Psycho-geography in Madrid - a picture story - in parts

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Welcome - good luck.

The pre amble - psycho geography - is a style of literature that normally - but not exclusively - takes the built environment and uses it as a springboard to redefining what you see and what you could see when wandering about - with no particular purpose - with the right sort of eyes. Discarding the A-Z, the tourist map or Google on your phone and creating your own guide book. That which is not obvious - but actually is, when you readjust the way you are looking at things. The genre has been most recently associated with writers such as Will Self, Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd. We blindly rush about cities paying very little attention. If you take your time - time is a key concept here - it isn't linear - more, malleable - you get overlaps in particular spots - backwash from that which came before. Other worlds - ways of thinking- that leave their marks on the shore - in the sand. Ideas that have occupied humans far longer than our modern age - our rationality. The following pictures and words are me playing with the idea of psycho geography in Madrid - a city I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours wandering about. All the images were shot deliberately for this project over two afternoons in February this year - almost exclusively in very unfashionable barrios of the city. As I said before - good luck - I hope you enjoy.

'Los de Abajos' - the underworld.

Los de abajos - literally translated - those that live underneath. Madrid has an underworld - as does everywhere else in the world. It stands to reason - we live up here - they live down there - I have no idea who they are incidentally. Nature seeks equilibrium - all organic life is symmetrical - bi-lateral in the case of animals - so if there is an above, there must be a below. Balance. The Egyptian - but culturally Greek - geographer Claudius Ptolemaeus knew this in the second century ce. In his 'Geographia' of 140 ce - which would remain the definitive work of cartography for one and a half thousand years - postulated the idea of the anti-podes - a great southern continent - hence antipodean -Australia - otherwise the globe would spin off its axis into space. It would take some 1600 years before Cook proved him right. I'm pretty sure that the Dutch knew this before but the British didn't ruin their economy in the interim trading on tulip bulbs - history is indeed written by the victors. Equally St Augustine in his 'City of God' - early 5th ce - imagined that there must be a perfect celestial city - above - to mirror the sacked ruins of his beloved Rome - below. What he doesn't actually point out in the 22 books of it - is that the Visigoths that did the deed were in fact Christians themselves - just the wrong sort of Christians. Arian not Catholic. He also fails to mention that Alaric and his troops that set about Rome in 410 ce did so because they were hired mercenaries in Roman employ that hadn't been paid for quite some time. They didn't touch a single church when they ransacked the city. So - two examples of an above needing to have a below. Back to Madrid. There must be gateways between the realms? Time to go look for them - after a bit of wandering in this frame of mind - I started to apply significance to apparently random things in the street -


SR-SG-M1.jpg

The gesture on the left poster seemed to be pointing me in a certain direction. I turned my gaze and saw this -


SR-PG-M2.jpg
A map - strangely drawn - both apparently directions to the same place. One for the above - one for the below. I followed it - and found this -


SR-PG-M3.jpg
The first portal - gateway- I discovered between los de abajos and the surface. My eyes tuned - I would find many more, traces of subterranean Mithraic bull cults and alchemy.

End of part the first - if anybody is interested in reading more of this rubbish - I'd be happy to oblige. Alternatively I can show the rest of the pictures from this project on their own.

Thank you for getting this far - yours - I.

@Barry Giddens @Blademonkey @Wayne Pritchard @Helveticum
 
Welcome - good luck.

The pre amble - psycho geography - is a style of literature that normally - but not exclusively - takes the built environment and uses it as a springboard to redefining what you see and what you could see when wandering about - with no particular purpose - with the right sort of eyes. Discarding the A-Z, the tourist map or Google on your phone and creating your own guide book. That which is not obvious - but actually is, when you readjust the way you are looking at things. The genre has been most recently associated with writers such as Will Self, Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd. We blindly rush about cities paying very little attention. If you take your time - time is a key concept here - it isn't linear - more, malleable - you get overlaps in particular spots - backwash from that which came before. Other worlds - ways of thinking- that leave their marks on the shore - in the sand. Ideas that have occupied humans far longer than our modern age - our rationality. The following pictures and words are me playing with the idea of psycho geography in Madrid - a city I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours wandering about. All the images were shot deliberately for this project over two afternoons in February this year - almost exclusively in very unfashionable barrios of the city. As I said before - good luck - I hope you enjoy.

'Los de Abajos' - the underworld.

Los de abajos - literally translated - those that live underneath. Madrid has an underworld - as does everywhere else in the world. It stands to reason - we live up here - they live down there - I have no idea who they are incidentally. Nature seeks equilibrium - all organic life is symmetrical - bi-lateral in the case of animals - so if there is an above, there must be a below. Balance. The Egyptian - but culturally Greek - geographer Claudius Ptolemaeus knew this in the second century ce. In his 'Geographia' of 140 ce - which would remain the definitive work of cartography for one and a half thousand years - postulated the idea of the anti-podes - a great southern continent - hence antipodean -Australia - otherwise the globe would spin off its axis into space. It would take some 1600 years before Cook proved him right. I'm pretty sure that the Dutch knew this before but the British didn't ruin their economy in the interim trading on tulip bulbs - history is indeed written by the victors. Equally St Augustine in his 'City of God' - early 5th ce - imagined that there must be a perfect celestial city - above - to mirror the sacked ruins of his beloved Rome - below. What he doesn't actually point out in the 22 books of it - is that the Visigoths that did the deed were in fact Christians themselves - just the wrong sort of Christians. Arian not Catholic. He also fails to mention that Alaric and his troops that set about Rome in 410 ce did so because they were hired mercenaries in Roman employ that hadn't been paid for quite some time. They didn't touch a single church when they ransacked the city. So - two examples of an above needing to have a below. Back to Madrid. There must be gateways between the realms? Time to go look for them - after a bit of wandering in this frame of mind - I started to apply significance to apparently random things in the street -


View attachment 34438

The gesture on the left poster seemed to be pointing me in a certain direction. I turned my gaze and saw this -


View attachment 34439
A map - strangely drawn - both apparently directions to the same place. One for the above - one for the below. I followed it - and found this -


View attachment 34440
The first portal - gateway- I discovered between los de abajos and the surface. My eyes tuned - I would find many more, traces of subterranean Mithraic bull cults and alchemy.

End of part the first - if anybody is interested in reading more of this rubbish - I'd be happy to oblige. Alternatively I can show the rest of the pictures from this project on their own.

Thank you for getting this far - yours - I.

@Barry Giddens @Blademonkey @Wayne Pritchard @Helveticum
I would be very interested in reading more, not rubbish at all! Very interesting indeed. P.
 
Great photos and an interesting approach, you can't beat just wandering round cities with your eyes open for the little details. I went to a brilliant exhibition in Paris by Mazuki (sp?) years ago, where he did a series of photos and sketches of scenes in Yokohama in the 70's and 80's and tried to draw parallels with the modern city and traditional Japanese legends.

Definitely more please, as Madrid is one of the most fascinating cities in Europe.
 
Welcome - good luck.

The pre amble - psycho geography - is a style of literature that normally - but not exclusively - takes the built environment and uses it as a springboard to redefining what you see and what you could see when wandering about - with no particular purpose - with the right sort of eyes. Discarding the A-Z, the tourist map or Google on your phone and creating your own guide book. That which is not obvious - but actually is, when you readjust the way you are looking at things. The genre has been most recently associated with writers such as Will Self, Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd. We blindly rush about cities paying very little attention. If you take your time - time is a key concept here - it isn't linear - more, malleable - you get overlaps in particular spots - backwash from that which came before. Other worlds - ways of thinking- that leave their marks on the shore - in the sand. Ideas that have occupied humans far longer than our modern age - our rationality. The following pictures and words are me playing with the idea of psycho geography in Madrid - a city I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours wandering about. All the images were shot deliberately for this project over two afternoons in February this year - almost exclusively in very unfashionable barrios of the city. As I said before - good luck - I hope you enjoy.

'Los de Abajos' - the underworld.

Los de abajos - literally translated - those that live underneath. Madrid has an underworld - as does everywhere else in the world. It stands to reason - we live up here - they live down there - I have no idea who they are incidentally. Nature seeks equilibrium - all organic life is symmetrical - bi-lateral in the case of animals - so if there is an above, there must be a below. Balance. The Egyptian - but culturally Greek - geographer Claudius Ptolemaeus knew this in the second century ce. In his 'Geographia' of 140 ce - which would remain the definitive work of cartography for one and a half thousand years - postulated the idea of the anti-podes - a great southern continent - hence antipodean -Australia - otherwise the globe would spin off its axis into space. It would take some 1600 years before Cook proved him right. I'm pretty sure that the Dutch knew this before but the British didn't ruin their economy in the interim trading on tulip bulbs - history is indeed written by the victors. Equally St Augustine in his 'City of God' - early 5th ce - imagined that there must be a perfect celestial city - above - to mirror the sacked ruins of his beloved Rome - below. What he doesn't actually point out in the 22 books of it - is that the Visigoths that did the deed were in fact Christians themselves - just the wrong sort of Christians. Arian not Catholic. He also fails to mention that Alaric and his troops that set about Rome in 410 ce did so because they were hired mercenaries in Roman employ that hadn't been paid for quite some time. They didn't touch a single church when they ransacked the city. So - two examples of an above needing to have a below. Back to Madrid. There must be gateways between the realms? Time to go look for them - after a bit of wandering in this frame of mind - I started to apply significance to apparently random things in the street -


View attachment 34438

The gesture on the left poster seemed to be pointing me in a certain direction. I turned my gaze and saw this -


View attachment 34439
A map - strangely drawn - both apparently directions to the same place. One for the above - one for the below. I followed it - and found this -


View attachment 34440
The first portal - gateway- I discovered between los de abajos and the surface. My eyes tuned - I would find many more, traces of subterranean Mithraic bull cults and alchemy.

End of part the first - if anybody is interested in reading more of this rubbish - I'd be happy to oblige. Alternatively I can show the rest of the pictures from this project on their own.

Thank you for getting this far - yours - I.

@Barry Giddens @Blademonkey @Wayne Pritchard @Helveticum
We demand more Iain! As you know, our reading material has been very similar of late. I would also point people in the direction of Alan Moore. His gargantuan work of prose ‘Jerusalem', although not strictly psycho geographical in its approach - Moore explores ‘eternalism' or the ‘block universe' theory - shares many of its tenets. Seemingly everyday and often overlooked openings that can act as portals to a different layer of time.
Superb stuff mate. Well worth the wait.
 
SR-PG-M4.jpg

Los de Abajos - part the second - time shifts - accessing deep history -


SR-PG-M5.jpg

Anthropomorphic bulls - 'Sala Caracol' - the 'room of the snail.'

Echoes of the Mithraic cult or Theseus in the labyrinth? How to read it? Although of Persian origin - the mystery religion of the worship of the god Mithras reached its high point in the Roman empire during the 1st - 4th ce. It was particularly popular among Roman soldiers - it involved degrees of initiation for believers. Nobody really knows what rites they practiced - but I suppose it wouldn't be a mystery religion if that wasn't the case. The key thing here is that the mithraea - the temples they worshiped in - were always underground. Beneath. The central devotional feature of every mithraeum was a depiction of the tauroctony - a bull being slain by Mithras. Tempting as an idea but I think we are seeing the Minotaur - half man and half bull - anthropomorphic. Residing in the labyrinth created by Daedalus - most famously father of Icarus - for King Minos underneath his palace complex in Knossos, Crete. Underneath the palace. The Minotaur was fed on a diet of the seven bravest youths and the seven fairest virgins - every seven years. Theseus - the founder of Athens in legend - determined to stop this barbaric practice - and slay the beast. He was helped no end by Ariadne - King Minos' daughter - who fell in love with him and supplied him with the key to the labyrinth and finding the Minotaur - 'always go down, never left or right,' - also she gave him - at the suggestion of Daedalus - a 'clew' - a ball of yarn - which was to be tied to the entrance so Theseus could find his way back out. Smuggling in a sword was of benefit too. Minotaur slain - they lived happily ever after - of course they didn't - Greek legends seldom end well for those involved. So - I was thinking about this Bronze age myth - the hero faced his test beneath the surface - where else? - and noticed an indicator of even deeper history. If you adopt a psycho geography approach - synchronicity becomes the norm not the unusual.

SR-PG-M6.jpg

The sign of the bull - modern cave art.

Something happened to homo sapiens in the upper paleolithic period - 50,000 to 10,000 bce - humans have been anatomically modern for at least 200,000 years - same skeleton, same brain capacity - but there was a change that allowed us to become behaviorally modern. Nobody knows why - theories abound though. There was an explosion of technologies and their complexity - the first evidence of things as diverse as the weaving of cloth and fishing - the sophistication of stone tools leaps forward in a relatively short span of time. In northern Europe - big game animals become the main source of food. Also - there appeared to be a cognitive shift that allowed or enhanced the capacity for abstract thought dramatically. We invented art. Both portable objects - which interestingly commonly are anthropomorphic - strange blends of human and animal form - and in what we call cave art. Even now, staggeringly lifelike and beautiful depictions - mostly - of the fauna around them. Altamira in the north of Spain was what I was thinking off when I saw this image. Among the very oldest examples of parietal art are the outlines of the creators hand. A simple silhouette made by spitting pigment mixed with saliva onto a hand held against the rock. We can't possibly bridge the gap between them and us to understand why they did this - most theories revolve around the idea of 'hunting magic' - proto religion - shamanism. Expressing the self in relation to their surrounding. We will never know. The point of this - is that when parietal art reaches the peak of its sophistication - in places like Altamira and Chauvet in southern France - the creators chose to do these things deep underground. In difficult, dangerous and barely accessible caves. The paintings at Altamira have a date range of tens of thousands of years. They returned for countless generations to the under world to express themselves in visual form. From as long as we can find evidence of modern human culture - ideas of and an attachment to, an attraction to - that 'which is beneath' is persistent.

Well done - you made it this far - thank you for looking and reading - yours I.

@Barry Giddens @Blademonkey @Wayne Pritchard @Helveticum @Dansco @Miles Teg
 
View attachment 34450

Los de Abajos - part the second - time shifts - accessing deep history -


View attachment 34451

Anthropomorphic bulls - 'Sala Caracol' - the 'room of the snail.'

Echoes of the Mithraic cult or Theseus in the labyrinth? How to read it? Although of Persian origin - the mystery religion of the worship of the god Mithras reached its high point in the Roman empire during the 1st - 4th ce. It was particularly popular among Roman soldiers - it involved degrees of initiation for believers. Nobody really knows what rites they practiced - but I suppose it wouldn't be a mystery religion if that wasn't the case. The key thing here is that the mithraea - the temples they worshiped in - were always underground. Beneath. The central devotional feature of every mithraeum was a depiction of the tauroctony - a bull being slain by Mithras. Tempting as an idea but I think we are seeing the Minotaur - half man and half bull - anthropomorphic. Residing in the labyrinth created by Daedalus - most famously father of Icarus - for King Minos underneath his palace complex in Knossos, Crete. Underneath the palace. The Minotaur was fed on a diet of the seven bravest youths and the seven fairest virgins - every seven years. Theseus - the founder of Athens in legend - determined to stop this barbaric practice - and slay the beast. He was helped no end by Ariadne - King Minos' daughter - who fell in love with him and supplied him with the key to the labyrinth and finding the Minotaur - 'always go down, never left or right,' - also she gave him - at the suggestion of Daedalus - a 'clew' - a ball of yarn - which was to be tied to the entrance so Theseus could find his way back out. Smuggling in a sword was of benefit too. Minotaur slain - they lived happily ever after - of course they didn't - Greek legends seldom end well for those involved. So - I was thinking about this Bronze age myth - the hero faced his test beneath the surface - where else? - and noticed an indicator of even deeper history. If you adopt a psycho geography approach - synchronicity becomes the norm not the unusual.

View attachment 34454

The sign of the bull - modern cave art.

Something happened to homo sapiens in the upper paleolithic period - 50,000 to 10,000 bce - humans have been anatomically modern for at least 200,000 years - same skeleton, same brain capacity - but there was a change that allowed us to become behaviorally modern. Nobody knows why - theories abound though. There was an explosion of technologies and their complexity - the first evidence of things as diverse as the weaving of cloth and fishing - the sophistication of stone tools leaps forward in a relatively short span of time. In northern Europe - big game animals become the main source of food. Also - there appeared to be a cognitive shift that allowed or enhanced the capacity for abstract thought dramatically. We invented art. Both portable objects - which interestingly commonly are anthropomorphic - strange blends of human and animal form - and in what we call cave art. Even now, staggeringly lifelike and beautiful depictions - mostly - of the fauna around them. Altamira in the north of Spain was what I was thinking off when I saw this image. Among the very oldest examples of parietal art are the outlines of the creators hand. A simple silhouette made by spitting pigment mixed with saliva onto a hand held against the rock. We can't possibly bridge the gap between them and us to understand why they did this - most theories revolve around the idea of 'hunting magic' - proto religion - shamanism. Expressing the self in relation to their surrounding. We will never know. The point of this - is that when parietal art reaches the peak of its sophistication - in places like Altamira and Chauvet in southern France - the creators chose to do these things deep underground. In difficult, dangerous and barely accessible caves. The paintings at Altamira have a date range of tens of thousands of years. They returned for countless generations to the under world to express themselves in visual form. From as long as we can find evidence of modern human culture - ideas of and an attachment to, an attraction to - that 'which is beneath' is persistent.

Well done - you made it this far - thank you for looking and reading - yours I.

@Barry Giddens @Blademonkey @Wayne Pritchard @Helveticum @Dansco @Miles Teg
Thank you! Thought provoking stuff and very interesting indeed. P.
 
View attachment 34450

Los de Abajos - part the second - time shifts - accessing deep history -


View attachment 34451

Anthropomorphic bulls - 'Sala Caracol' - the 'room of the snail.'

Echoes of the Mithraic cult or Theseus in the labyrinth? How to read it? Although of Persian origin - the mystery religion of the worship of the god Mithras reached its high point in the Roman empire during the 1st - 4th ce. It was particularly popular among Roman soldiers - it involved degrees of initiation for believers. Nobody really knows what rites they practiced - but I suppose it wouldn't be a mystery religion if that wasn't the case. The key thing here is that the mithraea - the temples they worshiped in - were always underground. Beneath. The central devotional feature of every mithraeum was a depiction of the tauroctony - a bull being slain by Mithras. Tempting as an idea but I think we are seeing the Minotaur - half man and half bull - anthropomorphic. Residing in the labyrinth created by Daedalus - most famously father of Icarus - for King Minos underneath his palace complex in Knossos, Crete. Underneath the palace. The Minotaur was fed on a diet of the seven bravest youths and the seven fairest virgins - every seven years. Theseus - the founder of Athens in legend - determined to stop this barbaric practice - and slay the beast. He was helped no end by Ariadne - King Minos' daughter - who fell in love with him and supplied him with the key to the labyrinth and finding the Minotaur - 'always go down, never left or right,' - also she gave him - at the suggestion of Daedalus - a 'clew' - a ball of yarn - which was to be tied to the entrance so Theseus could find his way back out. Smuggling in a sword was of benefit too. Minotaur slain - they lived happily ever after - of course they didn't - Greek legends seldom end well for those involved. So - I was thinking about this Bronze age myth - the hero faced his test beneath the surface - where else? - and noticed an indicator of even deeper history. If you adopt a psycho geography approach - synchronicity becomes the norm not the unusual.

View attachment 34454

The sign of the bull - modern cave art.

Something happened to homo sapiens in the upper paleolithic period - 50,000 to 10,000 bce - humans have been anatomically modern for at least 200,000 years - same skeleton, same brain capacity - but there was a change that allowed us to become behaviorally modern. Nobody knows why - theories abound though. There was an explosion of technologies and their complexity - the first evidence of things as diverse as the weaving of cloth and fishing - the sophistication of stone tools leaps forward in a relatively short span of time. In northern Europe - big game animals become the main source of food. Also - there appeared to be a cognitive shift that allowed or enhanced the capacity for abstract thought dramatically. We invented art. Both portable objects - which interestingly commonly are anthropomorphic - strange blends of human and animal form - and in what we call cave art. Even now, staggeringly lifelike and beautiful depictions - mostly - of the fauna around them. Altamira in the north of Spain was what I was thinking off when I saw this image. Among the very oldest examples of parietal art are the outlines of the creators hand. A simple silhouette made by spitting pigment mixed with saliva onto a hand held against the rock. We can't possibly bridge the gap between them and us to understand why they did this - most theories revolve around the idea of 'hunting magic' - proto religion - shamanism. Expressing the self in relation to their surrounding. We will never know. The point of this - is that when parietal art reaches the peak of its sophistication - in places like Altamira and Chauvet in southern France - the creators chose to do these things deep underground. In difficult, dangerous and barely accessible caves. The paintings at Altamira have a date range of tens of thousands of years. They returned for countless generations to the under world to express themselves in visual form. From as long as we can find evidence of modern human culture - ideas of and an attachment to, an attraction to - that 'which is beneath' is persistent.

Well done - you made it this far - thank you for looking and reading - yours I.

@Barry Giddens @Blademonkey @Wayne Pritchard @Helveticum @Dansco @Miles Teg
This is exceptional work Iain. Lucid and enthralling. Bravo!
 
View attachment 34450

Los de Abajos - part the second - time shifts - accessing deep history -


View attachment 34451

Anthropomorphic bulls - 'Sala Caracol' - the 'room of the snail.'

Echoes of the Mithraic cult or Theseus in the labyrinth? How to read it? Although of Persian origin - the mystery religion of the worship of the god Mithras reached its high point in the Roman empire during the 1st - 4th ce. It was particularly popular among Roman soldiers - it involved degrees of initiation for believers. Nobody really knows what rites they practiced - but I suppose it wouldn't be a mystery religion if that wasn't the case. The key thing here is that the mithraea - the temples they worshiped in - were always underground. Beneath. The central devotional feature of every mithraeum was a depiction of the tauroctony - a bull being slain by Mithras. Tempting as an idea but I think we are seeing the Minotaur - half man and half bull - anthropomorphic. Residing in the labyrinth created by Daedalus - most famously father of Icarus - for King Minos underneath his palace complex in Knossos, Crete. Underneath the palace. The Minotaur was fed on a diet of the seven bravest youths and the seven fairest virgins - every seven years. Theseus - the founder of Athens in legend - determined to stop this barbaric practice - and slay the beast. He was helped no end by Ariadne - King Minos' daughter - who fell in love with him and supplied him with the key to the labyrinth and finding the Minotaur - 'always go down, never left or right,' - also she gave him - at the suggestion of Daedalus - a 'clew' - a ball of yarn - which was to be tied to the entrance so Theseus could find his way back out. Smuggling in a sword was of benefit too. Minotaur slain - they lived happily ever after - of course they didn't - Greek legends seldom end well for those involved. So - I was thinking about this Bronze age myth - the hero faced his test beneath the surface - where else? - and noticed an indicator of even deeper history. If you adopt a psycho geography approach - synchronicity becomes the norm not the unusual.

View attachment 34454

The sign of the bull - modern cave art.

Something happened to homo sapiens in the upper paleolithic period - 50,000 to 10,000 bce - humans have been anatomically modern for at least 200,000 years - same skeleton, same brain capacity - but there was a change that allowed us to become behaviorally modern. Nobody knows why - theories abound though. There was an explosion of technologies and their complexity - the first evidence of things as diverse as the weaving of cloth and fishing - the sophistication of stone tools leaps forward in a relatively short span of time. In northern Europe - big game animals become the main source of food. Also - there appeared to be a cognitive shift that allowed or enhanced the capacity for abstract thought dramatically. We invented art. Both portable objects - which interestingly commonly are anthropomorphic - strange blends of human and animal form - and in what we call cave art. Even now, staggeringly lifelike and beautiful depictions - mostly - of the fauna around them. Altamira in the north of Spain was what I was thinking off when I saw this image. Among the very oldest examples of parietal art are the outlines of the creators hand. A simple silhouette made by spitting pigment mixed with saliva onto a hand held against the rock. We can't possibly bridge the gap between them and us to understand why they did this - most theories revolve around the idea of 'hunting magic' - proto religion - shamanism. Expressing the self in relation to their surrounding. We will never know. The point of this - is that when parietal art reaches the peak of its sophistication - in places like Altamira and Chauvet in southern France - the creators chose to do these things deep underground. In difficult, dangerous and barely accessible caves. The paintings at Altamira have a date range of tens of thousands of years. They returned for countless generations to the under world to express themselves in visual form. From as long as we can find evidence of modern human culture - ideas of and an attachment to, an attraction to - that 'which is beneath' is persistent.

Well done - you made it this far - thank you for looking and reading - yours I.

@Barry Giddens @Blademonkey @Wayne Pritchard @Helveticum @Dansco @Miles Teg
I am really enjoying this. As said very thought provoking indeed.

Thanks for your time and thanks for sharing! :)
 
When I first saw this post I thought 'far too long for just a passing glance', but here I am on a quiet non too tasking morning sat on the bridge of a ship and time to waste. So a return to this thread to give it a more attentative glance

I am glad I did. I really enjoyed the way you write and your observational connections. Other than that, damn interesting.

I do hope there is more to follow as I need to find further excuses to pass my time in the quiet moments

Good stuff
 
Los de Abajos - part the third - let's go deeper - confront and examine our fears of the under world.


SR-PG-M7.jpg

Portal - gateway to the underworld - Lavapies barrio.

I think by the point this picture was taken my eyes were well attuned to what I was looking for - I had a nagging anxiety I was being watched though. Not from the surface but from below - I turned around and saw this -


SR-PG-M8.jpg


Gates - obviously - need gate keepers - and this one had noticed me. I had dallied too long - shown too much interest. I took my warning - and wandered off - doubting my vision I decided to go back to the first portal I had discovered - and look at it again - and found this -

SR-PG-M9.jpg

Again directly behind me when I took my original picture - unnoticed by me at the time. That gecko may be drinking but it's paying close attention. It turned out that every gate had a watcher -


SR-PG-M10.jpg

Cerberus - granted - with only one head - but that leads us neatly to the narrative.

Why should we be instinctively or culturally conditioned to be afraid of that which lies beneath? The subterranean? Hell is down there isn't it? The realm of the damned. All things from below must be bad. Pretty much all Judeo/Christian concepts of the subject derive from the Greek idea of Hades. The Greeks understood it thus - Hades - a person - well an immortal - brother of Zeus and Poseidon - after their successful battle with the Titans cast lots to decide their respective realms. Zeus got the sky - Poseidon - obviously - the sea and Hades the underworld. Some sources mention he was a bit miffed about this but he accepted his lot with good grace. Initially - the Greek Hades - the word quite quickly comes to mean the realm in total and not just the person - was the repository of all dead souls - there was no idea at all of any sort of judgement.
 
I apologise - when trying to post the above - the rest of the text disappeared - several hundred words. Site error. The best part of my narrative. It took me hours to write. It's gone - you'll just have to do with the pictures with no supporting text. That's probably an end to this thread - as I'm not going to take the risk of this happening again. I.
 
Los de Abajos - part the third - let's go deeper - confront and examine our fears of the under world.


View attachment 34489

Portal - gateway to the underworld - Lavapies barrio.

I think by the point this picture was taken my eyes were well attuned to what I was looking for - I had a nagging anxiety I was being watched though. Not from the surface but from below - I turned around and saw this -


View attachment 34490


Gates - obviously - need gate keepers - and this one had noticed me. I had dallied too long - shown too much interest. I took my warning - and wandered off - doubting my vision I decided to go back to the first portal I had discovered - and look at it again - and found this -

View attachment 34491

Again directly behind me when I took my original picture - unnoticed by me at the time. That gecko may be drinking but it's paying close attention. It turned out that every gate had a watcher -


View attachment 34492

Cerberus - granted - with only one head - but that leads us neatly to the narrative.

Why should we be instinctively or culturally conditioned to be afraid of that which lies beneath? The subterranean? Hell is down there isn't it? The realm of the damned. All things from below must be bad. Pretty much all Judeo/Christian concepts of the subject derive from the Greek idea of Hades. The Greeks understood it thus - Hades - a person - well an immortal - brother of Zeus and Poseidon - after their successful battle with the Titans cast lots to decide their respective realms. Zeus got the sky - Poseidon - obviously - the sea and Hades the underworld. Some sources mention he was a bit miffed about this but he accepted his lot with good grace. Initially - the Greek Hades - the word quite quickly comes to mean the realm in total and not just the person - was the repository of all dead souls - there was no idea at all of any sort of judgement.
What a shame, I bet you was as miffed as Hades! It was going so well!
 
I apologise - when trying to post the above - the rest of the text disappeared - several hundred words. Site error. The best part of my narrative. It took me hours to write. It's gone - you'll just have to do with the pictures with no supporting text. That's probably an end to this thread - as I'm not going to take the risk of this happening again. I.
Iain (that's) awful. I know how much work you have put in to this.
 
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