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Poems on Falcon Chess: Chess Morality XI: Pleiadic Dialogue. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
📝George Duke wrote on Sat, Sep 29, 2007 03:38 PM UTC:
Seven(7) chess pieces in our system associate naturally with 5 visible planets and Sun and Moon. Here we re-name the 'beginning' (if there was one) the 'Glowth'. Earlier Sky & Telescope Magazine held a contest in 1990's to re-name 'Big Bang', and in the end there was no entry deemed better and Big Bang is retained. 'Deed' in the first stanza is after Goethe's 'Faust', who comes up with 'In the beginning was the Deed'. Five(5) Platonic solids in stanza two should be self-evident. (Jack Cheiky's 2004 Geodesic Chess grids, for example 272 spaces, are comprised of hexagons and pentagons but they are not regular constructions) Stanza three keys off Voltaire's 'If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.' In stanza seven, Calaeno, the 7th Pleiad, suggests that 'Turn' (in Chess anyway) is more fundamental than any of 'Word' or 'Deed' or 'Move'. In Greek mythology the 7 Pleiades were daughters of Atlas and Pleione, and each pairs up easily by her history with Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus & Saturn respectively -- which are also days of week in many languages -- and all the sequences now match the Chess pieces too.

📝George Duke wrote on Sat, Jan 22, 2011 05:53 PM UTC:
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/faust04.html.
The one other annotation of this one was four years ago for new watchers,
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=18022. The Big Bang stuck after committee of Carl Sagan, Hugh Downs et al. rejected all entries' improvement in the 'Sky & Telescope' contest of renaming year 1993. Yet Big Bang of Fred Hoyle coinage is not very descriptive and seeming worse all the time.  The morality happens to suggest instead ''The Glowth'' in all succinct scientific seriousness. 
Three serio-casual Contests to transpire over year 2011:
(1) Re-name the Big Bang. It has been 20 years since that last try, so really find a better term.  Http://news.discovery.com/space/the-big-bang-is-a-big-bust-for-skeptics.html.
(2)  Re-name ''Chess.'' The new tag should absolutely not be culture-bound and rather cut across with meaning and significance at least three of: Russian, German, French, English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese M., Bengali, Hindi, Cherokee.
(3) What should Chess piece-types 'King' and 'Queen' be called as replacement, since those names are rooted in past privilege and connotation.  Legal and okay are 
existing paired terms from another's cv any time or any place, that entrance here will serve to remind for creative purpose.
Summation: All entries must have an author.

📝George Duke wrote on Wed, May 29, 2013 12:56 AM UTC:
What was happening ten years ago? 

June 2003 this one is a discourse again with moral overtones, and the other comment in 2007, http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=18022, cites the central speaker Maia renaming ''Big Bang'' The Glowth. 

Sky and Telescope Magazine panel including Sagan and Hugh Downs retained Big Bang though so ineptly named by Hoyle, who was deliberately scoffing with the name on radio as proponent of Steady State -- Steady State having equal billing as contrary theory in such as planetarium shows and exhibits until discovery of background radiation the 1960s. Http://news.discovery.com/space/the-big-bang-is-a-big-bust-for-skeptics.html.

The first speaker Electra rejects compiled Bible's first page In the beginning was the Word, as well as Goethe's christianity-overcoming Faust's third scene In the beginning was the Deed, in favour of In the Beginning was the Move (chess).  (In quest selling soul to Mephistopheles, Faust temporizes In the beginning was the Thought: http://www.levity.com/alchemy/faust04.html.)

But the last word this Morality XI is the seventh Pleiad skeptic Caleano's In the Beginning was the Turn, for obvious reasons.

📝George Duke wrote on Tue, Feb 6, 2018 09:52 PM UTC:

Carlos Alberto Colodro's current article reprises symbolism of Lewis Caroll's contribution to Chess literature in fantasy and allegory of 'Through the Looking Glass'.  The first sentence mentions Borges: https://en.chessbase.com/post/lewis-carroll-y-su-alicia-jugando-al-ajedrez-por-sergio-negri-2018.  Jorge Luis Borges' "The Chess Player" introduces this Morality XI too.  Each piece of seven is associated in different moralities with, in turn, solar system bodies, animals, birds, days of week, metals, Wonders -- sets of 'seven' somehow being a popular way to organize the cosmos down through philosophy and religion.

Greek mythology has the Pleiades as daughters of Pleione and Atlas. Pleiades.

Here the seven sisters of mythology, Pleiades, conduct dialogue, each representing a Chess piece with unique perspective.  The actual stellar Pleiades of constellation Taurus have had their major stars named specifically after the same goddesses.   


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