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Mieko Shiomi, Spatial Poem, Osaka Kikaku Center, Osaka, 1976 [Fondazione Bonotto, Colceresa (VI). Librería El Astillero, Cantabria. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN]

Richard Wells, “Tarrant’s Field”

illustration to “The Blood on Satan’s Claw” by Robert Wynne-Simmons

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A ROMAN LIMESTONE RELIEF

CIRCA 3RD CENTURY A.D.

Sculpted in high relief with an offering scene to a pantheistic Abraxas within an aedicula, the triangular pediment with a shell-form niche framing the god's head, acanthus and palmettes for the acroteria, the syncretistic anguipede deity depicted with a wolf head crowned with sheaves of wheat, a human body clad in an animal skin, a marine-like fringe at the hips and snake legs, the head in profile to the right, the ears erect, the mouth open revealing fangs, holding a key in his raised right hand, poppies, a caduceus and sheaves of wheat in his extended left, the snake-heads of his legs slithering toward his attributes, a table to the left with a ram head, a diminutive bearded man kneeling at the right, presenting a loaf of bread on an offering table, its support with a lion head and a feline paw.

Chance Encounters #044

https://www.mixcloud.com/thomasmartinnutt/

2026 May 23

Messier 2 Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, G. Piotto et al.

Explanation: After the Crab Nebula, this giant star cluster is the second entry in 18th century astronomer Charles Messier’s famous list of things that are not comets. M2 is one of the largest globular star clusters now known to roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though Messier originally described it as a nebula without stars, this stunning Hubble image resolves stars across the cluster’s central 40 light-years. Its population of stars numbers close to 150,000, concentrated within a total diameter of around 175 light-years. About 55,000 light-years distant toward the constellation Aquarius, this ancient denizen of the Milky Way, also known as NGC 7089, is 13 billion years old. An extended stellar debris stream, a signature of past gravitational tidal disruption, was recently found to be associated with Messier 2.