A Theology of Taylor Swift

 A Theology of Taylor Swift

Stephen Bullivant

May 25, 2016

No topic, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, is out of bounds for the theologian. This is because theology’s true subject matter is God, and “all things,” Aquinas sagely points out, either “are God Himself or...refer to God as their beginning and end” (Summa Theologiae, q. 1 a. 7).

With the mandate of the Angelic Doctor, then, what might be said—theologically—about Taylor Swift, the 26-year-old musical megastar, who released her debut single, “Tim McGraw,” 10 years ago this June?

On the face of it, not very much. Religion is one area of Swift’s private life that she tends not to be so open about (though rumors persist that she is at least a cradle Catholic). True, the protagonists of “Our Song” from 2006 raise the philosophically intriguing possibility that God is able to replay the immediate past: “And when I got home, ‘fore I said, ‘Amen.’/ Asking God if he could play it again.” But even in her early, countrified period, overtly Christian lyrics are otherwise few and far between.

Gospel-era Bob Dylan—an obvious and well-trodden hunting ground for theology in popular music—Taylor Swift is not.

In other ways, though, comparisons with Dylan are not so wide of the mark. Both are singers, multi-instrumentalists and, taking a protean approach to genre boundaries, songwriters of genuine genius. (If you don’t believe me, go listen—really, actually, properly listen—to any of her five albums. All, down to the very last track, were written or co-written by Swift. And there is scarcely a weak song on any of them.) And if Dylan was the voice of, and soundtrack to, the youth of 50 years ago, Swift—with album sales of 40 million worldwide—is all that and more for today’s young people.

In fact, that is likely the best starting point for a kind of pastoral-theological approach to Taylor Swift. She has evidently touched a huge cultural nerve at the beginning of the 21st century. For those searching for “the signs of the times,” the “T-Swizzle” phenomenon is undoubtedly one. Note, too, that it is among young adults that Swift is most popular—and that the Catholic Church (or any church, for that matter) is increasingly not.

That said, my own Swiftian appreciation comes directly from the committed Catholic students I teach—especially a group of bright, 20-something women. I asked one of them just what it is about Swift that she finds so compelling. Alice Costar, now a razor-sharp theology postgraduate at the University of Bonn, commented on how, being similar ages...

things Taylor sang about were happening in my own life at that time. Just as I was beginning to think that adulthood wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, she released “Never Grow Up,” a song about wishing a child could be protected from the inevitable hurts in life. The song “22” was released the year I turned 22 and conjures up memories of easily the best year of my life.

If you spend any amount of time following Swift fandom online—as “research” for a commission from America, let’s say—relatable is a term you will meet often. It is not surprising. Her eponymous album, “Taylor Swift,” was released when she was just 16. Writing and singing about what she knows, Swift is essentially an ethnographer—a participant-observer par excellence—of young adulthood’s everyday “joys and hopes, fears and anxieties” (“Gaudium et Spes,” No. 1). The song “Fifteen,” 2008’s morality tale about navigating “life before you know who you’re gonna be,” is maybe the clearest example. But really, the same applies to her oeuvre as a whole. Would-be youth ministers, take note.

The theology of Taylor Swift can, in fact, go deeper still. While I previously noted the general lack of direct religious content in the Swift canon, there are two glaring exceptions to that rule—which are all the more remarkable for their rarity.

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2016/05/25/theology-taylor-swift

Hear the story behind Taylor Swift's visit to the Scottish Rite Cathedral in 2008

A music video for Taylor Swift’s song “Change” was filmed in the building in 2008. Hear from Sarah Bratcher, an event manager, on the story behind the video.

Christine Tannous

Published 5:20 a.m. ET Oct. 14, 2024

https://www.indystar.com/videos/entertainment/2024/10/14/taylor-swift-visits-indianapolis-to-film-video-in-scottish-rite-cathedral/75502344007/

Vatican reaffirms 'grave sin' of Freemasonry, says Catholics cannot join the world's largest secret society

Freemasonry has been prohibited for Catholics since 1738, when Pope Clement XII called the secret society 'depraved and perverted'

By Timothy H.J. Nerozzi Fox News

Published November 15, 2023 12:25pm EST

The Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) has reaffirmed the Catholic Church's teachings that laity or clerics participating in Freemasonry are in "a state of grave sin."

The DDF released the Nov. 13 document to the public with the signatures of Pope Francis and the DDF Prefect Cardinal Victor Fernández, urging the faithful not to participate in or affiliate with Freemasonry groups.

"On the doctrinal level, it should be remembered that active membership in Freemasonry by a member of the faithful is forbidden because of the irreconcilability between Catholic doctrine and Freemasonry," the document reads, citing the 1983 "Declaration on Masonic Associations" by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would go on to become Pope Benedict XVI.

"Therefore, those who are formally and knowingly enrolled in Masonic Lodges and have embraced Masonic principles fall under the provisions in the above-mentioned Declaration. These measures also apply to any clerics enrolled in Freemasonry," the document continues.

The clarification was requested by Bishop Julito Cortes of the Philippines, who raised concerns about growing interest in the secret society in his country.

Freemasonry, the world's largest secret society with millions of members scattered across almost every country in the world, established its first Grand Lodge in England in 1717.

The society swears oaths of secrecy, fellowship and fraternity among members and has accumulated a vast catalog of rituals, ceremonial attire and secret signals between masons. These aesthetic affectations often use Christian imagery despite being used for non-Christian rituals.

Freemasons are usually expected to profess belief in a "supreme being" but are not obligated to believe in any specific deity.

Members of the Catholic Church are not allowed to join or affiliate with Freemasonry groups due to the organizations' deistic, non-Christian teachings about divinity.

Additionally, the secretive and ritualistic nature of Freemason lodges has often led to accusations from Catholic leaders of idolatry and clandestine opposition to Christianity.

However, Freemason associations are far from uniform, and Masonic culture differs greatly between different rites, sects, lodges and national bodies of Freemasonry. The Catholic Church has fought most aggressively with Masonic bodies in continental Europe, which boasts a more ideological tone.

Freemasonry in the U.S. and the U.K., while still linked to overseas lodges, is reportedly more socially and professionally focused.

Freemasonry was rendered an excommunicable offense in 1738 by Pope Clement XII, who called the secret society "depraved and perverted."

The 1983 document by then-Cardinal Ratzinger cited in the Vatican's latest document states that the "negative judgment in regard to Masonic association remains unchanged since their principles have always been considered irreconcilable with the doctrine of the Church and therefore membership in them remains forbidden."

The 1983 document adds, "The faithful who enroll in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion."

The Vatican recommended a pastoral approach to the issue of Freemasonry in the Philippines, suggesting national bishops push for greater catechesis on the subject among the laity.

"On the pastoral level, the Dicastery proposes that the Philippine Bishops conduct catechesis accessible to the people and in all parishes regarding the reasons for the irreconcilability between the Catholic Faith and Freemasonry."

It is debated whether joining a Freemasonic lodge incurs an automatic excommunication from the Catholic Church under Canon Law.

https://www.foxnews.com/faith-values/vatican-reaffirms-grave-sin-freemasonry-catholics-cannot-join-worlds-largest-secret-society

THE NEW AGE 

GOD'S PLAN IN AMERICA C. WILLIAM SMITH, New Orleans, La.  September 1950

THERE are three plans in action in America today and they all have different purposes. The first plan is God's plan, a nonsectarian plan; the second is the Roman Catholic plan, and this is a denominational or sectarian plan, and the third is the Communistic plan, an anticapitalist plan. 

God's plan is dedicated to the unification of all races, religions and creeds. This plan, dedicated to the new order of things, is to make all things new-s new nation, a new race, a new civilization and a new religion, a nonsectarian religion that has already been recognized and called the religion of "The Great Light." 

Looking back into history, we can easily see that the Guiding Hand of Providence has chosen the Nordic people to bring in and unfold the new order of the world. Records clearly show that 95 percent of the colonists were Nordics-Anglo-Saxons. 

Providence has chosen the Nordics because the Nordics have prepared themselves and have chosen God. They are not church worshippers, for they worship God's word-the Holy Bible. The Nordics are. the great Bible-reading people of the world today, and the Nordics-Anglo-Saxons -were the first people to print the Holy Bible in great quantity, and they were known as the people of a book, that book being the Holy Bible. 

But, in order to read the Bible, it is necessary to know how to read. In the Nordic race there is no illiteracy. In Norway there has been no illiteracy for more than a hundred years. Another fact that shows clearly that the Nordics are God's chosen people this time is they are always looking for more light on the mission of life. 

Looking at their station of life, these great Bible-reading people should open the eyes of the world, King Gustaf of Sweden is a great light in the nonsectarian Masonic Brotherhood, and King Haakon of Norway is a Masonic light in Norway. 

The late King Christian of Denmark was a Masonic spirit in his Denmark; also King George of England is a Masonic light to his Anglo-Saxon people.  Just as Providence has chosen the Jewish race-the children of Israel-to bring into the world righteousness by carrying the "Ten Commandments" which emphasize 'Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy," so also Providence has chosen the Nordic race to unfold the 'New Age" of the world-a "Novus Ordo Seclorum." One of the first of the Nordics to reach the New World was the Viking, Leif Ericsson. He sailed from Norway to bring his people in Iceland a new message, the message of the Chritian God. But Providence moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform, and so Leif the Lucky was sent by Providence to the New World. From the abundance of grapes found there Leif Ericsson called the place Vinland. It is easy to sense that Leif Ericsson was sent by the Guiding Hand of Providence to bring the Norse spirit of the "All-Father" to the shores of the New World. 

The Nordics are the highest branch of the fifth Aryan Civilization.; The Latins are of the fourth Aryan Civilization, and the American race will be the sixth Aryan Civilization. This new and great civilization is like an American Beauty rosebud, ready to open and send its wonderful fragrance to all the world. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Paine and many others of the founders of the New World were Nordics. Thomas Paine, the spark plug of the American Revolution, loved God but hated sectarianism. In 'These Are the times," he wrote: "We have it in our power to begin the world all over again! A situation familiar to the present hath not happened since the days of Noah, till now. The birthday of a New World is at hand." 

As stated before, God's Plan in America is nonsectarian plan. Our Constitution is nonsectarian. Our great American Public Schools-God's chosen schools-are nonsectarian. The Great Spirit behind this great nation is nonsectarian.

Our great American Public Schools have never taken away from any child the freedom of will, freedom of Spirit or freedom of mind. That is the divine reason that Great God our King has chosen the great American Public Schools to pave the way for the new race, the new religion and the new civilization that is taking place in America.

Any mother, father or guardian who is responsible for taking away of freedom of mind, freedom of will or freedom of spirit is the lowest criminal on this earth, because they take away from that child the God-given right to become a part of God's great plan in America for the dawn of the New Age of the world."

The Official Organ of The Supreme Council 33° A. & A. Scottish Rite of Freemasonry S. J. U. S. A. PUBLISHED AT 1735 SIXTEENTH STREET N, W. WASHINGTON, D. C. 

In 1748 the Rite de Veilla Bru, or Faithful Scotsman, was established at Toulouse with nine degrees, the first three Symbolic, followed by the Secret Master, four Elu degrees, and the Ninth degree ' Scientific Masonry.^" " In 1750 and 1751, a Lodge styled ' St. Jean de Ecossais ' was established at Marseilles, which afterwards assumed the style of ' Scottish Mother Lodge of France.' Its regime finally consisted of Eighteen degrees, of which the Scottish Mother Lodge of France at Paris afterwards borrowed Eight."

" In 1752 a power of the High degrees was established under the pompous title of * Sovereign Council, Sublime Scotch Mother Lodge of the Grand French Globe.' It afterwards called itself* Sovereign Council, Sublime Mother Lodge of the Excellents of the Grand French Globe.' The ' Council of the Emperors of the East and West ' assumed that title also on the 22d January, 1780. — Ragon."

"In 1754, The Chevalier de Bonneville established a chapter of the High degrees at Paris, styled the ' Chapter of Clermont.' In it the Templar system was revived, and the Baron de Hund received the High degrees, there and thence derived the principles and doctrines of his ' Order of Strict Observance ' —Thory and Leveque—Ragon says, The regime of the Chapter of Clermont at first comprised only three degrees, viz., the three Symbolic, followed by the Knight of the Eagle or Master Elect, Illustrious Knight or Templar, and Illustrious Sublime Knight—but that they soon became more numerous."

" In the same year Martinez Pascalis established his rite of ' Elus C'dens ' with nine degrees. He did not carry it to Paris until 1767, where Martinism in ten degrees grew out of it." — Clavel.

" In 1757 M. de St. Gelaire introduced at Paris the ' Order of Noachites.' ^'

page 50

THE ANCIENT AND ACCEPTED SCOTTISH KITE, IN THIRTY-THREE DEGREES. KNOWN HITHERTO UNDER THE NAMES OF THE " RITE OF PEEPECTION" ^THE " EITE OF HEEEDOM" THE " ANCIENT SCOTTISH rite"—THE " RITE OF KILWINNING" AND LAST, AS THE " SCOTTISH RITE, ANCIENT AND ACCEPTED." A FULL AND COMPLETE HISTORY, WITH AN APPENDIX, CONTAINING NUMEROUS AUTHENTIC DOCUMENTS, RELATING TO THE ORIGIN, PKO- OB£SS AND ESTABLISHMENT OP THE EITE—EDICTS, CIRCULARS, PATENTS, REGISTERS, AND THE OPINIONS OF NUMEROUS AUTHORS — ILLUSTRATED WITH "TABLETS," / BY ROBERT B. FOLGER, M. D., Past Master, 33d., iJi-SECRETARY GENERAL, &0. SECOND EDITION. ,c ^ j ;^ NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/The_ancient_and_accepted_Scottish_rite%2C_in_thirty-three_degrees_%28IA_ancientaccepted00folg%29.pdf 

History

The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite is the final and the only result of a complex reform that involves various Masonic Systems which developed separately one from another during the XVIII century in the range of the so called Scottish Regime. This regime originated from the advent of the Scottish Masters since about 1738 and continued with the Chapters of Clermont (1754), the Emperors of the Orient and the Western world (1758) which put in practice rituality defined as the Rite of Perfection or the Rite of Heredom. The aim of the reform, that unified all in one single Order, was aside from these veins, also minor branches with more recent manifestation among which the Primitive Rite and others.

The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite is the rituality that characterises a particular Masonic Body which it adopts and makes his. This Masonic Body is called “The Supreme Council of the Sovereign Grand Inspector General of the 33 rd and Last Level of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite”.

The first Supreme Council (SC) called Mother of the World was founded in Charleston, Carolina, USA on the May 31st 1801 and presently has headquarters in Washington DC, USA.

In some ten years the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, under the impetus of the SC of Charleston, practically spread to all the world through further Supreme Councils which were formed in national territorial Jurisdictions, each independent and autonomous, jealous of their very sovereignty.

The Scottish Rite in Italy

The SC of Italy, that today is denominated “the Supreme Council SS.GG.II.GG. of the 3 rd and Last Level of the Free Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite for the Italian Jurisdiction – Grand Orient of Italy – Palazzo Giustiniani” as shown in a manuscript handed down as the Verbal of the Foundation, also called the “Seal of Foundation” which was founded and installed ritually in Milan on March16th 1805 by the Count Alexandre Francois Auguste De Grasse Tilly S.G.C. of the SC of France (1804), duly assisted by the French and Italian Brothers, with Licenses conferred by the SC Mother of the World of Charleston. The SC of Italy was a direct emanation of this Ritual Body.

In the same constitutional act of the SC of Italy, it is formally declared that it “creates and constitutes by its sovereign authority a General Grand Lodge in Italy under the name of G.O. Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite“. The Grand Orient of Italy, thus founded, was ritually installed on June 20th 1805 by the same founders of the SC of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

The SC of Italy with headquarters in Milan, had jurisdiction only in the territory of the Italian Kingdom and the Sovereign Grand Commander was the Vice King Eugenio Beauharnais.

Subsequently, on the not yet unified Italian territory, other SS.CC ‘s were formed among which (in Naples) a SC called of the two Sicilies (1809), a SC of Palermo (1860), a SC of Naples (1860). Following the unification of Italy initially a SC was formed with the fusion of the SC Milan with that of Turin (1862), then with the transfer of the capital to Florence another SC of this city (1864) was formed. A further SC was established in 1870 in Rome, permanent Capital of the Kingdom. Following numerous agreements and with much difficulty, the unification between the various SS.CC in a single SC of Italy was achieved with headquarters in Rome.

From a schism which occurring 1908, a second SC was born called “Piazza del Gesù” which since 1912 was recognized by many SS.CC. of the world opposed to that of 2Palazzo Giustiniani”. The fascist period, during which all Masonic activity in Italy was prohibited, actually eliminated the problem of this atypical duplication between the historical continuity and the possession of recognition of the various Jurisdictions.

The separation between the Jurisdictions of the Grand Orient of Italy and the SC was sanctioned in 1922. The conference of Paris of the SS.CC. of the world, held in 1929, authorized this principle for all the SS.CC.

Upon recommencement of Masonic activity in 1943, after the failures of unification attempts, those who possessed the Supreme Level of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, formed two SS.CC. of “Palazzo Giustiniani” and “Piazza del Gesù”.

From 1960 to 1973, the residual incomprehension between the two historical blocks of Italian Masonry were settled. Since then, in spite of other efforts of schism, in particular that of 1977 which failed owing to the loyalty of the Scottish Brothers of Italy and the wisdom of SS.CC. of the rest of the world, the SC of “Palazzo Giustiniani” represents the regularity for 54 Supreme Councils in the world.

https://www.ritoscozzese.it/en/rsaa/history/

450 JACOBINS LIKE CHICAGO ANARCHISTS. 

The answer is this : when formed by Jacobin Jesuits, in 1754, in the Jesuits' College of Clermont, Paris, it was "the Military Organization'' as the candidate was told. (See page 397,) It then crowned the Rite of Perfection of 25 degrees, which was adopted by ^^the Council of Emperors/' four years later; that is, in 1758. | (See note 377.) The Jacobins, like the Chicago anarchists lately hung were then -secretly swearing to do what they afterwards did, viz,, wage war on the government. ^ Hence this 32nd grade was not called a degree, but an "organization/' as it was. 

But when adopted by Morin's Sovereign Inspectors, at Charleston, S. C, in 1801, no war was then contemplated^ but by Aaron Burr, and he was soon tried by Jefferson, for his life. The country was then peaceful, and satisfied and pleased with their free constitution, adopted in 1789, only twelve years before. Of course, no fighting was contemplated. True French sympathizers elected Jefferson that year; but the French revolution had reacted, and the Monroe doctrine was soon adopted, to keep the United States free from foreign entanglements. Masonry now did not mean fight, but money^ and false worship. What then were Dalcho, Mitchell and Provost to do ? They had resolved on an "Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite,'' to rule the false worships of Masonry throughout the world. They adopted a scale of thirtytwo degrees; and placed this Military degree at the head: because, it had been, as the notes and ritual say: "the Ne Phis Ultra degree/' and it would not do to leave it out. 

Scotch Rite Masonry Illustrated Volume 2 

https://dn790006.ca.archive.org/0/items/scotchritemasonr02blan/scotchritemasonr02blan.pdf

Note 370.—"Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret. The 32nd degree of the Ancient and Accepted rite, and for many years, or until the institution of the 33d degree, this was the highest degree, or ne plus ultra of Masonry. The body is styled a Consistory, and should be held in a building of two stories. The officers are, a Thrice Illustrious Commander, First and Second Lieutenants, a Minister of State, a Grand Chancellor, a Grand Treasurer, a Grand Secretary, and a Grand Captain of the Guard. In the East a throne, elevated on seven steps, which is the seat of the Thrice Illustrious Commander, who wears a robe of royal purple, and he and the Lieutenants, wear swords. The collar of this degree is black, lined with scarlet, and in the center, at the point, a double-headed eagle, of silver or gold, on a red Teutonic cross. The apron is of white satin, with a border of gold lace, one inch wide, lined with scarlet; on the flap is a double-headed eagle, on each side of which is the flag of the country in which the body is located, the flag of Prussia and the Beause- -ant of the Kadosh degree; on the apron is the camp of the Crusaders, , which is thus explained; it is composed of an enneagon, within which is ' inscribed a heptagon, within that a pentagon, and in the center an equilateral triangle, within which is a circle. Between the heptagon and pentagon are placed five standards, in the designs of whigjl are five letters, which form a particular word. The first standard is purple, on which is emblazoned the ark of the covenant, with a palm, tree on each side; the ark has the motto Laus Deo. The second is blue, on which is a lion, of gold, couchant, holding in his mouth a golden key, with a collar of the same metal on his neck, and on it is the device, Ad majorem Dei gloriam. The third is white, and displays a heart in flames, with two wings; it is surmounted by a crown of laurels. The fourth is green, and bears a double-headed black eagle, crowned, holding a sword in his right claw, and a bleeding heart in his left. The fifth bears a black ox. on a field of gold. On the sides of the enneagon are nine tents, with flags, representing the divisions of the Masonic army; on the angles are nine pinions, of the same color as the flag of the tent that precedes it. The hall of the Consistory is hung with black, strewed with tears of silver. The jewel is a double-headed white and black eagle, resting on a Teutonic cross, of gold, worn attached to the collar or ribbon. ^The members are called Sublime Princes of the Royal Secret. The moral of the degree teaches opposition to bigotry, superstition, and all the passions and vices which disgrace human nature."—Macoy's Encyclopaedia and Pictionary of Freemasonry, Article Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret 

MISSIONS FROM THE SUPREME PONTIFF

252 §1. To be truly Christian, our service to the Church must be anchored in fidelity to Christ, who makes all things new; to be proper to the Society, it must be done in union with the successors of Peter[32]

The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms

https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

PART VI 1THE PERSONAL LIFE OF THOSE ALREADY ADMITTED AND INCORPORATED INTO THE BODY OF THE SOCIETY

SECTION 1: THE APOSTOLIC CHARACTER OF OUR VOWS IN GENERAL

143 §1. Our consecration by profession of the evangelical counsels, by which we respond to a divine vocation, is at one and the same time the following of Christ poor, virginal, and obedient and a rejection of those idols that the world is always prepared to adore, especially wealth, pleasure, prestige, and power. Hence, our poverty, chastity, and obedience ought visibly and efficaciously to bear witness to this attitude, whereby we proclaim the evangelical possibility of a certain communion among men and women that is a foretaste of the future kingdom of God.[1]

§2. Our religious vows, while binding us, also set us FREE:

FREE, by our vow of poverty, to share the life of the poor and to use whatever resources we may have, not for our own security and comfort, but for service;

FREE, by our vow of chastity, to be men for others, in friendship and communion with all, but especially with those who share our mission of service;

FREE, by our vow of obedience, to respond to the call of Christ as made known to us by him whom the Spirit has placed over the Church, and to follow the lead of all our superiors.[2] [1] See GC 32, d. 4, no. 16; see GC 31, d. 16, no. 4; d. 17, no. 2; d. 18, no. 3. [2] GC 32, d. 2, no. 20. 215

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

Valley of Traverse City

ANCIENT ACCEPTED SCOTTISH RITE

The History and Legend of Scottish Rite Origins

The Story Unfolds…

Like much of early Masonic history, the origins of the Scottish Rite are uncertain. This is primarily due to the lack of historic documentation prior to the early 1700’s and not to any great veiled mystery. The few records kept were subject to loss, fire, weather and aging. So we can at best only speculate on many of our origins by looking at the few documents, historical references and legends that remain.

What We Know

n 1754, near Paris, Chevalier de Bonneville established the Chapter of Clermont. The Chapter resided in the College of Jesuits of Clermont, hence the name. It is said to have been created to honor the Duc de Clermont, then Grand Master of the English Grand Lodge of France.

The Chapter of Clermont was a “Chapter of the Advanced Degrees” and initially entailed six degrees and was later extended to 25 known degrees. The six initial degrees were 1˚, 2˚ and 3˚ St John’s Masonry, 4˚ Knight of the Eagle, 5˚ Illustrious Knight or Templar, 6˚ Sublime Illustrious Knight.

Interestingly enough historically, prior to the time of the Rite’s creation, James II had been in residence at Clermont in exile from Britain from 1688 to his death in 1701. As noted by German Masonic historian, Lenning… “whilst in exile, James II residing at the Jesuit College of Clermont in France, allowed his closest associates to fabricate certain degrees in order to extend their political views.” Lenning believed this to have been an attempt on the part of James and his associates to regain control of the British throne for the House of Stuart. If Lenning is right, this places the origins of the “Rite of Perfection” in the hands of James II and the Jacobite (Stuart) Freemasons who at the time were in exile from Great Britain throughout France and Italy. Lenning also contends that these degrees were introduced into French Freemasonry under the name of the Clermont System.

James II died in exile in 1701. His son James III is said to have continued his father’s Masonic legacy and later created further higher degrees.

Perhaps James II saw in the Jesuit morality plays of the College of Clermont a vessel for passing on a set of moral lessons. Some of the world’s greatest playwrights had emerged from Clermont. Jesuit tutelage had previously produced great writers such as Lope de Vega, Moliere, Racine, and the Corneille brothers. Ensconced in exile, I believe James II did find the inspiration and the training to help produce what would later become the first six degrees. From out of the darkness… comes light.

To be continued… (Author’s note… An in depth look at the Templar influence in Scottish Rite masonry’s origins can be found by visiting the Rosslyn Templars’ website.)"

https://web.archive.org/web/20190615041607/http://www.traversecityscottishrite.com/scottish-rite-history.html 

The Collège de Clermont was one of the earliest schools established by the Jesuits, who were incredibly influential in shaping education in Europe. The Jesuits were a rigid and hierarchical Catholic sect that followed the teachings of Ignatius Loyola. 

https://earlymoderneurope.hist.sites.carleton.edu/exhibits/show/development-of-education-in-ea/item/249

Jessica Marie Alba (/ˈælbə/ AL-bə; born April 28, 1981)[2] is an American actress. She began her acting career at age 13 in Camp Nowhere (1994), followed up by The Secret World of Alex Mack (1994), and rose to prominence at age 19 as the lead actress of the television series Dark Angel (2000–2002), for which she received a Golden Globe nomination.[3][4][5]

Her big screen breakthrough came in Honey (2003). She soon established herself as a Hollywood actress, and has starred in numerous box office hits throughout her career, including Fantastic Four (2005), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), Good Luck Chuck (2007), The Eye (2008), Valentine's Day (2010), Little Fockers (2010), and Mechanic: Resurrection (2016).[6] She is a frequent collaborator with director Robert Rodriguez, having starred in Sin City (2005), Machete (2010), Spy Kids: All the Time in the World (2011), Machete Kills (2013), and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014). From 2019 to 2020, Alba starred in the Spectrum action crime series L.A.'s Finest.

In 2011, Alba co-founded The Honest Company, a consumer goods company that sells baby, personal and household products.[7] A number of magazines, including Men's Health, Vanity Fair and FHM, have included Alba on their lists of the world's most beautiful women.

Early life

Jessica Marie Alba was born in Pomona, California[8] on April 28, 1981, to Catherine Louisa (née Jensen) and Mark David Alba. Her mother has Danish, Welsh, German, English and French ancestry, while her paternal grandparents, who were born in California, were children of Mexican immigrants.[9] She has a younger brother, Joshua. Her third cousin, once removed, is writer Gustavo Arellano.[10] Her father's Air Force career took the family to Biloxi, Mississippi, and Del Rio, Texas, before they settled in Claremont, California when she was nine years old.[4] Alba has described her family as "very conservative… a traditional, Catholic, Latin American family", and herself as very liberal; she says she identified as a "feminist" as early as age five.[11]

Alba's early life was marked by a multitude of physical maladies. During childhood, she suffered from pneumonia four to five times a year and had partially collapsed lungs twice as well as a ruptured appendix and tonsillar cyst. She has also had asthma since she was a child.[4] She became isolated from other children at school because she was hospitalized so often, no one knew her well enough to befriend her.[12] She has said that her family's frequent moving also contributed to her isolation from her peers.[11] She graduated from Claremont High School at age 16 and subsequently attended the Atlantic Theater Company.[13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Alba 

Albion is an alternative name for Great Britain. The oldest attestation of the toponym comes from the Greek language. It is sometimes used poetically and generally to refer to the island, but is less common than "Britain" today. The name for Scotland in most of the Celtic languages is related to Albion: Alba in Scottish Gaelic, Albain (genitive Alban) in Irish, Nalbin in Manx and Alban in Welsh and Cornish. These names were later Latinised as Albania and Anglicised as Albany, which were once alternative names for Scotland.

New Albion and Albionoria ("Albion of the North") were briefly suggested as names of Canada during the period of the Canadian Confederation.[1][2] Francis Drake gave the name New Albion to what is now California when he landed there in 1579.

Etymology 

The toponym in English is thought to derive from the Greek word Ἀλβίων,[3] Latinised as Albiōn (genitive Albionis). The name ultimately likely derives from the Proto-Celtic nasal stem *Albiyū (oblique *Albiyon-) and survives in Albain (genitive Alban) in Irish, Nalbin in Manx and Alban in Welsh and Cornish. The name usually refers to Great Britain as a whole.

The root *albiyo- is also found in Gaulish and Galatian albio- 'world' and Welsh elfydd (Old Welsh elbid 'earth, world, land, country, district'). It may be related to other European and Mediterranean toponyms such as Alpes, Albania or the river god Alpheus (originally 'whitish'). It has two possible etymologies: either from the Proto-Indo-European word *albʰo- 'white' (cf. Ancient Greek ἀλφός, Latin albus ), or from *alb- 'hill'.

The derivation from a word for 'white' is thought to refer perhaps to the white Cliffs of Dover in the southeast, visible from mainland Europe and a landmark at the narrowest crossing point. On the other hand, Celtic linguist Xavier Delamarre argued that it originally meant 'the world above, the visible world', in opposition to 'the world below', i.e. the underworld.[4][5][6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion

Origin of the name Tiber

The Tiber was originally called Albula or Albu'la ("white" or "whitish" in Latin) supposedly because the sediment load was so white, but it was renamed Tiberis after Tiberinus, who was an Etruscan king of Alba Longa who drowned in the river. Ancient historians refer to the river as "yellow," not "white," and it is also possible that Albula is the Roman name for the river, while Tiberis is the Etruscan one. In his "History of Rome," the German classicist Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) wrote that the Tiber was the natural highway for traffic in Latium and provided an early defense against neighbors on the other side of the river, which in the area of Rome runs approximately southward.

The Tiber and its god, Tiberinus or Thybris, appear in several histories but most prominently in the first century BCE Roman poet Vergil's "The Aeneid." The god Tiberinus functions as a fully integrated character in "The Aeneid," appearing to the troubled Aeneas to advise him, and most importantly, to prophesy a magnificent destiny for Rome. Tiberinus the god is a rather majestic figure, who introduces himself in a long, long passage in the Aeneid, including:

"The god am I, whose yellow water flows Around these fields, and fattens as it goes: Tiber my name; among the rolling floods Renown’d on earth, esteem’d among the gods. This is my certain seat. In times to come, My waves shall wash the walls of mighty Rome."

https://www.thoughtco.com/tiber-river-rome-ancient-history-glossary-117752 

"According to doctrinal English opinion, the present heir to the Royal House of Stuart is Prince Franz of Bavaria who is said to inherit the Scottish honours by virtue of the Last Will and Testament of Charles Edward’syounger brother, Cardinal Henry, de jure Duke of York. This Will supposedly nominated Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia as the Stuart successor. By wayof marriages in the female line of descent from Charles Emmanuel’s brother, Victor Emmanuel I, the present Franz of Bavaria succeeds his father, the late Prince Albrecht, relying in this on a somewhat tenuous ancestry back to Henrietta, a daughter of Charles I. The fact is, however, that Cardinal Henry Stuart’s Will did not name Charles Emmanuel as his successor. This is acomplete fantasy that has made its way into the historybooks, but was originally a purposely-contrived deceptionon the part of Georgian politicians — a deception perpetuated by the later Victorian ministers.From the time that the Elector of Hanover began his reign as King George I of Britain in 1714, it became politically expedient to suppress or veil a good deal of information about certain families while enhancing the lineage of others. The House of Stuart came underparticular attack in order to justify the incoming German succession. Even today, history books repeat the nonsense contrived contemporarily and afterwards to discredit the Scots dynasty and its associated families. 

The fabrications are so well ingrained that they are destined to prevail for as long as historical authors continue to copy from one another.Charles Edward Stuart was married in 1772 to Princess Louise Maximilienne, the daughter of Gustavus, Prince de Stolberg-Guedern. In 1784, however, papal dispensation for divorce was obtained following Louise’s affair with the Italian poet Vittorio, Count Alfieri. Louise had been declared barren by the doctors,and after a few years of marriage she left Charles in 1780 to take up residence with her lover. The divorce is frequently described as the end of married life for Charles Edward — but it was not. The Stuart archives in Rome and Brussels reveal thatin November 1785 Charles was married again, to the Comtesse de Massillan at the Santi Apostoli in Rome. She was Marguerite Marie Thérése O’Dea d’Audibert de Lussan — a cousin by descent from Charles's grand uncle, King Charles II. Until 1769 she had been a ward of her own grand uncle, Louis Jacques d’Audibert, Archbishop of Bordeaux. Marguerite’s paternal grandmother Theresa, Marchesa d’Aubignie, was the daughter of James de Rohano Stuardo, Prince of Boveria, Marquis d’Aubignie. He was the natural son (legitimated 1667) of King Charles Il and Marguerite, Duchesse de Rohan. On her mother’s side, Margueritede Massillan was descended through the Comtes de Lussan. In November 1786 the 37-year-old Countess gavebirth to a son, Edouard Jacques Stuardo (Edward James Stuart), who became known as ‘Count Stuarton’. Although no secret in Europe, news of Charles Edward's legitimate son and heir was immediately suppressed by the Hanoverian government at Westminster. He has consequently since been totally neglected by academic historians in Britain. In that same month, Charles Edward's daughter Charlotte of Albany (born 1753 by Clementina Walkinshaw of Borrowfield) met King George III's brother William, Duke of Gloucester, at thehouse of Prince Santa Croce in Rome. Concerned about the strength of her own position as Charles Edward's ‘legitimated’ offspring, she informed Gloucester of the royal birth and sought his advice. The Duke confided that Charlotte’s status was probably safe enough, but his main concern was a letter that had been sent to her father by King George III in 1784. It suggested that Charles Edward could return to Britain from exile as the Count of Albany (Scotland). Charles had declined the invitation, but the matter was now complicated bythe new-born son who might well choose otherwise on becoming the Second Count in due course. When Charles Edward died, a contrived substitution of Wills enabled knowledge of both the marriage and the birth to be concealed from the British public, a concealment that was perpetuated through the Hanover—Saxe-Coburg era until the truth finally emerged inthe 1970s.  In 1784 Charles had made a Will nominating his brother Cardinal Henry, de jure Duke of York, as hisroyal heir. Charlotte of Albany was to be the sole estate beneficiary. This is well enough documented in the historical biographies — but what those accounts fail tomention is that this was not Charles's final Testament. It was superseded by another before his death. Not only was the fact of this later Will concealed by the Georgian Parliament, but so too was the reason for its existence. In order to stabilize King George III's position, his politicians thought it expedient to end the problem of Stuart popularity in Britain by having the Scottish linedeclared extinct — particularly since the Jacobites had been so instrumental in the American War of Independence (1775-1783). An enormous number of deprived Scots had emigrated to America following the subjugation of the Highlands after Culloden. They had not managed to regain their independence at home, but continued their Cause from across the Atlantic, thereby aiding their fellow Americans to secure their own freedom from Hanoverian constraint. On 30 January 1788 the de jure King Charles II (fondly remembered as Bonnie Prince Charlie) died, aged 67, at the Mutti Palazzo in Rome. Shortly before his death he wrote his Last Will and Testament. This was witnessed on 13 January 1788 by the Dominican Father O'Kelly and the Abbé Consalvi, both of whom were executors. The Will stated that Charles's offspring, Edward James and Charlotte, were to be co-heirs of the estate; his son Edward was to succeed to the Royal Honours on his 16th birthday, and Cardinal Henry was to be temporary Regent in the meantime. Following Charles Edward's demise, his ambitious brother Henry wasted no time in proclaiming himself King Henry I de jure of Scots (IX of England). To support this claim he produced not Charles’s Will of 1788 but his earlier Will of 1784 — which suited Britain’s Government since the Cardinal was not likely to have any children. Both O’Kelly and Consalvi were party to the intrigue in return for rapid promotion within the Church. Soon afterwards, the former became Dominican Procurator, while the Abbé was raised to the Cardinalate. Charlotte of Albany was provided with a home in Frascati, and the Mutti Palazzo was retained for Marguerite de Massillan and Prince Edward. Also involved in the scheme was the Abbé James Placid Waters, Procurator of the Benedictines in Rome. By declaring himself King de jure, Henry sought to nullify the immediate Regency clause in his brother’s Will. But in January 1789 Henry made his own Will in which he redressed his selfish strategy for the future: all his possessions and heritable status were bequeathed to Prince Edward James — that is, ‘to my nephew, Count Stuarton’. Both Cardinal Ercole Consalvi and Cardinal Angelo Cesarini were privy to the Will and were executors, as attested in their memoirs. As it happened, Henry subsequently lost a great deal of his wealth in the French Revolution and during the Napoleonic advance into the Papal States. In 1799 he became a pensioner of the British Crown at the rate of £5,000 per annum (about £250,000 in today’s terms) - but in return he was required to rewrite his Will. At a joint meeting between Prince Edward, Comtesse Marguerite, and the Pope, a suitable rewording was agreed. The new Will was made in 1802, but the inheritance still rested with Prince Edward. The revised document simply substituted the words ‘to my nephew, Count Stuarton’ with ‘in favour of that Prince to whom it descends by virtue of de jure blood relationship’. When Henry Stuart died in July 1807, King George and the British Parliament decided that the second Will was actually less appropriate than the former. They therefore ignored the 1802 document and reverted to Henry’s original Will of 1789 — and the press reported that Henry had made his bequest to his ‘relation Count Stuarton’ (meaning, of course, Edward James). However, no one in England thought to enquire who this relation, Count Stuarton, might be. Having dealt with the first hurdle, the Hanoverian ministers then produced Henry’s amended 1802 Will. By virtue of its malleable nature, the wording (‘in favour of that Prince to whom it descends by virtue of de jure blood relationship’) was strategically implemented in favour of Charles Emmanuel IV, ex-King of Sardinia. He had recently abdicated to join the Jesuit Order, and so the Stuart legacy passed to a potentially childless monk. Charles Emmanuel duly wrote to King George's Parliament denouncing the nomination because heknew the Stuarts to be alive and well. Indeed, having lived with him in Sardinia from 1797, Marguerite andher son Edward were then resident at his house by the Corso in Rome. The correspondence was ignored at Westminster, and the whole issue was put under wraps in Britain. History now records the ‘diverted succession’ as having progressed from Sardinia, through Modena, into Bavaria. The reality is that the legitimate Royal House of Stuart (Stewart) exists today, and haslong been actively interested in European constitutional management. In 1809 a dispute over sovereign loyalties arose between two sons of George III. It became known as the ‘War of the Brothers’. Prince Edward, Duke of Kent (the father of Queen Victoria), was a Freemason, while his brother Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex,was a Knight Templar. Edward's problem was that his brother’s Templar colleagues were Stuart supporters. He therefore endeavoured to sway their allegiance tothe reigning House of Hanover. In the event he failed, but compromised by creating a Templar-styled branch within the existing Masonic structure. This fell under the protectorate of Kent, and followed the English York Rite of Freemasonry. The chivalric Templars pursued the Scottish Rite under the protectorate of Prince Edward James Stuart, Second Count of Albany. While the exiled Stuarts were in France and Italy, they were deeply involved with the general growth and dissemination of Freemasonry, and they were the instigators of the exported Scottish Rite, which had higher degrees and held more profound mysteries than other Masonic systems. Prominent in this movement was Charles Edward's cousin and mentor, the Comte de St Germain. The Stuarts’ involvement was firmly based on established rights and privileges, with a desire to initiate brethren into the true antiquity and pedigree ofthe Craft. In England, the inherent secrecy of the club like lodges provided the perfect facility for undercover intrigue against the Whigs and the German succession. Throughout the land, the Jacobite societies and Tory lodges became closely entwined — as a result of which they became prime targets for Whig Intelligence, whose high-ranking Secret Service operatives duly infiltrated the fraternities. In later years English Freemasonry dispensed with political intrigue to become more concerned with allegorical representation and the codes of brotherly love, faith and charity. In Europe, however, many scientifically-based intellectual lodges of the traditional style are still extant. In 1817 a Dr Robert Watson purchased in Rome some of Cardinal Henry’s documents concerning the Stuart dynasty. He paid £23 sterling (equivalent to about £610 today), and prepared to publish the contents. But, beforehe had a chance to do this, the files were seized by the papal police and passed to London so that their contents would not become known. Some time later, the doctor received a payment from Westminster for having been deprived of his property. Not content with this, Watson pursued his right to the papers — only to be found dead, supposedly having committed suicide, in 1838. The papers have never since appeared in the public domain. Along with Cardinal Henry, the Abbé Waters also lost his possessions and became a pensioner of King George. Waters, an executor for Charlotte of Albany, was the custodian of various other Stuart papers — his guardianship of which constituted the route to his future Hanoverian income. In 1805 the Abbé was obliged to pass them over to the British Government. At length, some were deposited at Windsor Castle, where they remain today. As for the rest, their whereabouts are conveniently unknown. 

By virtue of these documentary acquisitions, the way was deemed clear for Prince Edward James to be totally excluded from historical records in Britain. But this was not the case in continental Europe, where he is well documented in papers held by the Stuart Trustees, and features in the writings of René, Vicomte Chateaubriand, Abbé James Waters, Princess Caroline Murat, and others. Although the Stuarts have been ignored by the British authorities since the death of Cardinal Henry, the descendants of Prince Edward James, Count Stuarton, Second Count of Albany, have been actively engaged in social, political, military and sovereign affairs for the past two centuries. They have often advised governments on constitutional and diplomatic matters in an effort to promote the ideals of public service and religious toleration, as upheld by their own reigning house, and they have been particularly concerned with matters of trade, welfare and education. In 1888 Prince Edward's grandson, Charles Benedict James Stuart, Fourth Count of Albany, was scheduled to visit Britain. He was due to attend a grand Stuart Exhibition at the New Gallery, London. It was sponsored by the Order of the White Rose, and the main organizers were Bertram, Earl of Ashburnham, and Melville Massue, Marquis de Ruvigny. But the Exhibition was wholly undermined by Hanoverian agents, and Prince Charles Benedict was found dead (presumed murdered) in Italy. There was no display in 1888 after all. A rather different Exhibition was held the following year. Instead of being in honour of the Stuarts, as was planned, it was promoted to celebrate the bicentenary of the Whig Revolution which had deposed James VII (Il) and the Stuarts in 1688! The Exhibition’s new patron was Queen Victoria herself, and the event was used as a cover to obtain even more valuable documents of Stuart heritage. Having been ousted from their patronage, Lord Ashburnham and the Marquis de Ruvigny directed their future interests towards the chivalric societies of Europe — the Order of the Realm of Sion, the Knights Protectors of the Sacred Sepulchre, and the Order of the Sangréal. In spite of Queen Victoria’s efforts to suppress Stuart popularity, there was a significant Jacobite revival in the late 1800s. The Queen’s advisers therefore sought to emphasize her tenuous claim to Stuart descent to the exclusion of the Stuarts’ own Scottish heritage. As a result, Thane Banquo and the Scots line from King Alpin disappeared from the Hanoverians’ readjusted Stuart registers. The Lord Lyon, King of Arms, subsequently wrote, ‘The traditional account of the descent of the family from Banquo, Thane of Lochaber, and through him from the ancient Kings of Scotland, is now generally discredited.’ From that time, the Stuarts’ Breton line was brought wholly to the fore —- but why anyone should have to discredit one line of a descent in order to promote another is beyond ordinary understanding. Everyone has at least two lines of immediate descent, and the Stuarts were no exception. Subsequent members of the Scots Royal Family were prominent in the Belgian Resistance during World War Il. Hubert Pierlot, Prime Minister of Belgium, was a close friend of the Stewarts, who had reverted to the original spelling of their name in 1892. In that year they had moved to the Chateau du Moulin in the Belgian Ardennes, where they lived until 1968. This castle had originally been given to the family in 1692 by King Louis XIV. As recently as 1982, the City of Brussels honoured the Stewarts with a grand reception. Then, on 14 December 1990, the Brussels Registrars signed, sealed and authenticated an updated Charter of the Royal House of Stewart, detailing the complete family descent from the time of Robert the Bruce down to date.

Today, there are several lines descended from Prince Edward James, Second Count of Albany. They include the Counts of Derneley and the Dukes of Coldingham. Foremost, however, in the main line of legitimate descent from Charles Edward Stewart and his son Edward James is the present Seventh Count of Albany: Prince Michael James Alexander Stewart, Duc d’Aquitaine, Comte de Blois, Head of the Sacred Kindred of St Columba, Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Temple of Jerusalem, Patron Grand Officer of the International Society of Commission Officers for the Commonwealth, and President of the European Council of Princes. Prince Michael’s own compelling book Scotland — The Forgotten Kingdom? (a thoroughly detailed and politically corrected history of the Scots royal descent) is now in the course of preparation. This senior Stewart descent goes all the way back to King Arthur's father, King Aedan of Scots, on the one hand and to Prince Nascien of the Septimanian Midi on the other. The Scots descent traces further back through King Lucius of Siluria to Bran the Blessed and Joseph of Arimathea (St James the Just), while the Midi succession stems from the Merovingians’ male ancestral line through the Fisher Kings to Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Conjoining the lines from their 1st-century points of departure, the descent is in the succession of the Royal House of Judah. This is a truly unique line of sovereign lineage from King David in one of the key descents which comprise the Bloodline of the Holy Grail.

pages 427-436 Chapter 20 "The Sangreal Today"

Bloodline of the Holy Grail by Laurence Gardner 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zsH4O_ls0IgWEYXLXWCo7I3IUi32FJhq/view?usp=sharing

Silicone breast implants are filled with silicone gel. 

https://www.plasticsurgery.org/cosmetic-procedures/breast-augmentation/implants

silicone (n.)

coined 1863 in German from silico-, combining form indicating the presence of silicon, + -one.

also from 1863

Entries linking to silicone

silicon (n.)

nonmetallic element, 1817, coined by British chemist Thomas Thomson from silica (silicon dioxide), from which it was isolated. The name is patterned on carbon, etc. Silicon chip is attested from 1965; Silicon Valley for the Santa Clara Valley near San Francisco is attested by 1974, in reference to the concentration there of manufacturers of silicon chips used in computers, watches, etc.

-one 

chemical suffix, from Greek -one, female patronymic (as in anemone, "daughter of the wind," from anemos); in chemical use denoting a "weaker" derivative. Its use in forming acetone (1830s) gave rise to the specialized chemical sense.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/silicone

Charles Babbage, an English mechanical engineer and polymath, originated the concept of a programmable computer. Considered the "father of the computer",[22] he conceptualized and invented the first mechanical computer in the early 19th century.

After working on his difference engine he announced his invention in 1822, in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society, titled "Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables",[23] he also designed to aid in navigational calculations, in 1833 he realized that a much more general design, an analytical engine, was possible. The input of programs and data was to be provided to the machine via punched cards, a method being used at the time to direct mechanical looms such as the Jacquard loom. For output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter and a bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be read in later. The engine would incorporate an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete.[24][25]

The machine was about a century ahead of its time. All the parts for his machine had to be made by hand – this was a major problem for a device with thousands of parts. Eventually, the project was dissolved with the decision of the British Government to cease funding. Babbage's failure to complete the analytical engine can be chiefly attributed to political and financial difficulties as well as his desire to develop an increasingly sophisticated computer and to move ahead faster than anyone else could follow. Nevertheless, his son, Henry Babbage, completed a simplified version of the analytical engine's computing unit (the mill) in 1888. He gave a successful demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1906.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer

Babbage’s, Inc.

10741 King William Drive

Dallas, Texas 75220

U.S.A.

(214) 401-9000

Fax: (214) 401-9002

Public Company

Incorporated: 1983

Employees: 2,400

Sales: $233.4 million

Stock Exchanges: NASDAQ

SICs: 5734 Computer & Software Stores

Santa Clara University is a private Jesuit university in Santa Clara, California, United States. Established in 1851, Santa Clara University is the oldest operating institution of higher learning in California.[5] The university's campus surrounds the historic Mission Santa Clara de Asís which traces its founding to 1777. The campus mirrors the Mission's architectural style and is one of the finest groupings of Mission Revival architecture and other Spanish Colonial Revival styles. The university is classified as a "Doctoral/Professional" university.[6]

The university offers bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and doctoral degrees through its six colleges, the College of Arts and Sciences, School of Education and Counseling Psychology, Leavey School of Business, School of Engineering, Jesuit School of Theology, and School of Law. It enrolls 6,115 undergraduate students and about 3,063 postgraduate students as of Fall 2022.

Santa Clara's sports teams are called the Broncos. Their colors are red and white. The Broncos compete at the NCAA Division I levels as members of the West Coast Conference in 19 sports. Broncos have won NCAA championships in both men's and women's soccer. Santa Clara's student athletes include current or former 58 MLB,[7] 40 NFL,[8] and 12 NBA players and 13 Olympic gold medalists.

Santa Clara's faculty and alumni include U.S. Senators and House representatives, a Pulitzer Prize winner, numerous billionaires and U.S. governors, a Director of the CIA, a U.S. Secretary of Defense, a U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, a White House Press Secretary and a United States Secretary of Homeland Security. Santa Clara has Fulbright Scholars as well as 4 Rhodes Scholars.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_University

1885 was a year a full century before the modern time of Marty McFly: 1985. It had been 20 years since Hill Valley's founding and a festival was held to honor the anniversary.

The town consisted of two major dirt streets which intersected at Courthouse Square and the construction of a new county courthouse and clock tower. One of the streets went to the Hill Valley Train Station.

Most of the surrounding countryside was mountains and valleys with deciduous trees and farther out desert with mesas to the north of the town and the ravine to the southeast of the town.

https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1885

Janet Wood Reno (July 21, 1938 – November 7, 2016) was an American lawyer and public official who served as the first female and 78th United States attorney general. Reno, a member of the Democratic Party, held the position from 1993 to 2001, making her the second-longest serving attorney general, behind only William Wirt.

Reno was born and raised in Miami, Florida. After leaving to attend Cornell University and Harvard Law School, she returned to Miami where she started her career at private law firms. Her first foray into government was as a staff member for the Judiciary Committee of the Florida House of Representatives. She then worked for the Dade County State Attorney's Office before returning to private practice. She was elected to the Office of State Attorney five times and was the first woman to serve as a state attorney in Florida. President Bill Clinton appointed her attorney general in 1993, a position she held until Clinton left office in 2001.

The following Department of Justice actions occurred during Reno's tenure:

The 51-day Waco siege standoff and resulting 76 deaths—the Branch Davidians—in Waco, Texas. (The standoff began on February 28, 1993, twelve days before Reno was installed as attorney general). Reno stated in congressional testimony that she authorized the FBI assault on the Branch Davidians because of reports that militia groups were en route to Waco during the standoff "either to help [Branch Davidian leader David] Koresh or to attack him."[48] The FBI had also, erroneously, reported to Reno that children were being abused at the compound.[49] Reno publicly expressed her regret of the decision to storm the compound, and accepted full responsibility for the loss of life.[50]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Reno 

Ellen G. White in a group at Reno, Nevada, camp meeting 1888.

https://adventistdigitallibrary.org/adl-364977/ellen-g-white-group-reno-nevada-camp-meeting-1888

14 And deceived them that dwell on the earth by the signs which were permitted to him to do in the sight of the beast, saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make the [t]image of the [u]beast, which had the wound of a sword, and did live.

Revelation 13:14

14We ought to act on the principle that everyone who lives under obedience should let himself be carried and directed by Divine Providence through the agency of the superior 15as if he were a lifeless body, which allows itself to be carried to any place and treated in any way; or an old man s staff, which serves at any place and for any purpose in which the one holding it in his hand wishes to employ it. 16For in this way the obedient man ought joyfully to employ himself in any task in which the superior desires to employ him in aid of the whole body of the religious order; 17and he ought to hold it certain that by so doing he conforms himself with the divine will more than by anything else he could do while following his own will and different judgment.[3]"

page 221

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms 

Ellen Gould White (née Harmon; November 26, 1827 – July 16, 1915) was an American author and co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Along with other Adventist leaders such as Joseph Bates and her husband James White, she was instrumental within a small group of early Adventists who formed what became known as the Seventh-day Adventist Church. White is considered a leading figure in American vegetarian history.[2] Smithsonian named her among the "100 Most Significant Americans of All Time".[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_G._White

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky[a] (née Hahn von Rottenstern; 12 August [O.S. 31 July] 1831 – 8 May 1891), often known as Madame Blavatsky, was a Russian and American mystic and author who co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. She gained an international following as the leading theoretician of Theosophy.

Born into an aristocratic family in Yekaterinoslav, then in the Russian Empire (now Dnipro in Ukraine), Blavatsky traveled widely around the empire as a child. Largely self-educated, she developed an interest in Western esotericism during her teenage years. According to her later claims, in 1849 she embarked on a series of world travels, visiting Europe, the Americas, and India. She also claimed that during this period she encountered a group of spiritual adepts, the "Masters of the Ancient Wisdom", who sent her to Shigatse, Tibet, where they trained her to develop a deeper understanding of the synthesis of religion, philosophy, and science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Blavatsky

Scottish doctor Alexander Wood is credited with inventing the modern hypodermic syringe in 1853. His goal was to treat pain in just one area of the body. He attached a hollow needle, an earlier invention by Irish doctor Francis Rynd, to a plunger.

Using his newly invented hypodermic syringe he was able to inject pain relief medicine to the area which was causing pain. His first patient was a woman experiencing neuralgia, which causes intense pain after nerve damage. She was injected at the site of her pain with the pain relief medicine morphia. Morphia was a mixture of sherry and morphine, a powerful pain relief medicine.

https://www.kentdelordhouse.org/artifact-corner-victorian-syringe/

24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

Genesis 2:24

7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

1 John 5:7

This Babylonian clay tablet, called Plimpton 322, was created around 1750 BCE in Sumeria, during the reign of Hammurabi the Great.

While more than 1000 years older than Pythagoras, the rows and columns on this table contain Pythagorean triples: integer solutions for the equation a2+b2=c2. For example, (3, 4, 5) is a Pythagorean triple because 32+42=52.

The exact purpose of the tablet has been debated by archeologists. Some think that it was a “teachers aid”, designed to help generate right-angled triangles. Others think it may be a very early trigonometry table.

https://mathigon.org/timeline/plimpton-322

HOTT Transcript

Hermetic Marriage

Updated : Sunday, April 17, 2005 2:40 PM

Hermetic Marriage

THE HOUR OF THE TIME

Tape No. 453:  "The Hermetic Marriage"

Tuesday, October 4, 1994

The Hermetic Marriage, or the marriage of the sun and the moon, the

origin of the hermetic philosophy, will astound you.  You're going to

learn a few things about yourselves, about religion, and about Walt

Disney tonight.

Good old Walt.  You've been leading your children to his lessons in The

Mysteries and the philosophic indoctrination into the philosophy of fire

for many years.  And you didn't even know it.

Thoth--Hermes--the ibis-headed, was the Egyptian god of wisdom,

learning, literature, and science--"gnosis", if you will.

The "G" in the center of the compass and square of the Masonic emblem

does not stand for "God" or "geometry".  It means "gnosis"--knowledge.

Those who know.

Thoth--Hermes--is accredited with being the first to reveal the art of

writing to the present human race.  According to the records available,

he lived in Egypt as a contemporary of Moses.  Some authorities even

claim that Moses and Hermes were one and the same person.

The Greek name "Hermes" is taken from an ancient root, "herm", which

means the active, or positive, radiant principle of nature; sometimes

translated as "vitality" or "generative force"; and known to ancient

freemasonry--or the sons of light, the free "macon"--as "the cosmic

fire", Hiram, and later as Hiram Abif.

Hermes Trismegistus, often called "Mercurius Termaximus" dominated the

philosophical and literary thought of the ancient world.  His very name,

ladies and gentlemen, became a synonym of wisdom.  In fact, he was

revered as the personification of philosophy and erudition.  He was

regarded as the first cabalist, the first physician, the first

alchemist, and the first historian. The actual life of this demagogue

and king of the ancient double empire of the Nile is obscured by that

twilight which hides the origin of all peoples.  And those who think

they know, you can be assured, do not.

By reason of his great wisdom and magical powers, Thoth was listed among

the gods until today many believe that he never existed at all outside

of mythology.  But if action and reaction are equal, then something more

substantial than a mere legend must be the foundation for the towering

super-structure of the hermetic arts.

During the early periods of human growth, when the intelligence of man

was scarcely above that of the animal--according to the theory of

evolution--all education was controlled by the priest craft, just as I

have outlined to you on many episodes of "The Hour of the Time".

The ancient priests were called "the shepherds of men"--the analogy is

that men are sheep or cattle--for the shepherds guarded the flocks of

primitive human beings as the shepherd does his sheep.

Are you beginning to have a flicker of understanding?

Both science and philosophy were outgrowths of religion.  In fact, all

our present day wisdom came originally into the world from between the

pillars of the sanctuaries, the temples, what today you call cathedrals

or churches.  And it came from the priesthood, from the priests.

Hermes was to ancient philosophy what Jesus is to Christianity:  its

light, its inspiration, and of course, its impetus.

The Egyptian initiates of the Temple of Isis claimed, therefore, that

Hermes was actually the writer of all books on philosophical and

religious subjects, that the supposed human authors were merely

amanuenses who wrote down upon parchment or velum the thoughts which

this god impressed upon their consciousness.  Sort of like channeling.

In scriptural terms, they were the pens; and he, the ever-ready writer.

During his lifetime--if indeed he lived--Hermes Trismegistus is supposed

to have actually written 42 books.  Some, however, are probably the work

of the ancient Egyptian priests, for in their glory, these

serpent-crowned hierophants represented the wisest group of philosophers

that ever lived upon this planet.

Clemens Alexandrinus states that these hermetic books were divided into

six parts, each dealing with a separate subject under such headings as

astronomy (and its inseparable companion--astrology), medicine,

geography, the hymns to the gods, and, of course, other titles.

During the ages that have past, Hermes has come to be acknowledged as

the godfather of science, particularly its chemical and medical

branches.  And even after the Christian Era, numerous works dealing with

religious and philosophical subjects were dedicated to him and to him

alone.  And the general term "hermetic art" has been applied to

practically all the abstruse sciences of the ancient, medieval, and

modern worlds.

"The Divine Pymander", more commonly known as "The Shepherd of Men", and

"The Smerigdine<?> Tablet" found in the Valley of Hebron, are the most

famous of the hermetic fragments.

You may reference this in a book by Manley P. Hall entitled "The Lost

Keys of Freemasonry".

And these two works are probably authentic and contain many keys to the

universal science of life as held by The Mysteries--not necessarily me

or anyone else--of which Hermes was a master.

Nearly all hermetic thought was an elaboration of the principle of

analogy contained in the great hermetic axiom--and you have heard me

propound upon this before--and I quote verbatim:

"That which is above is like unto that which is below.  And that which

is below is like unto that which is above."

Now at the present time, nearly all the so-called hermetic writings are

said to be lost.  Only a few isolated remnants remain of what once must

have been a magnificent collection of philosophical, medical, and

religious wisdom.

During the Middle Ages, one particular branch of hermetic

thought--alchemy--gradually came into prominence, and for several

hundred years dominated all other branches, and was held under that

ancient name:  "The Rosy Cross"--for those of you not familiar with the

subjects covered on this broadcast.

Alchemy was the androgynous parent of chemistry.

Notice I said androgynous.  This parent of chemistry, which was

separated from its sire by the speculations of Roger Bacon and Baal.

While chemistry as a science dealt only with minerals, medicines, and

essences, alchemy, ladies and gentlemen, struggled with the more

profound elements of macrocosmic and microcosmic relationships, and had

absolutely nothing--nothing--to do with what you have traditionally been

taught.

Alchemy undoubtedly originated in Egypt; for there, for there--the old

legends go--the secrets of transmuting base metals into gold, and of

prolonging the life of the physical body indefinitely, were thoroughly

understood by the priest craft.  But this explanation was of the

exoteric, and not the esoteric, meaning which literally dealt with the

soul and not the body, not the base metal.  For it had nothing to do

with metal.

It was about elevating oneself above the animal, above the baseness of

the human condition, to the purity of the consciousness of the soul, and

thus, a direct communication with God.

Ancient records tell us that the Chaldean sages knew how to rebuild

their bodies, many of them living to be over a thousand years old--and

then this again is a metaphor.

Many of the processes by which this was accomplished were concealed

under the sacred Egyptian rituals such as "The Book of Coming Forth By

Day", which E. A. Wallis Budge has called "The Book of the Dead".  The

correct title is "The Book of Coming Forth By Day", not "The Book of the

Dead".

In the Middle Ages, when religion, divorcing philosophy, was wed to

blind faith, there was a renaissance of the alchemical and hermetic

arts.  They were revived by that type of mind which demands reason,

logic, and philosophy, as well as hymns and prayers.

Alchemy won numerous converts in Germany, France, and England.  The

long-ignored works of the Arabian magicians--or the Magi--enjoyed wide

popularity, and from them was extracted the greater part of modern

astrology.  The ancient philosophies of the Jewish patriarchs were also

revived and cabalism became a universal topic of consideration.

Paracelsus, the great Swiss physician (sometimes called "the second

Hermes"), undoubtedly rediscovered the ancient Egyptian formulae of the

Philosopher's Stone and the Elixir of Life, and around him rallied a

coterie of medieval philosophers who today stand out strongly against

the dun-colored background of medieval culture.  They are, in fact, some

of the most interesting men of that period of history.

In back of this revival of interest in ancient Egyptian philosophy, we

may find the master minds and guiding hands of three great philosophical

movements who now control the world:

  1.  One is known as the Order of the Illuminati, represented by

Muhammad, prophet of Islam; Roger Bacon, father of chemistry; and

Paracelsus, father of modern medicine.  Remember, The Mysteries--or the

Religion of Illuminism--came from the Middle East, and thus, properly

belongs exactly where it is placed, represented by Muhammad, the prophet

of Islam.  For it is from the Islamic faith that the Knights Templars

brought The Mysteries from the Middle East into Europe.  It is an

interesting fact that the present buildings and school of Rudolf

Steiner, the German mystic, are located in the grounds of the old estate

of Hohenheim where Paracelsus lived;

  2.  The Order of Freemasons, represented by the great Robert Flood,

master of symbolism and alchemy, and Elias Ashmole, the unique

philosopher; and

  3.  The Rosicrucians, a sacred organization founded by the mysterious

Father C.R.C. after his return from Arabia.  You see, in the

mythological city of Demcar, he had been educated in alchemy and

astrology by Arabian adepts, according to the story.  After him came Sir

Francis Bacon, the remodeler of British law.  And then Count Cagliostro,

the sublime adventurer.  And last and greatest of all, the great Compte

de St. Germaine, probably the world's greatest political reformer, and

alchemist by fire, and one of the greatest frauds that has ever lived.

These superlative minds leavened the loaf of materiality.  And,

according to those who study The Mysteries, kept alight the flame of

Hermes during the medieval centuries of religious intolerance and

bigotry.

Concealed beneath chemistry--the science of relating chemicals and

elements--these minds discovered the ancient Egyptian arcana, long

hidden by the crafty priests of Ra and Amon, and further concealed by

that great Mystery School known as The Vatican.  Alchemy, thereupon,

became the chemistry of the soul.  For under the material symbol of

chemistry was concealed The Mystery of the Coming Forth By Day.

Now, these ancient wisemen taught that the world was a great laboratory;

that living essences were the chemicals; that the span of life was a

period of time given to the mind in which to experiment with the great

agencies of nature; and that to the thoughtful came wisdom from their

labors, while for the thoughtless life held only foolishness and sorrow.

In this great laboratory, man learned how to combine the living

chemicals of thought, action, and desire, and by learning the ways of

nature, became the master of nature.

According to those who believe, he became a god by actually becoming a

man.  You see, in the words of the great Paracelsus, and I quote:

"The beginning of wisdom is the beginning of supernatural power."

Of all the hermetic mysteries, none is more perplexing than the

so-called "hermetic marriage".  A post-Christian interpretation of an

ancient Egyptian ritual, supposedly written 200 years earlier, was

published to the modern world in the first part of the seventeenth

century under the name of "The Chemical Nuptials of Christian

Rosencruits".  Little, if anything, has been discovered concerning the

origin either of this book or the "Fama Fraternitatis" which appeared

about the same time.

The exalted order of Rosicrucian philosophers, which today is known as

The Rosy Cross, has been very reticent concerning its members and their

works.  And even today it is difficult to prove, from a strictly

material viewpoint, that the order ever existed--unless of course, you

listen to "The Hour of the Time", for we have proved it repeatedly,

cited book, paragraph, chapter and verse.

Concealed under that quaint wording of the alchemical marriage can be

plainly traced a series of mysterious formulae concerning the

transmutation of base metals into gold.  And I have already explained

the esoteric meaning of that.

The alchemists taught that man contained within himself all the elements

of nature, both human and divine, and that by special culture, the base

elements of his nature could be transmuted into the spiritual gold

called "the soul".

In discussing this, Paracelsus makes plain that these philosophers did

not wish to leave the impression that something could be made from

nothing; rather they emphasized the fact that each individual thing

contains all other things, and that the alchemical process of making

gold was merely to culture the germ of gold which is contained in every

base substance--to bring it to the top, so to speak--above the baseness

of human nature.

Modern science substantiates the alchemical point of view by stating

that it expects to extract gold from mercury by taking out, or

isolating, the electron of gold which is one of the constituents of

every mercurial atom.

Taking the chemistry of human relationships as a basis therefor, we have

prepared the following thesis concerning the true preparation of a

Philosopher's Stone and the Elixir of Life, according to the

fundamentals laid down by Hermes and the ancient Egyptian priest craft.

It is known as the Hermetic Anatomy.

A theory of natural creation has been generally accepted by the faiths

of the world, with the possible exception of Christianity.  You see, to

the ancients, everything in nature was alive.  Therefore, they accepted

the human body as symbolic of the universe.

The Hebrews called this prototype "adam-qadmon" or, in translation, the

"grand man", in whose mold all things were made.  Every system of

cosmogony, except the Christian, makes the universe a living thing.

Instead of a God separated from his creation, the Brahmins, Jews,

Persians, and Chinese have conceived their god as being completely

involved in his creation.  They have accepted more literally than the

Christians the idea that man dwells in God, that in God he actually

lives, moves and has his being.  They call this god, "Macroprosopis"--or

translated, "the spirit of the grand man", or more commonly known to all

of you as "the soul".  From his body was made the macrocosm consisting

of suns, moons, planets, meteors, ethers, gases, and the sundry parts of

creation.

In the Scandinavian edas, the universe was formed from the body of Emir,

the Frost King.

In India, the universe was constructed from the person of Brahma, whose

members became the various bodies of the visible cosmos.

The hermetists, therefore, said, quote:

"Man, know thyself.  For thou, like God, art all wisdom, and all power,

and the shadow bearing witness unto the eternal."

Unquote.  An anonymous alchemist, writing in the Middle Ages stated, and

I quote again:

"God has given man three ways whereby he may learn the infinite will:

(1) nature, for in the stars that twinkle in the sky, the planets in

their thundering march, and the earth with its multitude of laws, are

concealed the laws of God;  (2)  holy writ, the inspired word of saints

and sages unnumbered; and (3) anatomy, the structure of our own bodies,

wherein is concealed the structure of the universe, for all things are

made by one mold."

End quote.

The electron revolving around its nebular center obeys the same law that

moves planets around the sun.  In this we see the truth of the great

hermetic axiom:

"As above, so below.  As with the lesser, so with the greater."

This was believed by all of these ancient philosophers.

The hermetists spent much time studying the intricate construction of

man and, like the Brahmans of Indian, they divided him into three major

parts.

In India, this trinity of basic parts is called "Adeh", "Buddhi" and

"Manis", meaning literally, "spirit", "soul" and "body".  Their Trimurti

corresponds to the Trinity of Christian theology.  Each of these three

major parts of a god, a man, or a universe, was personified as an

individual.

The "adeh" or spirit, was called "the divine cause" or "the father".

"Manis," or matter, was called "the divine effect", being known in India

as "Shiva" and in Christendom as the Holy Spirit.

Between these two stood "Buddhi", the mediator, the god-man, the Mercury

of the Latins, the messenger of the gods.  By some, this intermediary is

considered synonymous with soul.  By others it is called "mind" because

mind is the uniting link between life and the sense of energy and death

and the sense of inertia.  And to the pagans and hermetists, all things

in nature, the ethers, the air, minerals, even the earth itself, were

endowed with intelligence, consciousness and feeling.

All was linked and gave rise to what you know today and what is known as

the New Age Movement as the Ghia Principle.

The Adeh-Buddhi-Manis constitution of man, as represented by the

alchemists under the symbolism of the Philosopher's Stone and its three

important constituents:  salt, sulfur and mercury.

According to alchemy, salt is the substance of all things.  It is the

body, the form, the dense crystallized particles from which all physical

things are manufactured.

Sulfur is symbolic of fire, the divine agent.  Fire is defined by the

hermetist as the life of all things and is the Adeh of the Brahman

Trimurti.

Mercury, the universal solvent, becomes synonymous with Buddhi, the

mind, the thing which absorbs all experience into itself, the link

between God and nature.

And now maybe you are beginning to understand how all of these esoteric

thoughts, the religion of The Mysteries, can be hidden behind symbology.

Those of you who would read a book concerning the alchemists of the

medieval times would have actually believed that they were attempting to

create gold from lead.  And you would have gained the exoteric

interpretation concealing--or re-veiling--the true esoteric meaning of

the verse.

And we're not through.

Before this hour is out, you are going to be absolutely and totally

amazed, for I have just begun.

All the great world saviors have come, it seems, as personifications of

Buddhi, as I have just explained its meaning.  Or the universal

mediator.

Like the Indian Vishnu, they have sought to bring God and man closer

together, whether as Christ, Prometheus, Zoroaster, Krishna, or Buddha,

they have come to bear witness to the Father and, being made in the

semblance of man but imbued with the spirit of God, they have become

personifications of the universal solvent represented as mercury.

To the hermetists, man has always been considered androgynous.  And they

created the god, Hermaphrodites, to represent the duality of all living

things.

This word is coined from "Hermes", fire or vitality, and Aphrodite, the

goddess of water.  The great hermetic and alchemical adage was, quote:

"Make the fire to burn in the water and the water to feed the fire.  In

this lies great wisdom."

End quote.

It was the purpose of the pouring of the molten sea.

It is the goal of The Mysteries to reconcile fire and water:  the

conflict between God and Lucifer.

Are you beginning to understand?  There are deep meanings held in these

metaphors.

To the public was given one meaning.  To the priesthood was given the

truth.

The ancient Rosicrucians taught that the eternal feminine was not

extracted from the nature of man, as Moses would have us think; but was

rather made subservient to the opposite side of its own nature.  They

believed, you see, that every creature was essentially male and female.

But for reasons which we will discuss later, only one phase of that

nature manifested at a time.

By fire, these philosophers taught that there was but one life force in

the human body, and that man used it in the furtherance of all his

labors; that he digested his food with essentially the same energy with

which he thought, and reproduced his species with the same forces which

he used in physical exercise.  This force personified was said to be the

builder of the universal temple. It became the Hiram Abif of Masonry,

the builder of the eternal temple.

In Egypt, this force is symbolized by a serpent and it is worthy of note

that in ancient Hebrew, the words "serpent" and "savior" are

synonymous.  And that should be a great revelation to many of you out

there.

Now, remember, I'm not asking that you believe any of this.  I am merely

revealing the esoteric meaning behind the stories that you have heard

and read about in your education, in college, in your private life, in

the movies, all your life.  And yes, even in your churches.

In ancient Hebrew, "serpent" and "savior" are synonymous.

In the stanzas of Diezen<?>, an ancient Tibetan fragment, it is stated

that at one time a shower of serpents fell upon the earth.  Now, this is

understood esoterically to represent the coming of the great world

teachers who have long been called "serpents" or "the gift to man of

intellect" by Lucifer through his agent, Satan.

You see.  For the basis of all of these esoteric Mystery religions is

the Luciferian philosophy.

The savior of the Aztecs and Incas was called "gatzalcotl" and this name

means "feathered serpent".  From the serpent kings of Egypt to the

feathered serpents of Tibet, the serpent is symbolic of the vital

energies of the human body and is, in fact, a metaphor for the

intellect, knowledge, gnosis.

Moses raised the brazen serpent in the wilderness and all who gazed upon

it lived.  Those who gained knowledge, who learned, survived.  Those who

did not, perished.

Christ, whom they called "the serpent reborn" says, quote:

"...I, if I be lifted up..., will draw all men unto me." [John 12:32]

Unquote.  The simile, folks, is obvious, yet few ever understand it.  To

the ancients, the magic wand was the spinal canal.  Through this canal

runs a sacred liquid which they called in those days "fire oil".

Remember, these are the philosophers of fire.

In Greek, "christos", the "savior", or "redeemer of things".  And

"christos" are those who believed in this were called "christians" long

before the birth of Christ.

In Greek, "christos", the "savior" or "redeemer of things".

This same thought has been preserved for freemasonry under the heading,

quote, "the marrow of the bone", unquote.

The hermetic philosophers recognized this essence in man as a

distillation of universal life derived from the atmosphere, the

sunlight, the rays of the stars, and food.

This universal vitality upon which all living things draw is probably

the origin of the myths of the gods who died for mankind.  It is

undoubtedly the origin of the legend of the Last Supper, for man

eternally maintains himself upon the body and the blood of this spirit

of universal energy--according to those who follow The Mysteries.

If this energy, which passes through the conduit of the spine, is

drained off by various parts of the body, it stands to reason that waste

will ultimately result in want.

They knew--or thought they knew--that it was very undesirable to do

heavy thinking directly after eating.  Just as today they tell you,

"Don't go swimming right after eating," for at such times the vital

energies are digesting food and cannot safely be diverted to other

channels.  The admonition that you cannot go swimming directly after

eating is a leftover legacy of this belief.

By analogy, one-pointedness is the basis of success, for when the bodily

energies are divided against each other, they cannot perform their

proper functions.  The ancients, you see, taught that the normal

individual had two distinct avenues of expression:  the first mental and

spiritual; the second, emotional and physical.

The mental faculties were radiant, powerful, dominating, and strong--but

often cruel and cynical.  The mind was called the positive pole of the

soul, while the heart was called the negative pole.  And we have been

taught that the spirit expresses itself through the mind; the soul and

the body through the heart.

The ancient alchemists called the mind "the sun", and the heart "the

moon", for to them strength, reason, and logic were masculine, paternal,

solar powers; while love, beauty, intuition, and kindliness were

feminine, maternal, lunar qualities, reflecting the pure light of their

master.  Just as the moon reflects the light of the sun, love, beauty,

intuition, and kindliness reflect the dominance of the strength, reason,

and logic.

Now, this will probably make clear why gold and silver had to be blended

in the great alchemical enterprises, for the gold and silver of the

alchemists were not dead metals, but living qualities in human life.

The marriage of the sun and moon was, therefore, the marriage of the

mind and heart, or the two halves of every nature.  It was the union of

strength with beauty; courage with inspiration; and in its greater

sense, the union of science with theology, or God with nature.

The urgency of this alliance is evident in the world today where cold,

intellectualism, and commercialism need the finer sentiments of

friendliness and altruism to offset their heartlessness.

On the other hand, fanaticism, blind faith, and ungoverned emotionalism

require the strong hand of logic and reason to steer them away from the

rocks of insanity and death.

Perfect equilibrium in human nature is very, very seldom found.  In

fact, it is nature's greatest rarity.  A person with that perfectly

balanced viewpoint, however, is the living Philosopher's Stone, for he

has the strength matched with kindliness, and justice tempered with

mercy.

Hermetic Anatomy teaches that there are two small bodies in the brain

which are identified with the living "yin" and "yang" of China--or the

positive and the negative, the male and the female.  In the same way,

every person has a masculine nature and a feminine nature; and never do

we find these two entirely disassociated.

It may be that East Indian philosophy gives us our best light on this

rather perplexing subject--pun absolutely intended--for both the Hindus

and the alchemists agree that the spirit, like God, is androgynous,

being both father and mother.  And--bear with me--it states in Genesis,

quote:

"...God created man in his own image,...; male and female created he

them." [Genesis 1:27]

End quote.  So, while the creation is singular within the creation,

there is two.  Listen to it again and listen very carefully.

"...God created man in his own image,...; male and female created he

them." [Genesis 1:27]

We would infer from this that God is both male and female.  And indeed,

if male and female both came from God, then this must be true, as God is

all things.  All things emanated from God and from nowhere else.

And as the spirit of man is of God, it must partake of the androgynous

nature of its parent.  And in harmony with the eastern sages, sex exists

no more in spirit than it does in the embryo before the third month of

prenatal life.

Sex, you see, is a polarization of the body, a manifestation of spirit.

The fetus, at one point in its development, can go either way, can be

male or female.  And all fetuses, up to that point, are exactly the same

in their anatomy.  But the germ of life itself is capable of projecting

both the positive and the negative rays.

So, we now become involved in a still more perplexing problem, namely:

what governs the sex which the animal being is to manifest during life?

Well, many people will tell you many different things.  The ancient

philosophers would turn to the eastern sages and they would say,

"Evolution is the continuity of form appearing in cycles and gradually

unfolding from a simple cell to a complex organism."

If a form evolves, it is not absurd to suppose that the cause of that

form is also evolving.

The oriental philosophy solves one of the western world's greatest

problems by the law of reincarnation--something which has never been

proven to be a reality by anyone, and can be traced to its origin at a

point in Indian history where the poor threatened rebellion over the

wealthy rulers, and all of a sudden, this theory of reincarnation and

Karma cropped up to keep the poor, lower classes, in their place.

I haven't got time to go into that.

This doctrine--which was removed from the Christian faith in A.D. 550 at

the Council of Constantinople--taught that the spirit, or life, is

immortal; that it descends into gross matter not once, but many times,

in order that it may ultimately gain that perfection which no living

creature has ever yet gained in one appearance in the world.

They say.

Again, you must understand, none of this has ever been proven to be

true.  No one, on the other hand, can prove it to be false either.

This doctrine also taught that the consciousness, thus descending into

form, does not always appear in one sex, but alternates, first appearing

in a masculine body and then in a feminine, in this way developing both

sides of the nature symmetrically.

Now, if you accept this doctrine, it will go far toward solving a number

of problems concerning heredity and the so-called injustice and

inequality in the world.  Even without it, hermeticism can still stand.

With its aid, however, the alchemical philosophies become far more

clarified.

And, of course, you have the option of rejecting it outright.

The ancient wisdom teaches that the circle of the creative forces in the

human body is broken at the present time.  One end of this broken ring

is in the brain where it furnishes the power or vitality which is the

basis of brain function.  The other end of this circle is located in the

generative system where it furnishes the means of reproducing the

species.

At a time remote in history, man was a complete creative unit in

himself--they say--being capable of procreating his species like certain

of the lower orders of animals of today.  And if you believe in the

theory of evolution, then this could be true.  However, there is no

proof of it whatsoever anywhere.  There's no proof that the theory of

evolution is correct, as a matter of fact.

At that time, however, when these philosophies bore fruit, and at the

time when man existed--they say--in this state, he had no mind.

According to mythology, the raising of the brazen serpent, therefore,

gave him a mind--remember the gift of intellect by Satan in the Garden

of Eden--but broke the creative circuit.

In the masculine sex, the positive pole of the life force is in the

brain.  The negative pole is used for generative purposes.

In the feminine sex, the negative pole is in the brain, the positive

pole is used for generative purposes.

And again, this is the belief of those who follow the hermetic

philosophy.

As a direct outgrowth of this condition--temporarily maintained in order

that man may think and develop his higher nature and at the same time

offer opportunity for other lives to come into manifestation--the

institution of marriage was established.

I bet you thought I'd never get there, didn't you.

Marriage, folks, is therefore the hermetic symbol of the ultimate

reunion of the two halves of each individual's nature, when, after

repeated appearances and associations, equilibrium between these

masculine and feminine qualities is established.

You see, the wedding ring was accordingly symbolic of the golden ring of

the spirit fire which connected the spiritual and material natures of

every individual.  And these beliefs, and these marriages, and this ring

existed long before Christianity was ever the remotest thought in any

human mind upon this earth.

Ultimately, the present methods of reproduction will be abolished--they

say--and both halves of the spirit fire will again be turned into the

brain.  One of them now finds its polarity in the pituitary body, and

the other in the pineal gland.  These two tiny ductless bodies, while an

enigma to modern science, were recognized by the ancients as organs of

great significance.

The ancient wisdom teaches that the pineal gland was the original organ

of vision, namely the third eye, called in the Sanskrit, "dangma" or

"the eye of Shiva".  It is the all-seeing eye of the Freemasons, and the

meaning of the word "Buddha".  And uniting its spark with the pituitary

body, this gland fuses the broken circle, and thus consummates the

hermetic marriage whereby, through an immaculate conception in the

brain, the great light, the shining one, Lucifer, is born as a luminous

spark in the third ventricle which is the master mason's chamber in the

ancient and accepted rite.

Today, students of the ancient wisdom are seeking to prepare themselves

for this peculiar work.  The hermetic marriage is, therefore, an

individual matter involving the attainment of individual completeness,

requiring of the aspirant a sincere effort to be balanced, sane, and

consistent in everything he does.

In the alchemical retorts and vials, we recognize the bodies' glands and

organs of man; and in the chemicals, the essences and forces coursing

through the body.  With these, the individual consciousness must labor

until it is capable of combining them according to the perfect formula.

And now, Walt Disney.

What child does not grow up in a fairyland, extending from the first

glimmer of understanding to the time when the grim realities of maturity

tear down the dream world and replace it with hopelessness and despair?

Hearts are broken all the way through this tragic pageantry of

existence:  the loss of innocence.  But the first heartbreak is when the

fairy stories and their wonderful little people are given up, and those

beautiful beings with which we have peopled the world of our fancies

give way to heartless human creatures and real existence.

Man thoughtlessly destroys not only the dreams of others, but makes his

own world a nightmare peopled with hobgoblins of selfishness and

egotism.

The fairies of childhood are always benevolent, kindly, helpful, serving

the poor in distress, righting wrongs, and doing many beautiful things;

while the realities of later life are generally malevolent and

productive of all the miseries that the fairies of childhood sought to

heal with silver-tipped wands and rainbow dreams.

And there is a double meaning.  As in the teachings of The Mysteries and

the fairy tales, there is an exoteric and an esoteric.

Walt Disney, a 33rd degree Freemason of the Scottish Rite, a very famous

Anglophile, a priest of The Mystery Religion of Babylon, has been

teaching this esoteric meaning to your children throughout their life.

In the great game of life, why can we not still preserve some of the

beauty and romance of fairyland?

This is what you see.  The world of pixies, gnomes, and fairy godmothers

in a Walt Disney movie is just as real in childhood as the grinding,

commercial system is during later life.

You see, economics would suffer no injury, nor would standards collapse

if dreams were perpetuated and man instructed how to build solid

foundations under his castles of air; for human beings are ever children

at heart.  For you, too, the parents, watch these movies and enjoy them.

Man grows old, but he never grows up.  Like Peter Pan, he is childlike

from the cradle to the grave.  Life, for the average person, has an

insufficiency of beauty or sweetness with which to combat the sordid

grind of modern things and therefore, these esoteric teachings can be

presented to a receptive mind.  And here and there, one lives a whole

life in a fairyland of poetry, art or music, and may be called a

dreamer.

But in the case of Disney, it is a message, an inculcation--a

brainwashing, if you will.

For will any child ever forget Cinderella and her wonderful glass

slipper; how she met and won the beautiful prince while her envious

sisters and cruel step-mother gnashed their teeth in rage?  The story is

part of childhood.

But with the coming of years, poor little Cinderella is forgotten.  The

rag dolls are thrown in the corner.  The toy blocks are covered with

dust.  For the dream world of childhood is faded from the mind.  And

little pattering feet, once running hither and thither, have given place

to slow uncertain steps.

Yet the romance finds another setting.  Prince Charming becomes a soda

fountain clerk or a floor walker in a downtown store, while Princess

Beautiful sells ribbons in some little country shop.

The lives of people are really fairy stories in which they play out the

comedies and tragedies of their lives, seeking for something today to

take the place of the shattered dreams of yesterday.  And so, they

relish and absorb these movies, for they have a counterpart in nature.

The world about us is filled with ugly step-mothers and half-sisters who

cannot wear glass slippers.

Do you remember Beauty and the Beast, how, in spite of the sorcery that

had turned the handsome prince into a hideous monster, the coming of

Beauty into his life restored him again to human form and happiness?

Through the lack of beauty in his own heart, many an individual has

become a horrible, hideous beast who, while still in human shape, has

all the attributes of a ferocious animal.

How often the sense of beauty is the thing that redeems.  Beauty of soul

and beauty of life bring back happiness to the beast.  The whole world

is a romance of beauty and the beast.

We see it on the battle field of Flanders where flowers are springing up

in the shadows of the trenches.

In nature we ever see beauty redeeming the beast.  Out in the forest:

the dark, dead trees, gaunt and bare.  But nature, with her magic wand,

covers the tree with creeping vines, decking its gaunt limbs with

mantles of flowers.

Have you read the story of Sleeping Beauty?  If not, go straight to the

library and visit the children's room.  Sit down in one of those little

chairs about ten inches from the floor.  Get out the book with its

colored pictures and much-thumbed pages and go with the Prince to the

great forest of nettles and thorns which surrounds the palace of

Princess Beautiful.

The Princess is under a spell which causes her to sleep until she is

awakened by the handsome prince, who passes through all the obstacles in

life in order to claim her as his own.

The soul.

The mating.

The bringing together of the masculine and the feminine, after passing

through the degrees, the trials, the tribulations of initiation in The

Mysteries.

And I could go on and on and on and on and on, ladies and gentlemen.

But unfortunately, we're out of time.

Good night.  God bless you all.   ...And think of the magical lamp of

Aladdin:  the lamp of illumination.

https://www.hourofthetime.com/hermetic.html

"In 1917, the Virgin appeared in Fatima. "The Mother of God" was a smashing success, playing to overflow crowds. As a result, the Socialists of Portugal suffered a major defeat.

"Roman Catholics world-wide began praying for the conversion of Russia and the Jesuits invented the Novenas to Fatima which they could perform throughout North Africa, spreading good public relations to the Muslim world. The Arabs thought they were honoring the daughter of Muhammad, which is what the Jesuits wanted them to believe.

"As a result of the vision of Fatima, Pope Pius XII ordered his Nazi army to crush Russia and the Orthodox religion and make Russia Roman Catholic." A few years after he lost World war II, Pope Pius XII startled the world with his phoney dancing sun vision to keep Fatima in the news. It was great religious show biz and the world swallowed it.

Not surprisingly, Pope Pius was the only one to see this vision. As a result, a group of followers has grown into a Blue Army world-wide, totaling millions of faithful Roman Catholics ready to die for the blessed virgin.

"But we haven't seen anything yet. The Jesuits have their Virgin Mary scheduled to appear four or five times in China, Russia, and major appearance in the U.S.

"What has this got to do with Islam? Note Bishop Sheen's statement: "Our Lady's appearances at Fatima marked the turning point in the history of the world's 350 million Muslims. After the death of his daughter, Muhammad wrote that she "is the most holy of all women in Paradise, next to Mary."

"He believed that the Virgin Mary chose to be known as Our Lady of Fatima as a sign and a pledge that the Muslims who believe in Christ's virgin birth, will come to believe in His divinity.

"Bishop Sheen pointed out that the pilgrim virgin statues of Our Lady of Fatima were enthusiastically received by Muslims in Africa, India, and elsewhere, and that many Muslims are now coming into the Roman Catholic Church." Article from: http://www.cloakanddagger .de/lenny/alberto_rivera.htm

How the Vatican created Islam (remnantofgod.org)

Latium is a 1669 work by the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher. It was dedicated to Pope Clement X and a 1671 edition was published in Amsterdam by Johannes van Waesbergen.[1] The work was the first to discuss the topography, archeology and history of the Lazio region.[2] It was based partly on Kircher's extensive walks in the countryside around Rome, although it included sites that he had probably not visited in person.[3] The work included many illustrations of the contemporary countryside, as well as reconstructions of ancient buildings.[4]: 92  It also included an account of his discovery of the ruined sanctuary at Mentorella, which he had already recounted in his 1665 work Historia Eustachio Mariana.[4]: 94 

Contents

Kircher’s stated purpose in Latium was to use the physical remains of ancient Latium as illustrations of human mutability and transience.[5] It was divided into five books. The first covered the origins and ancient history of the Latins. The second contained chapters describing (I) the region of Monte Cavo, Lake Albano and the ancient town of Alba Longa; (II) Tusculum; (III) the ancient Praeneste and the modern town of Palestrina, and (IV) the region of Labici and the ancient Hernici tribe. The third book examined the ancient history of Tivoli and the fourth, the countryside and ancient remains around it. The fifth book was devoted to the Pontine marshes.[1][6] The Pontine Marshes to the southeast of Rome had been discussed by Kircher in his 1658 work Scrutinium Physico-Medicum because they were a source of malaria that prevented the agricultural development of the neighbouring region and imposed a heavy burden of disease on its population. Kircher was probably one of the first people to recommend the taking of quinine in Rome to counter malaria. Pope Urban VIII had brought in the Dutch engineer De Wit to begin draining the marshes and in Latium Kircher noted these efforts approvingly, illustrating the devices used to pump out the water.[7]

Ancient history of Latium

In Book I, Kircher advanced the theory that Latium had been populated after the time of the Tower of Babel, or possibly before. Indeed he held that it had originally been settled by Noah, and that this was supported by local legends about Saturn and Janus, who he believed were in fact Noah himself.[5] Thus, he held, the mythological account of the castration of Saturn was a variant of the Biblical story of the discovery of Noah's nakedness by Ham. Such speculative theories were to be developed in his later works Turris Babel and Arca Noë.[8]: 44 

During his countryside walks, Kircher was searching for evidence that would allow him to reconstruct the history of the region from its earliest times right up to the pontificate of Pope Alexander VII. Although the timeline he constructed was highly inaccurate, the evidence he gathered was the first attempt at a complete chronological reconstruction of the region’s history.[9]

The Nile mosaic

Around 1600 a Roman mosaic was discovered at the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste. It is known to modern scholarship as "the Nile mosaic" because it is understood to represent the course of the River Nile from the mountains of Ethiopia through Sudan and Egypt to the sea. However in Book III of Latium Kircher offered a completely different interpretation of the piece, based on the idea that it depicted ceremonies in honour of the goddess of fortune. The upper part, he said, depicted wild animals, representing fortune's dangers. He noted that the people of ancient Praeneste were devotees of Hercules, who was famous for having destroyed monsters and overcome ill fortune. Beneath this, he said, was depicted the veneration of the goddess and consultation of her oracle. He correctly identified the temple of Serapis but this did not serve as a clue of the mosaic's real subject. At the bottom there are festivals and processions in honour of the goddess.[4]: 87–88 

Illustrations

Latium was published in folio with 27 engraved plates. These included illustrations, maps, and plans, including 15 double-page foldouts.[10] The illustrations included views of the countryside, sculptures, mosaics, coins and mechanical devices such as watermills.[6]

The frontispiece was by Romeyn de Hooghe. It depicted a seated figure of the genius loci Latia. On one side of her stands a mountain on which Atlas hold up the world, and on the other figures a volcano. These emblems represent, perhaps, the temporal and spiritual power of Rome respectively. Above her hang both ancient and contemporary arms. Romulus and Remus and their she-wolf adopted mother play behind her back while a putto presents her with the papal tiara and the keys of Saint Peter. She is wearing regalia that show that her presence and her power are intimately connected with the Catholic Church.[3] Her crown identifies her as the protector of a city, and the star above it is the symbols of the Chigi family to which Pope Alexander VII belonged. She holds a long sceptre topped with the hand of justice and her eyes fall on a mitre, a cardinal's hat, and other Catholic religious objects. Her robe covers the imperial eagle and her foot rests on the orb of temporal power, indicating her primacy over the Holy Roman Emperor. Beneath Latia is inscribed the Latin motto 'Latium cui par nihil est, nihil Secundu' ('Latium, to which none is equal, and second to none'). At the bottom of the illustration the male figures are the gods of the river Tiber and its Tivoli tributary the Aniene. The female figure with butterfly wings is the goddess of the Aniene, otherwise Ino, resting on symbols of her mythological shipwreck.[4]: 39 

The imagery of the frontispiece was intended to emphasise the purpose of Kircher’s claim that his contemporary Rome was connected not just to the ancient city that preceded it, but to a both the ancient classical and biblical worlds. The figure of Latia was Etruscan, the sceptre she hold resembled the regalia of ancient Egypt, while Greece was represented by the winged figure of Ino.[9]

The illustration depicting the apotheosis of Homer was signed by Giovanni Battista Galestruzzi. The aerial view of Palestrina and the plate of the Nile mosaic were signed by Agapito de Bernardini.[6]: 178 [4]: 51  The maps in the book were the work of Innocenzo Mattei.[11] The book also reused a number of earlier illustrations from previously published works, by Étienne Dupérac, Daniele Stoopendahl and Matteo Greuter. The image of the reconstruction of Hadrian’s villa was a replica of the illustration by Francesco Contini and the image of the temple of Fortune was a replica of a piece by Domenico Castelli.[6]: 182 

Critical reception

The work was criticised by many scholars of Kircher’s time for its inaccuracies and speculations about ancient history. Raffaello Fabretti pointed out that Kircher’s text was full of mistakes,[5] his images of aqueducts were inaccurate and his map wrongly located the source of the Aqua Virgo near Colonna.[12] Kircher intended to write a similar work on Etruria, entitled Iter Etruscum, but this was never published, because the Jesuit censors would not approve it.[3][13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latium_(1669) 

THE American Capitol abounds with clues of its Roman origins. “Freedom,” the Roman goddess whose statue crowns the dome, was created in Rome at the studio of American sculptor Thomas Crawford. We find a whole pantheon of Roman deities in the great fresco covering the dome’s interior rotunda: Persephone, Ceres, Freedom, Vulcan, Mercury, even a deified George Washington. These figures were the creation of Vatican artist Constantino Brumidi. The fact that the national Statehouse evolved as a “capitol” bespeaks Roman influence. No building can rightly be called a capitol unless it’s a temple of Jupiter, the great father-god of Rome who ruled heaven with his thunderbolts and nourished the earth with his fertilizing rains. If it was a capitolium, it belonged to Jupiter and his priests. Jupiter’s mascot was the eagle, which the founding fathers made their mascot as well. A Roman eagle tops the governing idol of the House of Representatives, a forty-six-inch sterling silverand- ebony wand called a “mace.” The mace is “the symbol of authority in the House.”4 W h e n the Sergeant-at-arms displays it before an unruly member of Congress, the mace restores order. Its position at the rostrum tells whether the House is in “committee” or in “session.” America’s national motto “Annuit Coeptis” came from a prayer to Jupiter. It appears in Book IX of Virgil’s epic propaganda, the Aeneid, a poem commissioned just before the birth of Christ by Caius Maecenas, the multi-billionaire power behind Augustus Caesar. The poem’s objective was to fashion Rome into an imperial monarchy for which its citizens would gladly sacrifice their lives. Fascism may be an ugly word to many, but its stately emblem is apparently offensive to no one. T h e emblem of fascism, a pair of them, commands the wall above and behind the speaker’s rostrum in the Chamber of the House of Representatives. They’re called fasces, and I can think of no reason for them to be there other than to declare the fascistic nature of American republican democracy. 6 A fasces is a Roman device. Actually, it originated with the ancient Etruscans, from whom the earliest Romans derived their religious jurisprudence nearly three thousand years ago. It’s an axe-head whose handle is a bundle of rods tightly strapped together by a red sinew. It symbolizes the ordering of priestly functions into a single infallible sovereign, an autocrat who could require life and limb of his subjects. If the fasces is entwined with laurel, like the pair on the House wall, it signifies Caesarean military power. The Romans called this infallible sovereign Pontifex Maximus, “Supreme Bridgebuilder.” No Roman was called Pontifex Maximus until the title was given to Julius Caesar in 48 BC. Today’s Pontifex Maximus is Pope John Paul II. As we shall discover in a forthcoming chapter, John Paul does not hold that title alone. He shares it with a mysterious partner, a military man, a man holding an office that has been known for more than four centuries as “Papa Nero,” the Black Pope. I shall present evidence that the House fasces represent the Black Pope, who indeed rules the world. Later, I will develop what is sure to become a controversial hypothesis: that the Black Pope rules by divine appointment, and for the ultimate good of mankind.

Rulers of Evil

by F. Tupper Saussy

https://archive.org/details/rulers-of-evil-f.-tupper-saussy_202201/Rulers%20of%20Evil%20F.%20Tupper%20Saussy/

In 1990, Harris was hired as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California, where she was described as "an able prosecutor on the way up".[37] In 1994, Speaker of the California Assembly Willie BROWN, who was then dating Harris, appointed her to the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and later to the California Medical Assistance Commission.[37] In February 1998, San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan recruited Harris as an assistant district attorney.[38] There, she became the chief of the Career Criminal Division, supervising five other attorneys, where she prosecuted homicide, burglary, robbery, and sexual assault cases—particularly three-strikes cases. In August 2000, Harris took a job at San Francisco City Hall, working for city attorney Louise Renne.[39] Harris ran the Family and Children's Services Division, representing child abuse and neglect cases. Renne endorsed Harris during her D.A. campaign.[40]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris

Donald Jasper Harris, OM (born August 23, 1938) is a Jamaican-American economist and professor emeritus at Stanford University, known for applying post-Keynesian ideas to development economics.[1]

He is the father of US Vice President and current Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris and lawyer Maya Harris.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_J._Harris 

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump 

Danney Lee Williams Jr. (born December 7, 1985) is a man from Little Rock, Arkansas who claims to be the biological son of Bill Clinton, the former President of the United States.[1] Blood tests ruled out Clinton as the father.[1][2]

Background

Williams was born in 1985 to Danney Williams Sr. and Bobbie Ann Williams.

The story came to notice in the late 1990s when reporting by Newsmax led by celebrity tabloid magazine Star to commission a paternity test prove whether Williams is actually Clinton's biological son.[3] Time magazine cited Star on July 18, 1999 to say that there was no match.[4]

The story was revived in 2016 before the 2016 presidential election and pushed by a number of media outlets including Newsmax, the Drudge Report,[3] as well as WorldNetDaily,[1] and the New York Daily News.[1]

Due to some uncertainties with the original test by Star, Snopes concluded that the claim was unproven.[3] The Washington Post stated that, while the test could not prove Clinton was the father, it did conclusively rule him out as the father.[1]

On October 19, 2016, Williams' lawyers announced their intentions to file a paternity suit to prove that Clinton's DNA matched Williams'.[5] Williams wrote to Monica Lewinsky asking for her dress in order to obtain a sample of Clinton's DNA. However, Lewinsky never replied to Williams.[6] A partial analysis of Clinton's blood, and thus his DNA, was already part of the public record because of the Lewinsky affair investigation.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danney_Williams

Silicone breast implants are filled with silicone gel. 

https://www.plasticsurgery.org/cosmetic-procedures/breast-augmentation/implants

silicone (n.)

coined 1863 in German from silico-, combining form indicating the presence of silicon, + -one.

also from 1863

Entries linking to silicone

silicon (n.)

nonmetallic element, 1817, coined by British chemist Thomas Thomson from silica (silicon dioxide), from which it was isolated. The name is patterned on carbon, etc. Silicon chip is attested from 1965; Silicon Valley for the Santa Clara Valley near San Francisco is attested by 1974, in reference to the concentration there of manufacturers of silicon chips used in computers, watches, etc.

-one 

chemical suffix, from Greek -one, female patronymic (as in anemone, "daughter of the wind," from anemos); in chemical use denoting a "weaker" derivative. Its use in forming acetone (1830s) gave rise to the specialized chemical sense.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/silicone

Charles Babbage, an English mechanical engineer and polymath, originated the concept of a programmable computer. Considered the "father of the computer",[22] he conceptualized and invented the first mechanical computer in the early 19th century.

After working on his difference engine he announced his invention in 1822, in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society, titled "Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables",[23] he also designed to aid in navigational calculations, in 1833 he realized that a much more general design, an analytical engine, was possible. The input of programs and data was to be provided to the machine via punched cards, a method being used at the time to direct mechanical looms such as the Jacquard loom. For output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter and a bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be read in later. The engine would incorporate an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete.[24][25]

The machine was about a century ahead of its time. All the parts for his machine had to be made by hand – this was a major problem for a device with thousands of parts. Eventually, the project was dissolved with the decision of the British Government to cease funding. Babbage's failure to complete the analytical engine can be chiefly attributed to political and financial difficulties as well as his desire to develop an increasingly sophisticated computer and to move ahead faster than anyone else could follow. Nevertheless, his son, Henry Babbage, completed a simplified version of the analytical engine's computing unit (the mill) in 1888. He gave a successful demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1906.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer

Babbage’s, Inc.

10741 King William Drive

Dallas, Texas 75220

U.S.A.

(214) 401-9000

Fax: (214) 401-9002

Public Company

Incorporated: 1983

Employees: 2,400

Sales: $233.4 million

Stock Exchanges: NASDAQ

SICs: 5734 Computer & Software Stores

Santa Clara University is a private Jesuit university in Santa Clara, California, United States. Established in 1851, Santa Clara University is the oldest operating institution of higher learning in California.[5] The university's campus surrounds the historic Mission Santa Clara de Asís which traces its founding to 1777. The campus mirrors the Mission's architectural style and is one of the finest groupings of Mission Revival architecture and other Spanish Colonial Revival styles. The university is classified as a "Doctoral/Professional" university.[6]

The university offers bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and doctoral degrees through its six colleges, the College of Arts and Sciences, School of Education and Counseling Psychology, Leavey School of Business, School of Engineering, Jesuit School of Theology, and School of Law. It enrolls 6,115 undergraduate students and about 3,063 postgraduate students as of Fall 2022.

Santa Clara's sports teams are called the Broncos. Their colors are red and white. The Broncos compete at the NCAA Division I levels as members of the West Coast Conference in 19 sports. Broncos have won NCAA championships in both men's and women's soccer. Santa Clara's student athletes include current or former 58 MLB,[7] 40 NFL,[8] and 12 NBA players and 13 Olympic gold medalists.

Santa Clara's faculty and alumni include U.S. Senators and House representatives, a Pulitzer Prize winner, numerous billionaires and U.S. governors, a Director of the CIA, a U.S. Secretary of Defense, a U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, a White House Press Secretary and a United States Secretary of Homeland Security. Santa Clara has Fulbright Scholars as well as 4 Rhodes Scholars.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_University

1885 was a year a full century before the modern time of Marty McFly: 1985. It had been 20 years since Hill Valley's founding and a festival was held to honor the anniversary.

The town consisted of two major dirt streets which intersected at Courthouse Square and the construction of a new county courthouse and clock tower. One of the streets went to the Hill Valley Train Station.

Most of the surrounding countryside was mountains and valleys with deciduous trees and farther out desert with mesas to the north of the town and the ravine to the southeast of the town.

https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1885

Janet Wood Reno (July 21, 1938 – November 7, 2016) was an American lawyer and public official who served as the first female and 78th United States attorney general. Reno, a member of the Democratic Party, held the position from 1993 to 2001, making her the second-longest serving attorney general, behind only William Wirt.

Reno was born and raised in Miami, Florida. After leaving to attend Cornell University and Harvard Law School, she returned to Miami where she started her career at private law firms. Her first foray into government was as a staff member for the Judiciary Committee of the Florida House of Representatives. She then worked for the Dade County State Attorney's Office before returning to private practice. She was elected to the Office of State Attorney five times and was the first woman to serve as a state attorney in Florida. President Bill Clinton appointed her attorney general in 1993, a position she held until Clinton left office in 2001.

The following Department of Justice actions occurred during Reno's tenure:

The 51-day Waco siege standoff and resulting 76 deaths—the Branch Davidians—in Waco, Texas. (The standoff began on February 28, 1993, twelve days before Reno was installed as attorney general). Reno stated in congressional testimony that she authorized the FBI assault on the Branch Davidians because of reports that militia groups were en route to Waco during the standoff "either to help [Branch Davidian leader David] Koresh or to attack him."[48] The FBI had also, erroneously, reported to Reno that children were being abused at the compound.[49] Reno publicly expressed her regret of the decision to storm the compound, and accepted full responsibility for the loss of life.[50]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Reno 

Ellen G. White in a group at Reno, Nevada, camp meeting 1888.

14 And deceived them that dwell on the earth by the signs which were permitted to him to do in the sight of the beast, saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make the [t]image of the [u]beast, which had the wound of a sword, and did live.

Revelation 13:14

"14We ought to act on the principle that everyone who lives under obedience should let himself be carried and directed by Divine Providence through the agency of the superior 15as if he were a lifeless body, which allows itself to be carried to any place and treated in any way; or an old man s staff, which serves at any place and for any purpose in which the one holding it in his hand wishes to employ it. 16For in this way the obedient man ought joyfully to employ himself in any task in which the superior desires to employ him in aid of the whole body of the religious order; 17and he ought to hold it certain that by so doing he conforms himself with the divine will more than by anything else he could do while following his own will and different judgment.[3]"

page 221

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

Ellen Gould White (née Harmon; November 26, 1827 – July 16, 1915) was an American author and co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Along with other Adventist leaders such as Joseph Bates and her husband James White, she was instrumental within a small group of early Adventists who formed what became known as the Seventh-day Adventist Church. White is considered a leading figure in American vegetarian history.[2] Smithsonian named her among the "100 Most Significant Americans of All Time".[3]

Scottish doctor Alexander Wood is credited with inventing the modern hypodermic syringe in 1853. His goal was to treat pain in just one area of the body. He attached a hollow needle, an earlier invention by Irish doctor Francis Rynd, to a plunger.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky[a] (née Hahn von Rottenstern; 12 August [O.S. 31 July] 1831 – 8 May 1891), often known as Madame Blavatsky, was a Russian and American mystic and author who co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. She gained an international following as the leading theoretician of Theosophy.

Born into an aristocratic family in Yekaterinoslav, then in the Russian Empire (now Dnipro in Ukraine), Blavatsky traveled widely around the empire as a child. Largely self-educated, she developed an interest in Western esotericism during her teenage years. According to her later claims, in 1849 she embarked on a series of world travels, visiting Europe, the Americas, and India. She also claimed that during this period she encountered a group of spiritual adepts, the "Masters of the Ancient Wisdom", who sent her to Shigatse, Tibet, where they trained her to develop a deeper understanding of the synthesis of religion, philosophy, and science.

Using his newly invented hypodermic syringe he was able to inject pain relief medicine to the area which was causing pain. His first patient was a woman experiencing neuralgia, which causes intense pain after nerve damage. She was injected at the site of her pain with the pain relief medicine morphia. Morphia was a mixture of sherry and morphine, a powerful pain relief medicine.

The Berenstain/Berenstein Confusion Doesn't Exist In A Vacuum. Close. The popular belief that the correct spelling of the Bears' last name was “Berenstein,” not "Berenstain," is one of the most prevalent examples of the Mandela Effect at work in the movie world.

24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

Genesis 2:24

7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

1 John 5:7

This Babylonian clay tablet, called Plimpton 322, was created around 1750 BCE in Sumeria, during the reign of Hammurabi the Great.

While more than 1000 years older than Pythagoras, the rows and columns on this table contain Pythagorean triples: integer solutions for the equation a2+b2=c2. For example, (3, 4, 5) is a Pythagorean triple because 32+42=52.

The exact purpose of the tablet has been debated by archeologists. Some think that it was a “teachers aid”, designed to help generate right-angled triangles. Others think it may be a very early trigonometry table.

THE HOUR OF THE TIME

Tape No. 453: "The Hermetic Marriage"

Tuesday, October 4, 1994

The Hermetic Marriage, or the marriage of the sun and the moon, the

origin of the hermetic philosophy, will astound you. You're going to

learn a few things about yourselves, about religion, and about Walt

Disney tonight.

https://www.hourofthetime .com/hermetic .html

"In 1917, the Virgin appeared in Fatima. "The Mother of God" was a smashing success, playing to overflow crowds. As a result, the Socialists of Portugal suffered a major defeat.

"Roman Catholics world-wide began praying for the conversion of Russia and the Jesuits invented the Novenas to Fatima which they could perform throughout North Africa, spreading good public relations to the Muslim world. The Arabs thought they were honoring the daughter of Muhammad, which is what the Jesuits wanted them to believe.

"As a result of the vision of Fatima, Pope Pius XII ordered his Nazi army to crush Russia and the Orthodox religion and make Russia Roman Catholic." A few years after he lost World war II, Pope Pius XII startled the world with his phoney dancing sun vision to keep Fatima in the news. It was great religious show biz and the world swallowed it.

Not surprisingly, Pope Pius was the only one to see this vision. As a result, a group of followers has grown into a Blue Army world-wide, totaling millions of faithful Roman Catholics ready to die for the blessed virgin.

"But we haven't seen anything yet. The Jesuits have their Virgin Mary scheduled to appear four or five times in China, Russia, and major appearance in the U.S.

"What has this got to do with Islam? Note Bishop Sheen's statement: "Our Lady's appearances at Fatima marked the turning point in the history of the world's 350 million Muslims. After the death of his daughter, Muhammad wrote that she "is the most holy of all women in Paradise, next to Mary."

"He believed that the Virgin Mary chose to be known as Our Lady of Fatima as a sign and a pledge that the Muslims who believe in Christ's virgin birth, will come to believe in His divinity.

"Bishop Sheen pointed out that the pilgrim virgin statues of Our Lady of Fatima were enthusiastically received by Muslims in Africa, India, and elsewhere, and that many Muslims are now coming into the Roman Catholic Church." Article from: http://www.cloakanddagger .de/lenny/alberto_rivera.htm

How the Vatican created Islam (remnantofgod.org)

The Twilight Zone - I of Newton 666 - Sherman Hemsley & Ron Glass (1985)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0ZRKSoN7Vg

Devil: the enemy of perfection, particularly of poverty [553]; his or her illusions must be guarded against [260]; against his or her attacks those who are dying must be defended [595]

Index

The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and their Complimentary Norms

"Historical Institute of the Society of Jesus: a Roman work of the entire Society, 304 §2" 

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

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14 Then Pilate said unto them, But what evil hath he done? And they cried the more fervently, Crucify him.

Mark 15:14

14We ought to act on the principle that everyone who lives under obedience should let himself be carried and directed by Divine Providence through the agency of the superior 15as if he were a lifeless body, which allows itself to be carried to any place and treated in any way; or an old man s staff, which serves at any place and for any purpose in which the one holding it in his hand wishes to employ it. 16For in this way the obedient man ought joyfully to employ himself in any task in which the superior desires to employ him in aid of the whole body of the religious order; 17and he ought to hold it certain that by so doing he conforms himself with the divine will more than by anything else he could do while following his own will and different judgment.[3]"

page 221

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

A Complete English Translation of the Official Latin Texts

THE INSTITUTE OF JESUIT SOURCES

SAINT LOUIS, 1996

https://web.archive.org/web/20200211182223/https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

32 Let Christ the king of Israel now come down from the cross, that we may see, and believe. They also that were crucified with him, reviled him.

Mark 15:32

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mark%2015&version=GNV

MISSIONS FROM THE SUPREME PONTIFF

252 §1. To be truly Christian, our service to the Church must be anchored in fidelity to Christ, who makes all things new; to be proper to the Society, it must be done in union with the successors of Peter[32]

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

A Complete English Translation of the Official Latin Texts

THE INSTITUTE OF JESUIT SOURCES

SAINT LOUIS, 1996

https://web.archive.org/web/20200211182223/https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

Note 370.—"Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret. The 32nd degree of the Ancient and Accepted rite, and for many years, or until the institution of the 33d degree, this was the highest degree, or ne plus ultra of Masonry. The body is styled a Consistory, and should be held in a building of two stories. The officers are, a Thrice Illustrious Commander, First and Second Lieutenants, a Minister of State, a Grand Chancellor, a Grand Treasurer, a Grand Secretary, and a Grand Captain of the Guard. In the East a throne, elevated on seven steps, which is the seat of the Thrice Illustrious Commander, who wears a robe of royal purple, and he and the Lieutenants, wear swords. The collar of this degree is black, lined with scarlet, and in the center, at the point, a double-headed eagle, of silver or gold, on a red Teutonic cross. The apron is of white satin, with a border of gold lace, one inch wide, lined with scarlet; on the flap is a double-headed eagle, on each side of which is the flag of the country in which the body is located, the flag of Prussia and the Beause- -ant of the Kadosh degree; on the apron is the camp of the Crusaders, , which is thus explained; it is composed of an enneagon, within which is ' inscribed a heptagon, within that a pentagon, and in the center an equilateral triangle, within which is a circle. Between the heptagon and pentagon are placed five standards, in the designs of whigjl are five letters, which form a particular word. The first standard is purple, on which is emblazoned the ark of the covenant, with a palm, tree on each side; the ark has the motto Laus Deo. The second is blue, on which is a lion, of gold, couchant, holding in his mouth a golden key, with a collar of the same metal on his neck, and on it is the device, Ad majorem Dei gloriam. The third is white, and displays a heart in flames, with two wings; it is surmounted by a crown of laurels. The fourth is green, and bears a double-headed black eagle, crowned, holding a sword in his right claw, and a bleeding heart in his left. The fifth bears a black ox. on a field of gold. On the sides of the enneagon are nine tents, with flags, representing the divisions of the Masonic army; on the angles are nine pinions, of the same color as the flag of the tent that precedes it. The hall of the Consistory is hung with black, strewed with tears of silver. The jewel is a double-headed white and black eagle, resting on a Teutonic cross, of gold, worn attached to the collar or ribbon. ^The members are called Sublime Princes of the Royal Secret. The moral of the degree teaches opposition to bigotry, superstition, and all the passions and vices which disgrace human nature."—Macoy's Encyclopaedia and Pictionary of Freemasonry, Article Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret 

PART VI 1THE PERSONAL LIFE OF THOSE ALREADY ADMITTED AND INCORPORATED INTO THE BODY OF THE SOCIETY

SECTION 1: THE APOSTOLIC CHARACTER OF OUR VOWS IN GENERAL

143 §1. Our consecration by profession of the evangelical counsels, by which we respond to a divine vocation, is at one and the same time the following of Christ poor, virginal, and obedient and a rejection of those idols that the world is always prepared to adore, especially wealth, pleasure, prestige, and power. Hence, our poverty, chastity, and obedience ought visibly and efficaciously to bear witness to this attitude, whereby we proclaim the evangelical possibility of a certain communion among men and women that is a foretaste of the future kingdom of God.[1]

§2. Our religious vows, while binding us, also set us FREE:

FREE, by our vow of poverty, to share the life of the poor and to use whatever resources we may have, not for our own security and comfort, but for service;

FREE, by our vow of chastity, to be men for others, in friendship and communion with all, but especially with those who share our mission of service;

FREE, by our vow of obedience, to respond to the call of Christ as made known to us by him whom the Spirit has placed over the Church, and to follow the lead of all our superiors.[2] [1] See GC 32, d. 4, no. 16; see GC 31, d. 16, no. 4; d. 17, no. 2; d. 18, no. 3. [2] GC 32, d. 2, no. 20. 215

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

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Valley of Traverse City

ANCIENT ACCEPTED SCOTTISH RITE

The History and Legend of Scottish Rite Origins

The Story Unfolds…

Like much of early Masonic history, the origins of the Scottish Rite are uncertain. This is primarily due to the lack of historic documentation prior to the early 1700’s and not to any great veiled mystery. The few records kept were subject to loss, fire, weather and aging. So we can at best only speculate on many of our origins by looking at the few documents, historical references and legends that remain.

What We Know

n 1754, near Paris, Chevalier de Bonneville established the Chapter of Clermont. The Chapter resided in the College of Jesuits of Clermont, hence the name. It is said to have been created to honor the Duc de Clermont, then Grand Master of the English Grand Lodge of France.

The Chapter of Clermont was a “Chapter of the Advanced Degrees” and initially entailed six degrees and was later extended to 25 known degrees. The six initial degrees were 1˚, 2˚ and 3˚ St John’s Masonry, 4˚ Knight of the Eagle, 5˚ Illustrious Knight or Templar, 6˚ Sublime Illustrious Knight.

Interestingly enough historically, prior to the time of the Rite’s creation, James II had been in residence at Clermont in exile from Britain from 1688 to his death in 1701. As noted by German Masonic historian, Lenning… “whilst in exile, James II residing at the Jesuit College of Clermont in France, allowed his closest associates to fabricate certain degrees in order to extend their political views.” Lenning believed this to have been an attempt on the part of James and his associates to regain control of the British throne for the House of Stuart. If Lenning is right, this places the origins of the “Rite of Perfection” in the hands of James II and the Jacobite (Stuart) Freemasons who at the time were in exile from Great Britain throughout France and Italy. Lenning also contends that these degrees were introduced into French Freemasonry under the name of the Clermont System.

James II died in exile in 1701. His son James III is said to have continued his father’s Masonic legacy and later created further higher degrees.

Perhaps James II saw in the Jesuit morality plays of the College of Clermont a vessel for passing on a set of moral lessons. Some of the world’s greatest playwrights had emerged from Clermont. Jesuit tutelage had previously produced great writers such as Lope de Vega, Moliere, Racine, and the Corneille brothers. Ensconced in exile, I believe James II did find the inspiration and the training to help produce what would later become the first six degrees. From out of the darkness… comes light.

To be continued… (Author’s note… An in depth look at the Templar influence in Scottish Rite masonry’s origins can be found by visiting the Rosslyn Templars’ website.)"

https://web.archive.org/.../scottish-rite-history.html

The Collège de Clermont was one of the earliest schools established by the Jesuits, who were incredibly influential in shaping education in Europe. The Jesuits were a rigid and hierarchical Catholic sect that followed the teachings of Ignatius Loyola. 

https://earlymoderneurope.hist.sites.carleton.edu/exhibits/show/development-of-education-in-ea/item/249#:~:text=The%20Coll%C3%A8ge%20de%20Clermont%20was,the%20teachings%20of%20Ignatius%20Loyola.

Vatican confirms ban on Catholics becoming Freemasons

By Reuters

November 15, 20235:16 PM PSTUpdated 10 months ago

The department, known as the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, issued its opinion, dated Nov. 13 and countersigned by Pope Francis, in response to a bishop from the Philippines alarmed by the growing number of Freemasons in his country.

The same office said last week that transgender people can be baptized, serve as godparents and act as witnesses at Catholic weddings.

The letter on Freemasons cited a 1983 declaration, signed by the late Pope Benedict XVI, at the time the Vatican's doctrine chief, stating that Catholics "in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion".

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/vatican-confirms-ban-catholics-becoming-freemasons-2023-11-15/

Arturo Marcelino Sosa Abascal SJ (born 12 November 1948) is a Venezuelan Catholic priest who serves as the 31st and present superior general of the Society of Jesus. He was elected by the Society's 36th General Congregation on 14 October 2016, succeeding Adolfo Nicolás. He is the first person born in Latin America to lead the Jesuits.

Early life and education

Arturo Marcelino Sosa Abascal was born in Caracas, Venezuela, on 12 November 1948,[1] the son of Arturo Sosa, Sr. a prestigious businessman who served twice as finance minister in 1958 and 1982.[2] He entered the Society of Jesus in 1966 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1977.[1] He earned a licentiate in philosophy from the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in 1972, and a doctorate in political science from the Universidad Central de Venezuela in 1990.[3][4]

Priestly ministry

Sosa has held a number of positions in various universities. He was a professor and member of the Council of the foundation for the Andrés Bello Catholic University, and rector of the Catholic University of Tachira, both Jesuit universities.[4] He was also the Chair of Contemporary Political Theory and the Department of Social Change at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Venezuela.[4] He published a number of works, mainly about the history and politics of Venezuela. He was also coordinator of the social apostolate and director of Centro Gumilla in Venezuela, a centre of research and social action for the Jesuits in Venezuela,[4] as well as editor-in-chief of Revista SIC magazine for Catholic social ethics and politics from 1976 to 1996.[5] In 2004, he was professor of Venezuelan political thinking at the Catholic University of Tachira and was invited to Georgetown University Center for Latin American Studies as a visiting professor to give a lecture.[6]

Between 1996 and 2004, Sosa was Provincial Superior of the Jesuits in Venezuela.[4] During the 35th General Congregation in 2008, he was appointed Counselor General by then-Superior General Adolfo Nicolás.[4] In 2014, he joined the General Curia of the Society of Jesus in Rome as Delegate for Interprovincial Roman Houses of the Society of Jesus in Rome, which include institutions such as the Pontifical Gregorian University, the Pontifical Biblical Institute, the Pontifical Oriental Institute, the Vatican Observatory, and La Civiltà Cattolica.[4][7]

Sosa speaks Spanish, Italian and English, and understands French.[4]

Superior General of the Society of Jesus 

On 14 October 2016, during the thirty-sixth General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, the assembly elected Sosa as the Order's thirty-first Superior General to succeed Adolfo Nicolás.[6] He became the first Latin American to head the Jesuits.[8] In his first address as Superior General, he said that Jesuits should look for "alternatives to overcome poverty, inequality and oppression" and also to collaborate with others "inside and outside the Church".[9]

In 2017, in a visit to the Jesuit mission in Cambodia, Sosa met with a group of Buddhist monks in the Buddhist-majority country.[10] In 2018, commenting on the Fifteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, Sosa spoke of secularization, saying "What if we try, instead, to look at secularization as a sign of the times, in the theological sense that the Second Vatican Council gave to this expression? It means looking at secularization, and the secular world that arises from it, as one of the ways the Spirit is speaking to us and guiding us in this time."[11]

In February 2019, after guiding Jesuits and their lay collaborators through two years of discernment, Sosa announced four priorities that would guide the Society's decisions for the next decade. These were: teaching discernment through use of the Spiritual Exercises, walking with the poor in their quest for dignity and justice, accompany young people in the creation of a hope-filled future, and collaborating in the care of our Common Home. Pope Francis declared these priorities to be very much in line with those of his pontificate.[12]

Criticism

The Catholic Herald criticised Sosa for being one of over 1,000 signatories of a 1989 letter welcoming Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to Venezuela in 1989, Castro having repressed the Catholic Church in Cuba during his time in power.[13] George Neumayr of the conservative American Spectator described Sosa as a "Marxist", "a Venezuelan communist, and modernist".[14]

In February 2017, in response to Cardinal Müller's argument that permitting the reception of Communion by the remarried contradicts Jesus's words in the Bible that marriage is indissoluble and Müller's insistence that those words are unchangeable, Sosa argued for a "reflection on what Jesus really said", and described the Gospel as "relative", being "written by human beings" and "accepted by [...] human beings". Sosa also argued that the doctrine of the Church is in "continuous development", and "never in white and black".[15] Sosa's remarks drew criticism in the Italian media.[16]

The English priest and consulting editor of The Catholic Herald Alexander Lucie-Smith disagreed with Sosa, arguing that the Church's teaching on the indissolubility of marriage has been historically consistent, and that there was no precedent set in the Bible to interpret these words otherwise.[17] Theologian Chad Pecknold criticised Sosa's views as "reflect[ing] a profound skepticism about Holy Scripture", countering that although a variety of interpretations are allowed, they must "fit with the established doctrine of the Church and do not contradict the deposit of the Faith". Contradicting Sosa's own claim that his views were "not relativism",[15] Pecknold characterised Sosa's remarks as "historicist relativizing".[18]

Catholic author Vittorio Messori accused Sosa of "'liquefying' the Gospel itself" by suggesting that the Gospel should be adapted according to the times on the basis that Jesus's words were not recorded verbatim or "on tape".[19]

In June 2017, in an interview with El Mundo, Sosa said, "We have formed symbolic figures such as the devil to express evil. Social conditioning can also represent this figure, since there are people who act [in an evil way] because they are in an environment where it is difficult to act to the contrary". This was criticised as contradicting the Catechism of the Catholic Church which teaches that the Devil is a real creature.[20] A spokesman for Sosa later argued that Sosa was not denying church teaching, saying, "to say the devil symbolizes evil is not to deny the existence of the devil."[21] On 21 August 2019, Sosa declared in an interview that the Devil "exists as the personification of evil in different structures, but not in persons, because [he] is not a person, [he] is a way of acting evil. He is not a person like a human person. It is a way of evil to be present in human life. [...] Good and evil are in a permanent war in the human conscience and we have ways to point them out. We recognize God as good, fully good. Symbols are part of reality, and the devil exists as a symbolic reality, not as a personal reality." The Catholic World Report criticized these declarations, saying they were contrary to the catechism, and reminded of the controversy of the June 2017 statement of Sosa concerning the Devil.[22]

In October 2018, in an interview with Eternal Word Television Network, Sosa argued that "the pope is not the chief of the Church, he's the Bishop of Rome". This was opposed by Chad Pecknold, Associate Professor of Theology at the Catholic University of America, who argued that it would be wrong to believe that Pope was "merely 'first among equals' ", and insisted that the pope has "supreme authority" over all bishops and the faithful.[23]

Publications

Sosa has authored about a dozen books on politics and on the history of Venezuela, including:

Arturo Sosa, La filosofía política del gomecismo: Estudio del pensamiento by Laureano Vallenilla Lanz, Barquisimeto, Centro Gumilla,1974, 130 p. (ISBN 8439920830)

Arturo Sosa and Eloi Lengrand, Del garibaldismo student to the izquierda criolla: Los orígenes marxistas del proyecto de AD (1928-1935), Caracas, Centauro, 1981, 517 ppp. (OCLC 30449576)

Arturo Sosa, Ensayos sobre el pensamiento político positivista venezolano, Caracas, Centauro,1985, 269 pp. (ISBN 9802630217)

Arturo Sosa, Rómulo Betancourt y el Partido del Pueblo, 1937-1941, Caracas, Fundación Rómulo Betancourt, coll. "Vigente Tiempo" (No. 9) 1995, 617 pp. (ISBN 9806191293)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arturo_Sosa

Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.”

That is the law of God as laid down in the beginning; that if a man shall shed blood, by man shall his blood be shed. Why? Because the blood is the life of the flesh, and is the only atonement a man can make for killing another. A murderer, by the shedding of his blood, may make some atonement for his sin; but he cannot come forth and inherit an exaltation in eternal life, he must be content with a less degree of glory. Still, as Brother Brigham taught, there is a chance for some men who have committed this great transgression if their blood be shed, and there are others who, even if they were willing to have their blood shed, could not obtain forgiveness for their transgressions. You can read about this in the revelation on celestial marriage. (Doctrine and Covenants, Sec. cxxxii,par. 26-7.) They are those who have not only been baptized into the Church of Christ, received the power of the Holy Spirit and been enlightened from on high, but have been in the most sacred places on the earth, ordained of God by His holy law, and have made special covenants in relation to that and other sins; they have been specially enlightened ; they have gone from step to step, from grace to grace, from knowledge to knowledge, and have had keys of power placed in their hands whereby, if they are faithful, they may climb to the highest pinnacle of honor and glory in the presence of our Heavenly Father, and then they turn round and commit this great transgression, the shedding of innocent blood. For them there is no forgiveness. They will be banished from the presence of God; they cannot inherit the glory which was sealed upon them, however repentant they may be; they cannot come up in the first resurrection and enter into their exaltation; but they must be cast out from the presence of God and have the everlasting penalty pronounced,

“Depart from me ye workers of iniquity.”

They will be banished from the presence of God,, which is spiritual destruction, that spiritual death which is called the “second death.”

But, there are other persons who by making thisitonement may obtain redemption—persons that have not advanced to this degree of knowledge in understanding, and whose sins are not of so* heinous a nature. Because sin is guaged by the light of the individual. The depth of man’s infamy is guaged by the degree of his light and is opportunity. He that knows much is expected to do much. Of him that knows but little, only little is expected. If a man has great light and he sins he is the greater sinner. I have heard people argue that all sin is the result of ignorance. Well, it is just the other way. Sin is rather the result of knowledge ; because a man cannot sin without some light. An idiot cannot sin, because he is responsible. It takes a responsible being to do responsible wrong. The more responsible a man is, the greater wrong he does if he commits transgression.

The greater a man’s light is, the greater is sin. The greater the light, the greater the condemnation for doing wrong. That is based upon the eternal principle of justice. From this, then, it would seem that if a man commits a sin unto death there is no redemption : if not unto death, and he pays the penalty, there is for him a chance of salvation.

This divine law for shedding the blood of a murderer has never been repealed. It is a law given by the Almighty and not abrogated in the Christian faith. It stands on record for all time that a murderer shall have his blood shed. He that commits murder must be slain. “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” I know there are some benevolent and I philanthropic people in these times who think that capital punishment ought to be abolished.

Yet I think the Lord knows better than they. Their law He has ordained will have the best results to mankind in general.

Well, is there any other sin that a man may commit which is worthy of death? I think there is. I will refer you to one in the Book of Leviticus, 20th chapter and 10th verse:

“And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and; the adulteress shall surely be put to death.”

That was the law of God in the days of Moses. It was the law of God previous to the days of Moses, as you will find by reference to the Book of 1 Genesis. It has been a law of God from the beginning. Some people have an idea that Jesus.

Christ did away with that law, and they bring up the case of the woman that had been taken in transgression. The object of the Pharisees in bringing the woman to the Savior was that they might catch Him in some way. You will find by a reading the history of Jesus Christ’s ministry on the earth that it was then as it is to-day—snares are all the time being laid to catch the servants of God. They tried to entrap Him in many ways but He was able to meet them with the wisdom of the Great God ; for the Spirit of God was given to Him without measure. The woman they brought to Him was taken in this great transgression. The Pharisees knew the law -of Moses was that she should be put to death. They inquired what Jesus had to say. He stooped down and thought a little while, then wrote with His finger on the ground and exclaimed, “Let him that is without sin cast the first stone !

”The Pharisees looked at each other and finally they slipped away. Why ? Because that was “an evil and adulterous generation.’’

Those self-righteous hypocrites were guilty of the transgression themselves, and the person to inflict the penalty justly, had to be one who was not guilty; for how could one such sinner rightly inflict the penalty upon another? Jesus Christ’s words smote them to the heart, and they slunk off and left the woman standing there. Did the sinner go free? Did Jesus say the law ought not to be inflicted? No. He asked: “Woman, where are thine accusers ?” They were gone. “Neither do I accuse thee.” It must be remembered that there must be accusers as well as judges. Jesus set a pattern which judges in these times would do well to follow. He did not act as an attorney for the prosecution or as a witness against the accused as well as a judge to pronounce the sentence. “Woman, where are those thine accusers ? * * *

Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” pages 26-27

Blood atonement, as taught by leading elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints : an address delivered in the Twelfth Ward assembly hall, Salt Lake City, October 12, 1884 (archive.org)

Blood atonement, as taught by leading elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints : an address delivered in the Twelfth Ward assembly hall, Salt Lake City, October 12, 1884 (archive.org)

"The friendliness of the Mormons towards Catholics is attributed to their appreciation that their settlement in the great Salt Lake Valley is due to having been directed to it by Fr. Pierre Jean de Smet, the great Jesuit missionary and explorer, who met and was entertained by Brigham Young in Council Bluffs, while the Mormons were on their trek West. Writing to his nephew, Fr. de Smet said: "They asked me a thousand questions about the regions I had explored, and the valley I have just described to you, pleased them greatly from the account I gave of it. Was that what determined them to settle there? I would not dare affirm it. They are there!"

https://web.archive.org/web/20151020074727/http://www.catholictradition.org:80/Tradition/goldstein70.htm

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian Christian church that considers itself to be the restoration of the original church founded by Jesus Christ."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints

416 Finally, those means that are proposed by our holy father Saint Ignatius in Part X of the Constitutions for the preservation and development not only of the body or exterior of the Society but also of its spirit, and for the attainment of the objective it seeks, which is to aid souls to reach their ultimate and supernatural end, [10] are to be observed eagerly and diligently by all, with a truly personal sense of responsibility for its increase and development, for the praise and service of our God and Lord Jesus Christ, and the help of souls. [11]

L. D. S. "

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"[593] 8. 1For the same reason, and to avoid occasions of unrest foreign to our profession, and also the better to preserve the peace and benevolent relations with all unto the greater glory of God, 2no professed or coadjutor or scholastic of the Society will consent to be interrogated in criminal trials or even in civil trials [E] (unless he is compelled to do so by someone who can oblige him under sin), without permission of the superior. 3The superior will not give the permission except in the trials which touch upon the Catholic religion, or in other pious cases which are favorable to one party in such a way that they do not do damage to another. [27] 4For it is proper to our Institute to serve all in our Lord without offense to anyone, as far as this is possible."

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

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The Mountain Meadows Massacre (September 7–11, 1857) was a series of attacks during the Utah War that resulted in the mass murder of at least 120 members of the Baker–Fancher emigrant wagon train.[1][a] The massacre occurred in the southern Utah Territory at Mountain Meadows, and was perpetrated by settlers from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) involved with the Utah Territorial Militia (officially called the Nauvoo Legion) who recruited and were aided by some Southern Paiute Native Americans.[2] The wagon train, made up mostly of families from Arkansas, was bound for California, traveling on the Old Spanish Trail that passed through the Territory.

After arriving in Salt Lake City, the Baker–Fancher party made their way south along the Mormon Road, eventually stopping to rest at Mountain Meadows. As the party was traveling west there were rumors about the party's behavior towards Mormon settlers and war hysteria towards outsiders was rampant as a result of a military expedition dispatched by President Buchanan, and Territorial Governor Brigham Young's declaration of martial law in response.[3][4][5] While the emigrants were camped at the meadow, local militia leaders, including Isaac C. Haight and John D. Lee, made plans to attack the wagon train. The leaders of the militia, wanting to give the impression of tribal hostilities, persuaded Southern Paiutes to join with a larger party of militiamen disguised as Native Americans in an attack. During the militia's first assault on the wagon train, the emigrants fought back, and a five-day siege ensued. Eventually, fear spread among the militia's leaders that some emigrants had caught sight of the white men, likely discerning the actual identity of a majority of the attackers. As a result, militia commander William H. Dame ordered his forces to kill the emigrants. By this time, the emigrants were running low on water and provisions, and allowed some members of the militia – who approached under a white flag – to enter their camp. The militia members assured the emigrants they were protected, and after handing over their weapons, the emigrants were escorted away from their defensive position. After walking a distance from the camp, the militiamen, with the help of auxiliary forces hiding nearby, attacked the emigrants. The perpetrators killed all the adults and older children in the group, in the end sparing only seventeen young children under the age of seven.[a]

Following the massacre, the perpetrators buried some of the remains but ultimately left most of the bodies exposed to wild animals and the climate. Local families took in the surviving children, with many of the victims' possessions and remaining livestock being auctioned off. Investigations, which were interrupted by the American Civil War, resulted in nine indictments in 1874. Of the men who were indicted, only John D. Lee was tried in a court of law. After two trials in the Utah Territory, Lee was convicted by a jury, sentenced to death, and executed by firing squad on March 23, 1877.

Historians attribute the massacre to a combination of factors, including war hysteria about a possible invasion of Mormon territory and Mormon teachings against outsiders, which were part of the Mormon Reformation period. Scholars debate whether senior leadership in Mormonism, including Brigham Young, directly instigated the massacre or if responsibility for it lay only with the local leaders in southern Utah.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_Massacre 

Mormon President and Pope Francis meet for the first time, after decades of hidden diplomacy

The two leaders met for 33 minutes at the Vatican and exchanged gifts, the day before Russell M. Nelson was due to dedicate the first Mormon temple in Rome

Michelle Boorstein Sunday 10 March 2019 20:38 GMT

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pope-mormon-leader-meeting-rome-vatican-lds-church-latterday-saints-a8816421.html 

5 children among 8 dead in Utah murder-suicide after wife sought divorce, officials say

Updated on: January 5, 2023 / 5:26 PM EST / CBS/AP 

Crime

5 children among 8 dead in Utah murder-suicide after wife sought divorce, officials say

Updated on: January 5, 2023 / 5:26 PM EST / CBS/AP

A Utah man fatally shot his five children, his mother-in-law and his wife, then killed himself two weeks after the woman had filed for divorce, according to authorities and public records.

Enoch Police Chief Jackson Ames said during a Thursday press conference that officers had been involved in investigations involving the 42-year-old man and his family a "couple of years prior." He did not elaborate.

The crime rocked Enoch, a small town in southern Utah about halfway between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas.

It's one of the fastest-growing areas of the country and communities of new homes are made up of large families that belong, like most of Utah, to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known widely as the Mormon church.

Enoch City Manager Rob Dotson said the deceased were well-known in the town.

"Many of us have served with them in church, in the community and gone to school with these individuals," Dotson said Wednesday night. "This community at this time is hurting. They're feeling loss, they're feeling pain and they have a lot of questions."

Officials said that they believed that Michael Haight had killed his wife, his mother-in-law and the couple's five children, and that each of the victims had gunshot wounds.

Court records show that Tausha Haight, 40, filed for divorce from her husband on Dec. 21. Her lawyer said Thursday that Haight had been served with the divorce papers on Dec. 27.

Tausha Haight and other members of the family were seen the night before the killings at a church group for young women, Mayor Geoffrey Chesnut said.

Police were dispatched to the family's home Wednesday afternoon for a welfare check after someone reported that Tausha Height had missed an appointment earlier in the week, city officials said.

The victims were found inside the house. The children ranged in age from 4 to 17 and included three girls and two boys, authorities said. The other victim was Tausha Haight's 78-year-old mother, Gail Earl.

The five children attended schools in the Iron County School District, officials said in a letter sent to parents.

According to CBS Salt Lake City affiliate KUTV, the letter said, "It is with deep regret that we inform you about a tragic loss to our school community. This afternoon, on Jan. 4, eight members of a family residing in Enoch with five students in our schools tragically passed away. This loss is sure to raise many emotions, concerns, and questions for our entire school district, especially our students."

James Park, who represented Tausha Haight in the divorce case, said she had not expressed any fear that her husband would physically hurt her but he declined to elaborate, citing the investigation into the killings. Park said he only met with her twice, mostly recently on Tuesday, and said she "was an incredibly nice lady."

The home where the victims were found was decorated with Christmas lights and located in a neighborhood of newly built single-family houses on a ridge overlooking the farming community of Enoch. It has a view of houses with snow-covered roofs and mountains in the distance. Half the surrounding block was cordoned off by police tape.

Enoch is on the outskirts of Cedar City, one of the fastest growing cities in Utah, which is one of the U.S.'s fastest-growing states. Cattle and sheep line the highway that runs through the town, along with signs that advertise "Custom New Homes," and recreation in southern Utah's famous national parks and recreation areas.

Sharon Hunstman of Cedar City came to the neighborhood with a bouquet of white flowers Thursday morning. She said the deaths had deeply rattled Iron County and cried as she arranged the bouquet.

"It's just one big community," she said. "We all have one heavenly father."

Archives from the local newspaper show that Haight's first birthday was commemorated with an announcement in the local newspaper in 1981 alongside a baby picture of him laughing.

He was in Boy Scouts as a young boy and earned the "Faith in God" award as a fourth grader. Two years later in 1992, another newspaper article showed that he had won a "Gospel in Action" award from his church.

His picture appeared again in the newspaper in 1998 when he was finalist for an academic award in high school for business and marketing. After high school, he served a church mission in Brazil and then married Tuasha at a church temple in St. George, in 2003. She was from Overton, Nevada, located just two hours south of Cedar City, where he grew up.

As an adult, Haight worked as an insurance agent and Allstate gave him an award for customer satisfaction. His wife's Facebook page showed pictures of the family looking happy in picturesque settings of Utah, and in front of a large statue of Jesus. Haight would have turned 43 on Jan. 7.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/enoch-utah-eight-family-members-five-kids-shot-dead-at-home/

How the Murder of a Utah Family Sparked Another Online Battle Over Mormonism

“So many men knew about this … I’m so f—ing furious.”

By Haley Swenson

Jan 20, 20235:21 PM

On Jan. 4, Enoch, Utah, police arrived at the home of Michael and Tausha Haight to perform a welfare check after a friend of Tausha’s had become alarmed when she hadn’t shown up for an appointment. In the home, police found eight bodies—those of Tausha, her five children, ranging in age from 4 to 17, and her mother, Gail Earl, who had all been shot to death, as well as the body of Michael Haight, who had apparently died by suicide after murdering the family.

In the following weeks, the case has drawn public attention from far beyond southern Utah. According to gun-violence research organization Everytown, an average of 70 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner every month in the U.S. We’ve already had several other mass murders in 2023 that could be characterized as “family annihilation,” whether attempted or accomplished. None of these have attracted the online attention the Haight case has. The family were active and seemingly devout members of the Mormon Church—or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as it prefers to be called—and well-known members of their community, a small, rural, mostly Mormon town outside Cedar City, Utah, approximately 215 miles south of Salt Lake City and 60 miles north of St. George. And after the deaths, both the Haight and Earl families released statements drawing on their religious faith that confounded onlookers inside and outside of Mormonism.

As often happens when an event involving members of the LDS church rises to the level of national scrutiny, the public has divided into various camps on just what parts of this horrible story are the religion’s “fault.” Here we have horrific domestic violence committed by a member of a church that promises a surefire plan for family peace and togetherness. Outside the church, the response has been one of both horror and disbelief at the quickness to forgive that has been demonstrated publicly by the families and by the Enoch community. Within the church, the case has stoked calls for reform and acknowledgement of the danger of patriarchal authority to women and children in the faith, but also defensiveness—a feeling that the church had nothing to do with the crime, and that to blame Mormonism is an act of anti-Mormon prejudice.

As of this week, the following facts in the case have been verified:

Michael and Tausha Haight had been married for 19 years, and had five children: 17-year-old Macie; 12-year-old Briley; 7-year old twins, Ammon and Sienna; and 4-year old Gavin. About two weeks prior to the murders, on Dec. 21, Tausha Haight filed for divorce. Gail Earl was staying with the family to help Tausha with the children in the midst of the divorce. According to Tausha Haight’s sister, Jennie Earl, Michael Haight had removed all firearms from the Haight home in the days leading up to the murders.

Local police confirmed early on that the family had previously been known to them due to a prior investigation. On Wednesday, reporters from the Associated Press published a piece drawn from the files associated with that investigation of Michael Haight for alleged child abuse against the couple’s eldest daughter, Macie. The case had apparently been opened in 2020 after a friend of the family raised concerns with the Utah Division of Child and Family Services.

Macie told police her father had choked her until she thought she might die, grabbed her by the shoulders, and pushed her into the sofa. Michael told police he had not intended his actions to be violent, but that Macie had been “mouthy,” and that he had been having a tough year due to his father’s death. A police officer warned Michael his behavior was “close to assaultive.” The investigation also uncovered that Michael was controlling and demeaning toward Tausha, including monitoring her text messages and surveilling her email. Tausha told police that she preferred charges not be filed against Michael, hoping the investigation would be a “wake-up call.” Police decided not to press charges. When questioned following the investigation about why charges had not been pressed, they told reporters there was insufficient evidence. The Enoch city manager has defended the police’s decision.

Those are the facts, and they are, sadly, familiar to anyone who follows how these crimes of family annihilation unfold. (Unconfirmed stories about the abuse that were posted by friends of the family members on Facebook—friends I tried to contact, and who have since taken down their accounts or did not reply—added upsetting corroborating details.) But it’s been the public response of the community that surrounded the Haights that’s drawn the biggest reaction.

On Jan. 6, Tausha’s family released a statement on the tragedy to the media and public, acknowledging the hurt they and the community were feeling and expressing their faith in God and the “plan of salvation that extends far beyond the mortal loss of those most precious to us.” They cautioned the media and public against politicizing the family’s story, particularly in order to motivate gun control or reform. Instead, they noted that all the adults in the household were trained in using firearms to protect themselves, and blamed the removal of those guns for the tragedy. They also called on the media to “turn their attention to the weightier matters surrounding this event,” which include the value of life, God’s ability to “render a forgiving heart,” and religion’s power to heal and promote love.

Arguably a political statement in its own right, the family’s advice to the media in this press release drew early scrutiny about the community’s and the family’s culture and politics. Here was a family with ample access to “protective arms,” unfettered by local authorities (despite, as it would later become clear, a prior complaint of child abuse), and with a clear history of devout religiosity, and their surviving relatives were arguing that the weightiest matters to cover following the tragedy were the need for expanded access to guns and the following of Christian religious principles. If one religious man could simply remove his family’s guns and their ability to defend themselves, despite both of the adults involved having gun rights under local law, and then murder his entire family, exactly how useful are guns and faith in preventing such tragedies?

Then came the obituary, which has now been removed from both the Spectator, the local news outlet that originally published it, and the local mortuary’s memorial page for Michael Haight. The obituary went viral after Shannon Watts, an activist with the gun control advocacy organization Moms Demand Action, tweeted it along with her own commentary on the family’s reactions:

Obituary for the Utah man who fatally shot his five children, mother-in-law and estranged wife: “Michael made it a point to spend quality time with each and every one of his children. Michael enjoyed making memories with the family.” https://t.co/p412A5qZSC

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) January 14, 2023

The obituary, which Watts posted screenshots of after it was taken down, and whose authors have not been named, entirely omitted the facts of the end of Michael Haight’s life and the ends of his family’s lives, most significantly the fact that everyone concerned died by his hand. It painted instead a picture of a flawless family man, a service-minded father and churchgoer, detailing Haight’s time as a missionary for the church as a young man as well as his leadership in the church’s lay ministry. As a Boy Scout, the anonymous author or authors wrote, Michael “achieved the rank of Eagle Scout.” In fact, the obituary claimed, “He excelled at everything he did.”

His obituary noted the births, but not the deaths, of each of his children. “Each of these children were truly a cherished miracle” to Tausha and Michael, the authors wrote, adding: “Michael made it a point to spend quality time with each and every one of his children. Michael enjoyed making memories with the family,” and had recently sold his insurance business “to allow more flexibility to spend time with his family.” The remembrance went on to list the family members he is survived by, but not those who preceded him in death.

The obituary post on the mortuary’s memorial page included an open comment section, which had gathered about 30 comments from members of the Haights’ church community before it was deleted. Some comments praised Haight as a joy to work with in positions of church authority, while other community members expressed their appreciation for his work as an insurance agent. “Michael was our insurance agent,” wrote one. “We drove all the way from St. George to have him help us,” wrote another. “He was always good to us and always willing to lend a helping hand. We don’t know the whys and how’s but I do know it’s not our right to judge. And the Lord loves Michael very much.”

A self-identified family member of Michael’s wrote, “Michael was funny. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the time we visited the cowboy/ghost town and Michael decided to be the wife in the cut outs. I’m grateful for his example of Christlike love and service, his life and his friendship. I pray that peace and comfort will come to his family left behind, with the reassurance that you will be together again one day.”

No one in the comments mentioned his murdered children, wife, or mother-in-law directly.

Among some progressive Mormons, the case has prompted conversations about the role of the religion’s unique beliefs about the afterlife in producing this oddly calm response. Was the idea that righteous Mormons will be connected to their families of origin for eternity perhaps making people’s efforts to cope with the murders a bit too easy?

Mormon LGBT advocate Calvin Burke tweeted, “My fellow Latter-day Saints, if you believe that it ‘isn’t your place to judge’ the actions of a member of our church who murdered his entire family—including his five children—Repent now. Or you will go to hell. And you will deserve it.” Others replied asking for a more nuanced view of Michael: “I’m for condemning the actions, but my theology requires waterfalls of grace for him as much as for his family. There is no room for wrath in my faith. It’s just too large a burden to bear.”

Progressive Mormon writer Meg Conley drew attention to the religion’s elevation of men’s testimony and the downplaying of women’s, as well as double standards around morality and sin.

Two years ago, his then 14 year old daughter told the police he was going to kill her.

And the police did nothing. How many of them were LDS? How many of them were taught the witness of women isn’t as powerful as the witness of men?

He did kill her. And everyone else. https://t.co/c6Kn6VoU6e

— Meg Conley🕸homeculture.substack.com (@_megconley) January 18, 2023

Writer Gabrielle Blair, who grew up in a small Mormon town in southern Utah, cast blame on the men in charge of the town for not raising flags about Haight’s behavior. In addition to blaming the police, Blair wrote that she suspected that church leaders—who are all men, due to the church’s beliefs that only men can be priests, and who interview all active members regularly about their lives, faith, and general well-being—were likewise alerted to complaints, either from Haight’s children or his wife, prior to the divorce: “I’m no prophet, but as details have come to light, it turns out my assumptions were exactly right. I’m so fucking furious,” Blair wrote. “So many men knew about this … Specific men, who had specifically agreed to care for vulnerable people in their community, and who had authority to do something about it, knew how shitty this guy was. And they did fucking nothing.”

How might things have gone differently if someone in the Haights’ religious circles, those who claim to have admired Michael so greatly, even after he committed such heinous crimes, had instead confronted him about his behavior or his attitude toward his family? And if, on the other hand, no men in the Haights’ church community suspected anything was wrong with Michael’s behavior, and never heard a complaint from his wife or children, despite the leadership structures Blair mentions, then truly—just what are they good for?

Others have criticized the Earl family’s GoFundMe page for the victims, which had raised just over $100,000 at the time of writing, for “any funeral expenses if needed, legal fees, and a memorial fund in honor of Tausha’s children.” The page features a family photo of the Haights that originally included Michael, Tausha, and all five of the Haight children, but Michael has been edited out of the photo and replaced with an illustration of Jesus Christ that’s commonly circulated in Mormon media. Christians and non-Christians alike took issue with the photo, including some who made small-dollar-amount contributions to the GoFundMe for the pleasure of arguing about the tastefulness of the edited photo in the donor comments section. Wrote one $5 donor: “This man murdered his five children, his wife, and his mother-in-law instead of accepting an impending divorce and seeking therapy. How dare you replace his face with that of Jesus Christ, your lord and savior. How dare you.”

Another donor wrote back, “For everyone who is angry that they replaced that horrible man with Jesus, consider that Jesus is the one who is with them now. Not the man responsible for taking their lives. You are all misinterpreting the meaning behind it. They wanted him out of the photo. This family is grieving and your insults are making it worse.”

As a former Mormon myself, this latter reading of the photo seems to me to be the right one. To remove Michael from the photo and replace him with Jesus indicates a belief on the part of the family that Michael is not with the children any longer, and that instead, the Haight family is under the protection of Jesus Christ in the afterlife. Despite their politicized early statement against gun control and in favor of greater religiosity as the answer to tragedies like this one, reports from the funeral last week for the children, Tausha, and her mother Gail indicate that even with the family’s belief that all of these lost loved ones are reunited with Christ, they miss them dearly and are just beginning to reckon with their loss. Belonging to the LDS church doesn’t mean you don’t feel grief, and things people say online in the aftermath of a tragedy can’t represent the entirety of their feelings and reactions.

Generally, the public and media have an unspoken commitment to not criticizing or questioning the families of the deceased as they mourn and make sense of the tragedy in their own ways. Who are we, some might say, to quibble with how a family facing this tragedy mourns their loss and comforts themselves? To many, casting blame on a grieving community and family feels uncharitable. After all, what do you say when something so horrific, something that so defies our understanding of family, of parenting, of humanity itself, happens in your community or in your family? And if faith is bringing them peace, who are we to judge?

There is a world in which an entirely secular reading of the case could suffice to explain Michael Haight’s apparent crimes. Domestic violence and gun violence are in no ways unique to conservative religions. In fact, intimate-partner mass killings like this one are more common in the United States than the more high-profile public mass shootings most of us hear about. “A guy who kills his wife and children and sometimes kills himself is the most common type of mass killing,” criminologist James Alan Fox told USA Today as part of a study on mass killings last year.

Perhaps much of the public controversy around the killings and the family and community response could be quelled if the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were to wade in and offer some clarity. According to their beliefs, just what is the likely eternal fate of a man who kills his whole family? What kind of grace, if any, does the church believe Michael deserves, and what can it say to dissuade any further crimes like this among its believers? What resources do they offer families facing an abusive and controlling patriarch, and where might they have done more in the case of the Haight family?

So far, church leadership has been silent regarding the case. Its last statements on child abuse came last year, regarding a lawsuit from three children who were sexually abused by their father over the course of many years, and whose Mormon bishop had heard a confession about the abuse from the father himself and had been encouraged by church legal representatives not to report it to law enforcement. That statement began, “For generations, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have spoken in the strongest of terms about the evils of abuse and the need to care for those who are victims or survivors of abuse …We echo those sentiments and teachings today. Our hearts are broken as we learn of any abuse. It cannot be tolerated. It cannot be excused. The Savior Jesus Christ wants us all to do better and be better.”

Perhaps the statement that “Good dads, good men, do not hurt, do not shoot, and do not kill their families” feels so obvious and uncontroversial it shouldn’t need to be made. The Haight case suggests it may be worth saying out loud after all.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/01/michael-haight-murders-mormon-obituary-gofundme.html 

Social Park USA

7h November 24, 2024

The Twin Towers of Lower Manhattan 🇺🇸

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02YWLDM4dS7jashNFXBpLEN7h5ua2X8nA3CmNSfaVo8V2dFYSp7XiMeFkwtKtQuZe9l&id=61555655113607

In Canaanite mythology there were twin mountains, Targhizizi and Tharumagi, which hold the firmament up above the earth-circling ocean, thereby bounding the earth. W. F. Albright, for example, says that El Shaddai is a derivation of a Semitic stem that appears in the Akkadian shadû ('mountain') and shaddā'û or shaddû'a ('mountain-dweller'), one of the names of Amurru. Philo of Byblos states that Atlas was one of the elohim, which would clearly fit into the story of El Shaddai as "God of the Mountain(s)". Harriet Lutzky has presented evidence that Shaddai was an attribute of a Semitic goddess, linking the epithet with Hebrew šad, 'breast', as "the one of the breast". The idea of two mountains being associated here as the breasts of the Earth, fits into the Canaanite mythology quite well. The ideas of pairs of mountains seem to be quite common in Canaanite mythology. The late period of this cosmology makes it difficult to tell what influences (Roman, Greek, or Hebrew) may have informed Philo's writings.

Mythology

In the Baal Cycle, Ba'al Hadad is challenged by and defeats Yam using two magical weapons (called "Driver" and "Chaser") made for him by Kothar-wa-Khasis. Afterward, with the help of Athirat and Anat, Ba'al persuades El to allow him a palace. El approves, and the palace is built by Kothar-wa-Khasis. After the palace is constructed, Ba'al gives forth a thunderous roar out of the palace window and challenges Mot. Mot enters through the window and swallows Ba'al, sending him to the underworld. With no one to give rain, there is a terrible drought in Ba'al's absence. The other deities, especially El and Anat, are distraught that Ba'al had been taken to the underworld. Anat goes to the underworld, attacks Mot with a knife, grinds him up into pieces, and scatters him far and wide. With Mot defeated, Ba'al is able to return and refresh the Earth with rain.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaanite_religion

Benben

In the creation myth of the Heliopolitan form of ancient Egyptian religion, Benben was the mound that arose from the primordial waters Nu upon which the creator deity Atum settled. The Benben stone (also known as a pyramidion) is the top stone of the pyramid. It is also related to the obelisk.

Primeval mound

In the Pyramid Texts, e.g. Utterances 587 and 600, Atum himself is at times referred to as "mound". It was said to have turned into a small pyramid, located in Heliopolis (Egyptian: Annu or Iunu), within which Atum was said to dwell. Other cities developed their own myths of the primeval mound. At Memphis, the god Tatenen, an earth god and the origin of "all things in the shape of food and viands, divine offers, all good things", was the personification of the primeval mound.

Benben stone

The Benben stone, named after the mound, was a sacred stone in the temple of Ra at Heliopolis (Egyptian: Annu or Iunu). It was the location on which the first rays of the sun fell. It is thought to have been the prototype for later obelisks, and the capstones of the great pyramids were based on its design. The capstone (the tip of the pyramid) is also called a pyramidion. In ancient Egypt, these were probably gilded so they shone in sunlight.[citation needed]

Many Benben stones, often carved with images and inscriptions, are found in museums around the world.

The bird deity Bennu, which was probably the inspiration for the phoenix, was venerated at Heliopolis, where it was said to be living on the Benben stone or on the holy willow tree.

According to Barry Kemp, the connection between the benben, the phoenix, and the sun may well have been based on alliteration: the rising, weben, of the sun sending its rays towards the benben, on which the bennu bird lives. Utterance 600, § 1652 of the Pyramid Texts speaks of Atum as you rose up, as the benben, in the Mansion of the Bennu in Heliopolis.[1]

Historical development

From the earliest times, the portrayal of Benben was stylized in two ways; the first was as a pointed, pyramidal form, which was probably the model for pyramids and obelisks. The other form was round-topped; this was probably the origin of Benben as a free standing votive object and an object of veneration.[2]

During the Fifth Dynasty, the portrayal of benben was formalized as a squat obelisk. Later, during the Middle Kingdom, this became a long, thin obelisk.

In the Amarna Period tomb of Panehesy, the benben is seen as a large, round-topped stela standing on a raised platform.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benben

A mound is a heaped pile of earth, gravel, sand, rocks, or debris. Most commonly, mounds are earthen formations such as hills and mountains, particularly if they appear artificial. A mound may be any rounded area of topographically higher elevation on any surface. Artificial mounds have been created for a variety of reasons throughout history, including habitation (see Tell and Terp), ceremonial (platform mound), burial (tumulus), and commemorative purposes (e.g. Kościuszko Mound).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mound 

Bennu /ˈbɛnuː/[1] is an ancient Egyptian deity linked with the Sun, creation, and rebirth. He may have been the original inspiration for the phoenix legends that developed in Greek mythology.

According to Egyptian mythology, Bennu was a self-created being said to have played a role in the creation of the world. He was said to be the ba (personality component of the soul) of the sun deity Ra, and to have enabled the creative actions of Atum.[2] The deity was said to have flown over the waters of Nun that existed before creation, landing on a rock and issuing a call that determined the nature of creation. He was also a symbol of rebirth and, therefore, was associated with Osiris.[3]

Some of the titles of Bennu were "He Who Came Into Being by Himself",[2] and "Lord of Jubilees"; the latter epithet referring to the belief that Bennu periodically renewed himself like the sun was thought to do.[3] His name is related to the Egyptian verb wbn, meaning "to rise in brilliance" or "to shine".[2]

Depiction

The Pyramid Texts, which date to the Old Kingdom, refer to the 'bnw' as a symbol of Atum, and it may have been the original form of Bennu. In this word the shape of a bird used is definitely not that of a heron, but a small singing bird. The German Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache (Dictionary of the Egyptian Language) surmised that this might have been a Yellow Wagtail (Motacilla flava), but no clear reason is given.[2] However, the same bird is used in the spelling of a word 'bn.t' in a painted limestone relief wall fragment from the suntemple of the Vth Dynasty Old Kingdom king Niuserre. This hieroglyph clearly shows traces of blue-grey paint on much of the bird body, indicating that it referenced a different bird species. The shape and colour seem to point rather to a (Mediterranean) Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) for which, however, another name was in use: 'hn.t<y' (lit. 'the one of the canal'). It could be surmised that a Kingfisher flying low over water and shrieking loudly would be a reasonable mythical basis for the creator deity Atum of Heliopolis as having risen from the first dark waters, called Nun, in order to start his creation of the world. If so, the Kingfisher 'bnw' or 'bn.t' is a good match for the mythical and cultic Nile goose (I.e. 'smn') of the creator deity Amun in later periods, imagined to have been honking loudly in the primeval dark above the still waters in order to bring forth all creation by its voice.[citation needed]

New Kingdom artwork shows Bennu as a huge grey heron with a long beak and a two-feathered crest. Sometimes Bennu is depicted as perched on a benben stone (representing Ra and the name of the top stone of a pyramid) or in a willow tree (representing Osiris). Because of the connection with Osiris, Bennu sometimes wears the Atef crown,[3] instead of the solar disk.

Possible animal model

Remains of a giant, human-sized heron species, thought to have gone extinct around 1500 BC, were discovered in the United Arab Emirates in 1977.[4][5] It lived on the Arabian Peninsula and shared many characteristics with Bennu, and scientists believe it may have been the animal model for the deity. In reference to this, archaeologist Dr. Ella Hoch from the Geological Museum at Copenhagen University named it the Bennu heron (Ardea bennuides).[6]

Worship

Like Atum and Ra, Bennu was probably worshipped in the deitys’ cult centre at Heliopolis.[3] Bennu also appears on funerary scarab amulets as a symbol of rebirth.[2]

Connection with the Greek phoenix

The Greek historian Herodotus, writing about Egyptian customs and traditions in the fifth century BC, wrote that the people at Heliopolis described the "phoenix" to him. They said it lived for 500 years before dying, resuscitating, building a funerary egg with myrrh for the paternal corpse, and carrying it to the temple of the Sun at Heliopolis.[7] His description of the phoenix likens it to an eagle with red and gold plumage, reminiscent of the sun.[3]

Long after Herodotus, the theme of the fire, pyre, and ashes of the dying bird, ultimately associated with the Greek phoenix, developed in Greek traditions.

The name "phoenix" could be derived from "Bennu", and its rebirth and connections with the sun resemble the beliefs about Bennu; however, Egyptian sources do not mention a death of the deity.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennu 

phoenix

mythological bird

Phoenix, in ancient Egypt and in Classical antiquity, a fabulous bird associated with the worship of the sun. The Egyptian phoenix was said to be as large as an eagle, with brilliant scarlet and gold plumage and a melodious cry. Only one phoenix existed at any time, and it was very long-lived—no ancient authority gave it a life span of less than 500 years. As its end approached, the phoenix fashioned a nest of aromatic boughs and spices, set it on fire, and was consumed in the flames. From the pyre miraculously sprang a new phoenix, which, after embalming its father’s ashes in an egg of myrrh, flew with the ashes to Heliopolis (“City of the Sun”) in Egypt, where it deposited them on the altar in the temple of the Egyptian god of the sun, Re. A variant of the story made the dying phoenix fly to Heliopolis and immolate itself in the altar fire, from which the young phoenix then rose.

The Egyptians associated the phoenix with immortality, and that symbolism had a widespread appeal in late antiquity. The phoenix was compared to undying Rome, and it appears on the coinage of the late Roman Empire as a symbol of the Eternal City. It was also widely interpreted as an allegory of resurrection and life after death—ideas that also appealed to emergent Christianity.

In Islamic mythology the phoenix was identified with the ʿanqāʾ (Persian: sīmorgh), a huge mysterious bird (probably a heron) that was originally created by God with all perfections but thereafter became a plague and was killed."

https://www.britannica.com/topic/phoenix-mythological-bird 

The Story of the Vatican Obelisk

Saint Peter’s Square in front of Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican is one of the most famous landmarks in the world. Over 100,000 people have been known to squeeze into Saint Peter’s Square on occasions like Easter or midnight mass or after a conclave takes place and a new Pope makes his first appearance to the massive crowds on the square. However right in the center of Saint Peter’s Square, you will find a monument that is impossible to miss called an Egyptian Obelisk. These Obelisks were taken from Egypt by the Ancient Romans so it is rather ironic that right in the center of Saint Peter’s Square at the Vatican is a stolen object. So what is an Egyptian Obelisk and why does the Vatican have one?

What is an Obelisk?

An Obelisk is a four-sided monument ending with a pyramid-like shape at the top which is traditionally carved out of one block of stone. Obelisks originally came from Ancient Egypt and were built to represent the immortality of the Pharaohs. They were usually placed in pairs at the entrance of Ancient Egyptian Temples. Although there are 28 ancient Obelisk’s in the world there are only six remaining in Egypt today. This is mainly because in Ancient Roman times the Roman Emperors ordered them to be taken from Egypt and brought back to Rome. Thirteen obelisks are scattered throughout Rome today where eight of them are originally from Ancient Egypt and five of them were built by the Ancient Romans with the largest being the Lateranense Obelisk in Piazza Di San Laterano in Rome. There are also Obelisks in New York, London, Istanbul, and most famously at the Place De La Concorde in Paris known as the Luxor Obelisk which was given as a gift in 1829 by the city of Rome.

The first obelisk that was taken from Egypt by the Ancient Romans is known as the Flaminian Obelisk and was placed on the Circus Maximus. The granite monument was taken from a temple in Heliopolis created in 1280 B.C under Ramses II. It was found buried at the Circus Maximus in 1587 and today stands in Piazza Del Popolo in Rome’s historic center.

The word “obelisk” is a Greek rather than an Egyptian word meaning a four-sided pillar. It was the Greek traveler Herodotus who was the first classical writer to describe these objects.

The Vatican Obelisk

The obelisk at the Vatican is right in the middle of Saint Peter’s Square and is said to be around 4,500 years old making it over 1,500 years older than the city of Rome. It is traditionally known as Caligula’s Obelisk as it was Caligula who in 37 A.D took the monument from Alexandria to have it placed in the Circus Caligula was constructing and which was later completed by Emperor Nero. The Circus was later known as the Circus of Nero where chariot races and many executions took place. In fact, it is in this area where the first Pope, Saint Peter, was crucified upsidedown in 64 A.D. under Nero’s reign. The Circus of Nero was built almost exactly where Saint Peter’s Basilica and Saint Peter’s Square are located today.

The Vatican Obelisk was moved to its current location between 1585 and 1586 under Pope Sixtus V and it is the only Obelisk that has remained standing since Ancient Roman times. Although the Obelisk was transported only a couple of hundred meters from its original location at the Circus of Nero to where it stands today it took 900 men and 140 horses five months to complete the task under the supervision of Domenico Fontana. The Vatican Obelisk is 83.6 feet (25.5 meters) tall and weighs 326 tonnes. The base is adorned with four lions and bronze eagles which were added in 1713.

St. Peter’s Square is free to visit so you can admire the obelisk at any time. If you want to see the original location of the Vatican obelisk and learn more about the Circus of Nero, you must take a Scavi Tour. This tour will bring you underneath Saint Peter’s Basilica and to the tomb of Saint Peter, passing by the center of the old circus along the way.

https://vaticantips.com/vatican-obelisk/

The Two Pillars

@emmandhook​ posted a very interesting analysis of Killian and Henry positioned as two pillars to Emma, which motivated me to make a quick research on the imagery and symbolism of it. I found such a rich material with so many possibilities, I’m impressed and will share some of them here (I find the High Priestess between two Pillars particularly endearing and fascinating)

“The concept of twin pillars standing at the gates of sacred places can be traced back to ancient civilizations of Antiquity (some claim from Atlantis, the lost source of Hermetic knowledge).

A Gateway

The symbol of the twin pillars have, since time immemorial, guarded the gateways to holy places and mysterious realms. They mark the passage towards the unknown and the otherworldly. In ancient Greece, The Pillars of Hercules was the phrase that was applied to the promontories that flank the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. The northern Pillar is the Rock of Gibraltar in the British territory of Gibraltar.

The Pillars of Hercules guarding the passage towards the unknown.

According to Plato’s account, the lost realm of Atlantis was situated beyond the Pillars of Hercules, in effect placing it in the realm of the Unknown. Renaissance tradition says the pillars bore the warning Nec plus ultra (also Non plus ultra, “nothing further beyond”), serving as a warning to sailors and navigators to go no further. Symbolically, going beyond the Pillars of Hercules can mean leaving the foulness of the material world to reach a higher realm of enlightenment.

The two columns called the “Pillars of Hercules” in Ancient Greece stood at the gateway to the sphere of the enlightened

The frontispiece of Francis Bacon’s “New Atlantis” featuring the Pillars of Hercules as a gateway to a new world. According to occult lore, Atlantis is the civilization from which all hermetic knowledge emerged. The rebirth of this lost kingdom has been the dream of Mystery schools for centuries.

“The city of the philosophic elect rises from the highest mountain peak of the earth, and here the gods of the wise dwell together in everlasting felicity. In the foreground are the symbolic pillars of Hercules which appear on the title page of Bacon’s Novum Organum, and between them runs the path which leads upward from the uncertainties of earth to that perfect order which is established in the sphere of the enlightened.”

In Freemasonry

The Masonic usage of the terms Jachin and Boaz originates from the Biblical account of King Solomon’s Temple. The master builder of the Temple of Solomon was Hiram Abiff, a prominent figure in Masonic ritual. The verses 1 Kings 6:1-38, 1 Kings Chapter 7, and Chapter 8 describe the dimensions, the construction and the dedication of the Temple under Solomon. One passage describes more specifically the twin pillars standing in front of King Solomon’s Temple.

15 For he cast two pillars of brass, of eighteen cubits high apiece: and a line of twelve cubits did compass either of them about.

16 And he made two chapiters of molten brass, to set upon the tops of the pillars: the height of the one chapiter was five cubits, and the height of the other chapiter was five cubits:

17 And nets of checker work, and wreaths of chain work, for the chapiters which were upon the top of the pillars; seven for the one chapiter, and seven for the other chapiter.

18 And he made the pillars, and two rows round about upon the one network, to cover the chapiters that were upon the top, with pomegranates: and so did he for the other chapiter.

19 And the chapiters that were upon the top of the pillars were of lily work in the porch, four cubits.

20 And the chapiters upon the two pillars had pomegranates also above, over against the belly which was by the network: and the pomegranates were two hundred in rows round about upon the other chapiter.

21 And he set up the pillars in the porch of the temple: and he set up the right pillar, and called the name thereof Jachin: and he set up the left pillar, and called the name thereof Boaz.

22 And upon the top of the pillars was lily work: so was the work of the pillars finished.

– 1 Kings Chapter 7

The account of Solomon’s Temple is of great importance in Freemasonry as each detail of the building holds an important esoteric meaning. The Twin pillars act as a “portal to the Mysteries” by standing on each side of the entrance to a sacred place.

“According to the ancient Rabbins, Solomon was an initiate of the Mystery schools and the temple which he built was actually a house of initiation containing amass of pagan philosophic and phallic emblems. The pomegranates, the palm-headed columns, the Pillars before the door, the Babylonian cherubim, and the arrangement of the chambers and draperies all indicate the temple to have been patterned after the sanctuaries of Egypt and Atlantis.” 

For this reason, Jachin and Boaz are prominently featured on Masonic buildings, monuments and documents. Here is Albert Pike’s description of the pillars in a text intended for new Masons:

“You entered the Lodge between two columns. They represent the two which stood in the porch of the Temple, on each side of the great eastern gateway. These pillars, of bronze, four fingers breadth in thickness, were, according to the most authentic account–that in the First and that in the Second Book of Kings, confirmed in Jeremiah– eighteen cubits high, with a capital five cubits high. The shaft of each was four cubits in diameter. A cubit is one foot and 707/1000. That is, the shaft of each was a little over thirty feet eight inches in height, the capital of each a little over eight feet six inches in height, and the diameter of the shaft six feet ten inches. The capitals were enriched by pomegranates of bronze, covered by bronze net-work, and ornamented with wreaths of bronze; and appear to have imitated the shape of the seed-vessel of the lotus or Egyptian lily, a sacred symbol to the Hindus and Egyptians. The pillar or column on the right, or in the south, was named, as the Hebrew word is rendered in our translation of the Bible, JACHIN: and that on the left BOAZ. Our translators say that the first word means, “He shall establish;” and the second, “In it is strength.”

These columns were imitations, by Khurum, the Tyrian artist, of the great columns consecrated to the Winds and Fire, at the entrance to the famous Temple of Malkarth, in the city of Tyre. It is customary, in Lodges of the York Rite, to see a celestial globe on one, and a terrestrial globe on the other; but these are not warranted, if the object be to imitate the original two columns of the Temple. The symbolic meaning of these columns we shall leave for the present unexplained, only adding that Entered Apprentices keep their working-tools in the column JACHIN; and giving you the etymology and literal meaning of the two names.

The word JACHIN, in Hebrew, probably pronounced Ya-kayan, and meant, as a verbal noun, He that strengthens; and thence, firm, stable, upright.

The word Boaz is Baaz which means Strong, Strength, Power, Might, Refuge, Source of Strength, a Fort. The prefix means “with” or “in,” and gives the word the force of the Latin gerund, roborando–Strengthening The former word also means he will establish, or plant in an erect position–from the verb Kun, he stood erect. It probably meant Active and Vivifying Energy and Force; and Boaz, Stability, Permanence, in the passive sense.”

The High Priestess of the Tarot sitting between Boaz and Jachin.

Esoteric Meaning

As with most occult symbols, the Masonic twin pillars conceal multiple layers of meaning, some intended for the profane and others divulged in higher degrees of Freemasonry. However, it is generally accepted that the Jachin and Boaz represent the equilibrium between two opposite forces.

“These were the names [Jachin and Boaz] of the two pillars cast from brass set up on the porch of King Solomon’s Temple. They were eighteen cubits in height and beautifully ornamented with wreaths of chainwork, nets, and pomegranates. On the top of each pillar was a large bowl – now erroneously called a ball or globe – one of the bowls probably containing fire and the other water. The celestial globe (originally the bowl of fire), surmounting the right-hand column (Jachin), symbolized the divine man; the terrestrial globe (the bowl of water), surmounting the left-hand column (Boaz), signified the earthly man. These two pillars respectively connote also the active and the passive expressions of Divine Energy, the sun and the moon, sulfur and salt, good and bad, light and darkness. Between them is the door leading into the House of God, and standing thus at the gates of Sanctuary they are a reminder that Jehovah is both an androgynous and an anthropomorphic deity. As two parallel columns they denote the zodiacal signs of Cancer and Capricorn, which were formerly placed in the chamber of initiation to represent birth and death – the extremes of physical life. They accordingly signify the summer and the winter solstices, now known to Freemasons under the comparatively modern appellation of the ‘two St. Johns.’”

“Alef is man; Bet is woman; 1 is the principle; 2 is the word; A is the active; B is the passive; the monad is BOAZ; the duad is JAKIN. In the trigrams of Fohi, unity is the YANG and the duad is the YIN.

BOAZ and JAKIN are the names of the two symbolical Pillars before the principal entrance of Solomon’s Kabalistic Temple. In the Kabalah these Pillars explain all mysteries of antagonism, whether natural, political or religious. They elucidate also the procreative struggle between man and woman, for, according to the law of Nature, the woman must resist the man, and he must entice or overcome her. The active principle seeks the passive principle, the plenum desires the void, the serpent’s jaw attracts the serpent’s tail, and in turning about upon himself, he, at the same time, flies and pursues himself. Woman is the creation of man, and universal creation is the bride of the First Principle.”

The permanent alliance of reason and faith will result not from their absolute distinction and separation, but from their mutual control arid their fraternal concurrence. Such is the significance of the two Pillars of Solomon’s Porch, one named JAKIN and the other BOAZ, one white and the other black. They are distinct and separate, they are even contrary in appearance, but if blind force sought to join them by bringing them close to one another, the roof of the temple would collapse. Separately, their power is one; joined, they are two powers which destroy one another. For precisely the same reason the spiritual power is weakened whensoever it attempts to usurp the temporal, while the temporal power becomes the victim of its encroachments on the spiritual. Gregory VII ruined the Papacy; the schismatic kings have lost and will lose the monarchy. Human equilibrium requires two feet; the worlds gravitate by means of two forces; generation needs two sexes. Such is the meaning of the arcanum of Solomon, represented by the two Pillars of the Temple, JAKIN and BOAZ.”

The union of the two pillars is said to generate a third pillar, one in the middle, which esoterically represents man and mankind.

“When the two columns find equilibrium between them it will signify the union of the Sushumna and the Kundalini. This sacred marriage will create a “Fire-Mist” to radiate throughout the human body, filling it will divine Light. It is then that humanity will become the third column of the Temple Wisdom. He/She will be a column formed by the combined forces of Strength (Jachin) and Beauty (Boaz). This act forms the Lost Word in the vibratory system of the soul’s physical embodiment.”

Qabbalistic Meaning

In Qabbalistic teachings, Jachin and Boaz represent the two pillars of Sepiroth, the Tree of Life.

“In the mysterious Sephirothic Tree of the Jews, these two pillars symbolize Mercy and Severity. Standing before the gate of King Solomon’s Temple, these columns had the same symbolic import as the obelisks before the sanctuaries of Egypt. When interpreted Qabbalistically, the names of the two pillars mean “In strength shall My House be established. “In the splendor of mental and spiritual illumination, the High Priest stood between the pillars as a mute witness to the perfect virtue of equilibrium – that hypothetical point equidistant from all extremes. He thus personified the divine nature of man in the midst of his compound constitution – the mysterious Pythagorean Monad in the presence of the Duad. On one side towered the stupendous column of the intellect; on the other, the brazen pillar of the flesh. Midway between these two stands the glorified wise man, but he cannot reach this high estate without first suffering upon the cross made by joining these pillars together. The early Jews occasionally represented the two pillars, Jachin and Boaz, as the legs of Jehovah, thereby signifying to the modern philosopher that Wisdom and Love, in their most exalted sense, support the whole order of creation – both mundane and supermundane.

The column on the right, which is called Jachin, has its foundation on Chochmah, the outpouring Wisdom of God; the three globes suspended from it are all masculine potencies. The column at the left is called Boaz. The three globes upon it are feminine and receptive potencies, for it is founded in Understanding, a receptive and maternal potency. Wisdom, it will be noted, is considered as radiant or outpouring, and Understanding as receptive, or something which is filled by the flowing of Wisdom. The three pillars are ultimately united in Malchuth, in which all the powers of the superior worlds are manifested.”

https://freechoicedreamer.tumblr.com/post/151623585409/the-two-pillars

Pope Francis Visits For Historic Multireligious Gathering

Pope Francis was joined by leaders from various religious traditions in a historic Multireligious Meeting for Peace at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum on Friday, September 25, 2015.

“I feel many different emotions standing here at ground zero, where thousands of lives were taken in a senseless act of destruction," said Pope Francis. “Here grief is palpable."

Pope Francis arrived just before 11:15 a.m. and met with a group of relatives of some of the nearly 3,000 victims on the 9/11 Memorial and offered condolences and prayers for healing. Pope Francis was then welcomed into the museum’s foundation hall by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop of New York. Standing adjacent to the last column and with the slurry wall as his background, a symbol of this country’s resilience after 9/11, Pope Francis addressed the crowd with a prayer of remembrance for the victims of the September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993 terror attacks.

Pope Francis said, "God of love, compassion and healing look on us, people of many different faiths and religious traditions, who gather today in this hallowed ground, the scene of unspeakable violence and pain, we ask you in your goodness to give eternal light and peace to all who died here: the heroic first responders: our firefighters, police officers, emergency service workers, and Port Authority personnel, along with all the innocent men and women who were victims of this tragedy simply because their work or service brought them here on September 11, 2001."

As part of the program, reflections and meditations were read by a group of selected religious leaders. The Young People’s Chorus of New York City performed the song “Let there be peace on Earth.”

Before leaving the Museum, the Pope viewed some inspirational artifacts within the museum's historical exhibition, including an intersecting steel column and crossbeam known as the Cross at Ground Zero.

After lunch, Pope Francis will head to Our Lady Queen of Angels School in east Harlem where he will meet schoolchildren. He will then proceed through Central Park before conducting mass at Madison Square Garden. On Saturday, the Pope is scheduled to depart from NYC for Philadelphia.

By Hannah Coffman, Digital Content Manager

https://www.911memorial.org/connect/blog/pope-francis-visits-historic-multireligious-gathering

"Ignatius Loyola, a Catholic Priest, theologian and founder of the Jesuit Order of the Catholic Church in the 16th Century, said, among his many inspiring sayings, “Go forth and set the world on fire."

"Inferno (Italian: [iɱˈfɛrno]; Italian for "Hell") is the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy. It is followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso. The Inferno describes Dante's journey through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth; it is the "realm ... of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen".[1] As an allegory, the Divine Comedy represents the journey of the soul toward God, with the Inferno describing the recognition and rejection of sin.[2]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante)

A Look at the Museum’s Memorial Hall 

“No Day Shall Erase You From the Memory of Time.”

This quote from Book IX of "The Aeneid" by the Roman poet Virgil suggests the transformative potential of remembrance and is indicative of the museum’s mission to honor and remember the victims of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993. Each letter was forged from pieces of recovered World Trade Center steel by New Mexico artist Tom Joyce.These words are part of a larger art installation in the 9/11 Memorial Museum created in 2014 by artist Spencer Finch, titled “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning.” The installation is the focal point for Memorial Hall, the area between the two main exhibitions at bedrock in the museum.Every one of the 2,983 watercolor squares is its own shade of blue – one for each of the 2001 and 1993 attack victims – and the artwork as a whole revolves around the idea of memory. Our own perception of the color blue might not be the same as that of another person. But, just like our perception of color, our memories share a common point of reference.By Jordan Friedman, 9/11 Memorial Research and Digital Projects Associate "

A Look at the Museum’s Memorial Hall | National September 11 Memorial & Museum (911memorial.org)

https://www.911memorial.org/connect/blog/look-museums-memorial-hall

"Rosicrucianism is a theosophy advanced by an invisible order of spiritual knights who in spreading Christian Hermeticism, Kabbalah, and Gnosis seek to enliven and to preserve the memory of Divine Wisdom, understood as a feminine flame of love called Sofia or Shekhinah, exoterically given as a fresh unfolded rose, yet, more akin to the BLUE fire of alchemy, the BLUE virgin. Rosicrucians have no organisation and there are no recognizable Rosicrucian individuals, but the order makes its presence known by leaving behind engrammatic writings in the genre of Hermetic-Platonic Christianity.1 The historical roots of Hermeticism is to be located in Ancient Egypt. Long before the rise of Christianity, Hermetic texts were structured around the belief that organisms contain sparks of a Divine mind unto which they each strive to attend. Things easily transform into others, thereby generating certain cyclical patterns, cycles that periodically renew themselves on a cosmic scale. These transformations of life and death were enacted in the Hermetic Mysteries in Ancient Egypt through the gods Isis, Horus, and Osiris. In the Alexandrian period these myths were reshaped into Hermetic discourses on the transformations of the self with Thot, the scribal god. These discourses were introduced in the west in 1474 when Marsilio Ficino translated the Hermetic Pimander from the Greek. The story of Christian Rosencreutz can be seen as a new version of these mysteries, specifically tempered by German Paracelsian philosophy on the Lion of the darkest night, a biblical icon for how the higher self lies slumbering in consciousness.2" Rose Cross Over The Baltic by Suzanne Ackerman

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vWI_uTVg5lzNCDm16itq-PLSavozNR_F/view?usp=sharing

"Around 1530, more than eighty years before the publication of the first manifesto, the association of cross and rose already existed in Portugal in the Convent of the Order of Christ, home of the Knights Templar, later renamed Order of Christ. Three bocetes were, and still are, on the abóboda (vault) of the initiation room. The rose can clearly be seen at the center of the cross.[34][35] At the same time, a minor writing by Paracelsus called Prognosticatio Eximii Doctoris Paracelsi (1530), containing 32 prophecies with allegorical pictures surrounded by enigmatic texts, makes reference to an image of a double cross over an open rose; this is one of the examples used to prove the "Fraternity of the Rose Cross" existed far earlier than 1614.[36]"

Rosicrucianism - Wikipedia 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosicrucianism 

“Rosa Jesuitica, oder Jesuitische Rottgesellen, das ist, Eine Frag ob die Zween Orden, der ganandten Ritter von der Neerscharen Jesu, und der Rosen-Creuzer ein einiger Ordensen: per J. P. D. a S. Jesuitarum Protectorum. Prague, 1620.” (4to). This is a truly curious tract upon the “relations of the Jesuits and the Rosicrucians."

Rosa jesuitica, oder, Jesuitische Rottgesellen (1620) - Google Drive 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dT28PyPUPfqDfC0iVg7nGFsle8vYBXLf/view 

"The Knight’s Templar was expelled from the Papacy in 1312 by Pope Clement V and Philip IV of France. The few Templars who escaped went to the powerful kingdom of Aragon and became known as the Order of the Calatrava, who would later align with the the Montessa. In 1534, a Spanish nobleman by the name of Ignatius Loyola would revive the Templars and call them the "Society of Jesus." Loyola was a Templar, and a member of a secret society called the "Alumbrados."  The third Superior General and co-founder of the order was Francis Borgia. The Borgia bloodline is part of the notorious "Black Nobility" which dates back to the ancient Ptolemaic period in history."

Exposing the Jesuits and the Papacy: The Jesuits are the revived Knights Templar (jesuitinquisition.blogspot.com) 

http://jesuitinquisition.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-jesuits-are-revived-knights-templar.html 

"The Order of Calatrava (Spanish: Orden de Calatrava, Portuguese: Ordem de Calatrava) was one of the four Spanish military orders and the first military order founded in Castile, but the second to receive papal approval. The papal bull confirming the Order of Calatrava was given by Pope Alexander III on September 26, 1164. Most of the political and military power of the order had dissipated by the end of the 15th century, but the last dissolution of the order's property did not occur until 1838.'

"Modern TimesIn 1931, once again unilaterally, the Second Spanish Republic suppressed the Spanish Orders. To survive, they had to resort to the Ley de Asociaciones Civiles ("Law of Civil Associations"), leading a precarious existence until the Concordat of 1953 recognized the Priory. Afterward, by the papal bull Constat militarium, the Priory was reduced to a mere title of the Bishop of Ciudad Real.In 1980, upon request by his august father, who was appointed Dean President of the Council, King Juan Carlos I by royal initiative caused the rebirth of the Orders. Under the Apostolic Pastoral Tertio millennio adveniente, the Spanish Orders began their renewal in 1996.Today, the aim of the Spanish Orders is basically the same as they had when founded: the defense of the Catholic faith. The sword has been put aside, but their doctrine, example, self-sanctification, and divine worship remain active, aside from their cultural and social activities.Their two hundred and fifty members guard the spirit and life of the Orders of Santiago, Calatrava, Alcántara, and Montesa under their Grand Master, King Felipe VI, and the Real Consejo de las Órdenes (Royal Council of the Orders) presided over by his Royal Highness Pedro of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duke of Calabria.[4]The Swiss luxury watchmaker Patek Philippe took the cross of the order in 1887 and established it as its company logo as a tribute to the knights, which remains until today.[5][6]""

Order of Calatrava - Wikipedia 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Calatrava

"The Oculus was positioned as part of the World Trade Center masterplan by Daniel Libeskind and designed by SANTIAGO CALATRAVA. The structure’s white metal-clad steel ribs reach up and out in a monumental move symbolic of a hand releasing a dove.The structure's orientation serves as a lasting reminder of the attacks of September 11, 2001. It is in alignment with the sun’s solar angles on each September 11, from 8:46 am, when the first plane struck, until 10:28 am, when the second tower collapsed. Its central skylight fits this alignment and washes the Oculus floor with a beam of light."

World Trade Center Oculus 

50 Church Street New York, NY 10007

Oculus Transportation Hub | World Trade Center (officialworldtradecenter.com) 

https://www.officialworldtradecenter.com/en/local/learn-about-wtc/oculus-transportation-hub.html 

Eataly NYC Downtown - Italian restaurant

101 Liberty St

New York, NY 10007

Bread-themed branch of the famed Italian market, offering counters, restaurants & cooking demos.

(212) 897-2895

Closed ⋅ Opens 7 AM Sat 

Eataly: authentic Italian products, restaurants, cooking classes | Eataly https://www.eataly.com/us_en

"Todd Morgan Beamer was an American passenger aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which was hijacked and crashed as part of the September 11 attacks in 2001. He was one of the passengers who attempted to regain control of the aircraft from the hijackers."

"Following this, the passengers and flight crew decided to act.[1] According to accounts of cell phone conversations, Beamer, along with Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett, and Jeremy Glick, formed a plan to take the plane back from the hijackers.[10] They were joined by other passengers, including Lou Nacke, Rich Guadagno, Alan Beaven, Honor Elizabeth Wainio, Linda Gronlund, and William Cashman, along with flight attendants Sandra Bradshaw and CeeCee Lyles, in discussing their options and voting on a course of action, ultimately deciding to storm the cockpit and take over the plane.[1] Beamer told Jefferson that the group was planning to "jump on" the hijackers and fly the plane into the ground before the hijackers' plan could be followed through.[7][8] Beamer recited the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm with Jefferson, prompting others to join in. Beamer requested of Jefferson, "If I don't make it, please call my family and let them know how much I love them." After this, Jefferson heard muffled voices and Beamer clearly answering, "Are you ready? Okay. Let's ROLL." These were the last words spoken by Beamer heard by Lisa Jefferson.[1][8][9]"

Todd Beamer - Wikipedia 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Beamer

Jefferson Airplane - House at Pooneil Corners - Manhattan Rooftop Concert (1968) - YouTube 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuwMEiNg3B8 

"Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams" is an assertion made by September 11th, 2001 attack conspiracy theorists that the burning fuel from crashed planes would not have been able to melt the supporting beams of the World Trade Center. The claim is widely mocked online for being based on flawed evidence."

Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams | Know Your Meme 

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/jet-fuel-cant-melt-steel-beams 

"Six months after the Twin Towers fell, they returned in the form of two blue beams of light illuminating the Manhattan skyline. Since then, they have lit the sky annually as a Sept. 11 commemoration known as Tribute in Light. The tradition will continue this year to remember the 14th anniversary of the attacks."

A Look at Tribute in Light | National September 11 Memorial & Museum (911memorial.org) 

https://www.911memorial.org/connect/blog/look-tribute-light 

"A Blue Mass is a Mass celebrated annually throughout the United States[1] in the Catholic Church for those employed in the "public safety field" (i.e. police officers, firefighters, correctional officers, 911 operators and EMS personnel).[2] The color blue relates to the blue-colored uniforms predominantly used by these services.[3] Similar to the Red Mass, the service honors those who have died in the line of duty and those currently serving as first responders.[4] The Mass is an opportunity for the community to show gratitude to first responders and their families.[5]"

Blue Mass - Wikipedia 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Mass 

The story behind this image of slain Davis police officer Natalie CORONA

By Lisa Fernandez and KTVU Published January 12, 2019 Updated December 28, 2020 California KTVU FOX 2

DAVIS, Calif. (KTVU) - In the image, she's wearing a royal BLUE gown, carrying a black-striped American flag with a thin blue line streaked across it.

Her heels are high. Her hair is done. Her smile is beaming. And she's standing in the middle of Leesville Grade Road next to a field in Williams, Colusa County, population 21,000, in California's Central Valley, where her father was a sheriff's deputy and now a county supervisor.

It's this compelling photograph of slain Davis police officer Natalie Corona that circulated throughout the country on Friday, hours after the 22-year-old was shot to death by a suspect identified on Saturday as Kevin Douglas Limbaugh, 48. A note found on his bed inside his home, where he later killed himself, stated that he believed Davis police bombarded him with ultrasonic waves." 

The story behind this image of slain Davis police officer Natalie Corona (ktvu.com) 

https://www.ktvu.com/news/the-story-behind-this-image-of-slain-davis-police-officer-natalie-corona 

"Serge Monast (1945 – 5 or 6 December 1996[1][2]) was a Canadian investigative journalist, poet, essayist and conspiracy theorist. He is known to English-speaking readers mainly for the originating the conspiracy theory Project BLUE BEAM, which concerns an alleged plot to facilitate a totalitarian world government by destroying traditional religions and replacing them with a new-age belief system using NASA technology.[3][unreliable source?]"

Serge Monast - Wikipedia 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serge_Monast

SEPTEMBER 11, 1990 | CLIP OF PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS ON PERSIAN GULF 

George H.W. Bush describes the New World Order in his address to the US Congress on the Crisis in the Persian Gulf.

User Clip: George Bush defines the New World Order | C-SPAN.org 

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4528359/user-clip-george-bush-defines-world-order 

"ROLLback of governments hostile to the U.S. took place during World War II (against Fascist Italy in 1943, Nazi Germany in 1945, and Imperial Japan in 1945), Afghanistan (against the Taliban in 2001), and Iraq (against Saddam Hussein in 2003). When directed against an established government, rollback is sometimes called "regime change".[2]"

Rollback - Wikipedia 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollback  

"In 1917, the Virgin appeared in Fatima. "The Mother of God" was a smashing success, playing to overflow crowds. As a result, the Socialists of Portugal suffered a major defeat. "Roman Catholics world-wide began praying for the conversion of Russia and the Jesuits invented the Novenas to Fatima which they could perform throughout North Africa, spreading good public relations to the Muslim world. The Arabs thought they were honoring the daughter of Muhammad, which is what the Jesuits wanted them to believe. "As a result of the vision of Fatima, Pope Pius XII ordered his Nazi army to crush Russia and the Orthodox religion and make Russia Roman Catholic." A few years after he lost World war II, Pope Pius XII startled the world with his phoney dancing sun vision to keep Fatima in the news. It was great religious show biz and the world swallowed it. "Not surprisingly, Pope Pius was the only one to see this vision. As a result, a group of followers has grown into a BLUE Army world-wide, totaling millions of faithful Roman Catholics ready to die for the blessed virgin. "But we haven't seen anything yet. The Jesuits have their Virgin Mary scheduled to appear four or five times in China, Russia, and major appearance in the U.S.

"What has this got to do with Islam? 

Note Bishop Sheen's statement: "Our Lady's appearances at Fatima marked the turning point in the history of the world's 350 million Muslims. After the death of his daughter, Muhammad wrote that she "is the most holy of all women in Paradise, next to Mary." 

"He believed that the Virgin Mary chose to be known as Our Lady of Fatima as a sign and a pledge that the Muslims who believe in Christ's virgin birth, will come to believe in His divinity. 

"Bishop Sheen pointed out that the pilgrim virgin statues of Our Lady of Fatima were enthusiastically received by Muslims in Africa, India, and elsewhere, and that many Muslims are now coming into the Roman Catholic Church."

How the Vatican created Islam (remnantofgod.org) 

http://www.remnantofgod.org/books/docs/how-the-vatican-created-islam.pdf

Royal Canin 

January 17  

A full range of dog foods means precise nutrition…

https://www.facebook.com/RoyalCanin.us/videos/1105019650770328

A Black Fast, also known as a strict fast, is a form of early Christian fasting.[1] Those undertaking a Black Fast consume no food or water during the day and then break the fast after sunset with prayer, as well as water and a vegetarian meal devoid of meat, eggs, dairy products (lacticinia), and alcohol.[2][3][4][5] Christians normatively fasted in this way during Lent prior to the 6th century.[6]

Description and practice

Traditionally, the Black Fast is undertaken during Lent; it is the early Christian form of fasting consisting of fasting until sunset, and then consuming one vegetarian meal afterwards (with food and water being allowed only at this time).[5][4] This was the normative way of Christian fasting prior to the 6th century A.D. and among certain denominations (such as the Coptic Orthodox Church) and in some localities like India and Pakistan, many Christians continue to observe the Black Fast throughout the whole season of Lent.[6][5][7][8][9] After attending a worship service (often on Wednesday or Friday evenings), it is common for Christians of various denominations to break that day's Lenten fast together through a communal Lenten supper, which is held in the church's parish hall in the public setting; in the home setting Lenten Suppers take place in the context of a family meal every day during Lent (except on the Lord's Day).[10] Throughout the entire Christian year, many Christians keep the Black Fast on Wednesdays (in memory of Jesus' betrayal) and on Fridays (to mourn the crucifixion of Jesus).[11] In Western Christianity, many monastics still retain this practice, though many laypeople voluntarily undertake the Black Fast, especially on Good Friday.[12]

The details of the Black Fast are as follows:[13][3]

No food or liquids are allowed from midnight until sunset.[14][4][9]

One vegetarian meal a day is permitted, only after sunset.[3][14][15][13]

A mealtime prayer is offered at the time the Black Fast is broken.[5]

Flesh meat, eggs, and dairy products (lacticinia: milk, butter, and cheese) are forbidden.[13]

Alcohol is forbidden.[13][16]

During Holy Week (the final week of Lent), the Lenten supper meal consists exclusively of bread, salt, herbs, and water.[3][A]

Oriental Orthodoxy

Coptic Orthodox Church

Further information: Fasting and abstinence of the Coptic Orthodox Church

In the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Black Fast is the normative way of fasting during Great Lent; Coptic Orthodox Christians go without water and food from midnight to sunset; after that time, the consumption of water and one vegetarian meal is permitted.[9] Married couples abstain from sexual relations during this period "to give themselves time for fasting and prayer (1 Cor. 7: 5)."[9]

Roman Catholicism

The Black Fast was widely practiced by the faithful during the Lenten season by "kings and princes, clergy and laity, rich and poor".[18] In addition, the Black Fast was kept on the days preceding one's ordination.[18] When fasting today, Roman Catholics have the liberty to fast in this manner, or in the modern fashion in which a collation is permitted. Fasting rules were liberalised to avoid accidents due to weakness or lack of concentration in modern industrial jobs. For the same reason some soldiers in military orders like the Hospitallers were historically exempt from the strict rule.

Eastern Orthodoxy and Eastern Catholicism

The Black Fast is observed by the devout Eastern Orthodox laity or monks throughout Great Lent, as well as the three other fasting periods of the year (the Dormition Fast, Nativity Fast, and the Apostles' Fast) and occasionally on the weekly fast days of Wednesday and Friday.[19][20]

Some Eastern Catholics and Eastern Lutherans perform the Black Fast on Fridays during Lent, especially on Good Friday.

Romanian Orthodox Church

The term "Black Fast" has a different connotation within the Romanian Orthodox Church, which defines it somewhat similar to the definition given by those within the realms of the Classical Pentecostal movement (see below).

Anglican Communion

In Anglican Communion, the faithful have observed the Black Fast on "the two great Prayer Book fast days, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday".[12] The Black Fast was especially popular during the 19th century as it sought to imitate "the fasting of the ancient church."[12]

Pentecostalism

The term "Black Fast" has a different connotation with writers within Classical Pentecostalism. A Black Fast is complete abstinence from food or water and nothing is consumed in its duration.[21]

Ward states that the terms "Black Fast," "Hebrew Fast," and "Absolute Fast" are synonymous. British evangelical Arthur Wallis coined the term "Absolute Fast" in his book God's Chosen Fast (1968).[22]

A Normal Fast or "Complete Fast" consists of eating nothing but drinking pure water. A Partial Fast (or Daniel Fast) consists of abstinence, either eliminating all but one type of food or eliminating just one type of food. The Black Fast is observed on rare occasions in Pentecostal circles while the Normal Fast is most usually undertaken.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Fast

Obsidian (/əbˈsɪdi.ən, ɒb-/ əb-SID-ee-ən ob-)[5] is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed when lava extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimal crystal growth. It is an igneous rock.[6]

Obsidian is produced from felsic lava, rich in the lighter elements such as silicon, oxygen, aluminum, sodium, and potassium. It is commonly found within the margins of rhyolitic lava flows known as obsidian flows. These flows have a high content of silica, giving them a high viscosity. The high viscosity inhibits diffusion of atoms through the lava, which inhibits the first step (nucleation) in the formation of mineral crystals. Together with rapid cooling, this results in a natural glass forming from the lava.[7]

Obsidian is hard, brittle, and amorphous; it therefore fractures with sharp edges. In the past, it was used to manufacture cutting and piercing tools, and it has been used experimentally as surgical scalpel blades.[8]

Origin and properties

The Natural History by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder includes a few sentences about a volcanic glass called obsidian (lapis obsidianus), discovered in Ethiopia by Obsidius, a Roman explorer.[9][10][11][12]

Obsidian is formed from quickly cooled lava, which is the parent material.[13][14][15] Extrusive formation of obsidian may occur when felsic lava cools rapidly at the edges of a felsic lava flow or volcanic dome, or when lava cools during sudden contact with water or air. Intrusive formation of obsidian may occur when felsic lava cools along the edges of a dike.[16][17]

Tektites were once thought by many to be obsidian produced by lunar volcanic eruptions,[18] though few scientists now adhere to this hypothesis.[19]

Obsidian is mineral-like, but not a true mineral because, as a glass, it is not crystalline; in addition, its composition is too variable to be classified as a mineral. It is sometimes classified as a mineraloid.[20] Though obsidian is usually dark in color, similar to mafic rocks such as basalt, the composition of obsidian is extremely felsic. Obsidian consists mainly of SiO2 (silicon dioxide), usually 70% by weight or more; the remainder consists of variable amounts of other oxides, mostly oxides of aluminum, iron, potassium, sodium and calcium.[21][22] Crystalline rocks with a similar composition include granite and rhyolite. Because obsidian is metastable at the Earth's surface (over time the glass devitrifies, becoming fine-grained mineral crystals), obsidian older than Miocene in age is rare. Exceptionally old obsidians include a Cretaceous welded tuff and a partially devitrified Ordovician perlite.[23] This transformation of obsidian is accelerated by the presence of water. Although newly formed obsidian has a low water content, typically less than 1% water by weight,[24] it becomes progressively hydrated when exposed to groundwater, forming perlite.

Pure obsidian is usually dark in appearance, though the color varies depending on the impurities present. Iron and other transition elements may give the obsidian a dark brown to black color. Most black obsidians contain nanoinclusions of magnetite, an iron oxide.[25] Very few samples of obsidian are nearly colorless. In some stones, the inclusion of small, white, radially clustered crystals (spherulites) of the mineral cristobalite in the black glass produce a blotchy or snowflake pattern (snowflake obsidian). Obsidian may contain patterns of gas bubbles remaining from the lava flow, aligned along layers created as the molten rock was flowing before being cooled. These bubbles can produce interesting effects such as a golden sheen (sheen obsidian). An iridescent, rainbow-like sheen (fire obsidian) is caused by inclusions of magnetite nanoparticles creating thin-film interference.[26] Colorful, striped obsidian (rainbow obsidian) from Mexico contains oriented nanorods of hedenbergite, which cause the rainbow striping effects by thin-film interference.[25]

Occurrence

Obsidian is found near volcanoes in locations which have undergone rhyolitic eruptions. It can be found in Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Australia,[27] Canada, Chile, Georgia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Russia, Scotland, the Canary Islands, Turkey and the United States. Obsidian flows which are so large that they can be hiked on are found within the calderas of Newberry Volcano (Big Obsidian Flow,[28] 700 acres) and Medicine Lake Volcano in the Cascade Range of western North America, and at Inyo Craters east of the Sierra Nevada in California. Yellowstone National Park has a mountainside containing obsidian located between Mammoth Hot Springs and the Norris Geyser Basin, and deposits can be found in many other western U.S. states including Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, and Washington,[29] Oregon[30] and Idaho.

There are only four major deposit areas in the central Mediterranean: Lipari, Pantelleria, Palmarola and Monte Arci (Sardinia).[31]

Ancient sources in the Aegean were Milos and Gyali.[32]

Acıgöl town and the Göllü Dağ volcano were the most important sources in central Anatolia, one of the more important source areas in the prehistoric Near East.[33][34][35]

Prehistoric and historical use

The first known archaeological evidence of usage was in Kariandusi (Kenya) and other sites of the Acheulian age (beginning 1.5 million years BP) dated 700,000 BC, although only very few objects have been found at these sites relative to the Neolithic.[36][37][38][39][40] Manufacture of obsidian bladelets at Lipari had reached a high level of sophistication by the late Neolithic, and was traded as far as Sicily, the southern Po river valley, and Croatia.[41] Obsidian bladelets were used in ritual circumcisions and cutting of umbilical cords of newborns.[42] Anatolian sources of obsidian are known to have been the material used in the Levant and modern-day Iraqi Kurdistan from a time beginning sometime about 12,500 BC.[43] Obsidian artifacts are common at Tell Brak, one of the earliest Mesopotamian urban centers, dating to the late fifth millennium BC.[44] Obsidian was valued in Stone Age cultures because, like flint, it could be fractured to produce sharp blades or arrowheads in a process called knapping. Like all glass and some other naturally occurring rocks, obsidian breaks with a characteristic conchoidal fracture. It was also polished to create early mirrors. Modern archaeologists have developed a relative dating system, obsidian hydration dating, to calculate the age of obsidian artifacts.

Europe

Obsidian artifacts first appeared in the European continent in Central Europe in the Middle Paleolithic and had become common by the Upper Paleolithic, although there are exceptions to this. Obsidian played an important role in the transmission of Neolithic knowledge and experiences. The material was mainly used for production of chipped tools which were very sharp due to its nature. Artifacts made of obsidian can be found in many Neolithic cultures across Europe. The source of obsidian for cultures inhabiting the territory of and around Greece was the island of Milos; the Starčevo–Körös–Criș culture obtained obsidian from sources in Hungary and Slovakia, while the Cardium-Impresso cultural complex acquired obsidian from the island outcrops of the central Mediterranean. Through trade, these artifacts ended up in lands thousands of kilometers away from the original source; this indicates that they were a highly valued commodity.[45] John Dee had a mirror, made of obsidian, which was brought from Mexico to Europe between 1527 and 1530 after Hernando Cortés's conquest of the region.[46]

Middle East and Asia

In the Ubaid in the 5th millennium BC, blades were manufactured from obsidian extracted from outcrops located in modern-day Turkey.[47] Ancient Egyptians used obsidian imported from the eastern Mediterranean and southern Red Sea regions. Obsidian scalpels older than 2100 BC have been found in a Bronze Age settlement in Turkey.[48] In the eastern Mediterranean area the material was used to make tools, mirrors and decorative objects.[49]

The use of obsidian tools was present in Japan near areas of volcanic activity.[50][51] Obsidian was mined during the Jōmon period.

Obsidian has also been found in Gilat, a site in the western Negev in Israel. Eight obsidian artifacts dating to the Chalcolithic Age found at this site were traced to obsidian sources in Anatolia. Neutron activation analysis (NAA) on the obsidian found at this site helped to reveal trade routes and exchange networks previously unknown.[52]

Americas

Lithic analysis helps to understand pre-Hispanic groups in Mesoamerica. A careful analysis of obsidian in a culture or place can be of considerable use to reconstruct commerce, production, and distribution, and thereby understand economic, social and political aspects of a civilization. This is the case in Yaxchilán, a Maya city where even warfare implications have been studied linked with obsidian use and its debris.[53] Another example is the archeological recovery at coastal Chumash sites in California, indicating considerable trade with the distant site of Casa Diablo Hot Springs in the Sierra Nevada.[54]

Pre-Columbian Mesoamericans' use of obsidian was extensive and sophisticated; including carved and worked obsidian for tools and decorative objects. Mesoamericans also made a type of sword with obsidian blades mounted in a wooden body. Called a macuahuitl, the weapon could inflict terrible injuries, combining the sharp cutting edge of an obsidian blade with the ragged cut of a serrated weapon. The polearm version of this weapon was called tepoztopilli.

Obsidian mirrors were used by some Aztec priests to conjure visions and make prophecies. They were connected with Tezcatlipoca, god of obsidian and sorcery, whose name can be translated from the Nahuatl language as 'Smoking Mirror'.[46]

Indigenous people traded obsidian throughout the Americas. Each volcano and in some cases each volcanic eruption produces a distinguishable type of obsidian allowing archaeologists to use methods such as non-destructive energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence to select minor element compositions from both the artifact and geological sample to trace the origins of a particular artifact.[55] Similar tracing techniques have also allowed obsidian in Greece to be identified as coming from Milos, Nisyros or Gyali, islands in the Aegean Sea. Obsidian cores and blades were traded great distances inland from the coast.[56]

In Chile obsidian tools from Chaitén Volcano have been found as far away as in Chan-Chan 400 km (250 mi) north of the volcano, and also in sites 400 km south of it.[57][58]

Oceania

The Lapita culture, active across a large area of the Pacific Ocean around 1000 BC, made widespread use of obsidian tools and engaged in long distance obsidian trading. The complexity of the production technique for these tools, and the care taken in their storage, may indicate that beyond their practical use they were associated with prestige or high status.[59]

Obsidian was also used on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) for edged tools such as Mataia and the pupils of the eyes of their Moai (statues), which were encircled by rings of bird bone.[60] Obsidian was used to inscribe the Rongorongo glyphs.

Current use

Obsidian can be used to make extremely sharp knives, and obsidian blades are a type of glass knife made using naturally occurring obsidian instead of manufactured glass. Obsidian is used by some surgeons for scalpel blades, although this is not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use on humans.[61] Well-crafted obsidian blades, like any glass knife, can have a cutting edge many times sharper than high-quality steel surgical scalpels: the cutting edge of the blade is only about three nanometers thick.[62] All metal knives have a jagged, irregular blade when viewed under a strong enough microscope; however, obsidian blades are still smooth, even when examined under an electron microscope.[63] One study found that obsidian incisions produced fewer inflammatory cells and less granulation tissue in a group of rats after seven days but the differences disappeared after twenty-one days.[64] Don Crabtree has produced surgical obsidian blades and written articles on the subject.[62] Obsidian scalpels may be purchased for surgical use on research animals.[65]

The major disadvantage of obsidian blades is their brittleness compared to those made of metal,[66] thus limiting the surgical applications for obsidian blades to a variety of specialized uses where this is not a concern.[62]

Obsidian is also used for ornamental purposes and as a gemstone.[67] It presents a different appearance depending on how it is cut: in one direction it is jet black, while in another it is glistening gray. "Apache tears" are small rounded obsidian nuggets often embedded within a grayish-white perlite matrix.

Plinths for audio turntables have been made of obsidian since the 1970s, such as the grayish-black SH-10B3 plinth by Technics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian

The Black Stone (Arabic: ٱلْحَجَرُ ٱلْأَسْوَد, romanized: al-Ḥajar al-Aswad) is a rock set into the eastern corner of the Kaaba, the ancient building in the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is revered by Muslims as an Islamic relic which, according to Muslim tradition, dates back to the time of Adam and Eve.

The stone was venerated at the Kaaba in pre-Islamic pagan times. According to Islamic tradition, it was set intact into the Kaaba's wall by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in 605 CE, five years before his first revelation. Since then, it has been broken into fragments and is now cemented into a silver frame in the side of the Kaaba. Its physical appearance is that of a fragmented dark rock, polished smooth by the hands of pilgrims. It has often been described as a meteorite.[1]

Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba as a part of the tawaf ritual during the hajj and many try to stop to kiss the Black Stone, emulating the kiss that Islamic tradition records that it received from Muhammad.[2][3] While the Black Stone is revered, Islamic theologians emphasize that it has no divine significance and that its importance is historical in nature.[4]

Physical description

The Black Stone was originally a single piece of rock but today consists of several pieces that have been cemented together. They are surrounded by a silver frame which is fastened by silver nails to the Kaaba's outer wall.[5] The fragments are themselves made up of smaller pieces which have been combined to form the seven or eight fragments visible today. The Stone's exposed face measures about 20 centimetres (7.9 in) by 16 centimetres (6.3 in). Its original size is unclear and the recorded dimensions have changed considerably over time, as the pieces have been rearranged in their cement matrix on several occasions.[1] In the 10th century, an observer described the Black Stone as being one cubit (46 cm or 18 in) long. By the early 17th century, it was recorded as measuring 140 by 122 cm (4 ft 7 in by 4 ft 0 in). According to Ali Bey in the 18th century, it was described as 110 cm (3 ft 7 in) high, and Muhammad Ali Pasha reported it as being 76 cm (2 ft 6 in) long by 46 cm (1 ft 6 in) wide.[1]

The Black Stone is attached to the east corner of the Kaaba, known as al-Rukn al-Aswad (the 'Corner of the Black Stone').[6] Another stone, known as the Hajar as-Sa’adah ('Stone of Felicity') is set into the Kaaba's opposite corner, al-Rukn al-Yamani (the 'Yemeni Corner'), at a somewhat lower height than the Black Stone.[7] The choice of the east corner may have had ritual significance; it faces the rain-bringing east wind (al-qabul) and the direction from which Canopus rises.[8]

The silver frame around the Black Stone and the black kiswah or cloth enveloping the Kaaba were for centuries maintained by the Ottoman Sultans in their role as Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. The frames wore out over time due to the constant handling by pilgrims and were periodically replaced. Worn-out frames were brought back to Istanbul, where they are still kept as part of the sacred relics in the Topkapı Palace.[9]

Appearance of the Black Stone

The Black Stone was described by European travellers to Arabia in the 19th- and early-20th centuries, who visited the Kaaba disguised as pilgrims. Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt visited Mecca in 1814, and provided a detailed description in his 1829 book Travels in Arabia:

It is an irregular oval, about seven inches [18 cm] in diameter, with an undulated surface, composed of about a dozen smaller stones of different sizes and shapes, well joined together with a small quantity of cement, and perfectly well smoothed; it looks as if the whole had been broken into as many pieces by a violent blow, and then united again. It is very difficult to determine accurately the quality of this stone which has been worn to its present surface by the millions of touches and kisses it has received. It appeared to me like a lava, containing several small extraneous particles of a whitish and of a yellow substance. Its colour is now a deep reddish brown approaching to black. It is surrounded on all sides by a border composed of a substance which I took to be a close cement of pitch and gravel of a similar, but not quite the same, brownish colour. This border serves to support its detached pieces; it is two or three inches in breadth, and rises a little above the surface of the stone. Both the border and the stone itself are encircled by a silver band, broader below than above, and on the two sides, with a considerable swelling below, as if a part of the stone were hidden under it. The lower part of the border is studded with silver nails.[10]

Visiting the Kaaba in 1853, Richard Francis Burton noted that:

The colour appeared to me black and metallic, and the centre of the stone was sunk about two inches below the metallic circle. Round the sides was a reddish-brown cement, almost level with the metal, and sloping down to the middle of the stone. The band is now a massive arch of gold or silver gilt. I found the aperture in which the stone is, one span and three fingers broad.[11]

Ritter von Laurin, the Austrian consul-general in Egypt, was able to inspect a fragment of the Stone removed by Muhammad Ali in 1817 and reported that it had a pitch-black exterior and a silver-grey, fine-grained interior in which tiny cubes of a bottle-green material were embedded. There are reportedly a few white or yellow spots on the face of the Stone, and it is officially described as being white with the exception of the face.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Stone

Niggardly (noun: niggard) is an adjective meaning 'stingy' or 'miserly'. Niggard (14th C) is derived from the Middle English word meaning 'stingy,' nigon, which is probably derived from two other words also meaning 'stingy,' Old Norse hnǫggr and Old English hnēaw.[2] The word niggle, which in modern usage means to give excessive attention to minor details, probably shares an etymology with niggardly.[3]

Nigger, a racial slur widely considered to be offensive, derives from the Spanish word Negro, meaning 'black', and the French word nègre. Both negro and noir (and therefore also nègre and nigger) ultimately come from the Latin adjective niger, 'black' or 'dark'.[4] The first recorded use of nigger dates to 1574, and its first recorded derogatory use to 1775.[5][6] Plays on the similarity of the two words date back at least a century, one example being a piece of sheet music from 1900.[7][original research?]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_niggardly 

In alchemy, nigredo, or blackness, means putrefaction or decomposition. Many alchemists believed that as a first step in the pathway to the philosopher's stone, all alchemical ingredients had to be cleansed and cooked extensively to a uniform black matter.[1]

In analytical psychology, the term became a metaphor for "the dark night of the soul, when an individual confronts the shadow within."[2]

Jung

For Carl Jung, "the rediscovery of the principles of alchemy came to be an important part of my work as a pioneer of psychology".[3] As a student of alchemy, he (and his followers) "compared the 'black work' of the alchemists (the nigredo) with the often highly critical involvement experienced by the ego, until it accepts the new equilibrium brought about by the creation of the self."[4] Jungians interpreted nigredo in two main psychological senses.

The first sense represented a subject's initial state of undifferentiated unawareness, "the first nigredo, that of the unio naturalis, is an objective state, visible from the outside only ... an unconscious state of non-differentiation between self and object, consciousness and the unconscious."[5] Here the subject is unaware of the unconscious; i.e. the connection with the instincts.[6]

In the second sense, "the nigredo of the process of individuation on the other hand is a subjectively experienced process brought about by the subject's painful, growing awareness of his shadow aspects."[7] It could be described as a moment of maximum despair, that is a prerequisite to personal development.[8] As individuation unfolds, so "confrontation with the shadow produces at first a dead balance, a standstill that hampers moral decisions and makes convictions ineffective or even impossible ... nigredo, tenebrositas, chaos, melancholia."[9] Here is "the darkest time, the time of despair, disillusionment, envious attacks; the time when Eros and Superego are at daggers drawn, and there seems no way forward ... nigredo, the blackening."[10]

Only subsequently would come "an enantiodromia; the nigredo gives way to the albedo ... the ever deepening descent into the unconscious suddenly becomes illumination from above."[11]

Further steps of the alchemical opus include such images as albedo (whiteness), citrinitas (yellowness), and rubedo (redness). Jung also found psychological equivalents for many other alchemical concepts, with "the characterization of analytic work as an opus; the reference to the analytic relationship as a vas, vessel or container; the goal of the analytic process as the coniunctio, or union of conflicting opposites."[12]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigredo

The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as 50 million people[2] perished, perhaps 50% of Europe's 14th century population.[3] The disease is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and spread by fleas and through the air.[4][5] One of the most significant events in European history, the Black Death had far-reaching population, economic, and cultural impacts. It was the beginning of the second plague pandemic.[6] The plague created religious, social and economic upheavals, with profound effects on the course of European history.

The origin of the Black Death is disputed.[7] Genetic analysis suggests Yersinia pestis bacteria evolved approximately 7,000 years ago, at the beginning of the Neolithic,[8] with flea-mediated strains emerging around 3,800 years ago during the late Bronze Age.[9] The immediate territorial origins of the Black Death and its outbreak remain unclear, with some evidence pointing towards Central Asia, China, the Middle East, and Europe.[10][11] The pandemic was reportedly first introduced to Europe during the siege of the Genoese trading port of Kaffa in Crimea by the Golden Horde army of Jani Beg in 1347. From Crimea, it was most likely carried by fleas living on the black rats that travelled on Genoese ships, spreading through the Mediterranean Basin and reaching North Africa, West Asia, and the rest of Europe via Constantinople, Sicily, and the Italian Peninsula.[12] There is evidence that once it came ashore, the Black Death mainly spread from person-to-person as pneumonic plague, thus explaining the quick inland spread of the epidemic, which was faster than would be expected if the primary vector was rat fleas causing bubonic plague.[13][14][15] In 2022, it was discovered that there was a sudden surge of deaths in what is today Kyrgyzstan from the Black Death in the late 1330s; when combined with genetic evidence, this implies that the initial spread may not have been due to Mongol conquests in the 14th century, as previously speculated.[16][17]

The Black Death was the second great natural disaster to strike Europe during the Late Middle Ages (the first one being the Great Famine of 1315–1317) and is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of the European population, as well as approximately 33% of the population of the Middle East.[18][19][20] There were further outbreaks throughout the Late Middle Ages and, also due to other contributing factors (the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages), the European population did not regain its 14th century level until the 16th century.[a][21] Outbreaks of the plague recurred around the world until the early 19th century.

Names

European writers contemporary with the plague described the disease in Latin as pestis or pestilentia, 'pestilence'; epidemia, 'epidemic'; mortalitas, 'mortality'.[22] In English prior to the 18th century, the event was called the "pestilence" or "great pestilence", "the plague" or the "great death".[22][23][24] Subsequent to the pandemic "the furste moreyn" (first murrain) or "first pestilence" was applied, to distinguish the mid-14th century phenomenon from other infectious diseases and epidemics of plague.[22]

The 1347 pandemic plague was not referred to specifically as "black" in the time of occurrence in any European language, though the expression "black death" had occasionally been applied to fatal disease beforehand.[22] "Black death" was not used to describe the plague pandemic in English until the 1750s; the term is first attested in 1755, where it translated Danish: den sorte død, lit. 'the black death'.[22][25] This expression as a proper name for the pandemic had been popularized by Swedish and Danish chroniclers in the 15th and early 16th centuries, and in the 16th and 17th centuries was transferred to other languages as a calque: Icelandic: svarti dauði, German: der schwarze Tod, and French: la mort noire.[26][27] Previously, most European languages had named the pandemic a variant or calque of the Latin: magna mortalitas, lit. 'Great Death'.[22]

The phrase 'black death' – describing Death as black – is very old. Homer used it in the Odyssey to describe the monstrous Scylla, with her mouths "full of black Death" (Ancient Greek: πλεῖοι μέλανος Θανάτοιο, romanized: pleîoi mélanos Thanátoio).[28][26] Seneca the Younger may have been the first to describe an epidemic as 'black death', (Latin: mors atra) but only in reference to the acute lethality and dark prognosis of disease.[29][26][22] The 12th–13th century French physician Gilles de Corbeil had already used atra mors to refer to a "pestilential fever" (febris pestilentialis) in his work On the Signs and Symptoms of Diseases (De signis et symptomatibus aegritudium).[26][30] The phrase mors nigra, 'black death', was used in 1350 by Simon de Covino (or Couvin), a Belgian astronomer, in his poem "On the Judgement of the Sun at a Feast of Saturn" (De judicio Solis in convivio Saturni), which attributes the plague to an astrological conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.[31] His use of the phrase is not connected unambiguously with the plague pandemic of 1347 and appears to refer to the fatal outcome of disease.[22]

The historian Cardinal Francis Aidan Gasquet wrote about the Great Pestilence in 1893[32] and suggested that it had been "some form of the ordinary Eastern or bubonic plague".[33][b] In 1908, Gasquet said use of the name atra mors for the 14th-century epidemic first appeared in a 1631 book on Danish history by J. I. Pontanus: "Commonly and from its effects, they called it the black death" (Vulgo & ab effectu atram mortem vocitabant).[34][35]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death

Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States. It traditionally marks the start of the Christmas shopping season and is the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States. Many stores offer highly promoted sales at discounted prices and often open early, sometimes as early as midnight[2] or even on Thanksgiving. Some stores' sales continue to Monday ("Cyber Monday") or for a week ("Cyber Week").

"Black Friday" has evolved in meaning and impact over the years, initially referring to calamitous days, with a notable early instance being Black Friday (1869) in the US. This financial crisis saw a dramatic plunge in gold prices, affecting investors. The term was later used in American retail, starting ambiguously in the 1950s. Initially associated with workforce absenteeism post-Thanksgiving, it was reinterpreted by Philadelphia police to describe the shopping-induced congestion. Attempts at rebranding to "Big Friday" failed, and the term "Black Friday" solidified by the 1980s, referring to the pivotal point where retailers purportedly shifted from loss ("in the red") to profit ("in the black"). This day marks the unofficial start of the Christmas shopping season, with promotional sales aiming to draw large crowds. Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States[3][4][5] and retailers prioritize it and Cyber Monday as highly profitable holiday shopping days.[6]

The concept has since globalized, with countries around the world adopting "Black Friday" sales to mimic the U.S. phenomenon, adjusting local customs or creating similar events. The advent of online shopping and events like "Cyber Monday" have expanded the traditional one-day shopping frenzy into a broader holiday shopping season, diluting the singular focus of Black Friday, and expanding its economic impact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(shopping)

Black project is an informal term used to describe a highly classified, top-secret military or defense project that is not publicly acknowledged by government, military personnel, or contractors.

United States and black projects

In the United States, the formal term for a black project is an unacknowledged special access program (SAP). Black projects receive their funding from the black budget.

The US depends on private defense contractors to develop and build military equipment. The two most notable examples are Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. The R&D department of Lockheed Martin is commonly referred to as Skunk Works; it is responsible for a number of aircraft designs, highly classified R&D programs, and exotic aircraft platforms.

Two well known sites for testing of black projects are the Nevada Test site and Area 51.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_project

World, the: 1. It is proper to our vocation: to go to diverse places and live in whatever part of the world and to be sent wherever the greater service of God and the help of souls can be hoped for [82, 92, 304, 308, 588, 603, 605, 626, 749]; to this purpose is directed the vow of special obedience to the supreme pontiff regarding missions, FI no. 3 [603, 605], 2 §1; consequently a complete availability, mobility, and universality are necessary, 110, 121 4°, 242 §3, 246 7°, 248, 259, 411; at the service of which is chastity, 144 §2; consequently our community is a community for dispersion, 255 §1, 312, 314 §2, 315, 317; thus also the need for communicating with different cultures of the world and for insertion into them, 99 §2, 106 §2, 110, 111, 246 2°; and for promoting that perfect and open cooperation among the members of the entire Society, of whatever province or region they may be, 396 §2. See also Cooperation, interprovincial and supraprovincial; Culture(s); Insertion 2. God is present in the world: exercising the ministry of healing and reconciliation, 246 4°; thus he is there to be sought and found, 223 §§3-4; the world, in great part afflicted with atheism and injustice and increasingly divided by diverse economic, social, and ethnic systems and by other sources of division and opposition, 59 §2, 223 §3, 246 4° 3. The world, as distinguished from religious life: is to be left behind, trampled underfoot, and renounced [30, 50, 53, 61, 66, 297]; it is to be despised because of the love for and imitation of Christ [101]; contempt for it assists in the union of minds and hearts [671]: customs which smack of the world are not to be introduced, 322.

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

A Complete English Translation of the Official Latin Texts

THE INSTITUTE OF JESUIT SOURCES

SAINT LOUIS, 1996

https://web.archive.org/web/20200211182223/https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

This Babylonian clay tablet, called Plimpton 322, was created around 1750 BCE in Sumeria, during the reign of Hammurabi the Great.

While more than 1000 years older than Pythagoras, the rows and columns on this table contain Pythagorean triples: integer solutions for the equation a2+b2=c2. For example, (3, 4, 5) is a Pythagorean triple because 32+42=52.

The exact purpose of the tablet has been debated by archeologists. Some think that it was a “teachers aid”, designed to help generate right-angled triangles. Others think it may be a very early trigonometry table.

https://mathigon.org/timeline/plimpton-322

"A major landslide occurred 4 miles (6.4 km) east of Oso, Washington, United States, on March 22, 2014 (3/22/2014), at 10:37 a.m. local time. A portion of an unstable hill collapsed, sending mud and debris to the south across the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River, engulfing a rural neighborhood, and covering an area of approximately 1 square mile (2.6 km2). Forty-three people were killed and 49 homes and other structures destroyed."

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Oso_mudslide

Published: 10 October 1996

Russian documents Set out 'tectonic weapon' research

Carl Levitin 

Moscow. The first official details have emerged in Moscow of ambitious research into 'tectonic warfare' carried out by the former Soviet Union and subsequently by the government of Russia, and involving atte mpts to stimulate 'artificial' earthquakes as weapons of destruction. According to documents obtained by the newspaper Moscow News, two research programmes, the first known as ' Mercury ' and the second as ' Volcano', were aimed at creating new earthquake epicentres by using underground nuclear explosions . Geophysicists are aware that impending earthquakes may be triggered by underground nuclear explosions . But Western geophysicists remain sceptical about tectonic warfare and have all but abandoned research after two unsuccessful phases of activity in the 1960s and 1980s, says Roger Clark, a lecturer in geophysics at the University of Leeds. Clark is not at all surprised that th e Russians tried to create earthquakes and control their location electromagnetically, however. "This sort of science is very much part of their heritage. We don't think it is impossible, or wrong , but past experience suggests it is very, very unlikely. "

The programme , which was secretly launched by the Communist rulers of the former Soviet Union in 1987, and has been unofficially known to Western geophysicists for several years, is now believed to have been abandoned. It would certainly contravene the terms of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which Russia signe d at the United Nations in Geneva last month . The Mercury project was launched in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, but came to a halt when the republic became independent. It was superseded by the Volcano project. Three underground nuclear tests are believed to have taken place at sites in Kyrgyzstan.

According to the documents, the Mercury project was launched by a secret decree of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union. The objective was to "develop a methodology for remote operation on an earthquake epicentre by using weak seismic fields and research possibilities of transferring the seismic energy of an explosion ".

The documents say that the Mercury project involved 22 scientific and industrial organizations, including the Geological Institute of the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences in Baku. The remit extended to developing the electronic equipment to be installed aboard space satellites that would control the tectonic weapon. The scientists were given three years to complete research, with testing planned for 1990.

During the research phase, Azerbaijani scientists grew increasingly confident and, according to the documents, were sure that " after [a] nuclear explosion, subterranean energy may accumulate at huge distances from the epicentre and reach massive capacity, after which the next directed explosion can release it all ".

Underground testing began at the town of Batken in Kyrgyzstan, and was directed by lkram Ke rimov , of the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences. The documents say that scientists detonated an underground nuclear charge and tried to control the direction of seismic energy release d using British-built equipment known as 'system 9690 ' .

A report prepared by the Mozhaisky Military Engineering Institute concluded that the test had been a success. But progress slowed considerably following Azerbaijan's independence from the Soviet Union. At about this time , Russia embarked on a more comprehensive tectonic warfare programme known as the Volcano project. The Earth Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) became the project headquarters .

Research was scheduled to be completed in 1992, with underground testing beginning the following year. The final test was carried out at a place code-named S36NZ-0Kh; Moscow News believes the letters 'NZ' refer to Novaya Zemlya, where Soviet nuclear testing began in the 1950s."

https://www.nature.com/articles/383471a0 

9. Interprovincial Works and Houses in Rome

304 §1. In the spirit of our fourth vow, the Society confirms its commitment to the interprovincial Roman works entrusted to it by the Holy See: the Pontifical Gregorian University and its associated institutes, the Pontifical Biblical Institute and the Pontifical Oriental Institute, as well as the Pontifical Russicum College, the Vatican Radio, and the Vatican Observatory, all of which are common works of the whole Society, placed directly under the superior general. Recognizing the very valuable service that these institutions have offered and continue to offer today, it calls upon major superiors who share Father General s responsibility for them to continue their help through subsidies and especially by training and offering professors and other personnel to them.

§2. Also recommended to the care of all the provinces are those other works or houses in Rome that render a service to the entire Society, such as the Historical Institute of the Society of Jesus and the international colleges of the Society in Rome.[142] 

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

A Complete English Translation of the Official Latin Texts

THE INSTITUTE OF JESUIT SOURCES

SAINT LOUIS, 1996

https://web.archive.org/web/20200211182223/https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

The National Security Act of 1947 (Pub.L. 80-253, 61 Stat. 495, enacted July 26, 1947) was a law enacting major restructuring of the United States government's military and intelligence agencies following World War II. The majority of the provisions of the act took effect on September 18, 1947, the day after the Senate confirmed James Forrestal as the first secretary of defense.[1][2]

The act merged the Department of the Army (renamed from the Department of War), the Department of the Navy, and the newly established Department of the Air Force (DAF) into the National Military Establishment (NME).[3] The act also created the position of the secretary of defense as the head of the NME.[3] It established the United States Air Force under the DAF, which worked to separate the Army Air Forces into its own service.[3] It also protected the Marine Corps as an independent service under the Department of the Navy.[3] Aside from the unification of the three military departments, the act established the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency, the latter of which is headed by the Director of Central Intelligence.[3]

The legislation was a result of efforts by Harry S. Truman beginning in 1944.[4] President Truman proposed the legislation to Congress on February 26, 1947.[5] The bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on February 28, 1947, and in the Senate on March 3, 1947.[6] Senator Chan Gurney was the bill's sponsor.[6] Senator Gurney, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, led committee hearings for the bill from mid-March to early May.[7][8][9] The bill passed in the Senate on July 9, 1947, and in the House on July 19, 1947.[10] The Senate agreed to a related House resolution (80 H.Con.Res. 70) on July 16, 1947.[10] The bill received bipartisan support and was passed in both chambers by voice vote.[4][10] The National Security Act of 1947 was signed into law by President Truman on July 26, 1947, while aboard his VC-54C presidential aircraft Sacred Cow.[11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Act_of_1947

Harry R. Truman (October 1896 – May 18, 1980) was an American businessman, bootlegger, and prospector. He lived near Mount St. Helens, an active volcano in the state of Washington, and was the owner and caretaker of Mount St. Helens Lodge at Spirit Lake near the base of the mountain. Truman came to fame as a folk hero in the weeks leading up to the volcano's 1980 eruption after refusing to leave his home despite evacuation orders. He was killed by a pyroclastic flow that overtook his lodge and buried the site under 150 ft (46 m) of volcanic debris.

After Truman's death, his family and friends reflected on his love for the mountain. In 1981, Art Carney portrayed Truman in the docudrama film St. Helens. He was commemorated in a book by his niece, and also in various pieces of music, including songs by Headgear, Billy Jonas, and Shawn Wright and the Brothers Band.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_R._Truman

Newly added to Digital Collections: Harry S. Truman Letters

July 14, 2020

Did you know that President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) was in correspondence with Melvin Maynard Johnson (1871-1957), the head of the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction's Supreme Council during the 1940s and 1950s? A number of recently digitized letters, written from Truman to Johnson on White House stationery are available through the Van Gorden-Williams Library & Archives Digital Collections website. They reveal a friendly relationship, with President Truman beginning his letters to Johnson by addressing him "Dear Mel."

Truman became a Freemason in 1909. By 1940, he was elected Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Missouri. In 1945, Truman was created a 33rd degree Sovereign Grand Inspector General in the Scottish Rite's Supreme Council, Southern Jurisdiction. That same year, the Supreme Council, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, awarded Truman its first Gourgas Medal, the Supreme Council's highest honor.

The letters in this collection include both those from Harry Truman as well as one written by his wife, Bess Truman (1885-1982). The majority of the correspondence in this collection consists of letters written by President Harry S. Truman to his friend and fellow Freemason, Melvin Maynard Johnson (1871-1957). Johnson served as the Supreme Council, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction's Sovereign Grand Commander from 1933 to 1953.

For more about the friendship between Truman and Johnson, have a look at one of our earlier blog posts, A Mason Answers His Country's Call and Receives the Scottish Rite's Highest Award.

There are now over 750 items in the Van Gorden-Williams Library & Archives Digital Collections website. Be sure to visit and check them all out!

Caption:

Letter from President Harry S. Truman to Melvin M. Johnson, 1948 August 3. Collection of Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, Lexington, Massachusetts. SC069.

https://nationalheritagemuseum.typepad.com/library_and_archives/harry-s-truman/

Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the U.S. and 33rd degree Freemason, in full occult regalia, in an official lodge portrait. Truman ordered the atomic incineration of two Japanese cities, killing at least 150,000 people, mostly women and children. Roosevelt's chief of staff, Admiral Leahy, admitted to Walter Trohan of the Chicago Tribune, that Japan was ready to surrender conditionally without an invasion by U.S. ground forces. It was Truman's insistence upon "unconditional surrender" that set the stage for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare 

by Michael A. Hoffman II

Extrusive (Volcanic) Rock Classification

Volcanic rocks are classified based on their chemical composition as determined by analytical techniques that identify the proportion of major elements found in them. Unlike for plutonic rocks, it is not possible to classify volcanic rocks based on the minerals found in them.

Some volcanic rocks contain some crystals (phenocrysts) that grew in the magma chamber prior to eruption, but others contain no crystals at all or are volcanic glass (obsidian).

In addition to the mafic (low silica) basalt, and the silicic rhyolite, several subdivisions exist between the two compositional end members.

https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/igneous.htm

THE CONCLAVE OR CELESTIAL CITY

Containing an epitome of the twelve degrees of the Philosophic Chamber of the Ancient and Accepted Rite.

The twelve degrees preceding the Rose Croix are as we have shown, associated with the twelve signs of the Zodiac.

From these fixed signs, the Rite passes to the Sun, Moon and the Planets.

From these the Rite looks to the four elements or four components of man, etc., and from these it considers the spirit and matter, or infinite and finite of the Universe and of man.

In the Rose Croix Degree, we have seen the son of masonry and heard the promise of universal peace and joy. Now let us proceed to seek the methods of realization, and learn how to restore the lost Eden and reedify the Celestial City." 

Scotch Rite Masonry Illustrated

THE COMPLETE RITUAL OF THE

Ancient AND Accepted Scottish Rite,

PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED.

Volume 2

https://dn790006.ca.archive.org/0/items/scotchritemasonr02blan/scotchritemasonr02blan.pdf

"Very soon now, it will no longer be a mystery of 'when' these events will take place; they will have become a terrible reality. Where then, will each of us stand on these issues, when the onslaught actually begins? Quickly it will be seen that the New Ager's counterfeit messiah, Lord #Maitreya, is also the same person as the #Pontifex Maximus pope of Rome, who then will take the reins of the New World Order. The deceptions will mesh wonderfully together, as the "World Harmonic Convergence" accomplishes new values for mankind in the cooperation, collaboration and unification on behalf of the "Spirit of the Earth." For those of you who read this book, be patient, it won't be long and you will know that it revealed to you the truth.

Also, it is only a matter of time when Pope John Paul II, old and tired, will succumb to his great age, and his mantle will then go to a more younger and aggressive pope. By him, a work will now be accomplished, known as the "Era of Reseeding" when major population areas will be 'thinned out' and the human population will be resettled. Finally, will come the "Era of the New Harmony" and the "Crystal Kingdom" of the earth will be set up. This is the glorious version of Rome's final victory and total conquest of humanity. But there is one last crowning act that is needed to make this masterpiece of deception complete.

FALSE MESSIAH OCCUPIES JERUSALEM

The counterfeit surpassing all other counterfeits, Rome has now fulfilled its grandest dreams. The entire world lays in shambles at its feet. "Order out of Chaos" ,was its beloved motto.

Now the 'great pretender' , the Pontifex Maximus pope declares himself to be God over all the earth! Not content with just being ruler of all the earth - but "is worshiped; so that he as God sitting in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God."

Only a Luciferic mind could think like that.

After usurping the very exalted position of grandeur, magnificence, majesty and sovereignty of God Himself - what other place would he choose to locate his Crystal Kingdom headquarters - other than where the God of creation has placed His own Holy name Jerusalem; where else? Rome has always had its covetous eye set on Jerusalem. The Crusaders were sent there to conquer it, after which, the Knights Templar were named after its temple. And now the Pontifex Maximus pope, dripping in blood of the world's innocents, claims this city as his too; to be the headquarters for ruling his New World Order.

Does all of this sound like some grotesque farcy tale or the terror of some fearsome nightmare? Oh my friend, how I wish that could really be the case; that we could actually wake up and none of this would really be true, and I could be called a liar. What I wouldn't give, if I could make that be so. But for all the sadness and horror it brings, it must be acknowledged that it is the truth. Not because man says so, but because God's Word has declared it. There is only one way to face the onslaught that is just ahead. We must fully trust our life into the hands of God, and then resolve in our minds that we are going to be killed; forgetting entirely the thought that we might be fortunate enough to escape. That is how thoroughly God's people are going to be rooted out. Know for sure in your own mind - they can kill your body ever so dead, but they can never take your life - if it is in Christ Jesus. That belongs to God alone.

Very soon, God's people are going to be confronted with the exact same experience as our Lord and Saviour. To know and look straight into the face of death - and yes, by the very same executioner - Rome. But our Lord loved you, dear reader, and me, and all, that He gave up His own life for ours. We must now respond to that love and be resolved to die also for Him, standing firm for His truth, as He died for us. And Rome can not kill us so dead, that our mighty God can not raise us back up to life. Not the miserable life we know now but incorruptible life for eternity. A quick calculation will tell you, that if one third of the earth's population, or nearly two billion people, are going to be slaughtered, only a minuscule fraction of that amount are fundamentalist Christians . That means a huge amount of people are going to die that are not Christians. Sadly, beyond any comprehension, they will have died for a very lost cause.

From all the horror, misery, and bloodshed, people universally, will become utterly paralyzed from sheer shock.

And to the overwhelming majority of them, sadly, this life is their only world, as they watch it being ripped apart; everywhere, nothing but chaos and devastation. They are terrified. They just do not understand! But there are a people that do understand; as they watch now with solemn awe, events occurring that they had known about and anticipated for many many years. This is what gives to God's people "hope". They know that God does not lie. God has given to His people promises, predictions, and prophecies that have never ever failed. That, dear friend, is wonderful, unselfish, and abiding love! - that builds unswerving trust. And no other promise is so deeply embedded into their hearts, than the one given that

Christ will soon return and redeem His people out of this wretched world. It buoys their spirits, as it assures them precious

'hope'.

Five hundred years before Jesus Christ walked the earth, God revealed to His people that Rome's false messiah, in the very end times, would "plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain." In other words, Jerusalem. (Daniel 11:45) What an incredible God we have! But notice how God describes it. He calls Rome setting up its New World Order headquarters in Jerusalem the "abomination that maketh desolate." In fact, Christ Himself prophesied that Rome would invade Jerusalem soon after His departure from earth, which it did in A.D.70. And this first invasion was to become a "type" for when it would occur again, with vengeance, in the very end time." 

CHAPTER 17 "TWO OCCULT POWERS UNITED FOR FINAL WORLD

CONTROL" 

The Grand Design Exposed 

by John Daniel

http://www.granddesignexposed.com/contents.html 

Fourteenth Rule. Although there is much truth in the assertion that no one can save himself without being predestined and without having faith and grace; we must be very cautious in the manner of speaking and communicating with others about all these things.

The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YC_luOfFWl0Bm0BWkbANKZGC1kkmdHQf/view?usp=sharing

Galatians 2

1599 Geneva Bible

2 1 That the Apostles did nothing disagree from his Gospel, 3 he declareth by the example of Titus being uncircumcised, 11 and also by his . . . the same against Peter’s dissimulation. 17 And so he passeth to the handling of our free justification by Christ, etc.

1 Then [a]fourteen years after, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and took with me Titus also.

2 And I went up by revelation, and declared unto them that Gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but particularly to them that were the chief, lest by any means I should run, or had run [b]in vain:

3 But neither yet Titus which was with me, though he were a Grecian, was compelled to be circumcised,

4 To wit, for the [c]false brethren which were craftily sent in, and crept in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage.

5 To whom we gave not place by [d]subjection for an hour, that the [e]truth of the Gospel might continue with [f]you.

6 But by them which seemed to be great, I was not taught (whatsoever they were in time passed, I am nothing the better: God accepteth no man’s person) for they that are the chief, did add nothing to me above that I had.

7 But contrariwise, when they saw that the Gospel over the [g]uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the Gospel over the circumcision was unto Peter:

8 (For he that was mighty by Peter in the Apostleship over the circumcision, was also mighty by me toward the Gentiles.)

9 And when James, and Cephas, and John, knew of the grace that was given unto me, which are [h]counted to be pillars, they gave to me and to Barnabas the right [i]hands of fellowship, that we should preach unto the Gentiles, and they unto the circumcision,

10 Warning only that we should remember the poor: which thing also I was diligent to do.

11 ¶ And when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to his [j]face: for he was to be condemned.

12 [k]For before that certain came from James, he ate with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision.

13 And the other Jews played the hypocrites likewise with him, insomuch that Barnabas was [l]led away with them by that their hypocrisy.

14 But when I saw, that they went not the [m]right way to the [n]truth of the Gospel, I said unto Peter before all men, If thou being a Jew, livest as the Gentiles, and not like the Jews, why [o]constrainest thou the Gentiles to do like the Jews?

15 [p]We which are Jews [q]by nature, and not [r]sinners of the Gentiles,

16 Know that a man is not justified by the works of the Law, but by the faith [s]of Jesus Christ, even we, I say, have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the Law, because that by the works of the Law, [t]no flesh shall be justified.

17 [u]If then while [v]we seek to be made righteous by Christ, we ourselves are found sinners, is Christ therefore the minister of sin? God forbid.

18 For if I build again the things that I have destroyed, I make myself a trespasser.

19 For I through the Law am dead to the [w]Law, that I might live unto God.

20 I am crucified with Christ, but I live, yet not [x]I anymore, but Christ liveth in me: and in that I now live in the [y]flesh, I live by the faith in the Son of God, who hath loved me, and given himself for me.

21 [z]I do not abrogate the grace of God: for if righteousness be by the Law, then Christ died without a [aa]cause.

Footnotes

Galatians 2:1 Now he showeth how he agreeth with the Apostles with whom he granteth that he conferred touching his Gospel which he taught among the Gentiles, fourteen years after his conversion, and they allowed it in such sort, that they constrained not his fellow Titus to be circumcised, although some tormented themselves therein, which traitorously laid wait against him, but in vain: neither did they add the least iota that might be to the doctrine which he had preached, but contrariwise they gave to him and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship and acknowledged them as Apostles appointed of the Lord to the Gentiles.

Galatians 2:2 Unfruitfully, for as touching his doctrine, Paul doubted not of it, but because there were certain reports cast abroad of him, that he was of another opinion than the rest of the Apostles were, which thing might have hindered the course of the Gospel, therefore he labored to remedy this sore.

Galatians 2:4 Which by deceit, and counterfeit holiness crept in amongst the faithful.

Galatians 2:5 By submitting ourselves to them, and betraying our own liberty.

Galatians 2:5 The true and sincere doctrine of the Gospel, which remained safe from being corrupt with any of these men’s false doctrines.

Galatians 2:5 Under the Galatians’ name, he understandeth all nations.

Galatians 2:7 Among the Gentiles, as Peter had to preach it among the Jews.

Galatians 2:9 Whom alone and only, these men count for pillars of the Church, and whose name they abuse to deceive you.

Galatians 2:9 They gave us their hand in token that we agreed wholly in the doctrine of the Gospel.

Galatians 2:11 Before all men.

Galatians 2:12 Another most vehement proof of his Apostleship, and also of that doctrine, which he had delivered concerning free justification by faith only because that for this thing only he reprehended Peter at Antioch, who offended herein, in that for a few Jews’ sakes which came from Jerusalem he played the Jew, and offended the Gentiles which had believed.

Galatians 2:13 By example rather than by judgment.

Galatians 2:14 Word for word, with a right foot which he setteth against halting and dissembling which is backward.

Galatians 2:14 He calleth the truth of the Gospel both the doctrine itself, and also the use of doctrine, which we call the practice.

Galatians 2:14 He saith they were constrained, which played the Jews by Peter’s example.

Galatians 2:15 The second part of this Epistle, the state whereof is this: we are justified by faith in Christ Jesus without the works of the Law: which thing he propoundeth in such sort, that first of all he meeteth with an objection, (for I also saith he am a Jew, that no man may say against me, that I am an enemy to the Law) and afterward, he confirmeth it by the express witness of David.

Galatians 2:15 Although we be Jews, yet we preach justification by faith because we know undoubtedly, that no man can be justified by the Law.

Galatians 2:15 So the Jews called the Gentiles, because they were strangers from God’s covenant.

Galatians 2:16 In Jesus Christ.

Galatians 2:16 No man, and in this word (flesh) there is a great vehemence, whereby is meant that the nature of man is utterly corrupt.

Galatians 2:17 Before he goeth any further, he meeteth with their objection, which abhorred this doctrine of free justification by faith, because say they, men are by this means withdrawn from the study of good works. And in this sort is the objection, If sinners should be justified through Christ by faith without the Law Christ should approve sinners, and should as it were exhort them thereunto by his ministry. Paul answereth that this consequence is false, because that Christ destroyeth sin in the believers: For so saith he do men flee unto Christ, through the terror and fear of the Law that being quit from the curse of the Law and justified, they may be saved by him, that together therewithall, he beginneth in them by little and little, that strength and power of his which destroyeth sin: to the end that this old man being abolished by the virtue of Christ crucified, Christ may live in them, and they may consecrate themselves to God. Therefore if any man give himself to sin after he hath received the Gospel, let him not accuse Christ nor the Gospel, but himself, for that he destroyeth the work of God in himself.

Galatians 2:17 He goeth from justification to sanctification, which is another benefit we receive by Christ, if we lay hold on him by faith.

Galatians 2:19 The Law that terrifieth the conscience, bringeth us to Christ, and he only causeth us to die to the Law indeed, because that by making us righteous, he taketh away from us the terror of conscience, and by sanctifying us, causeth through the mortifying of lust in us, that it cannot take such occasion to sin by the restraint which the Law maketh, as it did before, Rom. 7:10-11.

Galatians 2:20 The same that I was before.

Galatians 2:20 In this mortal body.

Galatians 2:21 The second argument taken of an absurdity: If men may be justified by the Law, then was it not necessary for Christ to die.

Galatians 2:21 For there was no cause why he should do so.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians%202&version=GNV

The Bhagavad Gita (IPA: [ˌbʱɐɡɐʋɐd ˈɡiːtɑː], Sanskrit: भगवद्गीता, romanized: bhagavad-gītā, lit. 'God's Song'),[a] often referred to as the Gita (IAST: gītā), is a 700-verse Hindu scripture, which is part of the epic Mahabharata. The Bhagavad Gita is dated to the second half of the first millennium BCE. Even though Hinduism includes several denominations, the Gita holds a unique pan-Hindu influence as the most prominent sacred text. It has been noted that if there is any one text that comes near to embodying the totality of Hindu thought, it is the Bhagavad Gita.

The Bhagavad Gita is set in a narrative framework of dialogue between the Pandava prince Arjuna and his charioteer guide Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu. At the start of the Kurukshetra War between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, Arjuna despairs thinking about the violence and death the war will cause in the battle against his kin and becomes emotionally preoccupied with a dilemma. Wondering if he should renounce the war, Arjuna seeks the counsel of Krishna, whose answers and discourse constitute the text. Krishna counsels Arjuna to "fulfil his Kshatriya (warrior) duty" for the upholding of dharma. The Krishna–Arjuna dialogue covers a broad range of spiritual topics, touching upon moral and ethical dilemmas, and philosophical issues that go far beyond the war that Arjuna faces. The setting of the text in a battlefield has been interpreted as an allegory for the struggles and vagaries of human life.

Summarizing the Upanishadic conceptions of God, the Gita posits the existence of an individual self (Atman) and the supreme self (Brahman) within each being.[note 1] The dialogue between the prince and his charioteer has been interpreted as a metaphor for an immortal dialogue between the human self and God.[note 2] Commentators of Vedanta read varying notions in the Bhagavad Gita about the relationship between the Atman (individual Self) and Brahman (supreme Self); Advaita Vedanta affirms on the non-duality of Atman and Brahman, whereas Vishishtadvaita asserts qualified non-dualism with Atman and Brahman being related but different in certain aspects, while Dvaita Vedanta declares the complete duality of Atman and Brahman.[note 3]

As per traditional accounts of Hindu mythology, the Gita was written by Ganesha, as told to him by the sage Veda Vyasa. The Gita forms the chapters 23–40 in book 6 of the Mahabharata called the Bhishma Parva, and forms a central text in the Vaishnava Hindu tradition and prasthanatrayi. The Gita covers the core beliefs of Hinduism; including difference between the transient body and the eternal self, the transmigration of self, actuality of gunas, necessity of doing one's duties, and the importance of detachment. The text analyses the paths of Jñāna, Bhakti, Karma, and Rāja yogas for the purpose of Moksha (spiritual liberation) and asserts that the path of Bhakti (devotion) is the foremost and easiest of all.[note 4] Numerous classical and modern thinkers have written commentaries on the Gita with differing views on its essence and essentials.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagavad_Gita

Apollo[a] is one of the Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and light, poetry, and more. One of the most important and complex of the Greek gods, he is the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. He is considered to be the most beautiful god and is represented as the ideal of the kouros (ephebe, or a beardless, athletic youth). Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu.[3]

As the patron deity of Delphi (Apollo Pythios), Apollo is an oracular god—the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle and also the deity of ritual purification. His oracles were often consulted for guidance in various matters. He was in general seen as the god who affords help and wards off evil, and is referred to as Alexicacus, the "averter of evil".

Medicine and healing are associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his son Asclepius. Apollo delivered people from epidemics, yet he is also a god who could bring ill health and deadly plague with his arrows. The invention of archery itself is credited to Apollo and his sister Artemis. Apollo is usually described as carrying a silver or golden bow and a quiver of silver or golden arrows.

As the god of mousike,[b] Apollo presides over all music, songs, dance, and poetry. He is the inventor of string-music and the frequent companion of the Muses, functioning as their chorus leader in celebrations. The lyre is a common attribute of Apollo. Protection of the young is one of the best attested facets of his panhellenic cult persona. As a kourotrophos, Apollo is concerned with the health and education of children, and he presided over their passage into adulthood. Long hair, which was the prerogative of boys, was cut at the coming of age (ephebeia) and dedicated to Apollo. The god himself is depicted with long, uncut hair to symbolise his eternal youth.

Apollo is an important pastoral deity, and he was the patron of herdsmen and shepherds. Protection of herds, flocks and crops from diseases, pests and predators were his primary rustic duties. On the other hand, Apollo also encouraged the founding of new towns and the establishment of civil constitutions, is associated with dominion over colonists, and was the giver of laws. His oracles were often consulted before setting laws in a city. Apollo Agyieus was the protector of the streets, public places and home entrances.[4]

In Hellenistic times, especially during the 5th century BCE, as Apollo Helios he became identified among Greeks with Helios, the personification of the Sun.[5] Although Latin theological works from at least 1st century BCE identified Apollo with Sol,[6][7] there was no conflation between the two among the classical Latin poets until 1st century CE.[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo

Apollo Creed is a fictional character from the Rocky franchise, portrayed by Carl Weathers. He appears in the first four Rocky films, serving as the main antagonist in Rocky and Rocky II, and later becoming one of the protagonists in Rocky III and Rocky IV. Sylvester Stallone, the writer and star of the Rocky series, stated that Jack Johnson was the inspiration for the character of Apollo Creed.[1]

Protagonist Rocky Balboa—Creed's rival in Rocky and Rocky II—faces underdog odds, but he views Creed with respect, pointedly refusing the prodding of a reporter to trash-talk Apollo Creed, even after he publicly taunts Balboa by remarking "he's great."[2][3][4][5]

Apollo Creed

Born August 17, 1942

Los Angeles, California, U.S.

Died August 31, 1985 (aged 43)

Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.

Nationality American

Statistics

Weight(s) Heavyweight

Stance Orthodox

Boxing record

Total fights 49

Wins 47

Wins by KO 46

Losses 2 (1 loss in World Championship bout with Rocky Balboa and 1 in exhibition with Ivan Drago)

Draws 0

In Rocky, Creed cleans out his division of serious challengers but decides to fight Balboa for the fan spectacle as well as for the implied symbolism of fighting a man with an Italian background.[6] In the sequel film Rocky II, Balboa and Creed find themselves evenly matched in the ring, becoming friends in Rocky III. Creed had many nicknames, including "The King of Sting," "The Dancing Destroyer," "The Prince of Punch," "The Count of Monte Fisto," and most prominently "The Master of Disaster."[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Creed

The Vishera (Russian: Вишера) is a river in Perm Krai, Russia, a left bank tributary of the Kama. It is 415 kilometres (258 mi) long, and its drainage basin covers 31,200 square kilometres (12,000 sq mi).[1][2] The Vishera freezes in late October or early November and stays under the ice until the end of April. There are diamond deposits in the basin of the Vishera.

The Vishera used to be part of the Cherdyn Route and is still considered one of the most picturesque rivers of the Urals. It starts on the extreme northeast of Perm Krai, near the border with the Komi Republic and Sverdlovsk Oblast. It flows on the west foothills of Ural Mountains and is a mountain river for most of its length. There are many rapids and shoals in the channel and many rocks along its banks.

The Vishera Nature Reserve is along the upper reaches of the river.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishera_(Perm_Krai)

The Vishera Review: AMD FX-8350, FX-8320, FX-6300 and FX-4300 Tested

by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 23, 2012 12:00 AM EST

Last year's launch of AMD's FX processors was honestly disappointing. The Bulldozer CPU cores that were bundled into each Zambezi chip were hardly power efficient and in many areas couldn't significantly outperform AMD's previous generation platform. Look beyond the direct AMD comparison and the situation looked even worse. In our conclusion to last year's FX-8150 review I wrote the following:

"Single threaded performance is my biggest concern, and compared to Sandy Bridge there's a good 40-50% advantage the i5 2500K enjoys over the FX-8150. My hope is that future derivatives of the FX processor (perhaps based on Piledriver) will boast much more aggressive Turbo Core frequencies, which would do wonders at eating into that advantage."

The performance advantage that Intel enjoyed at the time was beyond what could be erased by a single generation. To make matters worse, before AMD could rev Bulldozer, Intel already began shipping Ivy Bridge - a part that not only increased performance but decreased power consumption as well. It's been a rough road for AMD over these past few years, but you have to give credit where it's due: we haven't seen AMD executing this consistently in quite a while. As promised we've now had multiple generations of each platform ship from AMD. Brazos had a mild update, Llano paved the way for Trinity which is now shipping, and around a year after Zambezi's launch we have Vishera: the Piledriver based AMD FX successor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishera_(Perm_Krai)  

Vishera AMD FX-8350 Black Edition

https://aminoapps.com/c/pc-master-race/page/item/vishera-amd-fx-8350-black-edition/m066_vPS0I6E8zLExq2JrwQ77kpdRPb5w

Ad maiorem Dei gloriam or Ad majórem Dei glóriam,[note 1] also rendered as the abbreviation AMDG, is a Latin quote which can be translated as "For the greater glory of God." It has been used as a rallying cry for Catholics throughout history, especially during the Thirty Year's War, and is currently the motto of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), an order of the Catholic Church.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_maiorem_Dei_gloriam 

Devī (/ˈdeɪvi/;[1] Sanskrit: देवी) is the Sanskrit word for 'goddess'; the masculine form is deva. Devi and deva mean 'heavenly, divine, anything of excellence', and are also gender-specific terms for a deity in Hinduism.

The concept and reverence for goddesses appears in the Vedas, which were composed around the 2nd millennium BCE. However, they did not play a vital role in that era.[2] Goddesses such as Durga, Kali, Lakshmi, Parvati, Radha, Saraswati and Sita have continued to be revered in the modern era.[2] The medieval era Puranas witness a major expansion in mythology and literature associated with Devi, with texts such as the Devi Mahatmya, wherein she manifests as the ultimate truth and supreme power. She has inspired the Shaktism tradition of Hinduism. Further, Devi is viewed as central in the Hindu traditions of Shaktism and Shaivism.[2][3]

Etymology

Devi and deva are Sanskrit terms found in Vedic literature around the 3rd millennium BCE. Deva is masculine, and the related feminine equivalent is devi.[4] Monier-Williams translates it as 'heavenly, divine, terrestrial things of high excellence, exalted, shining ones'.[5][6] Etymologically, a cognate of devi is Latin dea.[7] When capitalised, Devi maata refers to the mother goddess in Hinduism.[8] Deva is short for devatā and devi for devika.[5]

According to Douglas Harper, the etymological root dev- means "a shining one", from *div-, "to shine", it is an Indo-European cognate of the Greek dios, Gothic divine and Latin deus (Old Latin deivos); see also *Dyēus.[9]

A synonym for the word Devi in the Vedas is Bhagavati. Bhagavatī (Devanagari: भगवती, IAST: Bhagavatī), is an Indian epithet of Sanskrit origin, used as an honorific title for goddesses in Hinduism and Buddhism. In Hinduism, it is primarily used to address the goddesses Lakshmi and Durga. In Buddhism, it is used to refer to several Mahayana Buddhist female deities, like Cundā.[10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devi

Kamala Devi Harris[b] (born October 20, 1964) is an American politician and attorney who has been the 49th and current vice president of the United States since 2021, serving under president Joe Biden. She is the first female U.S. vice president, making her the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history. She is also the first African American and first Asian American vice president. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the party's nominee in the 2024 presidential election, becoming the second woman nominated for president by a major U.S. political party. From 2017 to 2021, she represented California in the U.S. Senate, and was attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017. From 2004 to 2011, she served as district attorney of San Francisco.

Born in Oakland, California, Harris graduated from Howard University and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She began her law career in the office of the district attorney of Alameda County. She was recruited to the San Francisco District Attorney's Office and later to the office of the city attorney of San Francisco. She was elected district attorney of San Francisco in 2003 and attorney general of California in 2010, and reelected as attorney general in 2014. Harris was the first woman, the first African American, and the first Asian American to hold each office.

Harris was the junior U.S. senator from California from 2017 to 2021. She won the 2016 Senate election, becoming the second Black woman and first South Asian American U.S. senator. As a senator, Harris advocated for stricter gun control laws, the DREAM Act, federal legalization of cannabis, and reforms to healthcare and taxation. She gained a national profile while asking pointed questions of Trump administration officials during Senate hearings, including Trump's second Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.

Harris sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination in 2019, but withdrew from the race before the primaries. Biden selected her as his running mate, and their ticket defeated the incumbent Republican president and vice president, Donald Trump and Mike Pence, in the 2020 election. Presiding over an evenly split Senate upon entering office, Harris played a crucial role as president of the Senate. She cast more tie-breaking votes than any other vice president, which helped pass bills such as the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 stimulus package and the Inflation Reduction Act. After Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential election, Harris launched her campaign with Biden's endorsement and soon became the presumptive nominee. She lost the general election to Trump.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris 

Thomas Wilson was the President of the United States of America and the father of Laura Wilson. Prior to the events of the film, Thomas's wife, Dorothy, died. Thomas Wilson was a casualty of the 2012 Apocalypse.

Staying behind instead of going to the Arks, President Wilson survived the 9.4 magnitude earthquake that rocked Washington D.C., but was killed by a mega-tsunami that sent the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy crashing into the White House.

Biography

In 2009, after Adrian Helmsley returned from India with information about the upcoming apocalypse before 2012, the President called for a G8 meeting in British Columbia. He told all the heads of state at the meeting about the oncoming disaster.

President Wilson is seen again before Adrian Helmsley took off for Yellowstone, telling him that the apocalypse was going to happen sooner than expected, along with introducing Adrian to his daughter Laura who came to ask him about her colleague's death in Paris. He comes clean to her and tells her about the Ark project.

Adrian returned from Yellowstone and confirmed the worst, giving the news to the G8 nations the next day. President Wilson recommends that they leave immediately.

At some point during the day, President Wilson decided to stay behind in D.C. Adrian tried to convince him to evacuate, but he tells Adrian about his wife, regrets, and how Adrian's life was worth more than "A dozen old politicians". He went on to give a final address to the nation, which was seen by those in New York City, Las Vegas, the Genesis, and Air Force One.

Death

The Yellowstone ash cloud went on hit DC that night, the White House and its grounds getting turned into a refugee camp. President Wilson went out to find a person whose daughter has been separated. However, a 9.4 earthquake hits DC, destroying the Washington Monument and knocking President Wilson, and everyone else outside, unconscious. Minutes later, President Wilson woke up, and watched as a tsunami, which is carrying the USS John F Kennedy, washed into D.C. The carrier crashed into the White House, killing President Wilson and anyone else who was in the building.

Trivia

Thomas Wilson was portrayed by Danny Glover.

Thomas Wilson's surname is also the real name of former real-life, President Woodrow Wilson.

His daughter, Laura, mentioned that if he was on the Ark, he would open the gates for the survivors who are unable to afford the Ark's funding.

In reality, Barack Obama was the president at the time of 2012, having to defeat Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential elections.

It's unknown if the events of the film occurs during his first or second term.

There is also no mention of an election taking place.

Wilson choosing to stay behind in Washington instead of evacuating to the Arks may be a nod to American businessman, bootlegger, and prospector Harry Raniel Truman, refusing to leave his home near Mt. St. Helens when he was told to do so before the 1980 eruption.

https://2012movie.fandom.com/wiki/Thomas_Wilson

Fire as the agent of Truth

Asha Vahishta is closely associated with fire. Fire is "grandly conceived as a force informing all the other Amesha Spentas, giving them warmth and the spark of life."[27] In Yasht 17.20, Angra Mainyu clamours that Zoroaster burns him with Asha Vahishta. In Vendidad 4.54-55, speaking against the truth and violating the sanctity of promise is detected by the consumption of "water, blazing, of golden color, having the power to detect guilt."

This analogy of truth that burns and detecting truth through fire is already attested in the very earliest texts, that is, in the Gathas and in the Yasna Haptanghaiti. In Yasna 43–44, Ahura Mazda dispenses justice through radiance of His fire and the strength of aṣ̌a. Fire "detects" sinners "by hand-grasping" (Yasna 34.4). An individual who has passed the fiery test (garmo-varah, ordeal by heat), has attained physical and spiritual strength, wisdom, truth and love with serenity (Yasna 30.7). Altogether, "there are said to have been some 30 kinds of fiery tests in all."[28] According to the post-Sassanid Dadestan i denig (I.31.10), at the final judgement a river of molten metal will cover the earth. The righteous, as they wade through this river, will perceive the molten metal as a bath of warm milk. The wicked will be scorched. For details on aṣ̌a's role in personal and final judgement, see aṣ̌a in eschatology, below.

Fire is moreover the "auxiliary of the truth," "and not only, as in the ordeal, of justice and of truth at the same time."[11] In Yasna 31.19, "the man who thinks of aṣ̌a, [...] who uses his tongue in order to speak correctly, [does so] with the aid of brilliant fire". In Yasna 34-44 devotees "ardently desire [Mazda's] mighty fire, through aṣ̌a." In Yasna 43–44, Ahura Mazda "shall come to [Zoroaster] through the splendour of [Mazda's] fire, possessing the strength of (through) aṣ̌a and good mind (=Vohu Manah)." That fire "possesses strength through aṣ̌a" is repeated again in Yasna 43.4. In Yasna 43.9, Zoroaster, wishing to serve fire, gives his attention to aṣ̌a. In Yasna 37.1, in a list of what are otherwise all physical creations, aṣ̌a takes the place of fire.

Asha Vahishta's association with atar is carried forward in the post-Gathic texts, and they are often mentioned together. In Zoroastrian cosmogony, each of the Amesha Spentas represents one aspect of creation and one of seven primordial elements that in Zoroastrian tradition are the basis of that creation. In this matrix, aṣ̌a/arta is the origin of fire, Avestan atar, which permeates through all Creation. The correspondence then is that aṣ̌a/arta "penetrates all ethical life, as fire penetrates all physical being."[12]

In the liturgy Asha Vahishta is frequently invoked together with fire. (Yasna l.4, 2.4, 3.6, 4.9, 6.3, 7.6, 17.3, 22.6, 59.3, 62.3 etc.). In one passage, fire is a protector of aṣ̌a: "when the Evil Spirit assailed the creation of Good Truth, Good Thought and Fire intervened" (Yasht 13.77)

In later Zoroastrian tradition, Asha Vahishta is still at times identified with the fire of the household hearth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asha 

The Sphere (officially Große Kugelkaryatide N.Y., also known as Sphere at Plaza Fountain, WTC Sphere or Koenig Sphere) is a monumental cast bronze sculpture by German artist Fritz Koenig (1924–2017).[2]

The world's largest bronze sculpture of modern times stood between the Twin Towers on the Austin J. Tobin Plaza of the World Trade Center in New York City from 1972 until the September 11 attacks. The work, weighing more than 20 tons, was the only remaining work of art to be recovered largely intact from the ruins of the collapsed Twin Towers. After being dismantled and stored near a hangar at John F. Kennedy International Airport, the sculpture was the subject of the 2001 documentary Koenig's Sphere. Since then, the bronze sphere has become a memorial for the attacks.

The sculpture was installed in Battery Park between 2002 and 2017, when the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey moved it to Liberty Park, overlooking the September 11 Memorial and its original location.[2] The sculpture, rededicated at its permanent location on August 16, 2017, has been kept in the badly damaged condition it was found in after the September 11 attacks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sphere

Go Set the World on Fire

Ignatius often ended his letters to Jesuits going to the missions with the expression ite, inflammate omnia—“go, set the world on fire.” What did he mean by that? Maybe it was just a rah-rah expression, the kind of thing a football coach says when he tells the team to go out on the field and “kick butt.” But I don’t think so. I don’t think Ignatius had a cheerleader’s personality. He was a serious man who used words carefully.

“Set the world on fire” is a curious expression. Fire destroys; the world is already on fire with hatred, resentment, greed, lust, and other passions that consume individuals and whole societies. But fire purifies too; in the Bible, flames burn up the weeds and the refiner’s fire purifies gold. Then there are the tongues of fire that that descend on the Apostles at Pentecost, bringing the power of the Holy Spirit. I think this image might have been in Ignatius’s mind when he told his Jesuits to set the world on fire. He wanted everyone to be set afire with passion and zeal for the Kingdom of God.

No wonder “set the world on fire” has become something of a motto of Jesuit ministries. The book of Jesuit/Ignatian prayer that Loyola Press publishes is called Hearts on Fire. The Jesuit General Congregation’s decree on the Jesuit charism is called “A Fire That Kindles Other Fires.” That’s the kind of fire that’s worth spreading.

https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/go-set-the-world-on-fire/

The large Latin inscription on the façade reads: Clemens XII Pont Max Anno V Christo Salvatori In Hon SS Ioan Bapt et Evang. This abbreviated inscription translates as: "The Supreme Pontiff Clement XII, in the fifth year [of his Pontificate, dedicated this building] to Christ the Savior, in honor of Saints John the Baptist and [John] the Evangelist".[5] The inscription indicates, with its full title (see below), that the archbasilica was originally dedicated to Christ the Savior and, centuries later, rededicated in honor of Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist. Christ the Savior remains its primary dedication, and its titular feast day is 6 August, the Transfiguration of Christ. As the cathedral of the pope as bishop of Rome, it ranks superior to all other churches of the Catholic Church, including Saint Peter's Basilica.

Name

The archbasilica's Latin name is Archibasilica Sanctissimi Salvatoris ac Sancti Ioannis Baptistae et Ioannis Evangelistae ad Lateranum,[6] which in English is the Archbasilica of the Most Holy Savior and Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist at the Lateran, and in Italian Arcibasilica [Papale] del Santissimo Salvatore e Santi Giovanni Battista ed Evangelista in Laterano.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archbasilica_of_Saint_John_Lateran#Lateran_Palace 

Himmler used the Jesuits as the model for the SS, since he found they had the core elements of absolute obedience and the cult of the organisation.[59][60] Hitler is said to have called Himmler "my Ignatius of Loyola".[59] As an order, the SS needed a coherent doctrine that would set it apart.[61] Himmler attempted to construct such an ideology, and deduced a "pseudo-Germanic tradition" from history.[61] Himmler dismissed the image of Christ as a Jew and rejected Christianity's basic doctrine and its institutions.[62] Starting in 1934, the SS hosted "solstice ceremonies" (Sonnenwendfeiern) to increase team spirit within their ranks.[63] In a 1936 memorandum, Himmler set forth a list of approved holidays based on pagan and political precedents meant to wean SS members from their reliance on Christian festivities.[64] In an attempt to replace Christianity and suffuse the SS with a new doctrine, SS-men were able to choose special Lebenslauffeste, substituting common Christian ceremonies such as baptisms, weddings and burials. Since the ceremonies were held in small private circles, it is unknown how many SS-members opted for these kind of celebrations.[65]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology_of_the_SS 

From modest beginnings the SS (Schutzstaffel; Protection Squadrons), became a virtual state within a state in Nazi Germany, staffed by men who perceived themselves as the “racial elite” of Nazi future.

In the Nazi state, the SS assumed leading responsibility for security, identification of ethnicity, settlement and population policy, and intelligence collection and analysis. The SS controlled the German police forces and the concentration camp system. The SS conceived and implemented plans designed to restructure the ethnic composition of eastern Europe and the occupied Soviet Union.

From 1939, the SS assumed responsibility for “solving” the so-called Jewish Question; after 1941, its leadership planned, coordinated and directed the so-called Final Solution of the Jewish Question. This “solution” was the annihilation of the European Jews, which we now refer to as the Holocaust

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ss 

2 §1. The character and charism of the Society of Jesus arise from the Spiritual Exercises which our holy father Ignatius and his companions went through. Led by this experience, they formed an apostolic group rooted in charity, in which, after they had taken the vows of chastity and poverty and had been raised to the priesthood, they offered themselves as a HOLOCAUST to God,[2] so that serving as soldiers of God beneath the banner of the cross and serving the Lord alone and the Church his spouse under the Roman Pontiff, the vicar of Christ on earth,[3] they would be sent into the entire world[4] for the defense and propagation of the faith and for the progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine. [5]

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

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[666] 6. 1On the side of the superior general, what will aid toward this union of hearts are the qualities of his person [G], to be treated in Part IX [723-25], with which he will perform his office, 2which is to be for all the members a head from which the influence required for the end sought by the Society ought to descend to them all. 3It is thus from the general as head that all authority of the provincials should flow, from the provincials that of the local superiors, and from the local superiors that of the individual members. 4And from this same head, or at least by his commission and approval, should likewise come the appointing of missions. And the same should apply to communicating the graces of the Society. 5For the more the subjects are dependent upon their superiors, the better will the love, obedience, and union among them be preserved."

The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms

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"Head:

1. See Illness, mental

2. The superior general, head of the Society [666]"

page 463

The CONstitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

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Revelation 13:18

New International Version

"18 This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.[a] That number is 666."

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2013%3A18&version=NIV

BULL of Pope Boniface VIII promulgated November 18, 1302

For, according to the Blessed Dionysius, it is a law of the divinity that the lowest things reach the highest place by intermediaries. Then, according to the order of the universe, all things are not led back to order equally and immediately, but the lowest by the intermediary, and the inferior by the superior. Hence we must recognize the more clearly that spiritual power surpasses in dignity and in nobility any temporal power whatever, as spiritual things surpass the temporal. This we see very clearly also by the payment, benediction, and consecration of the tithes, but the acceptance of power itself and by the government even of things. For with truth as our witness, it belongs to spiritual power to establish the terrestrial power and to pass judgement if it has not been good. Thus is accomplished the prophecy of Jeremias concerning the Church and the ecclesiastical power: ‘Behold to-day I have placed you over nations, and over kingdoms‘ and the rest. Therefore, if the terrestrial power err, it will be judged by the spiritual power; but if a minor spiritual power err, it will be judged by a superior spiritual power; but if the highest power of all err, it can be judged only by God, and not by man, according to the testimony of the Apostle: ‘The spiritual man judgeth of all things and he himself is judged by no man‘ [1 Cor 2:15]. This authority, however, (though it has been given to man and is exercised by man), is not human but rather divine, granted to Peter by a divine word and reaffirmed to him (Peter) and his successors by the One Whom Peter confessed, the Lord saying to Peter himself, ‘Whatsoever you shall bind on earth, shall be bound also in Heaven‘ etc., [Mt 16:19]. Therefore whoever resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordinance of God [Rom 13:2], unless he invent like Manicheus two beginnings, which is false and judged by us heretical, since according to the testimony of Moses, it is not in the beginnings but in the beginning that God created heaven and earth [Gen 1:1]. Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff."

https://www.papalencyclicals.net/bon08/b8unam.htm

[529] C. 1The entire purport of this fourth vow of obedience to the pope was and is with regard to missions; 2and this is how the bulls should be understood where they speak of this obedience in all that the sovereign pontiff may command and wherever he may send one, and so on."

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf 

Historical Institute of the Society of Jesus: a Roman work of the entire Society, 304 §2

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

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LII-

THE INQUISITION IN MINUTE DETAIL: THE FIRST HOLOCAUST

Cruelties committed by the Inquisition. Those who survive the first tortures are tied dom upon their backs, a large cauldron turned upside down is placed upon their naked stomachs, with a number of large dormice underneath. A fire is lighted upon the top of the cauldron, which enrages the dormice; and as they are unable to creep under the edges of the cauldron, they burrow into the entrails of the victim

OR NEARLY SIX CENTURIES, WROTE PETER DE ROSSA. "Not one of the eighty popes (from the thirteenth century to nineteenth) said a word against the diabolical machinery of the inquisition, rather they cach added their own cruel touch to the awful machinery of death. The Church of Rome, at times, even waded through the blood of Roman Catholics to get to the Protestant "heretics."

THE

The real object of the Inquisition, it has been asserted. "was to discover errors in doctrine, to stop them from being propagated, and endeavour to enlighten and to win back those who had been perverted by the apostles of error." So says a Catholic apologist. We are even told that "the popes were obliged to employ stratagem in order to protect the penitent heretics from the merciless severity of the Inquisition." But, the fact is that the Holy See, in 1215 at the fourth Lateran Council, in the

1 Peter de Rossa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy (1988).

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third canon of that Council declared that "the heretics who are condemned shall be handed over to the secular arm, in order that they may receive their merited punishment," in the MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE MIDDLE AGES! Indeed, one historian, giving a detailed account of trials before the tribunals of the Inquisition, tell us that the civil punishment was only inflicted after the day of the Church's mock trial

called the Auto-da-fe ("Act of Faith").

In 1252, the pope even made a decree stipulating the exact details of how the prisoners of the Inquisition were to be tortured-including children from the age of twelve and upwards.

But for all its horrors, it was popish Spain that refined to an art the punishments Catholics invented to use against those who refused to accept their faith. In 1481, during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. the Inquisition was provided with "a new code of regulations," giving it even more formidable powers:

It was then that it got the name of The Holy Office, and was superintended by a grand inquisitor-general and a council.

When the Holy Office had a heretic, or anyone suspected of being one, lafter being arrested, its agents stripped the accused person of all he had about his person, and took a detailed inventory of his clothing and furniture.... The money so seized, whether in gold or silver, belonged by right to the tribunal, and went to defray the costs of the procedure. These formalities over, the accused...was taken to prison.

Of prisons, the Inquisition had several kinds: 1st, the common prison, in which were confined persons accused merely of ordinary misdemeanour, and who, consequently, were allowed to communicate with their families and friends; 2nd, the prison of mercy or of penitence, which was set apart for those who were to be detained only temporarily; 3rd, the intermediate prison, reserved for those who had committed some ordinary delinquency which brought them within the jurisdiction of the Holy Office; 4th, the secret prison, the inmates of which were kept in solitary confinement.

lon] the day of trial.... after a long interrogatory linterrogation). if the prisoner failed to avow his guilt, he was taken to the torture chamber, preceded by the Inquisitor and the four mystenous men in black.... Here he was again exhorted to abjure his errors, and, if these fresh entreaties were powerless to move lum, he was handed over to the torturer, who put him to the torture with one of the four agencies employed by justice-the cord, the scourge, fire, or water."

P. L. Jacob, (a Catholic) Military and Religious Life in the Middle Ages, (London: Chapman & Hall, 1874), pp. 435-436.

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Reader, we cannot find expressions strong enough to characterise the brutish, raw violence to which the Church of Rome had recourse with a view to establishing her anti-christian 'religion. John Lothrop Modey, speaking of papal persecution in the Netherlands, says: "Upon February 16, 1568, a sentence of the Holy Office (the Inquisition) condenmed ALL the inhabitants of the Netherlands to death as heretics.... The mos concise death warrant that was ever framed. THREE MILLIONS of people, men, women and children, were sentenced to the scaffold..." Although not put into full effect, "Alva's contemporary Grotius states that 100,000 genuine martyrs suffered death in the Netherlands for conscience' sake. Gibbon declared that this number, executed in a single province and a single reign, far exceeded that of the primitive martyrs in the space of three centuries and of the Roman Empire."

More than fifty million members of the human family are estimated to have been slaughtered under the sanction of the Catholic Church (Dowling, History of Rome. Bk. 8). How could such a degraded, inhumane, barbaric system claim to be the religion of Jesus Christ? Where in the Bible does it say the life of the heretic should be taken?

In Rome today, you will find, on the outside the Lateran Church, a plaque depicting Pope Innocent VIII's 1487 order against the Christian Waldenses (Vaudois or Albigenses) in these words: "That abominable sect of malignant to be crushed like venomous snakes." Why? They would not accept the pope as their head. R. W. Thompson writes:

The Waldenses were burned; they were cast into damp and bomd dungeons; they were smothered in crowds in mountain cavems mothers and babes, and old men and women together; they were sen out into exile in the winter night, unclothed and unfed, to climb the snowy mountains; they were hurled over the rocks; their houses and lands were taken from them; their children were stolen to be indoctrinated with the religion which they abhorred. Rap individuals were sent among them to strip them of their propert persecute and exterminate them. Thousands... old men, wouse and children, WERE HUNG, QUARTERED, BROKEN UPON THE WHEEL, OR BURNED ALIVE and their property confiscated...

John Lothrop Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic, Vol. I (London:

John Chapman, 1856), part 3, chap. 2, p. 626.

4 W.L. Bruckman, THE GLORY OF BELGIUM (London, New York, Toronto: Hodder & Stoughton), see footnote on pp. 10-11.

5 John Dowling, History of Romanism (1871), Bk. 6, chap. 5: sect. 62. 6 R.W. Thompson, The Papacy and the Civil Power, op. cit., p. 416.

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The Inquisition In Minute Detail...

In 1209 (July 22nd), Pope Innocent III caused the Waldenstan town of Beziers to be taken by assault and made a scene of terrible camage: his "crusaders gave no quarter-twenty thousand inhabitants were massacred without distinction of age or sex, and seven thousand were burnt in a church in which they had taken refuge."

In a few decades, hundreds of thousands of Waldenses dissenters were killed by the Pope's army. Two cities, of considerable size, Beziers (Braziers) and Carcasone, were destroyed; their occupants thrown from the top of high cliffs, hanged, DISEMBOWELED, PIERCED THROUGH REPEATEDLY, drowned, put out to be tom by dogs, burnt alive, and even crucified! One victim, "Paul Garnier was slowly sliced to pieces at Rora. Thomas Margueti was mutilated in an indescribable manner at Miraboco, and Susan Jaquin cut in bits at La Torre, Sara Rostagnol was slit open from the legs to the bosom, and so left to perish on the road between Eyral and Lucerna. Anne Charbonnier was impaled and carried thus on a pike, AS A STANDARD, from San Giovanni to La Torre. Daniel Rambaud, at Paesano, had his nails torn off, then his fingers chopped off, then his feet and his hands, then his arms and his legs, with each successive refusal on his part to abjure the Gospel.... In June, 1556, Barthelemi Hector, of Poitiers, was burned at Turin, for having sold copies of the Bible to the shepherds of the Alps."

Said the same author. "On Saturday, 24th April, 1655, at four o'clock in the morning, the signal for a general massacre of the Vandois was given: Sick persons and old people, men and women, were burned alive in their houses, or hacked in pieces, or mutilated in horrible ways. or flayed alive, or exposed bound and dying to the sun's noontide heat, or to ferocious animals; some were stripped naked, bound up in the form of a ball... and then rolled over precipices... Next, alter massacre and abduction, came incendiarismr. monks and priests, and other zealous propagandists, went about with lighted torches and projectiles, burning down the houses.... lal sister had seen her brother's mouth filled with gunpowder, and the head then blown to atoms...." These people, "so simple, so Christian, were made a prey to the DEMON of popery, cruel in its superstition BEYOND THE CRUELTY OF THE

MOST BARBAROUS SAVAGES.

TP. L. Jacob, Military and Religious Life..., op. cit., p. 430. Alex Muston (transl.), A History of the Waldenses: The Israel of the Alps

2nd edn. (London: Ingram, Cooke, & Co., 1853), p. 46.

9 Ibid., p. 138.

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I shall next quote from one who was intimately acquainted with the Inquisition, Don Juan Antonio Llorente, derived from orginal documents in the archives of the Supreme Tribunal and those of the Subterranean Tribunals of the Holy Office. I quote Llorente from his Critical History of the Inquisition in Spain, cited in page 207 of History of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, Vol. 1, by William H. Prescott

Don Juan Antonio Llorente is the only writer who has succeeded in completely lifting the veil from the dread mysteries of the Inquisition. It is obvious how very few could be competent to this task, since the proceed. ings of the Holy Office were shrouded in such impenetrable secrecy, that even the prisoners who were arraigned before it, as has been already stated, were kept in ignorance of their own processes. Even such of its functionaries, as have at different times pretended to give its transactions to the world, have confined themselves to an historical outline, with meagre notices of such parts of its internal discipline as might be safely disclosed to the public.

Llorente was secretary to the tribunal of Madrid from 1790 to 1792. His official station consequently afforded him every facility for an acquaint- ance with the most recondite affairs of the Inquisition; and, on its suppres sion at the close of 1808, he devoted several years to a careful investigation of the registers of the tribunals, both of the capital and the provinces, as well as of such other original documents contained within their archives, as had not hitherto been opened to the light of day.

Llorente thus speaks in his Preface:--

In order to write an exset history, it was necessary to be an Inquisitor, or Se entary of the Inquisition. In this way alone could be seen the bulls of the pope the orders of the kings, the decisions of the council of the Inquisition, the original trials and other papers of its archives. Perhaps I am the only one, who at the pre sent time can poss all of these documents. I was Secretary of the Inquisition of the Court of Madrid, in the years 1789, 1790, and 1791. I knew its establishment sofficiently to consider it vicious in its origin, constitution, and laws, in spite of the apologetic writings in its favour. I immediately devoted myself to the collection of papers, abridging the most voluminous, but copying literally all that was impert ant. My perseverance in this labour, and in that of collecting all the suppressed books and pamphlets that I could find among the depositories of former inquisitor provided me with a great sumber of interesting documents. I at last obtained the whole of the archives in 150), when the tribunal was abolished. I hope that I shall not be thought arrogant is mying, that I alone can satisfy the cariosity of th who wish to know the trae tory of the Inquisition of Spain. I merely mean, that supply in a great degree, my want of talent" I hop

In the early chapters of his work. Llorente gives a sketch of the ancient Inquisition, from its origin in 1203, down to the estab lishment of the modern tribunal by Ferdinand V. in 1481. Llo rente, with all his opportunities, was able to collect bat meagre details of the ancient Inquisition: its existence during the dark ages being unfavourable to critical inquiry.

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The Inquisition In Minute Detail...

To begin to understand the scale of atrocity of the inquisitions, consider the career of Torquemada (1420-1498), Grand Inquisitor of Spain. During his 18- year term, well over 100,000 heresy cases were tried in Spain alone, of which 97.322 were imprisoned and/or lost their property, at least 90,000 were torrared (many to death) and 10.220 were burned. These are numbers so large they seem incredible, but which were given by Llorenie, the Spanish historian of the Imp sition, who was well-qualified to judge their accuracy. If we take only half of Torquemada's rate of 5975 victims per year (people imprisoned, robbed, tor tured or killed by the Church) and multiply it for the 6 major Western Christian powers (Spain, France. England, Germany, Italy, Slavic countries) over 500 years (roughly 1150-1650), we reach a figure of nearly 9,000,000 victims of the various inquisitions. This does not include groups slaughtered in Europe by crusaders, or by general decree. It also does not include those threatened, harassed, lynched or punished without trial, such as known Jews. These victims add millions more to the body count. We can easily say that Christian Inquisitions killed at least 10 million, and cruelly ruined the lives of at least 10 million more.

Sober reader, the Seventh chapter of Daniel has been precisely fulfilled in the Catholic Church: "The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth... and shall devour the whole earth.... tread it down, and break it to pieces."

I quote next Grattan Guiness Romanism and the Reformation, 1881:

Stay, I will take you to the Inquisition. You shall enter its gloomy portals; you shall walk through its dark passages; you shall stand in its infernal torture-chamber; you shall hear the cries of some of its victims; you shall listen to their very words. What agonies have been suffered in these somber vaults, unseen by any human eyes save those of fiendish inquisitors! What cries have been uttered in this dismal place which has never reached the open world in which we live. Locked doors shut them in; stone walls stifled them. No sound escaped, not even that of a faint and distant moan. But now and then a victim found release; one and another have come forth from the torture-chamber pale and tremblingly, maimed and mutilated, to tell the things they experienced when in the hands of the holy inquisitors. We shall call in some of these as witnesses.

This book is Limborch's History of the Inquisition. It tells the story of its origin seven hundred years ago.... it describes its ministers and methods, its vicars, assistants, notaries, judges, and other officials. It describes the power of the inquisitors, and their manner of proceeding. It unveils their dread tribunal; opens their blood-stained records; describes their dungeons, the secret tortures they unflicted. the extreme, merciless, unmitigated tortures, and also the public... burning of heretics. What a record! What a world of tyranny and intolerable anguish compressed into that one word-the Inquisition!

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CODEWORD BARBELON Bk 2

Tyranny over the conscience! Men in the name of Jesus Christ stretching and straining, maiming and mangling their fellow men, to compel them to call light darkness, and darkness light. To bow down to man and worship him as God; to call the teaching of Chris beress, and the teachings of antichrist Divine! Tremendous was the power of that dread[ed] tribunal. In Spain and Portugal it completely crushed the Reformation. No secrets could be withheld from the inquisitors; hundreds of persons were often apprehended in one day, and in consequence... from their examinations under torture, thousands more were apprehended.

the inquisition [cells were filled and emptied again and ag torture-chamber was a hell. The most excruciating engines wer employed to dislocate the limbs of even tender women. Thousands were burned at the stake. The gospel was gagged and crushed....

"The place of torture," says a Spanish historian, quoted by Limborch, Page 217, "is generally an underground and very dri room.... There is a tribunal erected in it in which the inquisitor inspector, and secretary sit. When the candles are lighted, and the person to be tortured brought in, the executioner, who is waiting for him, makes an astonishing and dreadful appearance. He is covered all over with a black linen garment down to his feet and tied close to his body. His head and face are all concealed with a long black carl, only two little holes being left in it for him to see through.

All this is intended to strike the miserable wretch with greater terror in mind and body, when he sees himself going to be tortured by the hands of one who thus looks like the very devil.

Today, the infallible Church of Rome would have us to believe that such atrocities were the product of darker, less civilized times and that she has changed. But if she has changed' WHAT WAS SHE BEFORE?

TORTURE BY Ut

For more, see Juan Antonio Llorente's Critical History of the Inquisition in Spain 189

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"The Inquisition In Minute Detail: The First Holocaust" 

Codeword Barbelon book Two 

by P.D. Stuart

https://www.facebook.com/billy.dunn.50767/posts/pfbid023VqYNt4iwNSk8BREzesUxR1gPEDTrmnE648pn3nATw2NNfWCjamzEtr9zdXMcftkl

Revelation 18

1599 Geneva Bible

18 2 The horrible destruction of Babylon set out.  11, 16, 18 The merchants of the earth, who were enriched with the pomp and luxuriousness of it, weep and wail:  20 but all the elect rejoice for that just vengeance of God.

1 [a]And after these things, I saw another [b]Angel come down from heaven, having great power, so that the earth was lightened with his glory,

2 And he cried out mightily with a loud voice, [c]saying, It is fallen, it is fallen, Babylon that great city, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of all foul spirits, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

3 For all nations have drunken of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich of the abundance of her pleasures.

4 [d]And I heard another voice from heaven say, [e]Go out of her, my people, that ye be not [f]partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues:

5 For her sins are [g]come up into heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

6 [h]Reward her, even as she hath rewarded you, and give her double according to her works: and in the cup that she hath filled to you, fill her the double.

7 Inasmuch as she glorified herself, and lived in pleasure, so much give ye to her torment and sorrow: for she saith [i]in her heart, I sit being a queen, and am [j]no widow, and shall [k]see no mourning.

8 Therefore shall her plagues come at [l]one day, death, and sorrow, and famine, and she shall be burnt with fire: for that God which condemneth her, is a strong Lord,

9 And the [m]kings of the earth shall bewail her, and lament for her, which have committed fornication, and lived in pleasure with her, when they shall see that smoke of that her burning,

10 And shall stand afar off for fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city: for in one hour is thy judgment come.

11 [n]And the merchants of the earth shall weep and wail over her: for no man buyeth their ware anymore.

12 The ware of gold, and silver, and of precious stone, and of pearls, and of fine linen, and of purple, and of silk, and of scarlet, and of all manner of Thynewood, and of all vessels of ivory, and of all vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and of iron, and of marble,

13 And of cinnamon, and odors, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and servants, and souls of men.

14 ([o]And the [p]apples that thy soul lusted after, are departed from thee, and all things which were fat and excellent, are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more.)

15 The merchants of these things which were waxed rich, shall stand afar off from her, for fear of her torment, weeping and wailing.

16 And saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen and purple, and scarlet, and gilded with gold, and precious stones, and pearls.

17 [q]For in one hour so great riches are come to desolation. And every shipmaster, and all the people that occupy ships and shipmen, and whosoever traffic on the sea, shall stand afar off.

18 And cry, when they see that smoke of that her burning, saying, What city was like unto this great city?

19 And they shall cast dust on their heads, and cry, weeping, and wailing, and say, Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships on the sea by her coastlines: for in one hour she is made desolate.

20 [r]O heaven, rejoice of her, and ye holy Apostles and Prophets: for God hath punished her, to be revenged on her for your sakes.

21 [s]Then a mighty Angel took up a stone, like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, With such violence shall that great city Babylon be cast and shall be found no more.

22 [t]And the voice of harpers, and musicians and of pipers, and trumpeters shall be heard no more in thee, and no craftsman, of whosoever craft he be, shall be found anymore in thee: and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more in thee.

23 And the light of a candle shall shine no more in thee: and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth: and with thine enchantment were deceived all nations.

24 And in her was found the [u]blood of the Prophets [v]and of the Saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.

Footnotes

Revelation 18:1 The second place (as I said before, 17:1) of the history of Babylon, is of the woeful fall and ruin of that whore of Babylon. This historical prediction concerning her, is threefold. The first a plain and simple foretelling of her ruin in three verses, the second a figurative prediction by the circumstances, thence, unto verse 20. The third, a confirmation of the same by sign or wonder, unto the end of the Chapter.

Revelation 18:1 Either Christ the eternal word of God the Father (as often elsewhere) or a created Angel, and one deputed unto this service: but thoroughly furnished with greatness of power, and with light of glory, as the ensign of power.

Revelation 18:2 The prediction or foretelling of her ruin, containing both the fall of Babylon, in this verse, and the cause thereof uttered by way of allegory concerning her spiritual and carnal wickedness, that is, her most great impiety and injustice, in the next verse: her fall is first simply declared of the Angel: and then the greatness thereof is showed here by the events, when he saith it shall be the seat and habitation of devils, of wild beasts and of cursed souls, as of old, Isa. 13:21, and often elsewhere.

Revelation 18:4 The second prediction, which is of the circumstances of the ruin of Babylon: of these there are two kinds: one going before it: as that beforehand the godly are delivered unto the ninth verse: the other following upon her ruin, namely the lamentation of the wicked and rejoicing of the godly, unto the twentieth verse.

Revelation 18:4 Two circumstances going before the ruin, are commanded in this place: one is, that the godly depart out of Babylon: as I mentioned, chapter 12, to have been done in time past, before the destruction of Jerusalem: this charge is given here, and in the next verse. The other is, that every one of them occupy themselves in their own place, in executing the judgment of God, as it was commanded the Levites of old, Exod. 32:27, and that they sanctify their hands unto the Lord, verses 6, 7, 8.

Revelation 18:4 Of his commandment there are two causes to avoid the contagion of sin, and to shun the participation of those punishments that belong thereunto.

Revelation 18:5 He useth a word which signifieth the following of sins one after another, and rising one another in such sort, that they grew at length to such an heap that they came up even to heaven.

Revelation 18:6 The provocation of the godly, and the commandment of executing the judgments of God, stand upon three causes which are here expressed: the unjust wickedness of the whore of Babylon, in this verse her cursed pride opposing itself against God, which is the fountain of all evil actions, verse 7, and her most just damnation by the sentence of God, verse 8.

Revelation 18:7 With herself.

Revelation 18:7 I am full of people and mighty.

Revelation 18:7 I shall taste of none.

Revelation 18:8 Shortly and at one instant.

Revelation 18:9 The circumstances following the fall of Babylon, or the consequences thereof (as I distinguished them, verse 4) are two. Namely the lamentation of the wicked unto verse 19: and the rejoicing of the godly, verse 20. This most sorrowful lamentation, according to the person of them that lament, hath three members, the first whereof is the mourning of the kings and mighty men of the earth, in two verses. The second is the lamentation of the merchants that traffic by land thence unto verse 16. The third is the wailing of those that merchandise by sea, verses 16, 17, 18. In every [one] of these the cause and manner of their mourning is described in order, according to the condition of those [that] mourn, with observation of that which best agreeth unto them.

Revelation 18:11 The lamentation of those that trade by land, as I distinguished immediately before.

Revelation 18:14 An apostrophe, or turning of the speech by imitation, used for more vehemence, as if those merchants, after the manner of mourners should in passionate speech speak unto Babylon, though now utterly fallen and overthrown. So Isa. 12:9, and in many other places.

Revelation 18:14 By this is meant that season which is next before the fall of the leaf, at what season fruits ripen, and the word signifieth such fruits as are longed for.

Revelation 18:17 The manner of mourning used by them that trade by sea.

Revelation 18:20 The other consequent unto the other ruin of Babylon, is the exultation or rejoicing of the godly in heaven and in earth, as was noted, verse 9.

Revelation 18:21 The third prediction, as I said verse 1, standing of a sign, and the interpretation thereof: the interpretation thereof is in 2 sorts, first by a simple propounding of the thing itself, in this verse, and then by declaration of the events in the verses following.

Revelation 18:22 The events are two, the one of them opposite unto the other for amplification sake. There shall be, saith he, in Babylon no mirth nor joy at all, in this and the next verse, but all heavy and lamentable things from the bloody slaughters of the righteous and the vengeance of God coming upon it for the same.

Revelation 18:24 That is shed by bloody massacres, and calling for vengeance.

Revelation 18:24 That is, proved and found out, as if God had appointed a just inquiry, concerning the impiety, unnaturalness and injustice of those men.

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