The 20th of January, nature photographer Kurt Lolo of Lolo Pics shared a unique photo of the full moon at Assekrem, a famous plateau of the Ahaggar mountains, close to the town of Tamanrasset in the legendary Algerian desert. The photo grabs our attention immediately, because of the way the light seems to come from within the moon, who dominates the center of the photo like a huge crystal ball whose enormous weight is supported by the black rim of the nocturnal mountains. It is a bewitching photo, for the convincing impression of the moon as an instrument of divination, a messenger of the secrets of the crystal ball. Crystal balls have a beautiful name in Latin : orbuculum, which means eye of the orb, and they are associated with clairvoyance. The most ancient evidence of the use of the crystal ball goes back to the Celtic druids, who divined the future and omen with balls made from beryl, a mineral of whom the most renown varieties include emerald and aquamarine.
Kurt Lolo's photograph exudes a quality of magic, because the transparent moon with its luminous gold glow makes the magnificent illusion that the moon is a crystal ball quite credible. Since a crystal ball has no edges like conventional lenses, the qualities of the images it forms are omni directional. This effect is exploited by the Campbell - Stokes recorder , a scientific instrument invented by John Francis Campbell in 1853, that would be modified in 1879 by Sir George Gabriel Stokes, and that registers the brightness of the sun by burning the surface of a card bent around a crystal ball. This system of registering the hours when the sun is at her brightest is still in use today, and has the advantage that it can be used anywhere in the world without major modifications to its model.
A curious fact about crystal balls is their omni directional burn effect that occurs when a crystal ball is put in full sun. The image the sun forms with a crystal ball can burn the hand that holds the crystal ball, and can set fire to dark flammable material. The ball lenses used to connect fiber optics are identical to crystal balls, only in diminutive size, between 1mm to 10 mm in diameter. The third largest crystal ball is at the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology of the University of Pennsylvania. It weighs 22 kilos, and is made of Burmese crystal, and was fashioned through he continuous rotation during several years in a semi - cylindrical receptacle filled with emery, which is a compound of corundum and magnetite in powder form, and of the powder of garnet and water.
The idea of a full moon as a crystal ball is irresistible, as the moon is already a celestial body shrouded in mystery. The moon is 4.5 billion years old, and has many names, like the full moon, that dresses itself in different colours, which gives it also many different exotic names, as those given to the moon in the native American cultures : wolf moon, snow moon, worm moon, rose moon, flower moon, strawberry moon, buck moon, beaver moon, hunter moon, harvest moon, long night moon.
There are different names for the phases of the moon, like a crescent moon, a new moon, and this year, 2019, we will have a blue moon, which is the third moon of four full moons in a row, and the name blue moon has nothing to see with the colour, although under certain circumstances, like volcanic eruptions, or forest fires, that leave particles of a specific size to reflect preferentially the colour red, the moon can acquire a blue hue. All this ability to transform in shape and colour that the moon has, is fantastic, and explains our fascination with her. The sublime photo of Kurt Lolo has an exotic aura, a seductive attraction, that takes over our imagination, our dreams and desires. The Algerian desert has an international renown, for the immensity of its beauty, for the oldest rock art on earth at the Tassili n'Ajjer National Park, for the town of Tamanrasset, for the Tuareg culture that has managed to keep its cultural identity intact for thousands of years, for the oasis of Timimoun, for the Ahaggar mountains, for the vistas of the Assekrem. The photo of Kurt Lolo is an enchanting invitation that inspires the desire to want to discover this unique region on earth that is the vast and fascinating Algerian desert. The full moon of Kurt Lolo, that like a giant crystal ball rules the sky and our imaginations, in this night of ancient mysteries, is like a fabulous celestial treasure that has the key to the enigma of life on this earth. The moon fascinates us since thousands of years, the oldest image of the moon is a rock engraving of 5000 years ago, found at Knowth in Ireland.
The nature photographer has said of this photo of his that it is " Like the beginning of something new. " This photo the full moon at the Assekrem surely is that : the deepening of the photographic vision of Kurt Lolo, of his precise art, well thought out, enriched with the wisdom of existential and spiritual perspectives capable of an aesthetic equilibrium, that is solid, sincere and enduring.
Trudi Ralston
The research on the moon and its phenomena, as well as the information on crystal balls, courtesy of Wikipedia.
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