Sunday, March 04, 2007

Katriina Viljama-Rissanen

Finland Christmas Postage Stamp
Katriina Viljama-Rissanen is first and foremost known as an illustrator of children's books, but her art is also featured on a collection of textiles she designed for Finlayson, and on crockery by Pentik. The artist took great pleasure in the task of designing stamps, both because of the challenge and the subjects. Katriina Viljama-Rissanen says that Tiernapojat, a Christmas tableau based upon the legend of the three kings, has fascinated her since her childhood. This gave her a good reason to study the history of the tableau, its costumes and use of colours. The result of her work is a beautiful stamp featuring the characters of the tableau; King Herod, his servant the Knight, the King of the Blackmoors and the Bearer, carrying a six-pointed star, singing a text on events relating to the birth of Christ.

Pentacles

Pentacles HexagramPhoto of Pentacles Hexagram is copied from Wikipedia.
You can read now online the whole book titled The Key of Solomon (Clavicula Salomonis) Edited by S. Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Revised by Joseph H. Peterson. At the end of the book you'll find a few pentacles (amulets) with hexagrams and captions such as
The sixth and last pentacle of the Moon.-- This is wonderfully good, and serveth excellently to excite and cause heavy rains, if it be engraved upon a plate of silver; and if it be placed under water, as long as it remaineth there, there will he rain. It should be engraved, drawn, or written in the day and hour of the Moon

I ching

Picture of I ching Hexagram is courtesy of "urban_data" from Flickr.
Barbara G. Walker wrote on her book The I Ching of the Goddess (Harper & Row, San Francisco 1986 p. 16}
The word hexagram does not really mean an arrangement of parallel horizontal lines {as in the I Ching}. It means a geometric figure composed of two interlocking triangles: the same figure now generally accepted as a symbol of Judaism and even erroneously called the Star of David, or sometimes Solomon's Seal…
This is a most important insight that unifies the main meanings of the hexagram and opens new fields for future research.