And Then There Were Five Six

I've often remarked that chess and metaphysics don't mix very well; see for example the very first episode in my series titled Video Friday. There are, of course, exceptions, one of which is the recent press release for the 2011 Youth Chess Tournament for Peace (Monroi.com).

The Canadian Centre for Ecumenism is delighted to announce the launch of Youth Chess Tournaments for Peace, in Montreal, on September 7, 2011 in collaboration with MonRoi Inc. and the Canadian Chess’n Math Association. The event will coincide with the visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to the 2nd Global Conference on World’s Religions After 9/11, a combined initiative of McGill University and the University of Montréal.

When I first saw the announcement for the event I was immediately attracted by the poster showing nine religious symbols, a few of which were unfamiliar to me. You can see that poster here -- 2011 Youth Chess Tournament for Peace -- on USchess.org. With the help of Monroi.com I found an excellent explanation of the symbols on the Collections page of the Canadian Centre for Ecumenism (CCE), under Summary Table of World Religions.

You can imagine my surprise when I started to write this post and discovered that the 'same' poster, pictured below, now shows only six religious symbols. A comparison of the latest version of the poster with the Summary Table revealed that Bahá’í, Buddhism, Native Spirituality, and Zoroastrianism were all missing from both versions, while three unidentified symbols had disappeared from the older poster. The disappearance of Buddhism was especially strange, given that the Dalai Lama, mentioned specifically in the press release, is the spiritual leader for Tibetan Buddhism.

I trust that the youth tournament will fare better than the poster. For more about the tournament, as well as the '2nd Global Conference on World's Religions', see 2011 Youth Chess Tournament for Peace Home (also Monroi.com). • For more about the historically difficult relationship between chess and metaphysics, see Religion and Chess and Chess Bans Through the Ages, both by Bill Wall.