#so. here I am. researching Roman agriculture

[flashhwing]

I think im only gonna plan my campaign up to level 10 then whatever happens happens. leaving the plot from there up to my players. your turn to weave the narrative bitch

[max1461]

I have said this before, and also gestured at it in a lot of my recent posts, but every time I think about it I am increasing convinced that the explanation for the Great Divergence is basically "there's nothing to explain".

Ok, maybe that's a little unfair: there is something to explain. Western European states and the US saw a series of remarkable technological leaps during roughly the period from 1600 to 1900, which allowed them to achieve astonishing wealth and global political power. There is an explanandum here.

But what I mean when I say there's nothing to be explained is the following. We already have good reason to believe that technological growth is approximately exponential. Technology is self-compounding: the more of it you have, the more of it you can develop. And very many metrics that we would expect to correlate with technology, like agricultural yield and life expectancy, seem to grow exponentially. So I think the idea that technological growth is more-or-less exponential is well evidenced. When something grows exponentially, there is necessarily going to be a point of rapid take-off, a "foom". This is also something we see with technology, and life expectancy, and so on, particularly around the time of the industrial revolution.

This is fairly uncontroversial.

Another fact that I think is uncontroversial is that technological and scientific growth are subject to network effects, and subject to local material conditions. Societies that are generally wealthier may have more time and resources to spend on science, etc., and once you have a bunch of scientists working together in a specific place and sharing ideas, you get more rapid advancement. This seems true even in today's highly interconnected world, which is presumably related to why a small number of universities produce so much cutting edge research—they have the funding and the networks of top people. And I think there really is a sense in which you have many more opportunities for fruitful research and collaboration at e.g. an R1 university than an R2 university. The network effects still matter a lot. In the world before the twentieth century, when information traveled much slower, network effects would presumably have been much more important.

This is, again, a conclusion that I think is independently obvious and uncontroversial. If there was some sense in which it was not true, that would deeply surprise me.

But, look: the conclusion of these too facts taken together is basically that the observed course of history was (in a sense) inevitable. The second fact predicts that you'll get localized "scientific booms" through history, where a bunch of progress is being made in one area. We see this multiple times, with "golden ages" of science and philosophy in the Bronze Age Near East, in the Greco-Roman world, in ancient India, Tang China, the medieval Islamic world, and so on. Obviously I think in some sense "golden ages" are post hoc constructions by historians, but I think there's likely at least some reality behind them. So you have these localized scientific booms that slowly contribute to the exponential increase in global scientific knowledge. And it follows, if scientific growth is exponential, that there's going to be a foom. And it follows that whoever's having a boom when there's a foom is going to benefit a lot—in fact, exponentially more than anyone has before!

I am tempted to call this the "boom and foom theory" of the scientific and industrial revolution.

But it's not really a theory. It's a prediction of two existing theories about technological growth generally, taken together.

And it seems consistent with observation to simply say that Western Europe got lucky, to be having a boom when the foom happened. This is what I mean when I say "there's nothing to explain". I am not really sure we need anything extra to explain why this happened where it did geographically. I mean obviously you can dig in to the historical particulars, but ultimately... it was bound to happen somewhere.

Maybe there's something I'm missing here, or maybe I'm being excessively deterministic. But I think probably that any more particular theory of why the Great Divergence happened needs to justify itself against this one; it needs to explain why it adds anything to the picture that this does not already account for. But I don't know.

[bluberimufim]

The Caretos of Podence

Happy Carnaval!! Time for another cultural ramblie because I haven't done this in a while!!

(I just think they're cool)

This was originally gonna be about multiple Carnaval traditions in Portugal, like my Halloween post, because I wanted to talk about a really beautiful festivity in my city but then I realized it was related to an entirely different holiday and I wasn't gonna scrap this idea (I'll do that one in August, I guess??). So I decided to make a post about the Caretos of Podence because I just really vibed with them.

disclaimer! None of this is from lived experience, just online research (although I tried to use sources directly related to it, specifically the Casa do Careto website). I am not from Trás-os-Montes at all and have little contact with this. Just like in my first cultural ramblie, this is just me trying to better connect with my own culture and sharing what I find with anyone who's interested. If you see any errors or want to add anything, feel free!! I'm always happy to learn!

Okay, but before we begin: what exactly is Carnaval?

You might have heard of Brazil's Carnaval. Portugal's is way less hardcore but still culturally important (although some brazillian-style Carnavais are celebrated here).

The actual day of Carnaval is the day before Ash Wednesday, but it usually lasts about a week or 3 days in more urban areas (Carnaval break is a real thing that schools have). The general objective is to have an all-out celebration before Lent starts because, after that, you're not supposed to celebrate until Easter rolls around.

The Caretos

The village of Podence is in the middle of Trás-os-Montes, somewhat between Mirandela and Miranda do Douro. It is mostly known for this celebration, which lasts for about a week.

The name "caretos" means something like "big faces" and comes from their very recognizable masks. They're made of either leather or metal and are meant to completely obscure the identity of the wearer. The costumes are made of rows of coloured wool and are usually made by the community. The red, yellow, and green pattern is not mandatory and it can have many different colours, but it's the most common since it's the colours of the flag. On top of the costume, they wear a lot of bells: smaller ones attached to the straps on their chest and 4 to 8 bigger cowbells tied around their waist.

During the celebration, the caretos dance through the town, accompanied by the jingling of their bells. Traditionally, the caretos were young men who chased after single women, but today anyone can wear the costume and chase after anyone they please. They also go around stealing any easily grabbable chorizos left hanging from smokehouses, and use wooden staffs to propel their jumps higher.

On the last day of Carnaval, the Entrudo (a giant figure of a man) is burnt to draw away the bad things of the old year and let in the next. Like this:

This celebration has pagan roots, although none really know exactly where its origins lie. People seem to point to it being a pre-roman festivity, but we have few sources to go from. The most probable explanation is that it was a fertility ritual connected to the agricultural cycle, since this is generally the time in which farmers can start planting again after the winter.

I hope you enjoyed this little ramble. Because I very much did. Here's some more pictures:

[algolagnicalchemist]

Hi there!

I just wanna start by saying since you mentioned you've made jars before, i recognize some of what I suggest or explain may be known to you already - I just have a tendency to be thorough so others starting with less experience and info can learn when searching tags later.

This is kind of my process in deciding how to put jars etc. together, and hopefully it helps folks get an idea of what to try, or figure out how they could begin researching their practice to see what they want to do instead! For me this helps me decide more easily than just looking at lists of things associated with the holiday.

Since Ostara marks the Spring Equinox, a time of fertility, growth, and new beginnings, a lot of the associations we still see today make sense, and you can feel free to utilize them if you choose. i swear these few history paragraphs have a purpose in my suggestions that come next! 😂

Hares and rabbits have been considered symbols of fertility, abundance, and prosperity quite widely across cultures, including Celtic, Chinese, Greek, and Egyptian spiritual or cultural practices.

In the same vein, consider the egg: Roman worship to Ceres, the Goddess of agriculture, is one of the reasons eggs are a sacred symbol around the equinox across religions. Decoration of eggs have traditionally been used for equinox celeebrations from the pysanka of Ukraine to the Nowruz decorations in Ancient Persia.

Not that you should let one rot in the jar - instead, consider anything symbolically similar to an egg for you, something that's appropriate for how you'll dispose of the jar at the end of the holiday, the length of this cycle, or something else that feels right.

If you're a history nerd like me, I like to consider these things when I'm creating items for my practice, like a spell jar or a decoration. Personally I approach Ostara as a religious polytheist, so I love to delve into the roots of sabbats like this to consider who, what, and where the energies/spirits we're worshipping this time of the year come from. I often choose the most appropriate iteration/syncretization that resonates with me and isn't closed to my culture when i consider the beings I wish to revere, and I make sure to think about how I want this symbolic time to apply in *my* life, too.

Now here's how I use these factors to decide what I want in my jar:

Bringing even a little doodle of a rabbit into my jar is my way of helping me appease whatever powers I wish to hail - I'll be doing a lot of hard work this year, which makes me more inclined to invoke the hare of Artemis rather than the rabbit (whose association to Aphrodite could be perceived as more about love and marriage, which is what I absolutely CAN'T spend time focusing on this year!) Ergo, I know I'd like my rabbit drawing to portray a hare to reach out to Artemis. In my line of worship, she is often the youngest aspect of Hekate/the Triple Goddess, and I'm being led by Hekate quite regularly these days, so it's important to me to take the time to revere the spirit of this youthful experience I'm about to have.

i've been nonbinary for ages but my tmasc and egg just cracked, so my portrayal of the egg in my altar/jar will be a clean, broken eggshell. Maybe I'll put my little hare doodle so it looks like it's emerging from the egg and some dirt at the top of my jar.

Our agricultural ancestors were preparing and planting their harvest at this time. It's a time of new birth - I'll put the first bloom of spring on my altar to celebrate, and perhaps pick some smaller blossoms to put into the jar.

Since new beginnings are an emphasis of Ostara and perfect for where I am in life now too, that's also what i'll focus on with my crystals for this: aquamarine, moonstone, green adventurine, amazonite, malachite, pyrite, calcite, tigerseye, and a golden healer quartz. My choices here are, again, based on being into rocks, lol - I want the protection and direction and courage of tigerseye, the labradorite to transform my old energy and help me persevere and stay open. Malachite to bond me with my intentions and nurture my heart as I manifest abundant beginnings, amazonite to help me find the courage to surrender, and green adventurine to make me aware of the things I've outgrown now. The Spring Equinox is a perfect time to connect with what many of us refer to as the "Divine Feminine," and that's what moonstone does for me, connecting me to Artemis and the goals I set this Ostara to the moon, (which I use to track my goals and to-dos anyway)

I have an array of SMART goals for my new journey and upcoming year - I'll write these on slips of paper or something biodegradable and add them to my jar.

Since Artemis is a protector of the downtrodden, women, and children, I want to evoke these things too. If I weren't currently digging out of debt I'd donate a sum to a related charity, especially those for IPV (a cause I'm personally passionate about and linked with) and even add the receipt to the jar. I'll certainly be expressing my gratitude for her protection in my own adventures past in prayer, even if I don't have a receipt to show it.

Since she's a Goddess of Light and the moon, I'll likely seal this jar and burn a white candle on top of it while I reflect on my gratitudes, prayers, and intentions for the coming cycle.

For a floral, herbal, and aromatic components inside my jar, I'll seek out things like honeysuckle, lemon verbena, jasmine, bay laurel, thyme, and yarrow for their herbal, seasonal, and deity correspondences.

if you really wanna go the extra mile with this jar, consider making the jar a self-sustaining terrarium you set up to watch it grow with your intentions, or perhaps even put some more enduring things like crystals and natural items at the bottom of the jar beneath a thick layer of soil that will support a plant's rooting. (I wouldn't put any crystals that can't handle water in this, though.)

There's no more literal tracking of setting intentions, planting the seeds, nurturing, and watching them grow than caring for a plant yourself.

Could anyone give me ideas for Ostara or spring-related spell jar ingredients? I haven’t made a jar in a long time and I could use some encouragement ☘️

[writingwithcolor]

Mixing North America with Old World Cultures in Fantasy: What Are The Issues?

So I sent in an ask several years ago that, due in no small part to your response, I have grown from and eventually led to a complete restructuring of my story. I included a measure of context in this, so if you need to skip it, my main three questions are at the bottom. I think this mostly applies to Mod Lesya.

The new setting is both inspired by and based on North America in the late 1400s where the indigenous cultures thrive and are major powers on the continent. Since there is no “Europe” in this setting the colonization and plague events never happened. Within the continent itself (since it is a fantasy setting) there are also analogous cultures that resemble Norse, Central European, Persian, Arabic, Indian, and Bengali. Although not native to the fantasy continent, there is also a high population of ‘African’ and ‘Oceanic’ peoples of many cultures, the latter usually limited to coastal cities as traders and sailors. Elves are entirely not-human, or at least evolved parallel to humans ala Neanderthals/Denisovans; they have green blood, black sclera, and skin tones that run from pale to dark. 

The main national setting of the story takes great inspiration from a Byzantine/Turkish/Mississippian background, and the neighboring nations are based on the Haudenosee (Iriquois Confederacy), Numunuu (Comancheria), and the Hopi and Zuni (as the descendants of the Ancestral Puebloans) (I also know that 2 of these 3 occur much later than the 1400s, but I love the government systems and they provide excellent narrative foils for the more ‘traditional’ fantasy government that takes place in the story). The Maya inhabit the role analogous to Ancient Greece in that most writing systems on the continent descend from Maya script and all the Great Philosophers were Maya (and nobility from across the continent spend lots of money to send their children to schools in the Maya City-States or in the Triple Alliance (Aztec Empire)). There is magic with varying traditions, practices, and methods spread across the continent, some of which are kept secret from outsiders, so I would hope that this avoids the “Magical Native” trope. 

Beyond the setting, I have three main questions:

When it comes to foodstuffs, I was originally planning to limit myself to Pre-Columbian cuisine from the Americas (eg the Three Sisters and potatoes) but in doing my research, Navajo fry-bread seems to be a fairly integral part of the food culture and that does require flour, which originated in the Old World. Would it be better to incorporate some of the Old World stuff that has since become traditional to indigenous groups?

For place names used in the setting and writing systems would it be better to use existing languages or writing systems or ones inspired by them? EG should I make a language that is very similar to Cherokee, complete with its own syllabary, or should I use IRL Cherokee and its extant syllabary? I ask because I feel like using the real language might step on some toes, but using the conlang might seem like erasure.

One of the main themes of this story is the harm that even a ‘benevolent’ Empire can wreak on people. The Byzantine/Turkish/Mississippian culture is the main Empire on the continent, taking cues from both western and American monarchical systems (eg the Triple Alliance (Aztec) and The Four Regions (the Inca Empire)), but when I think about it having any kind of even vaguely western ‘Empire’ spring up from the soil of a North American inspired setting might be troubling.

Thank you for your time and consideration! Do you guys have a kofi or something so I can compensate you for time spent?

I actually do remember you, and I am going to 99% disregard your questions here because you went from glaringly obvious racism to covert racism, and none of your questions ask if your basic strings of logic for assumptions you built into the setting are okay. 

Since there is some extremely flawed basic logic in here, I’m going to tackle that first.

Question 1: Why did you originally title this “Pre Colombian North American Fantasy World” when you have more old world cultures than new world cultures?

A very simple, straightforward question. The actual content of the setting is what made me retitle it.

If you want to write a North American fantasy setting… why are there so many old world cultures represented here? 

Old world: - Greece (as a societal myth; see next point) - Byzantine - Turkey - Norse - Central European - Persian - Arabic - Indian - Bengali - African (which, let’s be honest, should be heavily broken up into multiple peoples) - Oceana (which, again, should be heavily broken up into multiple peoples)

New world: - Mississippian - Iroquois  - Numunuu - Hopi - Zuni - Maya - Aztec - Inca (maybe? not mentioned as having their own place on the continent, but one of your questions mentions them) - Navajo (maybe? See above)

To account for respecting Africa and Oceana, I’m going to make African cultures count as 3 and Oceanic cultures count as 5, and this is a purposeful lowball.

Old World: 17 New World: 9

It’s a giant discrepancy, especially if your attempt is writing an exclusively New World fantasy. And this is bare minimum old world, considering the fact I tried to limit myself to peoples who would be more likely to interact with the heavy Mediterranean/Alexander the Great’s Empire centricity. 

Question 2: Why does there have to be a Greece analogue?

I haven’t spoken about this topic at length on this blog, but Greek worship in the Western world is a very carefully crafted white supremacy based mythos that was created to prop up European “Excellence” and actually erases the reality of Greece as a peoples.

Cultural evolutionism is a theory that states the (assumed-white-European) Greeks were superior because of their philosophy, their abstract art, and their mathematics. When many of these concepts were refined in Egypt (African, aka Black), or the Arab world (aka brown), but white Europeans did not want to admit any of this so they instead painted everything as coming out of their ideas of Greece lock stock and barrel. 

The theory also ignored Iroquois science, Plains and Southwestern abstract art, and generally everything about North America, because the theory was designed to move the goalposts and paint North America as something it wasn’t, just to make Europeans feel okay taking it over and “bringing it to civilization.”

This theory was still taught in force up until the 1970s, and is still a major school of anthropological thought to this day (and still taught in some universities), so it is still very much influencing the Western world.

While the theory itself is only from the 1800s, it had long-growing roots in white/ noble Europe’s attempt to prop up European “Excellence” during its multiple periods of colonization, from the Crusades, onwards. You can see it in the copious amount of art produced during the Renaissance.

Europeans ignored the sheer amount of settling and travel that happened within Greece and Rome, and you’ll notice how many Renaissance paintings depict Greek philosophers as white, teaching other white people. In reality, we have no idea what their skin tone was, and they could have taught a huge variety of different skin tones. But it was appealing to European nobility to have people like them be the founders of all things great and “advanced”, so they invested huge amounts of time and money in creating this myth.

(Note: I said their nobility, not their population. People of colour existed en masse in Europe, but the nobility has been downplaying that for an exceptionally long time)

Greece took over most of the old world. It borrowed and stole from hundreds of cultures, brought it all back, and was assigned credit for it. White Europeans didn’t want to admit that the concept of 0 came from the Arabs, the pythagorean theorem came from Egypt, etc, and since Greece won, detailed records of how they were perceived and what they stole are long lost. It’s only glaring when they took from other global powers.

Question 3: Why would you pick totally different biomes to mix in here?

Turkey and the Mississippi are very, very different places when it comes to what can grow and what sort of housing is required, which makes them on the difficult side to merge together. They relied on different methods of trade, as well (boats vs roads), and generally just don’t line up.

The fact you pick such a specific European powerhouse—the Byzantine Empire—to mix into your “not European” fantasy world is… coming back to my above point about Greek (and Roman) worship in the West. Why can’t a fantasy world set in North America be enough on its own? Why does it need Europe copycats?

Question 4: Why are you missing a variety of nomads and Plains peoples?

Nomadic plains peoples were a thing across the globe, from the Cree to the Blackfoot to the Mongols. You have hyperfocused on settled peoples (with only one nomadic group named in both new and old world), which… comes across as very odd to me, because it is, again, very European sounding. That continent was about the only one without major populations that were nomadic, and if you look at European history, nomadic peoples were very highly demonized because of the aforementioned Mongols. 

Cultural evolutionism also absolutely hated nomadic peoples, which is where we get the term “savage” (hunter-gatherers, nomads) and “barbarian” (horticulturalists and pastoralists, the latter nomadic); these were “lesser cultures” that needed to settle down and be brought to “civilization” (European agriculture), and nothing good could ever come out of them.

Meanwhile, in North America, nomadic peoples took up a very large portion of landmass, produced a huge amount of culture and cultural diffusion, and mostly ignoring them while trying to create a “fantasy North America” is, well, like I said: odd. 

General Discussion Points

My suggestion for you is to write a fantasy Mediterranean region. Completely serious, here.

With the kinds of dynamics you are attracted to—the empires, the continental powers, the fact you keep trying to make Europe analogues in North America—you will do a much, much more respectful job by going into a really richly researched Mediterranean fantasy world than attempting to mix Europe and North America together in ways that show European traits (settled peoples, agriculture, a single empire dominating the whole culture and being viewed as superior) as the default.

I legitimately cannot see anything in here that feels like it comes from North America, or at the very least, treats non-sensationalized peoples (aka, those outside the Maya and Mississippian region) with respect. 

It falls into Maya worship, which is a very sensationalized topic and is fuelled by racist fascination, assuming no Indigenous peoples could be that smart. 

It falls into settled peoples worship, which is something that has cultural evolutionism roots because under such a model only settled peoples with agriculture are “civilized.”

It falls into placing Western concepts (public schools, large cities, the ilk) as the ideal, better solution, compared to methods better suited to horticulturalists, pastoralists, and hunter-gatherers and letting those teaching methods be respected.

There is no shame in writing inside Europe

The Mediterranean region contains Indigenous peoples, contains a huge diversity of skin tones, contains empires, contains democracy/a variety of governments, and in general contains every aspect of what you’re trying to create without playing god with a continent that did not evolve the way you’re trying to make it. 

A Mediterranean fantasy world would still be a departure from “fantasy world 35″ as I like to call it, because it would be different from the vaguely Germanic/ French/ Norse fantasy worlds that are Tolkien ripoffs. You can dig beyond the whitewashed historical revisions and write something that actually reflects the region, and get all the fun conflicts you want.

You don’t need to go creating a European/North American blend to “be diverse.” You can perfectly respectfully write inside Europe and have as much variety in peoples as you can write in a non-European setting. Europe is not the antithesis to diversity.

North America developed a certain way for a reason. It had the required fauna, space, resources, and climate to produce what it created. The old world developed a certain way for its own reasons, based off its own factors in the same categories.

You’re not really going to get them to blend very easily, and if you did, the fact there is such a strong European way-of-life preference (by picking places that mirror European society on the surface) makes me raise an eyebrow. It’s subtle, but very much there, and the fact you are ignorant to it shows me you still need to do more work before you go writing North American Indigenous Peoples.

Writing in Europe isn’t the problem, here. Writing a whitewashed, mythologized, everyone-not-white-is-a-caricature, ahistorical “Europe” is the problem. And you cannot fix this problem by simply painting European ways of life a different skin tone when the setting isn’t European. In fact, you’re perpetuating harm by doing that, because you are recreating the cultural evolutionism that calls anything you can find in Europe “better.” Indigenous cultures were vastly different from Europe, even if they shared similar trappings. 

Let North America exist without trying to shoehorn its most famous peoples into European analogues.

~ Mod Lesya

[xwhitewolfv]

Ok so I need to rant about an SCP for a sec

In SCP 1050, the obelisk has an inscription in a form of proto latin by a dude called Legalus Maximus Romulus. It's dated to around 53,000 BCE according to the article. The obelisk itself is dated to have been created around 48,000 BCE. So yes, somehow an inscription in proto latin predates the actual obelisk itself. Ok but here is where things start to bother me. You don't need to be linguist to know that there was no established written language form 50,000 years ago (at least I am 99% sure), not to mention the proto latin itself is stated by the article to be of some unknown alphabet variant, which is fine, except for the fact that it predates any known empire, kingdom, agriculturally advanced society, whatever. I don't know if this is intentional, but I'll get to that in a minute.

The person who apparently wrote the inscription was made by the name mentioned above, which when I tried to figure out if this was a real person (the only results that came up was THE actual Romulus, founder of Rome who would have been in office at around 700 BCE) which not only doesn't correspond with the original carving he's attached to, (plus the like 6 others carvings after from civilisations that predate Rome historically) but he is also from a time period where proto latin wouldn't have been used. Unless this isn't actually Romulus (i don't know if his full name was actually Legalus Maximus Romulus and frankly I kinda don't care) or this is some dude fucking with the inscriptions to make it seem like it was this person, but they time travelled 53,000 years ago. (Was it Clef? Probably, idk, its always him)

So overall:

An inscription that predates the actual obelisk itself,

is written in an unknown alphabet of proto latin in a time period where no languages (in terms of an alphabet, prefixes, vowels, fucking whatever is in a written language don't come at me I know jack shit) existed

Is written by some Roman person who if it is THE actual Romulus (i mean there aren't many people with that name, and the other inscriptions were made by other prominent rulers and figures throughout history, so following this pattern it would be safe to assume it is him) would have existed around 700 BCE, possibly not writing in any form of proto latin nor correspond with the date of the inscription

Not the mention the fact that proto latin doesn't have a concise written form in real life, but since its established in the article as being written in an unknown alphabet related to proto latin it's ok /g

So, by itself this is fine and dandy. Why? Because the date of the inscription and the language could be anomalous, which ties into the anomalous nature of the obelisk as an 'interstellar early warning system'. However, I literally cannot find anything in the article that actually mentions the anomalous nature of the date of inscription and how it contradicts the actual date of the obelisk's supposed creation. Either there is nothing there or I am REALLY stupid (most likely I have missed something because I am in fact, very hopeless) Everything else in the article makes sense to me, it features inscriptions of languages that are accurately dated to their approximated date and are listed as such chronologically, as well as the addition of unknown scripts and symbols that act as nicely embedded pieces of lore and possible history within the universe that this story was created in. Ancient and anomalous civilisations aren't are foreign concept in the SCP foundation, some of the best stories on there utilise these concepts to strengthen their storytelling. I literally have no problems with SCP 1050, I think its a great article and the author really did their research, but this detail bothers the fuck out of me because I can't find any reason as to why this would be mentioned as such. Now you are probably thinking, 'it could have been a typo', and yes, that is what I thought initially as well. Except for the fact that the article has been around for around 8 years, and the original author has not rectified this perceived 'typo'. Barely anyone in the discussion page of the article actually mentions this and I feel like I am loosing my mind a bit. Am I missing something?

Furthermore, (haha you thought this was over. Fuck u I'm not done bitch) the author has responded to comments identifying this typo, with one of the responses hinting that the author themselves did not intend for this to be in the final article, which I call bullshit; "I'll go digging through my notes and try and figure out a satisfactory answer for you. It's entirely conceivable that I messed up (I don't remember specifically where the 53,5██ BCE number came from) - in which case it might be a bit before I can correct not only the in-article text but the images of the carving. I had to do enough calculations for this article that I wouldn't be at all surprised if I made an error at some point..." A post from an admin indicates that at some point, someone edited the article to correct the date of the "proto latin" inscription in order to make it "Philologically plausible" (anyone can edit your SCP articles btw, with the proper permission and guidelines followed). From the admin's comment, the edit was reverted, as according to the author: "The unusual age of the writing is a key part of the anomaly" (can't find where they've stated this) and so this indicates that the date for the inscription WAS intentional, despite it not making any sense. Now before you go "this is the SCP FOUNDATION, we got a statue that looks like a peanut and a giant edgy reptile it doesn't NEED TO MAKE SENSE" which you are completely justified in saying. I too, really enjoy concepts and texts that do not make sense, because that's the great thing about writing surreal, cosmic horror, sci-fi, abstract pieces, you don't need to have your concepts make perfect logical sense because thatsTHE WHOLE POINT. Of course it helps to explain certain elements within your own universe in order for it to make a little realistic, but overall they're amazing, creative releases that I just adore. And so this part of the article really throws me for a loop, because it just stands out amongst all the other languages and inscriptions. Proto latin is a language, its date and alleged author on the obelisk however, contradicts the creation of the obelisk, which could link to its initial anomalous features (I'd like to point out that the obelisk is one part of the SCP, in fact I am quite literally extremely fixated on this one detail when it could be nothing of use) this isn't meant to mar the good quality of the article, it's just something that doesn't sit right with me because I can't piece it together into the story

Its almost 1am, my rant is done goodnight. I'm gonna look back on this in the morning and wonder wtf I was talking about

[berniesrevolution]

In Dilley, Texas, there is only one grocery store, and that grocery store is Lowes. (It is not a Lowes, like the home improvement center. It is a totally different and legally distinct store that also happens to be called Lowes.) Lowes is a place of many mysteries. I once went there to buy vegetable broth for a sick coworker, and combed the soup aisle for nearly 20 minutes before being forced to admit that no, Lowes does not carry vegetable broth. The closest thing they had was a can of something called “vegetable beef.” Lowes does, however, carry bacon-flavored pancake syrup, quite a lot of animal pheromones in spray cans (including such choice selections as “raccoon urine” and “sow in heat,” which I assume are for agricultural rather than cosmetic purposes), and a large selection of devotional candles in glass cylinders.

I had never paid much attention to the candles, but a friend of mine was in town, volunteering at the child internment camp where I work as an immigration lawyer, and he wanted to bring back a candle for some eclectic ofrenda-type situation he had set up in his D.C. apartment. He is a meticulous and thoughtful sort of person, and took a long time debating between various candidates. I had come to Lowes primarily to buy Cheez-Its, and was getting impatient. I picked up a candle at random. “How about this one?” I said.

The candle had a picture of a Little Lord Fauntleroy-type in a plumed hat and a white ruff, with a pink seashell pinned to his cloak. I glanced at the label on the back. Glorioso Santo Niño de Atocha, it said, patrón de las que están injustamente en prisión, protector de viajeros y que das la mano al que se encuentra en peligro…

I didn’t know anything about this saint at all, despite having grown up Catholic, so I looked him up on my phone. I soon discovered that he was not really a saint, per se, but a special Limited Edition version of baby Jesus. Wikpedia offered up the following backstory:

In the 13th century, Spain was under Muslim rule. The town of Atocha, now part of Madrid’s Arganzuela district, was lost to the Muslims, and many Christians there were taken prisoners as spoils of war. The Christian prisoners were not fed by the jailers, but by family members who brought them food. According to pious legend, the caliph ordered that only children under the age of 12 were permitted to bring food. Conditions became increasingly difficult for those men without small children. … Reports soon began among the people of Atocha that an unknown child under the age of twelve and dressed in pilgrim’s clothing, had begun to bring food to childless prisoners at night. The women of the town returned to Our Lady of Atocha to thank the Virgin for her intercession, and noticed that the shoes worn by the Infant Jesus were tattered and dusty. They replaced the shoes of the Infant Jesus, but these became worn again. The people of Atocha took this as a sign that it was the Infant Jesus who went out every night to help those in need.

This all got me rather excited, because I am very fond of medieval history, and regularly drive around rural Texas blasting 13th-century Spanish pilgrimage music. Who would��ve thought that a little vestige of the medieval world would turn up in my local grocery store? Secondly, what better patron for someone who works at a jail for child refugees than a child-saint who defends both travelers in peril and the unjustly imprisoned?

And that was how I first ended up buying a Holy Infant of Atocha candle for my kitchen table.

Later, when I researched the matter further, I found out that the Wikipedian history of the Holy Infant was—shockingly—likely incorrect. The medieval origin story was a post hoc invention, an attempt to give an older European pedigree to a wholly Mexican tradition. The Holy Infant’s mother, as it turns out, was an authentically medieval character: Holy Mary of Atocha appears in several of the 13th century Cantigas de Santa Maria (a.k.a. the sick beats currently blaring from my Kia Forte), mostly as a patroness of field workers. When her shrine at Atocha was selected for special favor by the Spanish monarchy in the 17th century, she was transformed from a saint of the people into an emblem of Spanish governance. It was in this capacity—as a defender of Spanish colonial might—that Mary of Atocha found her way to Mexico. Sanctuaries in her name were built in the state of Zacatecas, in Fresnillo and Plateros.

But through some obscure evolution of local devotion, it was the image of her child, the Holy Infant, that became the primary locus of worship. The Holy Infant of Atocha eventually came to be revered as a protector of ordinary people, especially of miners, travelers, and prisoners. An 1848 novena written by one Calixto Aguirre was instrumental in popularizing the cult of the Holy Infant, and the cover illustration of the printed pamphlet version was the first to show him as a pilgrim rather than a prince. Instead of a crown, a globe, and a scepter—the traditional iconography of power—he had a big hat, a food basket, and a traveler’s staff with a gourd hanging from it. The first episode of the novena tells of a legal miracle.  It begins with the tale of a poor woman by the name of Maximiana Esparza, who wanders to four different cities, seeking succor. In each city, she is imprisoned for her malas costumbres—some unspecified bad manners—and, having no family or other advocate to speak on her behalf, she languishes for years in prison in each place. At last, after being in prison a year in Durango, she prays to the Holy Infant of Atocha:

…who listened to her kindly and took her out of her captivity; for in all the time that she had lived there, there was nobody who would defend her, until the Holy Child of Atocha, dressed as a handsome youth, visited her in that prison and gave her some bread in the name of his mother, saying to her that same afternoon she would see the judge and he would take up her case, which caused no little amazement among the rector and the other inmates; and when the time arrived that the Child had named, she was set free.

Mary of Atocha, the former people’s saint, may regrettably have become more conservative in her waning years, but she nonetheless succeeded in giving the world an even more radical son. We should all be so lucky!

It’s actually pretty absurd that I knew nothing about the Holy Infant of Atocha until a few months ago. Once he was on my radar, I soon realized that he’s a pretty standard figure in Mexican and Chicanx Catholicism. But I stumbled into immigration advocacy three years ago knowing next to nothing about Latin American cultures, and even now there are huge gaps in my understanding. My Spanish, too, is still pretty atrocious. I have been working at it for three years, but it’s like speaking through a mouthful of broken glass. I muster my words with pain, and my meaning comes out all mangled. I now feel a strong affinity for all those immigrant grandparents who understand English perfectly and never learn to speak it; I am sure I would be just the same if I were ever to immigrate to a non-English-speaking country. I often feel that any bilingual person, with or without a law degree, could do most of my work a lot better than me. But I am here, so I do my best.

Sometimes I wake up in the mornings very anxious, usually when I have to draft a big court filing or an important request to the asylum office, to try and stop a detained family’s deportation. I come up with soothing little rituals to ease my transition from fretful sleep to focused work. I put on some music. I make a big pot of coffee. I light my Holy Infant of Atocha candle. It’s really because I like the way the candlelight makes me feel, not for superstitious reasons. I’m really not one for good luck charms, astrology, or premonitions. I remember that shortly after Trump first announced the family separation policy this summer—this was when I was still in Massachusetts, getting ready for my move to Texas—I was walking down a familiar street near my home, feeling very disturbed and heartsick. All of a sudden I saw a rabbit on the sidewalk a few feet ahead. It was standing quite still, and it let me walk up close. For a moment the encounter felt almost magical. Then the rabbit loped off, and where it had been, I saw two small baby bunnies lying dead on the pavement. When I bent to look, a little cloud of flies dispersed, then settled again. As omens go, that was some Roman-level bullshit. But I don’t think it was anything but coincidence.

The area of south Texas where I live now is teeming with strange sights, and sometimes everything I see feels pregnant with meaning. The drive from my apartment to the internment camp is only four minutes, but the road is always strewn with strange corpses. A dead dog or house cat is an everyday casualty; but I have also seen bodies of armadillos, bobcats, and javelinas, all mowed down by a speeding truck, or a passenger-bus of incoming detainees, or one of the heavy tankers that barrel continually to and from the nearby oilfields. No waste collection service ever disposes of the animals, so I watch their corpses bloat and distend and then disintegrate over a period of weeks. I have heard a rumor too that there are zebra on one of the ranches around here, flown in and kept in captivity so that deer-weary hunters can have something exotic to shoot. I’ve yet to see an escaped zebra lying dead by the side of the road, but give it time.

Also on the same road as the child internment camp, if you can believe it, there is a Texas state prison. It lies alongside a large ranch, and in front of the jail there’s a field of watermelons. Sometimes in the early morning, on my way into work, I see a group of prisoners in white jumpsuits and white caps, working the watermelon field. Ringed around them are three or four heavily-armed officers on horseback, in case anyone tries anything. The thing is so ludicrous it’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry. It’s as if this tiny town has been selected as a kind of roadside showcase of human cruelty.

(Continue Reading)

[fatehbaz]

Reading these articles and research papers on settlers colonialism strangely feels so validating. It's terrible, but it carries the message that indigenous people around the world have been saying; these practices are detrimental to all lifeforms. Since I come from a background of farmers, I've studied a lot where their practices came from, and reading "Modelling the Effects of Vegetation on Mediterranean Climate During the Roman Period" has given me a huge insight.

Sure. Like, of course indigenous environmental knowledge andcosmologies are valid without the need for “blessings” or corroboration fromWestern scientific institutions. But, yea, it still is heartening to see that– regarding ecology, and especially when it comes to vegetation, sustainablefood systems, and interdependency between plants and people - Western scienceessentially reaches the same/similar conclusions aboutvegetation/ecology/interdependence that Indigenous cosmologies have long proposedor understood. But even when Indigenous environmental knowledge itself isvalidated, I still think that many Western scientists treat the knowledge as valid, but still do notgrant this validation to the Indigenouscultures and cultural institutions themselves, which actually maintained that knowledge. Over the pastcouple of decades, the better visibility and public consideration of Indigenousknowledge is nice, and I hope non-Indigenous people remain careful about notco-opting or simply extracting Indigenous knowledge as if it was just anotherresource.

On ecological change as a result of imperialism:

I agree with the general consensus among politicalenvironmental historians and Indigenous activists. Local climate change, devegetation,and homogenization of soil regimes – among other environmental alterations – were notaccidental or secondary consequences of European colonization processes, butwere/are instead a primary intent and goal of colonization. This - the deliberate alteration of ecology as a main focus of colonization - is especially evident in the eradication of American bison. Crops in the GreatPlains, sugar plantations in Latin America, cattle ranches in Argentina, palmoil plantations in West Africa, and especially white settlers’ residential  areas and urban parks were reshaped to lookand function like European/Mediterranean environments more familiar andcomfortable to settlers.

It’s creepy to me that you can see the same green lawns andresidential yard landscaping designs in Seattle and Atlanta, on oppositecorners of the continent, an ecological homogenization at incredible scale. Tothis day, “woke” Americans still plant green lawns of non-native grass acrossthe continent; it’s like a stamp, it erases native plants, sanitizes the land,standardizes how your environment has tolook.

A bit of info that interests me is how it seems to be thatwhen ancient Mediterranean/Middle Eastern empires and modern European empiresintroduce industrial-scale food extraction and monoculture/plantation-typeagriculture – when empires alter landscapes - there is severe loss of soilhealth, native vegetation, and biodiversity. But Indigenous American peoples,for example, were also involved in altering landscapes at enormous scales –agroforestry throughout Central American rainforest, modification of the GreatPlains, etc. - and yet their practices actually improve biodiversity.

On the ecology of ancient civilizations:

I am fascinated with the surprising scale of environmentaldegradation in the Mediterranean and Middle East in ancient times (between thebeginning of the Holocene about 11,000 years ago, up until Greco-Roman times).But I haven’t read the article you mentioned, so I will definitely be readingit (looks like it was influential in the early 2000’s).

I’ve met people who were surprised to learn that Mesopotamiaand western Persia (basically, landscapes centered on modern-day Iraq andSyria) were not only forested, but also harbored species representative of both Africa and Asia. Here, species associated with Africa in the popularconsciousness – lions, giraffes, cheetah – intermingled with species associatedwith Asia – like Asian elephants, mugger crocodiles, and Indian rhinoceros. The environmental degradation that erased much of this biodiversity and soil fertility seems to directly correspond with the rise of militaries and empire-building.

A cool piece of scholarship on early civilization’senvironmental history is German geographer Hans Bobek’s Die naturlichen Walder und Geholzfluren Irans (1951), whichthoroughly describes the fertile forests and other biomes of Persia and Kurdishlands in the ancient era.

One of the best environmental history texts I’ve encountered is this book by Australian scholar and environmental historian MarkElvin. It’s called The Retreat of theElephants: An Environmental History of China (2006). Tigers, leopards,multiple species of rhinos, and elephants all lived throughout China as farnorth as Beijing until the mass mobilization of irrigation engineers,anti-flood projects, and militaries in the Zhou/Han eras forced rapiddevegetation and geoengineering.

Environmental change in ancient China wascrazy! And, like in the Mediterranean and Middle East, the massive devegetation and landscape alteration in Chinese history corresponds to the rise of empire-building.

Thanks for chatting. And thanks again for therecommendation!

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.

So concluded the historian Arnold Toynbee in his 12-volume magnum opus A Study of History. It was an exploration of the rise and fall of 28 different civilisations.

He was right in some respects: civilisations are often responsible for their own decline. However, their self-destruction is usually assisted.  

The Roman Empire, for example, was the victim of many ills including overexpansion, climatic change, environmental degradation and poor leadership. But it was also brought to its knees when Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410 and the Vandals in 455.

Collapse is often quick and greatness provides no immunity. The Roman Empire covered 4.4 million sq km (1.9 million sq miles) in 390. Five years later, it had plummeted to 2 million sq km (770,000 sq miles). By 476, the empire’s reach was zero.

Our deep past is marked by recurring failure. As part of my research at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, I am attempting to find out why collapse occurs through a historical autopsy. What can the rise and fall of historic civilisations tell us about our own? What are the forces that precipitate or delay a collapse? And do we see similar patterns today?

The first way to look at past civilisations is to compare their longevity. This can be difficult, because there is no strict definition of civilisation, nor an overarching database of their births and deaths.

In the graphic below, I have compared the lifespan of various civilisations, which I define as a society with agriculture, multiple cities, military dominance in its geographical region and a continuous political structure. Given this definition, all empires are civilisations, but not all civilisations are empires. The data is drawn from two studies on the growth and decline of empires (for 3000-600BC and 600BC-600), and an informal, crowd-sourced survey of ancient civilisations (which I have amended).

Collapse can be defined as a rapid and enduring loss of population, identity and socio-economic complexity. Public services crumble and disorder ensues as government loses control of its monopoly on violence.

Virtually all past civilisations have faced this fate. Some recovered or transformed, such as the Chinese and Egyptian. Other collapses were permanent, as was the case of Easter Island. Sometimes the cities at the epicentre of collapse are revived, as was the case with Rome. In other cases, such as the Mayan ruins, they are left abandoned as a mausoleum for future tourists.

What can this tell us about the future of global modern civilisation? Are the lessons of agrarian empires applicable to our post-18th Century period of industrial capitalism?

I would argue that they are. Societies of the past and present are just complex systems composed of people and technology. The theory of “normal accidents” suggests that complex technological systems regularly give way to failure. So collapse may be a normal phenomenon for civilisations, regardless of their size and stage.

We may be more technologically advanced now. But this gives little ground to believe that we are immune to the threats that undid our ancestors. Our newfound technological abilities even bring new, unprecedented challenges to the mix.

And while our scale may now be global, collapse appears to happen to both sprawling empires and fledgling kingdoms alike. There is no reason to believe that greater size is armour against societal dissolution. Our tightly-coupled, globalised economic system is, if anything, more likely to make crisis spread.

If the fate of previous civilisations can be a roadmap to our future, what does it say? One method is to examine the trends that preceded historic collapses and see how they are unfolding today.

While there is no single accepted theory for why collapses happen, historians, anthropologists and others have proposed various explanations, including:

CLIMATIC CHANGE: When climatic stability changes, the results can be disastrous, resulting in crop failure, starvation and desertification. The collapse of the Anasazi, the Tiwanaku civilisation, the Akkadians, the Mayan, the Roman Empire, and many others have all coincided with abrupt climatic changes, usually droughts.

ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION: Collapse can occur when societies overshoot the carrying capacity of their environment. This ecological collapse theory, which has been the subject of bestselling books, points to excessive deforestation, water pollution, soil degradation and the loss of biodiversity as precipitating causes.

INEQUALITY AND OLIGARCHY: Wealth and political inequality can be central drivers of social disintegration, as can oligarchy and centralisation of power among leaders. This not only causes social distress, but handicaps a society’s ability to respond to ecological, social and economic problems.

The field of cliodynamics models how factors such as equality and demography correlate with political violence. Statistical analysis of previous societies suggests that this happens in cycles. As population increases, the supply of labour outstrips demand, workers become cheap and society becomes top-heavy. This inequality undermines collective solidarity and political turbulence follows.

COMPLEXITY: Collapse expert and historian Joseph Tainter has proposed that societies eventually collapse under the weight of their own accumulated complexity and bureaucracy. Societies are problem-solving collectives that grow in complexity in order to overcome new issues. However, the returns from complexity eventually reach a point of diminishing returns. After this point, collapse will eventually ensue.

Another measure of increasing complexity is called Energy Return on Investment (EROI). This refers to the ratio between the amount of energy produced by a resource relative to the energy needed to obtain it. Like complexity, EROI appears to have a point of diminishing returns. In his book The Upside of Down, the political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon observed that environmental degradation throughout the Roman Empire led to falling EROI from their staple energy source: crops of wheat and alfalfa. The empire fell alongside their EROI. Tainter also blames it as a chief culprit of collapse, including for the Mayan.

EXTERNAL SHOCKS: In other words, the “four horsemen”: war, natural disasters, famine and plagues. The Aztec Empire, for example, was brought to an end by Spanish invaders. Most early agrarian states were fleeting due to deadly epidemics. The concentration of humans and cattle in walled settlements with poor hygiene made disease outbreaks unavoidable and catastrophic. Sometimes disasters combined, as was the case with the Spanish introducing salmonella to the Americas.

RANDOMNESS/BAD LUCK: Statistical analysis on empires suggests that collapse is random and independent of age. Evolutionary biologist and data scientist Indre Zliobaite and her colleagues have observed a similar pattern in the evolutionary record of species. A common explanation of this apparent randomness is the “Red Queen Effect”: if species are constantly fighting for survival in a changing environment with numerous competitors, extinction is a consistent possibility.

--

Despite the abundance of books and articles, we don’t have a conclusive explanation as to why civilisations collapse. What we do know is this: the factors highlighted above can all contribute. Collapse is a tipping point phenomena, when compounding stressors overrun societal coping capacity.  

We can examine these indicators of danger to see if our chance of collapse is falling or rising. Here are four of those possible metrics, measured over the past few decades:

Temperature is a clear metric for climate change, GDP is a proxy for complexity and the ecological footprint is an indicator for environmental degradation. Each of these has been trending steeply upwards.

Inequality is more difficult to calculate. The typical measurement of the Gini Index suggests that inequality has decreased slightly globally (although it is increasing within countries). However, the Gini Index can be misleading as it only measures relative changes in income. In other words, if two individuals earning $1 and $100,000 both doubled their income, the Gini would show no change. But the gap between the two would have jumped from $99,999 to $198,998.

Because of this, I have also depicted the income share of the global top 1%. The 1% have increased in their share of global income from approximately 16% in 1980 to over 20% today. Importantly, wealth inequality is even worse. The share of global wealth from the 1% has swelled from 25-30% in the 1980s to approximately 40% in 2016. The reality is likely to be starker as these numbers do not capture wealth and income siphoned into overseas tax havens.

Studies suggest that the EROI for fossil fuels has been steadily decreasing over time as the easiest to reach and richest reserves are depleted. Unfortunately, most renewable replacements, such as solar, have a markedly lower EROI, largely due to their energy density and the rare earth metals and manufacturing required to produce them.

This has led much of the literature to discuss the possibility of an “energy cliff” as EROI declines to a point where current societal levels of affluence can no longer be maintained. The energy cliff need not be terminal if renewable technologies continue to improve and energy efficiency measures are speedily implemented.

READ MORE

[euroman1945-blog]

The Daily Tulip

The Daily Tulip – Archeological News From Around The World

Friday 22nd June 2018

Good Morning Gentle Reader….  So much is being discovered, it’s almost on a daily basis, bodies, castles, graffiti, palaces, the list goes on, of course modern methods of examination of the ground certainly help, Lidar being a huge success in the archeological world, but quite often its old fashioned methods that reap rewards, understanding of poetry in one case today, I guess that there is a little Sherlock Holmes in a lot of Archeologists……

MUTILATED BODIES UNCOVERED IN ENGLAND…. CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND—Archaeological investigation ahead of road construction in Cambridgeshire has uncovered the graves of two men whose legs were chopped off at the knees, according to The Guardian. The men’s skulls were also smashed in. Archaeologist Kasia Gdaniec of the Cambridge County Council said the men are thought to have lived in the late Roman or early Saxon period. Their bodies were buried in graves placed at right angles to each other. The upper part of another body was found in a timber-lined well about 165 feet from the graves. The well had fallen out of use, and had been partially filled in with rubbish when the torso was deposited with its head intact. “People talk about the archaeology of conquest, but I have never felt it as strongly as here,” said Gdaniec. “The Romans arrive, the people who were here are completely subjugated, everything changes and is never the same again.”

BRONZE AGE VILLAGE DISCOVERED IN CHINA…. HOHHOT, CHINA—Xinhua reports that a 3,000-year-old village covering about four acres has been found in northern China. Pottery, ditches, and three tombs are currently under excavation. “The discovery will provide new reference for studies on archaeology and culture in [the] southeast region of Inner Mongolia during the Bronze Age,” said Cao Jian’en of the Inner Mongolia Regional Institute of Archaeology.

SEVENTH-CENTURY INSCRIPTION FOUND AT TINTAGEL CASTLE….CORNWALL, ENGLAND—The Guardian reports that words and letters were found carved into a seventh-century slate window ledge in a building at Tintagel Castle in north Cornwall. The inscription, thought to have been a doodle or a scribe’s practice work, include the Roman name Tito and the Celtic name Budic. The Latin words fili, or son or sons, and viri duo, or two men, were also carved into the two-foot ledge. A triangle may represent the Greek letter delta. There is also monogram made up of a letter “A” with a “V” inside it and a line across the top. The combination may have been a Christian symbol, since “A,” or “alpha,” was often associated with a Christian description of God. Some of the words were written in the formal script found in illuminated gospel works, while others are informal in style. Win Scutt of English Heritage said the letters support the interpretation of Tintagel as a literate, Christian port with trade ties to Europe and the Mediterranean. Further study will try to determine whether the scribe was left or right handed, and what sort of tool might have been used to carve the letters.

TOBACCO USE IN NORTH AMERICA PUSHED BACK 1,500 YEARS…. TROY, ALABAMA—The Cherokee One Feather reports that tobacco use in southeastern North America could date back 4,000 years, or about 1,500 years earlier than previously thought. Stephen B. Carmody of Troy University and his colleagues detected traces of nicotine in a smoking tube dated to the Late Archaic Period, when the residents of the Flint River archaeological site were beginning to domesticate plants. The smoking tube was unearthed in the late 1930s by Tennessee Valley Authority archaeologists in northern Alabama who conducted excavations before the area was submerged by the damming of the Tennessee River.

POSSIBLE PALACE FOUND IN JAPAN…. NARA PREFECTURE, JAPAN—According to a report in The Asahi Shimbun, traces of a large structure built during the first half of the eighth century A.D. have been found at the Miyataki archaeological site in central Japan, near the banks of the Yoshinogawa River. Archaeologists think it may be the main building of the Yoshino no Miya palace, mentioned in historic records and poetry as a place frequented by emperors, based upon its size and design. Scholars have been looking for the palace for years, and assumed it had been placed safely far away from the river, in the mountains, with views of the river. “I previously thought the poem depicts the palace in an exaggerated way,” said Makoto Ueno of Nara University, “but Yoshino no Miya was likely a detached palace to enjoy the beauty of the Yoshinogawa just as depicted in the poetry.” Michio Maezono of the Nara College of Arts added that the placement of this building could have facilitated religious services to honor the river god.

STUDY OFFERS CLUES TO IRELAND’S BRONZE AGE ENVIRONMENT….VANCOUVER, CANADA—The Vancouver Star reports that researchers led by Eric Guiry of the University of British Columbia have tracked the effect of deforestation and farming practices on the nitrogen cycle through the chemical analysis of Bronze Age animal bones from Ireland. The nitrogen cycle is the process of how the element circulates through the atmosphere, land, and oceans. The more than 700 bones in the study came from some 90 archaeological sites across Ireland. The test results suggest significant changes to the nitrogen composition of soil nutrients—and therefore the food chain—occurred when land use became more intensive through deforestation, agriculture, and grazing some 2,000 years ago. Guiry thinks small-scale agriculture up until that point was likely to have had little impact on nutrients in the environment.

Well Gentle Reader I hope you enjoyed our look at the archeological news from around the world this, morning… …

Our Tulips today are a view from the Wooden Shoe nursery in Oregon looking towards Mt. Hood...

A Sincere Thank You for your company and Thank You for your likes and comments I love them and always try to reply, so please keep them coming, it's always good fun, As is my custom, I will go and get myself another mug of "Colombian" Coffee and wish you a safe Friday 22nd June 2018 from my home on the southern coast of Spain, where the blue waters of the Alboran Sea washes the coast of Africa and Europe and the smell of the night blooming Jasmine and Honeysuckle fills the air…and a crazy old guy and his dog Bella go out for a walk at 4:00 am…on the streets of Estepona…

All good stuff....But remember it’s a dangerous world we live in

Be safe out there…

Robert McAngus #travel #news #love #blog #crime

[torixus]

Why We Worship On Sundays And Not Saturdays - Fr. Kelvin Reveals

Popular Nigerian Catholic Priest, Rev.Fr. Kelvin Ugwu has revealed the reason why Catholics and Other Christians worship on Sunday and Not on Saturday.

According to the Catholic Priest, Catholic Church through Emperor Constantine decided to make Sunday the day of worship following the pagan feast they call the feast of the Sun-god.

He pin points Out the Real Theory behind the Sabbath Day and the Bible Notes behind It.

Fr. Kelvin Ugwu is well known for his Daily Talk About Life and the Church.

The message Reads;

As you read this, I would like you to bear this in mind. The reason you see us clarifying and involving ourselves in some of these topics on social Media is not because we are jobless or want to show off, but just so that at least one or two persons who genuinely want to know the truth could get the opportunity of hearing another side that will aid him or her in making an informed decision.

In the Old Testament, we read in Exodus 20:8-10 concerning the Sabbath. It says:

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you,"

The question now is, how come it was shifted from what we now call Saturday to what we now called Sunday?

There are those who are ready to tell you that the reason for the shift is because the Catholic Church through Emperor Constantine decided to make Sunday the day of worship following the pagan feast they call the feast of the Sun-god. They will also tell you that worshipping on Sunday is not biblical, and as such when you worship on Sunday, you worship the pagan god.

hmmmm! Let's take a deep breath! I am making this post so that you can always keep it as reference or to share it with people ready to learn.

Prior to the death and resurrection of Christ. The first day of the week which we now call Sundays does not have much significance until we read in Matthew 28:1 concerning Mary Magdalene.

"Now after the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave."

Then, we were told in all the gospels that Christ rose from the dead on that FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK.(Mark 16: 9).

Gradually, the very fact that the resurrection took place that first day of the week, it soon became something very significant for the early Christians. The resurrection was and it is still a big deal, something no one has ever done. And truly, what sets Christians apart from others is simply their believe in the resurrection of Christ. Without it, they have nothing to talk about.

To make it even more dramatic, in Luke 24:14-14 Jesus appeared to two disciples on their way to Emmaus and broke bread with them. That day was the first day of the week, on a Sunday.

As if that is not enough, the disciples started gathering together and Jesus will appear to them on the first day of the week.

John 20:19 says,

"So when it was evening on that day, THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you.""

On that visit of Christ as recorded in John 20:19, do you know that Thomas was not with the disciples on that day? And when he came back and was told, he refused to believe. 

Here is the most astonishing part. Jesus had to wait for the next week, the first day of the week, before he appeared to show himself to Thomas. Why? Something for us to reflect on. Read for yourself.

John 20: 26

"A WEEK LATER his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”"

For some of you who are interested in research, please find time and google "The Didache" also known as "The Lord's Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nation". Take your time and read it. It was written in the first century and contains an account of how the first Christians saw themselves, what they did during their meetings, the day of the week they were meeting, and what they taught. This will open your eyes to how the early Christians worshipped. The documents is an archeological fact for those that want to doubt its authenticity.

What brought me to mentioning "The Didache" is to show you that though the early disciples still tried keeping the Sabbath, but they still gathered on the first day of the week for the breaking of bread. Even the book of Act 20:7 recorded it.

At some point, St Paul even gave us a clear hint in 1 Corinthians 16:1-2 that the first day of the week was the day they usually gather to pray.

Hear Paul as he writes to the Corinthians:

"Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so do you also. On the FIRST DAY OF EVERY WEEK each one of you is to put aside and save, as he may prosper, so that no collections be made when I come."

Mark the words: . . . OF EVERY WEEK.

It did not take long, this first day of the week was now referred to as "The day of the Lord" by the early disciples. You can check Revelation 1: 10. Even the Didache I told you about, talked about it.

Do I need to remind you all the importance of the resurrection? Formerly it was just an ordinary first day of the week, but Christ turned it to an Easter. As such, every Sunday became a "small Easter", such that it naturally took over Saturday.

Now, the ogakpatakpata of them all is the Pentecost day. Pentecost is an agricultural feast of the Jews. Pentecost means 50. Today when the word Pentecost is mentioned, our mind will go quickly to the Holy Spirit. That is not what Pentecost meant initially.

Why did God decided to send the holy Spirit on the apostles on the Pentecost day, a day where farmers were supposed to gather in accordance to the Jewish law of Leviticus 23:15-22? To Make it even more shocking, that day was on a Sunday. All Jewish Pentecosts were celebrated on the first day of the week (Sunday). Make the calculation yourself and you will see.

Now here is the summary: Christ rose on the first day of the week. God sent the Holy Spirit on the apostles in which more than 3000 souls were converted, and it was on the first day of the week. Two very important days for all Christians: The birth of the church on Pentecost and the salvation of the world on the day he rose. Both happened on Sundays.

Can you now see why it did not take long for the Sabbath to start losing its significance on the early Christians because they have seen something bigger than the Sabbath. They saw Christ himself, the Holy Trinity. They were no longer held bound by the law. They abandoned some of the practices of the Jews whom do not even believe that Jesus is the saviour not to talk of resurrection from the dead. This is why in the NT, even tithe was not binding and was not talked about among the early Christians.

Friends, to say that it was Constantine that made us to start worshipping on Sundays will amount to a show of ignorance of the scriptures and undermining the power of the resurrection and even worst still, giving Constantine the powers that he does not posses. 

And if they say Sunday is a day of worship of the pagan Sun-god and that the meaning of Sunday came from the Sun-god, then it is important we remind ourselves that the Jews as at that time of Jesus do not have names for the days of the week as we do today. This is why you will often hear them say, the first day of the week, the sixth day, the seventh Etc. This is exactly what played out during the creation story.

Even the word Sabbath is simply a description. Sabbath is from the Hebrew "shabbat" meaning "to rest." This is why even when the bible mentioned 7th day, it will still use the word Sabbath to describe it as the day of rest. "Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God." Exodus 20:8.

The days of the week as we have today were all adopted. They are all pagan. Monday is named after the god of the moon. Thursday is for the Norse god known in Modern English as Thor. Friday is named after the Anglo-Saxon goddess Fríge. Saturday is named after the Roman god Saturn. 

There is this impression from some Pentecostals Christians of today that once anything has a pagan origin it is evil and it is impossible for it to be 'Christianized.' This is the origin of the fight concerning the celebration of Christmas here on social media.

Well, unfortunately, many things came from the pagans, including the papyrus that was used to write the bible in those days. The tradition of offering visitors kolanut in Igbo culture is largely pagan. Even Baptism as we know it today as pouring of water or immersion in rivers did not start with Christians.

What these so called "highly spiritual" Pentecostals fail to see is that the christian faith must be planted in a culture for it to take root. Even St Paul while preaching to the Areopagus in Act 17:16-34 had to use what the Athens have as an altar to the "unknown god", to plant the message of the living and known God into them.

Friends, the point is, once the Christian faith is planted in any culture, it uproots the bad in it and retains the good. This is why once you mention "Sunday" we think about the day of worship in church and not sun-god. This is why 25th December may not be the day Christ was born, but it has taken a Christian dimension pushing aside whatever it was known with before. This is why the cross that was seen as a symbol of shame, once it is mentioned today, it is seen as a symbol of liberation and of glory.

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[pauljosephrovelli]

A Commentary on NOAH WAS A KABIR, HENCE HE MUST HAVE BEEN A DEMON by HPB

It seems one of the most potent voices behind the inner order secrets of the Golden Dawn was that of Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.  Accordingly, Thelema, which also owes much to the inner order secrets of the Golden Dawn would clearly show its Theosophical roots.  We present here a Thelemic  commentary on HPB’s essay: NOAH WAS A KABIR, HENCE HE MUST HAVE BEEN A DEMON.

HPB: It matters little whether it is Isis, or Ceres -- the "Kabiria" -- or again the Kabiri, who have taught men agriculture; but it is very important to prevent fanatics from monopolising all the facts in history and legend, and from fathering their distortions of truth, history, and legend upon one man. Noah is either a myth along with the others, or one whose legend was built upon the Kabirian or Titanic tradition, as taught in Samothrace; he has, therefore, no claim to be monopolized by either Jew or Christian. If, as Faber tried to demonstrate at such cost of learning and research, Noah is an Atlantean and a Titan, and his family are the Kabiri or pious Titans, etc. -- then biblical chronology falls by its own weight, and along with it all the patriarchs -- the antediluvian and pre-Atlantean Titans.

AL:I.46 "Nothing is a secret key of this law. Sixty-one the Jews call it; I call it eight, eighty, four hundred & eighteen."

AL:I.47 "But they have the half: unite by thine art so that all disappear."

pj comment: Per Liber AL, the Jews have the half; but that doesn't mean that that half includes everything in Jewish lore and history.  Though there's much, including and especially the Qabalah that they did carry; yet I think it important to understand Thelema as a Western paradigm.  The East did not have the same ideological enslavement brought upon by the Roman church in the West, and its mystery tradition did not suffer the broken lineages subsequent to Roman persecution in the West.  Though possibly, the whole world lost when the library at Alexandria was destroyed.

HPB: As now discovered and proven, Cain is Mars, the god of power and generation, and of the first (sexual) bloodshed (As he is also Vulcan or Vul-cain, the greatest god with the later Egyptians, and the greatest Kabir. The god of time was Chium in Egypt, or Saturn, or Seth, and Chium is the same as Cain.). Tubal-Cain is a Kabir, "an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron"; or -- if this will please better -- he is one with Hephaestos or Vulcan; Jabal is taken from the Kabiri -- instructors in agriculture, "such as have cattle," and Jubal is "the father of all those who handle the harp," he, or they who fabricated the harp for Kronos and the trident for Poseidon (See Strabo, comparing them to the Cyclopes -- XIV. p. 653 et seq. (Callim in Del., 31 Stat. Silo. IV., 6, 47; etc., etc.)).

pj comment: Tubal-Cain is the secret word of the Freemasons; a holy and esteemed word.  We can see here that Tubal-Cain is then the Cain of the Bible, who was of the race of Giants or Titans (the Kabir and even the Nephilim).  As an artificer or creative artisan, he fits perfectly with the craft of mundane masonry, upon which the Freemasons are said by their lore, to have evolved.  But as Vulcan, the god of Fire, we can connote the idea of the element of Spirit, which is dually attributed to the element of Fire in the Western system.  As well, we see an allusion to Horus and the importance of sexual Magick. Albert Pike writes in the Freemasonic document, Morals and Dogma:

AROERIS or HAR-oeris, the elder HORUS, is from the same old root that in the Hebrew has the form Aur, or, with the definite article prefixed, Haur, Light, or the Light, splendor, flame, the Sun and his rays. The hieroglyphic of the younger HORUS was the point in a circle; of the Elder, a pair of eyes; and the festival of the thirtieth day of the month Epiphi, when the sun and moon were supposed to be in the same right line with the earth, was called "The birth-day of the eyes of Horus."

AL:I.16 "For he is ever a sun, and she a moon. But to him is the winged secret flame, and to her the stooping starlight."

pj comment: The Sun and the Moon of course, are the symbols of male and female.  The spilling of blood in the story of Cain and Abel must have a symbolic and not literal significance.  HPB writes in a footnote:

HPB: Adam-Jehovah, Brahma and Mars are, in one sense, identical; they are all symbols for primitive or initial generative powers for the purposes of human procreation. Adam is red, and so also are Brahma-Viraj and Mars -- god and planet. Water is the blood of the Earth; therefore, all these names are connected with Earth and Water. "It takes earth and water to create a human soul," says Moses. Mars is identical with Kartikeya God of War (in one sense) -- which god is born of the Sweat of Siva, Siva Gharmaja and the Earth. In the Mahabharata he is shown as born without the intervention of a woman. And he is also called "Lohita," the red, like Adam, and the other "first men." Hence, the author of "The Source of Measures" is quite right in thinking that Mars (and all the other gods of like attributes), "being the god of war and of bloodshed, was but a secondary idea flowing out of the primary one of shedding of blood in conception for the first time." Hence Jehovah became later a fighting god, "Lord of Hosts," and one who commands war. He is the aggressive Zodh -- or Cain by permutation who slew his (female) "brother," whose "blood crieth from the ground," the Earth having opened her mouth to receive the blood. (Genesis iii.)

pj comment: Jubal, the "father of all those who handle the harp" seems to draw an overt allusion to the three employed artificers (Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum) of the Third Degree in Masonry, who conspire and kill Hiram-Abif, the Master Mason overseeing the construction of Solomon's temple.  But also, HPB’s assertion that the god of procreation is also the god of war is clearly echoed in Thelema:

AL:III.3 "Now let it be first understood that I am a god of War and of Vengeance. I shall deal hardly with them."

HPB: The history or "fables" about the mysterious Telchines -- fables echoing each and all the archaic events of our esoteric teachings -- furnish us with a key to the origin of Cain's genealogy (Genesis, ch. iii.); they give the reason why the Roman Catholic Church identifies "the accursed blood" of Cain and Ham with Sorcery, and makes it responsible for the Deluge. Were not the Telchines -- it is argued -- the mysterious ironworkers of Rhodes; they who were the first to raise statues to the gods, furnish them with weapons, and men with magic arts? And is it not they who were destroyed by a deluge at the command of Zeus, as the Cainites were by that of Jehovah?

AL:III.11 "This shall be your only proof. I forbid argument. Conquer! That is enough. I will make easy to you the abstruction from the ill-ordered house in the Victorious City. Thou shalt thyself convey it with worship, o prophet, though thou likest it not. Thou shalt have danger & trouble. Ra-Hoor-Khu is with thee. Worship me with fire & blood; worship me with swords & with spears. Let the woman be girt with a sword before me: let blood flow to my name. Trample down the Heathen; be upon them, o warrior, I will give you of their flesh to eat!"

pj comment: To better understand this, the construction of the name Hiram-Abif as discussed in Pike's tome is essential:

In the ancient Phcenician character, and in the Samaritan, A B, (the two letters representing the numbers 1, 2, or Unity and Duality, means Father, and is a primitive noun, common to all the Semitic languages. It also means an Ancestor, Originator, Inventor, Head, Chief or Ruler, Manager, Overseer, Master, Priest, Prophet. is simply Father, when it is in construction, that is, when it precedes another word, and in English the preposition "of" is interposed, as Abi-Al, the Father of Al.

Also, the final Yod means "my"; so that by itself means "My father. David my father, 2 Chron. ii. 3. (Vav) final is the possessive pronoun "his"; and Abiu (which we read "Abif") means "of my father's." Its full meaning, as connected with the name of Khurum, no doubt is, "formerly one of my father's servants," or "slaves." The name of the Phcenician artificer is, in Samuel and Kings, [2 Sam. v. 11; 1 Kings v. 15; 1 Kings vii. 40]. In Chronicles it is with the addition of [2 Chron. ii. 12]; and of [2 Chron. iv. 16].

It is merely absurd to add the word "Abif," or "Abiff," as part of the name of the artificer. And it is almost as absurd to add the word "Abi," which was a title and not part of the name. Joseph says [Gen. xlv. 8], "God has constituted me 'Ab l'Paraah, as Father to Paraah, i.e., Vizier or Prime Minister." So Haman was called the Second Father of Artaxerxes; and when King Khurum used the phrase "Khurum Abi," he meant that the artificer he sent Schlomoh was the principal or chief workman in his line at Tsur.

pj comment: The Trident is also interesting here: in the GCL document, Liber Tridens, I write:

The trident is the fork, which mysteriously appears in our mythology, held traditionally by Neptune, while today it shows up in our cultural depiction of the Devil and interestingly enough, even the classic Norman Rockwell painting of the American farmer and his wife.  Its nature is thoroughly understood by our collective unconscious.  But the cartoon images of Satan don’t represent it well at all. They are the result of our cultural repression after centuries of domination by the Roman heresy.  The trident is a real Magickal weapon and its powers are complex and hard hitting.  With its power derived from the AUMGN going forth, the Trident directs and commands the way of the AUMGN; the spiritual content of our world, our reality in its unborn state.  

The Trident is held up or down in a vertical line, relating to the equations:  2=0, and 0=2, referring in its downward position, to the birth of duality/polarity, the birth of qualities within the world; or if held upwards, it refers to the process of Aspiration, to reconcile duality with each other in order to take a position beyond good and evil.  It points therefore to the highest or the lowest, and make no mistake about the lowest genius, it culminates in poison, disease and corruption.  And by comparison, the Rod in the Gnostic Mass is also held upwards and downwards, expressed in both ways during the rite. The Trident as we’ve presented it here, is a very lofty weapon, and the attainment of it (no less to be able to wield it) is possible for but a very few.  It is a type of a wand in that it is the AUMGN going; the dynamic expression of the content of Kether.  But it must not be confused with the Lance of the Gnostic Mass, as This Lance personifies the one-pointedness of the Magus. The Trident balances its holy tip containing the unborn essence by two sides, which will be recognized in this connection as Binah and Chokmah, but the correspondences and virtues of the Trident are many...

Continuing with the HPB essay:

HPB: The Telchines are simply the Kabiri and the Titans, in another form. They are the Atlanteans also. "Like Lemnos and Samothrace," says Decharme, "Rhodes, the birth-place of the Telchines, is an island of volcanic formation." (Genii of Fire, p. 271.) The island of Rhodes emerged suddenly out of the seas, after having been previously engulfed by the Ocean, say the traditions. Like Samothrace (of the Kabiri) it is connected in the memory of men with the Flood legends. As enough has been said on this subject, however, it may be left for the present.

pj comment: It is enough to state the obvious; the superstitious denotation that sees a God that created the deluge to destroy the race of Giants/Nephilim.  For that matter, he was quite inefficient as enough of that race survived; that we could even get story of Davey & Goliath--so much for the denotative interpretation of myth.  Yet this can be so rich in its connotative virtue.

HPB: But we may add a few more words about Noah, the Jewish representative of nearly every pagan God in one or another character. The Homeric songs contain, poetized, all the later fables about the Patriarchs, who are all sidereal, cosmic, and numerical symbols and signs. The attempt to disconnect the two genealogies -- those of Seth and Cain (Nothing could be more awkward and childish, we say, than this fruitless attempt to disconnect the genealogies of Cain and of Seth, or to conceal the identity of names under a different spelling. Thus, Cain has a Son ENOCH, and Seth a Son ENOCH also (Enos, Ch'anoch, Hanoch; -- one may do what one likes with Hebrew unvowelled names). In the Cainite line Enoch begets IRAD, Irad MEHUJAEL, the latter METHUSAEL, and Methusael, Lamech. In the Sethite line, Enoch begets Cainan, and this one MAHALEEL (a variation on Mehujael), who gives birth to JARAD (or Irad); Jarad to ENOCH (Number 3), who produces Methuselah (from Methusael), and finally Lamech closes the list. Now all these are symbols (Kabalistically) of solar and lunar years, of astronomical periods, and of physiological (phallic) functions, just as in any other pagan symbolical creed. This has been proven by a number of writers.) -- and the further attempt, as futile, to show them real, historical men, has only led to more serious inquiries into the history of the Past, and to discoveries which have damaged for ever the supposed revelation. For instance, the identity of Noah and Melchizedek being established, the further identity of Melchizedek, or Father Sadik, with Kronos-Saturn is proved also.

pj comment: Perhaps there is some connection here with Enoch and the antidiluvian races that once existed on this planet.  In HPB's exposition on races, there were more subtle (less material) races that preceded our race (giving some credence to the Nephilim as a spiritual or lower astra race) that ultimately would have contacted someone such as Enoch; who himself was not Hebrew and as a descendent of Cain (as HPB points out here) is of this race of Giants.

HPB: That it is so may be easily demonstrated. It is not denied by any of the Christian writers. Bryant (See "Analysis of Ancient Mythology," Vol. II., p. 760) concurs with all those who are of opinion, that Sydic, or Sadic, was the patriarch Noah (as also Melchizedek); and that the name by which he is called, or Sadic, corresponds to the character given of him in Genesis, chap. vi., 9. "He was , Sadic, a JUST man, and perfect in his generation. All science and every useful art were attributed to him, and through his sons transmitted to posterity." (See New Encyclopaedia by Abraham Rees, F.R.S.)

pj comment: With some puzzlement, I'll state that Melchizedek is said by some to be one of the names of Akhenaten (the first priest/pharaoh of monotheism); along with Oedipus and Aeschylus.  The latter is an ancient playwriter of great renown; the seeming originator of the ancient Greek myths that especially have to do with the stories of creation and are as closely woven into Judaic lore as could possibly be.  In the essay that follows this essay in HPB's Secret Doctrine: The Curse from a Philosophical Point of View, she writes:

Pointing to antiquity he will prove that there never was an original sin, but only an abuse of physical intelligence -- the psychic being guided by the animal, and both putting out the light of the spiritual. He will say, "All ye who can read between the lines, study ancient wisdom in the old dramas -- the Indian and the Greek; read carefully the one just mentioned, one enacted on the theatres of Athens 2,400 years ago, namely 'Prometheus Bound' " The myth belongs to neither Hesiod nor AEschylus; but, as Bunsen says, it "is older than the Hellenes themselves," for it belongs, in truth, to the dawn of human consciousness.

--and--

The subject of AEschylus' drama (the trilogy is lost) is known to all cultured readers. The demi-god robs the gods (the Elohim) of their secret -- the mystery of the creative fire.

pj comment: This is the Promethean drama; reflected in the pseudepigraphal myth of Lucifer being exiled from heaven.  Returning to the present HPB essay:

HPB: Now it is Sanchoniathon, who informs the world that the Kabiri were the Sons of Sydic or Zedek (Melchizedek). True enough, this information, having descended to us through Eusebius (Preparatio Evangelica), may be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, as it is more than likely that he dealt with Sanchoniathon's works as he has with Manetho's Synchronistic Tables. But let us suppose that the identification of Sydic, Kronos, or Saturn with Noah and Melchizedek, is based on one of the Eusebian pious hypotheses. Let us accept it as such, along with Noah's characteristic as a just man, and his supposed duplicate, the mysterious Melchizedek, King of Salem, and priest of the high god, after "his own order" (See Hebrews, ch. v. 6, and vii. 1, et seq.); and finally, having seen what they all were spiritually, astronomically, psychically and cosmically, let us now see what they became rabbinically and KABALISTICALLY.

Speaking of Adam, Kain, Mars, etc., as personifications, we find the author of "The Source of Measures" enunciating our very esoteric teachings in his Kabalistic researches. Thus he says: --

"Now Mars was the lord of birth and of death, of generation and of destruction, of ploughing, of building, of sculpture or stone-cutting, of Architecture . . . . in fine, of all . . . . ARTS. He was the primeval principle, disintegrating into the modification of two opposites for production. Astronomically, too (HPB Note: The AEolian name of Mars was [[Areus]], and the Greek Ares, [[Ares]], is a name over the etymological significance of which, philologists and Indianists, Greek and Sanskrit scholars have vainly worked to this day. Very strangely, Max Muller connects both the names Mars and Ares with the Sanskrit root mar, whence he traces their derivation, and from which, he says, the name of Maruts (the storm-gods) comes. Welcker, however, offers more correct etymologies. (See Griech. Gotterlehre, I., 415.) However it may be, etymologies of roots and words alone will never yield the esoteric meaning fully, though they may help to useful guesses.), he held the birthplace of the day and year, the place of its increase of strength, Aries, and likewise the place of its death, Scorpio. He held the house of Venus, and that of the Scorpion. He, as birth, was good; as death, was Evil. As good, he was light; as bad, he was night. As good, he was man; as bad, he was woman. He held the cardinal points, and as Cain, or Vulcan (HPB Note: As the same author shows: "The very name Vulcain appears in the reading; for in the first words (of chap. iv. Genesis, 5) is to be found V'elcain, or V'ulcain, agreeably to the deepened u sound of the letter vau. Out of its immediate context, it may be read as "and the god Cain," or Vulcain. If, however, anything is wanting to confirm the Cain-Vulcain idea, Fuerst says: , Cain, the iron point of a lance, a smith (blacksmith), inventor of sharp iron tools and smith work"), or Pater Sadic, or Melchizadek, he was lord of the Ecliptic, or balance, or line of adjustment, and therefore was THE JUST ONE. The ancients held to there being seven planets, or great gods, growing out of eight, and Pater Sadik, the Just or Right One, was lord of the eighth, which was Mater Terra. ("Source of Measures," p. 186-70.)

pj comment: It is interesting to note that Libra, the scales of Justice; connected with this age of the Hammubi Code and the Ten Commandments, is opposite Aries on the astrological wheel.  The origin of the Jewish myth and the Torah is placed in this aeon, as discussed in my book: The Starry Gnosis. 

HPB: This makes their functions plain enough after they had been degraded, and establishes the identity.

The Noachian Deluge, as described in its dead letter and within the period of Biblical chronology, having been shown to have never existed, the pious, but very arbitrary supposition of Bishop Cumberland has but to follow that deluge into the land of fiction. Indeed it seems rather fanciful to any impartial observer to be told that there were "two distinct races of Kabiri," the first consisting of Ham and Mizraim, whom he conceives to be Jupiter and Dionysus of Mnaseas; the second, "of the children of Shem, are the Kabiri of Sochoniston, while their father Sydyk is consequently the Scriptural Shem." (Append. de Cabiris, ap. Orig. gent. p. 364, 376, and the latter statement on p. 357.)

pj comment: The chapter in my book, Gnostic Cycles asserts that the deluge is actually shown to be in the Manifestation of Scorpio (that includes the Aeon of Aries) and its aeon of Gemini.  So it's not that the deluge itself is pure fiction as HPB suggests, but rather the Hebrew myth of the deluge is fictional.

HPB: The Kabirim, "the mighty ones," are identical with our primeval Dhyan-Chohans, with the corporeal and the incorporeal Pitris, and with all the rulers and instructors of the primeval races, which are referred to as the Gods and Kings of the divine Dynasties.

pj comment: Identifying the Kabirim (the race of Noah as shown at the beginning of this essay) with the Dhyan-Chohans and the Pitris more clearly shows the spiritual importance of the Nephilim and validates further my speculation on the Nephilim being the Augoeiades or race of beings that are connected with the Thelemic idea of the Holy Guardian Angel, which itself evolves of Greek and Hebrew/Merkabah (Psuedpegripha) traditions.  Note also that the Jews, as descendants possibly of Akhenaten that when he was overthrown, settled into a region of ancient Greece (from which we get the Hellenic Jews), carried on the idea of Monotheism.  We should not be terribly surprised to see Jewish and Hellenic mythology to be so closely intertwined.  Indeed, the Greek connection of numeric values to the letters of their alphabet had a profound effect on the Jews; leading to the development of the Qabalah.

[offtosavetheearth]

June 27th 2018

I greeted the morning at 6:45am, feeling excited to head out of Cuenca. My last breakfast with the family was pineapple and pan, and I took a photoshoot with Abuela in my panama hat. We parted ways as promising to stay in touch, and Rina walked me to the bus. I had about 5 different bags, including my large suitcase, but we arrived right at 7:30am to take the bus to Quito. I foresaw myself being emotional when I said goodbye to Rina, but I was ready to go. I know that I will miss her, but it hasn’t sunk in yet. After one long hug and a few sweet words, we were off to arrive at our Hacienda at 5:30pm

Our bus took us from CEDEI to Hacienda Leito at Patate, following the Panamerican Highway. On the way we traveled through the Chimborazo province, which is home to large populations of Kichwa people in villages like Guamote and Laguna de Colta. Our last stop will be the Tungurahua volcano observatory, before dinner.

Driving through the Equatorial Andes, we experienced an entirely new landscape thanks to reoccurring, fresh volcanic material. The steep slopes, cultivated by quinoa, potatoes, and barley, contain brown or black soil that is nutrient-rich from the volcanic ash. Near the roadside one can see Cho Cho, or domesticated “blue bonnets”, whose poisonous beans are processed before being eaten by the Andean people. Interestingly enough, thanks to the cancellation of the free trade agreement, Ecuador grows their own chickens and makes their own chicken feed. If this deal had not been cancelled, I would have been eating Tyson chicken from Arkansas while in Ecuador. CAN YOU IMAGINE? Anyways, aside from agriculture, there is noticeable lack of remittance housing, and so we see more traditional housing built out of mud and thatched roofs. However these houses can easily be destroyed, either by earthquake or catching fire when lightning strikes, which is fairly common at elevation.

Soon we passed the Norton-built railroad from Guayaquil to Quito, as it runs through Devil’s nose. It is now only partially operating and a tourist attraction, although it used to regularly traverse through Ecuador.

We passed through several villages, where community members were wearing distinct red ponchos. This article of clothing helps identify the labor force, for they used to have problems with non-members entering the village unnoticed. In terms of religion, they are typically Roman Catholic, however Protestant missionaries had quite a bit of success up here. Surprisingly, the indigenous started converting to Evangelical Protestant, shocking the missionaries.  This transition allowed them to banish the mestizo priests and missionaries, so the native village people could make religion their own. Soon translating the bible into Kichwa, it became 100% their own practice. Dr. Knapp researched in these lands, but could not work with the Roman Catholic because they were associated with Marxist groups. He struck a deal with the Evangelical instead, to translate his research into Kichwa and share with the indigenous, if he was allowed in their community and to interview the people. Fun fact: during their celebrations, instead of drinking alcohol, soda pop is now popular. It is interesting to me how although these villages are very isolated from the large cities of Ecuador, they still inherit their bad habits like adapting poor diets. I am curious to know if they are also having trouble with obesity/health like Cuenca.

The capital of Chimborazo, called Riobamba, was passed through next. This region used to be 100% mestizo, but now is integrating indigenous peoples. Decades ago, Chinese immigrants set up several shops here. However the indigenous attacked Chinese shop holders for up charging and “stealing” their money. This was one of the few rare cases of inter-ethnic violence in Ecuador, for normally each culture is respected and allowed to flourish. The Chimborazo Volcano, at 17,000 feet, has rapidly melting ice caps that affect irrigated agriculture below. Villagers used to hike up the slopes and cut out large chunks of ice, to make special glacial ice cream, but the practice is diminishing as well.

Finally we reached the Tungurahua province, driving from west to east to arrive closest to the Tungurahua Volcano. This stratovolcano is the most active of Ecuador, and last erupted two years ago. It rises above the towns of Banos, and Riobamba, and is monitored for gassing, formation and seismicity by the Politechnic University of Quito. A faculty member, Patricia Mothes, guided us through the monitoring process and recent changes in both the politics and activity of the mountain. The observatory has operated since 2000, and provides safety for the whole country. They are in constant communication with residents of the slopes, providing a link between these peoples.  The observatory’s main concern is lahar and pyroclastic flow. Lahar is a violent type of mud or debris flow, which comes down from the volcano because of the melting ice caps. Pyroclastic flow was known for killing entire villages in Guatemala; is it a fast-moving current of hot gas and volcanic matter that moves away from the volcano as 700 miles an hour or faster. However the warning system is somewhat of concern; ever since Correra took office, the institution is not allowed to alert the people as soon as there is a hazard. Instead it has to go through the president first, and an inspector makes the final call, which could take up to half an hour of time that people on the slopes don’t have. This decision met much backlash, as can be imagined, from indigenous peoples. If Politechnic was given the power to warn farmers, the risks of living near a volcano could be greatly minimized. However people will always reside near these geologic formations regardless; the fertile soil and clean air is too hard to resist.

We arrived at the Hacienda after our observatory visit and were assigned rooms. I’m thankful to be rooming with Allie again; it was originally supposed to be Emily but she did not want to room with me so I ended up getting an even better roommate (screw ‘em)! We spent about an hour and a half walking around the BEAUTIFUL Hacienda. Words can’t even describe how the stark white building contrasted with the ominous Tungurahua volcano and the steeped flanks of surrounding mountains. There were beautiful hydrangeas decorating the lawns, and a precious nursery of tree tomatoes. Glacial water ran through our hacienda, and the skies were blue and clear. Inside, the room are enormous with real fireplaces, large beds, paintings, and even a bath tub!! The lobby was ornamentally decorated and incorporated key elements of Latin American culture.

Dinner was at 7:00 and I was starving since I didn’t eat much of the lunch. We had a hot lemony-cider with alcohol, potato soup with avocado, STEAK, fries, vegetables, chocolate cake, and a drink of our own choosing. I was so appreciative and thankful for this meal and this place. So luxurious, and for the first time in a while I was STUFFED. I could not have been happier about it. After dinner I took a hot bath (MY FAVORITE THING IN THE WORLD), and packed up my things for the jungle tomorrow.

I am now going to sleep listening to the crackle of our fireplace, in thick blankets with a full belly. Clean, warm, and content.

I do not think anything in my life will ever top this trip. To the Jungle I go!

[shidiand]

Touhou Characters and Fans: A Comprehensive Analysis

In this article, I will be presenting my in-depth research on the characters of Team Shanghai Alice's Touhou Project in relation to their fans. The conclusions I have reached after conducting extensive minutes of research through bing.com are not based on any individuals, and especially not you in particular.

Reimu Reimu fans are among the most difficult to categorize, since Reimu is generally regarded by everyone as a good character. at this point I don't really know what to say. Everyones drawn Reimu at some point. Picasso drew reimu. campbell soups dude probably drew reimu.but with soups. yall like... uh......anime

marisa now i know i just gave this excuse with reimu but come ON if you've ever read anything marisa says in the games you can't NOT like her. actually its more interesting to look at "fans who like marisa more than reimu" than "marisa fans": they like wearing pretty, showy outfits but they won't hesitate to burrow themselves under layers of comfort clothing if theyre in that sort of mood. most of them are short. all of them think her hair is wonderful golden-blonde and fluffy and would probably like longer hair themselves. they would like to blow a smug raspberry in the face of someone they don't like at least once in their life. they would probably like to do so to someone they like, too, on multiple occasions. affectionate people.

rumia i have no idea why rumia is so popular. at first i assumed it was the work of the vore boys but it really isnt. the list of characters the vore boys are interested in is basically the same as the list of touhou girls mom someday

another theory i have for rumia's unusually high popularity is that the rumia fans enjoy "artistic cannibalism". personally i think this sounds like a lot like something else also, my sources have told me that rumia is, (this is a quote) "cute".

the inroads to vore are ever so treacherous.

daiyousei i dont know any daiyousei fans so according to these rules i made up for myself i dont have to write a fthing

cirno ANDY WARHOL THAT'S HIS NAME they have a positive world view, really likes that slight bit of uncertain girliness that some characters have

meiling personally, meiling terrifies me. not only does this woman enjoy exercise, regularly, she'll even encourage others to join in, too. incredibly intimidating. i can only imagine the RAW GAINS meiling fans boast as they shred t-shirt upon t-shirt with their meaty ab flexes, breaching doors using their pectorals, supplying first-stage propulsion for russian aerospace during squats, etc

frankly there are far cooler characters than meiling; those who do love her are very sweet people, enjoy hugging others or being hugged by taller people. easily the nicest person who appears in eosd and her fans reflect that

koakuma very business-looking character. i am led to assume, in combination with the common succubus fanon, that her fans want to be stepped on by someone wearing heels

patchouli either hentai god or depression

sakuya you love girls SO MUCH

remilia remilia fans do not experience self-doubt* (*this can be seen by the fact that they are remilia fans), have strong opinions, a desire to find objective right-ness, and, wielding the divine mandate of Heaven, enjoy being looked up to by others as a figure of sole, exclusive authority. they are happiest in the presence of great religious influence, public executions, the Holy Roman Empire, and Constantinople, but can be expelled from your lands with peasant uprising, the Magna Carta, coalitions of wealthy nobles, the Gauls, and/or trebuchets. Furthermore, it can be said that the development of the three-field system marked a turning point within the domestic agriculture of Europe; indeed, Landon and Mercedes[3] posit that the rapid spread of crop rotation across central Europe by serfs of the tenement created an economic climate where towns and trade routes could arise and flouri

flandre pick a different character

letty(?) pretty sure the only people who enjoy winter are the ones who have never actually touched snow in their life so that rules out everyone i know

HOLY SHIT, I FORGOT PC98 if you know pc98 characters then youre already doing better than me. i respect that a lot but unfortunately i personally dont know a thing so ur gonna have to go jack it to Complete Darkness or something cause i cant help you here

uhhh chen

fffffffuck this im skipping chen

alice somewhat distant people with a bad sense of time, few but very deep interests

yukari ALL OF YOU ARE THIRSTY HOES delighted by the chance to surprise others. very "ride or die" people. you used to be able to piss them off easily by calling Yukari nasty but i think they're over that now

and thats every single character in touhou project Source: my twitter timeline fanfiction.net facebook.com if youd like to submit some touhou oc's for me to consider (e.g. "Benben Tsukumo", "Iku Nagae") please dont

[jokehockey44-blog]

A First Look: New Content from Modernist Bread

There are less than six months until Modernist Bread goes on sale—it will be in bookstores by November 7th—and we’ve hit a lot of milestones since our last post. (We’re happy to report that pages are being printed as you read this post.)

Today we’re sharing a first look at new content from Modernist Bread, including the table of content and new spreads from the book. The most exciting thing we have to share, however, is an excerpt from The Story of this Book in which Nathan answers some of the most common questions we’ve received in the two years since revealing we were working on a bread book.

Read on if you’ve been wondering why we decided to write a 2,642 page book on bread, who this book is for, and what we hope to accomplish with this book.

When I tell people what we’ve been working on since our last book, the reaction often goes something like this: “Did you say 2,600 pages? On bread?”

I’ll concede that at first blush, 2,600 pages might seem a little over the top. But we’ve been here before. We got the same initial reaction when we were working on our first book, Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, which ran an encyclopedic 2,438 pages. When it was released in 2011, people in the publishing industry told us that a nontradi­tional $625 cookbook would never sell.

Well, Modernist Cuisine broke a lot of rules. And to my great relief, that worked. More than 220,000 curious and passionate food lovers—from home cooks to renowned chefs to staff at educational institutions—decided that the book fit the right value equation. It won numerous major food writing awards and has been translated into nine languages. It’s fair to say it has had a big impact on the culinary world.

Now I am excited to introduce Modernist Bread. It’s just as disruptive, just as comprehensive, just as visually appealing, and just as thought-provoking as its older sibling. In the space of five volumes plus a kitchen manual, we tell the story of one of the world’s most important foods in new and different ways. Through this story, we hope to enlighten, delight, and inspire creativity in others who love not only bread but also the science, history, cultures, and personalities behind it.

Why focus on bread? Because it has so many of the things that we love in a topic. Bread may seem simple, but in fact it is highly technological and scientific—it’s actually a biotech product whose creation requires harnessing the power of microorganisms that ferment. Making bread is so technique-intensive that small variations in the method can make huge differences in the outcome. There is a tremendous amount of skill involved, to the point that bread making can be daunting to home bakers and professionals alike. During the baking process, bread’s simple ingredients go through such a mind-blowing transformation that the product that comes out of the oven bears almost no resemblance to the flour, water, salt, and yeast that went in. That’s just cool.

Focusing on bread has given us the opportunity to explore such wide-ranging scientific topics as the structure of gluten and the physics of ovens. It has given us a window into the minds of the inventors and innovators who have made, improved, and transformed this important staple over the course of thousands of years. Our focus on bread has also allowed us to look closely at the evolution of cultures through the lens of a single food that has spanned so much of human history: bread was the primary source of calories for the ancient Greeks and Romans and the Western civilizations that followed. We also became intrigued by the evolution of our agricultural system. There is currently a lot of nationwide and global concern about this system, after all, and wheat is at its center. As the grandson of a Minnesota wheat farmer, I was determined to tell the story of the role that the underappreciated and underpaid farmers play in our agricultural system.

Starting around the 1920s (but at an increasing pace throughout the 1960s), bread became an industrial product. Giant machines and factories were cranking out millions of loaves of bland, precisely uniform sandwich bread, and people welcomed these snow-white loaves. By the 1970s, though, both bread lovers and bread bakers were beginning to rebel, eventually building what is today called the artisanal bread movement. In the United States, the search for quality led to the breads of Europe—and in Europe, bakers turned to the past.

The idea behind the artisanal bread movement was a great one: bread lovers wanted to increase the variety, flavor, and quality of bread beyond the cheap industrial products that swamped supermarket shelves. Going back to preindustrial bread-baking practices and returning to small-scale methods historically used by village bakers seemed like just the thing to do.

But it can’t possibly be true that all the best ideas in bread baking have already been discovered—creative bakers around the world have made some amazing new loaves. Science and technology are not the enemies of great bread. The laws of nature govern baking just like they govern everything else in the world. Knowing which laws affect your bread helps; understanding technology helps, too.

When it began, the artisanal bread movement was so liberating: it freed consumers from insipid, machine-made white sandwich bread by giving them choices. But any belief system can become stagnant if it is closed to new ideas.

This stagnancy is all the more troubling today, in a world in which bread is under attack from the gluten-free trend and the low-carb movement. Now more than ever, it’s vital to start unleashing the creative possibilities of bread. With all the excitement around today’s innovative, modern cuisine, it’s time to make bread more than just an afterthought. Why not have fun and explore what the latest science can add to the bread we know and love? At the risk of sounding dramatic, bread must innovate to survive and thrive.

We took an approach that is fiercely analytic but also deeply appreciative of the artistry and aesthetics of bread. We studied exhaustively (or at least until we were exhausted!). We researched ingredients and history, milling technologies and dough rheology, grain botany, bubble mechan­ics, and more. We talked to grain farmers, mill­ers, food historians, statisticians, and every great bread baker we could find. Over time, we became even more convinced that our book could offer something fresh and new.

We believe the idea of Modernist bread—bread that looks to the future, not the past—should be celebrated. In these pages, you’ll find our contributions to what we hope will become a movement. This movement isn’t just about new recipes, though—it’s about the way we think of bread from the ground up.

For each of our key recipes, we developed a traditional version and a Modernist version. You can follow only the traditional recipes and find much of value in this book—or you can branch out into our Modernist recipes to explore new ideas. All of the recipes have been tested in and developed for professional and home equipment—you can bake out of this book no matter what kind of oven or tools you have.

Better yet, use this book as a jumping-off point to make new kinds of breads that no one has tried before. Whether you are a strict traditionalist or an avid Modernist, a home baker or an artisan baker or a restaurant chef, we hope that this book will open your eyes to the possibilities of invention and encourage different ways of thinking about bread. We believe this kind of disruption will even help change the economics of bread. (We’d like to see bread go the way of chocolate and wine, which are sold in a wide range of quality levels and price points.)

In short, we believe the golden age of bread isn’t some mythical past that we all should try to return to—the best days of bread are yet to come.

Source: https://modernistcuisine.com/2017/06/a-first-look-new-content-from-modernist-bread/

[parsbars]

Project Blackwing

I thought because we wont be getting a second season until October, we could do some theorizing about the clues and pieces Max has left with us this season. And we have a lot of stuff to work with. This is going to be based around Project Blackwing and some of the things I’ve been digging up. (this is mostly speculation but just bear with me here)

SPOILER WARNING FOR ANYONE WHO HAS NOT YET WATCHED THE ENTIRETY OF DIRK GENTLY’S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY SEASON 1

Okay so, I figured an easy start would be to look through some of the case names that have been assigned to the different projects/people. 

We see these subjects identified by a symbol and a name from either some ancient mythology or tale. In this image, we see some symbols followed by names of Blackwing subjects. 

I personally don’t have the time (or the intelligence lmao) to go through each one, but I can talk about 3 subjects that are present in almost every episode.

First we have Icarus. Obviously we all know Icarus and the whole flew too close to the sun ordeal. 

Daedalus fashioned two pairs of wings out of wax and feathers for himself and his son. Daedalus tried his wings first, but before trying to escape the island, he warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea, but to follow his path of flight. Overcome by the giddiness that flying lent him, Icarus soared into the sky, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which due to the heat melted the wax. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms, and so Icarus fell into the sea in the area which today bears his name, the Icarian Sea near Icaria, an island southwest of Samos.[3][4][5] (from the wiki article on Icarus)

This hasn’t been presented in the show yet but I found it may be important anyways (so spoilers for anyone not wanting to get any information outside of the show). I was reading one of the comics (Salmon of Doubt issue 1 I believe??) way back when and stumbled across a few panels where Dirk (as a child) was being tested on in some military base. He was being tested on about some supernatural future vision powers n such. At one point in the comic there was a panel with several scrapped pieces of paper lying around his cell. The papers read 9/11 and you could see newspapers and videos of the attack on the world trade center. So when Dirk was a child, he predicted 9/11, nothing about the day, just the date. What I found very significant about these scenes was the guard or whoever it was watching him. He seemed more of a guardian to Dirk than some military agent. 

Remember when the official twitter page tweeted this out? 

This is a very similar scene to that shown in the comic. This depicts Dirk (or Svlad at the time) in a small conference room or s room of the sort with Col. Scott Riggins and another character whom I either don’t recognize or has yet to be introduced 

Now for the Icarus part, and this is mostly speculation (as I have yet to read the other comics/the books) but I do believe that Col. Scott Riggins is the Daedalus of the story. We have seen him be very hesitant with Dirk in the episodes where they interact. When he encounters Dirk in the stairwell, Hugo is the one who tackles Dirk, Col. Riggins doesn’t wish to harm Dirk. This is just my prediction, but I believe after working with Dirk for a long period of time and trying to help him harness his abilities, he becomes attached to Dirk and may do something dangerous to help Dirk escape or anything of the sort. 

This is unrelated but in this scene, Col. Riggins asks “Where’s General Kinsey?” the woman here simply states “You don’t report to him anymore you report to me. I’m Wilson.” Perhaps Kinsey was the man in the images from the interrogation scene with Dirk and Col. Riggins.

And in this same scene, Wilson states “your research was inconclusive and without definable results” “mistakes were made, and worse is that you have failed to keep the subjects contained and recover them from the initial breach.” “Now we have potentially dangerous individuals at large. Over 30 of them.” This alludes to something larger, a breach in the system over 15 years ago allowing these subjects to escape. The fact that Col. Riggins says “and currently we only have budget to surveil one” may mean that the government has been trying to end this program or sabotage it in some way. Without supplying a proper budget, they can only keep there eyes on Icarus. “The fact is ma’am there’s a reason tried to bring in suspects after 15 years. They cannot be contained.” She also states that if these subjects are not brought back in that they will be eliminated. If they are yet to be eliminated over the past 15 years, could this mean they have some significance to be used or needed by the government? This I am currently unsure of but I could love any insight others can offer me. 

Next we have Incubus, or The Rowdy 3. 

This one definitely stumped me, as at first I couldn’t seem to make a clear connection between the mythology and the subjects associated with it. 

An incubus is a Lilin-demon in male form who, according to mythological and legendary traditions, lies upon women in order to engage in sexual activity with them. Its female counterpart is a succubus. Salacious tales of incubi and succubi have been told for many centuries in traditional societies, and in Christian mythology, such as Genesis 6:4. Some traditions hold that repeated sexual activity with an incubus or succubus may result in the deterioration of health, or even death.[1] (from the wiki article on Incubus demons)

The Rowdy 3 appear to be more like vampires that feed on emotion or that weird blue stuff that comes from Dirk and Amanda. (I’ve also done some theorizing about what that stuff may be, but that’s for another time). One connection I could make is how after they “feed” off of Dirk, he seems to be very disoriented. It seems to affect him more negatively than Amanda. I have no other ideas about this one but if anybody has any ideas let me know!!

And finally, we have Marzanna or Bart Curlish, this one I found the most interesting (and I’m going off of the assumption that the government may not be tracking Ken as of yet, however, I could be wrong as he is hacking some powerplant in episode 1)

Marzanna's name most likely comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *mar-, *mor-, signifying death.[2] The Slovak form of the theonym – Ma(r)muriena – suggests that the goddess may have originally been connected to the Roman god of war Mars (known under a variety of names, including Marmor, Mamers and Mamurius Veturius).[2] The connection to Mars is supported by, among others, Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov, who underline that he was originally an agricultural deity.[3]

Other theories claim her name is derived from the same Indo-European root as Latin mors 'death' and Russian mor 'pestilence'. Some authors also likened her to mare, an evil spirit in Germanic and Slavic folklore, associated with nightmares and sleep paralysis. In Belarusian, Polish, Ukrainian and in some Russian dialects the word 'mara' means 'phantom', 'vision', 'hallucination'.[4]

Similar to burning witches in some European countries or Holika Dahan in India, in terms of the season when its celebrated - at the end of winter, start of spring - and the evil character involved. (from the wiki article on Marzanna)

Marzanna I believe is kind of like a “death goddess”, which ties in perfectly with her character being a holistic assassin. However, Marzanna is just used to represent the effigy of the goddess, or the sculpture of her and not the actual goddess.

Just from reading this, I couldn’t find any other connection, we haven’t gotten much backstory on Bart other than that she basically can’t die and has little idea about what our day and age is like

What I did find in that article that could make a connection is this:

It concerns the "drowning of Marzanna," a large figure of a woman made from various rags and bits of clothing which is thrown into a river on the first day of the spring calendar. Along the way, she is dipped into every puddle and pond ... Very often she is burned along with herbs before being drowned and a twin custom is to decorate a pine tree with flowers and colored baubles to be carried through the village by the girls. There are of course many superstitions associated with the ceremony: you can't touch Marzanna once she's in the water, you can't look back at her, and if you fall on your way home you're in big trouble. One, or a combination of any of these can bring the usual dose of sickness and plague.

The ritual is preformed to show an end to the dark days of winter and to welcome spring and rebirth. Like the celebration says, we do see in Bart’s character how she is dressed in mostly rags and appears to be very dirty and worn out.

That’s really all I have time for but if anyone has any other ideas don’t be afraid to add on!