Shipwreck

"E porque já quando esta obra se acabou a çarração da noite era muito grande, não foi possível recolher-se à nau a gente que estava nele, pelo que foi forçado ficarem aquela noite lá todos, que foram quinze, de que os cinco eram portugueses, e os outros escravos e marinheiros. Em todos estes trabalhos e infortúnios nos acompanhou sempre este bem-aventurado padre, assim de noite como de dia, por uma parte trabalhando por sua pessoa como cada um dos outros, e por outra animando e consolando a todos de maneira que depois de Deus ele só era o capitão que nos esforçava e nos dava alento para de todo nos não rendermos ao trabalho, e nos entregarmos de todo à ventura, como alguns quiseram fazer algumas vezes, se ele não fora. Sendo já quase meia noite os quinze que iam no batel deram uma grande grita de Senhor Deus misericórdia, e acudindo toda a gente da nau a saber o que aquilo era, viram ao horizonte do mar o batel ir atravessado, porque lhe quebraram  os bragueiros ambos com que estava amarrado. O capitão, com a dor daquele desastre, sem consideração alguma, nem atentar ao que fazia, mandou arribar a nau pela esteira do batel, parecendo-lhe que o poderia salvar, mas como ela era má de governo, e acudia devagar ao leme, por causa da pouca vela de que era ajudada, ficou atravessada entre duas vagas, onde a encapelou uma grande serra por cima da popa, e lhe lançou no convés tamanho peso de água, que de todo a teve soçobrada, a que a gente com uma grande grita que rompia o ar chamou com muita insistência por nossa Senhora que lhe valesse."

Peregrinação - Fernão Mendes Pinto

שְׁאוֹל

Judaism has a tradition of describing Gehenna (Hebrew: Gehinnom), but it is not Hell. It is rather a sort of purgatory where one is judged based on his or her life's deeds, or rather, where one becomes fully aware of one's own shortcomings and negative actions during one's life. In both Rabbinical Jewish and Christian writing, Gehenna, as a destination of the wicked, is different from Hades or Sheol.
Gehenna is a term derived from a geographical site in Jerusalem known as the Valley of Hinnom. The site was initially where apostate Israelites and followers of various Ba'als and false gods, including Moloch, sacrificed their children by fire. In time it became deemed to be accursed and an image of the place of destruction in Jewish folklore.

Eventually the Hebrew term Gehinnom became a figurative name for the place of spiritual purification for the wicked dead in Judaism, a site at the greatest possible distance from heaven. According to most Jewish sources, the period of purification or punishment is limited to only 12 months and every shabbath day is excluded from punishment. After this the soul will ascend to Olam Ha-Ba, the world to come, or will be destroyed if it is severely wicked.

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Biblical_cosmology

Religion&Art

"Have you ever had to rule a State?" asked Mendelssohn Bartholdy once of Berthold Auerbach, who had been indulging in reflections on the Prussian Government, apparently distasteful to the famed composer. "Do you want to found a new religion? "—the author of the present essay might be asked. As that person, I should freely admit that it would be just as impossible as that Herr Auerbach could have deftly ruled a State, if Mendelssohn had managed to procure one for him. My thoughts have come to me as to a working artist in his intercourse with public life: in that contact it must seem to me that I should light upon the proper road if I weighed the reasons why even considerable and envied successes have left me uncontented with the public. Upon this road I grew convinced that Art can only prosper on the basis of true Morals, and thus could but ascribe to it a mission all the higher when I found it altogether one with true Religion. Any judgment of the history and future of the human race must remain beyond the artist's reach while he approached it in the sense of Mendelssohn's question, and had to view the State as something like a mill in which the human grain, already bolted on the threshing-floor of War, must be ground before it could be relished. As on my path I had felt a wholesome shudder at this drilling of mankind to barren aims, at last it dawned on me that another, better state of future man— conceived by others as a hideous chaos — might well arise in comely order, if Religion and Art not only were retained therein, but for the first time gained their right acceptance. From this path all violence is quite shut out, for it merely needs the strengthening of those seeds of Peace which all around have taken root, though scant as yet and feeble.

Peacoc_King

Indeed among the Dravidians the peacock is considered sacred. It is the vehicle (the animal a god uses to ride or sit upon) of "Subramania, the supreme god of the Dravidians of Tamil Nadu". As a decoration it is a support of temple lamps; its feathers are sacred temple objects. Related to these ritual uses are a number of folk beliefs and customs which call to mind the Catholic doctrine concerning the effects of Holy Communion (cleansing from sin and the power of Satan, union with Christ, and pledge of immortality). Not only can the peacock's feathers frighten away demons, but they can work cures, especially in regard to snake bites. The peacock eats almost anything, even reptiles; as the vehicle of Subramania, it is pictured with a serpent in its claws.The natural enmity of peacock and serpent, of good and evil? is more fully related by RI'Clintock and Strong: They run with great swiftness, and where they are serpents do not abound, as they devour the young with great avidity, and it is said, attack with spirit even the cobra de capello when grown to considerable size, arresting its progress and confusing it by the rapidity and variety of their evolutions around it, till exhausted with fatigue, it is struck on the head and despatched. The Indians thought that the peacock was the food of princes and that it was an effective antidote, besides having the power of making a person young and immortal. The Romans ate the peacock and had the notion that its meat was incorruptible. St. Augustine draws upon this Roman belief to explain why the peacock is a fitting symbol of the Resurrection. In Indian art the peacock occurs in scenes of "love, rain, and separation". It is the companion of the lover and beloved and is a substitute for the lover in his absence, representing the hope and promise of his return. As a vehicle the peacock can represent the glory of the sun. These illstances are not far removed from Christ portrayed in the Transfiguration (Matt. 17, 1-8) or returning as He promised at the Second Coming (Matt. 24, 27-31). (The priest in "The Displaced Person" is reminded of these two Christian beliefs when he sees the peacock's display.)
The review, during these pages, of the peacock lore of India with asides about Christian similarities is not meant to suggest a direct link between Hindu and Christian symbolism, but to show the possibilities of the symbol. It lays the foundation for O'Connor's unorthodox (from the general English literary tradition) development of the peacock as a symbol of Christ.

A girl feeding Peacocks - by Lord Frederick Leighton (1830-1896) from 1st Art Gallery

Consilience

Outside our heads there is freestanding reality. Only madmen and a scattering of constructivist philosophers doubt its existence. Inside our heads is a reconstitution of reality based on sensory input and the self-assembly of concepts. Input and self-assembly, rather than an independent entity in the brain - the "ghost in the machine" in the philosopher Gilbert Ryle's famous derogation - constitute the mind. The alignment of outer existence with its inner representation has been distorted by the idiosyncrasies of human evolution, as I noted earlier. That is, natural selection built the brain to survive in the world and only incidentally to understand it at a depth greater than is needed to survive. The proper task of scientists is to diagnose and correct the misalignment. The effort to do so has only begun. No one should suppose that objective truth is impossible to attain, even when the most committed philosophers urge us to acknowledge that incapacity. In particular it is too early for scientists, the foot soldiers of epistemology, to yield ground so vital to their mission.

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, a 1998 book by the humanist biologist Edward Osborne Wilson

जिगर

The liver has always been an important symbol in occult physiology. As the largest organ, the one containing the most blood, it was regarded as the darkest, least penetrable part of man's innards. Thus it was considered to contain the secret of fate and was used for fortune-telling. In Plato, and in later physiology, the liver represented the darkest passions, particularly the bloody, smoky ones of wrath, jealousy, and greed which drive men to action. Thus the liver meant the impulsive attachment to life itself.

James Hillman's comentary(1970) in Gopi Krishna Autobiographical work: Kundalini - The Evolutionary Energy in Man 

Conii V Bracarii

Dentre Balsa e Myrtilis, das brenhas ressequidas da serra entre as praias calmas do golfo assuão e o rasgo rochoso do rio dos patos que sempre renasce, sobe até aos castros perdidos da galécia celta, cantada pelos seus invasores - resistentes nos seus credos, firmemente em suas cruzes cedendo a uma subtil conquista. São estas as origens épicas da minha história.