Socrates: “For him, therefore, I said, the worthy people do not seek authority for either the money or the glory; for neither they nor the willed want to be characterized, receiving an obvious salary for their office or thieves, profit from it. Nor again for glory; for they are not ambitious. So we need to have a compulsion for them and some punishment to want to exercise power – thus almost be considered a shame to take one voluntarily government office before they forced to do so – and the greatest punishment here is the dominates one of his worst since he will not be willing to rule.
Fearing for her just punishment receive in my opinion to exert power worthy people when sometimes happen to take power in their hands, and take it to rule not with the idea that awaits them there anything good or that would wellbeing but as if they are going to something they need to do, and they do not have some of their better ones, or even theirs, to give it to them. “
Yes! I might get old and my style too but if we look in the history of humans, the way of making arts (I mention art because I think it’s the power of God given to us to be a creator, a part of God.) has been lost and so our power of imaginations. What a pity that we laze our abilities through using the technics and making ourselves as an idle!
If anyone tries to claim that modern day movies have too many special effects remind them of this. Films have always used special effects to trick the audience, and we’re just using new variations of tools from a century ago. In fact, right from the beginning, creators like Georges Méliès were pushing the boundaries of celluloid and 24 frames per second like the showmen and magicians they were.
By the time we get to the silent comedians as seen in our above video, technology had advanced along with the pure physical comedy of the stars. Yes, they were amazing and nimble athletes, but they weren’t stupid. Camera trickery helped them look superhuman.
The first example shows Harold Lloyd’s iconic stunt from 1923’s Safety Last!, where he hung over the streets of Los Angeles from a clock face. Only he wasn’t really. Using forced perspective, a constructed building edifice, and a safe mattress a few feet below shows how Lloyd faced no danger at all. Editing, too, creates so much of the effect, as we have seen how high the clock is compared to the ground in previous shots. The angle on the streets below and in the distance really sell the scene compared to just shooting the sky.
In fact, this forced perspective is still used in modern films: Peter Jackson used it a lot in The Lord of the Rings to give the impression that Gandalf was twice as tall as Hobbit Frodo simply by constructing the sets smaller.
And when backgrounds are basic like sand dunes, even the low budget filmmaker can achieve some amazing effects with no money, just a bunch of cool miniatures:
Then again, Jackie Chan one-upped Lloyd for real in his 1983 film Project A, when he dangles from a three-story clock hand only to crash through two canopies onto the ground below. It’s a stunt so nice, they show you it twice!
The other favourite trick of the silent films was a matte painting. As long as the camera doesn’t move, a piece of glass with a photo-realistic painting on it can seamlessly fit into the action.
In Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 Modern Times, that allows the comedian to skate very close to a three-floor drop without even being in danger. (Technically, the camera *does* move in this shot, but it’s a short pan which wouldn’t affect the illusion.)
This old-school method has gone away, though up through the ‘80s great matte painting artists were working on films like the Star Wars trilogy and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Now a digital matte artist works in three dimensions, not two, with endless finesse and tweaking at their disposal, like in Game of Thrones:
The matte is the basis, really, of all modern digital effects. Wherever there is a green screen, you’re seeing the evolution of the matte. You probably have an app on your phone that does something similar, and can magically transport you to where you really want to be…just like film.
Ted Mills is a freelance writer on the arts who currently hosts the artist interview-based FunkZone Podcast and is the producer of KCRW’s Curious Coast. You can also follow him on Twitter at @tedmills, read his other arts writing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.
Happy New Year! Exciting times ahead especially on January 20th when a Super Blood Wolf Moon with an eclipse will be viewed by folks in Europe, West Africa, Northern Russia and the Americas North, Central and South.
This extraordinary moon with its’ dark reddish hue will look larger than life contrasting in the dark sky. What is a lunar eclipse you ask? A lunar eclipse happens when our planet Earth travels between our Moon and Sun and aligns with them to block the Sun’s light that normally would reflect off our Moon.
According to the Farmer’s Almanac,“There are three types of lunar eclipses: total, partial, and penumbral, with the most dramatic being a total lunar eclipse—when the Earth’s shadow totally covers the Moon. A lunar eclipse can occur only when there is a full Moon: January’s Wolf Moon turns 100% full on the 21st at 12:16 a.m. EST.”
“..not fidelity to the law but love and kindness are the antithesis of evil. The wings of the dove temper the malignity of the air..” C.G. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis
Let’s talk about Magician! I’m a Persian and born in Persia named Iran now, and I have been named Aladin, by my father. It’s surely enough to be a reason for my dreaming to have a “Magiclamp”. Oh yes, there’s the orient and with full of fairy tales; amongst Thousand and one night. Therefore, and also because of my complicated childhood, my soul has been very traumatized I have got used to escape in my dreams and illusions, with the help of the fairy tales. the wonderful books which I’ve got, thanks to my father’s profession; Writing, I had the opportunity to find a good book to read.
But when I’d grown up, I had got to be very seriously logical! every time, more and more to leave the magical and fairy world and being alone with facts.was it a rescue for me as I might be disappointed to find the magic? in any case, I’ve got; one might say; cold as ice! my dear late brother had been calling me Data, as the same one in the TV serial: “Enterprise, the next generation”. this was an amazing issue for me to find out that my brother, as he was an ingrained Artist and writer, living in his own world full of dreams and illusions, envied me because of my cold logical soul! to put it bluntly, it is a real might to have a cold soul, untouchable and tabu.
Anyway, here is a fascinating description of this issue as the master told us about the magic and to be magical. It gives me my stabilities to stay on solid ground. Thank you, Dr Jung, thank You My dear Brother of soul Al Fazel
It is an error to believe that there are magical practices that one can learn. One cannot understand magic. One can only understand what accords with reason. Magic accords with unreason, which one cannot understand. The world accords not only with reason but also with unreason. But just as one employs reason to make sense of the world, in that what is reasonable about it approaches reason, a lack of understanding also accords with unreason. This meeting is magical and eludes comprehension. Magical understanding is what one calls noncomprehension.
Everything that works magically is incomprehensible, and the incomprehensible often works magically. One calls incomprehensible workings magical. The magical always surrounds me, always involves me. it opens spaces that have no doors and leads out into the open where there is no exit. The magical is good and evil and neither good nor evil. Magic is dangerous since what accords with unreason confuses, allures and provokes; and I am always its first victim. Where reason abides, one needs no magic. Hence our time no longer needs magic. Only those without reason needed it to replace their lack of reason. But it is thoroughly unreasonable to bring together what suits reason with magic since they have nothing to do with one another. Both become spoiled through being brought together. Therefore all those lacking reasons quite rightly fall into superfluity and disregard. A rational man of this time will therefore never use magic.
But it is another thing for whoever has opened the chaos in himself We need magic to be able to receive or invoke the messenger and the communication of the incomprehensible. We recognized that the world comprises reason and unreason, and we also understood that our way needs not the only reason but also unreason. This distinction is arbitrary and depends upon the level of comprehension. But one can be certain that the greater part of the world eludes our understanding. We must value the incomprehensible and unreasonable equally, although they are not necessarily equal in themselves; a part of the incomprehensible, however, is only presently incomprehensible and might already concur with reason tomorrow. But as long as one does not understand it, it remains unreasonable. Insofar as the incomprehensible accords with reason, one may try to think it with success; but insofar as it is unreasonable, one needs magical practices to open it up.
The practice of magic consists in malting what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner. The magical way is not arbitrary since that would be understandable, but it arises from incomprehensible grounds. Besides, to speak of grounds is incorrect, since grounds concur with reason. Nor can one speak of the groundless, since hardly anything further can be said about this. The magical way arises by itself If one opens up chaos, magic also arises. One can teach the way that leads to chaos, but one cannot teach magic. One can only remain silent about this, which seems to be the best apprenticeship. This view is confusing, but this is what magic is like. Where reason establishes order and clarity, magic causes disarray and a lack of clarity. One indeed needs a reason for the magical translation of the not-understood into the understandable, since only by means of reason can the understandable be created. No one can say how to use reason, but it does arise if one tries to express only what an opening of chaos means.
Magic is a way of living. If one has done one’s best to steer the chariot, and one then notices that a greater other is actually steering it, then magical operation takes place. One cannot say what the effect of magic will be, since no one can know it in advance because the magic is lawless, which occurs without rules and by chance, so to speak But the condition is that one totally accepts it and does not reject it, in order to transfer everything to the growth of the tree. Stupidity too is part of this, which everyone has a great deal of, and also tastelessness, which is possibly the greatest nuisance. Thus a certain solitude and isolation are inescapable conditions of life for the well-being of oneself and of the other, otherwise one cannot sufficiently be oneself A certain slowness of life, which is like a standstill, will be unavoidable. The uncertainty of such a life will most probably be its greatest burden, but still, I must unite the two conflicting powers of my soul and keep them together in a true marriage until the end of my life since the magician is called Diahmon and his wife Bacchus.
I hold together what Christ has kept apart in himself and through his example in others, since the more the one half of my being strives toward the good, the more the other half journeys to Hell. When the month of the Twins had ended, the men said to their shadows: “You are I,” since they had previously had their spirit around them as a second person. Thus the two became one, and through this collision, the formidable broke out, precisely that spring of consciousness that one calls culture and which lasted until the time of Christ. But the fish indicated the moment when what was united split, according to the eternal law of contrasts, into an underworld and upper world. If the power of growth begins to cease, then the United falls into its opposites. Christ sent what is beneath to Hell since it strives toward the good. That had to be. But the separated cannot remain separated forever. It will be united again and the month of the fish will soon be over. We suspect and understand that growth needs both, and hence we keep good and evil close together. Because we know that too far into the good means the same as too far into evil, we keep them both together.
But we thus lose direction and things no longer flow from the mountain to the valley but grow quietly from the valley to the mountain. That which we can no longer prevent or hide is our fruit. The flowing stream becomes a lake and an ocean that has no outlet unless its water rises to the sky as steam and falls from the clouds as rain. While the sea is a death, it is also the place of rising. Such is Diahmon, who tends his garden. Our hands have been tied, and each must sit quietly in his place. He rises invisibly and falls as rain on distant lands. The water on the ground is no cloud, which should rain. Only pregnant women can give birth, not those who have yet to conceive. ~Carl Jung; Red Book
The publication of the Red Book (RB) has rekindled much interest in Jung and his world. People are fascinated with its imagery and often inexplicably moved by it. What is it about this book? Many people feel its soulfulness, literally, when they first hold it in their hands. The Red Book is in the truest sense of the word awesome. But what to do other than admire it? Who has access to Jung’s at times elusive knowledge? Is it only the world of Jungian analysts who inherit Jung’s world? That would be terrible. Jung would abhor that thought.
Are those who have experienced an in-depth Jungian analysis his rightful heirs? Maybe. There is a lot to be said about working closely, intimately with someone who has walked the walk before. There are plenty of wonderful Jungian analysts out there. But unfortunately psychoanalysis has been assimilated by the medical model and…
On the whole she would speak in riddles whether posing a question or in idle conversation. Her preference to give noxious gifts in abundance, a thing of pure joy to the outed masochists, unwelcome to all others. Not that those ‘others’ dare say a word aside from making the polite noises expected of them and putting on a show of drowning in truthless gratitude. Such are the ways of invincible tyrants whose doctrine is not accountable to down trodden natives. The divine are known to favour the iron fist, although in her case the trepidation she could invoke with just a knowing smile meant she rarely felt compelled to throw that first symbolic punch. A propensity to savour complete and total power for her warped amusement was sufficient to serve her purpose of being. God help those who defied her wishes or she grew sick and tired…
The Scottish celebration of Hogmanay is close at hand. Hogmanay is the Gaelic word for the last day of the year, celebrated on New Year’s eve.
This is the time of year when Celtic folks in Scotland gather together to welcome in the New Year and say Farewell or in Scot’s Gaelic, Soraidh, to the old year.
Several sources cite that Gaelic origins grew from French or Norse language or an older version of gaelic. New year ceremonies and mid-winter observance were natural in both Gaelic and Norse traditions. Hogmanay is a larger celebration in Scotland and predates the Christian Christmas. According to Scotland’s own website Scotland.org The Word Hogmany originated from the Norman French from hoguinan (a New Year’s gift). They also mention it’s a modification of the Gaelic og maidne (new morning), the Flemish hoog min dag
Francis Picabia constantly perplexes and undermines artistic expectations. A wealthy, hedonistic playboy with great personal charm, Picabia also possessed a notoriously acerbic wit and personified the savage negation at the heart of Dada.
Picabia’s career spanned many movements across continents, but is best remembered for his involvement with Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Arthur Craven in the creation of New York Dada and his mechanomorphic drawings from 1915 onwards. Always on the move and with entry to every fashionable social circle, Picabia moved to Barcelona then to Zurich for the remainder of WWI. Asked to describe his impressions of the War, Picabia remarked that he was bored to hell. After WWI he moved back to Paris and participated in further Dada shenanigans with Tristan Tzara and Andre Breton, contributing ferocious manifestos for Dada events which he watched from private boxes with the mistress…
The publication of the Red Book (RB) has rekindled much interest in Jung and his world. People are fascinated with its imagery and often inexplicably moved by it. What is it about this book? Many people feel its soulfulness, literally, when they first hold it in their hands. The Red Book is in the truest sense of the word awesome. But what to do other than admire it? Who has access to Jung’s at times elusive knowledge? Is it only the world of Jungian analysts who inherit Jung’s world? That would be terrible. Jung would abhor that thought.
Image by kaSSandrA
Francis Picabia-Women with Bulldog 1941-1942 
lampmagician 
You must be logged in to post a comment.