Video Buzz | Cosmogram Streaming Video You Should be Watching

March 10th

The Kongo Cosmogram or Solar Cross: What animal walks on 4 legs at dawn, 2 legs at noon and 3 legs at dusk? Oedipus' answer to this question was 'man' ;. And rightly so, as becomes clear when one parallels the apparent passage of the sun around the Earth with a human life-span... 1 - midnight - 12AM - down - maturity 2 - noon - 6AM - up - maturity 3 - dusk - 6PM - left - death/birth 4 - dawn - 12PM - right - birth/death This is the core idea reflected in the Kongo Cosmogram or Yowa. The concept that life in the 'underwor ld' (world beneath) or spirit world is a reversed image of life in our world is due to the sun reaching its apex in each world at opposite ends of its cycle (12AM and 12PM). And so, the spirits of the dead are said to sleep (inactive) when we are awake and viceversa. The idea emphasises the continuity of life by viewing death and birth as repeatable transitions between states of being, along the path of evolution.

March 7th

Caribbean Espiritismo altars: the Indian and the Congo | Art Bulletin, The | Find Articles at BNET: The creation of a firma is considered both an act of faith and an aesthetic act. In literal translation, firma means signature, and a cluster of firmas can act as a system of ideographic writing. Because they are part of a Kongo-derived religious practice, the firmas used by Reginfo often employ Kongo-derived references, (47) such as the circling of the sun around the earth and the Kalunga line, or horizon line, the division between heaven and earth. As Robert Farris Thompson makes quite clear in his groundbreaking analysis of Kongo cosmograms, "In Kongo there is scarcely an initiation or ritual transformation of the person from one level of existence to another that does not take its patterning from the circle of the sun about the earth."