#ephedra

[the-lab-rat-falls-into-the-void]

Finally set up my online store and am working on adding product pages / a full inventory list.

Main products include tinctures of Amanita muscaria, Datura, Brugmansia, and Henbane. Miscellaneous other popular items include powdered extracts of Ephedra (10:1), and Kava root (30% kavalactones).

Feel free to contact with any questions via:

potts.designs.help@gmail.com

[phytophiliac]

Ephedra monosperma by Richard Ellis Via Flickr: Ephedra monosperma is a gymnosperm native to Asia. Like many plants in this family, it produces ephedrine which has been used in Chinese and Japanese medicine for centuries. The pharmacological effect of Ephedra medicine include: constriction of peripheral blood vessels, increase in heart rate, elevation of blood pressure and bronchodilation. Ephedrine had been commonly found in many herbal medications. There is a common misconception that somehow herbal medications are safe because they are natural. Apparently these folks have never heard of poisonous plants. Ephedrine herbal products are now banned in U.S.A since 1994 for causing various and serious adverse effects, such as headache, insomnia, stroke, arrhythmias, heart attack, psychosis, heart palpitations, cardiac arrest and even death. #Ephedramonosperma #Ephedra #monosperma #CUgreenhouse #botany

[healthnews101]

Ephedra Diet Supplements The Legal Challenges Continue

If you’ve ever wondered about dietary supplements that promise rapid and effective weight loss, then reading this article is a must. In the fascinating world of health and wellness, Ephedra supplements have been a popular choice for years. But what’s their true story? We’ll delve into the details behind these supplements, their impact on weight loss, and the legal challenges that have surrounded…

[tea-the-not-understanding]

Vortex Black Tea cookie also have a big brother who's more richer then him and more royal-like appearance. This is Blackhole Ephedra Tea cookie and he have a small ability to change form from time to time to look great and royal to others, but this is the main looks and wears that he always look.

He also responsible on taking Vortex black tea out for shopping spree as well.

@kaylikestodrawlittlenightmares @ask-churro-cookie

[cartoonscientist]

if alcohol reveals your true self then I must be a very sleepy person

[grison-in-space]

today I learned, because I had a question about the history of the abuse of amphetamines, that "ephedrine" does NOT derive as a name from the term "epinephrine" as one might otherwise naively assume. I mean. Now that I try to break the word into bits it seems obvious: epinephrine, AKA adrenaline, is named for the place where it is synthesized: the adrenal glands, which sit like little hats on top of (epi, "around") the location of the kidneys (nephr-, kidneys, see "nephrology").

It turns out ephedrine, which most of us probably know better by its close relative pseudoephedrine or Sudafed, doesn't get its name from anything to do with epinephrine. It comes from the plant that it was first isolated from: máhuáng, a member of the genus Ephedra in the Latin polynomial. (It means —

PLINY?!?

[spiritsdancinginthenight]

The Princess of Xiaohe (Chinese: 小河公主) or Little River Princess was found in 2003 at Xiaohe Cemetery in Lop Nur, Xinjiang. She is also known as M11 for the tomb she was found in. She was buried around 3,800 years ago. Furthermore, she was named the Princess of Xiaohe due to her state of preservation and beauty, not her social status; there is no reason to believe she was any more important than the other mummies buried in the complex.

The Princess has blonde hair and long eyelashes, with some facial features more similar to Indo-Europeans, such as high cheekbones and pale skin. She seems to be smiling slightly. She was 152 centimetres tall. Chunks of cheese were found on her neck and chest, possibly as food for the afterlife. Her body was not embalmed before death, but mummified naturally due to the climate and burial method.

“Despite being genetically isolated, the Bronze Age peoples of the Tarim Basin were remarkably culturally cosmopolitan – they built their cuisine around wheat and dairy from West Asia, millet from East Asia and medicinal plants like Ephedra from Central Asia,” said senior author Christina Warinner, an associate professor of anthropology at Harvard University.

The Tarim Basin mummies in what is now southern Xinjiang were once thought to be Indo-European-speaking migrants from the West. Some thought that their ancestors migrated from what became southern Siberia, northern Afghanistan or the Central Asian mountains.

“The identity of the earliest inhabitants of Xinjiang, in the heart of inner Asia, and the languages that they spoke have long been debated and remain contentious,” wrote the team of 34 researchers from China, Germany, South Korea and the United States in peer-reviewed journal Nature on Wednesday.

[mineralsrocksandfossiltalks]

Fossil Friday: Argentinosaurus

Argentinosaurus is a titanosaur from late Cretaceous Argentina. The animal is very fragmentary with only 14 known elements of which only two are complete.

So, how do we know it's the heaviest land animal to ever walk the earth? Well, we don't actually. We need more pieces of the puzzle before we can accurately answer that question. We can, at the very least, put in a clade though.

In a paper describing the holotype of Argentinosaurus, we can see the characters it possesses that place it within titanosauria:

"Argentinosaurus huinculensis is identified basically with Titanosauria, by the presence of diverse characters whose association is characteristic of this clade, and that have in part been already been pointed out and illustrated by Powell (1986): a) opisthocoelous dorsal vertebrae with relatively small, elliptic pleurocoels, located in the middle and anterior sector of the vertebral body, in a wide pleurocoelic depression of 8 oval form, more wide in the anterior sector than in the posterior; b) presence of very clear, angular fossae, in the lateral face of the neural arch of the dorsal vertebrae; c) neural spines of the anterior dorsals rather flat, wide transversely, and without vestiges of bifurcation; d) presence of large bony cells in the entirety of the spongy tissue of the dorsal and sacral vertebrae." (https://www.naturalhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/media/translated_publications/Bonaparte%26amp%3BCoria_93.pdf)

Argentinosaurus was found in the Huincul Formation composed of green and yellow sandstones up to 820ft (250m) thick. It is thought to represent a drainage system of a braided river.

Plants known from this formation include hornworts, liverworts,

ferns, clubmosses,

gymnosperms (including gnetophytes like ephedra and conifers)

and angiosperms.

Animals found in this formation include lungfish, gar,

turtles, squamates,

sphenodonts, crocodiles,

and many dinosaurs including titanosaur Choconsaurus, rebbachisaurids Cathartesaurus and Limaysaurus, carcharodontosaurid Mapusaurus, abelisaurids Skorpiovenator, Ilokelsia, and Tralkasaurus, noasaurid Huinculsaurus and paravian Overoraptor.

Tune in on Monday to learn all about diplodocids in more detail. Fossilize you later!

[ravings-of-a-mad-scientist]

Naked Sperm Plants

Gymnosperms are weird.

The thing all gymnosperms have in common, and that separates them from their much more successful rival cousin group the angiosperms (flowering plants) is that they have seeds without a seed coat. That’s literally what "gymnosperm" means.

Sperm means "seed" or whatever. And the Greek root gymn- means "naked". Because in ancient Greece the gymnasium was a place where manly men would go to work out, make gains, be naked, wrestle, hang out with the boys and appreciate each other’s gains. While naked. Together. Y’know… Man stuff. For men.

Gymnosperms include pine trees, cycads (which look like giant half-buried pineapples with a single giant pinecone/flower thing coming out the top), gnetums (look like normal leafy plant vines), ephedras (weird stick shrubs with no leaves), the welwitschia(an immortal desert plant that grows exactly two blade leaves endlessly until it’s just a tangled pile of leaf), and the gingko (a single species of tree that paradoxically hasn't gone extinct for 299million years despite being completely unadapted to any existing ecosystem and also makes vomit "berries") So you see, all the Gymnosperms are freaking weird.

I mentioned ginkgo “berries” in scare quotes because these aren’t actually berries. They’re not even fruits. It’s actually just the seed but with a fruit-like fleshy seed coat bit around it. Remember how I said that gymnosperms by definition don’t have seed coats? Yeah, the ginkgo has one of those despite being a gymnosperm; taxonomy is a folly of man’s hubris.

[aspergillosis]

one thing you gotta hand it to me for: i put myself in some situations. ive gotten sick with exotic zoonotic disease from taking care of snowy owl, ive had a pet bat, ive moved to tennessee and gotten a cryptobro room mate off of discord, and now im slowly developing a drinking habit and haven't lived on land for the past 9 months. i also have been the number 2 seller of i ching sets on etsy (the consequence of wanting an i ching set, deciding to grow my own yarrow, and it getting out of hand), and now my mom is taking care of my baby ephedra plants because I want to try authentic vedic soma so so so badly

[heartbeater168]

What's the worst thing you've ever done to your heart?

Hm, I had a bunch of ephedra and did pressure. It's between that and this other time I got overheated. My heart was pounding out then, and I was having trouble breathing. 😅

[korallion]

Loose threads and various trivia from the Poppy War series that I can't stop thinking about

I'm writing this because I have very little time to write at the moment so I won't be able to fit all these elements into the Poppy War fic I'm writing but I still have to get it out of the system because the amount of detail is insane.

DrUgS!

Ancient Chinese medicine in general is full of hallucinogenic and poisonous plants that were dosed very carefully, but shamans used them to talk to the gods, and the most common ones were:

The fly agaric mushroom: the mushroom that Chaghan and Qara gave to Kitay and Rin for the anchor ritual.

The ephedra plant: it was generally drunk in the form of tea and I think it's the liquid from the flask Jiang gives Rin in the first book when he sends her to meditate in the forest since Rin describes its effects not as a high but more as the beneficial effects of the plant in question.

The datura plant: it's extremely poisonous and was used in small amounts for its powerful hallucinogenic effects and sometimes its flowers are a blue-violet so I think it's the famous blue powder that Chaghan carries around in a small bottle although I couldn't find anything claiming it was used in that form. On that note, one of the candidates for Chaghan's drug is also cannabis, which was also used by Taoist monks and nomadic peoples from which I assume Hinterlands are inspired and, although they are modern hybrids, there are blue variants of this plant so it could be an artistic license from Kuang.

Betel nut tree: as Shiro experiments on Altan and Rin rants that the introduction of the Speerly to opium was an idea of the Red Emperor to make them addicted to Nikan and that previously their people used the bark of a tree without specifying which one. I think this is the tree in question although in reality, it is the nuts that are consumed because in addition to being the fourth most commonly used psychoactive substance after tobacco, alcohol, and caffeinated drinks, according to the World Health Organization, it energizing effects prevent fatigue and thirst so the famous fame of the Speerly warriors, at least those in Tearza's time, perhaps also stemmed from this as well as the brutal training regime and the legend of its origin is also very much linked to the Speerly eyes.

2.The Different Peoples of Nikan

I will only talk about Speerly and Hinterlanders otherwise I will never stop writing.

Speerly: As I mentioned above, the Tiwanese legend of the birth of the Betel Tree is linked to the inspiration for the red eyes of our phoenix warriors. According to the legend of the Paiwan tribe, one day a child with red eyes was born in a village, who killed any living thing with a glance. In the end Pali, this is the child's name, after finally integrating himself into the village and using the power of his eyes in wars between the other tribes, will be put to death after accidentally killing children but a friend of his notices that a betel nut tree was born on Pali's grave, the fruits of which are as wide and red as the boy's eyes that will protect the people of the village from then on. Now, what do you do with an intriguing legend about a red-eyed boy whose death essentially gave rise to a light drug tree? Apparently Kuang's answer was an entire red-eyed people reaching out to their murderous goddess via a drug of the colour of their eyes. I love this woman.

Hinterlanders: Rather than being one of a single people they are a sort of confederation of clans inspired by the Huns and the Mongols but I find it fascinating that many have light eyes and hair isn't an artistic license by the author to make them more 'shamanic' like most fantasy writers do because apparently a lot of ancient nomadic Asian ethnic groups had light eyes and hair. I used to think it was incredibly rare and more a thing of the descendants of peoples who lived near the Silk Road or the European border.

3.The Dragon

The Dragon is a Yao not a God.

I know Chaghan has already explained this, but many seem to forget about it, while I who had read Poppy War because I was in abstinence of Wuxia like MoDaoZuShi started shouting IS A FUKING Yao! and suddenly Nezha's whole speech about how it's not like Rin suddenly makes sense. Because Yao are often confused with Magical Beasts or Gods but Yao is a broad term for any animal, plant or even inanimate object that has gained spiritual awareness and magical powers. In this case, as Chaghan explained, an animal has absorbed the power of the Caves (if we want to speak in terms of theology or even Wuxia it would be Qi or even Mana if you prefer) which are one of those places where the veil between the two worlds thins and supposedly filled with the power of the real Rain Dragon and has become the 'Dragon'. But he is not a god because, as has already been said in the trilogy, true gods do not have material bodies. This can be confirmed in the story Vaisra tells Nezha about the shaman Yu who suggests that he has turned into the Dragon when in fact he may have been eaten and absorbed into the 'collection' of the Yao because in The Nine Curves River, a story by Kuang in the collection The Books of Dragons, she suggests the Yao existed before Yu's time because she makes no mention of Yu's legend but instead it is a fisherman who becomes the dragon in one of the versions.

The Dragon (Yao) is a Yinglong

The story of the Cave Dragon that Vaisra tells Nezha is inspired by the story of the legendary King Yu, founder of the Xia Dynasty who, according to the story, controlled the flooding of the Yellow River thanks to a Yinglong a very powerful water dragon that had lost its wings to kill a drought demon. This dragon is also related to the eels, through a connection that I honestly didn't understand, at least as Wikipedia explained it, and it relates back to how Rin sees him when he attacks the cave, because at least to me he reminds me of a giant eel.

Maybe the Yin sacrifice their children to the Yao

Okay I know, it sounds absurd, now I'll explain. Also in The Nine Curves River it is understood that it is set before the reign of the Red Emperor (the monks still operate) and the people of Arlong sacrifice the most beautiful people they can find in times of severe drought. Now there is no reference to anything like this in the era in which Poppy War is set but something may have changed when Yu was the one bound to the Yao in Dragon form, because in the story it is referred to that Yu would not allow anyone else to suffer, and in The Nine Curves River the Yao can cause an abnormal and prolonged drought until the sacrifice has been made but not in the times we are shown. So Yu did something that kept the Yao at bay for over a thousand years after his death or the Yin family sacrifice their children in secret. I have this theory that the Yin took it upon themselves to nurture what they thought was a God for the sake of their people after all forms of worship had been banned and, since in The Nine Curves River it is specified that the sacrificed people must go there voluntarily (perhaps a limitation imposed by the fact that even real gods cannot invade the minds of shamans unless the latter want them to and so a Yao who feeds on their power cannot go out and eat whoever they want whenever they want) the Yin Lords of the past would have piqued the curiosity of the sacrificable children to make them go to the Grotto voluntarily and the Yao would accept them as offerings and prevent the drought. So Vaisra knew that one of his sons would be eaten? Hell yes. Or at least he hoped that Yu's legend had some truth to it (knowing Riga) and that he would end up with at least one son turned into a Dragon to use for his revolution. As they say, be careful what you wish for.

Mingzha was not devoured by accident

Of course the whole theory above is dismantled when Nezha tells Yao that he was so hungry that he hadn't even thought of keeping Mingzha for himself and had devoured him straight away and that Nezha would go with him, presumably to do what Yu did (perhaps he had intuited something that is not told) to keep him at bay for so long. But hunger may not have been Yao's only reason for choosing to eat the child. Mingzha is presented to us with gold bracelets and anklets that are good luck charms for children, and so far nothing strange apart from the potential to be a heartbreak parallel for Nezha's handcuffs. But in The Nine Curves River the author implies that all Dragon sacrifices are marked with gold bracelets and anklets, so when the Yao chose Mingzha it was because he thought he was a sacrifice to be devoured.

The Red Emperor and Yu were like Nezha and Yin.

Me with a really crazy theory? More likely than you think.

So from what I understand even though it's not specified, the Yao doesn't eat all his sacrifices otherwise people like Yu and Nezha and the Fisherman wouldn't exist, even in legend. Maybe he plays with his food or maybe he has to give a fraction of his power in return, unfortunately we don't have enough elements to determine this but in Yu's legend there is a reference to the fact that the Dragon Province had become unlivable due to the currents and climate towards the end of the Red Emperor's reign, giving us a very specific time window in which to place the tale, which is strange in itself, but also makes a heavy implication (at least to me) that it was the Emperor's presence that made Arlong prosperous and, towards the end of his life, the work of his 'sacrifice' tapered off until Yu took his place.

Now, why do I think the Red Emperor was a Yin? Because Kuang loves to make us suffer and since Rin is Tearza's descendant it would make sense for Nezha to be a descendant of the Red Emperor but also for a few other reasons: Kitay says that the aunts and cousins of the Yin Clan were chosen as concubines of the Emperors and if the intrigue of the Harem didn't go out of fashion it wasn't just because of their beauty, women related to Kings and Emperors were a useful chess piece in political machinations. The coat of arms of House Yin is a dragon and speaking of historical reality the only ones who could wear the dragon on their robes or as a family crest were the Emperors and his family. Reference is made to the fact that there were no survivors of his lineage almost too insistently, just as there is no reference to Tearza's lineage until she calls Rin my blood. The Yin have the Imperial Seal that was thought to be lost. I'm pretty sure the Red Emperor is historically the equivalent of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, whose birth name was Ying Zheng and well . . . I know the Ying character and the Yin character are different but they sound similar and from a plot point of view the Red Emperor's remaining descendants could have hidden themselves by changing surnames but still one that had a resemblance to the one of origin or a side branch of the family, the possibilities are many. Lastly, he might be right about the Yin feeding their children to the Yao in Dragon form.

As for Yu, I think he was another yin descendant because, at least in the Italian version, Nezha seems to know that Yu is his ancestor.

That's all for now, at least until I find the rest of my notes. If any of this inspires you to write something I would love to have a little credit, even a small one, and oh. . .I definitely want to read it, or if you want to go in the rabbit hole with me don't be shy

[autistrix]

[https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/203263892] Mongolian Ephedra || Ephedra equisetina Observed in Kazakhstan No Conservation Status

[transmutationisms]

Do you have a perspective on why stimulants aren’t currently widely prescribed as weight loss drugs? Im guessing it’s related to it being a ‘controlled substance’ and ‘scary drug’ but drug marketing in pursuit of pharmaceutical profits is pretty powerful… I wonder why I haven’t seen (effective?) efforts to try to ‘overhaul’ the image of stimulants as only associated with “addiction”, “hyperactive children”, finance bros, and “lazy adults”.

I know vyvanse is also prescribed for binge eating but I get the sense most people are unaware of that. I tried many stimulants and I had the most rapid and “easy” (found food repulsive) weight loss on vyvanse. Granted all of the many prescribed stimulants I’ve tried all greatly suppress my appetite.And I’ve seen it described as a benefit by some people who have it prescribed for adhd (I understand why people do and I sometimes see it as a very depressing benefits because lack of food security despite). Binge eating disorder and prescribing for general weight loss aren’t too far from each other in the fatphobic society we live in but I guess I’m curious how it hasn’t had the ozempic treatment already/ when will it happen. People already look down of folks who can’t function by society’s standards in certain contexts and I see that similarity in how people talk about people who take ozempic for weight loss (admonishing and a moral failure).

stimulants absolutely still are prescribed for weight loss lol, in addition to Vyvanse for 'binge eating' (v unreliable diagnosis that many people receive when they are in fact dealing with subjective loss of control around food as a direct result of restrictive behaviours...) there's also Desoxyn (methamphetamine) and Phentermine (a substituted amphetamine), which are both still FDA-approved for short-term weight management. and yes that's Phentermine as in half of fen-phen. you also have to keep in mind that off-label prescribing is hard to track but is probably still occurring at not-insignificant rates (i know it happens with Ephedra and Clenbuterol, for example). and then there are also patients who use stimulants for weight loss without a doctor's knowledge, either by obtaining them on the black market or by simply getting a doctor to prescribe them for something else.

anyway in regards to pharma marketing strategies i think there are a few things going on here:

weight loss has never actually been the sole market for these drugs, nor was it the first. amphetamine was first synthesised in 1929; it was put into asthma inhalers almost immediately and by the late 30s was being sold as a kind of generalised wellness-producing drug, used by, for instance, college students as a 'pep pill'. the Allies used quite a bit of amphetamine in WWII to keep soldiers alert (the US military was still doing this in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2000s; afaik they have not stopped this practice). by the late 50s stimulants were also marketed as pick-me-ups for unhappy housewives and for a dizzying array of depression 'subtypes' (postpartum, old age-related, disability-related) and 'modern miseries' (atomic anxiety, economic and political unrest). it wasn't until the 50s and 60s that stimulants really started to be marketed as diet pills, with 'overeating' configured as a symptom of depression. even those formulations also had other use markets: professional athletes, for example. i'm sure pharma companies would love to have the stimulant dominance they once did in weight loss, but it's not really necessary in order to move product: these days the ADHD diagnosis will generally do the job just fine. nicolas rasmussen's book On Speed has more on this history.

speaking of the ADHD diagnosis, i have observed that in the last two or so decades, it has increasingly been invoked in bioessentialist narratives of either 'chemical imbalances' (usually dopamine, norepinephrine) or distinct 'neurotypes' that are said to cause, worsen, or be susceptible to 'overeating', which can therefore be treated by the use of stimulant drugs. i strongly suspect an effect here is that 'overeating', weight gain, or 'obesity' are de facto being used as diagnostic criteria for ADHD, or for other psychiatric diagnoses considered to have high overlap in behavioural presentation. this is not dissimilar to the formulation in the 60s of 'overeating' as a result of depression; in both cases the narrative elides the appetite-suppressant effects of stimulants and presents them as aiding with weight loss by treating an underlying bio/psychiatric pathology. an interesting historical note here is that Adderall is simply a rebrand of the second-gen formulation of the weight-loss drug Obetrol.

presently, weight loss is largely marketed using the language of health rather than aesthetics. although pharma companies are certainly not morally above lying, i do think it would be a tough pill to swallow (pun intended) if they tried to convince anyone that a stimulant prescription is part of this sort of 'wellness' scene. that could change in the future, ofc; these perceptions and associations are socially and historically contingent. in the US even as recently as the 90s, people were definitely still presenting fen-phen as health-promoting (tautologically, because it caused weight loss!), at least until the valve disease scandal.

glp-1 agonists like ozempic are, i think, getting a lot of extremely credulous coverage, from both the medical establishment and health journalists, that is obfuscating the fact that they basically also work by suppressing the appetite. whether it is 'healthier' to do this with a substance that alters endocrine function than to do it with a substance that acts on adrenergic receptors is unclear to me. certainly there are many 'side effects' of the glp-1 agonists that are simply the results of rapid / significant weight loss (fatigue, weakness, osteoporosis, hair loss, gallstones, 'ozempic face', &c). that a process that causes these things can be marketed as health-promoting is a whole other topic lol. but i think the perception of the glp-1 agonists as healthful weight-loss agents has to do with certain misunderstandings of diabetes, metabolism, and body weight, as well as a degree of... not quite blackboxing, but something adjacent, on the part of pharma companies in their promotional materials. which is to say, it wouldn't surprise me if, in the future, people looked back at glp-1 agonists as also being risky drugs to use for weight loss, and only being worth using in specific, limited circumstances.

[sabakos]

Other historical-critical conspiracy theories I think are probably true but can't prove:

Moses is not only not a historical person (not controversial), but the entire Joseph-Moses tradition is post-exilic. Isaac and Jacob are unrelated hero cult figures, and Abraham was invented as a syncretism after the fall of the "Northern" Kingdom.

The original readership of the two works that make up the Quran did not think they originated from Muhammad, who was a military leader. The person who wrote the more homiletic suras was aware of Christian doctrine but hadn't read the bible.

No one who wrote any of the Christian Gospels had ever been to Judea. The Marcionite versions of the Pauline Epistles and the Gospel of Luke are the originals. No one who wrote any part of the New Testament could read or speak Aramaic, and Jesus didn't speak Greek, so none of it originates with him. Pontius Pilate killed Jesus because he wanted to.

Every extra-scriptural tradition corresponding to the above three religions is pure fiction that was invented for doctrinal reasons, none of which originates from any oral tradition.

The mystery plant mention in the Vedic rituals called "Soma" is ephedra and the only reason this isn't obvious is that the Samaveda traditions originated in a place where ephedra actually grows rather than in India. It's also a stimulant which may not be compatible with the later traditions about it but fits the Vedas themselves just fine.

Prior to Adi Sankara, nobody thought of the upanishads as constituting a single body of literature. The "astika" schools are a post hoc categorization that was applied to a heterogeneous corpus of much earlier literature based on what happened to survive.

The gymnosophists that Alexander the Great encountered in india aren't Jains or Buddhists and don't correspond to any other coherent religious or philosophical group we would recognize either, none of which formally existed yet. Buddhism was formalized with the founding of the Maurya Empire, and Jainism as a coherent entity is much later.

The Homeridae were called that because they were initially formed from the sons of captives taken in war. Homer is a back-formation that was invented when the initial etymology was lost.

The Athenians greatly revised the Iliad and Odyssey for use in the Panathenaic festival to emphasize Athenian traditions, especially in the Odyssey. Most manuscripts of these poems that the Alexandrian librarians used to compile their editions originated from Athens, which means ours do too.

The philosophical dialogue format originates from Ancient Greek tragedy, which itself originates from the performances of the Homeric poems in the Panathenaea. It didn't catch on outside Athens, and fell out of favor even there as most philosophy students in the Hellenistic period were literate.

Plato's immediate successors, Speusippus, Xenocrates and Polemo, greatly revised and edited many of Plato's dialogues prior to publication. Only the 15 works cited by Aristophanes of Byzantium were initially intended by themfor wider publication. Much of the received text of these dialogues is unmarked commentary, which explains the stylometric and doctrinal differences. The other dialogues weren't published until Sulla sacked Athens.

Whoever wrote Aristotle's "esoteric" works, it wasn't him, and the reason that the later peripatetics, even the ones who knew him well, don't refer to these works is they weren't aware of any such texts by Aristotle.

Origen the Christian philosopher and Plotinus the founder of Neoplatonism were both taught by the same Ammonius of Alexandria, and the reason that Porphyry mentions an "Origen the Pagan" as one of Ammonius Saccas' students, while Origen claims his teacher was a Christian named Ammonius is that Origen lied about being a Christian.

[translations2]

두 개의 시, 자카리아 모하메드

Two Poems

By Zakaria Mohammed

Translated by Lena Tuffaha

I.

I caught a glimpse of you as I ran. I had no time to stop and kiss your hand. The world was chasing me down like I was a thief and it was impossible for me to stop. If I had stopped I’d have been killed. But I caught a glimpse of you: your hand a stem of narcissus in a glass of water, your mouth unbuttoned, and your hair a soaring bird of prey. I caught a glimpse of you but I had no matches with me to light a bonfire and dance around it. The world was failing me, abandoning me, so I didn’t even wave at you.

One day the world will settle down, the crazed cable channels will stop broadcasting, and those that hound me will disperse so I can return to that road, the one where I caught a glimpse of you. I’ll find you in that same chair: your hand a stem of narcissus, your smile a bird of prey, and your heart an apricot blossom. And there, with you, beneath the shade of your apricot, I’ll tear down the tent of my orphanhood and build my home.

                                     —from Kushtban

II.

Night is a generous friend.  All things loosen their vines over my head. My beloveds are seated around me as if we were at a celebration. My beloveds who have passed. My beloveds who are here, and beloveds yet to come. And death is a watchdog chained at the gate. Only the Khamaseen wind beats angrily at the door. Khamaseen is a loathsome neighbor; I raise a wall between us, turn out the lights between us.

I am happy, singing like a rod of ephedra, crying out like a raptor.

Do not believe my words. Don’t reach out to the vines in the darkness. Night is a pact of horrors. Ten birds sleep in the tree, but one anxiously circles over the house. And as you know, one bird suffices to destroy an entire celebration, one match to burn down a civilization.

The meal was cold. I rinsed my mouth out afterwards with Khamaseen, and washed my hands with lichen.

If there was any use in weeping I would have wept before you all. But weeping requires more energy than we possess, so I will sing for you like tender Saba wind, I’ll sing in the vernacular of a young basil stem: night is a stone of amber. Night is a pact of marvels.

                                    —from Alanda (Ephedra)

_

두 개의 시

- 자카리아 모하메드

- 레나 투파하 아랍어에서 영어로 옮김

I.

달리며 당신을 얼핏 보았습니다. 멈춰 서서 당신 손에 입을 맞출 시간이 없었어요. 세상이 마치 내가 도둑이라는 듯이 나를 뒤쫓고 있었고 나는 도저히 멈출 수가 없었습니다. 멈췄더라면 나는 죽임을 당했을거예요. 하지만 얼핏 당신을 봤습니다: 당신의 손은 물잔에 담긴 한 줄기 수선화, 조금 벌린 당신의 입, 당신 머리카락은 솟아오르는 맹금. 얼핏 당신을 보았지만 내게는 춤을 추며 돌 모닥불을 피울 성냥이 없었습니다. 세상이 나를 실망시키고 있었고, 나를 버리고 있어서, 당신에게 손도 흔들지 않았습니다.

어느날 세상이 진정될 것입니다, 날뛰는 케이블 채널들은 방송을 그만둘 것이고, 나를 못 살게 구는 이들이 흩어져 나는 그 길로 돌아갈 수 있을 것입니다, 당신을 얼핏 본 그 길로. 당신은 같은 의자에 앉아있을 것입니다: 당신 손은 한 줄기 수선화, 당신 미소는 맹금, 당신의 심장은 살구꽃. 그리고 거기서, 당신이랑, 당신 복숭아꽃의 그림자 아래에서, 내 고아시절의 텐트를 허물고 나의 집을 지을 것이에요.

                                     — 큐슈트반에서

II.

밤은 관대한 친구입니다. 온갖 것들이 나의 머리 위로 덩굴을 풀어둡니다. 사랑하는 이들이 무언가 기념하듯 나를 둘러싸고 앉아있습니다. 내가 사랑하는 돌아간 이들. 내가 사랑하는 여기 있는 이들과 내가 사랑하는 아직 오지 않은 이들. 그리고 죽음은 문에 묶인 감시견. *카마신 바람만이 성을 내며 문을 칩니다. 카마신은 혐오스러운 이웃; 우리 사이에 벽을 세워, 우리 사이 켜진 불을 끕니다.

마황 줄기처럼 노래하며, 맹금처럼 비명을 지르며, 나는 행복합니다.

나의 말을 믿지 마십시오. 어둠 속에서 덩굴에 다가가지 마십시오. 밤은 공포스러운 것들 사이의 약속입니다. 열 마리의 새가 나무에서 잠을 자지만, 한 마리는 불안해하며 지붕 위를 돕니다. 그리고 당신이 아시다시피, 기념식 하나를 망치는 데 새 한 마리면 충분하고, 문명 하나를 태워버리는 데 성냥 하나면 충분하지요.

식사는 차가웠어요. 식사를 하고 카마신으로 입을 헹구고 이끼로 손을 씻었습니다.

우는 것이 소용이 있었다면 누구보다도 먼저 내가 울었을 것입니다. 하지만 우는 것은 우리가 가진 것보다도 많은 힘을 요하니, 나는 상냥한 사바 바람처럼 당신을 위해 노래할게요. 어린 바질 줄기의 방언으로 노래할게요: 밤은 호박. 밤은 경이로운 것들의 약속.

                                    —알란다 (엘페드라) 에서

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*카마신 (또는 캄신): 캄신은 이집트와 이스라엘에 영향을 주는 건조하고 덥고 모래가 많은 국지풍이다. 봄부터 여름까지 지중해를 저기압이 동진하는데, 여기에 이끌려서 사막에서 불어나오는 모래풍인 열풍 (출처: 위키피디아)