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[ by Charles Cameron — beautiful photography, alchemical significance ]
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Twin images from The Atlantic’s selection of photos for this week:

TOPSHOT – The Cristo Rey monument is silhouetted against the full moon in Cali, Colombia, early on June 17, 2019. (Photo by Luis ROBAYO / AFP) (Photo credit should read LUIS ROBAYO/AFP/Getty Images)

The sun sets behind a tattered windmill, Tuesday, June 18, 2019, near Tappen, N.D. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

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Why bother?

Why bother to show you these two images out of a waterfall of fine images?

Because somewhere within us, deep, psychologically speaking, there’s a desire for the consummation of a marriage between what the Chinese term the creative and receptive principles, here represented in an alchemical image by king and queen, silver and gold, sun and moon:

— don’t think — just enjoy!

[ by Charles Cameron — first a poem, perhaps my angriest — some further disgust to follow in a subsequent post ]
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Don’t you mess with my mother the moon!
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i

Don’t you mess with my mother the moon!
Pearl.
Superb in the night sky.
Which you treat as a junkyard.

ii

I am serious. I was never
more serious. This, which you thinking
life to be composed of things consider
real estate, rock,
subtly balances that other,

portending at the eye
that same angle — and that other, too
you would colonize,
strip, slash, mine, burn,
rape had you the chance, were it not
so magisterial a furnace.

Gold, which figures the sun
with silver the moon,
you have tapped for coinage,
despoiling hills for greed,
valleys for your convenience:
nor is your idiocy limited in reach
by anything but your idiocy.

Sun and moon are married
in a wedding you cannot conceive,
to which you lack invitation
though it was offered you.
The simple light of the night sky
escapes you, neither glimpse
nor sonata troubles your soul with its ripples,

for you lack, altogether,
reflection.

_______________________________________________________________________________________
I don’t much care what you do to Mars..

Oh yes, and this poem is copyright (c) Charles Cameron 2006 onwards, until we get over copyright and have freedom of quotation, imitation and variation..

[ by Charles Cameron — one vivid memory, two breathtaking photos, one for war-watchers, one for poets ]
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There are very few days in my life where I know where I was, but on 6 September 1952, I was at the Farnborough Air Show, when John Derry‘s De Havilland 110 fell apart at Mach 1, the body of the aircraft falling safely away from the crowd, but one jet ploughing into the hillside I was perched on — literally, on my dad’s shoulders — a few dozen yards behind us.

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I was reminded of John Derry and his memorable death by this photo, captioned:

Military aircraft enthusiasts watch as a United States Air Force F-15 fighter jet travels at low altitude through the “Mach Loop” series of valleys near Dolgellau, Wales, on June 26, 2018. The Mach Loop valleys are regularly used by the military for operational low-flying training, which can take place as low as 250 feet (76 meters) from the nearest terrain. Oli Scarff / AFP / Getty

The aircraft, as shown above, is certainly striking — but no lesss striking at the tiny observers on the crest of the hillock, who no doubtt had an exhausting hike to get there, to see that remarkable aerial display. “Ooh, look!” These guys have their own private Farnboroughs — and thank God, nobody dies on this occasion.

I’m posting this here because I think the urge to see, I suppose one might call it the voyeuristic urge, is close cousin ttom the urge to game play. And game play, in military affairs, is a significant matter , from kriegspiel to the rcecently aborted exercises in S Korea.

Thoughts?

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OMG —

and I just can’t resist adding one more image from the same page where I found the one above — for its sheer drama:

The full moon rises behind burning moorland as a large wildfire sweeps across the moors between Dovestones and Buckton Vale in Stalybridge, Greater Manchester, on June 26, 2018, in Stalybridge, England. Anthony Devlin / Getty

Er, Wow!

[ by Charles Cameron — just keeping a paranoid eye on an old and subtle game.. ]
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You know I’m always looking out for examples of the Matryoshka doll effect, where a large doll holds smaller, nested “child” dolls, one within the other in a diminishing series — theoretically ad infinitum — and more generally of macro-micro, as a pattern always worth pondering?

Well, it’s World Cup time, and The Atlantic just posted a fine run of photos of soccer pitches from around the world — one of which caught my eye:

That’s just a detail, showing you the larger radomes of the Bundesnachrichtendienst / German Intel Service, and smaller versions of the same used to play soccer and — who knows? — pick up signals of my and your interactions around the world and off into near space too perhaps.. Japanese reports of moon tastings, my own poems, your moon-bounced messages..

Here, for your enjoyment, is the whole picture:

Sean Gallup / Getty

People play football at a field next to radomes of the digital communications listening station of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the German intelligence agency, on June 2, 2015, in Bad Aibling, Germany.

Photographer Sean Gallup certainly has a strong eye for macro-micro, too.

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When I was first introduced to NSA by somone who knew it better at least than I did after dipping into James Bamford, he explained:

NSA > National Security Agency > No Such Agency > “Nonesuch to you, Mister”

I’m grateful Nonesuch wasn’t named the Bundesnachrichtendienst!

See the rest of The Atlantic‘s soccer fields around the world, including this image:

RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP/Getty Images)

The caption here reads:

Ex-FARC rebels play football in the unarmed zone known as Territorial Spaces for Training and Reincorporation (ETCR in Spanish) “Antonio Narino”, where former guerrilla fighters receive training to facilitate their development, reconciliation and reincorporation to civilian life, in Icononzo, Tolima Department, Colombia, on June 12, 2018

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Next up in an expanding line of intelligent footballs, way out past our friendly moon: the Dyson sphere and matroshka brain architecture ..

[ by Charles Cameron — James Bond in the Sun Myung-Moon universe? ]
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As you know, I’m interested in the intersection of religion and violence, and there can hardly be a more emphatic example of that intersection than a religious ceremonial for the blessing of guns — complete with the personnel of an offshoot of messiah the Rev. Sun Myung-Moon‘s Unification Church (upper image, below, worshipper with crown of bullets):

— and their queenly leader Rev. Yeon Ah Lee-Moon (lower image, above) complete with her weapon of gold.

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Ah, guns of gold.

I would love to know the symbolic meaning of a crown of bullets — compare Christ’s crown of thorns — but the symbolism of gold…

Gold corresponds in alchemical symbology to the sun, and silver to the moon, making the original Unification messiah Sun Myung-Moon‘s name a sweet alchemical conjunction of sun and moon, albeit in transcription from the Korean in which the names would no doubt have entirely different valences from their English versions.

Forget the Moon, then — golden weapons are, in a sense the Aztecs might have appreciated, weapons of the sun, and adornments of sunly male royalty.

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Consider in this light the golden weapon of cartel boss Ramiro Pozos Gonzalez (upper image, below):

— far outshining Scaramanga‘s golden gun from the James Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun — (lower image, above, by mrgarethm under CC © Gareth Milner)..

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Gold, oh dear, is also the symbolic essence of wealth-as-power, ie for practical cases, money, cash, dosh — and as such, that substance the desire for which is, famously, scripturally, the root of all evil.

Golden guns, in this sense, are desirable precisely in inverse relationship to their owner’s desire for good.

Caveat emptor!

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Sources:

BBC, In pictures: US gun-blessing ceremony

Mail, Gold plated AK-47 confiscated during arrest of Mexican cartel leader

International Spy Museum, Golden Gun