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Was asked about the blog masthead logo and whether it was mean to represent the Islamic crescent moon symbol. Actually it is adapted from a motif ubiquitous in Ottoman art, the chintamani - literally meaning ‘auspicious’ - which is usually depicted in threes. It is also sometimes called ‘the badge of Tamerlane’. Tamerlane was a despotic ruler who features sometimes in Mulla Nasrudin stories.
The name “Anulios” comes from George Gurdjieff’s magnum opus Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson or Third Series of writings “All and Everything”. In the first book it is the name for a fragment of the Earth which split off and became the moon and which thenceforth exerted an influence on human beings. Along with its sister fragment “Kimespai” it has the general meaning of ‘never allowing one to sleep in peace’.
I thought the chintamani also evoked the image of the earth and a smaller fragment quite nicely. And of course it does look like a crescent!
Here is a pic of the symbol in situ - on a silk kaftan made for Sultan Ibrahim (d. 1648) and now in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul.
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