Tyrian-dyed.

Dyed purple or crimson, as in ancient Tyre.

—Susan Ostrav Weisser, 2003, from her notes to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, 1847.

Parian.

White marble.

—Susan Ostrav Weisser, 2003, from her notes to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, 1847.

The Most Famous Photographs

Orange-U Glad

“M&M’S is launching eight new flavors of the popular candies. The new flavors, which are sold in a “premium collectible” tin, include:
· All That Razz – Creamy white chocolate + milk chocolate + raspberry-flavored candy shell
· Eat, Drink and Be Cherry – Creamy white chocolate + milk chocolate + black cherry-flavored candy shell
· A Day at the Peach – Creamy white chocolate + milk chocolate + peach-flavored candy shell
· Orange-U Glad – Creamy white chocolate + milk chocolate + orange-flavored candy shell
· AlmonDee-licious – Almond + creamy white chocolate + candy shell
· Mint Condition – Creamy white chocolate + milk chocolate + mint-flavored candy shell
· Nut What You Think – Peanut + creamy white chocolate + candy shell
· Cookie Mintster – Crispy center + dark chocolate + speckled mint-flavored candy shell
Unfortunately . . . if you want to try them, you’ll have to purchase the whole $49.95 package.”
—Nicole Weston, posted November 16, 2006, at www.slashfood.com.

The cave painters

“The cave painters did have a wide range of colors in their palette, but the two that dominated everywhere were black obtained from manganese dioxide or occasionally charcoal, and red, obtained from iron oxide. The colored minerals were pulverized and then mixed with some fluid to make the paint. Often the fluid was water from the cave itself. It contained dissoved minerals from that particular place, which made the paint bind to the cave’s walls more easily.

The artistic techniques remained identical during the many millennia that cave painting lasted. The artists chipped tiny, pointed chisels from flints to use as engravers. They sometimes used crayons of charcoal or paintbrushes made from animal hairs. More frequently they used wads of fur or perhaps moss and pressed them on the walls. Just as frequently they blew the paint onto the wall by using a hollow reed or bone pipe or by putting the paint in their mouths and spitting it on in a series of explosive puffs made with the lips. When blowing the paint, they used either their hands or a stencil of bark or hide in order to make the shape they desired.

[The] immutable similarity in themes, colors, and techniques shows that the cave paintings were the creation of artists working in a cultural tradition that survived for more than 20,000 years.”

—Gregory Curtis, The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World’s First Artists, 2006. Pic is of the Hall of Bulls at Lascaux.

The color red

“[T]here is a residue of ochre around the periphery of the domestic fireplaces [at Pincevent]. The hunters used this mineral—iron oxide—in a variety of ways, including, of course, to make red pigment for painting in caves. The color red can stand symbolically for blood, fire, or, in the largest sense, for life itself. Some have proposed that the hunters spread ochre on the floors of their dwellings in order to sanctify them. At Pincevent, though, the ochre is thickest in places where the remains from working fiint are also the densest. The ochre deposit built up progressively over time as the tool working proceeded. That means that, although they may have used ochre to sanctify the ground, they also used it regularly for routine tasks such as tinting the shaft of a spear or coating their skin. It might also have been a preservative.”

—Gregory Curtis, The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World’s First Artists, 2006.

the spiritual realm

“Understandably enough, they [the Paleolithic people] would have believed that caves led into [a] subterranean tier of the cosmos. The walls, ceilings, and floors of the caves were therefore little more than a thin membrane between themselves and the creatures and happenings of the underworld. . . .

[It] was the act of covering the hand and the immediately adjacent surfaces with (usually red but sometimes black) paint that was important. People were sealing their own or others hands into the walls, causing them to disappear beneath what was probably a spiritually powerful and ritually prepared substance, rather than “paint” in our sense of the word. The moments when the hands were “invisible,” rather than the prints that were left behind were what mattered most. . . . [T]he hands thus reached into the spiritual realm behind the membrane of the rock, though in this case paint acted as a solvent that dissolved the rock.”

—Jean Clotte, from The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves, 1998; quoted by Gregory Curtis in The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World’s First Artists, 2006.

entoptic phenomena

“In “The Signs of All Times,” [1988, David] Lewis-Williams and [T.A.] Dowson declare that . . . they have discovered . . . a “neurological bridge” that could take us back to the Paleolithic Age. That bridge is the human nervous system, which they claim was the same then as now. They say that when drugs, fatigue, pain, insistent rhythms, or other stimuli induce a trance, the nervous system produces a pattern of hallucinations derived from it and not from cultural clues. The pattern is the same for all people in all cultures at all times. Therefore, Paleolithic hunters had the same pattern of hallucinations during trances that we do.

In particular the authors mean visions derived from the structure of the optic system. They call such visions “entoptic phenomena.” One example of entoptic phenomena is the jagged lines or herringbone patterns that some people see on the edge of their vision as a prelude to a migraine. Citing a considerable amount of modern research on the effects of mescaline and LSD, Lewis-Williams and Dowson identify six principal entoptic forms: a grid, parallel lines, dots, zigzags, nested curves, and filigrees. They also say that there are three stages of a hallucinatory trance, although they are not necessarily sequential or completely distinct. A subject experiences the entoptic forms and only those forms in the first stage. During the second stage, the subject tries to make sense of the entoptic forms by, for example, seeing a grid as a chessboard. And in the third and final stage, which is usually accompanied by the feeling of flowing through a swirling vortex, the subject experiences hallucinations that are so powerful they seem real. . . . Lewis-Williams and Dowson exhibit several charts showing that the entoptic forms appear in both San and Paleolithic art. More than that, various images from the art of both cultures appear to apply to each of the three stages of a trance.”

—Gregory Curtis, The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World’s First Artists, 2006.

to the red-room

“‘Take her away to the red-room, and lock her in there.’”

—Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, 1847.

scapulimancy

“The origins of the Chinese writing system are still somewhat mysterious. In 1899, the marks on some inscribed bones sold as medicinal “dragon bones” in a Peking pharmacy were recognised as writing. By that time, these pieces of writing were already some 3,500 years old, having been made during the Shang dynasty (c. 1500-1028 BCE). Though subsequent archaeological sites have turned up many pieces of neolithic pottery bearing marks dating back to c. 4000 BCE, these have yet to be interpreted, and the “oracle bone” script, such as that discovered in the pharmacy, is the earliest to be at least half understood.

The bones, mostly the shoulder blades of oxen, were used by the Shang rulers for scapulimancy: divination by reading the cracks that appeared after the application of heat to the prepared surface of the bone. The inscriptions typically consisted of a preface recording the date and the name of the diviner and the topic of divination, which was often the potential outcomes of military campaigns, hunting expeditions, sickness, childbirth or agricultural events.”

—Wikipedia, 2006.