Category: Artwork
Exhibition of paintings: Vinitha Anand
Angkor – An untold story
Is the bull the enemy?
By Sharon St Joan
When watching the stock market, we talk about the bulls and the bears – why? Well, the symbolism behind this isn’t so much really about the bears, but it is about the bulls, who from the very beginning of human consciousness have been known as a symbol of power, success, and victory. The bull stands at the top of the mountain, having conquered his rivals.
In the caves of Lascaux, in southern France, 17,000 years ago, Cro-Magnon man painted extraordinarily beautiful cave paintings. The largest of these, running about 17 feet long, depicts, a bull, not a modern bull, but an ancient wild bull, the auroch, a species that existed before bulls became domesticated. They were much larger then and fiercer.
Visiting Crete in the late sixties, I was struck by the many depictions in the ruins of Knossos of the bull. Even simple blocks of stone had double bulls’ horns carved at either end. Clearly, the bull was an archetypal symbol for the Minoans, whose civilization was at its zenith, around 1500 BCE.
In ancient Egypt, the bull was worshipped as the god Apis, symbol of strength and power.
Among Native Americans of the plains, where there were no cattle, the bison assumed the place of the bull, and the bison, who provided everything the plains people needed in terms of food, clothing, and shelter, were greatly revered.
In Vedic literature and other sacred texts of India, great heroes were referred to as “bulls among men.” Throughout history and today in India, the vehicle of the God Shiva is the bull, Nandi, who guards the entrance of every Shiva temple, and the devotee pays his respects to Nandi, who then graciously allows the devotee to enter the temple and to worship Shiva.
In the Christian Bible, the ancient Hebrews got into a lot of trouble by worshipping the Golden Calf, as soon as Moses had been gone too long on the mountain. When their faith in Moses waned, they reverted to an older tradition – worship of the bull.
The Mesopotamians worshipped the bull as Marduk, a magical being – god of water and the growth of vegetation, as well as judge of human affairs.
The Canaanite god Moloch was often portrayed as a bull.
Unfortunately, the position of great honor bestowed on the bull throughout history has drawn the attention of a darker aspect of human nature, which is the desire to kill whoever or whatever stands at the top. This is not at all the same as the legitimate fight against oppression and injustice, which is noble and heroic, but instead, it is the ignoble wish to subjugate anything that might be seen as a potential rival – the basic drive which seeks to eliminate all competition in any way possible.
This instinctive drive has a positive side which may lead to success and to excellence, but all too often, throughout human history, it has instead been overwhelmingly negative — leading to the wanton destruction of all that is perceived as not subservient enough.
The desire to destroy one’s rival leads to wars, to run-away arms races, to tyranny, to the accumulation of wealth at the expense of all who are less fortunate, to the oppression of the female, the young and the old, and all who are weaker or poorer. It leads to the destruction of nature, the elimination of wild species, the devastation of the planet earth and to climate change run rampant. At its most extreme, anything that is beautiful, untamed, or magnificent is the enemy of this drive for domination and becomes a target for destruction.
All this has lead to the bull being among the most persecuted of animals in many cultures, worldwide.
The bull in ancient Crete was the object of bull-baiting in which young men leaped on the backs of the bull to ride them, thus proclaiming their victory and superiority over the bull – and their worth as “heroes.”
Bull-fighting is the modern day form of this in Spain and other countries. In Spain and in Mexico, there are lesser-known “festivals,” sponsored by local Catholic churches, which far exceed bull-fighting in terms of extreme cruelty, torture, and the killing of the bull.
There are ritual tribal persecutions of the bull in sub-Saharan Africa.
In the history of Christianity, the devil has traditionally been depicted with the horns and the tail of a bull – thus showing the bull, who is an innocent animal, as the essence and symbol of evil.
The drive to dominate, subject, torment, and destroy all that is innocent and beautiful represents the very worst aspect of human nature, and it is based on fear, the fear of being defeated and replaced.
There is though a positive, iconic figure who is just the opposite of this – the protective hero, seen for example, in the great flood myth of India in the Noah figure, Manu. Manu saves a tiny, helpless fish, who calls out to him for help because he is about to be eaten by large, ferocious fish. Manu cares for his little fish with great attentiveness, for many years, raising him until he becomes a large, strong fish and then releasing him to be free again in the sea. The fish repays him for saving his life by warning him of the Great Flood and then by pulling Manu’s ship through the tempestuous waves to the top of a mountain, to rest in safety. There, all the seeds that Manu has brought along on the boat are planted in the ground, and the life of the earth is restored to begin anew. Manu is the archetype of the positive, protective figure, noble and kind, who cares for the good and the innocent. He is the true hero.
Even India though, which has for many thousands of years worshipped and revered trees, plants, and animals, is not free from the destructive instinct to dominate, especially to dominate the bull, and this is seen in the cruel sport jallikattu, a form of bull-baiting practiced in the south in Tamil Nadu, in which crowds of young men torment and persecute bulls as a spectator sport. It is also evident in the cruelties inherent in the illegal transport and slaughter of cattle – and in bullock-cart racing in the state of Maharashtra.
These abusive practices are being opposed by thousands of animal welfare groups in India, part of an energetic struggle that has been pursued over at least the past forty years.
The Supreme Court of India is expected soon to deliver a ruling on these three forms of cruelty to bulls, which are already illegal, according to the Prevention of Cruelty of Animals Act – 1960. If the ruling upholds the rights of the bulls and the integrity of the longstanding humane traditions of India, this will be a major leap forward for animals in India and the world – and a sign that the voices of kindness and positivity are not always silenced and will sometimes prevail, overcoming all obstacles.
© Sharon St Joan, 2014
Sharon St Joan is the author of Glimpses of Kanchi.
Top photo: Prof saxx / “This building is indexed in the Base Mérimée, a database of architectural heritage maintained by the French Ministry of Culture, under the reference PA00082696.” / Wikimedia Commons / “Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version…” / Lascaux Caves / Cave paintings of aurochs and deer.
Second photo: user:Rmashhadi / “I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide.” / “This is a featured picture on the Persian language Wikipedia” / Marduk. Iran’s heritage in Musée du Louvre.
Third photo: Deror_avi / Wikimedia Commons / “Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version…” / This is a duplicate, at the Minoan Palace, Knossos. The original is at the museum in Heraklion, Crete.
Fourth photo: Ramanarayanadatta astri / Wikimedia Commons / “This work is in the public domain in India because its term of copyright has expired.” / The fish Matsya pulling Manu and the seven rishis.
Chennai, India: Kindness Kids spread a message of compassion
Looking into how animals, especially elephants, in the temples in Chennai are being treated, B. Akshaya, a student at Grove School, participating in the Kindness Kids program, found that even when the animals are considered sacred, they are not necessarily being well cared for. Her awareness of the needs of the animals enabled her to notice discomfort they were feeling that many of the worshippers simply were not aware of.
Another student in the Kindness Kids program, R. Santhanalakshmi, took photos of conditions in a goshala, where cows are kept, and found that it was clean and very well managed.
Rishab Dasgupta, at the age of nine, after accompanying his father to a chicken stall, declared that he “didn’t want to eat meat anymore.” Though he is so far the only one in his family to become a vegetarian, his father was very proud of his son’s decision and very supportive.
These young people, between ages 9 and 14, were some of the prize-winners among the thousands of students who took part in the Kindness Kids Program. The program, sponsored by the Australian organization, the Winsome Constance Kindness Trust, and run by the C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyar Foundation, held a valedictory function on March 22, 2014 to honor the students for their hard work and many acts of compassion towards animals – from giving up eating meat to putting out water bowls for thirsty birds to conducting adoption drives for street animals.
17,000 students took part in the Kindness Kids program in Chennai, Hyderabad, Ooty, and Gudalur.
Dr. Nanditha Krishna, Honorary Director of the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation, said that there’s been a tremendous increase in the numbers of students involved, and they are engaged in more and more meaningful projects. The C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation is looking into expanding the program to cover ecological issues as well. When the students become aware of an issue that has a impact on animals, they take the message home to their families and friends, and they are remarkably focused when it comes to communicating the message of kindness.
At the award ceremony, awards were given to the children as Kindness Ambassadors and Kindness Champs, as well as to the best schools and the best teachers in the program.
Mr. S. Vinod Kumar, Assistant Secretary of the Animal Welfare Board of India, who presented the awards, stressed that it is essential to impart to every child the principle of kindness to animals.
The CEO of the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation, Mr. Prashanth Krishna, said that the message of compassion to animals is one that the children will carry throughout their lives. Part of making the world a kinder place is to encourage vegetarianism, as a habit that can carry forward to future generations.
When children are encouraged to be kind, there is a ripple effect that extends far beyond them.
Information for this story was drawn from the following sources:
News Today, Chennai, NT Bureau, Sunday, March 23, 2014,“Educating Students about human-animal relationship”
The Hindu, MetroPlus, Tuesday, March 25, 2014, “Circle of Kindness,” by Sriya Narayanan
The New Indian Express, City Express, Chennai, Monday, March 2014, Express News Service, “When kids set out to check on stray animals”
Photo: Artwork, part of the Kindness Kids program, from an earlier event at the Grove School
Chennai, India: Book release – Paintings of the Varadaraja Perumal Temple, Kanchipuram
Meenakshi – from the forest to the temple, Part Two
(Continued from Part One. To read Part One first, click here.)
By Sharon St Joan
History of the temple
Over twenty-five hundred years old, Madurai is mentioned by a number of ancient writers. The Greek Megasthenes, living in the third century BCE, may have visited Madurai. The statesman Chanakya also wrote about Madurai in the third century BCE. Roman historians mention Madurai in the first and second centuries BCE.
Between the third and seventh centuries CE, the city fell under the rule of the Kalabhras, one of whose chieftains was Tiraiyan of Pavattiri. The Tiraiyans were a mysterious people who had come from across the sea. The Kalabhras’ rule in south India was overthrown by the Pandyas, Chalukyas, and the Pallavas.
In the seventh century, there stood on this site a shrine of Shiva.
Then, from the early ninth to the early thirteenth century, the Cholas, who produced extraordinarily beautiful bronze sculptures, ruled Madurai. Many of the statues in the Madurai temple today are Chola bronzes, amazingly elegant and beautiful.
The shrine of Meenakshi, the village Goddess who had been found in the forest of kadamba trees, was added in the twelfth century by Chadayavarman Sundara Pandyan. And with this addition, Meenakshi joined Shiva in the temple.
However, life did not remain peaceful for the divine couple. This original temple was sacked in 1310 by the Moslem general Malik Kafur, who plundered a great many Hindu temples. Moslem incursions disturbed the peace of south India over the next couple of hundred years, though the Moslems were unable to establish a permanent hold in Tamil Nadu.
The temple was rebuilt in the following centuries by the Nayak kings, who ruled from 1529 CE to 1739 CE.
Rebuilding the temple was begun in 1560 by the first Nayak king of Madurai, Vishwanata Nayak and his remarkable prime minister, Ariyanatha Mudaliar. King Thirumalai Nayak in the seventeenth century also took a keen interest in the temple and added many of the complexes that now make up the temple’s interior.
The world within the temple
A high red and white wall surrounds the temple, and the walls of the temple tank (an enclosed pool) are also painted with red and white stripes, as is commonly done in many temples. Corridors that surround the temple tank provide a passageway along which one can walk through the temple while looking down over the tank through elegant columns. These corridors were built by Rani Mangammal (Queen Mangammal), one of the most successful and popular rulers in Tamil Nadu, at the close of the seventeenth century.
A tall gold mast stands at the east entranceway surrounded by many intricately carved statues. Nearby Nandi, the bull who is Shiva’s vehicle, stands guarding the temple, encircled in garlands and a white cloth.
Inside the temple one has entered a different world, of Gods, heroes, animals, and angels, gracefully cast in stone among the flickering lights and the gentle darkness.
Among the 33,000 sculptures in the temple are an endless number of yalis (mythical lions). There is Ganesha, the elephant-headed God of good fortune who overcomes all obstacles, and Kartikeya, who stands with his vehicle, the peacock. There are sculptures of the heroes of the epic poem, the Mahabharata. The Ashta Shakti Mandapam (Hall of Eight Goddesses) contains the statues of the eight forms of the Goddess Shakti. Rati, the wife of Kama, rides on the mythical bird Hamsa.
There are many halls, small and large, within the temple. The Hall of 1000 Pillars extends along straight rows. Wherever one stands looking down the rows, they are aligned in perfectly straight parallel lines.
One of the charming features of the temple are five musical pillars. As a musician strikes the stone pipes that form an integral part of the pillar, they make a lovely musical tone.
Hundreds of smaller sculptures, displayed in glass cases, which have been given to the temple over the years, are housed in a large hall.
Above the main corridors, overhead on the ceiling are rows of lotus blossoms painted red, yellow, and orange. They open and close as one’s eye travels along the ceiling.
Fortunately, parrots are no longer kept captive in the temple as they once were. Instead, they are now free to fly in the clear blue sky, and Meenakshi is certainly pleased that they are living happily once again in the natural world.
Murukruni Pillaiyar, who is Ganesha, was unearthed during an archaeological excavation and was brought here to his site in the temple. In front of his large form, many little dancing fires have been lit. The fires flicker as the priest gives him a bath in coconut water.
The temple is worlds within worlds, magical levels of existence, glimpsed through the magnificent beauty of the stone beings who are not really stone at all, but who gaze, aware and alive, deep into a world of the spirit.
The Meenakshi Amman Temple, like many Hindu temples, is rather like India itself — enchanting, beautiful, and of a complexity beyond understanding.
Top photo: Reji Jacob / Wikimedia Commons / “This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.”/ Some of the sculptures in the Meenakshi Temple.
Second photo: Iramuthusamy / Wikimedia Commons / “This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.” / Madurai Meenakshi Sundareshawar Temple, Golden Lotus Tank.
Third photo: Jomesh at mi.wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons / “Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.” / Pillars in the 1000 Pillar Hall.
Fourth photo: Rengeshb / Wikimedia Commons / “This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.” / Nataraja, a form of Shiva, among the sculptures encased in glass; he stands with one foot on a demon who signifies ignorance.
© Sharon St Joan, 2014. This article may be reblogged or reposted, provided a link is given to the original article on this site.
Meenakshi – from the forest to the temple, part one
A raindrop rolled down one leaf to land on another, sparkling in the dawn light, among the golden spherical flowers. The clear voice of a rose-ringed parrot called, “Meeakshi, Meenakshi” through the trees. Meenakshi, a form of Parvati, lived deep in the forest. The people of the village on the river Vaigai came to worship her, and sometimes they collected the fresh green leaves of the kadamba trees, which made up her forest, to feed to their cattle.
Thousands of years ago, she was the Goddess of the sacred forest, worshipped by the nearby villagers. Every Indian village originally had a sacred forest or grove and a village Goddess. Over time, the Goddess of the south Indian village became identified with the great Goddess Parvati, as she is known in Sanskrit. Meenakshi married her husband, Lord Shiva, and as the town of Madurai grew, she found her place at the sacred site at the center of the town.
It is said that very early on Indra, King of the Gods, went there to worship Shiva at this sacred site and to atone for his sins. When he felt that the burden of his sins had been lifted, then he constructed the first temple built there in honor of Shiva. Golden lotuses magically appeared in the nearby pool. His wife Meenakshi was found nearby in the sacred forest of kadamba trees, where she had always been revered and worshipped by the people of this region. She was brought to join Shiva in the temple, where she retained her position as the major deity. Worshippers first visit the shrine of Meenakshi, and then afterwards go to the shrine of Shiva.
This is one of the few temples in India today where the Goddess is the main deity and her husband takes second place.
Meenakshi means “fish-eyed,” meaning that her eyes have a beautiful shape, like that of a fish. Her statue is carved of a beautiful black stone, with emerald-colored glints. She stands, bedecked in garlands, surrounded by hanging lamps. A priest chants while performing a puja, encircling a brass tray in front of the Goddess. On it is the sacrificial fire and kumkum (red powder with which the worshippers place a red dot on their foreheads). Meenakshi, Mother of the Universe, watches in love and kindness.
The devotional fires which burn inside the temple, from the many tiny fires lit by individual devotees to the fires which are circled by the priest in the pujas for the deities, are the manifestation of the God Agni, who purifies all things, to whom all beings return in the end, freed from this world and returned to the realms of the spirit.
The Madurai Amman Temple is one of the largest temples in India with fourteen gopurums (gateway towers) and two gold domes (vimanas) over the shrines of Meenakshi and Shiva, who is called Sundareswarar, which means Lord of Beauty. The southern gopuram, the tallest, is 170 feet high.
The clean, well-kept temple covers around 45 acres. Wide stone paved avenues lined with trees and shrubs grace the walls facing the streets outside, and connect the tall gopurums, or gates. After going through one of the gates, one walks along more wide stone avenues that form a square around the walls of the temple itself.
A graceful and beautiful temple, it is filled with the exquisite artwork of south India.
© Sharon St Joan, 2014
Top photo: J.M. Garg / Wikimedia Commons / “Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License…” / Kadamb Neolamarckia cadamba in Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
Second photo: Sharon St Joan / The West Tower of the Meenakshi Amman Temple, with a kadamba tree in front.
Third photo: Jorge Royan / Wikimedia Commons / “This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.” Gopurums of the Meenakshi Temple.
Fourth photo: Flickr user fraboof / Wikimedia Commons/ “This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.” / “Golden tower of the Madurai Meenakshi temple – golden shrine over the sanctum of Meenakshi.”
To be continued in part two. To read part two, click here.
India: C.P. Art Centre: Smt. Alarmel Valli to inaugurate the Women’s Crafts Bazaar
Levels upon levels
By Sharon St Joan
In the book Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative to Darwin’s Theory, which is a sequel to his book “Forbidden Archaeology” (which I read about ten years ago) Michael Cremo presents the thesis that humans have walked on the earth for millions of years – even hundreds of millions. As evidence, in the second chapter, he provides a large number accounts taken from nineteenth century newspapers, often with credible witnesses present.
This theory about humans being around for millions of years can be a little hard to swallow, and it may be best not to worry for the moment about what is real or not real, true or not true – just suspend judgment; consider it all a fantasy, if you wish.
Here is just one of Michael Cremo’s examples: In California in the nineteenth century, as well as panning for gold in rivers, gold miners often dug in deep mines to extract gold. In Table Mountain, in Tuolumne County, miners digging in deposits dating back to the early Eocene age, around 50 million years ago, found the bones of modern humans embedded in the layers of rock. The Chief Government archaeologist of California, at the time, Dr. J. D. Whitney, documented these in a book published by Harvard University in 1880.
There isn’t much point here in giving a list of further examples, because citing a few brief examples won’t make this seem any less incredible, but Michael Cremo does give a great many examples in his book – cases where human remains or artifacts were found inside undisturbed layers of earth. In one case, for example, a metal ball with artwork inscribed on it, was found inside a piece of coal that was formed millions of years ago.
As one reads case after case after case, reported in newspapers, it seems less and less plausible that these could all have been fraudulent.
My first reaction to this idea that we humans had been around for millions of years was to think, “How could the earth have survived with humans living on it for millions of years? It is barely surviving now – after just a few thousand years of the intense destruction that we have inflicted on the poor earth.”
Some of these accounts tell of modern human footprints embedded in ancient layers – others are about the presence rough stone tools or artwork, in one case a gold string, embedded inside layers that are many millions of years old. Maybe there could be a simple explanation, and we are just missing it.
Surely humans simply could not have existed for many millions of years, could they? After all, we all have firmly implanted in our heads that there is a clear line of evolution, and all the evidence supports it – until one begins to ask oneself whether perhaps this clear evolutionary picture only seems clear because all the evidence that contradicts it has been unceremoniously brushed aside and discounted by scientific authorities, who belittle it and absolutely refuse even to consider it. This “scientific” position of “putting one’s head in the sand” like the ostrich has become more and more entrenched as time goes along.
One possible thought is that perhaps all the dating systems are terribly wrong and need to be recalibrated.
On the other hand, many people do have the sense that there were indeed extremely ancient civilizations before this one. Civilizations created by giants, extraterrestrials, or very advanced early humans. Maybe even previously existing intelligent species that we have absolutely no knowledge of. What if all the legends and all the mythologies in the world were based on fact? What if there really were giants, wizards, elves, fairies, goblins, dwarves, bigfoot, leprechauns? Or all the magical beings spoken of the ancient books of India – yakshas, rakshasas, gandharvas, apsaras, and kinnaras. The seers or rishis of ancient India were also a kind of divine human being. Every tradition has its own list of magical beings, events, countries, and lands. The ancient books of India for example are filled with accounts of aerial ships, which take off and land, and are considered a very commonplace way to travel.
What if the current, prosaic view of human development is just not the only way to look at things – the idea that apes descended from the trees, learned to walk upright, made stone tools, discovered fire, and developed into us? Mind you, this doesn’t mean that I would mind being descended from apes – who are in many ways a great deal nicer and much kinder than a lot of us humans.
But there is still the sense that in these vast epochs of millions upon millions of years, there may have arisen advanced civilizations, that rose and fell, and that we now know nothing of – and just perhaps, they may not have been possessed by the tendencies to use up and demolish the natural world that our own civilization is plagued with.
Does one view have to be true and the other false? What if there are multiple histories? What if they are all true? There might be a purely physical view of time – as a slow evolution from one-celled animals through trilobites, reptiles, dinosaurs, mice, apes, and early humans? And at the same time there can be other levels of reality – magical, mystical, enchanting – long lost civilizations, intergalactic empires, worlds of angels or elves? Why not?
Our standard view of logic – which is a rather pedestrian view – requires that either something “is” or it “isn’t”; but that kind of “logic” may not correspond to reality. Maybe reality is the dreams of God – or the dreams of the Gods? Even our own dreams have a certain reality – though not absolute reality. Surely, the dreams of God must have a vastly greater degree of reality than our own. Yet, there can still be one dream one day and another completely different dream another day. Only the ultimate reality – the divine reality – lies beyond the dreams which come and go. That is the only real, eternal reality – and is the essence of all that is.
So perhaps there are many histories of the earth and the universe, on many levels. If we did not have to try to fit all of reality into the little narrow physical box that our education provides for us, that would make things so much easier. Look for example at the theories of quantum physics. There is the entanglement theory, which briefly put, is this: If you take a sub-atomic particle and you pair it with another one — and if one spins in one direction and the other spins in the opposite direction, then if you take them far away from each other, say a few miles – and you reverse the spin of the first one, then the second one, will all by itself, at the same instant in time, reverse its own spin. This has been actually demonstrated in real scientific experiments. But how does it happen? Do the two particles communicate telepathically with each other? Or is there really no such thing as time and space?
This is a real, scientific demonstration, yet it must be filed in our heads as something that cannot possibly be true. It doesn’t fit into the ready-made box that we have inside our heads.
Think of all the miracles we have seen in our lives – and most of us have indeed seen miracles, though we may not talk about them – maybe not even to ourselves – but there are events that transcend the “laws” of physics.
Perhaps, as has been said before, what we call reality is the play of shadows cast upon the wall – and behind, hidden, there is the real, ultimate reality. The shadows are real too – just as real and solid as we are. But there is no longer any need to insist on just one history of the earth or the universe – there is much room for many levels, dimensions, mystical mountains and rivers, and undiscovered lands on far-away stars. There is more than we know, and there are times, places, and beings greater, more innocent, and more magnificent than any we might imagine.
Seen, in this perspective, there is no need for us to judge what is “true” and what is not, and we can be more open to the wonders that lie before us – or those that arise in the most distant, ancient past.
© 2014, Sharon St Joan
Top photo: Wikimedia Commons / “This work is in the public domain in the United States, and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years or less.” / An image of a horse from the Lascaux caves.
Second photo: Wikimedia commons / “This work is in the public domain in India because its term of copyright has expired.” / Ravana, the demon king of Lanka. Watercolor-painting by an unknown artist around 1920.
Third photo: Sharon St Joan / Guardian spirits with a horse at Puthupet sacred grove, in Tamil Nadu.
Fourth photo: NASA, ESA, CFHT, CXO, M.J. Jee (University of California, Davis), and A. Mahdavi (San Francisco State University) / A “merging galaxy cluster Abell 520, formed from a violent collision of massive galaxy clusters.”
To find Michael Cremo’s book, Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative to Darwin’s Theory, on Amazon, click here.