NADIA & REALITY !
(©Tamarro Forever)

- PART 2 -

Part 2: 1889 Paris Universal Expo - Chemistry - Nebula M-78 - Adam - The World Tree - The Tower of Babel

1889 Paris Universal Expo

Between May 6 and October 31, 1889, l'Exposition Universelle de Paris attracted millions of visitors from around the world to its 96-hectare grounds on the Champ de Mars. The total attendance was almost 30,000,000, or more than double the 13,000,000 initially projected. New to this exposition was the use of electricity, which dramatically increased the operating hours. A week there would definitely be Jean's idea of a sugoi vacation -- although he'd probably prefer a month or two.

The symbol of the exposition, the 6600-ton, 300-meter-tall Tour d'Eiffel (Eiffel Tower), was selected from a pool of over 100 contestants. The decision was met with almost uniform disapproval at the time, although attitudes had changed considerably in the tower's favor by the opening of the expo. Also in the category of "really big buildings," the Galerie des Machines (Machinery Hall) covered an area in excess of 83,500 square meters (at a cost of $300,000), at the time the largest area roofed by a single span.

The major omission from a Nadia fan's perspective is an aeroplane competition. As far as I can tell (having looked in various engineering periodicals), such an event did not take place. The articles on aerial navigation that do exist from the 1889 exposition concern themselves exclusively with lighter-than-air craft. Likewise, there is no mention of a high-speed chase through the Exposition grounds, and I was unable to find an article explaining in detail the construction of a variable-geometry hot-air balloon which was allegedly involved in such. Rather a pity, that -- I'd love to know just how Hanson managed the articulation in Gratan's robotic arms.

[article by Brad Ackerman - All rights reserved]

A chemical origin of names?

This is a really funny but, at the same time, a very interesting and curious theory about names used in the series. It can be easily understood if you're Italian, French or from any country which adopted this kind of translation of names.

If you look at the Mendeleiev periodic table of elements, at the rare gas column, you see the element (n°10) called Neon which is similar to Nemo and Neo (especially). Then, if look just above, you see (n°18) an element called Argon (Argo in Italian) JJ

Unfortunately, this method doesn't work with Gargoyle....A Gargoyle, if my mind serves me right, was a kind of monster statue used during medieval age to "protect" castles or so.

Thanks to Mendoza, member of Nadia's English mailing list, for this great idea!

Astronomy

Nebula M78...Nadia's real homeland...What's about it? Does it exist?

Of course...

Nebula M78
Credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey Collaboration

Explanation (taken from here): An eerie blue glow and ominous columns of dark dust highlight M78, a bright reflection nebula in the constellation of Orion. The dust not only absorbs light, but also reflects the light of several bright blue stars that formed recently in the nebula. The same type of scattering that colours the daytime sky further enhances the blue colour. M78 is about 1600 light-years across and visible through a small telescope. M78 appears above only as it was 1600 years ago, however, because that is how long it takes light to go from there to here. M78 belongs to the larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex that contains the Great Nebula in Orion and the Horsehead Nebula.

Personal Comments: Ok, you can find a good explanation of the nebula and a great image of it above...But...Did you notice something strange? Don't you remember what Nadia says in Ep35?

{Nadia} Our REAL homeland. It's 277.5 light years away.

277.5? Not 1600 light years? That would be the first mistake in the whole series...but it could be (at 99%) a translation mistake, similar to the one happened with Hamahama's age (he's NOT 13 but 21 J).

Adam, giants and conquerors

You know, in one of the latest episodes, Gargoyle guides Nadia through a tour inside Red Noah, introducing her what Atlantean called "their first experiment of servant". That huge man, too big to be useful for Atlanteans, is Adam, the first man made by God, according to the Holy Bible. It's interesting to note how a kind of mix between this theories (a huge Adam and religious concepts) could be connected with a lot of other historical and traditional stories. According to Maya's calendar, for example, there are 5 ages: the first one, 4082 years long, is the so called "Giant's era". Each of this eras ends with a catastrophic event (the Atlantean one, for example?). Then, still in America, both Incas and Atzecs remember in their stories the figure of a civilizer came from East as prophet of new knowledges. He was white skinned, he could rule natural elements and he come back to his homeland after a while. This reminds me the figure of a Spanish "conquistador"...Just in theory, anyway, supposing that conquistadores destroyed everything they found in their path, ignoring foreign & exotic cultures...

The World Tree

[taken from Episode 19]

{Jean} What was that?  It looked like a tree branch.
{Nemo} It was.
{Nemo} That's the World Tree.
{Jean} The World Tree?
{Nemo} Yes.  The tree that supports the heavens, whose roots are spread throughout the world

****

Like the octave, the spiral, the mandala, the fractal, the image of the tree represents a template for the structure of reaklity, and the emergence of multiplicity (branches, twigs and leaves) out of unitty (the trunk), of the visible (the tree above ground) out of the invisible, (the hidden part of the tree - the roots below ground).

Many ancient cultures incorporate the myth of the World Tree, or Tree of Life, Tree of Knowledge, Tree of Speech, as it is also known.

In Nordic mythology the World Tree or Yggdrasil of the Eddas is the giant ash tree that links and shelters all the worlds. Beneath the three roots the realms of Asgard, Jotunheim, and Niflheim (Gods and giants) are located, and also the Well of Wisdom and the Well of Fate, and the Hvergelmir (Roaring Kettle), the source of many rivers.   In the Tongan/Fijian myth of creation there is at the beginning of things the "Tree of Speech" which, like the giant Ash Yggdrasil, this is the gathering place of the gods, and the tree grows by a fountain, the Water of Life.  The three worlds are represented by three parts of the world tree - branchs, trunk and roots. The branchs are the home of the Gods, the middle is the earth / land of the giants, and the roots of the tree is the underworld.

The Bhagavad-Gita refers to the Asvattha (Ficus religiosa, popularly known as the Bodhi tree,) or world tree as growing with its roots in the heavens, and its trunk and branches extending downwards to earth.  Its leaves are the Vedas (sacred scriptures); its branches the three qualities (gunas), and the lesser branches the sense-objects

The upside down tree (the metaphor also and more generally applying to the large Nyagrodha (Ficus bengalensis), with branches which grow roots and roots which grow as branches) represents the emergence and emanation of the universe out of the Ground of being.

As well as literal symbolism there is also the more metaphoric.  In the system of Kabbala (esoteric Judaism, later adopted and modified by the Hermetic magickal tradition as Qabalah) there is the Tree of Life with its ten Sephirot and twenty-two connecting paths.

There are also diagrams that are tree-like, although not specifically represented as trees.  For example the Egyptian and  Greek Theogenies, or geneologies of the Gods, trace the origin of all the gods and hence all  craetion back to an original God or primal principle (e.g. chaos).  More abstract and universal are the Indian Samkhyan diagram of tattwas (evolutes), and Neoplatonist Proclus' tabulation of the emanation of principles from the One to the body.

  The theme of the Tree of Life also appears more recently (19th century) in the writings of the Darwinist philosopher and scientist Ernst Haekel, who was the first to represent living organisms in a phylogentic tree.

[article taken from here. The copyright is owned by its original author]

The Tower of Babel

Above you'll find two comparative images: the first one is the Tower of Babel in "Nadia" (ep22), the second one, instead, it's the "original" one, as it was painted through the centuries. Aren't they quite similar?

Here are, instead, the passages of the Bible about the tower and its history :

Genesis 11:1-9
"1.  And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.  2.  And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.  3.  And they said one to another, 'Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly.'  And they had brick for stone, and slime for morter.  4.  And they said, 'Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach into the heaven; and let us make a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.  5.  And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.  6.  And the Lord said, 'Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do:  and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.  7.  Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.'  8.  So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon all the face of the earth:  and they left off to build the city.  9.  Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth:  and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth."  

This incident takes place sometime after the Great Flood, described in Genesis 7.  Most theoligical scholars place the Tower of Babel about 500 years after the flood (which makes sense given the population required to build a city, much less the tower itself.)  The tower itself is generally thought to have been a circular ziggeraut, or stepped tower/pyramid.  This type of structure tends to denote the religious notion of man ascending to god-hood.  That was the intent of the "tower, whose top may reach into the heaven."

But why did God decide to scatter the people and confuse the languages?  The answer comes from Genesis 1:26-28 (commonely called the Dominion Mandate): 
"26.  And God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:  and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.'  27.  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.  28.  And God blessed them, and God said unto them, 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and replinish the earth, and subdue it:  and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."  In order to take dominion over something as large as the earth, you have to spread out.  The people after the flood did not do as God had said, rather they wanted to stay together "lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." 

So the confusion of languages was punishment.

[Really thanks to LodeRunner for the text and comments and Brigichan for the image!!]

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