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Who am 'eye'? |
POST-MODERN BEAD MAGIC
Would you be able to feel the
difference between wearing a genuine ancient bead and a new
factory made bead? Would it even matter
to you? I guess it would
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Otherwise,
you would not be reading these lines.
The world 's oldest art form
Beads represent the
world's oldest art form.
Stone beads reach back to the
beginning of the human history.
Our early ancestors wore stone beads long
time before they started to paint their caves. Even the
Neanderthals used beads for
decoration and ritualistic purposes in connection with
burials. Beads have always had more
significance than mere adornment.
For the person who lives in an open liquid field of
possibilities instead of being confined
to the bars of conventional belief systems,
an ancient bead can be
a valuable tool for
concentration and inner exploration.
Just click a look at these
red Yantra
Pentagram Star Beads and feel for yourself:

Magick Tantric pentagon shaped Star Beads
Beads and Meditation
A mindful
and crystal clear consciousness
is coherent like laser light.
In such a light we are able to decode
the existential interference
structures inherent in human
life, that otherwise would look like meaningless chaos.
For a mind keen on cultivating
super wakefulness, an
ancient bead can
both have
and gain 'amuletic' power.
The ancient bead
viewed as a rechargeable talisman
In the hands of a focussed
mind,
an ancient bead can act as a post-modern talisman,
rechargeable like a battery.
Here
it
bestows
the owner
with the roots of his own reality. The ancient bead
becomes in this magic mirror the ultimate power
symbol. Here it is not necessary
with
108 beads stringed together in a Buddhist prayer mala.
Just one
bead is enough.
A bead is an ancient signature
The bead is your ancient signature with its guarantee
that you, somehow
in the midst of the upcoming singularity of big data, you are
still you. You are not
simulacra.
Re-ligare to your own past
The word religion is derived from the Latin word
religare which means to re-connect, to tie your self - to
your past. The
reality of coherent consciousness can open a channel in which
archetypical dreams,
maybe passed on from
great civilizations long forgotten can be 'awared' and
integrated.
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Your symbolic brain & the bead
There are dormant operative systems in our brain
in the form of layers
of archaic biological survival processing systems that do not
understand language. They operate within the realm of
feelings, instinct,
intuition, symbols and analog thinking.
The doorway
to these part of your biological past
is opened in the process
of
meditative bead-concentration. It
reconnects you with your own ancient historical and biological
past - a past that reaches even further
back than to the days
where the first cave man wore a bead.
One could call it spiritual archeology.
That is why it can give such deep feelings to hold an
ancient bead in the hand.
The authentic talisman
The ancient bead has in this setting now become magic in the
sense that it acts as a symbolic link, a bridge between you and
your previous brains systems, that otherwise are out of reach of
your control. These ancient parts of you, buried deep in your
mind, do not understand reason or language. Here the bead
becomes your language. It will speak to
you as your authentic talisman.

Mystery
bead from Afghanistan -
SOLD TO
FAHAD A. |
Do not even for a second think that you are an
individual only listening to and
governed by reason. You might be an atheist
only believing - yes I write believing - in positivistic
science. Still, your million-year-old brain
parts will not be able to listen to your
logic arguments. That is why all our plans concerning shifts in
lifestyle and weight
loss mostly falter. Our genes are outdated software like the
roundworm inside of you controlling your appetite:
Our unique attributes evolved over a period of roughly
6 million years. They represent modifications of great ape
attributes that are roughly 10 million years old, primate
attributes that are roughly 55 million years old, mammalian
attributes that are roughly 245 million years old, vertebrate
attributes that are roughly 600 million years old, and
attributes of nucleated cells that are perhaps 1,500 million
years old.
If you think it is unnecessary to go that far back in the tree
of life to understand our own attributes, consider the humbling
fact that we share with nematodes [roundworms] the same gene
that controls appetite. At most, our unique attributes are like
an addition onto a vast multiroom mansion. It is sheer hubris to
think that we can ignore all but the newest room.
David Sloan Wilson, Evolution for Everyone,
2007
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24 * 10 mm
Translucent eye
bead
An ancient signature from the
Indus Valley civilization
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A modern rational human in sync with his inner cave man
This is my vision - seen through the symbolic telescopic hole of an ancient
bead:
A modern
rational human in sync with his inner cave man
Scientific studies have shown that religious people are more
empathic, but also more stupid than scientifically minded people, who
on the other hand are a little closer to psychopaths.
I do believe, extrapolated from my personal experience, that the time has come
where the dichotomy between the older operative systems of
'feeling' and the systems of 'language and rational thinking' can come together.
Super Wakefulness
This is done in super consciousness, a state of intense
wakefulness where the evolutionary most advanced parts of your
brain,
the frontal lobes, takes charge of your life. In the perspective
of this operative system, you
will understand the importance of synchronicity between all the
different parts of the brain that is inside of your head. They reach
back to the cave man and much further and if they are not
aligned with your modern mind, you will be in conflict with yourself.
You are the Placebo
To meditate with a bead in your hand is pure placebo. New
scientific studies have come up with a lot of exiting evidence
showing how
powerful placebo is in reality.
According to MIT placebos
works better with a brand name. The same is the case here
with ancient beads, maybe with a little difference that my
motives behind making this site hopefully are a little purer
than the urge to make money.
Seen in the light of super awareness it all becomes clear:
You are the placebo.
In this meta-awareness, you can choose to think symbolic,
meta-knowing about yourself, that now I am using this part of my
brain to get access to my feelings, my immune system and so on.
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Bead Magic in a post-modern context
This is for me the post-modern
way of using a talisman or an amulet. The bead amulet has become real in a new
level of understanding and will protect you from the
unreality
created as a byproduct of
our
sophisticated cyber civilization!
An ancient bead should be
felt by your skin. It should have direct contact with you as a
living, breathing and sweating physical being.
Let it also be close to the heart. By this direct contact, the bead's surface will be changed by you, while your inner being will be changed by the bead.
Just look, feel and sense the bead displayed below in this
context.
However, not only feeling is involved. Sight is also important.
Can you see how the bead below is almost looking at you? If you
can, you are protected by the
ancient Eye.
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Hexagon -
18 * 13 mm
This super ancient bead has been shaped,
not only by its makers,
but also by thousand of years of time
and by contact with human skin.
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THE POWER OF CONSCIOUS BELIEVING IN BELIEVING
Pre-agricultural shamanistic magic ways of understanding
'reality' are still very much alive in the East. Magic thinking did here not only survive the meeting with later stages of
civilization. It even thrived and evolved into new forms.
This
happened especially within the Indian tantric systems practiced both in
Buddhism and Hinduism.
Scientific thinking and symbols
It is important to remember that not long ago even
western scientific reasoning, was understood within a
frame of magic. When we look at ancient Greek scientific
understanding we, in the same way, have to view it within
the context of analog, symbolic thinking. The divorce
between symbolic and scientific thinking happened for us
in the West in the Age of Enlightenment in the 18.
Century.
There can be no doubt that this collective conversion to
the religion of belief in 'facts' has liberated the western mind
from mental slavery in the sense that we don't fear what we
understand. 'Progress' is however always happening as a
dialectic process where something is gained while other things
will be lost. To experience the world as a magic place is also a
beautiful thing.
In countries like India the divorce between reason and
magic never actually happened. I
have met Western top-educated Indian scientists who believed in astrology and reincarnation.
Even
today in Cyber City in Gurgaon outside New Delhi it is not uncommon
among the super modern and young IT-people working and living here to
find magic and rational ways of thinking in all kind of blends.
SRI YANTRA

Tantric-Pythagorean sacred geometry
used for spiritual rituals and Meditation
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The revival of magick
I do believe, as
often
stated on Ancientbead.com that the time for a 'resurrection' of magick-symbolic thinking
has come. This, of course, has to happen in
an entirely new set and setting. In a post-modern frame of mind, it is
possible to believe in the power of placebo yet knowing it is placebo.
This 'quantum position' transcends our old 'navigative' ways of 'neither
- nor'.
Magick Pentagon Beads
Hence I choose to explain the polygon shaped beads displayed below
within a frame of animist magick
thinking, but with new eyes that
allow me to enjoy the enhanced reality of
'cat
states' of believing and non-believing at the same time.
I can in
this context recommend the new song of Sting,
I can't stop thinking about you. The
brilliant lyrics in this song is heard in my ears as
being on the
same enhanced path of spiritual navigation, transcending
the old school dual ways of dividing reality in
neither, nor. |
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The symbolic power of the pentagram
Since ancient times beads
have been used to invoke a variety of different
magical qualities through
the particular geometrical shape, patterns and the material
itself.
Here I find pentagon shaped beads particularly interesting.
The pentagram has since the
dawn of civilizations been used in spiritual rites
in a variety of cultures. The earliest known use of the pentagram can be
found 3500 B.C. at Ur in Mesopotamia. However, we can also find the pentagram
in the ancient European Celtic culture. These cultures were separated by
time and distance to such an extent, that the use of these identical practices
should be explained not only as results of cultural exchange but also with
the help of archetypical behavior and patterns of understanding present in
the subconscious of a human being. I can in this context recommend
C.G. Jung's
writings as an eye-opener for new 'realities' in which one can view
ancient beads.
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MAGIC PENTAGON YANTRA STAR
BEADS

RB 5
-
Average size 8 to
9 mm
Click on picture for larger image
Gorgeous beautiful Ancient
polygonal Yantra beads in blood red jasper of the highest quality!
Most of these beads are shaped as pentagons depicting stars.
Classical
Period: From the times of the Buddha up to around 200 A.D.
NOTE - The beads are slightly more brownish than the scan shows.
In fact, they corectly match the color of blood.


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The stunning blood red pentagram jasper beads displayed above
are from India. They are more than 2000 years old. Most probably they
were used
within a Buddhist or Hindu tantric set and setting.
The Tantric-Greek connection
I do believe that the tantric understanding of
divine geometries
developed in North West India in a fusion of ancient Indian animist thinking
with
'modern' Seleucid Greek geometric and mathematic.
Indian tantric texts do in fact refer to Yavanacharya, which means Greek teacher.
Cultural ping pong is not a new phenomenon. Pythagoras (586-506 B.C.)
traveled all over the ancient world and way beyond. On his travels, he
shared his knowledge and also got inspired by dialogue with kindred souls.
However, it is not likely that Pythagoras
himself was in India. Greek thinking had to wait
until the days of Alexander the Great for
meeting with the Indian philosophy and science.
Most probably the synthesis between Greek and
Indian thought took place with the rise of the
Seleucid Empire in its
friendly relations with the Mauryan and later Ashoka-Buddhist Indians. Both
Buddhism and Tantrism
got in Northwest India heavily
influenced by Greek thinking for centuries. Still today one can in
Punjab find the
practice of Yavana, Greek, medicine. This important ancient link
has almost entirely disappeared under the scientific radar,
mainly due to the partition of Greater India into India and
Pakistan. Pakistan became the Muslim place to ignore Buddhist
history, while India became the politically stated home of
Hindus. What today only is known through a tiny fragment of
Greek-Buddhist history in the form of Gandhara art, was, in fact,
a huge advanced Indo-Greek Buddhist culture, stretching from
Syria to India for more than 800 years!
SPIRIT STAR IN UNION WITH MOTHER EARTH
The most elementary fivefold symmetric objects are displayed in the regular
Pentagon and
the five-pointed star.
Pythagoras and his followers thought of the 'pentagram five' as hieros gamos, the
marriage between heaven and earth. The pentagram was out of simple
geometric observations as demonstrated below, associated with a star. The
geometrical depiction of a star was seen as
symbolic
representative of the stars heavenly qualities manifested on earth through
pentagram rituals.
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A star 'caught' within a pentagon
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The magick Star-catcher
The early Hindu and Buddhist Tantric writings seem to share Pythagoras' view
of the star and its symbology. The
ancient Indian Tantrics also saw the Pentagram as a 'star-catcher,' as a way
to 'bring down' a Star in Heaven to unify it with Mother Earth.
The Pentagon within the Star within the Pentagon within the star
Furthermore, these two geometric forms seem to interact with each other in
most beautiful and infinite ways.
The Pentagon and the five-pointed star, viewed as objects in the
2-dimensional Euclidian plane, have ten-symmetry
operations (five rotations and five reflections). Both these objects are
related; each Pentagon contains a star, and each star
contains a Pentagon. As illustrated below the central
area of the star has the shape of the Pentagon which
again contains a star.
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That which is above is as that which is below
That which is below is as that which is above

The infinite play between heaven and earth.
What is above repeats itself below and vise verse.
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The occult interpretation of this mathematical
proportion (the pentagram) is sometimes expressed in the
maxim: ‘Nature is to man as man is to God.’ The
proportion itself is often called the Golden Section of
Pythagoras, and is associated with the Hermetic axiom:
‘That which is above is as that which is below, and that
which is below is as that which is above.’
Paul Foster Case
In this sense, the Pythagoreans viewed the pentagram as a geometric
representation of a dynamic cyclic transformation allowing the
'logos,' the spirit to ascend into the human body.
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PENTAGRAMS IN THE LIGHT OF RELIGION AND IMAGINATIVE MATHEMATICAL
MYSTICISM
I will in the following present the pentagram in
various contexts derived both from imaginative
mathematical mysticism, religions and simple
analog symbolic
thinking. It will only be a fragment of the examples you can find yourself
by searching. How you chose to understand and use this
information is of course entirely up to you.
My job is not to tell anyone what is right or wrong, but to present
inspiring information for free download in a new reality
of psychological sampling in a cross-cultural open
source environment.
The Golden Proportion
The geometric dimensions of a pentagram are those of the
Golden
Ratio. The Golden Ratio is found in ancient art worldwide art and is
still considered to be most pleasing to the eye. This ratio is a direct
consequence of the Fibonacci sequence.
The Fibonacci sequence
Nature is replete with five-fold symmetry following the
Fibonacci sequence.
The Fibonacci numbers exhibit a fivefold symmetry. They are Nature's
numbering system. They appear everywhere in Nature, from single cells,
flowers, a
grain of wheat, to the bones proportion section in a human finger.
The five elements
In the West, the tradition has since the days of
the Greek philosopher Empedocles mainly
operated with four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. In the
ancient Indian tradition, these four belonged to the realm of matter and were
governed by the quintessential, fifth: the Spirit. For the
non-material oriented Indians the Spirit, however, came first as number one and the
earth as the fifth and last element.
The five senses
There are five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. In this frame
of understanding the pentagram represents the five sense portals. While
connecting with ancient beads I recommend that all our
five senses are used. It is possible even to put a bead
in the mouth to have a taste of it!
The Christian Pentagram
The pentagram is in the West best known for being used
by Germanic and Celtic tribes before Christianity became
dominant. In the early Christianity, the pentagram
represented the five wounds of Christ on the
Cross. Later the church chose the cross as
a symbol of Christianity. Most probably the use
of the pentagram within the institutionalized
circles of Christian religion got problematic
because of the pentagrams common use in various
'pagan' settings. This widespread use got it
difficult for the Christianity seen as
ideological power strategy to monopolize the
utilization of the
pentagram.
The pentagram in modern occultism
Hence the Christian use of the pentagram
gradually ceased and even slowly got demonized.
In this way, this old beautiful symbol, like the
ancient swastika, got hijacked by the wrong
institutions in wrong places and times and for
the wrong reasons. It is time to take back these
beautiful symbols by using them following their original history.
When this is said, I also want to pay my respect
to certain pagan ways of thinking, which has
managed to emphasize and worship the fact that we as humans
also have an animal and 'dark' nature.
Here I would like to mention
Aleister Crowley's occult thinking,
especially.
With these thoughts intend to reclaim the pentagram for
everyone to use as they like in an open post-modern
context. If some people feel the need of reconnecting
with their animal nature through more dark rituals, in
opposition to Christianity's maybe sometimes immature
versions of Christ as light in opposition to darkness, I,
however, would point at C.G. Jung as my first choice for
downloading inspiration.
The five Pillars of Islam
In Islam, there are prayer five times a day. Furthermore, Islam is resting on
the five pillars of truth:
1) Shahada: Faith - 2) Salat: Prayer - 3) Zakāt: Charity - 4) Sawm: Fasting
- 5) Hajj: Pilgrimage to Mecca
Hamsas protective High five
The ancient and trans-cultural interest in the number five can be
explained just by watching our own hands.
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Hand of Fatimah or Hamsa
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Hamsa amulets are used as a magical protection against the evil eye. Hamsa means five.
We humans have five fingers.
Amulets depicting the hand with its five fingers is still today very common
in the Middle East. They are used by both Jews and Muslims. However, the protective
and/or blessing
hand can be traced back to Buddhism and even further back to the old Indus
Valley Civilization.
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Blessing hand of late Indus Goddess
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Blessing hand of Indus Goddess |

Ghandaran schist Buddha |

Jesus with blessing hand/mudra
Hagia Sofia mosaic |
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Where the inherent beauty of mathematic and geometry meets with spiritual symbolism
To sum it up the pentagram was one of the most powerful meditative talismans
of Buddhist and Hindu antiquity, and also used in later religions and belief
systems. It served as a
divine protection and as link between the Spirit-star and the lower orders of the
material Earth-realms.
In this way, the Pentagram represents the power of the Divine
Logos manifested in the human body to effect change through 'spirit.'
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THE STAR-CATCHER

A powerful Tantra
Mala with 108 magick
pentagon beads
Made by Mads Kornerup -
Shamballajewels.com
It is my favorite Mala. I wear it all the time.
I call it
THE STARCATCHER
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THE (W)HOLE
IN THE EYE - THE ZERO AND THE
SOUL
The eye you see is not
an eye because you see it.
It is an eye because it sees you.
Antonio Machado
The notion of the protecting Eye is linked to the historical culture and the concepts of the spiritual Third Eye as it has been used both in Hinduism and Buddhism or maybe more precise: the animism and shamanism that still prevails deep in the core of these religions.
Before world religions like Buddhism arrived animism and
shamanism ruled the spiritual world of human beings. In many
ways,
it still does, especially in the Theravada Buddhism and in
the Tibetan blend of
Vajrayana Buddhism
and Bön.
However, the concept of
psychological
protection
from
evil
through the eye
has been found in
almost every ancient culture around the world.
We find beads created
as
eyes
as far back as the Neolithic period.
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The bead as zero

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The social importance of ancient beads cannot be understood,
both today and thousands of years ago, without the animistic
context in which it was manufactured and used. It shows, as the
beads displayed
above and below, that the bead hole itself actually can be
interpreted as a Magic Eye.
One might say that the claimed parallel between this bead hole
and an eye is too far fetched. However we do not need to travel long
back in history before almost all arguments and search for higher
meaning was founded, not in evidence based logic, but in the persuading
power in symbolic and analog thinking.
I would go even
further in along the path of analog thinking and now state:
The hole is the first conceptualized emptiness in world history
- it is the shoonyo, the zero.
Consciousness itself is the absolute zero.
Zero
Is where the Real Fun starts.
There's too much counting
Everywhere else!
Hafiz
This is particularly interesting because
it was the
Indians who invented the zero. The
Hindi name
for zero is still today the word shoonyo, an old
Buddhist word for the fundamental emptines of existence.
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Neolithic bead from North Africa
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In the Indus Valley culture, there is ample evidence of the use
of the symbolic eye. In the Indus bead displayed below one can clearly observe the circular etching, that in the most simple symbolic form shows an Eye.
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13 * 12 * 3,5 mm
Magic Indus Valley
Eye Bead - 1500 BC
You can see the same
bead displayed on this link
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AN ORIGINAL FOR AN ORIGINAL
To story tell a bead
So now its time to tell a story among many for the post-modern
mind on its way to those nice
gamma waves in the frontal lobes:
In many cases, ancient beads have been sleeping in the soil of mother
earth for centuries. Not all of them have been in a continuum of human
company. However, they will wake
up from their slumber once you pick them up and look at them.
This
looking will transform both the bead and you.
Let me word it this way with a little help from Nietzsche:
When you look at the bead, the bead looks back on you.
This bead is
original |
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You become original |
Here comes another narrative you can sample
and customize for your own personal needs. A common name for
beads in India is Baba
Ghoria, which means Holy Mans Bead. Generally,
beads were worn by Holy men or had a divine purpose used as relics
in burial caskets and/or in Buddhist stupas.
The
Greek historian Megastehenes,
who lived at the court of
Chandragupta Maurya, wrote, that Indians according to his knowledge were the most kind, honest and helpful people he knew of. One must not forget that greater India was a peaceful, non-violent Buddhist empire for a long time. Before that, it was the land of the Indus culture, the only known culture in world history, that with toy-like weapons had found other solutions to social conflicts than violence. Mahavir and the Jains bear witness to this ancient culture. Maybe ... who knows .. vibrations from these golden times
of peace has charged the old bead you see above by pious Jains, Buddhist, and Hindus, who kept it as amulets
in close contact
with their skin - close to the heart.
Here we can be strung together as beads with good deeds and
intentions of the past - if we choose to see it so.
The
ancient bead has in this way been charged with
energy from noble intentions and good hearts for many generations. .. and maybe ...who knows, been in contact with a realized being.
At least this narrative will affect your blood pressure, if you
allow it to be part of your story told reality.
Post Modern Bead Magic & Poetic Quantum Physics
Here is one of my favorite beads. A wonderful
Buddhist prayer bead with a natural crystalline eye. This Eye Bead is one out of a million!
When you stare at this eye it will stare back at you ... And seen
by this old eye you become the original.
It takes an eye to know an eye - an original for an original.
This magic bead has responded to my intentional and 'self-created' power of belief in such a way that in this moment I would not give it in exchange for even a nine-eyed Zee-bead!
This is what I described as
Post Modern Magic. Post-modern magic includes a conscious meta level where you are aware of the fact that it is your very belief that creates the magic. It is like a situation where you are cured by placebo medicine even though you know it is placebo!
This phenomenon could be called Magic Realism.
Magic Realism &
Synchronicity
My understanding of Magic Realism is a product of
these thoughts. It is also an extrapolation of a lifelong experience of a series of incidents where my intentions have seemed to create situations that could not be explained by logic and statistic coincidence alone.
C.G. Jung termed this kind of phenomena with the word synchronicity. With a little poetic help from the world of quantum physics, I could say that it seems that a focused human consciousness is able to make small cracks in the space-time fabrics. Of course, you are not able to catch the moon because you wish so. But on a subtle level, there is still some kind of manipulation of time and space going on through a clear and directed thought 'awared' in a clear consciousness. With these thoughts in mind, I will return to the
ancient bead.
The real inside your Self
An ancient bead can respond like a microphone held close to a loudspeaker. A feedback is created between your intentional and directed willpower and the bead, or should I say your knowledge of the bead as being a representative of the ancient and the essential inside yourself. A magic bead is in this way like a meditation device helping you in the constant 'self-remembrance' of your own true
Buddha nature.
KINGS OF THE THIRD EYE & THE ZERO OF CONSCIOUSNESS
To the left
below we have a photo of a Harappan
King and/or High Priest. To the right, there is a photo of a
Seleucid Greco-Bactrian head in stucco depicting an Indian Buddhist King from the
Mauryan Empire.
It might be the great Buddhist
King Ashoka
who formed an
alliance with the Seleucid Empire and converted many of
Macedonians living there to Buddhism.
These photos show similarly designed headband eye-symbols.
The Kings are linked through the headband ornaments they wear; displaying what probably is a symbolic
all seeing eye. These eyes are made in the most minimalistic way possible, consisting of two concentric circles.
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Harappan King Indian Buddhist King
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The Indus Beads displayed below are ornamented with similar designed eyes as one can observe in the Kings head bands.
They show the same double concentric circles
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13 * 12 * 4 mm
Etched eye Bead
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In the Afghan second millennium B.C. bead displayed below, we
again find the same eye-logo consisting of two concentric
circles etched into the stone.
These ancient beads clearly show the similarity in the design of eye-symbols right from the Indus Valley Civilization and up to the Indian classical time.
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This points, as much other evidence, at the cultural link connecting the Indus Valley Civilization to the Indian classical time, especially the Indian, Ashokan
Imperial Buddhist civilization. As mentioned, the Indus Valley with its elitarian and
spiritual culture with extreme ideals, as still seen in its surviving form, the Jain religion, became popularized in the form of the middle way seeking Buddhism from
around 400 B.C.
The all seeing Eye of God, King, and State
Seen in the royal or priestly context, the headband with the Eye was likely to be a symbolic ornamental item of royal or imperial insignia.
The King/priest represents the divine order manifested on earth.
The King of Consciousness
It was most probably a manifestation of the all seeing Eye of the King and the state, with either the ability to administer spiritual blessings or punitive actions, delivered according to the law of karma, not only seen as an abstract spiritual force but also as the 'will' of the Empire. The
Priest King, as Ashoka indeed was, was the personification of the
omnipresent consciousness that 'awares' everything.
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Ancient Buddhist terra cotta Eye Bead from Sri Lanka
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The Third Eye as the Magic Eye
In the case of an enlightened and just Emperor like the great
Buddhist King Asoka, it would, therefore, be more fitting to talk
about the good Eye than the more in folklore typical, evil eye.
It is also natural to relate the headband insignia Eye to the Indian notion of the spiritual all seeing Third Eye.
Seen from that perspective, it is interesting to observe the
seemingly casual way the Buddhist King to the right has put his all seeing Third Eye; not in the center, but to the right side.

This asymmetry makes together
with the king's almost sorrowful, deep, subtle and peculiar individual face expression to an almost too human king; too aware of the
enormous responsibility it is to rule an Empire. By putting the headband eye to the side, he also is putting himself aside, making way for a spiritual power greater than his own human and frail assessments; namely the all-pervading compassion and knowledge of Lord Buddha himself.
I cannot help seeing the similarity between this face and later
constructions of the suffering Jesus.
Seen in comparison the Harrapan
Priest/King looks more introvert. He has almost closed his eyes
to the world. Only his third eye of God is wide open. He leaves
it to God to take of his Kingdom, while he himself is absorbed
in introspection.
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15 * 7 * 3 mm |

13 * 8 * 3 mm |

11 * 8 * 4 mm |
Super ancient Eye Beads
with a high content of iron.
Mesopotamia 3.300 BCE
These beads are extremely rare!
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You are protected by consciousness
Now I would like to sum up following thesis.
The Eye was original a symbol of a royal and spiritual protective power. As the King and also before him the High Priest was looking after his people, in case of war, famine or spiritual attacks from predatory
animistic entities, so you are also protected from the Evil Eye if you somehow have come into possession of the good all seeing Third Eye of the King/Priest.
Because consciousness is linked to sight and to light. Hence we
describe higher states of consciousness with the word
enlightenment.
You are protected by your conscious
awareness. Without awareness, you will tend to stumble and fall.
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Eye Beads made of Glass

9 * 2 mm -
9* 7 * 2 mm - 8
* 5 * 2 mm
These rare Eye
Beads are from the early historic time -
Most probably
from the Taxila period 300 BC- 100 AD
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Beads as amulets
- A strong and focused mind attracts a powerful bead
All ancient eye beads from greater India are in this way true amulets. But
the power of a bead increases with beauty
and the degree of good artistic design.
The very shape of the bead formed an intricate component of
its potency.
Why? Simply because the
extraordinary bead attracts more will power-attention than an
insignificant and poorly made bead.
In a way, only a firm focused and nonwavering mind deserves a truly magic bead.
The magic of the bead is created through that awareness field itself. It
becomes the perfect focus point of our attention and concentration. This mechanism shows the deeper animistic psychology behind the ancient amulet. Consciousness has often been described in metaphors of light. Hence the blooming of consciousness is called 'enlightenment'.
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This beautiful
translucent natural eye bead is from the
Indus Valley Civilization
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This is also why a magic bead in most cases is
designed as an Eye Bead. This Eye is both receiving, mirroring and sending your own conscious light, amplified and focused through the eye of the bead in the same way as normal diffused light is transformed into laser light when it is projected through a ruby. So what precious stones like rubies and diamonds can do, so can the Eye Bead
in the light of consciousness.
Seen in the light of this third eye, the bead is the world's oldest
'amuletic' tool of magic!
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25 * 10 mm
A mysterious colored agate Eye Bead.
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Today the knowledge of the power of the Indus Valley Eye Beads has been
lost. Only the mainly Tibetan Dzi-beads are still recognized as powerful
amulets.
However, the Indus beads
are sleeping beauty's from a far older culture than the Tibetan. The
Indus bead is like a dormant power plant. It just needs your
recognition to wake up from millennia's of sleep.
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Strange Indus Valey Snake Eye Bead
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Here
I make a division between the Indus Culture and the later Hindu
culture. The Vedic Hinduism did not attach much importance to stone beads.
In the
Vedas, we find no particular emphasis on stone beads as amulets.
The amulets of the Vedic times have more resemblance to the amulets worn
by Tantric Yogis. In these amulets, we find the extensive use of
materials from the animal and vegetable kingdoms plus the use of pearls
known as Mani, jewel. It is like S. B. Deo writes in his book,
'Indian Beads':
It is surprising that so few should have been used which are not
perishable. p.39
It seems that the
importance and use of magic beads is older than the Vedas, reaching back
to the pre-Vedic time of the Indus Culture. In the section displaying etched beads most of the beads are of Buddhist origin with Buddhist symbols. In prehistoric time, stone beads were an essential part of the Indus Valley Culture and in historical time the culture of stone beads more or less can be linked to the Buddhist culture. |

In this old bead the eye is
made of crystal
Period: Around 1000 A.D.
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A NEW EYE BEAD
The eye bead displayed below is not very old. It has a modern
shape. However, it has an
incredible and rare eye design!
It takes several thousand kilos of agate and
good luck to produce such a bead.
The bead is most probably made in Taiwan.
Still, I love it, because a really rare and beautiful design can in my
opinion substitute for age.
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32 * 11 mm
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Buddhist beads as cultural ambassadors
In Tibetan Buddhism, the use and understanding of magic beads play a major role. This stone bead culture with its symbolic axis around the magic eye has a wonderful artistic peak expression in the Dzi-beads.
The dramatic power and the mystic fascination of Dzi-beads have made them ambassadors of Tibetan Buddhism all over the globe. In this way, it seems that the Tibetan bead culture and understanding has become a mainstream trend for Buddhists in the far east. But the fascination of the Dzi-beads has spread to the
West as well where you will not be able
to see Sting performing a concert without his beloved 9 eyed Dzi-bead. The upper class of the western world is 'converting' to Buddhism these years. Buddhism has in many ways views that are far more compatible with a modern affluent way of living than Christianity can offer.
Hollywood has always been in love with Tibet and the Dalai Lama.
But this conversion is now further amplified by the increasing
interest in Meditation and mindfulness. Hinduism can not, with its caste system and Disney like Gods, offer much. However, Buddhism can with its emphasis on compassion and also logic offer a narrative frame that with a little updating fits perfectly to this post-modern world.
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Solomons agate Eye Beads
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