Category: Religion

Japanese Miniatures: Sukunabiko

April 18, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

There is something majestic about the arrival of the shinto dwarf god Sukunabiko (AKA The small lord of renown) to the shores of Izumo province in Japan. Dressed in the wings of a moth and carried by a tiny boat made from a sweet potato…

Vamana

April 6, 2021 By arne hendriks Off

The Hindu god Vishnu manifested himself on earth through ten primary incarnations. Within each of these incarnations are lessons for humanity. The first four incarnations are animal/human hybrids between a man and a fish, a turtle, a boar and a lion. The last six manifestations…

Tsimtsum

October 25, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

Tsimtsum is a Hebrew term meaning contraction, constriction or condensation. In the Kabbalah it is used to explain how God initiated the Creation by a process of contracting from his infinite omnipresence. Within the resulting space mankind could come into existence. So basically God actively shrunk…

David and Goliath

March 24, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

It’s interesting to listen to Malcolm Gladwell as he deconstructs the presumptions behind the story of David and Goliath. Rather than presenting it as one of our best known underdog stories he suggests that Goliath in fact never stood a chance. According to Gladwell this…

Mayan Dwarf Liminality

February 23, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

Short-statured people, dwarfs and people with achondroplasia play a significant role in Maya mythology. It was believed that dwarfs lived together with the gods long before humans even existed. This presumed divine proximity and intimacy gave the small-statured status. Dwarfs knew something that the taller…

Abundance Fantasies:Evangelical Carrots

February 11, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

In our series on Abundance Fantasies we explore how we can activate our deeply rooted desire for abundance, codified within our language, our myths and religions, to initiate the desire to shrink. There’s an unmistakable relationship between fundamental human desire for abundance and how this desire…

Abundance Fantasies: Al-Kawthar

June 23, 2013 By arne hendriks 0

In the Abundance fantasies we explore the origin and contemporary meaning of symbols, stories and tropes of abundance. People have an insatiable desire for more, but in reality we constantly have to cope with scarcity. Perhaps the activation of an abundance iconography will help further ignite…

Post-Growth / Post-Scarcity

June 18, 2013 By arne hendriks 0

Scarcity is the fundamental economic problem of having seemingly unlimited human needs and wants in a world of limited resources. Several cornucopians have explored the notion of the post-scarcity economy, with unlimited free goods, services and information. The most appealing aspect of most of these post-scarcity…

Relic Paulina

September 8, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

The Dutch are among the tallest people in the world yet the smallest girl that ever lived was from the Netherlands. Johanna Paulina Musters’ extremely small stature, she was only 61 centimeters, her talent for acrobatics, singing and dancing, and the ability to speak several…

Last Words Before Infinity

December 14, 2010 By arne hendriks Off

The Incredible Shrinking Man takes its name from a 1957 movie, based on a book by Richard Matheson. In it the protagonist Scott Carey slowly starts shrinking after having been exposed to radioactive pesticides. The film (and book) is about coping with this situation. Towards…