ON a hot July 25th, in 1917, Mata Hari (Margaretha Geertruida Zelle), the archetypal seductive female spy, was sentenced to death in France for spying on Germany's behalf during World War I.
The history books pretty much say she was a slut, but, the truth is she was a complicated woman doing the best she could in a world where woman were the objects of men, which I believe she used that her advantage. You see, she had been born poor in the Netherlands, but found her way out of her subservient life by answering a newspaper ad from a Dutch military officer living in Java. Of course he was an abusive asshole and that marriage didn't work out, and so she escaped to Paris where she took the dances she had learned in Indonesia with her, and created the woman we now know as Mata Hari.
Yes, she took the world by the balls, and made a name for herself in a world where stinky, bearded men with alcohol and cigar smoke on their breath, wanted a kiss, which she gave them, and the rest is history.
Was she a spy? Yes she was, definitely, she admitted it; but, the records of fact show that she was a spy for both sides. And that, my esoteric friends, her crimes was that she played both sides against each other for her own benefit, which, if she had been a man would have made her a hero; however, since she was a woman beating men had their own game, she got hanged.
ON another hot July 25th, in 1978, Louise Brown was born. She was the first in-vitro fertilized baby ever born. Before her birth, all the other "test-tube babies" had ended it failure, something the doctors failed to tell her parents at the time, but that's another story, for another day.
Louise grew up normal, and at the age of 43 she hasn't led anyone into the gates of hell, as the churches of the day had warned, but she has led thousands of woman to the Netherlands to get in-vitro vertilization, for Holland has the best success rate in Europe.
Funny, that the same religious quakes telling woman they can't end a pregnancy of a fetus the size of a grain of salt, are also against a woman having a baby without a man's thing inside of her. Makes you wonder about their whole argument. I mean, is it really about the life of a baby, or that thing between a man's legs? That thing Mata Hari knew a thing or two about.
Speaking of which, on this day in 1984, Svetlana Savitskaya became the first person to walk in space without a thing between her legs. Yes, the first woman to dangle her thing in outer space without a thing between her legs.
 |
| Thomas à Kempis |
My thoughts on this, well, the central themes of Kempis' book was how Jesus had risen from the death. Was he that good of a Christian? Something to think about.
In closing, as stated in Michael Farquhar's book "Bad Days in History," George Washington feared the possibility of being buried alive, and so on his deathbed he said: "... do not let my body be put into the vault in less than three days after I am dead...." Similary, the composer Frederic Chopin said as he was dying, "...swear to make them cut me open, so that I won't be buried alive."
Yes, that was a thing back then and had the name: Taphephobia. Taf of fo be ah. This is why some coffins came with air pipes to the surface, and others, had above-ground bells that could be rung from below if the occupant suddenly found himself, and it was a himself back then, alive. Other people were even buried with weapons to finish the job.
If that's not esoteric for a July 25th, I don't know what is.
~~ Eso Terry
