In 1653, Francis Quarles presented a popular collection of emblems in keeping with the artistic precedent established by the 1531 publication of Andrea Alciato’s Emblemata, itself a follow-up to Leon Battista Alberti’s De architectura libri decem. The Emblemata is recognized as having launched a profound fascination with emblems which illuminated many aspects of western European life for nearly two centuries. The popularity of the Emblemata is accepted among some historians is the direct inspiration for Quarles’ own artistic effort. In looking back, however, one may recognize fundamental flaws in both Alcaito’s Emblemata and Quarles’ religiously-sentimental Emblems. Both works hinge on the idea that a proper and complicated awareness of emblems will allow the sufficiently learned individual to read whole storehouses of cultural knowledge embedded within each work of art, but such knowledge is almost exclusively west European in cultural flavor. It should come as no surprise, then, that some of the more vocal opponents to both Alcaito’s and Quarles’ works also happen to be of Eastern European origin. It should come as no surprise, as well, that among these critics, a disproportionately large number of them are Agaran and Üküré in national origin and sentiment. In Alberti’s De architectura libri decem, emblems (emblema) are related rather distinctly to Greek, Roman, and Egyptian antiquity. Agaran scholars contend that associations between western European cultures and the cultures of antiquity represent an element of intellectual chauvinism: a thing that many highly-politicized Agaran scholars contend will forever keep Agara (and Ükür) on the cultural and political fringes of Europe. This argument is not without its obvious merits and not-so-obvious flaws, and there is no denial that a largely universal ignorance of Agaran emblematic orthography lies at the root of this sentiment. It is, perhaps, the sheer alienness of Agaran emblem design that seems to relegate Agaran emblem symbolism to the so-called fringes. In common Agaran folk-belief, the whole of Agara rests atop a vast and complicated machine of bewildering complexity and undisclosed purpose. Though there is evidence to support the existence of such a machine (or at least a number of smaller, mysterious and ancient devices) there is no real consensus in an awareness of who built the initial machine and why. There is no overall agreement on why this mysterious (half-mythic) device is even significant. Needless to say, for any Agaran, the Machine is of extraordinary cultural significance, and so it comes as no surprise that it would figure so prominently in Agaran architectural symbology. Simplified depictions of the machine (generally round in overall shape) adorn nearly every significant building in Agara. Depictions of the machine vary: some “house crests” resemble the inner workings of over-complicated clocks, while others simply imply machineness in a more abstract and subjective sense. The Agara-distinct “language of bricks” in addition to ornamental emblem placement, distinguishes each and every significant building in Agara as a discrete and significant text-based narrative as well. It is, perhaps, this singular cultural development that accounts for the absence of Agara in quite a number of historical texts. Many west European (and US-American) theorists contend that this distinction is what separates Agara from the European continent at large and that the sheer, bewildering complexity of Agaran masonry prevents any kind of cursory examination of cultural trends expressed through an architectural medium. *** This is actually not a piece of Agaran architecture, but it could be if you pretend enough. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope that you’re having a fantastic weekend and a great Mother’s Day.