9 World Chronicles

The Bladder Festival (Bladder Feast)

Culture: Yup’ik Eskimo Shamanism

Associated: Renewal

Celebrated: The Winter ceremonial season

an important annual seal hunting harvest renewal ceremony and celebration held each year to honor and appease the souls of seals taken in the hunt during the past season.

This occurred at the winter solstice by the Yup'ik of western and southwestern Alaska.

In the Yup'ik Eskimo shamanism, while the hunter kills the body of the animal, he does not kill the yua (spirit or soul), which resides in the animal's bladder (nakacuk in Yup'ik).

The animal ultimately will be reincarnated in a new body. The collected inflated bladders of sea mammals taken by hunters during the previous year are honored.

The celebration of the Bladder Festival marked the opening of the winter ceremonial season. At the time of the winter solstice, when the sun "sat down" on the horizon, families inflated the bladders of seals killed that year and brought them into the qasgiq sacred house. The bladder festival is said to increase sexual activity and thus women or prohibited from entering the sacred house. After several days the bladders are returned to the sea.

Black is the darkest color, complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, a color without hue, like white and gray.

Black is associated with fertility, magic and elegance.

Black ink is the most common color used for printing books, newspapers and documents, as it provides the highest contrast with white paper and thus the easiest color to read.

Black was one of the first colors used in art. The Lascaux Cave in France contains drawings of bulls and other animals drawn by paleolithic artists between 18,000 and 17,000 years ago.

For the ancient Egyptians, black had a special meaning, being the color of fertility and the rich black soil flooded by the Nile. It was the color of Anubis, the god of the underworld, who took the form of a black jackal, and offered protection against evil to the dead.

Ausar, who is credited with spreading sacred knowledge, is call the perfect black.

The word Khem, meant black or blackness. AS the root word of Chemistry, we understand this to mean the black arts or black study.

It has been argued that the Khemites were thus calling themselves the Black People.

Black symbolized both power and secrecy in the medieval world. The emblem of the Holy Roman Empire of Germany was a black eagle. The black knight in the poetry of the Middle Ages was an enigmatic figure, hiding his identity, usually wrapped in secrecy.

A black pigment can, however, result from a combination of several pigments that collectively absorb all colors. Black is the absorption of all colors of light, or an exhaustive combination of multiple colors of pigment.

In elementary science, far ultraviolet light is called "black light" because, while itself unseen, it causes many minerals and other substances to fluoresce.

As of September 2019, the darkest material is made from vertically aligned carbon nanotubes. The material was grown by MIT engineers and was reported to have a 99.995% absorption rate of any incoming light. This surpasses any former darkest materials including Vantablack, which has an peak absorption rate of 99.965% in the visible spectrum

A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping. The theory of general relativity predicts that when a star runs of out gas and begins to collapse  a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. It is called "black" because it absorbs all the light that hits the horizon, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics.

After a black hole has formed it can continue to grow by absorbing mass from its surroundings. By absorbing other stars and merging with other black holes, supermassive black holes of millions of solar masses may form. There is general consensus that supermassive black holes exist in the centers of most galaxies.

In China, the color black is associated with water, one of the five fundamental elements believed to compose all things.

In Japan black can also symbolize experience, as opposed to white, which symbolizes naiveté. The black belt in martial arts symbolizes experience.

In Christian theology, black was the color of the universe before God created light. In many religious cultures, from Mesoamerica to Oceania to India and Japan, the world was created out of a primordial darkness.

In Hinduism, the goddess Kali, goddess of time and change, is portrayed with black or dark blue skin. wearing a necklace adorned with severed heads and hands. Her name means "The black one". She destroys anger and passion according to Hindu mythology and her devotees are supposed to abstain from meat or intoxication.

In Paganism, black represents dignity, force, stability, and protection. The color is often used to banish and release negative energies.

Black is frequently used as a color of power, law and authority. In many countries judges and magistrates wear black robes

Black formal attire is still worn at many solemn occasions or ceremonies, from graduations to formal balls. Graduation gowns are copied from the gowns worn by university professors in the Middle Ages, which in turn were copied from the robes worn by judges and priests, who often taught at the early universities. The mortarboard hat worn by graduates is adapted from a square cap called a biretta worn by Medieval professors and clerics.

Black Panther symbolism is inevitably linked to a protector, a guardian, or a savior.

The names cougar, puma, panther, Black Panther, leopard, and mountain lion are often used interchangeably as they all belong to the class of animals grouped under the term ‘Panthera.’

The Black Panther is a melanistic leopard found in the moist, dense forests.

The Egyptian Goddess Mafdel took on the appearance of a panther and is invoked even today as the destroyer of snakes and scorpions. Thus, much of the Black Panther symbolism is linked to protection and guardianship.

Egyptian priests supposedly wore leopard and panther skins when performing funerary rites.

The symbolism of the black panther was used by the American Political Party of the 1960

In India, the caste system used the Black Panther Movement in America to form the Dalit Panthers –

The Dahomey God Agassu is a product of union between a panther and a Tado princess. Agassu became the founder of the royal line of Abomey.

Panther and leopard symbolism is also found in conjunction with the rulers of Cameroon Grasslands and Kongo. In fact, one of the many symbols of the power of the ruling Obas of Benin is a panther.

In the Iroquois mythology of North American Indians, the God of the West Wind is Dajoji – a panther or jaguar. When he snarls, even the sun hides his face.

Onyx, raven , ebony, melanoid, infinite, obsidian, sable,

The African Diaspora identifies itself with the term black.

Black is beautiful.

Black is infinite.

It is black culture, black awareness and black love.

Black is a color, a cosmological event and ideology, a people and a state of begin.

It is both the combination of all others and the absence of them.

Dendera Temple Complex

Located Nabta Playa in the Saharan desert

Sacred Places

Significance

Of Nabta Playa in general pushes the foundation of the Kemetic Civilization to 10 to 15 thousand years bce.

Size

The whole complex covers some 40,000 square meters and is surrounded by a hefty mudbrick enclosed wall.

Well Preserved

 It is one of the best-preserved temple complexes in Egypt. The area was used as the sixth nome of Upper Egypt, south of Abydos.

Hathor temple

Who was highly venerated by the Kemetic people as a supreme goddess and the Eye of Ra.

Shrine of Auset

Shrine of Sokar

Shrine of Harsomtus

Shrine of Hathor's Sistrum

Shrine of gods of Lower Egypt

Shrine of Hathor

Shrine of the throne of Rê

Shrine of Rê

Shrine of Menat collar

Shrine of Ihy

Shrine to Ausar

Dendera zodiac

The sculptured Dendera zodiac (or Denderah zodiac) is a widely known Egyptian bas-relief from the ceiling of the pronaos (or portico) of a chapel dedicated to Ausar in the Hathor temple at Dendera, containing images of Taurus (the bull) and Libra (the scales).

The first representation of the solar systems and the concept of the Zodiac

The Calendar Circle, which actuarily tracked the movements of the stars of a several thousand year period.

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Thebes

Location               Luxor, Luxor Governorate, Egypt

Region  Upper Egypt

Type      Settlement

UNESCO World Heritage Site

Official name     Ancient Thebes with its Necropolis

Type      Cultural

Criteria I, III, VI

Designated         1979 (3rd session)

Reference no.   87

Region  Arab States

Heka"He Who Activates the Ka"

 Alternative Names: Hike

Role & Function: The personification of magic, the power of word.

Status:  Heka was a member of the Triad of Latopolis, consisting of Neith, Khnum and Heka

Symbols:              The side lock, Hemhem crown, ankh, flail and scepter

Cult Center:        Hermopolis (Khmunu) in the Nile Delta lands of Lower Egypt

Titles:   

Heka, the Egyptian god of Magic and Medicine.. Heka, also known by the name of Hike, the god with magic powers and spells was the personification of divine magic that the ancient Egyptians believed produced the magical power of the sun and of life. As the god of magic he was also associated with medicine and healing and the power of the written and spoken words. The priests of Heka invoked his magical powers when practicing their arts, called themselves 'Priests of Heka'. Ancient Egyptian temples included a type of hospital where the priest practised their form of medicine and magic.

At the beginning of time, the god Atum emerged from the swirling waters of chaos to stand on the first dry land, the primordial ben-ben, to begin the act of creation.

The universe was created and given form by magical means, and magic sustained both the visible and invisible worlds. Heka was thought to have been present at creation and was the generative power the gods drew upon in order to create life.

To me belonged the universe before you gods came into being. You have come afterwards because I am Heka" (Spell, 261).

Heka was linked to the creative aspects of the heart and the tongue. The heart was considered the seat of one's individual personality, thought, and feeling, while the tongue gave expression to these aspects. Sia was a personification of the heart, Hu of the tongue, and Heka the power which infused both.

Heka was depicted as a young, beautiful and healthy child god. In ancient Egyptian art children were illustrated with a finger pointing towards their mouth (sucking their thumb) or pointing towards the lips. The Hieroglyphic Symbol for a child was indicated by a finger inserted in mouth. Heka was also depicted wearing a side lock, as worn by ancient Egyptian boys and the style of headdress called a Hemhem crown. He forms a Triad with Khnum and Neith. Hermopolis (Khmunu) in the Nile Delta lands of Lower Egypt

Magic was considered present at the birth of creation - was, in fact, the operative force in the creative act - and so Heka is among the oldest gods of Egypt, recognized as early as the Predynastic Period in Egypt (c. 6000 - c. 3150 BCE) and appearing in inscriptions in the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150 - 2613 BCE).

He is frequently seen in funerary texts and inscriptions guiding the soul of the deceased to the afterlife and is often mentioned in medical texts and spells. The Pyramid Texts and the Coffin Texts both claim Heka as their authority (the god whose power makes the texts true)

Heka was honored throughout Egypt's history from the earliest times through the Ptolemaic Dynasty (332-30 BCE) and into Roman Egypt. There was a statue of him in the temple of the city of Esna where his name was inscribed on the walls. He was regularly invoked for the harvest, and his statue was taken out and carried through the fields to ensure fertility and a bountiful crop.