The Native American tribes share a spiritual connection with nature, in the sense that nature plays a crucial role in deciphering the cosmos that consists of highly enigmatic elements in it. The Algonquin stance, "your birth date is the first drum beat of a fantastic ceremonial dance of life", just shows how the Native Americans associate life with a celebration, they celebrate and honor everything that breathes, be it human or animal. They observed the flora and the fauna, their strengths, their weaknesses, and sought powers from them to perform difficult tasks. For example, because a bat has the ability to see clearly in the dark, they (Native Americans) invoked its spirit to gain the power to see their prey clearly during a hunt in the night. When it comes to astrology, an animal totem was assigned to those born within a given time period. It is believed that these people share the traits of the animal symbol they are born under. The following section explains these zodiac animals, along with their western interpretation and meaning. Find out which is your birth animal!
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Monday, February 16, 2015
Friday, February 13, 2015
Swastika: “An Aryan symbol (卐)
In his 1896 book, The Swastika: The Earliest Known Symbol and its Migrations, Thomas Wilson, former curator of the Department of Prehistoric Anthropology in the U.S. National Museum, wrote of the swastika: “An Aryan symbol (卐) used by the Aryan peoples before their dispersion through Asia and Europe. This is a fair subject for inquiry and might serve as an explanation how…as a sacred symbol…the Swastika might have been carried to the different peoples and countries in which we now find it by the splitting up of the Aryan peoples and their migrations and establishment in the various parts of Europe.” http://atlanteangardens.blogspot.com/…/scientific-research-…
In the Western world the swastika is synonymous with fascism, but it goes back thousands of years and has been used as a symbol of good fortune in almost every culture in the world. As more evidence emerges of its long pre-Nazi history in Europe, can this ancient sign ever shake off its evil associations?
In the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit, swastika means "well-being". The symbol has been used by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains for millennia and is commonly assumed to be an Indian sign.
Early Western travellers to Asia were inspired by its positive and ancient associations and started using it back home. By the beginning of the 20th Century there was a huge fad for the swastika as a benign good luck symbol.
In his book The Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption? US graphic design writer Steven Heller shows how it was enthusiastically adopted in the West as an architectural motif, on advertising and product design.
"Coca-Cola used it. Carlsberg used it on their beer bottles. The Boy Scouts adopted it and the Girls' Club of America called their magazine Swastika. They would even send out swastika badges to their young readers as a prize for selling copies of the magazine," he says.
It was used by American military units during World War One and it could be seen on RAF planes as late as 1939. Most of these benign uses came to a halt in the 1930s as the Nazis rose to power in Germany.
The Nazi use of the swastika stems from the work of 19th Century German scholars translating old Indian texts, who noticed similarities between their own language and Sanskrit. They concluded that Indians and Germans must have had a shared ancestry and imagined a race of white god-like warriors they called Aryans.
What The Bacteria In Your Gut Have To Do With Your Physical And Mental Health
Strange but true fact: Our bodies are made of more bacteria than human cells, and the gut alone contains trillions of microbes (bacteria and fungi). In fact, it's estimated that the body is composed of 10 times more bacteria than human cells.
And the intestines are home to more bacteria than any other part of the body, including the skin. Now, scientists are devoting increasing amounts of time and resources to understanding the gut 'microbiome,' as the massive collection of bacteria and microbes is called -- and the influence it may exert on the brain and body. The National Institute of Health's Human Microbiome Project, for instance, is devoting millions of research dollars to understanding the microorganisms living within the human ecosystem.
Of particular concern among scientists and the public is the effect that gut flora may have on mental health, as a mounting body of researchsuggests that gut bacteria can have a significant impact on the way we think, feel and behave, and also on the development of neurological conditions. Last year, a major neuroscience symposium called the investigation of gut microbes a "paradigm shift" in brain science.
A number of diseases and disorders have been linked to abnormalities or instability in gut flora, and the microbiome is an important area of research for these conditions. However, it's important to note that while research has linked these conditions to alterations in the microbiome, it does not mean that in every case gut bacteria is the cause of the problem.
Of particular concern among scientists and the public is the effect that gut flora may have on mental health, as a mounting body of researchsuggests that gut bacteria can have a significant impact on the way we think, feel and behave, and also on the development of neurological conditions. Last year, a major neuroscience symposium called the investigation of gut microbes a "paradigm shift" in brain science.
A number of diseases and disorders have been linked to abnormalities or instability in gut flora, and the microbiome is an important area of research for these conditions. However, it's important to note that while research has linked these conditions to alterations in the microbiome, it does not mean that in every case gut bacteria is the cause of the problem.
Here are a handful of physical and mental health problems that have been linked to imbalances and abnormalities gut bacteria.
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