text:
I'm happy to announce that Taiji is coming to Steam and Itch on September 9th, 2022.
86. The Game's Not Dead!~
Very short update, but I wanted to keep things alive around here. Things are still coming along well and the list of music that needs to be written is getting very short now.
I have taken a job full time through the week, mostly because I already had the job lined up for after Taiji's release and even though the job starting itself was delayed, Taiji's release was delayed more. I chose to take the job anyway because I didn't want to miss the opportunity and I really don't have much I still need to be doing day-to-day personally leading up to the initial release. I'm mostly just directing Gregory on the music and doing occasional tech stuff for the music. Gregory has been fantastic to work with, he has a deep understanding of the game, and has the remaining music writing well under control.
I have still been trying to use the time to polish more and contribute to the soundtrack where I can, but after a rough couple weeks of trying to squeeze in Taiji stuff during the week, I've moved to just working weekends on Taiji, at least until after release.
Speaking of release, I know I keep saying I'll have something to announce on that front soon, but I really do mean it now. Soon is even sooner than it's ever been before. In fact, I can announce that I will have something to announce on August 12.
Practically SOON I say!
As for the switch port, it was always the plan to focus on the PC release first, and then the serious work on porting will start after I've fixed up any unforeseen bugs that happen when the game gets in the hands of you all.
Look forward to the announcement on August 12 and thanks again for your patience!
85. Delays, New Music, and Parsing
Today I finally finished up the ending related stuff I've been talking about for months. This was the last major task before I could ship the game. Except that I've just decided to add a bunch more tasks to the list.
It's a bit of a long story, but one of my testers, Gregory Bednorz, has gone from writing a bit of guest music for the ending to being heavily involved in helping me improve and expand the rest of the music in the game. You can see a bit more about that and hear some samples of the new music (and the old!) in the latest video devlog:
I don't want to rehash everything that I discussed in the above video, although I will say that I am still weighing different options as far as whether the game should release in some way before the new music is finished. There are reasons to release early and reasons to wait, and I am not 100% decided yet.
I was hoping to be a little less "all tech deep dives all day erry day", but with that said, I think it could be enlightening to some to show how simple it was for me to implement a composer-editable configuration file format for the new music system.
I felt that the results would be better if Gregory was not only composing music tracks, but was also involved in the implementation of the tracks into the game. But since I didn't want to send the whole Unity project back and forth or attempt to institute some type of version control system this late in development, I felt it would be good to have a configuration file system and dynamic asset importing.
The dynamic asset importing was actually more of a challenge than the parsing, so perhaps I will come back to that another time. Suffice to say that the development version of the game pulls in .wav files and generates a set of configurable audio layers based on the filenames. Then these filenames can be referenced and set up in a configuration file as follows:
zone Orchard1
osc_frequency_low 0.03
osc_frequency_high 0.07
osc_transition_interval 10
osc_transition_duration 3
add WindLow
add Orchard_FlutePadsLow
add Orchard_MatthewFluteSolo
tweak Orchard_MatthewFluteSolo offset_volume 0.5
tweak WindLow osc_low_volume 0.1
tweak WindLow osc_high_volume 0.4
layer WindLow
osc_low_volume 0.03
osc_high_volume 0.25
offset_volume 0
wind_edge_influence 0.5
layer Orchard_MatthewFluteSolo
osc_low_volume 0
osc_high_volume 0.1
offset_volume 0.4
wind_edge_influence 0.2
layer Orchard_FlutePadsLow
osc_low_volume 0.31
osc_high_volume 0.44
offset_volume 0
The way that this works, is that you set either a target zone or layer and then you configure settings for the target. Zones are areas in the world that contain only certain layers of the music and oscillate the volume of those layers up and down over time. Layers are just looping music tracks that have a volume that is tied to the high and low points of the current zone's oscillator. The oscillator itself is just a sine wave which periodically blends into a new random frequency. This allows the music to change dynamically over time in a somewhat unpredictable way.
So, now let's talk about parsing.
The main way that I kept parsing simple was that I decided that all state would be confined to individual lines, with only two exceptions: the current zone and the current layer. The brackets and indentation are purely for readability purposes and are ignored by the parser.
Because the inline code viewer on wordpress is horrible, and the pastebin one is slightly less horrible, here is a link to the entire relevant bit of code on pastebin.
The first thing that we do in terms of parsing is to point the C# standard StreamReader class at the file. I'm definitely not claiming this is the best or the most efficient way to parse a text file, but it's what I'm familiar with from the save system, so I chose to reuse it here:
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(file);
string line = "";
int active_line_index = 1;
while(sr.EndOfStream == false)
Once we get past this, we are now in the main loop, which is repeated for each line. First we create a cleaned version of the line by trimming any leading or trailing tabs and spaces.
stored_identifier = "";
line = sr.ReadLine();
line = line.TrimStart(' ', '\t'); //trim tabs and spaces
line = line.TrimEnd(' ', '\t');
int remainingChars = line.Length;
bool already_added_tweak = false;
Now we begin parsing through the line itself and breaking it down into tokens. A token is essentially just any single "word" in the file, so its just the next bit of text until there is a space. So we take the subset of the line until the next space and store that in a token string so we can interpret it later.
while(remainingChars > 0)
string token;
int tokenEnd = line.IndexOf(' ');
if(tokenEnd == -1)
token = line;
tokenEnd = line.Length;
else token = line.Remove(line.IndexOf(' '));
remainingChars -= token.Length;
if(tokenEnd+1 < line.Length)
line = line.Substring(tokenEnd+1);
remainingChars = line.Length;
else remainingChars = 0;
Now, we match the string against a set of keywords: #, zone, layer, add, tweak. The # is just a comment marker and is set to discard the rest of the line past it. The others all manipulate a line-level state variable which will be used in order to interpret the next token. If the token matches one of these keywords then we set the line-level state and parse out the next token on the line based on that state.
case "#":
remainingChars = 0;
case "zone":
state = states.SET_ZONE;
case "layer":
state = states.SET_LAYER;
case "add":
state = states.ADD_LAYER;
case "tweak":
state = states.TWEAK;
default: //identifier, action depends on current state
When the token doesn't match any of the keywords, this means it must be parsed differently depending on the current state. If we've already parsed a token on this line, and for example, that first token was zone, then the state will be SET_ZONE and we will parse the next token as though it was the identifier of a music zone that we want to set to be the target for future modification. This target, c_ActiveMusicZone, along with c_ActiveMusicLayer are the only state that is allowed to persist across multiple lines.
case states.SET_ZONE:
MusicZone targetZone = FindMusicZone(token);
bool created_new_music_zone = false;
if(targetZone == null)
targetZone = new MusicZone();
targetZone.name = token;
created_new_music_zone = true;
if(created_new_music_zone) musicZones.Add(targetZone);
targetZone.tweaks = new List<Tweak>();
targetZone.layers = new List<MusicLayer>();
c_ActiveMusicZone = targetZone;
And we do the same if the first token was layer or add, setting the active music layer or adding a music layer to the active music zone, respectively.
case states.SET_LAYER:
MusicLayer targetLayer = FindMusicLayer(token);
if(targetLayer == null)
Debug.LogError("File: "+file+" Line: "+active_line_index+" Attempted to set a Music Layer active that does not exist! Please verify that the names match.");
else c_ActiveMusicLayer = targetLayer;
case states.ADD_LAYER:
MusicLayer targetLayer2 = FindMusicLayer(token);
if(targetLayer2 == null)
Debug.LogError("File: "+file+" Line: "+active_line_index+" Attempted to add a music layer that does not exist! Please verify that the names match.");
if(c_ActiveMusicZone != null) c_ActiveMusicZone.layers.Add(targetLayer2);
The next possible keyword and state would be tweak, which is a way for a zone to override the settings of a specific layer. This makes things a bit complex, because we have to parse out an identifier for tweaking as well as a value, which somewhat duplicates the default path when the token doesn't match any keywords. I'll confine the explanation of identifiers to that path, but here's the tweak-related code anyhow:
case states.TWEAK:
if(already_added_tweak == false)
c_ActiveTweak = new Tweak();
c_ActiveTweak.target = FindMusicLayer(token);
if(c_ActiveTweak.target == null)
Debug.Log("File: "+file+" Line: "+active_line_index+" Unable to find target for tweaking \""+token+"\", perhaps it is misspelled?");
already_added_tweak = true;
if(c_ActiveTweak != null) //we only parse the rest of the line if we successfully found a tweak target
float value1;
if(float.TryParse(token, out value1))
c_ActiveTweak.value = value1;
case "osc_high_volume":
c_ActiveTweak.type = tweakType.OSC_HIGH_VOLUME;
case "osc_low_volume":
c_ActiveTweak.type = tweakType.OSC_LOW_VOLUME;;
case "offset_volume":
c_ActiveTweak.type = tweakType.OFFSET_VOLUME;
case "blend_duration":
c_ActiveTweak.type = tweakType.BLEND_DURATION;
case "wind_edge_influence":
c_ActiveTweak.type = tweakType.WIND_EDGE_INFLUENCE;
if(c_ActiveMusicZone != null) c_ActiveMusicZone.tweaks.Add(c_ActiveTweak);
else stored_identifier = token;
Next we have the general case, which is when we didn't match a keyword like layer, tweak, or add. In this case, it's assumed that the token is an identifier for a variable or the value that we want to set a variable to. So first we attempt to parse the token as a value, and if that fails then we store the token as the identifier of a variable which we will set after we parse the next token on the line. There is no overlap between layers and zones when it comes to the names of variables, so as long as there is a current active zone or active layer, we can set the appropriate values just based on the identifier.
//we must assume that the token is intended to identify a variable or a value, so we will check against a list of known variable names
float value;
if(float.TryParse(token, out value))
case "osc_frequency_low":
if (c_ActiveMusicZone != null) c_ActiveMusicZone.osc_frequency_low = value;
case "osc_frequency_high":
if (c_ActiveMusicZone != null) c_ActiveMusicZone.osc_frequency_high = value;
case "osc_transition_interval":
if (c_ActiveMusicZone != null) c_ActiveMusicZone.osc_transition_interval = value;
case "osc_transition_duration":
if (c_ActiveMusicZone != null) c_ActiveMusicZone.osc_transition_duration = value;
case "osc_low_volume":
if(c_ActiveMusicLayer != null) c_ActiveMusicLayer.osc_low_volume = value;
case "osc_high_volume":
if(c_ActiveMusicLayer != null) c_ActiveMusicLayer.osc_high_volume = value;
case "offset_volume":
if(c_ActiveMusicLayer != null) c_ActiveMusicLayer.offset_volume = value;
case "blend_duration":
if(c_ActiveMusicLayer != null) c_ActiveMusicLayer.blend_duration = value;
case "wind_edge_influence":
if(c_ActiveMusicLayer != null) c_ActiveMusicLayer.wind_edge_influence = value;
Debug.LogError("File: "+file+" Line: "+active_line_index+" Attempting to modify an unknown variable, please verify the name!");
else stored_identifier = token;
And that pretty much covers the parser, apart from that we reset the state between lines and increment the line counter so we can report errors a bit more helpfully.
Is it even remotely bulletproof? No. But for something quick and dirty that was mostly written in a day, I think it gets the job done, and hopefully can serve as somewhat of an inspiration against the idea that one should always "just use JSON" or that "parsing is hard", or whatever other nonsense excuse you might have to not just write your own format.
If I were to think of some things that definitely could be improved, the main would be making sure that all error cases are handled better. For the most part, the format is simple enough that even if there is a major error, the file should still parse for the most part and just report the error without putting the game into a broken state. However, there may be some error states which I am not reporting, which could bite us in the butt on down the line.
Another avenue for improvement would be to have a file version marker. Since I expected these files to be human edited, I didn't want to mark up all of the variables with some type of version information, but at least a file level version marker could be useful if there are some changes to the format that I want to make. This could facilitate automatic conversions of older files to a new format. With that said, this is a relatively minor concern, since there's really only Gregory and myself working with these files, and I can easily just convert the files and pass them back to Gregory.
84. How I Design Puzzles
This post was adapted from an answer to one of my playtesters questions:
What methods do you usually use to design this game's puzzles, and which of those methods do you think lead to the best (most enjoyable?) result?
There are three main approaches to designing puzzles in this type of game that I'm aware of.
1.Top-Down Method
This approach starts with the solution state and works backwards to constrain the puzzle so that this is the only solution.
This is an approach which I very rarely, if ever, have used in Taiji. There can be some valid reasons to choose it–if one is in a tight spot and needs to solve another design problem perhaps–but generally you don't have much luck making good puzzles with this approach.
As a caveat, all design approaches include at least some "top down" elements. For example, one has to pick an idea that seems interesting in the first place. Though it should be easy to see the difference between "this point is connected to this other point" as a top down imposition, and "this is the exact path that you take to get there". So the problems of this approach often come with the extent to which it is applied. Keeping things in balance I think is a theme that will be clear through this discussion.
Also, if I move to include the observational puzzles in the game, you could argue that those are fully top down designs. But since those puzzles are more about observation or abstracting something in the environment than they are about logic within a grid, the design approach is different. This discussion will be long enough just focusing on the logic puzzles, so I'm going to have to leave the topic of environmentally-clued puzzles undiscussed for now.
Moving on to the next approach.
2. Experimental Method
In this approach you basically just plop down some random things and see what happens.
This sometimes produces good puzzles, but it's difficult to make larger puzzles that have good solution paths through them. Getting good puzzles this way is mostly down to luck, and with smaller puzzles you just tend to have better luck. Regardless, this approach is the only one you can take early on, since when you are still adding new mechanics to the game, you still have a lot to learn about how your own game functions.
Another downside to this approach that perhaps just affects me personally, is that when just plopping things down randomly, I tend to draw symmetrical shapes because they "look nicer." Unfortunately this also tends to create symmetrical solutions in Taiji. This is still in the game often enough that players can notice the pattern, but I've worked hard to make sure that it is not a universally applicable tactic. It's okay to have symmetry show up sometimes, as it is thematically appropriate, but too many times and the game falls flat.
And the final design method.
3. Forwards Method
This is the trickiest to explain. Here is a link to a long form explanation and example, but the basic gist is that you start with some deducible situation and place that into the puzzle. You can then add more deductive moves into the panel, creating as much specificity as you want.
This method is useful because it gives you the most control over the players path through the puzzle. You are designing the moves that they will make in the order they will make them.
With that said, it is a tool that must be used with care. Just because you can fully specify every tile in the solution doesn't mean that you must. Sometimes leaving a little play in the puzzle is more interesting. In a pen-and-paper puzzle, you don't want multiple solutions because the solver needs to check against a canonical solution in the back of the book, but in a video game you can be more flexible and you should.
Use your discretion as a designer and prune alternate solutions if they allow the player to miss the main idea of the puzzle, but there's more than one way to skin an electric eel and part of the magic of video games is that they are a bit different for every player. Try to embrace that whenever your design goals allow it.
In the best case, the forwards design technique can allow you to focus your puzzle designs around strong core ideas. But in the worst case, it can lead to a flat feeling, where all puzzles become a sort of paint by numbers.
Still, it is the most powerful technique that I have learned over the course of designing Taiji, and even through it is dangerous, I think it is a requirement to have this tool in your toolbox. It's just important to remember that you are designing puzzles to serve the overall game design and not to serve the tool.
My Approach
So I mostly use a combo of methods 2 and 3; the experimental and forwards methods. But I think the best puzzles tend to come from a mixture of forwards design and some happy accidents. There are also meta aspects that I could get into which can really take puzzles to another level, but I've gone on long enough so that will have to wait for another time.
In any case, over time I have leaned more towards judging puzzles by their content instead of by their enjoyability. I think this is a more stable approach once one becomes more sure of themselves as a designer. However, this does sometimes lead to situations like one I had the other day. There is a particular puzzle in the game that I always loved, but which I have come to realize many players find annoying. I was so convinced that the idea for the puzzle was good, that I didn't worry too much about its enjoyability. Sometimes this is a good approach, however in this case, my disregard for the enjoyability of the puzzle led me to overlook its failure to communicate any appreciation for that core idea. Players found the way in which I was presenting the idea so repulsive that they came away finding the idea itself repulsive.
I knew the idea was good though, so yesterday I went back to the drawing board and designed a new introduction to the idea.
So, as with all game design, be sure to test your design theories against reality and see if you're getting an acceptable response. Not everyone has to enjoy every puzzle, but if most people hate a puzzle that you're in love with, then perhaps there is something about the way you presented that idea that could be improved.
As an aside, I want to mention the two biggest mistakes that I see other designers make. The first is not listening enough to others early on in their careers, and the second is listening too much to others once one becomes more established. When you're starting out, you don't even know what you don't know, and it's more likely than not if someone has a criticism of your game, that you probably should change something. However, as you develop skill and experience as a designer, it is important to learn what your own tastes and values are, and accept that sometimes these will conflict with those of other people who play your game. Accepting feedback and having a guiding vision are both important forces to keep in balance.
In summary, I think the best puzzles are the ones that have a strong idea at the core of them. Something that can be verbalized like "this puzzle shows you that when X and Y are the case that Z occurs" or "this puzzle is about carefully interweaving 4 things while maintaining symmetry" or "this puzzle introduces this new mechanic, but requires the player to deduce its meaning by virtue of it being the only possible explanation".
I haven't always lived up to this standard with every single puzzle in the game, but when I haven't, I have at least made sure that the puzzles serve a pacing reason or form a sequence or meta-structural element that has some unique interest to it.
And well…sequences and meta-structure can add immensely to the enjoyment of a puzzle game, but that's a whole additional discussion which will have to come at a later time.
Additional Recommended Reading
Elyot Grant's 30 Puzzle Design Lessons, Extended Director's Cut – This is a fantastic resource, and although lengthy, is an extremely enjoyable watch as well.
83. In The Final Stretch
I recently finished one of the two biggest remaining tasks on the to-do list and I've been celebrating a bit by working on some less important polish related things. Sometimes I find it difficult to immediately jump from one big challenging task into the next, and it can be good to take a break while still being productive on other things.
Early on, I figured out much of the art direction for Taiji, and most of those decisions I have stuck with until the end. But there were a few things that I changed as I went through the project. A big one of those was how to handle interior lighting.
I always knew that I wanted to have seamless transitions from the outside world into the inside world. Most top-down 2D games have separate maps that you load into when you go inside, and I wanted to avoid that. You can see an example of a typical building exterior and interior below (notice that the building is bigger on the inside!)
Although this example is nearly 30 years old, this is still the approach used in most top-down 2D games today. At the time of Link to the Past's release, I imagine the choice mostly came from system limitations, but there are still a few good reasons to choose this approach today. One of those is that it's just much more time consuming to keep everything seamless.
So if we don't go into a separate screen, what happens when you go into an interior? We can't just keep the roof of the building visible or we won't be able to see what we're doing once we're inside. So instead I decided that parts of the building would be cut away to reveal the interior. Sort of like a diorama of the interior with a removable set of walls and ceilings. A big inspiration for this approach for me was the interiors of Final Fantasy 9, although the Sims games also use a similar approach and I'm sure someone will be able to name a more recent example.
You can see how this approach has turned out in Taiji below:
Although I nailed down the transitions relatively early, it took some time before I settled on a lighting approach. Initially I chose to do the interiors using the same method I use for exterior shadows. This had some downsides of course, in that things were either fully in shadow or fully lit, and trying to do smooth falloffs required dithering. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this approach, but it does have some drawbacks that will become more apparent.
When it came time to do some interiors without windows, such as caves, I felt that having the entire area be in shadow looked too flat. So I chose to have the cutaway also allow sunlight into the interior. Unfortunately this created an inconsistency between different interiors, but it at least allowed for some better definition and readability in these areas.
This was the approach I went with until it came time to do the Gallery area, where the interior was expansive enough that even this approach began to look strange. So I thought of a third approach that would allow me to have all of the features that I wanted.
I have briefly covered this approach before in this video devlog, but I will attempt to summarize here as I know not everyone wants to dig through a video.
So, the basic approach is that I have 3 separate "light maps" for the interior. One for the direct lighting coming from the sun, one for some rear bounce lighting, so that windows facing away from the camera can have some light come in, and a third that is for ambient or interior light sources, such as light fixtures or torches.
Each of these three maps is then assigned to the Red, Green, and Blue channels of a single image, with the alpha channel being used to mask off the effect completely. So the final lighting map would look like the following, alongside how it gets composited with the rest of the art in-game:
This is a very effective approach, and although it could perhaps be extended further to allow for darker shadows and brighter highlights, it is what I have settled on for the final game and I'm happy enough with it. The only problem is all those pesky old interiors which I did before I developed this approach.
They've been sitting around for a year or more at this point, but this week I've been going back through and updating them finally. It's a more subtle difference in some cases, but I am glad to have things be more consistent. You can look at some comparisons below:
So, I have been mentioning that the game is close to complete and to expect a release date announcement soon, and I've been saying this for a few months now. However, the game has suffered a bit of an internal delay, and "soon" has turned into "not as soon". With that said, I will once again reiterate that the game is close to complete and to expect a release date announcement soon!
82. Happy New Year!
Well, I didn't get a trailer done before the new year, but things are still chugging along. I did want to remind everyone once again that I have a more-frequently-updated video devlog over on YouTube, if you're not subscribed. Maybe I should have always been cross-posting those here, but I always found it a bit nice to keep the two devlogs separate, especially since some people prefer to just read or skim rather than sit down and watch a video. Here's the latest episode of that if you do want to watch:
I've been continuing testing and polishing the game. There are still a couple major things that need to be done, but there are also dozens of minor problems that I've been clearing up.
One of those minor problems is readability issues in the environment. Sometimes it's hard to tell where you can or cannot walk. For example, below is a before/after comparison of the cliff overlooking the Mine area. The player is standing at the edge of a several hundred foot drop-off, but due to a lack of contrast, it was often misread by players as being level with everything else. The added darkness creates a good contrast and foreground/background separation, and it also fades away when you enter into the area, keeping things readable from a gameplay perspective.
One of my art weaknesses is that I often don't use enough contrast. Perhaps one excuse for my fear of contrast in doing the art for Taiji is that I wanted to avoid distracting noise. But this desire to avoid noise has unfortunately led much of the artwork to look very flat. I still think the art for the game is "good enough." There's no way I can go through and try to fix every single thing in the game at this point, but I'm trying to fix the worst spots. And moving forward it's something that I'll try to improve upon in future projects.
Hopefully I'll have that release date announcement trailer to show you sooner rather than later, but I don't want to put it out until I feel solid about a release date.
Thanks for reading!
81. Bonus Area
Over the course of making Taiji, I've designed many more puzzles than what have survived into the game as it exists today. Most were cut because they just weren't very good. But there were some decent puzzles that had to be removed because there was no good way to fit them into the existing areas; they took up too much physical space or dragged out the pacing too much.
So for the past couple months I've curated those puzzles into a hidden bonus area. There are also a few puzzles that were custom built for this area to round out some of the missing spots in the overall design.
Finishing this area is a major milestone, and means that the game is basically gameplay complete. With that said there are still several major things that I need to do before the game can be shipped. And one of those is to playtest the game a decent amount. I sent out beta invites to several long-suffering volunteers over the past week and have been getting a lot of good feedback so far, and fixing a lot of bugs.
This next week, if the bugfixes become more manageable, then I will start working on an announcement. So look forward to that in a couple weeks, hopefully. In the meantime enjoy these screenshots of the new area.
80. A Trip Down Memory Lane
This post is adapted from something I wrote in the Taiji Discord, but I thought it might be interesting to share it here. By the way, you should totally join our Discord if you haven't already.
Discord user GingerBread asked: "is there a specific reason why you chose tile shading as a basis for your puzzles instead of line drawing for instance? Was it mainly not to be too close mechanically with the Witness, or did you have other motivations?"
My Answer
The puzzle mechanic came about a bit differently, in that the game didn't start as a Witness-like game.
Initially Taiji started out in April or May of 2015 as a sort of reimagining of a what a Zelda game could be. I was working with a very talented artist and musician named Martin Cohen and we were just calling the game ZG (for Zelda Game) back then. This was before Breath of the Wild was ever revealed in detail and I was sort of thinking about what a more modern Zelda game might be like: open world, non-linear, hard combat, and one of the things I thought would be good was to have some sort of core puzzle gameplay. (This obviously all ended up being done by Nintendo in their forthcoming game but anyway it was the headspace I was in at the time)
I had initially started work on combat design and some world design ideas, but I realized that I didn't have any experience with combat design and was having a hard time making progress there at something interesting in a prototype form. So, I decided that I would switch focus and try to come up with something for the puzzles. I had many years of puzzle game design experience already so I thought it would be easier to make headway there.
I was not setting out to do something explicitly similar to the Witness, although I was inspired somewhat by Jonathan Blow talking The Witness having "core puzzle gameplay." For example, a first person shooter has the core gameplay that you shoot enemies and dodge their attacks. This core gameplay gets repeated over and over across the game, but because of the depth and variation within that core gameplay the game doesn't get boring just because you're "doing the same thing over and over".
Most Zelda games do not have core puzzle gameplay. Although they are not as bad about this as point and click adventure games, they do tend to have disconnected puzzle designs that at best maintain a theme across a single dungeon, and at worst are complete one-offs.
So I knew that I wanted to have some sort of core puzzle mechanic that the player would engage in across the whole game, but that would still have enough depth to stay interesting. The concept for the puzzles being about toggling things into some sort of pattern really just came to me, so unfortunately there's not a cool story for why I thought of that. But the initial idea was a little different than what it eventually became and was more like the Mattel game Lights Out (a game which I had never heard of at the time). So you would toggle a tile and it would also toggle its neighbors.
So I made a little prototype of that and it seemed interesting. However because I imagined that the goal would always be to just light up the whole grid of tiles, I didn't think there was tons of depth in that mechanic alone. Instead I imagined that the game would have variety through different input methods. So I also implemented some "snake" type puzzles where you would be forced to fill the grid by drawing out a path (this type of mechanic is still in the game in a few spots).
This still wasn't that interesting, so I instead started thinking about how I might clue the player into different things to put on the grids. I came up with a couple puzzle sets that I thought were itneresting (both of which are in the game still in a somewhat evolved form), and I felt like I was really getting somewhere.
Unfortunately, I still had not figured out anything about the combat, and I also felt like the puzzle design would really take some time to flesh out (I didn't imagine it would take 5 years). But because I knew I was onto something really interesting, I wanted to spend as much time as possible prototyping the gameplay before really committing to anything. So I suggested that Martin take a break from doing art and music concepts at least until I had developed this part of the gameplay further. (Ultimately I decided that I would pursue the project solo, though this in no way discounts Martin as an artist and musician, and I enjoyed working with him immensely. It had much more to do with my fear of relying on anyone else, but that's a story for another time perhaps)
So I shelved the combat and focused on puzzle design for a while. I designed a set of puzzles that let the player just toggle things in a free form way with no particular constraints (this was just going to be another one of the interaction methods at this point). Suddenly it was nearing the end of 2015, I had a growing document full of puzzle ideas, and soon a game that I had been anticipating for nearly 7 years would be released.
That game was The Witness, and my hype level for the game was somewhere above what was reasonable for a jaded 26 year old man. I thought that the game might (just maybe) turn out better than Braid.
I just happened to be laid off of work when The Witness released and I played it all day every day for a week until I had seen everything it had to offer me. I was blown away. Not only did I find it better than Braid. Not only was it the best game I had ever played. I thought perhaps it was the best puzzle game possible.
I was elated, but I was also devastated. Much to my surprise, almost all of those exciting gameplay ideas in that document I mentioned earlier were also in The Witness in stunning fully developed forms that were much better than anything I could have done.
…what was I going to do now…?
I felt for a time like there might be no point in what I was making. It felt both too similar and and also lesser. I recall an email chat I had with Brian Moriarty around this time where he commiserated with my feelings of burgeoning irrelevance, and opined that Jon had "made Salieris of us all". (Don't know who Salieri is? Feel free to google it, but honestly that's kind of the point)
However, I picked myself up off the ground and resolved to continue forward. Although The Witness had well mapped the territory ahead, I felt I could use it as a guidebook on what types of things would work in this kind of game and when there was overlap between the ideas, look for different forms of those ideas to the form they took in The Witness. I set out to make Taiji into a game that was both similar to, and different from, The Witness.
If The Witness was a telescope with which one could peer out at the universe and see certain ideas, I began to see Taiji as a different telescope with a different vantage point with which to look at some similar ideas. There was value in the different perspective even if sometimes the subjects were similar
With that said, one of the big things I chose to copy from The Witness was the symbols on the puzzles that you slowly discover the meaning of through experimentation. This ended up forming the bulk of the gameplay depth of the game, and I have been relatively happy with the degree of overlap and separation between the two games puzzle ideas.
Eventually as the game developed further, I felt like the alternate puzzle interaction methods were the least interesting things in the game. Also because those puzzles were just about space filling with no symbols or environmental cues it was casting this doubt on all the other puzzles that "oh maybe I just fill it all in?"
So the "lights out" type puzzles and the space filling stuff in general was cut from the game. And I also gave up on combat. (The Witness + Combat could still be interesting, but Taiji is not it) So the final game now focuses on puzzles where you can freely toggle tiles, and there are a few snake type puzzles that use a different interaction method where you're walking on the puzzle in order to toggle the tiles.
I don't know if that answers the question about how I chose tile shading, but hopefully it was a fun story!
P.S. The Mill area is done now, I did a video devlog about this, and here's a screenshot:
79. Assemblage
Since the prior post, the pixel art for the Mill area has been fully completed and I've been chopping everything into assets that can be assembled in game. Below, you can see the finished pixel art as well as the current state of integrating it into the game:
You may notice the colors are a bit different in the in-game version (particularly red). This is because the game uses a color grading setup that is not optimized to any particular area in the game. Ideally before release I'll go through and tweak the color grading a bit for each subarea to lock in a more unique look. If I can't afford to do that though, I don't think it looks too bad as it is.
Either way, there is clearly an empty space on the right hand side of the area that needs to be filled in!
The reason the finished art has that empty space is because I will be assembling that section using existing assets from the Shrine area, as it is a mechanical mix-in with the puzzles from that area, and the art for that area was created very modularly.
So, baseline art implementation is around 80% done or so. I still have to implement the exteriors, add some moving parts and add the entrance path below the plateau area to the left. After that I'll have to add in all the collision and triggers, which is another whole bucket-load of work, but at least everything seems to be proceeding straightforwardly.
I will be very happy to be finished with this area and be focused on tying up the last little loose ends so this game will be ready for release. That's not to say that I have a firm idea of when the game will be done. Although I think it could still possibly ship before the end of the year, it's likely to slip somewhat into next year. Thanks for your patience on that front, I'm trying to get things done as quickly as I can.
I know some folks are probably following the written devlog and not the video devlogs, and I've been a bit more diligent about putting out those than I have been over here. I apologize for that. I often am remiss to simply post the same information over here that's in the videos, as it feels redundant, but I think having some updates is better than going a whole month (or two!) without any sign of life.
If you're not following the video devlog, you can find it on YouTube over here.
78. Milling About
I've finished up both the the sketch from the previous dev log post as well as a more detailed pass on the concept art for the Mill area. With that out of the way, I have been moving onto doing the actual in-game pixel art. In order to save some time, I've combined both the pixeling and the "decay" pass on the art into the same phase.
You can look at all 3 passes as they currently exist (including the incomplete pixel-art pass) below:
Doing the pixel art is taking some time because there are a lot of small details which I want to get right with this area. As I mentioned in the latest video dev log, there is an important balance to strike between things having enough rust, dust, and decay, and things remaining within the overall "flat" aesthetic of the game's art style. With that said, I think the hardest part is now out of the way and I'm onto the more straightforward implementation phase.
I enjoy detailing the pixel art much more than I enjoyed planning everything out. I think this probably comes down to me being a generally detail-oriented person, ever since I was a small child. Probably something to do with being a bit autistic. I don't know for sure, but that's how it is.
Looking at the big picture, this is the final major area that needs to be finished. After that, there is a bonus area that I want to add as well, although it will be less visually detailed and hopefully can be completed in short order.
I'm getting closer than ever to actually having the game finished to a baseline degree. Ideally I'd like to go back over everything and add in more details and clean up stuff that I'm not happy with. But we'll see how much I can actually afford to do. The main obstacle at this point is how little money I have left. Although I have managed to reduce my burn-rate rather significantly for the time being, I'm about one small disaster away from being totally broke.
Anyway, not trying to complain, just trying to air out some of my thoughts here.
I feel like I should cover something a bit more in-depth here on the blog soon. If anyone has any suggestions for something to dive deeper into about the game, feel free to leave them in the comments below!


text:
MENDOZA, ARGENTINA. September 30, 2010. Argentina Mining is pleased to share with the international mining community the highlights of its latest Convention, held in San Juan, Argentina on August 31 - September 2. Close to 3000 people from 800 companies and 24 countries gathered during the three days of the Argentina Mining 2010 Convention, in an atypically cold -- and rainy -- San Juan. The accompanying exhibition boasted 110 booths, plus core shack and business rounds areas. The 2010 edition reached yet another attendance record, both in general and from international participation on the eighth edition of the premier mining event in Argentina.
The opening ceremony had the presence of National Secretary of Mining, Jorge Mayoral, San Juan's Governor, Jose Luis Gioja and Vice Governor, Ramon Uñan, and Felipe Saavedra, San Juan's Mining Secretary. Jorge Mayoral, along with greeting attendants, sent his thoughts to the 33 miners trapped in neighboring Chile. He also said that "this thriving industry together with the geological potential of our country and the magnitude of our geography allows us to be extremely optimistic on the future of mining. We'll be a major player in producing, prospecting, and exploration. We have potential and also what it takes -- the political will to set a producing model in motion."
The keynote speech was given by Alberto Salas, president of SONAMI, Chilean National Society of Mining, and the Inter-American Society of Mining. In his lecture, Salas stated that "Mining, in the period 2005-2009, represented 25% of the state income in Chile, some 48 billion dollars with another 45 billion forecasted for 2012." Salas also met privately with San Juan's Governor, Jose Luis Gioja. Both authorities expressed their interest in working together and exchanging information and experiences related to the mining development in Chile and its favorable economic-social impact in the country.
The program included over 60 international and local experts. The best rated speaker was Ricardo Martínez, Geologist and Manager of Argentina Minera SA, who presented an update of Mining in Argentina, and said: "We want to transform Argentina into a great location for mining, a country for labor and the development of opportunities." Among other speakers were John J. Ashburne from Black Horse Advisors; David Wahl from Southampton Associates; and Casilda Malagón from ICMM.
On the award ceremony, the peak moment came when the Outstanding International Entrepreneur award was presented to Ross Beaty, chairman of Pan American Silver, for his continued investments in Argentina. Mr. Beaty travelled especially from Vancouver for the event and expressed, "I am really happy to be in Argentina and delighted with the projects we have here." A large number of his Canadian and Argentinean teams joined him and he dedicated the award to them: "We will continue moving forward and investing in Argentina," Beaty declared.Also honored were Eduardo Machuca, from Troy Resources, and lawyer Carlos Saravía Frías, former Secretary of Mining in 2001-2002. In turn, Xstrata Copper was recognized for its CSR initiatives.
Of the 800 companies attending, 20% were mining companies, and the same ratio was palpable in the exhibition, cementing Argentina Mining as the local event with larger presence of mining executives. "The importance of the Argentina Mining Convention lies in the great diversity and quality of the participants. Argentina Mining's role in the promotion of mining investment in Argentina is reflected in the large number of foreign executives that come to evaluate Argentina as a destination for their ventures. The visit of a potential project developer creates opportunities not only for the mining industry itself, but also for other supplementary activities," emphasized Paola Rojas, manager of Argentina Mining.
Attendants from 24 countries made possible reaching a new record in foreign attendance, over 30%. The majority came from Canada, followed by Chile, Australia and the US.
In the end, attendees were invited to the sister event of the company, the Latin Exploration 2010 Conference, to be held in late October in Buenos Aires. For more details visit: http://www.argentinamining.com/en/eventos/latin-exploration/
About Argentina Mining:Argentina Mining is an Events and Marketing firm focused on the Argentinean mining market. Its objectives are gathering the mining community in Argentina and providing a place to promote the activity in the world, developing business opportunities for its members. The company organizes the premier international event of the Argentinean mining sector, the Argentina Mining Convention, which takes place biennially in Argentina since 1996, and the Latin Exploration Conference, among others. Additionally, it provides advisory services in public relations and marketing and develops supplementary products. For further information, please visit www.argentinamining.com

subset: commoncrawl


text:
A few days ago, we saw Google revealing how the search results will look if Article 11 of the same legislation took effect.
Well now, YouTube has also jumped on the same bandwagon and tweeted a mockup of how YouTube will appear if Article 13 was implemented in the near future.
Article 13 or the Directive on Copyright is the most controversial area of the nominated decree. Article 13 will require online platforms to remove or filter copyrighted material such as videos, memes, and other media files from their page. It might also block EU-based users from watching content that is already live elsewhere.
To educate the users regarding the after-effects of Article 13, the team at YouTube created a mockup-showing majority of blank video spaces on the app's homepage. The tweet also encourages users to join the #SaveYourInternet campaign and sign a petition addressed to the EU parliament to stop the directive.
Read Next: Top Creators On YouTube Are In Trouble After The Impersonation ScamInterestingly, most of the Twitteratis overlooked the possibility of how the internet will look post Article 13 and decided to snub YouTube altogether for different reasons. Majority of the users also complained that their YouTube home screen is currently similar to the mockup and they see no difference.
Check out the tweet here and let us know what you think of the Article 13 altogether.


text:
COVID-19 Alert for Patients
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Member Login
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Concerning the ASRM COVID-19 Task Force
April 27, 2021 -
A Brief Message from SART
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A Message from SART
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A Special Message to SART Members
ASRM COVID-19 Task Force Recommendations
ASRM Guidance for Practitioners
Embryology Laboratory Suggestions
Laboratory Guidance For Commencing Or Continuing ART Operations During The Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic
Update #1 - October 5, 2020
SART COVID-19 Toolkit
(created May 8, 2020, edited Sep 8, 2020)
Tips on Resuming Care
Example of Patient Messaging Prior to a Clinic Visit
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Example 1: Consent For Treatment During The Coronavirus (Covid-19) Pandemic
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Have questions about IVF and infertility? We have answers.
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text:
April 06, 2009
Brown Facing Jail with Plea Bargain?
Chris Brown is facing a judge today to answer to felony charges of assault and making criminal threats -- and the R&B star is rumored to be working on a plea deal that could have him facing jail time.
Brown will return to a Los Angeles courtroom today where he is expected to cop a plea to the charges against him. The "Forever" singer stands accused of beating one-time girlfriend Rihanna -- and TMZ's Harvey Levin tells "Extra" that Breezy's lawyers are still working at making a deal.
"They are seriously trying to plea bargain this case," says Harvey. "My hunch here is that he will probably accept a little bit of jail time to make this go away -- because if he doesn't, and it goes to trial, he could be facing a lot worse."
When asked if taking a plea deal would mean admitting guilt, Levin explained, "What they could do is, he could plead no contest to some kind of battery. 'No contest' is not the same as saying, 'I did it' -- 'no contest' just means I'm not going to fight."
Meanwhile Rihanna, the alleged victim, has flown home to Barbados to help celebrate her grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. "We are told that she is there because she wants to stay as far away from this court hearing as possible," says Levin. "She has made it really clear to Chris Brown that she wants this thing to go away as quickly as possible."
Brown will face a judge this afternoon.


text:
Activity Processors: Header Processor: Incident - Illegal Response Header
Complexity: Informational (0.0)
Default Response: None.
Cause: WebApp Secure monitors all of the response headers sent to the client from the web application. It has a list of known response headers that should never be returned. This list is configurable, and by default, includes any headers known to compromise the server's identity or security. Should the server return one of the illegal headers, this incident will be triggered. Because the list of illegal headers is configurable, it cannot be guaranteed that the request that contained the header is strictly malicious, but it does signify that something unusual has taken place. This can even represent a hackers successful attempt to exploit a backend service.
Behavior: There is a strict set of HTTP response headers that browsers understand and can actually use. Any headers returned by the server outside of the standard set could potentially expose information about the server or its software. Some headers can even be used to execute more complex attacks. In order to protect the server in the event of a serious issue (such as a "Response Splitting159" attack), some headers can be configured as illegal. Because the set is configurable, it is not straight forward as to what the actual header means or what vulnerability it might be targeted at.


text:
Dan Adams brings his twist to the Ski Doo XM with the Next Level Freeride seat kit.
Storage bag is permanently attached to the seat.
1 lb lighter
2.5" shorter (height)
2" shorter (length)
Made in the U.S.A
Payment & Security
Your payment information is processed securely. We do not store credit card details nor have access to your credit card information.


text:
Gal Finer, MD, PhD
Gal Finer, MD, PhDAttending Physician, Nephrology (Kidney Diseases) Assistant Professor of Pediatrics (Nephrology), Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Languages: English, Hebrew
Gal Finer MD, PhD, is a board-certified pediatrician and a pediatric nephrologist in the Division of Pediatric Nephrology at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, and is an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Dr. Finer has been caring for children with a variety of kidney diseases at Lurie Children's since 2007. Her current interest lies in the research of Congenital Anomalies of the Kidney and Urinary Tract (CAKUT). Dr. Finer acquired knowledge in genetic diseases of the kidney while serving the Bedouin population in Israel, and in molecular pathways of renal fibrosis and kidney development while working in the laboratories of Dr. William H. Schnaper and Dr. Susan Quaggin. Dr. Finer is the recipient of the National Kidney Foundation of Illinois Young Investigator Award of 2017, and of the NIH-K08 Clinical Investigator Award in 2020. Visit the Finer Laboratory.
Education & Training
Education: Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, 2000
Postgraduate Training: Residency in pediatrics, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, 2013-2015; Fellowship in pediatric nephrology, Children's Memorial Hospital, 2007-2010; Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, 2004-2007; Residency in pediatrics, Soroka University Medical Center, Israel, 2000-2004
Professional Organizations: American Society of Nephrology; American Society of Pediatric Nephrology; International Pediatric Nephrology AssociationSee Northwestern University Faculty Profile


text:
One of the least understood, but most commonly asked about issues are PFICs – Passive Foreign Investment Companies.
These form a complex part of the US tax system, and affect both NZ and Australian based US citizens, usually due to Kiwisaver or Superannuation.
In this post, we've created an easy to watch video. If you are unsure if you may be subject to PFIC reporting, call us today.
© 2020, US Global Tax, All Rights Reserved
Disclaimer: Information on this website is of a general nature and is not intended for use without professional advice.


text:
Abstract: Food and drink have played a central role in Chinese religious and ceremonial life from ancient times to the present. The role of food and drink is conspicuous not only in terms of banquet and drinking etiquette, but also in a wide variety of religious practices observed throughout the Chinese-speaking world. These range from ancestral sacrifices, to the worship of deities, to the wearing of mourning to the observance of religious festivals and family holidays.
Citation: Cheung et al. (2022). Berkshire Encyclopedia of Chinese Cuisines. Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire Publishing.
DOI: To come
Keywords: Ritual; ancestor worship; sacrifice; etiquette; social values; mourning; exorcism; ceremonies; holidays; festivals
Any figures or illustrations or illustrations included here are not finalized for publication. Advance publication date as per post date. Copyright Berkshire Publishing Group.
Ritual in Chinese Cuisines
Miranda Brown, University of Michigan
The term ritual is hard to define. According to the religious studies scholar, Catherine Bell (1992), rituals can refer to a wide variety of phenomena, ranging from ceremonial occasions to sacrifice to repetitive, patterned activity. In the context of Chinese studies, the term is also a moving target, used as a placeholder for broad Chinese words as li 禮 (ritual, etiquette, propriety) and yi 儀 (ceremonies or ceremonial protocol). Given the difficulties of pinpointing the exact meaning of ritual, this article will survey the different activities and practices that scholars associate with sacrifice and etiquette, highlighting the role of food and drink in religious life, social relations, and family festivals.
Banquet Etiquette
From ancient times, the Chinese acknowledged that food and alcohol played a large role in social intercourse and in the regulation of social hierarchies. As sinologist Roel Sterckx (2005, 55) writes, not only was cooked food a mark of Chinese civilization, but occasions for feasting and banqueting supplied opportunities to observe and evaluate human character. The ancient Chinese ruling elite devised intricate rules of etiquette for feasting, ranging from the initial greeting of guests, to the seating of each member of the party, the sequence of dishes, and the pouring of the alcohol. All of these rules emphasized the importance of hierarchy, as well as widely accepted social values, specifically deference or "yielding" (rang 讓), filial and fraternal piety (xiaoti 孝悌), and loyalty (zhong 忠) (Legge 1879, 438).
Idealized descriptions of ancient banquets are found in the canonical classics. The Record of Ritual (Liji 禮記), compiled in the Han 漢 dynasty (206 bce–220 ce) on the basis of earlier materials, contains the idealized description of a banquet hosted by an ancient ruler. The description reveals the banquet as a ceremonial occasion. The drinking of alcohol in particular was regulated by rules of etiquette and expressions of courtesy and deference:
The ruler sends the cup round among the guests in order; and when he has given a special cup to any, they all descend, and bow twice, laying at the same time their heads to the ground; after which they ascend, and complete their bowing:–thus showing the observance due from subjects. The ruler responds to them, for every act of courtesy must be responded to:–illustrating the observances due from the ruler and superiors. When ministers and inferiors do their utmost to perform service for the state, the ruler must recompense them with rank and emoluments. Hence all officers and inferiors endeavor with their utmost strength and ability to establish their merit, and thus the state is kept in tranquility, and the ruler's mind is at rest. (Legge 1879, 455–456)
Vestiges of ancient banquet rituals survive into the twentieth and twenty-first century (Chinese guests nowadays would bow rather than kowtow even to powerful hosts). One home economics manual, dating from 1919, revealed that the Chinese continued to conceive of banqueting in terms of ceremonial norms. Much like its ancient predecessors, this manual described the rules for hosting, from the placement of the seats to the use of utensils for eating the various offerings such as bird's nest and various soups, to the offering of toasts, the giving of thanks, and finally, the order of the guests' departure after the conclusion of the banquet. The manual also formulated rules of etiquette for attending a Western-style banquet, noting the differences between East and West in the seat arrangements of guests and the intermingling of the sexes, the utensils used for the meal, and the manner in which guests thanked the hosts (Gao 1919, Section 5, 3–5).
Ceremonies of Drinking
According to the Record of Ritual, the ancients regarded the consumption of alcohol—beer rather than the distilled liquor commonly consumed today—also in terms of rules of etiquette. According to the idealized picture presented in the Record, the ancients supposedly established a regular ceremony in the villages and hamlets to honor the elderly. Once again, the importance of ceremonial expressions of deference is apparent from the passage:
The chief of the district with the accomplished and virtuous men belonging to it had the vessel of liquor placed between the room (on the cast), and the door (leading to the apartments on the west), host and guests sharing it between them.…The viands came forth from the room on the east;–being supplied by the host. All washing, took place (in the courtyard) opposite the eastern wing;–showing how the host purified himself and made himself ready to serve the guests. (Legge 1879, 436)
Sacrificial Uses of Food
In early China, food and drink figured prominently in ancestral sacrifices and worship, as well as in offerings to deities. The earliest written records from China—the divination records left by the Shang 商 rulers (ca. 1250 bce)—disclose that food and drink offerings were an intricate part of ancestral cult practices. The earliest Chinese rulers made regular sacrifices of animals and grains like millet to their royal ancestors and to the Lord on High, the chief deity of the Shang, to secure good harvests, victory against military enemies, freedom from illness, and success in royal child birth, meaning the live birth of a male heir (Keightley 2001). One such record, which was engraved on the back of turtle shells in response to the king's toothache, offers a memorable example: "Divined: '(We) offer a dog to Father Geng (Ki8) (and) split open a sheep.'" (Keightley 2001, 153)
Archaeological excavations have revealed that sacrifices of meat and grain were placed in large and intricately designed bronze vessels—in tripods, cauldrons, and four-legged cooking vessels (ding 鼎). Grain-based brews were furthermore poured into ritual vessels, such as the jue 爵 and the zun 尊 (Cook 2005, 23–25). Such brews were not only offered directly to the ancestors, but also through human impersonators believed to have been possessed temporarily by a dead ancestor. The impersonators, typically a direct male descendant of the deceased ancestor, would consume food and alcohol on behalf of the ancestor (Cook 2005 13, Kleeman 2005, 143). This practice is immortalized in one poem collected in the canonical classic, Book of Songs (Shijing 詩經), anthologized around 600 bce (Owen 1996, xv).
Very hard have we striven,
That the rites might be without mistake.
The skillful recitant conveys the message,
Goes and gives it to the pious son:
"Fragrant were your pious offerings,
The Spirits enjoyed their drink and food.
They assign to you a hundred blessings."
(Waley and Allen 1996, 195)
The Shang rulers set the pattern for subsequent ages. Later Chinese offered food and beer sacrifices to gods, ghosts, deities, and even malevolent spirits believed to have visited sicknesses on people. One set of divinatory records from south China in the mid-fourth century bce hinted at the longevity of this tradition. The chronic illnesses of one nobleman occasioned the coordinated efforts of twelve diviners, who sacrificed no fewer than thirty-six pigs, six dogs, twenty-three sheep, nine oxen, and a horse—all expensive food items, and usually reserved for the feasts of nobles and kings (Kalinowski 2009, 384; Brown 2015, 28, 73; Cook 2006). The bureaucracy of the Qin 秦 dynasty (221–206 bce) took this tradition a step further. Bureaucratic records unearthed by archaeologists reveal that government officials kept supplies of salt, grains, and animals like sheep. All this was undertaken for the purpose of offering sacrifices to agricultural deities. Predictably, these offerings were made to ensure plentiful harvests (Sanft 2014).
To this day, food and alcohol figure in ancestral sacrifices in the Chinese-speaking world and parts of Asia influenced by Chinese religious traditions, including Japan. The Book of Songs, for example, describes one ancient sacrifice in the following manner:
In due order, treading cautiously,
We purify your oxen and sheep.
We carry out the rice-offering, the harvest offering.
Now baking, now broiling,
Now setting out and arranging,
Very harrowed was this service of offering;
Very mighty the forefathers.
The spirits and Protectors have accepted;
The pious descendant shall have happiness,
They will reward him with great blessing,
With spans of year unending.
(Waley and Allen 1996, 194)
Nowadays, food sacrifices to ancestors and gods typically include the offering of fruits such as oranges and peaches and steamed buns over animal entrails or whole animals. Yet there are clear continuities with the past, as these items are offered not only in the hopes of securing good health and male descendants, but also success in business and general economic prosperity for the family.
Mourning and Diet
The fasting from and choice of food also played a conspicuous part of traditional mourning practices. Before the twentieth century, an elite Chinese man who had lost a parent was expected to withdraw from normal society and the sensory pleasures of everyday life for up to twenty-seven months. This was called three years of mourning (sannian sang 三年喪). The person, most often the heir of the deceased head of household, would wear mourning, meaning he would take off his normal clothes, and don rough, white garments of unprocessed hemp. As Sterckx (2005, notes), the mourner would also be expected to abstain from a normal diet of meat and grains, and in the process become emaciated, so as to demonstrate the depth of his grief. At the beginning of the mourning period, the mourner would also be expected to abstain from food for about three days. After this period, the mourner would then move to a diet of gruel or congee, with coarse grains gradually introduced over time. Only after a year would the mourner be given vegetables and fruits to supplement his diet. Only after two years from the beginning of the mourning period would the mourner be allowed to consume meat. The return to a full (elite) diet signaled the mourner's reentry into what Sterckx (2005, 55) aptly refers to as "the realm of worldly flavor and sensory satisfaction."
Ritualized Consumption of Food
Besides occupying a conspicuous position in sacrifice and ancestral veneration, food has long enjoyed a prominent place in festivals and holidays. At these times, Chinese normally eat specific foods, suggesting that the consumption of these foodstuffs have acquired a ritualized character. Nowadays, Chinese families around the world eat long wheat noodles to celebrate the arrival of the New Year, as such noodles are believed to symbolize long life. Chinese families in the diaspora celebrate the New Year twice: the first time coincides with the new year of the Gregorian calendar (1 Jan), and the second or the more traditional Lunar New Year usually falls between late January and late February. The latter is also called the Spring Festival, and is one of the most important holidays in China. This holiday is associated with family members feasting together and the eating of a number of auspicious foods, including candied dates, sugary lotus roots, sweet lotus seeds, and peanuts. One of the most popular foods that are consumed over Spring Festival is niangao 年糕 ("new year") cake, which is not a cake in the sense of a Western pastry, but rather a sweet block, made by steaming glutinous rice flour in a spherical block.
Ancient Chinese observed the Cold Food Festival (Hanshi jie 寒食節) beginning in antiquity, which was usually celebrated in early April, later known as the Tomb Sweeping Festival (Qingming jie 清明節). As the original name of the festival suggests, the foods were not served piping hot, but were consumed cooled or at room temperature. Foods associated with this holiday include a gelatinous dish made from powdered apricot kernels, nowadays called almond "tofu" (xingren doufu 杏仁豆腐) (Holzman 1986, 60). As one would expect, the holiday is an occasion for ancestral veneration: families typically return to the tomb of their immediate ancestors to sweep the tomb and to pay their respects.
The Dragon Boat Festival (Duanwu jie 端午節), falling around the time of the summer solstice (or in late May or early June), is closely associated with the eating of zongzi 粽子. Zongzi comprise glutinous rice with filling and steamed in lotus leaves. One popular filling includes salted duck egg, pork, and peanuts; but sweet fillings, fashioned out of ingredients like adzuki beans, are also served.
Finally, the Mid-Autumn festival (Zhongqiu jie 中秋節) is another important holiday, second only to the Lunar New Year for its importance to families. The Mid-Autumn festival typically falls sometime in the second half of September. This holiday is closely associated with the eating of mooncakes, traditionally a rich and sweet wheat pastry that is either baked or deep-fried and filled with sweet fillings: a mix of nuts and pork, lotus-seed paste and salted duck egg yolks, or adzuki beans, to name but a few. Nowadays, "snowskin" mooncakes, made with glutinous rice and filled with ingredients like custard, are also popular According to one popular legend of dubious historicity, the holiday became associated with mooncakes at the end of the Mongol Yuan 元 dynasty (1271–1368), when anti-Mongol rebels sent military communications embedded in the pastry.
From ancestral sacrifices to business banquets to family holidays, food and drink has figured conspicuously in Chinese religious life, from the dawn of written history, if not earlier. While the ancients often thought of China as the realm of ritual and propriety, China is perhaps best understood as the realm of ritual and food. Indeed, Chinese religious and family life would scarcely be recognizable in the absence of the food and wine offerings to the gods and spirits.
Further Reading
- Bell, Catherine. (1992). Ritual theory, ritual practice. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
- Brown, Miranda. (2015). The art of medicine in early China: The ancient and medieval origins of a modern archive. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Cook, Constance. (2005). Moonshine and millet: Feasting and purification rituals in ancient China. In Roel Sterckx (Ed.), Of tripod and palate: Food, politics, and religion in traditional China (pp. 9–33). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Cook, Constance A. (2006). Death in ancient China: The tale of one man's journey. Leiden, the Netherlands, and Boston: Brill.
- Gao, Jianhua 高劍華. (1919). Zhijia quanshu 治家全書. Shanghai: Jiaotong tushuguan.
- Holzman, Donald. (1986). The cold food festival in early medieval China. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 46(1), 51–79.
- Kalinowski, Marc. (2009). Diviners and astrologers under the Eastern Zhou: Transmitted texts and recent archaeological discoveries. In John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski (Eds.), Early Chinese religion, part one: Shang through Han (1250 BC–220 AD) (pp. 341–96). Leiden, the Netherlands, and Boston: Brill.
- Keightley, David N. (2001). The "science" of the ancestors: Divination, curing, and bronze-casting in late Shang China. Asia Major, 14(2), 143–87.
- Kleeman, Terry. (2005). Feasting without the victuals: The evolution of the Daoist communal kitchen. In Roel Sterckx (Ed.), Of tripod and palate: Food, politics, and religion in traditional China (pp. 140–162). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Legge, James. (Trans.). (1879). The sacred books of China: The texts of Confucianism, 28, Part IV. Oxford, UK: Claendon Press.
- Owen, Stephen. (1996). Foreword. In The Book of Songs (pp. xii-xxv). New York: Grove Press.
- Sanft, Charles. (2014). Paleographic evidence of Qin religious practice from Liye and Zhoujiatai. Early China, 37, 327–358.
- Sterckx, Roel. (2005). Food and philosophy in early China. In Roel Sterckx (Ed.), Of tripod and palate: Food, politics, and religion in traditional China (pp. 34–61). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Waley, Arthur, & Allen, Joseph Roe. (1996). The book of songs. New York: Grove Press.


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Erkison believed a healthy outcome during infancy does not depend on the amount of food or oral stimulation offered but rather on the _________ of caregiving. What are some characterisitics?
Relieving discomfort promptly and sensitively, holding the infant gently, waiting patiently until the baby has had enough milk, and weaning when the infant shows less interest in breath or bottle.
What factors affect parental of personal happinness?
current life conditions (another baby), and culturally valued child-rearing practices
What is the Psychological conflict of the first year?
Basic trust vs. mistrust, the balance of care must be sympathetic and loving in order to have a positive outcome.
What is the difference between the trusting and mistrusting baby?
The trusting baby expects the world to be good and gratifying, so he feels confident about exploring, and the mistrustful baby cannot count on the kindness and compassion of others, so she protects herself by withdrawing from people and things around her.
What is the conflict of toddlerhood in the second year? How is it resolved?
Autonomy versus shame and doubt, resolved when parents provide suitable guidance and reasonable choices
Basic trust and autonomy grow out of warm, sensitive parenting and reasonable expectations for impulse control starting in the _______ year
What are the 3 attainments that Erikson regarded as those that emotions help organize?
Social relationships, exploration of the environment, and discovery of the self
What are the Basic emotions?
happiness, interest, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust--They are universal in humans and other primates and have a long evolutionary history of promoting survival.
Babies' first 2 arousal states of emotions are?
attraction to pleasant stimulation and withdrawal from unpleasant stimulation
What are the stages of smiling?
First born: Smile
Social smile: Broad grin 6-10 weeks
Laugh: 3-4 months: Reflects faster processing of information
Around the middle of the first year, infants smile and laugh more when interacting with familiar people, a preference that strengthens the parent-child bond. Between 8 and 10 months, the smile then becomes ________.
Deliberate social signal: Infants more often interrupt their play with an interesting toy to relay their delight to an attentive adult.
Anger characteristics of a baby include?
General distress from birth
Anger 4-6 months increases in frequency and intensity
_____ and ______ contribute to a rise in angry reactions.
cognitive and motor development
When does fear rise in a baby? When does stranger anxiety occur?
The 2nd half of the first year. 8-12 months
The most frequent fear, shown to meeting new adults.
stranger anxiety
What does stranger anxiety depend on?
Temperament, past experiences with strangers, and the current situation
Once wariness appears in a baby first developing walking, babies use the familiar caregiver as a ____ _____, or point from which to explore, venturing into the environment and then returning for emotional support.
secure base
Depression that emerges or strengthens after childbirth but fails to subside as the new mother adjust to hormonal changes in her body and gains confidence in caring for her baby
Postpartum depression
About ______ % of women experience chronic depression.
What happens to baby's who's mothers are depressed?
sleep poorly, less attentive to their surroundings, elevated levels of cortisol (stress) attachment difficulties, irritable mood
Some researches claim that infants respond in kind to others' emotions through a fairly automatic process of _____ _____.
emotional contagion<-- During early infancy
Others, however, believe that infants acquire these emotional contingencies through _____ _____---for example, learning that a smile generally triggers pleasurable feedback and that distress prompts a comforting response.
operant conditioning
Around 4-5 months, infants become sensitive to the structure and timing of face-to-face interactions, and they start too....
Recognize others facial expressions
This is something that occurs with emotions 8-10 months in. It is actively seeking emotional information form a trusted person in an uncertain situation. Relying on others' emotional reactions to appraise situation. Caregivers can use this to teach children how to act.
social referencing
____ _____ helps young children move beyond simply reacting to others' emotional messages. They use those signals to guide their own actions and to find out about others' intentions and preferences.
social referencing
What are the self conscious emotions?
Shame, embarrassment, guilt envy, and pride
Emotions that involve injury to or enhancement of out sense of self
self-conscious emotions
When we have harmed someone and want to correct the wrongdoing.
When we have negative feelings about our behavior and we want to retreat so others will no longer notice out feelings
ashamed and embarrassed
Reflects delight in the self's achievements, and we are inclined to tell others what we have accomplished.
When do children become aware of self as separate and unique, and this requires adult instruction about when to feel emotions.
middle of the second year
Refers to the strategies we use to adjust our emotional state to a comfortable level of intensity so we can accomplish our goals
Emotional self-regulation
What does emotional self-regulation require?
effortful control, voluntary, effortful control of emotions
Emotional self-regulation grows over the ____ year, with brain development, and caregivers contribute to child's self-regulation style.
Rapid development of the ___ _____ of the cerebral cortex increases the baby's tolerance for stimulation, and parents improve the capacity for the stimulation by initiating face-to-face play and attention to objects.
frontal lobes
When we describe one person as cheerful and "upbeat" another as active and energetic, and still others as calm, cautious, or prone to angry outbursts, we are referring to _______.
Early-appearing, stable individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation.
Refers to quickness and intensity of emotional arousal, attention, and motor activity.
Refers to strategies that modify reactivity.
Who's nine dimensions served as the first influential model of temperament
Thomas and Chess
What are the three 4 different classes of children and their percentages for the structure of temperament?
Easy-40% Quickly establishes regular routines in infancy, is generally cheerful, and adapts easily to new experiences
Difficult-10% is Irregular in daily routines, is slow to accept new experiences, and tends to react negatively and intensely
Slow-to-warm-up child-15% is inactive, shows mild, low-key reactions to environmental stimuli, is negative in mood, and adjusts slowly to new experiences
35% is unclassified
What is the self-regulatory dimension for temperament? The capacity to voluntarily suppress a dominant response in order to plan and execute a more adaptive response
effortful control
For the biological basis of temperament there are inhibited, shy children and uninhibited, Social children.
The ______ child reacts negatively, withdraws from stimuli, has high heart rates, stress hormones and stress symptoms, and higher right hemisphere frontal cortex.
The _____ child reacts positively, approaches new stimuli, has lower heart rates and stress hormones/symptoms, and higher left hemisphere frontal cortex activity.
Inhibited and then uninhibited
____________ develops with age.
Stability of Temperament.
The stability of of temperament is _____ to _____.
Low to moderate
Stability of temperament is best indicated after age ____.
Factors that affect the extent to which a child's temperament remains stable are->
1. development of the biological systems on which temperament is based
2 The child's capacity for effortful control
3. The success of her efforts which depend on the quality and intensity of her emotional reactivity
_______ ________ are responsible for about half of individual differences.
Genetic influences
______ and ______ explain differences between cultures and boys and girls when concerning genetic influences. Boys are more active and daring, more irritable when frustrated, and slightly more impulsive. Girls have greater compliance, better school performance, and lower incidence of behavior problems.
ethnic and sex differences
What are some environmental influences that effect temperament?
nutrition, caregiving, cultural variations, gender stereotyping, role of siblings
Thomas and Chess proposed a _______ to describe how temperament and environment together can produce favorable outcomes. It involves creating child-rearing environments that recognize each child's temperament wile encouraging more adaptive functioning.
Goodness-of-fit model
Effective parenting depends on what?
life conditions, good parental mental health, marital happiness, and favorable economic conditions
The strong affectionate tie we have with special people in our lives that leads us to feel pressure when we interact with them and to be comforted by their nearness in times of stress.
Recognizes the infant's emotional tie to the caregiver as an evolved response that promotes survival
Ethological theory of attachment
Birth to 6 weeks. Built in signals--grasping, smiling crying and gazing into adult's eyes. Help bring newborn babies into close contact with other humans who comfort them. Babies recognize smell and voice but not yet attached
pre-attachment phase.
6 weeks - 6-8 months. Respond differently to a familiar caregiver than to a stranger. Still not protest when separated, but begin to develop a sense of trust
Attachment in the making
Attachment to the familar caregiver is evident. Babies display separation anxiety, becoming upset when their trusted caregiver leaves.
"clear-cut" attachment phase
Rapid growth in representation and language permits toddlers to understand some of the factors that influence the parent's coming and going and to predict her return. As a result, separation protest declines. Now children negotiate with the caregiver, using requests and persuasion to alter her goals.
Formation of a reciprocal relationship
Set of expectations about the availability of attachment figures and their likelihood of providing support during times of stress.
internal working model
A widely used lab procedure for assessing the quality of attachment between 1 and 2 years of age
strange situation
60%-These infants use the parent as a secure base. When separated, they may or may not cry, but if they do, it is because the parent is absent and they prefer her to the stranger.
Secure attachment
15% These infants seem unresponsive to the parent when she is present. when she leaves, they usually are not distressed, and they react to the stranger in much the same way as to the parent.
Avoidant attachment
10% Before separation, these infants seek closeness to the parent and often fail to explore. When the parent leaves, they are usually distressed, and on her return they combine clinginess with angry, resistive behavior, sometimes hitting and pushing.
Resistant attachment
15% This pattern reflect the greatest insecurity. At reunion, the infants show confused, contradictory behaviors
Disorganized/disoriented attachment
Suitable for children between 1 and 4 years, depends on home observation. A security score is computed
Attachment Q-sort
Despite such cultural variations, the _____ is still the most common attachment quality in all societies studied.
secure pattern
What are the factors that might influence attachment security?
Opportunity to establish a close relationship, quality of caregiving, the baby's characteristics, and family context.
What 2 things does quality of caregiving consider?
Sensitive caregiving and interaction synchrony
Responding promptly, consistently, and appropriately to infants and holding them tenderly and carefully refers to?
Sensitive caregiving
Separated experiences of secure and insecure babies. It is best described as a sensitively tuned "emotional dance" in which the caregiver responds to infant signals in a well-timed, rhythmic, appropriate fashion
interactional synchrony
Family circumstances concerning factors that affect the attachment security is base on what?
parents' internal working models. Parents bring to the family context their own history of attachment experiences, from which they construct internal working models that they apply to the bonds they est. with their babies.
Children tend to develop multiple attachments with who?
Fathers, siblings, grandparents, and professional caregivers
What are some things that could encourage affectionate ties between infants and their preschool siblings?
Spend extra time with the older child, handle sibling misbehavior with patience, and discuss the baby's wants and needs
In many cultures fathers are seen as ____ and mothers are seen as _____.
playmates, caregivers
What are some important factors in attachment with fathers?
Sensitivity, warmth, family attitudes/relationships
What are some important things to consider when you have siblings?
Adjustment for preschoolers, rich emotional relationship between children, parents must promote positive relationships
As infants feel their own touch, and watch their limbs move, they experience what?
intermodal perception
Occurs around age 2, identifying one's self as a individual being.
The ability to understand another's emotional state and feel with that person, or respond emotionally in a similar way
Showing clear awareness of caregivers wishes and expectations and can obey simple requests and commands.
Waiting for an appropriate time and place to engage in a tempting act.
delay of gratification
Reflects the greater capacity of one side of the brain-the individual's dominant cerebral hemisphere-to carry out skilled motor action
At the rear and base of the brain is the ______, a structure that aids in balance and control of body movement.
A structure in the brain stem that maintains alertness and consciousness
Reticular formation
An inner-brain structure that plays a vital role in memory and in images of space that help us find our way.
A large bundle of fibers connecting the two cerebral hemispheres
corpus collosum
The ______, located at the base of the brain, plays a critical role by releasing two hormones that induce growth.
pituitary gland
_____ is necessary for development of all body tissues except the central nervous system and the genitals.
growth hormone
Prompts the thyroid gland in the neck to release thyroxine, which is necessary for brain development and for GH to have its full impact on body size.
Thyroid-stimulating hormone
A growth disorder that usually appears between ages 2 and 15. Typical characteristics include decreased GH secretion, very short stature, immature skeletal age, and serious adjustment problems. Caused by emotional deprivation
psychosocial dwarfism
Infectious disease can be due to _______ and _______.
malnutrition, and inability to get immunizations
Because of their higher activity level and greater impulsivity and risk taking, boys are _____ times more likely to be injured than girls.
What are three attentions to family conditions that can prevent childhood injuries?
Relieve crowding in the home, providing social supports to ease parental stress, and teaching parents to use effective discipline.
By age 2, preschoolers ___ become more smooth and rhythmic--secure enough that soon they leave the ground, at first by running and later jumping, hopping, galloping, and skipping.
What are the most common injuries during early and middle childhood?
auto and traffic accidents, drownings, and burns
A stage that spans the years 2 to 7.
Piaget's Pre-operational stage.
Failure to distinguish the symbolic viewpoints of others from one's own.
Egocentrism is responsible for preoperational children's __________. The belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities, such as thoughts, wishes, feelings, and intentions
animistic thinking
Refers to the idea that certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same, even when their outward appearance changes.
mental actions that obey logical rules
When children focus on one aspect of a situation, neglecting other features.
The organization of objects into classes and subclasses on the basis of similarities and differences.
hierarchical classifications
An inability to mentally go through a series of steps in a problem and then reverse direction, returning to the starting point.


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Greetings Kin,
Tone 10 is the Day of Manifestation. Under the trecena of Star/LAMAT, what We Have Created will be Magnified to Abundance!
10 Earth/CABAN is a Manifestation of Movement. This is a Day to Honor Mother Earth as the Source of Knowledge. Her Movement created Time, carries us to Experience, and turns us to a New Beginning every day.
Today is a day we've waited for to take action. Manifestation is a Blessing, and also a great responsibility. We manifest what we claim. We've been given many ways to see our own Transformation. The Movement we can make for our Highest Ascension is to claim our new "I Am."
Mother Earth was the Creator's gift to Human. She was created to be the place of our Divine Authority. Our lives were meant to be beautiful with beauty all around us. We were born to Move in the world. Mother Earth created Time for us to Create our Dreams.
Up Above, in the realm of Spirit, the One always Was the One Consciousness. As the One Mind of Consciousness it knew all there was to Know. We were made in the Image of a Creator. Like us, the Creator wanted to experience itself. The only way to do that is through Relationship. The Creator made Human as Sparks of its own Light. In the Mirror Image of the Up Above, we were Created for Heaven on Earth.
The Star/LAMAT trecena is guiding us to an Ascension as the Personification of the Creator's Light. We are being Transformed to reflect a Mirror Image. When Humanity is fully Awakened to the Light within our Self, we will be as Billions of Lights in the Universe. Together, we will shine Like the One Light.
This is an Important Day of Manifestation, the last in the completion of Human's 260-day cycle of Creation. We are celebrating the Birthday of Humanity. This is the day we are Given a New Name.
At the top of the mountain, Moses asked for the Name of God. The Answer was, "I Am, that I Am." The Creator is all that ever was and is. It appears as anything it says, "I Am." That can be the only name for One that is Infinitely Everything.
Our own Name is our Identifier, over time it speaks a thousand words. "I Am," are the most important words we speak. When we do, we're assigning an identity our unconsciousness will identify as the Truth. We claim our Newborn Spirit with the words, "I Am."
Tone 10 is a day when we see things differently. The day often marks a old experience that we perceive in a whole knew way. We have a Divine Agency helping to set the stage. This is a day to pay attention to your Movement in the world. What you See for Yourself, you can Claim.
This is day to celebrate. I used to think of Manifestation as an abstract concept. It was one of the things I couldn't "get" because all I wanted to do with it was to manifest the world's abundance. Treasures in the world can be lost and stolen. The Treasures we manifest in Spirit are Eternal. We are manifesting a Way of Happiness as near as "Right Now."
Our Manifestation will be a new Truth about our Self, that once we See, can no longer be Unseen. This is the Manifestation of the Dream the Creator intended for Itself. We were Created to Know who we Are.
In our State of Unconsciousness, we are just Humans bumping into each other as we try to carve out our own territory. Through Forgiveness we are Transformed by Compassionate Love for each other. Connected to our own Divine Consciousness, we wouldn't stake our happiness in a government, or imaginary lines we claim as True, that only separate us from one another. By our Own Authority, we would Care for Each Other.
The Movement of Humanity has swung so far away from the Dream we all wanted the most. We just to be happy. We've born the Time. The pendulum was in motion, it had to reach it's peak before it could turn around.
We are establishing Higher Ground for a New Life. Through our own Choice of Consciousness, we can Alter the Course of our Destiny.
In the tradition of the Sun/Moon Dance, we were given our Medicine Name at the completion of a 4-year commitmene. We danced our last dance with a new name. On the shamanic path, the Elders taught to choose a name we would be known by in the Spiritual Realm. The name was shared with no one, and was the possession of ID in the realm of Spirit. Our name would be known to call only on the Spirits of Highest Consciousness. Claim a new name if Spirit presents one to you.
There are so few opportunities for people to gather together in Sacred Ceremony. Many have to travel the path alone. The Elders say it is Right and Worthy to tend to our own needs for Ceremony and Initiation. This is a Birthday to Recognize our Self.
This is a Discovery that the Creator waits for, Light Seeing Itself. Through us, the Creator sees its own Beauty of Unconditional Love. This is a day of Holy Communion. We are One in the Experience with the Creator in a Manifestation of our Divine Identity.
This is an Important day for an Offering to Mother Earth. Cornmeal is a worthy Offering on the Birthday of Humanity. We are the Corn people, who Manifest our Own Re-Creation in 260 days.
The Cherokee Day Sign the Heron, lives its life as a perpetual movement of migration. The Heron is a symbol of the Phoenix that rises from the ashes of its past. We are perpetually migrating to Higher Ground. Today we claim it to rise from the ashes of our past.
To all my relations, may we imagine the Dynamic Beauty of Mother Earth… the beauty of living things, caring for their next generation, and the beauty that can grow from something as small as a Seed. May we recognize our Self for Creating a new Consciousness. May we see the way it changes our Destiny. May we claim the "I Am" of Divinity, Knowing our Light is the Reflection of the Creator. May we Claim a New Identity as the New Seed of our Self that we Dream to be Multiplied to Abundance.
In lak'ech, I am another You
Debra, Jaguar Woman, 9 Eagle/MEN
I'm sharing a the "21-Days of Gratitude" as a perpetual Personal Ceremony through the next journey to 8 Monkey/CHUEN Maya New Year. The "21 days" begin and end on Jaguar/IX.
21-Days of Gratitude: Day 3
I give thanks that we are given an opportunity for perpetual transformation. I'm grateful for the gifts of Spirit that can never be lost or stolen, but are gifts of Truths that are eternal.
Visit the 13-Day Trecena Guide for daily aspects and events of the Star/LAMAT trecena.
10 Earth/CABAN (Cherokee, Heron/GUWI'SGUWI)
Galactic Tone 10: Manifestation. What were once intentions or ideas, hopes or fears become physically present with the energy of Ten. What is focused upon with attention and intention becomes real with Ten. Ten is a powerful energy that carries a great responsibility.
Earth/Caban: Keeper of the garden of Earth. Profound synchronistic connections to Earth's natural cycles and energies provide power of creations and memories of ancient wisdom. Earth persons help dispel bad intentions, habits and ideas. This makes them very good counselors and masters of all arts. Studious and intelligent, Earth persons endeavor to bring a flow of natural order to all aspects of life. Being connected to the dynamic forces of nature, Earth persons need much liberty to facilitate their expression of migration or the sending of long distance communications such as the whales, elephants, birds and many other creatures. Sometimes Earth's delicate sensitivities are upset resulting in quakes of emotion even the display of volcanic temper.
Cherokee, Heron/GUWI'SGUWI: Sign of movement and perpetual motion, Heron is symbolized by Deneb, located in the Northern Cross beside the Milky Way. "The Northern Cross is the Tree of Life, Beside the Milky Way River & Perched atop is Guwi' sguwi, the Cherokee Heron Spirit Bird, comparable to the Phoenix that rises from the ashes of the past.
[Text in italics was the primary source of inspiration for my journal. These are the sources that started my journey and they are the reference for interpretation each day. By providing the original text, I hope to offer a way to see what inspired my thoughts and by including all the aspects – allow for something more to inspire you. Mayan descriptions are those written by Ian Lungold. Cherokee descriptions came from multiple sources. Links to sources and other resources of study are offered on the Daykeeper Resources Page. ~Debra]
How is your Spiritual path today?
I love to hear from you. Share your thoughts on the day, or share your local energy report.


text:
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