chartedunterritories:

This Book of Hours, referred to as the Black Hours, is one of a small handful of manuscripts written and illuminated on vellum that is stained or painted black. The result is quite arresting. The text is written in silver and gold, with gilt initials and line endings composed of chartreuse panels enlivened with yellow filigree. Gold foliage on a monochromatic blue background makes up the borders. The miniatures are executed in a restricted palette of blue, old rose, and light flesh tones, with dashes of green, gray, and white. The solid black background is utilized to great advantage, especially by means of gold highlighting.

(via The Morgan Library & Museum Online Exhibitions - The Black Hours)

barcarole:

The Fall of the Rebel Angels from Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, Limbourg Brothers, ca. 1410.

doublevajra:

Potential shrine cloths

cyanea:

Givan Lotz

All religions have an ecstatic component and all involve altering human consciousness to some extent by prayer, meditation, chanting, dancing, fasting etc. Although belief in a non-physical spiritual realm has diminished as part of our post-darwinian age it has not disappeared. Even those who have relinquished their belief are prone, if not compelled, to seek out substitutes. The altered states associated with Sex (orgasm), Drugs (intoxication), Madness (psychosis) are not only substitutes for religious experience but in some instances accomplices to these mystical practices.

knowiing:

By speedyjvw. 

loungeking:

Knoll Associates, 1963

loungeking:

50´s home decor

northedelweiss:

First minutes of the day - By Vlad Melamed

gilliflower:

bob cobbing, the sound of colour, print, 1999 (via the sackner archive)