In the Hindu understanding of the cosmos, the female counterpart of Vishnu - Lakshmi - is the Devi, or goddess, of prosperity... "who is the guiding light for the world - who has obtained the sustained (continued, everlasting) glance (Grace) from Brahma."
Also: "She is often depicted sitting upon a lotus and adorned with lotus at her hands and feet. Many of her names, Padmā, Kamalā, Ambujā, refer to the lotus. The lotus has powerful symbolism in Hinduism. While its roots are in the mud, its stalk rises clearly through the murky water, with its petals blossoming above, untouched by the mud. It is a symbol of rising above the material world through divinity, of being good in the midst of negative influences."
Lakshmi was first introduced on this blog in this
post.
(Shyamala Gopalan didn't name her daughter Kamala Devi for nothing. She saw the future.)
***
prosperous (adj.)
synonyms: thriving, doing well, fortunate, successful, lucky, rich, vigorous, roaring, strong, productive, flourishing, booming, opulent, golden...
antonyms: depressed, poor.
- Via Google/Oxford Languages. Prosperous is a word few of us can really wrap our heads around. Why is this?
I see them every day now in southwestern Albuquerque... more of them, and more frequently: the misfortunate nomads - the darker side of the American dream - wheeling their life's belongings in shopping carts down the vacant streets with no destination... no protection, no peace. They appear to be American refugees of every description. While I was never one of them, I, too, was homeless - and, theoretically, still am - but the emergence of the new Traveler or Nomad and the plight of the disenfranchised is not a recent development. I began living in my car the year following Trump's inauguration. And, then, came the Black Hole - the Pandemic. We all know the rest.
It is true: we - none of us - can "go back"; "back" no longer exists as we once knew it.
***
"Journalist Michael Wolff, who wrote three books about the Republican’s first administration between 2017 and 2021, has released an audio clip on his podcast Fire and Fury of what he says is Epstein talking in intimate detail about the inner workings of Trump’s Cabinet.
Speaking over the background bustle of the eatery, Epstein is heard in the audio telling Wolff how then-president Trump played his administration officials off against each other.
'His people fight each other and then he poisons the well outside,' he says."
As it was, Trump became president, while Epstein died under mysterious circumstances in a jail cell during Trump's term.
From Wiki's entry for
Epstein we have:
"In October 2019, Baden said that Epstein had experienced a number of injuries – among them a broken bone in his neck – that "are extremely unusual in suicidal hangings and could occur much more commonly in homicidal strangulation". Baden stated that he thinks that the evidence points to homicide rather than suicide."***
"Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm was the first African American woman in Congress (1968) and the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties (1972).In 1964, Chisholm ran for and became the second African American in the New York State Legislature... There, “Fighting Shirley” introduced more than 50 pieces of legislation and championed racial and gender equality, the plight of the poor, and ending the Vietnam War. She was a co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971, and in 1977 became the first Black woman and second woman ever to serve on the powerful House Rules Committee."
- Via this Women in History page. I am old enough to remember Shirley Chisholm... whose 1972 candidacy was treated as some sort of joke by many Americans... not so much because she was a woman of color but because she was a she.
She was an avatar.
"Her campaign was underfunded, only spending $300,000 in total. She also struggled to be regarded as a serious candidate instead of as a symbolic political figure; the Democratic political establishment ignored her, and her black male colleagues provided little support. She later said, "When I ran for the Congress, when I ran for president, I met more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Men are men." In particular, she expressed frustration about the "black matriarch thing", saying, "They think I am trying to take power from them. The black man must step forward, but that doesn't mean the black woman must step back."
Her husband, however, was fully supportive of her candidacy and said, "I have no hang-ups about a woman running for president." Security was also a concern, as, during the campaign, three confirmed threats were made against her life; Conrad Chisholm served as her bodyguard until U.S. Secret Service protection was given to her in May 1972."
- Via Wiki's entry for
Shirley Chisholm. For more info, try
here, and
here.
"The triangles facing upwards symbolize Shiva and the masculine, while the triangles facing downwards represent Shakti, the divine feminine... The diagram is surrounded by lotus petals representing the heart that is the container of the Self, and when the heart opens, understanding comes. The squared structures outside of the Yantra represents the material world that our senses show us and symbol of the illusion of separateness. Each side has a gate pointing toward the center. These doors represent the passage from the external and material to the internal and sacred.This ancient symbol has an important cosmological significance as well. In fact is been observed that the design of the Sri Yantra, and in particular the triangles, is based on the rules of the Golden Ratio, a mathematical and geometrical equation observed in all of creation."
- Descriptions of the Sri Yantra and the image (
inset left) were found
here. In short, the
Sri yantra represents an ultimate truth and is an ancient metaphysical and geometrical diagram contemplated to achieve enlightened states of mind and spirit or
superconsciousness.
It is in direct opposition to commercial, materialistic, and (some might say) heretical artifacts of our modern day... which polarize us while politicizing, misinterpreting and degrading religious traditions.
(Continued below the jump...)
