The Concept of the Sublime in Eighteenth Century Philosophy

The development of the concept of the sublime as an aesthetic quality distinct from beauty was first brought into prominence in the eighteenth century in the writings of Anthony Ashley Cooper (third earl of Shaftesbury) and John Dennis, in expressing an appreciation of the fearful and irregular forms of external nature, and Joseph Addison's synthesis of Cooper's and Dennis' concepts of the sublime in his Spectator, and later the Pleasures of the Imagination,. All three Englishmen had, within the span of several years, made the journey across the Alps and commented in their writings of the horrors and harmony of the experience, expressing a contrast of aesthetic qualities.

John Dennis was the first to publish his comments in a journal letter published as Miscellanies, in 1693, giving an account of crossing the Alps where, contrary to his prior feelings for the beauty of nature as a "delight that is consistent with reason", the experience of the journey was at once a pleasure to the eye as music is to the ear, but "mingled with Horrours, and sometimes almost with despair." Shaftesbury had made the journey two years prior to Dennis but did not publish his comments until 1709 in the Moralists. His comments on the experience also reflected pleasure and repulsion, citing a "wasted mountain" that showed itself to the world as a "noble ruin", but his concept of the sublime in relation to beauty was one of degree rather than the sharp contradistinction that Dennis developed into a new form of literary criticism. Shaftesbury's writings reflect more of a regard for the awe of the infinity of space, where the sublime was not an aesthetic quality in opposition to beauty, but a quality of a grander and higher importance than beauty.

Joseph Addison made the "Grand Tour" in 1699 and commented in the Spectator , (1712) that "The Alps fill the mind with an agreeable kind of horror". The significance of Addison's concept of the sublime is that the three pleasures of the imagination that he identified; greatness, uncommonness, and beauty, "arise from visible objects" (sight rather than rhetoric). It is also notable that in writing on the "Sublime in external Nature", he does not use the term "sublime", but uses terms that would be considered as absolutive superlatives, e.g."unbounded", "unlimited",as wellas "spacious", "greatness", and on occasion terms denoting excess.

Addison's notion of greatness was integral to the concept of the sublime. An art object could be beautiful but it could not rise to greatness. His work Pleasures of the Imagination,, as well as Mark Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination, (1744), and Edward Young's Night Thoughts, (1745), are generally considered as the starting points for Edmund Burke's concept of the sublime in Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, (1756). The significance of Burke's writings is that he was the first philosopher to argue that the sublime and the beautiful are mutually exclusive. The dichotomy is not as simple as Dennis' opposition, but antithetical to the same degree as light and darkness. Beauty may be accentuated by light, but either intense light or darkness (the absence of light) is sublime to the degree that it can obliterate the sight of an object. The imagination is moved to awe and instilled with a degree of horror by what is "dark, uncertain, and confused." While the relationship of the sublime and the beautiful is one of mutual exclusiveness, either one can produce pleasure. The sublime may inspire horror, but one receives pleasure in knowing that the perception is a fiction. Burke's concept of the sublime was a stark contrast to the classical notion of aesthetic quality in Plato's Philebus,, Ion,, and Symposium, , and suggested ugliness as an aesthetic quality.

The eighteenth century was an active period for investigation of the sublime as an aesthetic quality with many writers making contributions, but Immanuel Kant was the first philosopher to incorporate aesthetic theory into a philosophic system in the Critique of Judgment,. In accordance with his critical method of the first two Critiques, Kant poses the question "How are judgments of taste possible?" In other words, how can we be certain that a judgment concerning aesthetic quality can be known to be universally true? For Kant, judgments of taste, or beauty, corresponded to the four primary divisions of his categories of the understanding, with the essential element for universalization as the "moment" of "relation" that presupposed a disinterested state where the satisfaction derived was independent of desire and interest. The application of the synthetic a priori, of the judgment of taste, requiring a transcendental deduction, validated the judgment as universal. This treatment of judgments of beauty is analogous to the arguments made in the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Deduction of the Critique of Pure Reason,. In those arguments, for example, the intuition of space is presupposed by the mind and not a result of its perceptions. If space is universally presupposed in perception, then the axioms of geometry must be true for everyone. Like space, time, and the categories, beauty belongs to the understanding.

The sublime, on the other hand, was for Kant a feeling of satisfaction celebrating reason itself and our capacity as moral beings. The feeling is experienced when our imagination fails to comprehend the vastness of the infinite and we become aware of the ideas of reason and their representation of the totality of the universe, as well as those powers that operate in the universe which we do not grasp and are beyond our control. The feeling is at once existential in that we realize our own finitude, or smallness, but is universal in the realization of our own moral worth as an autonomous being belonging to the fraternity of mankind which shares a moral destiny through its capacity to apply the moral laws of practical reason. The judgments of the sublime arise from two principles of reason, the mathematical and the dynamic, which are both elements that have a common thread throughout Kant's writings on pure and practical reason. The sublime reflects the exaltation of reason and the nobility of the human spirit, whereas judgments of beauty belong to the "mere" understanding.

In his discussion of the sublime in the Critique of Judgment,, Kant distinguishes between the sensible concept of measuring things by comparison, and an absolute which as a concept of reason defies comparison and is "great beyond every standard of the senses". It is the same concept of reason that Kant refers to in the Critique of Practical Reason, as a source of free, uncaused activity, and in the Critique of Pure Reason, as the Unconditioned which unifies and completes the conditioned knowledge of the understanding. The sublime is the satisfaction derived from the realization of this concept of reason and its aim at infinite totality. In all three Critiques, Kant had warned that these concepts of unity and the unconditioned are only ideas that regulate the search for empirical knowledge. Towards the end of the eighteenth century other philosophers would utilize Kant's aesthetic theory and his notion of the unconditioned to try and reconcile the knower and the known, re-integrating the sublime and beauty in an Absolute which embodied the idealism which Kant had spent his career intent on refuting.

References

Addison, Joseph. The Spectator,. Ed. Donald E. Bond. Oxford, 1965.
Brett, R.L. The Third Earl of Shaftesbury. , London, 1951.
Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. , London, 1958.
Collingwood, R.G. The Idea of Nature,. Oxford, 1945.
Cooper, Anthony Ashley, Third Earl of Shaftesbury. The Moralists: A Philosophical Rhapsody, in Characteristics, , Vol. II. Ed. John M. Robertson. London, 1900.
Dennis, John. Miscellanies in Verse and Prose, in Critical Works, , Vol. II. Ed. Edward Niles Hooker. Baltimore, 1939-1943.
Hipple, Walter John, Jr. The Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Picturesque in Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetic Theory. , Carbondale, IL, 1957.
Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Judgment. , 1790.
Nicolson, Marjorie Hope. Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory. , Ithaca, 1959.
Nicolson, Marjorie Hope. "Sublime in External Nature". Dictionary of the History of Ideas. , New York, 1974.
Stolnitz, Jerome. "On the Significance of Lord Shaftesbury in Modern Aesthetic Theory". Philosophical Quarterly, , 43(2):97-113, 1961.

Joseph Bonaparte and The New Jersey Devil

Joseph Bonaparte and The New Jersey Devil:

"Commodore Stephen Decatur was an American naval hero in the early nineteenth century. According to legend, he visited the Hanover Mill Works to inspect his cannonballs being forged. While there, he visited a firing range and sighted a flying creature flapping its wings. He fired a cannonball directly upon it. It had no effect and the creature flew away.

Joseph Bonaparte, the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte and former King of Spain, was reported to have seen the Devil. The incident took place in Bordentown, New Jersey while he was game hunting in the nearby woods.

The infamous Captain Kidd is reputed to have buried treasure in Barnegat Bay. Legend has it he beheaded one of his men to guard forever his buried treasure. Accounts claim the headless pirate and the Jersey Devil became friends and were seen in the evenings walking along the Atlantic and in nearby marshlands.

In Clayton, New Jersey, the Devil was chased by a posse to the edge of a wooded area. The Devil fled into the wood. The posse, afraid to pursue him, halted and declared 'if you're the Devil, rattle your chains.'

The Devil's taste varies. He was seen cavorting at sea with a mermaid in 1870. And he is reputed to have had a ham and egg breakfast with a Republican - Judge French. But the Devil is not known to have specific political leanings.

The Devil's sightings have covered great geographic distances. - from Bridgeton to Haddonfield in 1859; to the New York border in 1899; and from Gloucester City to Trenton in 1909. Until this time, tales of the Devil were passed by word-of-mouth. However, published police and newspaper accounts during a famous week in January of 1909 took the story of the Devil from folk belief to authentic folk legend. Thirty different sightings in a one-week period told of the Devil sailing across the Delaware River to Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Newspaper articles created a near panic in the region.

Theory and the Devil

After the 1909 appearances, the scientific community was asked for possible explanations. Reportedly, science professors from Philadelphia and experts from the Smithsonian Institution thought the Devil to be a prehistoric creature from the Jurassic period. Had the creature survived in nearby limestone caves? Was it a pterodactyl or a peleosaurus? New York scientists thought it to be a marsupial carnivore. Was it an extinct fissiped? However, the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia could not locate any record of a living of dead species resembling the Jersey Devil." (2)

There is a remote 'possibility' that the Hapsburgs and Randolphs or other Merovingian sorcerers who live in the upper Chesapeake area have something to do with this Devil. Some of their rituals definitely involve the invocation of Asmodeus or other elementals that some call demons. They also claim to be able to shape-shift but I suspect they are involved in projecting hallucinations or what is called mind-fogging. In any event it is interesting to find Napoleon's brother living in these parts of America.

Privilege - Alfred Lee Loomis and Hecateus

ALFRED LEE LOOMIS:

Privilege sometimes leads to productivity and creativity through community efforts such as this man made possible at his Tuxedo Park mansion. The community he created included the likes of Einstein, Fermi and Heisenberg. The things they studied helped develop many technologies and lead to the Manhattan Project. Loomis had investigated everything from ultrasonics to brain waves as the world moved toward war in 1940. The combination of ultrasonics and brainwaves or ESP is my special interest. The Chaos Science of pre-Ice Age humans might well have allowed more fantastic things than the atom bomb. I heartily recommend serious study of the pentagon-dodecahedron and The Lost Chord which Pythagoras learned a little about from the Pyramid. This enabled Pythagoras to be credited with creating the musical octaves.

Please ask yourself just how much credit was Pythagoras due if he only learned a little about these things that can heal through his 'Singing of the Spheres'? I implore society to understand what his Dean of Studies might have been part of in a long line of pre-Empire knowledge systems that Phoenicians like Thales and Pythagoras kept a small amount from. That Dean of Studies is Abaris (Rabbi) the Druid according to a noted scientist who passed over his privileged opportunity to be a top Basilidae political agent or priest. That noted scientist is Hecateus of Miletus and ML or Mile and his kin are indeed rabbis and Stuart BEES.

Star-Fire Ceremony

The Templar flag Columbus and da Gama traveled under was the dominant economic (and therefore if for no other reason) force in the three centuries before they set sail. Not just in Europe as we have shown, but in the entire world, these progeny of the Phoenician Brotherhood ended feudal socio-political strangleholds and opened the way for new possibilities. For these reasons and the eventual weakening of the church influence and Inquisitions (though that is what the church started against THEM!) we can truly be thankful.

This superficial evaluation is only one aspect of what we analyzed with input from all available quarters and presented a real and true threat from the continued macho or competitive nature of those in pursuit of power. Their progeny has lost much of the righteous underpinnings of the Templar zeal. Needless to say their influence has not been exposed in the cultural history of our various media including schools. Therefore constant harping on the subject is somewhat warranted. I only seek to set the stage for their specific history and influence on the time of Marco Polo and another 'fiction' that was used to create the impression that there was a need for 'discovery' of the 'New World'. The idea that the land of the Dragons in China was not part of a world order continues to the present. There are many perspectives on the origin of the Templars and why they were given Papal 'carte-blanche' but let me quote Gardner again to see something far more ancient than most scholars purporting to know when Templars or Masons became a part of our cultural fabric. He is talking about a re-structuring of much more ancient mystery schools at this juncture.

"It has long been a customary Jewish practice to hang meat for blood-letting before cooking and consumption, but in contrast the Christian faith is especially concerned with the figurative ingestion of blood. In the Christian tradition it is customary to take the Communion sacrament (the Eucharist), wherein wine is drunk from the sacred chalice, symbolically representing the blood of Jesus, the life-blood of the Messianic line. Could it be, therefore, that the modern Christian custom is an unwitting throwback to some distant pre-Noah rite of actually ingesting blood? If so, then since we also know that the chalice is a wholly female symbol which has always been emblematic of the womb, might this even have been an extract from divine menstrual blood which, as we have seen (Chapter 10), was revered as life-giving 'Star-Fire'? The answer to these questions is yes, that was precisely the custom - but it was not so unsavoury as it might seem. (3) Few of us think to enquire about the ultimate sources of many of today's bodily supplements, and those in the know are generally reluctant to tell us. The premarin hormone, for example, is made from the urine of pregnant mares, while some forms of growth hormone and insulin are manufactured from 'E.coli', a human faecal bacterium.

Before considering this ancient practice in detail, it is worth reminding ourselves that the edict to abstain from blood came not from Enki the Wise but from Enlil-Jehovah, the god of wrath and vengeance who had instigated the Flood, wrought havoc in Ur and Babylon and endeavoured to deceive Adam with regard to the Tree of Knowledge. This was not a god who liked people and the Sumerian records are very clear in this regard. If he forbade the intake of blood, this was not likely to have been an edict for the benefit of Noah and his descendants - it was most probably to their detriment.

The menstrual Star Fire ('Elixir Rubeus') of the goddess, being essentially regarded as fluid intelligence, was symbolically represented as the all-seeing eye {The circle with a dot again.}, or as the fiery cross (the 'rosi-crucis') {The Circle with the cross.}, precisely as depicted in the Mark of Cain. The emblems were later used by the mystery school of ancient Egypt, particularly that of the priest-prince Ankhfn-khonsu (c.2170 BC {Check out Crowley's Book of the Law and the name at the end of it.}, which was formally established as the Dragon Court by the twelfth-dynasty Queen Sobeknefru.

Another of the most prominent mystery schools was the Great White Brotherhood of Rameses III (c. 1450 BC) - so called, it is often said, because of their white raiment, but actually named because of their preoccupation with a mysterious white powder {Through 'high-spin' atomic attunement able to levitate the pyramid blocks, he says.}. According to the Supreme Grand Lodge of the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis, there were thirty-nine men and women on the High Council of the Brotherhood, who sat at the Temple of Karnak in Luxor. (4) A branch off this Order became more generally known as the Egyptian Therapeutae, who in Heliopolis and Judaea, were identified as the Essenes. (5) It was into this White Brotherhood of wise therapeutics and healers (the original Rosicrucians) that Jesus was later initiated to progress through the degrees, and it was his high standing in this regard which gained him the often used designation of 'Master'... 'essaios': that is, something secret or mystic. (In the Norse tradition, the gods are called the 'Asen', the guardians of purity, and the word has a similar root.)...

In the hermetic lore of the ancient Egyptian mystery school, this process of achieving enlightened consciousness was of express importance, with spiritual regeneration taking place by degrees through the thirty-three vertebrae of the spinal column {Including the tail bones or sacrum and coccyx.} until reaching the pituitary gland which invokes the pineal body. The science of this regeneration is one of the 'Lost Keys' of Freemasonry, and it is the reason why ancient Freemasonry was founded upon thirty-three degrees." (6)

Though they have impressive pedigrees and lots of nice myths I am sure their knowledge is limited by the lack of ethics entailed in the elitist attitudes and acts of their members. Levitation and use of cosmic thought field potentials including one dimensional harmonic force and the probable 'Lost Chord' pre-dates these people, in my mind or point of view. MacDari is a Masonic linguist who suggests this time was even before the building of the Sphinx, and he says Phre-Masonry of the Lord Sun God Iesa was an early Brotherhood of Man that Jesus was named after. Gardner admits to 'pre-Noah' knowledge and probably has an open-mind about earlier roots, but his story focuses on the Bible and the Pendragon Grail legends.

Purpose

There is no God.

Belief is a stray sentiment; it functions furiously around its determination to survive. If it is healthy, it is impenetrable, if it is not, it is unknowingly so. Sadly, it also doesn't end with man; it ends with conflict and qualms. Men know perfectly to be courageous, they do not know but what to be courageous of, for or against. A belief is a second conscience overruling the normal one, it provides for all expectations of courage. It is difficult to confront a firm belief with the firmest of qualms, it is easier instead to assault it with them. One must never impress a doubt, one must induce it. Frustration is the first offspring of a belief losing its grounds. The firmer the latter, the superior the former.

No belief is entire, hence, no belief can be ended entirely; ridden by disparate proportions of an unapparent guilt, man, of what he believes wholly, holds desires against it. Belief is a personal satisfaction that justifies man's actions; it also appropriates it. 'We do what we believe in' - to the extent of - 'we must do what we believe in'. People aspire towards their beliefs. Like they commit to their satisfactions, they also prefer to commit to the place where they find it. That is in itself the greatest injustice a man can perpetrate - to rely on something uncertain and forge in oneself the assurance that it is not; and then expect it to yield.

Man is never totally satisfied.

Going back to the notion that there is a God helps us with another notion, that we aren't it. The first notion is an indefatigably powerful alibi, or rather, an apology for the limitations we abide by. Outside these limitations we gain our satisfactions. Hence, we are never totally satisfied. Only in little whiles, the elusive points of Time when we're Gods.

A conclusion such as that there is no god helps us to declare another - that within his limitations, a man may rise so, that that satisfaction he aims for must be more than final. They must find a medium to breathe and exist in an inert independence where they can choose to surrender without the reluctance and indifference, typical of their import. When we talk of another kind of survival other than the primary one, with a greater nature of independence, a de facto downright unconditional and total submission, and where the transient satisfaction he aims for is more than the final ability in man or is a somewhat credible challenge to it, when we appropriately stop believing in God to succumb to believing in something god-like in us - we talk of 'Purpose'.

Between man and the obtainable, lies a cheap form of development - motive; between a man and the unobtainable, lies the pursuit that searches beyond the compatible in him - purpose. Motive constricts man to his self; purpose is all and any involvement beside and outside this. Motive and purpose are close counterparts of the range of man's ability, almost like alibi and reason. Motive is a funnel for it, and purpose, a gauge. Both are concrete definitions: motive, of a virtue in man and purpose, of the peak of all his virtues. Both are also stalwart contradictions to that same range of the ability of man for motive becomes the exhaustion of one or more attributes, and purpose, their last gesture.

Purpose is never real. It is so because it is higher than the obsessive human prioritization of reality. A man with purpose is alive only to morality when morality is not a sense of right and wrong but merely a sense of direction.

To know how much we can expand is to understand a persisting relation with ourselves, but to know how much we can expand immediately after that obvious relation is to infringe an unfounded realm, much beyond the scope in us, and find, outside one's personal capacity and in an unnatural uniqueness, a paramount artificial strength (for the source is external) and a tantamount egoistical desire.

A man who finds purpose discovers a satisfaction more pure than any happiness and superior to all joy; this satisfaction rears further the implementation of the purpose, and the pursuit of its result. A satisfied result engenders a threat to the world, to alter it by the means of a single man, by a change personal in one's individuality to a change impersonal in the collectivism of an entire breed.

German Philosophers

German Culture: German Philosophers

German and German speaking philosophers have made vast contributions to philosophy, and through philosophy, to the course of world history. Perhaps the most influential were the 'great triumvirate' of Kant, Hegel and Marx. Other noteworthy philosophers include Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger and the Nobel prize-winner Hermann Hesse.

One of the greatest characters of German philosophy was Friedrich Nietzsche, who professed himself to be "a follower of Dionysus, the god of life's exuberance", and declared that he hoped Dionysus would replace Jesus as the primary cultural standard for future millennia.

Nietzsche showed his academic talents early on. As a child he didn't like playing, and the neighbour's children called him 'the little minister'. He died in 1900 after 11 years of madness. He went insane one morning after seeing a horse being whipped by a coachman. Historians argue whether his insanity was caused by syphilis, drug abuse, or a disease inherited from his father.

Nietzsche was heavily influenced by the work of Schopenhauer, a man so unpleasant, negative and pessimistic that even his own mother eventually banned him from her house.

Schopenhauer's philosophy was based on that of Kant, but he did not believe in individual free will, he believed that we are all part of a vast single will which is the entire universe, and any sense of individuality is pure illusion.

Schopenhauer never married, perhaps not surprisingly considering his view of women, he once declared that women "are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and teachers of our childhood by the fact that they are themselves childish, frivolous and short-sighted; in a word, they are big children all their life long." Instead, he shared his lonely existence with a poodle.

The first of the 'great triumvirate', Kant, was born in 1724 in Königsberg, (now part of Russia, and called Kaliningrad). He was one of the fathers of 'critical philosophy', and divided modes of thinking into two kinds, analytic and synthetic.

Analytical propositions are those which can be proven to be true by analysis, for example 'pink boots1 are boots2'. This statement must be true, because the predicate is contained in the subject. (If pink boots1 weren't boots2, then they wouldn't be boots1!)

Synthetic propositions are those that cannot be contrived purely from analysis, for example, 'the boot is pink', this relates to something in the real world and cannot be shown to be true or untrue purely by analysis of the statement, you need to see the boot. His most famous works include his 'Critique of Pure Reason' and 'The Metaphysics of Ethics', in which he discussed his views on ethics.

Kant died in 1804, when Hegel was 33. Hegel was born in Stuttgart and his philosophy was greatly influenced by that of Kant. After an inheritance he was able to devote his entire life to academic works.

He believed that dialectical reasoning (debate by question and answer to resolve two differing points of view) was the only way for progress in human thought. He believed that all men were fundamentally free, and that our task is to find a state or a set of laws under which we can all live freely.

Hegel did not advocate anarchy, rather he thought that we could make ourselves free by choosing to obey laws we knew to be rational. Hegel died in 1831 of cholera, after one day's illness. He was buried next to another German philosopher, Fichte, and near another, Karl Solger, in a plot he had chosen himself.

The last of these three, with perhaps the biggest influence on recent history, born in 1818, was Karl Marx. He is in fact best known for his economic theories, especially one seminal work he produced together with Engels, 'The Communist Manifesto'. In fact this only represents only a tiny fraction of his thought. Overall, his writing on Communism represents only an aside, he wrote much more simply in criticism of capitalism, or on analysis of concrete political events.

An even more contemporary philosopher was Martin Heidegger, who died only in 1976. He was strongly influenced by Nietzsche, and in turn his work influenced the French existentialist Jean Paul Sartre, although Heidegger himself disagreed with existentialist interpretations of his work. His work has had a great influence on Western philosophy, but he has received little public recognition because of his refusal to apologise for his involvement with the National Socialist Party. To what degree he was involved is still unclear.

Standing like a giant over modern German literary philosophy is the Nobel prize-winner, Hermann Hesse. At the age of 13 he was told he would be 'a poet or nothing', so he started off by writing unimpressive romantic novels. His first successful work was the more philosophical 'Peter Camenzind', which positively burned with anger at his repressed and traditional childhood.

His most widely read work is 'Siddhartha', which was published in 1922, it is based on the idea that man's true nature has been lost and can only be found through self expression.

Hesse was at one point accused of supporting the Nazis, whom he did not openly criticize, but while based in Switzerland he did a lot to help political refugees from Germany, and refused to leave out sections of his works which dealt with pogroms and anti-Semitism. His publisher Peter Suhrkamp, was arrested by the Nazis in 1944.

Hesse received the Nobel Prize in 1946, and thereafter did not produce further major works. He died in 1962.

My Insight into Numerology

From time to time, we wonder about the mystery that exists in our day to day experiences and events that happen in our lives. Some parts of these events are beyond our control and some are not. We are all here to experiment the theory that we learnt before we decided to embark upon our journey in this lifetime. Sometimes life does not go as far as what was originally intended in the years of previous planning. Well, welcome to planet earth! It is, of course, alright to make mistakes in life as long as we deal with the experience in an appropriate way. In other words, your individual response to what happens to you in your experience or lesson is as important as the circumstance itself.

We are not perfect as a human race and we are far from reaching full potential in terms of our universal understanding, despite the technological advancement we have at the moment. Even with our vast amount of available technology, we are still far from what we can really achieve when we tap into the energy that is provided to us by the universe, yet remains still to be acknowledged by the majority of us.

This numerology series is about numerology from my perspective and personal experiences with the numbers. Numerology is a down-to-earth science. If we really apply it seriously, we can attain a better result in understanding our circumstances. If we allow skepticism to take place, in reality, nothing will evolve or move in our lives. It is not about the history of numerology. We are not discussing the method or technique I will be using here because it does not matter. You can use any technique because I believe all methods will bring you the same result when applied properly.

The basic cycle of the digits 1 through 9 is used in numerology to symbolize the human life cycle. Within the range of these nine numbers lies the potential for the total life experience, including all things physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. We always reduce the number into one single digit with the exception of the Master Numbers 11, 22, and 33. These numbers have been found to have a special significance that precludes their reduction to their single essence of 2, 4, and 6. The characteristics of these numbers are beyond the range of normal human experiences. The experiences these numbers can bring are only for the highly enlightened and the highly evolved. The numbers 11, 22, and 33 never stop creating the future. These vibrations are the threshold of change and progress in the world. Please don't be carried away here if you have one of those Master Numbers. Do not allow your ego to take an exaggerated effect on you and your sense of purpose here in this lifetime. Maybe you are special, by all means, but by having these vibrations in your surroundings only mean you might have a greater responsibility in terms of making changes in your surroundings or the world. I do use the zero as an identifier to indicate people's internal strength and gifts that they need to explore in their life cycle to achieve their proper growth.

There is no number in all the numbers 1 to 9 or the Master Numbers that can claim to be better than the others, but each number can bring a different experience to the person who has that vibration. Why do we need to have these vibration or experiences? That will depend upon you individually in respect to your evolution and where you are going with it.

When I will go through all the different explanations in subsequent articles, I will list the different meanings of each number, from both positive and negative points of view, but that does not imply you will have all the qualities of those numbers that apply to you. People may have similar numbers or vibrations, however, that does not mean they are exactly the same in terms of their personalities or characteristics. On the contrary, they can be distinct opposites in terms of their understanding of life. This is due to other contrasting numbers existing in their individual charts. It can sometimes reflect a similar direction in life, yet a different twist or flavor might be apparent. What is in a chart? Plenty of qualities, and aspects of yourself and your characteristics that can help to determine the likely course you will take in life.

Do not take word-for-word the explanation of the essence of each number when building your understanding of your numbers or vibration, because other factors might take place or effect in your life. Learn to use numerology to help you find a better understanding of who you are and what you have as challenges and attainment in your life. Numerology can be used as your main direction as well as pinpointing your karma in this life.

Use numerology as a tool for guidance, but not as an easy answer for you because, in the end, you hold your own answers and you do have to do the work to accomplish whatever it is you desire in this lifetime. Your worst experiences are your best assets, depending on how you look at life in the first place. Hope you will enjoy the journey with me to discover your vibrations.

Dorothy Dunn and Primitive Art

The artist's of tribes of the Great Plains left their paper trail for centuries on rocks, cave walls, and buffalo robes and other animal skins. After contact with the white man the Native American artists began to use paper from the ledger books that traders used for record keeping, thus the term "ledger art".

The drawings were characteristic of the style that had persisted for centuries and culminated with the end of the proto-modern era of the Native American art movement.

It was at the end of this era and the beginning of the Modernistic era of the movement that Dorothy Dunn was teaching at the Santa Fe school. During her tenure she encouraged her students to continue the traditions of their predecessors in the "flat", or "primitive" art style. Here one can cite Dunn's unique concept of "primitive", and even more so her concept of "primitive art".

Anthropologists use the term "primitive" as a general category to describe cultures which had not achieved a certain standard (define modernity). For Dunn, a primitive was not a certain type of culture, but described individuals and objects indigenous to any, every, culture. The primitive subject was that gifted individual, or "seer" whom was able to discern the primitive objects relevant to their culture. These objects were also "primitives", and represented the signs, icons, or symbols of a culture. Thus, for Dunn, "primitive art" was the one to one relationship between the seer and the perceived set of primitive objects of their culture. Primitive was not a certain type of culture, but a certain set of variables occurring in every culture, and primitive art was an event that portrayed the values, or what was of importance in that culture. Thus, Dunn encouraged her students to carry on the tradition into the Modernist era.

Dorothy Dunn's concept of primitive art yields a definition that adequately depicts the problems and ambiguities in the usage of the term "primitive." She agrees with Boas' observation that in the broadest sense, every age has its primitives, its own interpreters and seers, and the assignment of the term primitive to these individuals is relative to the point of view based upon the knowledge of the observer. At the same time, she also cites Ralph Linton who denounces the commonly accepted connotation of the term "primitive" as assigning all primitives to the "childhood of art," but she seems to differ essentially from Linton's assertion that the "primitive" in "primitive art" is a relative term. Relational perhaps, but relative only in the sense that each culture defines its primitives according to its own set of values. The relational aspect is that primitive art occurs in every culture as an event between the seers, and that set of symbols, signs or designs which are iconic to that particular culture as its own set of primitives. The relationship is complex and is manifest in every society. This relationship defines the absolute in "primitive art." She summarizes this position in the statement that "Primitive is a relational term, conditioned by time and place, yet maintaining constant universal elements pertaining to frontiers."

Dunn notes that "Indian painting is the first art in history to have sprung, full-fledged, from the primitive into the contemporary world at a time when it was peculiarly compatible with both. Although it has won recognition as modern art, a consideration of some facts and assumptions in regard to primitive art may evaluate certain qualities of modern Indian painting which place it in a position of being old and new, primitive and contemporary." The reference to an absolute in primitive art is evident here, even though for the sake of communication she has to stumble over the common usage of the term "primitive" which she is trying to minimize.

In this regard Dunn states that the term "primitive art" calls for qualification. The qualification that Dunn employs is one that synthesizes the contrast between a diachronic and synchronic perspective of the term. In her usage of such terms as "time and place" and "frontiers" in contrasting the relative and universal aspects of primitive art she is indeed searching for a definition that would satisfy Fabian's demand for "allochronic determinations." If one were to isolate all instances of "time and place" diachronically (in linear, historical or temporal sequence) and apply them laterally, across cultural lines and the boundaries of possible worlds synchronically, and then abstract an intensive, characteristic notion of primitive as a universal concept, then one could have a definition that could be used comparatively at any given time and place, i.e. satisfying Fabian's demand for coevalence in discourse, and overcome any ethnocentricity a contemporary culture may have in its assessments and analysis of an object culture under study which lies at its frontier and depicts a different time and place.

The need for such qualification is summarized by Dunn in stating that "Anthropologists question certain implications of the expression" (primitive art) where a "consideration of tolerance" in the matter of "other civilizations" and "our own" may be comparatively based upon technical and material advancements, but overlook the fact that the lack of such advancements "might allow major emphasis upon esthetic and spiritual value." Here Dunn is to a degree once again segregating the primitive in a unique aspect, as she does in stating that "In primitive society symbolism is a special system through which ideas as images can be conveyed understandably to an individual or group," but her underlying supposition is that in every culture in every age society has its primitives; seers or interpreters who are the gifted individuals that discern and depict this special system of symbols. It is an event, a one to one relationship between the subject as a primitive interpreting the primitive as objectivity, and the event is a primal act.

In this Dunn has designated the interpreter within a culture as one who objectively identifies those elements that are the marks of that culture, and that the act is universal. While every society has its system of symbols, and certain images may be shared by diverse cultures, the same image may have different meanings cross-culturally or even have multi-references within a culture (The Zuni is a prime example). Every culture will iconize the sun and the moon, contrast the night with the day. The triangle has a range of meanings distinct in cultures as close as the Hopi and the Arapaho, or as diverse as its interpretation by the Western economist (The Greek letter Delta, signifying change). Yet, the act of the interpreter translating their culture's symbols into a communicable form is the absolute, universal, primitive act.

In this sense of the term "primitive" one is no longer referring to a category, or a term of allochronic discourse denoting temporal distance. It is not a qualifier for an object or culture, but is the object, subject, or act itself. Its sense is the act of the interpretation of symbols establishing a basis for and expediting the conveyance of intersubjective knowledge. Whether it is the interpreter within a culture translating a sign and conveying meaning to another interpreter within the culture, or an interpreter considering the system of symbols as an object language, the notion is that one is not dealing with a thing qualifiable as a primitive, but is identifying the primitive itself, and is what the logicians like to refer to as cross-identifications, or identifications of individuals across the boundaries of possible worlds, resulting in well-defined individuations or the objectivity of individuating functions.

This appears on its face to be actually quite useless. First, there is a set of objects within a culture the meaning of which is peculiar to that culture, and that particularity renders it non-informative for cross-identification with a set of particulars in another culture. The primitive act, conversely, is defined in such broad terms that it appears as nothing more than an abstraction that could not possibly produce any meaningful information. On a positive note, this sense of primitive has eliminated the temporal distancing with is denoted when used as a term of allochronic discourse, seemingly satisfying Fabian's demand for allochronic determinations (coevalance). Execution is problematic however, as the paradox of anthropological discourse displays itself when the term "primitive" is used, as Dunn often does, in the sense of temporal distancing in order to minimize or eliminate that very connotation.

By example, take another term of allochronic discourse that conveys temporal distancing. That term is "savage", or "savagery." Frank Hamilton Cushing used the term numerous times during his tenure as a participant observer at the Zuni Pueblo from 1879-1884 when reporting to his colleagues and superiors, and in various publications. In our own time he has been criticized for this as "wrong-headed" and "wrong-hearted." I hesitate to call these remarks wrong-headed or wrong-hearted, but in the very least they are incorrect, and any ethnologist/anthropologist worth their weight in salt should realize this. To summarize Fabian: Anthropological discourse about the "primitive" or the "savage" is not about people in the real world, at least not directly. First and immediately, it is about the primitive or the savage as an internal referent of a discourse or as a scientifically constituted object of a discipline. One must not confuse the logical content of a scientific language and the real world. That is, while temporal distancing creates its object for the anthropologist the synchronic of discourse projects its referent atemporally. In other words, Cushing was a scientist of the Victorian era using the scientific language of his time in order to communicate effectively with his colleagues, superiors, and general media audience. Communicative competence and valuing sociality guarantees its rationality and objectivity. As long as anthropological discourse does not confuse its own logical content with the real world then rationality is not violated by deviant utterances and the normative content of the discipline is maintained, thereby attaining rationality and objectivity through conformity.

The terms "primitive" and "savage" do pose differences, however, and is likely the reason, though not a justification for, the criticisms posed against Cushing for the use of the term. As Fabian points out in regard to the term "savage", "no amount of nominalist technicality can purge the term of its moral, aesthetic, and political connotations." It cannot be reduced to universal data.

"Primitive," on the other hand, is quite conducive to universalization. As Dunn notes, in an Indian society, there are no artists. As a medium for expression anyone may be a "creative participant in some capacity", and as such the groundwork for an inclusive base for interpretation of a communicable set of symbols is laid, providing an ontological basis of rationality. That is, the former abstract concept of primitive art as a primitive act has been provided with content. This should, to a reasonable degree, satisfy the ontologist and anthropologist alike. In the ontological sense rationality is viewed as "perspective- taking" and does not require objectivity. Objectivity requires agreement, or intersubjective validation through public reciprocal intentions, where the objectivity of claims is tied to their communicability. Objectivity becomes a "personal accomplishment" (Willard) and belongs to the anthropological sense of rationality as a social fact where forms of communication are used to express approval of someone's actions (aesthetic appreciation).

Quoting Alice Corbin Henderson, Dunn states that in an Indian society, art is "possessed in common" and "totally lacking in individualistic concept." Thus, objectivity is enjoined with intentionality as personal accomplishment without a reference to the individual. This would satisfy a pedagogic sense of rationality in that in an Indian society "the surest way to make a prayer effective is to symbolize the matter prayed for" (Bandelier). If the prayer (the art of rhetoric) was effective, then it was handed down from generation to generation and its success justified its rationality.

Dunn contrasts Indian art and contemporary art in distinguishing "modern" society where the title of the artist may well be deserved with the capacity to impress representatively, whereas to artists of primitive societies "painting does not seek primarily to portray a subject in a given place and time in a more or less representationalist manner, but rather to stress the fundamental qualities of the object or power. It is concerned with the inner functions and meanings rather than the superficial appearance of nature, and it sets forth the essential aspects of a subject?the primitive artist gives right-of-way to the basic elements in his interpretation." Dunn then cites Linton who observed that the "insistence upon accurate naturalistic representation seems childish to the primitive artist who, although he admires technical skill, feels that it is being expended for trivial ends in an amplification of the obvious."

Two worlds, side by side. The Indian artist may say of the contemporary artist that they are in forgetfulness of their origins, and the contemporary artist may refer to a child like quality of the Indian's painting. Nonetheless, to Dorothy Dunn they are both primitive art, or better said, a primitive act, and both have their reason for being. "Each aspect which characterizes Indian painting as a primitive art has its own reason for being. Likewise, certain of these same features qualify Indian painting as modern. This seeming paradox may well be in the fact that international painting, for reasons of its own, increasingly evolves forms and styles, even concepts, not unlike those long and deeply developed by Indian artists."

And so it was that Dorothy Dunn followed her inclinations towards the "primitive" and encouraged her students at the Santa Fe school to preserve the authenticity of their heritage through long established modes of interpreting the primitives.

REFERENCES:

Dunn, Dorothy. American Indian Painting of the Southwest and Plain'sArea. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1968.

Fabian, Johannes. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. NY: Columbia University Press, 1983.

Hintikka, Jaakko. "The Semantics of Modal Notions and the Indeterminacy of Ontology". Synthese. 21: 408-424, 1970.

Willard, Charles. A Theory of Argumentation. Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, 1989.

Illuminati in Kentucky

Illuminati in Kentucky:

My fevered imagination includes the probability that Andrew Jackson and stories of the Bell Witch are connected with this kind of knowledge.

"In his 1806 book Travels In America, Thomas Ashe writes of his experiences with a vast cavern originally discovered in 1783 beneath the city of Lexington, 300 feet long, 100 feet wide and 19 feet high, containing exotic artifacts, a stone altar for sacrifices, human skulls and bones piled high, and mummified remains. The mummies are very strange looking and have red hair. The local native Americans claimed that these were the remnants of an ancient civilization that died out long ago. Respected historian George W. Ranck also discusses this "lost city" buried beneath Lexington in 1872. It is said that local Native Americans identified the bodies as being from the ancient race who inhabited the area long before them.

In 1792 an early settler, General John Payne, made a strange discovery while building his house in the tiny town of Augusta, KY, 63 miles North of Lexington. From Historical Sketches of Kentucky by Lewis Collins, Maysville, Ky. 1847, page 205:

'The bottom on which Augusta is situated is a large burying ground of the ancients...They have been found in great numbers, and of all sizes, everywhere between the mouths of Bracken and Locust Creeks, a distance of about a mile and a half. From the cellar under my (Payne's) dwelling, 60 by 70 feet, over a hundred and ten skeletons were taken. I measured them by skulls, and there might have been more, whose skulls had crumbled into dust...The skeletons were of all sizes, from seven feet to infant.

David Kilgour (who was a tall and very large man) passed our village at the time I was excavating my cellar, and we took him down and applied a thigh bone to his. The man, if well-proportioned, must have been 10 to 12 inches taller than Kilgour, and the lower jaw bone would slip on over his, skin and all. Who were they? How came their bones here?'

'When I was in the army, I inquired of old Crane, a Wyandot and of Anglerson, a Delaware, both intelligent old chiefs, and they could give me no information in reference to these remains of antiquity. Some of the largest trees of the forest were growing over the remains when the land was cleared in 1792.'

A few years later, on December 21, 1806, the town of Augusta, KY was visited by Harman Blennerhassett, lawyer, occultist, and member of the Illuminati. Was he aware of the ancient underground civilization in the region?

Blennerhassett was born on October 8, 1764 in Ireland {The Black and Red Lodge of Masonry and Keogh's grandfather in my researches on this probable great great-grandfather of mine is connected I suspect.}and moved to the USA after graduating. He and his wife (who was also his niece which is in-line with the Merovingian genetic programming so long as there are adequate foreign genes put into the mix which the Hapsburgs forgot for a few centuries) lived on Blennerhassett island on the Ohio River. Blennerhassett was a friend and colleague of Adam Weishaupt {Son of a Rabbi}, and a member of his Order of the Illuminati, reaching the level of Illuminatus Magus. He was also a friend of Vice President Aaron Burr, with whom he engaged in a conspiracy to remove President Thomas Jefferson from power. The plot was discovered and Blennerhassett's secret camp at Marietta was destroyed on December 19, 1806.

Blennerhassett fled with about 50 of his fellow initiates, leaving his wife, his sons and the rest of his guerrilla troops behind. But instead of making a direct exit, Blennerhassett risked making a mysterious side trip to Augusta, KY, arriving on the day of the solstice. Clearly, there was some occult significance to his visit to Augusta. But what? That Blennerhassett was interested in the forgotten ancient civilization is a distinct possibility." (7)

Extra Terrestrial Genetic Defect Myth

There is a large contingency of people who believe in aliens and extra terrestrials. There are endless stories of abduction by UFO aliens, unbelievably performing spacecraft and ancient myths. One of the most intriguing and plausible explanations of why alien species are here or come to visit with us mostly harmless humans is to inter bread with us and repair their genetic flaws, which over hundreds of thousands of years had caused damage to their DNA. Some scientists have helped propel these myths but providing interesting information we have learned thru the space program about issues with radiation in space. For long-term space travel we must find solutions to protect us from the radiation, which might also damage our DNA. Thus conspiracy theorists and UFO-logists have hung onto this theory of why they believe the aliens are abducting people and as per the stories of the abducted seem to be quite interested in the human reproductive bio-systems.

Now then, let us discuss the flaws in these theories. First a civilization which may have been transplanted to this planet thru necessity or exploration outpost or colony would already have complete control of their DNA and bio-systems and thus have no need to introduce the human DNA into their lines as it would be somewhat weaker and less evolved. An advanced species which had control of their DNA would not have innate needs for procreation or need sex and thus would have figured out a way to clone without DNA replication loss issues. Additionally a species, which was far advanced would not be worried about DNA damage and would simply fix those issues themselves without having to splice genes from human beings. They would be able to genetically modify their DNA to over come any loses or replication issues from long-term space flight due to radiation or any issues with in-breading from their small population of alien space colony travelers.

Indeed whether you believe in aliens, UFOs or extra terrestrials is irrelevant to the question of if such a story is plausible, as it does not stand to reason. The legends, ancient writings and theories do not seem to hold water. As science learns more about DNA and as our own species becomes transhuman we will be able to better debate these alien urban legends and their flaws.

Alumpeth Devi Temple of Kerala in India

Alumpeth temple is an ancient kalari temple of Sri Bhadrakali (Devi), located at Vathikulam, a remote but beautiful village in Kerala state of South India. Vathikulam village is accessable by road travelling 7 kms towards east from Kayamkulam town. Kayamkulam is a well known town on national highway 47 about 108 kms towards north of Trivandrum and 110 kms towards south from Cochin. Kayamkulam is well connected by railway also. Motive behind the incarnation of Sribhadrakali (Devi) is to save the gods from insult and despair, people worship her in times of dejoice, neglect and impending emotional distress. Devi is also known to be a goddess on call at times when life is in risk and existence is felt to be impossible. Since Alumpeth temple is in the form of ancient Indian Kalari (school of literal and martial arts) people depend her when their progress in educational, cultural, scientific and legal endeavours are thwarted by enemies or negative situational factors. Prayer

Sit in a comfortable position with closed eyes and chant the manthra:

"Ya devi sarwabhootheshu
mathruroopena samsthitha
namasthasyai namasthasyai
namasthasyai namo nama:"

several times and achieve bliss.

Irrespective of size or amount, devotees offer anything under the sun to Devi. Offerings range from a garland or flower to an elephant. Fridays and Tuesdays are very important for this prayer. For resolving long standing problems, one has to better follow Velliyazhcha Vritham (Friday Fasting Prayer). The program starts on thursday after evening bath, taking no solid food other than fruits from thursday evening to saturday morning. Intoxicants, non-vegetarian food and sex should be avoided during these hours, should bath twice a day and chant the above manthra, this should be continued for any number of weeks until desired outcome is received. This prayer has high significance from naturopathic and yogic perspective also.

Mythology Lord Siva married Sati, daughter of king Daksha and were living happily at kailas. Daksha conducted a yaga (grand ceremony and feast to gods) where Siva and Sati were not invited. Despite of Siva's admonishment, Sati attended the yaga expecting her parents would apologize and receive her. But she was neglected and insulted in public. Sati felt desperate and ended her life jumping into the fire.

Lord Siva turned furious and bang his hair on earth giving birth to two frightening figures, Sri Bhadrakali(Devi) and Virabhadra. They destroyed the yaga and killed Daksha (Devibhagavatham 7th chapter). Hence Devi is believed to be a savior on call at times when ones esteem is injured.

History

Alumpeth temple is the holy seat of Sri Bhadrakali. Yogiswaran (ancient family chief) of Mulamoottil family was a devotee of Panayannarkavu goddess who brought Devi through penence in 16th century to Alumpeth temple. Yogiswaran is the physical founder of this temple. Yogiswaran's predecessors where accountant generals of kayamkulam dynasty and enjoyed immence power, wealth and all virtues of feudalism. This was a glorious period in the history of temple. In 1924AD the grand family and wealth were divided into 7 branches and the 7th branch is Alumpeth temple. Eravankara Punchaman Madom Thirumeni is the thanthri (spiritual chief) and this position runs hereditary in that family. Temple committee with the consent of thantri appoints poojari and other temple employees from time to time.

Siva: Third of thrimoorthi (Hindu Holy Trinity) responsible for samharam (destruct ion). At Alumpeth temple Siva sits near Devi. Purakuvilakku, Dhara and Mrithyunjaya pooja are important to Siva.

Ayyappa: Son of Siva in Vishnu. Ayyappa sits near Devi in t he temple. During sabarimala season, Ayyappa devotees crowed in the temple to start their sabarimala pilgrimage.

Veerabhadra: Brother of Devi, born along with her from Siva at the time of Daksha's killing.

Brahma Rakshas is considered as a part of Lord Vishnu.

Yakshi : Friend and helper of Devi. Tender coconut is her favorite offering.

Nagaraja and Nagayakshi : King and queen of snakes worshiped in ancient Kerala.. Panoor Kavu, bush located 1 km. south west of the temple is also known for snake worship .

Yogiswaran: Ancient family chief and founder of Alumpeth temple. His seat is Kadanath Kalari located 600 m. south of main temple.

Gandharwan (Musician of Heaven) also sits at Kadanath Kalari.

FESTIVALS

Major festival in this temple is on "Pathamudayom" (10th day of month Medom). Usually it comes on 23rd of April every year. Festival starts with special pooja for main and sub gods. In the morning ladies offer "Pongal" to the goddess. Pongal is a custom in which ladies cook Pudding in temple premises for fulfilment of their long cherished dreams. Kalasam, ezhunnallathu are conducted during day time. Night there will be traditional cultural programs like Kathakali, Music contest, Koothu, Theeyattu etc. Festival ends next day early morning with gurusi (holy sacrifice) and fire works. Vijayadasami is another festival in this temple.Devibhagavatham (epic text on Sree Bhadrakali) is read. Children from nearby places are brought for vidyarambham (commencement of study). Spiritual cheif writes alphabets on children's tongue with gold. During Sabarimala season (Vrichikam, Dhanu months) special Ayyappa Poojas are conducted. Ayyappa devotees crowed here for Malayidil (commencements of 2 months penence for Ayyappa) and kettumuruckal (fitting their bags for sabarimala pilgrimage).

Other Hindu festivals like Onam, Vishu, Deepavali, Sivarathri, Bharani, Ayilyam, Ekadasi are also celebrated. Star Rohini of every month is also important here.

OFFERINGS

(A) Vazhipadu/offering

Brief list of major offerings are given. Rate mentioned is for 1 year. Devotees can book the offerings by sending a cheque/Draft drawn in favour of Secretary, Alumpeth Devikshethram, Vathikulam, payable at Kayamkalam. This may be accompanied by a covering letter indicating the item of offering, devotee's star/date of birth. The offering pooja will be conducted on the same date of every month for a period of 1 year (12 pooja's) and the prasadam (blessed remainings of pooja) will be send to the devotee over post.

Ganapathy Homam: Special offering to Ganapathy (Vinayak) for eleminating barriers and adverse factors in life (Rs. 1250/- / 40 $). Mrithyunjaya Homam : Word meaning, win over death. It is a Siva Pooja conducted with the objective of saving life of person whose life is threatened. Lord Siva is considered as daring even to destroy god of death to save his devotes (Rs. 1500/- / 50$).

Sathru Samhara Pooja : Special offering to Sri Bhadrakali for total destruction of one's enemy (Rs. 1500/- / 50 $).

Noorum Palum: Specail offering to Nagaraja and Nagayakshi for birth of children and healthy growth of next generation. (Rs. 1500/- / 50 $). Ayyappa Pooja: Excludes the devotee from bad luck due to the influence of Sani (Saturn). (RS. 1500/- / 50 $).

Payasam/Pudding for Veerabhadran (Rs. 200/- / 5 $).

Payasam/Pudding for Brahmarakshasu (Rs. 200/- / 5 $).

Tender Coconut and varapodi for yakshi (Rs. 200/- / 5$).

Full day Pooja: for main and sub gods includes all the items 1 - 8 and unique pooja in devotees name to Sri Bhadrakali (Rs. 10000/- / 250 $).

(B)Contributions

Devotees can also contribute to development of the temple. Recently made such contribution includes Mr. Pallickal Sunil's contribution of a building. Another is an attractive protection wall to the temple constructed in memory of Panoor Kizhakkathil Thankamma Kunjamma and Thottathil Raghavan Unnithan.

The Pertinence of Nudity

Every kind of nudity is an abstraction. A man without clothes submits himself to immediate opinion. Nudity emphasizes coarseness devoid of culture, clothes advocate culture without coarseness. Culture and coarseness are subjective omissions. We wear our personalities, we also wear their failings. When romancing opportunity, man despises possibility. Nudity is the greatest opportunity that yields the nearest possibility to human perfection. Human perfection is an abstraction, too. The concept of drenching oneself with something that selfishly annuls this, is known as clothing. Topically, it is redeemed as Fashion.

The first human walked naked on earth, says the bible. But the Bible can be wrong. Salvation is extorted by a means of esthetic nakedness supported by an ethical one, say I. I am wrong. Skin is where the soul is most.

The river is nude. Hence, it has a surface. The sky is not nude. Hence, it bears an exaggeration of surface. Anything superficial allows manipulation. Nudity is not superficial, clothing is. It is impossible without surfaces; correction: it is impossible without their employment.

Life is a pornography of awkward silences, purpose must find reason where the source is unfounded. Perfect nudity is a demand on beauty. Beauty is a compromise on that demand. A body is its element.

If every man on the planet were to bear the burden of nakedness, they would also bear the disruption of choices, an overkill of beauty and a greater disruption of vanity.

Nudity commands neither perception nor imagination, neither prejudice nor preference - it is a simple acceptance of the least human soul. A naked man is the reflection of every other. However, it is not the ideal.

A man without clothes is a disarmed man. A man without judgment is so too. Clothes levy illusions of the body and carry them against a looseness of conscience. If every man on the planet were to wear the same set of clothes, the world would consist of only one man or one kind of man. A man is never whole. Even nudity cannot privilege that. It can, however, privilege the sensation.

Partial nudity is similar to partial blindness. Half a perception, half an imagination, half a prejudice, half a preference - they aren't impossible, they're unacceptable.

Clothes form wordless introductions. To know a man by what overlaps his skin, is to arrest him by his condition rather than his identity. Conditions are temporary and circumstantial; identity is unique and the unachieved whole. Neither is significant to a wordless introduction. Nudity doesn't provide one; correction: doesn't need one.

Man is imperceptible. Clothed, he holds neither disparity nor similarity. Inspite of which there is neither chaos nor dissatisfaction. Nudity cannot make man perceptible. It cannot promote either disparity or similarity. It works against their united cause.

It can, however, discover the chaos and dissatisfaction.

Every erect body is one's vertical area of the world. We must till, plow, nurture our areas. In a bareness, we must reap. The flesh is where the harvest is.

Cloth is a sight, skin is a definition. Nudity resolves the valid human confusions. A nude body is not a store house, it is a garage sale. We must not fear our shells, and we must fear without them.

Nudity does not need a revolution, it needs an understanding. If every man on the planet were to walk naked, we might still not have a perfect world, but surely a world less precious.

Emerson and Plato

You might be surprised by the breadth and reach of the influence of Plato. Even Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of his progeny. Emerson also had a lot of Swedenborgian Rosicrucian leanings and was heavily influenced by Thomas Carlyle whose biographers have still not figured out what his secret was that made him tell them they would never get him or his life right. That secret ties Carlyle and Goethe to Swift and other literary and scientific members of the Hibernians who oversee the Priory of Sion and Royal Society. Here is what Columbia Encyclopedia on the web has to offer.

We must not forget that a large part of the effort to integrate philosophy and spirituality has been done, and sometimes people called Nazis (Carlyle) had a lot to do with fostering the humanitarian movement and what is called transcendentalism. Emerson is one of the greats along with Thoreau and Whitman - at least in their influence on my life as I grew up.

"The writer's father, William Emerson, a descendant of New England clergymen, was minister of the First Unitarian Church in Boston. Emerson's early years were filled with books and a daily routine of studious and frugal homelife. After his father's death in 1811, his eccentric but brilliant aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, became his confidante and stimulated his independent thinking. At Harvard (1817-21) he began recording his thoughts in the famous Journal. Poor health hindered his studies at the Harvard divinity school in 1825, and in 1826, after being licensed to preach, he was forced to go south because of incipient tuberculosis. In 1829 he became pastor of the Old North Church in Boston (Second Unitarian). In the same year he married Ellen Tucker, whose death from tuberculosis in 1831 caused him great sorrow.

Emerson's personal religious scruples and, in particular, his conviction that the Lord's Supper was not intended by Christ to be a permanent sacrament led him into conflict with his congregation. In 1832 he retired from his only pastorate. On a trip to Europe at this time he met Carlyle (who became a close friend), Coleridge, and Wordsworth. Through these notable English writers, Emerson's interest in transcendental thought began to blossom. Other strong influences on his philosophy, besides his own Unitarian background, were Plato and the Neoplatonists, the sacred books of the East, the mystical writings of Swedenborg, and the philosophy of Kant. He returned home in 1834, settled in Concord, Mass. and married (1835) his second wife, Lydia Jackson."

I feel it is imperative to place some real history in this book. There are so many people who know something is wrong with our history and they believe in fictions like Atlantis which was based on Plato in large part. I feel quite passionate about these matters as you will see. This excerpt is taken from my book The Rising Roman Empire.

BERBERS ARE BEES TOO?

I must admit I was both pleased and surprised to read various Stuart historians during my research, saying that the Berbers are part of the Stuart lineage. Niven Sinclair and William Hamilton Stewart may not be the best sources but they give the more unvarnished picture of the situation even if it does appear a bit racist. After all is said and done my Hamilton/Lynn/Burke (mother) and Baird/King/Keough (father) genetic background have a lot of elitist people who gave up trying to make the world a better place for everyone.

I cannot say exactly when the pendulum turned fully towards the present malaise and I cannot be sure when it was that they became free and safe through the use of their advanced technology and use of islands as defendable homelands. The defendable mountains and islands seem to have been sought out rather soon after the Caucasians became more than just a curiosity. One of the key places of development is in the Tarim Basin surrounded by mountains and a desert. It may even have been the original Mediterranean ('between two mountain ranges).

My guess is the elitist campaign happened around the time Sinclair says he can trace his family to the Berbers - about 20,000 years ago. I think they made a deal with an Asian group at that juncture. The legends of MU and Atlantis take a lot of interpreting and analysis in comparison with the known artifacts. The Royal Bloodlines are just as complex and important to examine. You will not find it in Cahill's book on the Jews. (1)

As I often say - Plato was a 'front' man who made the story of Atlantis to suit his elite family and the needs of the ruling classes who were Hellenizing all knowledge. Now, you can see - I don't believe in aliens as our forbears, or Atlantis. But you might be surprised how many times people tell me that is what my history sounds like. Funny thing - that is what their history is founded upon. That, and a growing hierarchy that put some men above others and all men over women in their class. It is not a 'his'-story I enjoy or promote the continuance of, but I do have to face the facts that it is what most people believe.

Plato was the descendant of the wise Solon and I suspect his Danaus forbears are related to the Semitic Sargon the Great. In his era Ptolemy certainly drew his family tree back to the Danaus or Danaan great by the name of Herakles or Hercules. We will see that the Antonine Roman Emperors are of this same lineage. In the case of Ptolemy, who was put in charge of Egypt by the Kelt/Thracian/Macedonian hermeticist Alexander, he encouraged Manetho to write a Kings List which drew his lineage to Hercules. This is evidence of the founders of Egypt being Danaan or de Danaan in the line of Isis and Osiris. That Kings List forms the basis of the Bible Narrative and Egyptology today. It has some errors - to say the least.

However, it is of interest to note that Manetho has Isis coming to found Egypt around the time that we see the genetics shows the white man came to exist. Also we have recent archaeological proof of deep mining engineering here at that time. Isis Pelasgi is one of the continuing titles of the Ptolemaic lineage including Cleopatra. And we saw the Pelasgi in the quote from ESOP earlier. The Berber 'sea people' or 'pirates' include those people who lived in Genoa around 2000 BC. The Cisalpine Gauls including the great historian Livy and his family will play a major role along with their Veneti 'brothers' of Brittany as our history continues. For now it is important to say that the name of Brittany and Britain come from one of these Keltic families named Bruttii or Brutus who are Sons of Aeneas and Trojan War heroes; just like the family of Julius Caesar who they later assassinated. These extended families kept a verbal (sometimes written) history that forms the basis of the kind of things that Royals and Knights Malta still place great value upon. Here is a response to a person (Essene Templar that he is) which I made in a Grail project I am involved in researching.

'When I use the term extended family I am hearkening back to a time and place such as you suggested had little or no real ecclesiastical structure. Elder Council ran places that never really wanted any of the genocide practiced upon them by those trying to help them PROGRESS by nice sounding phrases like Manifest Destiny.

This kind of structure was part of what almost died off in most of the world at the end of the Punic Wars, but the land use laws of Ireland and indeed most of the ethics were still there until the 17th Century. It is a time when hereditary kings did not exist and FREEDOM was the most valuable resource of adventurous and creative or daring people. Brotherhood was real and women were equal. There was enough of it left in Carthage when Aristotle visited for him to be impressed with the Democratic reality of the society. In reference to Jesus, I would tend to agree with what you said.

But there is a lot more to it. THE DAVID are also (in an earlier time) THE BRUCE or Bruttii. His family were very wise and had been back to Melchizedek if not before that. His brother was the leader of the Essenes and he was from the wealthy stock of Solomon. I believe he went to India and other places. I am almost certain he spent time with Comarius who tutored Cleopatra in Egypt. There is a reason the Gnostics saved the Dag Hammadi Scrolls that give the best insight to Jesus and his brothers. They were willing to die for it.

As you know the families and even community of Jews still help each other get a head start in whatever business they are into. I hear you get to fail a couple of times if necessary too. But the corruption of values and the denominational in-fighting has even affected Samoa in the last decade. So I can not point to any large scale current models of what kind of society was looked over and advised by the pan-tribal Druids who treated the whole of their society with respect. The Cathars might have been their last large-scale attempt. They were scientists and administrators and not religious as we think of churches. In fact churches were outdoors and they had nothing to hide.'

Stranded Notions: Time And Philosophy Of The Individual

As I look back now, a long time seems to span itself behind me, opening up a trench of thoughts that I carry on my back. There is yet another spanning time, a future, actually it is a degree of time where the past is firmer and unmoving, anticipant even. And the present is where the past is producing, recreating, giving itself the chance of a perpetual birth, the perpetual acceleration of a cosmic motion and moreover, perpetually snatching away the suspenseful, concealed children of a continuum. We're constantly living a history, or involved in its process, for if a thing must already exist, it cannot be born; without harnessing it in theoretical ideas and perception, and giving it the impersonal neutrality that every other dominant living creature demands, we can comprehend Time as less an entity, one that is of the Present. This theory concludes that at one point of time and the nearest possibility of the next point of time that the primary influences, the infinitesimal difference that exists between them, though perfectly dissolved in existence, only and only in theory or any apparent flaw of what part we know of it, is actually a jump and not continuity. Conclusively, we can denote that there is no Present; a human body is unremittingly registering itself to a change between what has been and what must be its consequence. This is suggestive of a stellar rationality where the Present and all its virtues are the irrational.

Thus the individual always lives within a tension and not an equilibrium. The individual then becomes a component of a varying world, instead of a moving one. To confer that a thing is pacing is de facto different from the suggestion that a thing is changing.

Hence, there exists no actual reality, just one back and one forth, compounded by that change in motion that crops between them at a loss of centre. We're subsisting in that change, in that loss, within a sequence that flanks us. The reality is at the sides; we, the individual, occupy everything else.

To breathe, to feel, to inhabit a living body that further inhabits a living world is not being real. To exist in a moment as a moment, to not be a stretch, to not extend from so to so on, and to not extend at all, but instead simply to be seconds and minutes and days, where these are not elaborate components of time but where time is an elaborate component of the self - is to understand absolutely that any and all reality is unconditionally perfect and being so, it is finite.

By the conventions, death is real and so is life. Does reality really encompass every aspect, even their differences or conflicts? Not if it's finite, it doesn't. Then, how does one become real? Theory cannot answer that and neither can I. Both of us are here to criticize and rebuke and point and laugh. However, we can guess and estimate, and pray we assume correctly.

The answer lies in minimizing oneself. I do not talk of altruism or renunciation of the self, but the most of what that dangerous term suggests literally. Immortality.

To exist is an alternate to not exist at all; the other and only alternate is to exist forever. If there is no such thing as Time, then it shall matter least that a distance be covered either walking or running, if we secure a neutral objective. The goal of all Time is to unalterably extend, and the goal of the individual is to readily exist. If we observe, it is agreeable that neither of them can exchange their natural roles - Time does not readily exist, and the individual does not unalterably extend (man, and not the individual, as a collective function, does extend, but precariously).

This role of man is not a provision, it is a predicament. If we cannot expand beyond our limits, we must expand within them. A limit that cannot to be stretched, must be first adjusted to, and then, overemphasized. We cannot forge the definite; rather it is safer to forge ourselves. One also cannot amend the unalterable, one must amend instead the arrant idea of one's relation to it. A willing servitude is more convenient than a reluctant one. We cannot overcome Time, hence we must submit to it more absolutely than our physical selves.

A second is needlessly a second. We need to minimize ourselves to that needlessness; we need to inflexibly subsist in that second. Hence, we're immortal to the subsequence. We exist better than the last and certain than the next. In the framework of all limitations, if we comply properly, we do preserve an unnoticeable freedom. For the framework of Time, this unnoticeable freedom is reality.

Only inhuman is more than human. It is a law: we cannot be something we're not partly already. Immortality is not a myth, but like so many things, it is theoretical, not vulnerable to practice. The beauty of existing minimally is that it is not necessary that the individual must only live his age. Sometimes we're so much older than what years could occupy or foretell. But that is a different tale, for a different time? I guess.

Nature of Visual Representation

Nature is often called "red in tooth and claw", this means covered in blood, and comes from a fairy tale called Wolfking; it is a story of times past repute with epic adventures, this quote is very much like "survival of the fittest"!

Okay, maybe that was a bit too oblique, however, there was a point to it, perhaps if I add that, an artist named Foucault once created a painting where he wrote the words "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" which is French for "This is not a pipe" under a very conformist graphic of a smoker's pipe.

It was not a pipe, it was a picture of a pipe. But, then it was also not a picture of a pipe. By writing the words (as part of the graphic) he was questioning the nature of visual representation itself! Here is a better example:

"The lady protests too much, methinks" - Queen Gertrude - Act III, Scene II. Here Queen Gertrude is making a cynical remark about her counterpart (the Player queen) in Hamlets play, a subplot within the main story.

Shakespeare seems to be making a point about the nature of humanity, that an individuals grievances are a good indication of what issues they are sensitive about, and possibly, that this sensitivity is itself a good indication of insecurity or lack of confidence.

He is saying that too much bluster on Queen Gertrude's part, where she insist so passionately as to imply the opposite, is an indication that she is taking the lines of her counterpart as a personal attack; this is psychologically valid.

However, it is equally plausible that Shakespeare simply used this to make this character seem arrogant and self-assured, but the simplest interpretation, hence the more likely possibility is that this signifies nothing, except that Gertrude thinks her counterpart talks too much.

As it turns out, these last two interpretations are not as correct as the first! However, these other possibilities are equally valid, there existence detracts nothing from the value of the discourse.

The reason for this commentary is that we will all see things differently (due to our unique set of experiences), so having a dissimilar perspective is certainly no reason to believe something is wrong with others just because they are different from your own interpretation.

This is also true of governments, and goes a long way to explaining why it is that (despite the constant changes to the health care and education systems), progress is very slow.

This is largely because they invariably dismantle perfectly good parts of these systems that worked well with no regard for the consequences, due to the fact that in their eyes, they seemed to have no function, all because they did not understand why it worked in the first place.

Goths

To start this chapter we have a response from the journalist Hippie and friend who uses the name Eternum1 on the web. He was a part of the founding of web logs as these journalists went to the hot spots of the world and kept in touch with each other. I think he sees where I am going with this book.

Dear Robert:

I agree with Sartre in that each being has complete freedom if he will only believe it and I agree with Camus on how the absurd man becomes a rebel. Sartre had de Beauvoir to keep him honest in his musings because most left wing sympathizers had yet to recognize women as the barometer of society's evolution. As a result Sartre was more of an anarchist in his existential writings while Camus remained a sympathizer to Marxist rebellion, he didn't quite link Engels statement "judge a society by the position of its women" to the rebellion of his time.

I understand your link to Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin? btw I followed up on Rubin's "student is nigger" with my own catchy title 'the lumpenproletariat and the revolutionary youth movement'... I know its a real page turner judging by the title.... but it was re-printed in all the new left magazines of the day and translated into French, German and Italian..... it was an analysis of why white middle class youth was dropping out into a sub-proletarian mode of existence... i.e.? the hippy movement..... I explained in more human terms than Rubin... how white middle class and bourgeois children linked the limits on their freedom to racial minorities and the poor, which kind of shook up the socialists of the day who thought labor unions were the radical institutions still..... the idea that lumpys or otherwise déclassé citizens were the future great unwashed disturbed them more than the capitalists it appeared.

I agree that true freedom is the ability to accept or reject all things or as Sartre says psychologically in each one of us this amounts to trying to take the causes and motives as things. We try to confer permanence upon them. "We attempt to hide from ourselves that their nature and their weight depend each moment on the meaning which I give to them"; I find this statement very important, but not original since a similar thing was said by Nietzsche a hundred of years before, because it allows a different view of the things in the world. It reveals the potential of the thoughts. When everything depends on the meanings we give, then, we should think positively and we should give the meanings that we want, however unusual they are, not the ones we are expected to give and this would bring us closer to reaching our purposes.

How often have we seen our motives and causes co-opted and their meanings distorted into what you refer to hole (ass) istic babble. Too often. As we discussed in Babble on Babylon the separation of beings continues without the need for foreign tongues, our own language is used against us.

To the point where words like patriotism, love, freedom all become things not qualities.... but things we attach to like clothing labels.

Sartre makes an attempt to describe what freedom exactly is in Part 4, chapter 1 of his book Being and Nothingness. However, he says, he finds it difficult since describing something is looking for its essence. And "freedom has no essence"? "Freedom makes itself an act, and we ordinarily attain it across the act which it organizes with the causes, motives and ends which the act implies". That is to say that freedom is revealed by the act, we can experience the freedom only through act. It is not possible to describe freedom that is valid both for me and for the Other, thus no essence of freedom may be concluded. The freedom in one individual is different from the freedom of any other individual; there is nothing in common which can be named essence. Freedom is beyond essence since it is "the foundation of all essences".

So that is why I say freedom is an individual act but the combined acts of freedom compose rebellion and that is how rebels become existent? not that each finds a particular idealology but each exercises his freedom not to attach to the system or its ideaology. We know that Communism was never practiced by those who called us comrades... 'from each according to his ability and to each according to his need' ... possibly because the true anarchistic nature of freedom needs people sophisticated enough to implement socialist ideas.

Sartre often speaks of "bad faith" when we surrender our freedom to become soldiers for a cause.... to profess to "love anything" more than our responsibility to freedom is acting in "bad faith". And when you hand that freedom to a President or his Generals or to the mob of religiosity you give up responsibility for your actions to others and thereby lose true freedom.

I don't think an existentialist would ever say "we choose to be free" however. Because we are free at every moment. Freedom is not a choice made once and then forgotten. Freedom is not an ideal. Freedom exists within every being at every moment. Freedom on the individual level needs no defending against others unless others try to impose their will. There is no "land of the free" there are only individuals surrendering their freedom every day to causes and idealologys.

Sartre's version of a radical transformation of society is the paradigm shift in thinking we have discussed in the past. It is the belief that we can be what we choose to be. This requires effort for most of us believe what we are told we cannot do while few tell us what we are able to accomplish.

If Sartre was President he would tell each citizen what they need to do to prevent terrorism and it wouldn't be surrendering your freedom or responsibility to others and continue grazing passively in the food courts of the nations shopping malls. Nothing is a complicated as the elites would have us believe and the fact that they deny each citizen the right to be fully involved in making a safer world gives the lie to their role of defenders of freedom.

Really if freedom was a project wouldn't we want everyone working on it? But the co-opted version of freedom is not a project... it's a banner meant to take away ones options and choices like a valium induces passivity and a payment plan induces obedience.

Dear Et

I recall that lumpenproletariat thing. I liked it and the word. I agree about Simone de Beauvoir and there is another Simone that was important - Weil. Yep - I agree about Sartre and was impressed when he turned down the Nobel Prize. I used to call myself a French Atheistical Existentialist.

You apparently see where I am headed as I draw the Goths and Beatniks into this (tie it back to Cathars and Cynics long ago too). As the movie Braveheart ends the life of Wallace and the Keltic Creed that held the world in Brotherhood for millennia says - FREEDOM and NO FEAR - which you see all over the place. These symbols and the one for Peace are powerful legacies and archetypes. We need to show people some cultural through-lines and help the Goths be understood. - Robert

The same issue of what a Goth really is can be made in comparisons to Flower Children and the people who really study what might be the core principles. The Goths I have known seem more able to defend their approach to life than the normal average or everyday person. But I seem to know the upper echelon of them perhaps. I find few are doing it just for the attention which certainly was not as true with the Flower Children. At the same time one can find a wide variety of perspectives and wonder if there is any true Goth culture at all. Certainly the journalists and social commentators who were all the rage after Columbine's Massacre did not clue in to some truly important things. Those kids were under psychiatric medication and there are other extreme issues they faced. But I will make a little analysis of what I think might be going on with them and a host of other Church-burnings and the like.

In my time in the Caribbean I met people who knew some things about the 'Lodges' as well as Rastafarians or the followers of Bob Marley. There is something similar to the Peace, Love and Brotherhood message in these approaches and there are myths that make one smile. One of the things I intuit is operating has to do with the 'Rastie' symbol and flag of 'Irie' and I could be wrong but Eire seems to be there as a spiritual part or connection to the Kelts and the ancient Brotherhoods be they Olmec or Phoenician. Many black people there know that they were there long before the Spanish heathens and Empire-Builders came to wreck havoc and enslave them or perform an outright genocide on the likes of the Taino in Cuba. Their aversion to Babylon is a metaphor for all that is wrong with the materialistic Empires that control so many people. This continues in the black community to the present and many are they who abuse this knowledge and act as criminals. Who can really blame them? I deal with these things in depth in my historical books.

The stele I found at Chichen Itza had many ancient Masonic symbols including the old T-square which is the symbol of the Egyptian builder-god Ptah. It may have been put there by Rosicrucians and there was one member of their inner sanctum watching over it. The Goths who did the deed at Columbine were heard speaking about Plato and Aristotle and the day they chose to do it was the birthday of Adolf Hitler. The extent to which certain people know about these things or write about them has been hard to tell. I know authors like Marshall McLuhan knew about the influence of secret societies and yet he did not disclose what he knew. It can still be difficult for truth tellers. We must tell some of the root story of these Mystery Schools within what I call the 'octopus'. Hitler was a student of them too.

There are at least a thousand different stories that would fill the equivalent of the thirteen volumes the CORPUS HERMETICUM entails. Stories abound with re-written history and co-opting the people who told the truth by creating fictions about them or eliminating facts like who tried to assassinate James 'The Righteous' leader of the Essenes and probable brother of Jesus. This tale is mentioned in the Bible without saying who tried to assassinate him. Thus the reader is led to think it was an uprising of common people who distrusted James rather than the fact that Paul was diametrically opposed to the teaching of James; who as Michael Baigent says was much closer to Jesus than Paul ever was, even if James was not the actual brother of Jesus. The Roman scribes and lies are so complete as to make it exceedingly difficult to even guess what the nature of truth was. Unless one actually gets first hand experiential knowledge by means of such things as 'direct cognition' with such dimensional knowledge as the akashic or spirits might allow. That is what is known to me, alone; a simple sole and single searcher for truth - imagine how many other stories of even greater import there might be. It is hard to write about one without running into another but let me try to tie Aristotle and the life of Hermes in with Jesus and the enigmatic 'Emerald Tablet' so that you can see some different perspectives from academics. At the end of this story is a personal tale of soul-grabbing that makes the idea of the Lévi to Crowley to Hubbard and Miscavige soul entity continuance seem more possible. By the way, it is highly unlikely that Jesus did not visit Alexandria to see her great Lighthouse and Library during the long time he studied before his short period of missionary work that may have only been a couple of years at most.

After the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. which can be called the birth of Christianity or more properly 'Churchianity', the Gnostics were attacked four times over more than one hundred years. The agents of empire-builders like Constantine or Caliph Omar, did not want people to know the truth of the prophet Jesus, who spoke about all men being 'the children of God' in equal terms. They wished to be the Divine interpreters for whatever it is that we call God. In fact, they wished to be the sole interpreters if that were possible, but they knew they might have to share some of this power with others who also had armies and legions of willing 'sword or cannon fodder' that would follow like sheep in the proverbial 'flock'. The scribes were busily re-writing the apocryphal Bible or Septuagint and Targum Onklos with due regard to the Torah and Hebrew Bible. Part of the agreed upon purpose was to remove the story of the wise Miriam, whose counsel in her day (with Moses) was the most sought after in her land. This was once in the Bible under the name Jasher, but when the Council of Carthage removed women from the priesthood in 397 A.D. they allowed such heresy no more.

Enoch was another book of the Bible which told of psychic and spiritual realities 'within' and 'without', that mirror and elucidate the sayings of Jesus. Mary Magdalene, a priestess with the Essenes and part of the 'Therapeutae' who were a watered down version of the 'Great White Brotherhood of Master Craftsmen' from a couple of millenia before, was probably the wife of Jesus. Such truths would have rendered the 'Bible Narrative' incredible and without power to wield a 'sharp sword' of fear over the souls of all men. For if Jesus was not 'the only begotten Son of God' as the Jews and original Celtic Catholic Church say; then the concept of easy 'Salvation' (and its special dispensations that Martin Luther railed against) would be unable to generate the money-making and power creating outcome that has been with us these past 1500 or more years.

Karma or the original 'law of Retribution' would require right living on a daily basis and people would have to live in the true path of Jesus, and never be able to EXPECT a simple 'absolution of sin' through such things as confessionals. The great stories of 'Eternal n Damnation', 'The Resurrection' and 'Hell' would have little theological or philosophic support. The Pope has said there is no Heaven or Hell in the months leading up to the millennium and as part of damage control or spin-doctoring but is there any proactive course of change and when will the dogma and doctrine of Paul's 'Epistles to Timothy' that say 'man is the head of woman' etc., be expunged in all their vile prejudice against women? St. Augustine's portrayal of Genesis and the 'original sin' with women as the harbingers of that which disconnected us from God are damnable destructive influences to this very day.

Let me illustrate the academic conundrums and obfuscated idiocies attendant with Hermes and Jesus. Aristotle was able to keep his hermetic or alchemic inclinations sufficiently shrouded and thus lived a long life from the time his father taught him as physician to Alexander's father King Phillip of Macedon. (384-322 B.C.) He was motivated and guided by 'The Emerald Tablet' and the work of Hermes Trismegistus. According to the 'Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology':

"Emerald Table: The (of Hermes) Believed to be the earliest statement of the principles of spiritual alchemy, ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, after whom alchemy has been named the 'Hermetic Art'. Hermes Trismegistus is a shadowy figure, possibly mythical. The old alchemists believed him to have been an Egyptian living about the time of Moses; others have claimed him as a personification of Thoth, the Egyptian God of learning. There is a legend that the Emerald Table (also known as the Smaragdine Table) was discovered by Alexander the Great in the tomb of Hermes in a cave near Hebron.

The earliest printed version in Latin dates from an alchemical work of 1541, but a Commentary on it was known three centuries earlier, and the Table might well be ancient. The original was believed to have been inscribed on emerald (smaragdine) in Phoenician letters, later translated into Greek and Latin." (1)