Word: obsidian
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...adorned with feathers, his scepter a two-headed crocodile, is about to emerge from a sacred chamber with instructions from his long-dead ancestors. The crowd sees nothing of his movements, but it knows the ritual: lifted into the next world by hallucinogenic drugs, the king will take an obsidian blade or the spine of a stingray, pierce his own penis, and then draw a rope through the wound, letting the blood drip onto bits of bark paper. Then he will take the bark and set it afire, and out of the rising smoke a vision of a serpent will...
...bananas and taro root. Coastal people were developing double-hulled ocean-going canoes and mastering the rudiments of navigation, which led to an explosion of interisland trade. The dominant traders, peoples known to archaeologists as the Lapita, who lived in the Bismarck archipelago, did a booming commerce in food, obsidian, seashells and elaborately stamped pottery from island to island, eventually venturing as far away as Fiji and Tonga...
...Mexico's President Carlos Salinas de Gortari made sure all the stops were pulled out for this exhibit. The country's biggest media mogul, Emilio Azcarraga, put up the money. An unprecedented tonnage of basalt, clay, obsidian, jade, gilt, inlaid wood and painted canvas has been moved out of Mexican churches, museums and private collections -- sometimes over protests by local communities that resent having their saints or gods borrowed by the government. On view are 365 objects, starting in l000 B.C. with a five-ton stone Olmec head and finishing in 1949 with Frida Kahlo's The Love-Embrace...
...Tuscany who battled for permission to dig up the piazza, hopes to mount a midyear show to explain the history unearthed: a medieval city of giant towers sitting atop an important Roman city dating from the 1st century; Greek objects imported as early as the 8th century B.C.; even obsidian tools and pottery fragments probably imported from Sardinia around 3000 B.C. Nicosia says the findings have forced experts to rethink old Florence: "We expected to discover the Roman and the medieval cities, but not to this extent. We also didn't know the city was so old, going...
...manifestations of spiritual problems." Gallbladder ailments, she says, come from a bitterness toward God, and lung trouble from a hatred of one's own body. "All you have to do is release these problems," she says. She uses amethyst, rose and blue quartz, and even black onyx and obsidian. One of her satisfied customers is Annette Manders, who wields a crystal wand that Lucia gave her. "I healed a fungus under my toenail with my wand," says Manders, "and I had a stomach problem that doesn't bother me anymore. The energy is subtle. It's not like...