FROM GORKY TO GUSTON

8^th August 2012

Frankly, having long admired the paintings of Philip Guston, I  did not know much about the evolution of his Art.  These two Documentaries are a useful start:

Philip Guston: A Life Lived (MBP, 1981) [HERE]

Philip Guston, Odd Man Out (BBC4 arts documentary, 2004) [HERE]

And attached here:

Craig Burnett, Philip Guston. The Studio, Afterall Books (One work), 2014.

Naturally there is a mass of critical material on Guston,  but these are a few samples. 

GORKY

Just Finished ‘My Apprenticeship’ by Maxim Gorky, which is the middle part of a Trilogy of his life. I was delighted to see that the complete Trilogy was filmed and is available on the Mosfilm site – so I will watch those soon.  Of course, in Russian, with subtitles.   The visuals are superb and the director Mark Donskoy captures an almost Caravaggio version of Russia in the 19^th century (example above).

But I like this quote, where he berates the Saturnine aspects of the human psyche, the inability to move from fixed and entrenched positions.  Love S.

“Later, after I had met many such people among the intelligentsia, as well as among simple folk, I realized that their persistence was nothing more than the passivity of people who had nowhere to go beyond the point already reached, and who, indeed, had no desire to go further, caught as they were in a tangle of obsolete words and outworn conceptions. Their will had become enervated and incapable of developing toward the future and had they been suddenly emancipated; they would have rolled mechanically downhill like a stone on a mountainside. They were kept imprisoned in a graveyard of dead ideas by the lifeless force of backward- lookings and by a morbid love of suffering and persecution. Once deprived of the opportunity to suffer, they would be drained of all substance, and vanish like clouds on a fresh, windy, day.

The faith for which they sacrificed themselves so eagerly and with such false pride, was unquestionably a firm faith, but it resembled old garments, so caked with dust and dirt as to be inaccessible to the ravages of time. Their thoughts and feelings had grown used to being tightly encased in prejudices and dogmas, and the fact that they became deformed and earth-bound did not disturb them in the least.

   This faith-by-habit is one of the most vicious and regrettable phenomena of our life. Within the bounds of such faith, as in the shadow of a stone wall, anything that is new grows slowly twisted and anaemic. Too few rays of love penetrate that dark faith, and too many of vengeance, malice, and envy, blood-brothers to hate. The light of such faith is merely the phosphorescent glow of decay.”

THE TRILOGY ONLINE HERE:

The Childhood of Maxim Gorky (1938)

On His Own (1939)

My Universities (1939)

THE WHEEL

Philip Ellis Wheelwright

on

THE WHEEL

Ljubljana  Marshes. Wheel with axle (oldest wooden wheel yet discovered dating to Copper Age (c. 3,130 BC).  [1]

Perhaps the most philosophically mature of the great archetypal symbols is the Circle, together with its most frequent imagistic concretion the Wheel. From earliest recorded times the circle has been widely recognized as the most perfect of figures, both because of its simple formal perfection and for the reason stated in Heraclitus' aphorism, "In the circle the beginning and the end are the same.”[Note 4] When the circle is concretized as a wheel, two additional properties come in: the wheel has spokes, and it rotates. The spokes of the wheel are taken as iconically symbolic of the sun’s rays; both the spokes and the rays being symbolic of the creative influences going out to all things in the universe from a central life-giving source. In its rotation a wheel has the property that when its axis is at rest the movement of its spokes and rim is perfectly regular—a property which readily becomes symbolic of the human truth that to find the quiet centre of one's own soul is to produce a more tranquil ordering of one's experiences and activities.

Like many another archetypal symbol the Wheel is potentially ambivalent. It may have either a positive or a negative significance, and occasionally both. Negatively the Wheel can symbolize in the West the hazardous play of fortune, and in the East the persistent cycle of deaths and rebirths from which release is sought. Yoga, to the Hindu, is the patient disciplined exercise of action and non-action whereby an individual may prepare himself for such release. On the positive side, in addition to the symbolic import mentioned in the foregoing paragraph, the Wheel is in Hindu tradition connected with Dharma, or divine law. Buddhist iconography makes much of " the Wheel of the Law," and there is a widespread legend that Buddha, when he gave his first sermon after his initiatory vision under the bo tree ( the so-called Deer Park Sermon), set it revolving. In traditional Chinese Buddhist ritual a chariot wheel is often fastened to a post and turned to the right, which is supposed to reflect the sun in its orbit and to symbolize the path of universal Tao. In Tibet the idea of the perfection and sincerity of universal law can be symbolized by so simple a gesture as joining the thumb with the middle finger. The Tibetan prayer wheel had originally the same meaning, and perhaps still retains it for informed worshipers, despite the crude magical uses to which it has later been put. [Note 5]

A special development of the Wheel symbolism is found in the Buddhist tendency to let the purity of the still centre be symbolized by the lotus flower. Reciprocally the wheel is often pictured as having a lotus at its axis and the lotus is often displayed with outgoing rays of light. The actual lotus flower has two characteristics that have especially struck the Oriental imagination—its simple pure beauty and its mysterious birth by water. A Buddhist teaching says t h a t as the lotus flower arises from the dark depths of the lake to reveal itself in beauty, and as the sun arises in darkness and sends forth his rays, so Buddha issues forth from " the dark womb of being " in order to chase away the darkness of illusion (maya) by revealing the truth. In India the wheel is sometimes laid on the top of a pillar, as an icon of the lotus in full bloom on its stem. In the widely revered Lotus Scripture of Mahayana Buddhism the principal teaching is at once the eternity of divine law and the multiplicity of ways of expressing and teaching it — the still centre and the many spokes or rays of the divine sun-wheel. [Note 6] 

4. Heraclitus, Fragment 70 in Bywater (followed by most English translators), 103 in Diels, and 109 in the present writer's Heraclitus (Princeton University Press, 1959), where it is translated, "In the circle the beginning and the end are common/' This is literal. But the word [. . .] besides meaning "common," carries an overtone of [. . .] "with rational intelligence." On Heraclitus' functional use of the pun, see the Princeton University Press volume, p. 120, note 8, and again p. 148, note to Fragment 81.

5. W. E. Soothill, The Three Religions of China (Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 1923), regards the Lamaist prayer wheel as "a grotesque form of Buddha's lofty conception of the Wheel of the Law rolling forward like the sun and enlightening the world." Charles A. S. Williams, Outlines of Chinese Symbolism (Peiping, 1931): "The turning of the wheel of the Law was probably connected with the Vedic sun-worshiping ceremonies in which a chariot wheel was fastened to a post and turned towards the right, i.e. following the path of the Universal Law which directed the sun in its orbit." Cf. E. Dale Saunders, Mudra (Bollingen Series XLVIII: Pantheon Books, 1958).

6. Sir Charles Eliot, Hinduism and Buddhism (London, 1921), esp. Vol. II, p. 52, and Vol. Ill, p. 438; Sir Hari Singh Gour, The Spirit of Buddhism (London, 1929), p. 166; H. Hackmann, Buddhism as a Religion (London, 1910), p. 194; Eugene W. Burlingame, Buddhist Parables (Yale University Press, 1922); Charles A. S. Williams, Encyclopaedia of Chinese Symbols and Art Motives (New York, Julian Press, i960), under the entries "Lotus" and "Wheel of the Law."

What is briefly called the Lotus Scripture in the text is the Saddharmapundarika, traditionally translated "Lotus of the Good Name."

From: Philip Ellis Wheelwright, Metaphor and Reality, Indiana University Press, 1962, pp. 125 -127.

---

[1] Around 2000 BC, the Ljubljana Marshes in the immediate vicinity of Ljubljana were settled by people living in pile dwellings. Prehistoric pile dwellings and the oldest wooden wheel in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljubljana

THE CENTRE

The Symbolism of the Center

 Paralleling the archaic belief in the celestial archetypes of cities and temples, and even more fully attested by documents, there is, we find, another series of beliefs, which refer to their being invested with the prestige of the Center. We examined this problem in an earlier work;¹⁶ here we shall merely recapitulate our conclusions. The architectonic symbolism of the Center may be formulated as follows:

1. The Sacred Mountain—where heaven and earth meet—is situated at the center of the world.

2. Every temple or palace—and, by extension, every sacred city or royal residence—is a Sacred Mountain, thus becoming a Center.

3. Being an axis mundi, the sacred city or temple is regarded as the meeting point of heaven, earth, and hell.

A few examples will illustrate each of these symbols:

1. According to Indian beliefs, Mount Meru rises at the center of the world, and above it shines the polestar. The Ural-Altaic peoples also know of a central mountain, Sumeru, to whose summit the polestar is fixed. Iranian beliefs hold that the sacred mountain Haraberezaiti (Elburz) is situated at the center of the earth and is linked with heaven. The Buddhist population of Laos, north of Siam, know of Mount Zinnalo, at the center of the world. In the Edda, Himinbjorg, as its name indicates, is a "celestial mountain"; it is here that the rainbow (Bifrost) reaches the dome of the sky. Similar beliefs are found among the Finns, the Japanese, and other peoples. We are reminded that for the Semangs of the Malay Peninsula an immense rock, Batu-Ribn, rises at the center of the world; above it is hell. In past times, a tree trunk on Batu-Ribn rose into the sky.Hell, the center of the earth, and the "gate" of the sky are, then, situated on the same axis, and it is along this axis that passage from one cosmic region to another was effected. We should hesitate to credit the authenticity of this cosmological theory among the Semang pygmies if we did not have evidence that the same theory already existed in outline during the prehistoric period.According to Mesopotamian beliefs, a central mountain joins heaven and earth; it is the Mount of the Lands, the connection between territories. Properly speaking, the ziggurat was a cosmic mountain, i.e., a symbolic image of the cosmos, the seven stories representing the seven planetary heavens (as at Borsippa) or having the colors of the world (as at Ur).

Mount Tabor, in Palestine, could mean ṭabbūr, i.e., navel, omphalos. Mount Gerizim, in the center of Palestine, was undoubtedly invested with the prestige of the Center, for it is called "navel of the earth" (ṭabbūr ereṣ; cf. Judges 9 : 37: "… See there come people down by the middle [Heb., navel] of the land …"). A tradition preserved by Peter Comestor relates that at the summer solstice the sun casts no shadow on the "Fountain of Jacob" (near Gerizim). And indeed, Peter continues, "sunt qui dicunt locum ilium esse umbilicum terrae nostrae habitabilis." 

Palestine, being the highest country—because it was near to the summit of the cosmic mountain—was not covered by the Deluge. A rabbinic text says: "The land of Israel was not submerged by the deluge." For Christians, Golgotha was situated at the center of the world, since it was the summit of the cosmic mountain and at the same time the place where Adam had been created and buried. Thus the blood of the Saviour falls upon Adam's skull, buried precisely at the foot of the Cross, and redeems him. The belief that Golgotha is situated at the center of the world is preserved in the folklore of the Eastern Christians.

2. The names of the Babylonian temples and sacred towers themselves testify to their assimilation to the cosmic mountain: "Mount of the House," "House of the Mount of All Lands," "Mount of Tempests," "Link Between Heaven and Earth." A cylinder from the period of King Gudea says that "The bed-chamber [of the god] which he built was [like] the cosmic mountain …" Every Oriental city was situated at the center of the world. Babylon was a Bāb-ilāni, a "gate of the gods," for it was there that the gods descended to earth. In the capital of the Chinese sovereign, the gnomon must cast no shadow at noon on the day of the summer solstice. Such a capital is, in effect, at the center of the universe, close to the miraculous tree (kien-mu), at the meeting place of the three cosmic zones: heaven, earth, and hell. The Javanese temple of Borobudur is itself an image of the cosmos, and is built like an artificial mountain (as were the ziggurats). Ascending it, the pilgrim approaches the center of the world, and, on the highest terrace, breaks from one plane to another, transcending profane, heterogeneous space and entering a "pure region." Cities and sacred places are assimilated to the summits of cosmic mountains. This is why Jerusalem and Zion were not submerged by the Deluge. According to Islamic tradition, the highest point on earth is the Kaaba, because "the polestar proves that … it lies over against the center of heaven." 

3. Finally, because of its situation at the center of the cosmos, the temple or the sacred city is always the meeting point of the three cosmic regions: heaven, earth, and hell. Dur-an-ki, "Bond of Heaven and Earth," was the name given to the sanctuaries of Nippur and Larsa, and doubtless to that of Sippara. Babylon had many names, among them "House of the Base of Heaven and Earth," "Bond of Heaven and Earth." But it is always Babylon that is the scene of the connection between the earth and the lower regions, for the city had been built upon bāb apsī,the "Gate of the Apsu" —apsu designating the waters of chaos before the Creation. We find the same tradition among the Hebrews. The rock of Jerusalem reached deep into the subterranean waters (tehōm). The Mishnah says that the Temple is situated exactly above the tehōm (Hebrew equivalent of apsu). And just as in Babylon there was the "gate of the apsu" the rock of the Temple in Jerusalem contained the "mouth of the tehōm." We find similar conceptions in the Indo-European world. Among the Romans, for example, the mundus—that is, the trench dug around the place where a city was to be founded—constitutes the point where the lower regions and the terrestrial world meet. "When the mundus is open it is as if the gates of the gloomy infernal gods were open," says Varro (cited by Macrobius, Saturnalia, I, 16, 18). The Italic temple was the zone where the upper (divine), terrestrial, and subterranean worlds intersected.

The summit of the cosmic mountain is not only the highest point of the earth; it is also the earth's navel, the point at which the Creation began. There are even instances in which cosmological traditions explain the symbolism of the Center in terms which might well have been borrowed from embryology. "The Holy One created the world like an embryo. As the embryo proceeds from the navel onwards, so God began to create the world from its navel onwards and from there it was spread out in different directions." The γoma affirms: "The world has been created beginning from Zion." In the Ṛg-Veda (for example X, 149), the universe is conceived as spreading from a central point.The creation of man, which answers to the cosmogony, likewise took place at a central point, at the center of the world. According to Mesopotamian tradition, man was formed at the "navel of the earth" in uzu (flesh), sar (bond), ki (place, earth), where Dur-an-ki,the "Bond of Heaven and Earth," is also situated. Ormazd creates the primordial ox Evagdāth, and the primordial man, Gajōmard, at the center of the earth.Paradise, where Adam was created from clay, is, of course, situated at the center of the cosmos. Paradise was the navel of the Earth and, according to a Syrian tradition, was established on a mountain higher than all others. According to the Syrian Book of the Cave of Treasures, Adam was created at the center of the earth, at the same spot where the Cross of Christ was later to be set up. The same traditions have been preserved by Judaism. The Jewish apocalypse and a midrash state that Adam was formed in Jerusalem. Adam being buried at the very spot where he was created, i.e., at the center of the world, on Golgotha, the blood of the Saviour—as we have seen—will redeem him too.

The symbolism of the Center is considerably more complex, but the few aspects to which we have referred will suffice for our purpose. We may add that the same symbolism survived in the Western world down to the threshold of modern times. The very ancient conception of the temple as the imago mundi, the idea that the sanctuary reproduces the universe in its essence, passed into the religious architecture of Christian Europe: the basilica of the first centuries of our era, like the medieval cathedral, symbolically reproduces the Celestial Jerusalem. As to the symbolism of the mountain, of the Ascension, and of the "Quest for the Center," they are clearly attested in medieval literature, and appear, though only by allusion, in certain literary works of recent centuries.

Eliade, Mircea,  The Myth of the Eternal Return. Cosmos and History. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask with a new introduction by Jonathan Z. Smith, Bollingen Series 46, Princeton University Press, 2005.

RUNNING AWAY -

ERWIN ROUSSELLE. A CHINESE TALE:

“ The Chinese - and in this he has remained true to his heritage of age-old wisdom - has never forgotten the fearful aspect of everything that is truly great, and in tales and legends the magnificent primordial monster rises again and again to his consciousness. There is, for example, the story of the dragon-like spirit of Stallion Mountain: 13

   A peasant has dallied at the market and is a little tipsy as he starts on his ride homeward. As he approaches the ridge of Stallion Mountain, he suddenly sees a monster sitting by the brook, lapping up water. Its enormous face is blue; its eyes bulge out of its head like those of a crab. Its mouth gapes from ear to ear and has the aspect of a vat full of blood. Its fangs, growing in irregular clumps, are two or three inches long. The peasant is terrified, but the monster does not look up. Profiting by this, the peasant starts on a wide detour around the terrible ridge.

   As he rounds a bend, he meets the son of a neighbor, who calls to him. The peasant tells him briefly that he has just seen the monster nearby, and the neighbor’s son asks leave to ride with him. The peasant, eager to carry him as fast as possible from this awful place, lets him mount behind him. As they are riding along, the neighbor’s son asks him in a crafty voice: "What exactly did the monster look like?" The peasant feels ill at ease and replies beseechingly: "I'll tell you everything when we get home." But the other persists and says: "Turn around; perhaps I look like the monster." A cold shiver runs through the peasant and he cries out: "Don't make evil jokes. A man is not a spirit." But the other jeers and repeats: "Turn around." The peasant refuses and the other pulls him around by the arm. And the peasant looks into the face of the monster and falls unconscious from his saddle.”

   Thus suddenly, beneath the mask of everyday, the mask of the neighbor’s son, the horror which lies at the primal source of being - the monster by the stream - suddenly confronts man. He tries to escape but cannot. He carries the monster with him; it attacks him from behind, and in the dread of recognition man loses his senses, falls headlong into the depths.” 

FROM: Erwin Rousselle, Dragon and Mare - Figures of Primordial Chinese Mythology, [1934] Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks.: Eranos 6. The Mystic Vision, Edited by Joseph Campbell, p. 107.

TWO QUOTES FROM  PEMA CHODRON:

“Trying to run away is never the answer to being a fully human being. Running away from the immediacy of your experience is like preferring death to life.”

"If we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive."

 

SAINT JULIAN THE HOSPITALLER

Gustav Flaubert, Saint Julian the Hospitaller

When they reached the hut, Julian closed the door and saw the man sit down on the stool. The species of shroud that was wrapped around him had fallen below his loins, and his shoulders and chest and lean arms were hidden under blotches of scaly pustules. Enormous wrinkles crossed his forehead. Like a skeleton, he had a hole instead of a nose, and from his bluish lips came breath which was fetid and as thick as mist.

"I am hungry," he said.

Julian set before him what he had, a piece of pork and some crusts of coarse bread.

After he had devoured them, the table, the bowl, and the handle of the knife bore the same scales that covered his body.

Then he said: "I thirst!"

Julian fetched his jug of water and when he lifted it, he smelled an aroma that dilated his nostrils and filled his heart with gladness. It was wine; what a boon! but the leper stretched out his arm and emptied the jug at one draught.

Then he said: "I am cold!"

Julian ignited a bundle of ferns that lay in the middle of the hut. The leper approached the fire and, resting on his heels, began to warm himself; his whole frame shook and he was failing visibly; his eyes grew dull, his sores began to break, and in a faint voice he whispered:

"Thy bed!"

Julian helped him gently to it, and even laid the sail of his boat over him to keep him warm.

The leper tossed and moaned. The corners of his mouth were drawn up over his teeth; an accelerated death-rattle shook his chest and with each one of his aspirations, his stomach touched his spine. At last, he closed his eyes.

"I feel as if ice were in my bones! Lay thyself beside me!" he commanded. Julian took off his garments; and then, as naked as on the day he was born, he got into the bed; against his thigh he could feel the skin of the leper, and it was colder than a serpent and as rough as a file.

He tried to encourage the leper, but he only whispered:

"Oh! I am about to die! Come closer to me and warm me! Not with thy hands! No! with thy whole body."

So Julian stretched himself out upon the leper, lay on him, lips to lips, chest to chest.

Then the leper clasped him close and presently his eyes shone like stars; his hair lengthened into sunbeams; the breath of his nostrils had the scent of roses; a cloud of incense rose from the hearth, and the waters began to murmur harmoniously; an abundance of bliss, a superhuman joy, filled the soul of the swooning Julian, while he who clasped him to his breast grew and grew until his head and his feet touched the opposite walls of the cabin. The roof flew up in the air, disclosing the heavens, and Julian ascended into infinity face to face with our Lord Jesus Christ, who bore him straight to heaven.

And this is the story of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, as it is given on the stained-glass window of a church in my birthplace.

SOME NAGA RESOURCES

25^th February 2020

Here are a few selected Resources on the Nagas. The material available is extensive, this short curated bibliography can lead to further amplifications.

Yours in the Dharma,

Samten de Wet

Amy Leigh Allocco, "Fear, Reverence and Ambivalence: Divine Snakes in Contemporary South India." Religions of South Asia 7, 2013, pp. 230-248.  [ONLINE @ ACADEMIA]

Asutosh Bhattacharyya, "The Serpent in the Folklore of Bengal," Indian Folk-Lore 1 (1956): 22. [FIND]

Robert Beer, The Handbook of Tibetan and Buddhist Symbols,  Serinda, Chicago and London,  2003,  pp.72 – 74.

Adam Bégin, Nagas and Ophiolatry in Hindu Culture , 12 June 2014

Lowell W. Bloss,  "Nagas and Yakshas." The Encyclopedia of Religion.  [ONLINE HERE]

Lowell W. Bloss, The Buddha and the Nāga: A Study in Buddhist Folk Religiosity, History of Religions, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Aug., 1973), p. 37.

Meenu Chib, Naga Worship in Jammu & Kashmir, IJRAR- International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews, [Volume 41, Issue 41, Oct. – Dec 2017

Richard S. Cohen, Nāga, Yakṣiṇī, Buddha: Local Deities and Local Buddhism at Ajanta, History of Religions, Vol. 37, No. 4 (May, 1998), pp. 360-400

Robert Decaroli, "The Abode of The Nāga King": Questions of Art, Audience, and Local Deities at the Ajaṇṭā Caves, Ars Orientalis, Vol. 40 (2011), pp. 142-161

Jane Duran, The Nagaraja: Symbol and Symbolism in Hindu Art and Iconography, Journal of Aesthetic Education. 24, No. 2 (Summer, 1990), pp. 37-47

Alice Getty, Uga-jin: The Coiled-Serpent God with a Human Head, Artibus Asiae, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1940), pp. 36-48

Herbert Härtel, Aspects of Early Nāga Cult in India, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 124, No. 5243 (October 1976), pp. 663-683

Lotan   Dorje   (Luodanduojie), Klu in Tibet: Beliefs and Practices, Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo.

Abstract

The topic of my thesis is the klu as perceived in Tibetan worldview and as the object of cult. The klu is one of the most emblematic classes of supernatural forces in the world of deities and spirits in Tibet, and their influence on the social-religious life of the Tibetans is significant. They are believed to embody such natural resources and territories as forests, springs, fountains, lakes, oceans, hills, mountains, and even solitary old trees. Particular focus is put on the historical background of the klu as portrayed in textual sources, actual concepts and practices connected with the klu as they appear in the area of study. Specific attention is given to the problems of classifying the klu in Tibetan cosmology and the ambivalence connected with this class of beings. Further, this study also discusses how beliefs and practices of the klu are evident not only in texts, religious rituals and but also in everyday activities. As the main themes of this research, I intend to delineate the role of the klu in the Tibetan cultural area primarily based on religious texts as well as local perceptions, supplemented by individual accounts and practices in Kyagya (sKya rgya) , a Tibetan village in Jantsa (gCan tsha) Tibetan autonomous County in Amdo (A mdo), and in the Tibetan communities nearby. This study, is divided into five sections on the basis of the following themes: an introduction to the study being chapter one, a general background to the study being chapter two, the virtuous klu and the non-virtuous aspects of the klu being chapter three, ritual practices being chapter four, and a concluding chapter. The first chapter presents a general introduction to the study by presenting a general overview of the cult of the klu in Tibet, the importance of this current research, research history, materials and methodology used in this study, experiences and outcomes from fieldwork research, bias and reliability of the material and ends with an outline of this study. The second chapter centers on the general background to the klu cult providing some insights into its characteristics as described in the Tibetan literary tradition. This chapter first provides a general sketch of the Indian background of the klu followed by sections reflecting on its Tibetan background, typological considerations, cosmological classification, and caste division presenting different viewpoints on how it originated, and how it survived and adapted to the ever-changing socio-religious life of the Tibetan people. The third chapter discusses the klu in two categories: one is the klu on the side of virtue, supported by their divine characteristics and positive aspects in the Tibetan cultural context. The other type is the klu on the side of non-virtuous and demonic, supported by presenting the negative aspects of the klu, such as their destructive aspects connected with disease, as well as environmental and weather-related disasters. The fourth chapter focuses on topics surrounding ritual practices concerning the klu and provides descriptions of relevant texts."

Jakub Kocurek, Tree Beings in Tibet: Contemporary Popular Concepts of klu and gnyan as a Result of Ecological Change, Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics,  Vol 7, No 1 (2013) (Estonian Literary Museum, Estonian National Museum, University of Tartu.) [ONLINE HERE]

Abstract

"The article deals with the perception of trees in Tibet. It focuses on ideas on supernatural beings believed to dwell in trees, particularly klu and gnyan, which form a part of the popular or so called nameless religion. The study is based on fieldwork undertaken in the Tibetan areas of India and Nepal (the Spiti valley and Dolpo) among people of Dolpo origin living elsewhere and Tibetans in exile from different regions of Tibet. Gathered narratives and reappearing myth patterns are presented and discussed. The findings from the fieldwork are compared with the idea of tree beings found in ritual texts studied by Western scholars. The difference between these two sources are striking: popular traditions associate trees mainly with klu, whereas the ritual texts with gnyan. To explain the possible cause of this discrepancy, contemporary theories about the ecological history of the Tibetan Plateau are employed."

Sasanka Sekhar Panda, Nagas in the Sculptural Decorations of Early West Orissan Temples, OHRJ, Vol. XLVII, No. 1. [Online] 

Phan Anh Tu, The Signification of Naga in Thai Architectural and Sculptural Ornaments

A. Rawlinson, Nâgas and the Magical Cosmology of Buddhism, Religion 16 (1986), p. 141.

Juhyung Rhi, The Garuḍa and the Nāgī/Nāga in the Headdresses of Gandhāran Bodhisattvas: Locating Textual Parallels. Bulletin of the Asia Institute, New Series, Vol. 23 (2009), pp. 147-158.

Julia Shaw, Nāga Sculptures in Sanchi's Archaeological Landscape: Buddhism, Vaiṣṇavism, and Local Agricultural Cults in Central India, First Century BCE to Fifth Century CE,  Artibus Asiae, Vol. 64, No. 1 (2004), pp. 5-59. [ONLINE @ ACADEMIA]

Agarwal  Shivani, The archaeology of Mathura regional complexities and diversities (300 B.C.- A.D.300), 2014. Thesis, Chapter 5, The Yakshas, Nagas and Other Regional Cults of Mathura, Jawahalal Nehru University. [ONLINE HERE]

Giuseppe Tucchi, The Religions of Tibet, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1980

Gautama V. Vajracharya, The Creatures of the Rain Rivers, Cloud Lakes. Newars Saw Them, So Did Ancient India, asianart.com|articles,  January 07, 2009

J. Ph. Vogel, Indian Serpent-Lore, or the Nagas in Hindu Legend and Art, Delhi, 1972.

J. Ph. Vogel, "Naga Worship in Ancient Mathura," Archaeological Survey of India: Annual Report, 1908-09, pp. 159-63.  

Alex Wayman, Researches on Poison, Garuda-birds and Naga-serpents based on the Sgrub thabs kun btus

Robert Wessing, Symbolic Animals in the Land between the Waters: Markers of Place and Transition, Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 65, No. 2 (2006), pp. 205-239

"This paper analyses the use of symbolic animals in Indonesia and Southeast Asia generally as markers of place or state of being, and aids in transition between states of being. It shows that especially naga and Garuda, both subsets of a larger category of naga, respectively define the categories upperworld and underworld as the male and female extremes of a water continuum. These are linked by the rainbow, which is also a member of the naga category. Together these symbolic animals make up the axis mundi, as can be seen in both the symbolic mountain of the Javanese shadow theatre and the Balinese cremation tower. Within the arc of water created by these three elements lies the earth, which has emerged from, and can be seen to be part of the under-world. The emergence of the earth as well as states and crops from the underworld is made possible by the movement of buffalo or its equivalents, which also aid in the transition of human beings from the prenatal state, through life and into death."

KABBALAH AND COLOUR

“As Moshe Idel states after making a study of manuscript fragments which contained techniques of Kabbalistic prayer, this type of prayer also involved the visualisation of the colours of the Sefirotic ladder. By the ability to visualise these colours, or the divine Names within a coloured circle described by R. Joseph Ashkenazi, the practitioner was able to open a door into his own mind to enable him to perceive the workings of the realm of the Sefirvt. Further meaning was given, therefore, to the word Kauamah. I have said previously that the rabbis understood the word to mean contemplative or meditative prayer, but now this Kabbalistic contemplation spoke of a particular technique of visualising the colours of the Sefirot. Indeed, according to R. David ben Jehudah he-Hasid, a late 13th century Spanish Kabbalist, it was wrong to visualise the Sefirat themselves only their colours. Meditation and prayer performed in this way elevated human thought to the Sefirotic realm, which was achieved without an intermediary.”

“Each Sefirah had its own colour, which has been detailed in a work attributed to R. Azriel. The colours ranged from concealed light for the first Sefirah to the light which contains all colours, then green, white, red, then varieties of white and scarlet, and finally a colour which was composed of all colours. However, the colours did vary as can be seen in the later Pardes Rimonim from Safed.Indeed it seems that the colours were always changing, appearing and disappearing, which is suggested by the scarlet/white colours described above, where more scarlet or more white might appear and so forth.” 

Bates, Sandra Annette, The spiritual guide in late antiquity and the middle ages: a comparative study, M.Litt. Thesis, University of Durham, 1999, pp. 41 -42

Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/4797/