A Wisdom Archive on From The Cradle

WITCHES CRADLE: A method of torturing Witches during the Renaissance and Middle Ages by binding the Witch in a garment or sack and suspending them from the limb of a tree. The continual rocking and swinging caused a profound disorientation and hallucinations and induced confessions. Used in a more contemporary context as a sensory deprivation technique to alter states of consciousness.

 
(See also: WITCHES CRADLE, Witch, Witchcraft, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary )

Since most beings from Scandinavian folklore are said to be afraid of steel, Scandinavian parents often placed a steel item such as a pair of scissors or a knife on top of an unbaptized infant's cradle. It was believed that, if a human child was taken in spite of such measures, the parents could force the return of the child by treating the changeling cruelly, using methods such as whipping or even inserting it in a heated oven. In at least one case, a woman was taken to court for having killed her child in an oven.

Read more here: » Changeling: Encyclopedia II - Changeling - Scandinavia

TANTSU TANTRIC SHIATSU
Tantsu Tantric Shiatsu is a unique form of bodywork on land. It was invented by Harold Dull who also created Watsu, or water shiatsu. Tantsu brings Watsu’s in-water nurturing and power back onto land.
 
In a Tantsu session, the giver cradles the receiver with their whole body. No oil is used; the receiver lies fully clothed on the floor, while the giver kneels or stands beside the person.
 
Like shiatsu, Tantsu is based on point work and powerful stretches to release chi (life force) along the body’s meridians and in the energy centers, or chakras. Tantsu focuses on connecting the chakras and freeing the natural movement of energy along the spine.
 
 Learning to give a Tantsu session involves the giver in a process that leads to a deeper connection with others and with one’s own centers and flows of energy. (Definition taken from Dull’s book, Bodywork Tantra: On Land and in Water, Harbin Springs Publishing, 1987.)

 
(See also: TANTSU TANTRIC SHIATSU, Alternative Health, Massage, Bodywork, Body Mind and Soul )

Xisuthrus, Xisuthros (Greek) [from Chaldean Khas-is-adra]
 
Also Sisuthrus. The tenth king of Chaldea, son of Ardates according to Berosus, the last king of the mythical age, who reigned for 18 Sari. According to Chaldean legend during his reign a great flood occurred. Xisuthrus was warned in a vision by the gods to build a vessel five stadia long and two in breadth, and to take with him into it his friends and relatives, likewise to place therein all species of animals, and to trust himself to the deep. Eventually the ark settled on the mountain of Nizir, the dwelling of the gods, also regarded as the cradle of the Chaldean race. The Jewish story of Noah was taken from this earlier Chaldean legend.
 
The Xisuthrus-Noah story has more than one application in now forgotten human history. In one, Xisuthrus is the ideal figure of a race passing over from one to the next succeeding continental system; or on the cosmic scale, of the transmigration of the various classes of monads with their chief from one dying planet to the succeeding planet, the child of the former. In the case of the earth, it is the transmigration of the ten or twelve classes of monads from the moon-chain to the earth-chain, the ark standing for the cosmic surroundings governed by karmic law and holding the monads together as classes. Xisuthrus or Noah, therefore, is the collectivity of all these monadic classes into a unity for purposes of mythologic story.

 
(See also: Xisuthrus, Xisuthros, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul )

In Kant and the Platypus , Umberto Eco squares his shoulders and takes on the problem of pure being. For pure being is not just a problem, it is the problem in philosophy in that it underlies everything, including problems, philosophers and platypuses. Or should it be platypi? Even the question mark to a dubious lingual entity which does not really 'exist' has to have being, even if it is in the form of a being which we call 'non-existence'.

 
(See also: Life and Death, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul )

Read more here: » Life and Death: The Problem of Being

There are many texts available to new mothers to assist in the establishment of breastfeeding. The baby will usually indicate hunger by crying or moaning and fussing. When the baby's cheek is stroked, the baby will move his or her face towards the stroking and open his or her mouth, demonstrating the rooting instinct. Breastfeeding can make the mother thirsty and can last for up to an hour (usually in the early days, when both mother and baby are inexperienced) – it is therefore common for the mother to replace lost water by drinking during the process.

Read more here: » Breastfeeding: Encyclopedia II - Breastfeeding - Breastfeeding method

Romakapura (Sanskrit) [from romaka hairy + pura city, fortified town]
 
City of hairy ones; in the Surya-Siddhanta (1:6; 12:39), the birth place of Asuramaya, the putative author of the Surya-Siddhanta itself, who states that he received the knowledge which the scripture contains by dictation from the sun. It is stated to have been told to Asuramaya when but little of the krita yuga was left, making the work''s age at least 2,200,000 years.
 
The "fact of ''Romaka-pura in the West'' being named as the birth-place of this hero of the archaic ages, is the more interesting because it is so very suggestive of the esoteric teaching about the ''Sweat-born'' Races, the men born from the pores of their parents. ''Romakupas'' means ''hair-pores'' in Sanskrit" (SD 2:68). Romakapura therefore has a vague allusion to the land and cradle of the sweat-born of the third root-race, but more particularly in this case to the early days of Atlantis. The figure of 2,200,000 years ago brings Asuramaya and his work into the first part of the present fifth root-race.

 
(See also: Romakapura, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary )

Numerous Greco-Buddhist sculptures (around 23,000 of them) in clay or plaster were excavated in Hadda during the 1930s and the 1970s. They combine elements of Buddhism and Hellenism, in an almost perfect Hellenistic style. Although the style itself is typical of the late Hellenistic 2nd or 1st century BCE, the Hadda sculptures are usually dated, with some uncertainty, to the 1st century CE or later. This discrepancy might be explained by a preservation of late Hellenistic styles for a few centuries in this part of the world, of may indicate that th ...

Read more here: » Hadda: Encyclopedia II - Hadda - Background

A partial list of his (some co-authored) fiction books in chronological order: Prelude to Space (1951) The Sands of Mars (1951) Islands in the Sky (1952) Against the Fall of Night (1953) Childhood's End (1953) Expedition to Earth (1953) [short story collection] Earthlight (1955) Reach for Tomorrow (1956) [short story collection] The City and the Stars (1956) Tales from the White Hart< ...

Read more here: » Arthur C. Clarke: Encyclopedia II - Arthur C. Clarke - Bibliography