unforum

[KyraB]

new addition

[Caterpillar]

http://www.greywethers.net/sainteberegonne.html

[MageSteff]

SPEC: Grid with letters blacked out

[MageSteff]

[Myssfitz]

[dmax]

Lotso stuff, and looks like more to come

http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1477

[Myssfitz]

Here is some info for the picture at http://www.greywethers.net/window2.html

http://66.218.71.225/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=cumaea&url=dYMggdfUeWAJ:www.postcardgallery.com/Newsletter/prophets.htm

For the twelve rectangular panels running down either side of the main part of the vault in the Sistine Chapel, Michaelangelo chose five sibyls from ancient mythology and seven prophets from the Old Testament. The sibyls were tolerated in early Christian theology because they were thought to foresee, in some cases, the coming of Christ.
The Delphic Sibyl featured here is from a 12 card set published in Italy in the early 20th Century. Delphica was the prophetess who told Oedipus his unfortunate future. The set, of course, pictures each of the seven prophets and five sibyls.

These early cards are truly lovely chromolithos which give satisfying reproductions of the images. Of course, the Sistine Chapel has been extensively cleaned and restored for over a decade now, so the images appear more muted than the actual frescoes. Regardless, they remain a tiny masterpiece of printing.

This card pictures Cumaea who was one of the most revered of the sibyls. Virgil gave her fame by recording her utterance about a child who would bring peace to the world. She even had a shrine near Naples that was still visited in the time of Michelangelo.
Note the very masculine physique of Cumaea. It is said that Michelangelo used only male nudes for his models, hence the 'Amazon' quality of most of his woman.
The other sibyls in the set include: Erithraea, Libica and Persicha.

Jonah may be the best known of the prophets due to the fabulous tale of his spending three days and three nights in the belly of a whale after he tried to circumvent God's plans for him. The posture of Jonah in this image is riveting. In a great book recently published by Ross King, Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, the author mentions that the figure could be construed as leaning back and looking up at Michelangelo's vault in "wordless stupefaction." This is particulary apt as the painting is near the Sala Regia entrance and so would direct and "pantomime" the gaze of anyone entering the chapel this way. (Note: I highly recommend this book , especially for amateur art lovers like myself. It is lucid and full of interesting details about the artist, the painting of the chapel, Pope Julius II, Raphael, and the political and social atmosphere of the time. In short, a great read).
There is an interesting tie-in between the prophet Zacherias and the Sistine Chapel: he foresaw the reconstuction of the destroyed temple in Jerusalem, and the Sistine Chapel was built exactly to the dimensions of this rebuilt temple!
The remaining prophets in the set are: Daniel, Hieremias,
Joel, Esaias, and Ezechiel.

These depictions of the prophets on the vault are, as you would expect, much larger-than-life and make a tremendous impact when you actually see them first-hand instead of through an art book. I thought that like the experience I had with the Mona Lisa (so over-saturated with the popularity of the image that the original couldn't quite live up to its reputation), I would feel a slight let-down when I got to see them. Not so. I can only explain my reaction as startled; they were more awesome than I could have ever anticipated.

[MageSteff]

[Myssfitz]

Now here is something interesting. I found this and it talks about Cumeae, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, and the Moon. (all I saw at first glance). It ties in with the symbols from the Manuscript page. And it's a page from AGRIPPA's Of Occult Philosophy, Book I.

I don't know what it all means...

[Myssfitz]

Leads us to: http://www.greywethers.net/cumaeansibyl.html

[Caterpillar]

[Myssfitz]

Thanks Cem

Here's the same story about Sibyl, but taken a little bit farther. Don't know if it will help.

The Sibyl of Cumae gained her powers by attracting the attention of the sun god Apollo, depicted as doing so in the painting by Salvator Rosa (cir. 1650s) above. Apollo offered her anything if she would spend a single night with him. She asked for as many years of life as grains of sand she could squeeze into her hand. Granted, the sun god said; and Sibyl, glad to win her boon, refused his advances. Thereafter she was cursed with the furfillment of her wish--eternal life without eternal youth. She slowly shriveled into a frail undying body, so tiny that she fit into a jar. Her container was hung from a tree; Sibyl needed, of course, no food or drink, for she could neither starve nor die of thirst. And there she hung, croaking occasional oracles, while children would stand beneath her urn and tease, "Sibyl, Sibyl, what do you wish?" To which she would faintly reply, "I wish to die."

[Myssfitz]

INFO: The 12 Sibyl's

[Myssfitz]

http://www.icampiflegrei.it/Azienda%20Turismo/pozzuoli/articoli2001/sibilla_cumana_1_ing.htm

THE CUMAEAN SIBYL

The priestess' cave is empty. But the imposing magic chilliness is still there: it is the most venerated sanctuary of antiquity, dug in the sixth-fifth century B.C.
"In the spur of the hill turned to the rising sun there is a cave
covered from every part and hollow so as to have natural sacraria and a large cavity like an abyss. It is said that there lived the
Sibyl... over this den impended and leant part of the walls.
Narsetes, having noticed it, thought that it could be useful to him and sent in the den's cavity as many men as possible... be gradually dug and cut the roof of the cave, in the part on which the fortification leant" (Agathias: Historia, I, 10).
The peculiar aspects of those places made it possible the transposition of new rites on ancient cults, as well as the superimposition of sorcery, magic and popular traditions.
The worship and the legend of the Cumaean Sibyl - immortalized by Virgil - remain the basic elements to understand the importance that in the Phlegraean area had the spreading of the religious creed and of all beliefs, rites and traditions which Virgil wonderfully expresses in his verses.
Thus saw the light the 'pietas" in the world of the everlasting suggestions, the tracing of the new spiritual dominion.
Above all, in prophecy is recognized the "truth", the way and the concept of "purification" in search of answers to the distressful questions of man.
For obvious reasons, the art of prophesying, since its origin has had a hieratic character and has almost always developed like a priestly function.
The priest was the natural depository and interpreter of prophecy, announced like message of the hereafter or gift of divinity. However, this task was prevailingly entrusted to women.
And this can be easily explained, since it is in close connection
with the phenomena generally classified as hypnotic - such as
raptures, trance, catalepsy - which, having been almost always
noticed in women, have always been considered as closely connected with womanliness. Hysteria is a pathology which affects almost exclusively women and these compulsive forms are often associated with it, even if they do not constitute, as it would seem, its typical aspects. Pliny and Quintilian said that women are the best subjects,for magic experiments. Tashmann proved that there are more witches than wizards, and Bodin believes that the proportion of wizards compared to witches does not exceed 2%.
The ancient oracles were uttered by women in a more or less hypnotic state or in a sometimes spontaneous, sometimes
caused hysteric overexcitability. They were the Sibyls or Phytias. Their words were considered like the divinity's response. According to the common etymology, Sybil, in Greek means "God's will" (Anneccbino: La leggenda virgiliana nei Campi Flegrei-Virgil's legend in the Phlegraean Fields).
Virgil fell within the magic conception of a tradition and even of
a popular superstition of ancient origin, he became the one who
"solicitous of providing by all means for the common good,
arranged, in the area of Baia and Pozzuoli, the building of
public baths, efficacious for all diseases, and adorned them
with plaster images representing the various forms of illness and
indicating the suitable baths for each of them." D. Comparetti:
Virgilio nel Medioevo - Virgil in the Middle Ages). The Sibyl "horrid, where the huge den was", ended up, as in the
bitter transccription of Trimalcion, "in a suspended ampulla",
alone with her voice:"I want to die".
She was not like Cassandra, Priam's daughter who, having refused the love of the god Apollo, was never believed. On the
contrary, Romans preferred the oracle of Cuma to that
of Delphi, and her responses had a great influence on the Roman population and on the whole ancient world.
The Sibyl's myth did not come to a close, not even with the end of the Republic.
It was above all thanks to the Sibyl's books that Hellenism, through Cumae, mostly exerted its civil and religious influence in the history of Rome. "When extraordinary phenomena occured - like earthquakes, pestilence, flooding and new prodigies not provided for in the papal books - the State applied to the advise of fifteen priests who, after consulting those books, suggested the ceremonies of prayer and purification. In the land brimful with sacred fury the spirit of Apollo dominates.
In Cumae the temple of the god of beauty an prophecies welcomes the Sibyl, who gains her virtue of fortune-teller, sitting enraptured on a "high throne " uttering her oracles. Only games
and feasts to Apollo: such was the promise the Hero made on the "Euboean shores of Hesperian cumae" hoping that the responses were not blown away like leaves in the wind.
The myth dissolved like Virgil's leaves, but cemented itself to the rocks of tradition, in the mixture of the many beliefs and spells that followed one another.
It was believed, for instance, that in the area there was a natural spring of (sulphurous) water suitable to the practises of the sorceress Sagana, companion of Canidia, for her potion.
As time passed, the Phlegraean myths and sagas pivoted on Sibyl and Averno contributed a lot to the legend of Virgil the magician, as Annecchino underlines. According to Gabrici ("Cuma 1910") the Greek element and the local element originated the fusion of the worship of Apollo with the worship
of Persephone, the first imported by Calcidians, the second of Italic origin, whose priestess was the Sibyl. This fusion would find an analogous correspondence in the worship of Gea at Delphi, who, originally Pelasgic divinity, made way for the prophecy's god.
There has been a long debate on the elements and data about Virgil's legend and Sibyl's worship as a whole. On this subject it is considerable the recent work by R. De Simone (Il segno di Virgilio - Virgil's mark), who, about the figures of the various Sibyl's and particularly about the Cumaean Sibyl, states: "their provenance from an eastern area (particularly from mountains),
their virginity, their connection with an ancient Mother Goddess and with the tree which represents her, the furious character
of their prophesying, a subsequent connection with Apollo, their rambling and long-lived nature".
The worship, in the first century of the Empire, extinguished, but
its influence, the trace of a centuries old strength remained, so
that Virgil's "black lake and wood's darkness" changed into
Dante's "wild, strong and impervious forest".
Where are, oh Sibyl, the snow-white doves, winged harbingers?
Where is Lethe, river of oblivion, on which countless shadows fly?
The cave is dark, without divinity.
Men of this time have filled it with transitory impiety.

Mario Sirpettino
(from "Myth and Mystery in the Phlegraean Fields"
F. Di Mauro Editiore - third edition 1999)

[zounds]

The Sibyl of Cumae is one of the oldest and most famous
prophetesses known to the ancient Graeco-Roman world. She
was the guardian spirit of a sacred cave at Cumae, the earliest
Greek settlement in Italy. (Her cave may still be seen on the
Italian coast a little north of the Bay of Naples). Her Sibylline
prophecies (in nine volumes) were entrusted to Rome's last king,
Tarquinus Superbus. She was also regarded as the gate-keeper of
the underworld, and in the sixth eclogue of Virgil's Aeneid, she
conducts Aeneas through Hades (or the underworld). Once the
God Apollo offered her immortality if she would be his lover.
The Sibyl accepted but failed to ask for perpetual youth and
hence, withered into old age