Esoteric Sunday: Roots of Spiritualism.

Esoteric Sunday

There are people living among us who can see the world of angels as clearly as they can see the rocks and stones and trees that the rest of us see.  These people have many names, some of them rude, but for now, we will call them mystics. 

Sometimes they live and work within organized religion, but more often they live apart.  They tend to be solitary, perhaps lonely figures.  

Zephaniah Eddy was working on the farm one day when he saw his two sons playing with feral children he had never seen before.  When he went after these strange children, they seemed to vanish in mid-air.  The old man hauled the brothers over to the barn and beat them with a rawhide whip; he had  long worried about a history of witchcraft in his wife's family and now wanted to do everything he could to stamp it out.  

But as the boys grew older weird things continued to happen -- slates, tables and inkwells flying around the house, strange pounding noises and disembodied voices.  Spirits appeared, including a creature with white fur that the boys said sniffed at their faces when they were in bed, they grew larger until it turned into a luminous cloud with a human shape. 

Zephaniah grew increasingly alarmed and when the boys fell into trances he would sometimes beat them, even pour boiling water on them or singe them with burning coals -- anything to try to make them snap out of it.  The Eddy brothers left home as soon as they could, but then they were stoned, stabbed, manacled, tortured and even shot at by angry mobs, and they returned home, to the small, basic farm in Vermont, when their father died.  They remained scarred, sullen, suspicious of the world, but news that the farm was infested with spirits began to spread. 
 

Olcott

Henry Steel Olcott was a successful attorney.  He had been a colonel in the Union army, where he had been responsible for investigating fraud and corruption in arsenals and military shipyards.  He was also a prominent Freemason and one of a panel of three men charged with investigating the assassination of Lincoln.  In 1874 he was sent to investigate events at the Eddy's farm and he traveled there, accompanied by an artist called Kappas, whose illustrations he would use in a remarkable book, People from the Other World.

On his first day he attended a séance led by the Eddys at a local cave, Honto's cave.  Beforehand he investigated the location to make sure there were no hidden entrances or passageways.  When the séance started, he was amazed to see a gigantic Native American emerge from the cave.  Then another appeared, silhouetted on the top of the cave, then a squaw.  Afterwards Olcott could find no trace of footprints. 

He was hooked.  He stayed for two and a half months, recording some 400 spiritual manifestations.  During his stay he virtually took the farmhouse apart, plank by plank, to prove to himself that he wasn't being duped by trapdoors or other contrivances. 

Blavatsky

 A few weeks after Olcott's arrival, another visitor came to the farmhouse.  This was Madame de Blavatsky, an eccentric Russian traveler with a well-developed interest in esoteric teachings and a magnetic personality.  When she attended séances, some of the beings manifested by Eddy brothers began to speak and write in Russian.  New spirits manifested themselves before Olcott and the rest of the company, some of whom Madame Blavatsky claimed to have met earlier on her travels, including a Kurdish warrior and the leader of a band of jugglers form North Africa.  

Olcott tried to make sense of the exercises of power he was witnessing and to discern universal principles underlying them:

   What is this insensible something that envelops us like an inner atmosphere, and saturates all whom we meet?  What subtle power made the mere touch of an Apostle's robe efficacious to cure disease, and the laying on of a royal hand effect the same result?  What human lightning darting from Napoleon's eye converted every soldier into a hero as it fell upon him?  What potent spell lurked in the presence of Florence Nightingale, and made the wounded men at Scutari better, if they could barely kiss her shadow as it flitted across their beds?

In 1875  Blavatsky and Olcott co-founded the Theosophical Society, with the aim of promoting a universal brotherhood, regardless of race or creed, based on a free-thinking study of world religions.  In 1887 Madame Blavatsky published Isis Unveiled, a vast compendium of Rosicrucian lore.  She outlined a theology intended to make sense of the explosion of spiritual activity in the second half of the nineteenth century, much of it under the umbrella of Mystic Spiritualism. 

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Our First Non-Christian President Was...

 President Abraham Lincoln was America’s first non-Christian president.  Not only did he reject Christianity, he once wrote a booklet title Infidelity, by which he meant a lack of faith in God.  William Herndon, Lincoln’s close friend and biographer, wrote that when Lincoln “read his manuscript to Samuel Hill, his employer said to Lincoln:  ‘Lincoln, let me see your manuscript.’  Lincoln handed it to him.  Hill ran it in a tin-plate stove, and so the book went up in flames.  Lincoln in that production attempted to show that the Bible was false: first on the grounds of reason, and, second, because it was self-contradictory; that Jesus was not the son of God any more than any man.”  Later, as President, considerable pressure was placed on him to mention God in his speeches.  This he increasingly did—but he never mentioned Jesus. 

Others have done this, pretended to not be offended by the National Lie that keeps us all on our knees begging for more.  I for one, Obi-Wan Kenobi, look forward to the first president who comes clean with us on his/hers religious belief and we can finally put the lie to rest.  

Of course, telling the American people the truth has never been popular. 

Presidential campaign lying in the United States dates to the earliest days of the republic. When John Adams squared off against Thomas Jefferson in 1800, they waged a slander war by proxy: Adams’ men condemned Jefferson as an atheist (he wasn’t) and Jefferson’s side blasted Adams as a monarchist (he wasn’t). This was only the culmination of a simmering battle in which both sides tested the boundaries of the truth. After a note from Jefferson appeared in print assailing “political heresies” (widely understood to refer to Adams), Jefferson disingenuously professed that he didn’t have his rival in mind. Adams, for his part, disavowed having written a series of published letters lambasting Jefferson, neglecting to add that his son, John Quincy, had written them with his father’s blessing.

 There have been candidates who told the truth.  For one, the socialist candidate in 1920 said only truthful things:

"If you go to the city of Washington, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of congress, and mis-representatives of the masses claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad that I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks."

 “I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.”

RIP  Eugene Victor Debs

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A centuries-old festival known as Gharnta Karna Day takes place on this date in the ancient kingdom of Napal in the Himalayan Mountains.  The festival celebrates the death of Gharnta Karna, a horrible bloodthirsty Hindu demon who haunts the crossroads and is the sworn enemy of the venerated creator god Vishnu.   

Look for something to happen today from the current incarnation of Karna, that is, Donald Karna.  

An evil spirit is an evil spirit, come one, I'm only judging the man by his words and actions.  

Disarm Your God and I’ll Disarm Mine. You disarm yours first.

Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals.  The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostates and saints; and the Turks their Mohamed, as if the was to God were not open to every man alike.

Each of these churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God.  The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses; fact to face; the Christians say that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven.  Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.

Who was the masked-man who wrote these words?  You guessed, the writer who gave us most of the writings for our revolution against England:  Thomas Paine.

That’s right, the America that surrounded Paine at the time, the America on the verge of revolution, was far less hospitable to secularists than it is today.  This makes total sense too since religion was designed to keep people from protesting, from thinking for themselves, from taking responsibility for their actions, and if the church of the day would have had its way, there would have been no American Revolution.  Fortunately, England’s blind-faith was so apparent to the revolutionists, that they refused to follow any church.  Now, they were not atheist, they were deist: they knew there was a higher power,  just not anything any of the churches were pushing.

Funny, but it is still this way today, but somehow, the Churches and their mindless followers are still holding on to their myths,  which in this deist’s mind, is holding us back from becoming a world with no religion.  Notice, I said, No Religion, not, No God.  Relax.  When we all come together giving up our gods, we will come together as one.

I realize, from the writings I receive, that Christians are the most unhappiest about this peaceful thought.  I guess this is because they own most of the world’s resources and so have the most to lose. The other faiths are the same though, and so no one is willing to give up his/hers gods in fear the others won’t, and both know how easy it is to kill for a god.   Killing for ones god is as old as the pains of childbirth.  The Pagans did it, the Jews did it, the Christians, Muslims, Taoist, etc..

So, you see the problem, no one is willing to disarm.

Maybe no one knows how?

It’s easy:

Clear your mind, meditate on love.  Notice the similarities in others as opposed to the differences.  And finally, Impeach Donald Trump.

It’s that simple (chuckle, I really don’t want Trump impeached, I just don't want him anywhere near kids).

Ciao All

Dr. TV Boogie

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Look Out Toronto!

Chick-fil-A is coming for you.  The best racist-chicken in the West!

Some of us vegetarians don't think it is funny!

The Last King of Rome/The Last Republican President of the USA

Tarquin the last King in Rome

Let’s go back in time boys and girls, way back, back to the last time Trumps spirit might have appeared on our planet.  The time was around 534 years BCE in Ancient Rome when King Tarquin’s misuse of power brought down the monarchy system and gave Rome its first Republic.  You see, King Tarquin already had a reputation of unsavory character when he seized the throne by murdering his predecessor, King Servius Tullius.  As new ruler, King Tarquin, “on day one,” arrested a number of patricians on phony charges so he could take their wealthy estates for himself.  This greediness alienated many in the country, but until his son, Sextus, raped the wife of the noted patriot Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, no one did anything about it.  However, much as with President Trumps son’s recent admission of dealing with Russians for personal gain has finally gotten even the most stubborn of Republicans to wake up and take note, King Tarquin’s son crime was the proverbial last straw in Rome and Lucius Junius Brutus, the patriot of the day along with other leading nobleman, locked Tarquin and his disturbed children out of the city and dissolved the kingship.

First King Tarquin Now Trump

The Roman fathers then proceeded to create a completely new kind of government, one based on the wishes and votes of the common citizen.

Their Sleazy Sons

So, what’s it mean to you and me, today?   Well, for one, there is hope in the caos and madness the Trump Family has bestowed on our once proud country, and two, the future is certainly bright once we have a modern day Brutus stand up to the madness.  It has happened before.   Historically speaking, we are in good hands.

Coming Soon:  Our Brutus Hero!

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Feeling horny today?  You should be, on August 8th in Rome each year, the people celebrated the Eve of the Festival of Venus with songs, poetry, libations, and passionate lovemaking. The goddess of love and beauty was invoked and honored with prayers.  It was also a time when sorceresses performed love magic and divinations were done for romance and marriage. 

In case you forgot:

The Roman Venus

The Roman goddess Venus.

The goddess Venus was the Roman equivalent of the Greek Aphrodite, and was the essence of natural beauty.  She was associated with most all things girly, especially when it came to love and romance.  She was even considered the protector of chastity for young women, despite her reputation for having many love affairs.  You probably wouldn't expect powerful male rulers to find a goddess who is busy dealing with lovesick girls to be of much importance.  But she was.  And they did.

You see, in 217 BCE, as the Second Punic War was raging between Carthage and Rome, an oracle predicted that Rome could win, but only if they convinced Venus of Eryx to grant them her allegiance. They promised to build a temple in her honor if she would agree to help them. Apparently, she accepted--the Romans did win, and they eventually fulfilled their promise by building the temple in the middle of Rome.

Genealogy also made Venus important to many Roman rulers.  In Greek and Roman mythology, one of her love interests was the mortal prince Anchises.   From one of their romps came their son Aeneas.  He would go on to lead the survivors of Troy into Italy, guided by the celestial light of Venus.  As the Roman poet Virgil tells it, the heirs of Aeneas were the founders of Rome.  They claimed direct descent from the goddess, which gave them quite a divine status. Among the members of this prestigious family were Julius Caesar and his nephew and adopted son, Augustus.


A Virgil Love Poem:


All these souls, after they have passed away a thousand years, are summoned by the divine ones in great array, to the lethean river. . .In this way they become forgetful of the former earthlife, and re-visit the vaulted realms of the world, willing to return again into living bodies.

Virgil Statue

Plato's Messge to Trump/Trumps DeVos attack on education.

And can there be any greater evil than discord and distraction and plurality where unity ought to reign?  or any greater good than the bond of unity?

There cannot.

And there is unity where there is community of pleasures and pains — where all the citizens are glad or sorry on the same occasions?

No doubt.

Yes; and where there is no common but only private feeling, that disorganizes a state — when you have one-half of the world triumphing and the other sorrowing at the same events happening to the city and the citizens?

Certainly.

Such differences commonly originate in a disagreement about the terms ‘min’ and ‘his’?

Exactly.

And is not that the best ordered state in which the greatest number of persons apply the terms ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ in the same way to the same thing?

True, very true.

Or that again which most nearly approaches the condition of the individual — as in the body, when but the finger is hurt, the whole frame, drawn toward the soul and forming one realm under the ruling power therein, feels the hurt and sympathizes all together with the part afflicted, and then we say that the man has a pain in his finger; or gain, in any other part, when there is a sensation of pain or pleasure at suffering, or alleviation of suffering, the same expression is used?

“Yes,” he replied, “that is as you say; and I agree with you that in the best ordered state there is the nearest approach to this common feeling which you describe.”

Then when any one of the citizens experiences any good or evil, the whole state will make his case their own, and either rejoice or sorrow with him?

“Yes,” he said, “that will be true in a well ordered state.”

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So, the War on Education continues.   It really is a sign of the times when the one thing all parties use to agree on before the Neo-Con/Right Wing Nut/1%/Racist got their way, was: education is important and will set up free!

I guess it was the "free" word that bug these greedy bastards because in their minds, Nothing Should Be Free but Tax Cuts For The Masters.   

Is this why Donald Trump appointed the most unqualified person ever as secretary of education?  Betsy DeVos, a wealthy 1% who thinks public-education should be privatized through the voucher system?

Trump Rubbing Bellybuttons with Devos.

Why is this, really?  What do they have against education for all?  Well, let’s see. 

Bormann With Arms Folded.

Well, there is the fact that the less education one has, the more likely they are to vote for despots.  As the German Evil-Doer, Martin Bormann said in 1942:
 
“Education is dangerous. It is enough if they can count to 100.  Every educated person is a future enemy.  Religion we leave to them as a means of diversion.”

Did I mention DeVos was a devout Christian?

I’m just saying. 

Anonymous vs. QAnon

Esoteric Sunday

Having overcome all traces of selfishness and desire, Siddhartha entered a deep meditative state in order to realize the ultimate reality -- not merely for his own benefit, but for the sake of all beings.  Throughout the night he sat recalling his previous existences, until at dawn he achieved perfect Enlightenment.  He had become a Buddha, an 'awakened one.' 

For several weeks the Buddha remained in meditation beneath his tree.  During this time he was visited by the gods Indra and Brahma, who begged him to share his experience with others for the benefit of those who would understand his teachings. 

It is often overlooked that H.P. Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society in 1875, was the first person to bring both Buddhism and Hinduism to the West.  Of course, there were orientalists and scholars who had written books about the Eastern religions prior to Blavatsky’s day but these were merely written from the perspective of academic observation and more often than not misrepresented the religions as being primitive, superstitious, and “demonic,” according to the level of prejudice and bigotry of the writer.


Blavatsky, however, presented them as valid and noble spiritual paths and philosophies – indeed as the highest spiritual paths and philosophies – and worked ceaselessly and under much persecution from the Christian elite to show their true nature and real worth and importance.  As has been said elsewhere, anyone in the West today whose life has been at all enriched by the concepts, teachings, or practices of Eastern spirituality has – whether they realize it or not – Madame Blavatsky to thank for it.  It is a great shame then that many people today refuse to read her writings on the nonsensical grounds that they are “impossible to understand.”

The respected Buddhist expert Richard Taylor has written, “Blavatsky had access to Tibetan Buddhist sources which no other Westerner during her time had.  Her works are by no means merely strings of plagiarisms, but rather very cogent arguments, supplemented by masses of data, that her readers should believe Buddhist claims that there is a perennial philosophy, in the possession of Adepts, which explains the origins of the world and leads to salvation from it. … Blavatsky knew what the Buddhist Tantras were, knew their content and philosophical import better than any Western contemporary, and knew bona fide Tibetan traditions surrounding them.  This alone gives strong reasons not to dismiss her claims out of hand.”


 In 1925 the Panchen Lama of Tibet officially endorsed her book “The Voice of The Silence” and called it the “only true exposition in English of the Heart Doctrine of the Mahayana and its noble ideal of self-sacrifice for humanity.”


When the centenary edition of this book was brought out in 1989, the present Dalai Lama wrote, “I am therefore happy to have this long association with the Theosophists and to learn about the Centenary Edition: THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE which is being brought out this year.  I believe that this book has strongly influenced many sincere seekers and aspirants to the wisdom and compassion of the Bodhisattva Path.  I very much welcome this Centenary Edition and hope that it will benefit many more.”



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How come no revolt? Wilson was a racist!

 There really is nothing new under the sun.  Take for example, the Roman uprising that pitted wealthy aristocrats against middle-class citizens, two parties emerged in the Senate.  On one side were the optimates, conservatives who resisted social change.  On the other side were the populares, who believed Rome’s wealth should be better distributed among all people, not just a handful of aristocrats.

That strife ended up destroying the Roman empire because the aristocrats chose to let the Republic fail instead of accepting the social changes the people were demanding.  The changes the people were asking for then were simple, really:  they wanted the stink around them cleaned up because the wealthy citizens all lived high on the seven hills and their piss, shit, and garbage flowed down stream to the basins where the working poor -- peasant is too good of a word for the summer stink they lived in -- were forced to live.  

Yes, things were simpler then, and the people didn't want what the aristocrats up on the hills had, they only wanted better.   They're representatives tried too:  the populares/Liberals, tried to helped them, but just as today, were shutdown by the aristocrats.   And when it all came crashing down, the aristocrats were fine, they always are, unless, the people revolt.  

Finally, did you know that the Roman empire back then, still had better wealth distribution than we do in the USA today? 

How come we never revolt?

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Woodrow Wilson was a hard-core racist and white supremacist, and his wife was even worse.  She often told “darky” stories, while he segregated the federal government and tried to pass legislation curtailing the civil rights of African-Americans.  Through his efforts, the Democratic party was essentially closed to African-Americans for an additional two decades, and parts of federal government were segregated through the 1950’s.  The only time he met African-American leaders in the White House ended with him practically throwing them out of his office.  With the wave of racism coming out of the White House, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a tremendous resurgence, anti-black race riots swept the country, and lynchings of Africa-Americans spread as far north as Duluth.

Wilson prejudice also extended to other ethnic groups, which he referred to as “hyphenated Americans.”  He insisted, “Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.”

Under Wilson’s leadership, the United States made more military interventions in Latin America than at any other time in American history.  U.S. troops landed in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama, and eleven times in Mexico.  The U.S. military was used to select Nicaragua’s president and to force that country to accept a treaty favorable to the United States. 

In a largely forgotten war against the Soviets, the United States invaded the Soviet Union in an attempt to assist White Russian forces in overthrowing the Russian Revolution.  In the summer of 1918, American forces, under a joint command with the Japanese, penetrated to Murmansk, Archangel, Vladivostok, and then west to Lake Baikal.  After reaching the Volga, the White Russian forces disintegrated, and the U.S. troops were forced to flee from Vladivostok on April 1, 1920.  This action convinced the Soviets that the United States and the Western powers were determined to destroy them if given a chance. 

Finally, and most disturbing of all, this Democratic president gave us the Federal Reserve Banking System we are all slaves to today. 

What a guy!

August 2nd, LIzzy’s Day

Borden Home

 Fall River, Massachusetts, was quiet, remarkably ordinary little mill town tottering on the brink of obscurity until the morning of August 4, 1892.  That’s when one of the town’s most upstanding citizens—a mousy, unmarried woman name Lizzie Andrew Borden—was arrested and thrown into jail for brutally murdering her father and stepmother with an axe.

By the time her trial was over, Lizzie Borden had become a household name across America.  To some she was a demigoddess who should be hanged for her crime.  To others, especially many in women’s right groups, she was an innocent “symbol of womanhood” who stood falsely accused.

Also leaping to her defense were upper-class citizens and fellow churchgoers who found it difficult to believe one of their own could do such a thing.

Even thought Lizzie Borden was eventually acquitted, she remained guilty in the minds of millions of Americas.  After her sensational trial, which lasted thirteen days and attracted worldwide publicity, she went back to a quiet life of modest affluence in the same gray frame house on Second Street where the grisly murders had taken place.

By then, however, the damage to the former socialite and Sunday school teacher’s spotless reputation had been wrought.  The press, fueled by rabid public interest in the case, continued to run banner headlines focusing on the gory murder for years after the event, while crime writers and their publishers made fortunes telling and retelling the story.  It seemed that, guilty or not, Lizzie’s Borden’s Once proud name would forever be linked to the gruesome events of August 2, 1892.

The question remains, more than a century after the fact: Was she guilty?  Or, as was suggested at the trial, did some unknown person slip into the house and slay the elderly parents while Lizzie ate pears upstairs and a servant woman worked in the kitchen less than twenty feet from one of the victims?

No motive for an outside murder has ever been clearly established, even though several robberies had been reported in the neighborhood in the days immediately prior to the crime.  According to police reports, the Borden’s house itself had been burglarized at least twice.

But because of several factors, Lizzie Borden remained the most likely suspect.  At her trial, she gave a bewildering array of conflicting stories about her whereabouts during the murder.  At first she said she was in the “backyard.”  Later, she said she was “in the loft getting a piece of iron for the sinkers.”  To another interrogator, she was in the barn eating pears.

More puzzling, however, was her neat appearance and calm composure when the police arrived.  Surely, they reasoned, her clothes and hands and hair would have been splattered with the victims’ blood.  That is, if she ere, in fact, guilty.

And the murder weapon?  Where was the murder weapon?

A few days later an inspector rummaging through the Borden tool shed out back found a freshly cleaned axe head.  Could this have been the cruel device that ended the lives of Abby and Andrew Borden?  The fact that the wooden handle, from which it would have been difficult to remove bloodstains, was missing convinced investigators that this was, indeed, the weapon.

Then new evidence surfaced that further damaged Lizzie’s defense.  Upon request, she had turned over to police a spotlessly clean, fancy blue bengaline dress she swore she had worn on the day of the murders.  That story seemed unlikely, however, no one wore party dresses of bengaline, a heavy corded cloth, around the house in the August heat.

Confounding the problem was a testimony provided by a neighbor, Alice Russell, who reluctantly admitted she had seen Lizzie burn a blue cotton dress in the kitchen stove three days after the murders.  The dress, Lizzie explained, had been soiled with brown paint—a color, noted the prosecutor, not unlike that of dried blood.

But an outraged press, supported by the public, rallied behind the frail, soft-spoken woman.  Editors wanted to know how anyone could accuse “this innocent and loving daughter” of such heinous crimes without feeling ashamed?  After all, this was the height of the late Victorian era, a time when the gentleness, physical frailty and docility of the well-bred American woman were cornerstones of society.

New Englanders were certain that well-brought-up Christian daughters like Lizzie Borden could not possibly commit murder with an axe on sunny summer mornings.  Women possessed more “natural refinements,” as one editorial put it, “diviner instincts” and stronger “spiritual sensibilities” than did men.

Overlooked in the public outcry against her arrest was the glaring fact that she stood to inherit a fortune of several hundred thousand dollars.  Also, nobody pointed out that Lizzie and Abby had feuded frequently, mainly over matters involving Andrew Borden’s money.

In the end, the jury returned with the only verdict possible under the circumstances—not guilty.  The judge, who had admonished the jury men to remember that such “a woman of refinement and gentle training...could not have conceived and executed so bloody a butchery,” seemed genuinely pleased at the decision.

A few years before her death, Lizzie Borden moved to Maplecroft, the neighborhood she had begged her father to move the family to years before.  In her final days, she undoubtedly had occasion to hear the nasty rhyme already being sung by schoolchildren to the tune of “Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay!”

          Lizzie Borden took an axe
          And gave her mother forty whacks;
          When she saw what she had done,
          She gave her father forty-one.

On June 1, 1927, she died at the age of sixty-six and was buried alongside her stepmother and father in Oak Grove Cemetery.  But the public fascination with her case lived on, a favorite of crime writers, movie producers and directors, and even choreographers and playwrights.  In 1965, an opera entitled Lizzie Borden: A Family Tragedy in Three Acts met favorable reviews.  In 1980 Blood Relations appeared, a play in which Lizzie kills for her parents’ money, then dies after being found guilty.

In her own time, Lizzie Borden had become a cause célèbre of the women’s movement and an example of Christian piety.  Her acquittal was seen as a tribute to the American justice system and its main tenet of innocent until proven guilty.

But uncertainty remained.  Quipped American wit Dorothy Parker:  “I will believe till eternity, or possibly beyond it, that Lizzie Borden did it with her little hatchet, and whoever says she didn’t commits the sin of sins, the violation of an idol.”

Some skeptics pointed to Mr. Borden’s bizarre relationship with his youngest daughter.  “Daddy’s little girl,” as he called her, almost always got her way.  When his mutilated corpse was found, Lizzie’s graduation ring was still on his little finger.  This happened several months after he beheaded all of Lizzie’s pigeons in their barn—the same barn in which Lizzie supposedly ate pears while the murders took place.

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Peaceniks, the Illuminati banking system, and bread.

No shit! 

Another one for the peaceniks:

In 1888, Otto von Bismark decided to establish a German colony in Samoa and sent a fleet of ships to take over this group of South Pacific islands.  They shelled the native villages—destroying some American property—and later ripped down an American flag.  In response, the United States sent a fleet of ships to protect the Americans.  As the two groups of warships prepared to fight it out in a Samoan harbor, a hurricane suddenly struck the islands, destroying both fleets.  The German and American sailors found themselves frantically trying to save each others’ lives.  Both countries soon forgot their grievances, but if that hurricane had hit just a few days later, it’s very likely the United States and Germany would have gone to war. 



What does this teach us boys-and-girls?    Yes, sometimes it takes a whole lot of luck to see the blessings of peace.

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Since today in August first, I think it is only fitting we note why banker's love this day.  In 1463, the greatest of the Medici bankers, Cosimo "the Elder," dies at 75 in his villa at Careggi, Italy, while listening to one of Plato's Dialogues.  Cosimo took the successful bank established in Florence by his father, Giovannie di Bicci, and grew it into an empire, with nine major branches throughout Europe, ventures in insurance, money markets, speculation, farming, manufacturing, international trade, and control of state taxation.  Yes, the first Federal Reserve, and some say, still a controlling family in today's world banking systems.

I don't know about the Medici connection, but it is funny that on this day in 1778, in Hamburg, Germany, the hometown of the Illuminati organization, the world's first World Savings Bank is created.

If I might add, the one thing about these secret societies is they love to keep dates sacred.  In today's news:  The US Fed closes its two-day meeting today.

 I'm just saying.
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The festival of Lammas (loaf-mass), the feast of the first fruits that was held in celebration of bread loaves baked from the first grain harvested, is celebrated on this day.  Pagans of old celebrated Lammas by weaving corn dollies and offering the first loaves to their goddess and god.

Peace Out.