Tag: Religion
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Lingam and yoni
Lingam and yoni or Shiva and Parvati The blissful union of Shiva and Parvati finds its ultimate expression in the combination of their sexes. In an earlier post you can read a short citation from the Brhaddharma Purana explaining the essence of the lingam and yoni idea. It is the form in which life, creation, the universe, is…
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Shiva and Parvati
Shiva and Parvati In last few weeks’ posts we have identified the creative aspect of Shiva in his ithyphallic representation. But without his female half, Shiva is incomplete and deprived of his creative powers. In the image above, Shiva’s consort Parvati is seated next to him. Together they are the two complementary poles of one…
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Ithyphallic Shiva Nataraj
Ithyphallic Shiva Nataraj In last week’s post we saw the ancient sculpture of an ithyphallic dancing Shiva inside Kalinjar Fort in Uttar Pradesh. Here we have one on a 9th century temple in Bhubaneshvar, Orissa. It is better preserved, with the erect phallus clearly visible. This may be due to its high placement on the…
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Kalinjar Fort
Kalinjar Fort Kalinjar means ‘the destroyer of time’ and thus refers to Shiva, who next to Brahma, the creator, and Vishnu, the preserver, takes care of this part in the eternal cycle of creation, preservation and destruction. However, apart from being the destroyer, Shiva is at the same time very much regarded as creator, which explains…
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Ganesha in France
Ganesha in France We’re looking at a shop-window in which we can distinguish an image of the Hindu god Ganesha flanked by two attendants. At the same time we see the facades of French houses reflected in the windowpane. Two typical cultural images, one Indian, the other French, unexpectedly merged into one. It leaves us…
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Blue Goa
Blue Goa Sun, sea, beach and fun (with plenty of beer), that is Goa for most holidaymakers. Here then we have a beach not crowded like the ones in north Goa where all the tourists flock, but an empty one, breathing an atmosphere of pristine quietness. Not godforsaken though, as we can see. They are…
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La gaia religione
La gaia religione If it hadn’t been the cause of so much misery and death through the ages, one would think when seeing these images, that religion is a joke. Not ‘die fröhliche Wissenschaft’ here, but ‘die fröhliche Religion’. The unlikely collection of elements brought together in the image above is a true source of…
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Holy feet
Holy feet The fact is that the sacred relics of Saint Francis Xavier are kept in the Bom Jesus Church in Old Goa. They are displayed to the public once every ten years, and I happened to be there when this took place in 2014. Friends warned me that there might be a queue of…
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St. Francis Xavier
St. Francis Xavier Faith is big business. Not just for the Church; others are trying to cash in on it too. Churches and stalls selling religious trinkets undeniably hold a certain appeal for me. That’s surely down to my Catholic upbringing in the Catholic south of the Netherlands. For years I sang in the local…
καιρός remembered 