Rojo Diablo

Is it just me? Or are the origins of words and symbols and language remarkably interesting.

I know, I tend to irk people to the point of insanity as I run around vomiting sunshine and spouting out my epiphanies regarding anything from the relation between the word "red" in Spanish and the name Rohit in Hindi to the astrological origin of the word "Friday" (which, by the way, I think comes from the Latin "Veneris Dies" meaning "Venus' Day" and possibly came to English through the Anglo-Saxon equivalent, "Friges Daeg" or "Frigg's Day". Venus was the Roman goddess of love; Frigg was her Norse counterpart.)

eyah! You see? I can't control it. It just pops out. And the thing is, I am in no way intending to get praise for it. I know it's an incredibly boring subject to most people anyway. So I'm more of talking to myself. There's nothing wrong with trying to impress yourself is there (After all... she's the only one that listens so intently....)

It's like if you're high or something...and you've realized, what you think is, this AMAZING idea, and then you tell everyone about it, and they can immediately tell that you're high. But you know, it doesn't matter how stupid you make yourself look, at least you yourself think it was a great revelation.

Okay...so bad example. But you catch my drift?

As for symbols, I think there's a slightly higher number of people who find them intrigueing. But the problem is, ssymbols are more often than not misunderstood, righ'? I mean, take some symbol, and ask random people on the street what it means, and you'll get answers you cant imagine.

For example...(oh no...run!) The "swastika" (or, more accurately, "svastika")...actually means, something more like "conducive to well-being", and is Sanskrit, not German. Tear it apart and you get su + asti = "well" + "it is"....NOT "Nazi's rule, Jew's suck". The cross was actually used all over the place, much before the Nazi regime. A favorite of Mesopotamian's and stood for good fortune, and prosperity. At the same time on the other side of the world, it was used by Mayan's and Navajo's religiously and similarly.

And in India...to this day...it's widely used in Buddhism and Hinduism. A symbol for a saint because the arms remind them of four possibly places for rebirth; Animal/plant world, Hell, back as a human, or the spirit realm. Sometimes it's hung over doorways of homes, or even businesses. Even clockwise and counterclockwise direction of arms stand for different things, Right- solar, the suns course etc. , Left- basically the opposite...night, magic, Kali...

The swastika only came to the Nazi's through some guy named Guido von List...And can't remember the exact story, but something about him building a temple to Wotan and creating some kind of cult, eventually evolving in to an Armenian Society where the right-handed swastika's "sun" reference became a reference to the "sun-people" and so forth lie the foundations for Hitler adn his Aryan-Germanic ideals.

I think I've gotten carried away, but you see what I mean? Now, next time when you see a swastika you wont automatically think hate and bitterness and death.

Of course... I could be all wro0ng, at least according to somebody.

"If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.'" --Archie R. Ammons

"A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day." -- Emily Dickinson