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portent
Social climber
your mom's house
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Leggs
Sport climber
Tucson, by way of California
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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A replay of the Big Game, just concluded.
Seahawks/White vs Donkeys/Black
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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The Sphinx is said to have guarded the entrance to the Greek city of Thebes, and to have asked a riddle of travellers to allow them passage. The exact riddle asked by the Sphinx was not specified by early tellers of the stories, and was not standardized as the one given below until late in Greek history.
It was said in late lore that Hera or Ares sent the Sphinx from her Ethiopian homeland (the Greeks always remembered the foreign origin of the Sphinx) to Thebes in Greece where she asks all passersby the most famous riddle in history: "Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?" She strangled and devoured anyone unable to answer. Oedipus solved the riddle by answering: Man—who crawls on all fours as a baby, then walks on two feet as an adult, and then uses a walking stick in old age. By some accounts (but much more rarely), there was a second riddle: "There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other and she, in turn, gives birth to the first. Who are the two sisters?" The answer is "day and night" (both words are feminine in Greek). This riddle is also found in a Gascon version of the myth and could be very ancient.
Bested at last, the tale continues, the Sphinx then threw herself from her high rock and died. An alternative version tells that she devoured herself. Thus Oedipus can be recognized as a "liminal" or threshold figure, helping effect the transition between the old religious practices, represented by the death of the Sphinx, and the rise of the new, Olympian gods.
In Jean Cocteau's retelling of the Oedipus legend, The Infernal Machine, the Sphinx tells Oedipus the answer to the riddle, to kill herself so that she did not have to kill anymore, and also to make him love her. He leaves without ever thanking her for giving him the answer to the riddle. The scene ends when the Sphinx and Anubis ascend back to the heavens.
There are mythic, anthropological, psychoanalytic and parodic interpretations of the Riddle of the Sphinx, and of Oedipus's answer to it. Numerous riddle books use the Sphinx in their title or illustrations.
Michael Maier in his book, the Atalanta Fugiens (1617) writes the following remark about the Sphinx's riddle, in which he states that the solution is the Philosopher's Stone:
Sphinx is indeed reported to have had many Riddles, but this offered to Oedipus was the chief,
"What is that which in the morning goeth upon four feet; upon two feet in the
afternoon; and in the Evening upon three?"
What was answered by Oedipus is not known. But they who interpret concerning
the Ages of Man are deceived. For a Quadrangle of Four Elements are of all
things first to be considered, from thence we come to the Hemisphere having two
lines, a Right and a Curve, that is, to the White Luna; from thence to the Triangle
which consists of Body, Soul and Spirit, or Sol, Luna and Mercury. Hence Rhasis
in his Epistles, "The Stone," says he, "is a Triangle in its essence, a Quadrangle in
its quality."
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Pretend you're a bastion, FortMental.
I'll forget I'm a mouse.
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SCseagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Only in Santa Cruz
Susan
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Leggs
Sport climber
Made in California
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Feb 10, 2014 - 07:35am PT
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Unpacking
and discovered
my Cabbage Patch Kid
was naked.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Feb 12, 2014 - 04:46pm PT
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anita514
Gym climber
Great White North
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Feb 12, 2014 - 05:05pm PT
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Grumpyyyyyyyyyy cat!!!
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Feb 12, 2014 - 05:11pm PT
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Anita.
Yes, I'd say so...
And this one...
Photoshop time...
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Feb 15, 2014 - 12:13am PT
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SCseagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Feb 16, 2014 - 12:41pm PT
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Dang and I'm an egg lover
Susan
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Leggs
Sport climber
Made in California
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Feb 17, 2014 - 10:20am PT
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