I see your hand, and raise you…
"Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have." — H.G. Wells
How this is framed
The Holy Hand Grenade is a comedic item that features in the 1975 Monty Python & the Holy Grail movie. The design of this sacred relic has a likeness to the Globus Cruciger (orb and cross), also recognisable as the Sovereign's Orb, a Christian icon of authority often used in the regalia of monarchs.
This object also appears in other fictional role playing, such as in Worms - a series of artillery tactical video games with small platoons of anthropomorphic worms that battle each other across a destructible landscape, and Terraria - which features exploration, combat, crafting, building, and mining.
Meanwhile, in ‘real life’, the mobile phone, is the civilian’s hand-held weapon of choice, since it can trigger its users into various situations of outrage leading to people being embroiled in comment wars, creating online adversaries and perpetuating ongoing discord.
This is the context in which this arts-based project was initiated.
Military grenades were designed to resemble pomegranates, both in shape and in their internal structure containing small shrapnel. Yet Pomegranates have mythopoetic meanings of fertility and abundance in various cultures, and this symbol is here being reclaimed by the sigil of a benediction mudra, with creative fruitfulness represented.
We need refreshed devices of enchantment to probe us from default assumptions, and deliberately yet playfully puncture humanity’s lack of common sense. This is not so much an essay-based newsletter, and more about a movement towards investigation and reflection.
Prepare to throw down your gauntlet, be unflinching about getting gritty with perspectives beyond opinions, draw with sacred craft, and grow your hands back.
Why I write
I’m here to poke, provoke, confront and elevate, without the fruitless disputes.
I hope to satisfy curious appetites for shaping abundant futures. I like weaving pluralistic stories about emergent situations through earnest deliberations.
I ponder about the more numinous experiences of cultural evolution — how do we grasp the spiritual quint-essence beyond material concerns?
Where this newsletter floats
This is a contribution towards the ongoing need for cultural literacy training.
It’s a playful and diverse assortment of thoughts, with the prevailing mood of “Oh, that’s good to know!” As it explores the educational nebula of learning and unlearning, beware of arts asteroids from the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy).
For the aspirant reader
We are surrounded by riddles and poetry and I love to share thinking tools to help others decipher. My eclectic nerd style might sometimes induce a bit of a head-rush or conceptual stretches – I have a fondness for being a cryptic oracle service.
Join me in transitioning from the dismal doubts of “Is this it?”
towards more invigorating reshuffled positions that might exclaim “This is It!”
🔴 PS. Before any words are written, an artistic rendition of a Holy Hand Grenade must be created first. Each artwork adds to the sigil collection, and these unique images are available as prints and postcards. 🔴 There are various benefits to being a paid subscriber -- receiving snail mail, hosting Sanctuary Suppers, curation of Salon des Refusés, Oracle Readings, Cultural Tours and Book Club.
Greetings, I am Regina, a cultural ecologist, educator and community spade-worker. I radically scheme and play with wicked ideas, to usher in more soulful and joyful humanity. Field trips and adventures can be found via https://linktr.ee/atienzarina