Never before saw the connectedness of the circus with tarot. Very cool! Even cooler to have an actual tarot circus!

Nice link and citation of the White rider above - dont they usually carry a large flag, and ride around around the circle … reminds me of The Sun card with the child, horse, flag. I know the fortune-teller would be the High Priestess!

Nice idea too for an integrated book on all you’ve done. Be nice if you could collage all the neato imagery you’ve used into your own - what is it? 25% modified = legal reuse?

We live in and align ourselves with the physical universe and but what is the deciding mechanism?

Aesthetic selection and intuition. I don’t think the answer is more complex than that or needs to be.

We live in and align ourselves with the physical universe and but what is the deciding mechanism? What/who decided that days/months/Sirius etc. would be the clock and why? I really want to know. Why sacrifice a virgin for the harvest instead of going on a trek or a pilgrimage? Why paint walls instead of doing tattoos?

Fasting vs. feasting. It sounds stupid but where are the religions that go on an Atkins type of diet? Or eat fives times daily like diabetics? Who wrote that program and for what purpose? How did they do that? I’m serious. This stuff really bugs me. I come against this brick wall very often and I can’t break through.

http://dr-bob.securesites.com/babble/social/20020430/msgs/23306.html

Friends,
The narrow path led me to the circus. I came in through the Clown’s Entrance. The symbolism here is that I thought that I would be ridiculed by others for going on the Road to the Crown of Life. The circus is a symbol,to me, of the world. And at the circus were very entertaining people. And people want to be entertained. But it was the Rider on the White Horse that I believe that people miss. My friends wanted to focus on the entertainers. But it was the Rider that I wanted to focus on, for He is the one that I followed to get to the City of Peace. The entertainers were a distraction to me and were symbols, to me, of the distactions and temptations in the world that I had to overcome.
The world, I believe, has made us believe a lie that we must be entertained. We seek another “Kick” and “kicks just keep harder to find” as the song goes.And ther are many temptations in the world that can ruin us.
There are many other symbols in the circus scene. But my journey is about overcomming. It is not ment in any way to entertain you. I actually experianced all that you read in my posts. Those events actually happpened to me.
When I met the Rider face to face, He said to me, “Blessed is the man that endures temptation: for when he is tried, he shall recieve the Crown of Life which the Lord has promised to those that love Him.”
Lou

mostly based on Sun worship and/or other astrological phenomena.

So then they are just based on observation of natural phenomenon, encoded into human culture symbol sets and re-enacted in ritual to unify oneself and one’s actions with the universe?

“Even basketball one of our most popular national pastimes, was invented by a Mason, James Naismith.” (link)

But what are Masonic rituals based on, if that were the case?

That’s what I’d really like to know too! The thing I’ve heard that sounded realistic was they they are based on ancient Egyptian rituals that are mostly based on Sun worship and/or other astrological phenomena.

I second the thought that are in touch with something “greater” - lots of pings/memes floating around. You’re bring it all together (you have an earlier post to that effect - human search agent I think? You said something to the effect that there was a lot of data out there but that you still needed people to make sense of it.

Also, the circle/circus ringmaster made me think of this:

“We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern hold
In Midnight by the Master of the show.”

Omar Khayyám
The Rubáiyát

And talk of the sensorium took me to a CD-Rom novelization called The Third Force set in a future where one’s senses can be altered by use of a machine (used to suppress political objectors). Not the best written book, but thought-provoking ideas.

http://www.amazon.com/Third-Force-Nove...s=books&qid=1209135781&sr=8-4

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/HockeyRink-Zones.png

http://www.youth-basketball-tips.com/images/courtdiagram.jpg

Portions of circles found within squares known as diamonds:

http://www.topendsports.com/sport/baseball/images/baseball-diamond.gif

Some circleness with linearity:

http://www.asksoccer.com/soccer-field-layout.jpg

And complete linearity

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/AmFBfield.svg

The jury’s verdict?

http://media.funlol.com/content/img/cat-going-crazy.jpg

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w125/Gibson-Herrell/circus065.jpg

http://www.calvin.edu/map/pe/images/fieldhouse1466_600px.jpg

I also think that there is some metaphysical dynamic at work here, that you are chanelling creative forces greater than yourself.

I have to admit to feeling that same way and to being sort of embarrassed or awkward feeling like that somehow to begin with, like I don’t deserve it. The word, I think, is gratitude. All the other stuff has been one-shots, jokes almost delivered between acts to keep the audience involved while people are frantically changing costumes backstage…

I would absolutely LOVE to see some good research on this,

http://www.charlierose.com/shows/1995/...06/2/an-interview-with-isabel-fonseca
Her interview starts around 37:00. I remember reading her piece (book excerpt?) in The New Yorker but that site doesn’t give you whole articles. Something I read somewhere lead me to believe that comparing Rom words and words from Indian languages would be fruitful.

I actually just sold a bunch of books to a used book store and they bought every single one and said they were really good.

I am going to tell that story to my Mom. She is 60 and I think she could be a writer too.

Writing a book is hard isn’t it? Seriously.

Both of you keep at it all your lives. My Mom got a whole new life at the age of 60. She finally self published a small book a few years ago and she has had a cable TV show for almost 10 years. She kept writing and accumulating information, music, pictures etc. because she knew something big would happen and it did.

Your voice is even different than your more off the cuff type posts.

It is. It’s high quality stuff and I have very good taste.

I just hope you write this book. Let you be the one that does this.

Awww. Big hugs for Ted and Tim.

Writing a book is hard isn’t it? Seriously. I have tried a couple times. I mean, pretty serious efforts at it. Everything I have read from other authors, when they admit it, is that its excruciatingly painful. Like giving birth to a baby, running a marathon, being a boxer or somthing.

But I just want to say, I think you can do it and if I were to see this stuff in a book, even if it was a hundred dollars, I would buy it. I also think that there is some metaphysical dynamic at work here, that you are chanelling creative forces greater than yourself. Your voice is even different than your more off the cuff type posts.

People are in need of a cultural continuity in the modern world. You are dong really important work here and sharing it for free. I just hope you write this book. Let you be the one that does this.

One of my other story arcs for this series has to do with Gypsies, but that’s a topic which is even MORE difficult to find good scholarship on, because it’s always been so sensationalized. Good solid histories tend not to exist for the people on the lowest strata of society, except maybe within the realm of folk tales and songs, etc.

But a possible direct connection might be uncovered between Gypsies, who some say hail from India originally, and the influx of Hindu-ish and yoga-esque themes and symbolism by way of circus arts and itinerant performing, etc into the West. I would absolutely LOVE to see some good research on this, but I expect that it’s the kind of thing I would probably have to go and do first hand in the field myself to find out the best information on.

Will continue working on these lines of research and I encourage people who find this series, as well as the accompanying Carnival Culture series to email me with additional links, info and interest.

Also, I am actively interested in compiling all these strands of research and writing into something that could eventually take on a saleable book-length mass market format. If you or anyone you know is an editor, literary agent or connected to a publisher who would have an interest in such a venture, please connect me to them as I think we could make a really substantial piece out of all this.

If this circus ever comes to town go see it. I haven’t been yet but everybody at work raves about it.

I agree with Ted, good one.

But with epic posts, I always wonder how the data could be better presented. I like how you stack all of the images to make your point; a deceptively simple, but rarely used technique.

What would be great, would be if your post was presented in outline form, where mousing over links would open things up into more detail. Like, the images could all be shrunk down, so that when they were moused over, they would enlarge.

The problem with the length, is that one loses focus, and attention quickly because there is so much to digest.

Some other links for later:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mime
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marionettes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_and_judy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joust
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_fair
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaudeville
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burlesque
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_films
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_show

Also want to come back and connect the circus/street-performing traditions to modern media, advertising, propaganda, etc. Links above are a bridge to that…