Shamanism Influence in Inuit Art-Dorset Period

Native Inuit developed a complex system of shamanic-oriented thinking. They filled the frozen immensities of the Arctic with a number of omnipresent ghosts and spirits. In its shamanic-religious dimension, the Dorset art （circa 1000 B.C. to circa 1000 A.D.）, stemming from a culture moulded by shamanic practices and burial rites, kept memory of the Times of Origins, shaped a very rich symbolic universe, suggested, and outsourced the secret correspondences between the micro and macro cosmos. The present paper investigates the thigh correspondence and relationship between the Inuit-Dorset shamanic view of the world and their miniaturized art.

Cosmological Expansion and Its Effect on Small Systems

In order to study the effect of large scale cosmological expansion on small systems, we assume a Friedmann- Robertson-Walker type coordinate system in presence of a nonzero cosmological constant and derive a non-static Reissner-Nrdstr6m metric. It is an analytic function of r for all values except at r = O, which is singular. By determining the equation of motion in this metric we can estimate how expansion of the universe may affect Pioneer＇s motion. Because the metric does not have any event horizon and so high potential regions are accessible, this may help us in better understanding AGN phenomenon.

The Aboriginal-White Relationship in The Secret River and Carpentaria

This paper mainly explores the Australian Aboriginal-white relationship in two novels： The Secret River （2005） by non-Indigenous writer Kate Grenville, and Carpentaria （2006） by Indigenous novelist Alexis Wright, and compares the discursive strategies and narrative devices the authors have adopted to represent whiteness and Indigeneity, one from the European settlers＇ point of view, the other from the standpoint of an Aboriginal author. In The Secret River, Grenville resorts to the genre of historical novel as a way of reconciling the past. Though the novel challenges the racialised stereotypes of the Aboriginal people by adopting a double perspective （a reconfigured white perspective to refute the colonists＇ views）, the moral ambiguity of the settler identity is still complicit with the colonial discourse. On the other hand, Carpentaria rejects a narrow, essentialist categorization of the Aboriginal people and defamiliarises the concept of whiteness by foregrounding it in a critique rather than as the default norm. Set in a narrative related to the oral tradition, the novel brings Aboriginal cosmology into full play A comparison of the two novels provides a panoramic view of how the Aboriginal-white relationships are presented through the literary imaginary in Australia.

Merlin and Stonehenge in Daina Chaviano＇s Fables of an Extraterrestrial Grandmother

When Merlin first appears in Chaviano＇s Fables of an Extraterrestrial Grandmother as the wizard Soio, he reflects the imagination of Ana, the adolescent protagonist of the science fiction novel as she is in the process of writing the very novel the reader is reading. Later she will discover that her fictional creations are not the invention of her imagination but exist autonomously in parallel universes and are using her as a vehicle of inter-dimensional travel through time and space. Soio/Merlin gazes into his crystal ball, a microcosm that gathers the space-time energy fields of the parallel universes, and sees visions of the protagonists whose modes of existence are real in one and fictional in another parallel universe. Merlin is a Druid in exile from the Neolithic world of Celtic Britain who has crossed over from earthly life to existence in Rybel, a parallel universe. He had crossed over by lining up the Stone of the Past and the Mirror of the Future at the great circle of Stonehenge. The stone circle functioned as an astronomical observatory. Stonehenge is a microcosm, a circle that reflects and coordinates the larger circle of the universe, symbolized and embodied in the sphere or crystal ball that Merlin transmits to Ana in the form of the novel being read. All the characters are trying to coordinate dimensions of space and time in order to fly from one parallel universe to another. Chaviano emphasizes crossing boundaries of time and space. Her characters live in one world but belonging to another, yearn to make contact with the forces of the universe that will bring them home. Chaviano＇s use of the Merlin legend is original and takes into account archaeological evidence about the Celts, Druids, and Stonehenge.