zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — on abuses of word and image ]
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Exhinit A, The Four Horsies of the ‘Pocapypse:

Meet Calamity (Pestilence), Raven (Famine), Clash (War) and Ghost (Death). They’re the Four Horsies of the ‘Pocalypse (or at least they would be if they could only get their act together)! This next-generation of doombringers are on a mission to destroy the Earth, but to do so, they’ll have to beat the likes of Queen Chroma and her rainbow sprite army! Too bad they can’t crack teamwork to save their lives.

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Exhibit B, Juan Cole today:

Juan Cole asks:

Is Iraq Army Preparing for Armageddon with ISIL?

Armageddon? No, that would be near Haifa, not Mosul. And besides, for IS to take a battle seriously it would need to be at or near Dabiq, not Tel Megiddo.

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Exhibit C, the Urban Dictionary:

-pocalypse

a suffix that is affixed to any word that describes the cause of a situation of relative discomfort derived from the last 3 syllables of ‘armageddon.’

As of late, the suffix “-pocalypse” has been popularized in the media, trying to make a minor event bigger than it is. Interestingly, an actual apocalypse would likely go by another name, or receive the suffix anyway. i.e. ‘Armageddonopalypse.’

Related suffix: “-mageddon”

The Hyphen is not always used.

Someone left the ‘fridge open, now were having the mold-pocalypse of ’11

by annoyedCitizen70 July 19, 2011

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You might have thought once was enough..

January 2009, Mild winter easy on city budget

December 2009, Crushed! Snowpocalypse crippled Washington, D.C. on this date in 2009

February 2010, Snowmageddon, Blizzard of 2010

February 2011, video, Snowpocalypse, Chicago 2011

January 2012, ‘Snowpocalypse 2012’ For Small Alaskan Town

February 2013, Time lapse video of the 2013 Snowpocalypse in the Northeast

January 2014, Atlanta ‘snowpocalypse’ mocked after 2 inches of snow strands thousands

January 2015, Snowpocalypse 2015

January 2016, Snowpocalypse 2016: Desperate Hoarding Of Basic Supplies

Oh, and then there’s Trumpocapypse:

2015, South Park Imagines the Trumpocalypse

2016, For the Republican party, it’s Trumpocalypse Now

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I have yet to see Mad Max Fury Road, in which:

A woman rebels against a tyrannical ruler in postapocalyptic Australia in search for her home-land with the help of a group of female prisoners, a psychotic worshipper, and a drifter named Max.

But it sounds like fun. PostApocapyptic, though?

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Please. Apocalypse means Revelation or Unveiling, and although the revelation itself may cause upheavals up to and specifically including a series of trumpets accompanied by a series of plagues and woes —

And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.

The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; 9And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.

and so forth —

And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. 4And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. 5And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.

terminating with the end of this world — the post-Apocalyptic scene is serene and glorious —

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

Or as St Paul and Handel have it —

Or as the Qur’an says —

For the Trumpet shall be blown, and whosoever is in the heavens and whosoever is in the earth shall swoon, save whom God wills. Then it shall be blown again, and lo, they shall stand, beholding.

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Hence — when you say postapocalyptic, please don’t mean “after the snowploughs” or even “post-Hiroshima” — agreed?

And the word apocalypse is best left to the imagination not of the toymaker but of the artist:

[ by Charles Cameron — paging birds and fishes, Chuang Tzu and Wm Blake ]
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Dwight Furrow, Wine Tasting and Objectivity:

The question is whether flavors are “in the wine” or “in the mind”. On the one hand, there are objectively measurable chemical compounds in wine that reliably affect our taste and olfactory mechanisms—pyrazines cause bell pepper aromas in Cabernet Sauvignon, malic acid explains apple aromas in Chardonnay, tannins cause a puckering response, etc. But we know that human beings differ quite substantially in how they perceive wine flavors. Even trained and experienced wine critics disagree about what they are tasting and how to evaluate wine. This disagreement among experts leads many to claim that wine tasting is therefore purely subjective, just a matter of individual opinion. According to subjectivism, each person’s response is utterly unique and there is no reason to think that when I taste something, someone else ought to taste the same thing. Statements about wine flavor are statements about one’s subjective states, not about the wine. Thus, there are no standards for evaluating wine quality.

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Is each mind inherently closed to every other, much as the bird’s mind is closed to ours in Blake‘s aphorism —

How do you know but every bird that cuts the airy way, is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five?

— albeit not always so joyful?

In more contemporary terms — Is there encryption of the mind?

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I ask this in light of the DoubleQuote I posted a few days ago comparing Hesse and Hitchcock in terms of their metaphoric uses of “organ” — in, I hasten to add, the Bach sense of the word:

Here’s what I’m thinking. Hesse’s game influences the mind, as does art, but it is non-invasive; Hitchcock applauds the potential for art to move in a more invasive direction, as if by force rather than by enticement.

“”

Humans — or at least the philosophers and philosopher tagalongs among them — can’t even tell if what one human sees as “red” is what another sees as “red” — let alone what a given Burgundy tastes like on another’s palate.

If this means, more generally, that minds are effectively encrypted by virtue of their differences in wiring acquired with parentage, age and experience, then our communications media -– language, the arts, literature, number — would appear to be the available decryption keys, selectively available to the minds in question.

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Chuang-Tsu has this tale to tell:

Men claim that Mao-ch’iang and Lady Li were beautiful, but if fish saw them they would dive to the bottom of the stream, if birds saw them they would fly away, and if deer saw them they would break into a run. Of these four, which knows how to fix the standard of beauty for the world?

And this..

Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu were strolling along the dam of the Hao River when Chuang Tzu said, “See how the minnows come out and dart around where they please! That’s what fish really enjoy!”

Hui Tzu said, “You’re not a fish – how do you know what fish enjoy?”

Chuang Tzu said, “You’re not I, so how do you know I don’t know what fish enjoy?”

Hui Tzu said, “I’m not you, so I certainly don’t know what you know. On the other hand, you’re certainly not a fish – so that still proves you don’t know what fish enjoy!”

Chuang Tzu said, “Let’s go back to your original question, please. You asked me how I know what fish enjoy – so you already knew I knew it when you asked the question. I know it by standing here beside the Hao.”

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Chuang Tzu said, “You’re not I, so how do you know I don’t know what fish enjoy?”

Blake said, “How do you know but every bird that cuts the airy way, is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five?”

[ by Charles Cameron — iconoclasm ancient & modern ]
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Ancient:

Eamonn Duffy‘s “prize-winning account of the pre-Reformation church recreates lay people’s experience of religion in fifteenth-century England. Eamon Duffy shows that late medieval Catholicism was neither decadent nor decayed, but was a strong and vigorous tradition, and that the Reformation represented a violent rupture from a popular and theologically respectable religious system.”

& modern:

In Sarah Abu Abdallah‘s “work The Turbulence of Sea and Blood, 2015, we see disarrayed glimpses of multiple narratives such as that of: familial domestic tensions, a juvenile dream of going to Japan, the tendency to smash TVs in moments of anger, and eating fish. While using scenes from the artist’s surroundings and life in Saudi Arabia, like streets or malls, it never attempts to provide the whole picture, but takes a rhizomatic approach to tell a story of the everyday life.

Hat-tip: Hend Amry, who describes the lower image as “Me, this election season”. You see the artist’s description above, “the tendency to smash TVs in moments of anger”. Myself, I view it as a magnificent illstration of the smashing of idols, akin to the Reformation’s dissolution of the monasteries..

[ by Charles Cameron — filling a gap the WaPo left behind — with Christ, crucified, between the horns of a stag ]
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Butler‘s Lives of the Saints tells us of St Hubert:

He is also said to have been passionately addicted to the diversion of hunting, and was entirely taken up in worldly pursuits, when, moved by divine grace, he resolved at once to renounce the school of vanity, and enter himself in that of Christ, in which his name had been enrolled in baptism.

That telling neatly elides the alleged mechanism by which divine grace moved him. As the image that accompanies it in the online version of the tale shows, Hubert is reported to have been out hunting one Good friday while others were at church, when a stag appeared before him carrying a crucifix betwen its horns:

St. Patrick’s Basilica, Ottawa, Canada

No wonder, then, that Hubert, moved by such grace, became the patron saint of hunters, nor that Justice Antonin Scalia is reported to have been attending a gathering associated with the knightly Order of St Hubertus at the time of his death.

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From today’s Washington Post, an article which tells us something of Justice Scalia, a fair amount about the Order of St Hubertus, and nothing about St Hubert himself alas:

When Justice Antonin Scalia died 11 days ago at a West Texas ranch, he was among high-ranking members of an exclusive fraternity for hunters called the International Order of St. Hubertus, an Austrian society that dates back to the 1600s.

For more on Justice Scalia’s death at the ranch, read the rest of the WaPo piece; for more on the Order, visit its web pages. I trust this post of mine will somewhat remedy the lack of information about St Hubert himself and his remarkable conversion in both places.

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This story is told of St Placidus:

The Holy Great Martyr Eustathius was named Placidas before his Baptism. He was a military commander under the emperors Titus (79-81) and Trajan (98-117). Even before he came to know Christ, Placidas performed acts of charity, helping the poor and destitute. Therefore, the Lord did not leave the virtuous pagan remain in the darkness of idolatry.

Once while hunting in a forest, he saw a stag which would stop now and then to look him right in the eye. Placidas pursued it on horseback, but could not catch up. The stag leaped over a chasm and stood on the other side facing him. Placidas suddenly saw a radiant Cross between its antlers. In surprise the military commander heard a voice coming from the Cross saying, “Why do you pursue Me, Placidas?”

“Who are You, Master?” asked Placidas.The Voice replied, “I am Jesus Christ, Whom you do not know, yet you honor Me by your good deeds. I have appeared here on this creature for your sake, to capture you in the net of My love for mankind. It is not fitting that one as righteous as you should worship idols and not know the truth. It was to save mankind that I came into the world.”

Placidas cried out, “Lord, I believe that You are the God of Heaven and earth, the Creator of all things. Master, teach me what I should do.” Again the Lord replied, “Go to the bishop of your country and receive Baptism from him, and he will instruct you.”

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Let the Jägermeister herbal liquor label bring us to our conclusion — and to the third saint associated with a vision of stag and crucifix:

The label on Jägermeister bottles features a glowing Christian cross seen between the antlers of a stag.

This image is a reference to the two Christian patron saints of hunters, Saint Hubertus and Saint Eustace, both of whom converted to Christianity after experiencing a vision in which they saw a Christian cross between the antlers of a stag.

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St Eustace, then, is the third saint to whom the same vision is attributed. — and the one whose vision has been most gloriously celebrated in art.

Albert Durer‘s engraving of St Eustace in the Metropolitan Museum, New York:

Pisanello‘s St Eustace in the National Gallery, London:

[ by Charles Cameron — Napoleon at the St Bernard Pass goes to Turkey ]
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Jacques Louis David, Bonaparte, the first Versailles version:

Introducing Erdoganist art, tweeted by Mustafa Akyol and RT’d by Hayder al-Khoei:

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Oh, but it gets better. How’s this for a wild DoubleQuote? I found it while rummaging around for a “best version” of the Erdogan pic:

pic.twitter.com/ChoCEjaZrt

— Sedat Sahanlar (@9987088cbe5145a) February 1, 2016