{"id":42905,"date":"2015-01-17T18:32:09","date_gmt":"2015-01-17T18:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=42905"},"modified":"2015-01-17T18:32:09","modified_gmt":"2015-01-17T18:32:09","slug":"of-morale-and-angels-kiev-and-ragnarok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=42905","title":{"rendered":"Of morale and angels, Kiev and Ragnarok"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — not to mention crushing Khomeini, lubing your M16, and that Afghan powerpoint ]
\n.<\/p>\n

\"Andrei<\/a>

Andrei Rublev, The Archangel Michael<\/p><\/div>\n

**<\/p>\n

In my previous post, Of morale, angels and Spartans<\/a>, I raised the question of how our increasingly visual and graphical age could visually represent morale. I noted that the Muslims outfought a larger force at the Battle of Badr, and that the Qur’an suggests that this was because thousands of “angels, ranks on ranks” fought alongside them. <\/p>\n

Dave Schuler<\/strong> suggested the Archangel Michael — which sent me all over in search of a suitable representation. The icon above, by Andrei Rublev<\/strong>, is the most profound and beautiful work I was able to find, but hardly serves our purpose. <\/p>\n

I ran across a politically explicit comntemporary image in which the Archangel wears Airborne insignia:<\/p>\n

\"Archangel-Michael--airborne\"<\/a><\/p>\n

— but it was this image from the Maidan in Kiev that came closes to the sense of military power in angelic form —<\/p>\n

\"Archangel<\/a><\/p>\n

— although I’m not sure that military power or prowess is necessarily the same as morale or esprit de corps…<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Synchronistically — or coinidentally, as sceptics would say — Justin Erik Halld\u00f3r Smith<\/strong> headed his blog post Ragnar\u00f6k on the Seine<\/a> today with an image of Peter Nicolai Arbo<\/strong>‘s Wild Hunt, or Aasgaardreien<\/strong>. Here’s a detail:<\/p>\n

\"Aasgaardreien<\/a><\/p>\n

And here’s “the big picture”:<\/p>\n

\"Aasgaardreien<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s probably closer to “amok” than to “esprit de corps” — although the relationship between them is worth pondering.<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

I’m still not convinced that contemporary minds will “get” morale from any graphic image yet devised.. I can’t help remembering the M-16 manual I picked up one day at a library sale or flea market, titled The M16A1 Rifle: Operation and Preventive Maintenance<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Treat<\/a><\/p>\n

My guess, however, is that we’ll wind up with something closer to this:<\/p>\n

\"Powerpoint<\/a><\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Image sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
  • Andrei Rublev, icon of Archangel Michael<\/a>\n
  • Archangel Michael, Especial Forces graphic<\/a>\n
  • Sculpture, Archangel Michael, Kiev<\/a>\n
  • Peter Nicolai Arbo, Aasgaardreien<\/a>\n
  • M16 manual, DA Pam 750-30<\/a>\n
  • Powerpoint, Afghanistan Stability<\/a><\/li>\n
  • The photo of the Kiev St Michael is by Mstyslav Chernov<\/a>, used under CC-BY-SA-3.0<\/a> license<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    [ by Charles Cameron — not to mention crushing Khomeini, lubing your M16, and that Afghan powerpoint ] . ** In my previous post, Of morale, angels and Spartans, I raised the question of how our increasingly visual and graphical age could visually represent morale. I noted that the Muslims outfought a larger force at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[527,350,526,497,644,93,501,942,422,91,868,171,691,1026,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-army","category-charles-cameron","category-christianity","category-graphical-thinking","category-iran","category-myth","category-norse","category-powerpoint","category-russia","category-sacred","category-schuler","category-symbolism","category-ukraine","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42905"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42922,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42905\/revisions\/42922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}