2024 Patinated Bronze Edition 1 of 3 Dimensions: 690 x 393 x 260 cm | 271 5/8 x 154 3/4 x 102 3/8 in. Image Credit: © Tracey Emin. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2024. TAKE ME TO HEAVEN, 2024 Acrylic on Canvas Dimensions: 203.1 x 280.3 cm | 79 15/16 x 110 3/8 in. Image Credit: © Tracey Emin. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2024. TAKE ME TO HEAVEN, 2024 (DETAIL) ANOTHER PLACE TO LIVE, 2024 Acrylic on Canvas Dimensions: 203.1 x 280.3 cm | 79 15/16 x 110 3/8 in. Image Credit: © Tracey Emin. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2024. ANOTHER PLACE TO LIVE, 2024 (DETAIL) NOT FUCKABLE, 2024 Acrylic on Canvas Image Credit: © Tracey Emin. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2024. TRACEY EMIN'S STUDIO TRACEY EMIN'S STUDIO I DID NOTHING WRONG, 2024 ASCENSION, 2024 Patinated Bronze Edition 1 of 3 Dimensions: 72.5 x 36 x 23.5 cm | 28 9/16 x 14 3/16 x 9 1/4 in. Image Credit: © Tracey Emin. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2024. MORE LOVE THAN I CAN REMEMBER, 2024 Acrylic on Canvas Dimensions: 182 x 214.2 cm | 71 5/8 x 84 5/16 in. Image Credit: © Tracey Emin. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2024. MORE LOVE THAN I CAN REMEMBER, 2024 (DETAIL) BLOOD – BLOOD AND MORE BLOOD, 2024 Acrylic on Canvas Image Credit: © Tracey Emin. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2024. BLOOD – BLOOD AND MORE BLOOD, 2024 (DETAIL) THE END OF LOVE, 2024 Acrylic on Canvas Dimensions: 202.9 x 280.2 cm | 79 7/8 x 110 5/16 in. Image Credit: © Tracey Emin. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2024. THE END OF LOVE, 2024 (DETAIL) I KEPT CRYING, 2024 Acrylic on Canvas Dimensions: 122.3 x 122.3 cm | 48 1/8 x 48 1/8 in. Image Credit: © Tracey Emin. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2024. I KEPT CRYING, 2024 (DETAIL) I WAITED SO LONG – TOO LONG, 2024 Acrylic on Canvas Dimensions: 152.2 x 152.2 cm | 59 15/16 x 59 15/16 in. Image Credit: © Tracey Emin. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2024. I WAITED SO LONG – TOO LONG, 2024 (DETAIL) ABOUT TRACEY EMIN Tracey Emin looks to her life for her primary material. With soul-searching candour, she probes the construct of the self but also the very impulse to create. Unfiltered, irreverent, raw, she draws on the fundamental themes of love, desire, loss and grief in works that are disarmingly and unashamedly emotional. ‘The most beautiful thing is honesty, even if it’s really painful to look at’, she has remarked. Self-portraiture and the nude run throughout her practice, which Emin has described as being about ‘rites of passage, of time and age, and the simple realisation that we are always alone’. Her earliest works refer to her family, childhood and chaotic teenage years, growing up in the seaside town of Margate and leaving home at the age of fifteen. What happened next is explored, in a manner that is neither tragic nor sentimental, in drawing, painting, film, photography, sewn appliqué, sculpture, neon and writing, as the vicissitudes of relationships, pregnancies and abortions intersect with her commitment to the formal disciplines of art. Most recently, the artist has experienced her body as a battleground, through illness and ageing, on which she reports with characteristic fearlessness. The playful title of Emin’s first solo exhibition, My Major Retrospective 1963–1993, suggests the artist felt, despite being at the beginning of her career, significant things had already happened. Her obsessive assemblage of personal memorabilia included tiny photographs of her art school paintings that she’d destroyed, a ‘photographic graveyard’ that revealed an admiration for paintings by Egon Schiele and Edvard Munch. She details this ‘emotional suiside’ in Tracey Emin’s CV Cunt Vernacular (1997), among several early video works that give further insight into her formation as an artist, highlighting moments of epiphany through the use of first-person narrative. ‘I realised there was the essence of creativity, that moment of conception,’ she says in How It Feels (1996), a pivotal film in which she tells the story of her abortion. ‘The whole being of everything… it had to be about where it was really coming from’. Speaking to camera while walking through the streets of London, she concludes that conceptual art, as an act of reproduction, is inseparable from the artist’s inner life. Developing this connection, the haunting film Homage to Edvard Munch and All My Dead Children (1998) shows the artist on the pier near Munch’s house, naked and prostrate in the foetal position, the dawn rising over the water as she lifts her head and screams – a guttural response to great painter’s iconic image. In 1998, Emin created My Bed, an uncensored presentation of her most personal habitat. The double bed has become abstracted from function as it sits on the gallery floor, in conversation with art history and a stage for life events: birth, sleep, sex, depression, illness, death. The accumulation of real objects (slippers, condoms, cigarettes, empty bottles, underwear) on and around the unmade bed builds a portrait of the artist with bracing matter-of-factness, defying convention to exhibit what most people would keep private. The work gained international attention as part of the Turner Prize, entering Emin into public consciousness. Another work that became a byword for her art of disclosure was the sculpture Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963−1995 (1995, destroyed 2004), where the names of all those she had ever shared a bed with – friends, lovers and family – were sewn on the inside of a tent, a crawl-space that invites the viewer to reflect on their own inventory. Explicitly feminist, and acknowledging the influence of her friend and collaborator Louise Bourgeois, Emin’s choice of medium is integral to the story she tells. In hand-embroidered blankets and quilts, traditionally associated with women’s work, she pierces the visual field with words, combining scraps of different material with uneven stitching to spell out statements whose syntax and spelling remain uncorrected. With titles such as  Mad Tracey from Margate. Everyone’s been there, (1997) or Hellter Fucking Skelter (2001), they register the artist’s acute sensitivity to the views of those around her and give a riposte, just as the medium is a riposte to the classification of fine art, for centuries dominated by male artists. As she herself became newsworthy, both nationally and internationally, Emin used the publicity to prick other forms of decorum in the professional art world – such as never over-explaining. In longer form, her memoir, Strangeland (2005) offers an account of her journey to becoming ‘a fucked, crazy, anorexic-alcoholic-childless, beautiful woman. I never dreamt it would be like this.’ The text is riddled with spelling mistakes that challenge the form and carry through a sense of unfiltered process, as was also the case with her long-running newspaper column for The Independent (2005–09), in which she narrated her weekly goings-on under the title ‘My Life in a Column’. Emin’s ongoing series of neons features snatches of text in her recognisable slanted handwriting, elevating fleeting thoughts and feelings as aphorisms: You touch my Soul (2020), I Longed For you (2019) or I don’t Believe in Love but I believe in you (2012). Her formulation of statements in the second person has the effect of placing the viewer squarely in the situation, and can encapsulate an entire romance in a pithy phrase, as in I want my time with You (2018), a twenty-metre-wide neon that greets passengers at London’s St Pancras Station. A critical part of her practice since the 1990s, the neons evoke the seafront lights of Margate, latent with the sense of dusk and faded glamour. Her birthplace is an abiding subject; it resurfaces in large-scale sculptures, where reclaimed wood and found materials are assembled in jagged structures that allude to the beach, pier, huts and tide markers. Margate’s famous theme park ‘Dreamland’ is referred to in several works, among them Self-Portrait (2001), which recreates the pleasure ground’s helter-skelter, and It’s Not the Way I want to Die (2005), which recalls the undulating roller-coaster in rickety, worn wood, fragile to the point of collapse. Margate is ‘part of me’, Emin says, and while looking back she is now looking to the future with the establishment of TKE Studios, a new art school and artists’ studios. Questions of mortality and the centrality of the female reproductive body drive The Mother (2021), one of Emin’s most significant public sculptures. Permanently sited next to the new Munch Museum, Oslo, it marks the death of her own mother, and brings her lifelong admiration for Munch full circle. Fifteen tonnes of bronze standing nine metres high, this woman with ‘her legs open to the Fjord’ is visible from afar over land and water, a monument to the female figure as protector without compromising on her vulnerability or eroticism. By contrast, Baby Things, Emin’s accurate rendering of children’s tiny lost shoes and clothes in bronze, was installed as if by chance outside the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2007) and around Folkestone Triennial (2008), intimate tokens that might inadvertently provoke a range of reactions, from fear for those we love most, to the indifference with which we treat a discarded object. Most recently, Emin’s work has been charged by the seriousness of her medical situation, since in 2020 she was diagnosed with bladder cancer. Self-portraits taken on her camera phone in bed find the artist facing her ‘crippling’ insomnia in the small hours, and in recovery from extensive surgery. Her paintings of the nude figure have a tempestuous energy. Emin’s graphic line, by turn delicate or vigorous, imparts a sense of urgency; with each abandoned and assertive gesture, she is flaying herself open. Drips and obliterations point to the fluidity of the body, as it fluctuates between joy and suffering on its journey between birth and death. Explosions of colour allude to a self that is overcome by feeling and triumphing in sheer sensuality.  Tracey Emin was born in 1963 in London. She currently lives and works between London, the South of France, and Margate, UK. Emin has exhibited extensively including major exhibitions at Royal Academy of Arts, London (2020); Musée d’Orsay, Paris (2019); Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence, France (2017); Leopold Museum, Vienna (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami (2013); Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (2012); Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2012); Hayward Gallery, London (2011); Kunstmuseum Bern (2009); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2008); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Malaga, Spain (2008); Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2003); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2002). In 2007 Emin represented Great Britain at the 52nd Venice Biennale and her installation  My Bed has been included in ‘In Focus’ displays at Tate Britain with Francis Bacon (2015), Tate Liverpool with William Blake and also at Turner Contemporary, Margate alongside JMW Turner (2017). In 2011, Emin was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and in 2012 was made Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her contributions to the visual arts.

'The Universe', Sengai "...the entire eighth, my son, and the souls that are in it, and the angels, sing a hymn in silence..."  -The Ogdoad and Ennead Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man, Salvador Dali (1943) Those who walk the golden path know from experience that it is one of great illumination and propels one through a course of Initiations that simply cannot be fully expressed to one who has not 'broken ground' within themselves enough to appreciate the higher, and subsequently deeper levels of being we become attuned to and aware of through ritual work, reading, communicating and experimenting. Beginning to get on the 'path' is one of the most difficult stages, and environmental factors play a major role in that as well. There are many different ways to ignite the Black Flame within, ranging from art, to music, plants, sensory derangement - these all may serve as a 'switch' which affects the regular mode of operation allowing one to analyze both the familiar mode and the new mode, or perspective - the goal being to obtain a higher gnosis or 'profound view' of the mundane mind and its habituated instinct of identifying only with that which one sees with their eyes and opening the ego up to the range known as the 'higher mind', technically also including the subconscious, which on the Tree of Life is Yesod (the Moon). Over time, usually the period of many years, and with much effort in gaining knowledge from various sources and working with it, a second-knowledge is developed, a knowledge not based merely on action-reaction/cause-effect of factors in the microcosm, but the actions and reactions of causes and effects that span over the course of long spans of time and the impulses behind them and which they carry. There are many times in our lives where we feel a profound sense of belonging, like we are at the 'right place at the right time', and that everything in the universe must have been right on track for some fateful event to have happened in the particular way it did. Deja vu itself is like a magnified form of this in that its like we are realizing or reawakening to the path that we seem to have passed through before. The Bruce Codex - Gnosis.org  See also The Gnosis of the Light by Rev. F. Lamplugh and The Gnosis Or Ancient Wisdom in the Christian Scriptures by William Kingsland (PDF). Archetypal patterns are the fractal templates in and of themselves which carry on along the spiral currents of manifestation and sometimes our waking mind receives flashes of this pattern which reduces like a net infinitely great or infinitely small. This 'net' is that which Egyptian initiates would 'master' through their various practices, and this is the same practice that is happening in any gnostic yoga practice which seeks to unify (as a 'yoke' in an egg) as well as encompass (as the cosmic egg itself), and therefore become conscious living embodiments of the two extremes (yin and yang), and the 7 rays between them which alchemically mutate from light (spirit) into matter and then Spirit and Matter unified in balance. The Balance is symbolized by Atu VIII (8), and therefore Maat directly rules the balance of the Egg/Toroid of space-time. The symbol above which is similar to that of the Ankh shows the Wheel of Time, with the 'T' being the cross of directions, Past, Present, and Future with the 'wheel' being that which is 'rolling' (i.e. the luni-solar-stellar interplay of light and shadow which affects psychic and physical functions.) 8 or ∞ is related to the egg which has been 'imploded', that is - opened from the inside rather than the out. The center of the torus has opened and the Egg which was one universe to its own has awakened to find but another seemingly infinite universe right outside its shell. The 8 is symbolic of Eternity and the figure of Woman and the Ankh is that of Eternal Life and the figure of a Man. The figurative Serpent who put emnity between them is the spiral of 'time' at the center of the 'garden' (the toroid), the center of the Circle being figured as 359 (ShTN, 'Satan'), one less than the full circle which opens the Gate of the Qliphoth creating the movement of the revolution of Light signified by the Seven Aeons or Rays - the 8ths being the Great Ray of 'Time'/Chronos/Abraxas, and the 9th being that of distinction in solidarity or homogenization to re-open on a higher-level in 10, Malkuth, the Material plane. The Hexagram is symbolic of the union of opposites creating the Seventh Ray which illumines the 8th. It is the central shining light of GOLD in which used in Banishing and High Magick. Note also that the Hebrew word for this symbol is מגנ דוד, and thus equivalent to GOLD in the number 107, and of course reduces to 8, but shows the separation of the 1 from the 7 by the O, or Wheel of Time.  See Clearing the Aiwaves for the Qabalistic Cross The 8th Ray is known in the Gnostic Aeonology as the super-celestial aeon beyond the lower seven aeons and represents the stepping beyond the fractal 'net' through the path opened through duality and into the timeless astral region of Σοπηια (Wisdom, 369) or Αβραξας (365). The 'faculty of Abraxas' to which this post receives its name refers to the faculty which is generated over time through understanding and wisdom, to step across the 'abyss' of the fractal and tap into the source-energy of the Matrix itself - and thereby receive the power of the Ennead, a direct line of contact between ones 'self' (microcosm) and the core macrocosm of Infinity (in the center of the circle which is the Heart/Sun/Star center reflected by its own Light). The triple extension of 8 as 888 is the number of Ιηςους, 'Jesus' the carrier of THE COSMIC CHRIST force of Chrysos (GOLD), the 'Gold Light of Spirit itself manifested into THE FULLNESS OF INFINITY fit neatly into THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE, that infinitely subtle but infinitely powerful substance (THE AZOTh = 888) which is the One Substance upon which all is but a mutation of the HOLOGRAPHIC SOUL which projects both inward and outward. It was just recently mentioned by physicists that certain changes in their models show that the Universe may be infinite, and I think it's funny because I recently found that 888 is THE ETERNAL OVUM MUNDI UNIVERSE, Ovum Mundi being the Egg of the World or the Universe itself - 'The Cosmic Egg' corresponding to the 888 of 'It's All in the Egg'. THE TIME DOOR + O is 888 as well showing that the Ayin (Ajna) is the Door of Time which is merely the projector of the kalas of maya or the illusion of time (THE LION'S GATE - Abraxas being the Lion-headed Serpent). Thus 888 is the THE TIMELESS TIMELINES OF ABRAXAS, THE ENCODED LOGOS-LANGUAGE which stands beyond time. Particularly related to the Gnostic idea of the 'Demiurge' which is associated particularly with the interplay of the 8 and 9 (89 being the 'GVPh', or place between Manifestations), is that 888 is itself THE GNOSTIC DEMIURGE - and THE DEMIURGE + THE AEONS and THE DEMIURGE INTELLIGENCE which is exhibited throughout the fractal cosmos and condensed in the Logos of Humanity. THE TREE OF LIFE IS A FRACTAL IN THE GOLD EGG = 888. Being one (111 = RAY in Greek as ΡΑΙ, Rho Alpha Iota) ray above 777, 888 rules THE LIGHT WORLD (=777) which is equivalent to the OVLM HQLIPVTh, or 'World of Shells' which is the shadow of the Light. The Seven Seals of REVELATION are the cosmic-fractal connection between the 7 major Chakras and the 7 major Rays of Light which combine in 888 and condense in 999 - THE ALIGNMENT of the All in One and One and All (Frater Achad's motto which had the value of 777 in Latin). Notice this is all above 666 and also above the 'physical' once entering into 777, The Light World. The Spectrum of the Nine Chambers is very dense and only just now beginning to be deciphered and disseminated - no doubt there will be people trying to plagiarize this Knowledge - THE SUPREME KNOWLEDGE - but technically it's not 'mine' anyway, though I do seem to be the only one to have deciphered this key and found personal profound revelations prompting me to find more and present it to what I find as a decaying community which I think could be greatly 'refreshed' with this very dense but still very telling information. The Faculty of Abraxas is mentioned in a few different prominent Masonic works of the 1800's and along my search for more about it they each gave a little more information. While not referring to Abraxas in particular, Helena Blavatsky discusses the nature of the 8th Aeon as being related to that which opens beyond time in The Secret Doctrine (Vol. II page 563.): "We are reminded in King's "Gnostics" that the Greek language has but one word for vowel and voice; and this has led the uninitiated to many erroneous interpretations. On the simple knowledge, however, of that well-known fact a comparison may be attempted, and a flood of light thrown upon several mystic meanings. Thus the words, so often used in the Upanishads and the Puranas, "Sound" and "Speech," may be collated with the Gnostic "Vowels" and the "Voices" of the Thunders and Angels in "Revelation." The same will be found in Pistis Sophia, and other ancient Fragments and MSS. This was remarked even by the matter-of-fact author of "The Gnostics and their Remains." Through Hippolytus, an early Church Father, we learn what Marcus -- a Pythagorean rather than a Christian Gnostic, and a Kabalist most certainly -- had received in mystic revelation. It is said that "Marcus had it revealed unto him that 'the seven heavens'* . . . . sounded each one vowel, which, all combined together, formed a complete doxology"; in clearer words: "the Sound whereof being carried down (from these seven heavens) to earth, became the creator and parent of all things that be on earth." (See "Hippolytus," vi., 48, and King's Gnostics, p. 200.) Translated from the Occult phraseology into still plainer language this would read: "The Sevenfold LOGOS having differentiated into seven Logoi, or creative potencies (vowels) these (the second logos, or "Sound") created all on Earth. Assuredly one who is acquainted with Gnostic literature can hardly help seeing in St. John's Apocalypse, a work of the same school of thought. For we find John saying (chap. x. 3, 4), "Seven thunders uttered their voices . . . and I was about to write . . . (but) I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, 'Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.' " The same injunction is given to Marcus, the same to all other semi and full Initiates. Yet the sameness of equivalent expressions used, and of the underlying ideas, always betrays a portion of the mysteries. We must always seek for more than one meaning in every mystery allegorically revealed, especially in those in which the number seven and its multiplication seven by seven, or forty-nine, appear.  Now when the Rabbi Jesus is requested (in Pistis Sophia) by his disciples to reveal to them, "the mysteries of the Light of thy (his) Father" (i.e., of the higher SELF enlightened by Initiation and Divine knowledge), Jesus answers: "Do ye seek after these mysteries? No mystery is more excellent than they which shall bring your souls unto the Light of Lights, unto the place of Truth and Goodness, unto the place where there is neither male nor female, neither form in that place but Light, everlasting, not to be uttered. Nothing therefore is more excellent than the mysteries which ye seek after,saving only THE MYSTERY of the seven vowels and their FORTY AND NINE POWERS, and their numbers thereof; and no name is more excellent than all these vowels." "The Seven Fathers and the Forty-nine Sons blaze in DARKNESS, but they are the LIFE and LIGHT and the continuation thereof through the Great Age" -- says the Commentary speaking of the "Fires." Now it becomes evident that, in every esoteric interpretation of exoteric beliefs expressed in allegorical forms, there was the same underlying idea -- the basic number seven, the compound of three and four, preceded by the divine THREE (△) making the perfect number ten. Also, these numbers applied equally to divisions of time, to cosmography metaphysical and physical, as well as to man and everything else in visible nature. Thus these Seven vowels with their forty-nine powers are identical with the three and the Seven Fires of the Hindus and their forty-nine fires; identical with the numerical mysteries of the Persian Simorgh; identical with those of the Jewish Kabalists. The latter, dwarfing the numbers (their mode of blinds), made the duration of each successive renewal (what we call in esoteric parlance Round) of the seven renewals of the globe only of 7,000 years, instead of, as is more likely, 7,000,000,000, and assigned to the total duration of the universe 49,000 years only. (Compare § "Chronology of the Brahmins.") Now, the Secret Doctrine furnishes a key which reveals to us on indisputable grounds of comparative analogy that Garuda, the allegorical and monstrous half-man and half-bird, -- the Vahan or vehicle on which Vishnu (who is Kala, "time") is shown to ride -- is the origin of all other such allegories. He is the Indian phoenix, the emblem of cyclic and periodical time, the "man-lion" Singha, of whose representations the so-called "gnostic gems" are so full.* [*As confessed by King, the great authority on Gnostic antiquities, these gnostic gems are not the work of the Gnostics, but belong to pre-christian periods, and are the work of magicians (p. 241).] "Over the seven rays of the lion's crown, and corresponding to their points, stand, in many cases, the seven vowels of the Greek alphabet [Gk char], testifying to the Seven Heavens." This is the Solar lion and the emblem of the Solar cycle, as Garuda* is that of the great cycle, the "Maha-Kalpa" co-eternal with Vishnu, and also, of course, the emblem of the Sun, and Solar cycle. This is shown by the details of the allegory. At his birth, Garuda is mistaken for Agni, the God of Fire, on account of his (Garuda's) "dazzling splendour," and called thereupon Gaganeswara, "lord of the sky." Again, his being represented as Osiris, and by many heads of allegorical monsters on the Abraxas (gnostic) gems, with the head and beak of an eagle or a hawk (solar birds), denotes Garuda's solar and cyclic character. His Son is Jatabu, the cycle of 60,000 years. As well remarked by C. W. King: -- "Whatever the primary meaning (of the gem with the solar lion and vowels) it was probably imported in its present shape from INDIA, that true fountain head of gnostic iconography" (Gnostics, p. 218). The mysteries of the seven gnostic vowels, uttered by the thunders of St. John, can be unriddled only by the primeval and original Occultism of Aryavarta, brought into India by the primeval Brahmins, who had been initiated in Central Asia. And this is the Occultism we study and try to explain, as much as is possible in these pages. Our doctrine of seven Races and Seven Rounds of life and evolution around our terrestrial chain of spheres, may be found even in Revelation.** When the seven "thunders," or "sounds," or "vowels" -- one meaning out of the seven for each such vowel relating directly to our own Earth and its seven Root-Races in each Round -- "had uttered their voices" -- but forbidden the Seer to write them, and made him "seal up those things" -- what did the Angel "standing upon the sea and upon the earth" do? He lifted his hand to heaven "and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever . . . . that there should be time no longer." "But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel when he shall begin to sound, the Mystery of God (of the Cycle) should be finished" (x 7), which means, in theosophic phraseology, that when the Seventh Round is completed, then Time will cease. "There shall be time no longer" very naturally, since pralaya shall set in and there will remain no one on earth to keep a division of time, during that periodical dissolution and arrest of conscious life." The Egyptologist and historian Gerald Massey also gives somewhat similar comments in a relevant vein showing his own Abractic Gnosis having studied as wide a frame of references as is necessary to truly gain the necessary inferences and insights to truly appreciate the 365, or worldwide daily powers as they manifest across the sphere in its multitudinous formats which apparently some cannon seem to appreciate. 365 = THE TREE OF LIFE = SEPARATED = TRANSLATE  Μενος – ‘Strength/Force’ (From Proto-Indo-European *ménos (“mind”), from *men- (“to think”). Cognates include Avestan (manō) and Sanskrit मनस् (mánas).) =  Mειθρας – ‘Mithras’ = Aβραξας – ‘Abraxas’ (Gk. ΑΒΡΑΞΑΣ, variant form Abrasax, ΑΒΡΑΣΑΞ) was a word of mystic meaning in the system of the Gnostic Basilides, being there applied to the “Great Archon” (Gk., megas archōn), the princeps of the 365 spheres (Gk., ouranoi). The seven letters spelling its name may represent each of the seven classic planets—Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.) "It is affirmed that our Freemasons conceal, among other secret arts, what they term the ‘faculty of Abrac,' which is obviously a reduced form of the word Abraxas, the six-sided stone (sas or kas, Eg.) of the Ab-ra or Af-ra (Eg.) the Chnubis sun. The Abraxas stone with six sides is the foundation stone of the Masonic degree of R.A.M. [Royal Arch Mason]. This stone was fabled to have been brought by Adam out of the lost Paradise of a foreworld, and was passed on until Solomon used it as the foundation stone for his temple. The seal of Solomon is a double triangle, Y, looking like a six-pointed star. It is sometimes called the shield of David. The Hindu sri yantra contains the same figure, which is also found in ancient English churches, where the builders have made a Masonic mark. This figure is a symbolic part of the Royal Masonic Arch; and the seal of Solomon or shield of David is an extant illustration of the lunar character of David (the Egyptian Taht), and of the soli-lunar origin of Solomon the son. The double triangle of the sixfold one was also continued in a form of the divine nimbus worn by God the Father, which is represented in a fresco at Mount Athos, and upon an 'Epigonation' worn by a great image of St. Nicholas in the chief convent of Meteora in Thessaly, near Triccala. Building the temple of the heavens is the great mystery of Masonry, and they retain the chief figures accordingly. The number 5, for example, in which the first planetary heaven was completed, is one of the sacreds. This five runs into the six in the 'Five Orders,' of what are termed the 'Six Periods, the Grand Architects;' which expression is used [p.82] to designate the six days of the creation. Their mysteries reveal the same system as mythology. The building of the temple is one of the Masonic mysteries. Masons who know nothing of the mythical, that is astronomical, origin of these mysteries think this was the temple of an historical Solomon. But the mystic sen (Eg.) or brotherhood of Mâ is indefinitely older than the times of the supposed Solomon. Universal symbols found in all forms of the mysteries did not originate with the Jews a few centuries before the present era. Besides which, the 'Venerable Mah' of the Masons is one with the Hebrew Chokmah (המכח), the personification of wisdom, or Sophia, who acts the part of the builder in creation that Mâ does in the creation with Taht and Ptah. Chokmah was the 'founder of the earth.'When the heavens were prepared and a circle was set on the face of the deep, and the decree was given that the waters should not pass their appointed limit, Chokmah was there. She was the builder from the beginning, who first built the house of the seven pillars, and, therefore, like Ma, can be traced back to the goddess of the seven stars, the first measurer and maker of a circle in heaven. Chokmah denotes the skill of an artificer, but, personified, she is the feminine artificer. One mode of creating is described as checking the waters. This, in Egyptian, is khekh, to expel, turn back, or check. In the cuneiform description of creation, as part of the process, the waters were gathered into one place, where they are yet, in the three water-signs of the zodiac, and in the meh of the north. The words on the Babylonian tablet are mi, istinish, ikkique. Mi, is waters; istinish, one place; and ikhique answers to the Hebrew chaq (קח), a defined andappointed limit. Chit, in Phoenician, means encompassing. Kiki, Maori, is confined. Kuku, Fiji, to hold. Ciko, Zulu, is the woman's word for a stopper; as we have it in stopcock. To cag, English, is to bind, limit,imprison. Kakhya, in Sanskrit, denotes enclosure; kachcha, shores; ciug, Irish, the circle; kac, Breton, enclosure, whence the kay. One khekh (Eg.) sign was a collar with nine beads which, as the collar of Isis, signified the nine months of gestation and breath (or the put-circle of the nine gods). The nine dry months of the khekh, and the inundation, represented by the three water-signs, made a year, in the figure of which the waters were checked, limited, and confined to the meh, the abyss and water-girth of the northern quarter. On this the earth described by the Hebrew writers and Diodorus was founded in the nine dry signs, the antithesis of the waters. On this abyss of the waters was established the put-circle of the nine gods, the creation of Ptah who wrought in conjunction with Mâ, the Hebrew Chokmah, the Masonic 'Venerable Mah.' It is the mythical origin alone that affords any solution in such a case as this where the historical becomes fraudulent. Solomon, the Prince of Peace, was but a form of the solar or luni-solar manifestor. The demiurgic Ptah, the architect who built the temple of the heavens in conjunction with Mâ, according to one of the particular patterns, of which there were several, stellar, lunar, and solar, has a son who takes the name of Iu-em-hept, the bringer of peace. This was the Egyptian Solomon, the Ecclesiasticus or Iu-su, the coming son of the Apocrypha that was brought out of Egypt. He who comes with peace or fulfilment is the Solomon by name. The Egyptian Solomon was the typical builder and designer, the original, i.e., divine, modeller of the celestial temple. It is said in an inscription that the Temple of Edfu was 'restored as it is in the book of the model of the temple composed by Prince Iu-em-hept, eldest son of Ptahi.Prince Iu-em-hept is the prince who comes with peace, and is the Solomon who became the typical architect and healer in Israel. This establishes the link with the god Ptah, the solar architect whose assistants, the seven khnemu, are the fraternity of the seven builders of mythology. The sovereignty of Sebek (or Atum-Ra) as the seventh was founded on the six previous creations typified by the Ab-ra-xas stone; and the fact of the year having been established on those six creations and the luni-solar six divisions and then completed in 365 days, was conveyed by the 'faculty of Abraxas' in the numbers of the name, after the mode of the mysteries. This name is Abraxas in Latin and Αβρασάξ in Greek, A b r a x a s = 365 1 2 100 1 60 1 200 Such being the numeral value of the letters in Greek and Coptic, and therefore, still earlier, in Egyptian. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, affirmed that Orpheus composed a poem of 365 gods one for every day of the year. Justin Martyr puts the number at 360. Both are numbers of the year, and both show the phenomenal foundations in the time reckonings. The Gnostics, says Irenaeus, make out the local positions of 365 heavens. They hold that their chief is Abraxas, and on this account the word contains in itself the numbers amounting to 365. Lastly, the legends show that man was created in the likeness of the types belonging to the mythos at various stages of its evolution; and as, according to the Targum of Palestine, the Adamic man was created in the image of the Lord, with 365 nerves, the divine image was the solar god of the complete year of 365 days or divisions described as nerves. That is, Adam was formed in the likeness of Atum-Ra and of the Af-Ra, the sun of the three realms, the sixfold division of heaven and of the perfected year of solar time. This was not a primary but almost the final creation. Here is another link with the Masonic six, the great seisor of the Irish Druids. Acacian is a title signifying a Mason, but not because άκακία [p.84] means innocence. The acacia (Mimosa nilotica of Linnaeus) is the Masonic typical tree, the Nile name of which is sas (ses, or sesso wood), the same as the number 6 and the division of time by six. The cube sas or was was squared in acacia wood, as well as stone, on account of its hardness, as a figure of the sixfold foundation. In 'passing the veils' in the Masonic mysteries the candidate proceeds from the figure of six, the double triangle, and at the figure of nine—the triple triangle—the word is communicated by the companions. The Masonic north is the Void or Abyss. It appears to me that their temple of the heavens ranges from the heaven of the seven stars to that of the seven planets. The sanctum sanctorum is a place of the seven, which are typified by a candlestick with seven branches. Here the initiate is shown the Ark of the Seven and of the Covenant; 'the Ark to build, the Covenant to Keep.' It is the same ark of the seven as that of the seven Rishis, the seven Hohgates, the seven companions of Arthur, the seven stars of the earliest circle and covenant made in heaven. Synesius observes that the Egyptian hierophants had κωμαστήια, which are arks concealing, as they say, the spheres. The later planetary seven are illustrated by the seven steps and seven degrees of ascent. There are seven steps in the Scottish ritual of the degree called the 'Knight of Kadosh,' the names of which are chiefly Hebrew. Also, the ladder of seven rounds ascends from the Red Room, red being the colour of the goddess Ma, and of the nocturnal sun. Ne plus ultra is written at the foot of the ladder. This is considered the highest mystery. It was the top of attainment in relation to the later and superior ogdoad of gods consisting of the seven planetary gods and their manifestor, the 'Star (eight-rayed) of the Pleroma.' Both systems are combined in the account given by Celsus, preserved by Origen, who says: 'After this, Celsus desiring to exhibit his Learning in his treatise against us, quotes also certain Persian mysteries, where he observes:—"These things are obscurely hinted at in the accounts of the Persians, and especially in the mysteries of Mithras, which are celebrated amongst them. For in the latter there is a representation of the two heavenly revolutions of this movement, viz., of the fixed stars, and of that which takes place among the planets, and of the passage of the soul through these." The representation is of the following nature:—There is a ladder with lofty gates, and on the top of it an eighth gate. The first gate consists of lead, the second of tin, the third of copper, the fourth of iron, the fifth of a mixture of metals, the sixth of silver and the seventh of gold. The first gate they assign to Saturn, indicating, by the lead, the slowness of this star; the second to Venus, comparing her to the splendour and softness of tin; the third to Jupiter, being firm and solid; the fourth to Mercury, for both mercury and iron are fit to enclose all things, and [p.85] are money-making and laborious; the fifth to Mars, because, being composed of a mixture of metals, it is varied and unequal; the sixth of silver, to the Moon; the seventh of gold, to the Sun; thus imitating the different colours of the two latter." He next proceeds to examine the reasons of the stars being arranged in this order, which is symbolised by the names of the rest of matter. Musical reasons, moreover, are added and quoted by the Persian theology; and to these, again, he strives to add a second explanation connected also with musical considerations.' There are data, then, in all the different creations and points of departure which range from the motherhood of the seven elementaries to the final fatherhood established on earth and in heaven, as it was under Atum-Ra or in the second gnostic 'Hebdomad which surrounds the Father,' the planetary seven represented by Iao-Sabaoth. The development, changes, and readjustments can all be traced according to the data yet extant. This was preserved by the Gnostics, amongst others of those who knew, the men who were supposed, by the Christian Idiotes, to be mere plagiarists and heretics that sprang up in the second century of the present era. The Gnostics and Neo-Platonists brought on the whole matter with the connecting links. They have the primary ogdoad consisting of the Mother Sophia and the 'Inferior Hebdomad' of the seven elementaries who dwelt upon the mount of Am-Smen. 'This Mother they (the Gnostics) also call Ogdoad, Sophia, Terra, Jerusalem, Holy Spirit, and, with a masculine reference, Lord.' Proclus also says: 'The Goddess Rhea is a Monad, Duad, and Heptad, comprehending in herself all the Titannidae.' Valentinus maintained that the power of the seven who gave life to this world after the likeness of the first hebdomad was represented by Arrhetos, whose name is composed of seven letters (with one duplicate) to indicate the sevenfold nature of the one. Arrhetos, the sevenfold, answers to Sebti (or Sut) and Sevekh, both of which names contain the number seven. There was a certain dyad, or twofold being, he said, who is inexpressible by any name, of whom one part should be called Arrhetos (that is ineffable), and the other Sige (Silence); this was the source of the Ogdoad. -pg. 81 The Natural Genesis, Gerald Massey The Rectangle (or Square), Triangle and the Circle are related to IAO and the Ogdoad by way of the fact that, for one, they resemble the letters IAO, and the angles of the rectangle (4), triangle (3), and the circle taken as 1 enumerates the Ogdoad. IAO has a H.E.G. value of 81, which is 9, the serpent, cubed but also THE AJNA which is the central Eye which in a sense acts as a microcosmic version of the Prism of Daath being as it is the focal point of the inner vision which first shows itself as a thin thread of light which can unravel to reveal the mask of the fabric of what we consider reality (maya). 81 in Jewish Gematria is both 'Gold' and 'Ra', signifying the root-light of the 9x9 serpent-grid. The Kundalini/Chnoubis as the Lion Headed Serpent. In its Greek valuation, ΙΑΩ is 811, and a temurah of Αιω, meaning 'to Live', 'Breathe', 'Know'. 811 is also THE LIGHT SOURCE of THE SHEKINAH, Shekinah being the 'holy dwelling' or 'holy place' of God (i.e. manifestation), and since 811 combines the 8 and 11 which are both related to Daath (counting up from Malkuth, and counting it last), it refers to the Egg (11) of 8 (Infinity), i.e. the Egg of Abraxas which as a form of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, is 'ever-coming'. Note 800/Ω itself is 'INSIDE THE EGG' and 'THE EGG OF EVERYTHING', THE PRISM of the SERPENT which is centered in the EPIPHYSIS (Third Eye) through the alignment with XIN.  (In China, the word, xin 心 (often translated as ‘heart’) is frequently used and its concept is central to Chinese culture. However, its meaning is not exactly the same as ‘heart’ in English. Using qigong as the context, this article aims to explore the meaning of xin as a cultural keyword in order to gain an indepth understanding of Chinese culture and knowledge within that cultural system. Qigong is a Chinese health maintenance system and healing tradition which integrates physical activity with training of the mind and self-cultivation. One of qigong’s basic components is xin adjustment. It is impossible to convey the full meaning of this concept without understanding the meaning of xin. In Chinese culture, xin is the root of physical and mental life. It is the seat of all emotions, and embodies the inherent goodness of human nature and wisdom. Xin helps to guide the individual’s way of life and attitude, and can lead one to deep contentment.)  This is the alchemical process known as 'Theurgy', which in the west is the central aim of the a prominent Buddhist sect, that of MAHAYANA-BUDDHISM, by creating the 'Great'/Maha 'Vehicle'/Yana of Awakening which the Egg, Diamond, Torus, Dodecahedron, etc. are all types of. (Though it is said that the Mahayana school is a much lengthier route to Atma-Vidya/Self-Knowledge and true Enlightenment than the Vajrayana which focuses primarily on the Diamond body and the Diamond realm. There is also Therevada, Navayana, and many other forms of Buddhism which have their own unique perspective and all are very interesting and very useful for the Chaos-mage, Experimentalist, or the like.) Each path is essentially all one which leads by way of silence out of the gross mundane world of matter and ego into THE LIGHT WORLD of what could be termed 'LUCIFER CONSCIOUSNESS', for when one realizes their inextricable unity between mind and matter all is seen to be Light and THE COILED SERPENT-ANGEL OF LIGHT awakens in a way that can only be withstood for short periods either as flashes or full on raptures but may also open wider in the dream-state which is itself composed purely of the Light of Consciousness.  "The Gnostic Serpent Wheel pictured above represents the eight Aeons of Gnosticism. It is a emblem of the cycles of time and is a symbol of the Gnostic messiah- the eighth Aeon who brings awakening and restores unity. It is closely related to the eight-spoked catholic baptismal cross- the Sunday of the resurrection was for early Christians an eighth day, and symbolized regeneration. This cycle was represented for some Gnostics by the serpent, who was associated with the “self-begotten” Deity by virtue of its ability to “give birth to itself” by the shedding of its skin." -SymbolDictionary.com See Isis Unveiled Vol. II, page 461 & The Rosicrucians by Hargrave Jennings LAM is integral to these many different currents spanning the course of human history, and being enumerated as 71, Lam is a form of the Kundalini having stepped beyond the Seven Aeons into the 8th. Lam is the Mantra of the Root Chakra, the most dense relating to physical matter which is the mantra itself serves to open or loosen for entry into the more subtle layers. The Mask of LAM as given by Crowley is thus the face or head of the Kundalini (generalized of course) which has its reflection in Malkuth as M.A.L., the distiller and reviver of this core of ageless wisdom. Having been placed as the frontispiece to his commentated version of Blavatsky's The Voice of the Silence a clue is given as to the nature of what this all means, for in the Gnostic text 'The Discourse On the Eighth and the Ninth' which discusses in mystical terms the transition of the 8th to the 9th Aeonic Ray is done by a mode of 'singing in silence'.  "Hermes' son soon had ecstatic experiences of his own, and his comments make clear that visionary experiences were located as experiences of the Ogdoad or Eighth, while intellectual intuitions were located in the Ninth. In the Hermetic system, a person who was having a vision had transcended his bodily senses and had, as such, ascended beyond the physical realm of the seven planetary heavens. The Hermetists' mind or self found itself in a condition of existence that was entirely literal, even though it was mental rather than bodily. Visionary experience was not a state of consciousness but a state of being, a discrete rank or stage in the great chain of being. The Eighth cosmic region was, in Corbin's (1972) sense of the term, an "imaginal" realm, with its own epistemic and ontic integrity. We might best approximate the Hermetic nuance in modern idiom by speaking not of an Eighth celestial region, but of an Eighth "dimension." To go on to reach the Ninth cosmic region, the imaginal realm of forms had itself to be transcended. Both meditations and mystical experiences had to be limited to intellectual abstractions: "Trismegistus, let not my soul be deprived of the great divine vision. For everything is possible for you as master of the universe." Evolution - Adrian Kenyon "Return to , my son, and sing while you are silent. Ask what you want in silence." When he had finished praising he shouted, "Father Trismegistus! What shall I say? We have received this light. And I myself see this same vision in you. And I see the eighth and the souls that are in it and the angels singing a hymn to the ninth and its powers. And I see him who has the power of them all, creating those in the spirit" (Disc. 8-9 59-60; Robinson 1988:325). Abraxas - Josip Csoor The assertion that "he enters into the understanding of the eighth that reveals the ninth" (Disc. 8-9 63; Robinson 1988:326) epitomizes this part of the mystical technique. Visualization practices were used to induce visions of images that had forms. The visualizations were known to be fabricated, but the visions that they triggered were thought to be unfabricated. These reflections on the visions were made during the visionary state while in the company of the envisioned souls and angels. Due presumably to the visions' coherence or intelligibility, initiates postulated the reality of a Mind that was responsible for ideas that took visionary form as images. This Mind was not manifest to the initiate, but the images that manifested its ideas were. The text does not mention whether Mind, in this context, was human or divine. Once the ninth had been postulated on the basis of the evidence of the eighth, the initiate was ready to move on to the ninth itself. The postulation of Mind was to be used to induce a purely intelligible experience of the divine Creator of "those in the spirit." Having perceived the intellectual necessity, during visionary experience, of postulating a Mind beyond one's own, a Hermetist was to accomplish a final ontological movement by proceeding from vision to union. The initiand was to verify the divinity of the human mind, and its equivalence to divine Mind, by seeking an intellectual mystical experience. Corpus Hermeticum XIII described the experience as follows: "Father, I see the universe and I see myself in mind." "This, my child, is rebirth: no longer picturing things in three bodily dimensions. (C.H. XIII.13; Copenhaver 1992: 52)" pages 88-89, Stages of Ascension in Hermetic Rebirth, Dan Merkur Because Abraxas represents the cycle or circuit of the Earth-year it signifies revolution, which through time moves in a spiral fashion. The Spiral is related to the Cone and thus also the Triangle of ABRACADABRA itself which is said by many to be directly related to Abraxas. In An Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and Its Kindred Sciences Vol. I by Albert G. Mackey, William J. Hughan & Edward L. Hawkins thjere is an entry on Abrac on page 6: "Abrac. In the Leland MS. it is said that the Masons conceal "the way of wynninge the facultye of Abrac." Mr. Locke (if it was he who wrote a commentary on the manscript) says, "Here I am utterly in the dark." It means simply "the way of acquiring the science of Abrac." the science of Abrac is the knowledge of the power and use of the mystical abraxas, which see; or very likely "Abrac" is merely an abbreviation of Abracadabra." And on page 260 there is an entry on the faculty of Abrac as well:   "Faculty of Abrac. In the so-called Leland Manuscript, it is said that Masons "conceal the way of wynninge the facultye of Abrac." That is, that they conceal the method of acquiring the powers bestowed by a knowledge of the magical talisman that is called Abracadabra." In this Freemason's Magazine from 1796 a whole section which mentions the Abrac/Abracadabra connection referring to what also Mackey refers which is The Leland Manuscript (sometimes called The Locke Manuscript "in consequence of the suppositous annotations appended to it by that metaphysician", see The Leland Manuscript by Mackey.) "THE FREEMASONS' MAGAZINE, AN EXPLANATION OF THE  FACULTYE OF ABRAC. See Vol. III. p. 82. TO THE EDITOR.    SIR, I WAS extremely delighted with the copy of that ancient and venerable manuscript concerning Free-masonry with which you obliged to the public. Mr. Locke's notes and explanatory remarks do the paper great honour, and his declaration and the lady's have contributed to encrease the number of Masons in several lodges. There are however some passages so obscure that Mr. Locke himself knows not what to make of them. The way of wynning the facultye of Abrac is one; which I shall endeavour to elucidate. I apprehend, that by the facultye of Abrac is meant the chimerical virtues ascribed to the magical term ABRACADABRA, written or repeated in a particular manner. This fanciful charm is supposed to have been invented by the elder Serenus Samoniacus, in the time of the Emperors Severus and Caracalla; and was though to be efficacious in curing agues, and preventing other diseases. ---The way of writing it was thus: A    B     R     A     C     A     D     A     B     R     A A     B     R     A     C     A     D     A     B     R A     B     R     A     C     A     D     A     B A     B     R     A     C     A     D     A A     B     R     A     C     A     D A     B     R     A     C     A A     B     R     A    C A     B     R     A A     B     R A     B A  A paper so inscribed was tied about the neck of the patient. It is the more probable that this may be the true explanation of the facultye of Abrac, because we see that several of the mysteries of masonry enumerated in this old piece, are obscurely, imperfectly, or corruptly expressed. For instance, Peter Gower. Who would imagine that Peter Gower was Pythagoras in disguise? Yet how naturally and satisfactory is the corruption accounted for, by the medium which Mr. Lock has so happily discovered? Pythagoras seems to have been fated to transmigrations. The transmigration of Euphorbus into Pythagoras seems scarce more incredible, than (at first sight) the transmigraiton of Pythagoras into Peter Gower.   Another explanation of the above is to be seen in Mr. Hutchinson's Spirit of Masonry. p. 33, and in Brother Preston's Illustrations of Masonry." There is also Illustrations of Masonry, by William Preston & George Oliver,  in pages 95-97 which says:   "Mr. Lock has made several judicious observations on the answer which is given to the question here proposed. His being in the dark concerning the meaning of the faculty of Abrac, I am not surprised at, nor can I conceive how he could otherwise be. ABRAC is an abbreviation of the word ABRACADABRA. In the days of ignorance and superstition, that word had a magical signification; but the explanation of it is now lost. [Mr. Hutchinson, in his ingenious treatise, entitled The Spirit of Masonry, gives the following explanation of the word ABRAC; which, as it is curious, I shall here insert in that gentleman's own words: "ABRAC, or ABRACAR, was a name which Basilides, a religious of the second century, gave to God; who, he said, was the author of three hundred and sixty-five. "The author of this superstition is said to have lived in the time of Adrian, and that it had its name after ABRASAN, or ABRAXAS, the denomination which Basilides gave to the Deity. He called him the Supreme God, and ascribed to him seven subordinate powers or angles, who presided over the heavens: and also, according to the number of the days in the year, held, that three hundred and sixty-five virtues, powers, or intelligences, existed as the emanations of God; the value, or numerical distinction of the letters in the word, according to the ancient Greek numerals, made 365. Α    Β    Ρ    Α    Ξ    Α    Σ   1    2    100   1   60   1   200 "Among Antiquaries, ABRAXAS is an antique gem, or stone, with the word ABRAXAS engraved on it. There are a great many kinds of them, of various figures and sizes, mostly as old as the third century. Persons professing the religious principles of Basilides wore this gem with great veneration as an amulet, from whose virtues, and the protection of the Deity, to whom it was consecrated, and with whose name it was inscribed, the wearer derived health, prosperity, and safety. "There is deposited in the British Museum such a gem, which is a besil stone, of the form of an egg. The head is in cameo, the reverse in intaglio. "In church history, ABRAX is noted as a mystical term, expressing the Supreme God; under whome the Basilidians supposed three hundred and sixty-five dependent deities; it was the principle of the Gnostic hierarchy, whence sprang their multitudes of thæns. From ABRAXAS is proceeded their PRIMOGENIAL MIND; from the primogenial mind, the Logos, or Word; from the Logos, the PHRONÆSIS, SOPHIA and DYNAMIS, or Wisdom and Strength; from these two proceeded PRINCIPALITIES, Powers, and ANGELS; and from these, other angels, to the number of three hundred and sixty-five, who were supposed to have the government of so many celestial orbs committed to their care." So, we can see that as far back as the 17-1800's the 'facultye of Abrac', or Abraxas was at least somewhat known about, though the Gnostic discourse mentioned above ("The Eighth Reveals the Ninth", as it is called here since it's actual name is not fully given.) was not discovered until 1945 [= 'The Way of Abraxas' - reflecting on a newer level this year in 2015 as 'The Way of the Lama Serpent', or Serpent Lama or SERPENT LAM = 1111] and deciphered until 1947 [=THE SECRET HAS BEEN REVEALED]. The Ogdoadic and Enneadic traditions however go clear back to the Egyptian dynasties and span up to the present day with the Golden Dawn system largely of the Septuagint (7), the Ordo Astrum Solis of the Ogdoad (8) and the presently developing Enneadic Revival (9) on Malkuth with the 9 Typhonian Trilogies imparted by Kenneth Grant being a great foundational concentration and balance of the Horus and Set energies of Thelema fused with the primary keys of many of the important systems of the world and even tapping into the transplutonic, or otherworldly Gnosis which is slowly becoming more of a reality with both technological as well as psycho-philosophical advancements. The 9 pointed Star is known to Masons as the symbol of the 33rd Degree, and therefore it symbolizes the full flowering of the human soul, 33 being the two triangles forming the Hexagram of the Heart/Xin as well as the full Tree of Life including the Knowledge of Daath with it's full implications of the 'double tree', i.e. the double-headed Phoenix who is associated with Abraxas.  'The Highest Aeon Transcending Time' = 999 = 'The Aeon of Maat Outside Time' The 8 pointed Star is known as the Star of Ilu but it goes back to Sumeria where it is known as the Dingir which resembles the  Chaos magick star with the I/Eye/9 in the center and the Chinese bagua. There are 8 directions including the inbetween spaces of the cardinal directions, and 9 is 3 x 3 or the three dimensions projected into the grid # which veils the 8 directions with the 9th central square opened in the fractal expansion. 8 and 9 together are 17, the 1 divided from the 7, or Set with the Phallus of Osiris - which is unified by Isis (8+1) giving 9, the totality waking up or being reborn in Malkuth with the rising of the sun. 17 is related to Osiris who is also related to Orion and there are 17 stars in Orion that are visible to the naked eye. 17 is specifically related to reincarnation or resurrection (The Light [7] resurrected in Malkuth [10]), and 107 is The Egg of Daath which recurs cyclically through time, the nature of which is nearly 'Unspeakable' though may be intuited if one goes around the cyclical path enough to recognize the nature of the fractal wheel of Abraxas.  Note: Using Greek - ΑΒΡΑΓ or 'ABRAC' = 107, the primary number of the Egg explored in this blog. Heaven and Hell - Dennis Konstantin THE HUMAN FORM = THE FIVE = 437 = 'The Pentagram' = FREEMASON = THE 418 418 is the value of Crowley's rendering of the Abracadabra formula as Abrahadabra with HAD at the heart which he wrote about extensively in various works. 418 is the number also of Aiwass in Greek Αιvαςς, as well as the ChIT - 'pure consciousness'. In his book to Frater Achad, Liber Aleph; The Book of Wisdom or Folly, Crowley veils certain things relating to Abrahadabra: DE HAC FORMULA CONSIDERATIONES KABBALISTICAE. Behold moreover, my Son, the Oeconomy of this Way, how it is according to the Tao, fulfilling itself wholly within thine own Sphere. And it is utterly in Tune with thine own Will on every Plane, so that every Part of thy Nature rejoiceth with every other Part, communicating Praise. Now then learn also how this Formula is that of the Word ABRAHADABRA. First, HAD is the Triangle erect upon twin Squares. Of Hadit need I not o write, for He hath hidden Himself in "The Book of the Law". This Substance is the Father, the Instrument is the Son, and the Metaphysical Ekstacy is the Holy Ghost, whose Name is HRILIU. These are then the Sun, Mercury, and Venus, whose sacred letters are R-ר, B-ב, and D-ד. But the last of the Diverse Letters is H-ה, which in the Tarot is the Star whose Eidolon is D-ד; and herein is that Arcanum concerning the Tao of which I have already written. Of this will I not write more plainly. But mark this, that our Trinity is our Path inwards in the Solar System, and that H being of our Lady Nuith starry, is an Anchor to this Magick which else were apt to deny our wholeness of Relation to the Outer as to the Inner. My son, ponder these Words, and profit by them; for I have wrought cunningly to conceal or to reveal, according to thine Intelligence, o my Son! Crowley mentions something else that is odd in The Wake World about 418 being a 'Charioteer' who is 19 years, which is odd because I turned 19 the year of my deeper Initiation with the reception of the 107 Egg in 2011 which was 102 years years Liber 418 was written in 1909, 102 being the number of Mayan the Magician also mentioned in that work being also the Future Mage mentioned by Nema, and the one to carry on certain work mentioned in Liber 729: The ABRAHADABRA Key "Abrahadabra," which is a most mysterious word, because it has eleven letters in it.... The charioteer is a most curious person; he is a great big crab in the most lovely glittering armour, and he can just drive!  His name is the mysterious name I told you {Nomen [Yod Heh Vau Aleph] = 22    22x19 = 418 = Abrahadabra} about with eleven letters in it, but we call him Jehu for short, because he's only nineteen years old." Note that NINETEEN = 184 which is A-Ch-D, Achad, 'unity', the unity of 1 through 9 in the 'Egg'=19, and a temurah of 418, both of which reduce to 13. NINETEEN in its highest Hebrew-English Gematria form with N final = 700 is 1225, or 35 x 35 - the Double KEY, the KEY cubed or the KEY of the Cube. ) 19 is said to be 'The Secret Code of God' for a number of reasons, but spelled out as 1225 it is equivalent with the HUMAN LOGOS of 'The Seven Archons' of the Πνευμα Μητρας, 'Spirit Matrix' which is Ενας Σε Ολα Τα Ολα Σε Ενα, 'One in All-All in One', one of Achad's formulas for the Universe. [Note 19 is also the number of IACh, a form of IAO.] 1225 is also the sum, or triangular number of 1 through 49, 49 being 7x7 or 'Light Cubed' (The fractal extension of the manifestation of Light). Both 1225 and 19 reduce to Unity, and so it is significant that it is also the value of a Hebrew title of Kether : עתיקא דעתיקינ, 'The Ancient of the Ancient Ones'; and a verse from the Bible, Exodus 3:15: זֶה שְּׁמִי לְעֹלָם וְזֶה זִכְרִי לְדֹר דֹּר, This is My eternal name-and this is My memory from generation to generation. Thus being One with the Logos all is known by the Over-mind of 'God' which is symbolized by the 1 in 10 and 10 in 1, or 'One in All/All in One'. In Binary, 110101 is '53', the number of both DMT and Ακακια, the holy wood of immortality use for the Ark of the Covenant which contains DMT, a substance created by the pineal gland when one achieves the state of 'one-in-all-all-in-one' (Note 5x3 = 15, 'Ayin'-O, the Ajna), and 53 is also the degree of the angle of the Pythagorean triangle where Horus and Osiris meet (See Maat and Masonry). 53 is also ABN, the Stone, which connects back to 184 which is also the CHINTAMANI - the Stone which Achad concerned himself with as the MA-ION. MAION as 171 is 13 (AChD) less than 184 (A-Ch-D), but counting them all together as the MAION ABN CHINTAMANI the number 408 is obtained which is The Sapphire Stone itself, אבן הספיר - ABN H'SPhIR as the 'Maion Abn/Stone Chintamani - and if you subtract 'FRATER' from 408 -13 (negative AChD) is obtained, as if to show that Frater Achad is right there 'beyond the 0/Abyss', or inside the Egg. THE COMING OF LAM'S EGG = 418 = 'The Egg of Mu' Certainly he was on to something with his calculations, he just happened to die two years later (after 1948) and wasn't able to fully expand upon it. Kenneth Grant was the main person to carry this further, as well as a little bit of work done by various Maatians, such as Bertiaux, Greenfield, and others - but it really took awhile to develop and 'gestate' in egg a while for things to really be able to be put in scope and developed by someone with the inner-connections to these cyclically manifesting cosmic currents. I was 19 when I began this blog and the Egg was hatched in 2012, the year which the Mayan's prophesized Kukulkan (=102 = my name in Simple Gematria) would bring the SERPENT LINK (=999, K=500) to humanity at large. This has effectively been done yet is still in its formative stages. Kenneth Grant reformulates Abrahadabra in Beyond the Mauve Zone as ABRAChADABRA exchanging Heh for Cheth making AChD/'Unity' central to the formula instead of HAD, bringing the total value up from 418 to 421 the value of THE EGG which re-manifested, as a re-incarnation of Aiwass precisely on April 2, 2011 carrying on THE WORK OF THE EGG. This also makes the formula more consistent with it's ancient relations to Abrac/Abrax/Abraxas. Returning to the subject at hand, the value of ABRAC using Cheth is 212, the number of the Boiling Point in degrees Fahrenheit - 'The Boiling Water Degree', as well as 'Zero-Point Energy'. 212 is the value of ZHR, the Hebrew form of 'Zohar' which means 'Splendour' or 'Radiance', the same title as the Eighth sephira Hod associated with Abraxas - the 'radiance' from the Zero-Point - 'THE KEY OF MAGICK' or THEE MAGICKAL FACULTYE. 212 x 11 (Od/Aud, The Magick Power) = 2332, which happens to be the sum of the triangle of ABRAChADABRA in Hebrew-English Gematria. A    B     R     A     C     A     D     A     B     R     A = 421 A     B     R     A     C     A     D     A     B     R = 420 A     B     R     A     C     A     D     A     B =  220 A     B     R     A     C     A     D     A = 218 A     B     R     A     C     A     D =  217 A     B     R     A     C     A =  213 A     B     R     A    C = 212 A     B     R     A = 204 A     B     R = 203 A     B = 3 A = 1 Total = 2332 THE FACULTY OF ABRAXAS is 911, a number which has been stigmatized like 666 and associated with negativity such as the police and the events of September 11th, however it is a number of power being that of THE ZERO POINT which is active when it is the Pointed Zero (☉/10) form between the 9 and 11. 911 is also the formula of LAM-IPSOS / IPSOS-LAM [M final = 600], mentioned by Grant in Outside the Circles of Time (page 280) as 'The Maatian formula for evoking Lam', 10 being Malkuth/Muladhara/Lam which is a 'mask' of the Zero-point. 911 is also 'THE SECRET WORD WHICH I HAVE GIVEN UNTO HIM', that word being MA-ION [N final = 700], which as 821 is 90 less than 911, and therefore THE LAM-MAION is 911, 821 being THE GEMATRIA CODES of THE CHILD OF LIBER AL. Most importantly however, 911 is Αξων, 'Wheel', 'Axis', 'Pole' - the Axis or Axle being the center of the torus and therefore the heart of Abraxas - the Ομφαλος, 'Omphalos' or 'Center' from which is drawn the Ακμων, 'Meteoric Stone'/'Thunderbolt' (i.e. Magickal Creative Power of the 'Divine Light').  Azathoth - John Coulthart In the course of writing this post I had a dream just last night wherein I was doing a banishing ritual in an astral ritual chamber levitating as I do very often in my dreams above and surrounded by an empty vacuum of space. This is the timeless realm of the Egg of Abraxas which is co-terminous with the Ma-Ion, the astral K'rla Cell beyond space-time which is developed and empowered as the fractal Diamond-Light Rainbow Body. After remembering I had this dream today I calculated simply 'THE BANISHING RITUAL IN A DREAM' and just like many things that come to me almost like 'transmissions' from THE GENIUS MIND (=888), the 'received' phrase has a value of 777. 777 being the Light World of the 7 Rays it is also THE ASTRAL SEA of the ASTRAL PLANE DREAMS, each of which are like a 'BUBBLES' (=107) of AZATHOTH (=107) as what Crowley called "aggregates of experience". The ability to awaken in this way is the Faculty of Abraxas for it is the aligning with the Higher Self  and having calculated many Buddhist things and finding many things that = 777 it is significant to see it's also THE VAJRAYANA SIGHT of THE SEVEN PRIMAL RAYS of THE PHOENIX LIGHT, the re-incarnating, or re-creative eternal light.  The generation of the power of Abrax can be done with the method given in the Chinese Book of Life as expanded upon by Wilhelm and Jung in The Secret of the Golden Flower which gives the method of the Circulation of Light to create the golden elixir of 'chin' or Xin. XIN is 800 and is secreted from the GLAND (88). The XIN GLAND-888 is specifically related to the THE CIRCULATION+THE LIGHT. THE GOLDEN FLOWER which blossoms as a result of this is 889, THE INVISIBLE JEWEL of THE HOLY GUARDIAN ANGEL - the One in the midst of the 8th Gnostic Aeon. Adding OM to THE GOLDEN FLOWER which is unfolded by it's utterance gives 999, THE HIGHER POWER of THE HIGHEST UNITY UTTERMOST SHOWED of THE GOLD TAO EGG of the PERFECT MANI-STONE which arrived to me on April 2nd, 2011 as a talismanic manifestation of my having aligned with the Current of Maat (The Perfect-Ion) on September 9, 2009 (9-9-9) successfully channeling THE SUPREME KNOWLEDGE without my conscious awareness at the time. More of this Knowledge will be disseminated as it is more properly integrated and much more is to be published soon expanding on many more different routes of analysis using this frame of context. Bibliography and additional reading: ۞ Illustrations of Masonry by One of the Fraternity who has devoted Thirty Years to the Subject - William Morgan (1827) Illustrations of Masonry - William Preston (1867) The New Free-mason's Monitor Or, Masonic Guide - James Hardie (1819) The Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry - George F. Fort (1884) Free Masonry: Its Pretensions Exposed In Faithful Extracts Of Its Standard Authors - Henry Ward (1827) Lightfoot's Manual of the Lodge or Monitorial Instructions in the Three Degrees of Symbolic Masonry, as Exemplified in the Grand Jurisdiction of Texas - Jewel Lightfoot The Mystery of the Royal Arch Word - Arturo de Hoyos, 33° Occultic and Masonic Influence in Early Mormonism - Joel B. Groat The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth - The Nag Hammadi Library Hermetic Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth - Angel at Gnostic-Unrest Stages of Ascension in Hermetic Rebirth - Dan Merkur Election of Hermes Trismegistus from The Discourse on the Eighth & Ninth - Rennaissance Astrology

I kept wondering why, this month, NOT ONE PERSON had made a comment on my blog.  I mean... was it that boring?  that uninspiring?  that miserable?  But then the second person TODAY said, "is something wrong?  I keep checking for your blog update and it hasn't shown up...." so I went online and checked... and sure enough, the November post was missing in action!  I re-posted and hopefully everyone can see it now.  Stay tuned for the December blog update - it should have pictures from the big juried portion of the Houston quilt show, as well as some pictures of some things I've been working on.  And also, some thoughts as I walk into 2015... on how to downsize the UFO pile!  See you soon! Sue The big IQA quilt show is in town!  Here in Houston, with over fifty-five thousand visitors, it is the largest convention in town - bigger than Oil town's Offshore Technology Conference!  I was ready to walk my feet off and be wow-ed by all the sights and scenes of this magnificent show - and I was not disappointed.  I'll give you just a taste of what I saw - and then show you a few more things (like what I've been working on) - and then close with pictures of the 28 quilts made by the generous ladies who donated star blocks to be made into quilts.  As always, there's a story in all of these wanderings.  So put your feet up, grab a favorite beverage, and follow along....   One could not help but be impressed with the Ruby Jubilee exhibit at the quilt festival.  Ruby is the gem that celebrates 40 years... and this year's exhibit celebrated the 40 years of Festival - the name the locals call the IQA quilt show in Houston.  The exhibit was inspired by the 2011 "Infinite Variety:  Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts" exhibit in New York.  Red is a color denoting lover, power, lust, death, and more - and when combined with white, there is a great dynamic visual impact.      The good thing about the display was the number of quilts you could see in a smaller area - but the tough thing was that many of them were very high up and we could not see the intricate details.  Nonetheless, I loved this exhibit.     There were many varieties of red and white quilts:  pieced, appliqued, combinations of piecing and applique, redwork, and more.      Unfortunately, each quilt did not have an identification marker so you could easily find out who made the quilt and the story behind it.  There were a few notebooks on tables near the exhibit, and each page in the notebook had a photo of one of the quilts, the name of the quilt artist(s) and the artist's statement.  I had no time to hunt down the identification of each quilt... so I hope the artists will forgive me and enjoy the photos in my blog as much as I enjoyed the show.     Aren't they all just too grand for words?     This one was very large and particularly striking!     But no matter the size or shape, they were all striking in their own way.     Some of the quilts were new; some were old.     This unique red and white lone star really caught my eye, also - the border is quite a nice addition.                     I was tickled pink to see the quilt below at the Ruby Jubilee exhibit; it was made using my Washington Medallion pattern.  I love the reds!     What a grand paper cut quilt!  So much applique, and worth every stitch, right?!     This was a popular Amish design in the 1800s.         Look at this quilt!  It was hanging at the tippy-top of the ring of red and white quilts and I got a picture of it... but Margo Clabo had sent me a picture of it before the show.  What can I say besides WOW!  I'm glad that she sent the picture because I would otherwise have no idea how beautiful the quilting was, much less that she has a gorgeous tiny line of white piping in the outer border.  I am swooning over this quilt! There were so many unbelievable quilts.  I don't know if they've even thought about it, but I'd love for IQA or Quilts, Inc. to produce a book of these quilts.       I have a ton more red and white quilt photos - I will save them for another time.  The George Brown Convention Center where the quilt show is held covers more than a whole city block and is three stories high.  The quilt show fills the entire venue, top to bottom.  During quilt market, which is when I took these photos, you get a chance to talk to shops, manufacturers, dealers in various wares and notions, etc.  I love this part of the show - I get to see what trends are headed our way (welcome to Modern quilts and Modern quilt fabrics, hexies, and western fabrics...), what new tools are on the market, and what new vendors are popping up.   One of my favorite vendors is Brenda Henning from Bear Paw Productions (www.bearpawproductions.com) .  She sells a product called Triangulations.  It is a CD that you pop into your laptop, let it load, and once it's there, any time you want to print out paper foundations, you just click on the Triangulations file and print out page-sized paper foundations for half-square or quarter-square triangles, sized as you need them from 1/2 inch up to 8 inches in quarter-inch increments.  I LOVE the ease of using this software to make all my pieced half and quarter-square triangles when I need them.  Here's Brenda - a wonderful, soft-spoken woman who has made gorgeous quilts...     She has a book out...       And here is the surprise she told me at this year's market:  Very SOON she will be coming out with a CD that will make flying geese paper foundations!  Imagine... being able to print out sheets of paper, so that you can stitch up your flying geese strips in no time at all, perfectly sized.  Wow!  I can't wait to see these and order my very own.  YES, I am excited about it! I stopped and talked to Mary Ellen and Paula in Red Crinoline -- they are always such fun to see.  Paula is coming out with a new line of fabrics that are specifically border print designs.  Mary Ellen has her finger in all the quilts that are made using Paula's fabric.  This is another "I can't wait" item!   As I wandered around the vendor floor, I ran into lots of new interesting people and saw lots of interesting things in booths.  In the AQS publishing booth... I talked to a woman about a new book that is out.    The book is full of red and white quilts that are quilted in a spectacular manner.  Talk about inspiration?!!  Here is Single Irish Chain (34 x 40") by Margaret Solomon Gunn.  Don't you love how the simple Irish chain block is given new life with some unique quilting?     Here is a detail photo of the quilting in this quilt.   The quilt below is Eight-Pointed Star by Sue Patten. This one is Square in a Square by Sue Nickels.    Here is a detail photo of the quilt - you can see the lovely quilting, along with the variety of reds used in the quilt.  A red button is in the center of each square.    If you like these quilts, you can learn more about how to make them in Linda Baxter Lasco's book, Red, White and Quilted.    The juried show at Festival is enormous and amazing.  Here is one of the juried quilts that caught my eye immediately.  It is called Waratah and was made by Melinda Bula, whose quilts are among my favorite.  This particular quilt was Melinda's interpretation of the unusual flower called the Waratah, just as it was dying and the petals are open wide.  Melinda added the Kangaroo paws and the dots that the Aboriginal people love to put in their art work.    Melinda used fusible applique, thread painting, and machine quilting when she made this quilt.  I would love to learn how to do quilting like this!   There are a ton more quilts to show you from the juried show, as well as the special exhibits.  I'll be showing those to you in the coming blog posts, but for now, since I'm supposed to be packing for the show opening tomorrow (I'm writing this early and will post it on the first of the month...), I'll just show you what I've been working on.... and then some things that were purchased at Festival.... and finally, I'll close with a photo of each of the 28 NASA Stars quilts.  Please visit my blog again in the coming months and I'll have some knock-your-socks-off quilts to show you! * * *   I spent a good deal of time this month teaching little 7-year old Daisy how to assemble the quilt blocks she bought at my guild's auction into a quilt top.  She has enough blocks to make two quilt tops -- and is delighted at the thought of turning one of them into a "quillow" - a quilt that has a pocket on the back so that you can tuck the quilt into it and make it a pillow.  I just wanted to put a plug in to every quilter possibly donating a bit of time to inspire and teach young quilters how to quilt.  It's fun for me - and rewarding when it's my own grand daughter!  So here is Daisy... have you ever seen such intensity?!  Gotta love it!  I'll show you her quilt when it's finally done.   In the mean time, what is this collection of red and white scraps all about?   And why do I have this picture of an antique quilt?   Because!  I was inspired to make a quilt that was...      1.  Fairly simple      2.  Light and airy      3.  and had plenty of places to do some soft, elegant quilting. I looked at a lot of antique quilts and finally decided on nine designs that I liked - some were inspired by the quilt above, and some were inspired by other antique quilts.  What I really wanted to do, though, was to have a quilt where I could insert one- by two-inch flying geese sashing strips.  Yes, one- by two-inch flying geese strips.  No, I'm not crazy... I think those little geese are just what my quilt needed!   Here's a close-up of a corner of the quilt top; I'd show you more, but the quilt is loaded on my longarm machine.  With any luck (i.e., planning...), I'll be showing you the finished quilt next month.  That's a stretch for me, but I'm going to try!   See.... here it is, loaded and ready to go!  Once it's quilted, I'll start working on writing up the instructions and patterns for this quilt; it should be available on my website right after the first of the year.   But now that this quilt is so far along, what else am I working on?  I've still got plans for a 9-block complex (as opposed to the above simple/airy quilt) quilt.  I have four blocks done and just finished designing the fifth block.  Once a block is designed, I choose all of the fabrics I need for the quilt, put them in a box, and don't second-guess which other fabrics might be better.  I can drive myself crazy doing that, so I set boundaries.  Here is the fabric set for this basket of fruit with a blue jay, below.  If I really buckle down and crack the whip, maybe I can show you a finished block next month!   I've also continued to work on my half-square triangle/flying geese blocks that my daughter and I are both making, based on the "Thorns and Roses" quilt in Civil War Legacies II by Carol Hopkins.  This is a great book. Because I'm not the best piecer in the world, I rely on paper foundations.  In making this block, I made my own paper foundations, which made the blocks so much simpler for me to make.   With paper foundations, I can whip out one of these blocks in 10-12 minutes once I've pre-cut my fabric.  Whee!!! But I started thinking that I needed a bit of variation in my blocks, so I started changing up what the center square consisted of (other than a plain 2-inch finished size square of fabric).  It will be kind of fun to insert these odd little blocks among the others.   While I was making those blocks, my daughter happened to come over and make four churn dash blocks.  That got us both to thinking about the set of blocks we were putting together.  Hmmm...  what if we alternated the half-square triangle and flying geese blocks with churn dash blocks?  I think it looks pretty cool!     That's what I've been working on this month... but I have a few more things to show you.  First, a few purchases I made at Festival (this is before festival even starts!).  Jeanne Sullivan came and stayed with me and we went to quilt market along with my friend Cynthia -- and we all gathered up lots of ideas, and wiped out our savings.  Jeanne is now a dealer for Kangaroo Kabinets (www.jeannesullivandesign.com; she'll have the products posted on her website in the near future).  She dived into getting her own wonderful set of sewing room furniture for her studio - I'm envious!   We also both bought "Ideal Seam Guides" -- if you see this product somewhere, let someone demonstrate it for you.  These guides help you maintain a perfect seam allowance as you feed fabric into your sewing machine.  I have great hopes that my piecing will improve by leaps and bounds.  But wait!  Wait!  There's more!  Not only does it do that, it also allows you to do some mighty perfect machine quilting where your cross-hatching lines are simply perfect - even if you're doing quarter-inch cross-hatching.  Really?  Absolutely!   English paper piecing has been the rage this year.  One of the booths at market caught my eye and I bought packs and packs of English paper piecing templates to make Lemoyne stars.  But I couldn't believe how far hexies have come!  JoAnne Louis was in the Paper Pieces booth, wearing her crocs.  Someone had painted them for her.... awesome! One purchase made by Jeanne Sullivan was a wonderful antique oak leaf quilt from Julie Silber of The Quilt Complex.  We laid it out on the floor in my foyer -- it was so big that I couldn't get a picture of the whole quilt.   I worked on it in Photoshop and managed to straighten out the photo above.  This quilt is 100 inches square and is in pristine condition with rich, dynamic color.  Wow!  The applique in it was perfect - as was the quilting.   The block was a beauty in itself.   And the feathered swags in the open squares were so elegant. Jeanne purchased a second beauty - a red and green and cheddar tulip pot design. I love cheddar -- and this quilt had rich, rich color in it.  Look at the tiny little birds on the plant, too.  These are SO cute!  The triple-row border has a lovely six-row cable quilted across the rows, while the sashing and cornerstone strips are quilted with one-inch cross-hatching. What did I purchase?  Some smaller items.  Here is a little antique hand-pieced Lemoyne star with a circle in the center.    I bought it because of the lettering:  Be not weary of well doing ~ Rachel H. Valentine.  These blocks were made in 1849. I bought a second one with a different red print.   The lettering in it reads:  Hannah H. Gilbert ~ Hope is a cheering companion.  I love the sentiment in this block.  I plan on using both of them as centers of a medallion quilt. I bought a quilt from Cindy Rennels; just like Julie Silber, she has wonderful antique quilts every year, tempting me no end.  This particular quilt is a triangle quilt made of red prints, tan prints, and a few navy prints, along with a large variety of shirtings.  I love the bright, happy look of this quilt top. Here's a close-up of the triangles - they are so pretty.  I failed to photo one that has white polka dots on a red background; I think those triangles are part of what make the quilt so "happy." I bought Old Patchwork Quilts by Ruth Finley from Julie Silber - it is a very early book on quilting and will surely inspire me with its stories of early quilts. Mary Koval tempted me with this Princess Feather quilt top -- I love Princess Feather quilts and someday this one will be in the center of a quilt top that I intend to make.  At least that's the plan.  I had better take care of myself so that I can live a long time! Julie Silber had this quilt top in her booth and to be honest...  it was the first quilt I spotted when I started looking at the antique quilt booths.  It haunted me!  I must have gone back to that booth ten times the first day... and finally couldn't resist it any longer on the second day.  I'm SO glad it was still there.... these quilts often go quickly! The beauty of this quilt for me was the center spoke circle, along with the background print that enveloped it -- and the open blocks that will allow me to do some beautiful feathered wreaths.  Again... I can't wait to start on this one! Here was a tiny little hand-appliqued/pieced block that I found in Mary Koval's booth.  Dare I say that it is "darling"?  I wanted it because I think it's beautiful (see the quarter to see how tiny it is!) and I can just see (in my mind's eye) a TON of these little blocks in a quilt.  Okay - so I need to live way past one hundred, with my sight, my joints, and my mind still intact. Okay - I must confess that right now I'm inserting a little paragraph here, writing it AFTER the quilt show opened, while everything else was written BEFORE the quilt show opened.  It is true confession time...  I went to the show with a budget in my head.... and it went out the window.  The budget, not my head.  You see, I have a love of princess feather quilts that is unquenchable.  Maybe that's an overstatement, but it's close.  I simple drool over princess feather quilts.  I saw several at the show.  One was a finished quilt with a large single princess feather in the middle, surrounded by bars of brown and cream and green.  One had four princess feathers on it, but each one only had four solid red arms on it instead of eight red and green ones, and they were kind of spiky-looking.  It was very unique!  Another one was a classic four-block princess feather quilt but the green feather arms were in that teal blue-green instead of "real" green - and the center of each princess feather was not the usual star, but a big multi-petal rose with a covered button in the middle of it!  These were each unusual and beautiful... but then I saw another one that wiped me out!  Would you believe a combination of a princess feather and a Christmas cactus or amaranth bush?  I wouldn't have... until I saw this one.  Photos will come next month, I promise!  I bought it!  And just when I thought I was done buying quilt tops, what should appear before my eyes but a gorgeous Whig Rose quilt with the chunkiest vines I've ever seen!  Of course, it ended up coming home with me.  I will write about these next month, and will include the incredible artistry of MANY more quilts that were in the Houston quilt show.  This was a great year for quilts -- there were SO MANY GOOD ONES!  So you'll see them along with my comments starting next month.  Now, back to what I wrote earlier... The quilt below was in the exhibits area.  Do you see that star in center column, fifth row down?  That was made by astronaut Karen Nyland while  she was onboard the International Space Station for six months.   Here was the description of the block:   The public was invited, last year, to submit their own 8" star blocks... and they poured in to NASA.  A team of local quilters managed to assemble 28 quilts, quilt them, and bind them after the blocks came in.  Here's one of them - with blocks submitted by children!   Below are the remaining quilts - I took pictures of each of them so that if you made a star and it was included in the quilt, you might be able to find it.  Unfortunately, not everyone's star made it into these 28 quilts - but if you made a star, it was at the exhibit.  Those that have not been assembled into a quilt top were all placed in sleeves in a notebook so that everyone could scan through the notebooks and see tons more stars.  Take a look... at all the stars!                                          Here are samples of some of the stars in the books.  Everyone who submitted a block... your work is amazing!     That's all I have for this month, but please return again next month - the pictures I have left to show you are incredible!        Until then, happy quilting... Sue (c)2014 Susan H. Garman www.comequilt.com