Catholic Church in China: The Strange Case of Bishop Ji Weizhong

02/05/2025 He Yuyan

Once again, the CCP announced it had “elected” a bishop three months before the Pope appointed him. The Papal mandate was not mentioned in the consecration ceremony.

by He Yuyan

According to the Vatican-China deal of 2018, renewed for another four years in 2024, the CCP and the Holy See should agree on the appointment of new Catholic bishops, although details of the deals are secret.

In several cases, we see the following scheme at work, which is unlikely to correspond to the deal. First, the CCP “elects” a bishop and publicly announces the news. Second, for several months there is no reaction from the Holy See, which strongly suggests it had not previously been informed of the election. Third, after a hiatus of months the Pope “appoints” the bishop—whose election the CCP had already announced months earlier. Fourth, a consecration ceremony is held where the Papal mandate is not mentioned at all as if it were irrelevant, while a letter of approval is read by the “Bishops’ Conference” of the Patriotic Catholic Church, which is nor recognized as such by Rome.

The last such case concerns Bishop Ji Weizhong. The CCP informed that on July 19, 2024, Ji has been elected as bishop of the Diocese of Lüliang. Interestingly, at that date the Diocese of Lüliang did not exist. It was a desire of the CCP that such a diocese was created as part of the CCP’s plan to reduce the number of Catholic Chinese dioceses and adapt them to China’s administrative divisions. On July 19, 2024, for the Vatican Lüliang was still part of the Diocese of Fenyang. No bishop of Lüliang could be validly elected because there was no Diocese of Lüliang.

As in other previous cases, most notably the one involving the new bishop of Shanghai, some under-the-table negotiations should have followed and on January 20, 2025, the official Bulletin of the Holy See announced that “on October 28, 2024,” Pope Francis had suppressed the ancient Diocese of Fenyang, erected the new Diocese of Lüliang, and appointed Father Ji Weizhong as Bishop of Lüliang.

Another interesting question is why, if the Pope had taken the decisions of “ratifying” the CCP decisions on the dioceses and the bishop on October 28, 2024, the corresponding press release was issued only on January 20, 2025.

The answer is that it was urgent to “legitimize” the public consecration of Bishop Ji Weizhong, which happened precisely on January 20. As usual, at the consecration ceremony no Papal approval or mandate was mentioned, while a letter of the Chinese Bishops’ Conference was read, as if this non-Vatican-recognized body were the source of the bishop’s legitimacy rather than the Pope.

The Vatican-China deal of 2018 on the appointment of bishops continues to function in a rather curious way.

https://bitterwinter.org/catholic-church-in-china-the-strange-case-of-bishop-ji-weizhong/

A famous Jesuit General Michael Angelo Tambourini once boasted, in 1720, to the Duke of Brissac: " See, My Grace [my Lord], from this room, I govern not only Paris, but China; not only China, but the whole world, without anyone knowing how it is managed."

"Andrew Steinmetz, History of the Jesuits, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Lea and Blanchard Publ.,/New York: Richard Bentley, 1848), pp.107, 168-169; see also, Constitution of the Jesuits, edited by Paris Paulin (1843); Eugene Sue (Marie Joseph), The Wandering Jew, (London: Chapman and Hall, 1844/ New York; Harper & Brothers,, 1845), Bk I, Chap. XV, P. 183; see also, p. 618, and Bk. II, p. 21; Abrige de I'Hist. Eccles. de Racine, Chap. xii. P. 77." page 129 Chapter XII "Unhesitating Obedience: The General And The Holy Office" Codeword Barbelon book One by P.D. Stuart

"Steinmetz was fourteen years a Jesuit; see also, Constitutions of the Jesuits, ed. by P. Paulin (1843); Morale Pratique Des Jesuites: Histoire De La Persecution De deux Saints, Vol. I (Cologne, 1669), pp. 50 and 51."

"Epilogue-For Such A Time As This"

Pope Francis Lord of the World

by P.D. Stuart

The meaning "container made of tin," especially "can for preserving meats, fruits, etc." is by 1795; U.S. use tended to favor can (n.) for this. Tin-can is attested from 1770 as "can made of tin;" as naval slang for "destroyer," by 1937.

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

Can. 666 In the use of means of social communication, necessary discretion is to be observed and those things are to be avoided which are harmful to one’s vocation and dangerous to the chastity of a consecrated person."

TITLE II. RELIGIOUS INSTITUTES (Cann. 607 - 709)

CODE OF CANON LAW

https://www.vatican.va/.../cic_lib2-cann607-709_en.html

Tián (田), or T'ien in Wade-Giles is a Chinese surname.[1] An alternative transliteration of "田" from Cantonese is Tin, from Hokkien is Thinn. It appeared in the Hundred Family Surnames text from the early Song dynasty. It also means "field". In 2019 it was the 34th most common surname in mainland China.[2]

The same character is Jeon in Korean hanja.

Origins

perhaps from a fief called Tian (田), which in Old Chinese is pronounced similar to (陳) in Qi state. Assuming pronunciation of Tian in Old Chinese remains identical to today, the closest pronunciation of 陳 should be 'Tan', the Hokkien form. This surname was granted to Chen Wan (陳完), a prince in the State of Chen, who fled to Qi to escape persecution. The Qi clan also went on to rule Qi for many generations.[1]

possibly dates even further back to the post name of an official in charge of the management of farmlands who served the Shang dynasty

adopted in place of the Chinese surname Huang (黃) by the son of the official Huang Zicheng during the Ming dynasty, in order to avoid persecution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tian_(surname)

Tin Cup is a 1996 American romantic comedy and sports film co-written and directed by Ron Shelton,[3] and starring Kevin Costner and Rene Russo with Cheech Marin and Don Johnson in major supporting roles.[2] The film received generally positive reviews from critics and performed moderately at the box office, grossing $75.8 million against its $45 million budget. Costner received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

Plot

Roy "Tin Cup" McAvoy is a former golf prodigy who lost his chance to become a professional golfer when he attempted a risky shot for the final round of the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament rather than taking a safer shot. He owns a ramshackle driving range in West Texas, where he drinks and hangs out with his pal Romeo Posar and their friends.

One day Dr. Molly Griswold, a clinical psychologist, arrives looking for a golf lesson. She has been dating David Simms, a top professional golfer who played with Roy at the University of Houston. Roy is attracted to Molly.

The next day, Simms shows up at Roy's trailer ahead of a local benefit tournament. Roy thinks he is being invited to play, but Simms actually wants to hire him as a caddie. During the round, Roy needles Simms about laying up instead of having the nerve to take a 230-yard shot over a water hazard. A bet among the other players is made, and Simms fires Roy after he makes the long shot.

To get even with Simms and prove his worth to Molly, Roy decides to try to qualify for the U.S. Open. He makes a play for Molly. She turns him down but offers to be his sports psychologist in exchange for golf lessons.

In the first qualifying round, with Romeo as his caddie, Roy's game is excellent, but he insists on playing recklessly. They fight, and Romeo quits. Despite breaking most of his clubs in a tantrum, Roy advances to the final qualifying round. Without Romeo, he barely succeeds at the sectional qualifying round, earning a spot in the U.S. Open. Romeo returns and helps Roy with some swing problems.

On the first day of the U.S. Open, Roy, playing hungover, shoots a horrendous 83. Meanwhile, Molly sees Simms' unpleasant side and decides she wants to be with Roy. With renewed confidence, he shocks the golf world by making the cut with a round record at 10 under par. Roy's third round is also excellent and moves him into contention.

On the last day of the tournament, Roy is in a three-way battle to win. For the fourth day in a row, he takes a shot that repeatedly fails to keep the ball out of the water hazard. On his twelfth and final shot, facing disqualification, he reaches the green and gets the ball into the hole. Roy has blown a shot at winning the U.S. Open, but Molly reassures him that people will always remember his amazing shot.

Back in Texas, Molly tells Roy that he automatically qualified for next year's Open. They kiss passionately as the movie ends.

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

Race cup

a cup given as a prize to the victor in a race.

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Race+cup

Jimmy Carter in 1980: ‘Moon looks like a golf course’ compared to Mount St. Helens

Dec 29, 2024, 2:46 PM | Updated: 2:47 pm

BY FELIKS BANEL

Local historian

After Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, President Jimmy Carter declared all of Washington a federal disaster area and then paid a visit to see the devastation for himself.

Carter, who served just one term in office, died after a long illness on Dec. 29, 2024. He was 100 years old.

While the 39th Commander-in-Chief first entered hospice in 2023, it seemed like a good reason to look back to when Carter visited Washington and Oregon a few days after the 1980 eruption and a great excuse to listen to vintage audio clips from the somewhat unusual presidential visit to the Pacific Northwest.

Air Force One landed at the Air National Guard Base at Portland International Airport on the evening of Wednesday, May 21, 1980. The entourage traveled by motorcade to a briefing at the Gifford Pinchot National Forest headquarters in Vancouver, Washington, and then to the Marriott Hotel in Portland, Oregon, for the night.

The next morning, Carter, Washington Gov. Dixy Lee Ray, and other officials (and the news media) took off from the air base in a fleet of seven helicopters. For the next hour or so, they viewed mud and debris from the eruption clogging the Columbia River (near the mouth of the Cowlitz, which was also clogged) and blocking freight traffic in the busy corridor; flooding near Longview; homes in the Toutle Valley and other areas damaged by mudflows coming down the Toutle River; and the unimaginable devastation in the immediate vicinity of the volcano.

After the tour, the helicopters landed at Kelso Airport and then went by motorcade a few miles to Cascade Middle School in Longview (home since 1961, as everyone knows, to the mighty Cavaliers.)

School in the Longview/Kelso area had been canceled all week because of the eruption, but the gymnasium at Cascade had been converted into a Red Cross shelter for people who lost their homes or whose homes were now threatened. Carter met many of the 40 or so people staying at the shelter, listened to their stories, and offered words of support.

Longtime Sen. Warren Magnuson of Washington was also on the tour with Carter that day, and at one point, newspaper accounts say, he and Governor Ray tussled verbally over state versus federal funding required to aid in disaster recovery – Ray wanted federal dollars, Magnuson said the feds were broke.

This was 1980, after all, and the country was deep in an economic downturn, mired in the ongoing Iran hostage crisis, and on the brink of the United States’ boycott of the Summer Olympics in Moscow (in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan).

As it turned out, three of the highest-ranking elected officials who toured the volcano that day – Carter, Gov. Ray, and Sen. Magnuson – would lose their reelection bids later that year as the “Reagan landslide” radically changed Evergreen State politics (though Ray would lose earlier in the primary to Jim McDermott.)

But, those elections were still months away when, at the Kelso Airport, Carter made one of his most memorable comments about the devastation he’d witnessed from the helicopter.

“I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this before,” Carter told the gathered members of the media. “Somebody said it looked like a moonscape. The moon looks like a golf course compared to what’s out there.

“It is a horrible-looking sight.” Carter said.

More from Feliks Banel: How Seattle observed VE Day in 1945

Leaving Kelso, the entourage then headed back to Portland and the Marriott Hotel for a news conference. The president’s remarks made it very clear that what he had seen with his own eyes had made a deep impression.

“The absolute and total devastation of a region . . . encompasses about 150 (square) miles,” Carter said. “It’s the worst thing I have ever seen. It is literally indescribable, and it’s devastating.

“There is no way to prepare oneself for the sight that we beheld this morning,” the president continued. “I don’t know that … in recorded history in our nation, there has ever been a more formidable explosion.”

And even just four days after the deadly disaster which took the lives of 57 people, Carter was already looking ahead somewhat presciently, if sheepishly, to what would eventually become the reality of Mount St. Helens once the eruptive activity subsided.

“When safe places are fixed for tourists and others and scientists to come in and observe it,” the president said, “I would say there would be, if you’ll excuse the expression, a tourist attraction that would equal the Grand Canyon or something.”

“It’s an unbelievable sight,” he said.

Air Force One departed from Portland and headed back east. The jet touched down briefly in Spokane so the president could see the ash damage in Eastern Washington and meet with officials there before getting back on the plane and returning to Washington, D.C.

Editors’ note: This piece originally was published on May 18, 2023. It has been updated and republished since then.

Feliks Banel has served as KIRO Newsradio’s Resident Historian since 2015, and was originally hired by the radio station in 1991. Read more from Feliks here; subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here; and subscribe to Feliks’ Unsolved Histories podcast here. Feliks frequently posts about Northwest history on his Facebook page; follow him there for previews and updates. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks.

https://mynorthwest.com/history/president-carter-moon-golf-course-compared-mt-st-helens/3888183

Updated Nov. 22, 2023

Why Ivana Trump Was Buried at Bedminster Golf Course: 3 Theories

Portrait of Margaret Hartmann

By Margaret Hartmann, senior editor for Intelligencer who has worked at New York since 2012

Ivana Trump, former president Donald Trump’s first wife, died on July 14, 2022 at the age of 73, owing to injuries she suffered in an accidental fall on the “grand curving staircase” at her Upper East Side townhouse. Her funeral drew about 400 people and featured a gold-hued coffin, Secret Service agents, and loving remembrances from her three adult children as well as several friends. Then this icon of ’80s glamour and New York tabloid drama was laid to rest … at a New Jersey golf course?

Many found the decision to bury Ivana at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster puzzling. She is the first person to be buried at the former president’s New Jersey property, and the ground had to be consecrated so she could have a traditional Catholic burial.

A New York Post photographer scoped out the site shortly after Ivana was laid to rest and found that while her grave isn’t literally on the golf course, the whole vibe is surprisingly understated:

Photos taken by The Post Thursday show Trump’s grave alone against a bucolic scenery of trees and shrubbery. The grave looks upon a sprawling green space upon the country club’s vast estate.

The plot where Ivana was buried has a bouquet of more than two dozen white flowers and a plaque that reads in all capital letters Ivana Trump with the dates she was born and died.

The grave is in a place where golfers would not see it as they tee off for a round of golf. The small section of the club is below the backside of the first tee.

A little over a year later, the mystery persists. Photographs published by The Daily Mail on August 12, 2023 show that Ivana’s grave is marked with a small headstone, which “has become overgrown with grass and is barely visible.”

So what exactly is going on here? I have a few theories.

Theory 1: Trump really loves northern New Jersey.

If Trump National Golf Club Bedminster held a special place in Ivana’s heart, there’s no record of it. Donald bought the property in 2002, a full decade after their divorce was finalized. While Ivana maintained a friendship with her ex-husband through her final days, and her daughter, Ivanka, was married at the club, it does not appear that Ivana ever publicly praised the property.

There is, however, ample evidence that Donald Trump thinks Bedminster is a phenomenal place to be laid to rest. “Wouldn’t you want to be buried here?” he mused to The Wall Street Journal in 2015. The idea has been on his mind for at least 15 years. Back in 2007, Trump filed paperwork to build a windowless wedding chapel at Bedminster that would later be converted into a mausoleum for himself and his family.

Drawings filed with the Somerset County township called for what NJ.com described as a “19-foot-high, classical-style stone structure” with “four imposing obelisks surrounding its exterior and a small altar and six vaults inside. Locals balked at the proposal, which they deemed gaudy, and Trump withdrew the plan. Five years later, he came back with a new idea: Instead of a mausoleum, he would be buried at a large cemetery with more than 1,000 graves. “The idea, apparently, was that Trump’s golf-club members would buy the other plots, seizing the chance at eternal membership,” the Washington Post reported.

Facing continued opposition to his ghoulish ambitions, Trump revised his plans once again. In 2014, the Trump Organization filed paperwork to build two graveyards at Bedminster. One would have 284 lots for sale to the public, while the other would consist of just ten plots for Trump and his family near the first tee. The company’s filing with the state said Trump “specifically chose this property for his final resting place as it is his favorite property.”

In an October 2023 interview, Eric Trump revealed it was his father’s idea to have his mother laid to rest at the “family funeral plot.” “He was the one to say, you know, ‘I want her with us,’” Eric said. “It was pretty amazing again, you know, kind of a wife long removed — ex-wife long removed. He’s an incredible man. He’s got a heart of gold.”

Theory 2: Trump is running an elaborate tax scheme.

Some remain skeptical that Trump actually considers this the most fabulous piece of property he owns:

The Trump National Golf Club Bedminster on July 31. Photo: Jared C. Tilton/LIV via Getty Images

The average person might say Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s seaside Florida resort, is more spectacular, but they’re not looking at Bedminister through the eyes of a person with an alleged passion for tax avoidance. This tweet from Brooke Harrington, a professor of sociology at Dartmouth, sparked speculation that Bedminster’s real appeal as a graveyard lies in New Jersey tax law.

As a tax researcher, I was skeptical of rumors Trump buried his ex-wife in that sad little plot of dirt on his Bedminster, NJ golf course just for tax breaks.

So I checked the NJ tax code & folks...it's a trifecta of tax avoidance. Property, income & sales tax, all eliminated. pic.twitter.com/VDZBlDyuhQ

— Brooke Harrington (@EBHarrington) July 31, 2022

Indeed, as Insider reported, there are some surprising perks to being the proprietor of a New Jersey graveyard:

Under New Jersey state tax code, any land that is dedicated to cemetery purposes is exempt from all taxes, rates, and assessments. Cemetery companies are also specifically exempt from paying any real estate taxes, rates, and assessments or personal property taxes on their lands, as well as business taxes, sales taxes, income taxes, and inheritance taxes.

And the Trump family has definitely been pursuing the tax advantages of cemetery ownership. A document published by ProPublica shows that the Trump Family Trust sought to designate a property in Hackettstown, New Jersey, about 20 miles from Bedminster, as a nonprofit cemetery company back in 2016.

But there is reason to question this too-Trumpy-to-be-true allegation. First, all this cemetery business is unnecessary because he has already found a way to drastically reduce his Bedminster tax burden. When the Post’s David Farenthold looked into Trump’s cemetery obsession in 2017, he concluded it wouldn’t be very profitable as a business venture or a tax-avoidance scheme:

… the savings would hardly be worth the trouble. That’s because Trump had already found a way to lower his taxes on that wooded, largely unused parcel. He had persuaded the township to declare it a farm, because some trees on the site are turned into mulch. Because of pro-farmer tax policies, Trump’s company pays just $16.31 per year in taxes on the parcel, which he bought for $461,000.

According to a 2019 HuffPost analysis, Trump slashed his Bedminster tax bill by about $88,000 a year by keeping eight goats and farming 113 acres of hay on the property.

Is is possible that the cemetery business is some kind of backup tax- avoidance scheme? I suppose, but it doesn’t make a ton of sense to this humble TurboTax user.

Theory 3: Trump is just keeping it weird.

“It’s always been my suspicion that there’s something we don’t know” about Trump’s cemetery plan, Bedminster land-use board member Nick Strakhov told Farenthold in 2017.

It does seem we’re missing a key piece of the boneyard puzzle. But there is one thing we know about Trump now that wasn’t quite as apparent back then: He is a super-weird guy. He has managed to be weird with various kinds of paper, toilet bowls, aircraft carriers, and “dangerous fruit,” to name just a few of his proclivities. The thought of our inevitable demise brings out strange feelings and behavior in most people. Some of the rich plan to freeze themselves or shoot their remains into space; is it any surprise that Trump has some grandiose idea about how he and his family should be laid to rest?

“It’s never something you like to think about, but it makes sense,” Trump told the New York Post during his first attempt to make Bedminster a cemetery in 2007. “This is such beautiful land, and Bedminster is one of the richest places in the country.”

Trumpy commentary on the wealth of northern New Jersey aside, that sounds astonishingly well adjusted.

This piece was updated to include Eric Trump’s comments on his mother’s gravesite.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ivana-trump-buried-bedminster-3-theories.html

Operation Warp Speed (OWS) was a public–private partnership initiated by the United States government to facilitate and accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics.[1][2] The first news report of Operation Warp Speed was on April 29, 2020,[3][4][5] and the program was officially announced on May 15, 2020.[1] It was headed by Moncef Slaoui from May 2020 to January 2021 and by David A. Kessler from January to February 2021.[6] At the end of February 2021, Operation Warp Speed was transferred into the responsibilities of the White House COVID-19 Response Team.[7]

The program promoted mass production of multiple vaccines, and different types of vaccine technologies, based on preliminary evidence. Then there were clinical trials. The plan anticipated that some of these vaccines would not prove safe or effective, making the program more costly than typical vaccine development, but potentially leading to the availability of a viable vaccine several months earlier than typical timelines.[8]

Operation Warp Speed, initially funded with about $10 billion from the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) passed by the United States Congress on March 27, 2020,[1] was an interagency program that includes components of the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA); the Department of Defense; private firms; and other federal agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.[1]

History

President Donald Trump formally announced Operation Warp Speed on May 15, 2020, in the White House Rose Garden.

On May 15, 2020, President Donald Trump officially announced the public-private partnership.[4][1] The purpose of Operation Warp Speed was to coordinate Health and Human Services-wide efforts, including the NIH ACTIV[9] partnership for vaccine and therapeutic development, the NIH RADx[10] initiative for diagnostic development, and work by BARDA.[1]

Operation Warp Speed was formed to encourage private and public partnerships to enable faster approval and production of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic.[2] The name was inspired by terminology for faster-than-light travel used in the Star Trek fictional universe, evoking a sense of rapid progress.[11][12]

The Food and Drug Administration announced on June 30, 2020, that a vaccine would need to be at least 50% effective for diminishing the severity of COVID-19 symptoms to obtain regulatory and marketing approval.[13]

In January 2021, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced that the program was expected to undergo a restructure and renaming under the Biden administration.[14][15] Also in January 2021, Dr. Moncef Slaoui, former Operation Warp Speed lead, was told not to use the name Operation Warp Speed anymore.[16] At the end of February 2021, responsibilities of Operation Warp Speed were transferred into the White House COVID-19 Response Team.[7][17]

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

The Visions and Circles of Power

Transcript of audio tape from Betty J. Mills

http://educate-yourself.org/cn/bettymillsvisonsandcirclesofpowerjan1991.shtml

January 1991

The Visions and Circles of Power by Betty Mills (Jan. 1991)

http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/hoax/circlesofpower.htm

This is a transcript of a tape made by Betty J. Mills in January, 1991. Also see the transcript of Betty’s tape, that illustrates the influence wielded by leaders of the Conservative - Christian/Conservative "New Right" which, Betty asserts, has held the door open for the liberal agenda. An Open Letter to Members of Eagle Forum and Serge Monast's transcript on Project BlueBeam

The Visions and Circles of Power

by Betty J. Mills

My name is Betty J. Mills . It is January 1991. The title of this tape is The Vision and Circles of Power. This tape is undoubtedly the most difficult tape I have ever made and some of you may say it is also the most unbelievable. First, let me say, as I have said in my tape and booklets, when I discuss the Catholic Church, the Vatican, the Pope and the all-Catholic SMOM (Sovereign Military Order of Malta). I am not condemning Catholics and their faith. The Catholics' faith is their business. I only enter when it is political and a threat to the freedom of my grandchildren and all other children - and also when it is a threat to the restoration of the sovereignty of the United States of America and its Constitutional Republic.

Also, when I discuss the world policy makers or President George Bush [Sr.] and his administration and the war in the Gulf, I am in no way in opposition to our service men and service women. I honor and respect them. However, I am not behind the policy of president George Bush and his administration. I am not behind their policy which is the policy of the World Policymakers, whose dream was - and is - the New World Order.... and the war in the Gulf is a vitally important part of this plan.

Here is a question as part of a scenario. What would you believe or think?... what would you say and what would you do if ?... tomorrow your children came into the house screaming, "Mommy! Daddy! Come look at the sky!" You run outside and looking up at the sky you see a VISION. THE VISION could be the Virgin Mary. It could be Christ. It could be both or it could be some other [religious figure]. At this time you also hear a voice telling you that you will be receiving a message and that you must carry out the instructions you are given. Then other members of the family come out of the house and they inform you that they have seen the same VISION on television. You listen to the radio and you hear the message about THE VISION and other instructions that you are to follow. You try to call relatives and friends but you find that the phone lines are busy. Perhaps a recording will be giving some information. You learn from television and radio that THE VISION is being seen all over the world and the messages are being heard in the language of their country or area

The Struggle for World Dominion Between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Capitalist West

Now... let us return to the present and reality. It will lead us to a book written by Malachi Martin considered by many as the voice for Pope John Paul II. As I discuss Malachi Martin's book, it will lead us back to THE VISION. From August the 2nd, 1990 until the present ... January 1991 - it is less than a six-month period of time, but it certainly is a most historical time. During this short period of time, president George Bush implemented a vital part of the U.S. State Department plan 7277.

This is one of the final steps leading into the New World Order. President George Bush accomplished this when he placed the U.S. military into an International Military Force under the United Nations. We have nearly one-half million service men and women over in the sand, and they are functioning under United Nations' resolutions. President George Bush then announced the NEW WORLD ORDER. Following this came a startling book by Malachi Martin entitled Keys of This Blood. The jacket of this book tells us what the book is about. It says it is the "struggle for world dominion between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Capitalist West". I challenge that statement and will detail it later.

Simon & Schuster, the publishers of this book, call it "explosive" - and indeed it is. If the book had been written by just somebody, it would not have meant too much. However, the author of this book is Malachi Martin who is an eminent theologian and expert on the Catholic Church. He is a former Jesuit and a former professor at the Vatican Pontifical Biblical Institute. He served in Rome from 1958 to 1964.... and one thing to remember is that Malachi Martin made it very clear that Pope John Paul II has offered no objection to what he, Malachi Martin, has written. This fact certainly makes the book, Keys of This Blood "explosive" - as it was called by its publishers.

Following are my remarks and highlights of the book review of Simon & Schuster. If there is any doubt as to the New World Order meaning a One World Government, I would say that Malachi Martin's book and the book review verify the statement that the New World Order and a One World Government are one and the same. The book review states that before the end of the 1990's we will see the first One World Government that has ever existed in the society of nations. The Simon & Schuster book review shows that Malachi Martin's statements are startling and that he, Malachi Martin - for the first time - reveals the ongoing plans and policies of a reigning pope who is of course, at this time, Pope John Paul II. Malachi Martin exposes coveted Vatican intelligence data concerning the competition among these three major powers - as stated... the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev, the Capitalist West and Pope John Paul II with his world-wide Roman Catholic church. It is with the intent to set up and maintain the New World Order which Pope John Paul II expects to be in place before the end of the 1990's

"...Pope John Paul II as the Servant of Heaven's Grand Design"

Malachi Martin says the battle between the pope, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Capitalist West will be a "winner-take-all" battle. He says that it:

"will end in a global government being a New Economic and Political World Order that is so vast that it will have to be presided over by a super bureaucracy superior to all individual nations".

We must surely understand from those statements that this would mean the absolute end of any attempt of restoring the sovereignty of the United States of America and its Constitutional Republic with its freedom and independence - a freedom never before enjoyed by any country. Malachi Martin says that, outside of his rivals, few people see Pope John Paul II as he sees himself. He said that the Pope sees himself as a contender with the power and the determination to establish and maintain the New World Order. Malachi Martin says that Mikhail Gorbachev and the Capitalist West do not have what it takes to make them the winners. Malachi Martin says:

"the world at large must reckon with Pope John Paul II as the servant of Heaven's Grand Design."

I would say that sounds very "New Age". And... throughout the book Malachi Martin makes it a point to tell us that Pope John Paul II is a slave to the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. Also, after Pope John Paul II was shot he said he had a personal communication from heaven. After this communication from heaven, Pope John Paul II concluded that the Fatima message linked with his One World Government plans. I would agree with that statement. In fact, that is what I feared and wrote about five years ago. Malachi Martin says the other two contenders feel that their present moves are in the last stages on the road to a New World Order which is already in view. AND... he said that Pope John Paul II is waiting for an event that will separate human history and that the event is THE VISION. I believe he is absolutely correct in his thinking, although I do not believe that "the vision" comes from whence Malachi Martin says.

The Message of Fatima

At the time the people view THE VISION in the sky it is very possible that they will receive the third message of Fatima. For those of you who are not familiar with this third message of Fatima, I will give just a small sketch of the story. Space does not allow the telling of the story in detail. I would suggest that any who are not familiar with the story of Fatima... get the booklet and read the story. It should be available in most Catholic book stores.The third message of Fatima could well be one of the most important messages ever heard by the people on this earth because it can be used by the world policymakers to their advantage in implementing the New World Order. It was nearly five years ago that I became very concerned about the third message of Fatima being used by the world policy-makers. I wrote a bit on it. Yes... with the Pope being totally committed to the Virgin Mary (who is the lady of Fatima), with the Pope being the powerful religious partner of the world policy-makers and with the third message - being what the world policy-makers want it to be - the third message of Fatima could be absolutely overwhelming in their New World Order plan.

I labeled the Pope as a partner of the other two that Malachi Martin calls "adversaries" of the Pope. The Capitalist West, Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union and the Pope may be one another's adversaries at times. In a sense, while they may be adverse to one another at times, they are also at times one and the same. Now I will go back to the story of the Lady of Fatima. Fatima is a village in the center of the country of Portugal. It was near Fatima that three children saw "an angel" and later said they saw the blessed mother - the Virgin Mary. She gave them messages. Two of the messages were published. During this period of time when she was appearing before the children it was said that thousands of people viewed the sun zig-zagging in the sky. The one child, Lucia, grew to adulthood and became a nun. Lucia scribed a third message from the Virgin Mary which was eventually given to the Pope. It was to be revealed in 1960. It has not yet been revealed

When the Vision appears the Pope..."will control the Will and minds of men"

https://educate-yourself.org/cn/bettymillsvisonsandcirclesofpowerjan1991.shtml

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

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

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

[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." page 333

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

Jeremiah 17:9

1599 Geneva Bible

9 [a]The heart is deceitful and wicked above all things, who can know it?

Read full chapter

Footnotes

Jeremiah 17:9 Because the wicked have ever some excuse to defend their doings, he showeth that their own lewd imaginations deceive them, and bring them to these inconveniences: but God will examine their deeds by the malice of their hearts, 1 Sam. 16:7; 1 Chron. 28:9; Ps. 7:10; Jer. 11:20 and 20:12; Rev. 2:13.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah%2017%3A9&version=GNV

The union of minds and hearts: with respect to: performing the task of the head on behalf of the entire Society [666]; governing subjects well [667-69]; exempting Ours from obedience [663]; preparing for, summoning, and directing congregations [681, 682, 686, 689, 690, 691, 712, 716, 718, 755], 332. See also Formulas of congregations " page 512

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

Revelation 17:9-13

1599 Geneva Bible

9 [a]Here is the mind that hath wisdom, The [b]seven heads [c]are seven mountains, whereon the woman sitteth: [d]they are also seven Kings.

10 [e]Five are fallen, [f]and one is, [g]and another is not yet come: and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.

11 [h]And the beast that was, and is not, is even [i]the eighth, and is [j]one of the seven, and [k]all go into destruction.

12 [l]And the ten horns which thou sawest, are [m]ten kings, which yet have not received a kingdom, but shall receive power, as Kings [n]at one hour with the beast.

13 [o]These have one mind, and shall give their power and authority unto the beast.

Read full chapter

Footnotes

Revelation 17:9 An exhortation preparing unto audience, by the same argument, with that of Christ: He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Wherefore, for mine own part, I had rather read in this place, Let there be here a mind, etc. So the Angel passeth fully unto the second place of this description.

Revelation 17:9 Very children know what that seven hilled city is, which is so much spoken of, and whereof Virgil thus reporteth, And compasseth seven towers in one wall: that city it is, which when John wrote these things had rule over the kings of the earth: It was and is not, and yet it remaineth this day, but it is declining to destruction.

Revelation 17:9 This is the painting out of the beast by things present (as I said before) whereby S. John endeavored to describe the same, that he might both be known of the godly in that age, and be further observed and marked of posterity afterwards. This delineation hath one type, that is, his heads, but a double description or application of the type: one permanent from the nature of itself, the other changeable, by the working of men. The description permanent, is by the seven hills, in this verse, the other that fleeteth, is from the seven kings, verses 10, 11. And here it is worthy to be observed, that one type hath sometimes two or more applications, as seemeth good unto the holy Ghost to express either one thing by divers types, or divers things by one type. So I noted before, of the seven spirits, Rev. 1:4. Now this woman that sitteth upon seven hills, is the city of Rome, called in times past of the Greeks, … i. of seven tops or crests, and of Varro, septiceps, i. of her seven heads (as here) of seven heads, and of others, septicollis, i. standing upon seven hills.

Revelation 17:9 The beginning of these Kings or Emperors is almost the same with the beginning of the Church of Christ, which I showed before, Rev. 11:1. Namely from the year 35, after the passion of Christ, what time the Temple and Church of the Jews was overthrown. In which year it came to pass by the providence of God that that saying The beast was and is not, was fulfilled before that the destruction of the Jews immediately following came to pass. That was the year from the building of the city of Rome, 109, from which year S. John both numbered the Emperors which hitherto hath been, when he wrote these things, and foretelleth two others next to come: and that with this purpose, that when this particular prediction of foretelling of things to come, should take effect the truth of all other predictions in the Church might be the more confirmed. Which sign God of old mentioned this in the Law, Deut. 18, and Jeremiah confirmeth, Jer. 28:8.

Revelation 17:10 Whose names are these: the first, Servius Sulpicius Galba, who was the seventh Emperor of the people of Rome, the second Marcus Salvius Otho, the third Aulus Vitellius, the fourth, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, the fifth, Titus Vespasianus his son of his own name.

Revelation 17:10 Flavius Domitian son of the first Vespasian. For in the latter end of his days S. John wrote these things, as witnesseth Irenaus, Lib. 5 adversus hareses.

Revelation 17:10 Nerua. The Empire being now translated from the family of Flavius. This man reigned only one year, four months, and nine days, as the history writers do tell.

Revelation 17:11 This is spoken by the figure synecdoche, as much to say as that head of the beast which was and is not, because it is cut off, and Nerua in so short time extinguished. How many heads there were, so many beasts there seemed to be in one. See the like speech in Rev. 13.3

Revelation 17:11 Nerua Traianus, who himself in divers respects is called here the seventh and the eighth.

Revelation 17:11 Though in number and order of succession he be the eighth, yet he is reckoned together with one of these heads, because Nerua and he were one head. For this man obtained authority together with Nerua, and was Consul with him, when Nerua left his life.

Revelation 17:11 Namely, to molest with persecutions the Churches of Christ, as the histories do accord, and I have briefly noted, Rev. 2:10.

Revelation 17:12 The third place of this description as I said, verse 18, is a prophetical prediction of things to come which the beast should do, as in the words following S. John doth not obscurely signify, saying, which have not yet received the kingdom, etc. For there is an Antithesis or opposition between these kings, and those that went before. And first the persons are described, in this verse, then their deeds in the two verses following.

Revelation 17:12 That is, arising with their kingdoms out of the Roman beast: at such time as that political Empire began by the craft of the Popes greatly to fall.

Revelation 17:12 Namely, with the second beast whom we called before a false prophet, which beast, ascending out of the earth got unto himself all the authority and power of the first beast, and exerciseth the same before his face, as was said, Rev. 14:11, 12. For when the political Empire of the West began to bow downwards, there both arose those ten kings, and the second beast took the opportunity offered to usurp unto himself all the power of the former beast. These kings long ago, many have numbered and described to be ten and a great part of the events plainly testifieth the same in this our age.

Revelation 17:13 That is, by consent and agreement, that they may conspire with the beast, and depend upon his beck. Their story is divided into three parts, counsels, acts, and events. The counselors some of them consist in communicating of judgments and affections: and some in communicating of power, which they are said to have given unto this beast in this verse.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=revelation%2017%3A9-13&version=GNV

Cox Report

The Report of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China, commonly known as the Cox Report after Representative Christopher Cox, is a classified U.S. government document reporting on the People's Republic of China's covert operations within the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. The redacted version of the report was released to the public on May 25, 1999.

Committee created by the U.S. House of Representatives

The report was the work product of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China. This special committee, created by a 409–10 vote of the U.S. House of Representatives on June 18, 1998, was tasked with the responsibility of investigating whether technology or information was transferred to the People's Republic of China that may have contributed to the enhancement of the nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles or to the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction.

A similar investigation had already begun in the U.S. Senate under the leadership of Senator Fred Thompson (Republican-Tennessee). Thompson had opened his hearings on China's influence in America's 1996 presidential and congressional elections 11 months earlier (on July 8, 1997).

The Chairman of the committee was Republican Rep. Christopher Cox of California, whose name became synonymous with the committee's final report. Four other Republicans and Democrats served on the panel, including Representative Norm Dicks, who served as the ranking Democratic member. The committee's final report was approved unanimously by all 9 members. The redacted version of the report was released to the public May 25, 1999.

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

Pope Francis Lord of the World by P.D. Stuart

Case No. 25 PO 00002 3G

PO Rec No.: 323314

254400044

FILED

2025 JAN-7 PM 4:58 JUSTICE PEACE

IN THE JUSTICE COURT OF DAYTON TOWNSHIP

JOSHUA JAMES COX

Applicant,

VS.

BILLY DUNN

Adverse Party.

COUNTY OF LYON, STATE OF NEVADA

TEMPORARY PROTECTION ORDER AGAINST STALKING OR HARASSMENT

Expiration: This order was issued by the Court above on January 7, 2025 and will expire

on FEBRUARY 21, 2025 at 11:59 pm unless the Court orders otherwise. Hearing to Extend:

There will be a hearing to determine whether to extend this order on FEBRUARY 18, 2025 at 3:00 pm at the Court listed above.

If you do not attend, the court may rule against you.

The Applicant filed a verified application for a protective order. The Court has jurisdiction over this matter. See NRS 200.591, et seq. The Court finds that stalking, aggravated stalking and/or harassment has occurred. Accordingly, and good cause appearing, it is the ORDER of the Court that the following orders apply to the Adverse Party:

1. YOU ARE PROHIBITED from threatening, physically injuring, or harassing the

Applicant and/or the following persons:

Protected Parties: The following persons are protected under this order: Applicant: JOSHUA JAMES COX

2. YOU ARE ORDERED to not contact the protected parties at all in any way,

including but not limited to in person, by phone/text, by email, or through social

media.

3. YOU ARE ORDERED to stay away from Applicant's residence located at: 2024 LONNIE LANE, DAYTON, NV 89403

02020 Nevada Supreme Court

Temporary Protection Order Against Stalking or Harassment (Revised October 2020)

Page 1 of 3

How do you know the person you need protection from (check all that apply)?

We are related by blood or marriage. Explain We are or used to be friends/acquaintances.

We are

neighbors

or reside in the same

We are or were co-workers.

Other: (specify relationship):

in any court?

neighborhood.

Are there any other current or prior court cases that involve you and the Adverse Party

No.

Yes. If you know, please list the case type, county, state, and case number:

Firearms/Guns.

Does the Adverse Party own a gun or have a gun in his/her possession or control?

Yes

I don't know.

Most Recent Event. Think about the most recent event. These questions ask about the most recent event only.

Approximate date it happened:

City/State/Location where it happened:

Did the other person use or threaten to use a weapon? No Yes.

What Happened? Explain the most recent event and describe any injuries. Give specific and detailed information about the event. You can list past events on the next page. If you are filing on behalf of a child, include details about who happened to the child.

I WAS LEAVING CALIFORNIA ON JANUARY 2ND WHEN THE CFO

AT MY JAR MESSAGED ME AND

ASKED ME TO MEET HER IN HER OFFICE SOMETIME THAT WEEK. I INFORMED HER THAT I WAS OUT OF TOWN BUT WOULD BE THERE IN THE MORNING (JANUARY 3RD). I ASKED WHAT IT WAS ABOUT AND

02020 Nevada Supreme Court

Application for Protection Order

(Revised October 2020)

Page 3 of 8

SHE SAID THAT SOMEONE THAT SHE DIDN'T KNOW WAS TEXTING HER AND 14 OTHER PHONE NUMBERS. AND THEY SENT HER A VIDEO ALSO, BILLY DUNN who RESIDES AT 2031 LONNIE LANE WAS THE PERSON THE OWNERS SENDING THE TEXTY AND VIDEO, HE SENT THESE TO AND FAMRY MEMBERS THAT HE IS STALKING, HARASSING AND CYBER BULLYING ME AND OTHER PEOPLE ONLINE. HE MIGHT DO: IT IS ESCALATING AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE

EMPLOY ME.

Attach more pages if you need more room (pages 4a, 4b, 4c).

C2020 Nevada Supreme Court

Application for Protection Order (Revised October 2020)

Page 4 of 8

Past Event(s).

Think about any other times the person you want protection from threatened or abused you happened. and/or the child/children. The following questions ask about any past events that may have

Approximate Date:

What Happened:

JUNE 12TH 2024 I GOT HOME

FROM WORK AND MY NEIGHBOR APPROACHED WE AND ASKED IF I SAW A POST THAT BILLY SUNN HAD POSTED ON A TACEBOOK GROUP (RE DAYTON NEVADA JOB SEEKERS). I TOLD HIM NO I HAVEN'T SEEN IT AND ASKED TO SEE IT HE HAD AN A. I., APP ASE TO MAKE A STORY ABOUT ME COMMITTING SUICIDE. I HAVE REPORTED THE VIDEOS ONLINE, BUT I KNOW IT ISN'T ENDUGH AND MY FAMILY AND EMPLOYERS AFE WORRIED FOR ME AND WHAT HE MIGHT DO NEXT!

Approximate Date: What Happened:

10. Law enforcement involvement.

Was law enforcement informed?

Yes

a. If so, please provide a copy of the police incident report Was anyone arrested? No Yes (Who),

Is the Adverse Party in jail? A No

Yes

C2020 Nevada Supreme Court

Application for Protection Onder (Revised October 2020)

Page 5 of 8

Case No. 25 PO 00002 3G

If you want to dispute this order or have it changed, you can request a

hearing by filing a written request with this court. Court staff will give you information about how to file your request. The court will set a hearing on your request as quickly as

possible.

ORDER TO LAW ENFORCEMENT

Any law enforcement officer, with or without a warrant, may arrest and take into custody the Adverse Party, when the law enforcement officer has probable cause to believe that (a) an Order has been issued pursuant to NRS 33.270 against the Adverse Party; (b) the Adverse Party has been served with a copy of the Order; and (c) the Adverse Party is acting or has acted in violation of the Order. This arrest may occur regardless of whether the violation occurred in the officer's presence.

Any law enforcement agency in this state may enforce a Court Order issued pursuant to NRS 33.270 without regard to the county in which the Order is issued.

January 7, 2025

121

amil

CAMILLE VECCHIARELLI Justice of the Peace

(Revised October 2020)

Temporary Protection Order Against Stalking or Harassment

Page 3 of 3

Founded in 1957, NATC is a privately owned, independent test, evaluation, design, and engineering facility offering development and certification testing to customers worldwide. We have provided services for more than 1,000 vehicle systems and components for automotive, commercial, construction, military, and public utility applications, and we have logged more than 50 million test miles and advanced the state of the art in test procedures, data acquisition, and analysis.

Successful production of a new car, truck, bus, or component depends on teamwork to meet customer expectations. We have spent over 60 years developing partnerships with our customers. Our divisions are dedicated to providing value-added technical solutions to the worldwide transportation industry. Our substantial international experience, allows us to evaluate products intended for global markets knowledgeably and objectively. We have compiled an extensive database of worldwide operational and infrastructure conditions allowing accurate definition of user duty cycles and creation of test programs that are representative of service environments around the world.

Along with worldwide duty cycles, data acquisition, and advanced engineering analysis, we provide complete prototype fabrication capabilities for one-stop solutions from design to product verification.

Between our four locations, we have the experience to cover all your engineering and testing needs.

https://natc-ht.com/about-us/

Mary Hitz/NATC/HODGES

Engineering Coordinator at Nevada Automotive Test Center

Nevada Automotive Test Center

Carson City, Nevada, United States Contact info

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-hitz-natc-hodges-91563813/

On 21 February 2001, Pope John Paul II made Archbishop Bergoglio a cardinal, assigning him the title of cardinal priest of San Roberto Bellarmino, a Jesuit church. Bergoglio was installed there on 14 October. During his trip to Rome for the ceremony, he and his sister María Elena visited their father's hometown in northern Italy.[27] As cardinal, Bergoglio was appointed to five administrative positions in the Roman Curia. He was a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the Congregation for the Clergy, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, the Pontifical Council for the Family, and the Commission for Latin America. Later that year, when Cardinal Edward Egan returned to New York following the September 11 attacks, Bergoglio replaced him as relator (recording secretary) in the Synod of Bishops,[84] and, according to the Catholic Herald, created "a favourable impression as a man open to communion and dialogue".[85][86]

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

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](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

WWF 9 11 Twin Towers Predictive Programming Illuminati Satanic Lighting Bolt WWE WCW NWO Exposed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQhaRjh3QXI

Have you ever stuck a batch of cookies in the oven with high hopes that you've *finally* found the perfect recipe, only for them to emerge being far from what you imagined? According to cookie science, there are a variety of factors that will affect the taste & texture of the final product, from the type of ingredients to the temperature of your oven. Keep reading below for our cookie baking tips, so you can finally bake the cookies of your dreams!

Ingredients

Baking requires a great level of precision when measuring out the ingredients. A little more or a little less of an ingredient might change your cookies quite drastically. We recommend using a kitchen scale to help with the precision & accuracy of your measurements, but it will also help to have a deeper understanding behind the impact each ingredient has on the outcome of your cookies.

https://www.quebradabakingco.com/news-item/how-to-bake-perfect-cookie/

What are HTTP Cookies? HTTP cookies, or internet cookies, are built specifically for web browsers to track, personalize and save information about each user's session. A “session” is the word used to define the amount of time you spend on a site. Cookies are created to identify you when you visit a new website.

https://usa.kaspersky.com/resource-center/definitions/cookies

8 Things You Need to Know about Surveillance

8 important truths about surveillance

ai-in-society

Author

Rachel Thomas

Published

August 7, 2019

Over 225 police departments have partnered with Amazon to have access to Amazon’s video footage obtained as part of the “smart” doorbell product Ring, and in many cases these partnerships are heavily subsidized with taxpayer money. Police departments are allowing Amazon to stream 911 call information directly in real-time, and Amazon requires police departments to read pre-approved scripts when talking about the program. If a homeowner doesn’t want to share data from their video camera doorbell with police, an officer for the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office said they can just go directly to Amazon to obtain it. This creation of an extensive surveillance network, the murky private-public partnership surrounding it, and a lack of any sort of regulations or oversight is frightening. And this is just one of many examples related to surveillance technology that have recently come to light.

I frequently talk with people who are not that concerned about surveillance, or who feel that the positives outweigh the risks. Here, I want to share some important truths about surveillance:

Surveillance can facilitate human rights abuses and even genocide

Data is often used for different purposes than why it was collected

Data often contains errors

Surveillance typically operates with no accountability

Surveillance changes our behavior

Surveillance disproportionately impacts the marginalized

Data privacy is a public good

We don’t have to accept invasive surveillance

While I was writing this post, a number of investigative articles came out with disturbing new developments related to surveillance. I decided that rather than attempt to include everything in one post (which would make it too long and too dense), I would go ahead and share the above facts about surveillance, as they are just a relevant as ever.

Surveillance can facilitate human rights abuses and even genocide

There is a long history of data about sensitive attributes being misused, including the use of the 1940 USA Census to intern Japanese Americans, a system of identity cards introduced by the Belgian colonial government that were later used during the 1994 Rwandan genocide (in which nearly a million people were murdered), and the role of IBM in helping Nazi Germany use punchcard computers to identify and track the mass killing of millions of Jewish people. More recently, the mass internment of over one million people who are part of an ethnic minority in Western China was facilitated through the use of a surveillance network of cameras, biometric data (including images of people’s faces, audio of their voices, and blood samples), and phone monitoring.

Adolf Hitler meeting with IBM CEO Tom Watson Sr. in 1937. Source: Computer History

Pictured above is Adolf Hitler (far left) meeting with IBM CEO Tom Watson Sr. (2nd from left), shortly before Hitler awarded Watson a special “Service to the Reich” medal in 1937 (for a timeline of the Holocaust, see here). Watson returned the medal in 1940, although IBM continued to do business with the Nazis. IBM technology helped the Nazis conduct detailed censuses in countries they occupied, to thoroughly identify anyone of Jewish descent. Nazi concentration camps used IBM’s punchcard machines to tabulate prisoners, recording whether they were Jewish, gay, or Gypsies, and whether they died of “natural causes,” execution, suicide, or via “special treatment” in gas chambers. It is not the case that IBM sold the machines and then was done with it. Rather, IBM and its subsidiaries provided regular training and maintenance on-site at the concentration camps: printing off cards, configuring machines, and repairing them as they broke frequently.

Data is often used for different purposes than why it was collected

In the above examples, the data collection began before genocide was committed. IBM began selling to Nazi Germany well before the Holocaust (although continued for far too long), including helping with Germany’s 1933 census conducted by Adolf Hitler, which was effective at identifying far more Jewish people than had previously been recognized in Germany.

It is important to recognize how data and images gathered through surveillance can be weaponized later. Columbia professor Tim Wu wrote that “One [hard truth] is that data and surveillance networks created for one purpose can and will be used for others. You must assume that any personal data that Facebook or Android keeps are data that governments around the world will try to get or that thieves will try to steal.”

Plenty of data collection is not involved with such extreme abuse as genocide; however, in a time of global resurgence of white supremacist, ethno-nationalist, and authoritarian movements, it would be deeply irresponsible to not consider how data & surveillance can and will be weaponized against already vulnerable groups.

Data often has errors (and no mechanism for correcting them)

A database of suspected gang members maintained by California law enforcement officials was found to be full of errors, including 42 babies who had been added to the database when they were less than 1 year old (28 of whom were marked as “admitting to being gang members”). Even worse, there was no process in place for correcting mistakes or removing people once they’ve been added.

An NPR reporter recounts his experience of trying to rent an apartment and discovering that TransUnion, one of the 3 major credit bureaus, incorrectly reported him as having two felony firearms convictions. TransUnion only removed the mistakes after a dozen phone calls and notification that the story would be reported on. This is not an unusual story: the FTC’s large-scale study of credit reports in 2012 found 26% of consumers had at least one mistake in their files and 5% had errors that could be devastating. An even more opaque, unregulated “4th bureau” exists: a collection of companies buying and selling personal information about people on the margins of the banking system (such as immigrants, students, and people with low incomes), with no standards on what types of data are included, no way to opt out, and no system for identifying or correcting mistakes.

Surveillance typically operates with no accountability

What makes the examples in the previous section disturbing is not just that errors occurred, but that there was no way to identify or correct them, and no accountability for those profiting off the error-laden data. Often, even the existence of the systems being used is not publicly known (much less details of how these systems work), unless discovered by journalists or revealed by whistleblowers. The Detroit Police Dept used facial recognition technology for nearly two years without public input and in violation of a requirement that a policy be approved by the city’s Board of Police Commissioners, until a study from Georgetown Law’s Center for Privacy & Technology drew attention to the issue. Palantir, the defense startup founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, ran a program with New Orleans Police Department for 6 years which city council members did not even know about, much less have any oversight.

After two studies found that Amazon’s facial recognition software produced inaccurate and racially biased results, Amazon countered that the researchers should have changed the default parameters. However, it turned out that Amazon was not instructing police departments that use its software to do this either. Surveillance programs are operating with few regulations, no oversight, no accountability around accuracy or mistakes, and in many cases, no public knowledge of what is going on.

Surveillance changes our behavior

Hundreds of thousands of people in Hong Kong are protesting an unpopular new bill which would allow extradition to China. Typically, Hong Kong locals use their rechargeable smart cards to ride the subway. However, during the protests, long lines of people waited to use cash to buy paper tickets (usually something that only tourists do) concerned that they would be tracked for having attended the protests. Would fewer people protest if this was not an option?

In the United States, in 2015 the Baltimore Police Department used facial recognition technology to surveil people protesting the death of Freddie Grey, a young Black man who was killed in police custody, and arrested protesters with outstanding warrants. Mass surveillance could have a chilling impact on our rights to move about freely, to express ourselves, and to protest. “We act differently when we know we are ‘on the record.’ Mass privacy is the freedom to act without being watched and thus in a sense, to be who we really are,” Columbia professor Tim Wu wrote in the New York Times.

Flyer from the company Geofeedia Source

Surveillance disproportionately impacts those who are already marginalized

Surveillance is applied unevenly, causing the greatest harm to people who are already marginalized, including immigrants, people of color, and people living in poverty. These groups are more heavily policed and surveilled. The Perpetual Line-Up from the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology studied the unregulated use of facial recognition by police, with half of all Americans appearing in law enforcement databases, and the risks of errors, racial bias, misuses, and threats to civil liberties. The researchers pointed out that African Americans are more likely to appear in these databases (many of which are drawn from mug shots) since they are disproportionately likely to be stopped, interrogated, or arrested. For another example, consider the contrast between how easily people over 65 can apply for Medicare benefits by filling out an online form, with the invasive personal questions asked of a low-income mother on Medicaid about her lovers, hygiene, parental shortcomings, and personal habits.

In an article titled Trading privacy for survival is another tax on the poor, Ciara Byrne wrote, “Current public benefits programs ask applicants extremely detailed and personal questions and sometimes mandate home visits, drug tests, fingerprinting, and collection of biometric information… Employers of low-income workers listen to phone calls, conduct drug tests, monitor closed-circuit television, and require psychometric tests as conditions of employment. Prisoners in some states have to consent to be voiceprinted in order to make phone calls.”

Data privacy is a public good, like air quality or safe drinking water

Data is more revealing in aggregate. It can be nearly impossible to know what your individual data could reveal when combined with the data of others or with data from other sources, or when machine learning inference is performed on it. For instance, as Zeynep Tufekci wrote in the New York Times, individual Strava users could not have predicted how in aggregate their data could be used to identify the locations of US military bases. “Data privacy is not like a consumer good, where you click ‘I accept’ and all is well. Data privacy is more like air quality or safe drinking water, a public good that cannot be effectively regulated by trusting in the wisdom of millions of individual choices. A more collective response is needed.”

Unfortunately, this also means that you can’t fully safeguard your privacy on your own. You may choose not to purchase Amazon’s ring doorbell, yet you can still show up in the video footage collected by others. You might strengthen your online privacy practices, yet conclusions will still be inferred about you based on the behavior of others. As Professor Tufekci wrote, we need a collective response.

We don’t have to accept invasive surveillance

Many people are uncomfortable with surveillance, but feel like they have no say in the matter. While the threats surveillance poses are large, it is not too late to act. We are seeing success: in response to community organizing and an audit, Los Angeles Police Department scrapped a controversial program to predict who is most likely to commit violent crimes. Citizens, researchers, and activists in Detroit have been effective at drawing attention to the Detroit Police Department’s unregulated use of facial recognition and a bill calling for a 5-year moratorium has been introduced to the state legislature. Local governments in San Francisco, Oakland, and Somerville have banned the use of facial recognition by police.

For further resources, please check out: - Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology - Digital Defense Playbook

https://www.fast.ai/posts/2019-08-07-surveillance.html

LVII

SEPTEMBER 11-NATIONAL SECURITY VS.

INDIVIDUAL FREEDOMS IN THE NEW

WORLD ORDER!

The right to be let alone is the most comprehensive of rid and the right most valued by civilized men

Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brande Olmstead. United States (1928), 2771 S. 38, 478

How does one take over control of the currency of a nation? By engineering crisis, wars and national calamities. And that is exactly what has been done

THE SECRET GOVERNMENT HAD LONG SOUGHT means, or rather an excuse, to bring in the first phase of the New World order-initiated" by Pope John Paul II- September 11, 2001 gave them that opportunity.

As the reader will recall, earlier, I referred to the official US government video in which the then U.S. Senator Gary Hart can be heard saying, just one day after 9/11, that President Bush had the

Pope Benedict's 2009 encyclical, Caritas in Veritate speaks about setting "ourselves new rules under new "a world Political authority" And you will recall also that in an earlier chapter I quoted the Jesuit Professor Malachi Martin saying, "John Paul started into the millenni and that it would be "dominated by an INTERNATIONAL BUREAUCRACY (vix, a world political authority? whuch controls and directs every citizen and every nation." Martin called

endgame... HE INITIATED IT

this "International Bureaucracy" the Pope's "Grand Design of God for the new world order." So we have it from a former advise to three popes that the Vatican, the Roman Catholic hierarchy is the power behind the new world order (See, Keys of This Blood, op. cit., pp. 13,15, 16, 41, 50

378

September 11-National Security Vs. Individual Freedoms... opportunity to "use this [September 111 disaster to carry out what his father (Bush Sr./ mentioned... and that is a New World Order."

September 11, 2001, was a major phase of the "millenium endgame" spoken of by Jesuit professor Malachi Martin. It created the ammosphere that was required for the unopposed introduction of

modern fascism.

Leading American academic, Patricia Williams has said that the laws passed after September 11 "mirror the worst excesses of some hctatorships." Andrew P. Napolitano a 59 year old former New Jersey Superior Court Judge had this to say about the U.S. law makers of the Patriot Act: "Congress recognizes no limits on its power. It doesn't care about the Constitution; it doesn't care about your inalienable rights."

Reader, this Catholic judge has admitted that the most glaring assault on American freedoms comes from a Jesuit-crafted law known as the ESA PATRIOT Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by George W. Bush on October 15, 2001, "while the rubble of 9/11 still smoldered," as someone commented. This deceptively named Patriot Act is being used against the very American citizens it was supposed to protect. Under this Dark Age monstrosity, FBI agents can serve self- written search warrants and then enter your home, your barn, search your car, etc, etc., without any prior court authorization!

Congress-with minimal floor debate in the Senate and no floor debate in the House-enacted this most Inquisitorial, popish kind of Low; and had the nerve, the 'audacity' if you please, to call it the PATRIOT Act! In 2004, this law produced two offsprings: the "Intelligence Authorization Act" and the "Intelligence Reform Act." both of which permit the execution of self-written search warrants. called a national security letter, is the ultimate constitutional farce. What Writes, Judge Napolitano, "A self-written search warrant, even one federal agents would not authorize themselves to seize whatever they wished?... Why would government agents bother going to a judge with probable cause seeking a search warrant if they can simply write their warrants on over 120,000 unsuspecting Americans since October ?... federal agents have written and executed self-written search the Bush administration and... Congress could have visited upon us." 2001. "The PATRIOT Act is the most unpatriotic of the things that Judge Napolitano added. But, interestingly, what Judge Napolitano does not seem to realise is that this is the very code under which the Roman House members were given just 30 minutes to read the 315 page bill.

379

CODEWORD BARBELÓN BK 2

Catholic Inquisition operated. He forgets, too, that the Patriot Act was drafted by a professor at the Jesuit Georgetown University (for whach see Book D. Judge Napolitano is a devout Roman Catholic who studied at the Jesuit Notre Dame University (Notre Dame is French for "Our Lady" referring to Mary). In a 2008 interview with Celebrate Lake Magazine, Judge Napolitano said " we should go to our Lady, the Blessed Mother. Not a Mass should be said without reference to her. Not a war should be waged, not a prayer should be uttered, no contact should be sought without her assistance." This, reader, n qualify as a candidate for quote of the decade! It certainly left me scratching my head. Isn't it just strange how Catholics can be intellige on almost every subject other than their religion? But more of this ser Not content with the Patriot Act. Mr. Bush enacted the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which effectively ended habeas corpus-d right to an attorney when charged, and to have a court review of one's detention and arrest. Without this latter right, all other rights are ellectively undermined, as anyone can now be detained indefinitely and no one needs to know about it-they would just go missing!

Still, Mr. Bush was not done. Before leaving office he passed NSPD 51, a directive signed by Bush on May 9, 2007, that, with the stroke of a pen allows any US. President to declare martial law-for such reasons as "to restore public order-effectively transforming the US, into dictatorship. Mr. Bush even had parts of the NSPD 51 directive classified so that members of Congress are denied the right to review Next came the "Protect America Act 2007" (PAA), allowing domes wiretapping and surveillance, while reducing FISA court over Under PAA, probable cause' of being a terrorist is no longer required. Another law, The Jolm Warner Defense Authorization Act, sed by Mr. Bush on October 17, 2007, allows the U.S. President to declec a public emergency and station troops anywhere in America-with de coment of the governor or local authorities-to "suppress publ disorder. Thus, by means of a raft of post 9/11 legist the Constitutional rights of Americans have been systematically disuaald

One la alter another, all in the name of national security

Another curious set of farts is what occurred soon after 9/11: the US government, it would appear, took no ellective steps to catch the alleged

3 The university's first academic curriculum was modeled after the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum ("The Official Plan for Jesuit Education"). Interview with Anita Crane, senior editor of Celebrate Life

www.cimagazine.org/backissues/2008 janfeb 16-18judgeandrewnapolitano.pdf

380

September 11th-National Security Vs. Individual Freedoms... astermind behind 9/11. This is demonstrated by what happened to Bin Ladens living in the US, a few days after the 9/11 attacks, when Learjet 35 twice flew in and out of Tampa International Airport (TIA) violation of the Federal no-fly restriction. Among the passengers on at aircraft were members of the Bin Laden family."

Authorities at TIA initially denied that the flights had taken place. can Heller of the St. Petersburg Times wrote on June 9, 2004, that the White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the d never took place and have denied published reports and despread Internet speculation about its purpose." "But now, at the

quest

of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, TIA officials ve confirmed that the flight did take place and have supplied details." Yet another lie foisted upon the American people by the officialdom. Did the FBI or CIA investigate the Bin Laden Family as part of the ackdown of financing or involvement in global terrorism before allowing them to leave the U.S.? No! At the time, the Bin Laden family lad extensive investments in the U.S., and it is not improbable that they could have secretly funnelled millions of dollars to Bin Laden's operatives inside and outside of America. Yet, every member of the Emily of the alleged master-minded behind the 9/11 plot was given aress to the America skies on a private jet, at a time when law-abiding American citizens were banned from flying! The alleged orchestrator of the attacks had his family treated as royalty, while the U.S. Government felt it necessary to caves drop on and interrogate its own citizens, despite the fact the government admits that the 9/11 attackers were all non- Americans and lived primarily outside of the U.S. Yet, the Bush gemment, in its unparalleled wisdom, saw it fit to create the "Homeland Security" Act and the Jesuit-crafted "Patriot Act."

The question is, why? Is this really a war on terror or something more sinister? Several decades ago, John Lord O'Brian, former United

Boeing 727 contracted by the Saudi embassy, departed the United On September 20, 2001, at 2:05 A.M., Ryan International Flight 441, a States from Boston, for Newfoundland. The screening of this flight was directed by an FBI agent in the Baltimore Field Office who was also a pilot: James C, interview (June 3, 2004). The flight manifest indicates other than the flight crew: 23 passengers and 3 security guards. that the flight departed the United States with 26 individuals on board them had the last name Bin Ladin: see, FBI record, "Final Draft of Most of the 23 passengers were relatives of Usama Bin Ladin: 12 of Response to October 2003 Vanity Fair Article (Bin Laden FamilyDepartures after 9/11/2001)," Sept. 24, 2003.

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CODEWORD BARBELON Bk 2

States Attorney General for Western New York, warned of the dangers af forfeiting Constitutionally granted freedoms for the promise-teg necessarily the guarantee-of security: "It is an understatement to emphasize that one of the principal influences which threaten the very existence of democracy is the all-pervasive craving for security at any price." "Over and over again we have been warned against the insidious and sinister invasions of civil liberty by plausible excuses...."

A state or country in which citizens and visitors can be interrogaod, interned or detained without trial, without evidence or even explanation or have their private communications intercepted, purely on the basis of some government agent's suspicion is a slippery slope towards high-tech totalitarianism-and is a mere refinement of the techniques of the papal Inquisition of the middle ages. As the Supreme Court of Canada observed in R. v. Duarte (1990), such a police state is the kind of 'democracy in which liberty will eventually have no meaning.

Reader, unless the signs are all misleading, the United States will soon no longer have a constitutional legislative branch of government in any true sense of that term, other than vestigial: for each year brings its additional level of restrictive and invasive regulations in the name of Anti-Terrorism, but in the bargain chip away at our liberties.

And when the dust finally settles, I venture to say that we will find ourselves in a world in which privacy and liberty no longer have any meaning, a world where we are a little safer, perhaps, but far less free."

As Brian Lilley wrote. ".... It is only a matter of time before some would be terrorist, pledging loyalty to al Qaida tries to bring down a plane by smuggling explosives in a body cavity. At that point, a travellers will be asked to take off their shoes, surrender their water boules, step aside for the scan and then bend over for a probing search. At that point, perhaps, the public will realise they are surrendering their rights, their dignity and getting little in the way of protection in return.

7 John Lord O'Brian, National Security and Individual Freedom (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955), p. 7.

8 Frank Murphy and Norris Harold, Mr. Justice Murphy and the Bill of Rights (New York: Oceana Publ., Inc., 1965), p. 43, citing John L. O'Brian from a speech given at Harvard April 27, 1955.

9 The thorough pat-down as an alternative to full-body scan is no less

invasive or humiliating.

10 Brian Lilley, Ottawa Bureau Chief for radio stations Newstalk 1010 Toronto and CJAD 800 Montreal": www.mercatornet.com/articles/

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CODEWORD BARBELON Bk 2

5. U.S. development of space-based weapons;

6. "Advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool;"

7. U.S. willingness to use muclear weapons to accomplish its goal 8. Possible conflict with China.

Reader, that was in 2000, one year before 9/11! The proposal is available, in its entirety, on the PNAC Website. Read it for yoursell

Knowing full well that the decent American people would never support their outrageous goals unless they were thoroughly traumatised first, page 52 of the proposal (PNAC) states, "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event-like a new Pearl Harbor. That's verbatim. Were these ideologs serious?

Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University. has confirmed in his book War Without End that in 1998 the out of power Republican Party formed a policy advocacy group called "The Project for a New American Century." Professor Schwartz reveals that the group's membership included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld. Paul Wolfowitz and dozens of other key individuals who would later hold key positions in the administration of George W. Bush.

Only a year before Bush, Jr. was jobbed into office, this same group of Neo-Cons, lead by Rumsfeld and Cheney, issued a policy document "Entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses, advocating what is now known as the Rumsfeldian doctrine. The document stated that in order to justify another American military invasion of Iraq they would need "some catastrophic and catalyzing event." The document goes on to s that "public approval could not be obtained WITHOUT... A NEW PEARL HARBOR." That is to say, an outrageous attack on the US, soil.

There are those who say that since members of the Bush administration could make suck policy proposals in 1998, and further since the American government actually planned to stage fake terror attacks aunst its people in 1962, what's to keep them from staging fake

1 www.newamericancentury.org

2 The document was also cited by the BBC:

3 David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/conspiracy files/6338551.stm the Bush Administration and 9/11 (Northampton, Mass.: Interlink Bks.

2004), pp. 95-96.

384

9/11: A New Pearl Harbor Or "outrageous conspiracy theories" Such attacks, lake or real. Indeed, some conspiracists say that the U.S. attacks in 2001 when they have even greater capability to orchestrate government had much more motivation to achieve this hidden agenda. Do these conspiracy theorists have documented proof, irrefutable proof, that the U.S. government is capable of conspiring a plot of the magnitude and evil of 9/11, against its own citizens? It would seem so. There is a document known as "Operation Northwoods," which although created long before 9/11, does show that the U.S. government had a plan to kill its own citizens for a "greater cause." This top secret document was presented to President John F. Kennedy on March 13, 1962 and was only declassified in 1997. But it took three years before the Baltimore Sun and ABC News ran stories on the document, in 2001. The document is available from dozens of reputable online sources such as the National Security Archive located at George Washington University, and is thoroughly analyzed by author James Bamford in his 2001 book Body of Secrets.

What are the contents of this document? The goal of Operation Northwoods was to get public support for an invasion of Cuba. The Joint Chiefs of Staff believed that Americans would only support a war against Cuba if it could be shown that Cuban "terrorists" had carried out a number of surprise attacks against the U.S. Isn't that how they got support for their "war on terror" and their second war against Iraq?

The 1962 Northwoods document recommended that the US. should stage fake terror attacks against American citizens. The document states: "Such a plan would enable a logical build-up of incidents to be combined with other seemingly unrelated events to camouflage the ultimate objective and create the necessary impression of Cuban rasmess and irresponsibility on a large scale." The specific recommendations made in the document included": 1. Stage mock attacks, sabotages and riots and blame it on Cuban 2. Sink an American ship at the Guantanamo Bay American military base or destroy American aircraft and blame it on Cubon

forces.

News, May 1, 2003. Archived at:

David Ruppert, "US Military Wanted to Provoke War with Cuba," ABC Washington University: www.gwu.edu/nsarchiv/news/20010430 pabcnews.go.com/sections/us/Daily News/jointchiefs 010501.html

ee, "Pentagon Proposed Pretext for Cuba Invasion." Archive at George http://operation-northwoods.wikiverse.org summary of the Operation Northwoods document is found at:

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CODEWORD BARBELON BK 2

3. Harassment of civil air, attacks on surface shipping, and destruction of U.S. military drone aircraft by MIG-type planes would be useful as complementary actions.

4. Destroy A FAKE COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT supposedly full of "college students off on a holiday."

5. Stage a "terror campaign," including the "real or simulated" sinking of Cuban refugees.

What do you think reader, does that not sound like the U.S. Joint hiels were plotting a "conspiracy" involving the hijacking of an aircraft? If in 1962, the higher ups in the U.S. government were prepared to lan and stage fake terror attacks against its own citizens, what is to say hey did not stage "simulated" or even 'real' attacks on 9/112

But, I hear you say, "That was fouty years ago; you couldn't possibly be suggesting that this could happen today, or did happen on 9/11?" My response to you is, "Why not?"Why not reader? Answer that.

In 2002, U.S. Today reported a bizarre coincidence that occurred on the very day of the 9/11 terror attacks: that a US. intelligence agency was set to run "an exercise" on Sept 11 at 9AM, 2001, in which a commercial aircraft would crash into one of its buildings near Washington, DC. (USA Today/AP, 8/22/02). "It was just an incredible coincidence that this happened to involve an aircraft crashing into our facility," was the excuse given by U.S. intelligence agent Art Haubold. He added: "As soon as the real world events began, we canceled the exercise." Sure you did. The U.S. Today article quoted above was titled "FEDERAL AGENCY PLANNED PLANE-CRASHING-INTO-BUILDING DRILL... LAST SEPT. 11." Now, that's a fact that is stranger than fiction! In light of all of the above facts, let us review what really happened on 9/11; let us separate the 'real' from the fiction-the cold, hard. unpalatable truth from the "outrageous conspiracy theories. For as Disraeli once said. "Ignorance never settles a question.

7 usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-08-22-sept-11-plane-drill_x.htm

8 As an aside, here is what might be just another "outrageous conspiracy theory" for you. Is it probable that Islamic terrorists or Islamic nations may attack Rome and the Vatican? According to Former Jordanian Minister Sheikh Ali Al-Faqir "The prophecy of the conquest of Rome remains valid, Allah willing.... Rome too will be conquered. Our prayers, our fasting, and the charity we give will be to no avail, if we doubt [what the Prophet Muhammad (said]." May 2, 2008. "We proclaim that we will conquer Rome.": www.memritv.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/2410.htm; See also sermon aired on Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV on March 5, 2010: www.memritv.org/clip/en/2410.htm.

386

"September 11-National Security vs Individual Freedoms In The New World Order!"

Codeword Barbelon book Two

by P.D. Stuart

Windows Vista is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on November 8, 2006, and became generally available on January 30, 2007, on the Windows Marketplace, the first release of Windows to be made available through a digital distribution platform.[7] Vista succeeded Windows XP (2001); at the time, the five-year gap between the two was the longest time span between successive Windows releases.

Microsoft began developing Vista under the codename "Longhorn" in 2001, shortly before the release of XP. It was intended as a small upgrade to bridge the gap between XP and the next major Windows version, codenamed Blackcomb. As development progressed, it assimilated many of Blackcomb's features and was repositioned as a major Windows release. Vista introduced the updated graphical user interface and visual style Aero, Windows Search, redesigned networking, audio, print, and display sub-systems, and new multimedia tools such as Windows DVD Maker among other changes. Vista aimed to increase the level of communication between machines on a home network, using peer-to-peer technology to simplify sharing files and media between computers and devices. Vista included version 3.0 of the .NET Framework, allowing software developers to write applications without traditional Windows APIs. It removed support for Itanium and devices without ACPI.

While its new features and security improvements garnered praise, Vista was the target of significant criticism, such as its high system requirements, more restrictive licensing terms, lack of compatibility, longer boot time, and excessive authorization prompts from User Account Control. It saw lower adoption and satisfaction rates than XP, and it is generally considered a market failure.[8][9] However, Vista usage did exceed Microsoft's pre-launch two-year-out expectations of achieving 200 million users, with an estimated 330 million internet users in January 2009. On October 22, 2010, Microsoft ceased sales of retail copies of Windows Vista, and the original equipment manufacturer's sales for Windows Vista ceased the following year.[10]

Vista was succeeded by Windows 7 (2009), which retained and refined many of the features that Vista introduced. Microsoft ended mainstream support for Vista on April 10, 2012, and extended support on April 11, 2017.[11] In retrospect, Vista is often described as one of the worst versions of Windows,[12] but also an important one that laid the foundation for future releases.[13][14]

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

The Marriott World Trade Center was a 22-story, 825-room hotel at 3 World Trade Center within the World Trade Center complex in Manhattan, New York City. It opened in April 1981 as the Vista International Hotel and was the first major hotel to open in Lower Manhattan south of Canal Street since 1836. It was also unofficially known as World Trade Center 3 (WTC 3 or 3 WTC), and the World Trade Center Hotel, officially the Vista Hotel, and the Marriott Hotel throughout its history.

The hotel was damaged in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It was destroyed by structural damage caused by the collapse of the World Trade Center as a result of the September 11 attacks. The hotel was not replaced as part of the new World Trade Center complex, although its address was reused for a tower at 175 Greenwich Street.

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

WINDOWS on the World was destroyed when the North Tower collapsed during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. While the restaurant was hosting regular breakfast patrons and the Risk Waters Financial Technology Congress, Egyptian terrorist Mohamed Atta and four other Al-Qaeda hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower between floors 93 and 99 at 8:46 a.m.[19] Everyone present in the restaurant died that day, as all means of escape (including the stairwells and elevators leading down from the impact zones) were instantly severed by the impact. Victims trapped in Windows on the World either died from smoke inhalation from the ensuing fire, jumping or falling to their deaths from the restaurant, or being killed in the eventual collapse of the North Tower 102 minutes later at 10:28 A.M. At least five Windows occupants were witnessed jumping or falling to their deaths from the restaurant.[20]

There were 72 restaurant staff present in the restaurant, including assistant general manager Christine Olender, whose desperate calls to Port Authority police represented the restaurant's final communications.[21] Sixteen Incisive Media-Risk Waters Group employees, as well as 76 other guests/contractors, were also present.[22] Among those also present was the executive director of the Port Authority, Neil Levin, who was having breakfast. After about 9:40 a.m., no further distress calls from the restaurant were made. The last people to leave the restaurant before Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. were Michael Nestor, Liz Thompson, Geoffrey Wharton, and Richard Tierney, who all shared an elevator together. They departed at 8:44 a.m. and survived the attack.[23]

World Trade Center lessor, Larry Silverstein, was regularly holding breakfast meetings in Windows on the World with tenants as part of his recent acquisition of the Twin Towers from the Port Authority, and was scheduled to be in the restaurant on the morning of the attacks. However, his wife insisted that he had to go to a dermatologist's appointment that morning,[24] whereby he avoided death."

Windows on the World - Wikipedia

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

Administration/administrators of temporal goods: 1. Of the Society in general: those who are administrators [326, 327, 419-21, 740-745, 759, 815]; the powers they have [743-745]; in what spirit and with what care and dedication the temporal goods of the Society are to be administered [305], 216 §§1, 2-4; social justice is to be safeguarded and fostered in the investment of money, 217; nothing is to be changed in or derogated from norms and instructions without permission, 216 §3; an account of one s administration is to be rendered [326, 741, 759], 167; especially so at the end of the t e rm s o f o f f i c e o f l o c a l superiors and treasurers, 222; negligent or wasteful superiors are to be corrected, 216 §4 2. Of one s own goods: is to be yielded from the beginning of novitiate and after first vows, 57 3. Of the goods of others: not to be undertaken without permission of the general, 166; administration of deposits of money from externs, whether in cash or in negotiable paper, should not be undertaken, 219. See also Buildings; Contracts in general, and in particular: Alienation of goods; Debts; Deposits; Gifts; Investment of money; Legacy; Rentals; Revenues"

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

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

In July 2001, Silverstein and several minority investors won the contract for a 99-year lease on the Twin Towers for $3.2 billion (including debt). Just six weeks later, the buildings were obliterated by terrorists. Silverstein Properties lost four employees in the attacks, and 7 World Trade Center crumbled soon after as well, though the building was safely evacuated before it did.

Almost immediately after Silverstein heard the news, he was set on rebuilding. It was not only the family’s key holding, but a critical part of Con Edison ’s electricity system was located underneath 7 World Trade. When that building came down, Con Edison had to rely on emergency generators to power Downtown Manhattan but electricity problems persisted, continuing to wreak havoc on a battered neighborhood. As more companies and residents in the neighborhood moved elsewhere, Silverstein became more convicted."

Meet The Billionaire Developer Who Rebuilt The World Trade Center To Heal New York After 9/11 (forbes.com)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2016/09/10/billionaire-world-trade-center-911-rebuild-developer-healing/?sh=411007f4405a

When Larry Silverstein opened the original Seven WTC in 1987, Larry and his wife Klara spent several years filling the lobby with contemporary art. Installations included The Third CIRCLE by Al Held, a Roy Lichtenstein entablature, Cloud by Louise Nevelson, Crusading Euphoria by Ross Bleckner, the two large paintings by Frank Stella, and others."

7 World Trade Center Welcomes New Public Art (silversteinproperties.com)

https://www.silversteinproperties.com/commercial-real-estate-media/News/7-world-trade-center-welcomes-new-public-art

An anonymous Internet commentator reflects:A friend of mine got hold of the beta test CD of Win95, and set up a packet sniffer between his serial port and the modem. When you try out the free demo time on The Microsoft Network, it transmits your entire directory structure in background.This means that they have a list of every directory (and, potentially every file) on your machine. It would not be difficult to have something like a File Request from your system to theirs, without you knowing about it. This way they could get a hold of any juicy routines you've written yourself and claim them as their own if you don't have them copyrighted." Liability For Distributed Artificial Intelligences"

Berkeley Technology Law Journal (btlj.org)

https://www.btlj.org/data/articles2015/vol11/Searchable/11-1/03%20Karnow.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3N1_M0djLd_bQgTM_xQto8kfgVZRyQkphkkmMOmvXec71yVJuGf9UvVnU

The Vatican has founded the Pope John Paul II Center for Prayer and Study for Peace at 1711 Ocean Avenue, Springlake, New Jersey, in a mansion overlooking the ocean. The mansion was given to the New York Archdiocese by the estate of Elmer Bobst, who died in 1978. He was a multimillionaire and chairman of Warner Lambert Company. Richard Nixon was a frequent visitor. Directors of the Center were Kurt Waldheim, former Secretary General of the United Nations and ex-nazi war criminal; Cyrus Vance, former Secretary of State under Carter and member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission; Clare Booth Luce, a dame of the Knights of Malta; and J. Peter Grace of W.R. Grace Company, who is head of the Knights of Malta in the United States. The Center was set up by the Vatican as a part of the Pope's new peace plan, which will bring the world together (see my paper "The Secret Government"). The Center has two roles:

(1) Educate Catholics and their children to accept the New World Order.

(2) Provide residence for the world-peace-solution computer and an ongoing study for peaceful solutions to any future problems which may endanger world peace. The computer is hooked to the world capitals via satellite. All nations have agreed to relinquish sovereignty to the Pope and submit future problems to the computer for solution. Of course, this will not go into effect until the New World Order is publicly announced. I believe that the New World Order was born in secrecy on January 19,1989. Now you know.

Acquaint yourself anew with the teachings of Jesus. Compare his teachings with the tenets of the Illuminati and then compare it with the following. The Vatican has stated at various times that "the Pope is for total disarmament; the Pope is for elimination of the sovereignty of the nation states; the Pope is also stating that property rights are not to be considered true property rights. The Pope believes that only the Vatican knows what is right for man." In the early 1940s, the I.G. Farben Chemical Company employed a Polish salesman who sold cyanide to the Nazis for use in Auschwitz. The same salesman also worked as a chemist in the manufacture of the poison gas. This same cyanide gas along with Zyklon B and malathion was used to exterminate millions of Jews and other groups. Their bodies were then burned to ashes in the ovens. After the war the salesman, fearing for his life, joined the Catholic Church and was ordained a priest in 1946. One of his closest friends was Dr. Wolf Szmuness, the mastermind behind the November/78 to October/79 and March/80 to October/81 experimental hepatitis B vaccine trials conducted by the Center for Disease Control in New York, San Francisco and four other American cities that loosed the plague of AIDS upon the American people. The salesman was ordained Poland's youngest bishop in 1958. After a 30-day reign his predecessor was assassinated and our ex-cyanide gas salesman assumed the papacy as Pope John Paul II. 1990 is the right time with the right leaders: ex-chief of the Soviet secret police Mikhail Gorbachev, ex-chief of the CIA George Bush, ex-Nazi cyanide gas salesman Pope John Paul II, all bound by an unholy alliance to ring in the New World Order."

Behold A Pale Horse

by William Cooper

hourofthetime.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/William_Cooper-Behold_a_Pale_Horse1991A.pdf

7:46

(775) 883-6111

Hello. This is Ridezilla in Carson City. Please stop sending in political news and personal rants to our lead generation system. This is the 3rd one you've sent in and I would greatly appreciate it if you stopped. We are a powersports dealership and are not

interested in your political views or opinions.

Notes

First Name: William Last Name: Dunn

Work Phone: 7755088818

Email Address: Olizzysec1@gmail.com

telephone: 7755088818

SourcePage: xcontact

formpage: xcontact

Comments: Letter: Trump's Day 1 false promises

Avatar photo

by Opinion Contributor

February 1, 2025

Day 1 was supposed to bring lower prices, the end of the Ukraine war, and bold action to make America great again.

Instead, we got: Nazi salutes. Canceled cancer research. Potentially higher prescription prices. Pardons for criminals who assaulted cops. Hiring freezes, mass firings, and federal funding freezes. A gutted Federal Aviation Administration followed promptly by the deadliest aviation disaster in the U.S. in 20 years.

Republicans say Day 1 priorities will take more time. Meanwhile, they are considering

7:44 PM

You are ripping customers off then

Thank you for contacting Ridezilla Carson City. You have reached us after hours. We will respond to you as soon as we get in. Thanks!

Since the form is available for comment I will

Text message

帅

are not very int

thecause you do not

7:51

(775) 883-6111

7:44 PM

You are ripping customers off then

Thank you for contacting Ridezilla Carson City. You have reached us after hours. We will respond to you as soon as we get in. Thanks!

Since the form is available for comment I will keep practicing the first amendment until you make the form unavailable you and you are not very intelligent because you do not know what a rant is

00 00

Thank you for the veiled threat

7:51 PM SMS

Text message

It will be proven that Ridezilla is sending business logs to the Papacy to screw over customers, Mike Cannon. Thank you for texting my phone number 775-508-8818 with a veiled threat.

TITLE II. RELIGIOUS INSTITUTES (Cann. 607 - 709)

CODE OF CANON LAW

https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib2-cann607-709_en.html

Carson City powersports store expands under new ownership

By Scott NeufferThursday, November 3, 2022

Share this: Email | Facebook | X

The buyout of a decades-old powersports store in Carson City will not affect the local, family-oriented feel of the former Michael’s Cycle Works, according to store employees.

On Tuesday, Mike Cannon, sales consultant at the south Carson store, told the Appeal a five-year buyout by Georgia-based Outdoor Network had been completed.

“We are under new ownership,” Cannon said. “We’ve rebranded as ‘Ridezilla.’”

Cannon said the new owners funded a nearly $4 million remodel that, recently completed, doubled the size of the shop to 20,000 square feet. The remodel increased the size of the showroom by 70 percent and added a new parts and service area at the back of the store, Cannon said.

“People should come in to see the difference,” he said. “It’s significant.”

Cannon said the store has been in operation for half a century.

“I am 64, and the first dirt bike I bought – brand new and paid for in cash – was when I was 15, and it was at Michael’s Cycle Works,” he said.

Cannon said the store used to be on Highway 50 but relocated to its current spot near the car dealerships about 40 years ago.

“We are looking for new ways to expand,” he said, noting the store kept its doors open during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We are measured by customer service. We take customer feedback seriously.”

Cannon said Outdoor Network specializes in off-highway-vehicle parts and has smaller companies and brands under its umbrella. The acquisition also means the Carson store is no longer associated with Michael’s Reno Powersports, which was once a sister store to Cycle Works.

“We’re known as a local store, a family store, and we plan to keep that with the new corporate owners,” Cannon said. “The owners understand that.”

Ridezilla offers seven brands of off-road vehicles, both new and used models. They do offer some street bikes, but Cannon said 85 percent of sales come from the off-road market.

The store is located at 2680 S. Carson St. Business hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. The business is closed on Sundays.

For information, call 775-883-6111.

https://www.nevadaappeal.com/news/2022/nov/03/carson-city-powersports-store-expands-under-new-ownership/

Marty McFly is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Back to the Future franchise. He is a high school student living in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California, who accidentally becomes a time traveler and alters history after his scientist friend Emmett Brown invents a DeLorean time machine. He was created by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale. In the film trilogy, he is portrayed by Canadian actor Michael J. Fox. Back to the Future established Fox as a film star, such was the commercial success and popularity of the film upon its release in 1985. Marty returned in two film sequels, Back to the Future Part II in 1989 and Back to the Future Part III in 1990.

During the development of Back to the Future, Eric Stoltz was initially cast in the role, but was replaced by Fox. Various other actors have portrayed or voiced the character in other media. In the animated series, David Kaufman voices him, and in the video game developed and published by Telltale Games, he is voiced by A.J. LoCascio, while Fox makes vocal cameos as his future counterparts. Olly Dobson played him in the original stage musical adaptation in the West End and Casey Likes plays him in the Broadway production.

Critics have described Marty as a film character that defined the 1980s. He was named one of the greatest movie characters of all time by Empire. Critics have also described him as a pop culture icon. Since the release of Back to the Future, he has been influential in other media, often being referenced in television and film.

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

Etymology of McFly

What does the name McFly mean?

Rugged coastal mountains and the windswept Hebrides islands were the home of the first family to use the name McFly. It was originally given to a dark-featured, peaceful person. The Gaelic name of the Clan is Mac Dubhshithe, which translates as black one of peace. One branch of the Clan on the island of North Uist was known as Dubh-sidh, meaning 'black fairy,' due to their whimsical association with the faerie folk. 1 2

Early Origins of the McFly family

The surname McFly was first found in on the Isle of Colonsay, where the eponymous ancestor of the Clan may be Dubhshith, also called Dubside, who was lector at the Cathedral on the sacred isle of Iona in 1164. As the name MacFee is one of the oldest of all Dalriadan surnames it appears in records as early as the reign of Alexander II, when Johannes Macdufthi was witness to a charter in Dumfriesshire. In 1296, Thomas Macdoffy swore an oath of allegiance to King Edward I of England. 2

McFly Spelling Variations

Many spelling variations of McFly have been recorded over the years, including MacFie, McFey, MacFee, MacDuffie, MacPhee, MacGuffie, MacCuffie, MacPhie, Maffie, Maffey, MacDubh-shithe (Gaelic) and many more.

https://www.houseofnames.com/mcfly-family-crest

In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Mars (Latin: Mārs, pronounced [maːrs])[4] is the god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome.[5] He is the son of Jupiter and Juno, and was pre-eminent among the Roman army's military gods. Most of his festivals were held in March, the month named for him (Latin Martius), and in October, the months which traditionally began and ended the season for both military campaigning and farming.[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_(mythology)

Latin adjectives from the name of Mars are martius and martialis, from which derive English "martial" (as in "martial arts" or "martial law") and personal names such as "Marcus", "Mark" and "Martin".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_(mythology)

Pope Martin V (Latin: Martinus V; Italian: Martino V; January/February 1369 – 20 February 1431), born Otto (or Oddone) Colonna, was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 11 November 1417 to his death in February 1431.[1] His election effectively ended the Western Schism of 1378–1417. He is the last pope to date to take on the pontifical name "Martin".

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

Martin Luther OSA (/ˈluːθər/ LOO-thər;[1] German: [ˈmaʁtiːn ˈlʊtɐ] ⓘ; 10 November 1483[2] – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, professor, and Augustinian friar.[3] Luther was the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation, and his theological beliefs form the basis of Lutheranism. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in Western and Christian history.[4]

Luther was ordained to the priesthood in 1507. He came to reject several teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, in particular the view on indulgences. Luther attempted to resolve these differences amicably, first proposing an academic discussion of the practice and efficacy of indulgences in Ninety-five Theses, which he authored in 1517. In 1520, Pope Leo X demanded that Luther renounce all of his writings, and when Luther refused to do so, excommunicated him in January 1521. Later that year, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V condemned Luther as an outlaw at the Diet of Worms. When Luther died in 1546, Pope Leo X's excommunication was still in effect.

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

Martinism is a form of Christian mysticism and esoteric Christianity concerned with the fall of the first man, his materialistic state of being, deprived of his own, divine source, and the process of his eventual (if not inevitable) return, called 'Reintegration'.[1]

As a mystical tradition, it was first transmitted through a Masonic high-degree system established around 1740 in France by Martinez de Pasqually, and later propagated in different forms by his two students Louis Claude de Saint-Martin and Jean-Baptiste Willermoz.

The term Martinism applies to both this particular doctrine and the teachings of the reorganized "Martinist Order" founded in 1886 by Augustin Chaboseau and Gérard Encausse (aka Papus). It was not used at the tradition's inception in the 18th century. This confusing disambiguation has been a problem since the late 18th century, where the term Martinism was already used interchangeably between the teachings of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and Martinez de Pasqually, and the works of the first being attributed to the latter.[2] Regular transmission of Martinism to Augustin Chaboseau and Gérard Encausse has yet to be documented.

The three branches of the tradition

Martinism can be divided into three forms through which it has been chronologically transmitted:

The Elus-Cohens or Elus Coëns. (Cohen is the Hebrew for "priest" and "Elus" means "the elect" or "the chosen".) This was the first, and explicitly theurgical, way that 'reintegration' was to be attained. The Elus-Cohens were founded by Martinez de Pasqually, who was Saint-Martin's teacher. The original Elus-Cohens ceased to exist sometime in the late eighteenth or early 19th century, but it was revived in the 20th century by Robert Ambelain, and lives on today in various Martinist Orders, including the branch reinstigated by Ambelain himself.[citation needed]

In the highest of the three degrees of the Order of the Elus-Cohen, known as the Shrine, itself consisting of three degrees of which the highest was the Master Reau-Crois, evocation of entities belonging to the Divine Plane was carried out. This makes clear that the Elus-Cohen were not merely a mystical but a magical order. The chief evocation was that of the 'Mender', Jehoshua, and the basic methods were those of the Key of Solomon, including the use of circles, names of angels, planetary hours and symbols. The magical operations of the lower degrees were intended to establish contact between the operator and the Invisible World. Lofty and beautiful prayers recalled the goal which the Order tried to attain. There were also exorcisms intended to strangle demonic influence in the universe and thwart its powers over men, and to combat black magic.[3]

The Scottish Rectified Rite or Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cité-Sainte (CBCS). This was originally a Masonic rite, a reformed variant of the Rite of Strict Observance which, in its highest degrees, uses Masonic-type rituals to demonstrate the philosophy which underlies both Martinism and the practices of the Elus-Cohens. The CBCS was founded in the late 18th century by Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, who was a pupil of Martinez de Pasqually and a friend of Saint-Martin. The CBCS has managed to survive as a continually practiced rite from its founding until the present day, both as a purely masonic rite, and as a detached rite which is also open to women.

The Martinism of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, a mystical tradition in which emphasis is placed on meditation and inner spiritual alchemy. Saint-Martin disapproved of these teachings being called 'martinism' by his contemporaries, and instead explained it as a silent 'way of the heart' to attain reintegration. Saint-Martin most likely did not organize this path as an 'order', but gathered small circles of students around him, where he transmitted his teachings.

In a nutshell, the Martinism as we know it today consists of the theurgic tradition of Martinez de Pasqually (Martinezism), the Masonic Templarism of Jean-Baptiste Willermoz (Willermozism) and the Christian Theosophy of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin.[4] This heritage was reorganized into the 'Ordre Martiniste' in 1886 by Augustin Chaboseau and Gerard Encausse (also known as Papus).[citation needed]. The regular transmission of the Martinist heritage to Chaboseau and Papus has not been proven as of today.

Martinezism: Martinez de Pasqually and the Elus Cohens

Jacques de Livron Joachim de la Tour de la Casa Martinez de Pasqually was born in c. 1727 in Grenoble, France, and died in 1774 in Saint-Domingue while dealing with profane business. Martinez de Pasqually was active in Masonic organisations throughout France from the age of 28 onwards. In 1765 he established l'Ordre des Chevaliers Maçons Élus Coëns de l'Univers (Order of Knight-Masons Elect Priests of the Universe), which functioned as a regular Masonic obedience in France.

This order had three sets of degrees: the first were analogous to the symbolic degrees of conventional Freemasonry. The second were generally Masonic, though hinting at Pasqually's own secret doctrine. The third set were blatantly magical: for example, by using exorcisms against evil in the world generally and in the individual specifically. In the highest degree, the Reaux-Croix, the initiate was taught to use Theurgy to contact spiritual realms beyond the physical.[5]

De Pasqually put forth the philosophy underlying the work of the Elus-Cohens in his only book, Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings,[6] which first uses the analogy of the Garden of Eden, and refers to Christ as "The Repairer". The ultimate aim of the Elus-Cohen was to attain – whilst living – the beatific vision through a series of magical invocations and complex theurgic operations.

After Martinez de Pasqually's death, the Elus-Cohens continued to operate for some time; however, divisions started to occur between various temples, which became dormant during the first half of the 19th century. The last-known surviving Elus-Cohen from the original incarnation of the order, Destigny, died in 1868.[6]

Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin

Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin was born in 1743 in Amboise, France, and died in 1803. He was originally a barrister before taking a commission in the army at Bordeaux. Saint-Martin was initiated into the Elus-Cohens in 1768 and was active in the organization for at least six years. Saint-Martin was initiated into the Reaux-Croix, the highest degree of the Order, and in 1770 became de Pasqually's secretary.

Saint-Martin became increasingly dissatisfied with the Elus-Cohens' use of theurgic ritual, feeling that it was too sophisticated for the desired end. Instead, he favoured inward contemplation, or what he called "The Way of the Heart". Nevertheless, Saint-Martin continued to acknowledge Martinez de Pasqually's influence on his own system of thought. In addition, Saint-Martin drew much inspiration from the work of Jakob Böhme.[7]

In 1777, after failing to convince the Elus-Cohens to adopt a more contemplative practice, he cut back his involvement in the Order. He ceased all involvement in 1790.

Saint-Martin outlined his philosophy in several books , using the pen name of "The Unknown Philosopher". These include:

Ecce Homo

Of Errors and Truth, 1775

The Man of Desire

The New Man

Man, His True Nature & Ministry

Aphorisms and Maxims.

The Spiritual Ministry of Man.

Ten Prayers.

The Red Book.

Theosophic Correspondence.

Natural Table of the Correspondences between God, Man and the Universe, 1782

Note: the books with the name Man or l'homme in French are retellings of Saint-Martin of the main teachings of Martinez de Pasqually and what he learned in Martinezism mixed with Boehme.

There has been some controversy over whether Saint-Martin himself ever founded a formalised Order of Martinists. For example, 20th-century Martinist author Robert Ambelain initially claimed that Saint-Martin founded an order called the "Society of Initiates",[8] but within a few years he became disillusioned with the concept and stated that the Society of Initiates never existed.[9] Others allege that Saint-Martin became involved in a pre-existing society called the "Order of Unknown Philosophers".[10] It seems most probable, however, that although Saint-Martin did initiate disciples after a fashion, this was done on an informal basis; Martinism did not exist as an order per se until the efforts of Papus and Chaboseau (see below).

Willermoz and the Scottish Rectified Rite

Jean-Baptiste Willermoz (born 1730, Lyon, France; died 1824 also at Lyon), was initiated into Masonry at the age of 20 in a lodge which operated under the auspices of the Strict Observance. He was initiated into the Elus-Cohen in 1767, eventually attaining the highest degree of the Order, and being named by de Pasqually as a "Superior Judge," one of its most senior officers.

Concerned about dissent in the order after the death of de Pasqually, Willermoz in 1778, together with two other Superior Judges, formulated the idea of creating two additional degrees for the Auvergne Province of the Strict Observance, which exemplified the philosophy, though not the theurgic practices, of the Elus-Cohens, while working in the Knight Templar-oriented milieu of the masonic rite. The name of the rite was changed to Chevaliers Beneficient de la Cité-Sainte (CBCS). The degree structure of the rite was thus:

Apprentice

Fellowcraft

Master

Maître Ecossais/Scotch Master

Ecuyer Novice/Squire Novice

C.B.C.S. (Le Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cité Sainte)

Chevalier-Profès/Professed Knight

Chevalier-Grand Profès/Grand Professed Knight

Having reformed the French branch of the order, Willermoz in 1782 succeeded in persuading the German mother branch to adopt his reforms – though not without meeting considerable opposition from other branches of the Strict Observance, such as the Bavarian Illuminati of Adam Weishaupt.

The French Revolution curtailed the activities of the CBCS in France although the rite was preserved in Switzerland. Today the CBCS, or "Scottish Rectified Rite" (Rite Ecossais Rectifié) has several "great priories" throughout the world: Switzerland, USA., France, both the Waite's & Michael Herbert's Great Priories in England, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and Brazil, with prefectures and lodges of Saint Andrew as well as Rectified Craft lodges existing in many places from Italy to Brazil to Romania.[11]

Papus and Chaboseau: the founding of the Martinist Order

The disciples of Saint-Martin spread the Doctrine of the Unknown Philosopher in France, Germany, Denmark and above all in Russia. It was through one of them, Henri Delaage, that in 1880 a brilliant young Parisian doctor, Gerard Encausse (Later to be known as Papus), became acquainted with the doctrines of Saint-Martin. Subsequently, in 1884, together with some of his associates, he established a Mystical Order which he called the Ordre Martiniste or the Martinist Order.[12]

The founding of the Order came about when Encausse met Augustin Chaboseau in 1884. In parallel, Stanislas de Guaita, in association with Papus and Pierre-Augustin Chaboseau founded the Ordre Kabbalistique de la Rose Croix in 1888. Papus and Chaboseau discovered that they had both apparently received Martinist initiation through two different chains of succession which linked back to Saint-Martin and his original disciples. Papus claimed to have come into the possession of the original papers of de Pasqually and to have been given authority in the Rite of Saint-Martin by his friend Henri Viscount Delaage.[13] However, Encausse realised that there was a "missing link" in his own chain of succession: he and Chaboseau therefore "swapped initiations" to consolidate their lineages.

The Martinist Order which Papus founded was organised as a Lodge system, which worked four degrees:

Associate

Mystic

Unknown Superior (S::I::/Supèrieur Inconnu)

Unknown Superior Initiator (S::I::I::/Supérieur Inconnu Initiateur)(Lodge/Heptad Master).

Of these, the first two introduce the Candidate to key Martinist concepts, while the third supposedly confers the actual Initiation which Saint-Martin gave to his original disciples. Martinists generally believe that to be an authentic initiate, one must be able to show a chain of Initiatic Succession which goes back to Saint-Martin himself. However, Restivo states that "Martinist authenticity is not contingent upon acceptance or initiation into a filiation or succession of other Martinists as no personal initiation chain from Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin exists in the sacramental manner of ordination as culmination of mastery in an Initiatic order."

About the rituals themselves, the following general points may be made:

The mystical Christianity of Martinism is emphasised by the fact that all lodges are opened by invoking Yeheshuah, (Hebrew: יהשוה) i.e. the Pentagrammaton, consisting of the Tetragrammaton, with the addition of the Hebrew letter Shin, which was first suggested by Reuchlin as a Qabalistic way of spelling Jesus.

Despite the Lodge structure of Martinism, the rituals themselves do not bear any resemblance to the symbolic degrees of Freemasonry. The rituals have their own milieu of dramatic and esoteric content. It has been claimed however that some of the rituals derived from the Egyptian Freemasonry of Cagliostro, and the Scottish Rectified Rite of Willermoz.[14]

The rituals contain elements of Martinez de Pasqually's philosophy, and passing references to the Qabalah, in addition to principles derived from Saint-Martin's own teachings.

The candidate at key points throughout the rituals is expected to answer on his or her own initiative. He or she is constantly encouraged to meditate on the symbolism presented.

The rituals often rely on the element of surprise to reinforce the points they make.

During the period up to the Second World War, the I::L:: or S::I::IV degree was exceptionally added as an endorsement or rank of distinction to the S::I::I:: degree for legates in new Martinist jurisdictions who were expected to eventually become Grand Masters. Later branches of the Martinist Order worked a fifth degree, I::L:: (Free Initiator/Initiateur Libre), which conferred on the candidate the power to initiate others into all four degrees in person, not requiring Lodge or Heptad group forms, and to establish a new and independent Martinist Order, as well as to act as the legate or representative or Grand Master of that new order. For example, the Rose+Croix Martinist Order (Ontario, Canada):[15]

Associate

Mystic

Unknown Superior (S::I::/Supèrieur Inconnu)

Unknown Superior Initiator (S::I::I::/Supèrieur Inconnu Initiateur)(Lodge/Heptad Master)

Free Initiator (I::L::/Initiateur Libre/S.I.IV) (Grand Officer/Grand Initiator).

Modern Martinism

In 1905, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia invited Papus to Tsarskoye Selo to ask for advice on domestic difficulties that he was facing with revolutionaries. The First World War was disastrous for the Order. Papus died on the battlefield fulfilling his duties as a doctor, as did many other leaders of the Order. After the war, the Order was almost extinct and the surviving members splintered into competing factions.

René Guénon was himself initiated in the Martinist Order. In between 1906 and 1912, Guénon was a member of Martinist Lodges Humanidad and Melchissedec,[17] and published articles in L'Initiation, Revue Indépendante des Hautes Etudes Martinistes.[18][19] The Congrès Spiritualiste held in Paris on 7–10 June 1908, and organized by Papus, with the presence of Victor Blanchard, Paul Veux, Paul Chacornac, Theodor Reuss, and Charles Détré alias Teder took place at the peak of the collaboration between Guénon and Papus. However, the regularity of the Martinist Order was strongly questioned by Brother O. Pontet of the Grand Orient de France,.[20][21] The creation by Guénon in 1909 of an Ordre du Temple within the premises of the Martinist Order, as well as his involvement in a Gnostic Church under the name Palingenius prompted the separation between Papus and Guénon.

Many French Martinists supported Karl Wilhelm Naundorff's claims to the French throne. They joined the Synarchy movement and formed the Ordre Martiniste et Synarchie (OM&S) under the leadership of Victor Blanchard. Both Imperators of The Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC), Ralph Maxwell Lewis and Harvey Spencer Lewis were initiated into the Martiniste et Synarchie (OM&S). AMORC Imperator Harvey Spencer Lewis held the title of Grand Inspector for the Americas as well as Sovereign Grand Master Legate for the United States and was granted a charter to establish Lodges in the United States. Lewis later decided not to proceed with the OM&S plan for the U.S. due to the fact that Victor Blanchard was unable to produce all the required documentation. It turned out that the activities of the OM&S were limited to the transmission of various Martinist Initiations, and that the Order otherwise had no actual existence. There was no Martinist Lodge in Paris at the time and Victor Blanchard gave his initiations in the temple of the Fraternitae des Polaires.[citation needed]

In 1931 Augustin Chaboseau joined Victor-Emile Michelet and Lucien Chamuel (the other two surviving members of the original Supreme Council of 1891) to resuscitate the Order that they had founded with Papus. To emphasise the difference between traditional Martinism and the many new groups that had emerged, they named their movement the Ordre Martiniste Traditionnel (OMT). Victor-Emile Michelet was elected Grand Master and Augustin Chaboseau succeeded him in 1939 until his death in 1946. AMORC Imperator Ralph Maxwell Lewis was asked by the OMT in 1939 to bring Traditional Martinism to the U.S. Lewis was thus appointed Sovereign Legate and Regional Grand Master of the OMT and received the necessary charters and other documents required in order to proceed with the Order's expansion.[citation needed]

The Second World War was as disastrous for the Order in Europe as the first. The Nazi regime suppressed all 'occult' groups and many Martinists died in concentration camps. The OMT in Europe and its American branch, the Traditional Martinist Order (TMO) still exist. The TMO currently operates in almost every free country in the world under the protection of AMORC. Martinism is still growing in popularity, and with the advent of the Internet, many new orders and online groups expressing an interest in Martinism have emerged worldwide.[22]

The Martinist Order (L'Ordre Martiniste) founded by Papus in 1887 continues, and grows worldwide with Groups across Europe, Africa, the United States and the Middle East.[citation needed]

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

There are still more interesting, if not curious, facts surrounding President Obama. In February 2008, Obama was endorsed by white terror-racist group the Ku Klux Klan as reported in the Uk's Daily Squib Newspaper. Imperial Wizard, Ronald Edwards, and his KKK members supported Barack Obama in a rally in Tennessee.

Some might say the Klan weren't really voting for Obama, as much as against Hilary Clinton, because the banners they carried said, "ANYTHING IS BETTER THAN HILARY." But wait, if "ANYTHING" is "BETTER THAN HILARY," why doesn't the banner say, "Vote McCain, Palin or Obama"? Why just, "VOTE OBAMA"?

The Ku Klux Klan is of course a Masonic organization. And rumour has it that Mr. Obama is a high-ranking Freemason: either a Prince Hall Freemason or a member of the Martinist Order. And as if to prove the rumour true, on Tuesday January 20, 2009, the Masonic Lodge William R. Singleton-Hope-Lebanon Lodge #7 of the District of Columbia hosted what it called Masonic Inaugural Ball" in honor of President Barack Obama. The Ball was held on Inauguration, 8:00pm, at Stars Bistro, 2120 P Street N.W., Washington DC. Mr. Obama did not attend, of course, as that was his inauguration day as President.

Codeword Barbelon book two

by P.D. Stuart

Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister, activist, and political philosopher who was one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. King advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through the use of nonviolent resistance and nonviolent civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of legalized discrimination.

A black church leader, King participated in and led marches for the right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other civil rights.[1] He oversaw the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and later became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As president of the SCLC, he led the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize some of the nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King was one of the leaders of the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and helped organize two of the three Selma to Montgomery marches during the 1965 Selma voting rights movement. The civil rights movement achieved pivotal legislative gains in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. There were several dramatic standoffs with segregationist authorities, who often responded violently.[2]

King was jailed several times. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover considered King a radical and made him an object of the FBI's COINTELPRO from 1963 forward. FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties, spied on his personal life, and secretly recorded him. In 1964, the FBI mailed King a threatening anonymous letter, which he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide.[3] On October 14, 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War.

In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray, a fugitive from the Missouri State Penitentiary, was convicted of the assassination, though the King family believes he was a scapegoat. After a 1999 wrongful death lawsuit ruling named unspecified "government agencies" among the co-conspirators,[4] a Department of Justice investigation found no evidence of a conspiracy.[5] The assassination remains the subject of conspiracy theories. King's death was followed by national mourning, as well as anger leading to riots in many U.S. cities. King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2003. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in cities and states throughout the United States beginning in 1971; the federal holiday was first observed in 1986. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011.

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

Socialist Martin King with his White Master, Pope Paul VI, 1964 #612 Archbishop Paul Marcinkus gazes at King after an “audience” with the Pope. SMOM Henry R. Luce’s Time magazine named King “Man of the Year” in 1964 on orders from Cardinal Spellman, furthering Rome’s Civil Rights agitation.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4737372.stm

Vatican Assassins Wounded In The House of My Friends

Third Edition

by Eric Jon Phelps

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uQl1CmWeLL87RWVtzKttGFKm0frSNR8D/view?usp=sharing

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

Beelzebub or Baʿal Zebub (/biːˈɛlzəbʌb, ˈbiːl-/[1] bee-EL-zə-bub, BEEL-; Hebrew: בַּעַל־זְבוּב‎ Baʿal-zəḇūḇ), also spelled Beelzebul or Belzebuth, and occasionally known as the Lord of the Flies, is a name derived from a Philistine god, formerly worshipped in Ekron. In some Abrahamic religions he is described as a major demon. The name Beelzebub is associated with the Canaanite god Baal.

In theological sources, predominantly Christian, Beelzebub is another name for Satan. He is known in demonology as one of the seven deadly demons or seven princes of Hell, Beelzebub representing gluttony and envy. The Dictionnaire Infernal describes Beelzebub as a being capable of flying, known as the "Lord of the Flyers", or the "Lord of the Flies".

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

8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;

9 And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.

10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

11 Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.

Matthew 4:8-11

Rabbinic tradition equates Baʿal Berith with Beelzebub, "the lord of flies," the god of Philistine Ekron (2 Kings 1:2).[12] He was worshipped in the shape of a fly; and Jewish tradition states that so addicted were the Jews to his cult that they would carry an image of him in their pockets, producing it, and kissing it from time to time. Baʿal Zebub was called Baʿal Berith because such Jews might be said to make a covenant of devotion with the idol, being unwilling to part with it for a single moment.[13] According to another conception, Baʿal Berith was an obscene article of idolatrous worship, possibly a simulacrum priapi.[14] This is evidently based on the later use of the word "berit" to refer to circumcision.[12]

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

Smith's Bible Dictionary - Baal

Baal, [N] [B] [E] [H]

the supreme male divinity of the Phoenician and Canaanitish nations, as Ashtoreth was their supreme female divinity. Some suppose Baal to correspond to the sun and Ashtoreth to the moon; others that Baal was Jupiter and Ashtoreth Venus. There can be no doubt of the very high antiquity of the worship of Baal. It prevailed in the time of Moses among the Moabites and Midianites, ( Numbers 22:41 ) and through them spread to the Israelites. ( Numbers 25:3-18 ; 4:3 ) In the times of the kings it became the religion of the court and people of the ten tribes, ( 1 Kings 16:31-33 ; 1 Kings 18:19 1 Kings 18:22 ) and appears never to have been permanently abolished among them. ( 2 Kings 17:16 ) Temples were erected to Baal in Judah, ( 1 Kings 16:32 ) and he was worshipped with much ceremony. ( 1 Kings 18:19 1 Kings 18:26-28 ; 2 Kings 10:22 ) The attractiveness of this worship to the Jews undoubtedly grew out of its licentious character. We find this worship also in Phoenician colonies. The religion of the ancient British islands much resembled this ancient worship of Baal, and may have been derived from it. Nor need we hesitate to regard the Babylonian Bel, ( Isaiah 46:1 ) or Beaus, as essentially identical with Baal, though perhaps under some modified form. The plural, BAALIM, is found frequently, showing that he was probably worshipped under different compounds, among which appear--

BAAL-BERITH (the covenant Baal ), ( Judges 8:33 ; 9:4 ) the god who comes into covenant with the worshippers.

BAAL-ZEBUB (lord of the fly ), and worshipped at Ekron. ( 2 Kings 1:2 2 Kings 1:3 2 Kings 1:16 )

BAAL-HANAN. a. The name of one of the early kings of Edom. ( Genesis 36:38 Genesis 36:39 ; 1 Chronicles 1:49 1 Chronicles 1:50 ) b. The name of one of Davids officers, who had the superintendence of his olive and sycamore plantations. ( 1 Chronicles 27:28 )

BAAL-PEOR (lord of the opening , i.e. for others to join in the worship). We have already referred to the worship of this god. The narrative (Numb 25) seems clearly to show that this form of Baal-worship was connected with licentious rites.

[N] indicates this entry was also found in Nave's Topical Bible

[B] indicates this entry was also found in Baker's Evangelical Dictionary

[E] indicates this entry was also found in Easton's Bible Dictionary

[H] indicates this entry was also found in Hitchcock's Bible Names

Bibliography Information

Smith, William, Dr. "Entry for 'Baal,'". "Smith's Bible Dictionary". . 1901.

Smith's Bible Dictionary - Baal

Baal, [N] [B] [E] [H]

geographical. This word occurs as the prefix or suffix to the names of several places in Palestine, some of which are as follows:

BAAL a town of Simeon, named only in ( 1 Chronicles 4:33 ) which from the parallel list in ( Joshua 19:8 ) seems to have been identical with BAALATH-BEER.

BAALAH (mistress ). a. Another name for KIRJATH-JEARIM, or KIRJATH BAAL, the well-known town now Kuriet el Enab . ( Joshua 15:9 Joshua 15:10 ; 1 Chronicles 13:6 ) b. A town in the south of Judah, ( Joshua 15:29 ) which in Josh 19:3 is called BALAH, and in the parallel list, ( 1 Chronicles 4:29 ) BILHAH.

BAALATH (mistress ), a town of Dan named with Gibbethon, Gath-rim-mon and other Philistine places. ( Joshua 19:44 )

BAALATH-BEER (lord of the well ). BAAL 1, a town among those in the south part of Judah, given to Simeon, which also bore the name of RAMATH-NEGEB, or "the height of the south." ( Joshua 19:8 )

BAAL-GAD (lord of fortune ), used to denote the most northern, ( Joshua 11:17 ; 12:7 ) or perhaps northwestern, ( Joshua 13:5 ) point to which Joshuas victories extended. It was in all probability a Phoenician or Canaanite sanctuary of Baal under the aspect of Gad or Fortune.

BAAL-HAMON (lord of a multitude ), a place at which Solomon had a vineyard, evidently of great extent. ( Solomon 8:11 )

BAAL-HAZOR (village of Baal ), a place where Absalom appears to have had a sheep-farm, and where Amnon was murdered. ( 2 Samuel 13:23 )

MOUNT MOUNT BAAL-HERMON (Lord of Hermon ), ( Judges 3:3 ) and simply Baal-hermon. ( 1 Chronicles 5:23 ) This is usually considered as a distinct place from Mount Hermon; but we know that this mountain had at least three names ( 3:9 ) and Baal-hermon may have been a fourth in use among the Phoenician worshippers.

BAAL-MEON (lord of the house ), one of the towns which were built by the Reubenites. ( Numbers 32:38 ) It also occurs in ( 1 Chronicles 5:8 ) and on each occasion with Nebo. In the time of Ezekiel it was Moabite, one of the cities which were the "glory of the country." ( Ezekiel 25:9 )

BAAL-PERAZIM (lord of divisions ), the scene of a victory of David over the Philistines, and of a great destruction of their images. ( 2 Samuel 5:20 ; 1 Chronicles 14:11 ) See ( Isaiah 28:21 ) where it is called MOUNT MOUNT PERAZIM.

BAAL-SHALISHA (lord of Shalisha ), a place named only in ( 2 Kings 4:42 ) apparently not far from Gilgal; comp. ( 2 Kings 4:38 )

BAAL-TAMAR (lord of the palm tree ), a place named only in ( Judges 20:33 ) as near Gibeah of Benjamin. The palm tree (tamar ) of Deborah, ( Judges 4:5 ) was situated somewhere in the locality, and is possibly alluded to.

BAAL-ZEPHON (lord of the north ), a place in Egypt near where the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. ( Numbers 33:7 ; Ezekiel 14:2 Ezekiel 14:9 ) We place Baal-zephon on the western shore of the Gulf of Suez, a little below its head, which at that time was about 30 or 40 miles northward of the Present head.

https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/baal/

Weishaupt desired that the revolution of 1789 produce pure democracy, much as it was in Israel during the time of the Judges when each Israelite did "that which was right in his own eyes" (Judges 17:6; 21:25). The consequence of this kind of rule, however, leads to anarchy. Such was the case after the French Revolution. History records it as the "Reign of Terror" perpetrated by the Jacobin Clubs. As we shall learn, however, the Jacobins were all Templar Masons. The name "Jacobin," as we know, recalls Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, who was avenged by the French Revolution. If the Knights Templar, and not the Priory of Sion, was the Order that perfected the French Revolution, then somehow, sometime between Weishaupt's plan and the commencement of the French Revolution, control of the conspiracy transferred from the Priory of Sion to the Knights Templar. This conclusion was confirmed by Abbe' Augustin Barruel in 1799, one year following the publication of Robison's exposure of the Illuminati. During the 1773 suppression of the Jesuits, Barruel, a French patriot and a Jesuit, had joined Freemasonry, rising to the rank of Master Mason (3rd degree). After seeing the devastation caused by the French Revolution, knowing it to be Masonic, he renounced Freemasonry and wrote his Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism. In them he documented that the Jacobin Clubs were Templar Masonic fronts.98

Abbe' Barruel, a French clergyman, and John Robison, a professor in Scotland, were two men unknown to each other. They were members of opposing Masonic Orders and wrote in different countries and languages. They both covered the same subject matter and came to the same conclusions - that a conspiracy lay behind the French Revolution. Robison claimed that the Illuminati controlled the conspiracy, while Barruel maintained the Templars were in command.

Scarlet and the Beast

by John Daniel

https://ia803001.us.archive.org/28/items/ScarletAndTheBeastJohnDaniel1995/Scarlet%20and%20the%20Beast,%20John%20Daniel%20(1995).pdf

Jacobus Arminius (/ɑːrˈmɪniəs/; Dutch: Jakob Hermanszoon[a] ; 10 October 1560 – 19 October 1609) was a Dutch Reformed minister and theologian during the Protestant Reformation period whose views became the basis of Arminianism and the Dutch Remonstrant movement. He served from 1603 as professor in theology at the University of Leiden and wrote many books and treatises on theology.

Following his death, his challenge to the Reformed standard, the Belgic Confession, provoked ample discussion at the Synod of Dort, which crafted the five points of Calvinism in response to Arminius's teaching.

Early life

Jakob Hermanszoon[a] was born in 1559 or 1560 in Oudewater, Utrecht. He became an orphan while still young. His father Herman, a manufacturer of weapons, died, leaving his wife a widow with small children.[1] He never knew his father, and his mother was killed during the Spanish massacre at Oudewater in 1575.[citation needed]

The child was adopted by Theodorus Aemilius, a priest inclined towards Protestantism. Around 1572 (the year Oudewater was conquered by the rebels), Arminius and Aemilius settled in Utrecht. The young Jacobus studied there, probably at the Hieronymusschool. After the death of Aemilius (1574 or 1575), Arminius became acquainted with the mathematician Rudolph Snellius, also from Oudewater. The latter brought Arminius to Marburg and enabled him to study at the Leiden University, where he taught.[2] In 1576, Arminius was registered as a liberal arts student at the newly opened Leiden University.[citation needed]

Theological studies and ministry

Arminius remained a student at Leiden from 1576 to 1582. Although he enrolled as a student in Liberal Arts, this allowed him to pursue an education in theology, as well. His teachers in theology included Calvinist Lambertus Danaeus, Hebrew scholar Johannes Drusius, Guillaume Feuguereius (or Feugueires, d. 1613), and Johann Kolmann. Kolmann is now known for teaching that the overemphasis of God's sovereignty in high Calvinism made God "a tyrant and an executioner".[3] Although the university in Leiden was solidly Reformed, it had influences from Lutheran, Zwinglian, and Anabaptist views in addition to Calvinism. One Leiden pastor (Caspar Coolhaes) held, contra Calvin, that civil authorities did have jurisdiction in some church affairs, that it was wrong to punish and execute heretics, and that Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anabaptists could unite around core tenets.[3] The astronomer and mathematician Willebrord Snellius used Ramist philosophy in an effort to encourage his students to pursue truth without over reliance on Aristotle.[3] Under the influence of these men, Arminius studied with success and may have had seeds planted that would begin to develop into a theology that would later question the dominant Reformed theology of John Calvin. The success he showed in his studies motivated the merchants guild of Amsterdam to fund the next three years of his studies.

In 1582, Arminius began studying under Theodore Beza at Geneva. He found himself under pressure for using Ramist philosophical methods, familiar to him from his time at Leiden. Arminius was publicly forbidden to teach Ramean philosophy. After this difficult state of affairs, he moved to Basel to continue his studies.[2]

He continued to distinguish himself there as an excellent student. In 1583 Arminius was contemplating a return to Geneva when the theological faculty at Basel spontaneously offered him a doctorate.[4] He declined the honor on account of his youth (he was about 24)[5] and returned to the school in Geneva to finish his schooling in Geneva under Beza.

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

Arminius (/ɑːrˈmɪniəs/; 18/17 BC–AD 21) was a chieftain of the Germanic Cherusci tribe who is best known for commanding an alliance of Germanic tribes at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9, in which three Roman legions under the command of general and governor Publius Quinctilius Varus were destroyed. His victory at Teutoburg Forest precipitated the Roman Empire's permanent strategic withdrawal and the decolonisation of Germania Magna,[2] and modern historians regard it as one of Imperial Rome's greatest defeats.[3] As it prevented the Romanization of Germanic peoples east of the Rhine, it has also been considered one of the most decisive battles in history[4][5][6][7] and a turning point in human history.[8]

Born a prince of the Cherusci tribe, Arminius was part of the Roman-friendly faction of the tribe. He learned Latin and served in the Roman military, which gained him Roman citizenship, and the rank of eques. After serving with distinction in the Great Illyrian Revolt, he was sent to Germania to aid the local governor Publius Quinctilius Varus in completing the Roman conquest of the Germanic tribes. While in this capacity, Arminius secretly plotted a Germanic revolt against Roman rule, which culminated in the ambush and destruction of three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest.

In the aftermath of the battle, Arminius fought retaliatory invasions by the Roman general Germanicus in the battles of Pontes Longi, Idistaviso, and the Angrivarian Wall, and deposed a rival, the Marcomanni king Maroboduus. Germanic nobles, afraid of Arminius's growing power, assassinated him in 21. He was remembered in Germanic legends for generations afterwards.[9] The Roman historian Tacitus designated Arminius as the liberator of the Germanic tribes and commended him for having fought the Roman Empire to a standstill at the peak of its power.[9]

During the unification of Germany in the 19th century, Arminius was hailed by German nationalists as a symbol of German unity and freedom.[10] Following World War II, however, Arminius' significance diminished in Germany due to the rise of anti-militarism, pacifism, and anti-nationalism; the 2,000th anniversary of his victory at the Teutoburg Forest was only lightly commemorated in Germany.[10]

Name

The etymology of the Latin name Arminius is unknown, and confusion is further created by recent scholars who alternately referred to him as Armenus.[11] In his History, Marcus Velleius Paterculus calls him "Arminius, the son of Sigimer, a prince of the nation" and states he "attained the dignity of equestrian rank".[12] Due to Roman naming conventions of the time, it is likely Arminius is an adopted name granted to him upon citizenship or in any case not his Germanic name. The name instead appears to ultimately be of Etruscan origin, appearing as armne and armni on inscriptions found at Volaterrae.[1] According to another theory, that name was given to Arminius for his service in Armenia.[11]

The German translation of Arminius as the name Hermann dates from the 16th century, possibly first by Martin Luther.[13] In German, Arminius was traditionally distinguished as Hermann der Cherusker ("Hermann the Cheruscan") or Hermann der Cheruskerfürst ("Hermann the Cheruscan Prince"). Hermann etymologically means "Man of War", coming from the Old High German heri meaning "war" and man meaning "person" or "man".[14][15] This has also led to his English nickname "Herman the German."

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

How did the name Jacob become James in the New Testament?

In the original Greek of the New Testament, the names Jacob and James are variants of the same root—both names stem from the same Hebrew name, Yaaqob (יַעֲקֹב), which is translated “Jacob” throughout the Old Testament (e.g., Genesis 25:29).

In the Greek language, the Hebrew name Yaaqob becomes Iakób (Ἰακώβ) in a straight translation. That word is still translated as the English “Jacob” throughout the New Testament. For example, when Matthew refers to the son of Isaac and to the father of Joseph, Mary’s husband, he uses Iakób. Both those men were named Jacob (see Matthew 1:2 and 8:11).

Jacob was a common name in Jesus’ day, and many people named their son after the patriarch. But, since the culture was strongly influenced by Greek language and culture, the name was also given a Greek form, and the result was Iakóbos (Ἰάκωβος). In English translations, this becomes “James.”

The transformation of Iakób to Iakóbos is an example of a word being Hellenized or Graecized—being adapted to Greek structure and spelling. A similar phenomenon occurs in English, as well: a name of foreign origin is often Anglicized for English speakers. For example, the Scottish name Cailean can be Anglicized to Colin, and the Welsh name Eoghan becomes Owen. Eoghan and Owen are variants of the same name—the spellings and pronunciations are all that’s different. The same is true for Iakób and Iakóbos.

There is still the matter of why Iakóbos is translated as “James” rather than “Jacob.” It’s an adventuresome etymology, and we have to follow the Greek word Iakóbos through its later development from Greek to English. Before the time of Jerome and the Latin Vulgate, the Greek Septuagint had been translated into Latin; in that version, Iakóbos was transliterated as Iacobus (or Jacobus)—still very close to Jacob. In Late Latin, however, a slight change in spelling and pronunciation occurred, and the name started to be written as Iacomus (or Jacomus). Early French adapted the Latin name and truncated it to Gemmes (or Jammes), and from there English took it as James.

In the English New Testament, the name Jacob is mostly reserved for references to the Old Testament patriarch (24 out of 26 times). James is used of any of several men named James, including two of Jesus’ disciples and the half-brother of Jesus.

https://www.gotquestions.org/James-vs-Jacob.html

The Camino de Santiago (Latin: Peregrinatio Compostellana, lit. 'Pilgrimage of Compostela'; Galician: O Camiño de Santiago),[1] or in English the Way of St. James, is a network of pilgrims' ways or pilgrimages leading to the shrine of the apostle James in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition holds that the remains of the apostle are buried.

As Pope Benedict XVI said, "It is a way sown with so many demonstrations of fervour, repentance, hospitality, art and culture which speak to us eloquently of the spiritual roots of the Old Continent."[2] Many still follow its routes as a form of spiritual path or retreat for their spiritual growth. It is also popular with hikers, cyclists, and organized tour groups.

Created and established after the discovery of the relics of Saint James the Great at the beginning of the 9th century, the Way of St. James became a major pilgrimage route of medieval Christianity from the 10th century onwards. But it was only after the end of the Granada War in 1492, under the reign of the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, that Pope Alexander VI officially declared the Camino de Santiago to be one of the "three great pilgrimages of Christendom", along with Jerusalem and the Via Francigena to Rome.

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

The Cistercians and The Templars

The Knights Templar is a well-known order. They hold up a firm spot in the history of religions. What are less known, however, are the Cistercians, kin of the Templars. While the knights are known as the warriors, the Cistercians were the monks with the white mantles.

In 1098 just, a year prior to the Crusaders' storm over Jerusalem, a monk of the Benedictine gathered a group of followers and took off to the Citeaux, where he started a new abbey, known later as the Cistercians.

The monk, Robert, left the order as he was discontented with the members not following the St. Benedict rule, the same rule that the Templars were based upon. The monk believed that if he started a new group in the wilderness, he could begin a new thing. However, the Benedictines back at Molesome were dissatisfied with him going away, which is why they convinced the Pope to force him to go back to his first order. At Citeaux, the monk was replaced by Alberic.

Although Alberic was not the first founding member of the order, it is said that he is the one who is responsible for the white mantles. However, it is very likely that Stephen Harding, his next-in-line, was the one responsible.

Later, the white mantles became what distinguishes the Cistercians and the Templars from all other monastic groups. The monkhood started growing as more members joined the order, seeking belonging and ready for devotion.

As the Templars grow in numbers and wealth, the Cistercians did too. Both orders were tithes and taxes free, and the members were experts of trading, farming, and even industry.

The connection between the two institutions was not random. The same rules that founded the Templars held the white mantled monks in recognition and admiration. For instance, when a knight was forced to exile the order, he was to join the Cistercians as some sort of rehabilitation, as he was not allowed to go back to secular life.

https://bricksmasons.com/blogs/masonic-education/the-cistercians-and-the-templars?comment=126382243958#comments

The Order of Preachers (Latin: Ordo Prædicatorum, abbreviated OP), commonly known as the Dominican Order, is a Catholic mendicant order of pontifical right that was founded in France by a Castilian priest named Dominic de Guzmán. It was approved by Pope Honorius III via the papal bull Religiosam vitam on 22 December 1216. Members of the order, who are referred to as Dominicans, generally display the letters OP after their names, standing for Ordinis Praedicatorum, meaning 'of the Order of Preachers'. Membership in the order includes friars,[a] nuns, active sisters, and lay or secular Dominicans (formerly known as tertiaries). More recently, there have been a growing number of associates of the religious sisters who are unrelated to the tertiaries.

Founded to preach the gospel and to oppose heresy, the teaching activity of the order and its scholastic organisation placed it at the forefront of the intellectual life of the Middle Ages.[2] The order is famed for its intellectual tradition and for having produced many leading theologians and philosophers.[3] In 2018, there were 5,747 Dominican friars, including 4,299 priests.[1] The order is headed by the master of the order who, as of 2022, is Gerard Timoner III.[4] Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Siena are the co-patronesses of the order.

Saint Dominic, portrayed in the Perugia Altarpiece by Fra Angelico, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, Perugia.

Foundation

The Dominican Order came into being during the Middle Ages at a time when men of God were no longer expected to stay behind the walls of a cloister. Instead, they travelled among the people, taking as their examples the apostles of the primitive Church. Out of this ideal emerged two orders of mendicant friars – one, the Friars Minor, led by Francis of Assisi; the other, the Friars Preachers, led by Dominic de Guzmán. Like his contemporary, Francis, Dominic saw the need for a new type of organization, and the quick growth of the Dominicans and Franciscans during their first century of existence confirms that conditions were favorable for the growth of the orders of mendicant friars. The Dominicans and other mendicant orders may have been an adaptation to the rise of the profit economy in medieval Europe.[5]

Dominic sought to establish a new kind of order, one that would bring the dedication and systematic education of the older monastic orders like the Benedictines to bear on the religious problems of the burgeoning population of cities, but with more organizational flexibility than either monastic orders or the secular clergy. The Order of Preachers was founded in response to a perceived need for informed preaching.[6] Dominic's new order was to be trained to preach in the vernacular languages.

Dominic inspired his followers with loyalty to learning and virtue, a deep recognition of the spiritual power of worldly deprivation and the religious state, and a highly developed governmental structure.[7] At the same time, Dominic inspired the members of his order to develop a "mixed" spirituality. They were both active in preaching, and contemplative in study, prayer and meditation. The brethren of the Dominican Order were urban and learned, as well as contemplative and mystical in their spirituality. While these traits affected the women of the order, the nuns especially absorbed the latter characteristics and made those characteristics their own. In England, the Dominican nuns blended these elements with the defining characteristics of English Dominican spirituality and created a spirituality and collective personality that set them apart.

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

History of Couvent des Jacobins

The Couvent des Jacobins was the mother church of the Dominican Order, a small community of monastic preachers founded by Saint Dominic to combat the heresy of Christian Catharism. They needed somewhere to preach and decided to build this elegant ecclesiastical building in 1229 from pink Roman brick (though the church’s earlier incarnation was only half as tall).

The Couvent expanded over the next 200 years, and in 1368 Pope Urban V decreed that the relics of Saint Thomas Aquinas – a member of the Dominican Order – could be transferred from Italy to Toulouse.

Following the French Revolution of 1789, the Dominican Order was banned, and the friars were forced to leave. By 1810, the emperor Napoleon had converted the building into barracks to help in his various military campaigns. The next 150 years saw the Couvent take various forms – housing an exhibition of Arts and Industries in 1865, serving as a school playground in 1872 and as a safehouse for storing treasures from the museums of Paris during World War II.

After all these odd jobs, the Couvent spent much of the second half of the 20th century in a state of renovation to restore it to its former glory, and it finally (partially) reopened as a museum in the 21st century.

https://www.lonelyplanet.com/france/toulouse/attractions/couvent-des-jacobins/a/poi-sig/1192995/1003054

Jacob Appelbaum - People Think They're Exempt From NSA (2014)

Jacob Appelbaum discusses the fallacy of Americans thinking that they won't be targeted, passive and active surveillance methods, AI and human analyst systems working together, satellite networks, deep packet inspection & injection, military contractors getting special access to surveillance programs, proprietary vs open source software, OTR messaging, hoarding exploits for self-gain. A great talk from an amazing person. 2014 Security Summit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyT7yzap1Wc

On June 24, 1717, six months after the exile of the Stuarts, four lodges in London (names not given) met at Apple-Tree Tavern and united English Freemasonry under the name "United Grand Lodge," which has been nicknamed the Mother Grand Lodge, or Grand Mother Lodge.

The first French Templar Lodge was founded in 1725 by a contingent of exiled Stuart sympathizers. In 1745 Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, attempted to regain

his Scottish throne and was soundly defeated in less than a year. Upon returning to France, the Scottish Templars founded the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, quickly

developing it to 32 degrees by 1755. In 1801 all French lodges accepted the Templar Scottish Rite degrees. That same year the Scottish Rite of Charleston, S.C., created the 33rd and final

degree in Templar Freemasonry.

On the continent of Europe, French Freemasonry is known as Scottish Rite, Grand Orient, French Grand Lodge, Continental, or Latin Freemasonry. The Templar York Rite in England was

transported to America, where it remains to this day. English Freemasonry continued with the three Craft Degrees UNTIL 1860, WHEN IT ADOPTED THE THIRTY ADDITIONAL DEGREES OF THE SCOTTISH RITE, but for competitive reasons refused to call it "Scottish."'

Scarlet and the Beast

by John Daniel

https://ia803001.us.archive.org/28/items/ScarletAndTheBeastJohnDaniel1995/Scarlet%20and%20the%20Beast,%20John%20Daniel%20(1995).pdf

For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled."

Revelation 17:17

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." The History and Legend of Scottish Rite Origins http://www.traversecityscottishrite.com/scottish-rite-history.html

In the British Empire, Jacobin was linked primarily to The Mountain of the French Revolutionary governments and was popular among the established and entrepreneurial classes as a pejorative to deride radical left-wing revolutionary politics, especially when they exhibit dogmatism and violent repression.[4] In Britain, the term faintly echoed negative connotations of Jacobitism, the pro-Catholic, monarchist, rarely insurrectional political movement that faded out decades earlier tied to deposed King James II of England and his descendants. Jacobin reached obsolescence and supersedence before the Russian Revolution, when the terms (Radical) Marxism, anarchism, socialism, and communism had overtaken it.

In France, Jacobin now generally leans towards moderate authoritarianism, more equal formal rights, and centralization.[5] It can, similarly, denote supporters of extensive government intervention to transform society.[6] It is unabashedly used by proponents of a state education system that strongly promotes and inculcates civic values. It is more controversially, and less squarely, used by or for proponents of a strong nation-state capable of resisting undesirable foreign interference.[7]

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

Weishaupt’s Illuminati, and his Lodges of the Grand Orient, went underground. They were succeeded by the Jacobin Clubs and convents as has been explained in Pawns in The Game. Mirabeau directed the French Revolution. He was ably assisted by Adrien Duport, who was also an initiate of the Higher Degrees of the

Illuminati. It was Duport who set before the Committee of Propaganda the policy of destruction they were to carry out on May 21, 1790.

"When Weishaupt had destroyed France as a monarchy and a world power, and had Americans cut each other’s throat because of alleged grievances which propaganda made appear very real, he then moved to Italy.

Illuminism was running hog-wild in Italy. Under various names and disguise, it was aimed at the destruction of the Vatican because it was both a spiritual as well as a temporal power. The Italian Illuminists reasoned, “how can we destroy ALL governments and ALL religions if we don’t first of all destroy the Vatican.” But this

line of reasoning was not in keeping with Weishaupt’s plans as we will prove.

Italian Grand Orient Masons and Illuminists, and Alta Vendita members had not been initiated into the FULL secret. According to Weishaupt’s plan, as has been confirmed by Mazzini, Pike, Lemmi, and Lenin, the Vatican is to be allowed to survive, and control nearly 500,000,000 souls, until those who direct the Synagogue

of Satan decide it is time to involve ALL Christian people in the final social cataclysm with all people controlled by atheistic-Communists. For this reason Weishaupt hurried to Italy to prevent a premature destruction of the Vatican. Nearly one hundred years later Pike had to take similar action to prevent first Mazzini and later Lemmi from upsetting the Synagogue of Satan’s plans by doing exactly the same thing, All this proves that only a very few men who comprise the High Priesthood of the Luciferian Creed know the full secret and how their conspiracy is intended to reach its final goal."

Satan Prince of This World

by William Guy Carr

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Hw94yTrcRzvZjNQOo8T5_w-jqL8v5IMu/view?usp=sharing

Friends: of the Society are to be sought and cultivated [426, 823, 824] on behalf of them, whether living or dead, prayers are to be offered and other signs of gratitude are to be shown [638], 413; the extent to which communication with friends in the world is to be had [60, 246], 53, 111; the extent to which an examiner can examine candidates who are his friends [143]

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

The Society of the Friends of the Constitution (French: Société des amis de la Constitution), renamed the Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Freedom and Equality (Société des Jacobins, amis de la liberté et de l'égalité) after 1792 and commonly known as the Jacobin Club (Club des Jacobins) or simply the Jacobins (/ˈdʒækəbɪn/; French: [ʒakɔbɛ̃]), was the most influential political club during the French Revolution of 1789. The period of its political ascendancy includes the Reign of Terror, during which well over 10,000 people were put on trial and executed in France, many for political crimes.

Initially founded in 1789 by anti-royalist deputies from Brittany, the club grew into a nationwide republican movement with a membership estimated at a half million or more.[1] The Jacobin Club was heterogeneous and included both prominent parliamentary factions of the early 1790s: The Mountain and the Girondins.[3] In 1792–93, the Girondins were more prominent in leading France when they declared war on Austria and on Prussia, overthrew King Louis XVI, and set up the French First Republic. In May 1793, the leaders of the Mountain faction, led by Maximilien Robespierre, succeeded in sidelining the Girondin faction and controlled the government until July 1794. Their time in government featured high levels of political violence, and for this reason the period of the Jacobin/Mountain government is identified as the Reign of Terror. In October 1793, 21 prominent Girondins were guillotined. The Mountain-dominated government executed 17,000 opponents nationwide as a way to suppress the Vendée insurrection and the Federalist revolts, and to deter recurrences. In July 1794, the National Convention pushed the administration of Robespierre and his allies out of power and had Robespierre and 21 associates executed. In November 1794, the Jacobin Club closed.

History

Foundation

When the Estates General of 1789 in France convened in May–June 1789 at the Palace of Versailles, the Jacobin club, originating as the Club Breton, comprised exclusively a group of Breton representatives attending those Estates General.[8] Deputies from other regions throughout France soon joined. Early members included the dominating comte de Mirabeau, Parisian deputy Abbé Sieyès, Dauphiné deputy Antoine Barnave, Jérôme Pétion, the Abbé Grégoire, Charles Lameth, Alexandre Lameth, Artois deputy Robespierre, the duc d'Aiguillon, and La Revellière-Lépeaux. At this time meetings occurred in secret, and few traces remain concerning what took place or where the meetings convened.[8]

Transfer to Paris

By the March on Versailles in October 1789, the club, still entirely composed of deputies, reverted to being a provincial caucus for National Constituent Assembly deputies from Brittany. The club was re-founded in November 1789 as the Société de la Révolution, inspired in part by a letter sent from the Revolution Society of London to the Assembly congratulating the French on regaining their liberty.[9][10][11]

To accommodate growing membership, the group rented for its meetings the refectory of the Dominican monastery of the “Jacobins” in the Rue Saint-Honoré, adjacent to the seat of the Assembly.[10][11] They changed their name to Société des amis de la Constitution in late January, though by this time, their opponents had already concisely dubbed them "Jacobins", a nickname originally given to French Dominicans because their first house in Paris was in the Rue Saint-Jacques.[8][11]

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

"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 " BITE OF PEEPECTION" ^THE " EITE OF HEEEDOM" THE " ANCIEIII SCOTTISH rite"—THE " EITE OF KILWINNING" AND LAST, AS THE " SCOTTISH EITE, 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

PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS Thirty-Second Degree ; oR;, Sublime Prince of the KoYAL Secret. The French Revolution—Jacobins Like Chicago Anarchists—Lodge and Romish Despotism—Denials that Masonry is a Religion—Proof that Masonry is a Religion—Made Twofold More the Child of Hell—Freemasonry Confessedly Deistic—Deism is Practical Atheism—Adopts the Motto of the Jesuits—**They Sbal] Be Booted Up." This degree originated thirty years before the French Eevolntion of 1789^ and was active in producing it. The lodge-theory was that of the anarchists of today^ that;, if institutions or religion, and government were abolished;, human passions, like fluids^, would find their level in universal peace and happiness. Communists ^guillotined their king^ and hung their bishops to lampposts ; proclaimed "^^liberty and equality ;'^ and put their religious creed over the gate of their cemetery: ''There is no God! Death is an eternal sleep/' The last degree of their system required the candidate to stab his I brother, or nearest friend, as a traitor to the lodge, and ' amid the brother's groans, and pleadings for his life, they laid the candidate's gloved hand on the beating heart of a lamb. And, if he stabbed, they removed the vj)linder, and swore him to vengeance against Church and State. This was ''The Royal Secret/' This explains the vengeance sworn in this and other degrees of that day. {See Rohison's Conspiracy, p. 299.) But, in this country, and at this day, this degree is senseless, and worthless. Its bluster about freeing the people, is meaningless, and itself not worth reading. But how happens this once "Ne plus ultra'' degree to be so prolix and stupid as to be scarce worth reading ?

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 Eite 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 Eite,'' 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. They therefore stretched it, and stuffed it into its present shape, prolix enough. Hence the hotchpotch flummery of a camp of nine sides, with stupid Masomc explanatious for every comer, i

LODGE AND ROMISH DESPOTISM. 451 But the one "^^mission and object^^ (Maekey) of Masonry is kept steadily in view; which is the worship of the god of this world, who is Satan, as the ''Orand Architect of the Universe/' and to accomplish this by inventing ^^a religion in which all mankind agree ;^^ and this, by putting all earth's religions upon a level, and uniting them together in Masonic worship, which is boldly avowed in rituals, lexicons, and philosophical degrees. This is, (in Revelation, IS, IJf,) called: the image of the beast, made by ^^them, that dwell on the earth;'' that is, everybody; every creed, and no creed; all who join secret lodges. But this world-religion must have some form and shape, to hold together; and be taxed; hence, it takes the form, or image, of the beast. Lodge despotism is as absolute as Eomigh despotism, and is the image of it ; and it is made, as we have seen, by the lamb-dragon beast, which is Popery; ^Hhat great city, (Rome) which reigneth over the kings of the earth/' {Rev, 17, 18.) Note now the profound craft, by which this is to be accomplished, viz,. Masonry promises men salvation by I ceremonies invented by men, administered by priests, and inhabited by devils. This is the sum and substance of all the false religions on earth, and will ultimately unite them against Christ. (See Rev. 20^.) But the only opponents Masonry dreads, is Christ, who refused to worship Satan, and his followers. If there were no Christians in lodges, Masonry would not live an hour. Hence, though Christ is wholly omitted, in the lower degrees, He is taken into the lodges, made by Jesuits and Jews, as a tool of incantation, but He is not permitted to be worshiped there, except by worships which are paid to devils. In the next and last degree, of the world's ruling rite, the SSrd^ Christ i^ twir-p o^]]o(] ''our 452 DENIALS THAT MASONRY IS A RELIGION. Sovereign/' (See pp. 476-7.) but none are baptized in His name, nor do they celebrate His death. The bread is eaten and the wine drunk from human skulls, in honor of devils, not Christ; and though Christ is called sovereign, they trample on His law. Why, then, do they pay Him these empty compliments? Plainly, to draw in ignorant, weak, and worldly Christians, and this is what they achieve. ^ Nothing is more common, than the denial that Free* masonry is a religion. This denial is made by many Masons, and by all Jack-Masons, who bear the burdens of the lodge, while claiming merit for not joining it. But the many distinct avowals, that ''Masonry is a religious institution'' made by the highest Masonic authorities, have been given in their own words. The diabolical craft of the system appears in this; that while ^^traditions,'^ which are man-made religions, crucified ^*^the Son of Gpod,'^ they worship the cross, the tool by which they tortured Him, to make believe they were opposed to His crucifixion and torture, as if the assassin should kneel before the dagger, with which he stabbed his victim. N'or is this all, or the worst: claiming that they unite all religions in one, they renounce and exclude the God and religion of the Bible, as ^^bigoted^' and narrow. They work only in Christian lands, not in barbarous and savage countries; and they denounce as ^^bigoted'^ the religion of the lands where they work. And to crown their falsehood with felony, they steal and falsely appropriate the principles knd fruits of the Gospel of Christ. The quotations which we give below, not only prove that Masonry claims to be a religion, but the true religion, and that its thistles produce figs, that its heathen ritual regenerates, sanctiPROOF THAT MASONRY IS A RELIGIOK'. 453 fies, and saves men. To begin with the Entered Apprentice : ^^There he stands without our portals^ on the threshold of this new Masonic life, in darkness, helplessness and ignorance. Having been wandering amid the errors, and covered over with the pollutions of the outer and profane world, he comes inquiringly to our doors, seeking the new birth, and asking a withdraw^d of the veil which conceals divine truth from his uninitiated sight. * * * There is to be not simply a change for the future, but also an extinction of the past ; for initiation is, as it were, a death to the world, and a resurrection to a new life.'' Mackey's Ritualist, pp, 22-3. This is Satan's travesty and burlesque of Bible conviction of sin, and seeking religion. The Fellow Craft is still compassing Mt. Sinai. Then follows the new birth, or regeneration, not ^^by the Holy Ghost," but by the third, or Master's degree : ^^This has very properlv been called ihQ sublime degree of a Master Mason, as well for the solemnity of the ceremonies which accompany it, as for the profound lessons of wisdom which it inculcates. The important design of the degree is to symbolize the great doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and the immortality of the soul; and hence it has been remiarked-by a learned v/riter of our Order, that the Master Mason represents a man saved from the grave of iniquity, and raised to the faith of salvation." — MacJcey's Ritualist, p. 109. Then follows the Masonic lying-in, in w^hich the devil acts as midwife. The hoodwink falls, the lodge claps and stamps, and the weary, badgered and befooled candidate experiences such a ^change of heart/"

FREEMASONRY CONFESSEDLY DEISTIC. 455 dwelling place of Him who is the author of purity." — Machey's Ritualist, p. 39. What is professing religion, if this is not? Then also the same writer says of the Shock o'f Enlightenment, or Eite of Illumination : ^This mental illumination,'—this spiritual light, which, after his new birth, is the first demand of the new candidate, is but another name for Divine Truth,— the truth of God and the soul,—the nature and essence of both,—which constitute the chief design of all Masonic teaching." — Machey's Ritualist, p, SS. We add the following, not because needed to prove Masonry a religion, but to show that it is organized deism : ^'^Every important undertaking in Masonry is both begun and completed with prayer. The prayers given in the hand-books of the Blue Lodge, are such, as all Masons, whatever their religious faith, may unite in. In the orders of knighthood the prayers are, as a matter of course, strictly and intensely Christia^. In the third L degree a sublime prayer, adapted from the 14th chapter of Job, is made in American lodges an essential part of the ritual of Eaising." — Morris' Dictionary Art. Prayer. it is evident from the above quotations that Freemasonry claims to he a religion. Kow let Masonic authorities tell us what kind of a religion it is. "The truth, is, that Masonry is undoubtedly a religious institution,—its religion being of that universal kind in which all men agree, and which, handed down through the long succession of ages, from that ancient priesthood who first taught it, embraces the great tenets of the existence of God, and of the immortality of the 456 DEISM IS PRACTICAL ATHEISM. soul; tenets, which by its peculiar symbolic languages, it has preserved from its foundation, and still continues m the same beautiful way to teach. Beyond this for its religious faith, we must not and cannot go/' — MacJcey's Masonic Jurisprudence, page 95, ''The religion then, of Masonry, is pure theism, on which its different members engraft their own peculiar opinions, but they are not permitted to introduce them into the lodge, or to connect their truth or falsehood with the truth of Masonry/' — Macheys Lexicon, Art. Religion, "All the ceremonies of our order are prefaced and terminated with prayer, because Masonry is a religious institution and because we thereby show our dependence on, -and our faith and trust in God." — MacJcey's Lexicon, Art, Prayer. — ''This is the scope and aim of its ritual. The Master Mason represents man when youth, manhood, old age, and life itself have passed away as fleeting shadows, yet raised from the grave of iniquity, and quickened into another and better existence. By its legend and all its ritual it is implied that we have been redeemed from the death of sin and sepulchre of pollution !" Machey's Ritualist, p, 109. These and the like quotations might be continued to any extent and from different authors. But these will suffice to settle the question with all rational and intelligent readers. And if once the ministry and churches* of this country can be possessed of these facts, there will be raised to God one general cry ; as when President Lincoln called the American people to unite in prayer for deliverance from the curse of the slavery war. Deism is practical atheism. For the infinite God cannot be reached by finite minds, but only through a merciful Mediator.

' • ADOPTS THE MOTTO OF THE JESUITS. 457 But the key to the importance of this 33nd degree, is its Motto: ''Ad majorem Dei gloriam/' Note 370. This is the motto of the Jesuits ; who, with the apostate Ramsay, made these French degrees, falsely called Scottish. This motto was adopted by their founder, Igna^ tins Loyola; and is still the motto of the order which he founded, in an underground chapel of the Holy Martyrs in 1534, seventeen years after Luther nailed his Theses to the church door at Wittenberg, in 1517. The reformation' had only fairly begun, and this underground, secret order of Jesuits met the Eeformation, and has turned it back. Some principalities in Germany, once Protestant, are now under Popish prindes ! That order now rules Popedom, though once prohibited by it, as Masonry is now. The reader will find the above motto on page IJf, of the introduction, and the founding of the order on page 9 of the ''History pf the Society of Jesus,'' Baltimore, 1878. And on pages 13 and 13 he says, that .^ in the village of Lasorta, near Rome, while praying, he I was '^dazzled by a brilliant light ;^^ and ^^the entire J history of the order,'' says the historian^ ^^is but a de- 1 velopment of that vision.'^ ? Now, if that light had been from God, as was that which shone around Paul, at his conversion, Loyola's life would have borne thfe same fruit which Paul's did, instead of the ignorance, superstition, and persecution which has tracked Papacy ever since; and now furnishes saloon-keepers for our cities, and carries their votes to license pauperism, crime, blasphemy, and woe. But if that light was from Satan, who is Christ's rival and counterfeit, then we should expect the fruits, which we see follow the Papacy everywhere. Then that supornatural light was Masonic light, whose fruits are the 458 "they shall be rooted up/^ same. And our Savior has told us: '''By their fruits ye shall Jcnow them/' These lodges are not of God's plantings and we have the word of Christy that 'Hhey shall be rooted up/' (Math. 15, IS,) Let ns look to Him for the fulfillment of that glorious promise.

Scotch Rite Masonry Illustrated Volume 2

by Blanchard

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

jacobin

Est. 1828

Dictionary

Definition

Jacobin

noun

Jac·o·bin ˈja-kə-bən

: DOMINICAN

[French, from Jacobin Dominican; from the group's founding in the Dominican convent in Paris] : a member of an extremist or radical political group

especially : a member of such a group advocating egalitarian democracy and engaging in terrorist activities during the French Revolution of 1789

Jacobinic

ˌja-kə-ˈbi-nik

adjective

or Jacobinical

ˌja-kə-ˈbi-ni-kəl

Jacobinism

ˈja-kə-bə-ˌni-zəm

noun

Examples of Jacobin in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

In the spring of 1794, leading the Jacobin revolution required Robespierre to be for the rule of law and for its suspension, to defend and attack private property, to support and reject nationalism, to embrace feminism and antifeminism, and to promote religion and irreligion.

—Patrice Higonnet, Foreign Affairs, 1 July 2012

As the writer and historian Steve Fraser put it in a recent essay for the magazine Jacobin, the right and the left have settled on competing calls not for revolution but for restoration.

—Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker, 25 Mar. 2024

The Dominican Order — one of the four orders of the Roman Catholic Church — was known as the Jacobin Order in France.

—Moira Ritter, Miami Herald, 5 Mar. 2024

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'Jacobin.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

Middle English, from Anglo-French jacopin, from Medieval Latin Jacobinus, from Late Latin Jacobus (St. James); from the location of the first Dominican convent in the street of St. James, Paris

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler

The first known use of Jacobin was in the 14th century

See more words from the same century

Articles Related to Jacobin

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In the beginning, illuminati were shut out, but now they hold the key.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Jacobin.

The Church of the Jacobins is a deconsecrated Roman Catholic church located in Toulouse, France. It is a large brick building whose construction started in 1230, and whose architecture influenced the development of the Gothique méridional (Southern French Gothic) style.[1] The relics of Thomas Aquinas are housed there. In the two centuries following the dissolution in France of the Dominican Order at the time of the French Revolution, it served various different purposes before undergoing major restoration in the 20th century. In the early 21st century, it was partially converted into a museum.

Toulouse being the city where the Dominican order was founded in 1215, the Convent of the Jacobins of Toulouse is sometimes considered the mother church of the order, although it was not the first convent built by the Dominican friars.[2] Other churches such as Santa Sabina in Rome also claim this title.

Name

The name Jacobins is the nickname that was given to the Dominican Order in the Middle Ages in France. Their first convent in Paris was located in the rue Saint-Jacques, (Latin Jacobus), and that name came to be attached to the order itself.[3]

The building complex is called a convent, although nowadays this term usually refers to a community of women, because in its historical usage the term convent was applied to communities of mendicant orders to differentiate them from the monasteries of monastics.

Dissolution

Following the French Revolution of 1789, the Dominican order was banned, and the friars forced to leave. In 1804 the conventual complex including the church became the property of the city of Toulouse, and in 1810 the emperor Napoleon requisitioned the church and converted it into a barracks. Floors were installed to create upper storeys for dormitories, while stables and an armoury occupied the ground floor. During the period the building served as a barracks, the stained glass windows were destroyed, and the medieval paintings in the choir were painted over with whitewash.[8]

Monument and museum

Citizens who were appalled at the destruction succeeded in 1861 in convincing the army to move to new barracks. In succeeding years, the building housed an exhibition of Arts and Industries (1865), served as a playground for the pupils of the nearby Lycée Fermat starting in 1872, and as a place to safely store treasures from the museums of Paris during World War I.[8]

Several periods of restoration work were undertaken over the course of the 20th century. In 1905 the floors installed by the army were removed; starting in 1923 blocked windows were uncovered and stained glass installed; between 1953 and 1963 the chapels were reconstructed; and between 1965 and 1974 the whitewash covering the medieval murals was removed. Today the building functions as a museum.[8]

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

The Battle at Pontes Longi was fought near Bramsche, Germany in 15 AD between the Roman general Aulus Caecina Severus and an alliance of Germanic peoples commanded by Arminius. It was part of a three-year series of campaigns by Germanicus in Germania. According to Tacitus, The battle ended with a Roman victory.

After fighting an indecisive battle with Arminius, Germanicus ordered Caecina to take his original forces and march back to the Rhine. Arriving at a spot referred to as the "long causeways" and finding it impassable, Caecina began repairs to the causeways so he could continue his march towards the Rhine.[3] However, he was attacked by Arminius and just managed to hold him off when night fell. The next day, the two armies joined in battle again. The Roman legions became separated and were again almost defeated. Caecina, trying to hold the front line against the Germans, had his horse killed under him. He only survived due to the timely intervention of the First Legion.[1] When Caecina saw many of the Germans turning from the fighting to plunder the baggage carts and pack mules, he gave orders for the baggage to be abandoned. This was the key reason the First and Twentieth legions were able to withdraw and rejoin the Fifth and Twenty-First legions on dry land by nightfall.[4]

During the night a rumor spread that the Germans had broken into the camp, causing the troops to rush the gates in an attempt to escape. Caecina, unsuccessful in attempting to convince the soldiers that there was no attack underway, was forced to throw himself on the ground under the gateway to persuade the soldiers to stop and listen.[5]

During the night Arminius counseled in favor of letting the Romans leave their camp in the morning and resume their march to the Rhine. Arminius explained that once the legionaries were in the open and clear of the camp, the Cheruscans could wipe them out. But Arminius’ uncle, Inguiomerus, did not want to give the Romans a chance to escape. He advised attacking their camp at dawn and over-running it. Other chiefs concurred. So Arminius, outvoted, agreed to lead a dawn attack on the Roman camp.[6]

In the morning, with Caecina having stiffened his army’s morale, the Romans managed to defeat the Germans attacking the camp and caused them to flee the battlefield. Caecina was then able to complete the repairs to the Long Bridge and return to the Rhine. As a result of this victory, he was awarded triumphal honours.[7]

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

Another element of the Grail legend is the spear supposed to have pierced the side of Jesus, also known as the Spear of Longinus or the Spear of Destiny. Whoever possesses this spear, so the legend goes, will rule the world. The Merovingians, whose descendants are the Habsburg pretenders to the Austrian throne today, are in possession of the spear. It is on display in the Habsburg museum in Vienna, Austria~ No one, however, knows the location of the Holy Grail. At least no one is telling. Although heretical, this secret society should not be discounted, for it is alive and well today. In fact, in 1956, an Order calling itself the Prieure de Sion, or Priory of Sion, registered itself publicly for the first time with the French government. (Sion is French for Zion.) It is from this Order that the legend of the Holy Grail originated five centuries after Christ's death.

Scarlet and the Beast

by John Daniel

https://ia803001.us.archive.org/28/items/ScarletAndTheBeastJohnDaniel1995/Scarlet%20and%20the%20Beast,%20John%20Daniel%20(1995).pdf

Arminius (/ɑːrˈmɪniəs/; 18/17 BC–AD 21) was a chieftain of the Germanic Cherusci tribe who is best known for commanding an alliance of Germanic tribes at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9, in which three Roman legions under the command of general and governor Publius Quinctilius Varus were destroyed. His victory at Teutoburg Forest precipitated the Roman Empire's permanent strategic withdrawal from Germania Magna,[2] and modern historians regard it as one of Rome's greatest defeats.[3] As it prevented the Romanization of Germanic peoples east of the Rhine, it has also been considered one of the most decisive battles in history[4][5][6][7] and a turning point in human history.[8]

During the unification of Germany in the 19th century, Arminius was hailed by German nationalists as a symbol of German unity and freedom.[10] Following World War II, however, Arminius' significance diminished in Germany due to his association with militaristic nationalism; the 2,000th anniversary of his victory at the Teutoburg Forest was only lightly commemorated in Germany.[10]

Name

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

The Thirty Years' War[j] was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history, lasting from 1618 to 1648. Fought primarily in Central Europe, an estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of battle, famine, or disease, while parts of present-day Germany reported population declines of over 50%.[19] Related conflicts include the Eighty Years' War, the War of the Mantuan Succession, the Franco-Spanish War, the Torstenson War, the Dutch-Portuguese War, and the Portuguese Restoration War.

The war was traditionally viewed as a continuation of the religious conflict initiated by the 16th-century Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire. The 1555 Peace of Augsburg attempted to resolve this by dividing the Empire into Catholic and Lutheran states, but over the next 50 years the expansion of Protestantism beyond these boundaries destabilised the settlement. However, while differences over religion and Imperial authority were important factors in causing the war, most contemporary commentators suggest its scope and extent were driven by the contest for European dominance between Habsburg-ruled Spain and Austria, and the French House of Bourbon.[20]

Its outbreak is generally traced to 1618,[k] when Emperor Ferdinand II was deposed as king of Bohemia and replaced by the Protestant Frederick V of the Palatinate. Although Imperial forces quickly suppressed the Bohemian Revolt, his participation expanded the fighting into the Palatinate, whose strategic importance drew in the Dutch Republic and Spain, then engaged in the Eighty Years' War. Rulers like Christian IV of Denmark and Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden also held territories within the Empire, giving them and other foreign powers an excuse to intervene. The result was to turn an internal dynastic dispute into a broader European conflict.

The first phase from 1618 until 1635 was primarily a civil war between German members of the Holy Roman Empire, with support from external powers. After 1635, the Empire became one theatre in a wider struggle between France, supported by Sweden, and Emperor Ferdinand III, allied with Spain. This concluded with the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, whose provisions included greater autonomy within the Empire for states like Bavaria and Saxony, as well as acceptance of Dutch independence by Spain. The conflict shifted the balance of power in favour of France, and set the stage for the expansionist wars of Louis XIV which dominated Europe for the next sixty years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War

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

Martyr Landau and Buffy the Vampire Slayer

buffoon (n.)

1540s, "type of pantomime dance;" 1580s, "professional comic fool;" 1590s in the general sense "a clown, a joker;" from French bouffon (16c.), from Italian buffone "jester," from buffa "joke, jest, pleasantry," from buffare "to puff out the cheeks," a comic gesture, of echoic origin. Also see -oon.

also from 1540s

Entries linking to buffoon

buffo (n.)

1764, "comic actor in an opera," from Italian buffo "a comic actor," from buffare "to mock; to puff" (see buffoon).

buffoonery (n.)

"low jokes, vulgar pranks," 1620s; see buffoon + -ery.

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

Drusilla, or Dru for short, is a fictional character on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, portrayed by Juliet Landau. Created by Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt, she is introduced as a main antagonist alongside her lover Spike in the second season of Buffy. In addition to returning in subsequent seasons, the character is featured as a villain on the spin-off show Angel as well. Flashbacks in both series reveal Drusilla's past as a young psychic in Victorian London who was driven insane by Angel before he ultimately turned her into a vampire. Spike and Dru are notably more subversive compared to other "Big Bads" that have opposed Buffy Summers. The duo was conceived as a Sid and Nancy-inspired vampiric pair so Landau chose to portray Drusilla with a Cockney accent, while the character's physical appearance drew from sources such as supermodel Kate Moss and the 1990s heroin chic aesthetic.

Following the conclusion of both series, Drusilla continued to appear in Expanded Universe materials in other media. Landau went on to co-write a two-issue Drusilla story arc for IDW Publishing's Angel comic book series in 2009, which continued her character's storyline.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drusilla_(Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer)

Who is Drusilla in the Bible?

Answer

Drusilla was the youngest of three daughters born to Herod Agrippa I and is reported to have been very beautiful. Both King Agrippa I and his son Agrippa II were rulers in Israel during the first century. Drusilla is significant because of her interaction with the apostle Paul during one of his imprisonments. Drusilla, along with her husband at the time, Governor Felix, were intrigued by Paul’s teaching about Jesus and wanted to hear more (Acts 24:24).

Drusilla came from a royal but dysfunctional family. Her father, Herod Agrippa I, was the grandson of Herod the Great, the king we read about in the Christmas story who ordered the slaughter of all baby boys in Bethlehem in an effort to destroy the Messiah (Matthew 2:1–15). Drusilla’s older sister Bernice had a long and checkered sexual history, culminating in an incestuous relationship with their brother, Agrippa II, whom we read about in Acts 25 and 26.

Drusilla was given in marriage at the age of fourteen to Azizus, king of Emeza. The historian Josephus implies that she was unhappy in this marriage and was later seduced by Felix with the help of a Cyprian sorcerer named Simon. Felix, the Roman governor of Judea, took Drusilla as his third wife, and they had a son, also named Agrippa. This son later died in an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.

As a Jewess, Drusilla would probably have known about the stoning of Stephen, which happened before she was born (Acts 7:58–60), and the martyrdom of James (Acts 12:2) at the order of her own father. She was married to a man who was well acquainted with Christianity (Acts 24:22). After Paul was arrested in Jerusalem, he was brought to Caesarea. Governor Felix heard the charges brought against him, and Paul presented the gospel as part of his defense, but Felix delayed giving a verdict. Some days later, Felix with his wife, Drusilla, summoned Paul for another hearing. There was no legal reason for Drusilla to be present at these hearings, so she must have been curious about what Paul had to say.

Speaking before Felix and Drusilla, Paul “spoke about faith in Christ Jesus . . . righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come” (Acts 24:24–25). Luke records that the governor was afraid at Paul’s words and sent Paul back to his cell until a more “convenient” time (verse 25). We are not told what Drusilla’s response was, but Paul’s preaching on self-restraint and the coming judgment must have disturbed her, given her marital history and ungodly lifestyle.

Paul gives us a good model for presenting truth to those who seem to be set against it. He boldly proclaimed the gospel without watering it down to please his audience. It is up to the messenger to deliver the message; what God does with the truth we speak is God’s business. The results are His. As Paul spoke to the court in Caesarea, Drusilla may have seemed to be as far from Christianity as a person can be, yet she was drawn to the message. The gospel has power to reach even the hardest hearts when presented without shame or apology. Paul wrote in Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” He proved his boldness concerning the gospel when he preached to Felix and Drusilla.

https://www.gotquestions.org/Drusilla-in-the-Bible.html

Juliet Rose Landau (born March 30, 1965)[1][2][3][4] is an American actress, director, producer, and ballerina best known for her role as Drusilla on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff show Angel, the latter appearance earning her a Saturn Award nomination. She is also known for co-starring as Loretta King in Tim Burton's Ed Wood.

Early life

Landau was born in Los Angeles to Jewish parents Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, both of whom were actors.[5][6][7] Her older sister is film producer Susan Landau Finch.[8] She spent her early childhood in West Los Angeles.[9] Landau is a former professional ballerina.[10]

Career

Landau starred in some independent films including Where the Road Runs Out, Fairfield, Monster Mutt, Citizens, Dark Hearts, The Yellow Wallpaper, Hack!, Toolbox Murders, Repossessed, Carlo's Wake, Life Among the Cannibals, Ravager, Direct Hit, and co-starred in Henry Jaglom's Going Shopping. She also starred in the Lifetime film Fatal Reunion.

Landau guest starred in television shows Criminal Minds, Millennium, La Femme Nikita and Strong Medicine. She voiced various characters in the animated series Justice League Unlimited and Ben 10 as well as the animated film Green Lantern: First Flight. She has also voiced characters of the BioShock video games.

Landau's theater roles include Awake and Sing at the Pittsburgh Public Theater, the world premiere of Failure of Nerve, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, A Streetcar Named Desire, Uncommon Women and Others, The Pushcart Peddlers, Billy Irish, We're Talking Today Here, the musical How To Steal An Election, Irish Coffee and the world premiere of musical The Songs of War. She played Natasha in a reading of Three Sisters, assembled by Al Pacino at The Actors Studio.[11]

Landau's made her directorial debut in 2008's Take Flight, a short documentary film about Gary Oldman and his creative process. Oldman spoke positively about the experience.[12][13] With her husband, Deverill Weekes, Landau co-directed Dream Out Loud, about make-up artist Kazuhiro Tsuji, who was branching into the world of fine art. The film captures one of his creations from inception to culmination, and features interviews with Guillermo del Toro, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Rian Johnson.

In 2009, Landau co-wrote issues #24 and #25 of the Angel comic book series for IDW Publishing, in collaboration with Brian Lynch, with storylines featuring her Buffy and Angel character Drusilla. Landau also contributed numerous ideas and references for the cover and interior art of the issues, and has stated that she would like to write more comics set in the Buffyverse.[14] She was slated to write a five-part Drusilla miniseries from Dark Horse Comics in 2014, which is now delayed.[15]

In 2012–13, Landau produced and starred in the play Danny and the Deep Blue Sea directed by John McNaughton at the Crown City Theater in North Hollywood.[16] Her portrayal received positive reviews[17][18] and awards,[19] and the show was extended multiple times due to its popularity.[20]

In July 2013, Landau was cast as a new incarnation of the Time Lord Romana in the audio dramas Gallifrey and Luna Romana,[21][22] both of which are spin-offs from the BBC television series Doctor Who.

In 2019, Landau was cast as Rita Tedesco in the fifth season of Bosch[23] on Amazon Prime Video.

In September 2019, Landau was cast as the vampire Hester, for the web series Vampire: The Masquerade - LA by Night. Her character was part a cabal of Tremere, vampires that can do blood sorcery, called the Wyrd Sisters.

Personal life

Landau is a member of the Actors Studio and in 2008 was being mentored by Mike Medavoy.[12]

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

The Boogeyman Joins Good Friend Marcus Buff Bagwell To Talk Wrestling

Marcus Buff Bagwell

Jan 16 2025

Marcus talks with WWE Wrestling Legend The Boogeyman about their match on the indies in Mexico, Boogeyman's early days in the business, and becoming the infamous WWE Legend, The Boogeyman!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6jXv9M9bxs

Marcus Alexander Bagwell (born January 10, 1970) is an American professional wrestler better known by his ring name, Buff Bagwell.[1] He is best known for his appearances with World Championship Wrestling (WCW) from 1991 to 2001, where he was a five-time World Tag Team Champion.[3]

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

Martin Wright[1] (born July 15, 1964),[1] better known by the ring name The Boogeyman, is an American professional wrestler and fitness instructor. He is currently signed to WWE under a legends contract.[4]

Professional wrestling career

World Wrestling Entertainment (2004–2009)

Tough Enough and Ohio Valley Wrestling (2004–2005)

Wright first entered the world of professional wrestling to take part in the fourth season of the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) produced reality television competition Tough Enough. On October 15, 2004, he attended the two-day event in Venice Beach, California, where he was among eight finalists chosen. After surviving the first day of eliminations he admitted that he was actually 40 years old—five years over the competition's cut off point—and not 30 as he'd claimed.[1] As a result, he was cut from the competition.[1]

Though he had been cut from Tough Enough, WWE officials invited him to come to their developmental territory Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) for possible training. He trained between January and June 2005, making his OVW debut on June 25, 2005. During a dark match pitting the team of Seth Skyfire and Robert Fury against Robbie Dawber and his partner, Wright entered the ring and squashed all three men, no-selling the offense of Skyfire in the process. He then announced that he was "The Boogeyman" before leaving the building. The Boogeyman gimmick further evolved into a "monster" face who would appear when another wrestler said his name and attack him, while not selling any offense he received.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boogeyman_(wrestler)

Michael Andrew Fox (born June 9, 1961), known professionally as Michael J. Fox, is a Canadian and American activist and retired actor. Beginning his career as a child actor in the 1970s, he rose to prominence portraying Alex P. Keaton on the NBC sitcom Family Ties (1982–1989) and Marty McFly in the Back to the Future film trilogy (1985–1990). Fox went on to star in films such as Teen Wolf (1985), The Secret of My Success (1987), Casualties of War (1989), Doc Hollywood (1991), and The Frighteners (1996). He returned to television on the ABC sitcom Spin City in the lead role of Mike Flaherty (1996–2000).

In 1998, Fox disclosed his 1991 diagnosis of Parkinson's disease. He subsequently became an advocate for finding a cure, and founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation in 2000 to help fund research. Worsening symptoms forced him to reduce his acting work.

Fox voiced the lead roles in the Stuart Little films (1999–2005) and the animated film Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001). He continued to make guest appearances on television, including comedy-drama Rescue Me (2009), the legal drama The Good Wife (2010–2016) and spin-off The Good Fight (2020), and the comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm (2011, 2017). Fox's last major role was the lead on the short-lived sitcom The Michael J. Fox Show (2013–2014). He officially retired in 2020 due to his declining health.[1]

Fox has won five Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Grammy Award. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2010, and was inducted to Canada's Walk of Fame in 2000 and the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2002. For his advocacy of a cure for Parkinson's disease, he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in 2022[2] and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2025.[3][4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J._Fox

The Actes and Monuments (full title: Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church), popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, is a work of Protestant history and martyrology by Protestant English historian John Foxe, first published in 1563 by John Day.

It includes a polemical account of the sufferings of Protestants under the Catholic Church, with particular emphasis on England and Scotland. The book was highly influential in those countries and helped shape lasting popular notions of Catholicism there.

The book went through four editions in Foxe's lifetime and a number of later editions and abridgements, including some that specifically reduced the text to a Book of Martyrs.

Background

After the Reformation, Catholic apologists raised the issue of the novelties of Protestant doctrines, as "exploiting religious credulity for material and sexual ends."[a] Protestant apologists such as Calvinist Anglican John Foxe "sought to establish the continuity of a proto-Protestant piety from apostolic times to the Reformation."[b]

Biblographic details

Frontispiece to the 1563 edition of The Book of Martyrs

The book was produced and illustrated with over sixty distinctive woodcut impressions and was to that time the largest publishing project ever undertaken in England. (Common descriptions in this paragraph and next: King 2006, Evenden & Freeman 2011, Mosley 1940, Haller 1963, Wooden 1983, White 1963). Their product was a single volume book, a bit over a foot long, two palms-span wide, too deep or thick to lift with only one hand given it exceeded 1500 pages, and weighing about the same as a small infant.[c]

Foxe's own title for the first edition (as scripted and spelled), is Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church. Long titles were conventionally expected at the time, so this title continues and claims that the book describes "persecutions and horrible troubles" that had been "wrought and practiced by the Roman Prelates, speciallye in this realm of England and Scotland". Foxe's temporal range was "from the yeare of our Lorde a thousand unto the tyme nowe present"[4]

Following closely on the heels of the first edition (Foxe complained that the text was produced at "a breakneck speed"), the 1570 edition was in two volumes and had expanded considerably. The page count went from approximately 1,800 pages in 1563 to over 2,300 folio pages. The number of woodcuts increased from 60 to 150. As Foxe wrote about his own living (or executed) contemporaries, the illustrations could not be borrowed from existing texts, as was commonly practiced. The illustrations were newly cut to depict particular details, linking England's suffering back to "the primitive tyme" until, in volume I, "the reigne of King Henry VIII"; in volume two, from H "Queen Elizabeth our gracious Lady now reigning."[5][6][7][8]

Foxe's title for the second edition (vol I) is quite different from the first edition where he claimed his material as "these latter days of peril...touching on matters of the Church'. In 1570, Foxe's book is an "Ecclesiastical History" containing "the acts and monuments [no capitals] of thynges passed in every kynges tyme in this realm [England], specially in the Church of England". It describes "persecutions, horrible troubles, the suffering of martyrs [new], and other such thinges incident ... in England and Scotland, and [new] all other foreign nations". The second volume of the 1570 edition has its own title page and, again, an altered subject.

Volume II is an "Ecclesiastical History conteyning the Acts and Monuments of Martyrs" [capitalized in original] and offers "a general discourse of these latter persecutions, horrible troubles and tumults styred up by Romish ['Roman' in 1563] Prelates in the Church". Again leaving the reference, to which church, uncertain, the title concludes "in this realm of England and Scotland as partly also to all other foreign nations apparteynyng".[9][10][11]

Title

Part of a series on the

History of the Church of England

Westminster Abbey (1749) by Canaletto

Middle Ages (597–1500)

Reformation (1509–1559)

Elizabethan Church (1558–1603)

Jacobean period (1603–1625)

Caroline period (1625–1649)

1649–1688

1700–1950

vte

Actes and Monuments for almost all its existence has popularly been called the Book of Martyrs. The linking of titles is an expected norm for introducing John Foxe's sixteenth century work. William Haller (1963) observed that "[Bishop] Edmund Grindal called it a book of martyrs, and the name stuck."[d] It may have contained Grindal's "book of English martyrs" (as he had conceived the project), but it was not John Foxe's.[13][14] Dismayed by the popular misconception, Foxe tried to correct the error in the second edition. That his appeal was ineffective in his own time is not surprising; very few people would even have read it. Continuing this practice in academic analyses is being questioned, particularly in light of Foxe's explicit denial.

I wrote no such booke bearying the title Booke of Martyrs. I wrote a booke called the Acts and Monumentes ... wherin many other matters be contayned beside the martyrs of Christ.

— John Foxe, The Actes and Monuments (1570)[15]

There is also evidence that the "martyr" title referred only to the abridgments, as used by John Milner (1795), no friend to Foxe, whose major work Milner situates at the centre of efforts to "inflame hatred" against Catholics in the eighteenth century.

We find the lying Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, with large wooden prints of men and women, encompassed with faggots and flames in every leaf of them, chained to the desks of many county churches, whilst abridgements of this inflammatory work are annually issued from the London press under the title of The Book of Martyrs.[e]

Work of the English Reformation

Published early in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and only five years after the death of the Roman Catholic Queen Mary I, Foxe's Acts and Monuments was an affirmation of the English Reformation in a period of religious conflict between Catholics and the Church of England. Foxe's account of church history asserted a historical justification that was intended to establish the Church of England as a continuation of the true Christian church rather than as a modern innovation, and it contributed significantly to encourage nationally endorsed repudiation of the Catholic Church.[f]

The sequence of the work, initially in five books, covered first early Christian martyrs, a brief history of the medieval church, including the Inquisitions, and a history of the Wycliffite or Lollard movement.[g] It then dealt with the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, during which the dispute with Rome had led to the separation of the English Church from papal authority and the issuance of the Book of Common Prayer. The final book treated the reign of Queen Mary and the Marian Persecutions.

Editions

Engraved Title page from Fox's Book of Martyrs, pub by Thomas Kelly in 1814 (folio)

John Foxe died in 1587. His text, however, continued to grow.[16] Foxe himself set the precedent, substantially expanding Actes and Monuments between 1563 and 1570. The 1576 edition was cheaply done, with few changes, but for the 1583 printing Foxe added a "Discourse of the Bloody Massacre In France [St. Bartholomew's. Day, 1572]" and other short pieces. The 1596 fifth edition was essentially a reprint of the 1583 edition. The next editor, however, followed Foxe's example and in 1610 brought the work "up to the time of King James" and included a retelling of the French massacre. The 1632 edition added a topical outline and chronology, along with a "continuation of the foreign martyrs; additions of like persecutions in these later times" which included the Spanish invasion (1588), and the Gunpowder Plot (1605). The editor for the 1641 edition brought it to "the time of Charles, now King",and added a new copperplate portrait of John Foxe to accompany Simeon Foxe's "Life" of his father. The most "sumptuous" edition of 1684 anticipated James with gilt-edged, heavy bond paper and copperplate etchings that replaced worn-out woodcut illustrations.[17]

As edition followed edition, Actes and Monuments or "Foxe" began to refer to an iconic series of texts; unless constrained by a narrow band of time, Acts and Monuments has always referred to more than a single edition. The popular influence of the text declined, and by the nineteenth century it had narrowed to include mainly scholars and evangelicals. It was still sufficiently popular among them to warrant (at least) fifty-five printings of various abridgments in only a century, and to generate scholarly editions and commentary. Debate about Foxe's veracity and the text's contribution to anti-Catholic propaganda continued. Actes and Monuments survived whole primarily within academic circles, with remnants only of the original text appearing in abridgments, generically called The Book of Martyrs, or plain Foxe.[18][19][20] Some copies, including that presented to Matthew Parker, were hand-coloured.[3]

Notable Editions and Derivative Works of "The Acts and Monuments"

Edition Date Features

Strasbourg Latin Edition 1554 persecution of Lollards

Basel Latin Edition 1559 Although Mosley calls this "no more than a fragment", it has 732 numbered pages, much of it concerning the reign of Mary Tudor.[21]

1st English Edition printed by John Day March 1563 "gigantic folio volume" ~1800 pages

2nd Edition, with John Field 1570 response to Catholic critics; "two gigantic folio volumes, with 2300 very large pages"

3rd Edition 1576 reprint, inferior paper, small type

4th Edition 1583 last in Foxe's lifetime, "2 volumes of about 2000 folio pages in double columns"

Timothy Bright's Abridged Edition 1589 dedicated to Sir Francis Walsingham

Clement Cotton's Abridged Edition 1613 titled Mirror of Martyrs

6th edition 1610 2 volumes; 1952 pages plus 27-page unpaginated index. Includes the Gunpowder Plot.

Titled Actes and monuments of matters most speciall and memorable, happening in the Church : with an vniuersall historie of the same ...

Rev. Thomas Mason of Odiham's Abridged Edition 1615 titled Christ's Victorie over Sathans Tyrannie

Edition of the original 1641 Contains memoir of Foxe, now attributed to his son Simeon Fox.[22]

Edward Leigh's Abridged Edition 1651 titled Memorable Collections

Jacob Bauthumley 1676 Brief Historical Relation of the Most Material Passages and Persecutions of the Church of Christ[23]

Paul Wright 1784 The New and Complete Book of Martyrs, an update to cover the 18th century [24]

Thomas Kelly 1814 The Book of Martyrs ..., "Revised & Improved by the Rev. John Malham", in folio

Edition by Stephen Reed Cattley with Life and Vindication of John Foxe by George Townsend, in eight volumes 1837–41 Much criticised by Samuel Roffey Maitland on scholarly grounds.

Michael Hobart Seymour 1838 The Acts and Monuments of the Church; containing the history and sufferings of the martyrs; popular and reprinted Victorian edition.[25]

Latin versions

Foxe began his work in 1552, during the reign of Edward VI. Over the next thirty years, it developed from small beginnings (in Latin) to a substantial compilation, in English, filling two large folio volumes. In 1554, in exile, Foxe published in Latin at Strasbourg a foreshadowing of his major work, emphasizing the persecution of the English Lollards during the fifteenth century; and he began to collect materials to continue his story to his own day.

Foxe published the version in Latin at Basel in August 1559, lacking sources, with the segment dealing with the Marian martyrs as[disputed (for: conflict with the 1559 text) – discuss] "no more than a fragment."[26] Of course, it was difficult to write contemporary English history while living (as he later said) "in the far parts of Germany, where few friends, no conference, [and] small information could be had."[27] Nonetheless, the 1559 version gives substantial coverage of the persecution under Mary Tudor; for example Latimer, perhaps the most famous of the martyrs, is mentioned more frequently - average per page - in the 1559 version.[21] The standard pdf reader program finds Latamer (Latamerus when nominative, etc.) 66 times in the 1559 edition of 761 pages (8.7% instances per page in 1559). Likewise Cranmer 23.1% in 1559.[21] than in the 1641 edition;[28] The standard pdf reader program finds Latimer 230 times in the 1641 edition of 3282 pages (7.0% instances per page in 1641). Likewise Cranmer 9.1% in 1641.[28] Another example is that much of the 1559 edition starting at the page numbered 230 deals with the reign of Mary Tudor, that is, 67% of the pages; The standard pdf reader first finds the number 1554 at the page numbered 230 and thereafter never finds any earlier date (searching for Arabic numerals in the 1559 edition, op cit).[28] further, the 1559 edition only has four illustrations, of which the third shows the martyrdom of Bishop Hooper in 1555 and the fourth shows Archbishop Cranmer, in 1556, being burnt alive.

John Foxe made a reputation through his Latin works.[29] Both these versions were intended as the first volume of a two-volume work, the second volume to have a broader, European scope. Foxe did not publish these works; but a second volume to the Basel version was written by Henry Pantaleon (1563). Study has shown this period of the exiled English communities and their return to England in 1558, as the trained elite who would ensure a Protestant England.[30][31][32][33][34][35]

First edition

In March 1563, Foxe published the first English edition of The Actes and Monuments from the press of John Day. Day's epitaph reads: "He set a Foxe to write how martyrs run/By death to life. Foxe ventured pains and health/To give them light: Daye spent in print his wealth,/And God with gain restored his wealth again,/ And gave to him as he gave to the poor."[36] It was a "gigantic folio volume" of about 1800 pages, about three times the length of the 1559 Latin book.[37] As is typical for the period, the full title was a paragraph long and is abbreviated by scholars as Acts and Monuments. Publication of the book made Foxe famous; the book sold for more than ten shillings, three weeks' pay for a skilled craftsman, but with no royalty to the author.[29][38][39] The full title is Actes and Monuments of these latter and perilous days, touching matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and described the great persecutions and horrible troubles that have been wrought and practised by the Romish prelates, specially in this realm of England and Scotland, from the year of our Lord 1000 unto the time now present; gathered and collected according to the true copies and writings certificatory, as well of the parties themselves that suffered, as also out of the bishops' registers, which were the doers thereof; by John Foxe.

Second edition

The second edition appeared in 1570, much expanded. New material was available, including personal testimonies,[29] and publications such as the 1564 edition of Jean Crespin's Geneva martyrology.[40] John Field assisted with research for this edition.[41]

Acts and Monuments was immediately attacked by Catholics, including Thomas Harding, Thomas Stapleton, and Nicholas Harpsfield. In the next generation, Robert Parsons, an English Jesuit, also struck at Foxe in A Treatise of Three Conversions of England (1603–04). Harding, in the spirit of the age, called Acts and Monuments ' "that huge dunghill of your stinking martyrs," full of a thousand lies'.[36] In the second edition, where the charges of his critics had been reasonably accurate, Foxe removed the offending passages. Where he could rebut the charges, "he mounted a vigorous counter-attack, seeking to crush his opponent under piles of documents."[h] Even with deletions, the second edition was nearly double the size of the first, "two gigantic folio volumes, with 2300 very large pages" of double-columned text.[43]

The edition was well received by the English church, and the upper house of the convocation of Canterbury, meeting in 1571, ordered that a copy of the Bishop's Bible and "that full history entitled Monuments of Martyrs" be installed in every cathedral church and that church officials place copies in their houses for the use of servants and visitors. The decision repaid the financial risks taken by Day.[44]

Third and fourth editions

Foxe published a third edition in 1576, but it was virtually a reprint of the second, although printed on inferior paper and in smaller type.[45] The fourth edition, published in 1583, the last in Foxe's lifetime, had larger type and better paper and consisted of "two volumes of about two thousand folio pages in double columns." Nearly four times the length of the Bible, the fourth edition was "the most physically imposing, complicated, and technically demanding English book of its era. It seems safe to say that it is the largest and most complicated book to appear during the first two or three centuries of English printing history."[46] At this point Foxe began to compose his interpretation of the Apocalypse; he wrote more in Eicasmi (1587), left unfinished at his death.[47]

The 1583 title page included the poignant request that the author "desireth thee, good reader, to help him with thy prayer."[48]

Abridgements and derived works

The first abridgment appeared in 1589. Offered only two years after Foxe's death, it honoured his life and was a timely commemorative for the English victory against the Spanish Armada (1588).[49] Issued with a dedication to Sir Francis Walsingham, Timothy Bright's tight summary of Acts and Monuments headed a succession of hundreds of editions of texts based on Foxe's work, whose editors were more selective in their reading. Based with greater or lesser degrees of exactitude on the original Acts and Monuments, yet influenced always by it, editors continued to tell its tale in both popular and academic venues (although a different tale was told to each gathering).[50][51]

"The Book{s} of Martyrs"

The majority of the editors knew Foxe's text as a martyrology. Taking their material primarily from the final two books of Acts and Monuments (that is, volume II of the 1570 edition), they generated derived texts that genuinely were "Book(s) of Martyrs". Famous scenes from Acts and Monuments, in illustrated text, were revived for each new generation. The earliest printed book bearing the title Book of Martyrs, however, appears to be John Taylor's edition in 1631. While occurring again periodically, that title was not much in use before 1750, and not regularized as the title of choice before 1850. The title, Foxe's Book of Martyrs (where the author's name reads as if part of the title) appears first in John Kennedy's 1840 edition, possibly as a printing error.[i]

William Tyndale, just before being strangled and burned at the stake, cries out, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes", in woodcut from an early edition of Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

Characterized by some scholars as "Foxe's bastards", these Foxe-derived texts have received attention as the medium through which Foxe and his ideas influenced popular consciousness.[52] Nineteenth-century professionalizing scholars, who wanted to distinguish the academically significant Acts and Monuments from the derived "vulgar corruption", dismissed these later editions as expressing "narrowly evangelical Protestant piety" and as nationalistic tools produced only "to club Catholics". Very little, still, is known about any of these editions.[53][54][55] Characterized most recently as 'Foxe', with ironic quotation marks signaling a suspect term, and also as "Foxe-in-action", these Foxe-derived texts await researchers.[54][56][57]

Foxe as a historian

The author's credibility was challenged as soon as the book first appeared. Detractors accused Foxe of dealing falsely with the evidence, of misusing documents, and of telling partial truths. In every case that he could clarify, Foxe corrected errors in the second edition and third and fourth, final version (for him).[citation needed]

In the early nineteenth century the charges were taken up again by a number of authors, most importantly Samuel Roffey Maitland.[58] Subsequently, Foxe was considered a poor historian, in mainstream reference works. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica said this of Foxe "The gross blunders due to carelessness have often been exposed, and there is no doubt that Foxe was only too ready to believe evil of the Catholics, and he cannot always be exonerated from the charge of wilful falsification of evidence. It should, however, be remembered in his honour that his advocacy of religious toleration was far in advance of his day.[11th ed.,volume 10, p.770]"; two years later in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Francis Fortescue Urquhart wrote of the value of the documentary content and eyewitness reports, but claimed that Foxe "sometimes dishonestly mutilates his documents and is quite untrustworthy in his treatment of evidence".[59] The 14th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica (1960 printing) has an article on John Foxe written by J.F. Mozley who himself wrote a book "John Foxe and His Book" in 1940. Mozley was certainly sympathetic to John Foxe and Foxe's Book of Martyrs (see the Bibliography for Mozley's book). Mozley in summary concerning Foxe's Book of Martyrs states the following: "It is indeed prolix [i.e. long-winded], unsystematic, carelessly edited, one-sided, oversharp, sometimes credulous. But it is honest and it is strong in facts....It opens a window on the English Reformation by preserving much firsthand material unobtainable elsewhere.. . .The charges of deliberate falsification brought against him by Alan Cope (1566), Robert Parsons(1603) and some moderns [viz. S.R. Maitland etc.-ed] have no substance." (Encyclopedia Britannica,14th ed., 1960, Vol. 9, p. 573).

Foxe's source reliability

In contrast, J. F. Mozley maintained that Foxe preserved a high standard of honesty, arguing that Foxe's method of using his sources "proclaims the honest man, the sincere seeker after truth."[j] The 2009 Encyclopædia Britannica notes that Foxe's work is "factually detailed and preserves much firsthand material on the English Reformation unobtainable elsewhere." It was typical, however, in the late nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth centuries to treat Foxe's text as "not to be trusted....If not the father of lies, Foxe was thought to be the master of inventions, and so readers of the Encyclopedia [sic] Britannica were advised and warned."[61]

Documented grounds

Foxe based his accounts of martyrs before the early modern period on previous writers, including Eusebius, Bede, Matthew Paris, and many others. He compiled an English martyrology from the period of the Lollards through to the persecution of Protestants by Mary I. Here Foxe had primary sources to draw on: episcopal registers, reports of trials, and the testimony of eyewitnesses.[29] In the work of collection Foxe had Henry Bull as collaborator.[62] The account of the Marian years is based on Robert Crowley's 1559 extension of a 1549 chronicle history by Thomas Cooper, itself an extension of a work begun by Thomas Lanuet. Cooper (who became a Church of England Bishop) strongly objected to Crowley's version of his history and soon issued two new "correct" editions.[k] John Bale set Foxe onto martyrological writings and contributed to a substantial part of Foxe's ideas as well as printed material.[63][64]

Objectivity and advocacy

Foxe's book is in no sense an impartial account of the period. He did not hold to later centuries' notions of neutrality or objectivity, but made unambiguous side glosses on his text, such as "Mark the apish pageants of these popelings" and "This answer smelleth of forging and crafty packing."[65] David Loades has suggested that Foxe's history of the political situation, at least, is 'remarkably objective'. He makes no attempt to make martyrs out of Wyatt and his followers, or anyone else who was executed for treason, except George Eagles, whom he describes as "falsely accused."[66]

In their 1952 British Authors before 1800: A Biographical Dictionary, Kunitz and Haycraft wrote, "For a century at least it was practically required reading in every English-speaking Puritan household, often the only book owned except the Bible. Probably no single book has caused so many neuroses as has this one. Foxe was a fanatical Protestant, wrote with feverish energy, was completely credulous, and reveled in horror. No detail is too small or too dreadful to be described minutely, and no invective too violent to be applied to the Roman Catholics—for to his mind there were no martyrs except Protestants. His only theme is suffering, and he mangles his readers' nerves with one long monotony of agony and terror."[67]

Sidney Lee, in the Dictionary of National Biography, called Foxe "a passionate advocate, ready to accept any primā facie evidence". Lee also listed some specific errors and suggested that John Foxe plagiarized. Thomas S. Freeman observes that, like a hypothetical barrister, Foxe had to deal with the evidence of what actually happened, evidence that he was rarely in a position to forge. But he would not present facts damaging to his client, and he had the skills that enabled him to arrange the evidence so as to make it conform to what he wanted it to say. Like the barrister, Foxe presents crucial evidence and tells a side of the story which must be heard, but his text should never be read uncritically, and his partisan objectives should always be kept in mind."

By the end of the 17th century, however, the work tended to be abbreviated to include only "the most sensational episodes of torture and death" thus giving to Foxe's work "a lurid quality which was certainly far from the author's intention."[29]

It is true that Acts and Monuments "tended to be abbreviated". The second part of the claim, however, is in error.[citation needed] It could be simply deleted as an error, but it repeats and elaborates William Haller's second thesis as if a fact, that the later Foxe-derived abridgements had lost entirely intellect's levening influence. (The "Elect Nation" was Haller's first thesis). Haller read through some of the Foxe-derived martyrologies, editions by Martin Madan, John Milner and John Wesley, and observed "a progressive corruption and vulgarization of the original for the propagation of an increasingly narrow Protestant piety".[68][69]

William Haller did not refer to "sensational episodes of torture and death", nor did he report on any texts reduced "only" to such matter. Neither has any specific edition been exhibited as proof, yet, it is conventionally believed and so frequently asserted that Sydney Lee, and Thomas Freeman after him, state it as a true overgeneralization. Thus, it should not be deleted as a simple error in fact, even if it is wrong. A scan of the titles for Foxe-derived editions make the claim unlikely, and Reflexive Foxe: The 'Book of Martyrs' Transformed, prove it false; findings supported by Haller and Wooden's less comprehensive glimpses into the later abridgments.[70][l]

Acts and Monuments was cannibalized for material to warn of the dangers of Catholicism and, in Foxe's name, also to undermine resurgent High Church Anglicanism. The author's credibility and the text's reliability became suspect, then, for both Catholic and Anglican Church defenders. Samuel Roffey Maitland,[29][30] Richard Frederick Littledale as well as Robert Parsons and John Milner, mounted campaigns to disprove Foxe's findings.[71] Maitland's and others' critiques helped to awaken increasing antagonism toward intolerance in the public conscience.[72] Combined with professionalized academic dissociation, left no voices to speak in Foxe's defence, and reduced Foxe's historical credibility such that "no one with any literary pretensions...ventured to quote Foxe as an authority."[73]

John Milner, defender of the "old religion" (Catholicism), authored several tracts, pamphlets, essays, and Letters to the Editor: "Dear Sir…"; using all public means available to him for declaring that abuse of Englishmen was occurring "frequently", ipso edem, the defamation and harassment of Catholics in England – a treatment not similarly visited on Sectarian communities or the Quakers.[e]

Milner's life project to discredit "Foxe" was polemical—that was the point of arguing: to persuade people to see things as the speaker constructed or, at least, to seeing some merit to his case. Before the Houses of Parliament in the years of Milner's and others activism, were bills for relieving English Catholics of tax penalties (for being Catholic), having to tithe to the Anglican Church, and relief from imposition of the Oath that stood between any Catholic and a government position.

The publication of J. F. Mosley's biography of Foxe in 1940 reflected a change in perspective that reevaluated Foxe's work and "initiated a rehabilitation of Foxe as a historian which has continued to this day."[29] A new critical edition of the Actes and Monuments appeared in 1992.[74]

"Since Mozley's landmark study (1940)," Warren Wooden observed in 1983, "Foxe's reputation as a careful and accurate, albeit partisan, historian especially of the events of his own day, has been cleansed and restored with the result that modern historians no longer feel constrained to apologize automatically for evidence and examples drawn from the Acts and Monuments."[75] Patrick Collinson's formal acknowledgement and recognition of "John Foxe as Historian," invites redetermining historians' current relationship with the text. John Foxe was the "greatest [English] historian of his age," Collinson concluded, "and the greatest revisionist ever".[61]

Religious perspectives

Anglicans consider Foxe's book a witness to the sufferings of faithful Protestants at the hands of anti-Protestant Catholic authorities and their endurance unto death, seen as a component of English identity. Foxe emphasizes hearing or reading the Holy Scripture in the native language without mediation through a priesthood.[76][77]

Catholics consider Foxe a significant source of English anti-Catholicism, charging among other objections to the work, that the treatment of martyrdoms under Mary ignores the contemporary mingling of political and religious motives — for instance, ignoring the possibility that some victims may have intrigued to remove Mary from the throne.[78][79]

Influence

Dual martyrdom by burning, 1558; from a 1641 edition of Foxe.

Following a 1571 Convocation order, Foxe's Acts and Monuments was chained beside the Great Bible in cathedrals, select churches, and even several bishops' and guild halls. Selected readings from the text were proclaimed from the pulpit as was (and as if it were) Scripture. It was read and cited by both ecclesiastical and common folk, disputed by prominent Catholics, and defended by prominent Anglicans. Acts and Monuments sailed with England's gentleman pirates, encouraged the soldiers in Oliver Cromwell's army, and decorated the halls at Oxford and Cambridge.[m]

Acts and Monuments is credited as among the most influential of English texts. Gordon Rupp called it "an event". He counted it as a "normative document", and as one of the Six Makers of English Religion.[n] Nor was Foxe's influence limited to the direct effects of his text. At least two of Rupp's Makers continued and elaborated Foxe's views. Christopher Hill, with others, has noted that John Bunyan cherished his Book of Martyrs among the few books that he kept with him while imprisoned. William Haller observed that John Milton's Of Reformation in England, and other tracts, took "not only the substance of the account… but also the point of view straight out of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments." Haller means by this, "the view of history advanced by propaganda in support of the national settlement in church and state under Elizabeth, kept going by the increasing reaction against the politics of her successors, and revived with great effect by the puritan opposition to Anglican prelacy in the Long Parliament."[12][80]

After Foxe's death, the Acts and Monuments continued to be published and appreciatively read. John Burrow refers to it as, after the Bible, "the greatest single influence on English Protestant thinking of the late Tudor and early Stuart period."[81]

Position in English consciousness

The original Acts and Monuments was printed in 1563. This text, its dozens of textual alterations (Foxe's Book of Martyrs in many forms), and their scholarly interpretations, helped to frame English consciousness (national, religious and historical), for over four hundred years. Evoking images of the sixteenth-century martyred English, of Elizabeth enthroned, the Enemy overthrown, and danger averted, Foxe's text and its images served as a popular and academic code. It also alerted English folk to the threat of harboring citizens who bore allegiance to foreign powers. Acts and Monuments is academically linked with notions of English nationhood, liberty, tolerance, election, apocalypse, and Puritanism. The text helped to situate the English monarchy in a tradition of English Protestantism, particularly Whiggism; and it influenced the seventeenth-century radical tradition by providing materials for local martyrologies, ballads, and broadsheets.[o]

In historiography

Warren Wooden presented John Foxe's key significance as a transitional figure in English historiography in 1983. "Foxe identified the key themes of the Reformation … along with the central props of Protestant belief." Wooden observed that Foxe also did much to determine the grounds of the controversy. By offering a full-scale historical investigation, "Foxe helped to shape the controversy along historical and prophetic lines, rather than epistemological or linguistic ones."[82] Patrick Collinson confirmed that Foxe was indeed a worthy scholar and that his text was historiographically reliable in 1985, and set in process the British Academy's funding for a new critical edition in 1984, completed by 2007.[83][84][85]

Acts and Monuments acted as something of a Bible for English folk (commonly asserted) and also for academics (rarely acknowledged), influencing their histories, historical sensibility and consciousness to an unprecedented degree. University-trained researchers professionalized the original author's findings, his facts checked and challenged, being more often proved than not in seventeenth-eighteenth century inquiries, and their findings were verified through the next two centuries. Foxe's data and vision sensibly provided a foundation for informed academic conclusions. John Strype was among the early beneficiaries, and he praised John Foxe for preserving the documents on which his own ecclesiastical history depended.[20][86]

Acts and Monuments substantially defined, among many other histories from John Strype onward, Arthur Geoffrey Dickens's influential The English Reformation (1964, 1989 revised), which has been characterized by a critic as "a sophisticated exposition of a story first told by John Foxe".[87] Although Haigh's observation participates in a revisionist agenda that does not acknowledge what else he brought to the construction, Dickens' dependence on Foxe's text is indisputable.[88][89][90][91] Why should that dependency be so worthy of comment? Dickens wrote a history that was informed by facts and—similarly to Milton—also the substance of his text, derived directly from Foxe's Acts and Monuments. Foxe's historical vision and the documentation to support it, was taught to young Arthur Dickens, along with his fellows, as a schoolboy.[85]

Historiography, as the study of the writing of history, is in this case subsumed in history, as that which happened in the past and continues into the colloquial present. Discussing Foxe in the constructions of historical (national/religious) consciousness has always been also a discussion about the meaning and writing of history. Approaching this subject puts researchers into a kind of liminal zone between borders, where relations slip from one category to another – from writing history, to discussing history writing (historiography), to considering collective history in human consciousness (historical consciousness and collective memory).

The text in this case has always been multiple and complex. Several researchers have remarked on how malleable, how easily mutable Foxe's text was, and so inherently contradictory, characteristics that increased its potential influence.[92][p] It is a difficult text to pin down, what Collinson called "a very unstable entity", indeed, "a moving target". "We used to think that we were dealing with a book," Collinson mused aloud at the third Foxe Congress (1999), "understood in the ordinary sense of that term, a book written by an author, subject to progressive revision but always the same book ... and [we thought] that what Foxe intended he brought about."[93][94]

Through the late nineties and into the twenty-first century, the Foxe Project has maintained funding for the new critical edition of Acts and Monuments and to help promote Foxeian studies, including five "John Foxe" Congresses and four publications of their collected papers, in addition to dozens of related articles and two specialized books or more produced independently.

Modern reception and anniversary

March 2013 marked 450 years since Foxe's 1563 publication. Foxe's first edition capitalized on new technology (the printing press). Similarly, the new critical edition of Acts and Monuments benefits from, and is shaped by, new technologies. Digitalized for the internet generation, scholars can now search and cross-reference each of the first four editions, and benefit from several essays introducing the texts. The conceptual repertoire available for reading has so altered from that of John Foxe's era that it has been asked how it is possible to read it at all. Netzley posed this question focusing on the sixteenth century texts, polemics, and its readers. In its own time, and as Foxe had anticipated, people sought out the parts that felt most relevant.[95] There is extensive literature on the culture and politics of reading in the early modern period.[96][97][98][99][100]

Patrick Collinson concluded at the third Foxe Congress (Ohio, 1999) that as a result of the "death of the author" and necessary accommodations to the "postmodern morass" (as he termed it then), The Acts and Monuments "is no longer a book [in any conventional sense."[101]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxe%27s_Book_of_Martyrs

Donald J. Trump

is at Kennedy Center For Performing Arts.

1h · Washington D.C. ·

Top fan

Billy Dunn

Donald Trump does not love his beautiful wife Melania, pretend to love his wife Melania and would rather kiss the ass of the Pope at the Vatican than to really love his wife. Donald Trump thinks he is the king of threats, Donald Trump better think again. As you signed executive orders, your wife wore a hat resembling Saturn to indicate that you are a liar and mass murderer looking to harvest lives in America. You flatter the republicans that voted for you because you have no respect for them. Donald Trump needs to repent or else Donald Trump is incapable of Saving America!

56m

Edited

Top fan

Billy Dunn

Donald Trump wants to make laws to forbid anti-christian sentiment meaning Trump wants to censor the lives of anyone that speaks out against Donald Trump's antichrist Pope Francis at the Vatican!

51m

Top fan

Billy Dunn

the democrats and kamala harris are more battery friendly when it comes to smartphones then Donald Trump is. 20 times a day Donald Trump sends text messages drains the battery

I signed up for both DNC and GOP to receive text messages and Donald Trump does not give two towers about your smartphone battery when it comes to his flattering text messages

try it and you will see that it is true

Donald Trump wants to suck your alkaline

Donald Trump is a battery vampire

31m

Top fan

Billy Dunn

Donald Trump calls everyone in his universal text messages "patriot" because Donald Trump is mocking everyone that got fucked over by the Patriot Act. Donald Trump pretends to love his supporters, Donald Trump is a Papist, Donald Trump is a Benedict Arnold.

28m

Top fan

Billy Dunn

Donald Trump is a Patriot Act.

26m

Top fan

Billy Dunn

You are very dishonest towards your supporters Donald Trump you need to repent, no more dumb deception from you!

25m

Top fan

Billy Dunn

Donald Trump got trick shot in the ear but then whispers into Joseph Biden's ear on January 20 2025

https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/posts/pfbid0UPXqG6cMUw5zPMWrJwwqXQK3w2DgLoM9fUkBnDAesA8UrZLGecXLPmKB3pKxpWj7l

Chronos (/ˈkroʊnɒs, -oʊs/; Ancient Greek: Χρόνος, romanized: Khronos, lit. 'Time'; [kʰrónos], Modern Greek: ['xronos]), also spelled Chronus, is a personification of time in Greek mythology, who is also discussed in pre-Socratic philosophy and later literature.[1]

Chronos is frequently confused with, or perhaps consciously identified with, the Titan, Cronus, in antiquity, due to the similarity in names.[2] The identification became more widespread during the Renaissance, giving rise to the iconography of Father Time wielding the harvesting scythe.[3]

Greco-Roman mosaics depicted Chronos as a man turning the zodiac wheel.[4] He is comparable to the deity Aion as a symbol of cyclical time.[5] He is usually portrayed as an old callous man with a thick grey beard, personifying the destructive and stifling aspects of time.[6]

Name

Chronos and His Child by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli, National Museum in Warsaw, a 17th-century depiction of Chronos as Father Time, wielding a harvesting scythe

During antiquity, Chronos was occasionally interpreted as Cronus.[7] According to Plutarch, the Greeks believed that Cronus was an allegorical name for Chronos.[8]

Mythology

In the Orphic tradition, the unaging Chronos was "engendered" by "earth and water", and produced Aether, Chaos, and an egg.[9] The egg produced the hermaphroditic god Phanes who gave birth to the first generation of gods and is the ultimate creator of the cosmos.

Pherecydes of Syros in his lost Heptamychos ("The seven recesses"), around 6th century BC, claimed that there were three eternal principles: Chronos, Zas (Zeus) and Chthonie (the chthonic). The semen of Chronos was placed in the recesses of the Earth and produced the first generation of gods.[10]

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

The Temple of Set is an occult initiatory order founded in 1975. A new religious movement and form of Western esotericism, the Temple espouses a religion known as Setianism, whose practitioners are called Setians. This is sometimes identified as a form of Satanism, although this term is not often embraced by Setians and is contested by some academics.

The Temple was established in the United States in 1975 by Michael Aquino, an American political scientist, military officer, and a high-ranking member of Anton LaVey's Church of Satan. Dissatisfied with the direction in which LaVey was taking the Church, Aquino resigned and – according to his own claim – embarked on a ritual to invoke Satan, who revealed to him a sacred text called The Book of Coming Forth by Night. According to Aquino, in this work Satan revealed his true name to be that of Set, which had been the name used by his followers in ancient Egypt. Aquino was joined in establishing the Temple by a number of other dissatisfied members of LaVey's Church, and soon various Setian groups were established across the United States.

Setians believe that Set is the one real god and that he has aided humanity by giving them a questioning intellect, the "Black Flame", which distinguishes them from other animal species. Set is held in high esteem as a teacher whose example is to be emulated but he is not worshipped as a deity. Highly individualistic in basis, the Temple promotes the idea that practitioners should seek self-deification and thus attain an immortality of consciousness. Setians believe in the existence of magic as a force which can be manipulated through ritual, however the nature of these rituals is not prescribed by the Temple. Specifically, Aquino described Setian practices as "black magic", a term which he defines idiosyncratically.

Following initiation into the Temple, a Setian can proceed along a series of six degrees, each of which requires greater responsibilities to the group; as a result, most members remain in the first two degrees. Governed by a high priest or high priestess and a wider Council of Nine, the Temple is also divided into groups known as pylons, through which Setians can meet or correspond in order to advance their magical work in a particular area. Pylons of the Temple are now present in the United States, Australia, and Europe, with estimates placing the Temple's membership between 200 and 500.

Definition

The Temple of Set is a new religious movement,[1] and draws upon earlier forms of Western esotericism.[2] Among academic scholars of religious studies, there has been some debate as to whether the Temple of Set can be characterized as "Satanism" or not. The religious studies scholars Asbjorn Dyrendal, Massimo Introvigne, James R. Lewis, and Jesper Aa. Petersen describes the Temple of Set as a Satanic group, despite its reluctance to use the term "Satanism", because it is an offshoot of the Church of Satan which continues to use satanic mythology.[3][4] Conversely, the scholar Kennet Granholm argued that it should not be considered a form of Satanism because it does not place an emphasis on the figure of Satan. Granholm acknowledged that it was an "actor in the Satanic milieu" and part of the wider left-hand path group of esoteric traditions.[5] He suggested that it could also be seen as a form of "Post-Satanism", thereby continuing to reflect its historical origins within religious Satanism.[6]

The Temple of Set is far more rooted in esoteric ideas than the Church of Satan had been.[7] It has thus been termed "Esoteric Satanism", a term used to contrast it with the "Rational Satanism" found in LaVeyan Satanism.[8] Accordingly, it has been labelled the "intellectual wing of esoteric Satanism",[9] with the Temple presenting itself as an intellectual religion.[10] Aquino possessed a P.h.D. in political science and this formal education was reflected in the way that he presented his arguments, in which he draws broadly upon Western philosophy and science.[11]

History

Foundation

Born in 1946, Michael Angelo Aquino was a military intelligence officer specializing in psychological warfare.[12] In 1969 he joined Anton LaVey's Church of Satan and rose rapidly through the group's ranks.[13] In 1970, while he was serving with the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, Aquino was stationed in Bến Cát in South Vietnam when he wrote a tract titled "Diabolicon" in which he reflected upon his growing divergence from the Church of Satan's doctrines.[14] In this tract, teachings about the creation of the world, God, and humanity are presented, as is the dualistic idea that Satan complements God.[15] The character of Lucifer is presented as bringing insight to human society,[16] a depiction of Lucifer that was inherited from John Milton's seventeenth-century epic poem Paradise Lost.[17]

By 1971 Aquino was ranked as a Magister Caverns of the IV° within the Church's hierarchy, was editor of its publication The Cloven Hoof, and sat on its governing Council of Nine.[12] In 1973 he rose to the previously unattained rank of Magister Templi of IV°.[12] According to the scholars of Satanism Per Faxneld and Jesper Petersen, Aquino had become LaVey's "right-hand man".[18] There were nonetheless things that Aquino disliked about the Church of Satan; he thought that it had attracted many "fad-followers, egomaniacs, and assorted oddballs, whose primary interest in becoming Satanists was to flash their membership cards for cocktail-party notoriety".[19] When, in 1975, LaVey abolished the system of regional groups, or grottos, and declared that in the future all degrees would be given in exchange for financial or other contributions to the Church, Aquino became increasingly disaffected; he resigned from the organization on June 10, 1975.[20] While LaVey seems to have held a pragmatic and practical view of the degrees and of the Satanic priesthood, intending them to reflect the social role of the degree holder within the organization, Aquino and his supporters viewed the priesthood as being spiritual, sacred and irrevocable.[21] Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen describe Aquino as, in effect, accusing LaVey of the sacrilege of simony.[21]

Aquino then provided what has been described as a "foundation myth" for his Setian religion.[22] Having departed the Church, he embarked on a ritual intent on asking Satan for advice on what to do next.[23] According to his account, at Midsummer 1975, Satan appeared and revealed that he wanted to be known by his true name, Set, which had been the name used by his worshippers in ancient Egypt.[24] Aquino produced a religious text, The Book of Coming Forth by Night, which he alleged had been revealed to him by Set through a process of automatic writing.[25] According to Aquino, "there was nothing overtly sensational, supernatural, or melodramatic about The Book of Coming Forth By Night working. I simply sat down and wrote it."[26] The book proclaimed Aquino to be the Magus of the new Aeon of Set and the heir to LaVey's "infernal mandate".[27] Aquino later stated that the revelation that Satan was Set necessitated his own exploration of Egyptology, a subject about which he had previously known comparatively little.[28]

Aquino's Book of Coming Forth by Night makes reference to The Book of the Law, a similarly revealed text produced by the occultist Aleister Crowley in 1904 which provided the basis for Crowley's religion of Thelema. In Aquino's book, The Book of the Law was presented as a genuine spiritual text given to Crowley by preternatural sources, but it was also declared that Crowley had misunderstood both its origin and message.[29] In making reference to The Book of the Law, Aquino presented himself as being as much Crowley's heir as LaVey's,[30] and Aquino's work would engage with Crowley's writings and beliefs to a far greater extent than LaVey ever did.[7]

In establishing the Temple, Aquino was joined by other ex-members of LaVey's Church,[12] and soon Setian groups, or pylons, were established in various parts of the United States.[12] The structure of the Temple was based largely on those of the ceremonial magical orders of the late nineteenth century, such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Ordo Templi Orientis.[31] Aquino has stated that he believed LaVey not to be merely a charismatic leader but to have been actually appointed by Satan himself (referring to this charismatic authority as the "Infernal Mandate") to found the Church.[32] After the split of 1975, Aquino believed LaVey had lost the mandate, which the "Prince of Darkness" then transferred to Aquino and a new organization, the Temple of Set.[32] According to both the historian of religion Mattias Gardell and journalist Gavin Baddeley, Aquino displayed an "obsession" with LaVey after his departure from the Church, for instance by publicly releasing court documents that reflected negatively on his former mentor, among them restraining orders, divorce proceedings, and a bankruptcy filing.[33] In turn, LaVey lampooned the new Temple as "Laurel and Hardy's Sons of the Desert".[34] In 1975, the Temple incorporated as a non-profit Church in California, and later that year secured state and federal recognition and tax-exempted status.[35]

Later development

Many members of the Temple had voiced their opposition to Aquino's position of power within it.[36] Aquino relinquished his office of High Priest in 1979 to Ronald Keith Barrett,[37] who produced an inspired text of his own, titled The Book of Opening the Way.[38] Barrett's approach was later criticized as "more mystical than magical" by Temple members.[39] Barrett's leadership was also criticized as authoritarian,[40] resulting in a decline in the Temple's membership.[38] Barrett resigned his office and severed ties with the organization in May 1982.[37] He subsequently established his own Temple of Anubis, which he led until his 1998 death; it survived until the early 2010s.[36] After Barrett's departure, Aquino retook leadership of the Temple of Set.[36] During this period, the sociologist Gini Graham Scott clandestinely participated in the Temple, using her observations as the basis for her 1983 book The Magicians: A Study of the Use of Power in a Black Magic Group.[41]

After receiving his PhD in political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1980, Aquino worked as an adjunct professor at Golden Gate University until 1986 while continuing to serve in the United States Army as an Active Guard Reserve officer at the Presidio of San Francisco.[42] He was fascinated with the connections between occultism and Nazism,[43] resulting in some accusations that he was sympathetic to Nazi ideology.[44] In 1983, he performed a solitary rite at Walhalla, the subterranean section of the Wewelsburg castle in Germany that was utilized as a ceremonial space by the Schutzstaffel's Ahnenerbe group during the Nazi period. This resulted in his formation of the Order of the Trapezoid, a Setian group whose members understood themselves as a chivalric order of knights.[45] From 1987 through to 1995, the Grand Master of the Order of the Trapezoid was Edred Thorsson, who had joined the Temple of Set in 1984 and risen to the Fifth Degree in 1990.[46] Thorsson exerted a "discernible influence" over the Setian community through his books, in which he combined aspects of Satanic philosophy with the modern Pagan religion of Heathenry.[47] In 1980, he founded the Texas-based Rune-Gild which shared many of the Temple's key philosophical tenets but with a focus on the study of runes and their applications in magical practice.[48]

In the 1980s, Aquino attracted greater publicity for his Temple through appearances on television talk shows like The Oprah Winfrey Show and Geraldo.[18] In 1987, during the Satanic ritual abuse hysteria, the three-year-old daughter of a Christian clergyman accused Aquino of sexually abusing her during Satanic rites held at his Russian Hill home. Responding to the allegations, police raided Aquino's home, however—after no evidence was found to substantiate the allegation and it was revealed that Aquino was living in Washington D.C. at the time of the alleged abuse—the police decided not to charge him with any felony.[49] Aquino attempted to bring formal charges against the chaplain and psychiatrist who had encouraged the girl's claims, although he was more successful in bringing legal action against two books—Carl A. Raschke's Painted Black and Linda Blood's The New Satanists—that had suggested that he was guilty.[50] cause” in the case of alleged child sexual abuse. Aquino. however, he was not convicted.[51] He then left the Presidio and was transferred to St. Louis.[52] In 1994, Aquino retired from active service in the Army, being honourably transferred to the Retired Reserve and awarded the Meritorious Service Medal.[53]

While the Satanic ritual abuse hysteria declined, Aquino continued to be a figure of prominence in "mind control" conspiracy theories because of his career as a psychological warfare officer in the US Army.[54] In the United Kingdom during this same period, tabloids like the News of the World and Sunday Mirror published sensationalist articles about the Temple.[55] In the mid-1990s, a group of British Setians approached the religious studies scholar Graham Harvey and encouraged him to conduct research into the group so as to combat misconceptions about them.[56] The Temple first registered a website in 1997, the same year as the Church of Satan.[57] It would also establish its own intranet, allowing for communication between Setians in different parts of the world.[5]

One member of the Temple was the New Zealander Kerry Bolton, who split to form his own Order of The Left Hand Path in 1990.[58] In 1995, another couple who joined were LaVey's daughter Zeena Schreck and her husband Nikolas Schreck, both of whom were vocal critics of Zeena's father.[59]

In 1996, Don Webb became the high priest of the Temple, a position that he held until 2002.[60] He was replaced by Zeena Schreck, but she resigned after six weeks and was replaced by Aquino, who took charge once more.[60] In that year, Zeena led a schism within the organization[9] establishing her own Berlin-based group, The Storm, which she later renamed the Sethian Liberation Movement.[61]

Aquino stood down as Supreme Priest again in 2004, to be replaced by Patricia Hardy who was elected to the position of Supreme Priestess.[61] Although no longer in charge of the organization, he nevertheless remained its most visible spokesperson.[61]

Aquino died in July 2020 at the age of 73.[62]

Ideology

Writings

In addition to the Book of Coming Forth by Night, in which Set himself is purported to speak, the Temple's philosophy and teachings are revealed in a series of occult writings titled the Jeweled Tablets of Set.[63] Each tablet is keyed to a specific degree in the Temple hierarchy.[63] Only the introduction to the first tablet (Crystal Tablet of Set), titled "Black Magic", is available for non-members.[63] The Ruby Tablet, which is available for second-degree members, is the lengthiest and most diverse of the tablets.[64]

The private Temple literature is not regarded as secret per se, but is kept restricted because it contains materials which, according to the Temple, may be dangerous to the non-initiated.[63]

Self-deification and Xeper

The human individual is at the centre of Setian philosophy.[22] The Temple places great emphasis on the development of the individual,[65] postulating self-deification as the ultimate goal.[18] The realization of the true nature of the Setian is termed "becoming" or "coming into being" and is represented by the Egyptian hieroglyphic term kheper, or "Xeper" (a phonetic of _Xpr_), as the Temple of Set prefers to write it.[66] This term is described in The Book of Coming Forth by Night as "the Word of the Aeon of Set".[67] Members attempt "to preserve and strengthen" their "isolate, psyche-centric existence" through adherence to the left-hand path.[9] This idea is in opposition to the traditional goal of Hermetic and Western mystical practices, which is the surrendering of the ego into a union with either God or the universe.[68]

The Temple teaches that the true self, or essence, is immortal, and Xeper is the ability to align consciousness with this essence.[9][69] Aquino taught that there is an afterlife for those who have reached the necessary level of individual development.[70] This afterlife could occur in the individual's subjective universe.[70] Those unable to reach this level dissolve into non-existence when the physical body dies.[70] Self-initiation is knowledge understood as a conjunction of intellect and intuition.[9] In keeping with its emphasis on the individual, the Temple encourages their members to celebrate their own birthday, and does not prescribe any other calendar of religious festivities.[71]

Barrett presented Xem as his Aeonic Word to the Setians,[39] presenting it as a natural and necessary further development of Aquino's Xeper.[38] Aquino later acknowledged Xem as a worthwhile magical concept for Setians to explore, but found Barrett's insistence on its exclusivity as incompatible with the Temple's individualistic philosophy.[38]

Set

Aquino's understanding of Satan differed from the atheistic interpretation promoted by LaVey,[22] and the Temple's theology differs from that of the Church of Satan.[72] The Temple states that the name Satan was originally a corruption of the name Set.[73] The Temple of Set promotes the idea that Set is a real entity,[74] and accordingly has been described as being "openly theistic".[18] It further argues that Set is ageless and is the only real god in existence, with all others having been created by the human imagination.[75] Set is described as having given humanity—through the means of non-natural evolution—the "Black Flame" or the "Gift of Set". This refers to humanity's questioning intellect which sets the species apart from other animals and gives it an "isolate self-consciousness" and the possibility to attain divinity.[76] Aquino argued that the idea of the Gift of Set was inadvertently promoted to a wider audience in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. According to Aquino, the black monolith which imparts human-level intelligence onto prehistoric apes in the film was a symbol of Set.[77]

While Setians are expected to revere Set, they do not worship him, instead regarding him as a teacher and a guide.[78] He is portrayed as a role model on which Setians can base their own deification.[79] According to Webb, "we do not worship Set - only our own potential. Set was and is the patron of the magician who seeks to increase his existence through expansion."[80]

Embracing the idea of aeons from Crowley's Thelema, Aquino adopted the Crowleyan tripartite division between the Aeon of Isis, Aeon of Osiris, and Aeon of Horus, but added to that the Aeon of Satan, which he dates from 1966 to 1975, and then the Aeon of Set, which he dated from 1975 onward.[81] Despite presenting these chronological parameters, Aquino also portrayed the aeons less as time periods and more as mind-sets that can co-exist alongside one another.[81] Thus, he stated that "A Jew, Christian or Muslim exists in the Æon of Osiris, a Wiccan in that of Isis, and a Thelemite in that of Horus".[81]

Magic

Aquino placed an emphasis on what he deemed to be the division between the objective and subjective universes.[82] In the Setian religion, the objective world is understood as representing the natural world and humanity's collective meaning systems, while the subjective universe is understood as the individually experienced world and individual meaning systems.[48] Following earlier esotericists like Crowley, Aquino characterized magic as "causing change in accordance with will".[83] Unlike LaVey, Aquino expressed belief in the division between black magic and white magic.[84] He described white magic as "a highly-concentrated form of conventional religious ritual", characterizing it as being "more versatile", "less difficult", and "less dangerous" than black magic.[85] However, he criticized white magic as "fraud and/or self-delusion" which deceives the consciousness into thinking that it has been accepted in the objective universe.[86]

Aquino divided black magic into two forms: lesser black magic and greater black magic.[87] He stated that lesser black magic entails "impelling" things that exist in the "objective universe" into doing a desired act by using "obscure physical or behavioral laws" and into this category he placed stage magic, psychodramas, politics, and propaganda.[88] Conversely, he used the term greater black magic in reference to changes in the subjective universe of the magician, allowing them to realize their self in accordance with the principle of Xeper.[89] Among Setians it is accepted that there may be changes in the objective universe as a result of greater black magic, but such effects are considered secondary to the impact that they have upon the subjective universe.[89]

Within the Temple, rituals are typically known as "workings",[90] and are most often carried out alone.[91] Stressing the religion's individualist nature, there are no rituals that are specifically prescribed by the Temple.[92] Aquino also emphasized that in order to achieve a desired aim, the Setian should carry out physical actions alongside magical ones.[83] There are no regular occasions which are marked by fixed rituals, and the Temple has no calendar of festivals.[91]

Insignia

The Temple uses an inverted pentagram as its insignia, known as the "Pentagram of Set" to Setians.[93][94] The use of the geometric shape is derived from the Sigil of Baphomet used by the Church of Satan, although stripped of its overtly Satanic add-ons.[93] The Temple explains the meaning and significance of the pentagram by referring to Pythagorean ideas and "mathematical perfection".[93] At Setian gatherings, members wear the pentagram as a medallion.[94] The medallion is colored according to the initiation degree of the Setian.[94]

Both the Church of Satan and the Temple of Set also use the trapezoid symbol.[93] The version used by the Church includes flames, a pitchfork and the number 666, while the trapezoid of the Temple has a left-facing Egyptian sceptre, and the number 666 stylized in geometric shapes rather than as clear numbers.[93]

Structure

The internal structure of the Temple of Set is closely reminiscent of that of the Church of Satan as it existed in the 1970s.[95]

Degrees

All members of the Temple must be affiliated with a pylon, and thus membership is by application, requiring contact with a Setian priestess or priest followed by an evaluation period.[9] The participation of non-initiated in the Temple's rituals are forbidden, due to the belief that their rituals would be dangerous in the wrong hands.[96]

The Temple of Set recognizes several stages or degrees of initiation. The degrees indicate the individual Setian's development and skill in magic.[97] The degree structure is based on that of the Church of Satan, which in turn was based on the degrees of a nineteenth-century occult group, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.[98] The Temple terms the progression through degrees as "recognitions", because the organization's philosophy sees that the individual member initiates themselves and that the Temple merely acknowledges this by granting the degree.[99] These degrees are:[100]

Setian (First Degree)

Adept (Second Degree)

Priest / Priestess of Set (Third Degree)

Magister / Magistra Templi (Fourth Degree)

Magus / Maga (Fifth Degree)

Ipsissimus / Ipsissima (Sixth Degree)

The priesthood of the Temple of Set consists of members holding the third degree or higher; those in the first and second degrees are considered "lay members" of the Temple.[101] The first degree serves as a space for mutual evaluation, in which the Temple assesses whether the individual is appropriate for the group, and the individual decides whether they wish to further their involvement with it.[102] Full membership comes with recognition to the second degree.[99] Many members do not advance beyond the second degree, nor is this expected of them, as while the first and second degree members use the organization's teachings and tools for their own development, the priesthood involves greater responsibilities towards the organization, such as being its official representatives.[103]

Recognition is performed by members of the priesthood.[99] The fourth degree, which is acknowledged by the high priest/priestess, entails that the individual is so advanced in their magical skills that they are able to found their own school of magic, represented in the different orders of the Temple.[99] The fifth degree can only be awarded by the unanimous decision of the Council of Nine and by the approval of the Temple's high priest/priestess.[99] A fifth degree member has the power to utter and define a concept which somehow affects the philosophy of the organization, such as the concept of Xeper defined by Aquino in 1975.[99] Only a handful of members have attained this degree and most "fifth-degree" concepts defined in such a manner are no longer studied in the organization.[99] The final sixth degree represents a Magus "whose Task is complete".[99] This degree is held by a very select few in the Temple, although any fifth-degree member can assume the sixth degree based on their own assessment.[99]

Leadership

The organization is led by a high priest/priestess, who is also the public face of the Temple.[90] The high priest is chosen among fourth or higher degree members by the chairman of the Council of Nine.[90] This ruling council has nine members chosen from the priesthood (third degree or higher), whose mandate lasts for nine years with a new member being elected every year.[90] The chairman of the council is chosen from among the council members each year.[90] The council has the ultimate ruling power in the Temple and even the high priest is responsible to it.[90] The Temple also has an executive director, whose task is to deal with administrative issues.[90]

Since its founding in 1975, the temple has had the following high priests/priestesses:[90]

Michael A. Aquino (1975–1979, 1982–1996, 2002–2004)

Ronald K. Barrett (1979–1982)

Don Webb (1996–2002)

Zeena Schreck (2002)

Patricia Hardy (2004–2013)

James Fitzsimmons (2013–present)

Pylons, elements, and orders

In addition to the international organization, the Temple sponsors initiatory Orders and Elements and local groups called Pylons. Pylons are intended to facilitate the initiatory work of the Temple's members by conducting meetings where discussions and magical works take place.[98] The purpose of a pylon is to provide a space in which the Setian can focus on their religion, aided by like-minded individuals.[104] Pylons typically meet in a member's home.[104] Members usually join the Pylon located geographically closest to them.[98] Correspondence- or Internet-based Pylons also exist,[98] with Harvey noting that this online networking is more common than in-person interaction.[72] A Pylon is led by a second-degree (or higher) member who is called a Sentinel.[98][104] The term pylon derives from the architectural features which served as fortified gateways to ancient Egyptian temples.[105] One Finnish Setian informed Granholm that the relationship between the orders and the temple was like that of different departments in a university.[98]

Elements are loosely structured interest groups, where specific themes and issues are addressed.[98] They can be open for non-members and are commonly in operation only for short periods.[98] Topics of interest include, for example, animal rights, which was the subject of the Arkte element operated by Aquino's wife Lilith.[98]

There are sections of the Temple known as Orders, each of which focus on a particular theme, for instance ancient Egypt, Norse culture, Tantric Hinduism, or vampirism.[106] Others focus on a particular skill, for instance the Order of Uart focuses on the visual arts and the Order of Taliesin on music.[107] Orders can be understood as schools of different aspects of magic providing different paths of initiation.[98] Orders are led by grand masters, who will usually be the founder of the order.[98] In longer-lived orders the founder may have a successive grand master.[98] Orders are founded by members of the fourth degree.[99] When members reaches the second degree of initiation, they are expected to join an order of their own choosing.[98] In normal circumstances, a Setian is only permitted to join one order, however special dispensation can be obtained for a practitioner to join two.[5]

Setians also hold annual International Conclaves. First Degree Initiates who obtain sponsorship by a member of the Priesthood are permitted to attend the International Conclave and Regional Gatherings.[108]

Demographics

In 2000, the Temple had thirteen pylons, which were operating in the United States, Australia, Germany, and across Sweden and Finland.[73] The extent of the Temple's membership has not been publicly revealed by the group;[104] however, in 2005 Petersen noted that academic estimates for the Temple's membership varied from between 300 and 500,[9] and Granholm suggested that in 2007 the Temple contained circa 200 members.[109] The Temple's members come from a variety of racial backgrounds.[110]

In 1999, the anthropologist Jean La Fontaine suggested that in Britain there were 100 members of the Temple at most, and possibly "considerably fewer".[111] In 2001 the scholar Gareth Medway posited that the group had 70 to 80 members in the United Kingdom, adding that it was the largest Satanic group then active in the country.[112] In 2009, Harvey concurred with La Fontaine's assessment, although still believed that it was the largest Satanic group in the United Kingdom.[113] He noted that most members were male, between the ages of twenty and fifty, and that—despite his expectation that they might be political extremists—they endorsed mainstream political positions, with all those whom he communicated with stating that they had voted for either the Conservative Party, Labour Party, or Liberal Democrats.[72]

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

Pink Floyd

The group rebranded as the Pink Floyd Sound in late 1965. Barrett created the name on the spur of the moment when he discovered that another band, also called the Tea Set, were to perform at one of their gigs.[24] The name is derived from the given names of two blues musicians whose Piedmont blues records Barrett had in his collection, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.[25] By 1966, the group's repertoire consisted mainly of rhythm and blues songs, and they had begun to receive paid bookings, including a performance at the Marquee Club in December 1966, where Peter Jenner, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, noticed them. Jenner was impressed by the sonic effects Barrett and Wright created and, with his business partner and friend Andrew King, became their manager.[26] The pair had little experience in the music industry and used King's inheritance to set up Blackhill Enterprises, purchasing about £1,000 (equivalent to £23,500 in 2023[27]) worth of new instruments and equipment for the band.[nb 7] Around this time, Jenner suggested the band drop the "Sound" from their name.[29]

Under Jenner and King's guidance, Pink Floyd became part of London's underground music scene, playing at venues including All Saints Hall and the Marquee.[30] While performing at the Countdown Club, the band had experimented with long instrumental excursions, and they began to expand them with rudimentary but effective light shows, projected by coloured slides and domestic lights.[31] Jenner and King's social connections helped gain the band prominent coverage in the Financial Times and an article in the Sunday Times which stated: "At the launching of the new magazine IT the other night a pop group called the Pink Floyd played throbbing music while a series of bizarre coloured shapes flashed on a huge screen behind them ... apparently very psychedelic."[32]

In 1966, the band strengthened their business relationship with Blackhill Enterprises, becoming equal partners with Jenner and King and the band members each holding a one-sixth share.[29] By late 1966, their set included fewer R&B standards and more Barrett originals, many of which would be included on their first album.[33] While they had significantly increased the frequency of their performances, the band were still not widely accepted. Following a performance at a Catholic youth club, the owner refused to pay them, claiming that their performance was not music.[34] When their management filed suit in a small claims court against the owner of the youth organisation, a local magistrate upheld the owner's decision. The band was much better received at the UFO Club in London, where they began to build a fan base.[35] Barrett's performances were enthusiastic, "leaping around ... madness ... improvisation ... [inspired] to get past his limitations and into areas that were ... very interesting. Which none of the others could do", wrote biographer Nicholas Schaffner.[36]

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

The Fourth International Posadist is a Trotskyist international organisation. It was founded in 1962 by J. Posadas, who had been the leader of the Latin America Bureau of the Fourth International in the 1950s, and of the Fourth International's section in Argentina. Between their split from the International Secretariat of the Fourth International in 1962 and Posadas' death in 1981, Posadists developed a strain of communism that included several fringe ideas, which brought them into conflict with more mainstream left-wing groups.

Posadism attempts to introduce elements of ufology into Marxist thought.[1][2] Arguing that only communism can allow the development of interplanetary travel, they concluded that visiting aliens from other planets must live in highly advanced communist societies and are bound to help Earth-based communists with bringing about the world revolution.[3][4]

History

Origins

When the Fourth International (FI) split in 1953, Posadas and his followers sided with Michel Pablo and the International Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI).[5] The Posadists began quarrelling with the majority of the ISFI in 1959 over the question of nuclear war with Posadas being a proponent as, he claimed, it would destroy capitalism and clear the way for socialism.[6] The Posadists finally split with the ISFI in 1962 to form the Fourth International (Posadist).[7] The group initially had a following in several countries, particularly among railway workers in Cuba, tin workers in Bolivia and farm workers in Brazil.[citation needed]

There was a significant Posadist group in Cuba. Posadist guerrillas fought alongside Castro and Che Guevara in the 1959 revolution. When the Posadists split from the Fourth International in 1962, they took the Cuban section with them, meaning no other Trotskyist group was represented in Cuba in the 1960s.[citation needed]

The Posadist group was accused by Soviet-friendly forces in Cuba of arguing that the Cuban government should forcibly expel the American military base at Guantanamo Bay and of trying to organize workers in the town of Guantánamo to march on the nearby military base. That was taken as a justification by the government for imposing a ban on them, Castro denouncing their influence as "pestilential" at the Tricontinental Conference held in January 1966.[8] Cuban Posadists went on to claim that Castro had Guevara killed when, it turned out, he was actually in Bolivia fighting with the guerrilla movement there. Conversely, after Guevara was executed by Bolivian authorities, Posadas claimed in 1967 that Che Guevara was not actually dead but was being kept in prison by Castro's government.[9][10] By 1968, a Posadist movement began to develop in Europe; however, the ufology elements of the movement caused it to fail to garner much traction.[4]

Decline and resurgence

In the late 1960s, the Posadists became increasingly interested in UFOs, claiming they were evidence of socialism on other planets.[4] The organization soon began to wane in influence and membership, aided by an increasingly paranoid Posadas who expelled many of its members by 1975.[11]

Posadas' death in 1981 meant the virtual dissolution of the organization, with only a few isolated groups continuing to operate to the present day.[9] In the United Kingdom, the Revolutionary Workers' Party (Trotskyist) was founded in 1963 by Posadist members of the Revolutionary Socialist League and despite several schisms and a dwindling membership, it continued to publish its newspaper Red Flag until 2000.[12][13]

In recent years (as of 2018), interests in the Posadists, particularly in regard to their views in ufology, has increased. Several satirical and non-satirical "neo-Posadist" groups emerged on social media, making Posadas "one of the most recognizable names in the history of Trotskyism".[11][14]

Theories

Posadist society

Posadists advocate for a society akin to those proposed by general Marxist theory. A proletarian revolution will destroy the bourgeois state, replacing it with a socialist state.[4]

Nuclear first strike

At the height of the Cold War, Posadas thought that nuclear war was inevitable. He asserted that the nuclear-armed socialist states should launch a preemptive nuclear attack that would destroy the nuclear capabilities of capitalist countries. Additionally, he believed that a nuclear catastrophe between the United States and USSR would spark the world revolution.[9][15]

Posadas vocally opposed the Partial Test Ban Treaty signed in 1963 by the United States, the USSR, and the United Kingdom, believing that a nuclear war between the US and the USSR was inevitable and desirable, and would create the conditions for socialism, with the "workers' states" winning and resetting society.[16][17]

Scientific progress

Posadas was highly interested in the way scientific advancement could improve human lives when used for the common good, rather than for profit. In an essay written entitled "Childbearing in space, the confidence of humanity, and Socialism" (1978), he espoused his vision of a Utopian future under the guidance of science:

"Humanity feels pressed and oppressed by the straightjacket that imprisons science. For science is oppressed! The capitalists oppress science by using it to kill people. When science is liberated – it will not be long, in only a few years – we will wipe out all the problems, floods, hunger, and misery. All this could already be done, and it will not be long before we do. And when we do, everyone will be an architect, an engineer, a doctor, and the like."

— Posadas (1978)[18]

Posadas was also a supporter of space exploration by the former USSR and the People's Republic of China. He praised an alleged plan by the USSR to have a woman give birth in space, considering such endeavors the mark of an advanced society:

"If we have already the audacity to envisage childbearing in space, it is because we feel part of a quest that transcends life on Earth."

— Posadas[18]

These views are in line with the more mainstream positions of Russian cosmism and transhumanism.[18][19]

Ufology

Posadas was the author of a number of works with an unconventional slant and towards the end of his life he tried to create a synthesis of Trotskyism and Ufology. His most prominent thesis from this perspective was the 1968 pamphlet Flying saucers, the process of matter and energy, science, the revolutionary and working-class struggle and the socialist future of mankind which exposed many of the ideas associated today with Posadism. Here, Posadas claims that while there is no proof of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, the science of the time makes their existence likely. Furthermore, he claims that any extraterrestrials visiting earth in flying saucers must come from a socially and scientifically advanced civilisation to master inter-planetary travel, and that such a civilisation could have only come about in a post-capitalist world.[3]

Believing visiting aliens to be naturally non-violent and only here to observe, Posadas argues that humans must call on them to intervene in solving the Earth's problems, namely "to suppress poverty, hunger, unemployment and war, to give everyone the means to live in dignity and to lay the bases for human fraternity". The means to achieving this end remained within the mainstream Trotskyist and included ending capitalism as well as the bureaucracy of the workers' states and establishing a socialist society.[3][20]

Despite Posadas himself never publishing anything on the subject after 1968,[a] ufology nonetheless became an important part of Posadism. After his death in 1981, some Posadists continued to explore the subject, notably Dante Minazzoli,[21] Paul Schulz, and Werner Grundmann.[14][22] Others, however, have distanced themselves from the more unconventional notions and have claimed that Posadas' interest in extraterrestrial life was a marginal point that was blown out of proportions.[9]

Member parties

The Fourth International Posadist claims the following parties as members.[23] It is unknown how many of these organisations still exist or how many members they have. However it is unlikely there are more than a hundred members of the Posadist movement throughout the world. The organization currently lists contacts in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, however only Uruguay has a functioning party.[24]

Uruguay – Revolutionary Workers Party (Partido Obrero Revolucionario)

Defunct

Argentina – Revolutionary Workers' Party Posadist (Partido Obrero Revolucionario – Posadista)

Belgium – Revolutionary Worker's Party – Trotskyist (Parti Ouvrier Révolutionnaire – Trotskiste)

Bolivia – Revolutionary Workers' Party Trotskyist–Posadist (Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Trotskista Posadista))

Brazil – Brazilian Section of the Trotskyist–Posadist IVth International (Seção Brasileira da IV Internacional Trotskista–Posadista)

Britain – Revolutionary Workers' Party (Trotskyist)[25]

Chile – Revolutionary Workers' Party (Posadist) (Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Posadista))

Colombia – Posadist Trotskyist Workers Party (Partido Obrero Trotskista Posadista)

Cuba – Revolutionary Workers' Party (Trotskyist) – (Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Trotskista))

France – Revolutionary Communist Party (Trotskyist) – (Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire (Trotskyiste))

Germany – Posadist Communist Party (Posadistische Kommunistische Partei)

Greece – Revolutionary Communist Party–Posadists (Epanastatiko Kommounistiko Komma-Posadistes)

Italy – Revolutionary Communist Party (Trotskyist–Posadist) – (Partito Comunista Rivoluzionario (Trotzkista–Posadista))

Mexico – Revolutionary Workers' Party (Trotskyist) – (Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Trotskista))

Peru – Revolutionary Workers' Party (Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Trotskista))

Spain – Revolutionary Worker's Party (Trotskyist–Posadist) – (Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Trotskista–Posadista))

United States – Revolutionary Workers Party (Trotskyist–Posadist)

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