posted October 01, 2025 02:03 AM            

Some brilliant transcendental architectures were designed with religion in mind.

A lot of fringe religions had their own Beauty, whether they created it or sought it out in nature. I knew some joyful and open-minded Wiccans who not only reveled in natural beauty but also liked to build cob homes with their own personal designs (that included religious or archetypical themes) built right into the home.

Songs are also popular across many religions (a beauty of sound), and at least some even include dance (at least very spirited moving along with the music, such as clapping while singing).

I think what I'm looking for is confirmation or denial in my thought that perhaps what makes humans unique (as far as we know) is that there is a desire for beauty. (Well, some seem to delight in destroying beauty and/or promoting unwholesome/Ugly values instead and can include religions that seem based on hating the world, sometimes even hating themselves.) Or maybe it's just aesthetically pleasing propaganda. (Could it be a bit of both?)

I wonder if the hunger for beauty is a hunger for God/dess as beauty is the shadow on the cave wall that we can see (making a reference to Plato's cave). It does seem there is a hunger for the beautiful (though some perversely seek to destroy anything beautiful, sometimes as if they have a grudge against it, and may explain their hatred of it in religious terms).

posted October 07, 2025 12:18 PM            

Yes, it is human nature to be hypnotized by beauty and revel in it. A lily is naturally in tune with frequency of flowering (between bud and blossom) ....

posted October 07, 2025 11:21 PM            

I'd forgotten about this until now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary

Gothic indeed!

I do wonder what the inspiration was for building the "bone chapel." (And wonder how the bodies were prepared to be added to it, how it must've smelled as they constructed it. Did anyone visit who could recognize a skeleton as someone once dear to them?) I've read that it was an artistic and religious monument to all the death going on at the time it was started. I wish it was explained better. I'm sure that it just made sense at the time.

Now I'm going to be thinking about that for a few days, even when I want to stop. A couple of people I know may regret asking me what I'm thinking about.

I may add other things later, but fear if I do so now that this will turn into a long, rambling essay, so I will stop here for now.

posted October 10, 2025 08:08 AM            

Similar designs have been done in the Paris Catacombs where there are 1000s if not millions of skulls and bones aligning its pathways and rooms (many artistically constructed).

So the idea that even in darkness or surrounded by death, there is a natural propensity to still try and make something beautiful out of it, to salvage the pain as it were...

Perhaps even the fact that many of humanities greatest works through art, music or writing have often been produced by people experience incredible instances of hardship and yet find a way to channel that into something beautiful.. enduring, and works that even uplift humanity as a whole (wouldn't that itself be considered Divine)?

posted October 11, 2025 12:51 PM            

I remember now that Mexico has Calavera Catrina (a Lady of the Dead) featured on the Day of the Dead. She seems to be a 20th century invention, but her portrait is popular (and I believe I've seen some women in "skull face" were made up as her). Mexico has long had a morbid streak, and also big on celebrations, so it was probably more fashion (though Santa Claus was a 19th century invention largely based on regional religious beliefs that became adopted in the USA after a poem, with many alternatives--racy ones in Russia--also available, so maybe Catrina was also based on obscure religious beliefs, especially as the Day of the Dead is a hybrid mix of Aztec and Christian holidays combined into one).

Hmm, I wonder if the idea behind La Calavera Catrina is similar to the comic book character of Death (who takes many forms, but usually assumes the form of a female perky goth, sister to Dream) by Neil Gaiman? The character was also fashionable as well as comforting to the dead (rather than a figure of fear).

As for older celebrations (like the bone chapel), I can't quite grasp it. I thought bodies were to remain whole for when Judgment Day happened when the dead would be returned to life for Judgment after the End Times.

But for what it's worth, the Black Death that wiped out so many made the Renaissance and so many revolutions possible which transformed our world. Had that plague not happened then I would not be surprised if we were still in roughly medieval times with feudal lords. Given the date that the bone chapels were made, perhaps they recognized that and thus saw it as one of God's mysterious ways to be celebrated rather than bothered by.