Journal articles on the topic 'ASTROLOGICAL IMPACTS'

Astrology is a divine, ancient and very ancient art. This astrological art is based on the movements of the sun, moon and all kinds of planets, and is an advanced phenomenon based on the properties of the stars in outer space. In ancient times kings were well versed in medicine and astrology. Astrologers and physicians were regularly featured in the royal court. Star, Thithi etc. were also seen for surgical treatment. In this, the astrologers were the ones who handled the medicine very well. Based on this, they predicted the harm to the country, knew the disease coming through it and treated the medical system accordingly. This study, entitled ‘Diabetes in Medical Astrology’, provides a comprehensive overview of the patients being treated for diabetes in hospitals and the medications available and the purpose of this study is to find out the horoscopes of the planets that cause their diseases by getting their horoscopes, and how astrology and the structure of the planets can help them to know who will be affected by diabetes in the future and how to protect themselves from it.

Jean des Murs wrote two astrological predictions: a prognostication for the conjunction of the three superior planets—Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars—in 1345 and a letter to Pope Clement vi concerning the conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter in 1365 and of Saturn and Mars in 1357. The prognostication was probably written when Jean des Murs was in Avignon, working with Firmin de Beauval on the calendar reform sponsored by Clement vi. The letter on the conjunctions of 1365 and 1357 was necessarily addressed to Clement vi before his death in 1352. In this article we try to ascertain the Alfonsine astronomical substratum of these astrological judgments in order to understand their reasoning, context, and motivations, but also to gauge their significance and impact from the mid-fourteenth century to the following.

In 1604, the last of the supernovae seen with the naked eye in the Milky Way had a great impact on the history of astronomy and cosmology. Scientists with different conceptions of the Universe - among them Galilei and Kepler but also Arab and Chinese astronomers - competed and collaborated to explain its nature, its origin and its astrological meaning. Even today, we still observe what remains of that supernova, and we learn about stellar astrophysics.

Michael Scot was a central figure both for the transmission of Arabic philosophy to the Latin West and for the development of medieval science and astrology, yet much still remains unknown about his life and career. In part of a longer article dedicated to teasing out some of the strands of Michael Scot's influences and impact, Charles Burnett poses intriguing questions about the importance of his early sojourn in Toledo. He shows that Michael, along with Salio of Padua and Mark of Toledo, continued the translating activity begun in the twelfth century in Toledo, and he wonders whether Michael — like the twelfth-century translators Dominicus Gundissalinus, Gerard of Cremona, and John Hispanus — was closely associated with the cathedral of Toledo. Burnett hypothesizes that Toledo could have been the place where Michael first came across the works of Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroes that he is credited with translating from the Arabic, and he notes that many of Michael's sources for his astrological treatise, the Liber introductorius (hereafter LI), were available in Toledo. Burnett suggests that by Michael's final departure from Spain to Italy, around 1220, he may have already made considerable headway in both his translating and astrological activities.

There is a huge relation between humans and plants. In Hinduism, vriksha have been considered like God. With the hope of achieving good health and accomplishment of works, the legislation for their worship and protection is very ancient. Ayurveda and astrology are proven to be an Indian heritage. They both are established with a scientific base. Nowadays they have got worldwide acceptance. The aim of both the sciences is to maintain the physical and mental health of human beings. Nakshatras have a very close relationship with nature, due to changes in nakshatras transformation occur in plants and all living beings. it has been seen that the graha and nakshatras related to our birth time have a wide impact on humans it is described in many old scriptures and Ayurveda. Indian astrology has stated 27 nakshatras with their vriksha. The nakshatra at which a person is born is considered to be his or her birth nakshatra. Each nakshatra has a relation with a vriksha, it is called nakshatra vriksha this is described in rajnighantu they are also known as aradhya vrikshas (worshipped plant). It is also described in many old scriptures and Ayurveda.1 Keywords: graha, nakshatra, nakshatra vriksha, aradhya vriksha.

Bhrigu Samhita is an astrological classic written by Maharshi Bhrigu in the Vedic period. This was the first treatise on predictive astrology. This book is a concise version of the original Bhrigu Samhita. This treatise contains 5 million horoscopes, in which he wrote down the fate of every being in the universe. He gave his predictions on different types of horoscopes compiled by him with the help of Lord Ganesha in a brief and concise manner. It is specifically written to understand the needs and interests of both laymen and experts. It imparts useful information on how to find out the character of a native, moral inclination, fortunes and misfor-tunes in various walks of life. Each content ex-plained in the various chapters would enable to predict the future of the native and helps to form an opinion as to how a planet is disposed in a par-ticular nativity.

This article describes the impact of humoral theory and astrology on the description of human body in four types of temperaments (choleric, phlegmatic, sanguine and melancholic) in the Renaissance writings. The most important of them is an antique book entitled Introductiones apotelesmaticae in Chyromantiam, Physiognomiam, Astrologiam Naturalem complexiones hominum naturas planetarum written by Johannes Indagine and printed in 1522. Other books from this period are: Enchiridion Physiognomiae co[m] pe[n]diosu[m]: cu[m] figuris facieru[m] (1532) by Simonenide Louicz, Problemata Aristotelis. Gadki… o składności członk.w człowieczych (1535) by Andrzej Glaber, Phisionomia hinc inde ex illustribus scriptoribus… recollecta (1518) by Johann von Glogau. The article describes the humoral theory of diseses, which roots were created by Hippocrates and Galen, and the doctrine of the four humors dominated Medieval and Renaissance medicine. This theory held that in the body there are four humors or bodily fluids (moists) held the secret to temperaments. These humors were: blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. A proper domination of each fluid was a cause of characteristic patterns of appropriate temperament: melancholic, sanguine, choleric and phlegmatic. The theory of four temperaments was also intrinsically tied to astrology, beginning with a natal birth chart interpretations to the impact of diffrent planets (Zodiac) on the organs in human body. Astrology was also helpful in the interpretation of temperaments (personality types) with their connection to the picture of human face, which was analyzed by the medieval physiognomy and also to physical appearance: shape of the body, colour of the skin, musculature and hair. The article also describes the correlations connecting the theory of four humors with birth (natal) charts and looking which planet has the impact on each temperament and human body, with negative or positive domination of diffrent character qualities. And finally, there is a detailed reconstruction of physiognomic types of human types of four temperaments, based on the book from 1522 Introductiones apotelesmaticae in Chyromantiam, Physiognomiam, Astrologiam Naturalem complexiones hominum naturas planetarum by Indagine. The author discusses a planet’s positions and conjunctions with other planets in horoscope and their impact on temperament, physical posture, character traits, with some medical comments.

In the Confessions, after telling the audience about his internal struggle with desires, Augustine relates the famous tolle lege incident in a garden in Milan where Augustine happened to read a codex of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. With regard to the act of consulting a sacred book, Augustine appears to follow a venerable tradition in late antiquity, in which these words tolle lege chanted by children indícate a procedure of the oracle. Augustine also recorded the conversation he had with a knowledgeable physician, Vindicianus, earlier in the Confessions (4.3.5-6) where they discussed how astrological predictions often turned out to be correct. Vindicianus pointed out the prediction drawn from the consultation of a book of poetry. Yet, remarkably, although he concluded that the true predictions by astrologers were produced not by skill but by chance ('non arte, sed sorte'), Augustine’s attitude was not simply negative. Not only in the Confessions, but in some works (e.g. De diuersis quæstionibus octoginta tribus 45.2; Epistula 55.37), he was concerned about a source of inspiration for the oratorical process that had played such a crucial role in his conversion. Why did Augustine think about this kind of oracle? How did he follow the custom in late antiquity? In this paper I shall argue the signifícance and impact of this phenomenon in the thought of Augustine.

According to Vedic Astrology, the status of the planets, their motion, and constellations associated with them have a great impact on the lives of individuals. There exists a co-relationship between celestial bodies and plants. Each of these grahas/rashis/nakshatras is associated with a specific plant that resonates with his/her birth chart. These sacred plants are used in curing any ill outcomes associated with astrology. Moreover, these plants are considered as sacred because of their medicinal, aesthetic, and natural traits. Since ancient times, our culture, food, folklore, and therapeutic practices are deeply connected and affected by the use of plants. That is why since our ancestry we revered plants like Gods and Goddesses and honored them as divine elements. These are powerful sources of many pharmacological activities like antioxidant, antimicrobial, anticancerous, etc. In Indian culture worshipping of plants, thus, form the basis for conserving many plant species. These days, there are numerous variables answerable for the depletion of biodiversity like deforestation, misuse, industrialization, unsustainable development, and so forth so, in this circumstance, the objective of this paper is to an all-encompassing perspective on the significance of plants in our day to day existence from the viewpoint of Vedic astrology, i.e., plants related with navgrah, rashi, and nakshatra alongside their cultural, socio-religious beliefs, mythological facts, and pharmacological properties. Planting and revering plants as indicated by one’s astrological chart is a significant strategy to ensure and conserve biodiversity, eventually benefiting individuals. The human relationship with flora might be useful in conserving plant species for their treasured characteristics.

Uma análise a respeito do conhecimento e crença em tópicos de pseudociência foi realizada na cidade de São Borja, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil. A pesquisa aborda uma discussão conceitual sobre o que é Ciência, pseudociência, suas principais diferenças e impactos sociais no mundo contemporâneo. Foi aplicada uma entrevista estruturada com 1078 moradores da cidade, para compreender a relação dos entrevistados com tópicos pseudocientíficos, oferecendo dados quantitativos a respeito desse tema. Percebe-se que não são apenas pessoas com baixa instrução educacional que acreditam em informações falsas oriundas das mais diversas mídias, pois alguns com formação superior também creem em ideias não científicas, como a homeopatia, a astrologia, o terraplanismo, etc. Os dados são comparados com análises realizadas por diversos autores, buscando discutir formas de prevenir a população em geral e desmistificar as pseudociências. A partir deles, atividades foram realizadas com alunos de Ensino Médio e superior da cidade de São Borja, buscando enaltecer o papel do professor no processo de formação dos alunos como executores e participantes de um conhecimento científico.

AbstractThe beaching and stranding of whales and dolphins around the world has been mystifying scientists for centuries. Although many theories have been proposed, few are substantiated by unequivocal statistical evidence. Advances in the field of animal magnetoreception have established that many organisms, including cetaceans, have an internal ‘compass,’ which they use for orientation when traveling long distances. Astrobiology involves not only the origin and distribution of life in the universe, but also the scientific study of how extraterrestrial conditions affect evolution of life on planet Earth. The focus of this study is how cetacean life is influenced by disturbances in its environment that originate from an astrological phenomenon – in the present study that involves solar flares and cetacean beachings. Solar storms are caused by major coronal eruptions on the Sun. Upon reaching Earth, they cause disturbances in Earth's normally stable magnetosphere. Unable to follow an accurate magnetic bearing under such circumstances, cetaceans lose their compass reading while travelling and, depending on their juxtaposition and nearness to land, eventually beach themselves. (1) This hypothesis was supported by six separate, independent surveys of beachings: (A) in the Mediterranean Sea, (B) the northern Gulf of Mexico, (C) the east and (D) west coasts of the USA and two surveys (E and F) from around the world. When the six surveys were pooled (1614 strandings), a highly significant correlation (R2 = 0.981) of when strandings occurred with when major geomagnetic disturbances in Earth's magnetosphere occurred was consistent with this hypothesis. (2) Whale and dolphin strandings in the northern Gulf of Mexico and the east coast of the USA were correlated (R2 = 0.919, R2 = 0.924) with the number of days before and after a geomagnetic storm. (3) Yearly strandings were correlated with annual geomagnetic storm days. (4) Annual beachings of cetaceans from 1998 to 2012 were linearly correlated (R2 = 0.751) with frequency of annual sunspot numbers. Thus, consistently strong statistical correlation evidence indicates that an astronomical phenomenon – solar flares – can cause cetaceans to change their behaviour and become disoriented, which eventually causes them to swim onto a shore and beach themselves.

There appears to be no ‘tail end’ in sight for academic enquiry into the worship of Mithras in the Roman Empire. Interest in this ancient religion, and its popularity and longevity as a topic of study, has no doubt been secured by its status as an elective cult and by its rich, and at times controversial, surviving evidence, which is predominantly archaeological in nature and packed with astrological symbolism. No written documentation representing a theological canon, which might outline its origins, traditions and customs, has ever been discovered. Furthermore, the few surviving literary accounts present snapshots of the cult and are written by ‘outsiders’. Though strongly associated with Zoroastrianism, an ancient religion widely worshipped across Asia Minor and Persia, the exact origins of Mithras, his identity as a god, and the development of his worship remain unclear. With the reopening of the London Mithraeum last year the spotlight has once again been cast on the spread and impact of the cult in Roman Britain. This article accompanies pieces in this volume ofJCTand the next which focus on this sacred and once exclusive space. Organised in two sections, part one will begin with a brief introduction to the history of scholarship, focusing mostly on some methodological and theoretical developments in recent studies. Following this, attention will be paid to the nature of the evidence for the mysteries of Mithras and popular interpretations drawn from it. Part two will discuss methods for bringing this rich material to life in the classroom and reflect on pedagogical issues relating to teaching Mithraism as part of the Latin GCSE syllabus. The tried and tested exercises presented in this part of the article and are applicable to a variety of classroom settings, sizes and age groups.

The paper examines the presence of astrology in the heraldic work Orbis Polonus by Szymon Okolski dating from the mid-1600s. While due to a growing fascination with Neoplatonism and hermetic writings, astrology had enjoyed popularity since the Renaissance, in Okolski’s case its influence came mostly through early-modern books of emblems and compendia of symbols. It is, therefore, important not only to track down astrological motifs in the works of Alciatus, Cesare Ripa, Giulio Cesare Capaccio, Julius Wilhelm Zincgref, and Diego de Saavedra to compare them with those found in Orbis Polonus, but also to recognise the fact that emblematics had a great impact on how Okolski perceived the import of his heraldic work as such. The novelty of Okolski’s project consisted in treating armorial bearings as universal symbols and interpreting them not only in accordance with the rules of heraldry, but also through a wide range of cultural sources, trends, and traditions. In order to make the symbolic significance hidden in coats of arms more apparent, the author tried to organise the heraldic entries in a new way. Apart from the usual parts describing the coat of arms (delineatio), its origins (origo) and the family that used it (linea familiae), he introduced subchapters dealing with its symbolic meaning. He called them “considerations”, “precautions”, or “omens” depending on which aspect of the symbolic explanation he wanted to emphasise. Especially the third of these dovetails with astrology because the symbolism of the coat of arms, including motifs derived from, or related to, astrology, is presented as the best path that should be taken by a family bearing a particular coat of arms. All the while, however, these auguries are made based on symbols as such and not on careful observation of stars, planets or comets, and Okolski was not concerned with the destiny of individual people but with more general tendencies that affected the virtue of noble families, and virtue is for Okolski the foundation of nobility.

Abstract This article explores the politics of popular press astrology between 1939 and 1942. Charting the astrological content of the News of the World, The People, the Sunday Dispatch, the Sunday Express and the Sunday Pictorial, it unearths connections between predictions and wider themes of morale and press freedoms during the war. The article argues that these predictions, which were largely aimed at female readers, were, on balance, morale-boosting. Fears over the impact of press astrology speak to anxieties over the influence of popular newspapers in wartime among officials and contemporary researchers.

Algorithmic media have adopted and adapted divinatory practices and vernaculars of prediction, prophecy, probability, fortune-telling and forecasting – suggesting a possible link between artificial intelligence and pre-scientific modes of speculation. Statistical thinking and magical thinking, too, can be recognised as closely correlated epistemological systems for governing societies and ways of life. In fact, primitive astrological practices of looking up at the stars may represent one of the earliest statistical projects involving sophisticated calculations and data sets. Such pattern-making techniques could even be considered precursory to machine learning. As a point of departure for exploring these eclectic relationships between stars and data, magic and machines, I use a media archaeological methodology to question the historical roles of both astrological and computational divination in mediating methods of control, surveillance and knowledge production across transforming societal contexts. This methodology is especially relevant for examining historical narratives in the field of cultural studies as it makes apparent the hyper-connectedness between objects, cultural representation and sites of hegemonic contention. My findings reveal relationships between celestial pattern recognition and efforts to exert control over and manipulate the natural environment and its populations, the historical impact of meteorological and climatological practices for predicting and influencing future events with artificial intelligence, and links between statistics and algorithmic data biases. This article suggests a speculative genealogy of astrology and artificial intelligence, as well as a genealogy of the theological, scientific and machinic unconscious.

Since the beginning of human civilization, hygiene, health, medicine religious practices and law, are found to be interwoven around each other. On one hand, ancient legal system or religion preaches us about an ideal way of living life, on the other hand, the health care providers, try to identify and observe the religious practices and faith of the patient for providing better treatment. These practices may include prayer, meditation, bathing and cleanliness, dietary needs and astrological beliefs of patient. The history of alliance of law in the religious preaching and religious practices, medicine, and healthcare is very interesting to look at. Since ages, to make people take up cleanliness as a habit, it has been linked to Godliness, for example in Hinduism it is often said that “Swachchta hi Prabhuta hai”. Also, for hundreds of years, religious institutions were responsible for licensing physicians to practice medicine. Thus, religious practices are external activities or functions of human civilizations which works as code of conduct for them. The present piece of work is an attempt to identify the relevance of Article 25 of Indian Constitution for the medical practitioners while treating patients with orthodox patients with deep rooted religious practices which may create hindrances in the treatment too.

For seven months in 1999/2000, six-year old Cuban Elián González was embroiled in a family feud plotted along rival national and ideological lines, and relayed televisually as soap opera across the planet. In Miami, apparitions of the Virgin Mary were reported after Elián’s arrival; adherents of Afro-Cuban santería similarly regarded Elián as divinely touched. In Cuba, Elián’s “kidnapping” briefly reinvigorated a torpid revolutionary project. He was hailed by Fidel Castro as the symbolic descendant of José Martí and Che Guevara, and of the patriotic rigour they embodied. Cubans massed to demand his return. In the U.S.A., Elián’s case was arbitrated at every level of the juridical system. The “Save Elián” campaign generated widespread debate about godless versus godly family values, the contours of the American Dream, and consumerist excess. By the end of 2000 Elián had generated the second largest volume of TV news coverage to that date in U.S. history, surpassed only by the O. J. Simpson case (Fasulo). After Fidel Castro, and perhaps the geriatric music ensemble manufactured by Ry Cooder, the Buena Vista Social Club, Elián became the most famous Cuban of our era. Elián also emerged as the unlikeliest of popular-cultural icons, the focus and subject of cyber-sites, books, films, talk-back radio programs, art exhibits, murals, statues, documentaries, a South Park episode, poetry, songs, t-shirts, posters, newspaper editorials in dozens of languages, demonstrations, speeches, political cartoons, letters, legal writs, U.S. Congress records, opinion polls, prayers, and, on both sides of the Florida Strait, museums consecrated in his memory. Confronted by Elián’s extraordinary renown and historical impact, John Carlos Rowe suggests that the Elián story confirms the need for a post-national and transdisciplinary American Studies, one whose practitioners “will have to be attentive to the strange intersections of politics, law, mass media, popular folklore, literary rhetoric, history, and economics that allow such events to be understood.” (204). I share Rowe’s reading of Elián’s story and the clear challenges it presents to analysis of “America,” to which I would add “Cuba” as well. But Elián’s story is also significant for the ways it challenges critical understandings of fame and its construction. No longer, to paraphrase Leo Braudy (566), definable as an accidental hostage of the mass-mediated eye, Elián’s fame has no certain relation to the child at its discursive centre. Elián’s story is not about an individuated, conscious, performing, desiring, and ambivalently rewarded ego. Elián was never what P. David Marshall calls “part of the public sphere, essentially an actor or, … a player” in it (19). The living/breathing Elián is absent from what I call the virtualizing drives that famously reproduced him. As a result of this virtualization, while one Elián now attends school in Cuba, many other Eliáns continue to populate myriad popular-cultural texts and to proliferate away from the states that tried to contain him. According to Jerry Everard, “States are above all cultural artefacts” that emerge, virtually, “as information produced by and through practices of signification,” as bits, bites, networks, and flows (7). All of us, he claims, reside in “virtual states,” in “legal fictions” based on the elusive and contested capacity to generate national identities in an imaginary bounded space (152). Cuba, the origin of Elián, is a virtual case in point. To augment Nicole Stenger’s definition of cyberspace, Cuba, like “Cyberspace, is like Oz — it is, we get there, but it has no location” (53). As a no-place, Cuba emerges in signifying terms as an illusion with the potential to produce and host Cubanness, as well as rival ideals of nation that can be accessed intact, at will, and ready for ideological deployment. Crude dichotomies of antagonism — Cuba/U.S.A., home/exile, democracy/communism, freedom/tyranny, North/South, godlessness/blessedness, consumption/want — characterize the hegemonic struggle over the Cuban nowhere. Split and splintered, hypersensitive and labyrinthine, guarded and hysterical, and always active elsewhere, the Cuban cultural artefact — an “atmospheric depression in history” (Stenger 56) — very much conforms to the logics that guide the appeal, and danger, of cyberspace. Cuba occupies an inexhaustible “ontological time … that can be reintegrated at any time” (Stenger 55), but it is always haunted by the prospect of ontological stalling and proliferation. The cyber-like struggle over reintegration, of course, evokes the Elián González affair, which began on 25 November 1999, when five-year old Elián set foot on U.S. soil, and ended on 28 June 2000, when Elián, age six, returned to Cuba with his father. Elián left one Cuba and found himself in another Cuba, in the U.S.A., each national claimant asserting virtuously that its other was a no-place and therefore illegitimate. For many exiles, Elián’s arrival in Miami confirmed that Castro’s Cuba is on the point of collapse and hence on the virtual verge of reintegration into the democratic fold as determined by the true upholders of the nation, the exile community. It was also argued that Elián’s biological father could never be the boy’s true father because he was a mere emasculated puppet of Castro himself. The Cuban state, then, had forfeited its claims to generate and host Cubanness. Succoured by this logic, the “Save Elián” campaign began, with organizations like the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) bankrolling protests, leaflet and poster production, and official “Elián” websites, providing financial assistance to and arranging employment for some of Elián’s Miami relatives, lobbying the U.S. Congress and the Florida legislature, and contributing funds to the legal challenges on behalf of Elián at state and federal levels. (Founded in 1981, the CANF is the largest and most powerful Cuban exile organization, and one that regards itself as the virtual government-in-waiting. CANF emerged with the backing of the Reagan administration and the C.I.A. as a “private sector initiative” to support U.S. efforts against its long-time ideological adversary across the Florida Strait [Arboleya 224-5].) While the “Save Elián” campaign failed, the result of a Cuban American misreading of public opinion and overestimation of the community’s lobbying power with the Clinton administration, the struggle continues in cyberspace. CANF.net.org registers its central role in this intense period with silence; but many of the “Save Elián” websites constructed after November 1999 continue to function as sad memento moris of Elián’s shipwreck in U.S. virtual space. (The CANF website does provide links to articles and opinion pieces about Elián from the U.S. media, but its own editorializing on the Elián affair has disappeared. Two keys to this silence were the election of George W. Bush, and the events of 11 Sep. 2001, which have enabled a revision of the Elián saga as a mere temporary setback on the Cuban-exile historical horizon. Indeed, since 9/11, the CANF website has altered the terms of its campaign against Castro, posting photos of Castro with Arab leaders and implicating him in a world-wide web of terrorism. Elián’s return to Cuba may thus be viewed retrospectively as an act that galvanized Cuban-exile support for the Republican Party and their disdain for the Democratic rival, and this support became pivotal in the Republican electoral victory in Florida and in the U.S.A. as a whole.) For many months after Elián’s return to Cuba, the official Liberty for Elián site, established in April 2000, was urging visitors to make a donation, volunteer for the Save Elián taskforce, send email petitions, and “invite a friend to help Elián.” (Since I last accessed “Liberty for Elián” in March 2004 it has become a gambling site.) Another site, Elian’s Home Page, still implores visitors to pray for Elián. Some of the links no longer function, and imperatives to “Click here” lead to that dead zone called “URL not found on this server.” A similar stalling of the exile aspirations invested in Elián is evident on most remaining Elián websites, official and unofficial, the latter including The Sad Saga of Elian Gonzalez, which exhorts “Cuban Exiles! Now You Can Save Elián!” In these sites, a U.S. resident Elián lives on as an archival curiosity, a sign of pathos, and a reminder of what was, for a time, a Cuban-exile PR disaster. If such cybersites confirm the shipwrecked coordinates of Elián’s fame, the “Save Elián” campaign also provided a focus for unrestrained criticism of the Cuban exile community’s imbrication in U.S. foreign policy initiatives and its embrace of American Dream logics. Within weeks of Elián’s arrival in Florida, cyberspace was hosting myriad Eliáns on sites unbeholden to Cuban-U.S. antagonisms, thus consolidating Elián’s function as a disputed icon of virtualized celebrity and focus for parody. A sense of this carnivalesque proliferation can be gained from the many doctored versions of the now iconic photograph of Elián’s seizure by the INS. Still posted, the jpegs and flashes — Elián and Michael Jackson, Elián and Homer Simpson, Elián and Darth Vader, among others (these and other doctored versions are archived on Hypercenter.com) — confirm the extraordinary domestication of Elián in local pop-cultural terms that also resonate as parodies of U.S. consumerist and voyeuristic excess. Indeed, the parodic responses to Elián’s fame set the virtual tone in cyberspace where ostensibly serious sites can themselves be approached as send ups. One example is Lois Rodden’s Astrodatabank, which, since early 2000, has asked visitors to assist in interpreting Elián’s astrological chart in order to confirm whether or not he will remain in the U.S.A. To this end the site provides Elián’s astro-biography and birth chart — a Sagittarius with a Virgo moon, Elián’s planetary alignments form a bucket — and conveys such information as “To the people of Little Havana [Miami], Elian has achieved mystical status as a ‘miracle child.’” (An aside: Elián and I share the same birthday.) Elián’s virtual reputation for divinely sanctioned “blessedness” within a Cuban exile-meets-American Dream typology provided Tom Tomorrow with the target in his 31 January 2000, cartoon, This Modern World, on Salon.com. Here, six-year old Arkansas resident Allen Consalis loses his mother on the New York subway. His relatives decide to take care of him since “New York has much more to offer him than Arkansas! I mean get real!” A custody battle ensues in which Allan’s heavily Arkansas-accented father requires translation, and the case inspires heated debate: “can we really condemn him to a life in Arkansas?” The cartoon ends with the relatives tempting Allan with the delights offered by the Disney Store, a sign of Elián’s contested insertion into an American Dreamscape that not only promises an endless supply of consumer goods but provides a purportedly safe venue for the alternative Cuban nation. The illusory virtuality of that nation also animates a futuristic scenario, written in Spanish by Camilo Hernández, and circulated via email in May 2000. In this text, Elián sparks a corporate battle between Firestone and Goodyear to claim credit for his inner-tubed survival. Cuban Americans regard Elián as the Messiah come to lead them to the promised land. His ability to walk on water is scientifically tested: he sinks and has to be rescued again. In the ensuing custody battle, Cuban state-run demonstrations allow mothers of lesbians and of children who fail maths to have their say on Elián. Andrew Lloyd Weber wins awards for “Elián the Musical,” and for the film version, Madonna plays the role of the dolphin that saved Elián. Laws are enacted to punish people who mispronounce “Elián” but these do not help Elián’s family. All legal avenues exhausted, the entire exile community moves to Canada, and then to North Dakota where a full-scale replica of Cuba has been built. Visa problems spark another migration; the exiles are welcomed by Israel, thus inspiring a new Intifada that impels their return to the U.S.A. Things settle down by 2014, when Elián, his wife and daughter celebrate his 21st birthday as guests of the Kennedys. The text ends in 2062, when the great-great-grandson of Ry Cooder encounters an elderly Elián in Wyoming, thus providing Elián with his second fifteen minutes of fame. Hernández’s text confirms the impatience with which the Cuban-exile community was regarded by other U.S. Latino sectors, and exemplifies the loss of control over Elián experienced by both sides in the righteous Cuban “moral crusade” to save or repatriate Elián (Fernández xv). (Many Chicanos, for example, were angered at Cuban-exile arguments that Elián should remain in the U.S.A. when, in 1999 alone, 8,000 Mexican children were repatriated to Mexico (Ramos 126), statistical confirmation of the favored status that Cubans enjoy, and Mexicans do not, vis-à-vis U.S. immigration policy. Tom Tomorrow’s cartoon and Camilo Hernández’s email text are part of what I call the “What-if?” sub-genre of Elián representations. Another example is “If Elián Gonzalez was Jewish,” archived on Lori’s Mishmash Humor page, in which Eliat Ginsburg is rescued after floating on a giant matzoh in the Florida Strait, and his Florida relatives fight to prevent his return to Israel, where “he had no freedom, no rights, no tennis lessons”.) Nonetheless, that “moral crusade” has continued in the Cuban state. During the custody battle, Elián was virtualized into a hero of national sovereignty, an embodied fix for a revolutionary project in strain due to the U.S. embargo, the collapse of Soviet socialism, and the symbolic threat posed by the virtual Cuban nation-in-waiting in Florida. Indeed, for the Castro regime, the exile wing of the national family is virtual precisely because it conveniently overlooks two facts: the continued survival of the Cuban state itself; and the exile community’s forty-plus-year slide into permanent U.S. residency as one migrant sector among many. Such rhetoric has not faded since Elián’s return. On December 5, 2003, Castro visited Cárdenas for Elián’s tenth birthday celebration and a quick tour of the Museo a la batalla de ideas (Museum for the Battle of Ideas), the museum dedicated to Elián’s “victory” over U.S. imperialism and opened by Castro on July 14, 2001. At Elián’s school Castro gave a speech in which he recalled the struggle to save “that little boy, whose absence caused everyone, and the whole people of Cuba, so much sorrow and such determination to struggle.” The conflation of Cuban state rhetoric and an Elián mnemonic in Cárdenas is repeated in Havana’s “Plaza de Elián,” or more formally Tribuna Anti-imperialista José Martí, where a statue of José Martí, the nineteenth-century Cuban nationalist, holds Elián in his arms while pointing to Florida. Meanwhile, in Little Havana, Miami, a sun-faded set of photographs and hand-painted signs, which insist God will save Elián yet, hang along the front fence of the house — now also a museum and site of pilgrimage — where Elián once lived in a state of siege. While Elián’s centrality in a struggle between virtuality and virtue continues on both sides of the Florida Strait, the Cuban nowhere could not contain Elián. During his U.S. sojourn many commentators noted that his travails were relayed in serial fashion to an international audience that also claimed intimate knowledge of the boy. Coming after the O.J. Simpson saga and the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, the Elián story confirmed journalist Rick Kushman’s identification of a ceaseless, restless U.S. media attention shift from one story to the next, generating an “übercoverage” that engulfs the country “in mini-hysteria” (Calvert 107). But In Elián’s case, the voyeuristic media-machine attained unprecedented intensity because it met and worked with the virtualities of the Cuban nowhere, part of it in the U.S.A. Thus, a transnational surfeit of Elián-narrative options was guaranteed for participants, audiences and commentators alike, wherever they resided. In Cuba, Elián was hailed as the child-hero of the Revolution. In Miami he was a savior sent by God, the proof supplied by the dolphins that saved him from sharks, and the Virgins who appeared in Little Havana after his arrival (De La Torre 3-5). Along the U.S.A.-Mexico border in 2000, Elián’s name was given to hundreds of Mexican babies whose parents thought the gesture would guarantee their sons a U.S. future. Day by day, Elián’s story was propelled across the globe by melodramatic plot devices familiar to viewers of soap opera: doubtful paternities; familial crimes; identity secrets and their revelation; conflicts of good over evil; the reuniting of long-lost relatives; and the operations of chance and its attendant “hand of Destiny, arcane and vaguely supernatural, transcending probability of doubt” (Welsh 22). Those devices were also favored by the amateur author, whose narratives confirm that the delirious parameters of cyberspace are easily matched in the worldly text. In Michael John’s self-published “history,” Betrayal of Elian Gonzalez, Elián is cast as the victim of a conspiracy traceable back to the hydra-headed monster of Castro-Clinton and the world media: “Elian’s case was MANIPULATED to achieve THEIR OVER-ALL AGENDA. Only time will bear that out” (143). His book is now out of print, and the last time I looked (August 2004) one copy was being offered on Amazon.com for US$186.30 (original price, $9.95). Guyana-born, Canadian-resident Frank Senauth’s eccentric novel, A Cry for Help: The Fantastic Adventures of Elian Gonzalez, joins his other ventures into vanity publishing: To Save the Titanic from Disaster I and II; To Save Flight 608 From Disaster; A Wish to Die – A Will to Live; A Time to Live, A Time to Die; and A Day of Terror: The Sagas of 11th September, 2001. In A Cry for Help, Rachel, a white witch and student of writing, travels back in time in order to save Elián’s mother and her fellow travelers from drowning in the Florida Strait. As Senauth says, “I was only able to write this dramatic story because of my gift for seeing things as they really are and sharing my mystic imagination with you the public” (25). As such texts confirm, Elián González is an aberrant addition to the traditional U.S.-sponsored celebrity roll-call. He had no ontological capacity to take advantage of, intervene in, comment on, or be known outside, the parallel narrative universe into which he was cast and remade. He was cast adrift as a mere proper name that impelled numerous authors to supply the boy with the biography he purportedly lacked. Resident of an “atmospheric depression in history” (Stenger 56), Elián was battled over by virtualized national rivals, mass-mediated, and laid bare for endless signification. Even before his return to Cuba, one commentator noted that Elián had been consumed, denied corporeality, and condemned to “live out his life in hyper-space” (Buzachero). That space includes the infamous episode of South Park from May 2000, in which Kenny, simulating Elián, is killed off as per the show’s episodic protocols. Symptomatic of Elián’s narrative dispersal, the Kenny-Elián simulation keeps on living and dying whenever the episode is re-broadcast on TV sets across the world. Appropriated and relocated to strange and estranging narrative terrain, one Elián now lives out his multiple existences in the Cuban-U.S. “atmosphere in history,” and the Elián icon continues to proliferate virtually anywhere. References Arboleya, Jesús. The Cuban Counter-Revolution. Trans. Rafael Betancourt. Research in International Studies, Latin America Series no. 33. Athens, OH: Ohio Center for International Studies, 2000. Braudy, Leo. The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986. Buzachero, Chris. “Elian Gonzalez in Hyper-Space.” Ctheory.net 24 May 2000. 19 Aug. 2004: http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=222>. Calvert, Clay. Voyeur Nation: Media, Privacy, and Peering in Modern Culture. Boulder: Westview, 2000. 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Victoria, Canada: Trafford, 2000. Stenger, Nicole. “Mind Is a Leaking Rainbow.” Cyberspace: First Steps. Ed. Michael Benedikt. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1991. 49-58. Welsh, Alexander. George Eliot and Blackmail. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1985. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Allatson, Paul. "The Virtualization of Elián González." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/16-allatson.php>. APA Style Allatson, P. (Nov. 2004) "The Virtualization of Elián González," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/16-allatson.php>.