William Henry on Capitol Symbolism

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I love William Henry's take on the Capitol Building in DC and have posted on it several times. I just found this older Coast to Coast interview on the topic. It's excellent. In it, he diplomatically dispenses with the more paranoid readings of all the occult and Masonic symbolism and draws parallels to ancient Egypt. The more research on this I do, the more convinced I am that the philosophical underpinnings of the American revolution are about freedom in a much more esoteric sense than we've been taught in history class. It's about freeing our consciousness. It's evident in the richly layered symbolism of our America's iconic structures.

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Our Answers Lie in Oneness

Not all shamans are great visionaries; not all understand the universe at the same depth. However, they all apply the knowledge they have and that knowledge is rooted in the experience of the Oneness-of-all-things. The more powerful the shaman, the greater his or her insight into this true nature of our physical universe, which is a Oneness composed of complementary and interdependent opposites. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the Oneness at the heart to of the shaman's universe and why this way of viewing the world holds the answers to the challenges that face us today. It is the shaman's capacity to function with intention within the trance state that determines the degree of power of the shaman. The shaman's ability to act in the spirit world is bound by her capacity to reach beyond her own human fears, expectations, and limits and grasp the vast implications of the true nature of this universe, what the true source of the problem is, and how the prescribed actions will actually restore balance.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Why Shamanism Now? on Co-Creator Network
Questions? Comments? Call: 1-512-772-1938

All episodes are now available in the iTunes Podcast Library.

Awakenings with Michele Meiche

Deep Happy Life with Medical Intuitive Peter Fairfield

12pm PDT --- Host MICHELE MEICHE shares her weekly Soul Insights, Meditations, Healing, Activation and Acceleration work for Soul Alignment. What is your Soul's Purpose & how can you actualize this? What is your role, your path, and what are the signs in your life and in the world telling you? Call in for channeled guidance readings, and psychic mediumship readings. Michele is the author author of the DailyOM course to Learn how to align to your Soul's Purpose and create from your Soul Blueprint 2012: Navigate Through Your Greatest Soul Shift http://bit.ly/izvzS1 Call in and share your path of awakening and Soul Alignment. You may also email your questions to be covered on air at awakenings@selfinlight.com. The second portion of the show is Conversations with Awakened Guests. Michele dialogues with spiritual teachers, healers, conscious experts, visionaries, awakened leaders, authors, conscious beings and people of all walks of life that are focused on living consciously. This week’s conversation is with Peter Fairfield. He has become an exceptionally gifted multi-disciplined healer by blending the knowledge gained from a lifetime exploring life’s mysteries—how we get to where we are, and how we recover to become who we were meant to be. Today he is an acupuncturist, healer and medical intuitive with more 40 years of clinical experience using many forms of healing and as a national lecturer. But it all began when at 8-year-old boy pondered, “What does infinity FEEL like?” And then one day, he suddenly experienced that infinite timelessness. That connection changed him profoundly and set the tone for his life, as he sought to understand human consciousness—so that we can rebalance and reach our Deep Happy. www.deephappylife.com

Wed, September 26, 2012 03:00PM ET

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/awakenings

Suzanne Toro

BeSimply...LoveSelf {Sacral Healing}

Join 'She' for 54 minutes to work on the Inner Self.

During this segment:

The Sacral Region. Healing, Transforming and Embodying the Sacredness...Part II Become Empowered by the Possibility. What it is and how we can stop participating. The path to healing...How to learn to stand in your own truth and avoid being manipulated and/or manipulate others. The need to control or be controled is rooted in a base fear. We will explore fears, manipulations, and the practice to release the cycle and reconnect to your sacredness. The things we might of wish we had known earlier in life...

Explore and Align with 'Self', How to reconnect to Self?

Please send in your questions to s@suzannetoro.com or call in during the episode.

Fri, September 28, 2012 12:00AM ET

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/suzannetoro

Just Energy Radio

The Occult & Imagining the World into Existence

Dr. Rita Louise has two guests this week on Just Energy Radio. In the first hour she will be speaking with James Wasserman about the history of the occult. In the second hour, Normandi Ellis will discuss how we can imagine the world into existence.

James Wasserman
James Wasserman is a lifelong student of religion and spiritual development. His writings and editorial efforts maintain a focus on spirituality, creative mythology, secret societies, history, religion, and politics. He is a passionate advocate of individual liberty. An admirer of the teachings of Aleister Crowley, he has played a key role in numerous seminal publications of the Crowley literary corpus. A book designer by trade, Jim is the owner of Studio 31. He is married with two children.

Normandi Ellis
Normandi Ellis , author of ten books; her translations from the Egyptian hieroglyphs, Awakening Osiris, is a spiritual classic; past president of the National Association of Poetry Therapy Foundation. In 2011 she co published Invoking the Scribes of Ancient Egypt, a text on how to write spiritual autobiography. In July 2012, Bear & Co publishes Imagining the World into Existence, her treatise on expanding states of consciousness.

Fri, September 28, 2012 03:00PM ET

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/just-energy-radio

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Colbert on Dough-Faced Homunculus

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Stephen Colbert names Cecilia Giménez, the self-appointed art restorer discussed here, "Alpha Dog of the Week." Hilarious... and tragic.

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Volunteer Art Destroyer Seeks Payment

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Surely the eighty year old Cecilia Giménez meant well when she took it upon herself to restore a church fresco that had fallen into disrepair. But after being lambasted by local officials and family members of the late artist, and threatened with legal action, I guess she's feeling a little unappreciated. So now she'd like to be paid for her trouble. She'll settle for a cut of the church's proceeds now that her masterpiece has put the little town of Borja on the map.

The before and after pictures went viral across the globe and tourists began arriving in droves -- but very few were leaving donations according to Ars Technica. The sanctuary's owners, the Santi Spiritus Hospital Foundation, reportedly made $2,600 in four days from visitors wanting to see "Ecce Mono," or "Behold the Monkey" as it's now called, Ars Technica reported.

Both sides have retained counsel, with the Santuario de Misericordia church scrambling to protect its assets. They will need whatever they've been able to take in to pay a real art restorer. That is, if they can find one capable of undoing the damage from Giménez's act of artistic largesse. The jury is still out as to whether or not it can be restored to its original state.

That said, 18,000 people have signed a petition to leave the Giménez version as it is. Said one woman, "The previous painting was also very pretty, but I really like this one."



Perhaps they see something in Giménez's work that others don't. Art-Eater.com posits that the octogenarian's work is a rich commentary on the inner conflicts of faith in a modern world.

By creating the work as what some might call an act of vandalism, Gimenez combines the subversive spirit of graffiti street-culture with the reverence of religious tradition, reminding us of the revolutionary nature of Christianity, a faith that was outlawed in its early days.

The unconventional nature of the restored painting tells a story. The fringes of the painting are very faithful to the original, particularly in the cloth.  However, the painting becomes looser, more expressionistic as we move to the center.  This is reflective of how modern people have grown comfortable with the superficial window dressings of Christianity, yet tensions secretly boil at the core.  The original painting depicts Christ’s moment of doubt on the cross, as described in PSalm 22, where he wonders “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

. . .

By depicting Christ with simian features, the piece smolders with the passion and agony of contemporary man, struggling to reconcile religion and science. Are we the divine children of god or the discordant descendants of apes? The lingering power of this question has lead contemporary worshipers to redub the fresco “Ecce Mono” or “Behold The Monkey.”

The painting daringly trails off at the mouth of Christ, left unfinished, imploring us to come to our own conclusion. Though the words of the bible are to be venerated as the word of God, the final sermon has yet to be delivered. Though icons are beautiful expressions of faith, the real substance of Christianity is found in a personal communion with God, a cornerstone of Catholicism.

They've also posted some pretty pictures of her future restorations.

Other critics have not been as kind.

Giménez's efforts have been variously been dubbed "the worst restoration in history", "a botched job", and "a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic".

What no critic seems to have noticed is the elements of self portraiture.

Ecce Homo
Elías García Martínez

Ecce Mono
Cecilia Giménez

Ecce Giméno
God

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Amish Hair-Cutters Found Guilty

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I can't say I'm terribly surprised to see Sam Mullet and his band of hair-cutters go down. As stated, I thought federal prosecutors put on a strong case. I'll be the first to admit, I thought they might have been reaching by making this a test case of a newly expanded federal hate crimes statute, but they laid it out well. From the New York Times:

Samuel Mullet Sr., the domineering leader of a renegade Amish sect, and 15 followers were convicted of federal conspiracy and hate crimes Thursday for orchestrating a series of bizarre beard- and hair-cutting attacks last fall that spread fear through the Amish of eastern Ohio.

The convictions of Mr. Mullet and his followers and family members who carried out the assaults could bring lengthy prison terms. The jury’s verdict vindicated federal prosecutors, who made a risky decision to apply a 2009 federal hate-crimes law to the sect’s violent efforts to humiliate Amish rivals.

The Times story paints a vivid picture of the bizarreness of this case -- one which actually caused several Amish communities to break with tradition and bring their concerns to the authorities. Many of them came to court allowing themselves to be snapped at fairly close range by news photographers. It speaks to the extremity of the circumstances that such private people allowed this intrusion. Sam Mullet was a bigger threat to their way of life than the modernity of the English world.

During the testimony, the 16 defendants, in traditional attire, and their lawyers had sat around four tables that filled half the courtroom. In the gallery sat dozens of Amish supporters of the victims, including several of Mr. Mullet’s elderly siblings, who shook their heads as witnesses described Mr. Mullet’s unorthodox methods. Also in the gallery was Mr. Mullet’s wife, who had sat impassively as a woman who used to live in Bergholz spoke of how Mr. Mullet pressured her to come to his bed repeatedly.

I, for one, am just glad to see the criminal justice system found a way to stop this guy before more people got hurt -- and that includes his own followers. As I've said previously, Sam Mullet is one sick twist, and I don't think concerns that this could have escalated into a Jim Jones scenario are unfounded. As one prosecution witness put it in an interview last November:

Sociologist Donald Kraybill told Barbara that Mullet acted much like a cult leader. "He's not accountable to anyone. He's not in fellowship with other Amish groups. He thinks he is invincible," Kraybill said. "So under the guise of religion he is trying to protect himself, so he can do whatever he wants to do."

But Sam Mullet was also a victim of his own arrogance. He seemed to believe that he would not be accountable to other Amish communities, or the law, for really outrageous behavior. Slapped down by hundreds of Amish bishops for improper excommunications, Mullet has now been slapped down by a federal court for retaliating against those bishops.

Mullet and his followers face sentences of ten years or more. I hope the senior Mullet, at least, goes away for a good, long time.

Addendum: Federal officials have made statements regarding the verdict. From the Los Angeles Times:

At a televised news conference after the verdict was returned, officials said the case was an important application of anti-hate laws and rejected claims that Mullet and his followers had been singled out for their religious beliefs.

“From day one, this case has been about the rule of law and defending the right of people to worship in peace,” said Steven Dettelbach, U.S. attorney for the northern district of Ohio. “Our nation was founded on the bedrock principle that everyone is free to worship how they see fit. Violent attempts to attack this most basic freedom have no place in our country.”

Officials took a similar tack in a statement released by the Department of Justice in Washington.

“The violent and offensive actions of these defendants, which were aimed at beliefs and symbols held sacred by this country's Amish citizens, are an affront to religious freedom and tolerance, which are core values protected by our Constitution and our civil rights laws,” said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. “Those laws prohibit the use of violence to settle religious differences and the Department of Justice and the Civil Rights Division will vigorously enforce those laws.”

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Verdict Watch: Amish Hair-Cutting Trial

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Sam Mullet

In its fourth day of deliberations, the jury in the Amish hair-cutting trial has now twice sought clarity on the fine points. It isn't surprising that they would need both time and clarification with this case. Bear in mind that they have to determine the guilt or innocence of sixteen defendants, dressed in matching styles, and variously named Mullet and Miller. They are facing different sets of charges and have multiple defense attorneys with differing arguments.

Today the jury attempted to parse the fine points of their individual culpability in a conspiracy that may not involve all the parties.

The U.S. District Court jury in the trial of 16 Amish reconvened and promptly asked the judge if a conspiracy could involve just some of the defendants.

Judge Dan Aaron Polster told the jury that a conspiracy wouldn't necessarily need to involve all nine victims in the five attacks or all 16 defendants. Defense attorneys argued that the indictment specified a plot against nine victims, but Polster overruled them.

The indictment charges the defendants with conspiring to cause bodily harm to the victims. The judge said that if all 12 jurors agree that the government proved a conspiracy, the jury then must separately decide who plotted.

Last week, only three hours into deliberations, jurors called for more explanation of the hate crimes statute.

They asked for the definitions of "disfigurement" and "mental faculty."

Once all the attorneys and defendants assembled in the courtroom by 11:45 a.m., Polster said his reply would be "As for disfigurement, Congress did not define disfigurement so I am not either...so use your own common sense and your everyday experiences....look at how bodily injury is defined in the instructions as any injury to the body..."

".....as for mental faculty, (prosecutors) have not argued that any victim suffered an injury of a mental capacity...."

Prosecutors did not object to his language and only two defense attorneys asked for a minor modification but Polster denied the modifications.

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Mrs. Jesus?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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A tiny fragment of papyrus may upend centuries of Christian dogma. Dr. Karen L. King, a professor at Harvard's Divinity School has in her possession the first documentary proof that Jesus may have had a wife -- or at least, that an early Christian sect believed he did. Thus far, the scrap has withstood multiple authentication tests and appears to be genuine.

The discovery reopens ancient debates about marriage and sexuality in a Christian context. It also calls into question much about the role and rights of women in the church.

Dr. King is a fairly impressive woman, herself. She's the first woman to hold the oldest endowed chair in the United States. She is an expert on early Coptic texts and Gnosticism and has written a number of books on newly discovered Gnostic texts such as The Gospel of Mary Magdala and Reading Judas.

A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …'”

The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”

. . .

But the discovery is exciting, Dr. King said, because it is the first known statement from antiquity that refers to Jesus speaking of a wife. It provides further evidence that there was an active discussion among early Christians about whether Jesus was celibate or married, and which path his followers should choose.

“This fragment suggests that some early Christians had a tradition that Jesus was married,” Dr. King said. “There was, we already know, a controversy in the second century over whether Jesus was married, caught up with a debate about whether Christians should marry and have sex.”

Dr. King argues that none of this should be taken as evidence that the historical Jesus was married pointing to the total absence of any discussion of the topic in first century texts. There is no known documentary proof of either his being married or unmarried from his own era. Rather, discussion and speculation about his marital status began to emerge during the second century as early Christians struggled to reconcile their spiritual calling and their sexuality. So the only valid discussion is over whether or not there was a religious tradition in which he was seen as married and this scrap, if authentic, is the first piece of empirical evidence of such a tradition.

Dr. King speculates that the text from which the fragment was taken was likely translated from a  Greek original, like many Coptic texts. She also sees a strong basis of comparison with The Gospels of Mary, Thomas, and the Egyptians and posits that the original from which this was copied also dates to the latter second century. This, historically, was when there was a great deal of speculation about Jesus's marital status.

In her paper, which can be downloaded here, Dr. King places the remnant in context with other writings of early Christianity. She categorizes this fragment as a piece of a gospel because it shows a dialogue between Jesus and his disciples. It is also reminiscent of a number of gospels, both Biblical and Gnostic, in its discussion of discipleship. She assigns it the working title of The Gospel of Jesus's Wife.

While Dr. King disavows any connection to the theories put forth in The Da Vinci Code, saying, “At least, don’t say this proves Dan Brown was right,” she also comes to the conclusion that the wife referred to is most likely Mary Magdelene. To do so, she attempts to discern whether the Mary named in the fragmentary text is his mother or the mysterious wife. She also dispenses, once again, with the canard that Magdelene was a prostitute.

The second issue is to identify Mary: Is she Jesus’s mother (→1) or his wife (→3)? Scholars have long noted “the confusion of Marys” in early Christianity, due not least to the ubiquity of this name (Maria, Mariam, Mariamme⁵⁹) for Jewish women in the period.⁶⁰    One of the most influential confusions has been the identification of Mary of Magdala with three other figures: Mary of Bethany (John 11:1-2; 12:1-3), the woman caught in adultery (John 8:3-11), and the sinner woman (Luke 7:37-38), resulting in the erroneous portrait of Mary Magdalene as a repentant prostitute.⁶¹    Another is the confusion of Jesus’s mother with Mary of Magdala, and even the substitution of the mother for her, for example as the first witness to the resurrected Jesus in John 20:11- 17.⁶²    These confusions make one cautious in identifying to whom “Mary” refers here.

. . .


The tradition of Mary of Magdala as an honored disciple of Jesus is well attested from the first century gospels, and is emphasized even more strongly in a variety of literature from the second and third centuries, notably The Gospel of Mary, The Dialogue of the Savior, The Gospel of Philip, and Pistis Sophia.⁶⁴    It was not until relatively late that Mary of Magdala was misidentified as a (repentant) prostitute, most clearly by Pope Gregory in the late sixth century.⁶⁵    Prior to the fourth century, she appears as a follower of Jesus during his ministry, was present at his crucifixion and burial, and, in the Gospel of John, is the first witness to the resurrection.⁶⁶    Yet in a number of these texts Mary’s status as a leader or disciple is directly challenged, notably by Peter.⁶⁷    GosThom 114, for example,states:...  (“Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary leave us for women are not worthy of life’.”)⁶⁸    Here Peter’s rejection of Mary provides the opportunity for Jesus to refute the radical exclusion of all women from salvation (a position otherwise completely unattested in Christian literature).

. . .


These two cases from the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary identify Mary as the disciple whose status was being challenged, and in both cases her worthiness is defended by appeal to Jesus, the Savior. So, too, in GosJesWife →5, Jesus declares that “she is able to be/come my disciple”. This statement immediately follows Jesus’s reference to “my wife” in →4, indicating his affirmation that the ability to become his disciple concerns his wife, not his mother. This line of interpretation, then, suggests that it is the worthiness of Jesus’s wife, not his mother, which is being discussed. If so, then Jesus’s wife is named “Mary” here and can presumably be identified with Mary Magdalene. It is she who he declares is able to be his disciple.

Almost more interesting than the tantalizing notion that Jesus was married, or thought to be married, is Dr. King's discussion of marriage as an expression of a mystery tradition. Here she turns to The Gospel of Philip.

“The Lord did everything in a mysterious mode: a baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber” 67:27-30

She considers it likely that this was all part of a single ritual of unification.

According to the Gospel of Philip, death came into existence because Eve separated from Adam (GosPhil 68:22-26; 70:9-17101). The ritual of the bridal chamber effects the spiritual transformation of the initiand [sic] by uniting male and female (GosPhil 70:17-20), represented as the (present attainment of the) eschatological union of the redeemed person’s true light-self with his or her heavenly twin (σύζυγος) or angel (GosPhil 58:10- 14; 67:26-27). The ritual of the bridal chamber is thus necessary for salvation (GosPhil 86:4-8).¹⁰²

So Philip's gospel would seem to equate separation from God with the division into polarity and implies that this was the fall that cast us out of the Garden of Eden. What remains somewhat unclear is whether this marriage ritual is entirely metaphorical or if it depicts marriage in the earthly realm as a symbolic expression of reunification with God.

What comes to mind is The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, as discussed here. This is especially interesting if we consider Hancock and Bauval's proposition that the ideas in Western Alchemy can be traced to early Gnostic teachings.

Dr. King concludes, though, that what is suggested by this piece of text is a literal marriage between  Jesus and, most likely, Mary Magdelene. This marriage may or may not have been actual and historical, and there is no evidence either way. But it was a very real part of a larger Gnostic narrative that has been hinted at in other extant writings of the time. It also speaks to Jesus's revolutionary teachings about women as, at least, near equals in the early church. It is unlikely that the Vatican will take this any more seriously than it has other Gnostic texts which stand so completely at odds with its rigidly patriarchal doctrines. Michael D'Antonio in the Huffington Post explains:

The implications of professor King's discovery are profound. If Jesus was married, the main spiritual argument for male-only clergy and the celibacy of Roman Catholic priests falls into question. (Priests wouldn't need to abandon sex in order to imitate him.) But more importantly, if Jesus was a family man, then the claim to special status made by Catholic clergy, who regard themselves as supernaturally closer to God, loses much of its power.

Beyond internal Catholic Church politics, a married Jesus invites a reconsideration of orthodox teachings about gender and sex. If Jesus had a wife, then there is nothing extra Christian about male privilege, nothing spiritually dangerous about the sexuality of women, and no reason for anyone to deny himself or herself a sexual identity. In fact, one could argue that in their obsessive self denial -- of sexual pleasure, intimate relationships, and family - celibates reject the fullness of Jesus' example.

What this discovery could prove is that there was, in antiquity, a Christian tradition that didn't vilify women or their sexuality, or consider it a mark of piety to eschew them as ungodly temptresses. It might even make us get honest about the thinly veiled preoccupation with Jesus as a sex symbol. Because, you know, he was hot.

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