The Christmas Tree Nebula
Photograph: From his garden in the New Forest, Professor Greg Parker takes images of deep space which are now collected in his book Star Vistas. Included in the book is this image of NGC 2264 or as it is more commonly known, The Christmas Tree Nebula. From The Telegraph.
The Parabola team wishes you much happiness this holiday season. Here's to the dispelling of darkness and bright new beginnings! May you continue to let the timeless wisdom of Parabola help light the way!
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ARCS
Illustration: Ilonka Karasz (1896-1981) was the foremost woman modernist designer in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. She designed wallpaper, wrapping paper, textiles, furniture, interiors, nurseries, book jackets, and magazine covers, among other things. The Twelve Days of Christmas (1949) was named by The American Institute of Graphic Arts as one of the fifty books of the year for 1949. The New York Times called it "a miracle of design and imagination."Marc Chagall, "America Windows" (detail)
“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”
—Edith Sitwell
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Photograph:During Christmas services in Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Palestine, by the American Colony Jerusalem Photo Department, between 1934 and 1939.
He was sitting on his divan and nodded as we filed past him and found places around the Christmas tree. He seemed rested.… He asked Canary [in later years, Gurdjieff customarily gave special names to his pupils] to put out all the lights and to plug in the contact that lit the tree. We sat in silence for several minutes. Then Gurdjieff said: “This I like. Such tree makes you quiet, peaceful inside. It is like sitting before an open fire. Coziness.”
The mirror over the mantel reflected the tree’s colored lights. Wendy whispered, “I see two trees …” and started our master talking about reflected light, a chapter out of his unknown past.
“It would be better if it was candlelight,” he said. “Candlelight blends better; electricity does not blend. But the most beautiful light I know, is the light I saw many times in Persia. They make a clay cup, fill it with mutton fat, put twist of cotton in, and this they burn for holiday, fete, wedding. This light burns longer than any other kind of light—even for two days one such small cup will burn. And such light—the most beautiful for blending. For Mohammedan fete, once I saw a whole house lit by such lights … such brightness you cannot imagine, it was like day. You have seen Bengal lights? This I speak about was even more bright. For man, it is the best light for reading …” A note of nostalgia for the Near East came into his voice. “In Persia, they even arrange rooms for such light. Once I saw one I can never forget. They hang mirrors everywhere, even floors and ceilings have mirrors—then around, in special places to make decoration, they put such clay cups with mutton fat, and when you see—it makes the head spin. Wherever you look, you see lights, endless, thousands. You cannot imagine how it was. Only, one must see—and when you see you would never imagine that such a beautiful sight comes from such small idiot thing as this clay cup of mutton fat.…”
“One other thing about such lights,” he went on, “is most original. When they make them with frozen fat, this they put together in layers, each layer with a special perfume, with separations between layers so that when they burn—first you smell, then the room fills with one perfume; after half an hour with another, and then another—all planned exact! Such knowledge they had before … such candles they made consciously and everybody had them. Such was life then! Now … they make them automatically …”
A sadness settled over our spirit after he had spoken, as so often happened when he made a glowing picture of how man once was—simple, unspoiled, aware of his soul and its needs.
Kathryn Hulme, Undiscovered Country: A Spiritual Adventure, Boston: Little Brown, 1966, pp. 131–33.
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Illustration: "The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come’ Illustration from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, 1843
"I wear the chain I forged in life....I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it."
—Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
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Woodblock Print by Tsuchiya Koitsu, Suijin, Woods in the snow along the Sumida River, Tokyo
LITTLE tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower
who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly
i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid
look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,
put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy
then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud
and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"
—by e.e. cummings (1894-1962)
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