Madame Blavatsky, Odin and Sleipnir

 

Into the shadowy world of Ouija boards, seances and ghostly rapping from beyond, there once sauntered a controversial character whose was known for her mystical powers and beautiful theories on religion, the cosmos and lost civilizations; yes the mother of today's Esoteric. 

Helene Petrovna Blavatsky, known to legions of devoted followers as Madame Blavatsky, was a guiding force behind the spiritual renaissance of the late 1870’s that saw reputations—and financial fortunes—of mediums and mystics surge to new heights of respectability.

At one point, this chain-smoking, hot-tempered daughter of Russian nobility and founder of the Theosophical Society would boast that she was more popular than either the king of England or the president of the United States, and to people like you and me, she was.

In spite of her great popularity, however, there were those who insisted that Madame Blavatsky was nothing more than a fraud and a vulgar adventuress.

She once wrote:  “I am repeatedly reminded of the fact that as a public character, as a woman who, instead of pursuing her womanly duties, sleeping with her husband, breeding children, wiping their noses, minding her kitchen and consoling herself with matrimonial assistants on the sly and behind her husband’s back, I have chosen a path that has led me to notoriety and fame; and that therefore I had to expect all that befell me.”

Born Helen Petrovna Hahn in czarist Russia, the future spiritual leader showed an early interest in fantasy and make-believe.  One of her favorite childhood games was to entertain friends by telling them stories about invisible companions she called “hunchbacks.”  Her storytelling skills were said to be so great that she often frightened the other children and made them have nightmares.

When she was sixteen, Helene married Nikifor Blavatsky, the minor government official thirty years her senior.  The marriage lasted only a few months, and as she wrote "was never consummated." Heading out on her own she would style herself forever as Madame Blavatsky.

While still in her teens, Madame Blavatsky—a tall, striking beauty with dark hair and exceptionally blue eyes—embarked on a series of global travels and adventures that would eventually take her to America.  For the next twenty-five years, she wandered the world visiting hidden monasteries in Tibet and the catacombs of Rome and Paris and studying the secrets of the Egyptian pyramids, eventually winding up in New York in June 1873.

Her timing couldn't have been better, Madame Blavatsky now plump and graying, was immediately caught up in the wave of spiritualism and interest in occult phenomena sweeping the nation.  At a seance in Vermont she met Colonel Henry S. Olcott, a newspaperman, lawyer and ardent spiritualist.

Olcott

 

The pair teamed up to form an organization called the Theosophical Society, after the Greek words for “god” and “wisdom.”  The society’s stated purpose was to investigate ancient mysteries, such as the secrets of the pyramids and the “nature of people of the distant past.”

“A Theosophist,” Madame Blavatsky once wrote, “is one who gives you a theory of God or the works of God, which has not revelation, but an inspiration of his own for its basis.  In this view every great thinker and philosopher, especially every founder of a new religion, school of philosophy, or sect, is necessarily a Theosophist.”

“Hence,” she concluded, “Theosophy and Theosophists have existed ever since the first glimmering of nascent thought made man seek instinctively for the means of expressing his own independent opinions.  Theosophy is...the archaic Wisdom-Relgion, the esoteric doctrine once known in every ancient country having claims to civilization.”

In 1875 Madame Blavatsky published her first book, an enormous volume called Isis Unveiled.  Critics snickered and were generally harsh in their reviews, but the massive work did succeed in gaining large numbers of occult-minded followers.

Highly successful, the book was followed by another in 1888 called The Secret Doctrine.  In this landmark two-volume book, Madame Blavatsky reported that revelatory spirits from the Orient had taught her about the lost continents of Atlantis and Lemuria.  Scholars and critics were quick to claim that much of the work was stolen from books by other occultists and crank scholars like Ignatius Loyola Donnelly’s book on Atlantis.

Donnelly

Nevertheless, the book sold extremely well, earning Madame Blavatsky immortality among die-hard followers of mysticism and popular lost worlds’ theories.  Written in the same lofty style of her other works, The Secret Doctrine sets out the author’s view that the Lemurians were the third of seven “root” races of mankind.  The fourth race was the Atlantans, who were said to have evolved from the Lemurians as Lemuria San beneath the sea several thousand years ago.

Atlantis, which occupied a spur of ancient Lemuria, was destroyed about ten thousand years ago during a cataclysmic upheaval.  Madame Blavatsky believed that refugees from the disaster escaped to Central Asia where they evolved into modern Hindus and Europeans.  She also suggested that survivors might have fled to America, where they intermarried with Indians and gave them the technology to build the great monuments of Mexico and elsewhere.

It was in India while researching her book that Madame Blavatsky was introduced to the “Masters,” or “Mahatmas.”  The Mahatmas were spirit forces that dwelled in the mysterious and remote mountains of Tibet.  According to Madame Blavatsky, these kindly “lords of the unseen world” confided great secrets to her during their travels together—spectacular secrets about out-of-body travel, archaic history and the cosmic future of mankind.

Among the “fundamental truths” taught to her by the Mahatmas was reincarnation, the belief that “all people living on the planet are brothers immortal, living and reliving their lives.”

By the late 1880’s Madame Blavatsky was at the pinnacle of her international fame and fortune.  But fate was gearing up to deal her a crushing blow.  A report written by famed English psychic investigator Richard Hodgson wrote, “we regard her neither as the mouthpiece of hidden seers, nor as mere vulgar adventuress, we think that she has achieved a title to permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious and interesting imposters of history.”

Even devout Theosophists began to regard their former leader with suspicion.  Some questioned her stability, while others called her “a potentially dangerous woman.”  Growing numbers argued that Olcott should take her place as head of the organization.

Weary and frail, the once-powerful mystic agreed to step aside and then retired to a friend’s house in London.  On May 8th, 1891, Madame Blavatsky died quietly in her sleep.  The old Theosophists body was cremated at Woking Crematorium in Surrey, England.

Finally, Madame Blavatsky's breakdown with the Theosophist Society was not long lived and today she is still considered the mother of their reasoning.  In 1924 the then leader of the society, G De Purucker, lectured on Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine; eventually, he simplified her works in a book called Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy.  A great read called FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC. 

 

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Odin

 On this day (July 26) the festival of Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged horse that can take the rider between the three worlds: Asgard (heaven), Midgard (Earth), and Utgard (the underworld).  As the Norse sky god, god of war, and god of the dead, Odin had the ability to transcend the planes of consciouness, which allowed him to oversee the fate of the human beings.

O Henry, Karma, and the George Washington of South America.

O Henry

On this day in 1901, William Sydney Porter is released from prison after serving three years in jail for embezzlement from a bank in Austin, Texas.  In jail, he began writing stories to kill his time and earn money to support his young daughter.  Can you imagine how low of a time it was for this guy?  In prison?  No freedom.  A real major f*&k up!

Well, since Karma is as Karma does, prison made this man the writer we all became to know as O. Henry, who, after his release moved to New York and worked for the New York World, writing one short story after another.  In 1904, his first story collection, Cabbages and Kings, was published.  His second, The Four Million, contained one of his most beloved stories, The Gift of the Magi.

So, boys-and-girls, if you find yourself in a prison today, don't frown, there is a reason; and so, take a few breaths, meditate, and see why the universe has you there.  It's all good!

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving! O. Henry
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/o_henry_176169

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving! O. Henry
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/o_henry

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving! O. Henry
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/o_henry

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Speaking of Karma:

Images of the Buddha can be identified by distinctive physical characteristics, postures and hand gestures.  The unique physical features of a Buddha are known by the Sanskrit term lakshana.  The most conspicuous are the ushnisha, a cranial bump indicating special wisdom; the urns, a round tuft of hair between the eyebrows, indicating supernatural vision; short curled hair,indicating the renunciation of worldliness; and long pierced earlobes, indicating boiling (ancient Indian royalty wore huge pierced earlobes that stretched the lobes).  The ushnisha sometimes takes the form of a flame, indicating illumination and a gentle smile on the lips.

The Buddha may also be shown in various postures (asanas), which can be divided into sitting, standing and reclining poses.  The seated postures indicate stillness, as in mediation; the standing postures refers exclusively to the Buddha’s physical death (parinirvana).

Hand gestures (mudras) indicate a specific activity such as teaching, mediating or offering reassurance to specific incidents in the life of the historical Buddha.  In this standing Buddha figure from Sri Lanka, the Buddha’s right hand is raised, palm outwards with the thumb and forefinger together in the gesture of discussing the Dharma (Vitoria mudra).

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Simon Bolivar

In case you forgot, today is the birthday/anniversary of Simon Bolivar, who was born in Catracas, Venezuela on July 24, 1783.  His victories over the Spaniards won independence for Bolivia, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.  In the Latin countries, Bolivar is referred to as The Liberator and the George Washington of South America.  

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Finally, for those of us in Texas experience the "cyclical" earth warming -- yeah, right -- here is what O Henry had to say about the heat in Texas.

The people of the State of Texas consist principally of men, women, and cowboys.  The weather is very good, thermometer rarely rising above 2,500 degrees in the shade and hardly ever below 212. 
               
                                                                                                                            ~~  O. Henry 

Yes, progress is scary, but also, progress!

Van Buren

Yes, progress is scary.   It is why the world is in the mess it is in today.   You know,  with gay acceptance, woman rights, and religions finally being recognized as the lies they are, a lot of people are scared and crying to go backwards, hence, we have the Donald Trump movement, a movement that is trying to stop the progress the world has made in the last fifty years by Making America Great Again.  This crazy Trumpism can be likened to a letter Van Buren -- before he was president -- wrote to President Andrew Jackson back in April 1829.

Dear President Andrew Jackson:

     The canal system of this country is being threatened by the spread of a new form of transportation known as railroads.  The federal government must preserve the canals for the following reasons:

     One—If canal boats are supplanted by railroads, serious unemployment will result.  Captains, cooks, drivers, repairmen and lock tenders will be left without means of livelihood, not to mention the numerous farmers now employed in growing hay for horses.

     Two—Boat builders would suffer and towline, whip and harness makers would be left destitute.

     Three—Canal boats are absolutely essential to the defense of the United States.  In the event of the expected trouble with England, the Erie Canal would be the only means by which we would move the supplies so vital to waging modern war.

As you may well know, Mr. President, railroad carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour by engines which in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside setting fire to crops, scaring the livestock and frightening women and children.  The Almighty certainly never intended that people would move at such breakneck speed.

                                                                  Martin Van Buren, Governor of New York, April 1829.

Seven years later, Van Buren was elected the eighth president of the United States without the support of Russian hacking.   Hmmmm....

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Speaking of going backwards, how about this quote from Will Rogers:

“Something ought to be done about these ‘primitive’ people who live in various parts of the world, and don’t know a thing but to live off what nature provides.  You would think they would be civilized and learn to live off each other like us civilized folds do.”

                            —Will Rogers

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Neptune

On this day in ancient Rome a festival of the Neptunalia celebrated the divinity of the sea god Neptune and his wife Salacia, goddess of the wide-open salty sea and the inland springs of highly mineralized waters.  It is believed that the goddess Sulis, who is still worshiped at the sacred hot springs in Bath, England, is an aspect of the goddess Salacia.

Sulis

My Pagan Reason? It is a Root Religion.

 Esoteric Sunday

Then there's, the Pagan thing...

This was the last-thing I was told by my ex-girlfriend as she completed her bucket list of the reasons she was ending it.   Out of them all, too emotional, too poor, too proventual, etc., the Pagan one really bothered me for she wasn't religious at all, at least, not sober.  And so I'm am alone again and pretty much content, destined to date a witch I guess.  Which Witch -- I had to throw that in there -- I don't know.

So, I am here this Sunday morning to talk about my Pagan beliefs and why, Paganism is really not a thing.

Like most Americans, I was a Christian, accepted Jesus as my savior at seven and dunked in the glass pool at nine.  The baptism was splendid, for, also being dunked that day was Laura Luciana, a neighborhood girl I had a crush on, beautiful Italian eyes, and a well developed body for her age.  When she came out of the water and walked past me her wet robe showed her nipples, and so I went into my rebirth somewhat excited.

I really tried to follow the law, but, was led for fun and became someone a rebel playing in a rock band.   After a few years of that, I found the lord again and for a year I went to church three times a week, listened to Christian rock, and met the youth group for coffee and eggs at the local Denny's.   Eventually, that would get old though because of the judgement of others.   You see, "judging" is the one thing all Christian faiths have in common, shit, they even have a chapter in their good book called Judges.  Oh, they will tell you they don't judge, but they do.  Along with this judging it was the snobbish statements about other faiths, like, Mohammad was a phony who raped woman and children; meditation is opening the doors to Satan, and a woman should serve her man, it's God's will.  

Around that time, I was working in a music store teaching guitar while I went to a local Christian college.   I shared a teaching room with an old southern piano teacher who's name was, wait for it, Mrs. Southland.  No shit.  She was a victim of her time but tried to be forward thinking by telling me she really like Charley Pride -- one of the few black country music singers, ever -- and she thought he was handsome.   It was code-speak for: why can't all black people be like him, then there wouldn't be a problem.  She also told me about her preacher grandfather who once told her:  Nancy -- her name was Nancy -- one of these days the world will be so churchy and the church so worldly you won't be able to tell the difference.

That phrase stuck with me as I watched the Christian faith try to weasel its way into pop culture and all of a sudden, Christians were drinking Coors Light beer because if Jesus were here it was the beer he most likely would drink; laughing at environmentalist because they were trying to save a world headed for Armageddon which didn't included them; and wearing thong bikinis on the beach to show-off their Jesus sun-tattoo on their butt cheek.  Yes, the Christian faith I thought was above all that, had become that.  And so I prayed, I prayed to Jesus as a matter of fact, and long story short, was led to Buddhist meditation, which, alternatively led to my seeing that true spirituality was bigger than Buddha, Jesus, or Mohammad, and I asked myself: What was it we had before they came along?  And the answer was: The human being and the divine are intimately related to the extent of sharing a mutually kindred nature.  And so I contrasted what I knew about the Big Three faiths with what was before my eyes and realized that they came in large part in contrast to the indigenous paganism they encountered.  And to me, this was a crime.  I needed to get back to what had happened before the cults.  Back to the truth.  Back to the root religion in us all.

Amen

Join us next Sunday when we discuss Who Was Amen?

Old fashion love and the Trump strife.

So what is really happening in the world?  I think one can answer this by remembering the philosopher Empedocles.   I know,  he is a joke to most professors of philosopher because of his beliefs that we came from body parts that roamed the earth until they all evolved together into the human species we now call "man"; this theory stated that a lung and foot hopped around until it was eaten by a more developed lung, foot, and leg.   Okay, so the guy did mushrooms.

 
The other thing that makes philosophy snobs laugh is the fact that Empedocles thought he was a god, and so ended his life by jumping into the Etna crater to prove it.  If he only would have showed up three days later with a woman at hid knees... but I digress.

He wasn't a god, what he was was a philosopher who is credited with giving us the fact that "air" is "matter."  His reasoning for this was that when water is spun around in a bucket on a string, it doesn't come out because of the air holding it.   Out of this, he opined that there were four elements -- although he didn't call them elements -- of fire, water, earth, and air.  

Not a small feat for a man who lived in a time when losers of an election were killed by the winning politician.    A thing the Trump MAGA followers undoubtly wound like to see us return to.   This brings us to the thing I most appreciate from Empedocles: his love cycle.  

Empedocles believed that the world had begun in "love" or "Philotes" until the "strife" force,m or "Neikos" took over.   

According to Empedocles, the Goddess Love and the God Strife, offspring of Night (Nux), were ancient deities, predating the Olympians. The original golden age was the Reign of Aphrodite, when all things were united and Love permeated the length and breadth of the well-rounded cosmic sphere. But Strife, as the River Styx surrounding the Sphere, broke its Unity, and cleaved the One into Many. It divided the four elements, which ever since combine and separate under the opposing actions of Love and Strife to produce the changing world with its manifold objects and qualities. As Heraclitus said, "Through Strife all things come into being." Empedocles said that Strife also divided the one immortal soul of Love into many individual souls, each comprising both Love and Strife in some proportion; these immortal souls are reborn time and again into mortal bodies, which are animated by mortal souls compounded from the four elements.

And so you have it boys-and-girls: the best explanation I know of to explain the Donald Trump "strife" the world is suffering now.  And as Empedocles knew, "love" will come back around and totally devoid the guy.  Soon I hope.

Hang in there.

Thank you Empedocles. 
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Speaking of love:

Four days before his assassination on January 30th, 1948, Gandhi explained that his escape from an assassin’s bomb the week before “was God’s mercy,” adding, “I am quite prepared to obey His order when it does come.  I talk of leaving Delhi on February 2, but I do not myself feel that I shall be able to go away from here.  After all, who knows what is going to happen tomorrow?”

On the night before he was killed, he said, “If I die of disease or even a pimple, it will be your duty to shout to the world from the rooftops that I was a false mahatma.  Then my soul, wherever it may be, will rest in peace.  But, if an explosion took place as it did last week, or somebody shot at me and I received his bullet on my bare chest without a sigh with Rama’s name on my lips, only then should you say I was a true mahatma.”  The following day he received three bullets in his bare chest and dies with Rama’s name on his lips.

John Lennon, another pacifist who was assassinated, once commented, “Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are great examples of fantastic nonviolent who died violently….I’m not sure what it means when you’re such a pacifist that you get shot.”

Imagine there's no country...nothing to kill or die for....

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 In Lithuania, on this day, the ancient goddesses of love are invoked during an annual lovers' festival called the Binding of the Wreaths.  At sunset, all the participants go into the forest and gather summer flowers.  The flowers are then made into wreaths, crown circlets, and streamers to be exchanged between the lovers on the days that follow. 

More proof this is the year of the woman.

CAPE CANAVERAL - Launch towers that have graced Florida's Cape Canaveral since the early days of the space program came down Thursday morning like a Good-Bye Phallic Symbol.  Yes, launch stations are more uterus now, slender, flat, straight forward.

#metoo

The demolition was triggered around 7 a.m. by the Commander of the Air Force 45th Space Wing.
A simultaneous detonation brought down some structures at launch complex 17, a few miles away from Port Canaveral.

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In Seneca Falls, New York, on this day in 1848 the first women's rights convention ever held i the United States convenes, with almost 200 women in attendance.  It was organized by Lucretia Mort and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who met at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, England.  As women, they were barred from the convention floor, and this was the impetus for their founding of the movement.

Did you get that year?  1848.  It sure has been a long battle. 

Stanton and Mort

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Aphrodite

In ancient Greece, people celebrated the Adonia on this date, the midpoint of Adonis' traditional six months' presence on Earth and the anniversary of his wedding to Aphrodite.  The ancient Egyptian New Year falls on this day, which is the birthday of the mother goddess Isis and the anniversary of her marriage to Osiris, the god of vegetation.

Nero's Lie and Hate Released

According to the Roman senator and historian Tacitus, writing some fifty years after the event, a fire began on the hot summer's night of July 18, 64 AD in the southeastern end of Rome's largest hippodrome, the Circus Maximus.  Because the majority of Romans lived in wooden houses, the fire spread rapidly through the city, where it continued to burn for five days.  By the time it had been extinguished, it had razed four of Rome's fourteen districts and severely damaged seven others.  Many important buildings were destroyed, including Nero's palace, the Temple of Jupiter Stator, and the hearth where the sacred fire was kept burning in the Temple of Vesta.  The people of Rome were devastated and looked to their emperor for help.

When the fire started, Nero was taking his ease at Antium, a resort town on the coast some 31 miles south of the capital.  Concerned with his city, Nero hurried back to the capital in order to coordinate efforts to extinguish the fire and provide disaster relief for the population, with funds paid out of his own treasury.  When the fire was doused, Nero opened his palaces to survivors whose houses had been destroyed and ensured that food and other essentials were distributed. 

Once the fear and shock had worn off, people started looking around for someone to blame.  It was widely known that Nero had grand plans for the reconstruction of Rome, so rumors began to circulate around the city that it was the emperor himself who had ordered Rome to be burned to the ground.  Alarmed by the growing hostility of the people and desperate to retain their loyalty, he looked for a scapegoat, at which point his gaze fell upon a new sect called the Christians. 

Tacitus goes on to say that Nero created a diversion and subjected to the most extraordinary tortures those hated for their abominations by the common people called Christians.  So an arrest was made of all who confessed to be Christian and all were convicted, mocked, and throne to dogs, or nailed to crosses, or doomed to the flames. 

That's the story being told 64 years after the Christ thing, which, probable helped convert more Pagan's than the actual Christ Story.  But was it true?  In his book "The Greatest Lies in History," Alexander Canduci points out a few facts to the contrary.

Rome was not the marble, wide streets of the movies.  It was actually a jumble of wooden terraced homes, and fires were very common.  So when Tacitus claims that the only way a fire could have spread was from arson, doubtful.

 Romans knew of the Jesus story, a minor Jewish prophet who had been executed in the distant province of Jude’s some thirty years earlier, but the Christian sect of followers had barely been in existence for a generation, with most of its small membership drawn from the lower classes.
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On this day in 1925, seven months after being released from Landsberg jail, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler publishes the first volume of his personal manifesto, Mein Kampf.  Dictated by Hitler during his nine-month stay in prison -- and edited and contributed to by all-the-great-hate-minds-of-the-day -- Mein Kampf, or My Struggle, was a bitter narrative filled with anti-Semitic outpourings, disdain for morality, worship of power, and the blueprints for his plan of Nazi world domination.  The autobiographical work soon became the bible of Germany's Nazi Party.  In the early 1920's, the ranks of Hitler's Nazi Party swelled with resentful Germans who sympathized with the party's bitter hatred.

Trump and Hitler proceed from the same apocalyptic starting point.  In Trump’s narrative, America is on the brink of ruin.  At least a portion of his listeners, as did Hitler’s, passionately believes the downfall scenario. Each man is (or was) skilled at setting up bogeymen:  For Hitler, it was Jews, Marxists, the hated French and the “lying press.”  For Trump, it is Muslims, Mexican illegals, the Islamic State terrorist group and the Chinese who are supposedly cleaning our clocks, and the “dishonest” news media.  Yet, like Hitler, Trump understands the importance of the news media to his political enterprise.  In 1987, Trump wrote in the book he now holds up as a kind of Trump bible, The Art of The Deal: “If you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you.  Hitler couldn’t have agreed more.  After a particularly violent beer hall rally in Munich, he said:  “It makes no difference whatever whether they laugh at us or revile us.... The main thing is that they mention us.”

     “Progress and civilization could be achieved only through the genius and energy of a great personality.”
                                                                                                             Adolf Hitler

     “I alone can save America, save the world, save you!”
                                                                     
                                                          Donald Trump at the 2016 National Republican Convention.

TWA Flight 800 101

It was on this day (July 17, 1996) twenty-two years ago that a sleepy, seven-hour flight from New York’s JFK airport to Paris burst into a fireball and plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean.  No one survived.


Two years after the flight, with no clear cause, conspiracies flew:  Syrian-backed terrorist shot it down and President Clinton suppressed info to win re-election.

Clinton had it shot down because two of the passengers were Arkansas troopers on their way to Paris to spill-the-beans on Clinton’s corruption to Le Monde newspaper.

Then the most popular:  a friendly-fire missile strike.

Pierre Salinger 1970

The missile strike rumor was mainly being splattered about by Pierre Salinger: a World War II veteran turned spokesman for President John F Kennedy, and finally, the character “Lucky Pierre” on the 60’s television version of Batman.  Salinger wrote a book and went on the media-circuit tour stating he had proof the aircraft was shot down by “friendly fire” from the USA.  His proof from a video-still of a blip of light headed for the aircraft just seconds before the crash.  This claim became more valued when 150 eyewitnesses came out and stated that they had seen a light hit the plane before its crash.

Salinger as a crooked lawyer on Batman.

Following Salinger’s claims, James Sanders published his book on the subject titled “The Downing of TWA Flight 800,” where he wrote about having uncovered a few pieces of foam from the crash with reddish stains on it.  These stains, he wrote, were the stains from missile fire.

In the end, CIA investigators answered the call by stating that the “strike of light” the witnesses saw, was just leaky fuel, which fuels exploded from a bad wire, and that the aircraft had faulted wiring.

So that should have ended it, but then, why did the CIA get involved in commercial airline flight?

It’s a conspiracy.

Good bye Capitalism, hello Putin-ism (soon to be one word).

Part One: Death of Capitalism

So President Trump is meeting with Vladimir Putin today and the world is giddy.   I for one am glad he is, I mean, birds-of-a-feather flock together.  And, in case you haven't heard, or didn't know, Putin was elected by running on an Anti-Amnerican/Anti-Jewish, Make Russia Great Again platform.   Yes, the ex-KGB (as if there really ever is such a thing) communist, ran stating things like "America is why Russia has Failed."   And so the same Fake Communism that gave Communism a bad name, is now a Fake Capitalism which seems to be repeating in the Putin clone:  Donald Trump.   Okay, so Trump may not be a Putin clone, but he is playing right into his Putin's hands by insulting the democratic leaders in the world who have always been our allies, and favoring corrupt, murderous dictators like Kim Jong Un in North Korea, along with his man-crush on Vladimir Putin in Russia.   Also, with Trump's trade wars and statements like, "The European Union is a Foe," Trump himself is stating that capitalism as we know it, is dead.   Trump states that every US president before him is an idiot, and that for the USA to be great again, it needs to change to... into what?  We don't know, but judging from Trump's actions and words, it sure sounds and looks a lot like the type of power that has kept Putin in power for eighteen years.  Is this really happening?  Shit has hit the fan in the USA, and the current Republican Party is allowing it because they are a victims of their own hate-media which their base listen's too, and so if Fox News and Hannity like it, it is what is best for the country, even if it means never having a free election again, well, at least not until it benefits Democrats.  It really isn't far-fetched reasoning here to wonder what they will do when Trump completes his Putin-nization and announces that there won't be an election because no one else is as smart as him and capable of saving the country from more idiots like former presidents Obama and Bush.

 

Part Two:  The USA stands no chance against Putin with Trump as President.

When dealing with Putin, Trump is either a trader and willing to sell out our country for his own personal gain, i.e., Benedict Arnold -- who's death day happens to be Trump's birthday -- or, Trump is just an idiot; either way we lose.

Say what you will about Vladimir Putin, but he has been running Russia for eighteen years, where Trump has only been ruining the USA for eighteen months.  Also, note, Trump has made a lot of money in Russia, a fact why we will not ever see his tax-returns.  And, with this combination of Trump thinking he is the smartest man ever (you have to give me this based on his every word), and his fond memories of previous dealing with Putin, Putin will win.  How this will probably play out: capitalism will go the way of communism and we will be left with fake news, fake elections, and a fake president: Russian capitalism.   

Good bye Capitalism, hello Putin-ism (soon to be one word).

Trump Mocking Capitalism

The Gnostics saw Eve as the "awakener."

Esoteric Sunday

The Gnostics interpreted the story of Genesis differently than did ancient Jews and Christians.  To the Gnostics, Adam and Eve were not historical people, the predecessors of humankind, or the original couple who brought sin upon humanity, but rather the personification of two principles indwelling in humans.  While Adam personified the soul, Eve represented the spirit.  Adam represented the "lower self" and Eve the "higher self."  Right away you can see the problem that orthodox Christianity might have with this idea because it places Eve in a superior position to that of Adam.

The Gnostics viewed Eve as Adam's numinous "awakener."  The second century Gnostic text titled Apocryphon of John reveals that Adam was covered in the "drunkenness of darkness" and he awakened when Luminous Epinoia (or Eve) appeared and "lifted the veil which lay over his mind."

Before orthodox Christianity established the belief in the Trinity--that is, belief in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit--and the belief subsequently became part of the orthodox Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed, some early Christian communities venerated a deity named Luminous Epinola as the Divine Eve.  The word "luminous" suggests light, so Gnostics undoubtedly saw her as a "light bearer," empowered to illuminate the sacred in their lives.  The Apocryphon of John states that she is humanity's capacity to know God.  The narrator of the Apocryphon of John asked Jesus if every human receives her, to which Jesus replied, "Yes."

The Gnostic Eve stands in dramatic contrast to the Orthodox Christian view of Eve as a weak, impressionable woman, powerless to resist the Serpent's temptation to eat from the tree in the center of the Garden of Eden.  Eve "saw that the tree was good for food...pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise" (Genesis 3:6).  She wanted those things.  Consider this in the cultural context of the times of Jesus, when women were considered the property of men.  Because of the times in which they lived, women were not educated and likely not well versed in the ancient scriptures, although they would have had some knowledge in order to train their children and practice the faith themselves.  Until Jesus came along with his egalitarian beliefs and practices, women were not thought capable of understanding the deep wisdom of the scriptures.  Many Jews and Christians saw Eve's act of defiance at disobeying God, of eating the apple, and of involving Adam by offering him a taste as a sin against the Father God.  The second chapter of 1 Timothy describes the blame assigned to Eve for desiring knowledge and partaking of the forbidding fruit.

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