#schematise

[jonnywaistcoat]

Are there any personality typology theories that you are less sceptical of?

Honestly, no. It's fun and all, to create rubrics and classifications and to try and schematise the vast and messy contradictions of humanity, but to actually take that sort of thing seriously is at best a bit foolish and at worst profoundly dangerous.

Our minds are bizarre and twisted mazes of electricity and flesh, constantly growing and breaking in a thousand new ways. And you tell me you can group them into tidy little categories?

Beyond that, the methodologies are all fundamentally flawed: self-reporting at best gives a picture of a person's self-image; and anyone else trying to judge is either assessing their own projections and experiences laid on a stranger or ticking arbitrary checkboxes that tell you nothing.

You can be in therapy for years and never reach anything approaching the "truth" of how your specific mind works and why, yet someone wants to tell you there's a neat typology of personalities that's good for more than a dinner party chuckle? Nah, mate - they're either trying to sell you some bullshit, or they've already been sold it themselves.

[ukfrislandembassy]

I'm annoyed a little that I can't link to the particular entry directly, but there's a fascinating discussion in here about the development in Tamashek of person agreement in a formerly adjectival subsystem of verbs, which is schematised in the table below (you can find the entry in the database for more comprehensive context).

It's probably not entirely clear from the table, but stage I is entirely adjectival agreement, without distinctive person marking: zero suffixation for singular masculines, an overt -yæt for feminine singulars and an overt -æt for plurals. Person agreement is then successively imported from elsewhere in the verbal paradigm into this, as represented in the various stages which are also reflected in other Berber languages.

The most interesting aspect for me is that the the actual features is not relevant for the extension, but merely the form of the inflection, namely that the imported inflection is suffixal. There's a good formal analogical basis for this; the verbs in this class formerly only hosted suffixes and so you just take the suffixes from other paradigms and put them into the slot.

But here's where it gets funky. You can note from the left-hand column that not all of the person-number values in the normal set of verb inflections are marked suffixally; in particular, the 3SG forms and the 1PL are expressed using prefixes. As a result, the existing adjectival exponents end up acquiring person values due to there not being a suffixal exponent to extend. So you end up with these suffixes becoming 3rd person exponents in the singular, but 1st person in the plural (the reason this is in a database on defectiveness is because in Tamashek the original adjectival suffixes are then lost, leading to some varieties having defective paradigms in these verbs which lack a 1PL form).

[risunsky]

How did you learn to draw bodies so well? I’m very envious of your art style!

I don't think I learned the right way. Just by repetition and observation.

For some time now I've had a better way, I've studied the skeleton and musculature more seriously. I was fed up with just being able to draw the outline of the body vaguely, my attention to detail also wanted to render the folds, bumps and hollows formed by the bones and muscles. This also affects the way the light comes across, so it's important to know how it works. Body posture can tell a lot. A seated person isn't just sitting, it's telling a story: they can be very relaxed, even slumped in their chair, or on the contrary very stiff, as if waiting for something stressful to happen. All this is easier to tell if you know how to vary postures, even subtly. Wanting to know how to do this led me to learn more about the human body. I also think that I tend to project myself into the drawing, I always ask myself if the posture is natural, or if it's comfortable. Also visualising the body I want to draw as a 3D object, understanding the volumes and knowing how to render them, to achieve good posture I also need to be aware of how the pieces impact on each other. For example, drawing a character with arms crossed means thinking about how the flesh of the upper arm rests on the flesh of the lower arm, whether the character is relaxed or tense, etc.

An exercise that I do from time to time and which I think helped, drawing a character in an absurd posture but which must be rendered realistically. A good example is circus acrobats. It takes you out of your comfort zone to understand how the body works.

I recommend : drawing from reference. practise with very quick sketches to learn how to schematise the body but also slower sketches to study in more detail. Do this as regularly as possible. There are lots of freely available reference stocks that can be used for this kind of exercise:

"How to think when you draw" is an excellent resource too, they don't just do the human body but when they do they explain really well how to understand articulation and movement.

I hope this answer is a bit helpful, and thanks for the compliment! :)

[bedbabayka]

(Here the notebook contains a number of schematised drawings, apparently depicting the transformation of a canine into a human leg.) The rear lialf of the skeleton of the foot is lengthening. Elongation of the toes. Nails. (With appropriate sketches.)

[the-casbah-way]

as someone who actually does archaeology this is a very dumb take. we’re not trying to determine your gender at any point. we want to know how you lived, who you lived with, how you died. things like that. we sex bodies, we don’t gender them, and even the sexing is just an estimate and nothing else. there’s a reason “gendering bodies” is not a thing, because we understand that this is literally impossible seeing as gender varies way too much between individuals and different societies to ever be determined by archaeology alone. gender does not explicitly show up in the archaeological record in any way. any trained archaeologist will no doubt have stumbled upon near countless examples of when our own modern biases have skewed our interpretations of archaeological finds and human remains, and why we need to be hyperaware of our own tendencies to anachronise or schematise human history. it’s literally common sense. the idea of your belongings having to match your gender makes absolutely no sense and is also just insanely weird and regressive. so many counterarguments against the whole “archaeologists will dig up your bones and see you as xyz” thing are even dumber than the original argument itself which is really saying something. i truly do not mean this in a condescending way but it would be great if you could leave the archaeology to the actual archaeologists

[mybeingthere]

Wassily Kandinsky, with his painting "Dominant Curve", 1936.   

Although Kandinsky was forced to leave Germany in 1933 due to political pressures, he did not allow the mood of desolation pervading war-torn Europe to enter the paintings and watercolours that he produced in France, where he remained until his death in 1944. His late works are marked by a general lightening of palette and the introduction of organic imagery; breaking away from the rigidity of Bauhaus geometry, he turned to the softer, more malleable shapes used by Paris-based artists associated with Surrealism, such as Jean Arp and Joan Miró. Kandinsky’s late, often whimsical, paintings were also influenced by the playful, intricately detailed compositions of his longtime friend and Bauhaus colleague Paul Klee.

During his first years in France, Kandinsky experimented with pigments mixed with sand, a technical innovation practiced during the 1930s by many Parisian artists, including André Masson and Georges Braque. Although Kandinsky utilized this method only until 1936, he created several paintings with rich, textured surfaces such as Accompanied Contrast, in which the interconnected colored planes and smaller floating patterns project slightly from the canvas. Always attentive to and appreciative of contemporary stylistic innovations, Kandinsky inevitably brought his own interests to bear on any aspects he would borrow. As art historian Vivian Barnett has pointed out, his employment of biomorphic forms—a motif favoured by Surrealist painters as well as by Klee—attests more to his fascination with the organic sciences themselves, particularly embryology, zoology, and botany. 

During his Bauhaus years, Kandinsky had clipped and mounted illustrations of microscopic organisms, insects, and embryos from scientific journals for pedagogical purposes and study. He also owned several important sourcebooks and encyclopedias from which depictions of minuscule creatures found abstract equivalences in his late paintings. 

A schematised pink-toned embryo, for instance, floats in the upper-right corner of Dominant Curve, while the figures contained within the green rectangle in the upper-left corner resemble microscopic marine animals. Various Actions is imbued with similar organic figures hovering above a celestial blue field. These buoyant, biomorphic images, often presented in pastel hues, may be read as signs of Kandinsky’s optimistic vision of a peaceful future and hope for postwar rebirth and regeneration.

Nancy Spector (Giggemheim)

[optikes]

an Australian painter in the streets of New York...

John Firth-Smith (born 1943) Australia

1 White Street # 3 (1982) acrylic on stretched 300gsm rag paper, 104cm x 104cm

2 Black Street # 27 (1982) pulp paper and mixed media, 35cm x 35cm

3 Place, Orientation and Navigation (1983) oil on linen 305.0 x 335.5 cm

4 Winter Rounds (1982)

5-7 the artist connecting dots & lines in New York

8 the artist’s photo-documentation of line and shape on New York streets

9 Marshall Islands stick chart

A   Professor Peter James Smith   from  menziesartbrands.com

In 1981 John Firth-Smith travelled to New York to experience the city, to paint there as a local and allow the powerful New York art scene to wash over him. It was a time in the city (that the writer experienced first-hand) when graffiti clogged West Broadway and adorned the walls of the cross-town subway platforms. The locals were producing abstract paintings that had active, brushy surfaces. The curator Barbara Rose, in 1979, produced a show of such work called American Painting: The Eighties that looked like Abstract Expressionism with a college education, and heralded the rise of art stars Susan Rothenberg (1945- ) and Elizabeth Murray (1940-2007). It was the perfect time and place for Firth-Smith’s painterly surfaces to evolve.

From his studio on 20th Street, Firth-Smith could look down on the first winter snows in the city. In the early morning the snow appeared as a soft white blanket, a shroud that covered everything, but later in the day it was stained and marked by the black tracks of car tyres and the footfalls of passers-by. He became fascinated by the ethereal gothic nature of what he saw: steaming ventilators were often to be found in the middle of busy streets, their smoke stacks rising through the traffic, their warmth contradicting the presence of winter snow and sludge. Such is the sensibility that is vividly painted in Winter Rounds 1982, an attractively-proportioned canvas that effortlessly supports the New York dynamic.

Winter Rounds 1982, is ingrained with the gritty, wintry ambience of the city. Like schematised patterns taken from a subway map, or a diagram drawn in an attempt at directing a stranger, there is a frenetic congested intensity in the work that is broken by dots and splashes of colour.’

This painting shows Firth-Smith’s familiar arabesque line, sweeping through the rising red veils of smoke and graffiti, to challenge the gridded infrastructure of the city. Notions of infrastructure usually revolve around trains, bridges, roads and buildings; however with a different kind of infrastructure in mind, the artist deploys a series of connected straight lines and dots to the heart of his picture. In his monograph on Firth-Smith, writer Gavin Wilson describes how the artist had become fascinated with the Victorian cast iron manhole covers found at street level. They often had elaborate decorative surfaces and had holes drilled through them. Firth-Smith tied small weights to the ends of strings, and dropped the weights down the holes making the strings pull tight between the holes; so the sequences of dots and connected lines were born. He later photographed these microcosms, and like an industrial espionage operative, these found their way into his painting process. Ironically, these patterns are reminiscent of stick charts from the Marshall Islands – structures formed by tying small sticks in a gridded pattern to represent the sea, with shells knotted at the intersections to represent the locations of islands. The sea is never far away from the artist’s concerns.

Only in New York could Firth-Smith have had such fertile exposure to the early stages of neo-expressionism. He embraced many deterministic methods of applying paint with drawn lines and dots, then overpainting, then re-positioning more gridded lines and dots; but these methods always relied on chance and randomness. He painted and repainted layer upon layer. ‘The effaced surfaces of the completed work were like a palimpsest, leaving only the faintest trace of his earlier marks.’  It is the beauty of those effaced surfaces that captures the imagination with their daring trails of snow-lines, and the monochrome expanse of restless white.

search @ www.khanacademy.org    www.smithsonianmag.com

[kodicraft]

Dealing with weird shit in proprietary software really does reinforce my beliefs in FOSS

Like I just spent the entire day trying to reverse engineer the goddamn time unit of SynthV. This would've taken actual minutes at most if I could just look in the source code directly and see where the numbers come from! But no! With proprietary software you're just at the mercy of what the developers decided you are allowed to know! There is literally zero information on the file format of SynthV project files, nothing, I had to manually schematise it from scratch. Thank God that it's json with full keys in proper English but that just makes me wonder why there isn't even minimal documentation on what these mean?

This isn't just mildly obscure software either, the other day I was helping out a friend who's windows was stuck in a blue screen boot loop. The only error? A hex code! Googling the hex code returned only fake pages and one single Microsoft support page with some guy telling you to input some unexplained commands to magically fix your system. I know people dog on the Linux source code for being pretty messy and not well documented but it's there! If I get a kernel panic I can just browse the source code and follow the code path to see what happened! I can read and understand what the panic means, why it happened and can figure out how to fix it and not encounter it again!

Open source software isn't just more flexible and versatile but also more usable, being able to access the source code of a program and even edit it makes not just the program but its very code into a tool.

[iwasateenagebordigist]

Comprehending and weighing up the situation has to be the key requirement for making tactical decisions because this allows us to signal to the movement that the time has come for an action which has already been anticipated as far as possible; it doesn’t however allow arbitrary “improvisations” and “surprises” on the part of the leaders. We can’t predict with absolute certainty how objective situations will turn out, but we can predict what we should do in certain hypothetical situations, that is to say, we can predict tactics in their broad outlines. To deny this possibility and necessity would be to deny both a fundamental party duty, and to reject the only assurance we can give that in all circumstances party militants and the masses will agree to take orders from the leading centre. In this sense the party is not like an army or any other State mechanism, for in these organs hierarchical authority prevails and voluntary adhesion counts for nothing. We perhaps state the obvious when we say that there will always be a way left open, incurring no penalties, for party members not to obey orders i.e., simply leaving the party. Good tactics are as follows: in a given situation, even when the leading centre doesn’t have time to consult the party — still less the masses — the tactics are such that they don’t lead to unexpected repercussions inside the party itself and within the proletariat, and they don’t go in a sense opposed to the success of the revolutionary campaign. The art of predicting how the party will react to orders, and which orders will be well received, is the art of revolutionary tactics. These tactics can only be relied upon if they collectively utilise the experiences of the past summed up in clear rules of action and if the membership, having entrusted the fulfilment of this latter task to the leaders, is convinced that these will not betray their mandate and are genuinely and decisively, and not just apparently, engaged in the work of carrying out the movement’s orders. We have no hesitation in saying that since the party itself is something perfectible but not perfect, much has to be sacrificed for clarity’s sake to the persuasive capacity of the tactical norms, even if this does entail a certain schematisation: for even when tactical schemes prepared by us collapse under the weight of circumstances, the matter is never remedied by relapsing into opportunism and eclecticism but rather by renewed efforts to bring tactics back into line with the duties of the party. It isn’t only the good party that makes good tactics, but good tactics that makes the good party and good tactics have to be amongst those that everybody has chosen, and everybody has understood in their main outlines.

Basically, what we are rejecting is that the difficult work of the party in collectively defining its tactical norms should be stifled by demands for unconditional obedience to one man, one committee, or one particular party of the International, and its traditional apparatus of leadership.

[ashleysingermfablog]

Wk 16, 25th of May, 2024 Research Herbals, how plants have been seen

Lilium Lily, Early printed herbal, Herbier du XVe siècle (1486)

From the text: INCIPIT HERBARIUM APULEI PLATONICI AD MARCUM AGRIPPAM by THE BOTANICAL ILLUSTRATION from Library of the Botanical Garden of the University of Padova...

Incunabulum is the text of an author of the fourth century AD known as Pseudo Apuleius, printed in Rome between 1481 and 1484 (or perhaps a few years earlier, Pier Andrea Saccardo, for example, dates it to 1479) by the publisher Giovanni Filippo de Lignamine.

The text is accompanied by very simplified and schematic xylographic images, to the point that, for the most part, the plants represented are unrecognisable if not thanks to the names listed above.

The illustrations are followed by the list of the different names by which the plant is known among the different peoples and data relating to its therapeutic and medicinal uses.

There are animals in many depictions, linked to the medicinal properties of the plant represented: if, for example, the image includes a snake, the plant is useful against snake bites. An exception is the mandrake, depicted with human features and tied to a leash of a dog, which in this case refers to the legend on how to collect it.

In the copy found in the Library of the Botanical Garden, the black and white prints have been lightly coloured with red and yellow pencils.

From the text: BRIEF HISTORY OF ILLUSTRATED HERBALS by THE BOTANICAL ILLUSTRATION from Library of the Botanical Garden of the University of Padova...

For the period from classical antiquity to the late Renaissance, illustrated botanical texts fall into the category of "herbals", while for the following period it is more correct to speak of "flora", "florilegia" and scientific texts on botany.

The herbal can be defined as "a book, used in classical antiquity until the last decades of the fifteenth century, which collects descriptions of plants and their pharmacological virtues, often accompanied by the names by which each plant essence was known in various languages ​​and information on their habitats [...] the text also was soon well provided with depictions [... and] especially from the eleventh century, the images of the plants were often associated with human figures, with the explicit aim of more clearly illustrating the medicinal virtues or to exemplify specific harvesting methods" (from the Treccani Encyclopedia of Medieval Art).

With regards to flora we refer technically to the composite of plants and plant species that live in certain geographic areas, but the term also includes the texts, often illustrated, that describe these plants. The scientific texts on botany, however, examine the plants from only a scientific point of view, analysing distinguishing characteristics, component parts, habitat, life, evolution, mutual differences and similarities...

The term anthology (florilegium), although rarely used with this meaning in the Italian language, refers to a collection of images of plants and flowers, a work dedicated to the plants more from an aesthetic, rather than practical, point of view.

It is difficult, especially for the oldest periods, to define a clear boundary between herbal, flora and anthology.

In Latin times, they had in all probability to circulate illustrated herbals that included images made from copies of previous versions, increasingly less realistic and detailed.

Pliny the Elder argued in his Naturalis Historia that often it was not in any way possible to recognise plants from such images, sustaining to a certain degree the futility of botanical representations (Nat. Hist., XXV, 4-8).

During the Middle Ages, botanical illustrations continued to be based on ancient models through copies and copies of copies gradually less and less true to the original, partly also due to a new mentality which focused attention more on the ideal rather than on reality: even the plants are to some extent idealised, schematised, or reduced to the essence or enriched with imaginative details or related to (real or alleged) therapeutic properties of plants rather than to their actual appearance.

The study of botany is essentially the study of the classical authors, of what was said by Dioscorides, Pliny, Theophrastus ... whose knowledge and beliefs are not challenged, but continue to be passed down in a mixture of science and magic, where the power of the voice of the "greats" of the past is stronger than critical thinking and real life.

One example is the depiction of the mandrake, a toxic plant of the Solanaceae family that actually exists, to which magical powers were attributed. The particular shape of the root, which vaguely resembles a human being, had fuelled numerous legends associated with this plant, in particular its power to kill anyone who dared to harvest it with a piercing scream. In order to harvest the plant, it was therefore advised to tie the base to a leash of a dog that, set free, would run and tear out the plant and die from the cries while making it possible for his master to take it. Despite the fact that simply observing the plant would suffice to understand that this was a legend, the evocative power of popular belief and texts from the past was such that in many medieval texts the mandrake is depicted with anthropomorphic features and tied to the leash of a dog (see below).

During the seventeenth century, botany began to establish itself as an autonomous science and not simply as a branch of medical science: all aspects of plants begin to be studied and their distinctive characteristics, also independent of the pharmacological properties, are investigated.

Volumes from this period, therefore, begin to include more pictures which tended to illustrate the anatomy of plants, with details of the flowers, seeds and fruits, and representations of the undersides of leaves and flowers. The great attention to detail is aided by the increasing use of xylography (engraving of images on metal plates), which replaces chalcography (engraving on wooden slabs) and which allows an even greater degree of detail.

In particular, the publication of texts by Brunfels and Fuchs marks the moment when botany begins to focus on observation of the natural world in an innovative approach, stripping away imaginative interpretations and basing itself on real observation, while the Mattioli text represents an admirable example of revision of the classical authors.

[cassoneconrosole]

One of my biggest problems is that I have a really hard time studying in the morning if I’m not taking notes or schematising

[thevalleysbelow]

Constellation of the day: a brief introduction on sky cultures.

To begin with: every culture that’s ever existed on this planet seems to have found images to associate with groups of stars. Each culture gave those constellations names borrowed from mythology or everyday-life objects. So we have a number of Sky Cultures, some of which have been somehow systemised. I’d at least like to name them, as a form of respect and because they are intrinsically interesting and important.

Native American cultures are the Blackfoot culture, Inuit, Navajo, Tukano, Tupi-Guarani.

In Asia, the Bugis, Chinese (old and Contemporary), Indian Vedic, the Japanese (that is similar to the Chinese in dividing the Moon’s path in 28 “stations”), the Korean (also similar to the Chinese one), the Mandar, Mongolian, and Siberian.

In Europe we have constellation systems as the Belarusian, the Norse (love that one), the Romanian, the Ruelle chart (first ever attempt to reconstruct Greek constellation with geometrical figures), the Sami, a whole separate star chart for Sardinia, then there’s the Western- that’s the most used constellation system adopted by the International Astronomical Union, and three other variations of this particular system.

In the Middle East, we find three Arabic cultures (Al-Sufi, Ancient, Lunar Stations) and the Egyptian culture.

In Oceania, there are the Anutan, Hawaiian, Kamilaroi/Euahlayi, Māori and Tongan.

On the same Earth and under the same sky, apparently no human group could go without looking at the stars. If you’re interested, you may find more here (other references included). Even more bibliography and information can be found on my other main source, from which I learnt most of what I know about Sky Cultures, the mobile app Stellarium. Can also ask me for other links and such if you feel like it.

No constellation is, obviously, a faithful portrait of the hero, object, or animal it’s associated with. One could hardly think of Cassiopea as a W. To see why constellations are named as they are, one should look at the night sky not only with imagination in general, but with The imagination of those who named them first, influenced by their myths, their heroes and their lives. Slawik and Reichter give in their premise the pregnant example of Orion, that up there in the sky is stopping the attack of the Taurus, all the while chasing the beautiful Pleiades, and running from the Scorpion’s stinger. Looking at the sky as a group of humans looked at it, means having in front of you (or above your head for that matter) a sort of rotating, ever changing picture of their culture and beliefs. Stories and legends and are told and handed down in what we now schematise as dots and lines, and I find that re-learning to read them from scratches can be quite mind-opening.

See y’all later with another post, probably another introduction on catalogues and names, this time more technical.

~Ad Astra~

[deathlessathanasia]

“Given the wide range of episodes, and the geographical distance which these stories encompass, some critics, such as Lesky (1931, 48–50), have argued  that there were originally two figures called Medea, whose stories became conflated. The one Medea is believed to be an early figure  from Korinthian mythology, and is linked to the stories of the death  of her children in that community. The other is believed to be a figure associated with the Kolchian sun-god lineage, through her father, Aietes, and aunt Kirke. Ancient mythographers tried different ways of linking Medea’s stories together, such as the argument of Eumelos (cited by Pausanias, 2.1.1 ff.) that made the descendants of Helios  the original rulers of Korinth. It is impossible to say which elements were originally part of the myth, whether one ‘Medea’ came before another. Many scholars think it unlikely that two figures with the  same unusual name should coexist, and the ‘Unitarian Theory’, that there was only ever one figure of Medea, is presented persuasively  by Giannini (2000).

As Medea arrives in our earliest references with a well-developed mythological persona it is impossible to say where the trail began.  If we cannot find a fixed starting point, we may be able to define the area of Medea’s mythic conception. In his 1994 analysis of the myth of Jason and Medea, Moreau argues that Medea was originally a goddess in the tradition of an earth mother, and became an individual figure at a later period, a process termed ‘hypostasis’. Moreau’s reading stems from a view of Greek religion which looks for core sets of ideas and beliefs, arguing that several individual figures of mythology can develop from one initial figure, such as the ‘earth mother’. Johnston (1997) has argued on a related line that Medea was originally a goddess comparable to Hera, but as divine functions became specialised and  divided, Medea became a separate figure.

As a character, Medea’s origins are always divine, as she is part of the family of Helios. The idea that her mythic identity developed from a religious status as a goddess is attractive because the figure of Hekate, to whom Medea is strongly linked, also undergoes a process of mythological reassignment. A child of the Titans, she is accepted into the Olympian pantheon, and her functions change. In Hesiod’s Theogony (vv. 404–52) Zeus welcomes Hekate, and she takes on a number of roles, from care of the young to overseeing horsemanship. She is linked to Artemis and Demeter in Greek mythology, and until the fifth century she is usually represented as a young woman, similar to Artemis, but carrying torches rather than a bow. It is only in later art that she  is depicted more as the old woman, or ‘crone’. Some have suggested that Hekate was originally a mother goddess or earth goddess, and  her function as a patron of the magical arts is a later development. Such parallels are suggestive for the interpretation of Medea, but it is significant that Hekate is always a goddess, whereas Medea’s status  as heroine is more problematic.

Readings such as those of Moreau or Johnston are dismissed by some scholars as being ‘reductionist’, a term referring to attempts to trace all related figures back to single sources. Such ‘reductionist’ approaches, which seek to explain complex phenomena in terms of simpler phenomena (‘reducing’ complex stories), are thought by many to be fundamentally flawed, because they cannot take adequate account of the multiplicity of detail, and must ignore material or  ideas which cannot be easily schematised or catalogued. By contrast, Dowden (1989) and others would emphasise the multivalency of myth, and the need to view heroines of myth in terms of wider significances. We can explore patterns within a myth without insisting on an overall theory which can explain every aspect. An anti-reductionist approach to the story of Medea might accept that there are elements of the myth which have underlying connections with other themes or characters, but still insist that Medea is an individual figure who needs to be analysed in her own terms. As often with the study of mythology, there is no easy resolution to this issue, and the ‘true’ answer may well lie somewhere between these two positions, so that Medea was both an individualised figure and part of a wider set of ideas about divinity.”

 - Emma Griffiths, Medea

[punkpandapatrixk]

This is Part 4 of a series of PACs specifically tailored to the theme of self-transformation. All of my PACs naturally carry this theme, however, the ones belonging to this series are imbued with intentions that are closely intermingled with one another. I think, there will be 5 PACs in total to complete this series.

They're all essentially timeless so it doesn't matter which ones you come across first.

[Back to Masterlist] [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 5]

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

People usually have this idea that a life purpose is this one thing you're meant to figure out at one point in life and continue to pursue/do for the remainder of your days. Although this isn't wrong, this is misleadingly inaccurate. If you're adept at Astrology, you'll understand that one's life purpose can encompass a variety of things you're meant to do in this incarnation.

The one thing we do have... is a theme. The variety of things you can indulge in your studies all lead to one schematised plan—life's blueprint. If you think your Destiny—your life's destination—is a single lane towards a singular activity, you'll only be miserably confused. It's more empowering to think about direction, you see.

Life changes constantly and future possibilities are shaped by the current emanation of energies—mostly they are yours, but bigger forces are also at play, so be humble, and be chill when things seem to go crazy. You rarely have only one direction in Life. As you progress through this hyper-realistic game we call Life, paths continue to alter and new directions revealed.

Pile 1 - Harbinger of Revolution

Queen of Wands, King of Cups Rx

Priestess of Integrity & Red Astronomer (Johannes Kepler)

Of all the piles, yours is probably the heaviest. Look, you clearly didn't come here to just play stupid and be boring like everyone else. You. Are. A. Harbinger. Of. Revolution. Quite literally, you came here—hyper-specifically—to change the world. In all the senses that word carries. Bad news is, such a destiny is rarely easy. But if you manage this incarnation, amazing evolution to your Soul is also granted.

Some of you, your Soul did want just exactly that—evolution. Some of you, they begged your participation in this hyper-realistic game called Earth Life because your skills are so fucking needed. Whether this voluntary participation has caused your Soul much sadness is not even in the question. Fuck that, right? This much hardship in one's life should never be okayed🤬

Now, this pile has attracted a very specific group of Souls, but at the same time, the variety of things/activities you're meant to view as your Life Purpose is also vastly varied! This may surprise you but your Life Purpose is actually part of a greater TEAM WORK that involves other highly advanced and specialised Souls who'd decided to incarnate on Planet Earth at very specific times, to assist one another.

You're like in a group of very important beings who get to play a part in the course of Human history and that makes your life's blueprint almost hyper-specific, so as to minimise the risks of your failing your mission. What this entails... may be a feeling like you've never had a freewill of your own. It's because you agreed to that in your Soul's contract: that should the time for you to awaken and fulfil your contract, you give the Higher Realms the permission to override your freewill.

-You should know that this kind of design is highly unorthodox because this Planet is a special planet that works on freewill. That alone should tell you the importance of your Soul and your mission. Please never see yourself as small and insignificant!-

What to do NOW🔻❤️

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 2 - Balancer of the World

XIV Temperance, 7 of Swords Rx

Priestess of Good Fortune & Silver Geographer (Francis Drake)

You know... your life's direction could be the simplest and yet, the most wholesome of all. Basically, your life purpose is to be and do good. You just have to be a good person; the world needs your charitableness. But what does being good mean in this world where goodness is often cheated on by assholes? If you're so good and white and pure to a point of being used by others and have no means to protect yourself, you're also being not good to yourself. It's not enough.

'If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.' — probably a Buddhist quote

Hopefully it doesn't sound counterintuitive, but your life purpose revolves around the theme of self-empowerment, which may involve some acts of selfishness in order to defend your place in the world. You need to learn to become strong, which may involve some acts of hurting another person in order to defend your wellbeing, too. But this isn't to say that you're justified for doing cruel things. No, you're a good person, but this world is rarely good, so you kinda need to learn how the devil ticks, so you don't get easily manipulated and taken advantage of.

Knowing how the devil ticks is not the same as becoming the devil. By knowing, and still choosing to be good, you set an example for others. That shit gives people hope—that there is a place for goodness in this world; that being good doesn't have to equate being a pushover or a weakling. Being good doesn't mean being harmless, you know?

'A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control.' — Dr Jordan Peterson

At the end of the day, if you wonder what your life purpose should look like, it is to do with charity. To share your good fortune with the world. Fortune, fortunately, can mean a wealth of things. Even your life stories are a fortune provided you know how to tell them for inspiration😉With the state of the world today, all kinds of sharing that lift up the Soul are very much needed by everyone.

What to do NOW🔻💙

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Pile 3 - Off the Beaten Path

9 of Pentacles, Queen of Cups Rx

Priestess of Magick & Red Alchemist (John Dee)

People who've chosen this pile are probably highly, highly uninterested in the idea of having a family. Or anything else to do with the concept of matrimony. You like being your own best company and you aren't afraid the least bit of 'dying alone'. You just have a different idea about what it means to grow old and die 'alone'. You already know that 'family' isn't defined by blood and you know damn well, it can be found well beyond a matrimony.

Your Life Purpose, actually, is to just have fun with whatever plans you have for yourself in this incarnation. Whether or not you're aware of this, you're an extremely advanced Soul and have very powerful manifesting abilities. Your fun game is learning how to manifest all that you desire through concrete studies in all that you're passionate about. Study, explore, experience, grow, make things, inspire the world. Do what you like and make your own rules. The world's your oyster, as they say.

You need not be afraid of what others have to say—or think—about your unorthodox way of life. It's your way of life, anyway. In this world where so many young people are confused anyway, your living life your way can serve as a ray of hope for those looking for a green light to live their own lives authentically. You're all alchemists of the Soul; magicians; Old Souls; Lightworkers; Starseeds; wayshowers; what have you; you came here to make a difference.

I'm thinking characters like John Keating from Dead Poets Society and Katherine Watson from Mona Lisa Smile.

I feel a bit unfair for this pile has such a short message (and no extra messages either), but... wow, I'm not hearing anything anymore. Bottom line is, I think you're so powerful and so confident and you, so, know, what you want. Perhaps, sometimes you're just a little confused because the world is unfriendly towards powerful beings and you can question yourself from time to time. Well, keep going and keep being strong. You're not wrong at all.

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[le75gr]

Geoff Mcfetridge suite...

Pour voir plus de sa production: http://geoffmcfetridge.tumblr.com

[ellebi-studies]

Hello everyone,

I am so glad to announce that I just finished the second year of med school! I am sorry for having not being active on Tumblr during the last months, but now I am here to share my study methods for the exams of this session, beginning with neuroanatomy.

Neuroanatomy was, for me, the better part of the anatomy exam. It may seem chaotic when you start studying it, but I find so fascinating the way we are precisely organised and the abilities our brain allow us to have.

Since neuroanatomy might be hard to understand at first-lecture, I advise a layered strategy to approach this exam.

Also, I strongly suggest using an atlas to memorise the structure of the nervous system. I found Netter's Atlas of Neuroscience very complete and understandable, and it is cheap too (I paid less than 20 euros).

Here are the steps of my preparation for this exam:

1) Reading all the material

When I first faced this subject, it seemed to me that I could not understand anything. Everything was so confused, with unclear terminology and references to structures that I did not know.

That is why I preferred to have a general look at all the material, without focusing on understanding in depth what I was reading, but trying to catch as much information as I could to have a basic knowledge of neurosciences.

During this phase, I attended classes, read my notes and read the book. After that, I drew a minimal mind map with main topics to start building a scheme in my mind.

2) Active comprehension and schematisation

After having gone through all the material, I quitted the classes and favoured studying on my own. I guess this is a personal decision: generally speaking, I find it vital to go to classes, but in this case, I felt I was losing my time. I realised I needed much more time than a two-hour lesson to comprehend a topic, so I could not focus, ending up distracting and wasting my time.

I started reading all the material again, trying to grasp the point.

I also began to schematise the topics. I selected the most helpful images of the atlas, and I copied them on my notebook, adding a description.

It may seem time-consuming, but it was easier to memorise anatomical structures after having drawn them.

I also compared my notes with the professor's slides to have a more schematic view.

3) Memorisation and recalling with a friend

I based the last part of my studying on trying to remember all the information.

I used mnemotechnics for the most mnemonic parts, such as the peripheric nervous system. By the way, I think neuroanatomy is not one of the more mnemonic exams in med school.

The technique that helped me the most to fix the information was recalling them with a friend. I am not a fan of studying with someone when I still have to comprehend the topic, but I find it vital some weeks before the exam. Having a study buddy allows you to see the subject from a different point of view and to understand whether you missed relevant information.

Also, I recalled all the topics out loud on my own. It helped me test myself and perceiving if I was able to build a speech on that point.

And that's how I prepared for one of my favourite exams in med school so far. Let me know whether you agree with this method or you would have changed something.

Hope this post will be useful for someone ✨