RELIGIOUS BELIEFS
When we speak of religious beliefs we mean its theological tenets. Christianity and Islam share common ideas and beliefs having their roots in a common source--Judaism. This religion in turn derived many of its doctrines and beliefs from the Persians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, and the Sumerians. Perhaps it would be true to say that almost every religion is syncretic, though they may try very hard to cover this up.
Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Taoism are more mystical in nature and differ greatly from the Semitic religions in many basic principles; Hinduism comprising of many philosophical schools of thought, embraces various theological ideas. Some schools of Buddhism teaches that there is no permanent entity called the soul; that what is thought to be the soul is simply a collection of karmic tendencies transmittable from one incarnation to another. Their extreme views are nilhilistic in nature; however, it is doubtful whether this was implied in the teachings of the Buddha. For instance, if there is no Self, then there is also no Gautama Buddha in existence; and yet, prayers are still being directed by the faithful to this exalted being. Fundamentally, although these religions have diverse concepts regarding the soul they all point or refer to the One where all sentient beings originate. All have their own particular name or names for this Source, and all have their personal ideas regarding this Divine Essence.
Theological precepts are often tainted with the frailties of the human ego and intellect and thus offer a poor basis for the study of true religion and its revelations concerning the soul. Nevertheless, we will strive to present its beliefs with as little bias on our part as possible. This section will be brief, for to do justice to the subject would require many pages and go beyond the scope of this work.
In Christian theology it is believed that the soul prior to birth is devoid of any individuality or personality. It is only when God breathes through the nostrils of man that the soul acquires self-consciousness, and is a "living" being--and this condition of being alive is believed to remain with the soul after death. In the Book of Genesis it is recorded that,
"God made man out of the dust of the earth, breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and made man a living soul." (Gen 2:7)
The phrase "living soul" is equated to the state of being self-conscious. According to this notion unless there is an awareness of the existence of an ego, or a self, a person or being does not truly have a soul. Such a creature is "soulless." A person may be alive imbued with the soul-essence, the life-force, and yet remain soulless, in the sense that it is not self-aware. Some states of insanity may represent beings who are "soulless." While the living soul is associated with the awareness of the ego, immortality is associated with the awareness of the superego, the Higher Self. This idea, though, falls in the province of metaphysical thought.
Basically, theology consider the soul to be a substance implanted in man. It is believed to be an entity divinely created and bestowed upon man when man takes his first breath. Christian theology formulated the idea that man is a divine creation, the highest of all beings, and that the whole universe was created for man alone in support of his existence.
In Christianity the terms "lost souls" or "degraded souls" are often expressed. The moral quality of a person's life is believed to be able to affect the soul. However, from the metaphysical point of view soul-essence is immaculate, perfect, immutable and divine. What may be affected is not its essence but its conscious expression. The consciousness arising from soul essence is that which evolves and strives to reflect the image, archetype or blueprint that God created for man. This is stated emphatically in Genesis; however the statement is often interpreted literally. This blueprint is the image or divine qualities of God. It does not refer to form but to the inner nature of the life-essence.
The Hindus, generally speaking, believe the soul to be an entity that resides in the physical body and is subjected to reincarnation in accord with its karma. The Upanishads says that, "The Supreme Person, of the size of the thumb, dwells forever in the heart of all human beings." Its esoteric wisdom, moreover, tells us that the immaterial man is constituted of various principles each having their own particular function. The highest principle within the microcosm of man is the Atma, or according to others, the Paratman.
In the Bhagavad Gita, the microcosm is represented by Krishna, Arjuna, the carriage, and the horses. Krishna is the Spirit, the highest aspect of man; Arjuna the evolving soul; the carriage the mind; and the horses the senses. Graphically five horses are often represented. They represent the senses of man through which the vital force escapes and runs uncontrolled. In yoga and esoteric practices the senses are subdued so that the vital force may be directed within to awaken the sluggish Arjuna. Krishna is the guide that assists Arjuna in this project.
ANCIENT BELIEFS
As we mentioned before, the belief in the survival of the soul after death goes way back to the earliest development of humankind. Primitive Neanderthal tribes, for instance, would bury food, tools, and weapons along with the corpses of their departed in order to provide them with the bare necessities in the afterlife. This custom still survive in some cultures and is a clear indication that not only is soul survival believed in but that the afterlife as a continuation of the sort of life lived in the physical world is likewise presumed.
Animism was the prevailing belief among prehistoric man. Everything was considered alive and pervaded with a soul-force that even gave inanimate objects a consciousness and an intelligence of some kind. Stars in particular were believed to be souls long dead and living in heaven. To the primitive mind, the sky or firmaments were considered to be heaven, just as hell was thought to lie beneath the earth.
That the soul "resided" and functioned in the physical body, a location was sought for its residence. Some believed the heart to be the organ of the soul, others pointed to the head. Some primitive cultures thought that the blood was the vehicle of the soul--that the blood carried soul-substances to every part of the body. The demon Mephistopheles in a play written by Goethe (1749-1832) declares the blood to be a "curious thing." The belief that the blood is the vehicle of the soul is not without foundation, however. If the soul in this context is considered to be the life-force, prana, chi, or even oxygen, one can only surmise how the primitive mind intuited this scientific fact. Scientifically, it has been noticed that blood-transfusion often causes a temporary change in character in the person receiving the donor's blood. Could it be that blood is impregnated with one's soul-characteristics? As the blood was associated with the soul, many primitive tribes such as the Scythians evolved the custom of drinking the blood of their enemies or victims in order to absorb their courage, strength, power, and abilities. The custom of forming blood-brothers is also based upon the belief in the importance of the blood as related to the soul, and its transcendence over fleshly ties. Members forming blood-brothers would drink the blood of fellow members thus forming a soul-bond overriding the normal flesh-and-blood relationships.
The ancients often depicted the soul as a bird often human headed, perhaps referring to its ability to fly. The Aztecs, ancient Greeks and Egyptians among the many ancient races, for instance, often portrayed the souls of their dead in murals and pottery as a winged bird taking flight from its lifeless corpse. Eagles, hawks, doves, peacocks and phoenixes were often used to represent the soul.
Not only the head, heart, and blood were believed to be the seat of the soul, but likewise the breath. Believing that the breath is associated with the soul and life, the aborigines of Papua New Guinea would breathe through tubes into effigies of their forefathers in order to confer a certain vitality to their departed souls. This is a magical practice based on the law of similarity. Many tribal cultures practiced the placement of obstructions in the nostrils of their dying ones as a last effort to saving their lives. This they believe would effectively prevent the soul from escaping and causing the death of the body.
It is believed among ancient and savage people that the soul being associated with the life force, illnesses or feebleness of the physical body are caused by the escape of the soul from the gross form. In extreme cases the soul force was "captured" by some evil spirit and it was the task of the shaman, the tribal witch-doctor to recapture the soul and restore it to the corporeal body. The ability of the shaman to dissociate his incorporeal aspect from the gross form supposedly facilitated this sort of work.
The Ancients' concept of the soul has evolved throughout the ages, and even now our scientific understanding is constantly in a state of change. Our conceptions regarding the soul is associated with our various notions regarding God. As man evolves so does his awareness of the soul and his Source. Man has formed many ideas regarding the nature of his creator. In this context it can be seen that the phrase, "God creates man, and man creates God" has a basis in truth.
Among the ancient cultures, the Egyptians and Hindus were the most advanced in their understanding of the soul. We in particular refer to their mystics, hierophants, and sages. They regarded man as a microcosm with many aspects, both material and incorporeal, with each aspect having its own function to play in the life and destiny of the soul. Their many teachings live on today in contemporary metaphysico-occult philosophy. The ancient Greek philosophers and sages such as Thales, Plato and Pythagoras derived much of their occult knowledge from these wise priests of the Orient.
SCIENTIFIC VIEWS
Along the scientific vein, certain schools of thought believe the self or ego to be a by-product of a brain function, and yet what gives rise to this function is not known, and only given an educational guess. The section of the brain that "causes" a sense of self is likewise not yet discovered. This concept of the "brain causes consciousness" is fundamentally the viewpoint of the mechanists that sees man as merely a machine. The above concept is flawed, however, because portions of the brain have been known to be destroyed and yet the presence of a sense of self still remained. In the condition known as hydrocephalus, for instance, large sections of the cerebral cortex may be destroyed or missing, being filled instead with cerebro-spinal fluid, and yet individuals suffering from such a condition may lead normal lives without suspecting their blight. They may even have an I.Q. above average.
The mechanists, Freud (1856-1939) among them, claim that our behavioral actions are automatic responses to external stimuli, and that life is a result of the right combination of chemicals derived from food and oxygen. That an animating force exists to vitalize the organism they may concede but this force is looked upon as a physical energy akin to electricity. The mechanistic theory describes how perception takes place through the stimulation of the senses that creates nerve impulses, and how these nerve impulses travel to the sections of the brain related to the senses, and how they form sensations; but the theory does not consider the real perceiver that tries to make sense of the sensations. To mechanists, the perceiver is thought to be one of the functions of the cerebral cortex. In short, the mechanistic concept leaves no room for the existence of the soul. To a mechanist the purported existence of the soul is considered as an absurdity.
If the eminent neuropsychologist Karl Lashley (1890-1958), author of Brain Mechanisms and Intelligence, after years of research could not discover the seat of memory in the brain, how much more difficult would it be to discover the seat of the self or soul--not withstanding Descartes' (1596-1650) assertion that the pineal gland is its locus. This French philosopher and mathematician also declared, "cogito, ergo sum," or "I think, therefore I am" thus implying that the Self arises into existence as a result of thought, or as a function of the mind. Nevertheless, mystics have proved to themselves the possibility of transcending thoughts and yet remaining in existence, and possessing an exalted sense of Self, unified with the Cosmos. The mystic's standpoint is supported by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), French philosopher and writer. To Sartre, existence does not depend on the functions of the mind, that a being does not exist simply because it thinks. According to Sartre, existence precedes the mind--or thinking.
Rene Descartes' statement is therefore erroneous, or perhaps our interpretation of his statement is wrong. "I think, because I am" would be closer to the truth. In spite of this, Descartes was somewhat accurate in believing that the pineal gland plays an important role in man's occult physiology as we shall see later when we discuss the metaphysical purview.
Mainstream science may disavow the existence of the soul on the pretext of its immateriality, undetected by their instruments; and yet, matter in its actual state in similarly immaterial. This was the proposition of Leibniz (1646-1716), the German philosopher, who considered matter as a manifestation of Mind--"a stupid variety of mind." To explain this graphically, for instance, what we call concrete matter is actually made up of moving molecules. Molecules in turn are made up of whirling atoms, and these are composed of even smaller particles. Should these sub-atomic particles be magnified "nothing" would be found. Matter, is therefore, made up of "emptiness." We may call this void "energy," "mind," or "spirit," but whatever we call it, the fact remains that matter is actually as insubstantial as the soul. If the reality of one is accepted why not the other? The many particles composing matter are filled with this "nothing," or space. Another curious fact is that if we were to remove the space inherent within a human body, for instance, and all the "particles" united, the total compaction would result in a piece of matter no larger than a mite of dust. Leibniz's theory is also paralleled by the thoughts of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), the American Trancendentalist. According to Emerson matter is "a phenomenon, not a substance." He also considered the material world to be,
"a divine dream, from which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day."
Science informs us that nothing is destroyed. That matter is just energy possessing a certain structure and magnetic-field. It is acknowledged that everything in existence is made up of energy. Now as the existence of consciousness and a sense of self are undeniable, they should be thought of as indestructible as well, for Science has already implied the idea in its equations. So why then does Science not accept the possible existence of disembodied consciousness--the soul?--because it cannot be perceived? Quiet an absurdity, really--even while embodied the Self cannot be seen. Can you see your Self?
From whence does the sense of self-identity come? It seems that mainstream science is still a long way in finding this one out. However, new paradigms are being formulated by open-minded scientists who are now considering the world-view of eastern mystics in conjunction with the new developments and discoveries in the field of physics and psychology. The theories of quantum physics and transpersonal psychology are closing the gap between essential religion and conventional science. Regarding the mystery of the Self in relation to the brain we are reminded of the words of the researcher and scientist George Buletza who said in the Rosicrucian Digest (Sept. 1983) that,
"Rather than the brain producing Self, it is the other way around. The brain is a product of Self, of Being ever striving to be. The brain is the incredibly fine instrument created by Self in the process of expressing its own nature . . ."
It has been observed in many laboratory experiments all over the world that human consciousness reveals an ability to extend itself beyond the boundaries of the brain and body, that somehow it may perceive or influence events at distant places. Such mental activities suggests to some scientific observers that consciousness may exist independent of the corporeal form.
Many branches of science such as physics, psychology, astrophysics, and biology, are investigating the soul, and each has their own particular methods of inquiry. Perhaps the most important branch of science that has been developed in recent times, relatively speaking, is parapsychology.
Parapsychology
Parapsychology is that branch of science that studies the nature of psychic or paranormal phenomena. Its scope of investigation covers a wide range of subjects: for instance, ESP, hauntings, poltergeist activity, Near-Death Experience, Out-of-the-Body Experience, UFOs, Strange Creatures, Weird Phenomena, etc. There are now many institutes investigating, studying, and teaching this branch of science. The word "parapsychologist" is often misunderstood. Many people seem to think that being a parapsychologist is synonymous to being psychic. This is erroneous. A psychic may not be a parapsychologist, and vice versa. A psychic is someone who perceives impressions through higher senses not ordinarily registered by the physical senses. Psychics may not generally understand the impressions that they register, and may simply believe and be fooled by illusions and appearances. A parapsychologist seeks to understand unusual phenomena through scientific analysis, and by using empirical methods with the aid of carefully devised instruments. A mystically inclined metaphysician, on the other-hand, basically strives to understand phenomena with the aid of his intellect, intuition, and other higher faculties. The parapsychologist's basic methods are three-dimensional, the psychic's four-dimensional, and the mystic-metaphysician's, five-dimensional, or even higher.
To illustrate the difference between a paranormal and a metaphysician's understanding of phenomena, we will just illustrate one out of many. As an example, supposing a psychic were to receive impressions of an impending disaster, he would consider it to be truth and proclaim it to others. He would make all sorts of predictions anent the impressions that was registered in his mind. He would consider it as a revelation of God.
The metaphysician on the other hand, knowing Cosmic and natural laws, understands the impressions received to possibly be thought-forms-mind creations of fearful beings. Man radiates thoughts, and these thoughts, perhaps without a basis of truth, are received by psychics. The unfortunate thing in all of this is that thoughts are creative. What we habitually think about with intense emotion have a tendency to materialize. So dire predictions often come true; however it does not have to be. We have to learn to eliminate fear. When psychics make predictions they are instilling and intensifying fear among the masses. Now this is a vicious cycle. When people are made fearful by psychics they begin to imagine more catastrophic horrors and these thoughts radiate out again to susceptible psychics who repeat the whole procedure over again. The momentum eventually grows until it manifests physically.
However, let us not digress too far and return to our subject: Parapsychology has established various avenues of research for determining the reality of the soul and the survival of personal consciousness. Although the results of their research are inconclusive by the standards of mainstream science, parapsychologists have been successful in acquiring evidence and vital knowledge that when analyzed seemingly validates the age-old belief in the existence of the soul and its survival of bodily death. Nevertheless, parapsychologists have formulated various theories as to their findings, not all of which aligns with the traditional view of the soul. It is also important to note that the term "soul" is rarely used in mainstream science or parapsychology. The terms "mind," "consciousness," and "personality" are often used instead.
Copyright ฉ 2006 Luxamore
Luxamore
Metaphysical teacher, counseler, healer and merchant of occult/magickal items of Indonesia.
http://www.indotalisman.com/
http://www.bezoarmustikapearls.com/
Ancient Egyptian Writing
The ancient egyptians had a special language called hieroglyphics. This language used ancient egyptian alphabet and other words, sentences or ideas all composed of pictures and symbol.
This article courtesy of http://www.kingtutshop.com, the handmade gifts andeducational kits experts. Click here to see our universe of handmadegifts and educational kits"
The ancient Egyptian writing which is called hieroglyphics were composed of pictures and drawings. The hieroglyphic alphabets is composed of drawings to symbolize the ancient Egyptian letters. The anciet Egyptians were very cultured and civilized that is why they cherished learning and cherished their history and invented this method of writing to keep their civilization recorded on walls of temples and tombs.
The hieroglyphics alphabet is made up of drawings representing the sound of the letter, thus they were all constant letters. Also ancient egyptian writing used small pictures for representing whole words, ideas or actions.
HIEROGLYPHICSThere is about 700 letters in the ancient egyptian writing system. The ancient Egyptians considered this type of writing as sacred and religious writings and most were placed and carved on tombs or wall of temples.The Egyptian writings were considered the "words of the Gods". The ibis-headed god Thoth was considered to be the patron deity of writing and scribes. Hieroglyphs were primarily used for religious and formal secular purposes. Early in the historical period, a simpler cursive script was developed, in which each character was a simplified version of a hieroglyph. This script is today known as hieratic and was widely used until about 800 BCE for business, literary and religious texts. By about 700 BCE another script today called demotic had evolved from the hieratic. Business, legal and literary inscriptions were written in demotic.
Hieratic
Hieratic is an adaptation of the hieroglyphic script, the signs being simplified to make their writing quicker. Hieratic was the administrative and business script throughout most of its history, and recorded documents of a literary, scientific and religious nature. It was most often used on papyrus rolls or sheets, or on bits of pottery or stone.
Hieroglyphs were written with a reed brush and ink on papyrus, leather or wood, and on those surfaces it was harder to attain the crisp quality and detail of the signs as carved on stone. So cursive hieroglyphic was merely a simpler form of each hieroglyphic sign. A hieratic sign was not always as clear a counterpart to its hieroglyphic sign as was cursive hieroglyphic.Hieratic should not be confused with cursive hieroglyphic script, though the two resemble each other. Cursive hieroglyphic script is usually written from right to left in columns, though just as with hieroglyphic it could vary, and is found almost exclusively in religious texts such as the Book of the Dead. Hieratic could be written in columns or horizontal lines, but it always read from right to left. It also sometimes contained punctuation in the form of a small dot to separate units of thought.
DemoticThe word "Demotic" comes once again from Greek, meaning "popular script." By the Hellenistic period of the Ptolemies, demotic was the only native script in general daily use. It is a very cursive script, having been derived directly from hieratic, making it difficult to read and almost impossible to transcribe into any hieroglyphic counterpart.Demotic texts were generally administrative, legal and commercial, though there are a few literary compositions as well as scientific and religious texts. The Rosetta Stone contains a section inscribed in demotic along with hieroglyphic and Greek.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Sherin Elkhawaga, Female, 31 Years Oldradiologist.Beholds Masters Degreein Radiology. Interested In Egyptology.
This article courtesy of http://www.kingtutshop.com, the handmade gifts andeducational kits experts. Click here to see our universe of handmadegifts and educational kits"
The ancient Egyptian writing which is called hieroglyphics were composed of pictures and drawings. The hieroglyphic alphabets is composed of drawings to symbolize the ancient Egyptian letters. The anciet Egyptians were very cultured and civilized that is why they cherished learning and cherished their history and invented this method of writing to keep their civilization recorded on walls of temples and tombs.
The hieroglyphics alphabet is made up of drawings representing the sound of the letter, thus they were all constant letters. Also ancient egyptian writing used small pictures for representing whole words, ideas or actions.
HIEROGLYPHICSThere is about 700 letters in the ancient egyptian writing system. The ancient Egyptians considered this type of writing as sacred and religious writings and most were placed and carved on tombs or wall of temples.The Egyptian writings were considered the "words of the Gods". The ibis-headed god Thoth was considered to be the patron deity of writing and scribes. Hieroglyphs were primarily used for religious and formal secular purposes. Early in the historical period, a simpler cursive script was developed, in which each character was a simplified version of a hieroglyph. This script is today known as hieratic and was widely used until about 800 BCE for business, literary and religious texts. By about 700 BCE another script today called demotic had evolved from the hieratic. Business, legal and literary inscriptions were written in demotic.
Hieratic
Hieratic is an adaptation of the hieroglyphic script, the signs being simplified to make their writing quicker. Hieratic was the administrative and business script throughout most of its history, and recorded documents of a literary, scientific and religious nature. It was most often used on papyrus rolls or sheets, or on bits of pottery or stone.
Hieroglyphs were written with a reed brush and ink on papyrus, leather or wood, and on those surfaces it was harder to attain the crisp quality and detail of the signs as carved on stone. So cursive hieroglyphic was merely a simpler form of each hieroglyphic sign. A hieratic sign was not always as clear a counterpart to its hieroglyphic sign as was cursive hieroglyphic.Hieratic should not be confused with cursive hieroglyphic script, though the two resemble each other. Cursive hieroglyphic script is usually written from right to left in columns, though just as with hieroglyphic it could vary, and is found almost exclusively in religious texts such as the Book of the Dead. Hieratic could be written in columns or horizontal lines, but it always read from right to left. It also sometimes contained punctuation in the form of a small dot to separate units of thought.
DemoticThe word "Demotic" comes once again from Greek, meaning "popular script." By the Hellenistic period of the Ptolemies, demotic was the only native script in general daily use. It is a very cursive script, having been derived directly from hieratic, making it difficult to read and almost impossible to transcribe into any hieroglyphic counterpart.Demotic texts were generally administrative, legal and commercial, though there are a few literary compositions as well as scientific and religious texts. The Rosetta Stone contains a section inscribed in demotic along with hieroglyphic and Greek.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Sherin Elkhawaga, Female, 31 Years Oldradiologist.Beholds Masters Degreein Radiology. Interested In Egyptology.
The Greek Vase - The Story of Ancient Greece Told in Clay
Withstanding the test of time, Greek Pottery has been a crucial element in the world's comprehension of the ancient Greek culture. Mostly found in the Etruscan Tombs, Greek Vases and Greek Pottery are canvases that paint a portrait of the world of ancient Greece. While much of ancient Greek art is forever lost, Greek pottery offers a glimpse into both the every day life and the mythology of ancient Greece.
Starting with the Minoan civilization that existed in Crete, the culture made remarkable contributions to the Greek way of life; especially, in the artisanship of pottery and vases. The Minoan potters designed pottery for food gathering and storage. A practical need became one of artistic expression with the potter looking to nature to influence the designs that transformed the pottery, creating art from what was once only a tool.
As time progressed, Minoan's created vases in forms that were used for specialized purposes. For example, the Amphora vase is a swollen vase with a wide mouth and two opposing handles. It was used to transport and store oil, wine and other liquids. Painted with grass and flowers, and marine scenes, the Minoan's set precedent for future designs.
During the Protogeometrical Period, Greek vases were decorated with simplistic designs that consisted mainly of circular patterns. The Geometric style followed with new motifs, building upon the latter with wavy lines and triangles. In the middle of the 11th Century, the first images of human figures were seen painted on the Greek vase, and by the end of the period, mythological figures became prominent images on much of the pottery of the era.
The Orientalizing Period came after trade-links with Syria and the Aegan World. The popularity of human depictions slowed during this time, and the artisan used the Greek vases for depicting lions, griffins and sphinx with lotuses as accents.
Through the Corinthian invention known as the black-figure process, artists used iron-rich clay that turned reddish-orange after firing. They then sketched their design in outline, and filled it with clay. The Greek vases would be kiln fired at a temperature of around 800 degress Celsius. The pottery would turn a reddish-orange color. Next, the temperature was raised to 950 degrees Celsius, and the vase would turn black. Finally, the kiln vents were opened to let in oxygen, and the pottery would turn back to the reddish-orange color, but the paint layer remained black.
The Corinthian used these vases to depict animal friezes. It was the Athenian painters who developed a narrative method, depicting mythological scenes of battle, gods and heroes.
Following the black-figure method, the red-figure method was introduced in Athens. At its core, the process is exactly the opposite of the black-figure method. Scenes were applied to the Greek vases, but to unfired pieces after they were dried. The Athenians drew outlines on the pottery or vase with a blunt scrapper. It was erased during the kiln process, but after the contours remained and were filled with a glossy clay slip.
The Greek methods for creating pottery resulted in Greek vases whose designs endure even today and left the world with a path to the past told in the distinct and varying images etched and painted on their sides.
Starting with the Minoan civilization that existed in Crete, the culture made remarkable contributions to the Greek way of life; especially, in the artisanship of pottery and vases. The Minoan potters designed pottery for food gathering and storage. A practical need became one of artistic expression with the potter looking to nature to influence the designs that transformed the pottery, creating art from what was once only a tool.
As time progressed, Minoan's created vases in forms that were used for specialized purposes. For example, the Amphora vase is a swollen vase with a wide mouth and two opposing handles. It was used to transport and store oil, wine and other liquids. Painted with grass and flowers, and marine scenes, the Minoan's set precedent for future designs.
During the Protogeometrical Period, Greek vases were decorated with simplistic designs that consisted mainly of circular patterns. The Geometric style followed with new motifs, building upon the latter with wavy lines and triangles. In the middle of the 11th Century, the first images of human figures were seen painted on the Greek vase, and by the end of the period, mythological figures became prominent images on much of the pottery of the era.
The Orientalizing Period came after trade-links with Syria and the Aegan World. The popularity of human depictions slowed during this time, and the artisan used the Greek vases for depicting lions, griffins and sphinx with lotuses as accents.
Through the Corinthian invention known as the black-figure process, artists used iron-rich clay that turned reddish-orange after firing. They then sketched their design in outline, and filled it with clay. The Greek vases would be kiln fired at a temperature of around 800 degress Celsius. The pottery would turn a reddish-orange color. Next, the temperature was raised to 950 degrees Celsius, and the vase would turn black. Finally, the kiln vents were opened to let in oxygen, and the pottery would turn back to the reddish-orange color, but the paint layer remained black.
The Corinthian used these vases to depict animal friezes. It was the Athenian painters who developed a narrative method, depicting mythological scenes of battle, gods and heroes.
Following the black-figure method, the red-figure method was introduced in Athens. At its core, the process is exactly the opposite of the black-figure method. Scenes were applied to the Greek vases, but to unfired pieces after they were dried. The Athenians drew outlines on the pottery or vase with a blunt scrapper. It was erased during the kiln process, but after the contours remained and were filled with a glossy clay slip.
The Greek methods for creating pottery resulted in Greek vases whose designs endure even today and left the world with a path to the past told in the distinct and varying images etched and painted on their sides.
Looking for a Greek Vase to decorate your home? Check out the these distinct Greek Vases from Your Museum Store. Rob Mabry is a former military journalist living in San Antonio. He writes about travel, technology, film and the video game industry. Rob operates http://www.yourmuseumstore.com along with his wife Sherry.
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING.
THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS HAD A SPECIAL LANGUAGE CALLED HIEROGLYPHICS. THIS LANGUAGE USED ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ALPHABET AND OTHER WORDS, SENTENCES OR IDEAS ALL COMPOSED OF PICTURES AND SYMBOL.
This article courtesy of http://www.kingtutshop.com, the handmade gifts and
educational kits experts. Click here to see our universe of handmade
gifts and educational kits"
The ancient Egyptian writing which is called hieroglyphics were composed of pictures and drawings. The hieroglyphic alphabets is composed of drawings to symbolize the ancient Egyptian letters. The anciet Egyptians were very cultured and civilized that is why they cherished learning and cherished their history and invented this method of writing to keep their civilization recorded on walls of temples and tombs.
The hieroglyphics alphabet is made up of drawings representing the sound of the letter, thus they were all constant letters. Also ancient egyptian writing used small pictures for representing whole words, ideas or actions.
HIEROGLYPHICS
There is about 700 letters in the ancient egyptian writing system. The ancient Egyptians considered this type of writing as sacred and religious writings and most were placed and carved on tombs or wall of temples.The Egyptian writings were considered the "words of the Gods". The ibis-headed god Thoth was considered to be the patron deity of writing and scribes.
Hieroglyphs were primarily used for religious and formal secular purposes. Early in the historical period, a simpler cursive script was developed, in which each character was a simplified version of a hieroglyph. This script is today known as hieratic and was widely used until about 800 BCE for business, literary and religious texts. By about 700 BCE another script today called demotic had evolved from the hieratic. Business, legal and literary inscriptions were written in demotic.
Hieratic
Hieratic is an adaptation of the hieroglyphic script, the signs being simplified to make their writing quicker. Hieratic was the administrative and business script throughout most of its history, and recorded documents of a literary, scientific and religious nature. It was most often used on papyrus rolls or sheets, or on bits of pottery or stone.
Hieroglyphs were written with a reed brush and ink on papyrus, leather or wood, and on those surfaces it was harder to attain the crisp quality and detail of the signs as carved on stone. So cursive hieroglyphic was merely a simpler form of each hieroglyphic sign. A hieratic sign was not always as clear a counterpart to its hieroglyphic sign as was cursive hieroglyphic.
Hieratic should not be confused with cursive hieroglyphic script, though the two resemble each other. Cursive hieroglyphic script is usually written from right to left in columns, though just as with hieroglyphic it could vary, and is found almost exclusively in religious texts such as the Book of the Dead. Hieratic could be written in columns or horizontal lines, but it always read from right to left. It also sometimes contained punctuation in the form of a small dot to separate units of thought.
Demotic
The word "Demotic" comes once again from Greek, meaning "popular script." By the Hellenistic period of the Ptolemies, demotic was the only native script in general daily use. It is a very cursive script, having been derived directly from hieratic, making it difficult to read and almost impossible to transcribe into any hieroglyphic counterpart.
Demotic texts were generally administrative, legal and commercial, though there are a few literary compositions as well as scientific and religious texts. The Rosetta Stone contains a section inscribed in demotic along with hieroglyphic and Greek.
This article courtesy of http://www.kingtutshop.com, the handmade gifts and
educational kits experts. Click here to see our universe of handmade
gifts and educational kits"
The ancient Egyptian writing which is called hieroglyphics were composed of pictures and drawings. The hieroglyphic alphabets is composed of drawings to symbolize the ancient Egyptian letters. The anciet Egyptians were very cultured and civilized that is why they cherished learning and cherished their history and invented this method of writing to keep their civilization recorded on walls of temples and tombs.
The hieroglyphics alphabet is made up of drawings representing the sound of the letter, thus they were all constant letters. Also ancient egyptian writing used small pictures for representing whole words, ideas or actions.
HIEROGLYPHICS
There is about 700 letters in the ancient egyptian writing system. The ancient Egyptians considered this type of writing as sacred and religious writings and most were placed and carved on tombs or wall of temples.The Egyptian writings were considered the "words of the Gods". The ibis-headed god Thoth was considered to be the patron deity of writing and scribes.
Hieroglyphs were primarily used for religious and formal secular purposes. Early in the historical period, a simpler cursive script was developed, in which each character was a simplified version of a hieroglyph. This script is today known as hieratic and was widely used until about 800 BCE for business, literary and religious texts. By about 700 BCE another script today called demotic had evolved from the hieratic. Business, legal and literary inscriptions were written in demotic.
Hieratic
Hieratic is an adaptation of the hieroglyphic script, the signs being simplified to make their writing quicker. Hieratic was the administrative and business script throughout most of its history, and recorded documents of a literary, scientific and religious nature. It was most often used on papyrus rolls or sheets, or on bits of pottery or stone.
Hieroglyphs were written with a reed brush and ink on papyrus, leather or wood, and on those surfaces it was harder to attain the crisp quality and detail of the signs as carved on stone. So cursive hieroglyphic was merely a simpler form of each hieroglyphic sign. A hieratic sign was not always as clear a counterpart to its hieroglyphic sign as was cursive hieroglyphic.
Hieratic should not be confused with cursive hieroglyphic script, though the two resemble each other. Cursive hieroglyphic script is usually written from right to left in columns, though just as with hieroglyphic it could vary, and is found almost exclusively in religious texts such as the Book of the Dead. Hieratic could be written in columns or horizontal lines, but it always read from right to left. It also sometimes contained punctuation in the form of a small dot to separate units of thought.
Demotic
The word "Demotic" comes once again from Greek, meaning "popular script." By the Hellenistic period of the Ptolemies, demotic was the only native script in general daily use. It is a very cursive script, having been derived directly from hieratic, making it difficult to read and almost impossible to transcribe into any hieroglyphic counterpart.
Demotic texts were generally administrative, legal and commercial, though there are a few literary compositions as well as scientific and religious texts. The Rosetta Stone contains a section inscribed in demotic along with hieroglyphic and Greek.
"Goddess Remembered" - A Film Reflection
"Goddess Remembered," Part of the Series, "Women in Spirituality" © 1989,
National Film Board of Canada
Produced by: Margaret Pettigrew
Directed by: Donna Read
Distributed by: Wellspring Media, Inc.
Wow, those hairstyles and puffy sleeves! The 80's - gotta love 'em. Look at the difference 20 years makes in social customs. Now, think what 2,000 years can mean, and 20,000 years, and back even further. This documentary pays homage to the goddess-worshipping religions of the ancient past. With its dinner-party format, I was expecting Judy Chicago to make an appearance. It would have been great to see each woman - Starhawk, Merlin Stone, Jean Bolen and others - sitting at the place setting of a goddess. Back in 1979, Chicago had depicted place settings for 39 mythical and historical famous women throughout history. By 1989, "The Dinner Party" had been up and running for a decade. It seems like a serious omission to me, although I did appreciate the goddess statue as a focal point on the table.
The dinner party theme of "Goddess Remembered" seemed fitting as it's been women who have historically grown, gathered, prepared and shared food, particularly in a social setting. (I don't see why it could not have been both men and women who domesticated animals.) The viewer could see that these particular women are all highly intelligent "heavy-weights" in the goddess stratosphere. And they have not been lounging around for the last 20 years.
Jean Shinoda Bolen is the woman who said how when she was giving birth she felt linked in time horizontally to every woman who ever was, and that "nothing had prepared me for this. It hurt!" Bolen is an author, a Jungian analyst and an activist. She has written many books with which feminists would be familiar, including Crossing to Avalon: A Woman's Quest for the Sacred Feminine, Goddesses in Everywoman: Powerful Archetypes for Women and The Millionth Circle: How to Change Ourselves and the World. Her Millionth Circle, she explains, is a tool she uses as "an advocate for women's circles with a sacred center as the means to reach a critical mass-tipping point to bring women's wisdom into the world."
Starhawk is also an author of many works that celebrate the Goddess movement including her latest, The Earth Path, which speaks about the root of our environmental destructiveness, and tells readers how to reconnect with the Earth. She describes herself as "a peace, environmental and global justice activist and trainer, a permaculture designer and teacher, a Pagan and Witch." Interestingly enough, she and Donna Read, the director of "Goddess Remembered," have co-produced a documentary on the life of archaeologist, Marija Gimbutas, called "Signs Out of Time."
Merlin Stone, a sculptor and art history professor, grew interested in archaeology while studying ancient art. In 1976 she wrote a book called When God Was A Woman which delves into matriarchal and matrilineal societal structures that were suppressed by Judaism and Christianity. Her other book, Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood, (1990) is a collection of stories, myths and prayers about the goddess. Oh to be a fly on the wall at a gathering of such powerful women. I would have liked to see the name and title of each woman, every time she appeared on the screen; this would have been a good way for viewers to familiarize themselves with who these women are, but credits were not forthcoming until the end of the film, which struck me as weird.
The women and Olympia Dukakis, the film's narrator, discussed many diverse and interesting points. They spoke of how the serpent was a symbol of healing and prophecy. They spoke of Malta, the Greek island that is the oldest known repository of the goddess culture. The people of Malta are now predominantly Catholic.
The women all seemed to share the viewpoint of Luisa Teish who said she had rejected the notion of the "Great Bearded White Man in the Sky." She laughed, "I hung with Mary!" Later on she also said something meaningful for all women: "I am an ancestress of tomorrow."
Crete was mentioned as a place where the people had studied astronomy, mapping the stars and keeping records. Women there could be sea captains and chariot drivers, if they so desired. The creation of art was highly esteemed, and in this peaceful society, no evidence had been found of male/female inequality. No personal mark was ever found on a piece of art. Minoan Crete is the place where the worship of the goddess was intact for the longest period of time.
The Golden Age of Greece marked the beginning of men's power and the end of women's. The warrior cults came into the forefront then and thereafter, rampaging the Earth and exploiting her treasures. Greece once had gorgeous stands of trees and vegetation. These were chopped down to produce warships, and when the trees go down; the sand takes over. The place once known as Eden is now a dry and desolate land.
The claim that Old Europe was woman-centered, cooperative and non-violent seems to be a bone of contention (the self-proclaimed feminist Cynthia Eller, among many others, makes a case against it).
Following is a recent critique of "Goddess Remembered" that I found on the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com): Unsubstantiated claims abound..., 10 May 2007
Author: thorn101 from United States - (Charles Sheaffer) This film is filled with blatant nonsense and pseudo-scientific drivel. Various claims are made in the film which have no scientific or archaeological basis, and are merely assumptions or the result of faulty logic (and wishful thinking).
Claims like (allegedly) Goddess-worshiping Old Europe was an egalitarian, woman-centered society. It was cooperative, non-hierarchical, and non-violent. This is not true, many fortified prehistoric settlements have been found in Europe indicating the presence of warfare.
David Anthony, an assistant professor of anthropology at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., said that there is also evidence of weapons, including some used as symbols of status, and of human sacrifice, hierarchy, and social inequality. There is also no evidence that women played the central role, in either the social structure or the religion of Old Europe.
Lengyel and Tiszapolgar cemeteries indicate that fighting, hunting, and trading were male activities, because men were buried with flint tools, weapons, animal bones, and copper tools. Pottery was probably made by females and used mainly by them in domestic activities. This is reflected by finds of pottery with female remains. Also no domesticated or wild animals are associated with female burials.
Claims that satellite photographs have shown that the Neolithic monoliths of the Goddess "all stand on energy lines, which criss-cross the earth" is pure pseudo-science. There are no such things as "energy lines" that cross the earth. Also scholars are now disputing the identification of neolithic megaliths with any so-called "Goddess" worship.
The film contains many more such unsubstantiated claims.
Overall this is a nice flick to watch on an all girls night sleepover party whilst honoring your inner goddess with vast amounts of chocolate. The reality is that this mockumentary has no place in women studies, anthropology or archaeology, and I am appalled to still see it being taken so seriously.
Interesting, eh? It brings to mind an old Shakespearian quote, "The man protests too much." I know that neither he nor I were around 20,000 years or so ago, so I believe his argument is moot.
I would say that the main theme of "Goddess Remembered" is how women and nature are one. "As a species, we don't stand apart from nature," is something that Charlene Spretnak said, and I believe she is right. It really comes down to this equation:
Women = Nature (illustrated by caves, snakes, water, etc.) Man vs. Nature (which pits Man against Woman)
Until Man honors and respects Nature and thus, Woman, our downward spiral toward oblivion via war and the destruction of the Earth, will carry us all down that swift and vengeful river together. And that would indeed by the end of His- and Her-story.
Wow, those hairstyles and puffy sleeves! The 80's - gotta love 'em. Look at the difference 20 years makes in social customs. Now, think what 2,000 years can mean, and 20,000 years, and back even further. This documentary pays homage to the goddess-worshipping religions of the ancient past. With its dinner-party format, I was expecting Judy Chicago to make an appearance. It would have been great to see each woman - Starhawk, Merlin Stone, Jean Bolen and others - sitting at the place setting of a goddess. Back in 1979, Chicago had depicted place settings for 39 mythical and historical famous women throughout history. By 1989, "The Dinner Party" had been up and running for a decade. It seems like a serious omission to me, although I did appreciate the goddess statue as a focal point on the table.
The dinner party theme of "Goddess Remembered" seemed fitting as it's been women who have historically grown, gathered, prepared and shared food, particularly in a social setting. (I don't see why it could not have been both men and women who domesticated animals.) The viewer could see that these particular women are all highly intelligent "heavy-weights" in the goddess stratosphere. And they have not been lounging around for the last 20 years.
Jean Shinoda Bolen is the woman who said how when she was giving birth she felt linked in time horizontally to every woman who ever was, and that "nothing had prepared me for this. It hurt!" Bolen is an author, a Jungian analyst and an activist. She has written many books with which feminists would be familiar, including Crossing to Avalon: A Woman's Quest for the Sacred Feminine, Goddesses in Everywoman: Powerful Archetypes for Women and The Millionth Circle: How to Change Ourselves and the World. Her Millionth Circle, she explains, is a tool she uses as "an advocate for women's circles with a sacred center as the means to reach a critical mass-tipping point to bring women's wisdom into the world."
Starhawk is also an author of many works that celebrate the Goddess movement including her latest, The Earth Path, which speaks about the root of our environmental destructiveness, and tells readers how to reconnect with the Earth. She describes herself as "a peace, environmental and global justice activist and trainer, a permaculture designer and teacher, a Pagan and Witch." Interestingly enough, she and Donna Read, the director of "Goddess Remembered," have co-produced a documentary on the life of archaeologist, Marija Gimbutas, called "Signs Out of Time."
Merlin Stone, a sculptor and art history professor, grew interested in archaeology while studying ancient art. In 1976 she wrote a book called When God Was A Woman which delves into matriarchal and matrilineal societal structures that were suppressed by Judaism and Christianity. Her other book, Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood, (1990) is a collection of stories, myths and prayers about the goddess. Oh to be a fly on the wall at a gathering of such powerful women. I would have liked to see the name and title of each woman, every time she appeared on the screen; this would have been a good way for viewers to familiarize themselves with who these women are, but credits were not forthcoming until the end of the film, which struck me as weird.
The women and Olympia Dukakis, the film's narrator, discussed many diverse and interesting points. They spoke of how the serpent was a symbol of healing and prophecy. They spoke of Malta, the Greek island that is the oldest known repository of the goddess culture. The people of Malta are now predominantly Catholic.
The women all seemed to share the viewpoint of Luisa Teish who said she had rejected the notion of the "Great Bearded White Man in the Sky." She laughed, "I hung with Mary!" Later on she also said something meaningful for all women: "I am an ancestress of tomorrow."
Crete was mentioned as a place where the people had studied astronomy, mapping the stars and keeping records. Women there could be sea captains and chariot drivers, if they so desired. The creation of art was highly esteemed, and in this peaceful society, no evidence had been found of male/female inequality. No personal mark was ever found on a piece of art. Minoan Crete is the place where the worship of the goddess was intact for the longest period of time.
The Golden Age of Greece marked the beginning of men's power and the end of women's. The warrior cults came into the forefront then and thereafter, rampaging the Earth and exploiting her treasures. Greece once had gorgeous stands of trees and vegetation. These were chopped down to produce warships, and when the trees go down; the sand takes over. The place once known as Eden is now a dry and desolate land.
The claim that Old Europe was woman-centered, cooperative and non-violent seems to be a bone of contention (the self-proclaimed feminist Cynthia Eller, among many others, makes a case against it).
Following is a recent critique of "Goddess Remembered" that I found on the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com): Unsubstantiated claims abound..., 10 May 2007
Author: thorn101 from United States - (Charles Sheaffer) This film is filled with blatant nonsense and pseudo-scientific drivel. Various claims are made in the film which have no scientific or archaeological basis, and are merely assumptions or the result of faulty logic (and wishful thinking).
Claims like (allegedly) Goddess-worshiping Old Europe was an egalitarian, woman-centered society. It was cooperative, non-hierarchical, and non-violent. This is not true, many fortified prehistoric settlements have been found in Europe indicating the presence of warfare.
David Anthony, an assistant professor of anthropology at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., said that there is also evidence of weapons, including some used as symbols of status, and of human sacrifice, hierarchy, and social inequality. There is also no evidence that women played the central role, in either the social structure or the religion of Old Europe.
Lengyel and Tiszapolgar cemeteries indicate that fighting, hunting, and trading were male activities, because men were buried with flint tools, weapons, animal bones, and copper tools. Pottery was probably made by females and used mainly by them in domestic activities. This is reflected by finds of pottery with female remains. Also no domesticated or wild animals are associated with female burials.
Claims that satellite photographs have shown that the Neolithic monoliths of the Goddess "all stand on energy lines, which criss-cross the earth" is pure pseudo-science. There are no such things as "energy lines" that cross the earth. Also scholars are now disputing the identification of neolithic megaliths with any so-called "Goddess" worship.
The film contains many more such unsubstantiated claims.
Overall this is a nice flick to watch on an all girls night sleepover party whilst honoring your inner goddess with vast amounts of chocolate. The reality is that this mockumentary has no place in women studies, anthropology or archaeology, and I am appalled to still see it being taken so seriously.
Interesting, eh? It brings to mind an old Shakespearian quote, "The man protests too much." I know that neither he nor I were around 20,000 years or so ago, so I believe his argument is moot.
I would say that the main theme of "Goddess Remembered" is how women and nature are one. "As a species, we don't stand apart from nature," is something that Charlene Spretnak said, and I believe she is right. It really comes down to this equation:
Women = Nature (illustrated by caves, snakes, water, etc.) Man vs. Nature (which pits Man against Woman)
Until Man honors and respects Nature and thus, Woman, our downward spiral toward oblivion via war and the destruction of the Earth, will carry us all down that swift and vengeful river together. And that would indeed by the end of His- and Her-story.
Patty Mooney has been writing since the age of 16. Her favorite topics include women's issues, homelessness, homeless veterans, the arts, cinema, biographies, nature and video production. Her work has appeared in many publications around the world, including the Los Angeles Times, The San Diego Reader, Create Magazine, Post Magazine, Women's Sports & Fitness, Yoga Journal and others. You can read her blog, "A Diary Left Open" at http://www.sandiegovideoproduction.blogspot.com Her business site is http://www.crystalpyramid.com
What To Do In Malaga, Spain
There is a lot to do in Malaga, Spain. This Malaga city overview should help you sort your way through the many attractions and sightseeing opportunities to help you plan your holiday and create a fun and exciting itinerary for you time in Malaga.
Malaga is located on one of Spain's seventeen most beautiful regions, the Costa del Sol. Malaga is the second largest city in Andalucia and is known for its wine, fresh seafood and great weather. Another added bonus when visiting Malaga is the convenience of reaching the city, as the Malaga airport offers discount flights from multiple airline carriers.
There are several museums in Malaga allowing you to enjoy this region's art, history and culture. The Picasso Museum is one of its most famous museums and honors the famous artist, Pablo Picasso, celebrating his life and work. Picasso was born in Malaga, and the home in which he was born is actually not far from the museum. This home is now home to the Picasso Foundation. Two museums are located on the premises of the Alcazaba Castle. The Archaeological Museum has on display a variety of Greek and Gothic artifacts. The Museu de la Ceramica displays pottery from a variety of historical periods and, as its name suggests, is dedicated to ceramics and pottery. Also on the grounds of the Alcazaba Castle is a Roman theater from the first century. Finally, the Museum of Arts and Popular Traditions, the city museum, contains a variety of art from local artists of different periods as well as modern art. This is, especially, an enjoyable visit for the art lover. It is located in the older part of Malaga.
Another attraction worth seeing is the Cathedral. It is one of the best known buildings in Malaga. This site was originally home to a mosque. Construction on the Cathedral began in 1528, but was stopped in 1783 due to a lack of funding. During these centuries, construction was on and off and, actually, the south tower is still not complete. During your visit, you will be able to observe the many different architecture styles in this building.
The market area is great for shopping, eating and enjoying the city's night life. There are also many restaurants in the area surrounding the city's market. Fresh seafood is always on a Malaga menu. If you hope to enjoy some night life during your vacation, this is where you will find it as this area has become home to several bars.
Finally, the harbor is also a popular part of town. There is a nice park near the harbor where you can relax and take an enjoyable walk, and enjoy a beautiful view
Malaga is located on one of Spain's seventeen most beautiful regions, the Costa del Sol. Malaga is the second largest city in Andalucia and is known for its wine, fresh seafood and great weather. Another added bonus when visiting Malaga is the convenience of reaching the city, as the Malaga airport offers discount flights from multiple airline carriers.
There are several museums in Malaga allowing you to enjoy this region's art, history and culture. The Picasso Museum is one of its most famous museums and honors the famous artist, Pablo Picasso, celebrating his life and work. Picasso was born in Malaga, and the home in which he was born is actually not far from the museum. This home is now home to the Picasso Foundation. Two museums are located on the premises of the Alcazaba Castle. The Archaeological Museum has on display a variety of Greek and Gothic artifacts. The Museu de la Ceramica displays pottery from a variety of historical periods and, as its name suggests, is dedicated to ceramics and pottery. Also on the grounds of the Alcazaba Castle is a Roman theater from the first century. Finally, the Museum of Arts and Popular Traditions, the city museum, contains a variety of art from local artists of different periods as well as modern art. This is, especially, an enjoyable visit for the art lover. It is located in the older part of Malaga.
Another attraction worth seeing is the Cathedral. It is one of the best known buildings in Malaga. This site was originally home to a mosque. Construction on the Cathedral began in 1528, but was stopped in 1783 due to a lack of funding. During these centuries, construction was on and off and, actually, the south tower is still not complete. During your visit, you will be able to observe the many different architecture styles in this building.
The market area is great for shopping, eating and enjoying the city's night life. There are also many restaurants in the area surrounding the city's market. Fresh seafood is always on a Malaga menu. If you hope to enjoy some night life during your vacation, this is where you will find it as this area has become home to several bars.
Finally, the harbor is also a popular part of town. There is a nice park near the harbor where you can relax and take an enjoyable walk, and enjoy a beautiful view
The Nephilim and the Roots of Civilization
We often take the roots of Western Civilization for granted. Yes, we are taught by convention that such roots find a strong hold in Mesopotamia around 3500 B.C. But, have you ever stopped to ask yourself how deep those roots go, and better yet, "who planted the tree?"
It is very likely that the key to understanding the founding of the world's great cities and civilizations rests on a fundamental understanding of giants, or as the Bible calls them, Nephilim. These creatures were the offspring of fallen angels and human females, and according to scripture, contributed to the very downfall of antediluvian society (Genesis 6). Some of them, it would seem, even survived the great deluge, cropping up in later millennia under various other names, such as the Old Testament's Rephaim and Anakim. The perseverance of their race could account for many of the world's great cities or monuments. If we broaden the Biblical interpretation of this colossal line of creatures to include world mythology, then possibilities emerge after the most cursory of glances at man's religions.
In extrabiblical sources, such as The Book of Enoch, one can find the very work of transforming hunter-gatherers into a more sophisticated society. The fallen angels waste no time in developing a scheme to influence man for their own ends. We are told that under the guidance of their leader Semyaza, the fallen angels trade knowledge and technology for access to human females for the purposes of breeding offspring. To the great misfortune of mankind, civilization was a high price to pay for what would soon become oppression and violence. At any rate, the fallen angels along with the Nephilim taught men metallurgy, war craft, farming, husbandry, and a host of other bodies of knowledge defining civilizations.
The great Mesopotamian hunter and king, Nimrod, is often regarded as a giant. We read clearly in Genesis of his renown, no doubt contributing to the memories preserved by Abraham, himself born of Sumeria. Consequently, Nimrod is also credited with having built the Tower of Babel, preserved to us in image as a ziggurat, one of the stepped temples of ancient Mesopotamian society. The very Cradle of Civilization provides an early example civilization and its connection to the giants of old.
Egypt, whose legends whisper to us in the present, was most likely not without its own giant origins. At least as much may be said about its monuments, and in particular the pyramids. Some scholars who entertain historical ideas outside of convention, such as Patrick Heron, posit that the antediluvian giants constructed the pyramids. This design spread with them as they spread to other lands east and west of the Holy Land.
In the Old Testament, we get a picture of the descendants of these giants. You may recall from Sunday School that the spies Moses sent into Canaan on the eve of its conquest were all terrified save Joshua and Caleb. They related that they were as "grasshoppers" compared to these enormous men. Jewish tradition tells us that one giant, Arba, built the great fortified city of Hebron. Another giant, Og, who allegedly had survived the great flood, ruled over Bashan, a vast kingdom northeast of the Sea of Galilee.
Moving away from the Near East leaves one with no fewer examples of giant-founded societies. Most of us remember to some extent the myths we were taught in grade school about the Greeks and the Romans. Scholars have long been aware of the influence of the Near East on Greek ideas and religion. Similar residues may be found in the pottery and art of ancient Greece, an indicator of trade with Phoenicians and other peoples of the Near East, and something known to scholars as "orientalizing." The very gods were all believed to hail from Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Egypt, and other lands to the east. As for feats of city-building, Poseidon and Apollo were believed to have built the great walls of Troy. The Greeks also contended that the Cyclopian giants had built the city of Mycenae.
In the case of the Romans, we learned that the twins Romulus and Remus, descendants of the great Trojan refugee Aeneas, founded Rome. For obvious reasons, teachers leave out the gory details which Roman historian Livy relates to us. Mars, god of war, raped the Vestal Virgin Rhea Sylvia, and the products of this violation were Romulus and Remus. The twins, as with other children sired by gods, were of great stature. Somewhere between myth and history, we learn that Romulus built the city of Rome in the eighth century AD, promptly after killing his brother. The conditions of their conception, their size, and their violence all smack of traits borne by the Nephilim.
Even beyond the scope of Western Civilization proper, evidence of giant engineering abounds, as do the legends pertaining to such structures. German mythology relates to us that the walls of Asgard were built by a frost giant to separate the realm of the gods from that of the giants, known as Niflheim (which is phonetically similar to Nephilim). Mesoamericans, likewise had firm ideas about the origins of their civilization and giants. The Maya believed their civilization to have been founded by giants. The Aztecs too, believed their cities and their society had been established by giants and gods. The great monuments of Machu Pichu, the earthen tombs of China, Angkor Wat, the great earthen pyramid of the ancient Indian city of Cahokia-they all speak to engineering feats that defy foundations in human sweat and toil alone.
If you look, you can see that our civilization bears the touch of humanity. A closer look still, reveals the possibility of deeper roots and gigantic origins. The next time you look at the photo album from your Egypt trip, watch a documentary on Mesopotamia, or thumb through that humanities text you just couldn't throw away, pause. Pause and ask yourself "what does the evidence say, and who founded these societies?" You just may find the maker's mark of the Nephilim in subtle imprint.
It is very likely that the key to understanding the founding of the world's great cities and civilizations rests on a fundamental understanding of giants, or as the Bible calls them, Nephilim. These creatures were the offspring of fallen angels and human females, and according to scripture, contributed to the very downfall of antediluvian society (Genesis 6). Some of them, it would seem, even survived the great deluge, cropping up in later millennia under various other names, such as the Old Testament's Rephaim and Anakim. The perseverance of their race could account for many of the world's great cities or monuments. If we broaden the Biblical interpretation of this colossal line of creatures to include world mythology, then possibilities emerge after the most cursory of glances at man's religions.
In extrabiblical sources, such as The Book of Enoch, one can find the very work of transforming hunter-gatherers into a more sophisticated society. The fallen angels waste no time in developing a scheme to influence man for their own ends. We are told that under the guidance of their leader Semyaza, the fallen angels trade knowledge and technology for access to human females for the purposes of breeding offspring. To the great misfortune of mankind, civilization was a high price to pay for what would soon become oppression and violence. At any rate, the fallen angels along with the Nephilim taught men metallurgy, war craft, farming, husbandry, and a host of other bodies of knowledge defining civilizations.
The great Mesopotamian hunter and king, Nimrod, is often regarded as a giant. We read clearly in Genesis of his renown, no doubt contributing to the memories preserved by Abraham, himself born of Sumeria. Consequently, Nimrod is also credited with having built the Tower of Babel, preserved to us in image as a ziggurat, one of the stepped temples of ancient Mesopotamian society. The very Cradle of Civilization provides an early example civilization and its connection to the giants of old.
Egypt, whose legends whisper to us in the present, was most likely not without its own giant origins. At least as much may be said about its monuments, and in particular the pyramids. Some scholars who entertain historical ideas outside of convention, such as Patrick Heron, posit that the antediluvian giants constructed the pyramids. This design spread with them as they spread to other lands east and west of the Holy Land.
In the Old Testament, we get a picture of the descendants of these giants. You may recall from Sunday School that the spies Moses sent into Canaan on the eve of its conquest were all terrified save Joshua and Caleb. They related that they were as "grasshoppers" compared to these enormous men. Jewish tradition tells us that one giant, Arba, built the great fortified city of Hebron. Another giant, Og, who allegedly had survived the great flood, ruled over Bashan, a vast kingdom northeast of the Sea of Galilee.
Moving away from the Near East leaves one with no fewer examples of giant-founded societies. Most of us remember to some extent the myths we were taught in grade school about the Greeks and the Romans. Scholars have long been aware of the influence of the Near East on Greek ideas and religion. Similar residues may be found in the pottery and art of ancient Greece, an indicator of trade with Phoenicians and other peoples of the Near East, and something known to scholars as "orientalizing." The very gods were all believed to hail from Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Egypt, and other lands to the east. As for feats of city-building, Poseidon and Apollo were believed to have built the great walls of Troy. The Greeks also contended that the Cyclopian giants had built the city of Mycenae.
In the case of the Romans, we learned that the twins Romulus and Remus, descendants of the great Trojan refugee Aeneas, founded Rome. For obvious reasons, teachers leave out the gory details which Roman historian Livy relates to us. Mars, god of war, raped the Vestal Virgin Rhea Sylvia, and the products of this violation were Romulus and Remus. The twins, as with other children sired by gods, were of great stature. Somewhere between myth and history, we learn that Romulus built the city of Rome in the eighth century AD, promptly after killing his brother. The conditions of their conception, their size, and their violence all smack of traits borne by the Nephilim.
Even beyond the scope of Western Civilization proper, evidence of giant engineering abounds, as do the legends pertaining to such structures. German mythology relates to us that the walls of Asgard were built by a frost giant to separate the realm of the gods from that of the giants, known as Niflheim (which is phonetically similar to Nephilim). Mesoamericans, likewise had firm ideas about the origins of their civilization and giants. The Maya believed their civilization to have been founded by giants. The Aztecs too, believed their cities and their society had been established by giants and gods. The great monuments of Machu Pichu, the earthen tombs of China, Angkor Wat, the great earthen pyramid of the ancient Indian city of Cahokia-they all speak to engineering feats that defy foundations in human sweat and toil alone.
If you look, you can see that our civilization bears the touch of humanity. A closer look still, reveals the possibility of deeper roots and gigantic origins. The next time you look at the photo album from your Egypt trip, watch a documentary on Mesopotamia, or thumb through that humanities text you just couldn't throw away, pause. Pause and ask yourself "what does the evidence say, and who founded these societies?" You just may find the maker's mark of the Nephilim in subtle imprint.
Judd Burton is an historian, anthropologist, religious scholar, and teacher. He has taught from behind the podium and in the field on expeditions. Please visit his website at http://www.burtonbeyond.com for more information.
The Cross of the Templars: The History of the True Cross
Today the world is going mad for all things Knights Templar. They have never been so popular. Everywhere you turn there's a new book, poster, t-shirt and even mug with their infamous red cross on a white background. But this wasn't their only symbol, and we discovered that there was even greater truth to be found behind this enigmatic imagery and believe it or not, it had nothing at all to do with Dan Brown.
We begin our quest with a familiar symbol to many people - the ankh. Today there are millions of people walking around with this unique and extremely important symbol on chains around their necks. Even Christians adorn themselves with the image, thinking it to be a normal cross. And yet the significance of the symbolism implied by this seemingly unobtrusive little object is very profound.
This enigmatic symbol of Egypt represents in its simplest interpretation 'eternal life' and was often found in the names of Pharaoh's such as the infamous Tut-ankh-amun. The symbol is often depicted being held by a god to a Pharaoh, giving him life, or held by a Pharaoh to his people, giving them life - this basically set aside the immortals, from the mortals, for anyone wearing or carrying the Ankh had gained or hoped to gain immortality. Those holding the ankh were the great magicians, the ones capable of altering reality - they had the power of the Otherworld through the device which symbolised the access to the Otherworld. So what elements of this ankh give it this special power?
The Ankh is technically known as the Crux Ansata. It is a simple T-Cross, surmounted by an oval - called the Ru. The Ru is often seen as the portal or gateway to another dimension such as heaven, in essence, the Otherworld. The ankh therefore becomes the symbol of transition from one plain to another. It outlived Egyptian domination and was widely used by the Christians as their first cross, but in this symbol holds a clue to the secret of the serpent.
One character intricately linked with the ankh and specifically the Tau cross is Thoth or Taautus - a character no different to the alchemists and Greeks Hermes or the biblical Enoch, both of whom were transported to other worlds in ways similar to modern altered states of consciousness.
Amazingly Thoth was said by Eusebius to be the originator of serpent worship in Phoenicia and this will prove to be of worth. Sanchoniathon called him a god and says that he made the first image of Coleus [1] and invented hieroglyphs. This links him with Hermes whom we mentioned previously. Thoth also consecrated the linked species of dragons and serpents; and the Phoenicians and Egyptians followed him in this superstition.
This Thoth could very well be a memory of the first group who originated the worship of the serpent after the flood or end of last ice age approximately 12000 years ago. Thoth was deified after his death (a time that nobody knows, if indeed he existed) and given the title "the god of health" or "healing". He was the proto-type for the serpent-linked healer Aesculapius and identified with Mercury who bore the serpent entwined caduceus. All healers, all wise, all teachers, all saviours and all associated with the serpent for their powers. Indeed, it was as the healing god that Thoth was symbolized as the serpent - whereas he was normally represented with the head of an Ibis and Baboon.
The Letter or Symbol 'Tau' is the first letter of Taautus, Tammuz and Thoth and is thought to be the 'Mark of Cain', who himself was called the "son of serpents." In many respects it is also linked with the ancient swastika, so well-known to us now from Nazi imagery.
Swastika
The ancient symbol of the swastika is simply a stylised spiral as can be shown from the many depictions across the world of swastikas made up of spirals and snakes. It also shows up in the spiral fashions of the labyrinths and mazes. The word labyrinth comes directly from the ancient Minoan Snake Goddess culture of Crete, where the swastika was used as a symbol of the labyrinth and is linked etymologically with the "double headed axe" - which is none other than the Tau Cross. Similar labyrinthine shaped swastikas have been found in the ancient city of Harappa from the 2000 BC. As the labyrinth is viewed as a womb of the Mother Goddess, and a symbol of the snake, there is little wonder that these two symbols became fused. However, labyrinths were also seen as places of ancient serpent initiation. In ancient Egypt the labyrinth was synonymous with what was called the Amenti - the snake like path taken by the dead to journey from death to resurrection. It was Isis, the serpent queen of heaven, who was to guide the souls through the twists of the Amenti. The path towards the centre, leads towards treasure.
The snake adorning Athene in ancient Greece is shown with a swastika skirt. The same is true of Astarte or Asherah and Artemis. There is Samarran pottery dating from 5000-4000 BC from Mesopotamia showing a female and swastika, where the females hair swirls with Medusa type serpents. The swastika is also shown as two serpents crossing each other.
In Norse myth, the hammer of Thor [2], Mjollnir, is closely connected with the swastika and is found to be a prominent motif in Scandinavian art from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. It is found on swords and Anglo-Saxon cremation urns and on numerous Viking items. It was seen as a protector against thieves, reminiscent of the fact that serpents were known to guard treasure. As Thor's hammer was also seen as a Tau cross it is certainly related to the secrets of the serpent. It was used by Thor to lop off the head of the sacred ox, which he used as bait to catch the Midgard Serpent, which encircled the globe in the symbol of the Ouroboros, eating its own tail. This was Thor offering a head as sacrifice to the serpent to try and gain immortality in the mead - the drink of the gods. He was using the serpent, to catch the serpent. It was the cessation of the constant cycling of the Midgard Serpent that Thor attempted and in this way, he beat time itself.
Thor's aim was to gain a cauldron big enough to take the mead for the immortals and he needed to prove his worth by fishing for the serpent. He had power over the serpent as the slayer, with the swastika or Tau cross. There is evidence to prove that the myths of these Scandinavians and the Hindus are related, as the story of Thor and the Midgard Serpent closely resemble the battle between Indra and Vritra, showing a common origin. Vritra is the great serpent, which lies at the source of two rivers (the positive and negative or male and female), as the Midgard Serpent lies beneath the sea (of the mind). Indra slits open the belly of the serpent to release the waters and therefore fertility back to the land. Both gods, Indra and Thor, are related to the weather, both are warrior gods with a thunderbolt as a weapon and both slay the dragon. The swastika of the serpent is a common motif in both cultures. Eventually the Christians steal both pagan myths and place St. Michael and St. George in their place - both having the red serpent cross to replace the swastika.
The cross is also found in the legends of Thoth or Taautus who was said to have symbolized the four elements with a simple cross, which originated from the oldest Phoenician alphabet as the curling serpent. Indeed Philo adds that the Phoenician alphabet "are those formed by means of serpents . . . and adored them as the supreme gods, the rulers of the universe." If Thoth, Hermes and even Enoch are the supposed inventors of the art of writing then there is little wonder that they are so closely linked with the serpent.
Bunsen in the 19th century thought, "the forms and movements of serpents were employed in the invention of the oldest letters, which represent gods." This symbol of the four elements was altered slightly and became the Egyptian Taut, the same as the Greek Tau, which is where we get the name Tau Cross from - a simple T.
The T or Tau cross also gives its name to the Bull in the Astrological sign of Taurus - note here the two elements of the Tau and the Ru being brought together. In fact the Druids (or "adders" after the snake) venerated the tree and the snake by scrawling the Tau cross into tree bark.
In the Middle Ages the Tau cross was used in amulets to protect the wearer against disease.
Amongst the modern Freemasons the Tau has many meanings. Some say that it stands for Templus Hierosolyma or the Temple of Jerusalem, others that it signifies hidden treasure or means Clavis ad Thesaurum, 'A key to treasure' or Theca ubi res pretiosa, 'A place where the precious thing is concealed.'
It is especially important in Royal Arch Masonry where it becomes the 'Companions Jewel' with a serpent as a circle above the cross bar in place of the Ru and forming the Ankh with the Hebrew word for 'serpent' engraved on the upright and also including the Triple Tau - a symbol for hidden treasure.
It was also the symbol for St. Anthony - later to become the symbol for the Knights Templar of St. Anthony of Leith in Scotland. St. Anthony lived in the 4th century AD and is credited with establishing Monasticism in Egypt, and generally the story goes that he sold all his possessions after hearing from the Lord and marched off into the wilderness to become a hermit. On his travels he learned much from various sages in Egypt and grew for himself a large following. He was sorely tempted by the devil in the form of 'creeping things' and serpents. In one episode he follows a trail of gold to a temple, which is infested with serpents and takes up residence, needing little food for sustenance other than bread and water. He is said to have lived 105 years and due to this longevity he is credited with protective powers.
The Order of the Hospitalers of St. Anthony, who would later take much of the Templar wealth, brought many of Anthony's relics to France in the 11th century. Previously they were said to have been secretly deposited somewhere in Egypt just after his death and then later to have found their way to Alexandria. All of this is a symbolic representation of the truth. The truth in fact is that the secret of these stories found their way to Alexandria, which was a mixing bowl of the occult, esoteric, Gnostic and mystical world and from there it spread into Europe via such movements as the Templars, Rosicrucians and later the Freemasons - hence the reason for finding the symbolism in the 'Companions Jewel.'
The Taut or Tau symbolizes the creating four elements of the universe. It is the centre of all this creation, it is the spark in the cycle, the very centre of all. Next the symbol of the solar-serpent was added, a simple circle or the oval Ru. This loop above the T cross-created the Ankh, the symbol of eternity. The snake in a circle eating its own tale is symbolic of the sun and immortality.
Eventually the symbol of the moon was added to this, turning it into the sign for Hermes or Mercury and showing the Caduceus/Serpent origin. No wonder that this, the most perfect and simple of symbolic devices became the symbol of the early Christians; no wonder that, even though there were no cross-beam crucifixions, Christ was never the less symbolically crucified on a symbol of eternal life, a symbol of the serpent.
This symbol became the mark or sign, which would set the believer aside for saving. In Ezekiel this is the mark that god will know, the mark on the forehead. As Deane points out the Ezekiel passage (9:4) should read, "set a Tau upon their foreheads." or "mark with the letter Tau the foreheads." The early Christians baptized with the term "crucis thaumate notare." [3] They baptized with the symbol of the snake.
Is this the original mark of Cain, who we have found elsewhere to be of the serpent tribe?
The idea of this sign or mark is widespread once discovered. In Job 31:35 we read in our modern Bibles "I sign now my defence - let the Almighty answer me" which should properly read, "Behold, here is my Tau, let the Almighty answer me." He then goes on and says "Surely I would take it upon my shoulder, and bind it as a crown to me."
This remarkable idea of wearing the Tau cross on the shoulder as a sign would later become part and parcel of the crusader Templars markings. Also the Merovingians (said by some to be descended from Jesus and a sea serpent or fish god - the Quinotaur or Quino-Tau-r) were supposedly born with a red cross between their shoulder blades. The Tau cross is also strangely used by those practicing sacred geometry as a "marker" for buried treasure, whether physical or spiritual.
This buried treasure is truly the centre. The point in our minds and hearts where we find the original self. This original centre (heart means centre) was seen to be connected to the Universal Mind and only by accessing this centre of ourselves could we access the Universal Mind or God. This in turn stops time, we become one with all and we believe we are immortal. The Tau marks this place, either on the forehead or in the chest (between the shoulders), revealing to others those who can access the point in time where God resides. The word Temple from whence Templar derives has another meaning - tempos simply means time. The true Temple is that place which has power over the cycling energy of the serpent. The true Temple, like the one on our brow, is within us.
Notes 1 Coelus was the Roman personified god of the heavens and is identified with Uranus of the Greeks.
2 Labyrinth means double headed axe just like the Hammer of Thor and that Thor's name is linked with that of Thoth.
3 John Bathurst Dean in Worship of the Serpent Traced Throughout the World and its Traditions Referred to the Events in Paradise (1830).
About the Author
Philip Gardiner is the author of the best selling The Serpent Grail, The Shining Ones, and Gnosis: The Secret of Solomon's Temple Revealed. He does talks, lectures, has his own radio show and does tours across the world via www.powerplaces.com
Philip has a degree in marketing and 9 diplomas ranging from etymology to holistic medicine. He is hosting the Philip Gardiner's Forbidden Knowledge Conference UK (FKCUK) in July 2006.
www.philipgardiner.net
www.gardinerosborn.com
We begin our quest with a familiar symbol to many people - the ankh. Today there are millions of people walking around with this unique and extremely important symbol on chains around their necks. Even Christians adorn themselves with the image, thinking it to be a normal cross. And yet the significance of the symbolism implied by this seemingly unobtrusive little object is very profound.
This enigmatic symbol of Egypt represents in its simplest interpretation 'eternal life' and was often found in the names of Pharaoh's such as the infamous Tut-ankh-amun. The symbol is often depicted being held by a god to a Pharaoh, giving him life, or held by a Pharaoh to his people, giving them life - this basically set aside the immortals, from the mortals, for anyone wearing or carrying the Ankh had gained or hoped to gain immortality. Those holding the ankh were the great magicians, the ones capable of altering reality - they had the power of the Otherworld through the device which symbolised the access to the Otherworld. So what elements of this ankh give it this special power?
The Ankh is technically known as the Crux Ansata. It is a simple T-Cross, surmounted by an oval - called the Ru. The Ru is often seen as the portal or gateway to another dimension such as heaven, in essence, the Otherworld. The ankh therefore becomes the symbol of transition from one plain to another. It outlived Egyptian domination and was widely used by the Christians as their first cross, but in this symbol holds a clue to the secret of the serpent.
One character intricately linked with the ankh and specifically the Tau cross is Thoth or Taautus - a character no different to the alchemists and Greeks Hermes or the biblical Enoch, both of whom were transported to other worlds in ways similar to modern altered states of consciousness.
Amazingly Thoth was said by Eusebius to be the originator of serpent worship in Phoenicia and this will prove to be of worth. Sanchoniathon called him a god and says that he made the first image of Coleus [1] and invented hieroglyphs. This links him with Hermes whom we mentioned previously. Thoth also consecrated the linked species of dragons and serpents; and the Phoenicians and Egyptians followed him in this superstition.
This Thoth could very well be a memory of the first group who originated the worship of the serpent after the flood or end of last ice age approximately 12000 years ago. Thoth was deified after his death (a time that nobody knows, if indeed he existed) and given the title "the god of health" or "healing". He was the proto-type for the serpent-linked healer Aesculapius and identified with Mercury who bore the serpent entwined caduceus. All healers, all wise, all teachers, all saviours and all associated with the serpent for their powers. Indeed, it was as the healing god that Thoth was symbolized as the serpent - whereas he was normally represented with the head of an Ibis and Baboon.
The Letter or Symbol 'Tau' is the first letter of Taautus, Tammuz and Thoth and is thought to be the 'Mark of Cain', who himself was called the "son of serpents." In many respects it is also linked with the ancient swastika, so well-known to us now from Nazi imagery.
Swastika
The ancient symbol of the swastika is simply a stylised spiral as can be shown from the many depictions across the world of swastikas made up of spirals and snakes. It also shows up in the spiral fashions of the labyrinths and mazes. The word labyrinth comes directly from the ancient Minoan Snake Goddess culture of Crete, where the swastika was used as a symbol of the labyrinth and is linked etymologically with the "double headed axe" - which is none other than the Tau Cross. Similar labyrinthine shaped swastikas have been found in the ancient city of Harappa from the 2000 BC. As the labyrinth is viewed as a womb of the Mother Goddess, and a symbol of the snake, there is little wonder that these two symbols became fused. However, labyrinths were also seen as places of ancient serpent initiation. In ancient Egypt the labyrinth was synonymous with what was called the Amenti - the snake like path taken by the dead to journey from death to resurrection. It was Isis, the serpent queen of heaven, who was to guide the souls through the twists of the Amenti. The path towards the centre, leads towards treasure.
The snake adorning Athene in ancient Greece is shown with a swastika skirt. The same is true of Astarte or Asherah and Artemis. There is Samarran pottery dating from 5000-4000 BC from Mesopotamia showing a female and swastika, where the females hair swirls with Medusa type serpents. The swastika is also shown as two serpents crossing each other.
In Norse myth, the hammer of Thor [2], Mjollnir, is closely connected with the swastika and is found to be a prominent motif in Scandinavian art from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. It is found on swords and Anglo-Saxon cremation urns and on numerous Viking items. It was seen as a protector against thieves, reminiscent of the fact that serpents were known to guard treasure. As Thor's hammer was also seen as a Tau cross it is certainly related to the secrets of the serpent. It was used by Thor to lop off the head of the sacred ox, which he used as bait to catch the Midgard Serpent, which encircled the globe in the symbol of the Ouroboros, eating its own tail. This was Thor offering a head as sacrifice to the serpent to try and gain immortality in the mead - the drink of the gods. He was using the serpent, to catch the serpent. It was the cessation of the constant cycling of the Midgard Serpent that Thor attempted and in this way, he beat time itself.
Thor's aim was to gain a cauldron big enough to take the mead for the immortals and he needed to prove his worth by fishing for the serpent. He had power over the serpent as the slayer, with the swastika or Tau cross. There is evidence to prove that the myths of these Scandinavians and the Hindus are related, as the story of Thor and the Midgard Serpent closely resemble the battle between Indra and Vritra, showing a common origin. Vritra is the great serpent, which lies at the source of two rivers (the positive and negative or male and female), as the Midgard Serpent lies beneath the sea (of the mind). Indra slits open the belly of the serpent to release the waters and therefore fertility back to the land. Both gods, Indra and Thor, are related to the weather, both are warrior gods with a thunderbolt as a weapon and both slay the dragon. The swastika of the serpent is a common motif in both cultures. Eventually the Christians steal both pagan myths and place St. Michael and St. George in their place - both having the red serpent cross to replace the swastika.
The cross is also found in the legends of Thoth or Taautus who was said to have symbolized the four elements with a simple cross, which originated from the oldest Phoenician alphabet as the curling serpent. Indeed Philo adds that the Phoenician alphabet "are those formed by means of serpents . . . and adored them as the supreme gods, the rulers of the universe." If Thoth, Hermes and even Enoch are the supposed inventors of the art of writing then there is little wonder that they are so closely linked with the serpent.
Bunsen in the 19th century thought, "the forms and movements of serpents were employed in the invention of the oldest letters, which represent gods." This symbol of the four elements was altered slightly and became the Egyptian Taut, the same as the Greek Tau, which is where we get the name Tau Cross from - a simple T.
The T or Tau cross also gives its name to the Bull in the Astrological sign of Taurus - note here the two elements of the Tau and the Ru being brought together. In fact the Druids (or "adders" after the snake) venerated the tree and the snake by scrawling the Tau cross into tree bark.
In the Middle Ages the Tau cross was used in amulets to protect the wearer against disease.
Amongst the modern Freemasons the Tau has many meanings. Some say that it stands for Templus Hierosolyma or the Temple of Jerusalem, others that it signifies hidden treasure or means Clavis ad Thesaurum, 'A key to treasure' or Theca ubi res pretiosa, 'A place where the precious thing is concealed.'
It is especially important in Royal Arch Masonry where it becomes the 'Companions Jewel' with a serpent as a circle above the cross bar in place of the Ru and forming the Ankh with the Hebrew word for 'serpent' engraved on the upright and also including the Triple Tau - a symbol for hidden treasure.
It was also the symbol for St. Anthony - later to become the symbol for the Knights Templar of St. Anthony of Leith in Scotland. St. Anthony lived in the 4th century AD and is credited with establishing Monasticism in Egypt, and generally the story goes that he sold all his possessions after hearing from the Lord and marched off into the wilderness to become a hermit. On his travels he learned much from various sages in Egypt and grew for himself a large following. He was sorely tempted by the devil in the form of 'creeping things' and serpents. In one episode he follows a trail of gold to a temple, which is infested with serpents and takes up residence, needing little food for sustenance other than bread and water. He is said to have lived 105 years and due to this longevity he is credited with protective powers.
The Order of the Hospitalers of St. Anthony, who would later take much of the Templar wealth, brought many of Anthony's relics to France in the 11th century. Previously they were said to have been secretly deposited somewhere in Egypt just after his death and then later to have found their way to Alexandria. All of this is a symbolic representation of the truth. The truth in fact is that the secret of these stories found their way to Alexandria, which was a mixing bowl of the occult, esoteric, Gnostic and mystical world and from there it spread into Europe via such movements as the Templars, Rosicrucians and later the Freemasons - hence the reason for finding the symbolism in the 'Companions Jewel.'
The Taut or Tau symbolizes the creating four elements of the universe. It is the centre of all this creation, it is the spark in the cycle, the very centre of all. Next the symbol of the solar-serpent was added, a simple circle or the oval Ru. This loop above the T cross-created the Ankh, the symbol of eternity. The snake in a circle eating its own tale is symbolic of the sun and immortality.
Eventually the symbol of the moon was added to this, turning it into the sign for Hermes or Mercury and showing the Caduceus/Serpent origin. No wonder that this, the most perfect and simple of symbolic devices became the symbol of the early Christians; no wonder that, even though there were no cross-beam crucifixions, Christ was never the less symbolically crucified on a symbol of eternal life, a symbol of the serpent.
This symbol became the mark or sign, which would set the believer aside for saving. In Ezekiel this is the mark that god will know, the mark on the forehead. As Deane points out the Ezekiel passage (9:4) should read, "set a Tau upon their foreheads." or "mark with the letter Tau the foreheads." The early Christians baptized with the term "crucis thaumate notare." [3] They baptized with the symbol of the snake.
Is this the original mark of Cain, who we have found elsewhere to be of the serpent tribe?
The idea of this sign or mark is widespread once discovered. In Job 31:35 we read in our modern Bibles "I sign now my defence - let the Almighty answer me" which should properly read, "Behold, here is my Tau, let the Almighty answer me." He then goes on and says "Surely I would take it upon my shoulder, and bind it as a crown to me."
This remarkable idea of wearing the Tau cross on the shoulder as a sign would later become part and parcel of the crusader Templars markings. Also the Merovingians (said by some to be descended from Jesus and a sea serpent or fish god - the Quinotaur or Quino-Tau-r) were supposedly born with a red cross between their shoulder blades. The Tau cross is also strangely used by those practicing sacred geometry as a "marker" for buried treasure, whether physical or spiritual.
This buried treasure is truly the centre. The point in our minds and hearts where we find the original self. This original centre (heart means centre) was seen to be connected to the Universal Mind and only by accessing this centre of ourselves could we access the Universal Mind or God. This in turn stops time, we become one with all and we believe we are immortal. The Tau marks this place, either on the forehead or in the chest (between the shoulders), revealing to others those who can access the point in time where God resides. The word Temple from whence Templar derives has another meaning - tempos simply means time. The true Temple is that place which has power over the cycling energy of the serpent. The true Temple, like the one on our brow, is within us.
Notes 1 Coelus was the Roman personified god of the heavens and is identified with Uranus of the Greeks.
2 Labyrinth means double headed axe just like the Hammer of Thor and that Thor's name is linked with that of Thoth.
3 John Bathurst Dean in Worship of the Serpent Traced Throughout the World and its Traditions Referred to the Events in Paradise (1830).
About the Author
Philip Gardiner is the author of the best selling The Serpent Grail, The Shining Ones, and Gnosis: The Secret of Solomon's Temple Revealed. He does talks, lectures, has his own radio show and does tours across the world via www.powerplaces.com
Philip has a degree in marketing and 9 diplomas ranging from etymology to holistic medicine. He is hosting the Philip Gardiner's Forbidden Knowledge Conference UK (FKCUK) in July 2006.
www.philipgardiner.net
www.gardinerosborn.com
In Their Footsteps: A Copper Merchant In Enkomi
As you tour Enkomi, near Famagusta in North Cyprus, you might imagine you are a copper merchant during the city's heyday between 1300 and 1100 B.C. Your city is now only about 500 years old.
Let us imagine you are leading a donkey caravan laden with copper ingots. You have been to the copper mines in the interior of the island. Copper is smelted from its ore close to the mines, where there is a lot of wood to keep the smelting fires hot. Your ingots are shaped like oxhides and are famous throughout the eastern Mediterranean world.
You approach your walled city through the farmland that feeds it and are filled with civic pride as you near the massive walls. Your city is thoroughly up-to-date for its time, with gates set symmetrically and streets crossing at right angles. Not for you the ancient cities with their rabbit warren of twisting alleys. You didn't call your city Enkomi, but probably Alasia.
Your home is built of good stone. Its many rooms surround a central court, where your donkeys are unloaded. In our time, you can see the first few courses of stone and trace the outline of the houses.
First you, the merchant, must instruct your scribe to record the shipment. He uses Enkomi's own invention, a script similar to Minoan and Mycenaean, which in our time we will call Cypro-Minoan. He writes on the clay tablets so traditional in the Middle East, but uses a simple syllabary, rather than the complex cuneiform writing.
You greet your family and trade your dusty robes for finer, embroidered clothes that befit your wealth. Then you are quickly off to the market sector near the port. You want to hear news of the great battles at Troy. Troy controls the passage to the North Sea, where Cypriot copper is exchanged for wheat and dried fish. In fact, political and military conditions throughout the known world are important to you, for your copper is traded everywhere. The siege at Troy has dragged on for years, and copper prices have risen with the demand for weapons.
The market is vibrant with color and sound. You hear Hittites arguing with Syrians and Egyptians haggling with Cilicians. Most of the people are robed in brilliantly dyed cloaks, but the Egyptians stand out in their snow-white linen. You find your favorite tavern, where your cronies welcome you. They want to know about road conditions on the way to the copper country. You want to catch up on local news.
After a good gossip and perhaps some wine, bread, and olives, you go down to the harbor at the river's edge. Changes in the coastline have silted up the harbor in modern times. But you, the merchant, find many ships berthed in its harbor. You are looking for a captain who will buy your copper. You are surrounded by a variety of languages, especially Greek and Semitic dialects; you know enough to get by in several of them.
After a good haggle, you sell much of your copper to a fellow from Syria, who has wonderful ivory carvings to trade. He has beautiful glassware from Egypt and luxury pottery from Mycenae in Greece. Your copper will be only part of his load. His ship will leave port with ten tons of copper ingots.
And he's told you some shocking news. You hardly wait to tell your wife that the High King of the Greeks, Agamemnon, has been divorced and deposed at his home in Mycenae. Clytemnestra, the Queen, has taken a new husband. This, you know, will not end well.
But first, you must visit the temple of the Horned God. The Horned God is Hittite and Alasia was under the sway of the Hittite Empire for several centuries. The Hittites considered Alasia "the outer limits" and sent their exiles here. Now the Egyptians have the mastery of Cypriot affairs. But the Horned God has been good to your family, and a quick visit will surely help your affairs to prosper.
Hittites yesterday, Egyptians today, tomorrow, perhaps the upstart Greeks. As long as business is good, and pirates are kept to a minimum, you care not a fig which foreign ruler considers himself to be in charge.
As you pass the craftsman's quarter, the acrid smell of copper smelting assaults your nose. Here the copper is further refined, mixed with tin, and made into bronze. Enkomi/Alasia is famous for its bronze statues and for its tripods, but you can find any tool or weapon you need on these streets. Now the air is sweeter and the noise is gentler as you pass the shops where fine jewelry is made. You have a little gold in your moneybag, perhaps you should have a trinket made for your wife. Here are the ivory carvers. There, that is just the thing - a game board and pieces inlaid with ivory. She loves the Phoenician style.
The Phoenicians and Syrians have been coming to Enkomi for centuries. They were always competitive among themselves, but now, with the Mycenaean Greeks elbowing themselves a place, the markets are even more volatile. All to the good, for a canny bargainer such as yourself.
And now, to home, where you make a quick but reverent bow to your ancestors buried beneath the floor. How pleasant it is in the courtyard, beneath the grape arbor. Your meal is simple -- bread, fish, olives, figs, wine. Some night soon you will entertain your business associates and serve that lamb you've been fattening, but for tonight, you will dine with your family.
Let us imagine you are leading a donkey caravan laden with copper ingots. You have been to the copper mines in the interior of the island. Copper is smelted from its ore close to the mines, where there is a lot of wood to keep the smelting fires hot. Your ingots are shaped like oxhides and are famous throughout the eastern Mediterranean world.
You approach your walled city through the farmland that feeds it and are filled with civic pride as you near the massive walls. Your city is thoroughly up-to-date for its time, with gates set symmetrically and streets crossing at right angles. Not for you the ancient cities with their rabbit warren of twisting alleys. You didn't call your city Enkomi, but probably Alasia.
Your home is built of good stone. Its many rooms surround a central court, where your donkeys are unloaded. In our time, you can see the first few courses of stone and trace the outline of the houses.
First you, the merchant, must instruct your scribe to record the shipment. He uses Enkomi's own invention, a script similar to Minoan and Mycenaean, which in our time we will call Cypro-Minoan. He writes on the clay tablets so traditional in the Middle East, but uses a simple syllabary, rather than the complex cuneiform writing.
You greet your family and trade your dusty robes for finer, embroidered clothes that befit your wealth. Then you are quickly off to the market sector near the port. You want to hear news of the great battles at Troy. Troy controls the passage to the North Sea, where Cypriot copper is exchanged for wheat and dried fish. In fact, political and military conditions throughout the known world are important to you, for your copper is traded everywhere. The siege at Troy has dragged on for years, and copper prices have risen with the demand for weapons.
The market is vibrant with color and sound. You hear Hittites arguing with Syrians and Egyptians haggling with Cilicians. Most of the people are robed in brilliantly dyed cloaks, but the Egyptians stand out in their snow-white linen. You find your favorite tavern, where your cronies welcome you. They want to know about road conditions on the way to the copper country. You want to catch up on local news.
After a good gossip and perhaps some wine, bread, and olives, you go down to the harbor at the river's edge. Changes in the coastline have silted up the harbor in modern times. But you, the merchant, find many ships berthed in its harbor. You are looking for a captain who will buy your copper. You are surrounded by a variety of languages, especially Greek and Semitic dialects; you know enough to get by in several of them.
After a good haggle, you sell much of your copper to a fellow from Syria, who has wonderful ivory carvings to trade. He has beautiful glassware from Egypt and luxury pottery from Mycenae in Greece. Your copper will be only part of his load. His ship will leave port with ten tons of copper ingots.
And he's told you some shocking news. You hardly wait to tell your wife that the High King of the Greeks, Agamemnon, has been divorced and deposed at his home in Mycenae. Clytemnestra, the Queen, has taken a new husband. This, you know, will not end well.
But first, you must visit the temple of the Horned God. The Horned God is Hittite and Alasia was under the sway of the Hittite Empire for several centuries. The Hittites considered Alasia "the outer limits" and sent their exiles here. Now the Egyptians have the mastery of Cypriot affairs. But the Horned God has been good to your family, and a quick visit will surely help your affairs to prosper.
Hittites yesterday, Egyptians today, tomorrow, perhaps the upstart Greeks. As long as business is good, and pirates are kept to a minimum, you care not a fig which foreign ruler considers himself to be in charge.
As you pass the craftsman's quarter, the acrid smell of copper smelting assaults your nose. Here the copper is further refined, mixed with tin, and made into bronze. Enkomi/Alasia is famous for its bronze statues and for its tripods, but you can find any tool or weapon you need on these streets. Now the air is sweeter and the noise is gentler as you pass the shops where fine jewelry is made. You have a little gold in your moneybag, perhaps you should have a trinket made for your wife. Here are the ivory carvers. There, that is just the thing - a game board and pieces inlaid with ivory. She loves the Phoenician style.
The Phoenicians and Syrians have been coming to Enkomi for centuries. They were always competitive among themselves, but now, with the Mycenaean Greeks elbowing themselves a place, the markets are even more volatile. All to the good, for a canny bargainer such as yourself.
And now, to home, where you make a quick but reverent bow to your ancestors buried beneath the floor. How pleasant it is in the courtyard, beneath the grape arbor. Your meal is simple -- bread, fish, olives, figs, wine. Some night soon you will entertain your business associates and serve that lamb you've been fattening, but for tonight, you will dine with your family.
King Tut's Tomb was No Better - Found in America
Between 603 and 702 AD. a truly marvelous temple was built by the Mayan people to honour a non-Mayan, non-Indian man. The firsthand account of Alberto Ruz from 'Eyewitness to Discovery' follows in part, as it was printed in 'Illustrated London News':
Four spells of work--each two and a half months long--were required before we were able to clear the filling from this mysterious staircase. {It has an important serpent figure on the walls all the way down.} After a flight of forty-five steps, we reached a landing with a U-turn. There followed another flight, of twenty-one steps, leading to a corridor, whose level is more or less the same as that on which the pyramid was built--i.e., some 22 metres under the temple flooring. In the vaulting of the landing two narrow galleries open out and allow air and a little light to enter from a near-by courtyard.
Above one of the first steps we reached we found a box-shaped construction of masonry containing a modest offering: two ear-plugs of jade placed on a river stone painted red {The colour of ochre and cinnabar that we have seen denotes spiritual things in the beginning of processes that adepthoods of the world are seen involved with.} On reaching the end of the flight of stairs we found another box of offerings, backing on to a wall which blocked the passage. This time it was a richer offering: three pottery dishes, two shells full of cinnabar, seven jade beads, a pair of circular ear-plugs also of jade, the plugs of which were shaped like a flower, and a beautiful tear-shaped pearl, with its 'lustre' pretty well preserved. An offering of this kind, at such a depth, told us without any doubt that we were approaching the object of our search.
And, in fact, on July 13, 1952, after demolishing a solid obstruction some metres thick, made of stone and lime--this was very hard and the wet lime burnt the hands of the workmen--there appeared on one side of the corridor a triangular slab, 2 metres high, set vertically to block an entrance. At the foot of this slab, in a rudimentary stone cut, there lay, mixed together, the largely destroyed skeletons of six young persons, of whom one at least was a female.
At noon on the 15th of the same month we opened the entrance, displacing the stone enough for a man to pass through sideways. It was a moment of indescribable emotion for me when I slipped behind the stone and found myself in an enormous crypt which seemed to have been cut out of the rock--or rather, out of the ice, thanks to the curtain of stalactites and the chalcite veiling deposited on the walls by the infiltration of rain-water during the centuries. This increased the marvellous quality of the spectacle and gave it a fairy-tale aspect. Great figures of priests modelled in stucco a little larger than life-size perhaps just 'giants'. formed an impressive procession round the walls. The high vaulting was reinforced by great stone transoms, of dark colour with yellowish veins, giving an impression of polished wood.
Almost the whole crypt was occupied by a colossal monument, which we then supposed to be a ceremonial altar, composed of a stone of more than 8 square metres, resting on an enormous monolith of 6 cubic metres, supported in its turn by six great blocks of chiselled stone. All these elements carried beautiful reliefs.
Finest of all for its unsurpassable execution and perfect state of preservation was the great stone covering the whole and bearing on its four sides some hieroglyphic inscriptions with thirteen abbreviated dates corresponding to the beginning of the seventh century A.D., while its upper face shows a symbolic scene surrounded by astronomical signs.
I believed that I had found a ceremonial crypt, but I did not wish to make any definite assertions before I had finished exploring the chamber and, above all, before I had found out whether the base of the supposed altar was solid or not. On account of the rains and the exhausting of the funds available for this phase of the exploration, we had to wait until November before returning to Palenque… I then had the base bored horizontally at two of the corners, and it was not long before one of the drills reached a hollow space. I introduced a wire through the narrow aperture and, on withdrawing it, I saw that that some particles of red paint were adhering to it… This colour was associated in the Mayan and Aztec cosmogony with the East...
{This is true of the gateway arch at Tiahuanaco where they talk of the red lands to the east that went under the water. It likely relates to what is now found off the coast of Cuba at the 2200 foot depth.}
Once the stone left its seating and began to rise it could be seen that a cavity had been cut out of the enormous block which served it as a base. This cavity was of an unexpected shape, oblong and curvilinear, rather like the silhouette in schematised form of a fish or of the capital letter omega {Which we have seen regarding Teilhardism. Could this have been a man like Count Vlad of the Christian Dragon crusaders? Could it be the forerunner of the Jesuit/Illuminati knowledge including Teilhard?}, closed in its lower part. {My Stele details how at Chichen Itza I was able to see the Greek alphabet and what I believe was the Cara-Maya alphabet as well as mathematical, astrological and other symbols. I was threatened with being thrown in a Mexican jail and coerced to sign away my legal protection as a U.S. resident and Canadian citizen. This stele is not on the tour and was painted over the second time I was there. It was painted over more than once and difficult to photograph. The work of Churchward says the Greek alphabet [this was an early alphabet] tells the story of the destruction of Mu. The Mayan people know that is their origin. But the Greek and Mu tie-in may have something to do with Troy III which was named Aa-Mu. This kind of information would be sensitive to a lot of people. The Mexicans were negotiating [roadblocks and army goons with guns all over] with the Mayans in Chiapas at the time.} The cavity was sealed by a highly polished slab fitting exactly and provided with four perforations, each with a stone plug. On raising the slab which closed it we discovered the mortuary receptacle…
In the vermillion-coloured walls and base of the cavity which served as a coffin, the sight of the human remains--complete, although the bones were damaged--covered with jade jewels for the most part, was most impressive. It was possible to judge the form of the body which had been laid in this 'tailored' sarcophagus; and the jewels added a certain amount of life {There were probably metal knives and a staff which came from something other than the meteorites the Mayans made knives from. The Mayans weren't encouraged by the Mexicans to take pride in their heritage. There was a time when they were even saying there were no Mayans left, as they tried to make it become the truth}, both from the sparkle of the jade and because they were so well 'placed' and because their form suggested the volume and contour of the flesh which originally covered the skeleton. It was easy also to imagine the high rank of the personage who could aspire to a mausoleum of such impressive richness.
We were struck by his stature, greater than that of the average Mayan of today; and by the fact that his teeth were not filed or provided with incrustations of pyrites or jade, since that practice (like that of artificially deforming the cranium) was usual in individuals of higher social ranks. The state of destruction of the skull did not allow us to establish precisely whether or not it had been deformed. In the end, we decided that the personage might have been of non-Mayan origin {N.B.}, though it is clear that he ended in being one of the kings of Palenque. The reliefs, which we have still to uncover on the sides of the sarcophagus and which are now hidden under lateral buttresses, may tell us before long something of the personality and identity of the glorious dead.
Even if he had not been buried in the most extraordinary tomb so far discovered in this continent of America, it would still be perfectly possible to assess the importance of this personage from the jewels which he wore--many of them already familiar in Mayan bas-reliefs {Therefore some not?} As shown in some reliefs, he was wearing a diadem made from tiny disks of jade and his hair was divided into separate strands by means of small jade tubes of appropriate shape; and we discovered a small jade plate of extraordinary quality cut in the shape of the head of Zotz, the vampire god of the underworld, and this may have been a final part of the diadem {Elsewhere reported as part of a necklace, by others.}. Around the neck were visible various threads of a collar composed of jade beads in many forms--spheres, cylinders, tri-lobed beads, floral buds, open flowers, pumpkins, melons, and a snake's head (Chanes and Dragons}. The ear-plugs were composed of various elements, which together made up a curious flower.
The amount of jade and the meaning of each thing on the necklace or the crouched man on the ring of jade are all packed with meaning. You could say that each of the insignia represented a spirit that one of the tribes honoured or worked with, you could imagine they are like Boy Scout badges, and you could say they are just decoration. The jade and green vitreole is an interesting connection that might make me think of geopolymerization, but I doubt it was tested for that possibility. The crouched man is a position of many honored Kelts when buried.
The ear plugs of special flower design reminds me of the lotus chakra and the place where the 'Third Eye' rests inside the brain. Perhaps the energy of the crystals and stone were created to accentuate certain energy or direct it into specific forms. Maybe I am just guessing too much; but symbols always mean something. At his feet were jade beads so large as to be hollowed and they had a flower plug. Kukulcan/Quetzacoatl directed the natives to sacrifice flowers rather than people in the centuries that followed. It would surprise me if this person was not one of the heritage of those mythic heroes who came and went throughout the Americas. I think they acted like Ovates of the Druidic or Bardic Tradition from the writings I've seen.
It is entirely likely that they and their families were to become the Toltecs. They were most sought after as mates among the various people. Ruz draws a lot of inferential connections to the Egyptian symbology and practices. I agree with some but also repeat imitations of pyramids that house tombs in America does not make Giza Pyramids into funerary tombs. Here also is a 'Tree of Life' and a Cross that is part of many belief systems throughout the world. It amazes me to hear the scholars say things like there is no cultural impact from other continents on the Americas when I read things like this; perhaps I use too much intuition or common sense and would have learned the error of my ways if I had become an archaeologist.
"The presence here, in a sepulchre slab, of motives which are repeated in other representations gives perhaps the key to interpret the famous panels of the Cross and the foliated Cross (in Palenque) and also some of the paintings in the codices. On the stone in question we see a man surrounded by astronomical signs symbolizing heaven--the spatial limit of man's earth... But above the man rises the well-known cruciform motif, which in some representations is a tree, in others the stylised maize {Like in Rosslyn Castle of the Templar Stewarts.} plant, but it is always the symbol of life resurgent from the earth, life triumphing over death." (2)
'Astronomical' should be astrological, in my mind. The Mayan (and Peruvian) ability to prophesize is legendary. They correctly knew the many key disasters of their history well in advance. The planet Venus plays a key role in their calendrical sky watching. There are many ways to report on these things, but I ask again; why not include other theories and related facts. When he wrote this he might have known about the Hopewell/Adena mound builders that many archaeologists see a relationship with. The serpent that rises up the stairs at a specific day each year through the shadows of a construction and placement so exact, might be of interest. The placement of all Mayan temples on a center point theory tied in to the earth energy grid could have been connected to the crystal ear plug receivers.
There, I go again! Just a lot of 'possibilities', but where are the facts? It was good that he drew connections to Egypt and omega could have a great deal of meaning as we said to make a connection with Greece. In Chichen Itza at the Villas Archaeologique I saw many Greek or Etruscan statues dated to the appropriate era. The more recent sculpted faces were totally Mayan/Aztec with the tongue and grotesque exaggerated features. It is hard to imagine that he would not have been there. It is the place where all the archaeologists stayed while uncovering the Mayan culture at the end of the 19th century. The editor of the book could have made notations about the breaking of the Mayan code that shows it has a phonetic as well as pictographic language, which wasn't known to Ruz.
Author of Diverse Druids, COlumnist for The ES Press Magazine, Guest 'expert' at World-Mysteries.com
Four spells of work--each two and a half months long--were required before we were able to clear the filling from this mysterious staircase. {It has an important serpent figure on the walls all the way down.} After a flight of forty-five steps, we reached a landing with a U-turn. There followed another flight, of twenty-one steps, leading to a corridor, whose level is more or less the same as that on which the pyramid was built--i.e., some 22 metres under the temple flooring. In the vaulting of the landing two narrow galleries open out and allow air and a little light to enter from a near-by courtyard.
Above one of the first steps we reached we found a box-shaped construction of masonry containing a modest offering: two ear-plugs of jade placed on a river stone painted red {The colour of ochre and cinnabar that we have seen denotes spiritual things in the beginning of processes that adepthoods of the world are seen involved with.} On reaching the end of the flight of stairs we found another box of offerings, backing on to a wall which blocked the passage. This time it was a richer offering: three pottery dishes, two shells full of cinnabar, seven jade beads, a pair of circular ear-plugs also of jade, the plugs of which were shaped like a flower, and a beautiful tear-shaped pearl, with its 'lustre' pretty well preserved. An offering of this kind, at such a depth, told us without any doubt that we were approaching the object of our search.
And, in fact, on July 13, 1952, after demolishing a solid obstruction some metres thick, made of stone and lime--this was very hard and the wet lime burnt the hands of the workmen--there appeared on one side of the corridor a triangular slab, 2 metres high, set vertically to block an entrance. At the foot of this slab, in a rudimentary stone cut, there lay, mixed together, the largely destroyed skeletons of six young persons, of whom one at least was a female.
At noon on the 15th of the same month we opened the entrance, displacing the stone enough for a man to pass through sideways. It was a moment of indescribable emotion for me when I slipped behind the stone and found myself in an enormous crypt which seemed to have been cut out of the rock--or rather, out of the ice, thanks to the curtain of stalactites and the chalcite veiling deposited on the walls by the infiltration of rain-water during the centuries. This increased the marvellous quality of the spectacle and gave it a fairy-tale aspect. Great figures of priests modelled in stucco a little larger than life-size perhaps just 'giants'. formed an impressive procession round the walls. The high vaulting was reinforced by great stone transoms, of dark colour with yellowish veins, giving an impression of polished wood.
Almost the whole crypt was occupied by a colossal monument, which we then supposed to be a ceremonial altar, composed of a stone of more than 8 square metres, resting on an enormous monolith of 6 cubic metres, supported in its turn by six great blocks of chiselled stone. All these elements carried beautiful reliefs.
Finest of all for its unsurpassable execution and perfect state of preservation was the great stone covering the whole and bearing on its four sides some hieroglyphic inscriptions with thirteen abbreviated dates corresponding to the beginning of the seventh century A.D., while its upper face shows a symbolic scene surrounded by astronomical signs.
I believed that I had found a ceremonial crypt, but I did not wish to make any definite assertions before I had finished exploring the chamber and, above all, before I had found out whether the base of the supposed altar was solid or not. On account of the rains and the exhausting of the funds available for this phase of the exploration, we had to wait until November before returning to Palenque… I then had the base bored horizontally at two of the corners, and it was not long before one of the drills reached a hollow space. I introduced a wire through the narrow aperture and, on withdrawing it, I saw that that some particles of red paint were adhering to it… This colour was associated in the Mayan and Aztec cosmogony with the East...
{This is true of the gateway arch at Tiahuanaco where they talk of the red lands to the east that went under the water. It likely relates to what is now found off the coast of Cuba at the 2200 foot depth.}
Once the stone left its seating and began to rise it could be seen that a cavity had been cut out of the enormous block which served it as a base. This cavity was of an unexpected shape, oblong and curvilinear, rather like the silhouette in schematised form of a fish or of the capital letter omega {Which we have seen regarding Teilhardism. Could this have been a man like Count Vlad of the Christian Dragon crusaders? Could it be the forerunner of the Jesuit/Illuminati knowledge including Teilhard?}, closed in its lower part. {My Stele details how at Chichen Itza I was able to see the Greek alphabet and what I believe was the Cara-Maya alphabet as well as mathematical, astrological and other symbols. I was threatened with being thrown in a Mexican jail and coerced to sign away my legal protection as a U.S. resident and Canadian citizen. This stele is not on the tour and was painted over the second time I was there. It was painted over more than once and difficult to photograph. The work of Churchward says the Greek alphabet [this was an early alphabet] tells the story of the destruction of Mu. The Mayan people know that is their origin. But the Greek and Mu tie-in may have something to do with Troy III which was named Aa-Mu. This kind of information would be sensitive to a lot of people. The Mexicans were negotiating [roadblocks and army goons with guns all over] with the Mayans in Chiapas at the time.} The cavity was sealed by a highly polished slab fitting exactly and provided with four perforations, each with a stone plug. On raising the slab which closed it we discovered the mortuary receptacle…
In the vermillion-coloured walls and base of the cavity which served as a coffin, the sight of the human remains--complete, although the bones were damaged--covered with jade jewels for the most part, was most impressive. It was possible to judge the form of the body which had been laid in this 'tailored' sarcophagus; and the jewels added a certain amount of life {There were probably metal knives and a staff which came from something other than the meteorites the Mayans made knives from. The Mayans weren't encouraged by the Mexicans to take pride in their heritage. There was a time when they were even saying there were no Mayans left, as they tried to make it become the truth}, both from the sparkle of the jade and because they were so well 'placed' and because their form suggested the volume and contour of the flesh which originally covered the skeleton. It was easy also to imagine the high rank of the personage who could aspire to a mausoleum of such impressive richness.
We were struck by his stature, greater than that of the average Mayan of today; and by the fact that his teeth were not filed or provided with incrustations of pyrites or jade, since that practice (like that of artificially deforming the cranium) was usual in individuals of higher social ranks. The state of destruction of the skull did not allow us to establish precisely whether or not it had been deformed. In the end, we decided that the personage might have been of non-Mayan origin {N.B.}, though it is clear that he ended in being one of the kings of Palenque. The reliefs, which we have still to uncover on the sides of the sarcophagus and which are now hidden under lateral buttresses, may tell us before long something of the personality and identity of the glorious dead.
Even if he had not been buried in the most extraordinary tomb so far discovered in this continent of America, it would still be perfectly possible to assess the importance of this personage from the jewels which he wore--many of them already familiar in Mayan bas-reliefs {Therefore some not?} As shown in some reliefs, he was wearing a diadem made from tiny disks of jade and his hair was divided into separate strands by means of small jade tubes of appropriate shape; and we discovered a small jade plate of extraordinary quality cut in the shape of the head of Zotz, the vampire god of the underworld, and this may have been a final part of the diadem {Elsewhere reported as part of a necklace, by others.}. Around the neck were visible various threads of a collar composed of jade beads in many forms--spheres, cylinders, tri-lobed beads, floral buds, open flowers, pumpkins, melons, and a snake's head (Chanes and Dragons}. The ear-plugs were composed of various elements, which together made up a curious flower.
The amount of jade and the meaning of each thing on the necklace or the crouched man on the ring of jade are all packed with meaning. You could say that each of the insignia represented a spirit that one of the tribes honoured or worked with, you could imagine they are like Boy Scout badges, and you could say they are just decoration. The jade and green vitreole is an interesting connection that might make me think of geopolymerization, but I doubt it was tested for that possibility. The crouched man is a position of many honored Kelts when buried.
The ear plugs of special flower design reminds me of the lotus chakra and the place where the 'Third Eye' rests inside the brain. Perhaps the energy of the crystals and stone were created to accentuate certain energy or direct it into specific forms. Maybe I am just guessing too much; but symbols always mean something. At his feet were jade beads so large as to be hollowed and they had a flower plug. Kukulcan/Quetzacoatl directed the natives to sacrifice flowers rather than people in the centuries that followed. It would surprise me if this person was not one of the heritage of those mythic heroes who came and went throughout the Americas. I think they acted like Ovates of the Druidic or Bardic Tradition from the writings I've seen.
It is entirely likely that they and their families were to become the Toltecs. They were most sought after as mates among the various people. Ruz draws a lot of inferential connections to the Egyptian symbology and practices. I agree with some but also repeat imitations of pyramids that house tombs in America does not make Giza Pyramids into funerary tombs. Here also is a 'Tree of Life' and a Cross that is part of many belief systems throughout the world. It amazes me to hear the scholars say things like there is no cultural impact from other continents on the Americas when I read things like this; perhaps I use too much intuition or common sense and would have learned the error of my ways if I had become an archaeologist.
"The presence here, in a sepulchre slab, of motives which are repeated in other representations gives perhaps the key to interpret the famous panels of the Cross and the foliated Cross (in Palenque) and also some of the paintings in the codices. On the stone in question we see a man surrounded by astronomical signs symbolizing heaven--the spatial limit of man's earth... But above the man rises the well-known cruciform motif, which in some representations is a tree, in others the stylised maize {Like in Rosslyn Castle of the Templar Stewarts.} plant, but it is always the symbol of life resurgent from the earth, life triumphing over death." (2)
'Astronomical' should be astrological, in my mind. The Mayan (and Peruvian) ability to prophesize is legendary. They correctly knew the many key disasters of their history well in advance. The planet Venus plays a key role in their calendrical sky watching. There are many ways to report on these things, but I ask again; why not include other theories and related facts. When he wrote this he might have known about the Hopewell/Adena mound builders that many archaeologists see a relationship with. The serpent that rises up the stairs at a specific day each year through the shadows of a construction and placement so exact, might be of interest. The placement of all Mayan temples on a center point theory tied in to the earth energy grid could have been connected to the crystal ear plug receivers.
There, I go again! Just a lot of 'possibilities', but where are the facts? It was good that he drew connections to Egypt and omega could have a great deal of meaning as we said to make a connection with Greece. In Chichen Itza at the Villas Archaeologique I saw many Greek or Etruscan statues dated to the appropriate era. The more recent sculpted faces were totally Mayan/Aztec with the tongue and grotesque exaggerated features. It is hard to imagine that he would not have been there. It is the place where all the archaeologists stayed while uncovering the Mayan culture at the end of the 19th century. The editor of the book could have made notations about the breaking of the Mayan code that shows it has a phonetic as well as pictographic language, which wasn't known to Ruz.
Author of Diverse Druids, COlumnist for The ES Press Magazine, Guest 'expert' at World-Mysteries.com
Keltic Seafaring
Many academics are unable to handle the possibility of ships that travelled the oceans as long ago as the Franchithi Caves dig that showed 13,000 B.C. community fishing fleets. It even was hard for most to accept the Kelts at the time of Caesar had this technology at that time despite the words of Caesar. Some people think knowledge once gained is never lost but that is far from true. Barry Fell was a Harvard Professor of Oceanography before he got the bug to expose the truth. Some (Like Wiseman in Archaeology Magazine of 'Camelot in Kentucky' article from 2001) ridicule Fell as "self-taught" in matters such as Ogham. Truth is, Fell took one of the only small courses available at the time from Edinburgh University. Who can really learn the truth from academics that hide it? His name was made dirt by academics but his legacy from America B.C and Bronze Age America has been sweet vindication.
Here is a little of the story of his travails, which is presented for more reason than just the obvious need to reinforce on the existence and loss of Keltic seacraft technology. The rise and fall of Celtic sea power has been strangely neglected {Although the movie 'Spartacus' shows Kirk Douglas arranging passage to Italy from the Kelts[Silesians and Galatians are Kelts back to the time of Punt] who ruled the Sea.} by most historians and archaeologists as to prompt much skepticism when first I began to report Celtic inscription in America. 'I can't say I've ever heard that the Celts were seafarers,' was a typical comment. Those who recall that Julius Caesar described the Britons as mostly naked savages, wearing only iron torques about their necks, {A torquetum or tanawa is an ancient sextant known to have existed in this period as Maui navigated for a well known Greek and was able to calculate longitude.} sometimes with the skin of a beast cast over the shoulders, think of the Britons as having nothing better than one-man coracles for crossing water.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, most of Book III of Caesar's 'De Bello Gallico' is devoted to the greatest naval battle he was ever called upon to mount. And his adversaries? None other than the Celts of Brittany, whose fleet was swelled by the arrival of a flotilla they had summoned from their allies in Britain! The combined Gallic and British naval armament comprised an immensely powerful force, numbering, so Caesar tells us, no less than 220 ships, all larger than and superior in construction to those of the opposing Roman navy under Admiral Brutus. These Celtic ships, Caesar says, were so soundly constructed that they could outride tempestuous or contrary winds upon the very ocean itself without sustaining injury ('De Bello Gallico', books III,XIII,I.). It is clear that these fine vessels, which towered over the Roman galleys, had the capability of crossing the Atlantic Ocean 'vasto atque aperto mari', "upon the vast open sea," as Caesar indicates."(2)
Does it cross your mind that these ships were in fact employed in such voyages to the Americas? Why had Caesar never seen their like before? The wind went down and the Roman galleys threw grappling hooks into the Celtic rigging and sails then boarded them. Caesar made a deal (as was his wont) with the cousins of his ancestors who were not in control of all. He gave them full citizenship of Rome, which they in fact had established after defeating the Tarquin kings of Etruria. Thus the nature of Catholicism and the Anglican church has a long and sordid past association, as they outlawed the Druids and put a bounty on their heads. Can you see why we think the Toltecs or others in America might have Druidic roots? There is no further mention of British or Gaulish naval vessels in Caesar's commentaries, nor does Tacitus in the century that followed give any space or consideration to native naval might. It seems that the battle against the Veneti was the end of Celtic sea power in classical times. Except for the periodic truculence by British chiefs like Queen Boadicaea.
NORMAN TOTTEN: - "The Eye of God and the Agricultural Grid
By Norman Totten
Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts
Impetus for this kind of research was the need to understand the "atna-kuna" motif so prevalent in Celtic New England and Iberia, and frequently associated with the "eye of Bel". James Whittall has been locating examples of it in Portugal and Spain. Fell, Dix, and Oedel have recently published observations about it.
This presentation is limited to what seems to be the two predominant symbolic forms of the sun and earth in ancient inscriptions - - the eye of the sun god and the cultivated field grid. Both have occurred in numerous varieties, visually and phonetically. This paper should be read as a progress report, incomplete in its consideration and somewhat tentative in its conclusions regarding a vast and complex problem.
I. Morphology and Dissemination: Eye of the Sun
Though he later equivocated about which direction the evolution had occurred, Sir Arthur Evans (1984, p. 303) set forth the basic forms of the eye of Ra - - from one complete with lashes (rays) to a circle (pupil) enclosing a smaller circle or dot (iris)." (6)
This is important to understanding the worldwide cultures and the elite corporate traders. The circle with a dot is the Mark of Qayin or Cain (Gardner's Genesis of the Grail Kings and other sources) and as such it is the adept cartouche or signifying token for the family of Jesus and the 'arch-tectons' (Septuagint) of the Great Pyramid.
In 'Bel' we have the Keltic God as well as the Mesopotamian (later) God. To find them so closely associated or connected in the Iberias that now carry names like Spain, Ireland and North America adds a great additional clue to the Tartessian (source of the 'Biblical Ships of Tarshis') sites being excavated or studied in Anatolia and Portugal. They all start with Iberia in the Caspian and the Black Sea region that is the genetic homeland of the Kelts some 30-35,000 years ago. Because we can genetically and forensically trace and track these people and marry them to dateable artifacts we have a credible history untainted by kingly or priestly power mongers.
Another ESOP excerpt from the work of Totten deals with Moroccan monastics exiled to America in the 5th Century AD. "In Figuig the monks were solitary (monachos), but in communal life (Koinos Bios) of brothers (fratres), a friary. Their form of testifying (martyrium) under persecution was not death in an arena for the pleasure of pagan spectators but exile, exile to the wilderness of America." (7)
TERRACOTTA HEAD OF A ROMAN IN MEXICO: - "This year, Scandinavians celebrate the 1,000 years since Leif Ericsson sailed to the New World from Greenland. Bjarni Herjolfsson was supposedly the first to step ashore on the New World. Historians have long believed that Ericsson's colony at L'Anse aux Meadows, on the northern-most tip of Newfoundland, represented the first evidence of Europeans on the continent {When Farley Mowat wrote about it in 'Westviking' he was ridiculed.}. However, a wide variety of archaeological evidence points to earlier contact.
A black terracotta head of a bearded man, about 2 in (5cm) tall, found in the Toluca Valley about 40 miles (64km) west of Mexico City in 1933 and dated by thermoluminescence to about 200 AD, could be the first reliable proof that Roman sailors reached America. It is different in style from any other known pre-Columbian artwork and has been identified as Roman by art experts. Although much was written about the head since its discovery, its whereabouts were unknown until 1994, when it was found locked away in a Mexico City museum by a US anthropologist appropriately named Dr Roman Hristov.
A review of the circumstances surrounding the head's discovery confirmed it was placed in its burial ground no later than 1510 - a decade before the Spanish arrived in Meso-America. Crucially, the head was excavated from the site by professionals, said David Kelley, an archaeologist at the University of Calgary, in Alberta {Professor Emeritus} Canada. 'This was sealed under three floors, it's as close to archaeological certainty as you can get.' {Emphasis and N.B.}
Archaeologist David Grove, of the University of Illinois, agreed that the head was Roman, but pointed out that there was no evidence of Roman influence on pre-Columbian cultures. He suggested that the head could have been washed ashore from a Roman shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico. Even so, there seems no denying that Roman sailors had reached American waters. 'Ancient Mesoamerica, v.10, p.207; Scotsman, Guardian, D. Mail, 10 Feb; New Scientist, 12 Feb 2000.'
Mark McManamin, professor of geography and geology at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, is convinced that the Carthaginians discovered America between 350 and 320 BC. In a recent issue of 'The Numismatic' magazine, and at a meeting of the American Friends of Tunisia Association in May 1999, he interpreted a series of puzzling gold coins of that period as depictions of the known world, including a land mass to the west of Spain. Experts on ancient trade routes believe that the Carthaginians almost certainly reached the coast of Brazil, where Punic amphorae (containing olive oil and wine) have been found; and Punic coins of the 4th century BC have been excavated at seven sites in the eastern United States, unfortunately not specified in our source ('Jeune Afrique', Paris,7, 1 Sept 1999).
According to the Xinhua Chinese press agency last August, similarities between nearly 300 markings found on pottery, jade and stone at unspecified ancient native sites in central America closely resemble 3,000-year-old Shang dynasty characters for the sun, sky, rain, water, crops, trees and stars inscribed on animal bones or tortoise shells, known as Jiaguwen. American and Chinese pictographs in 56 matching sets were shown to senior academics at a symposium in Anyang, former capital of the Shang dynasty.
These impressive similarities add fuel to theories that Chinese arrived in the Americas before the end of the Shang dynasty in 221 BC. Shang legends state that a king led his people on a journey to the east, with some scholars believing that it took them across the Bering Strait to North America. The Chinese classic, the 'Shan Hai King' of about 2250 BC, contains what seems to be an accurate description of the Grand Canyon. {We have articles describing a massive complex being found dug into the walls of the Grand Canyon at a significant height up from where the river now flows. Pictures of a Buddha-like statue that is a lotus god from Egypt are in the article. The US government put it off limits after the Smithsonian went and made a report verifying an earlier report from credible people early in the 20th century. You can't get to the area any easy way, even if you wanted to go behind the officials. The Grand Canyon was one of my accounts when I worked in the area.} Peanuts and maize have been found at ancient Chinese sites dating back to 3000 BC. The orthodox view is that neither of these plants left their native America before their export by European colonists in the 16th century AD.
In AD 499, a Chinese Buddhist monk, Hui Shen, returned to China claiming to have spent 40 years in the land of Fu Sang. He left a record of the country he visited, which has been recorded in official histories - a land thought by some modern scholars to be ancient Mexico.
Then there is the 3,000-year-old pottery found on the Valdivian coast of Ecuador, decorated and incised in exactly the same way as pottery from the Jomon area of Japan {We touched on the Canadian Museum of Civilization and a lie saying there was evidence of earlier local industry.}, and not preceded in Ecuador by plainer and simpler bowls and urns, 'National Post (Toronto), 27 Aug; D. Telegraph, 28 Aug 1999'.
The maverick historian Farley Mowat recently brought out 'The Farfarers: Before the Norse', in which he argues that the first Europeans to reach America were 'Albans' {A site in central America has a similar name.} who set off from the north of Scotland in the 8th century AD in search of walrus ivory (for centuries considered more valuable than gold), sailing from Iceland to Greenland and northern Labrador. The 78-year-old kilted Canadian author {Who my oldest brother's first wife's father spent two years with as a missionary in the Arctic.} maintains that the remains of long houses far above the tree-line in northern Quebec were built by these immigrants {Yet I've read articles saying Mowat has no first hand experience and other stupid remarks about an eminently honest person who has nothing but disdain for most academics.}. His 36 books on the life, history and ecology of North America have sold 15 million copies, and he shrugs off the scorn of conventional historians. 'Times, 9 Nov. 1999. For a general round up of pre-Columbian discovery-of-America claims, see FT61:26-28.'" (3)
My first-hand viewing of many sculpted or cast heads at the Villas Archaeologique and the fresco of blond warriors at the Temple of Warriors there (Chichen Itza) is just one of a thousand other factual things you'll see in this encyclopedia. Botany brings the American sweet potato that convinced nay sayers in that discipline, which had been insistent they were right. Sociologists, geologists and map makers as well as historians and oceanographers and physicists are all included as every possible area of study has good evidence the liars had good reason to hide their true purposes from people they sought to abuse. 'Liars' is a very kind word, and it was quite gracious of the Amerindians to say the white man spoke with a tongue that is forked.
Author of Diverse Druids
Regular Columnist for The E SPress Magazine
Guest 'expert' at World-Mysteries.com
Here is a little of the story of his travails, which is presented for more reason than just the obvious need to reinforce on the existence and loss of Keltic seacraft technology. The rise and fall of Celtic sea power has been strangely neglected {Although the movie 'Spartacus' shows Kirk Douglas arranging passage to Italy from the Kelts[Silesians and Galatians are Kelts back to the time of Punt] who ruled the Sea.} by most historians and archaeologists as to prompt much skepticism when first I began to report Celtic inscription in America. 'I can't say I've ever heard that the Celts were seafarers,' was a typical comment. Those who recall that Julius Caesar described the Britons as mostly naked savages, wearing only iron torques about their necks, {A torquetum or tanawa is an ancient sextant known to have existed in this period as Maui navigated for a well known Greek and was able to calculate longitude.} sometimes with the skin of a beast cast over the shoulders, think of the Britons as having nothing better than one-man coracles for crossing water.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, most of Book III of Caesar's 'De Bello Gallico' is devoted to the greatest naval battle he was ever called upon to mount. And his adversaries? None other than the Celts of Brittany, whose fleet was swelled by the arrival of a flotilla they had summoned from their allies in Britain! The combined Gallic and British naval armament comprised an immensely powerful force, numbering, so Caesar tells us, no less than 220 ships, all larger than and superior in construction to those of the opposing Roman navy under Admiral Brutus. These Celtic ships, Caesar says, were so soundly constructed that they could outride tempestuous or contrary winds upon the very ocean itself without sustaining injury ('De Bello Gallico', books III,XIII,I.). It is clear that these fine vessels, which towered over the Roman galleys, had the capability of crossing the Atlantic Ocean 'vasto atque aperto mari', "upon the vast open sea," as Caesar indicates."(2)
Does it cross your mind that these ships were in fact employed in such voyages to the Americas? Why had Caesar never seen their like before? The wind went down and the Roman galleys threw grappling hooks into the Celtic rigging and sails then boarded them. Caesar made a deal (as was his wont) with the cousins of his ancestors who were not in control of all. He gave them full citizenship of Rome, which they in fact had established after defeating the Tarquin kings of Etruria. Thus the nature of Catholicism and the Anglican church has a long and sordid past association, as they outlawed the Druids and put a bounty on their heads. Can you see why we think the Toltecs or others in America might have Druidic roots? There is no further mention of British or Gaulish naval vessels in Caesar's commentaries, nor does Tacitus in the century that followed give any space or consideration to native naval might. It seems that the battle against the Veneti was the end of Celtic sea power in classical times. Except for the periodic truculence by British chiefs like Queen Boadicaea.
NORMAN TOTTEN: - "The Eye of God and the Agricultural Grid
By Norman Totten
Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts
Impetus for this kind of research was the need to understand the "atna-kuna" motif so prevalent in Celtic New England and Iberia, and frequently associated with the "eye of Bel". James Whittall has been locating examples of it in Portugal and Spain. Fell, Dix, and Oedel have recently published observations about it.
This presentation is limited to what seems to be the two predominant symbolic forms of the sun and earth in ancient inscriptions - - the eye of the sun god and the cultivated field grid. Both have occurred in numerous varieties, visually and phonetically. This paper should be read as a progress report, incomplete in its consideration and somewhat tentative in its conclusions regarding a vast and complex problem.
I. Morphology and Dissemination: Eye of the Sun
Though he later equivocated about which direction the evolution had occurred, Sir Arthur Evans (1984, p. 303) set forth the basic forms of the eye of Ra - - from one complete with lashes (rays) to a circle (pupil) enclosing a smaller circle or dot (iris)." (6)
This is important to understanding the worldwide cultures and the elite corporate traders. The circle with a dot is the Mark of Qayin or Cain (Gardner's Genesis of the Grail Kings and other sources) and as such it is the adept cartouche or signifying token for the family of Jesus and the 'arch-tectons' (Septuagint) of the Great Pyramid.
In 'Bel' we have the Keltic God as well as the Mesopotamian (later) God. To find them so closely associated or connected in the Iberias that now carry names like Spain, Ireland and North America adds a great additional clue to the Tartessian (source of the 'Biblical Ships of Tarshis') sites being excavated or studied in Anatolia and Portugal. They all start with Iberia in the Caspian and the Black Sea region that is the genetic homeland of the Kelts some 30-35,000 years ago. Because we can genetically and forensically trace and track these people and marry them to dateable artifacts we have a credible history untainted by kingly or priestly power mongers.
Another ESOP excerpt from the work of Totten deals with Moroccan monastics exiled to America in the 5th Century AD. "In Figuig the monks were solitary (monachos), but in communal life (Koinos Bios) of brothers (fratres), a friary. Their form of testifying (martyrium) under persecution was not death in an arena for the pleasure of pagan spectators but exile, exile to the wilderness of America." (7)
TERRACOTTA HEAD OF A ROMAN IN MEXICO: - "This year, Scandinavians celebrate the 1,000 years since Leif Ericsson sailed to the New World from Greenland. Bjarni Herjolfsson was supposedly the first to step ashore on the New World. Historians have long believed that Ericsson's colony at L'Anse aux Meadows, on the northern-most tip of Newfoundland, represented the first evidence of Europeans on the continent {When Farley Mowat wrote about it in 'Westviking' he was ridiculed.}. However, a wide variety of archaeological evidence points to earlier contact.
A black terracotta head of a bearded man, about 2 in (5cm) tall, found in the Toluca Valley about 40 miles (64km) west of Mexico City in 1933 and dated by thermoluminescence to about 200 AD, could be the first reliable proof that Roman sailors reached America. It is different in style from any other known pre-Columbian artwork and has been identified as Roman by art experts. Although much was written about the head since its discovery, its whereabouts were unknown until 1994, when it was found locked away in a Mexico City museum by a US anthropologist appropriately named Dr Roman Hristov.
A review of the circumstances surrounding the head's discovery confirmed it was placed in its burial ground no later than 1510 - a decade before the Spanish arrived in Meso-America. Crucially, the head was excavated from the site by professionals, said David Kelley, an archaeologist at the University of Calgary, in Alberta {Professor Emeritus} Canada. 'This was sealed under three floors, it's as close to archaeological certainty as you can get.' {Emphasis and N.B.}
Archaeologist David Grove, of the University of Illinois, agreed that the head was Roman, but pointed out that there was no evidence of Roman influence on pre-Columbian cultures. He suggested that the head could have been washed ashore from a Roman shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico. Even so, there seems no denying that Roman sailors had reached American waters. 'Ancient Mesoamerica, v.10, p.207; Scotsman, Guardian, D. Mail, 10 Feb; New Scientist, 12 Feb 2000.'
Mark McManamin, professor of geography and geology at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, is convinced that the Carthaginians discovered America between 350 and 320 BC. In a recent issue of 'The Numismatic' magazine, and at a meeting of the American Friends of Tunisia Association in May 1999, he interpreted a series of puzzling gold coins of that period as depictions of the known world, including a land mass to the west of Spain. Experts on ancient trade routes believe that the Carthaginians almost certainly reached the coast of Brazil, where Punic amphorae (containing olive oil and wine) have been found; and Punic coins of the 4th century BC have been excavated at seven sites in the eastern United States, unfortunately not specified in our source ('Jeune Afrique', Paris,7, 1 Sept 1999).
According to the Xinhua Chinese press agency last August, similarities between nearly 300 markings found on pottery, jade and stone at unspecified ancient native sites in central America closely resemble 3,000-year-old Shang dynasty characters for the sun, sky, rain, water, crops, trees and stars inscribed on animal bones or tortoise shells, known as Jiaguwen. American and Chinese pictographs in 56 matching sets were shown to senior academics at a symposium in Anyang, former capital of the Shang dynasty.
These impressive similarities add fuel to theories that Chinese arrived in the Americas before the end of the Shang dynasty in 221 BC. Shang legends state that a king led his people on a journey to the east, with some scholars believing that it took them across the Bering Strait to North America. The Chinese classic, the 'Shan Hai King' of about 2250 BC, contains what seems to be an accurate description of the Grand Canyon. {We have articles describing a massive complex being found dug into the walls of the Grand Canyon at a significant height up from where the river now flows. Pictures of a Buddha-like statue that is a lotus god from Egypt are in the article. The US government put it off limits after the Smithsonian went and made a report verifying an earlier report from credible people early in the 20th century. You can't get to the area any easy way, even if you wanted to go behind the officials. The Grand Canyon was one of my accounts when I worked in the area.} Peanuts and maize have been found at ancient Chinese sites dating back to 3000 BC. The orthodox view is that neither of these plants left their native America before their export by European colonists in the 16th century AD.
In AD 499, a Chinese Buddhist monk, Hui Shen, returned to China claiming to have spent 40 years in the land of Fu Sang. He left a record of the country he visited, which has been recorded in official histories - a land thought by some modern scholars to be ancient Mexico.
Then there is the 3,000-year-old pottery found on the Valdivian coast of Ecuador, decorated and incised in exactly the same way as pottery from the Jomon area of Japan {We touched on the Canadian Museum of Civilization and a lie saying there was evidence of earlier local industry.}, and not preceded in Ecuador by plainer and simpler bowls and urns, 'National Post (Toronto), 27 Aug; D. Telegraph, 28 Aug 1999'.
The maverick historian Farley Mowat recently brought out 'The Farfarers: Before the Norse', in which he argues that the first Europeans to reach America were 'Albans' {A site in central America has a similar name.} who set off from the north of Scotland in the 8th century AD in search of walrus ivory (for centuries considered more valuable than gold), sailing from Iceland to Greenland and northern Labrador. The 78-year-old kilted Canadian author {Who my oldest brother's first wife's father spent two years with as a missionary in the Arctic.} maintains that the remains of long houses far above the tree-line in northern Quebec were built by these immigrants {Yet I've read articles saying Mowat has no first hand experience and other stupid remarks about an eminently honest person who has nothing but disdain for most academics.}. His 36 books on the life, history and ecology of North America have sold 15 million copies, and he shrugs off the scorn of conventional historians. 'Times, 9 Nov. 1999. For a general round up of pre-Columbian discovery-of-America claims, see FT61:26-28.'" (3)
My first-hand viewing of many sculpted or cast heads at the Villas Archaeologique and the fresco of blond warriors at the Temple of Warriors there (Chichen Itza) is just one of a thousand other factual things you'll see in this encyclopedia. Botany brings the American sweet potato that convinced nay sayers in that discipline, which had been insistent they were right. Sociologists, geologists and map makers as well as historians and oceanographers and physicists are all included as every possible area of study has good evidence the liars had good reason to hide their true purposes from people they sought to abuse. 'Liars' is a very kind word, and it was quite gracious of the Amerindians to say the white man spoke with a tongue that is forked.
Author of Diverse Druids
Regular Columnist for The E SPress Magazine
Guest 'expert' at World-Mysteries.com
Art of Greece - Fifth Century - Dividing Line Between Archaic and Classical Traditions
In the fifth century before Christ, the creative spirit of Greece touched the new horizons of architecture, art, drama, literature, and philosophy, well shaping the Western Civilization, and influencing the culture of several other countries as well. Where art was on its new high with the then joie de vivre reflected through several tremendous sculptural & pictorial delineations, architecture was climaxing the depths of finesse & technical soundness.
The art of Greece in the initial fifth century is awed for its famous "Korai" and "Kouros" statues, a landmark of the Archaic period (600-480BC). While "Kouros" portrayed nude males, the "Korai" statues, being the feminine counterparts of "Kouros," were clothed. The "Korai" were a case study for the development in dress as well as facial expressions. The "Kouros," on the other hand, reflected creative physical evolution in sculpting, and were therefore, observed more for their morphology. Approximately life-size, except a few, most "Kouros" were made of marble. They exhibited a strict anatomical symmetry with the help of simple geometric forms. A standard format followed was the standing front pose with the left leg moved forward and arms close to the bodies, touching the sides of thighs.
The Greek Art of the fifth century BC primarily manifests the creative voyage from 'Archaic Period' to the 'Classical' one. The statues created at the beginning of the fifth century embodied real people, as is evident from the statues of "Harmodius" and "Aristogeition" (477 BC - now lost), in Athens, to mark the overthrowing of oppression. The sculpting wonders testified as the first public monuments.
"Charioteer of Delphi" (470 BC) is one of the finest sculpting works of this period. The bronze cast statue dramatically represents the artistic transition from 'Archaic' to 'Classical' patterns, and the shift from stone & marbles as art materials to bronze. Terracotta too was an occasional sculpting material such as the statue of "Zeus & Ganymede" (470 BC), in Olympia. Another sculpting milestone, the bronze statue of "Poseidon or Zeus" (460 BC), stands around 7 feet tall. "Statue of Zeus at Olympia" (approximately 432 BC), a 39 feet tall sculpture (now in ruins), by the sculptor Phidias, and placed in the temple of Zeus, Olympia, forms one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Sculpting as the fifth century Greek Art, counterbalanced the conventional geometric representation and idealized 'Realism.' In fact, where these historical splendors incessantly enthralled its viewers, the Western Civilization took a forward leap, setting them as one of the creative foundations for the next millennia.
Fifth century Greek artistry touched other creative wings too. The paintings of the artist "Polygnotous of Thasos," and the meticulous and dignified wall painting, "Minoan Art" such as "The Symposium View in the Tomb of the Diver," (480 BC) in Paestum, are some brilliant examples. The architectural wonders include the graceful temples, "Parthenon" (447-31 BC), of Greek goddess Athena, in Athens, one of the greatest cultural symbols of Ancient Greece and a mark of Athenian Democracy; and "Temple of Hephaestus and Athena Ergane" (449-15 BC), Athens. Pottery gifted the world with the likes of "Tondo portraying Herakles & Athena" (around 480-70 BC) by Phoinix (potter) & Douris (painter), and "White-ground lekythos" (420-10 BC) by the Reed Painter. Inscribed coins, such as "Athenian Tetradrachm, with the head of Athena and Owl," (post 449 BC) and "Drachm of Aegina with Tortoise & Stamp" (404 BC), had reached an impressive level of artistic maturity.
Despite all the excellence, unfortunately enough, very few exemplary of the fifth century art of Greece remain today. Marbles could not stand the tides of time, architectural wonders were destroyed in natural calamities such as earthquakes, and metal works were mostly melted for other uses, while several others were devastated in wars, ravages, and by fanatics. Still with whatever is preserved today, the fifth century art of Greece stands broad and impressive, well outlining the 'golden period' in the history of Greek culture.
The art of Greece in the initial fifth century is awed for its famous "Korai" and "Kouros" statues, a landmark of the Archaic period (600-480BC). While "Kouros" portrayed nude males, the "Korai" statues, being the feminine counterparts of "Kouros," were clothed. The "Korai" were a case study for the development in dress as well as facial expressions. The "Kouros," on the other hand, reflected creative physical evolution in sculpting, and were therefore, observed more for their morphology. Approximately life-size, except a few, most "Kouros" were made of marble. They exhibited a strict anatomical symmetry with the help of simple geometric forms. A standard format followed was the standing front pose with the left leg moved forward and arms close to the bodies, touching the sides of thighs.
The Greek Art of the fifth century BC primarily manifests the creative voyage from 'Archaic Period' to the 'Classical' one. The statues created at the beginning of the fifth century embodied real people, as is evident from the statues of "Harmodius" and "Aristogeition" (477 BC - now lost), in Athens, to mark the overthrowing of oppression. The sculpting wonders testified as the first public monuments.
"Charioteer of Delphi" (470 BC) is one of the finest sculpting works of this period. The bronze cast statue dramatically represents the artistic transition from 'Archaic' to 'Classical' patterns, and the shift from stone & marbles as art materials to bronze. Terracotta too was an occasional sculpting material such as the statue of "Zeus & Ganymede" (470 BC), in Olympia. Another sculpting milestone, the bronze statue of "Poseidon or Zeus" (460 BC), stands around 7 feet tall. "Statue of Zeus at Olympia" (approximately 432 BC), a 39 feet tall sculpture (now in ruins), by the sculptor Phidias, and placed in the temple of Zeus, Olympia, forms one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Sculpting as the fifth century Greek Art, counterbalanced the conventional geometric representation and idealized 'Realism.' In fact, where these historical splendors incessantly enthralled its viewers, the Western Civilization took a forward leap, setting them as one of the creative foundations for the next millennia.
Fifth century Greek artistry touched other creative wings too. The paintings of the artist "Polygnotous of Thasos," and the meticulous and dignified wall painting, "Minoan Art" such as "The Symposium View in the Tomb of the Diver," (480 BC) in Paestum, are some brilliant examples. The architectural wonders include the graceful temples, "Parthenon" (447-31 BC), of Greek goddess Athena, in Athens, one of the greatest cultural symbols of Ancient Greece and a mark of Athenian Democracy; and "Temple of Hephaestus and Athena Ergane" (449-15 BC), Athens. Pottery gifted the world with the likes of "Tondo portraying Herakles & Athena" (around 480-70 BC) by Phoinix (potter) & Douris (painter), and "White-ground lekythos" (420-10 BC) by the Reed Painter. Inscribed coins, such as "Athenian Tetradrachm, with the head of Athena and Owl," (post 449 BC) and "Drachm of Aegina with Tortoise & Stamp" (404 BC), had reached an impressive level of artistic maturity.
Despite all the excellence, unfortunately enough, very few exemplary of the fifth century art of Greece remain today. Marbles could not stand the tides of time, architectural wonders were destroyed in natural calamities such as earthquakes, and metal works were mostly melted for other uses, while several others were devastated in wars, ravages, and by fanatics. Still with whatever is preserved today, the fifth century art of Greece stands broad and impressive, well outlining the 'golden period' in the history of Greek culture.
Annette Labedzki received her BFA at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. She has more than 25 years experience. She is the founder and developer of an online art gallery featuring original art from all over the world. It is a great site for art collectors to buy original art. Is is also a venue for artists to display and sell their art . Artists can join for free and their image upload is unlimited. Please visit the website at http://www.labedzki-art.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)