Illustration shows a gigantic boar wearing a crown with “$” and a shawl labeled “Plutocratic Greed” and holding the U.S. Capitol dome labeled “Special Privilege”, inverted to form a bucket from which it is sowing seeds labeled “Abuse of Power, Arrogance, [and] Contempt of Law” onto a field sprouting “Socialist votes”. It is stepping on an American flag and a Liberty cap.
Title: The seeds of socialism / Keppler.
Creator(s): Keppler, Udo J., 1872-1956, artist
Date Created/Published: N.Y. : J. Ottmann Lith. Co., Puck Bldg., 1908 February 12.
My Symbol – My Way – The Symbol of Mankind / Nature
The Phrygian “Liberty” Cap – The Symbol of Justice and Freedom – The Symbol of Aries / Libra – The First and the Seventh Astrological Signs in the Zodiac – The Equinoxes – The Sping / Autumn – The Golden Age – Astraea / Justitia / Lady Justice – Venus / Mars – Ostara / Tyr – Maria / Jesus – The Medium of Awakening.
Ama-gi is a Sumerian word written ama-gi or ama-ar-gi. It has been translated as “freedom”, as well as “manumission”, “exemption from debts or obligations”, and “the restoration of persons and property to their original status” including the remission of debts. Other interpretations include a “reversion to a previous state” and release from debt, slavery, taxation or punishment.
The word originates from the noun ama “mother” (sometimes with the enclitic dative case marker ar), and the present participle gi “return, restore, put back”, thus literally meaning “returning to mother”.
Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer has identified it as the first known written reference to the concept of freedom. Referring to its literal meaning “return to the mother”, he wrote in 1963 that “we still do not know why this figure of speech came to be used for “freedom.””
The earliest known usage of the word was in the reforms of Urukagina. By the Third Dynasty of Ur, it was used as a legal term for the manumission of individuals. It is related to the Akkadian word anduraāru(m), meaning “freedom”, “exemption” and “release from (debt) slavery”. A number of Libertarian organizations have adopted the cuneiform glyph as a symbol.
Ishara (išḫara) is an ancient deity of unknown origin from northern modern Syria. She first appeared in Ebla from the mid 3rd millennium. In Ebla, there were various logographic spellings involving the sign AMA “mother”.
Ishara is a pre-Hurrian and perhaps pre-Semitic deities, later incorporated into the Hurrian pantheon. In Hurrian and Semitic traditions, Išḫara is a love goddess, often identified with Ishtar / Inanna. In Alalah, her name was written with the Akkadogram IŠTAR plus a phonetic complement -ra, as IŠTAR-ra.
From the Hurrian pantheon she found her way to the Hittite pantheon. Ishara is the Hittite word for “treaty, binding promise”, also personified as a goddess of the oath.
She was associated with the underworld. Her astrological embodiment is the constellation Scorpio and she is called the mother of the Sebitti (the Seven Stars).
Variants of the name appear as Ašḫara (in a treaty of Naram-Sin of Akkad with Hita of Elam) and Ušḫara (in Ugarite texts).
One of the most important goddesses of reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion is the personification of dawn as a beautiful young woman. Her name is reconstructed as Hausōs or Ausōs (PIE *h₂éwsōs, an s-stem), besides numerous epithets.
The dawn goddess was also the goddess of spring, involved in the mythology of the Indo-European new year, where the dawn goddess is liberated from imprisonment by a god.
Ushas, Sanskrit for “dawn”, is a Vedic deity, and consequently a Hindu deity as well. In one recent Hindu interpretation, Sri Aurobindo in his Secret of the Veda, described Ushas as “the medium of the awakening, the activity and the growth of the other gods; she is the first condition of the Vedic realisation. By her increasing illumination the whole nature of man is clarified; through her [mankind] arrives at the Truth, through her he enjoys [Truth’s] beatitude.”
*Mitra is the reconstructed Proto-Indo-Iranian name of an Indo-Iranian divinity from which the names and some characteristics of Rigvedic Mitrá and Avestan Mithra derive. The first extant record of Indic Mitra, in the form mi-it-ra-, is in the inscribed peace treaty of c. 1400 BC between Hittites and the Hurrian kingdom of the Mitanni in the area southeast of Lake Van in Asia Minor.
Both Vedic Mitra and Avestan Mithra derive from an Indo-Iranian common noun *mitra-, generally reconstructed to have meant “covenant, treaty, agreement, promise.” This meaning is preserved in Avestan miθra “covenant.” In Sanskrit and modern Indo-Aryan languages, mitra means “friend,” one of the aspects of bonding and alliance.
In the colossal statuary erected by King Antiochus I (69–34 BC), an Armenian king from the Kingdom of Commagene and the most famous king of that kingdom, at Mount Nemrut, Mithras is shown beardless, wearing a Phrygian cap, and was originally seated on a throne alongside other deities and the king himself.
The Phrygian cap is still being used as a revolutionary symbol, more than 200 years after the French Revolution. The French diplomat, member of the French Resistance and concentration camp survivor Stéphane Hessel recently wore a Phrygian cap while speaking at a pro-Palestinian rally.
Hessel’s best-selling pamphlet, Indignez-Vous! (Time for Outrage!), is a 35-page book written by Hessel in 2010 which have sold 3 million copies in 30 languages and inspired protests like “Occupy” in the US and The Indignados in Spain.
The 94-year-old author starts with a brief reference to his participation in the French Resistance at the end of the Second World War, pointing out that outrage was at its roots.
The author asserts that indifference is the worst of attitudes. He speaks of his experience among the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and exhorts young people to look around for topics of indignation.
He then presents his own principal indignation at present, the strife in Palestine, the Gaza strip and the West Bank. He ends the tract by calling for non-violent action and for a peaceful uprising against the powers of finance capitalism.
In 2011, one of the names given to the 2011 Spanish protests against corruption and bipartisan politics was Los Indignados (The Outraged), taken from the title of the book’s translation there (¡Indignaos!).
The Spanish protests later inspired other protests all around the world, including Greece, Israel and Occupy Wall Street in the US and the Manifiesto de los Indignados de la Cruz del Sur, written by philosopher Eduardo Sanguinetti, released in Montevideo in December 2011.
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