Circles - Mandalas - Radial Symmetry XI (Heavenly Bodies)

behold this fool who, in the month of June,
having of certain stars and planets heard,
rose very slowly in a tight balloon
until the smallening world became absurd

E. E. Cummings

Europa

Heavenly Bodies - Robert Longo

When I draw, I take it into me. I look at it,
it goes into every part of my body; it comes out of me.

Robert Longo



Robert Longo, Untitled (Saturn), 2007

Marvels of Creatures and Strange Things Existing

Kitab Aja'ib al-makhluqat wa Gharaib al-Mawjudat

literally "The Wonders of Creation and the Curiosities of Existence", or

Marvels of Creatures and Strange Things Existing

Merchant from Isfahan Flying


Kitab Aja'ib al-makhluqat wa Gharaib al-Mawjudat, literally "The Wonders of Creation," compiled in the middle 1200s in what is now Iran or Iraq. The vibrantly illustrated work is considered one of the most important natural history texts of the medieval Islamic world.

Lights in the Night

… the Stars
That nature hung in Heav’n, and fill’d their Lamps
With everlasting oil, to give due light
To the misled and lonely Travailer.

Arthur Rackham

I am starting this year with a new collection - similar to the series Things with Wings - called
Lights in the Night.  Art from different times and cultures about the pleasures of exploring the
sky with its heavenly bodies as well as the urge to illuminate the dark hours between dusk
and dawn with fire and light.

Tsuki Hyakushi - 100 Aspects of the Moon

Whore and monk, we sleep
under one roof together,
moon in a field of clover

Bashu






A huge thank you to all my followers and subscribers.
You are amazing and I couldn't do this without you!

Moon

you'll be beautiful in my manner

John Adams Whipple, View of the Moon, Feb 26, 1852 (Daguerreotype )

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The Moon’s Favors

Meanwhile, in the expansiveness of her joy,
the Moon filled all of the room like a phosphoric atmosphere,
like a luminous poison; and all of that living light thought and said:
“You will be eternally subject to the influence of my kiss.
You will be beautiful in my manner.

You will love what I love and who loves me:
water, the clouds, silence, and the night; the immense, green sea;
formless and multiform water; the place where you will not be;
the lover you will not know; monstrous flowers;
perfumes that make you delirious; cats who swoon on pianos,
and who moan like women, with a hoarse, gentle voice!

Charles Baudelaire

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Time Lapse - Milky Way

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Henry David Thoreau

watch the video below

Björk/Michel Gondry

Space Abstraction

Man is a microcosm, or a little world, because he is an extract from all the stars and planets of the whole firmament, from the earth and the elements; and so he is their quintessence.

Paracelsus

watch the video below

Heavenly Bodies

Objects that are so ancient that they precede not only humanity and intelligent life on the planet, but also any form of life known to us

“… then the land was consumed by fire and flames surrounded the trees, plants, animals and men. Only a few of the Mocoví people saw the fires coming and dove into rivers and lagoons, where they were turned into capybaras and crocodiles. Two of them, a man and his wife, sought refuge in a tall tree, where they looked on as the rivers of fire flooded the surface of the earth; but unexpectedly, the fire blew upwards and burned their faces and turned them into monkeys …”

From the Jesuit missionary Guevara, on the Mocoví myth on how the Sun fell from the sky (1764).

Moon People

Pictures from the times when all the unknown places of the earth and the heavens still were crowded with fabulous creatures and imaginary landscapes

Scoperte fatte nella luna Sigr. Herschell, [1836]

While browsing some archives with historic scientific images I  found the picture above and below are some examples from this wonderful "portfolio of hand-tinted lithographs purports to illustrate the "discovery of life on the moon." In 1836, Richard E. Locke, writing for the New York Sun, claimed that the noted British astronomer Sir William Herschel had discovered life on the moon. Flora and fauna included bat-men, moon maidens (with luna-moth wings), moon bison, and other extravagant life forms. Locke proposed an expedition to the moon using a ship supported by hydrogen balloons."

Time Lapse - Rising Moon

Thou art hidden from mine eye.
Yet my sadness thou well knowest ...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe