Invocation

An invocation (from the Latin verb invocare "to call on, invoke, to give") may take the form of:

These forms are described below, but are not mutually exclusive. See also Theurgy.

Supplication or prayer

As a supplication or prayer it implies to call upon God, a god or goddess, a person, etc. When a person calls upon God, a god, or goddess to ask for something (protection, a favour, his/her spiritual presence in a ceremony, etc.) or simply for worship, this can be done in a pre-established form or with the invoker's own words or actions. An example of a pre-established text for an invocation is the Lord's Prayer.

All religions in general use invoking prayers, liturgies, or hymns; see for example the mantras in Hinduism and Buddhism, the Egyptian Coming Out by Day (aka Book of the Dead), the Orphic Hymns and the many texts, still preserved, written in cuneiform characters on clay tablets, addressed to Shamash, Ishtar, and other deities.

Invocation (The X-Files)

"Invocation" is the fifth episode of the eighth season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. It premiered on the Fox network on December 3, 2000. The episode was written by David Amman and directed by Richard Compton. "Invocation" is a "Monster-of-the-Week" story, unconnected to the series' wider mythology. The episode received a Nielsen rating of 8.2 and was viewed by 13.9 million viewers. Overall, the episode received mixed reviews from critics.

The series centers on FBI special agents Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and her new partner John Doggett (Robert Patrick)—following the alien abduction of her former partner, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny)—who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. In this episode, a little boy mysteriously reappears after having been kidnapped for ten years. However, he has not aged one bit after his disappearance. While the case stirs up painful memories for Doggett, suspicion stirs that the boy is not all he seems.

Invocation (Sympathy album)

Invocation is the 2002 debut album by the Canadian technical death metal band Sympathy. The album was published by Fear Dark, a Dutch record label.

Although suffering from low production values, the album got positive feedback in underground metal circles and magazines such as BW & BK and was mentioned in Metal Maniacs magazine as one of the reader's albums of the year for 2002. Noted for solid songwriting, Sympathy has since re-recorded several of the album's songs with better production.

The music features deep growling, occasional shrieking, heavily-distorted guitar sound, plenty of tempo-changes and atonal riffs, some symphonic keyboards and computer drums. "Prelude and Toccata in e Minor" is a piano instrumental, and "Christus Factus Est" features operatic female vocals. The album cover was done by Jeffray Arwadi of Soundmind Graphics, also known as the guitarist/vocalist for the Indonesian avant-garde metal band Kekal.

Track listing

Epsilon Ursae Majoris

Epsilon Ursae Majoris (Epsilon UMa, ε Ursae Majoris, ε UMa) is the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Major (despite its Bayer designation being merely "epsilon"), and at magnitude 1.76 is the thirty-first brightest star in the sky. It has the traditional name Alioth. It is the star in the tail of the bear closest to its body, and thus the star in the handle of the Big Dipper (Plough) closest to the bowl. It is also a member of the large and diffuse Ursa Major moving group. Historically, the star was frequently used in celestial navigation in the maritime trade, because it is listed as one of the 57 navigational stars.

Peculiarities

According to Hipparcos, Alioth is 81 light years (25 parsecs) from Earth. Its spectral type is A1p; the "p" stands for peculiar, as the spectrum of its light is characteristic of an Alpha2 Canum Venaticorum variable. Alioth, as a representative of this type, may harbor two interacting processes. First, the star's strong magnetic field separating different elements in the star's hydrogen 'fuel'. In addition, a rotation axis at an angle to the magnetic axis may be spinning different bands of magnetically sorted elements into the line of sight between Alioth and the Earth. The intervening elements react differently at different frequencies of light as they whip in and out of view, causing Alioth to have very strange spectral lines that fluctuate over a period of 5.1 days. The kB9 suffix to the spectral type indicates that the calcium K line is present and representative of a B9 spectral type even though the rest of the spectrum indicates A1.

Alioth (Debian)

Alioth is a FusionForge system run by the Debian project for development of free software and free documentation, especially software or documentation to do with Debian.

Most of the projects hosted by Alioth are packaging existing software in the Debian format. However, there are some notable non-Debian projects hosted, like SANE project.

History

Alioth was announced in March 2003. Originally Alioth was to be hosted on the SourceForge code base; the Free Software version of GForge was chosen later as it avoided the need to duplicate effort spent on rebranding SourceForge. Since 2009 Alioth runs a GForge descendant called FusionForge.

Alioth administrators include Raphaël Hertzog and Roland Mas.

External links

References