History tells us there have been past golden ages. Greece briefly entered one and many believe Lemuria and Atlantis actually existed and were great golden age empires before they collapsed and fell. The men and women of these civilizations were very intuitive and spiritually evolved. The family was held in high esteem because the people embraced the values that are uplifting to society. Art, music, science, invention, architecture, technology, philosophy, mathematics, commerce, education, all the things that come to mind in association with a golden age, reflected the highest ideals of the people because the Divine Mother was revered. The Mother is the "nurturing force" that produces great cultures.

When the Mother principle is absent, governments and the economy are affected, society suffers, morals and values erode, educational standards decline, and the environment is systematically destroyed or polluted. With the dawning of the age of Aquarius everyone is "undergoing the initiations of the Feminine Ray" 12 whether they know it or not. The healing we receive from following the path and passing our tests and initiations results in the raising of the sacred fire of the Divine Mother. As our reverence and devotion to the Divine Mother grows something magical happens. A feeling of wholeness and balance flows through us and we begin to feel the presence of our Father-Mother God. We start to merge with our Higher Self. This in turn causes a sense of holiness for everything and everyone around us. We begin to honor the flame in the heart of all we meet. And before we know it, the creative fires flowing through us inspire the desire to make the world a better place. The age of Aquarius is a "state of consciousness" and it is only through the raising of the powerful energy of the Mother flame (Kundalini) that this transformation of consciousness can occur. As we come to understand the feminine aspect of God, great things can happen both on a personal and planetary level. If we are successful, we have the opportunity to anchor in a golden age of "freedom, peace and enlightenment" unlike any the earth has ever known. This is the age of the Divine Mother and the Holy Spirit. 75,000 YA: This time on Earth was the age of the highest peak of civilization so far experienced on our planet. A time of technologies far more advanced than we see today, advanced spiritual development (which was part of the technology — these were higher Density technologies based on consciousness, rather than 3D mechanics), and cities made up of many races, both terrestrial and non, living at different levels of Density, spread across the globe. Underground, the great inner-Earth civilization of Agartha was also well established and still expanding. The beings who lived there were mostly benevolent or neutral, though there was still a pocket of Ciakar, the Draco royalty, living in their stronghold under Africa.. In the preceding millennia the Nacaals had made themselves known to the Annunaki and had educated them on the vast interstellar community they were part of. This, combined with the flourishing of mankind and advances in consciousness opened the gates for many other ET races to visit the Earth, and our world became a true Utopia, for a time. Genetic experiments also continued, both through the intermarrying of various races as well as through deliberate manipulation of DNA. By the time Homo Sapiens emerged from this period, we would have 22 different “races” or genome types, thanks to the influence of 22 different ET races. This furthered the pace of evolution in all areas of life. Enki, in addition to getting all “hippy” on Enlil by embracing the traditions of the Nacaal, also had mated with quite a few different human women at this point, and then elevated some of those children to govern in various locations, which enraged the prudish Enlil, to whom this increasingly complex and intermixed globe seemed more and more tarnished and “impure”. He longed for the good ‘ol days of Annunaki dominion and he began to return to Niribu more frequently. He also started to mull over possible ways to end the human experiment on Earth. Atlantis, being the center of all things scientific and technological, tended to have a bit of an inclination towards a manifest destiny kind of attitude. They were more concerned with what could be achieved and discovered, than they were with maintaining harmony with nature and spiritual equanimity; more concerned with what they could do, and not so much with what they should do. They did work to develop their consciousness as well, but also with interfacing those advancements with more mechanical creations.

 

medium.com/a-history-of-the-multiverse/chapter-5-part-1-t...

I feel utterly inadequate and unworthy to share any Biblical truth with anyone, because how can a law breaker like me promote the same law he breaks? I am no less of a hypocrite than anyone else ever lived. But if every Christian stops sharing Biblical truths because he or she is not perfect then the gospel will not be preached anymore.

 

Joseph Reassures His Brothers - Genesis 50

 

15 When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, "What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?" 16 So they sent word to Joseph, saying, "Your father left these instructions before he died: 17 'This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.' Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father." When their message came to him, Joseph wept.

18 His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. "We are your slaves," they said.

19 But Joseph said to them, "Don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God? 20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. 21 So then, don't be afraid. I will provide for you and your children." And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.

 

I doubt any human will condemn Joseph if he had held a grudge against his brothers or even if had taken revenge against them. This story reminds me of once as I was reading the Bible at break time at work a lady who was new in Canada asked to read what I was reading. She was shocked by our Lord’s words in Matthew 5:44:

 

But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

 

She said in her broken English, “No, I think he wrong. Love family friends ok, good. No love enemies, bad!” How else could she feel about those words? Her reaction was completely natural—human-like. But not Joseph. Joseph didn’t have a Bible, he didn’t have the gift of the Holy Spirit, he didn’t have godly parents to guide and protect him or, he didn’t have access to Christian counsellors, he didn’t even have accountability partners. But he had a heart of flesh and not of stone, a heart bent toward God—Joseph was a man who truly knew how to love God and esteem Him. He dared to be different for His God. Even though all he knew about this God was probably what he heard from his father Jacob.

 

David Spares Saul's Life - 1 Samuel 24

 

1 After Saul returned from pursuing the Philistines, he was told, "David is in the Desert of En Gedi." 2 So Saul took three thousand chosen men from all Israel and set out to look for David and his men near the Crags of the Wild Goats.

3 He came to the sheep pens along the way; a cave was there, and Saul went in to relieve himself. David and his men were far back in the cave. 4 The men said, "This is the day the LORD spoke of when he said to you, 'I will give your enemy into your hands for you to deal with as you wish.' "Then David crept up unnoticed and cut off a corner of Saul's robe.

5 Afterward, David was conscience-stricken for having cut off a corner of his robe. 6 He said to his men, "The LORD forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the LORD's anointed, or lift my hand against him; for he is the anointed of the LORD." 7 With these words David rebuked his men and did not allow them to attack Saul. And Saul left the cave and went his way.

 

Most natural people reading this will think that David was either a coward or simple minded. No law on earth can condemn David for killing Saul—this was the best scenario for self-defence in an era where murder could go unnoticed. But David did not live by the laws of an era, a culture, or a certain kingdom; David lived by the laws of his God and held himself accountable to God and God alone. Even when, many years later, he committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered her husband, after he was convicted of his sins he said, “Against you[God], you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight,” (Psalm 51:4) David realized he sinned against God before anyone else, after all it was God who said, “You shall not murder”, and “You shall not commit adultery.” To David God was as real as a human judge.

 

What laws did David follow in sparing—twice--king Saul’s life? He didn’t have the Sermon of the Mount. What he had was “an eye for an eye”, yet David showed a deep knowledge of God that can only be gained through a personal relationship with God strengthened by daily walk with Him.

 

This morning I was talking to a lady who attends church at least twice a week (and not just any church: this is a pretty committed church to following our Lord) and she opened the topic about how Christian women should dress and told me that she can’t understand what is so sinful about wearing tight jeans and that she can’t stop wearing them. I knew exactly what her problem was, so I asked her, “Where in the New Testament does the Bible mention how Christian women should dress?” She replied, “It doesn’t! It is not mentioned anywere!” I told her, “You see, there are at least two places that talk directly about this issue. Not to mention dressing in church, and the numerous verses that deal with causing someone to sin.” Her problem is that she has no faith. She doesn’t believe that God’s Word is worth reading nor that God’s laws are extremely important to follow. Otherwise, she would never say that she can’t obey them. How is she going to dare be different for Her God when she doesn’t believe that He knows best?

 

We have the illusion that going to church, giving to the poor, and singing Christian song build our faith—they don’t. Our Lord did not build His faith when He healed or preached. He build His faith when He woke up early in the morning and spend time talking and listening to His heavenly Father and obeying Him. When He healed and preached He was simply expressing His faith.

 

David did not build his faith when he became a king; rather he became a king because he had faith. He built his faith when as a young shepherd he spent countless hours by himself knowing His God and attending sheep. When he wrote the Psalms he was simply expressing his faith. Yet, when we read the Psalms we think that our faith is going to be built just by reading them.

 

Do you dare to be different for your God? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God who loved you so much that He sent His beloved, perfect, and only Son, Jesus Christ, to die a gruesome, painful, and humiliating death on the cross just so that you would love Him and spend eternity in heaven with Him. Start being different in the little things because God will not trusted you with greater things without you showing trustworthiness in the little things.

 

Let me tell you a little story: about a week ago I saw my mid-term grade and it was substantially above the class average. I knew something was wrong because I had not done so well on the mid-term. I told my close classmates that there must be something wrong with the way my paper was marked. Sure enough when I received it I was given 14% extra by mistake. So I submitted my test paper back to the TA for my mark to be fixed, namely lowered 14%. My classmates thought I was either the craziest man ever lived, or the most simple minded, or the most idealistic. But I am none of those things. I simply asked myself this question: does God know about it, and what would He want me to do?

 

One classmate had a long discussion with me because of this and he made the remark, “Fadi, you are living your life backward!” I told him, “Exactly! That’s exactly how I know I am heading in the right way! Because most people—naturally living by their human nature—do not follow God. So when I do something that’s different then I know that I am walking in the right way. Human thinking says, ‘Good! Free marks!’ But God says, ‘That’s cheating. That’s being dishonest. That’s stealing.’” Another classmate said, “Have you ever thought that may be God wants to help you by giving you those free marks?” I answered him, “God doesn’t sin—He doesn’t cheat. He doesn’t cause people to sin, but He does test our faith.” Why do we feel that we have to know every trivial thing, except when it comes to God we start guessing who He is and how He operates?

 

My mom sometimes comes from church and tells me, “Fadi, I saw this beautiful and wonderful single lady at church and I thought…” And that’s when I stop her. Sometimes she keeps going, and I have to insist she stops. She says, “How will you ever get married if you don’t even build relationships with girls?” I cannon justify my position except that God is working, at least in me that I know for sure, and He hasn’t done His work yet. And I won’t do anything before I hear from Him and know His will. Actually, He has given me specific promises about the topic of marriage, and I cannot go out and do my things and ruin everything He is doing. Can you imagine how rude it is when, let’s say, a close friend of yours asked you to photograph their wedding, and you spend all this time preparing your photography equipments and cleaning them, and charging the batteries, and backing everything, and making sure you haven’t forgotten anything, and bought extra accessories such as a flash diffuser, and even went as far as taking photography lessons or reading about wedding photography…only to find out that your friends has already arranged someone else to photograph the wedding? Yet, we do this all the time with God.

 

My question for you is this: Do you dare to be different for your God and Saviour? By “…for your God and Saviour”, I don’t mean to impress the world by your obedience and try to change people. What I mean is: do things because they please His heart, regardless of what the outcomes will be.

 

PS: I want to give special thanks to my co-worker Chungsoon, for teaching me how to tip the Pepsi can like this without it falling. All you have to do is leave just the right amount of Pepsi for the can to balance on its edge.

 

(Toronto, ON; fall 2008.)

 

Location : Dumaguete Boulevard , Dumaguete city,

Negros Oriental, Philippines

  

~~~~~~~~~~~~<<<@

 

Things are going to change soon .

Have Jesus Christ as your personal saviour and Lord

Make Jesus as your only refuge

and have rest in Him .

Whatever happens, you're with the

Lord and will be with the Lord, when things are restored

in own time which is very near.

 

If anyone of you have time, pls listen to this audios / videos:

 

Prophetic revelation to the late David Wilkerson in 1973 -which is coming to reality in our time.

I have no doubt the late DW is an annointed man of God.

David Wilkerson -- The Vision 1973

Stan Deyo "What's Coming in 2013?"

Stan Deyo is a Scientist/ researcher exposing what is possibly on the menu this year or few yrs owards. As a follower of the Bible and a watcher, it all fits in the description. God is in control but it seem we are

close to the timeline. Keep watching. Don't be one of the deceived.

If you don't have Christ seek Him soon, don't delay.

 

Is this the coming Mark of the Beast , and not just America but whole wide world to to have this. The Bible said so. My feeling is once mega economic collapse happens, our day's wages will be just worth a loaf of bread as our money devalued or great inflation ,then we are the mercy of our system -- the one world govt. to feed us all.

And unless we have that mark, we can't eat, work, sell, buy, have health care, this is very plausible and we are closing in. We can't even log in to flickr unless we have this mark / microchip.

New RFID Technology "Obamacare Beware" ~ By Paul Begley

  

Whaaaaat , are you serious ?????

Obama Wants An American To Be The Next Pope!!

 

Hourglass Rapture Vision From The Holy Spirit. Get Ready! The Raptures IMMINENT

 

Endtime News Updates 3-13-13

 

Queen signs charter to advance gay rights

 

The calm before the solar storm?NASA warns 'something unexpected is happening to the Sun

 

War is in the horizon, confirming Bible prophecies of big wars in the last of

days,when all things mentioned will happen simultaneously .

Just trust the word of God ( Matthew 24 )

Russian Navy Starts forming Mediterranian task force

  

THE NEW POPE WAS NAMED TODAY ! ' Is he the last Pope but he's not black ," Petrus Romanus" according to St Malachy prophecy ( non- Biblical prophecy,but came accurate with the past Popes including ex-Pope Benedict . It is " wait and see" "time will tell" .

 

The New Pope: Bergoglio of Argentina

    

**HIGH RAPTURE WATCH: ALL SIGNS ARE HERE FOR THE TRIBULATION By Patrick Winfrey , Philippines

    

Heidelberg - Heiliggeistkirche und Marktplatz

 

The Church of the Holy Spirit (German: Heiliggeistkirche) is the largest church in Heidelberg, Germany. The church, located in the marketplace in the old town center, was constructed between 1398 and 1515 in the Romanesque and Gothic styles. It annually receives 1–3 million guests a year, making it among the most visited churches in Germany.

 

The church was planned as the burial place of the Electors of the Palatinate and as a representative church of the Palatinate royal seat. In the Palatine War of Succession, the princely graves of the Electors were destroyed; today only the grave of the founder of the church, Elector Ruprecht III, remains. The church was also the location of the founding of the Heidelberg University and was the original repository of the Bibliotheca Palatina.

 

The congregation was originally Roman Catholic, but the church has changed denominations more than ten times through its history. Intermittently, over a 300 year period, the nave and the choir of the church were separated by a wall, allowing both Catholics and Protestants to practice in the church at the same time. The wall was ultimately removed in 1936, and the congregation is now solely Protestant. Today, it is a parish church within the Evangelical Church of Heidelberg and is part of the Evangelical Church in Germany.

 

History

 

A manuscript from 1239 references a Romanesque chapel in the center of Heidelberg named “Zum Heilien Geist” (English: to the Holy Ghost). A Gothic, asisleless church was constructed on that site around 1300 and subsequently referred to as the Chapel of the Holy Spirit (Heiliggeistkapelle). King Rupert commissioned a new church building in 1398, which replaced the chapel and became the current Church of the Holy Spirit. The current church is the third sacral building on the site.

 

Congregations

 

Between the 16th and 20th centuries, the church changed confessions over ten times, between Lutheranism, Calvinism, Catholicism, and Old Catholicism. Sermons had been delivered in German at various points before the Reformation at the Church of the Holy Spirit, but Protestantism was not quickly adopted in Heidelberg. The first Protestant service was conducted at the Church of the Holy Spirit in 1546. Elector Otto Henry converted the region in 1557, and the church was officially designated as a Lutheran parish church. Otto Henry's successor, Friedrich III, converted the church to Calvinism and commissioned the Heidelberg Catechism.

 

In 1706, a succession crisis resulted in the church being divided in half in order to accommodate both Catholics and Protestants simultaneously, so that both congregations could hold their services without any mutual disturbance. The church was divided by a wall which separated the nave and the chancel, creating a second altar in the center of the church. In 1719, Elector Karl III Philipp ordered soldiers to occupy the church and tear down the wall in order to restore it to a purely Catholic place of worship. Political pressure from other states and the Holy Roman Empire forced him to re-erect the wall shortly thereafter. The wall was again removed in 1886, but was rebuilt once more as a result of the Kulturkampf and pressure from the Vatican. It was ultimately removed on 24 June 1936. The church has been solely Protestant since.

 

Bibliotheca Palatina

 

The Bibliotheca Palatina was founded and originally kept in the gallery of the Church of the Holy Spirit, where good light for reading was available. It contained several collections, including the libraries of Heidelberg University, Heidelberg Castle, and several monasteries.

 

During the Thirty Years War, this collection of manuscripts and early printed books were taken as loot and presented to the Pope by the Count of Tilly, who commanded the Catholic League’s forces at Heidelberg in 1622. Reportedly 54 oxcarts filled with crates of books were taken to Rome from the Church of the Holy Spirit. They now form the Bibliotheca Palatina section of the Vatican Library. As a result of the Congress of Vienna, 847 of the german manuscripts from this collection were returned to the University of Heidelberg in 1816. For the University's 600th anniversary, a further collection of 588 of the Bibliotheca's documents were temporarily exhibited at the Church. Much of the exhibition contained documents detailing the workings of the former library itself: from the former library's binding techniques to records on the library's removal in 1623.

 

Architecture

 

Construction

 

Documents name Arnold Rype, a former mayor of Heidelberg, as the church's "master builder". At the time, the term "master builder" referred not to the architect but the financial initiator. The only known architects are Hans Marx, who worked on the church until 1426, as well as Jorg, who was responsible until 1439. Both men probably supervised work on the nave. Under the reign of Prince-elector Frederick I, a noted specialist in the construction of church towers, Niclaus Eseler, came from Mainz to Heidelberg and was likely responsible for the execution of the primary work on the church's spire, though the steeple was completed by Lorenz Lechler.

 

Construction began in 1398 when the cornerstone was laid. The choir was completed and consecrated in 1411, and the nave finished in 1441. The construction of the steeple was started in the same year, but works were interrupted until 1508, and the tower was finished in 1544.

 

Restoration

 

During the Palatinate War of Succession, the church was raided by French forces in 1693 and significantly damaged by a fire. The fire destroyed the church tower, which was rebuilt in 1709 in a baroque style. A viewing platform inside the main spire is accessible to the public via a narrow staircase with a total of 208 steps. The platform is located 38 meters above ground level.

 

The 1693 fire damaged the roof, and resulting in decades of water damage in much of the building. Late 18th century restoration efforts greatly altered the original design of the building. Crumbling, octagonal sandstone pillars were sanded-down to round columns. Medieval frescoes were either plastered over, or reinterpreted in baroque style.

 

One of the vaults of the nave is decorated with a fresco, created around 1440. Each of the vault's eight panels are decorated with an angel playing a unique instrument. The fresco was restored in 1950 by Harry MacLean, who added a bassoon to one angel, which was not original to the piece. A Holy Ghost hole sits between the eight angels.

 

Stained glass

 

Heiliggeistkirch's original medieval windows were destroyed by the fire of 1693. None of the original windows were preserved and no record or attestation to what they looked like exists. To replace the damaged windows, emergency glazing was introduced in the 19th century, principally in the choir and along the south aisle of the nave. Matching windows, installed on the north aisle, were subsequently destroyed in 1945 during the Second World War. The poor condition of the 19th century glazing became a pressing issue in the mid 20th century, resulting in a historically significant series of unrealised attempts to commission the design of a unified programme of stained glass windows from contemporary artists.

 

In the mid 1970s, the regional church board voted to replace the 19th century additions, as part of a broader restoration and repair of the interior. As a result, several significant efforts were made in the 1970s and 1990s to reinstall stained glass into these windows through a programme of artworks by a single artist. Initially, the German artist Johannes Schreiter was commissioned in 1977 to undertake the project and design a total of twenty-two pieces, but negative response to his designs and the resulting “Heidelbergerfensterstreit” (Heidelberg Window Controversy) meant that only one complete work, the Physics Window, was installed in the church. Subsequently, the British artist Brian Clarke was asked to submit a proposal for the remaining windows. His resulting designs drew on the history of the site's location as the repository of the Biblioteca Palatina and its link to the development of Calvinism through the 1563 Heidelberg Catechism. Ultimately, of Clarke's designs were implemented.

 

During the late 1990s, Hella Santarossa won a subsequent 1997 competition for a series of five windows whose core element is treated, broken coloured glass. Santarossa is a member of the Derix family, one of the major stained glass studios in Germany. Her series of five windows were installed in the north nave.

 

The "Heidelberger Fensterstreit"

 

The most famed and controversial stained glass works commissioned for the church are those of Johannes Schreiter, commissioned in 1977 to design twenty-two stained glass windows. At the time, this was to be the largest stained glass commission to have been granted to a single artist. The resulting avant-garde designs, which incorporated references from science, medicine, philosophy, and the analogue technologies of the day, became the subject of a cultural and theological dispute known as the "Heidelberg Controversy" (German: Heidelbergerfensterstreit Fensterstreit). This dispute is cited as "the most intense controversy on record involving twentieth century stained glass".

 

Schreiter's designs had previously been debated and tested within a focus group including theologians, art critics, and church attendees. They were then presented to the public in 1984 when the first window was installed on the south isle. This window is known as the "Physikfenster" (English: "Physics Window"). It's critical theme immediately became controversial. Critics called the Physics Window overly conceptual, elitist, and secularly dejected. When sketches of Schreiter's following pieces were released, local parishioners were reportedly disenfranchised by their themes. Protests, parish votes, and petitions ultimately prevented their installation. Nine years after Schreiter was commissioned, the project was officially terminated on June 23rd 1986. Schreiter had originally been commissioned to create ten separate pieces for the nave; the ensuing controversy caused the remaining nine to be abandoned. The Physics Window remains the only work of Schreiter's installed in the church, though other windows from the series have since been purchased and displayed by independent organisations, including other churches and hospital clinics.

 

The Physics Window is 458 cm tall and 125 cm wide. The majority of the piece is red, representing the Holy Spirit; a white arrow at the top represents the Holy Spirit descending to earth. Only two points on the piece are in bright blue: one highlighting the Einstein's theory of relativity, E=mc², and the other states the date the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, 6 August 1945. Written above both of these in black, gothic script, is a passage from the Second Epistle of Peter (2 Peter 3:10) combined with a passage from Isaiah (Isaiah 54:10). The first passage references an apocalyptic end to the earth, in which everything created by man is destroyed by fire. This theme is reflected in Schreiter's work by an effect in the glass that resembles burnt paper near the date of the Hiroshima tragedy. By contrast, the second passage offers hope, implying that God will remain merciful despite man's mistakes.

 

Notable burials

 

Originally, the Church of the Holy Spirit contained the tombs of the Palatinate electors, which were later destroyed by fire during the War of the Palatine Succession. The only remaining tomb is that of Prince-Elector Rupert III, the founder of the church, which is still preserved.

 

Dorothea of Denmark, Electress Palatine (1520–1580)

Eberhard II, Duke of Württemberg (1447–1504)

Elisabeth of Nuremberg (1358–1411)

Louis III, Elector Palatine (1378–1436)

Louis IV, Elector Palatine (1424–1449)

Rupert, King of the Romans (1352–1410)

Wolfgang of the Palatinate (1494–1558)

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Die Heiliggeistkirche ist die größte und bedeutendste Kirche in Heidelberg. Mit der Apsis zum Marktplatz steht sie mitten in der Heidelberger Altstadt. Ihr Turm beherrscht und prägt – mit dem achteckigen Glockenturm des Schlosses – das Stadtbild. Die aus rotem Neckartäler Sandstein gebaute gotische Hallenkirche mit barockem Dach und barocker Turmhaube gilt als „völlig singuläres Bauwerk von hohem künstlerischen Rang“.

 

Die Kirche wurde von 1398 bis 1515 errichtet und war als Grablege der Kurfürsten von der Pfalz und als repräsentatives Gotteshaus der kurpfälzischen Residenzstadt geplant. Bei schweren Zerstörungen im Pfälzischen Erbfolgekrieg wurden die Fürstengräber verwüstet, sodass sich heute nur noch das Grab des Erbauers des Chors der Kirche, Kurfürst Ruprecht III., der als Ruprecht I. deutscher König war, in der Kirche befindet. Bekannt ist die Heiliggeistkirche auch als einstiger Standort der Bibliotheca Palatina sowie wegen ihrer wechselvollen, eng mit der Geschichte Heidelbergs verknüpften, konfessionellen Geschichte. Von 1706 bis 1936 war die Kirche durch eine Scheidemauer in zwei Teile geteilt. Das Langhaus war protestantisch, der Chor katholisch. Seit 1936 gehört die gesamte Kirche zur Evangelischen Landeskirche in Baden.

 

Kirchenrechtliche Stellung

 

Die Heiliggeistkirche war ursprünglich eine von der Peterskirche kirchenrechtlich abhängige Kapelle. Kurfürst Ruprecht III. erreichte im Zusammenhang mit der Gründung der Universität Heidelberg bei Papst Bonifatius IX., dass die Heiliggeistkirche aus der Abhängigkeit von der Peterskirche gelöst und zur Stiftskirche erhoben wurde. Verschiedene Pfründen, die ursprünglich an anderen Kirchen bestanden, wurden auf die Heiliggeistkirche übertragen und dienten der Finanzierung der jungen Universität, deren Professoren zugleich Stiftsherren an der Heiliggeistkirche waren. Die Einrichtung des Kollegiatstifts war 1413 abgeschlossen. Gleichzeitig fungierte die Heiliggeistkirche als Pfarrkirche für die Altstadt, während die Peterskirche die Funktion einer Pfarrkirche für die Neustadt (die nach der Stadterweiterung von 1392 hinzugekommenen Teile der heutigen Altstadt) übernahm. Kurfürst Ottheinrich löste nach seinem Amtsantritt das Stift auf und übertrug die Pfründen an die Universität, die Heiliggeistkirche wurde zur evangelischen Pfarrkirche.

 

Die Heiliggeistkirche blieb der Universität seit ihrer Gründung, die mit einer Messe in der (damaligen) Heiliggeistkirche gefeiert wurde, verbunden. In der Folgezeit blieb die Heiliggeistkirche Universitätskirche, ihre Tür diente als Schwarzes Brett der Universität. Im 19. Jahrhundert übernahm die Peterskirche die Funktion als Universitätskirche.

 

Baugeschichte

 

Eine dem Heiligen Geist geweihte Kirche am Heidelberger Marktplatz wurde im Jahr 1239 in einer Urkunde des Klosters Schönau zum ersten Mal erwähnt. Weitere Erwähnungen folgen erst in den Jahren 1353 und 1358.

 

Bei der im Jahr 1239 erwähnten Kirche handelte es sich um eine spätromanische Basilika, von welcher im Jahr 1936 eine Apsis ausgegraben wurde. Um 1300, vielleicht aber auch schon zwischen 1278 und 1288, wurde sie zu einer dreischiffigen spätromanischen oder bereits gotischen Kirche umgestaltet. Diese Kirche war halb so lang wie die jetzige und ist durch Ausgrabungen in den Jahren 1886 sowie 1936 bis 1942 gut dokumentiert. Als Grund für diesen Umbau wird ein Brand vermutet, dem ein Hochwasser vorausgegangen sein soll.

 

Kurfürst Ruprecht III. ließ anstelle des bisherigen Chores ab 1398 einen hohen und lichten Hallenchor erbauen. Da Heidelberg unter der Herrschaft Ruprechts I. die alten Zentren Bacharach, Alzey und Neustadt verdrängt hatte und alleinige kurpfälzische Residenzstadt geworden war, sollte es, seinem Rang entsprechend, eine große und repräsentative Kirche erhalten, die auch als künftige Grablege der Pfälzer Kurfürsten bestimmt war. Diese repräsentative Funktion erhielt besonderes Gewicht, als Ruprecht III. zum deutschen König gewählt wurde und der Chor der Heiliggeistkirche dereinst das Grab eines Königs aufnehmen sollte. Der Chor wurde vermutlich schon 1410 zur Beisetzung von Ruprecht III. vollendet.

 

Ursprünglich war der Bau eines neuen Langhauses nicht vorgesehen. Die Kombination eines hohen, stattlichen Chores mit einem älteren und kleineren Langhaus findet man heute noch bei der Sebaldus-Kirche in Nürnberg. Unter Kurfürst Ludwig III. wurde dann doch mit dem Bau eines neuen Langhauses begonnen, das 1441 fertiggestellt und genauso hoch wie der Chor war. Chor und Langhaus bilden äußerlich eine Einheit. Wahrscheinlich schon im Jahr 1441 wurde auch mit dem Bau des Westturms begonnen. Die Arbeiten mussten jedoch bis 1508 unterbrochen werden. Wahrscheinlich 1515 wurde der Turm – damals mit einem spitzen gotischen Helm – vollendet.

 

Als Baumeister nennen Urkunden einen Heidelberger Bürger namens Arnold Rype, der zeitweilig auch Bürgermeister der Stadt war. Im damaligen Sprachgebrauch meinte man mit Baumeister jedoch nicht den Architekten, sondern den – oft ehren- oder nebenamtlich tätigen – Finanzkoordinator. Von den Architekten der Heiliggeistkirche kennt man lediglich Hans Marx, welcher 1423 in einer Urkunde erwähnt wird und bis 1426 an der Kirche arbeitete, sowie Jorg, der bis 1439 zuständig war. Beide beaufsichtigten wahrscheinlich die Arbeiten am Langhaus. Unter Friedrich dem Siegreichen kam der berühmte Turmbauspezialist Niclaus Eseler aus Mainz nach Heidelberg, der vermutlich den Großteil der Arbeiten am Turm der Heiliggeistkirche durchführte, der jedoch erst in der letzten Bauphase von Lorenz Lechler vollendet wurde.

 

Am 22. Mai 1693 wurde die Kirche während des Pfälzischen Erbfolgekrieges schwer beschädigt. Französische Truppen sperrten eine große Menschenmenge in der Heiliggeistkirche ein und steckten die Kirche in Brand. Erst als bereits Glocken, Balken und Gewölbeteile herabstürzten, wurde auf Bitten des jungen reformierten Pfarrers Johann Daniel Schmidtmann eine Tür geöffnet. Bei der Flucht aus der Kirche wurden viele Menschen erdrückt, andere von französischen Soldaten, die die Kirche plünderten, misshandelt.

 

In den Jahren 1698 bis 1700 wurde das Dach in damals moderner gebrochener Form wiederhergestellt. Bei dem Dach handelt es sich um eines der frühesten noch komplett erhaltenen Mansarddächer in Deutschland. 1709 erhielt der Turm seine barocke welsche Haube. Zwischenzeitlich angebrachte Seitenkapellen wurden bei dem Wiederaufbau entfernt.

 

Von 1978 bis 1985 wurde die Kirche umfassend restauriert; dabei wurde die ursprüngliche, auf Rottönen basierende Farbgebung wiederhergestellt.

 

Architektur

 

Die Heiliggeistkirche ist aus sorgfältig behauenen Sandsteinquadern aus dem Neckartal erbaut. Der Hallenumgangschor ist mit einer dreischiffigen Emporenhalle unter einem durchlaufenden Dach verbunden. Eine derartige Emporenhalle findet man in Süddeutschland äußerst selten. Den Durchgang vom Mittelschiff zu den Seitenschiffen bilden sechs Arkaden mit schlanken, kapitelllosen Rundpfeilern. Der gesamte Kirchenraum ist von einem einfachen Kreuzrippengewölbe überdeckt.

 

Das Niveau der nördlichen Empore liegt über dem der Südempore. Ungewöhnlich ist, dass die Seitenschiffe breiter als das Mittelschiff sind. Dies beruht darauf, dass die Emporen der Seitenschiffe von Anfang an dazu bestimmt waren, die Büchersammlung des Kurfürsten Ludwig III. aufzunehmen. Eine weitere Besonderheit liegt darin, dass die Hauptblickachse nicht wie üblich auf ein Fenster im Chor, sondern auf einen Strebepfeiler gerichtet ist. Dieses kühne Motiv der Achsenverschränkung ist bei Kirchenbauten der Parler-Schule oft zu finden. Eine baugeschichtliche Besonderheit stellt die Einziehung des Chormittelschiffs zum Triumphbogen dar.

 

An den Längsseiten der Kirche befinden sich gestufte, bis auf einige Wasserspeier schmucklose Strebevorlagen, dazwischen jeweils zwei übereinander angeordnete Maßwerkfenster, die großen am Chor mit drei oder vier Pässen. Der schlanke Westturm ist in den Baukörper eingezogen und besitzt ein achteckiges Glockengeschoss mit einer markanten Barockhaube.

 

Äußeres

 

Kennzeichnend für das Äußere der Heiliggeistkirche ist eine gewisse Monumentalität unter Verzicht auf Architekturdetails. An der Nordseite des Chors ist eine Sakristei angebaut mit einer gemalten Strahlenkranzmadonna an der Nordostecke als einzigem Schmuck. Das Gemälde stammt aus dem späten Mittelalter und wurde im 19. Jahrhundert sowie im Jahre 1987 restauriert.

 

Aus der Barockzeit stammen jeweils drei nachträglich eingebaute Portale an der Nord- und der Südseite. Über den mittleren Portalen auf Nord- und Südseite ist das Wappen des Kurfürsten Johann Wilhelm und seiner Gemahlin Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici angebracht. Unter diesem Herrscher wurde die Kirche instand gesetzt. Das barocke Hauptportal wurde 1967 an die Nordseite versetzt und durch ein neugestaltetes Portal ersetzt. An der Nordseite am Fischmarkt ist in der Außenwand ein kleiner mit Fischen geschmückter Brunnen eingelassen. Eine Markierung zeigt den Stand des Hochwassers im Jahr 1784 an.

 

Typisch für die Heiliggeistkirche sind die kleinen Ladenanbauten, die zwischen den Strebepfeilern eingefügt sind. Während früher Blumenhändler, Schuhmacher und Bäcker zu finden waren, sind heute neben kleinen Buchläden vor allem Andenkenbuden dort untergebracht. Der Schriftsteller Michael Buselmeier schrieb, dass sich „der Andenkenschund immer dreister breitmacht“. Auf der Südseite sind im Mauerwerk mehrere Brezeln dargestellt. Diese Darstellungen stammen aus dem 15. Jahrhundert und zeigen das richtige Größenmaß an, damit die Kunden überprüfen konnten, ob die von den Bäckern verkauften Brezeln die richtige Größe hatten.

 

Königsgrab

 

Entsprechend der Funktion als kurfürstliche Grablege befanden sich im Chor der Heiliggeistkirche insgesamt 54 Grabmale und Särge von zwischen 1410 und 1685 bestatteten Kurfürsten der Pfalz und von Angehörigen der kurfürstlichen Familien. Als besonders prächtig galt das Renaissance-Grabmal von Ottheinrich, das – schon zu seinen Lebzeiten aufgestellt – wegen der freizügigen Frauenfiguren Anstoß erregte, sodass Ottheinrich es mit Tüchern verhüllen ließ. Auch die Grabmale von Ludwig VI. und von Friedrich IV. waren aufwändig und repräsentativ gestaltet. Karl Ludwig und Karl II. verzichteten demgegenüber auf Grabmäler und ließen sich in schlichten Särgen bestatten.

 

Im Pfälzischen Erbfolgekrieg wurden nahezu alle Grabmäler durch Brand und Plünderungen zerstört. Nur noch die Grabplatte des Kurfürsten Ruprecht III., als Ruprecht I. deutscher König, und seiner Gemahlin Elisabeth von Hohenzollern ist erhalten. Dabei handelt es sich um die Deckplatte der zerstörten Tumba. Das Grab war ursprünglich als Hochgrab in der Mitte des Chores aufgestellt, inzwischen hat die Grabplatte einen Platz im nördlichen Seitenschiff gefunden. Sie stellt eine bedeutende Bildhauerarbeit im hochgotischen „weichen Stil“ dar. Die Gesichter sind idealisiert, der König ist mit Zepter, Krone und Reichsapfel als Zeichen seiner Würde dargestellt. Die schlanken Körper sind in schwere und reiche Gewänder gehüllt, die kunstvolle Falten werfen. Die Gesichter wurden 1693 beschädigt und danach ergänzt. Zu Füßen des Königs liegt ein Löwe als Symbol der Stärke, zu Füßen der Königin ein Hund als Zeichen der Treue. Zwischenzeitlich befand sich die Grabplatte an der Scheidemauer, seit 1936 ist sie an ihrem jetzigen Platz, allerdings verkehrt herum, aufgestellt: Statt wie ursprünglich nach Osten, der aufgehenden Sonne und dem Jüngsten Tag entgegen, blickt der König nun nach Westen.

 

Als der Kurfürst im Jahr 1720 die Residenz nach Mannheim verlegte, wurde die Kirche im heute nicht mehr vorhandenen Heidelberger Karmeliterkloster neue kurfürstliche Grablage. Nach dem Ende der Kurpfalz im Jahr 1803 ließ Kurfürst Maximilian IV. Joseph die Särge nach München überführen, wo sie sich in St. Michael befinden.

 

Im südlichen Seitenschiff befinden sich einige Grabplatten von kurfürstlichen Hofmeistern und Professoren der Universität aus dem 15. Jahrhundert mit deutlichen Spuren des Brandes aus dem Jahr 1693.[28] Sie waren bei den Restaurierungsarbeiten ab 1936 im Kirchenraum gesichert worden und wurden anschließend dort eingemauert.

 

Glasfenster

 

Die mittelalterlichen Glasfenster wurden bei dem Brand im Jahre 1693 zerstört. Die später eingebauten Fenster barsten durch die Druckwelle, die bei der Sprengung der Alten Brücke im März 1945 entstanden war. Alle jetzigen Glasfenster stammen daher aus der Zeit nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg.

 

Das westlichste Bleiglasfenster im südlichen Seitenschiff stammt von Johannes Schreiter und wurde 1984 eingebaut. Ursprünglich hatte Johannes Schreiter eine ganze Serie von Fenstern für die Heiliggeistkirche entworfen. Nach einem heftigen Streit wegen der von einigen als zu progressiv empfundenen Fenster wurde jedoch im Jahr 1986 beschlossen, keine weiteren Fenster von Johannes Schreiter einzubauen. Von den Fenstern, die die Beziehung der modernen Welt und der Wissenschaften zum Glauben reflektieren sollten, wurde nur das Physik-Fenster verwirklicht. Darin erkennt man unter anderem die berühmte einsteinsche Gleichung e = m c2 und das Datum des Atombombenabwurfs auf Hiroshima. Die fünf Fenster im Nordseitenschiff wurden in den Jahren 1999 bis 2001 eingebaut. Sie stammen von Hella Santarossa und behandeln das Wirken des für die Kirche namensgebenden Heiligen Geistes in der Welt. Das Glasfenster über der Westempore ist von Gottfried von Stockhausen aus dem Jahr 1967 und zeigt das Lamm auf dem Buch mit dem sieben Siegeln aus der Offenbarung des Johannes. Seine volle Pracht entfaltet es nur in der Abendsonne.

 

Bibliotheca Palatina

 

Von Beginn an war auf den Emporen die später um die Büchersammlung des Kurfürsten Ludwig III. erweiterte Stiftsbibliothek aufgestellt. Auf den Emporen gab es relativ gute Lichtverhältnisse zum Lesen. Durch wesentliche Ergänzung insbesondere durch Ottheinrich, aber auch unter Johann Casimir, wurde die Bibliothek zu der weltberühmten Bibliotheca Palatina. Während des Dreißigjährigen Krieges wurde die Sammlung im Jahr 1622 von Kurfürst Maximilian I. von Bayern als Kriegsbeute geraubt und dem Papst geschenkt. Von den rund 5000 Büchern und 3524 Handschriften gelangten 1816 nur 885 zurück und befinden sich heute in der Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg. Der Rest wird auch heute noch im Vatikan aufbewahrt. Zur 600-Jahr-Feier der Universität im Jahr 1986 kam eine repräsentative Auswahl der Bücher für eine einmalige Ausstellung vorübergehend an ihren alten Standort zurück. Das berühmteste Stück der Bibliotheca Palatina, die Manessische Liederhandschrift, hatte Kurfürst Friedrich V. mitgenommen, als er 1619 Heidelberg verließ, sodass sie dem Raub entging. Über Umwege gelangte sie nach Paris, 1888 konnte die Heidelberger Universitätsbibliothek sie zurückkaufen.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Der Marktplatz ist ein zentraler Platz in der Altstadt von Heidelberg.

 

Topographie und Geschichte

 

Der Marktplatz ist einer der ältesten Plätze der Stadt und erfüllt seine namensgebende Funktion seit es den Platz als solchen gibt. Im Norden und Süden wird er von Häuserzeilen begrenzt, im Osten des Marktplatzes steht das Rathaus, im Westen wird der Platz von der Heiliggeistkirche dominiert.

 

In der Mitte des Platzes steht der Herkulesbrunnen, der zwischen 1706 und 1709 errichtet wurde und an die enormen Anstrengungen des Wiederaufbaus der Stadt nach den Verwüstungen des Pfälzischen Erbfolgekriegs erinnern soll.

 

Neben seiner Funktion als Ort für den Wochenmarkt diente der Platz in früheren Jahrhunderten auch als Platz für öffentliche Prozesse, wie z. B. gegen Johannes Sylvanus, die Räuberbande des Hölzerlips oder Mannefriedrich im Jahre 1812.

 

Nachdem der Marktplatz zwischenzeitlich auch als Parkplatz neben der damals noch für den Kraftfahrzeugverkehr freigegebenen Hauptstraße diente, ist er seit dem Ende der 1970er Jahre nunmehr nur noch für Fußgänger zugänglich. Im Winter dient der Marktplatz auch regelmäßig als ein Veranstaltungsort des Heidelberger Weihnachtsmarktes der am queeren "Pink Monday" nach dem 1. Advent pink-rosa beleuchtet ist (der andere Platz ist der Universitätsplatz).

 

(Wikipedia)

  

Daily devotional with John Piper

 

Most people in the world have no experience of lasting joy in their lives. We’re on a mission to change that. All of our resources exist to guide you toward everlasting joy in Jesus Christ

 

Topic: The Glory of God

 

The following is a lightly edited transcript.

I have three aims, one of which is predominant. One aim is to set the direction of your little boat, the boat of your life toward the completion of world evangelization or missions and to help you build a mast on the top of the boat of great purpose and to stretch out the sails and let them drop and see them filled with the wind of the Spirit. The second aim is I would like to put ballast in your boat. Ballast makes the boat heavier. It draws more water. And it is, therefore, harder to tip over. And the last thing I would like to do is be a means of that Holy Spirit wind filling those sails and that is God’s work. In fact, it is all God’s work. I can’t do any of those three without him...." John Piper

  

Die Garnisonkirche (ehemals: Hof- und Garnisonkirche) war eine evangelische Kirche in der historischen Mitte von Potsdam, deren Turm von 2017 bis 2024 wiederaufgebaut wurde. Erbaut im Auftrag des preußischen Königs Friedrich Wilhelm I. nach Plänen des Architekten Philipp Gerlach in den Jahren 1730–1735, galt sie als ein Hauptwerk des norddeutschen Barocks. Mit einer Turmhöhe von fast 90 Metern war sie das höchste Bauwerk Potsdams und prägte im Dreikirchenblick zusammen mit der Nikolaikirche und der Heiliggeistkirche das Stadtbild. Gegen Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs wurde sie 1945 durch einen britischen Luftangriff in der sogenannten Nacht von Potsdam schwer beschädigt und brannte aus. Die Regierung der DDR ließ die gesicherte Ruine 1968 sprengen, um auf einem Teil des Grundstücks das Rechenzentrum Potsdam zu errichten.

Anhänger eines Wiederaufbaus des Gotteshauses traten 2004 mit dem Ruf aus Potsdam an die Öffentlichkeit. In der Folge ihres Engagements wird seit 2017 die kontrovers debattierte Rekonstruktion als offene Stadtkirche und internationales Versöhnungszentrum betrieben. Am Ostermontag 2024 wurde im wiedererrichteten Kirchturm die neue Nagelkreuzkapelle eröffnet. Im August 2024 wurde eine Ausstellung zur Geschichte des Ortes und die Aussichtsplattform in 57 Meter Höhe eröffnet. Noch fehlt dem Turm die Haube, deren Bau aber noch 2025 neben dem Turm begonnen werden und die dann bis 2027 auf den Turm gehoben werden soll. Das Kirchenschiff wird vermutlich, anders als ursprünglich geplant, nicht wieder errichtet, stattdessen wird über ein Veranstaltungszentrum oder auch einen Saal für die Stadtverordnetenversammlung diskutiert. Der Kirchturm ist bereits jetzt der höchste Aussichtspunkt Posdam, die Aussichtsterrasse ist barrierefrei zu erreichen.

Der Wiederaufbau des Turms war stark umstritten, und ist es immer noch, vor allem wegen des sogenannten "Tags von Potsdam" 1933. Bei den Reichstagswahlen vom 5. März 1933, die in einem Klima von Rechtsunsicherheit und Gewalt stattfanden, erhofften sich die Nationalsozialisten die absolute Mehrheit der Stimmen. Damit sollte die Selbstauflösung des Parlaments durchgesetzt werden, um endgültig den Weg in die Diktatur beschreiten zu können. In der Folge des Reichstagsbrandes in der Nacht vom 27. auf den 28. Februar beschloss das Reichskabinett auf Vorschlag Hitlers, die Reichstagseröffnung nach Potsdam zu verlegen. Unter Bezug auf die erste Reichstagseröffnung 1871 durch Kaiser Wilhelm I. im Weißen Saal des Berliner Schlosses wurde der 21. März als Termin festgesetzt. Höhepunkt der Feierlichkeiten war ein Staatsakt in der Garnisonkirche mit Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg, Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler, den Mitgliedern seiner Regierung und den Reichstagsabgeordneten mit Ausnahme der Abgeordneten der SPD und der KPD sowie geladenen Gäste aus dem öffentlichen Leben, der Wirtschaft und der Reichswehr. Damit ähnelte die Zusammenkunft dem Empfang der neuen Reichstagsabgeordneten beim Kaiser, wie es vor 1918 der Brauch gewesen war. Der stark von militärischen Traditionen geprägten Staatsakt in Potsdam mit Reden Hindenburgs und Hitlers und einer großen Militärparade wurde reichsweit im Radio live übertragen und von NS-Propagandaminister Joseph Goebbels als Tag von Potsdam inszeniert. Der Handschlag Hitlers und Hindenburgs vor der Garnisonkirche wurde fotografisch festgehalten und später von der NS-Propaganda zum symbolischen Händedruck stilisiert. Die Nazis, die ihre Macht noch nicht gefestigt sahen, sahen im Staatsakt in der Garnisonkirche die Chance, eine Annäherung zwischen Hitler und Hindenburg zu inszenieren und die 1932 im Reichspräsidenten-Wahlkampf noch heftige Spaltung des Mitte-Rechts-Lagers, als überwunden darzustellen. Dieses geschichtliche Ereignis und die Interpretation der Kirche als Symbol des preußischen Militarismus waren vermutlich Hauptgrund für den Abriss der wiederaufbaufähigen Ruine im Jahr 1968 durch die DDR-Behörden gewesen.

  

Dieser Text beruht im Wesentlichen auf Wikipedia

 

The Garrison Church (formerly: Court and Garrison Church) was a Protestant church in the historic centre of Potsdam, whose tower was rebuilt from 2017 to 2024. Built by order of the Prussian King Frederick William I according to plans by the architect Philipp Gerlach between 1730 and 1735, it was considered a major work of North German Baroque architecture. With a tower height of almost 90 metres, it was the tallest building in Potsdam and, together with St. Nicholas' and Holy Spirit Churches, dominated the cityscape in what was known as the 'Three-Churches-View' Towards the end of the Second World War, it was badly damaged by a British air raid in 1945 during the so-called Night of Potsdam and burnt out. The GDR government had the secured ruins blown up in 1968 in order to build the Potsdam Computer Centre on part of the site.

Supporters of rebuilding the church went public with the “'Call from Potsdam”' in 2004. As a result of their commitment, the controversially debated reconstruction as an open city church and international reconciliation centre has been underway since 2017. On Easter Monday 2024, the new Chapel of the Cross of Nails was opened in the rebuilt church tower. In August 2024, an exhibition on the history of the site and the viewing platform at a height of 57 metres were opened. The tower is still missing its spire, but construction will begin next to the tower in 2025 and the spire is due to be raised by 2027. The nave of the church will probably not be rebuilt as originally planned, instead there are discussions about an event centre or a hall for the town council meeting. The church tower is already the highest vantage point in Posdam, and the viewing terrace can be reached barrier-free.

The reconstruction of the tower was, and still is, highly controversial, mainly due to the so-called “Day of Potsdam” in 1933. The Nazis hoped to gain an absolute majority of votes in the Reichstag elections of 5 March 1933, which took place in a climate of legal uncertainty and violence. This was intended to force through the self-dissolution of parliament so that they could finally embark on the path to dictatorship. Following the Reichstag fire on the night of 27/28 February, the Reich Cabinet decided, at Hitler's suggestion, to move the opening of the Reichstag to Potsdam. With reference to the first Reichstag opening in 1871 by Emperor Wilhelm I in the White Hall of the Berlin Palace, 21 March was set as the date. The highlight of the celebrations was a state ceremony in the Garrison Church with Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, the members of his government and the Reichstag deputies, with the exception of the SPD and KPD deputies, as well as invited guests from public life, business and the armed forces. The gathering thus resembled the reception of the new Reichstag deputies by the Kaiser, as had been the custom before 1918. The state ceremony in Potsdam, which was strongly characterised by military traditions, with speeches by Hindenburg and Hitler and a large military parade, was broadcast live on the radio throughout the Reich and staged by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as the Day of Potsdam. Hitler and Hindenburg's handshake in front of the Garrison Church was photographed and later stylised by Nazi propaganda as a symbolic handshake. The Nazis, who did not yet see their power consolidated, saw the act of state in the Garrison Church as an opportunity to stage a rapprochement between Hitler and Hindenburg and to present the still fierce division of the centre-right in the 1932 presidential election campaign as having been overcome. This historical event and the interpretation of the church as a symbol of Prussian militarism were probably the main reasons for the demolition of the rebuildable ruins in 1968 by the GDR authorities.

 

This text is mainly based on Wikipedia

   

Hi friends,

 

So sorry for not visiting your streams for a while but I’m “super” busy these days. Very limited in what I can shoot as you know, I thought of the work above. It is not a photograph but almost a 100% Photoshop work. It is what came to my mind last night and I wanted it simple so except for the Santa painting which I downloaded from the net searching available “free” Xmas cliparts, the rest is entirely Photoshop cs2. There was a signature at the bottom of the Santa painting but as the painting itself was uploaded small, attempts to enlarge it resulted in jagged, pixilated and hence unreadable signature. There was also no tag attached leading to the ID of the painter for I really wished to include his/her name for such a beautiful work of art. If it is a painting of a well known artist then forgive me my ignorance!

  

As you see, it is a visit that we pay to Santa’s house at midnight to find him busy preparing for the Dec. 25…to add to the excitement we realize that he is not only checking the toys and the list of the kids or houses he intends to visit but also dressed in his uniform and I can imagine him playing “Jingle Bells” to fully enjoy the spirit of the season…and what a merry and holy mission it is to bring joy to kids’ hearts…the beautifully visible angels of our sinful world.

  

Merry Christmas to all of you in advance!

   

 

Almighty God and The Church of Almighty God

 

www.holyspiritspeaks.org/about-us/

 

In the Age of Grace, the Lord Jesus promised to His followers, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to myself; that where I am, there you may be also” (Jhn 14:3). He also prophesied, “For as the lightning comes out of the east, and shines even to the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be” (Mat 24:27). In the last days, as promised and foretold by Himself, God has again become flesh and descended to the East of the world—China—to do the work of judgment, chastisement, conquest, and salvation using the word, on the foundation of the redemption work of the Lord Jesus. In this, the prophecies of the Biblethat “Judgment begins with the house of God” and “He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” have also been fulfilled. God’s work of the last days has ended the Age of Grace and ushered in the Age of Kingdom. As the gospel of the kingdom of Almighty God spread rapidly in Mainland China, The Church of Almighty God came into being. As proven by facts, The Church of Almighty God came into being entirely as a result of God’s work of the last days, and was not established by any man. This is because the chosen people in The Church of Almighty God pray in the name of Almighty God, obey His work, and accept all the truths expressed by Him. Thus it is evident that these chosen people believe in Christ who is incarnated in the last days, the practical God who is the Spirit realized in the flesh, instead of believing in a man. Outwardly, Almighty God is nothing more than an ordinary Son of man, but in substance He is the embodiment of God’s Spirit and is the truth, the way, and the life. His work and word are the direct expression of the Spirit of God and are the appearance of God in person. Therefore, He is the practical God who is incarnated.

  

(You must know what the first command that God gave man was; however, you might not know how God’s will among these verses was…...)

 

God’s Word | God’s Command to Adam

 

“(Gen 2:15-17) And Jehovah God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die.

 

Did you get anything out of these verses? How does this part of the scriptures make you feel? Why was “God’s Command to Adam” extracted from the scriptures? Do each of you now have a snapshot of God and Adam in your minds? You can try to imagine: If you were the one in that scene, what would the God in your heart be like? What emotions does this image make you feel? This is a moving and heartwarming picture. Though there is only God and man in it, the intimacy between them is so worthy of envy: God’s profuse love is gratuitously bestowed upon man, surrounds man; man is naive and innocent, unencumbered and carefree, blissfully living under God’s eye; God shows concern for man, while man lives under God’s protection and blessing; every single thing man does and says is closely linked to and inseparable from God.

 

You can say that this is the first command God gave man since creating him. What does this command carry? It carries God’s will, but it also carries His worries for mankind. This is God’s first command, and it is also the first time God worries about man. That is to say, God has had a responsibility toward man since the moment He created him. What is His responsibility? He has to protect man, to look after man. He hopes man can trust and obey His words. This is also God’s first expectation of man. It is with this expectation that God says the following: “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die.” These simple words represent God’s will. They also reveal that God’s heart has already begun to show concern for man. Among all things, only Adam was made in God’s image; Adam was the only living thing with God’s breath of life; he could walk with God, converse with God. That is why God gave him such a command. God made it very plain in this command what man can do, as well as what he cannot do.

 

In these few simple words, we see God’s heart. But what kind of heart do we see? Is there love in God’s heart? Does it have any concern in it? God’s love and concern in these verses can not only be appreciated by people, but it can also well and truly be felt. Isn’t that so? Now that I’ve said these things, do you still think these are just a few simple words? Not so simple, right? Could you see this before? If God personally told you these few words, how would you feel inside? If you are not a humane person, if your heart is ice cold, then you wouldn’t feel anything, you wouldn’t appreciate God’s love, and you wouldn’t try to understand God’s heart. But if you are a person with a conscience, with humanity, then you would feel differently. You would feel warmth, you would feel cared for and loved, and you would feel happiness. Isn’t that right? When you feel these things, how will you act toward God? Would you feel attached to God? Would you love and respect God from the bottom of your heart? Would your heart grow closer to God? You can see from this just how important God’s love is to man. But what is even more crucial is man’s appreciation and comprehension of God’s love. In fact, doesn’t God say a lot of similar things during this stage of His work? But do the people of today appreciate God’s heart? Can you grasp the will of God I just spoke of? You can’t even discern God’s will when it is this concrete, tangible, and realistic. That’s why I say you don’t have real knowledge and understanding of God. Is this not true? That is all we will communicate on this section.”

 

from “God’s Work, God’s Disposition, and God Himself I” in The Word Appears in the Flesh

 

Also Recommended: Gospel Books

  

Admirers learned of its loss when they hoped to see the phenomenon at exactly 4:33 pm on Sunday, when the Earth's axis was directly perpendicular to the sun -- marking the first day of spring.

STRASBOURG : The stained glass at a cathedral in eastern France will no longer produce a distinctive green ray seen just twice a year, on the spring and autumn equinoxes, after the precise pane was replaced...

 

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The green equinoxial light of Strasbourg cathedral...The sun darkens its light from Chaldea to the base of the midnight mountain. But men do not notice it, they are blinded by the appearance of falsehood, by the Appearance of crept gold.

 

The light of the ray indicates a new time and certainly that the emperor Guillaume in 1871 wished to find a symbolych with the architect Klotz, and Knauth took again this Babylonian symbolism in the Egyptian writing. The bible blends with the book of Enoch and the Zohar, so the green ray is a bit like announcing a new time. The concave structure of the foot stems from a piece of kheops that was probably also used to illuminate the royal tomb in the heart of a stone mountain. we find the story of Goethe's Green Serpent. Many good people fall, many deceitful people rise up in their place. Damaged her horrible breath reverses most people's thoughts. What is pure will go down, what is unclean will go up. What was downstairs will be upstairs; the places swap evil and good. People will be drunk. Delusions will rule the world. to the land of the north.The light of the north is the star that guides us, it should be noted that the green ray comes from the east.(orient) From whose maltreated earth the deliverer ascends, the avenger: The Third Sargon! And from north to south, the lone righteous shall rise up and will be mighty, and will strike the fire like a storm and carry it forward, all of which burns badly everywhere, yes, everywhere. He would set the course that had to be set - on behalf of the Godhead - so that fulfil what is prophesied: the birth of the New Golden Age! The Germans had to do it. they who are divinely destined and called to do so, they had to establish the new kingdom - not but for the whole world! Presumably in August of 1917, four men and women met at the Viennese café "Schopenhauer" and a woman to set the course for the future of humanity. It was the German adventurers and esoteric Karl Haushofer and Rudolf von Sebottendorff, the medium Maria Orschitsch from Zagreb. the young engineer and pilot Lothar Waiz and the prelate Gernot von der Geheimnisen "Community of the Knights Templar Heirs" (Societas Templi Marcioni).Your spokesman was certainly Rudolf von Sebottendorff, and I think we can reconstruct quite well, what he may have first recited to the Templar - Prelate in order to present his and his friends to prove their skills:How our solar year is divided into twelve months according to the twelve moon orbits - i. e.

the twelve zodiacs of astrology - the orbit around the great central sun is the same of our Milky Way into twelve animal or Tyre districts; this is done in cooperation with the

precession, the conical inherent motion of the earth due to the inclination of the axis, which is different ages of the world. Such a "cosmic month" lasts about 2155 years, the

"cosmic year" is about 25,860 years.Now we are at the end of the Fish Age and the beginning of the Aquarian Age - the

New Golden Age, in which the Millennial Kingdom of Peace will also come, from in the twentieth chapter of John Revelation.However, there is not only a normal change of age ahead, but the end of a cosmic year and the start of a completely new one. We have completed the approximately 25,860-year-old precession and change from the darkest, weakest, darkest age, the age of fish, into the the age of Aquarius. At the same time as the age of fish, the "potash -

Yuga ", the age of sin according to the indo-Aryan definition.

 

The green ray is therefore a clock to measure the time that separates us from the golden age.

 

Due to the combined effect of precession and elliptical orbit around the large central sun, wich now stands a completely different divine - cosmic radiation and a dramatic of the circumstances on Earth. This is especially important because the large central sun - the Black Sun "of ancient myths - is to be seen as a source of power for the Godhead, whose

will soon exercise its influence undisturbed.All changes in the age have led to major changes in political, religious and social life.of this scale. This will now be the subject of a new cosmic year at the upcoming change of age. be much stronger. Anything that is not suitable for the new age of light will perish. A completely new order will take hold of the whole earth. We are now in the in the final stage of the final battle in the great intercosmic battle of the world. The Powers of Darkness re-grow up again to fight wildly. Just as consistently and with the weapons of light, we must face it.

  

In June 1984, Mr Maurice Rosart, an ENSAIS engineer, revealed in the course of his of a conference he gave, whom he had discovered in the Cathedral a phenomenon of exceptional luminous light and rare beauty, which could not a priori be the fruit of a coincidence.In fact, this exceptional green light is caused by the rays of the sun which pass through the green transparent glass of the left foot of Judah, ancestor of Christ, appearing in the second and third parts window of the fourth span at the southern triforium. It should be noted that similar luminous manifestations of light have been shown in the following ways especially during the solstices, in other cathedrals and in other cathedrals. especially at Notre-Dame de Chartes. To determine the instant of a phenomenon caused by the sun comes back to endo an astronomical analysis. Indeed, the interplay of shadows and light produced by the sun, through a painted stained glass window, is a function of the position and the motion of this star on the celestial vault. Astronomical analysis of the equinoxial luminous phenomenon has shown that that the green ray, contrary to what had been assumed to be a premium mentioned by the press, passes over the head of Christ about one hour before noon, i. e. before the moment when the the sun occupies the highest position during the day, and one or two days after the spring equinox and one or two days after the spring equinox days after the fall equinox. In addition, due to the presence of obstructions that obstruct the operation of the roof of the south sill and the triforium gallery, the green light is not visible, from the axis of the pulpit, around the equinoxes, that for a period of approximately one month, i. e. approximately 12 days before and 20 days after the spring equinox, as well as 20 days after the spring equinox before and 12 days after the fall equinox. From the results of the astronomical analysis, we can deduce various interpretations of the phenomenon according to the moment when it is considered to occur.

period of visibility of the light or architectural motif, and

the green ray. The mechanism that makes up the green plate on Judah's left foot,more transparent than the other parts of the stained glass, and the vertical axis of the cross with its center can be considered as a sundialquinoxial. It's a way to spot the time of the change of season: winter-spring passage around 20 March and summer passage fall around 22 September. The whole thus constitutes in some respects

sort of an astronomical clock. The green ray is only visible from the axis of the pulpit during a period of one month at each equinox. During this period, it scans the whole pulpit from top to bottom in spring and from bottom to top in

fall. The phenomenon can thus be interpreted as a general

value of the pulpit and jewel of flamboyant gothic art that it

constitutes. The ray of light passes over Christ's head in the vicinity of the spring equinox near the Easter feast. So we can to consider the green ray as illuminating and radiating Christ on the the cross of Golgotha on the eve of his resurrection on the morning of Easter morning at Easter.

new light of spring. Luminous effects caused by stained glass were observed in various cathedrals where medieval glass artists searched for express their mystical and religious feelings. What about the effect optics in the Cathedral of Strasbourg? Is the phenomenon the fruit of an intention on the part of the master glassmaker, creator of the stained-glass window of Judah, or is it just a coincidence whose effect is particularly significant happy?To try to answer these questions, we must look back to the time which created the stained glass window of Judah and the artist who designed the cardboard.In 1843, Louis Schneegans and Frédéric Klein drew up an inventory of stained glass windows. With regard to triforium, the southern triforium, they noted that in the first three eastern fenestrelles were the busts of Jesus Christ, Melchi and Semei. The warheads of other fenestrelles ornaments decorated with geometric, floral and foliated ornaments. The medallions contained busts, stars, clovers and other medallions motives. As for the window currently occupied by Jacob and Judah in the green ray phenomenon, they noted that in the a clover and in the warheads a leaf was found in a clover, and in the warheads a erased drawing, foreign pieces and blackened glasses. These canopies were remodeled from 1848 to 1850 by Ritter and Baptiste.

Petit-Gérard by applying the conservation principle. They have and supplemented by floral motifs such as those which

still exist today in the windows of the sixth bay of the

South triforium. The busts of Christ, Melchi and Semei were at this time in this church. opportunity taken and put in deposit at the shop of the Work of Notre-Dame

in the Impasse des Trois-Gâteaux. Of course the two lower panels of the canopies, which at the time were filled with white glass, were equipped with painted stained-glass windows. But as early as 1848, even before the restoration was undertaken, the abb. Gerber and others felt that the genealogy of the Christ according to St Luke, part of which was restored by Marshal and Gugnon from 1847 to 1848, was already present in the northern triforium. From 1873 to 1875

floral motifs made a quarter of a century ago have been

replaced by footed characters from the genealogy of Christ' s Melea to God according to the Gospel of St. Luke (3:31-38) according to the Gospel of St. Luke. Vulgate Clementine who was the authoritative Vulgate at that time. The work has

executed by Pierre, son of Baptiste Petit-Gérard and Ferdinand Huguelin on the basis of the cartons drawn by the painter "d' histoire". Louis Steinheil Parisian but born in Strasbourg.

 

The stained glass window of Judah which

was received by Gustave Klotz on August 8,1875.

In 1897, the Ott-Frères company was commissioned to restore these stained glass windows consisting of reusing the lead plating with reuse of all old glasses even broken and complemented by glass antique.

 

At the beginning of the last war, in September 1939, most of the stained-glass windows were placed under the direction of architect C. Czarnowsky Historic Monuments. Stained glass crates were sent the Prefecture of the Dordogne Department and finally put in security at the Château de Haute Fort. In the autumn of 1940, the stained-glass windows were claimed by the authorities German occupiers. They were brought back to Strasbourg, and put in storage

in the chapels of the Cathedral and in the cellars of the Lycée Fustel de Coulanges, the Grand Séminaire and the Maison de l' Oeuvre NotreDame. In the summer of 1941, the Interim Museums Directorate had an Archaeological and photographic survey of all the glass windows.Unfortunately, the collection of photographs has disappeared. However, it is

is possible that it still exists and may be stored somewhere

in Germany.After the bombardments by the American Air Force on August 11 and 25 On 1 September 1944, the German authorities responsible for safeguarding the

artistic treasures decided to transfer the stained-glass windows to a salt plant Heilbronn. For the pulpit whose centre of the cross is swept by the green equinoxial light, it was carved and installed from 1485 1487. It was removed in 1793 and restored in 1804 probably exactly at its old location. Since then, she hasn't had any not even during the last three wars. As for the roof of the southern sill, whose roof limits the duration of the roof. green light, it has been the subject of extensive work by 1843 to 1844, when it was covered with copper plates in Replacement of tile roofing. Since then, it has not been the subject of than repair and maintenance work. After the war, in September 1945, the boxes containing the glass windows were recovered and brought back to Strasbourg. In 1946, before their panels of each stained glass window, particularly those of the southern triforium, were photographed by the Taon company for the first time.

account of the central administration of the Monuments Service History. A collection of photographs is currently kept at the Photographic Archives of Historic Monuments at Fort Saint Saint Cyr 78390 Bois dArcy. The pictures of the three panels of the Judah stained glass window wear the M. H. number. 302,325 to 302,327. Some of the panels, including those in Judah's stained glass window, were a new

photographed by Riotte between 1947 and 1950 after their restoration by the Ott-Frères House. The unnumbered photos are currently kept at the Bas-Rhin Departmental Architecture Service. Around 1950, the exact year could not be determined, and the stained-glass windows of the

triforium were rested by Ott-Frères. During this operation, the interversions have occurred. A comparative study of the disposition with the continuation of the ancestors of Christ according to the Gospel of St Luke (3,23-38) in accordance with the Vulgate Clementine has made it possible to locate

these interversions. They affect more than a third of the stained-glass windows in both galleries of triforium, but fortunately they do not concern the stained-glass windows in the fourth bay of the southern triforium, and in particular

not the position of Judah who intervenes in the phenomenon of light equinoxial green.

 

Around 1972, Maurice Rosart observed for the first time that the equinoxial green light caused by the sun's rays.

sun rays passing through the glass plate representing the foot left of Judah. Now this piece of glass, which is tinted green in the the mass, kept its transparency. So she seems to have been treated different from the other parts of the stained glass.

 

This fact was confirmed, after an on-site examination in February 1985, by Mr. Hubert Werlé, glass painter in Haguenau. In addition, this glassmaker is of the opinion that the part in question is made of antique glass of manufacture and it appears to have been introduced into the stained glass window while it was in place, probably during a repair. Transparency measures carried out in September 1985 with the help of a luxmeter showed that the ratio between the transparency of the foot. The right foot and left foot is about 1 to 10. the same glass of the right foot is treated in such a way that it is possible to see the glass of the right foot. so that the formation of a light beam is impossible.In addition, a comparison of the current state of the stained glass window with its condition reveals by photographs taken between 1946 and 1950 shows the the left foot of Judah at that time wore the foot neck trace whereas at present there is no longer such a trace. The between 1950 and 1972 and it turns out that the repair was carried out in the period 1950-1972. date and 1st reason for the repair as well as the date of the repair. glass quality of the plate that the glassmaker replaced.

 

We therefore consulted with Fernand Guri, architect of the

Retired buildings in France and Messrs. Lucien Schaeffer,

master glassmaker, and Frédéric Bangratz, glass painter, two retirees from the Ott-Frères House. The three persons contacted were of the opinion that, given

the period of time during which the repair appears to have been carried out, the the glass replacement was certainly made by the Ott Frères company, but they don't remember. They believe that the employment of a untreated glass proves that the work performed was in the area of

the ongoing maintenance of stained glass windows and that it will therefore be difficult to find the date and reason for the repair. In fact, it will be as much more difficult than the archives of the Ott-Frères House concerning this

no longer exist. But we do think we should find out

details of the remedy and the date of the resting

of the triforium stained-glass windows after 1946 in the M. H. archives. conserved at the Bas-Rhin Departmental Architecture Service.

From this, a number of conclusions can be drawn

The stained glass window of Judah, which is at the origin of the equinoxial green ray, was created by the Holy Spirit.

around 1875. It was therefore posed after the restoration of the pulpit in the Cathedral in 1804 and after the last major works at the the roof of the southern sill, which was completed in 1843 1844. This stained glass window is therefore very recent and modern. In addition, its directors are well known.Therefore, if the equinoxial luminous phenomenon was really the not by chance, the authors could not be the result of an intentional that, on the one hand, the glass painters Pierre Petit-Gérard and Ferdinand Huguelin and, on the other hand, the history painter Louis Steinheil. He's got born in Strasbourg and author of the stained-glass cardboard could have be aware of an equinoxial optical effect caused by the probably before 1848, at the time when the sun's rays were first observed. The lower panels of the lancets were still made of white glass. Examination of Judah's cardboard could provide some clues in this regard. But this cardboard can't be found. The same applies to coloured drawings stained-glass windows of the southern triforium, which were to be executed after the completion of panels in accordance with Gustave's instructions Klotz.

 

On the other hand, the examination of the photographs of the lower stained-glass panel of Judah performed by Taon in 1946 and Riotte between 1947 and 1950 presumes that the treatment of the glass of the two feet of Judah was practically the same since each piece bears the trace of the elbow-foot

The transparency of the glass of Judah's left foot was therefore significantly increased as a result of the replacement of the original glass by a untreated glass, probably in case of repair, at least of the stained glass window that must have taken place at the around 1950. The phenomenon of green equinoxial light

seems to have been strengthened or perhaps even created during this period.repair.As a result, it can be concluded at first glance that the phenomenon of equinoxial green light is very likely to have a purely accidental nature.But there are still some doubts. First of all, we don't have found in the archives of the recent repair of the stained glass window of

Judah. Secondly, we have so far ignored the attitude of

of the character of Judah. According to Mr. Maurice's interpretation, this one Rosart, direct his gaze on the circular medallion, which could represent the solar disk, and shows the solar disk with the index finger of the right hand.

left foot of green color which, him, is at the origin of the green ray. What is the significance of this attitude? Should it attract attention? on the luminous phenomenon of the equinox? The current state of our knowledge doesn't allow you to say it!

In summary, if indeed the phenomenon of green light

quinoxial was due only to a combination of circumstances, chance would have done things really well and would have caused an effect particularly happy and wonderful, attracting each time a lot of more and more admirers.

 

Louis Tschaen

Bulletin de la Cathédrale de Strasbourg, XVII, 1986

 

michel.lalos.free.fr/cadrans_solaires/autres_depts/bas_rh...

Aberystwyth is a university and seaside town as well as a community in Ceredigion, Wales. Located in the historic county of Cardiganshire, Aberystwyth means "the mouth of the Ystwyth". Aberystwyth University has been a major educational location in Wales since the establishment of University College Wales in 1872.

 

The town is situated on Cardigan Bay on the west coast of Wales, near the confluence of the River Ystwyth and Afon Rheidol. Following the reconstruction of the harbour, the Ystwyth skirts the town. The Rheidol passes through the town.

 

The seafront, with a pier, stretches from Constitution Hill at the north end of the Promenade to the harbour at the south. The beach is divided by the castle. The town is divided into five areas: Aberystwyth Town; Llanbadarn Fawr; Waunfawr; Llanbadarn; Trefechan; and the most populous, Penparcau.

 

In 2011 the population of the town was 13,040. This rises to nearly 19,000 for the larger conurbation of Aberystwyth and Llanbadarn Fawr.

  

Aberystwyth Bay from a 1748 survey by Lewis Morris (1701–1765)

The distance to Swansea is 55 miles (89 km); to Shrewsbury 60 miles (97 km); to Wrexham 63 miles (101 km); to Cardiff 76 miles (122 km); and to London 180 miles (290 km).

 

Aberystwyth is a university town and tourist destination, and forms a cultural link between North Wales and South Wales. Constitution Hill, scaled by the Aberystwyth Cliff Railway, gives access to panoramic views and to other attractions at the summit, including a camera obscura. Scenic Mid Wales landscape within easy reach of the town includes the wilderness of the Cambrian Mountains, whose valleys contain forests and meadows which have changed little in centuries. A convenient way to access the interior is by the preserved narrow-gauge Vale of Rheidol Railway.

 

Although the town is relatively modern, there are a number of historic buildings, including the remains of the castle and the Old College of Aberystwyth University nearby. The Old College was originally built and opened in 1865 as a hotel, but after the owner's bankruptcy the shell of the building was sold to the university in 1867.

 

The new university campus overlooks Aberystwyth from Penglais Hill to the east of the town centre. The station, a terminus of the main railway, was built in 1924 in the typical style of the period, mainly in a mix of Gothic, Classical Revival, and Victorian architecture.

 

The town is the unofficial capital of Mid Wales, and several institutions have regional or national offices there. Public bodies located in the town include the National Library of Wales, which incorporates the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales, one of six British regional film archives. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales maintains and curates the National Monuments Record of Wales (NMRW), providing the public with information about the built heritage of Wales. Aberystwyth is also the home to the national offices of UCAC and Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (Welsh Language Society), and the site of the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research, the Welsh Books Council and the offices of the standard historical dictionary of Welsh, Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru. A purpose built Welsh Government office and an adjoining office of Ceredigion County Council are also located in the town.

 

At the 2001 census, the population of the town was 15,935. This reduced to 13,040 at the 2011 census. Including neighbouring Llanbadarn Fawr, the population was 16,420, and the greater Aberystwyth conurbation having a population of 18,749 in 2011

 

Aberystwyth experiences an oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification Cfb) similar to almost all of the United Kingdom. This is particularly pronounced due to its west coast location facing the Irish Sea. Air undergoes little land moderation and so temperatures closely reflect the sea temperature when winds are coming from the predominant onshore (westerly) direction. The nearest Met Office weather station is Gogerddan, 3 miles to the northeast, and at a similar elevation.

 

The absolute maximum temperature is 34.6 °C (94.3 °F), set during July 2006. This is also the July record maximum for all of Wales, suggesting that the area's low lying situation, aided by a possible föhn effect when winds are offshore can act to achieve high temperatures on occasion. Typically the warmest day will average 28.0 °C (82.4 °F) and 5.6 days will achieve a maximum of 25.1 °C (77.2 °F) or above.

 

The absolute minimum temperature is −13.5 °C (7.7 °F), set in January 2010. Typically 39.8 days will register an air frost.

 

Rainfall averages 1,112 mm (44 in) a year, with over 1mm recorded on 161 days. All averages refer to the 1981–2010 period.

 

There is evidence that during the Mesolithic Age the area of Tan-y-Bwlch at the foot of Pen Dinas (Penparcau) was used as a flint knapping floor for hunter-gatherers making weapons from flint that was deposited as the ice retreated.

 

The remains of a Celtic fortress on Pen Dinas (or more correctly 'Dinas Maelor'), a hill in Penparcau overlooking Aberystwyth, indicates that the site was inhabited before 700 BC. On a hill south of the present town, across the River Ystwyth, are the remains of a medieval ringfort believed to be the castle from which Princess Nest was abducted. This rare survival is now on private land and can only be accessed by arrangement.

 

The recorded history of Aberystwyth may be said to date from the building of a fortress in 1109 by Gilbert Fitz Richard (grandfather of Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow, the Cambro-Norman lord notable for his leading role in the Norman invasion of Ireland). Gilbert Fitz Richard was granted lands and the lordship of Cardigan by Henry I, including Cardigan Castle. The fortress built in Aberystwyth was located about a mile and a half south of today's town, on a hill over the south bank of the Ystwyth River, thus giving the settlement of Aberystwyth its name. The location is now known as Tan-Y-Castell.

 

Aberystwyth was usually under the control of the princes of Deheubarth, but its position close to the border with Gwynedd and Powys left it vulnerable to attacks from the leaders of those polities. The town was attacked by Gwenwynwyn ab Owain in 1197, an assault in which Maelgwn ap Rhys was captured. Llywelyn the Great attacked and seized the town in late 1208, building a castle there before withdrawing.

 

Edward I replaced Strongbow's castle in 1277, after its destruction by the Welsh. His castle was, however, built in a different location, at the current Castle Hill, the high point of the town. Between the years 1404 and 1408 Aberystwyth Castle was in the hands of Owain Glyndŵr but finally surrendered to Prince Harry (the future King Henry V of England). Shortly after this, the town was incorporated under the title of Ville de Lampadarn (the ancient name of the place being Llanbadarn Gaerog or the fortified Llanbadarn, to distinguish it from Llanbadarn Fawr, the village one mile (1.6 km) inland. It is thus styled in a Royal charter granted by Henry VIII but, by Elizabeth I's time, the town was invariably named Aberystwyth in all documents.

 

From 1639 to 1642, silver coins were minted at Aberystwyth Castle on behalf of the Royal Mint, using silver from local mines. £10,500 in currency was produced, equivalent to 2.5 million silver pennies.

 

In 1649, Parliamentarian troops razed the castle, although portions of three towers still exist. In 1988, an excavation within the castle area revealed a complete male skeleton, deliberately buried. Though skeletons rarely survive in Wales' acidic soil, this skeleton was probably preserved by the addition of lime from the collapsed building. Affectionately known as "Charlie" and now housed in the Ceredigion Museum in the town, he probably dates from the English Civil War period, and is likely to have died during the Parliamentarian siege. His image is featured in one of nine mosaics created to adorn the castle's walls.

 

The development of Aberystwyth's Port contributed to the town’s economic development during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Port improvements were carried out in both 1780 and 1836, with a new Customs House constructed in 1828. Rural industries and craftsmen were also an important part of life in this country town. The local trade directory for 1830 shows that there were in Aberystwyth: Twenty boot makers, eight bakers, two corn millers, eleven carpenters and joiners, one cooper, seven tailors, two dressmakers, two straw hat makers, two hat makers, three curriers, four saddlers, two tinsmiths, six maltsters, two skinners, four tanners, eight stonemasons, one brewer, four lime burners, three shipwrights, three wheelwrights, five cabinet makers, one nail maker, one rope maker and one sail maker.

 

The Cambrian Railways line from Machynlleth reached Aberystwyth in 1864, closely followed by rail links to Carmarthen, which resulted in the construction of the town's impressive station. The Cambrian line opened on Good Friday 1869, the same day that the new 292 metres (958 ft) Royal Pier (designed by Eugenius Birch) opened, attracting 7,000 visitors.

 

The railway's arrival gave rise to something of a Victorian tourist boom, with Aberystwyth becoming a significant holiday destination for working and middle class families from South Wales in particular. The town was once even billed as the "Biarritz of Wales". During this time, a number of hotels and fine townhouses were built including the Queens Hotel, later renamed Swyddfa'r Sir (County Office) when used as offices by the town council, and most recently used as the external scenes of the police station in the television show Hinterland. One of the largest of these hotels, "The Castle Hotel", was never completed as a hotel but, following bankruptcy, was sold cheaply to the Welsh National University Committee, a group of people dedicated to the creation of a Welsh University. The University College of Wales (later to become Aberystwyth University) was founded in 1872 in this building.

 

Aberystwyth was a contributory parliamentary borough until the Third Reform Act, which merged its representation into that of the county in 1885.

 

In 1895, various businessmen who had been behind the Aberystwyth New Harbour Company formed the Aberystwyth Improvement Company (AIC) to take over the works of the defunct Bourne Engineering & Electrical. In 1896, the AIC completed three projects: the new landside pavilion for the Royal Pier; built the Cambria Hotel (later the United Theological College) and formed Constitution Hill Ltd, to develop a Victorian theme park. Chief engineer George Croydon Marks designed all the AIC developments, including the United Kingdom's second longest funicular railway, which takes passengers up a 50% gradient to a park and camera obscura.

 

Aberystwyth hosted the National Eisteddfod in 1865, 1916, 1952 and 1992.

 

On the night of Friday, 14 January 1938, a storm with estimated wind speeds of up to 90 mph (140 km/h) struck the town. Most of the promenade was destroyed, along with 200 feet (60 m) of the pier. Many properties on the seafront were damaged, with every property from the King's Hall north affected; those on Victoria Terrace suffered the greatest damage. Work commenced on a protective coffer dam which continued into 1940, with total costs of construction coming to £70,000 (equivalent to £2.5 million today).

 

Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (Welsh Language Society) held their historic first protest on Trefechan Bridge in Aberystwyth, on 2 February 1963. The first independent Welsh Evangelical Church was established in Aberystwyth (see Evangelical Movement of Wales).

 

On 1 March 2005, Aberystwyth was granted Fairtrade Town status.

 

In March 2009 mayor Sue Jones-Davies, who had played the role of Judith Iscariot in the film Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), organised a charity screening of the film. Principal actors Terry Jones and Michael Palin also attended. There is a popular, but incorrect, urban myth that the town had banned the film (as some authorities did) when it was first released.

 

During the aftermath storms from Cyclone Dirk on Friday 3 January 2014, the town was one of the worst hit in Wales. Properties on the adjoining promenade were then evacuated for the next five days, including 250 students from the University. Ceredigion Council appealed to the Welsh Assembly Government for funds, whilst Natural Resources Wales undertook surveys and emergency preventative measures.

 

North Parade, Aberystwyth was reported to be the most expensive street in Wales in 2018, based on property prices.

 

Penglais Nature Park (Welsh: Parc Natur Penglais) is a woodland overlooking the town. The park was created in 1995 from a disused quarry and surrounding woodland that had formerly been part of the Richardes family estate. In spring a carpet of bluebells bloom, in common with the many other bluebell woods.

 

The park covers 27 acres (11 ha). It was the first Nature reserve to open in Ceredigion and is the only UNESCO Man and Biosphere urban reserve in Wales.

 

Aberystwyth's local government administration has a two-tier structure consisting of two separate councils. As local government is a devolved matter in Wales, the legislation for both Councils is a responsibility of the Senedd.

 

Aberystwyth Town Council is the first tier of local government, which is the closest to the general public; there are 19 elected town councillors from five wards. The last elections were held in 2022. The council is responsible for cycle paths, public footpaths, CCTV, public Wi-Fi, bus shelters, parks, gardens (including the castle grounds and the skateboard park) and allotments. The council is a statutory body which is consulted regarding planning decisions in the town area and makes recommendations to the planning authority, Ceredigion County Council. The Town Council is also involved in leisure, tourism, business (through providing more than half of Menter Aberystwyth's funding in grants), licence applications, wellbeing and environmental health, recycling and refuse collection.

 

A borough council existed in Aberystwyth from 1832 and the Aberystwyth School Board was established in 1870.

 

Ceredigion County Council is another statutory body incorporated by Act of Parliament. It is the second tier of local government in the area and is a unitary authority with a wide range of powers and responsibility. The Council deals with roads (except trunk roads), street lighting, some highways, social services, children and family care, schools and public libraries. Aberystwyth elects six of the 42 councillors in five separate wards (Bronglais, Central, North and Rheidol wards elect one councillor each while Penparcau ward elects two).

 

Aberystwyth has five Senedd members, one of whom (Elin Jones) was elected as a constituency MS for Ceredigion, and four who are elected on the regional list for Mid and West Wales.

 

The town is in the Ceredigion constituency for elections to the House of Commons. Since June 2017, Aberystwyth's MP has been Plaid Cymru's Ben Lake.

 

The first ever public library in Aberystwyth was opened in Compton House, Pier Street on 13 October 1874. In 1882 the library was moved to the Assembly Rooms which were leased to the council for 21 years. The lease expired in 1903 and the library returned to Pier Street, this time to the Old Banking Library at the corner with Eastgate Street, although this was short lived. A Carnegie library was built in Aberystwyth in 1905, with a grant of £3,000. Located in Corporation Street, it was designed by the architect Walter Payton of Birmingham, who was one of 48 who entered the competition to design the building. It was formally opened on 20 April 1906 by Mrs Vaughan Davies, wife of the local MP. The town library moved to Aberystwyth Town Hall, now known as Canolfan Alun R. Edwards, following the building's refurbishment in 2012.

 

The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, is the national legal deposit library of Wales. Established in 1907, it is a Welsh Government sponsored body. According to Cyril Evans, the library's centenary events co-ordinator, "The library is considered to be one of the world's greatest libraries, and its international reputation is certainly something that all Welsh men and women are intensely ... proud of". Welsh is the main medium of communication within the organisation; it aims to deliver all public services in Welsh and English.

 

Aberystwyth Arts Centre is one of the largest and busiest arts centres in Wales. It encompasses a 312-seat theatre, 900-seat concert hall, 125-seat cinema, and has accompanied studio, galleries, plus public spaces which include cafes and a bar. Arad Goch is an Arts Council funded community theatre and art gallery based in the town. The premises holds a theatre, gallery, several art studios and meeting rooms, and a darkroom.

 

The town has three works by the Italian sculptor Mario Rutelli; the War Memorial on the promenade, the Tabernacle Chapel Memorial on Powell Street, and the statue of Edward VIII as Prince of Wales in the Old College. All are Grade II listed structures. Rutelli’s connection with the town came through Thomas Jenkins of Aberystwyth, who ran a shipping business. Jenkins was a frequent visitor to Italy where he admired Rutelli’s work. Jo Darke, in her work, The Monument Guide to England and Wales: A National Portrait in Bronze and Stone, describes Rutelli’s war memorial as “striking and rare” and suggests that the life-size statue of Edward VIII is the only recorded example.

 

Aberystwyth has a live music scene which has produced bands and artists such as: The Crocketts; The Hot Puppies; Murry the Hump; and The Lowland Hundred. The University Music Centre promotes a varied programme for instrumentalists, singers and listeners from the university and the wider community. The University chamber choir, The Elizabethan Madrigal Singers, have been singing in the town since 1950 and continue to hold a number of concerts throughout the year. Aberystwyth gives its name to a well known hymn tune composed by Joseph Parry.

 

Aberystwyth RFC is the local rugby union club and acts as a feeder club to professional side Scarlets. It was formed in 1947 and for the 2017/18 season played in the WRU Division One West. Aberystwyth Town F.C. is a semi-professional football club that was formed in 1884. The team currently compete in the Cymru Premier, Wales' top division. The town also has a cricket club which plays in local leagues, an athletics club (founded 1955), and boxing club in Penparcau. The town's golf course opened in 1911.

 

Ceredigion, the county in which Aberystwyth is located, is one of the four most Welsh-speaking counties in Wales and remained majority Welsh speaking until the 2011 census. Since the town's growth as a seaside resort in the Victorian era, it has been more anglicised than its hinterland and the rest of the county in general. The university has also attracted many English-speaking students from England, non-Welsh speaking parts of Wales and elsewhere. The 1891 census recorded that, of the 6635 inhabitants who completed the language section, 3482 (52.5%) were bilingual, 1751 (26.4%) were Welsh monoglots, and 1402 people (21.1%) were returned as English monoglots. Ceredigion (then named Cardiganshire) as a whole was 95.2% Welsh-speaking and 74.5% monoglot Welsh. Although the town remained majority Welsh-speaking for many more decades, English had already replaced Welsh in certain domains, such as entertainment and tourism. By 1961, only 50.0% of the town's population could speak Welsh, compared to 79.5% for Cardiganshire as a whole; by 1971, these numbers had fallen to 44.9% and 67.6% respectively. The 2001 census reported that, in the seven wards of Aberystwyth, 39% of the residents self-identified as able to speak or read or write Welsh. This is lower than Ceredigion as a whole (54%) but higher than Wales overall (19%).

 

Aberystwyth parish church is St Michael's and All Angels, located in Laura Place. The parish was a Rectoral Benefice until 2019, incorporating the Anglican churches of Holy Trinity, Santes Fair (services in Welsh) and Saint Anne's, Penparcau. The Rectoral Benefice has now been converted to a local ministry area (LMA). The church was built between 1886 and 1890, replacing an earlier church. It was designed in a Gothic Revival style and is a Grade II listed building.

 

In addition to the Anglican churches, there are many existing and former Welsh Calvinistic Methodist chapels that have these days merged into Saint David's (United Reformed) and Capel y Morfa (Welsh language services). A former Calvinistic Methodist Sunday school house, Ysgoldy Tanycae, is now the meeting place of the Elim Pentecostal church. Meanwhile there is a Wesleyan Methodist church, Saint Paul's Methodist Centre, located in Bath Street. An Independent Baptist church is located in Alfred Place. In 2021, amid some controversy, Aberystwyth's Catholic church, Saint Winefride's, was closed and the congregation relocated to a new-build church located in Penparcau.

 

There are a number of other smaller congregations, and many former churches that have now been converted to alternative use, such as the Academy bar.

 

Aberystwyth has two comprehensive schools serving the town and a wide rural area: Ysgol Gyfun Gymunedol Penweddig and Ysgol Penglais School. Ysgol Gyfun Gymunedol Penweddig uses Welsh as the primary language of tuition; Ysgol Penglais School teaches in English and in Welsh as a subject.

 

There are currently three primary schools within the town limits, which are: Plascrug, Saint Padarns (Roman Catholic) and Ysgol Gymraeg. Ysgol Gymraeg was the first designated Welsh medium school in Wales, originally established as a private school in 1939 by Sir Ifan ab Owen Edwards as Ysgol Gymraeg yr Urdd.

 

Aberystwyth is home to Aberystwyth University (Welsh: Prifysgol Aberystwyth) whose predecessor, University College Wales, was founded in 1872 and renamed the 'University of Wales, Aberystwyth' in the mid-1990s. Prior to the college's establishment, Wales had very limited academic-degree capability through St David's College, Lampeter (founded in 1822, now the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David).

 

As well as having two cinemas and a golf course, the town's attractions include:

The Aberystwyth Cliff Railway, a funicular railway

A Victorian camera obscura at the top of Constitution Hill.

The Vale of Rheidol steam railway (Aberystwyth to Devil's Bridge)

Aberystwyth Arts Centre.

The Parc Penglais nature reserve

The Ystwyth Trail cycle path

National Library of Wales

Park Avenue. Football stadium home to Aberystwyth Town F.C.

The all organic dairy unit of Rachel's Organic is based in Glan yr Afon, and is the largest private sector employer in Aberystwyth.

 

The Cambrian News newspaper came to Aberystwyth from Bala in 1870, after it was purchased by Sir John Gibson. Printed in Oswestry, in May 1880 the paper integrated operations in a former Malthouse in Mill Street. Owned by the Read family from 1926, in 1993 printing was contracted out, enabling the move of editorial staff to the current open-plan offices on Llanbadarn Fawr Science Park. On the death of Henry Read, the paper was purchased in 1999 by Sir Ray Tindle, whose company owns more than 200 weekly newspapers in Britain. Now printed in tabloid format, Cambrian News is the second-largest weekly-print circulation newspaper in Wales, with 24,000 copies in six regional editorial versions, read by 60,000 weekly readers. The circulation area of mid, west and north Wales covers 3,000 square miles (7,800 km2).

 

Since the TV series Hinterland has been filmed in and around Aberystwyth, the area is being promoted as an opportunity for tourists to visit filming locations; many are well publicised.

 

Aberystwyth railway station is situated in the town centre and is the terminus of the scenic Cambrian Line. Transport for Wales Rail operate a mostly hourly service (with some two-hour intervals) to Shrewsbury via Machynlleth and Mid Wales, with nearly all trains continuing to Birmingham International. Connecting services from Dovey Junction provide a link to Gwynedd's west coast as far as Pwllheli, along the Cambrian Coast Line. There is no longer a southbound connection: the Carmarthen–Aberystwyth line was closed in 1965 as part of the Beeching cuts.

 

Aberystwyth station is also the terminus of the Vale of Rheidol Railway, a steam-operated narrow gauge heritage railway. Constructed between 1901 and 1902, it was intended to ship mineral cargo, primarily lead, from Devil's Bridge down to Aberystwyth for trans-shipment. By the time it was finished, lead mining was in a deep downturn and—thanks to the Aberystwyth Improvement Company—the railway came to rely largely on the tourist industry, opening for passengers in December 1902. It still remains open for the summer season, with a journey of 12 miles (19 km).

 

In 1896, the Aberystwyth Improvement Company formed Constitution Hill Ltd which, under the direction of chief engineer George Croydon Marks, developed the United Kingdom's second longest funicular railway, the Aberystwyth Cliff Railway, which takes passengers up a 50% gradient.

 

A TrawsCymru T1 service on the A4120 in Aberystwyth

Aberystwyth is a hub for the TrawsCymru bus network, with four routes serving the town:

 

T1 - hourly service to Carmarthen (connects with T1S to Swansea, Monday-Saturday) via Aberaeron and Lampeter - with one service a day (Monday-Saturday) extended to Cardiff

T1C - daily express coach service to Cardiff, via Aberaeron, Carmarthen (connects with T1S to Swansea, Monday-Saturday), Swansea (Sunday & Bank Holidays only), Port Talbot Parkway and Bridgend

T2 - every 1–2 hours to Bangor via Machynlleth, Dolgellau (connects with T3 to Barmouth and Wrexham), Porthmadog and Caernarfon

T5 - hourly service to Haverfordwest via Aberaeron, New Quay, Cardigan and Fishguard

(TrawsCymru services run less-frequently on Sundays.)

 

There is a daily National Express coach, service 409 to London via Birmingham, along with local bus services within the town and into the surrounding area.

 

The A44 and A487 meet with much traffic between North Wales and South West Wales passing through the town. The A4120 links the A44 and A487 between Llanbadarn Fawr and Penparcau, allowing through traffic to bypass the town centre.

 

The B4574 mountain road linking the town to Rhayader is described by the AA as one of the ten most scenic drives in the world.

 

The port of Aberystwyth, although it is small and relatively inconsequential today, used to be an important Atlantic Ocean entryway. It was used to ship locally, to Ireland and as a transatlantic departure point. Commercially, the once important Cardiganshire lead mines exported from this location.

 

The importance of maritime trade in the 19th century is reflected in the fact that a lifeboat has been based at Aberystwyth since 1843, when a 27 ft (8.2 m) boat powered by six oars was funded by public subscription and placed under the control of the harbourmaster. The RNLI took over the service in 1861 and established Aberystwyth Lifeboat Station which celebrated 150 years in 2011. The station uses the Atlantic 85-class inshore lifeboat Spirit of Friendship.

 

The Owl Service by Alan Garner, a well-known and -loved multi-award-winning classic published 1967, is set in north Wales and has two of its core characters —Gwyn and his mam (mother) Nancy— recently arrived from Aberystwyth for 3 weeks' work, with Nancy repeatedly threatening to return there immediately. They and the Welsh locals refer to it as "Aber"; the English characters use its full name.

Aberystwyth (albeit an alternative universe version) is the setting for the cult Louie Knight series by Malcolm Pryce, which transfers Chandleresque "noir" stories and dialogue to this small seaside town. This alternative reality features many landmarks of Aberystwyth, such as the University and the National Library of Wales, but the social situation is radically altered to more closely resemble the pulp/noir stereotypical "Dirty Town" that the narrative plays off. Most of the humour in the books is derived from the almost seamless juxtaposition of the real Aberystwyth and the fictional, noir Aberystwyth. Various aspects of Welsh culture are reflections of what you might expect to see in reality, but with a pulp twist – for example, prostitutes wear Welsh stovepipe hats.

Stripping Penguins Bare, the book 2 of Michael Carson's Benson Trilogy of comic novels, is set in the town and university in the 1960s.

The local writer Niall Griffiths has set many of his novels here and reflects local slang, settings, and even individuals. Grits and Sheepshagger are set wholly in Aberystwyth, which also features prominently in his other novels such as Kelly and Victor and Stump. He portrays a more gritty side of Aberystwyth.

‘Cofiwch Aberystwyth’ by science fiction writer Val Nolan, is a near-future post-apocalyptic novelette about three young urban explorers visiting Aberystwyth years after a nuclear disaster on the west coast of Wales. It was originally published in Interzone (magazine) and later anthologised in Best of British Science Fiction 2020. The title references the Cofiwch Dryweryn graffiti outside nearby Llanrhystyd, Ceredigion.

 

Television

Y Gwyll (2013–2016), a Welsh-language television programme, and the English-language version Hinterland , broadcast on S4C, BBC One Wales, BBC Four, and syndicated around the world, is set in Aberystwyth. It is filmed in and around the town, often in rural locations.

 

Film

Y Llyfrgell (2017) is an award-winning Welsh language film set in and around the National Library, which was filmed on location in 2016. The 2009 book on which it was based was released in English in 2022.

 

The following people and military units have received the Freedom of the Town of Aberystwyth.

Individuals

1912 – Sir John Williams

1912 – David Davies

1912 – Stuart Rendel

1922 – David Lloyd George

1923 – Lewis Pugh Evans

1923 – Matthew Vaughan-Davies

1923 – Sir Herbert Lewis

1928 – Stanley Baldwin

1936 – Sir David Charles Roberts

1936 – Ernest Vaughan

1951 – Winston Churchill

1956 – Sir David James

2011 – Fritz Pratschke

2015 – Jean Guezennec

 

Military Units

1955 – The Welsh Guards

 

Twinning

Arklow in Wicklow, Republic of Ireland Ireland

Kronberg im Taunus in Hesse Hesse, Germany Germany

Saint-Brieuc in Brittany Brittany, France France

Esquel in Patagonia, Argentina Argentina

The Hymn of God's Word "Those Who Accept the New Work Are Blessed" | Gospel Music

 

Blessed are all those who are able to obey the actual utterances of the Holy Spirit. No matter how they used to be, or how the Holy Spirit, how the Holy Spirit used to work within them, those who've gained the latest work are the most blessed ones. Today, those who can't follow the latest work will be eliminated. God wants those who can accept the new light, and those who accept and know His latest work.

 

II

 

Why must you be a chaste virgin? A chaste virgin can seek the work of the Holy Spirit; she can take in the new things, and give up the old notions, and obey God's work today, obey God's work today. These people, who accept the newest work of today, were ordained by God before the world, and are the most blessed ones. You hear the voice of God , and behold the appearance of Him. So, in all times and generations, and throughout heaven and earth, none have been more blessed than you, this group of people.

 

from "Know the Newest Work of God and Follow the Footsteps of God" in The Word Appears in the Flesh

 

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In alchemy, earth was believed to be primarily cold, and secondarily dry, (as per ... is Ghob, and the earth elementals (following Paracelsus) are called gnomes. ... left point of the pentagram in the Supreme Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram.Modernist Alchemy: Poetry and the Occult

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In his description of the magical powers of the pentagram, he cites the most famous of the medieval alchemists, Paracelsus (63). In a passage particularly ...

 

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The key to Alchemy – The Trinities ... The trinity in Alchemy, based on Jacop Boehme and Paracelsus, are Sulphur, ..... The Pentagram and the Ether Streams.

Although the origin of this symbol is lost in time, some occult authorities try to trace the source of its esoteric significance back to an astronomical phenomena, the so called “Pentagram of Venus" . The synodic period of Venus is approximately 584 days. Plotting the greatest elongation west or east of this movement five successive times over a period of approximately 8 years and 5 days traces the figure of a Pentagram on the Zodiacal belt. Incidentally, the numbers 5 and 8 continue to play a role in the Rosicrucian symbolism of the pentagram, as will be seen further on.

The pentagram has been found on potsherds from the pre-cuneiform Uruk period of ancient Babylon (3500BCE). In later periods of Mesopotamian civilization it appears in cuneiform writing to represent the four cardinal directions with the fifth point representing “above;” as such, it represented the dominion of royal authority extending to “the four corners of the world and the heavens above.”

The symbol also appears in Egyptian hieroglyphics, associated with the Goddess Sopdet, who was represented in the night sky by the brightest star, Sirius, the so called Dog Star in the constellation of Canis Major[ii]. Interestingly, the name Sirius is from the Greek word seirios, which means “burning,” and brings to mind the Blazing Star of Alchemy.

The Pythagoreans called the Pentagram Hugieia, with the combined meanings of “health,” “wholeness” and “blessings.” The letters of this word were placed around the points of the pentagram. According to Iamblichus, the five-pointed star was the Pythagorean sign of recognition and held sacred as a symbol of divine perfection. The Greek Goddess of Health was Hygeia, or the Roman Salus. Both of these names appear on talismans from Greek and Roman periods, with the image of the pentagram central.

Pythagoras was a known traveler, and the fact that he appears in Indian tantrik texts by name as Yavanacharya (“the Greek teacher”) may explain why the Pentagram also appears in early Hindu tantrik writings and art.

To the ancient Hebrews, the Pentagram was the symbol of Truth and the five books of the Pentateuch. Ameth, the Hebrew word for Truth, is associated with humanity by the kabbalistic technique of temurah using the Aiq Beqr system, which utilizes letter substitution according to specific rules[iii]. Later it will be seen that the very geometry of the Pentagram also encodes the idea of mankind and Truth.

The Pentagram found its way onto many Gnostic amulets. According to Budge. Gnostic amulets contained the pentacle which contained the ineffable name YHWH within it. More often the names Moses or Solomon were represented, Moses because he was connected with the setting up of the brazen serpent, and Solomon because his seal worked miracles.”[iv]. The early Christians associated the Pentagram with the five wounds of Christ. Later kabalistic Christians would associate the name of Christ in Hebrew characters, IHShVH or Yeheshua, to the five points of the pentagram. This method also shows the divine Tetragrammaton associated to the four points of the star, with the fifth top point being ascribed to the Hebrew letter shin, which symbolized spirit and fire, or the Holy Ghost. Thus the pentagram represented the descent of the divine fire into the world.,The Pentagram has been associated with the Star of Bethlehem or Three Kings’ Star, which led the Magi to the newborn Christ. Of these ideas Pike writes: The Star which guided [the Magi] is that same Blazing Star, the image whereof we find in all initiations. To the Alchemists it is the sign of the Quintessence; to the Magists, the Grand Arcanum; to the Kabalists, the Sacred Pentagram. The study of this Pentagram could not but lead the Magi to the knowledge of the New Name which was about to raise itself above all names, and cause all creatures capable of adoration to bend the knee.[v] In the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Pentagram was emblazoned in gold on Gawain’s shield, representing the five virtues of generosity, courtesy, chastity, chivalry and piety. The symbol of the pentagram appears on many Knights Templar graves in France, as well as being intrinsic to the architecture and positioning of many chapels. One dramatic example is the mysterious shrine of Rennes du Chartres, said to be a center of Templar activity, which is situated in the center of a ring of mountains that form a nearly perfect pentagram. The symbolism of the Western Mystery tradition has assigned the four elements of earth, air, water and fire to the four points of the pentagram, with the top point being attributed to the quintessence, or spirit. From this pattern is then attributed Kabalistic hierarchies of Archangles (Auriel for Earth, Raphael to Air, Gabriel for Water, and Michael with Fire), the Four Worlds (Assiah, Yetzirah, Briah and Atziluth), parts of the soul, and many more correspondences which are too lengthy to address in this paper.

   

Central on our Rosicrucian Altars in the S.R.I.C.F. is the figure of the Pentagram (also called the pentacle, pentalpha, pentangle, pentancle), a five pointed star, formed by 5 straight lines between the vertices of a pentagon and enclosing another pentagon. The name pentagram is Greek, from penta (“five”) and gramma (“letter”). One of the most intriguing symbols of esotericism, it is has been held to have magical properties since time immemorial, and is a symbol that has been both revered by initiates as a talisman of power, and shunned by the masses in abject fear for hundreds of years.

 

Today the image of the five pointed star has become almost obsequious to the media, and the symbol has been used to promote Rock music and movies, feed Satanic furor with tales of “ritual slayings,” and other hype. Additionally, the many neo-pagan movements have adopted the pentagram as their ensign of “natural religion.” More recently, novels such as The Davinci Code have weaved a colorful blend of fact and fiction, and once again brought the image of the Pentagram into popular view. At the same time, there is a long, somewhat quiet esoteric history of usage associated with this symbol which initiates in all times have utilized.

 

Despite the seeming commonplace appearance of this symbol, it is little understood. This paper will endeavor to highlight some of the symbolic meanings of the pentagram, looking at historical usage across cultures and languages; Masonic usage in both the Craft and Higher Degrees, with emphasis on our Rosicrucian usage; the geometric properties inherent in the symbol, and western occult traditions of initiation and ceremonial magick. It is hoped that this paper will help to cut through the popular misinformation about this symbol, and shed some Light on the real properties and use of this powerful, sacred figure.

  

HISTORICAL USAGE

 

Although the origin of this symbol is lost in time, some occult authorities try to trace the source of its esoteric significance back to an astronomical phenomena, the so called “Pentagram of Venus” shown in the figure below[i]:

 

pentagram_venus

 

The synodic period of Venus is approximately 584 days. Plotting the greatest elongation west or east of this movement five successive times over a period of approximately 8 years and 5 days traces the figure of a Pentagram on the Zodiacal belt. Incidentally, the numbers 5 and 8 continue to play a role in the Rosicrucian symbolism of the pentagram, as will be seen further on.

 

The pentagram has been found on potsherds from the pre-cuneiform Uruk period of ancient Babylon (3500BCE). In later periods of Mesopotamian civilization it appears in cuneiform writing to represent the four cardinal directions with the fifth point representing “above;” as such, it represented the dominion of royal authority extending to “the four corners of the world and the heavens above.”

 

The symbol also appears in Egyptian hieroglyphics, associated with the Goddess Sopdet, who was represented in the night sky by the brightest star, Sirius, the so called Dog Star in the constellation of Canis Major[ii]. Interestingly, the name Sirius is from the Greek word seirios, which means “burning,” and brings to mind the Blazing Star of Masonry.

 

The Pythagoreans called the Pentagram Hugieia, with the combined meanings of “health,” “wholeness” and “blessings.” The letters of this word were placed around the points of the pentagram. According to Iamblichus, the five-pointed star was the Pythagorean sign of recognition and held sacred as a symbol of divine perfection. The Greek Goddess of Health was Hygeia, or the Roman Salus. Both of these names appear on talismans from Greek and Roman periods, with the image of the pentagram central.

 

Pythagoras was a known traveler, and the fact that he appears in Indian tantrik texts by name as Yavanacharya (“the Greek teacher”) may explain why the Pentagram also appears in early Hindu tantrik writings and art.

 

To the ancient Hebrews, the Pentagram was the symbol of Truth and the five books of the Pentateuch. Ameth, the Hebrew word for Truth, is associated with humanity by the kabbalistic technique of temurah using the Aiq Beqr system, which utilizes letter substitution according to specific rules[iii]. Later it will be seen that the very geometry of the Pentagram also encodes the idea of mankind and Truth.

 

The Pentagram found its way onto many Gnostic amulets. According to Budge

 

Gnostic amulets contained the pentacle which contained the ineffable name YHWH within it. More often the names Moses or Solomon were represented, Moses because he was connected with the setting up of the brazen serpent, and Solomon because his seal worked miracles.”[iv]

 

The early Christians associated the Pentagram with the five wounds of Christ. Later kabalistic Christians would associate the name of Christ in Hebrew characters, IHShVH or Yeheshua, to the five points of the pentagram. This method also shows the divine Tetragrammaton associated to the four points of the star, with the fifth top point being ascribed to the Hebrew letter shin, which symbolized spirit and fire, or the Holy Ghost. Thus the pentagram represented the descent of the divine fire into the world.

 

The Pentagram has been associated with the Star of Bethlehem or Three Kings’ Star, which led the Magi to the newborn Christ. Of these ideas Pike writes:

 

The Star which guided [the Magi] is that same Blazing Star, the image whereof we find in all initiations. To the Alchemists it is the sign of the Quintessence; to the Magists, the Grand Arcanum; to the Kabalists, the Sacred Pentagram. The study of this Pentagram could not but lead the Magi to the knowledge of the New Name which was about to raise itself above all names, and cause all creatures capable of adoration to bend the knee.[v]

 

In the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Pentagram was emblazoned in gold on Gawain’s shield, representing the five virtues of generosity, courtesy, chastity, chivalry and piety.

 

The symbol of the pentagram appears on many Knights Templar graves in France, as well as being intrinsic to the architecture and positioning of many chapels. One dramatic example is the mysterious shrine of Rennes du Chartres, said to be a center of Templar activity, which is situated in the center of a ring of mountains that form a nearly perfect pentagram.

 

The symbolism of the Western Mystery tradition has assigned the four elements of earth, air, water and fire to the four points of the pentagram, with the top point being attributed to the quintessence, or spirit. From this pattern is then attributed Kabalistic hierarchies of Archangles (Auriel for Earth, Raphael to Air, Gabriel for Water, and Michael with Fire), the Four Worlds (Assiah, Yetzirah, Briah and Atziluth), parts of the soul, and many more correspondences which are too lengthy to address in this paper.

  

MASONIC USAGE

 

The Zelator ritual of S.R.I.C.F. briefly introduces the symbolism of the Pentagram on the Altar to the new postulant:

 

The Five-pointed Star reminds us of the five points of felicity, which are to walk with, to intercede for, to love, to assist, and to pray for our Brethren, so as to be united with them in heart and mind.

 

As an emblem of the five points of felicity, the Pentagram reminds us of our duties towards our brethren of the Rose and Cross throughout the world.

 

Further in the ritual the subject of number symbolism is addressed, and the number five is explained as

 

the emblem of Health and Safety; it is also denominated the Occult number; the Pentagram was a famous talisman; it represents Spirit and the four elements.

 

The reference to health and safety is interesting as it is reminiscent of the Greek hygeia discussed earlier.

 

The Pentagram may be seen as symbolic of the entire course of initiation in the S.R.I.C.F. First Order, as the elemental degrees are easily associated with the elemental points of the Pentagram; while initiation into the Second Order represents the quintessence or fifth, top-most point of the Star. In this way, the candidate of the S.R.I.C.F. symbolically builds up the power of the pentagram internally as they progress through and assimilate the lessons of the degrees. Entrance to the Second Order would then represent Adepthood, as the initiate has established the flaming star within their very heart of hearts and embodies the very essence of the Pentagram, and is a living embodiment of the Stone of the Philosophers.

 

Within the Craft degrees, the figure of the Pentagram may also be seen in the image of the 5 rayed Blazing Star. According to Albert Pike, the pentagram is synonymous with the Blazing Star of Masonic Lodges:

 

The Blazing Star in our Lodges, we have already said, represents Sirius, Anubis, or Mercury, Guardian and Guide of Souls. Our Ancient English brethren also considered it an emblem of the Sun. In the old Lectures they said: ‘The Blazing Star or Glory in the centre refers us to that Grand Luminary the Sun, which enlightens the Earth, and by its genial influence dispenses blessings to mankind. It is also said in those lectures to be an emblem of Prudence. The word Prudentia means, in its original and fullest signification, Foresight: and accordingly the Blazing Star has been regarded as an emblem of Omniscience, or the All-

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THE SACRED PENTAGRAM

by Bro.Gregory H. Peters

Burlingame Lodge No. 400 F&AM

Grand Lodge of California

32° Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite in the Valley of Burlingame

Companion of King Solomon Chapter No. 95

Frater of the Golden State College of Societas Rosicruciana in Civitatibus Foederatis.

 

Note: paper presented first at the November 2004 Convocation of Golden State College Societas Rosicruciana in Civitatibus Foederatis.

Editor's Note: the paper has been edited for publication on this website

 

The Sacred Pentagram

INTRODUCTION

 

Central on our Rosicrucian Altars in the S.R.I.C.F. is the figure of the Pentagram (also called the pentacle, pentalpha, pentangle, pentancle), a five pointed star, formed by 5 straight lines between the vertices of a pentagon and enclosing another pentagon. The name pentagram is Greek, from penta (“five”) and gramma (“letter”). One of the most intriguing symbols of esotericism, it is has been held to have magical properties since time immemorial, and is a symbol that has been both revered by initiates as a talisman of power, and shunned by the masses in abject fear for hundreds of years.

 

Today the image of the five pointed star has become almost obsequious to the media, and the symbol has been used to promote Rock music and movies, feed Satanic furor with tales of “ritual slayings,” and other hype. Additionally, the many neo-pagan movements have adopted the pentagram as their ensign of “natural religion.” More recently, novels such as The Davinci Code have weaved a colorful blend of fact and fiction, and once again brought the image of the Pentagram into popular view. At the same time, there is a long, somewhat quiet esoteric history of usage associated with this symbol which initiates in all times have utilized.

 

Despite the seeming commonplace appearance of this symbol, it is little understood. This paper will endeavor to highlight some of the symbolic meanings of the pentagram, looking at historical usage across cultures and languages; Masonic usage in both the Craft and Higher Degrees, with emphasis on our Rosicrucian usage; the geometric properties inherent in the symbol, and western occult traditions of initiation and ceremonial magick. It is hoped that this paper will help to cut through the popular misinformation about this symbol, and shed some Light on the real properties and use of this powerful, sacred figure.

  

HISTORICAL USAGE

 

Although the origin of this symbol is lost in time, some occult authorities try to trace the source of its esoteric significance back to an astronomical phenomena, the so called “Pentagram of Venus” shown in the figure below[i]:

 

pentagram_venus

 

The synodic period of Venus is approximately 584 days. Plotting the greatest elongation west or east of this movement five successive times over a period of approximately 8 years and 5 days traces the figure of a Pentagram on the Zodiacal belt. Incidentally, the numbers 5 and 8 continue to play a role in the Rosicrucian symbolism of the pentagram, as will be seen further on.

 

The pentagram has been found on potsherds from the pre-cuneiform Uruk period of ancient Babylon (3500BCE). In later periods of Mesopotamian civilization it appears in cuneiform writing to represent the four cardinal directions with the fifth point representing “above;” as such, it represented the dominion of royal authority extending to “the four corners of the world and the heavens above.”

 

The symbol also appears in Egyptian hieroglyphics, associated with the Goddess Sopdet, who was represented in the night sky by the brightest star, Sirius, the so called Dog Star in the constellation of Canis Major[ii]. Interestingly, the name Sirius is from the Greek word seirios, which means “burning,” and brings to mind the Blazing Star of Masonry.

 

The Pythagoreans called the Pentagram Hugieia, with the combined meanings of “health,” “wholeness” and “blessings.” The letters of this word were placed around the points of the pentagram. According to Iamblichus, the five-pointed star was the Pythagorean sign of recognition and held sacred as a symbol of divine perfection. The Greek Goddess of Health was Hygeia, or the Roman Salus. Both of these names appear on talismans from Greek and Roman periods, with the image of the pentagram central.

 

Pythagoras was a known traveler, and the fact that he appears in Indian tantrik texts by name as Yavanacharya (“the Greek teacher”) may explain why the Pentagram also appears in early Hindu tantrik writings and art.

 

To the ancient Hebrews, the Pentagram was the symbol of Truth and the five books of the Pentateuch. Ameth, the Hebrew word for Truth, is associated with humanity by the kabbalistic technique of temurah using the Aiq Beqr system, which utilizes letter substitution according to specific rules[iii]. Later it will be seen that the very geometry of the Pentagram also encodes the idea of mankind and Truth.

 

The Pentagram found its way onto many Gnostic amulets. According to Budge

 

Gnostic amulets contained the pentacle which contained the ineffable name YHWH within it. More often the names Moses or Solomon were represented, Moses because he was connected with the setting up of the brazen serpent, and Solomon because his seal worked miracles.”[iv]

 

The early Christians associated the Pentagram with the five wounds of Christ. Later kabalistic Christians would associate the name of Christ in Hebrew characters, IHShVH or Yeheshua, to the five points of the pentagram. This method also shows the divine Tetragrammaton associated to the four points of the star, with the fifth top point being ascribed to the Hebrew letter shin, which symbolized spirit and fire, or the Holy Ghost. Thus the pentagram represented the descent of the divine fire into the world.

 

The Pentagram has been associated with the Star of Bethlehem or Three Kings’ Star, which led the Magi to the newborn Christ. Of these ideas Pike writes:

 

The Star which guided [the Magi] is that same Blazing Star, the image whereof we find in all initiations. To the Alchemists it is the sign of the Quintessence; to the Magists, the Grand Arcanum; to the Kabalists, the Sacred Pentagram. The study of this Pentagram could not but lead the Magi to the knowledge of the New Name which was about to raise itself above all names, and cause all creatures capable of adoration to bend the knee.[v]

 

In the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Pentagram was emblazoned in gold on Gawain’s shield, representing the five virtues of generosity, courtesy, chastity, chivalry and piety.

 

The symbol of the pentagram appears on many Knights Templar graves in France, as well as being intrinsic to the architecture and positioning of many chapels. One dramatic example is the mysterious shrine of Rennes du Chartres, said to be a center of Templar activity, which is situated in the center of a ring of mountains that form a nearly perfect pentagram.

 

The symbolism of the Western Mystery tradition has assigned the four elements of earth, air, water and fire to the four points of the pentagram, with the top point being attributed to the quintessence, or spirit. From this pattern is then attributed Kabalistic hierarchies of Archangles (Auriel for Earth, Raphael to Air, Gabriel for Water, and Michael with Fire), the Four Worlds (Assiah, Yetzirah, Briah and Atziluth), parts of the soul, and many more correspondences which are too lengthy to address in this paper.

ALCHEMIC USAGE: The Zelator ritual of S.R.I.C.F. briefly introduces the symbolism of the Pentagram on the Altar to the new postulant: The Five-pointed Star reminds us of the five points of felicity, which are to walk with, to intercede for, to love, to assist, and to pray for our Brethren, so as to be united with them in heart and mind. As an emblem of the five points of felicity, the Pentagram reminds us of our duties towards our brethren of the Rose and Cross throughout the world. Further in the ritual the subject of number symbolism is addressed, and the number five is explained as the emblem of Health and Safety; it is also denominated the Occult number; the Pentagram was a famous talisman; it represents Spirit and the four elements.

The reference to health and safety is interesting as it is reminiscent of the Greek hygeia discussed earlier.

The Pentagram may be seen as symbolic of the entire course of initiation in the S.R.I.C.F. First Order, as the elemental degrees are easily associated with the elemental points of the Pentagram; while initiation into the Second Order represents the quintessence or fifth, top-most point of the Star. In this way, the candidate of the S.R.I.C.F. symbolically builds up the power of the pentagram internally as they progress through and assimilate the lessons of the degrees. Entrance to the Second Order would then represent Adepthood, as the initiate has established the flaming star within their very heart of hearts and embodies the very essence of the Pentagram, and is a living embodiment of the Stone of the Philosophers.

Within the Craft degrees, the figure of the Pentagram may also be seen in the image of the 5 rayed Blazing Star. According to Albert Pike, the pentagram is synonymous with the Blazing Star of Masonic Lodges:

The Blazing Star in our Lodges, we have already said, represents Sirius, Anubis, or Mercury, Guardian and Guide of Souls. Our Ancient English brethren also considered it an emblem of the Sun. In the old Lectures they said: ‘The Blazing Star or Glory in the centre refers us to that Grand Luminary the Sun, which enlightens the Earth, and by its genial influence dispenses blessings to mankind. It is also said in those lectures to be an emblem of Prudence. The word Prudentia means, in its original and fullest signification, Foresight: and accordingly the Blazing Star has been regarded as an emblem of Omniscience, or the All-Seeing Eye, which to the Ancients was the Sun.[vi]

He further associates this star with the “Divine Energy, manifested as Light, creating the Universe.”[vii]

The Alchemic scholar Rex Hutchins asserts that the Pentagram is the symbol of the Divine in man… The five-pointed star with a single point upward represents the Divine. It also symbolizes man for its five points allude to the five senses, the five members (head, arms and legs) and his five fingers on each hand, which signify the tokens that distinguish alchemists. Furthermore he writes that this figure is the symbol of the Microcosm, the universe where humans dwell. Since the pentagon which encloses the pentagram may be formed by connecting the five points of the human body, for many centuries the symbol was also used to represent humanity in general. Within this symbol then is a representation of humanity, and our Divine role in the Universe as co-creators of eternity. In addition to being a central altar piece in our Rosicrucian Temples, and the Blazing Star of the Craft Lodges, the Pentagram appears as an ensign in some of the High Degrees and rites. For example, it is central on the apron of the 28th Degree of the Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite, Knight of the Sun or Prince Adept. In discussing the symbol of the pentagram in the lecture of this degree, Pike writes in Morals & Dogma that in certain undertakings [the Pentagram] cannot be dispensed with. It is what is termed the Kabalistic pentacle… This carries with it the power of commanding the spirits of the elements. A central lesson of this highly Kabalistic and Alchemical degree is that there is no death, only change. The Pentagram, symbol of humanity as the microcosm is an apt representation of this wisdom which, to one who has internalized it, may have that contempt for death which is expressed in the line from 1 Corinthians – “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

In the same lecture, Pike alludes to the true meaning of this radiant symbol: When the masters in Alchemy say that it needs but little time and expense to accomplish the works of Science. When they affirm, above all, that but a single vessel is necessary, when they speak of the Great and Single furnace, which all can use, which is within the reach of all the world, and which men possess without knowing it, they allude to the philosophical and moral Alchemy. In fact, a strong and determined will can, in a little while, attain complete independence; and we all possess that chemical instrument, the great and single athanor or furnace, which serves to separate the subtle from the gross, and the fixed from the volatile. This instrument, complete as the world, and accurate as the mathematics themselves, is designated by the Sages under the emblem of the Pentagram or Star with five points, the absolute sign of human intelligence. It may be said that the Pentagram represents the power of the Divine Will, as manifested in Humanity, to effect conscious change. As conscious participants with the Divine Will, humanity is in the unique position of being able to be co-creators with the Divine. Our sisters of the Eastern Star utilize a Pentagram as their primary symbol. Interestingly, their usage places the pentagram “upside down,” with two points on top and a single point facing down. According to esoteric tradition, this usage indicates the “evil” forces of darkness. The occult authority Eliphas Levi writes in Transcendental Magic: The Pentagram with two horns in the ascendant represents Satan, or the goat of the Sabbath, and with the single horn in the ascendant is the sign of the Savior. It is the figure of the human body with the four members and a point representing the head; a human figure head downward naturally represents the demon, that is, intellectual subversion, disorder and folly. As to whether the author of the Easter Star rituals was aware of these qualities when designing the emblem of the rite is most likely unknown. A contemporary member of the Eastern Star has informed us that the explanation of the symbol she received attributes the two points as facing towards the east, providing an unobstructed channel from the altar to the Eastern dais, as well as creating a confined center or “chamber” in the east that is formed between the two extended points and the dais. All Alchemists would be familiar with the idea of having the path from the Altar to the East clear at all times, and this may in fact be the most probable reason for the design., manifested as Light, creating the Universe.”[vii]

The alchemists asserts that the Pentagram is the symbol of the Divine in man… The five-pointed star with a single point upward represents the Divine. It also symbolizes man for its five points allude to the five senses, the five members (head, arms and legs) and his five fingers on each hand, which signify the tokens that distinguish alchemits.Furthermore he writes that this figure is the symbol of the Microcosm, the universe where humans dwell. Since the pentagon which encloses the pentagram may be formed by connecting the five points of the human body, for many centuries the symbol was also used to represent humanity in general. Within this symbol then is a representation of humanity, and our Divine role in the Universe as co-creators of eternity.

In addition to being a central altar piece in our Rosicrucian Temples, and the Blazing Star of the Craft Lodges, the Pentagram appears as an ensign in some of the High Degrees and rites. For example, it is central on the apron of the 28th Degree of the Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite, Knight of the Sun or Prince Adept. In discussing the symbol of the pentagram in the lecture of this degree, Pike writes in Morals & Dogma that in certain undertakings [the Pentagram] cannot be dispensed with. It is what is termed the Kabalistic pentacle… This carries with it the power of commanding the spirits of the elements.

A central lesson of this highly Kabalistic and Alchemical degree is that there is no death, only change. The Pentagram, symbol of humanity as the microcosm is an apt representation of this wisdom which, to one who has internalized it, may have that contempt for death which is expressed in the line from 1 Corinthians – “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

In the same lecture, Pike alludes to the true meaning of this radiant symbol:

When the masters in Alchemy say that it needs but little time and expense to accomplish the works of Science. When they affirm, above all, that but a single vessel is necessary, when they speak of the Great and Single furnace, which all can use, which is within the reach of all the world, and which men possess without knowing it, they allude to the philosophical and moral Alchemy. In fact, a strong and determined will can, in a little while, attain complete independence; and we all possess that chemical instrument, the great and single athanor or furnace, which serves to separate the subtle from the gross, and the fixed from the volatile. This instrument, complete as the world, and accurate as the mathematics themselves, is designated by the Sages under the emblem of the Pentagram or Star with five points, the absolute sign of human intelligence. It may be said that the Pentagram represents the power of the Divine Will, as manifested in Humanity, to effect conscious change. As conscious participants with the Divine Will, humanity is in the unique position of being able to be co-creators with the Divine. Our sisters of the Eastern Star utilize a Pentagram as their primary symbol. Interestingly, their usage places the pentagram “upside down,” with two points on top and a single point facing down. According to esoteric tradition, this usage indicates the “evil” forces of darkness. The occult authority Eliphas Levi writes in Transcendental Magic:

 

The Pentagram with two horns in the ascendant represents Satan, or the goat of the Sabbath, and with the single horn in the ascendant is the sign of the Savior. It is the figure of the human body with the four members and a point representing the head; a human figure head downward naturally represents the demon, that is, intellectual subversion, disorder and folly. As to whether the author of the Easter Star rituals was aware of these qualities when designing the emblem of the rite is most likely unknown. A contemporary member of the Eastern Star has informed us that the explanation of the symbol she received attributes the two points as facing towards the east, providing an unobstructed channel from the altar to the Eastern dais, as well as creating a confined center or “chamber” in the east that is formed between the two extended points and the dais. All alchemists would be familiar with the idea of having the path from the Altar to the East clear at all times, and this may in fact be the most probable reason for the design. The Pentagram has a long history of occult use. It was by use of a poorly constructed Pentagram that Mephistopheles was able to manifest in the circle of Faust! Magical grimoires of the western esoteric tradition are replete with examples of pentagrams being used as protective and evocatory talismans, or as the seals of circles of the Art which were traced on the floor of the ritual chamber. Literally thousands of examples are extant from the works of Trithemius, Dr. John Dee, Heinrich Agrippa, Kircher, Bruno, and many others, which show the hermetic and kabalistic applications of the Pentagram in ceremonial ritual use.Perhaps one of the most evocative descriptions of the occult powers of this symbol comes from the magician Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Louis Constant), who writes of the Pentagram in his book Transcendental Magic:

The Pentagram expresses the mind's domination over the elements and it is by this sign that we bind the demons of the air, the spirits of fire, the spectres of water, and the ghosts of earth. It is the Star of the Magi, the burning star of the Gnostic schools, the sign of intellectual omnipotence and autocracy. Its complete comprehension is the key of two worlds‑‑it is absolute natural philosophy and natural science. Its use, how-ever, is most dangerous to operators who do not completely and perfectly understand it. All mysteries of magic, all symbols of the gnosis, all figures of occultism, all Qabalis-tic keys of prophecy, are resumed in the sign of the Pentagram, which Paracelsus pro-claims to be the greatest and most potent of all. [...] this absolute sign, this sign as old or as older than history, should and must actually exercise an incalculable influence on souls disengaged from their material envelope. Armed therewith and suitably disposed, we can behold infinity through the medium of that faculty which is as the Soul’s Eye, and can cause ourselves to be served by legions of angels and demon hordes. The empire of the Will over the Astral Light which is the physical soul of the four elements, is represented in magic by the Pentagram.,If it be asked how a sign can exercise that immense power over spirits which is claimed for the Pentagram, we inquire in turn why the Christian world bows before the sign of the cross. The sign by itself is nothing, it derives strength from the doctrine which is resumes, and of which it is the Logos. Now, a sign which epitomizes by expression all the occult forces of Nature, which has always manifested to the elementary and other spirits a power superior to their own, naturally strikes them with fear and respect, and enforces their obedience by the empire of knowledge and will over ignorance and weakness. The points of the pentagram are often associated with the five-fold name of the Christ, IHShVH or Yeheshua. Paul Foster Case describes this: The letters at the five points of the pentagram are the Roman characters corresponding to Yod, Heh, Shin, Vau and Heh. They are the letters which spell the divine name IHVH, Jehovah, with the ‘holy letter,’ Shin, symbol of the Holy Spirit, placed between the first two and last two letters, thus: I H Sh V H. This is the occult and Rosicrucian spelling of the name Yeheshua, or Jesus…’It is the symbol of the Word made flesh.’ […] every pentagram … symbolizes the mystical name IHShVH…[viii]

 

www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/pentagram_freemasonry.html

Gateway Camp Verse

(Pin1) Ging1 Mahn4

Isaiah 62:10

 

What Dale instructed about going out of our way to treat the Mainland Chinese well resonated within me. To be sure, just as the Koreans have gone out of their way to bless me so I must step out to bless and to love my Mainland brethren.

 

After the first meeting, Ed and I wandered off campus and found inside a shopping mall a cha chaan teng where we had a late-night snack. And hardly had we tucked into our meals when in walked several dozen volunteers, all locals, who were overcome, it seemed, by the same munchies that infected Ed and me. It’s surprising how such a primal urge, at such a time, drives everyone to no less than the same, impossibly far location.

 

I thus far have met so many people that, had I not brought along my iPod, I would have already lost track of the multitudinous names flying around like fireflies at night, sparkling luminously one moment and then disappearing the next. And this is only the beginning: more and more people will arrive both today and tomorrow so I had better stay awake, alert, and writing.

 

I am working with a partner who really challenges me, and indeed that is why I chose to work with him. From the first words that came streaming out of his mouth, I knew he would be a special one, and as if to conifrm my conjecture, indeed, the more he spoke, the more confused I became. The challenge, I have realized after much ruminating, isn’t so much the pace of his speech as his choice of words, which fall outside a normal lexical range; that is, at least with me, when he talks, he doesn’t use familiar collocations to communicate; besides, he has an uncanny Tin Shui Wai accent; those, along with his amazing resistance to Chinglish, which impresses me, by the way, have made our communication tedious, since I am bombarded by peculiar lexical constructions that I generally never encounter in Cantonese conversation and must therefore stop our flow to clarify his speech. It’s too bad that he doesn’t speak English as I would love to hear how he structures ideas in my native language to determine whether or not this strange lexis has spilled over into his other modes of communication.

 

Regardless, in being with him, I have learned to be patient, and if I am truly to walk away from resentment, I must continue rather to engage him than to keep him at arm’s length. It helps us, then, that he is a congenial fellow, prone more to expressing love, much in the same way that I do by warmly grabbing a forearm or a shoulder, than to venting his frustration, which with me could certainly be great. He is verily a good guy, and so long as the Lord keeps him — I am sure Daddy will — Tin Shui Wai, that small patch of concrete moon colony, is in capable, faithful human hands.

 

Sau2 muhn6 je2

Mihng6 dihng6

Kyuhn4 lihk6

Lihk6 leuhng6

Chong3 yi3 adjective

Chong3 jouh6 verb

 

Romans 5:3-5

 

Not only so, but we rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.

 

I cried this morning when I read these words, because they are true, and comfort my soul as water to a dry, parched land. However many times I’ve lamented this place and its people, I am still inextricably tied to this rock, per God’s will for my life; and God really is faithful in providing a way out not from this place but from these spiritual hindrances. These past few days, what with communication failures and fatigue setting in, I could have more easily give into my rationality, in defense of my weaknesses, than resisted this bait of satan. Thank God, hence, for the words which are like fuel for the refiner’s fire that burns up all my expectations, my pride and my flesh. I can survive, nay, rejoice, indeed, because of God, who, in me, day by day teaches me to suffer long with a smile.

 

This is what the gateway is all about, I believe: jumping head-first out of my comfort zone to confront the nations, for my brothers and sisters and I must face each other if we are to raise the banners together. Battling through enemy strongholds of mistrust ad resentment, we demolish carnal thoughts and dig deep in the Spirit for the unity that shall overcome as much language as culture; God, after all, is bigger, even, than the battlefield. In these ways can my brethren and I love each other as ourselves, as we shall be one in the Father, with audacious power and boldness laying hands on His kingdom which advances, in this kairos moment, over all of China, including, no doubt, Hong Kong. No longer will there be curses thrown upon the nations; but rather the river of life will flow through the city, and the leaves of the tree on each side of the river will be for the healing of the nations.

 

1) Welcoming the Father

2) Unifying the body

3) Partnering with the Chinese

4) Serving the city

5) Supporting the Chinese

 

Isaac and I have worked quite hard this morning, putting up signs all over campus, and as if to reward me for my assiduity, he offered to buy me a drink, an offer which I took up. Indeed, this man’s care and concern for others, genuine, doubtlessly, fills me with joy, for, to be sure, the joy of the lord is his strength. My friend is indefatigable, always encouraging and never slighting, no matter the circumstances, rain (that has happened a lot today) or shine. Praise God!

 

Much like my relationship with Isaac, my relationships with my other team members have improved considerably since, even, this morning’s briefing during which, the code-switching, happening too fast and too furiously for my comfort, vexed me so terribly that if Isaac had not put a generous arm around my shoulder immediately afterwards, I surely would have blown my top in frustration at the perplexing language option. Thankfully, my team and I settled our language arrangements: Isaac, Dorcas and I will intractably speak Cantonese to each other whereas my other group mates and I will use English with as little code-switching as possible; and I, along with Ed, no doubt, am satisfied. It’s best to avoid misunderstandings.

 

Lihng4 Mahn4 (soul)

Sihng4 jeung2

Muhng6 Seung2 (dreams)

 

The Lord’s mercies are new everyday. Just now, during the morning rally, by His Spirit, hundreds of brothers and sisters received a new anointing, to be spiritual mothers and fathers of a new generation so as to minister to the next. This outpouring of the Spirit was sudden, and so captivated me that when the call came to reap, I rushed to the front to ask my father for this anointing, and naturally, my life was transformed. In the same way, the pastor called up a new generation of spiritual children to receive the love, care and support of these new parents; and likewise, so many young men and women heeded this call that verily, the pit in front of the stage was soon awash in hugs and tears between generations that, once lost, were now found. Indeed, no sooner did these people embrace their father than Dad immediately swept them up in his strong arms and showered them with audacious encouragement and support. Praise God!

 

An Outburst

 

I was angry this morning during our team time. I temporarily lost my ability to be merciful and to live in God’s grace. When my team leader began to address me in English, yet again, I couldn’t help but berate him for doing so when Cantonese, I argued, would be a more economical medium of delivery. And then I compounded this already incendiary situation by ranting about the hypocrisy of Hong Kong being a gateway to China but not a gateway into its own neighborhoods teeming with Chinese people, 97% of whom, according to one of the pastors at this camp, do not know the Lord Jesus. Cantonese will matter, I posit, if anyone dares to take on the onerous mission in this vexing place.

 

To be sure, even my brother announced that language was a prohibitive barrier to closer relationships with these local people, and therefore, since he neither speaks Cantonese nor is going to give learning the language a go, he is relegated to the outer walls of the gates into Hong Kong.

 

In hindsight, I thought I cared enough about God’s purposes for me in Hong Kong, but I realize now that I still care a lot about myself, and resentment. Though I have prayed and declared boldly that God is bigger than language and culture, I know I don’t believe it; and that’s upsetting. For the time being, I don’t verily believe in my heart that I can have deeper, closer relationships with Chinese people without the benefit of language and culture, patterns of action.

 

OK. This is actually an opportune start for my spiritual parentship, for now I have an opportunity to put aside my very compelling arguments for the necessity of language and culture in deep and close relationships, these conclusions born out of my reason, and to step out in faith, to trust in the Lord who, I pray, will show me deep and close relationships sans language and culture, and with whom my deep and close relationship shall obviously be the key to this victory.

 

I’m thinking about events at this camp that heretofore demonstrated loving relationships without language and culture, and I recalled two acts: the first happened yesterday when I spontaneously joined a line of ushers to high-five and to cheer the audience as they flooded out of the auditorium, the morning rally having scarcely finished; and the second, this was my meeting Yao, a man from the Ivory Coast, whom I befriended in those first, fleeting, if not frantic moments before the opening rally on Friday evening. That encounter was immediate and sudden, neither words nor habits needed; Yao and I simply high-fived, hugged and sat beside each other; and wow, that was terrific companionship — praise God!

 

Finally, however hard my diatribe may have struck my team members’ hearts, my merciful group mates still forgave me, not only on an personal level, but also, as I had sought forgiveness on behalf of all foreigners who have ever cursed locals or stood passively outside the gateway, on a corporate level, thereby releasing countless non-Chinese people into the freedom of these Hong Kong people’s forgiveness; just as brothers and sisters had so recently been reconciled to each other in my church, so local and non-local people have received the others’ freedom of forgiveness; more than a homecoming, that, indeed, is a breakthrough.

 

In listening to this morning’s sermon, I hear such verses as I know God is speaking to me through His word. 2Corinthians 4:16-18, this scripture in particular carries a buoyant, hopeful currency in my heart. My spirit soaks in this divine revelation as a sponge soaks in water and thus becomes malleable, able to be formed and shaped according to its holder’s will: Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

 

Disagreeable

 

I don’t know why my brother and I undermine each others’ comments; why we no more know consensus than the deaf music. Our interactions have been especially abrasive recently since we have spent so much time together without the benefit of our other brother to act as a natural, vociferous buffer; and as a result we argue like pieces of sand paper being rubbed against flesh, which inevitably leads to significant soreness. I feel sore now.

 

I think back to my outburst this morning and can appreciate my role in this evening’s embarrassing outcome; I am certainly not without fault, for I choose these days not only to venture my opinions but to do so passionately, if not emotionally. People consequently who otherwise are phlegmatic at best are put in a discomfiting position by my impassioned pleas. Besides, I recall Interrupting my brother prolifically, which understandably would not make him a happy camper; just as a hyperactive child doesn’t know when to stop pestering his sibling, so I don’t know nowadays when to hold my tongue. Indeed, I would rather not respond at all to my brother, even after he has fired off his rejoinder, than to strike him down in mid-speech.

 

In view of this latest incident, I have resolved to take the former course of action. To be sure, I simply stopped our petty dispute about a stupid basketball game by, awkward as it was, taking out my book and perusing it as fixedly as my tattered mind would allow. I will try my best to stay away from my brother for a spell, to create physical and spiritual space between us, so hopefully, in this way at least one of us will be able to come to his senses about this matter; better yet, now would be an opportune time for our father in his mercy to reveal to us the fault lines in our flesh so that we could surrender these tremulous spots in our soul, crucifying them to the father for our healing and the redemption of our relationship. I will pray about this.

 

…Praise God. If I had not separated myself from my brother’s presence, I wouldn’t have been sitting at that bench at the exact moment when Isaac came over to me in a plaintive mood. Obviously upset, he had been so recently wronged, he lamented on the verge of tears. And at that, mercy swept over my countenance, for my brother felt as aggrieved as I did earlier; and this appointment, per God’s unfailing, obstinate love, had at last come for me, convicting me to be very, very agreeable, sympathetic and kind to my fellow long-suffering brother. In this instance, thank God, language did not matter so much as empathy, carrying each others’ burdens and thus fulfilling the rule of Christ. We prayed and blessed each other in Jesus’ name, and then boldly went forward into the rally.

 

I suspect the enemy has infiltrated our team what with my outbursts and Isaac’s failing out as evidence. My group mates and I must be more vigilant in prayer and in digging deep into the Father’s word if we are to overcome the spies in our camp that have planted incendiary devices in our mouths and in our hearts. We certainly need such encouragement as the Lord provides for the edification and encouragement of each other, even more so, in fact, in the face of adversity, despite our fatigue and other physical ills that befall us like a hail of arrows. In faith, I’m sure, faith will see us through; and per what the pastors exhorted at the rally, we will become as if the smooth stone in David’s sling, ready to fly into the air to crush the Goliath in this world.

 

Sihng4 jauh6 achievement

Ngwuih misunderstanding

Nggaai2 to misunderstand

Yuhn4 leuhng6 forgive

Gaan2syun2 chosen

 

The Security Guard

 

At the morning rally, a security guard left an indelible impression on my heart what with her showing of unconditional support and her proffering of words of encouragement, which like a waterfall fell in force and power over my friends and me. To my amazement, I first saw her out of the corner of my eye stepping out of her role as a security guard to pray as a spiritual parent to two spiritual children during the morning rally’s prayer time; there she was, clad in her blue uniform, laying hands on those weeping kids; finally, I had witnessed someone courageous enough to step out of that rule of law, her boundary in Hong Kong, to be bound to that which is ethereal, the rule of Christ to carry each others’ burdens. Later, as the audience passed through the exit, I had time to confirm her love for the Lord and at that, we broke into a torrent of encouragement and followed this with a flurry of picture-taking. Indeed, never have I stumbled upon such good will from a dragon security guard in HK so I am hopeful, therefore, that this is but the the start of a greater movement within that particular demon-worshipping core, that at this time, God is opening up the heavenly armory and placing his prayer warriors inside that particular stronghold in Hong Kong to demolish every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and placing in its stead a profusion of love, gentleness and kindness. I look forward to the day when wisdom, and not languid stares, shall emanate from all the people who man the facilities in these universities.

 

Reconciliation

 

This is special. No sooner had Isaac and I stepped into the auditorium than we heard the plaintive cry of the mainland Chinese on the stage forgiving the Hong Kong people for their trespasses against their brethren from the north. A flurry of hugs, replete with a few tears, ensued. That was, as Dale announced from the stage, a delicious moment. Jesus must have been breaking out the good champagne in heaven for a rousing celebration in view of this victory.

 

Sex Talk – Part One

 

The kids finally received the sex talk this morning; a fiery pastor delivered the message which was as much shocking as informative; and gasps and wincing abounded in the audience.

 

While I have recently heard the sex talk at the men’s retreat, and have furthermore by God’s grace been inoculated against this particular area of struggle, it was nonetheless refreshing to hear the news, as shocking and as sensational as it was. I am willing, in addition, to believe that some of the atrocious acts that the pastor referenced, such as gruesome abortions and bizarre sexual acts, are more prevalent than my reason will believe, because my scope is limited by experience, but as the Father witnesses everything, if the Spirit has convicted this man and has told him that the world is heading closer and closer into the mouth of Jezebel in this way, I accept this. In fact, believing this is important if I am to be a good spiritual parent who will not only protect but educate the new generation from the prowling enemy that lurks these days, even, in our computers.

 

Prayer

 

The Holy Spirit fell over me this morning during my group’s team time. He convicted me to pray in Cantonese for the first time, and so I did without fear, those Chinese words pouring out of me as if perfume from an alabaster jar. Praise God: he is good; and this was the moment I have been waiting for.

 

I think about what happened, and am amazed at the Father’s favor; despite my critiques against this culture, and in spite of my recent lamentations, the Lord, ever faithfully, provided a way out under which I could stand and by which I could be protected from the bait of Satan. Little did I know that the escape route would, in fact, ironically, direct me to the very thing that heretofore has stood as an obstruction, a spiritual roadblock, in my mind.

 

A missionary on the stage just spoke into my life when she said about her experience learning Putonghua in China: the difficult part was not learning the language but learning to love those people as Jesus loves them. This will always be my mission, no matter where I am.

 

Keuhng4 jong3

Lai1 hei2 (pull up)

 

In the afternoon, my team had a reconciliation meeting during which, in small groups, each team member at last was given an opportunity to share alternately their joys and struggles. At that time, though having staved off an open rebuke for several days, I could no longer hold back this challenge to my small group: to step out in faith to be a gateway to the nations; and second, per the morning’s message, to on their guard against the sexually explicit, insidious media. I laid out my argument with much cogency, and such a response as I saw fit knocked my group mates into a stupor, because they certainly didn’t have much to say afterwards.

 

Oscillate between…and…

Vacillate…

Equivocated

Prevaricate

 

Sex Talk – Part Two

 

1) Jesus came to show us the Father; John1:18

2) Grace First, Truth Second; John 1:24:25; 16-18

 

Pahn4 mohng6 (hope)

 

Do you believe that Jesus can heal you? Then lay hands.

 

Dale and I are men who have shared similar struggles. His testimony is riveting.

 

Suddenly, I realized that this rally is, in fact, a continuation of yesterday morning’s sex talk, because we ended the previous rally praying more against the shame of abortion than against personal sexual immorality. Notionally, what is being discussed will enable people to really experience the love of the Father such that to change permanently our behavior. So when we are tempted:

 

1) Call for help; Romans 10:13

2) Escape Plan; 1Corinthians 10:13

 

Remember not to stand and rebuke the enemy with your own strength; move physically from the situation.

 

3) Run Away; 2Timothy 2:22

4) Into the Father’s Arms; Hebrews 4:14

 

I like this talk. This might be the first time that these young people get straight sex talk from their leaders; and there is no better time than now for these young people to break through in this particular area of struggle, just as the young men of SP broke through these obstinate barriers during our men’s retreat.

 

5) Confess and be Healed; James 5:16

 

I hope these young people find faithful accountability brothers and sisters in this service.

 

6) Walk in Transparent Accountable Relationships; 1John 1:7

7) Resist the Enemy; James 4:7

Ancient prophets, Isaiah, Mohammed, Ezekiel, Moses, Saul (Paul) and Jesus were ‘ascended’ into craft, to later suffer psychological distress, having met “God, or the Devil and His Angels”. Ancient alien abductions recorded in the Old Testament, reflect ontological shock after superior beings with miraculous technology identified themselves as,”God”, worshipped by Hebrews who called the skies above, ‘Heaven’ Their technology still looks like magic to us, 5000 years after the Old Testament’s documented encounters with this,”God”. Modern abductees report that during their abductions onboard craft, they often see a frightening alien race. These beings radiate rage and hatred, and appear to be overlords of the many alien races who frequent the crossroads of Earth for salvage, and to abduct humans and these beings command and pilot UFOs. Small greys, who act in unison like robots, are work beings, designed and created and labeled,’synthetic work beings’. There are similar descriptions of these overlords: Muscular, winged, sentient, highly technological, upright standing to seven or eight feet tall, scaled reptilian beings, with webbing between their claws, who have yellow/red cat-like eyes, upright saurian ‘monitor lizards’, Mothmen, alien reptilians who looked upon us, as we fancied veal. That may completely explain the ‘God-ordered’ Kosher dietary laws; strictly control what human animals eat,( as we do with snails and Omaha beef) and you will make them more tasteful as an edible. At Bud Hopkins’ house, during Saturday evening meetings, I learned that abductees had also somehow gleaned what reptoids regular diets consisted of: human young. It was a chilling story I was to hear repeatedly, echoed elsewhere, like Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone” episode,”To Serve Man”, where our importance as a race in the Universe is that of a mere condiment. It reframed correctly, the true modus operandi behind this particular alien type and its ancient and continuing interaction/visitations with mankind. We were NOT the top of the food chain! Reading the O.T. Bible, again with alien-fresh eyes, even a non abductee can discern the elusive and controlling reptilian silhouette. Statue carvings of reptilians display the Mayan ‘God’ and Egyptian ‘God’ who created other similar “chosen people” sacrificial religions. This reptilian ‘God’, seated within a comparable “Holy of Holies”, in ancient Central America, was the centerpiece of power and evil, poised to eat and relish the Mayan God’s favorite dish, that of still beating human hearts.

This ‘God’ is the self-same demanding, controlling, punishing UFO ‘Heavenly’ “God” who insisted and demanded to the Hebrews that by ‘law’, much sacrificial blood be splashed on all four corners of His Altar.In the Garden of Eden tale, are clear reptilian fingerprints; alien advanced technological surgery (Adam put to sleep and a ‘rib’ removed for cloning and genetic manipulation) created a human-alien hybrid, the status of modern man and modern woman. Reptilians. horrid creatures. are completely in command of other alien subservient beings, aboard UFO craft and starships. Some wrongly and whimsically surmised about “God”, that pigs wrote the Bible, as half the world’s two major religions forbade the eating of swine… It is laughable, to us, today, that ancient human cultures throughout the ancient world wrongly mistook highly technological beings, who landed in craft, from the skies, as “God”, but the Mayans and Israelites were clearly and purposefully duped, by these beings. The impersonation, masquerade of ancient aliens as, “God”, helmeted and duped the world in the Old Testament .. God, our true spiritual father, is much too imbued within us, and within everything all around us, to be so easily discerned.

Religion, instead, is the bane.Gandhi said : ” I very much like your Christ , but not at all, your Christians”. There is a human unconscious remnant distant memory, of looking up, towards the stars for ‘God’. Earth, is the only planet, not named for a ‘God’. But God had nothing to do with an alien machine.

A closer look at the Ark of the Covenant, is more illuminating and revealing towards this realization of non-divine origins of the Old Testament; it was an object that breached the physical world of the Jews and the unseen paranormal world of the demanding “God” who had suddenly burst upon the scene.

 

Biblical evidence exists that the Ark of the Covenant was structurally designed as superior technology, acting as an alien transmitter-capacitor as well as a alien weapon.

 

The Ark, lethal when touched, was used to communicate with alien entities who masqueraded as “God”, who insisted a contrivance to be built, which would carry ‘God’s voice’, and aid Israelites when it was carried into battles: “And they shall make an Ark of shittim wood, two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof. ‘And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it, and shalt make upon it a crown of gold around and all about.” One of the Gold plates was positively charged and one was negatively charged and together they formed the condenser.

If one of the cherubim’s positioned above the Mercy Seat acted as a magnet, then one has the rudimentary requirements of a two way communication set. The ‘Lord’, this “God”, even detailed what clothing should be worn when consulting “God” through this Ark device, so that no interference would be encountered and to limit the risk of electrocution. This discussion shall follow, shortly. Further proof of the Ark’s innate communication function can be found in the First Book Of Samuel, Chapter 3:3, when the Ark directly speaks to Samuel: “And ere the lamp of God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the Ark of God was, and Samuel was laid to sleep. ‘That the Lord called Samuel, and he answered here am I. ‘And he ran unto Eli, and said here am I, for thou calledst me. And he said. I called not, lie down again. And he went and lay down”. This repeated itself on two more occasions and eventually Eli realized that the Lord was speaking to Samuel via the Ark, which he then told to Samuel, and on the fourth occasion Samuel was able to converse with the “Lord”, directly THROUGH this contrivance.The only persons in the house at the time were Eli and Samuel, and it is quite blatant that it was indeed the Ark which ‘spoke’ to Samuel.

 

This Ark , clearly an alien technological invention, beyond ancient man’s technological understanding, seems a most unseemly ‘tool’ for our true, good and all powerful, God of the Universe, who communicates through angels, coincidences and signs, dreams, infused insights, inspiration and telepathy.

The True spirit God does not need such mechanical contrivances and HE, is down a long hall and somewhere else, than in that “Book” that pretends to delineate and define God. This machine/ weapon technological artifice was an alien designed three-in-one communication device set, religious receptacle and weapon of mass destruction. The Ark had these three uses; at all times of communication with ‘God’ and at all times of great battles, the Ark was invariably present. Unfortunately, not everyone had the same opinion of the Ark as lethally divine in intent. David decided for safety’s sake, to ‘steal away with it’, with Uzzah’s help, with tragic consequences as retold in the second book of Samuel, Chapter 6: “And when they came to Nachons threshing-floor, Uzzah put forth his hand to the Ark of God, and took hold of it, for the oxen shook it. ‘And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and God smote him there for his error, and there he died by the Ark of God.” Quite clearly the Ark , carrying a massive electrical charge, killed Uzzah on the spot when he touched it. Theologians mince words. Why didn’t “the God of the Universe”, kill Uzzah for attempting to sequester the Ark at the outset; why did He have to wait until the Ark was actually touched? Because, to theologians, ‘God’, accurately described in the Hebrew Old Testament, was a crafty, manipulative, and completely masquerading alien. Regard this startling photo of a Sumerian ‘God’, worshipped and obeyed 7000 years before Abraham, Isaac and Moses, with much the same sacrificial orders.ood technology always looks just like magic to a primitive.Consider the WWII “Cargo Cults” that developed in the South Pacific when native islanders took our pilots and airmen for “Gods from the Sky.”When the war ended, these primitive peoples sought to incite the return of the “Sky Gods” by making facsimile airplane out of palm trees and fronds.

 

This Ark ‘contrivance’, from the UFO document of the Old Testament, reveals more about this ancient,’God’ who used the Ark as an alien technological tool to conduct this masquerade.Insights about this ‘God Machine’ reveal the reptilian alien fingerprint and its fuller silhouette, unfurled in Biblical descriptions, that yield eve more truths.

 

The Ark of the Covenant alien ordered to be built, was an ornate golden chest used for electrical radiation/ radio communication, to both hear from ‘God’ and to speak to “God”, and was additionally used as a terrible weapon against the enemies of the Israelites.In order to operate it safely, the high priest from the family of Kohath (of the tribe of Levi), who knew even more of its ‘secrets’, had to wear a breastplate with twelve sacred gemstones called ‘the Stones of Fire’, for his own physical protection.

 

The ‘holiest’ part of the Ark was called the ‘oracle’, the place where one could literally discern audible orders to Israel from “God”, which were almost totally made through Moses.

When Moses entered into the tabernacle of the covenant to consult with this ‘oracle’, he heard a voice speaking to him from the ‘propitiatory’, a sectional ‘speaker’ that was over the ark between the two cherubim, the wings of which acted as separate battery terminal poles. This is technology, not spirituality. Specific directives, given to Moses, would now come from “God”, through this machine : “Thence will I give orders, and will speak to thee over the propitiatory, and from the midst of these two cherubim, which shall be upon the Ark of the testimony, all things which I will command the children of Israel by thee”. Unlike orders given from a ‘ burning bush’, a disembodied voice in a laser of light focused upon a bush, all of “God’s” future orders came from this ‘burning’ box , an electronic technological contrivance. There was an intermittent appearance of a “cloud” between the cherubim and at these times the Ark machinery was considered so dangerous that Moses, himself, would not approach it. I am personally sure that the accompanying sharp smell of ozone, a characteristic smell of a modern powerful radio transmitter, filled the room, at such times, as well. A “fire” which emerged from the Ark of the testimony was preceded by a “glow” which the Bible describes as the “glory of the Lord”.The army that carried the Ark of the Covenant, before it, was invincible. Is mankind a simple ‘speck’ of import, in an endless and timeless Universe? We are a considerable, “speck”, given that we are created as a harvest-able crop farmed throughout the Universe, by the masters of our Universe, Draco reptilians, and thus very much someone else’s valuable property. Though we are no more than a condiment in reptoids menu, we are also imbued with a soul/spirit, by God, a soul/spirit that is also garnered by reptoids after our ‘death’ and recycled by them.Disclosure will NOT EVER, will NEVER happen, simply because humankind could never handle the dismal alien-human ‘truth’.We figure, spiritually and physically, for both elements of mankind are harvested (abducted) much more than a mere speck, but instead one of a prized simian creature useful for reptilian’s purposes who deluded mankind in a God masquerade that has blinded and helmeted Earth.Director of CIA, Admiral R.H. Hillenkoetter: “It is time for the truth to be brought out in open Congressional hearings. Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense. To hide the facts, the Air Force has silenced its personnel.” p. 58, quoted from New York Times, February 28, 1960, p. L30

Paul Schroeder, September 25th, 2017 Brooklyn, NY

Two fiery jets allegedly issued from between the cherubim above the Ark, burning up snakes, scorpions, thorns, and enemies in the Israelites' path. Such legendary attributes of ... In his first book,Chariots of the Gods, he explained that he believed the Ark of the Covenant was an alien invention that was electrically charged.Thelidonthe Ark ofthe Covenant hadtwocherubim facing each other. There isnoindication that these cherubim were ever removed from the lid, anditis certain thatthelid was never removed. Even so, two large cherubim standing on the floor and spreading their wings over the Ark were placed in the Most Holy Place.

The Ark of the Covenant (Hebrew: אָרוֹן הַבְּרִית, Modern Arōn Ha'brēt Tiberian ʾĀrôn Habbərîṯ), also known as the Ark of the Testimony, is a gold-covered wooden chest with lid cover described in the Book of Exodus as containing the two stone tablets of the Ten Commandments. According to various texts within the Hebrew Bible, it also contained Aaron's rod and a pot of manna. The biblical account relates that, approximately one year after the Israelites' exodus from Egypt, the Ark was created according to the pattern given to Moses by God when the Israelites were encamped at the foot of biblical Mount Sinai. Thereafter, the gold-plated acacia chest was carried by its staves while en route by the Levites approximately 2,000 cubits (approximately 800 meters or 2,600 feet) in advance of the people when on the march or before the Israelite army, the host of fighting men. When carried, the Ark was always hidden under a large veil made of skins and blue cloth, always carefully concealed, even from the eyes of the priests and the Levites who carried it. God was said to have spoken with Moses "from between the two cherubim" on the Ark's cover.[3] When at rest the tabernacle was set up and the holy Ark was placed under the veil of the covering the staves of it crossing the middle side bars to hold it up off the ground.According to the Book of Exodus, God instructed Moses on Mount Sinai during his 40-day stay upon the mountain within the thick cloud and darkness where God was and he was shown the pattern for the tabernacle and furnishings of the Ark to be made of shittim wood to house the Tablets of Stone. Moses instructed Bezalel and Oholiab to construct the Ark. In Deuteronomy, however, the Ark is said to have been built specifically by Moses himself without reference of Bezalel or Oholiab. The Book of Exodus gives detailed instructions on how the Ark is to be constructed. It is to be 2½ cubits in length, 1½ in breadth, and 1½ in height (approximately 131×79×79 cm or 52×31×31 in). Then it is to be gilded entirely with gold, and a crown or molding of gold is to be put around it. Four rings of gold are to be attached to its four corners, two on each side—and through these rings staves of shittim-wood overlaid with gold for carrying the Ark are to be inserted; and these are not to be removed. A golden lid, the kapporet (traditionally "mercy seat" in Christian translations) which is covered with 2 golden cherubim, is to be placed above the Ark. Instructions missing from the biblical account include the thickness of the mercy seat, but instruct that the cherubim cover be beaten out the ends of it and details concerning the cherubim except that they form the space that God will appear. The Ark is finally to be placed under the veil of the covering.The biblical account continues that, after its creation by Moses, the Ark was carried by the Israelites during their 40 years of wandering in the desert. Whenever the Israelites camped, the Ark was placed in a separate room in a sacred tent, called the Tabernacle. When the Israelites, led by Joshua toward the Promised Land, arrived at the banks of the Jordan river, the Ark was carried in the lead preceding the people and was the signal for their advance (Joshua 3:3, 6). During the crossing, the river grew dry as soon as the feet of the priests carrying the Ark touched its waters, and remained so until the priests—with the Ark—left the river after the people had passed over (Josh. 3:15-17; 4:10, 11, 18). As memorials, twelve stones were taken from the Jordan at the place where the priests had stood (Josh. 4:1-9). In the Battle of Jericho, the Ark was carried round the city once a day for seven days, preceded by the armed men and seven priests sounding seven trumpets of rams' horns (Josh. 6:4-15). On the seventh day, the seven priests sounding the seven trumpets of rams' horns before the Ark compassed the city seven times and, with a great shout, Jericho's wall fell down flat and the people took the city (Josh. 6:16-20). After the defeat at Ai, Joshua lamented before the Ark (Josh. 7:6-9). When Joshua read the Law to the people between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, they stood on each side of the Ark. We next hear of the Ark in Bethel where it was being cared for by the priest Phineas the grandson of Aaron (Judges 20:26f, where 'Bethel' is translated 'the House of God' in the King James Version). According to this verse it was consulted by the people of Israel when they were planning to attack the Benjaminites at the battle of Gibeah. Later, however, the Ark was kept at Shiloh, another religious centre some 10 miles north of Bethel, at the time of the prophet Samuel's apprenticeship (1 Samuel 3:3), where it was cared for by Hophni and Phinehas, two sons of Eli (1 Samuel 4:3f).A few years later the elders of Israel decided to take the Ark out onto the battlefield to assist them against the Philistines, after being defeated at the battle of Eben-Ezer (1 Sam. 4:3-11). They were, however, heavily defeated with the loss of 30,000 men. The Ark was captured by the Philistines and Hophni and Phinehas were killed. The news of its capture was at once taken to Shiloh by a messenger "with his clothes rent, and with earth upon his head." The old priest, Eli, fell dead when he heard it; and his daughter-in-law, bearing a son at the time the news of the capture of the Ark was received, named him Ichabod — explained as "The glory has departed Israel" in reference to the loss of the Ark (1 Sam. 4:12-22). The mother of the child Ichabod died at his birth. (1 Sam. 4:20) The Philistines took the Ark to several places in their country, and at each place misfortune befell them (1 Sam. 5:1-6). At Ashdod it was placed in the temple of Dagon. The next morning Dagon was found prostrate, bowed down, before it; and on being restored to his place, he was on the following morning again found prostrate and broken. The people of Ashdod were smitten with tumors; a plague of mice was sent over the land (1 Sam. 6:5). The affliction of boils was also visited upon the people of Gath and of Ekron, whither the Ark was successively removed (1 Sam. 5:8-12). After the Ark had been among them for seven months, the Philistines, on the advice of their diviners, returned it to the Israelites, accompanying its return with an offering consisting of golden images of the tumors and mice wherewith they had been afflicted. The Ark was set up in the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite, and the Beth-shemites offered sacrifices and burnt offerings (1 Sam. 6:1-15). Out of curiosity the men of Beth-shemesh gazed at the Ark; and as a punishment, seventy of them (fifty thousand and seventy in some translations) were smitten by the Lord (1 Samuel 6:19). The Bethshemites sent to Kirjath-jearim, or Baal-Judah, to have the Ark removed (1 Samuel 6:21); and it was taken to the house of Abinadab, whose son Eleazar was sanctified to keep it. Kirjath-jearim remained the abode of the Ark for twenty years. Under Saul, the Ark was with the army before he first met the Philistines, but the king was too impatient to consult it before engaging in battle. In 1 Chronicles 13:3 it is stated that the people were not accustomed to consulting the Ark in the days of Saul.At the beginning of his reign over the United Monarchy, King David removed the Ark from Kirjath-jearim amid great rejoicing. On the way to Zion, Uzzah, one of the drivers of the cart that carried the Ark, put out his hand to steady the Ark, and was struck dead by God for touching it. The place was subsequently named "Perez-Uzzah", literally "Outburst Against Uzzah",[10] as a result. David, in fear, carried the Ark aside into the house of Obed-edom the Gittite, instead of carrying it on to Zion, and there it stayed three months (2 Samuel 6:1-11; 1 Chronicles 13:1-13). On hearing that God had blessed Obed-edom because of the presence of the Ark in his house, David had the Ark brought to Zion by the Levites, while he himself, "girded with a linen ephod ... danced before the Lord with all his might" and in the sight of all the public gathered in Jerusalem - a performance that caused him to be scornfully rebuked by his first wife, Saul's daughter Michal (2 Sam. 6:12-16, 20-22; 1 Chron. 15). In Zion, David put the Ark in the tabernacle he had prepared for it, offered sacrifices, distributed food, and blessed the people and his own household (2 Sam. 6:17-20; 1 Chron. 16:1-3; 2 Chron. 1:4).

The Levites were appointed to minister before the Ark (1 Chron. 16:4). David's plan of building a temple for the Ark was stopped at the advice of God (2 Sam. 7:1-17; 1 Chron. 17:1-15; 28:2, 3). The Ark was with the army during the siege of Rabbah (2 Sam. 11:11); and when David fled from Jerusalem at the time of Absalom's conspiracy, the Ark was carried along with him until he ordered Zadok the priest to return it to Jerusalem (2 Sam. 15:24-29).

 

In Solomon's Temple

When Abiathar was dismissed from the priesthood by King Solomon for having taken part in Adonijah's conspiracy against David, his life was spared because he had formerly borne the Ark (1 Kings 2:26). Solomon worshipped before the Ark after his dream in which God promised him wisdom (1 Kings 3:15). During the construction of Solomon's Temple, a special inner room, named Kodesh Hakodashim (Eng. Holy of Holies), was prepared to receive and house the Ark (1 Kings 6:19); and when the Temple was dedicated, the Ark—containing the original tablets of the Ten Commandments—was placed therein (1 Kings 8:6-9). When the priests emerged from the holy place after placing the Ark there, the Temple was filled with a cloud, "for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord" (1 Kings 8:10-11; 2 Chron. 5:13, 14).

When Solomon married Pharaoh's daughter, he caused her to dwell in a house outside Zion, as Zion was consecrated because of its containing the Ark (2 Chron. 8:11). King Josiah also had the Ark returned to the Temple (2 Chron. 35:3), from which it appears to have been removed by one of his predecessors (cf. 2 Chron. 33-34 and 2 Kings 21-23).

 

The Babylonian Conquest and aftermath[edit]

In 587 BC, the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple. There is no record of what became of the Ark in the Books of Kings and Chronicles. An ancient Greek version of the biblical third Book of Ezra, 1 Esdras, suggests that Babylonians took away the vessels of the ark of God, but does not mention taking away the Ark: And they took all the holy vessels of the Lord, both great and small, with the vessels of the ark of God, and the king's treasures, and carried them away into Babylon— 1 Esdras 1:54

In Rabbinic literature, the final disposition of the Ark is disputed. Some rabbis hold that it must have been carried off to Babylon, while others hold that it must have been hidden lest it be carried off into Babylon and never brought back.[11] A late 2nd-century rabbinic work known as the Tosefta states the opinions of these rabbis that Josiah, the king of Judah, stored away the Ark, along with the jar of manna, and a jar containing the holy anointing oil, the rod of Aaron which budded and a chest given to Israel by the Philistines.[12] This was said to have been done in order to prevent their being carried off into Babylon as had already happened to the other vessels. Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Shimon, in the same rabbinic work, state that the Ark was, in fact, taken into Babylon. Rabbi Yehudah, dissenting, says that the Ark was stored away in its own place, meaning, somewhere on the Temple Mount.

References in Scripture

Tanakh; The Ark is first mentioned in the Book of Exodus, and then numerous times in Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, I Samuel, II Samuel, I Kings, I Chronicles, II Chronicles, Psalms and Jeremiah. In the Book of Jeremiah, it is referenced by Jeremiah, who, speaking in the days of Josiah (Jer. 3:16), prophesied a future time, possibly the end of days, when the Ark will no longer be talked about or be made again: And it shall be that when you multiply and become fruitful in the land, in those days - the word of the LORD - they will no longer say, 'The Ark of the Covenant of the LORD' and it will not come to mind; they will not mention it, and will not recall it, and it will not be used any more.Rashi comments on this verse that "The entire people will be so imbued with the spirit of sanctity that God's Presence will rest upon them collectively, as if the congregation itself was the Ark of the Covenant."

Second Book of Maccabees

According to Second Maccabees, at the beginning of chapter 2: The records show that it was the prophet Jeremiah who ... prompted by a divine message ... gave orders that the Tent of Meeting and the ark should go with him. Then he went away to the mountain from the top of which Moses saw God's promised land. When he reached the mountain, Jeremiah found a cave-dwelling; he carried the tent, the ark, and the incense-altar into it, then blocked up the entrance. Some of his companions came to mark out the way, but were unable to find it. When Jeremiah learnt of this he reprimanded them. "The place shall remain unknown", he said, "until God finally gathers his people together and shows mercy to them. The Lord will bring these things to light again, and the glory of the Lord will appear with the cloud, as it was seen both in the time of Moses and when Solomon prayed that the shrine might be worthily consecrated."II Maccabees 2:4–8 (Douay-Rheims, 1899) The "mountain from the top of which Moses saw God's promised land" would be Mount Nebo, located in what is now Jordan.

 

The Ark in Islamic sources

Chapter 2 (Sura 2) of the Quran (Verse 248), is believed to refer to the Ark: And their prophet said to them, "Indeed, a sign of his kingship is that the chest (tābūt) will come to you in which is assurance (sakīnatun) from your Lord and a remnant of what the family of Moses (Mūsā) and the family of Aaron (Hārūn) had left, carried by the angels. Indeed in that is a sign for you, if you are believers." The Arabic word sakīna (variously translated "peace of reassurance" or "spirit of tranquility") is related to the post-Biblical Hebrew shekhinah, meaning "dwelling or presence of God". The Islamic scholar Al Baidawi mentioned that the sakina could be Tawrat, the Books of Moses.[15] According to Al-Jalalan, the relics in the Ark were the fragments of the two tablets, rods, robes, shoes, mitres of Moses and the vase of manna.[15] Al-Tha'alibi, in Qisas Al-Anbiya (The Stories of the Prophets), has given an earlier and later history of the Ark.

According to Uri Rubin the Ark of the Covenant has a religious basis in Islam, and Islam gives it special significance.[

Possible locations: Since its disappearance from the Biblical narrative, there have been a number of claims of having discovered or of having possession of the Ark, and several possible places have been suggested for its location. Mount Nebo..2 Maccabees 2:4-10, written around 100 BC, says that the prophet Jeremiah, "being warned by God" before the Babylonian invasion, took the Ark, the Tabernacle, and the Altar of Incense, and buried them in a cave on Mount Nebo, informing those of his followers who wished to find the place that it should remain unknown "until the time that God should gather His people again together, and receive them unto mercy."[17] Mount Nebo is also described in the Bible (Deuteronomy 34) as the site from which Moses views the Promised Land, and apparently also is his final burial place. Mount Nebo is approximately 47 km (29 miles) slightly south of due east from Jerusalem, near the east bank of the Jordan River. Ethiopia..The Chapel of the Tablet at the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Axum allegedly houses the original Ark of the Covenant. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church claims to possess the Ark of the Covenant, or Tabot, in Axum. The object is currently kept under guard in a treasury near the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion. Replicas of the Axum tabot are kept in every Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo church, each with its own dedication to a particular saint; the most popular of these include Mary, George and Michael. The Kebra Nagast was composed to legitimise the Solomonic dynasty, which ruled the Ethiopian Empire following its establishment in 1270. It narrates how the real Ark of the Covenant was brought to Ethiopia by Menelik I with divine assistance, while a forgery was left in the Temple in Jerusalem. Although the Kebra Nagast is the best-known account of this belief, it predates the document. Abu al-Makarim, writing in the last quarter of the twelfth century, makes one early reference to this belief that they possessed the Ark. "The Abyssinians possess also the Ark of the Covenant", he wrote, and, after a description of the object, describes how the liturgy is celebrated upon the Ark four times a year, "on the feast of the great nativity, on the feast of the glorious Baptism, on the feast of the holy Resurrection, and on the feast of the illuminating Cross." In his 1992 book The Sign and the Seal, British writer Graham Hancock suggests, contrary to the Kebra Nagast, that the ark spent several years in Egypt before it came to Ethiopia via the Nile River, where it was kept in the islands of Lake Tana for about four hundred years and finally taken to Axum.[20] Archaeologist John Holladay of the University of Toronto called Hancock's theory "garbage and hogwash," while Edward Ullendorff, a former Professor of Ethiopian Studies at the University of London, said he "wasted a lot of time reading it." On 25 June 2009, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia, Abune Paulos, said he would announce to the world the next day the unveiling of the Ark of the Covenant, which he said had been kept safe and secure in a church in Axum, Ethiopia.[22] The following day, on 26 June 2009, the patriarch announced that he would not unveil the Ark after all, but that instead he could attest to its current status. The Lemba people of South Africa and Zimbabwe have claimed that their ancestors carried the Ark south, calling it the ngoma lungundu or "voice of God", eventually hiding it in a deep cave in the Dumghe mountains, their spiritual home.[On 14 April 2008, in a UK Channel 4 documentary, Tudor Parfitt, taking a literalist approach to the Biblical story, described his research into this claim. He says that the object described by the Lemba has attributes similar to the Ark. It was of similar size, was carried on poles by priests, was not allowed to touch the ground, was revered as a voice of their God, and was used as a weapon of great power, sweeping enemies aside. In his book The Lost Ark of the Covenant (2008), Parfitt also suggests that the Ark was taken to Arabia following the events depicted in the Second Book of Maccabees, and cites Arabic sources which maintain it was brought in distant times to Yemen. One Lemba clan, the Buba, which was supposed to have brought the Ark to Africa, have a genetic signature called the Cohen Modal Haplotype. This suggests a male Semitic link to the Levant. Lemba tradition maintains that the Ark spent some time in Sena in Yemen. Later, it was taken across the sea to East Africa and may have been taken inland at the time of the Great Zimbabwe civilization. According to their oral traditions, some time after the arrival of the Lemba with the Ark, it self-destructed. Using a core from the original, the Lemba priests constructed a new one. This replica was discovered in a cave by a Swedish German missionary named Harald von Sicard in the 1940s and eventually found its way to the Museum of Human Science in Harare.[25] Parfitt had this artifact radio-carbon dated to about 1350, which coincided with the sudden end of the Great Zimbabwe civilization.Chartres Cathedral, France

French author Louis Charpentier claimed that the Ark was taken to the Chartres Cathedral by the Knights Templar.. Rennes-le-Château, then to the United States

One author has theorised that the Ark was taken from Jerusalem to the village of Rennes-le-Château in Southern France. Karen Ralls has cited Freemason Patrick Byrne, who believes the Ark was moved from Rennes-le-Château at the outbreak of World War I to the United States.

The Ark of the Covenant was said to have been kept in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, surviving the pillages of Rome by Genseric and Alaric I but lost when the basilica burned. "Rabbi Eliezer ben José stated that he saw in Rome the mercy-seat of the temple. There was a bloodstain on it. On inquiry he was told that it was a stain from the blood which the high priest sprinkled thereon on the Day of Atonement."[In 2003, author Graham Phillips hypothetically concluded that the Ark was taken to Mount Sinai in the Valley of Edom by the Maccabees. Phillips claims it remained there until the 1180s, when Ralph de Sudeley, the leader of the Templars found the Maccabean treasure at Jebel al-Madhbah, and returned home to his estate at Herdewyke in Warwickshire, England taking the treasure with him.[34]

During the turn of the 20th century British Israelites carried out some excavations of the Hill of Tara in Ireland looking for the Ark of the Covenant—the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland campaigned successfully to have them stopped before they destroyed the hill. In 1922 in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, the royal tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun (KV62) was opened by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon. Among the artifacts was a processional ark, listed as Shrine 261, the Anubis Shrine. Almost immediately after publication of the photographs[36] of this sensational archaeological find, some claimed that the Anubis Shrine could be the Ark of the Covenant. John M. Lundquist, author of The Temple of Jerusalem: Past, Present, and Future (2008), discounts this idea. The Anubis Shrine measures 95 centimetres (37 in) long, 37 centimetres (15 in) wide, and 54.3 centimetres (21.4 in) high in the shape of a pylon. The Biblical Ark of the Covenant is approximately 133 centimetres (52 in) long, 80 centimetres (31 in) wide, and 80 centimetres (31 in) high in the shape of a rectangular chest.

Lundquist observes that the Anubis Shrine is not strictly analogous to the Ark of the Covenant; it can only be said that the it is "ark-like", constructed of wood, gessoed and gilded, stored within a sacred tomb, "guarding" the treasury of the tomb (and not the primary focus of that environment), that it contains compartments within it that store and hold sacred objects, that it has a figure of Anubis on its lid, and that it was carried by two staves permanently inserted into rings at its base and borne by eight priests in the funerary procession to Tutankhamun's tomb. Its value is the insight it provides to the ancient culture of Egypt.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark_of_the_Covenant

www.holyspiritspeaks.org/videos/gospel-movie-waiting-5/

Introduction

"He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches" (Revelation 2:29). Have you heard the Holy Spirit speak to the churches? Are the words spoken by Almighty God and the Lord Jesus uttered from one Spirit, from one source? This movie clip will reveal this to you!

 

Storyline:

 

Yang Hou'en is a pastor at a house church in China. With his father Yang Shoudao, they have awaited the Lord Jesus to descend from the clouds and take them up into the kingdom of heaven. For this, they diligently worked for the Lord, held fast to His name, and believed that anyone who is not the Lord Jesus descending from the clouds is a false Christ. And so, when they heard the news of the Lord's second coming, they did not listen to it or accept it. They thought that it was best to watch and wait. … While they waited passively, Yang Hou'en's cousin Li Jiayin accepted the work of Almighty God in the last days, and spread the gospel to them. After some intense discussions, Yang Hou'en finally understood the true meaning of "watch and wait," and could see that Almighty God's words are the truth, the way, the life, and these are the voice of the Lord, and Almighty God is the second coming of the Lord Jesus that they had waited for so many years …

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Third Sunday of Lent

 

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 4:5-42

 

Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

Jacob's well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon.

A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink."

His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.

The Samaritan woman said to him, "How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?" (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.)

Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

(The woman) said to him, "Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the cistern is deep; where then can you get this living water?

Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?"

Jesus answered and said to her, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again;

but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water."

Jesus said to her, "Go call your husband and come back."

The woman answered and said to him, "I do not have a husband." Jesus answered her, "You are right in saying, 'I do not have a husband.'

For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true."

The woman said to him, "Sir, I can see that you are a prophet.

Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain; but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem."

Jesus said to her, "Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews.

But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him.

God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth."

The woman said to him, "I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Anointed; when he comes, he will tell us everything."

Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking with you."

At that moment his disciples returned, and were amazed that he was talking with a woman, but still no one said, "What are you looking for?" or "Why are you talking with her?"

The woman left her water jar and went into the town and said to the people,

Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Messiah?

They went out of the town and came to him.

Meanwhile, the disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat."

But he said to them, "I have food to eat of which you do not know."

So the disciples said to one another, "Could someone have brought him something to eat?"

Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work.

Do you not say, 'In four months the harvest will be here'? I tell you, look up and see the fields ripe for the harvest.

The reaper is already receiving his payment and gathering crops for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper can rejoice together.

For here the saying is verified that 'One sows and another reaps.'

I sent you to reap what you have not worked for; others have done the work, and you are sharing the fruits of their work."

Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified, "He told me everything I have done."

When the Samaritans came to him, they invited him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days.

Many more began to believe in him because of his word,

and they said to the woman, "We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world."

The Furnace of Affliction!

William Nicholson and Milburn Cockrell

 

"Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction!" Isaiah 48:10

The Bible has much to say about the afflictions of God's people. Psalm 34:19 declares: "Many are the afflictions of the righteous." It is sometimes necessary for God to put His people in the furnace of affliction. This act flows from both the justice and compassion of God. He does this to try and to prove His people. This was true of Israel of old (Deuteronomy 4:20), and it is equally true of the New Testament believer. Sometimes He exercised them with heavy trials; placing them in the furnace of affliction. And it appears from the context, that a consignment to such an ordeal had been beneficial in its influence.

In the time of the Old Testament a "furnace" was a crucible for melting and refining silver and gold (Proverbs 17:3; 27:21). The word is used figuratively in the Scriptures. It this text, it means severe and grievous afflictions by which God purifies and proves His people (Ezekiel 22:18-22; Isaiah 32:9).

 

The Furnace is AFFLICTIVE

That is, the furnace is composed of many severe trials, of much mental and bodily suffering, which are designed by the great Proprietor and Manager of this furnace, to purge and refine the souls of His people.

Many agents are used by God in working out His sovereign purposes. He may use men, things, and circumstances. This is all hinted at in the action of fire in a furnace. A furnace with a fire in it causes suffering and separation. Fire finds out what is worthless; it cleanses. Now I want to list some of the forms these afflictions take.

First, God may send us a scantiness of earthly things. This may be induced by lack of employment—it may be the result of sickness—it may result from the injustice of man.

"I gave you empty stomachs in every city and lack of bread in every town" (Amos 4:6). We may not have enough food to dirty our teeth. The Lord controls both nature and worldly circumstances. He has many ways of taking away our temporal goods. Though we may work hard every work day and make much money, God can cause it to not go very far. "You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it." (Haggai 1:6).

Second, there can be affliction in our body. "My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly. I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning. My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body." (Psalm 38:5-7). The great Manager of the furnace of affliction, chastens the body with pain, burns with fever, or wastes it by disease.

Third, this affliction may take the form of bereavements. "And Sarah died at Kiriath-arba in the land of Canaan. There Abraham mourned and wept for her." (Genesis 23:2). Our friends and relatives get sick and die. Many of us have been put in this furnace of affliction. Friends and relatives are removed by death, lest we trust too much in them, instead of the Lord.

Fourth, the Lord sends domestic trials. "At the age of forty, Esau married two Hittite wives: Judith, the daughter of Beeri, and Basemath, the daughter of Elon. But Esau’s wives made life miserable for Isaac and Rebekah!" (Genesis 26:34-35). Sometimes our child will make a bad choice of a mate for life. Often times even small children in the home mock their father and despise their mother (Proverbs 30:17). The actions of our children can . . .

break our hearts,

put gray hairs in our heads,

and hasten us to the grave!

All of God's elect have been in this furnace of affliction! Adam first experienced it when he sinned in Eden.

Moses suffered afflictions with the people of God.

David was persecuted by his blood-thirsty enemies.

Job lost his possessions, children, and health.

Jeremiah and Isaiah were cruelly treated.

Daniel was put in the lions' den.

Paul and Silas were put in prison.

Even our Lord was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.

 

This Furnace is DIVINELY APPOINTED

Afflictions are not the result of chance or blind fate.

Afflictions do not arise out of the dust (Job 5:6).

Afflictions are not to be traced to secondary causes.

Afflictions are not merely the work of our enemies.

Afflictions come from the moral government of God.

Afflictions come by the wise and gracious arrangement of God's divine providence. "So that no one would be disturbed by these afflictions; for you yourselves know that we have been destined for this!" (1 Thessalonians 3:3). "Heed the rod, and the One who appointed it!" (Micah 6:9).

The same God who sends the sunshine and the rain — also sends His people into the furnace of affliction. "The LORD kills, and makes alive. He brings down to the grave, and raises up. The LORD sends poverty and wealth; He humbles and He exalts!" (1 Samuel 2:7). In Isaiah 45:7 Jehovah declares: "I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things!"

The wise man sees the hand of God in affliction — as well as in affluence. Every event is either of His appointment — or it has His all-wise permission. God works all things after the counsel of His own will (Ephesians 1:11), and so all things work together for good to those who love God (Romans 8:28). "Behold, He snatches away; who can hinder or turn Him back? Who will say to Him, What are You doing? He destroys the blameless and the wicked" (Job 9:12, 22).

God's afflictive providence, is the working out of His sovereign will. Often we see God's hand in great things — but not in little things. We see His hand in good things — but not in evil things. "Behold, this evil is of the LORD" (2 Kings 6:33). Job asked his wife: "What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" (Job 2:10). "Shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD has not done it?" (Amos 3:6). "For the inhabitant of Maroth waited carefully for good: but evil came down from the LORD unto the gate of Jerusalem" (Micah 1:12). These verses do not teach that God is the author of sin. Rather they teach that when God sends us afflictions — they seem evil unto us.

When grace enables us to see the hand of God in all events, we can bear these without murmuring or complaining. Job lost his family, his wealth, and his good health, yet he consoled himself: "For He performs what is appointed for me, and many such decrees are with Him!" (Job 23:14). David suffered much from his enemies and his family, yet he was happy to say: "My times are in Your hand!" (Psalm 31:15). Still again hear him: "I was silent; I would not open my mouth — for You are the one who has done this!" (Psalm 39:9). When Eli was told his family tree would be cut off, he said to young Samuel: "He is the LORD; let Him do what is good in His eyes!" (1 Samuel 3:18). When Hezekiah was told by the Prophet Isaiah that his sons would be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon, he said: "The word of the LORD you have spoken is good" (Isaiah 39:8).

How wonderful to know that a God of infinite love and wisdom has arranged all things which come to pass in this world. When we find ourselves in a very dark chapter of the book of Divine Providence, we must fall upon the words of our Lord: "What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand!" (John 13:7).

 

This Furnace is Not Vindictive, but GRACIOUS

The chastisement of God is always less than we deserve: "He has not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities" (Psalm 103:10). If God dealt with us as our sins deserved, we would be consigned to the lowest Hell. But because of His mercy and grace, we never suffer as we deserve to suffer. "But He, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and did not destroy them. Yes, many a time He turned His anger away, and did not stir up all His wrath!" (Psalm 78:38). "And after all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great guilt, seeing that you, our God, have punished us less than our iniquities deserved!" (Ezra 9:13). Our sins are many: "We all stumble in many ways!" (James 3:2). Nevertheless, God's judgments are few: "For He does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men." (Lamentations 3:33).

The afflictions He sends are "light affliction" (2 Corinthians 4:17).

They are of short duration: "For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning!" (Psalm 30:5). The Lord told the Israelites: "For a brief moment I deserted you — but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing anger for a moment I hid My face from you — but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you — says the LORD, your Redeemer." (Isaiah 54:7-8).

 

The Furnace is for OUR EVERLASTING GOOD

There can be no caprice, nor unwise anger in God toward His chosen purchased people. When He sends upon us afflictions, they are designed for our spiritual and everlasting good. They are corrective, not destructive. When we are cold and indifferent to His cause — He will permit persecutions and reproaches to befall us. But this is not the same way God punishes the wicked for their sins. The wicked are punished in wrath — the righteous are chastened in love. The wicked are punished for the good of society — the righteous are disciplined for their individual good: "When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold!" (Job 23:10; cf. Deuteronomy 8:15-16).

Afflictions exhibit the faithfulness of God: "I know, O LORD, that Your judgments are right, and that in faithfulness You have afflicted me" (Psalm 119:75). God always justly and wisely chastens us. It is the faithfulness of God to His covenant, which brings the elect under the afflictive rod. "If they break My statutes and do not keep My commandments — then I will punish their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless My lovingkindness I will not utterly take from him, Nor allow My faithfulness to fail." (Psalm 89:31-34; cf. Ezekiel 20:37). God's chastisements are blessings in disguise — they are veiled mercies.

When sore afflictions come upon us, we have the greatest evidence that we are loved with an everlasting love: "As many as I love — I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent!" (Revelation 3:19). "My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him. For whom the LORD loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives." (Hebrews 12:6-7). None but the sons and daughters of God's family are corrected. To live without chastisement is a sad sign of alienation from God. Our heavenly Father chastens us to prevent our final condemnation: "But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world" (1 Corinthians 11:32).

 

The Furnace is PROPORTIONATE

As a furnace is prepared for refining gold (Proverbs 17:3), so afflictions are appointed for the saints, who are compared to fine gold (Lamentations 4:2). Let us see here the high value that God places upon His people. Being . . .

chosen by the Father,

redeemed by the Son, and

regenerated by the Holy Spirit

— they are His precious gold!

As His gold, they get tarnished by the world and sin, and they must be subjected to the refining process. The beauty of His grace must be seen in them. Hence Jehovah seeks their spiritual improvement: "I will turn My hand against you; I will thoroughly purge away your dross and remove all your impurities!" (Isaiah 1:25).

The Lord does not treat Israel in the severe manner in which gold or silver is treated by the refiner: "Behold, I have refined you, but not with silver. . ." (Isaiah 48:10). The Great Refiner knows His metal — He knows what each one can bear. He never allows us to be tested above what we are able to bear. Sometimes He pours water on the fire if it gets too hot. He never goes beyond our strength. Neither does He turn the furnace up to the same temperature for all alike. He proportions the temperature to the strength of the bearer, allotting a greater heat to the strongest, and a less to the weakest. "I will correct you in measure" (Jeremiah 30:11). God will not over-afflict.

The goldsmith keeps the furnace burning with the gold in it, until all the dross has been removed, and he can see his face in the pure gold. Even so does our heavenly Father. Let us be cheerful and hopeful when we are in the furnace, knowing He seeks only to see His pure image clearly in us! We are in the furnace of affliction "for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness" (Hebrews 12:10).

An all-wise God regulates the heat of the furnace according to the needs of His people. "He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; He will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver." (Malachi 3:3).

Some of us need more heat than others, so He increases the fire when needed. Micah said: "I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against Him." (Micah 7:9).

There are other times that He lowers the temperature, according to His Divine inspection. The prophet Jeremiah said: "Correct me, LORD, but only with justice — not in your anger, lest You reduce me to nothing." (Jeremiah 10:24).

Remember the time of trial is but short. "Weeping may endure for a night." It is called the day of adversity—the hour of affliction. Afflictions are but for a moment.

 

The Design of the Furnace is BENEFICIAL

The design of God in choosing us to suffer in the furnace of affliction, is for our everlasting good, and for His glory. Regenerating grace implants in us the seeds of immortality, which require cultivation in order to bring about maturity. The furnace is designed to develop these principles, and to fit us for higher enjoyment. Afflictions . . .

scour off our rust,

preserve us from sin,

assimilate us to Christ, who was a man of sorrows,

show us the frailty of human life,

manifest the vanity of the world,

teach us sympathy to others,

make us very humble, break the haughty mind, and bring down the lofty thought,

induce a spirit of prayer, "In the day of my trouble, I sought the Lord."

The people of God have the same need of affliction . . .

that our bodies have of medicine,

that fruit trees have of pruning,

that gold and silver have of the furnace,

that iron has of the file, and

that the child has of the rod of correction!

"However the wicked, like trees in the wilderness, grow without culture — yet the saints, like trees in the garden, must be pruned to be made fruitful; and affliction does this. There is as much difference between the sufferings of the saints and those of the ungodly — as between the cords with which an executioner pinions a condemned malefactor, and the bandages wherewith a tender surgeon binds his patient!" Wall

1. The furnace of affliction is designed to prevent us from going astray. "Before I was afflicted I went astray — but now have I kept Your Word" (Psalm 119:67). "It is good for me that I have been afflicted — that I might learn Your statutes" (Psalm 119:71). The believer comes from this furnace improved and refined!

By our natural corruption, we are ready to wander in the pathway of sin, and go astray after worldly vanities. Hence the Lord makes affliction to serve us as a thorny hedge — to keep us on the right course. Afflictions amend us and strengthen us to keep God's statutes.

2. Afflictions wean us from the evil world. "For You have tried us, O God; You have refined us as silver is refined!" (Psalm 66:10). When Egypt became an iron furnace — the Israelites became weary of it. The prodigal never thought of his father — until he experienced famine. The Lord makes this world a grief — so it may not become our idol. It is to be our purgatory — that we may never make it our paradise.

3. Afflictions test our religious profession. "But He knows the way that I take! When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold" (Job 23:10). We profess to be gold for God's treasury — yet there is much dross in us. We claim to be grain fit for the garner of heavenly glory — yet there seems to be more chaff than wheat in us. Therefore the Lord casts us into the furnace of affliction — that we may be tried and purified. The dross must be severed and separated from us. We must be winnowed with the strong wind of affliction — that the chaff may be blown away and the pure grain remain.

We profess to be soldiers in the army of the King of kings. We claim to fight under the banner of the Lord Almighty. Therefore the Lord allows us to be attacked by Satan and assaulted by the world with afflictions and persecutions — to try us and to find out if we are traitors. Cowards will yield early in the fight. Real soldiers will stand and fight to the death, but a traitor will join with the enemy. "The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away!" (Matthew 13:20-21). "You therefore endure hardship, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ" (2 Timothy 2:3).

4. The furnace of affliction brings about growth in Christian graces. "We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope" (Romans 5:3-4). Our heavenly Father longs to see His children grow up spiritually. To bring this about, He uses the instrumentality of afflictions. In these we learn patience, and we are caused to hope in God. The Lord buffets and afflicts us with severe trials — to give occasion to exercise these graces which otherwise would lie dormant with us.

The Christian graces are like perfumes — the more they are pressed by affliction, the sweeter they smell. They are like the stars — they appear best in the darkness of trouble. They are like the snow (though cold and uncomfortable), yet it warms and nourishes the earth in winter. Just so, the believer is nourished in the winter of affliction. Worldly joy ends in sorrow — but godly sorrow ends in joy. As it sometimes rains when the sun shines, so there is frequently joy in the saint's heart — when there are tears in his eyes!

5. The great Refiner aims to drive us to prayer. "LORD, in trouble have they visited You; they poured out a prayer when Your chastening was upon them" (Isaiah 26:16). "Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray" (James 5:13). The furnace is necessary to stir up prayer in us. In peace and prosperity we seldom recognize our need of Divine help. Afflictions bring us to God, and show our need of dependence upon Him. "In their affliction, they will seek Me early" (Hosea 5:15).

6. Afflictions prepare us for greater usefulness and fruitfulness. "Every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it, that it may bring forth more fruit" (John 15:2). The wise farmer prunes his fruit trees in the winter, so that they may produce more fruit in the summer. Superfluous branches and suckers which steal the sap, must be removed. Creature comforts are often to the soul, what suckers are to the tree. Therefore the great Farmer prunes these off, that the tree of the Lord may produce much fruit. God will prune His people, but not hew them down. The right hand of His mercy, knows what the left hand of His severity is doing!

 

CONCLUSION

1. Do not think the life of a Christian is easy. It is not a flowery bed of ease. During our life on earth, we all must spend some time in the furnace of affliction. But like the three Hebrews in the furnace in Babylon, God is always with us in all these sufferings. "Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are Mine. When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior!" (Isaiah 43:1-3).

2. In short, God, by placing his people in the furnace of affliction, is educating them . . .

for crowns and scepters,

for thrones and dominions,

for a place in Paradise, and

for a seat at his right hand!

At present, the Lord is fashioning the inward spiritual life for the world to come. The oppression, the piercings, the anguish, the disappointments, and all events — are but the preparation for the position we shall occupy in the world to come.

3. As Israel did not understand election until they were in Egypt, even so today we come to see our election in the furnace of afflictions. When the sorrows of death compass us and the pains of Hell get hold upon us — then we come to see distinguishing grace and everlasting love. In soul trouble we come to understand the text: "I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction!"

4. There is in this world — a furnace of afflictions for God's elect. Then in the world to come — there is another furnace of literal, physical fire that is heated for the ungodly after the judgment. "The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will weed out of His kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth!" (Matthew 13:41-42). Oh, lost sinner, flee the wrath to come!

  

APPLICATION

1. Let the sublime design of this furnace induce patience, and submission.

2. Remember the time of trial is but short. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning!" Called the day of adversity — the hour of affliction — are but for a moment.

3. What a furnace of infliction awaits the ungodly in the world to come!

The god of popular Christianity!

(Milburn Cockrell, "The Master of the World!")

 

"Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth! Yours is the dominion, O LORD, and You exalt Yourself as head over all. Both riches and honor come from You, and You rule over all, and in Your hand is power and might!" 1 Chronicles 29:11-12

 

In these days of man-centered religion, verses like these have been ignored. The pulpits of our land preach . . .

a defeated God,

a disappointed Christ and

a defenseless Holy Spirit.

Man has been deified — and God dethroned.

God has been relegated to the background.

 

The God most people believe in has benevolent intentions, yet He is unable to carry them out. He wants to bless men, but they will not let Him. The average church-goer thinks Satan has gained the upper hand, and that God is to be pitied rather than worshiped. The god of popular Christianity has a weak smile and a halo!

 

To suppose in the slightest that God has failed, or that He has been defeated, is the height of foolishness and the depth of impiety! The religious world needs to get God off the charity list!

 

The Bible knows nothing of a defeated, disappointed, and defenseless God. The God of the Bible is the "Almighty God" (Genesis 17:1) Who has all power in Heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18). With Him nothing is impossible (Luke 1:37) or too hard (Jeremiah 32:17). His eternal purpose is being worked out. Everything is going according to His plan, and all things are under His control.

 

The God of the Bible is the Supreme Being in the universe! He is the most High, higher than the highest. He has no superiors and no equals.

God is God. He does . . .

as He pleases,

only as He pleases,

always as He pleases.

 

"He is in one mind, and who can turn Him? What His soul desires, even that He does" (Job 23:13). Agreeing with this is Psalm 115:3: "But our God is in the heavens: He has done whatever He has pleased." As the Master of the World He declares: "My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure!" (Isaiah 46:10)

 

God is the Supreme Being and the Sovereign of the universe. He exercises His power . . .

as He wills,

when He wills,

where He wills.

"All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing. But He does according to His will in the host of Heaven, and among the inhabitants of earth. No one can ward off His hand or say to Him: What have You done?" (Daniel 4:35)

 

God governs all His creatures and their actions. The events that take place on earth do not take place by chance, or fate, or luck. The so-called accidents are not even incidents with the Master of the World. He numbered the hairs of our head and noted the sparrow's fall in eternity past by His "determinate counsel and foreknowledge" (Acts 2:23).

 

The Master of the World set the bounds of our habitation on earth. The number of our months is with Him, and our days are appointed!

 

God is holding the helm of the universe, and regulating all events. The Master of the World "works all things after the counsel of His own will" (Ephesians 1:11). It is God's eternal right to do all His pleasure. He is not accountable to any of His creatures. Job 33:13 declares: "He gives no account of any of His matters."

 

God controls all things — or nothing.

He must either rule — or be ruled.

He must either sway — or be swayed.

He must either accomplish His will — or be thwarted by His creatures.

He is not obligated to leave the affairs of this world to be governed by accident, chance, or the will of sinful men.

Shuhada' Sadaqat[8][a] (born Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor; 8 December 1966 – July 2023), known professionally as Sinéad O'Connor,[9][b] was an Irish singer, songwriter and political activist. Her debut studio album, The Lion and the Cobra, was released in 1987 and charted internationally. Her second studio album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got (1990), became her biggest success, selling over seven million copies worldwide.[11] Its lead single, "Nothing Compares 2 U", was named the number-one world single in 1990 by the Billboard Music Awards.[12]

O'Connor released ten studio albums. Am I Not Your Girl? (1992) and Universal Mother (1994) were certified gold in the UK,[13] Faith and Courage (2000) was certified gold in Australia,[14] and Throw Down Your Arms (2005) went gold in Ireland.[15] Her work included songs for films, collaborations with many other artists, and appearances at charity fundraising concerts. Her 2021 memoir Rememberings was a bestseller.[16]

In 1999, O'Connor was ordained as a priest by the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church, an Independent Catholic sect that is not recognised by the Roman Catholic Church.[17] She consistently spoke out on issues related to child abuse (including her 1992 Saturday Night Live protest against the continued cover-up of Catholic Church sexual abuse cases), human rights, racism, organised religion, and women's rights. Throughout her music career, she spoke about her spiritual journey, activism, socio-political views, as well as her trauma and mental health struggles. In 2017, O'Connor changed her name to Magda Davitt. After converting to Islam in 2018 she changed it to Shuhada' Sadaqat,[2][8][18] but continued to record and perform under her birth name.[

O'Connor was born Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor[20] in the Cascia House Nursing Home at 13 Pembroke Road, Dublin, on 8 December 1966.[2] She was named Sinéad after Sinéad de Valera, the mother of the doctor presiding over the delivery, Éamon de Valera, Jnr., and Bernadette in honour of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes.[21][22] She was the third of five children;[23] her siblings are novelist Joseph,[24] Eimear,[25] John,[26] and Eoin.[27]

Her parents are John Oliver "Seán" O'Connor, a structural engineer later turned barrister[23] and chairperson of the Divorce Action Group,[28] and Johanna Marie O'Grady (1939–1985), who married in the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel, Drimnagh, Dublin, in 1960. She attended Dominican College Sion Hill school in Blackrock, County Dublin.[29]

In 1979, O'Connor left her mother and went to live with her father, who had married Viola Margaret Suiter (née Cook) in Alexandria, Virginia, United States, in 1976.[30] At the age of 15, her shoplifting and truancy led to her being placed for 18 months in a Magdalene asylum called the Grianán Training Centre in Drumcondra run by the Order of Our Lady of Charity.[31] In some ways, she thrived there, especially in the development of her writing and music, but she also chafed under the imposed conformity. Unruly students there were sometimes sent to sleep in the adjoining nursing home, an experience of which she later commented, "I have never—and probably will never—experience such panic and terror and agony over anything."[32] She later for a period attended the Quaker Newtown School, Waterford for 5th and 6th year but did not sit the Leaving Certificate in 1985.[33][34]

On 10 February 1985, when O'Connor was 18, her mother Marie died in a car accident, aged 45, after losing control of her car on an icy road in Ballybrack and crashing into a bus.[35][36]

In June 1993, O'Connor wrote a public letter in The Irish Times which asked people to "stop hurting" her: "If only I can fight off the voices of my parents / and gather a sense of self-esteem / Then I'll be able to REALLY sing ..." The letter repeated accusations of abuse by her parents as a child which O'Connor had made in interviews. Her brother Joseph defended their father to the newspaper but agreed regarding their mother's "extreme and violent abuse, both emotional and physical". O'Connor said that month, "Our family is very messed up. We can't communicate with each other. We are all in agony. I for one am in agony."[37]

Musical career 1980s

One of the volunteers at Grianán was the sister of Paul Byrne, drummer for the band In Tua Nua, who heard O'Connor singing "Evergreen" by Barbra Streisand. She recorded a song with them called "Take My Hand" but they felt that at 15, she was too young to join the band.[38] Through an ad she placed in Hot Press in mid-1984, she met Colm Farrelly. Together they recruited a few other members and formed a band called Ton Ton Macoute.[22] The band moved to Waterford briefly while O'Connor attended Newtown School, but she soon dropped out of school and followed them to Dublin, where their performances received positive reviews. Their sound was inspired by Farrelly's interest in world music, though most observers thought O'Connor's singing and stage presence were the band's strongest features.[22][39]

O'Connor's time as singer for Ton Ton Macoute brought her to the attention of the music industry, and she was eventually signed by Ensign Records. She also acquired an experienced manager, Fachtna Ó Ceallaigh, former head of U2's Mother Records. Soon after she was signed, she embarked on her first major assignment, providing the vocals for the song "Heroine", which she co-wrote with U2's guitarist the Edge for the soundtrack to the film Captive. Ó Ceallaigh, who had been fired by U2 for complaining about them in an interview, was outspoken with his views on music and politics, and O'Connor adopted the same habits; she defended the actions of the Provisional IRA and said U2's music was "bombastic".[2] She later retracted her IRA comments saying they were based on nonsense, and that she was "too young to understand the tense situation in Northern Ireland properly".[40]

 

Her first album The Lion and the Cobra was "a sensation" when it was released in 1987 on Chrysalis Records,[41] and it reached gold record status, earning a Best Female Rock Vocal Performance Grammy nomination. The single "Mandinka" was a big college radio hit in the United States, and "I Want Your (Hands on Me)" received both college and urban play in a remixed form that featured rapper MC Lyte. In her first U.S. network television appearance, O'Connor sang "Mandinka" on Late Night with David Letterman in 1988.[42] The song "Troy" was also released as a single in the UK, Ireland, and the Netherlands, where it reached number 5 on the Dutch Top 40 chart.[43]

O'Connor named Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Bob Marley, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the Pretenders as the artists who influenced her on her debut album.[44] In 1989 O'Connor joined The The frontman Matt Johnson as a guest vocalist on the band's album Mind Bomb, which spawned the duet "Kingdom of Rain".[45] That same year, she made her first foray into cinema, starring in and writing the music for the Northern Irish film Hush-a-Bye-Baby.[46]

1990s

O'Connor's second album – 1990's I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got – gained considerable attention and mostly positive reviews:[47] it was rated "second best album of the year" by the NME.[48] She was praised for her voice and original songs, while being noted for her appearance: trademark shaved head, often angry expression, and sometimes shapeless or unusual clothing.[47] The album featured Marco Pirroni (of Adam and the Ants fame), Andy Rourke (from The Smiths) and John Reynolds, her first husband;[49] most notably, it contained her international breakthrough hit "Nothing Compares 2 U", a song written by Prince[50][51] and originally recorded and released by a side project of his, the Family.[51] Hank Shocklee, producer for Public Enemy, remixed the album's next single, "The Emperor's New Clothes",[49] for a 12-inch that was coupled with another song from the LP, "I Am Stretched on Your Grave". Pre-dating but included on I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, was "Jump in the River", which originally appeared on the Married to the Mob soundtrack; the 12-inch version of the single had included a remix featuring performance artist Karen Finley.[52][53]

In July 1990, she joined other guests for former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters' performance of The Wall in Berlin.[54] She contributed a cover of "You Do Something to Me" to the Cole Porter tribute/AIDS fundraising album Red Hot + Blue produced by the Red Hot Organization.[55] Red Hot + Blue was followed by the release of Am I Not Your Girl?, an album made of covers of jazz standards and torch songs she had listened to while growing up; the album received mixed-to-poor reviews, and was a commercial disappointment in light of the success of her previous work.[56] Her take on Elton John's "Sacrifice" was acclaimed as one of the best efforts on the tribute album Two Rooms: Celebrating the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin.[57]

Also in 1990, she was criticised after she stated that she would not perform if the United States national anthem was played before one of her concerts; Frank Sinatra threatened to "kick her in the ass".[58] After receiving four Grammy Award nominations, she withdrew her name from consideration.[2] Although nominated for the Brit Award for International Female Solo Artist, which she won, she did not attend the awards ceremony, but did accept the Irish IRMA in February 1991.[59]

I don't do anything in order to cause trouble. It just so happens that what I do naturally causes trouble. I'm proud to be a troublemaker.

—O'Connor in NME, March 1991[60]

She spent the following months studying bel canto singing with teacher Frank Merriman at the Parnell School of Music. In an interview with The Guardian, published in May 1993, she reported that singing lessons with Merriman were the only therapy she was receiving, describing Merriman as "the most amazing teacher in the universe."[61]

In 1992, she contributed backing vocals on the track "Come Talk To Me", and shared vocals on the single "Blood of Eden" from the studio album Us by Peter Gabriel. Gabriel invited her to join his ongoing Secret World Tour in May 1993, to sing these songs and more in an elaborate stage setting. O'Connor travelled and performed as a guest artist.[62] She was seen at Gabriel's side at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards in September. While in Los Angeles, she took too many sleeping pills, inciting media conjecture about a suicide attempt. She said she "was in a bad way emotionally at the time, but it wasn't a suicide attempt."[63] She left the tour suddenly, causing Gabriel to scramble for a replacement singer.[62] Decades later, she wrote in her memoir Rememberings that she left Gabriel because he treated her casually, and would not make a commitment.[6]

The 1993 soundtrack to the film In the Name of the Father featured O'Connor's "You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart".[49] Her more conventional Universal Mother album (1994) spawned two music videos for the first and second singles, "Fire on Babylon" and "Famine", that were nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video.[64][65] She toured with Lollapalooza in 1995, but dropped out when she became pregnant with her second child.[66] In 1997, she released the Gospel Oak EP.[67]

In 1994, she appeared in A Celebration: The Music of Pete Townshend and The Who,[68] also known as Daltrey Sings Townshend. This was a two-night concert at Carnegie Hall produced by Roger Daltrey of the Who in celebration of his 50th birthday.[69] A CD and a VHS video of the concert were issued in 1994, followed by a DVD in 1998.[70][71]

In 1996, O'Connor guested on Broken China, a solo album by Pink Floyd's Richard Wright.[72]

O'Connor made her final feature film appearance in Neil Jordan's The Butcher Boy in 1997, playing the Virgin Mary.[73]

In 1998, she worked again with the Red Hot Organization to co-produce and perform on Red Hot + Rhapsody.[74]

2000s

 

O'Connor at the "Music in My Head" festival in The Hague, 13 June 2008

Faith and Courage was released in 2000, including the single "No Man's Woman", and featured contributions from Wyclef Jean of the Fugees and Dave Stewart of Eurythmics.[75]

Her 2002 album, Sean-Nós Nua, marked a departure in that O'Connor interpreted or, in her own words, "sexed up" traditional Irish folk songs, including several in the Irish language.[76] In Sean-Nós Nua, she covered a well-known Canadian folk song, "Peggy Gordon".[77]

In 2003, she contributed a track to the Dolly Parton tribute album Just Because I'm a Woman, a cover of Parton's "Dagger Through the Heart". That same year, she also featured on three songs of Massive Attack's album 100th Window before releasing her double album, She Who Dwells in the Secret Place of the Most High Shall Abide Under the Shadow of the Almighty. This compilation contained one disc of demos and previously unreleased tracks and one disc of a live concert recording. Directly after the album's release, O'Connor announced that she was retiring from music.[78] Collaborations, a compilation album of guest appearances, was released in 2005—featuring tracks recorded with Peter Gabriel, Massive Attack, Jah Wobble, Terry Hall, Moby, Bomb the Bass, the Edge, U2, and The The.[79]

Ultimately, after a brief period of inactivity and a bout with fibromyalgia, her retirement proved to be short-lived. O'Connor stated in an interview with Harp magazine that she had only intended to retire from making mainstream pop/rock music, and after dealing with her fibromyalgia she chose to move into other musical styles.[80] The reggae album Throw Down Your Arms appeared in late 2005.[81]

On 8 November 2006, O'Connor performed seven songs from her upcoming album Theology at The Sugar Club in Dublin. Thirty fans were given the opportunity to win pairs of tickets to attend along with music industry critics.[82] The performance was released in 2008 as Live at the Sugar Club deluxe CD/DVD package sold exclusively on her website.[83]

O'Connor released two songs from her album Theology to download for free from her official website: "If You Had a Vineyard" and "Jeremiah (Something Beautiful)". The album, a collection of covered and original Rastafari spiritual songs, was released in June 2007. The first single from the album, the Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber classic "I Don't Know How to Love Him", was released on 30 April 2007.[84] To promote the album, O'Connor toured extensively in Europe and North America. She also appeared on two tracks of the new Ian Brown album The World Is Yours, including the anti-war single "Illegal Attacks".[85]

2010s

In January 2010, O'Connor performed a duet with R&B singer Mary J. Blige produced by former A Tribe Called Quest member Ali Shaheed Muhammad of O'Connor's song "This Is To Mother You" (first recorded by O'Connor on her 1997 Gospel Oak EP). The proceeds of the song's sales were donated to the organisation GEMS (Girls Educational and Mentoring Services).[86] In 2012 the song "Lay Your Head Down", written by Brian Byrne and Glenn Close for the soundtrack of the film Albert Nobbs and performed by O'Connor, was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.[87]

O'Connor performing in 2013

In 2011, O'Connor worked on recording a new album, titled Home, to be released in the beginning of 2012,[88] titled How About I Be Me (and You Be You)?,[89][90] with the first single being "The Wolf is Getting Married". She planned an extensive tour in support of the album but suffered a serious breakdown between December 2011 and March 2012,[91] resulting in the tour and all other musical activities for the rest of 2012 being cancelled. O'Connor resumed touring in 2013 with The Crazy Baldhead Tour. The second single "4th and Vine" was released on 18 February 2013.[92]

In February 2014, it was revealed that O'Connor had been recording a new album of original material, titled The Vishnu Room, consisting of romantic love songs.[93] In early June 2014, the new album was retitled I'm Not Bossy, I'm the Boss, with an 11 August release date. The title derives from the Ban Bossy campaign that took place earlier the same year. The album's first single is entitled "Take Me to Church".[94][95]

In November 2014, O'Connor's management was taken over by Simon Napier-Bell and Björn de Water.[96] On 15 November, O'Connor joined the charity supergroup Band Aid 30 along with other British and Irish pop acts, recording a new version of the track "Do They Know It's Christmas?" at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill, London, to raise money for the West African Ebola virus epidemic.[97]

In September 2019, O'Connor performed live for the first time in five years, singing "Nothing Compares 2 U" with the Irish Chamber Orchestra on RTÉ's The Late Late Show.[98][99]

2020s

In October 2020, O'Connor released a cover of Mahalia Jackson's Trouble of the World, with proceeds from the single to benefit Black Lives Matter charities.[100]

On 4 June 2021, O'Connor announced her immediate retirement from the music industry. While her final studio album, No Veteran Dies Alone, was due to be released in 2022, O'Connor stated that she would not be touring or promoting it.[101] Announcing the news on Twitter, she said "This is to announce my retirement from touring and from working in the record business. I've gotten older and I'm tired. So it's time for me to hang up my nipple tassels, having truly given my all. NVDA in 2022 will be my last release. And there'll be no more touring or promo."[101][102] On 7 June she retracted her previous statement, describing the original announcement as "a knee-jerk reaction" to an insensitive interview, and announcing that she would go ahead with her already scheduled 2022 tour.[103]

On 1 June 2021, O'Connor's memoir Rememberings was released to positive critical reception. It was listed among the best books of the year on BBC Culture.[104]

On 7 January 2022, O'Connor's son, Shane, died by suicide at the age of 17.[42] She subsequently decided to cancel her 2022 tour and her album No Veteran Dies Alone was postponed indefinitely.[105]

In February 2023, she shared a new version of "The Skye Boat Song", a 19th century Scottish adaptation of a 1782 Gaelic song, which is also the theme for the fantasy drama series Outlander.[106] The following month, she was awarded the inaugural Choice Music Prize Classic Irish Album by Irish broadcaster RTÉ for her 1990 album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got.[107][108]

Name

In 2017, O'Connor changed her legal name to Magda Davitt, saying in an interview that she wished to be "free of the patriarchal slave names. Free of the parental curses."[113][114] On her conversion to Islam in October 2018, she adopted the name 'Shuhada', and before mid-2019 also changed her surname from Davitt to Sadaqat.[115]

Personal and public image

Her shaved head has been seen as a statement against traditional views of femininity.[116]

Marriages and children

O'Connor had four children and was married and divorced four times. She had her first son, Jake, in 1987 with her first husband, music producer John Reynolds,[117] who co-produced several of her albums, including Universal Mother. Reynolds and O'Connor later married in Westminster register office in March 1989.[118][119] The same year, O'Connor had an abortion after things did not work out with the father. She later wrote the song "My Special Child" about the experience.[120] O'Connor and Reynolds announced their plan to divorce in November 1991 after being separated for some time.[121]

Soon after the birth of her daughter Brigidine Roisin Waters on 10 March 1996, O'Connor and the girl's father, Irish journalist John Waters, began a long custody battle that ended with O'Connor agreeing to let Roisin live in Dublin with Waters.[122][119][117] In August 2001, O'Connor married British journalist Nick Sommerlad in Wales; the marriage ended in July 2002 after 11 months.[123][117] She had her third child, son Shane, in 2004 with musician Donal Lunny.[117][119] In 2006, she had her fourth child, Yeshua Francis Neil Bonadio, whose father is Frank Bonadio.[124][125]

O'Connor was married a third time on 22 July 2010, to longtime friend and collaborator Steve Cooney,[4][126] and in late March 2011, made the decision to separate.[127] Her fourth marriage was to Irish therapist Barry Herridge. They wed on 9 December 2011, in Las Vegas, but their marriage ended after having "lived together for 7 days only".[128] The following week, on 3 January 2012, O'Connor issued a further string of internet comments to the effect that the couple had re-united.[5]

On 18 July 2015, her first grandson was born to her son Jake Reynolds and his girlfriend Lia.[129]

On 7 January 2022, two days after her 17-year-old son Shane was reported missing from Newbridge, County Kildare, he was found dead by suicide. His body was found by Gardaí in the Bray/Shankill part of Dublin.[130][131][132] O'Connor stated that her son, custody of whom she lost in 2013, had been on "suicide watch" at Tallaght Hospital, and had "ended his earthly struggle". O'Connor criticised the Health Service Executive (HSE) with regard to their handling of her son's case.[133][134][135] She initially criticised Ireland's family services agency, Tusla, but retracted this a few days later.[136][137] In January 2022, a week after her son's suicide, she was hospitalised on her own volition following a series of tweets in which she indicated she was going to take her own life.[138]

Relationship with Prince

Speaking about her relationship with Prince in an interview with Norwegian station NRK in November 2014 she said, "I did meet him a couple of times. We didn't get on at all. In fact we had a punch-up." She continued: "He summoned me to his house after 'Nothing Compares'. I made it without him. I'd never met him. He summoned me to his house – and it's foolish to do this to an Irish woman – he said he didn't like me saying bad words in interviews. So I told him to f*** off....He got quite violent. I had to escape out of his house at 5 in the morning. He packed a bigger punch than mine."[139] In her 2021 memoir Rememberings, O'Connor described her meeting with Prince in detail, which ranged from having his butler serve soup repeatedly despite no desire for soup, to hitting her with a hard object placed in a pillowcase after wanting a pillow fight, and stalking her with his car after she left the mansion.[140]

Health

In the early 2000s, O'Connor revealed that she suffered from fibromyalgia. The pain and fatigue she experienced caused her to take a break from music from 2003 to 2005.[141]

On an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show broadcast on 4 October 2007, O'Connor disclosed that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder four years earlier, and had attempted suicide on her 33rd birthday, 8 December 1999.[142] Then, on Oprah: Where Are They Now? of 9 February 2014, O'Connor said that she had received three "second opinions" and was told by all three that she was not bipolar.

O'Connor was also diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder and borderline personality disorder.[143]

In August 2015, she announced that she was to undergo a hysterectomy after suffering gynaecological problems for over three years.[144] O'Connor later blamed the hospital's refusal to administer hormonal replacement therapy after the operation as the main reason for her mental health issues in the subsequent years, stating "I was flung into surgical menopause. Hormones were everywhere. I became very suicidal. I was a basket case."[145]

Having smoked cannabis for 30 years, O'Connor went to a rehabilitation centre in 2016, to end her "addiction".[146] O'Connor was agoraphobic.[147]

In August 2017, O'Connor posted a 12-minute video on her Facebook page in which she stated that she had felt alone since losing custody of her 13-year-old son, Shane, and that for the prior two years she had wanted to kill herself, with only her doctor and psychiatrist "keeping her alive".[148] The month after her Facebook post, O'Connor appeared on the American television talk show Dr. Phil on the show's 16th season debut episode.[149] According to Dr. Phil, O'Connor wanted to do the interview because she wanted to "destigmatize mental illness", noting the prevalence of mental health issues among musicians.[150] Shane died in January 2022. A week later, following a series of tweets in which she indicated that she was going to kill herself, O'Connor was hospitalised.[151]

Sexuality

In a 2000 interview in Curve, O'Connor said that she was a lesbian.[152] She later retracted the statement, and in 2005 told Entertainment Weekly "I'm three-quarters heterosexual, a quarter gay".[153]

In 2013, O'Connor published an open letter on her own website to American singer and actress Miley Cyrus in which she warned Cyrus of the treatment of women in the music industry and stated that sexuality is a factor in this, which was in response to Cyrus's music video for her song "Wrecking Ball".[154] Cyrus responded by mocking O'Connor and alluding to her mental health problems.[155]

Politics

O'Connor was a vocal supporter of a united Ireland, and called on the left-wing republican Sinn Féin party to be "braver". In December 2014 it was reported O'Connor had joined Sinn Féin.[156] O'Connor called for the "demolition" of the Republic of Ireland and its replacement with a new, united country. She also called for key Sinn Féin politicians like Gerry Adams to step down because "they remind people of violence", referring to the Troubles.[157]

In a 2015 interview with the BBC, O'Connor said she wished that Ireland had remained under British rule (which ended after the Irish War of Independence, except for Northern Ireland), saying "the church took over and it was disastrous".[158] Following the Brexit referendum in 2016, O'Connor wrote on Facebook "Ireland is officially no longer owned by Britain".[159]

Religion

 

Sinéad O'Connor on After Dark on 21 January 1995

In January 1995, O'Connor made an unexpected appearance on the British late-night television programme After Dark during an episode about sexual abuse and the Catholic Church in Ireland.[160] The discussion included a Dominican friar and another representative of the Catholic Church, along with former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald. Host Helena Kennedy described the event: "Sinéad came on and argued that abuse in families was coded in by the church because it refused to accept the accounts of women and children."[161]

In the late 1990s, Bishop Michael Cox of the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church (an Independent Catholic group not in communion with the Roman Catholic Church) ordained O'Connor as a priest.[17] The Catholic Church considers the ordination of women to be invalid and asserts that a person attempting the sacrament of ordination upon a woman incurs excommunication.[17] The bishop had contacted her to offer ordination following her appearance on RTÉ's The Late Late Show, during which she told the presenter, Gay Byrne, that had she not been a singer she would have wished to have been a Catholic priest. After her ordination, she indicated that she wished to be called Mother Bernadette Mary.[17]

In a July 2007 interview with Christianity Today, O'Connor stated that she considered herself a Christian and that she believed in core Christian concepts about the Trinity and Jesus Christ. She said, "I think God saves everybody whether they want to be saved or not. So when we die, we're all going home ... I don't think God judges anybody. He loves everybody equally."[162] In an October 2002 interview, she credited her Christian faith in giving her the strength to live through and overcome the effects of her childhood abuse.[112]

On 26 March 2010, O'Connor appeared on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360° to speak out about the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Ireland.[163] On 28 March 2010, she had an opinion piece published in the Sunday edition of The Washington Post in which she wrote about the scandal and her time in a Magdalene laundry as a teenager.[31] Writing for the Sunday Independent she labelled the Vatican as "a nest of devils" and called for the establishment of an "alternative church", opining that "Christ is being murdered by liars" in the Vatican.[164] Shortly after the election of Pope Francis, she said:[165][166]

Well, you know, I guess I wish everyone the best, and I don't know anything about the man, so I'm not going to rush to judge him on one thing or another, but I would say he has a scientifically impossible task, because all religions, but certainly the Catholic Church, is really a house built on sand, and it's drowning in a sea of conditional love, and therefore it can't survive, and actually the office of Pope itself is an anti-Christian office, the idea that Christ needs a representative is laughable and blasphemous at the same time, therefore it is a house built on sand, and we need to rescue God from religion, all religions, they've become a smokescreen that distracts people from the fact that there is a holy spirit, and when you study the Gospels you see the Christ character came to tell us that we only need to talk directly to God, we never needed Religion ...

Asked whether from her point of view, it is therefore irrelevant who is elected to be pope, O'Connor replied:

Genuinely I don't mean disrespect to Catholic people because I believe in Jesus Christ, I believe in the Holy Spirit, all of those, but I also believe in all of them, I don't think it cares if you call it Fred or Daisy, you know? Religion is a smokescreen, it has everybody talking to the wall. There is a Holy Spirit who can't intervene on our behalf unless we ask it. Religion has us talking to the wall. The Christ character tells us himself: you must only talk directly to the Father; you don't need intermediaries. We all thought we did, and that's ok, we're not bad people, but let's wake up ... God was there before religion; it's there [today] despite religion; it'll be there when religion is gone.[167]

Tatiana Kavelka wrote about O'Connor's later Christian work, describing it as "theologically charged yet unorthodox, oriented toward interfaith dialogue and those on the margins".[168]

In August 2018, via an open letter, she asked Pope Francis to excommunicate her as she had also asked Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II.[113]

In October 2018, O'Connor converted to Islam, calling it "the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian's journey".[169] The ceremony was conducted in Ireland by Sunni Islamic theologian Shaykh Umar Al-Qadri. She also changed her name to Shuhada' Davitt. In a message on Twitter, she thanked fellow Muslims for their support and uploaded a video of herself reciting the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer. She also posted photos of herself wearing a hijab.[170]

After her conversion to Islam, O'Connor called those who were not Muslims "disgusting" and criticised Christian and Jewish theologians on Twitter in November 2018. She wrote: "What I'm about to say is something so racist I never thought my soul could ever feel it. But truly I never wanna spend time with white people again (if that's what non-muslims are called). Not for one moment, for any reason. They are disgusting."[171][172] Later that month, O'Connor stated that her remarks were made in an attempt to force Twitter to close down her account.[173] In September 2019, she apologised for the remarks, saying "They were not true at the time and they are not true now. I was triggered as a result of Islamophobia dumped on me. I apologize for hurt caused. That was one of many crazy tweets lord knows."[174]

Death

On 26 July 2023, O'Connor was found dead at her flat in Herne Hill, South London, at the age of 56 Her family issued a statement later the same day, without indicating the cause of her death.[108][177][178] The following day, the Metropolitan Police reported that O'Connor's death was not being treated as suspicious] On 28 July, the Coronor in London said that the date of death was still unknown.

Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

  

The Battle of Alexander at Issus (German: Alexanderschlacht) is a 1529 oil painting by the German artist Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480–1538), a pioneer of landscape art and a founding member of the Danube school.

 

It portrays the 333 BC Battle of Issus, in which Alexander the Great secured a decisive victory over Darius III of Persia and gained crucial leverage in his campaign against the Persian Empire.

 

The painting is widely regarded as Altdorfer's masterpiece, and is one of the most famous examples of the type of Renaissance landscape painting known as the world landscape, which here reaches an unprecedented grandeur.

 

Duke William IV of Bavaria commissioned The Battle of Alexander at Issus in 1528 as part of a set of historical pieces that was to hang in his Munich residence.

 

Modern commentators suggest that the painting, through its abundant use of anachronism, was intended to liken Alexander's heroic victory at Issus to the contemporary European conflict with the Ottoman Empire. In particular, the defeat of Suleiman the Magnificent at the Siege of Vienna may have been an inspiration for Altdorfer.

 

A religious undercurrent is detectable, especially in the extraordinary sky; this was probably inspired by the prophecies of Daniel and contemporary concern within the Church about an impending apocalypse.

 

The Battle of Alexander at Issus and four others that were part of William's initial set are in the Alte Pinakothek art museum in Munich.

Contents

 

Albrecht Altdorfer is regarded as one of the founders of Western landscape art.[29] He was a painter, etcher, architect, and engraver, and the leader of the Danube school of German art.

 

As evidenced by such paintings as Saint George and the Dragon (1510) and Allegory (1531), much of Altdorfer's work is characterised by an attachment to sprawling landscapes that dwarf the figures within them;[30]

 

The Battle of Alexander at Issus epitomises this facet of his style. With reference to St George and the Dragon in particular, art historian Mark W. Roskill comments that "The accessory material of landscape [in Altdorfer's work] is played with and ornamentally elaborated so that it reverberates with the sense of a sequestered and inhospitable environment".[31] Inspired by his travels around the Austrian Alps and the Danube River,[32]

 

Altdorfer painted a number of landscapes that contain no figures at all, including Landscape with a Footbridge (c. 1516) and Danube Landscape near Regensburg (c. 1522–25). These were the first "pure" landscapes since antiquity.[33]

 

Most of Altdorfer's landscapes were made with a vertical format, in contrast with the modern conception of the genre. The horizontal landscape was an innovation of Altdorfer's Flemish contemporary Joachim Patinir and his followers.[34]

 

Altdorfer also produced a great deal of religious artwork, in reflection of his devout Catholicism. His most frequent subjects were the Virgin Mary and the life and crucifixion of Christ.

 

As in The Battle of Alexander at Issus, these paintings often feature settings of great majesty and use the sky to convey symbolic meaning.

 

This meaning is not uniform throughout Altdorfer's corpus – for example, the visage of the setting sun connotes loss and tragedy in Agony in the Garden, but serves as "the emblem of power and glory" in The Battle of Alexander at Issus.[35]

 

Larry Silver of The Art Bulletin explains that The Battle of Alexander at Issus is both similar to and in direct contrast with Altdorfer's previous work: "Instead of the peaceful landscape of retreat for Christian events or holy figures, this panel offers just the opposite: a battleground for one of ancient history's principal epoch-making encounters ... Yet despite its global or cosmic dimensions, the Battle of Issus still looks like Altdorfer's earlier, contemplative liminal landscapes of retreat, complete with craggy peaks, bodies of water, and distant castles."[36]

 

Although the Battle of Alexander is atypical of Altdorfer in its size and in that it depicts war, his Triumphal Procession – a 1512–16 illuminated manuscript commissioned by Maximilian I of the Holy Roman Empire – has been described as a conceptual antecedent.[37]

 

The Procession was produced in parallel with the Triumph of Maximilian, a series of 137 woodcuts collaboratively executed by Altdorfer, Hans Springinklee, Albrecht Dürer, Leonhard Beck and Hans Schäufelein.[38]

 

Altdorfer's most significant contemporary influence was Matthias Grünewald (c. 1470–1528).

 

Art historian Horst W. Janson remarked that their paintings "show the same 'unruly' imagination".[39] Elements of The Battle of Alexander at Issus – particularly the sky – have been compared to Grünewald's Heavenly Host above the Virgin and Child, which forms part of his masterpiece, the Isenheim Altarpiece. Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553), also associated with the Danube school, was another important influence for Altdorfer.

 

According to Roskill, works by Cranach from about 1500 "give a prominent role to landscape settings, using them as mood-enhancing backgrounds for portraits, and for images of hermits and visionary saints", and seem to play a "preparatory role" for the onset of pure landscape.[40]

 

Altdorfer owed much of his style, particularly in his religious artwork, to Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528);[41] Larry Silver writes that Altdorfer's "use of convincing German landscapes in combination with celestial phenomena for his religious narrative" is "firmly tied" to a tradition "modeled by Albrecht Dürer."[42]

 

William IV, Duke of Bavaria commissioned The Battle of Alexander at Issus in 1528.[43] Altdorfer was approximately 50 at the time, and was living in the Free Imperial City of Regensburg.[44]

 

As a result of over a decade of involvement with the Regensburg city council, Altdorfer was offered the position of Burgomaster on 18 September 1528.

 

He declined; the council annals reported his reasoning as such: "He much desires to execute a special work in Bavaria for my Serene Highness and gracious Lord, Duke [William]."[44] William probably wanted the painting for his newly built summer Lusthaus ("pleasure house") in the grounds of his palace in Munich, approximately 60 miles (97 km) south of Regensburg.[43][44][45]

 

There, it was to hang alongside seven other paintings with a similar format and subject matter, including Ludwig Refinger's The Matyrdom of Marcus Curtius, Melchior Feselen's The Siege of Alesia by Caesar, and the painting of Battle of Cannae by Hans Burgkmair (1473–1531).[46][47]

 

Another eight, each portraying a famous woman from history, were later added to the set, probably at the behest of the Duke's wife, Jacobaea of Baden.[47] Altdorfer's Susanna and the Elders (1526) was among these.[48]

 

The Battle of Alexander at Issus is painted on a limewood panel measuring 158.4 cm × 120.3 cm (62.4 in × 47.4 in),[56] and portrays the moment of Alexander the Great's victory. The vertical format was dictated by the space available in the room for which the painting was commissioned – each in William's set of eight was made to be the same size.

 

At an unknown date, the panel was cut down on all sides, particularly at the top, so the sky was originally larger and the moon further from the corner of the scene.[57] The scene is approached from an impossible viewpoint – at first only feet from the fray, the perspective gradually ascends to encompass the seas and continents in the background and eventually the curvature of the Earth itself.[58][59]

 

Thousands of horse and foot soldiers immersed in a sea of spears and lances populate the foreground. The two armies are distinguished by their dress, anachronistic though it is: whereas Alexander's men clad themselves and their horses in full suits of heavy armour, many of Darius' wear turbans and ride naked mounts.[60]

 

The bodies of the many fallen soldiers lie underfoot. A front of Macedonian warriors in the centre pushes against the crumbling enemy force, who flee the battlefield on the far left.

 

The Persian king joins his army on his chariot of three horses, and is narrowly pursued by Alexander and his uniformly attired Companion cavalry.[47] The tract of soldiers continues down the gently sloped battlefield to the campsite and cityscape by the water, gravitating toward the mountainous rise at the scene's centre.

 

Beyond is the Mediterranean Sea and the island of Cyprus.[61] Here, a transition in hue is made, from the browns that prevail in the lower half of the painting to the aquas that saturate the upper half.

 

The Nile River meanders in the far distance, emptying its seven arms into the Mediterranean at the Nile Delta.[61] South of Cyprus is the Sinai Peninsula, which forms a land bridge between Africa and Southwest Asia. The Red Sea lies beyond,[61] eventually merging – as the mountain ranges to its left and right do – with the curved horizon.

 

A fierce sky caught in the dichotomy between the setting sun and the crescent moon dominates more than a third of the painting.[57] The rain-heavy clouds swirling ominously around each celestial entity are separated by a gulf of calmness, intensifying the contrast and infusing the heavens with an unearthly glow.[62]

 

Light from the sky spills onto the landscape: while the western continent and the Nile are bathed in the sun's light, the east and the Tower of Babel are cloaked in shadow.

 

The painting's subject is explained in the tablet suspended from the heavens. The wording, probably supplied by William's court historian Johannes Aventinus,[63] was originally in German but was later replaced by a Latin inscription.

 

It translates:

 

"Alexander the Great defeating the last Darius, after 100,000 infantry and more than 10,000 cavalrymen had been killed amongst the ranks of the Persians. Whilst King Darius was able to flee with no more than 1,000 horsemen, his mother, wife, and children were taken prisoner."

 

No date is provided for the battle alongside these casualty figures. The lower left-hand corner features Altdorfer's monogram – an 'A' within an 'A' – and the lower edge of the tablet is inscribed with "ALBRECHT ALTORFER ZU REGENSPVRG FECIT" ("Albrecht Altdorfer from Regensburg made [this]").

 

Tiny inscriptions on their chariot and harness identify Darius and Alexander, respectively.[64] Each army bears a banner that reports both its total strength and its future casualties.[43][60]

Analysis and interpretation

Detail of soldiers from both armies. Reinhart Koselleck comments that the Persians resemble the 16th-century Turks "from their feet to their turbans."

 

Anachronism is a major component of The Battle of Alexander at Issus. By dressing Alexander's men in 16th-century steel armour and Darius' men in Turkish battle dress, Altdorfer draws deliberate parallels between the Macedonian campaign and the contemporary European–Ottoman conflict.[44][59][64]

 

In 1529 – the year of the painting's commissioning – the Ottoman forces under Suleiman the Magnificent laid siege to the Austrian city of Vienna[64], then also the capital of the Holy Roman Empire and called 'the golden apple' by the Sultans. Although far inferior in number, the Austrian, German, Czech, and Spanish soldiers marshalled to defend Vienna were able to force the enemy into a retreat and stall the Ottoman advance on central Europe.

 

It is probable the painting's underlying allegory was inspired by the siege of Vienna, given its similarities to Alexander's victory at Issus. Some critics go further, suggesting that the inclusion of anachronism may have been an element of Altdorfer's commission.[47][59]

 

Featured alongside the anachronism in The Battle of Alexander at Issus is a genuine lack of historicity. Altdorfer demonstrates minimal hesitance in neglecting the painting's historical integrity for the sake of its heroic style, in spite of the pains he took to research the battle.

 

That the Persian army was up to twice the size of the Macedonian army is not clear, and the relative positioning of the soldiers as reported by ancient sources has been disregarded.

 

According to art critic Rose-Marie Hagen, "The artist was faithful to the historical truth only when it suited him, when historical facts were compatible with the demands of his composition."[60] Hagen also notes the placement of women on the battlefield, attributing it to Altdorfer's "passion for invention",[60] since the wife of Darius, his mother and his daughters were waiting for Darius back at the camp, not in the thick of battle.[66] True to form, however, Altdorfer made the aristocratic ladies "look like German courtly ladies, dressed for a hunting party" in their feathered toques:[60]

 

Altdorfer's primary point of reference in his research was probably Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle (Schedelsche Weltchronik), an illustrated world history published in Nuremberg in 1493. Schedel was a physician, humanist, historian and cartographer, and his Chronicle was one of the first books produced on the printing press. With a heavy reliance on the Bible, it recounts the seven ages of human history,[67] from Creation to the birth of Christ and ending with the Apocalypse.[68] Altdorfer's statistics for the battle of Issus mirror those of Schedel.

 

Furthermore, the errors in Schedel's maps of the Mediterranean and Northern Africa are also present in The Battle of Alexander at Issus: the island of Cyprus is noticeably oversized, and both the mountain rise in the painting's centre and the range adjacent to the Nile do not exist.[61]

 

Since the Chronicle describes Alexander's victory over the Persians in terms of its proximity to Tarsus and omits mention of Issus, it is likely that the cityscape by the sea is intended to be the former city rather than the latter. Issus in the 16th century was minor and relatively unknown, whereas Tarsus was renowned for its having been a major centre of learning and philosophy in Roman times. Tarsus was also said to be the birthplace of the Apostle Paul, which may explain the presence of the church towers in Altdorfer's portrayal.[61] Another source may have been the writings of Quintus Curtius Rufus, a 1st-century Roman historian who presents inflated figures for the number of killed and taken prisoner and the sizes of the armies.[60]

 

The sky bears overt metaphorical significance and is the centrepiece of the painting's symbolism. Alexander, identified by the Egyptians and others as a god of the sun, finds his victory in the sun's rays; and the Persians are routed into the darkness beneath the crescent moon, a symbol of the Near East.[69]

 

Considered in terms of the painting's contemporary context, the sun's triumph over the moon represents Christendom's victory over the Islamism of the Ottomans.[35] Eschatological meaning, probably inspired by prophecies in the Book of Daniel, is imbued in the heavenly setting. In particular, Daniel 7 predicts the rise and fall of four kingdoms before the Second Coming; these were thought to be Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome at the time of the painting's creation. Altdorfer saw the Battle of Issus as a principal indicator of the transition of power from Persia to Greece, and thus as an event of cosmic significance.[35][57]

 

The battle also marked a progression toward the end of the world – an important theological concern in the 16th century, given that the last traces of Rome were diminishing with the papacy. As a member of the Regensburg council and a practising Catholic, Altdorfer frequently interacted with the Church and was surely aware of this trend of eschatological thought. Schedel, too, had calculated that the final age of the seven he identified was nigh.[67] It may therefore be inferred that the sky's expression of the momentous event at Issus was intended to be of contemporary relevance as well.[57]

 

The Battle of Alexander at Issus remained part of the royal collection of the Dukes of Bavaria for centuries. By the late 18th century, it was regularly featured in public galleries at the Schleissheim Palace.

 

The painting was one of 72 taken to Paris in 1800 by the invading armies of Napoleon I (1769–1821),[70] who was a noted admirer of Alexander the Great.[60][71]

 

The Louvre held it until 1804, when Napoleon declared himself Emperor of France and took it for his own use.

 

When the Prussians captured the Château de Saint-Cloud in 1814 as part of the War of the Sixth Coalition, they supposedly found the painting hanging in Napoleon's bathroom.[72]

 

The Battle of Alexander at Issus and 26 others taken in the 1800 invasion were subsequently restored to the

 

King of Bavaria in 1815.[70] Five of the paintings in William IV's original set of eight – including The Battle of Alexander at Issus – later passed from the royal collection to the Alte Pinakothek art museum in Munich, Germany, where they remain; the other three are in the National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm, having been looted by the Swedish army in the Thirty Years War of 1618–1648.[73] Susannah and the Elders is the only other work by Altdorfer in the Alte Pinakothek.

Horatius Cocles Stopping King Porsenna's Army outside Rome, by Ludwig Refinger. From the same historical cycle that The Battle of Alexander at Issus originally belonged to.

 

Contextually, the painting forms part of the Northern Renaissance, a resurgence of classical humanism and culture in northern Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries.

 

The Renaissance induced a new kind of social individualism which Altdorfer expressed through the heroic emphasis on Alexander and Darius, and which is reflected in the specifics of the painting's commission and by the subjects of its companion pieces: "During the Renaissance people no longer saw themselves solely as members of a social group, as the citizens of a town, or as sinners before God in whose eyes all were equal. They had become aware of the unique qualities that distinguished one person from another.

 

Unlike the Middle Ages, the Renaissance celebrated the individual. Altdorfer may have painted row after row of apparently identical warriors, but the spectators themselves would identify with Alexander and Darius, figures who had names, whose significance was indicated by the cord which hung down from the tablet above them."[47]

 

Altdorfer was not only a pioneer of landscape, but also a practitioner of early incarnations of the Romanticism and expressionism which impacted the arts so greatly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

 

Kenneth Clark writes of Altdorfer and contemporaries Grünewald and Bosch, "They are what we now call 'expressionist' artists, a term which is not as worthless as it sounds, because, in fact, the symbols of expressionism are remarkably consistent, and we find in the work of these early 16th-century landscape painters not only the same spirit but the same shapes and iconographical motives which recur in the work of such recent expressionists as van Gogh, Max Ernst, Graham Sutherland and Walt Disney."[74]

 

According to art critic Pia F. Cuneo, "Altdorfer's construction of landscape on a cosmic scale" in the Battle of Alexander at Issus, and his "spiritual and aesthetic affinities with Romanticism and Modern art (in particular, German Expressionism)", "have been especially singled out for praise".[75]

 

The Battle of Alexander at Issus is typically considered to be Altdorfer's masterpiece. Cuneo states that the painting is usually "considered in splendid isolation from its fifteen other companion pieces, based on the assumption that it either metonymically stands in for the entire cycle, or that its perceived aesthetic predominance merits exclusive focus."[75] German writer Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) was one of many who saw the painting in the Louvre and marvelled, calling it a "small painted Iliad".[72] Reinhart Koselleck comments that Altdorfer's depiction of the thousands of soldiers was executed with "a mastery previously unknown",[65] and Kathleen Davis describes the painting as "epochal in every sense".[65]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Alexander_at_Issus

On October 11, 1975, in San Francisco, Archangel Zadkiel announced the transfer from the priests and priestesses of the Violet Planet of the Cathedral of the Violet Flame. We will continue working with the Six Rays of God to transmute any elements from the previous day’s journey. Saint Germain will guide us to Table Mountain, Wyoming to the “Cave of Symbols” which is a cave in the mountain lined with pink and white crystals that gives way to a gigantic chamber covered with rainbow colored stalactites that form symbols representing sacred geometry.

 

Each participant will work through the revelations they received from the Royal Teton Retreat. This retreat houses the “Cosmic Mirror” in which an individual will see the cause and effect of their karma along with the “Atomic Accelerator” which brings forth electrons in the Light Body to make the necessary changes, and lastly, the “Sphere of Light” which is a room that will help an initiate in their ascension process.We now start the work within the 7th Ray of the Violet/Purple Flame with the Archangels Zadkiel and Amethyst along with the Elohim Masters Arcturus and Virginia.Students of Ascended Master Teachings organizations (also known as Ascended Master Activities) believe that their doctrine has been given to humanity by the Ascended Masters, individuals believed to have lived in physical bodies, acquired the wisdom and mastery needed to become immortal and free of the cycles of "re-embodiment" and karma, and have attained their "ascension", a state of "one-ness" with God. This knowledge is believed to have previously been taught for millions of years only within "Ascended master retreats" and "Mystery schools".

 

Adherents of the Ascended Master Teachings believe that this wisdom was partially released by the Theosophical Society beginning in 1875, by C.W. Leadbeater and Alice A. Bailey, and began to have more detailed public release in the 1930s by the Ascended Masters through Guy Ballard in the I AM Activity.[1][2] However, Theosophists maintain the concept of Ascended Masters are a corruption of the original Theosophical concept of the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom.

 

The term Ascended Master was first introduced in 1934 by Guy Ballard with the publication of Unveiled Mysteries, a book which he said was dictated to him by the Ascended Master: St. Germain. Other Ascended Master Teachings are contained in The Bridge to Freedom The Summit Lighthouse (1958), (Known also as The Church Universal and Triumphant[6] The Aetherius Society (1955),[7] The Temple of The Presence (1995),[8] the I AM University (2004), the White Eagle Lodge (1936) and the Aquarian Christine Church Universal, Inc. (2006)

 

Our first visitation on this day will be “The Cathedral of the Violet Flame” in the Rocky Mountains which includes all Violet Flame Angels and Priests and Priestesses of the Violet Planet representing elemental life. This retreat represents to ability to be cleared of human burdens and densities.

 

Our second visitation will be the “Temple of Purification”with Archangels Zadkiel and Amethyst which is located over the islands of Cuba (previously known to be the location of Atlantis). Part of the initiation for this journey will represent the work with the Order of Melchizedek as training as a Priest/Priestess along with learning the true meaning of “spiritual freedom.

 

The third visitation will be the “Temple of Freedom” with Elohim Masters Arcturus and Virginia which is located over Luanda, Angola; they release the violet, purple and pink flames of mercy, forgiveness, transmutation and freedom for the entire planet, as a giant fiery pillar. We will be utilizing the Violet Flame to overcome difficult situations on a personal and planetary scale, to transmute darkness into light.

Universal All-Pervading Presence of Life[edit]

Students of the Ascended Master Teachings believe that there is One God, the "Universal All-Pervading Presence of Life", "The One", Who is the Source of all Life, Light, and Love in existence, and that all forms of existence and consciousness emanate from this "Allness of God" - "The One". The Voice of the I AM states "All Life is One" [11] and that there is "One Substance, One Energy, One Power, One Intelligence" as the Source of all consciousness and creation.[12] This Divine Being and Mind is considered to be above and distinct from all creation (in the sense of classical theism), transcending all creation yet interpenetrating all existence. Belief in this "One God" stresses the essential unity of the spiritual and material components of the universe. God creates through Individualized Identities that have distinct Self-Consciousness and that make up the Spiritual Hierarchy of Creation, yet remain connected through the flow of the "River of Life" and "Lifestream" to the "One Undivided God" - the "All in All" - the "Good" - the "Source from which all Life, Light, and Love come." There is always an uninterrupted "Oneness" that is maintained with the "Allness" of God. From the "One God" all other realities, including hierarchy, humanity and the material universe, are the result of a process of emanation.[2]

 

The Individualized "I AM" Presence[edit]

Adherents of the Ascended Master Teachings believe that each person is an incarnation of an "Individualized Presence" of the "Most High Living God" - the "Mighty I AM Presence" - as part of our very Nature and Being. God (as Life and Love) manifests in the 7 octaves of the created universe through individual Divine Identities. As embodied individuals, we are the outer expression of that God Self in form. It is our unique and immortal True Identity, yet always sharing in the Allness of the ONE GOD.[2]

 

Ascended Master Saint Germain, believed by those adherent to the Ascended Master Teachings to have previously been embodied as Plato, Proclus, Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon, and numerous others, was quoted as saying:

 

"When one individualizes within the Absolute, All-Pervading Life, he chooses of his own free will to become an intensified individual focus of Self-Conscious Intelligence. He is the conscious director of his future activities. Thus, having once made his choice, he is the only one who can fulfill that Destiny — which is not inflexible circumstance but a definitely designed Plan of Perfection." [13] When You, the 'Mighty I AM Presence,' will to come forth into an Individualized Focus of Conscious Dominion and use the Creative Word, 'I AM,' Your First Individual Activity is the Formation of a Flame. Then you, the 'Individualized Focus' of the 'Mighty I AM Presence,' begin your Dynamic Expression of Life. This Activity, We term Self-consciousness, meaning the Individual who is conscious of his Source and Perfection of Life, expressing through himself." [1]

 

Twin Flames[edit]

Saint Germain explained through Guy Ballard:

 

"The 'Almighty God Flame,' breathing within Itself, projects Two Rays into the 'Great Sea of Pure Electronic Light.' This Intelligent Light-substance becomes the clothing, as it were, for these Rays of the 'Mighty I AM Presence.' Each Ray has all the Attributes of the Godhead within It, and no imperfection can ever enter into or register upon It. The Individualized Flame sends down into each Ray a Focal Point, or Spark, forming a Heart Center upon which gathers the 'Electronic Light Substance,' creating the Electronic Body." [1]

 

In 1937, The Voice of the I AM article on this subject elaborated:

 

"When the Ascension of both has taken place, each is the complete balance of all masculine and all feminine qualities within himself. Then the Threefold Flame of Life is completely unfolded, the individual becomes Master at Cosmic Levels of creation and does work with systems of worlds, as well as in this physical world. Thus, that which came out of the Great Central Sun as One Flame becomes Three complete Flames, each of the same full Limitless Power and Activity as the Great Central Sun. This becomes the Cosmic Activity of the Power of the 'Three times Three'. "When both Rays have made the Ascension, then the individual works with systems of worlds instead of just in one world. This is the way the Godhead is ever expanding the Perfection of Itself throughout Infinity and keeping order throughout interstellar space." [14]

 

Beliefs about Ascended Masters[edit]

It is believed that Ascended Masters are individuals who were once embodied on Earth and learned the lessons of life in their incarnations. They gained mastery over the limitations of the matter planes, balanced at least 51% of negative karma, and fulfilled their Dharma (Divine Plan). An Ascended Master has become God-like and a source of unconditional Love to all life, and through the Ascension has united with his or her own God Self, the "I AM" Presence. It is claimed that they serve as the teachers of mankind from the realms of Spirit, and that all people will eventually attain their Ascension and move forward in spiritual evolution beyond this planet. According to these teachings, they remain attentive to the spiritual needs of humanity, and act to inspire and motivate its spiritual growth. In many traditions and organizations, they are considered part of the Spiritual Hierarchy for Earth, and members of the Great Brotherhood of Light, also known as the Great White Lodge or Great White Brotherhood.[2]

 

Belief in the Brotherhood and the Masters is an essential part of the beliefs of various organizations that have continued and expanded the concepts released in the original Saint Germain instruction in the 1930s through The "I AM" Activity.[15][16][17][18][19] Examples of those believed by the ones proposing these teachings to be Ascended Masters would be the Master Jesus, Confucius, Gautama Buddha, Mary the Mother of Jesus, St. Paul of Tarsus (aka Hilarion), Melchizedek, Archangel Michael, Metatron, Kwan Yin, Saint Germain and Kuthumi, as well as dozens of others.[20]

 

Unveiled Mysteries records:

 

"Truly the Great Ascended Masters are Gods. It is no wonder in the mythology of the ancients that their activities have been brought down to us in the guise of myth and fable. They wield Tremendous God Power at all times because they hold with unwavering determination to the Great God Presence and hence all Power is given unto them for they are All-Perfection. "'When Jesus said, All these things I have done, ye shall do and even greater things shall ye do, he knew whereof he spoke,' continued Saint Germain. 'He came forth to reveal the Conscious Dominion and Mastery that it is possible for every human being to attain and express while still here on Earth." [13]

 

Great Sea of Universal Light, Life, and Love[edit]

Unveiled Mysteries states:

 

"Try to think upon this Power, which is within you. Call into use the Great Sea of Universal Substance from which you may draw without limit. It obeys, without exception, the direction of thought, and records any quality imposed upon it, through the activity of the feeling nature in mankind. Universal Substance is obedient to your conscious will at all times. It is constantly responding to humanity's thought and feeling whether they realize it or not. There is no instant at which human beings are not giving this Substance one quality or another, and it is only through the knowledge that the individual has conscious control and manipulation of a Limitless Sea of It that he begins to understand the possibilities of his own Creative Powers, and the responsibilities resting upon him in the use of his thought and feeling." [13]

 

Spiritual Hierarchy[edit]

Main article: Spiritual Hierarchy

Adherents of these Ascended Master Teachings believe that the All-Pervading Presence of God does not act nor create except through Its Individualizations. All creation comes forth through These Individual Identities and is sustained by Them. According to Elizabeth Clare Prophet, this Spiritual Hierarchy is a "Universal Chain" of Individualized God Free Beings fulfilling Attributes and Aspects of God's Infinite Selfhood. Included in this Cosmic Hierarchical scheme are Solar Logoi, Elohim, Sons and Daughters of God, Ascended Masters, Cosmic Beings, the Twelve Solar Hierarchies, Archangels, Angels, Beings of the Elements, and Twin Flames of the Alpha-Omega Polarity sponsoring Systems of Worlds and entire Galactic Systems. This Universal Order of Divine Self-Expression is the means whereby God in the Great Central Sun steps down [ spiritual energy from ] the Presence and Essence of His Universal Being / Consciousness in order that all Life in time and space might give and receive Unconditional Divine Love. One's placement on this "Ladder of Life" in the Spirit / Matter Universes is determined by one's level of Spiritual Attainment - measured by Awareness and Manifestation of balanced Love, Wisdom, and Power - as well as the embodying of other Divine Qualities."

 

Use of "I AM" in decrees, affirmations, and invocations[edit]

A characteristic of students of the Ascended Master Teachings is the use of God's Creative Name - "I AM" - in the use of Decrees, Fiats, Adorations, and Affirmations to invoke and send forth the Light of God to Bless Life, to bring forth the Perfect Divine solution for every situation, and to fulfill the Divine Plan. It is believed to be a way of externalizing more Divine Light, Divine Love, and Divine Life into the lower planes of creation through the dynamic force of sound vibration as creative energy.[2]

 

The Magic Presence states:

 

"Only the Self-conscious Individual has ALL the Attributes and Creative Power of the 'Mighty I AM Presence.' Only He can know who and what He is, and express the Fullness of the Creative Power of God whenever He decrees, by the use of the Words, 'I AM.' The outer human part of this activity is what We call the personality. It is but the vehicle through which Perfection should be expressed into the outer substance of the Universe.

 

"Within the 'Pure God-Flame' is a Breath that pulsates constantly. This `Great Fire-Breath' is a Rhythmic Outpouring of Divine Love, Its Three Attributes being 'Love, Wisdom, and Power in action.' These pour out constantly, into the 'Infinite Sea of Pure Electronic Light.' This Light is the Universal Substance or Spirit, out of which all forms are composed. It is intelligent, mark you, because It obeys law through the command of the Individual who says, or is conscious of, 'I AM.' These Two Words are the Acknowledgment and Release of the Power to Create and bring forth into outer existence, whatever quality follows That Acknowledgment. For Intelligence to act there must be Intelligence to be acted upon, and the Universal Substance, being like a photographic film, takes the record of what-ever quality the Individual imposes upon It through his thought, feeling, and spoken word. The Words 'I AM' whether thought, felt, or spoken, release the Power of Creation instantly. Make no mistake about this. Intelligence is Omnipresent, and It is within the Electronic Light." [1]

 

Violet Flame[edit]

Use of the "Violet Flame of Divine Love" is considered to be the 7th Ray aspect of the Holy Spirit and the "Sacred Fire" that transmutes and consumes the "cause, effect, record, and memory" of sin or negative karma. Also called the "Flame of Transmutation", the "Flame of Mercy", the "Flame of Freedom", and the "Flame of Forgiveness". "Our God is a Consuming Fire" in Deuteronomy 4:24 (KJV) and Hebrews 12:29 (KJV) is believed to be refer to this "Sacred Fire of God".

 

The "Violet Fire" is held to be a raising, transforming, purifying action of "Divine Love" from the "Heart of God" in the "Great Central Sun". It acts to transmute and consume human creation that is not worthy of becoming Immortal, and all negative karmic causes, effects, records, and memories, without the need to individually balance that karma face-to-face with each person back to the earliest beginning of one's individualized manifestation on this or any other world.[2]

 

Ascension[edit]

Main article: Initiation (Theosophy)

The Ascension is believed to be the returning to complete "Oneness with God" - "raising the outer atomic structure of the physical, emotional, and mental bodies into the Electronic Structure of the I AM Consciousness", becoming an Ascended Master, eventually a Cosmic Being, and beyond. The Ascension into Immortality through reunion with the God Self requires the consuming of at least 51% of the records and memories of "negatively qualified karma" as well as:

 

Mastery of the matter planes[edit]

It is believed that the "Individualized Flames of Perfection", emanating as lifestreams taking physical embodiment, can develop further attributes that express a unique Identity, and attain the fullness of the use of Light. This is done by mastery over matter planes that have a slower vibratory action, thus requiring more energy and concentration to externalize form. This allows for the development of greater skills of creation and "Causal Body Momentums" of various "Divine Qualities". Physical embodiment gives each individual the opportunity to expand these attributes and faculties through matter substance, and to become a "master of energy" through thought and feeling. This allows for accomplishments and added power which one who does not ever embody on a planet does not possess. Thus an individual may expand the "Flame in the Heart", and expand the "Perfection of the Allness of God's Love" in the created universe, eventually becoming an Ascended Master and later a Cosmic Being.

 

According to the Ascended Master Teachings, gaining "mastery over matter planes" means learning to consciously use 100% of one's Creative Power of thought, feeling, and spoken word to create greater perfection, joy, and love in the world, as opposed to using thoughts, feelings, and words to create greater limitations, bondage, and chaos in one's own experience and in the world at large through carelessness and lack of awareness of the extent of one's influence in the world. "Matter planes" refers to the differentiations of atomic and molecular structure in which evolution takes place, the lower planes (dimensions / wavelength frequency resonance) sometimes correlated with physical solids, liquids, and gases; the higher subplanes of the Physical Octave are sometimes referred to as "etheric" and are not normally perceivable by the physical senses. The emotional and mental octaves are also made up of electrons and atoms of feeling and thought substance and differentiated into levels of density and vibratory rate.[2]

 

"To understand the above explanation concerning the electron and the conscious control the individual has through his thought and feeling to govern the atomic structure of his own body is to understand the One Principle Governing form throughout Infinity. When man will make the effort to prove this to himself or within his own atomic flesh body, he will then proceed to Master Himself. When he has done that, all else in the Universe is his willing co-worker to accomplish whatsoever he wills through Love." [13]

 

Fulfillment of the Divine Plan[edit]

"Within the Life of every human being is the Power by which he can express all that the Ascended Masters express every moment — if he but chooses to do so. All Life contains Will but only Self-Conscious Life is free to determine upon its own course of expression. Hence, the individual has free choice to express either in the human, limited body or the Super-Human, Divine Body. He is the chooser of his own field of expression. He is the Self-determining Creator. He has willed and chosen to live as Self-Conscious Life. . . . When one individualizes within the Absolute, All-Pervading Life he chooses of his own free will to become an intensified individual focus of Self-Conscious Intelligence. He is the conscious director of his future activities. Thus, having once made his choice, he is the only one who can fulfill that Destiny - which is not inflexible circumstance but a definitely designed Plan of Perfection.[13]

 

Threefold Flame[edit]

The Threefold Flame of Life is the Immortal Flame within the Heart of the children of Light and Sons and Daughters of God, and is an actual extension of the Heart of the I AM Presence of each Lifestream in embodiment on Earth.[2]

 

The fall of man[edit]

It is believed that since the "fall of man" during the time of the incarnation of the Fourth Root Race, imperfection, limitations and discord increasingly entered into our world. The memory body is considered to have become known as a "soul", and this temporary personality has taken on the sense of a self that is separated and not connected to God. It is believed that a "Dictation" from Maitreya further clarified this matter through the "Messenger", Geraldine Innocente, on September 27, 1954 when what occurred during the time of the "Fourth Root Race" was described:

 

"Curiosity, rebellion against holding true to the Divine Pattern and the use of thought and feeling in creation of imperfection, began the building of what you call the 'soul'. It is a consciousness apart from the full Purity of God. The first thought a man had that was imperfect and impure, energized by a secret feeling, was a cause and that, sent out into the atmosphere, created an effect. Like a boomerang, the effect came back into the consciousness and made a record. That record was the beginning of an impression. Energy sent out in a certain manner returned to affect the lifestream who had sent it forth and there began to be created a shadow between the I AM Presence and the human consciousness. Endeavoring to contact the Presence, the individual would find these 'tramp' thoughts and feelings flowing through that line of contact until more and more imperfect was the conscious use of them. Finally, those centers got completely away from the control of the ego and acted independently.[21]

 

Dictations[edit]

Within The "I AM" Activity, contact and cooperation with the Ascended Masters became a central part of each member's life. Through the Ballards as "Messengers", the Ascended Masters were believed to have regularly communicated with the students of The "I AM" Activity. Those Addresses (known as "Dictations") were delivered before gatherings of members in Conclaves held throughout the United States of America, published in the monthly periodical, The Voice of The "I AM", and some were collected and reprinted in the books of The Saint Germain Series. In all, 3,834 Dictations from the Masters were received through Guy and Edna Ballard. Other "Ascended Master Activities" believed that the Ascended Masters, Cosmic Beings, Elohim, and Archangels continued to present a program for both individual development and spiritual transformation in the world.[22] They believe that further instruction from the Ascended Masters and the rest of the Spiritual Hierarchy continued through new Dispensations with new Messengers, such as The Bridge to Freedom,[23] The Summit Lighthouse,[6] and The Temple of The Presence.

 

Dawning Golden Age[edit]

Students of the Ascended Master Teachings believe that this world is destined to again have a Golden Age, a "Heaven on Earth", that will be permanent, unlike previous Golden Ages millions of years ago.[2]

 

"In your beloved America, in the not so far distant future, will come forth a similar recognition of the Real Inner Self, and this her people will express in high attainment. She is a Land of Light, and Her Light shall blaze forth, brilliant as the sun at noonday, among the nations of the Earth. She was a Land of Great Light, ages ago, and will again come into her spiritual heritage, for nothing can prevent it." [13]

 

"The Divine Plan for the future of North America is a condition of intense activity in the greatest peace, beauty, success, prosperity, spiritual illumination, and dominion. She is to carry the Christ Light and be the Guide for the rest of the Earth, because America is to be the Heart Center of the 'Golden Age' that is now dimly touching our horizon. The greater portion of the land of North America will stand for a very long time." [13]

 

The Aquarian Church[edit]

The Aquarian Christine Church Universal, Inc. (ACCU) is a denomination founded in 2006 based on The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ transcribed from the Akashic Records by Levi H. Dowling. The Aquarian Christine Church actively promotes Ascended Master Teachings and shares many beliefs in common with the I AM Movement, White Eagle Lodge and New Thought and Theosophical groups. The book "Initiations of the Aquarian Masters: The Theosophy of the Aquarian Gospel" by ACCU founder Rev. Dr. Jacob L. Watson, expounds on the church's teachings which draw heavily from the writings of A.D.K. Luk, the Saint Germain Series published Saint Germain Press (The Saint Germain Foundation), and especially from "The Lost Years of Jesus" compiled by Elizabeth Clare Prophet and published by The Summit Lighthouse.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascended_Master_Teachings

 

Archangel Zadkiel said:

 

"In this moment it is being transported by angelic hosts as they carry this giant cathedral to be placed in the etheric plane of earth's atmosphere for the consecration of the violet flame and as another focal point for souls desiring to be free to frequent while their bodies sleep at night. And therefore, the Cathedral of the Violet Flame is placed in the heart of the Rocky Mountains in commemoration of the light of freedom of the Ruler of the Violet Planet, Omri-Tas, who does respond to the calls of men and women who pursue the light of freedom, yet do not know of the violet flame.

 

"Hail unto the children of light! Hail to the elementals! For they are invited also to enter into the Cathedral of the Violet Flame to be saturated with that light, to be cleared of all of the burdens of the planes of mankind's consciousness...

 

"The focuses of light in this Cathedral are the jewels of the amethyst and violet crystals of many varieties that also hold the action of the violet flame. And these crystals are not native to Terra but come from the Violet Planet as specimens of that which coalesces there as the crystallization of the Christ mind...

 

"Remember To Enter The Violet Flame Cathedral.

"You will find violet flame angels tending there, tending the flame of sacred fire, and you will also find on the altar, the central altar, a focus of jade, the gift of the Angel Deva of the Jade Temple, placed there as the offering of healing for those who come to have their substance transmuted—a focus of jade, healing jade, for the removal of the cause and core of that sin and that struggle that produce disease in mind, in souls, in bodies.

 

"And you will see also certain angels, twelve in number, who come from the Temple of the Angel Deva. You will also see an arc of light from that temple in China to the temple in North America. And if you are fortunate in the flame of living Truth, you may also find the Angel Deva standing there also officiating at the altar with the violet-flame angels.

 

"So I have come in the midst of the judgment to tell you of this gift of the priests and priestesses of the sacred fire. So make your way to the Cathedral of the Violet Flame and be blessed as you carry that flame north and south and east and west."1

 

Call to Give Violet Flame at the Cathedral of the Violet Flame Retreat

In the name of the Christ, my own Real Self, I call to the heart of the I AM Presence and to the angel of the Presence, to Archangel Michael and Archangel Zadkiel and your legions of light to take me in my soul and in my soul consciousness to the Cathedral of the Violet Flame, that I may join the heavenly hosts and elementals in invoking the violet flame for the freeing of elementals and mankind from the burdens of mankind's karma. And I ask that all information necessary to the fulfillment of my divine plan be released to my outer waking consciousness as it is required. I thank thee and I accept this done in the full power of the risen Christ.

 

Spiritual Books on the Saint Germain & the Violet Flame:

Books by Mark and Elizabeth Clare Prophet on the Great Divine Director, Saint Germain, and the Violet Flame. Spiritual books showing how to work with the violet flame to clear the obstacles to your divine plan for effect personal change and world spiritual transformation:

 

Saint Germain on Alchemy: Formulas for Self-Transformation

The Soulless One: Cloning a Counterfeit Creation by the Great Divine Director

Saint Germain: Master Alchemist

Violet Flame to Heal Body, Mind and Soul

Alchemy of the Heart: How to Give and Receive More Love

The Masters and their Retreats

Lords of the Seven Rays: Mirror of Consciousness

The Chela and the Path: Keys to Soul Mastery in the Aquarian Age by El Morya

www.ascendedmastersspiritualretreats.org/ascended-master-...

Saint Germain's Spiritual Retreat, Chohan of the 7th Ray

Saint Germain's Cave of Symbols retreat is in Table Mountain near North America's Rocky Mountains. This is an important focus, and many inventions are to be released from this retreat. Saint Germain uses this retreat along with the Rakoczy Mansion in Transylvania, the Cave of Light in the Himalayas and the nearby Royal Teton Retreat in the Grand Teton range.

 

Interior of the Cave of Symbols

One enters through a cavern in the mountain lined with pink and white crystal and then moves on into a vaulted chamber two hundred feet wide covered with stalactites of rainbow hue in the formation of occult symbols. As focuses of the rainbow rays of God and geometric keys to the release of fohat, the energy that blazes through these symbols extends throughout the United States. This energy has a most significant influence upon her people, keying into their consciousness the matrix of the golden age and the remembrance of their lost inheritance. The cave derives its name from these symbols.

 

Ascended master Saint Germain, violet flame alchemist. On the opposite wall, at the far side of the chamber, there are three arches, spaced twenty feet apart: the first a deep rose, the second a penetrating white and the third a cobalt blue. These are the focuses of great cosmic beings for the victory of the Christ consciousness in America.

 

Accompanied by the ascended master Saint Germain, who raises his hand toward the center archway, we gain entrance to a tunnel that opens at his command. After several hundred feet, he shows us through a door on which there are more ancient symbols into a twelve-sided, domed room sixty feet in diameter. Immediately we notice that four of the twelve sides are a brilliant white (focusing the purity of the Christ consciousness in the four elements and the four lower bodies of the planet). The remainder are the pastel hues of the rays.

 

Cave of Symbols: Home to Many Inventions

In this room we are shown the fantastic radio invented by the ascended lady master Leonora, by which one can communicate with other planets in this solar system, with the center of the earth, or with any point on the surface of the earth. There are chemical and electrical laboratories where scientists are perfecting formulas and inventions they have been permitted to take from the hermetically-sealed cities at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. These cities have been protected since the sinking of Atlantis. These discoveries will be brought forth for mankind's use in the golden age, just as soon as man has learned to harness greed, selfishness and the desire to control others through war and dishonest financial policies.

 

When the Sons of God are once again in control of the great nations of the world, the ascended masters will step forth with a tremendous wealth of information that has been guarded in their retreats for ages. Unascended scientists come here in their finer bodies while asleep or between embodiments.

 

Opportunity to Spiritually Travel to Saint Germain's Retreat

Students of the light can also ask to be taken to Saint Germain's Cave of Symbols. Saint Germain is training a large cadre of souls devoted to the Christ and to the science of the Christ, who at the proper time will have lowered into the outer consciousness all that they have learned in this and other retreats of the Great White Brotherhood.

 

The Golden Atomic Accelerator Chair

There is an "atomic accelerator"—a golden chair through which are passed electronic currents that quicken the vibratory pattern of the atoms and electrons within the four lower bodies. Initiates of the Brotherhood who have proven their merit by service and devotion to the light and who have already balanced a considerable amount of their karma are allowed to sit in this chair for a length of time prescribed by the master Saint Germain and the Lords of Karma. By accelerating the light frequency in the four lower bodies, a portion of one's karma is balanced and a portion of one's misqualified substance is thrown off by the centrifugal action produced by the revolving electrons and transmuted by the sacred fire.

 

Thus, the individual's four lower bodies can be accelerated in ascension currents and the soul raised into the ascension. Under the sponsorship of Saint Germain, many lifestreams have ascended from this room.

 

Entering Further into the Retreat

Entering an elevator, we descend a hundred feet into the heart of the mountain, emerging in a circular room having a diameter of twenty feet. We are led through a door into a huge hall equipped with furnaces and machines for the production of materials used in the experimental work carried on in the chemical and electrical laboratories in the upper level of the retreat.

 

Returning to the upper level, we are shown a reception hall with a domed ceiling, adjoining sleeping quarters, and an audience hall also with a domed ceiling of sky blue with painted clouds, giving the impression of being in the open air. Here there is a magnificent organ and piano that is used by the masters to focus the harmonizing currents of the music of the spheres on behalf of the freedom of sons and daughters of God on earth.

 

The Cosmic Mirror

The Cosmic Mirror in the Cave of Symbols. The Cosmic Mirror is on the east wall of the Crystal Chamber. When the disciple has reached a certain degree of attainment, he is taken by the master before the Cosmic Mirror, which keys into his etheric body and reflects his past lives, including the cause and effect upon his world of every thought, feeling, word and deed he has ever manifested. The Cosmic Mirror also reflects the original blueprint of his divine plan that is placed upon the etheric body when the soul is born in the heart of God.

 

In viewing his past lives, the disciple then may learn what portion of the divine plan he has outpictured. He may see what conditions in his world must be corrected and what good momentums he has developed that he can now use to overcome the difficulties of the past and the present and thus fulfill his divine plan in the very near future.

 

The Sphere of Light

At the far end of the audience hall, through a concealed door, one enters the Sphere of Light, a spherical-shaped room where the focus of the sacred fire is used to intensify the expansion of the light within those who are permitted to enter there. The function of this room correlates with the action of the light in the Cave of Light in the charge of the Great Divine Director in India.

 

Together with the Atomic Accelerator, these focuses serve to bring the disciples of the masters closer to their ascension and to provide them with the assistance to accelerate the process that could not be achieved in the outer world.

 

It is a very real and enlivening experience to stand before the Cosmic Mirror in this retreat. The disciple needs to be ready to look through the illusions, the fantasies and the synthetic self. He must be able to own up to the deceits that the ego continually practices against itself. It is not possible to hide anything from God.

 

The sincere student who would like to get rid of these illusions may call to Saint Germain to be taken to stand before the Cosmic Mirror.

 

Violet Flame Call by Saint Germain

Violet flame alchemy for spiritual transformationThis violet flame mantra for the Aquarian age is for accelerating personal and planetary spiritual transmutation of past errors in thought, feeling and action.

 

I AM a being of violet fire,

I AM the purity God desires.

 

Call to be Taken to Saint Germain's Violet Flame Retreat.

In the name of the Christ, my own Real Self, I call to the heart of the I AM Presence and to the angel of the Presence to take me in my soul and in my soul consciousness to the Cave of Symbols retreat of Saint Germain. I ask that I be saturated with the violet flame focused there and be taught the mastery of the ritual of the atom for the Aquarian age. And I ask that all information necessary to the fulfillment of my divine plan be released to my outer waking consciousness as it is required. I thank thee and I accept this done in the full power of the risen Christ.

 

Ascended Master Retreats of the Chohans

 

Fourteen-Day Cycles at the Universities of the Spirit Chart (PDF)

El Morya and the Temple of Good Will near Darjeeling India

Lord Lanto and the Royal Teton Retreat in Wyoming

Paul the Venetian Le Château De Liberté In Southern France

Serapis Bey and the Ascension Temple and Retreat at Luxor

Hilarion and the Temple of Truth over Crete

Lady Master Nada and the Arabian Retreat

Saint Germain and the Cave of Symbols in the Rocky Mountains

Maha Chohan and the Temple of Comfort over Sri Lanka

Summit Lighthouse Books on the Chohans of the Rays

 

The Book of Apocalypse explained. Like the captain of the Host of the Lord, I invite you to stand up in honor of your Powerful Presence I AM, because I release upon you the power of the sword of the Spirit and I will increasing its power, according to the measure which you are able to receive it! Holding this sword, that my mentor give me long time ago, I direct its power to consume the cause and nucleus of all the negative conditions that can be upon you or in your interior! wields the flaming sword and direct its omniconsuming fire to the insane areas of your subconscious and unconscious minds. My Friends, adverse conditions like those that you have allowed to poison the organs of your physical body, affects also the astral body, the mental and also the etheric body, dimming the mind and preventing that you assume the divine control on your conscious mind! Therefore, I hold my sword of the Spirit and I let that it traverse you! I traverse you! I traverse you with the power of First Ray of the Sacred Will of God! With my sword I extirpate any precancerous conditions in your four lower bodies, from the etheric body to the mental, from the body of desires where its tentacles reaches the physical body and strangle the body as well your soul. Therefore, if you want to save yourself and save others, Call me, and with my sword of blue flame I will extirpate those conditions inside you and your beloveds, close or far to you.

 

www.ascendedmastersspiritualretreats.org/chohan-retreats/...

O Interior do Pantheon, em Roma.

The Pantheon's Interior, in Rome.

 

A text, in english, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Pantheon, Rome.

The Pantheon (Latin: Pantheon, from Greek: Πάνθειον, meaning "Temple of all the gods") is a building in Rome which was originally built as a temple to all the gods of Ancient Rome, and rebuilt circa 126 AD during Hadrian's reign. The intended degree of inclusiveness of this dedication is debated. The generic term pantheon is now applied to a monument in which illustrious dead are buried. It is the best preserved of all Roman buildings, and perhaps the best preserved building of its age in the world. It has been in continuous use throughout its history. The design of the extant building is sometimes credited to Trajan's architect Apollodorus of Damascus, but it is equally likely that the building and the design should be credited to Emperor Hadrian's architects, though not to Hadrian himself as many art scholars once thought. Since the 7th century, the Pantheon has been used as a Roman Catholic church. The Pantheon is the oldest standing domed structure in Rome. The height to the oculus and the diameter of the interior circle are the same, 43.3 metres (142 ft).

n the aftermath of the Battle of Actium (31 BC), Agrippa built and dedicated the original Pantheon during his third consulship (27 BC). Agrippa's Pantheon was destroyed along with other buildings in a huge fire in 80 AD. The current building dates from about 126 AD, during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, as date-stamps on the bricks reveal. It was totally reconstructed with the text of the original inscription ("M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECIT", standing for Latin: Marcus Agrippa, Lucii filius, consul tertium fecit translated to "'Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, Consul for the third time, built this") which was added to the new facade, a common practice in Hadrian's rebuilding projects all over Rome. Hadrian was a cosmopolitan emperor who travelled widely in the East and was a great admirer of Greek culture. He might have intended the Pantheon, a temple to all the gods, to be a kind of ecumenical or syncretist gesture to the subjects of the Roman Empire who did not worship the old gods of Rome, or who (as was increasingly the case) worshipped them under other names. How the building was actually used is not known.

Cassius Dio, a Graeco-Roman senator, consul and author of a comprehensive History of Rome, writing approximately 75 years after the Pantheon's reconstruction, mistakenly attributed the domed building to Agrippa rather than Hadrian. Dio's book appears to be the only near-contemporary writing on the Pantheon, and it is interesting that even by the year 200 there was uncertainty about the origin of the building and its purpose:

Agrippa finished the construction of the building called the Pantheon. It has this name, perhaps because it received among the images which decorated it the statues of many gods, including Mars and Venus; but my own opinion of the name is that, because of its vaulted roof, it resembles the heavens. (Cassius Dio History of Rome 53.27.2)

The building was repaired by Septimius Severus and Caracalla in 202 AD, for which there is another, smaller inscription. This inscription reads "pantheum vetustate corruptum cum omni cultu restituerunt" ('with every refinement they restored the Pantheon worn by age').

In 609 the Byzantine emperor Phocas gave the building to Pope Boniface IV, who converted it into a Christian church and consecrated it to Santa Maria ad Martyres, now known as Santa Maria dei Martiri.

The building's consecration as a church saved it from the abandonment, destruction, and the worst of the spoliation which befell the majority of ancient Rome's buildings during the early medieval period. Paul the Deacon records the spoliation of the building by the Emperor Constans II, who visited Rome in July 663:

Remaining at Rome twelve days he pulled down everything that in ancient times had been made of metal for the ornament of the city, to such an extent that he even stripped off the roof of the church [of the blessed Mary] which at one time was called the Pantheon, and had been founded in honor of all the gods and was now by the consent of the former rulers the place of all the martyrs; and he took away from there the bronze tiles and sent them with all the other ornaments to Constantinople.

Much fine external marble has been removed over the centuries, and there are capitals from some of the pilasters in the British Museum. Two columns were swallowed up in the medieval buildings that abbutted the Pantheon on the east and were lost. In the early seventeenth century, Urban VIII Barberini tore away the bronze ceiling of the portico, and replaced the medieval campanile with the famous twin towers built by Maderno, which were not removed until the late nineteenth century. The only other loss has been the external sculptures, which adorned the pediment above Agrippa's inscription. The marble interior and the great bronze doors have survived, although both have been extensively restored.

Since the Renaissance the Pantheon has been used as a tomb. Among those buried there are the painters Raphael and Annibale Carracci, the composer Arcangelo Corelli, and the architect Baldassare Peruzzi. In the 15th century, the Pantheon was adorned with paintings: the best-known is the Annunciation by Melozzo da Forlì. Architects, like Brunelleschi, who used the Pantheon as help when designing the Cathedral of Florence's dome, looked to the Pantheon as inspiration for their works.

Pope Urban VIII (1623 to 1644) ordered the bronze ceiling of the Pantheon's portico melted down. Most of the bronze was used to make bombards for the fortification of Castel Sant'Angelo, with the remaining amount used by the Apostolic Camera for various other works. It is also said that the bronze was used by Bernini in creating his famous baldachin above the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica, but according to at least one expert, the Pope's accounts state that about 90% of the bronze was used for the cannon, and that the bronze for the baldachin came from Venice. This led the Roman satirical figure Pasquino to issue the famous proverb: Quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt Barberini ("What the barbarians did not do, the Barberinis [Urban VIII's family name] did")

In 1747, the broad frieze below the dome with its false windows was “restored,” but bore little resemblance to the original. In the early decades of the twentieth century, a piece of the original, as could be reconstructed from Renaissance drawings and paintings, was recreated in one of the panels.

Also buried there are two kings of Italy: Vittorio Emanuele II and Umberto I, as well as Umberto's Queen, Margherita. Although Italy has been a republic since 1946, volunteer members of Italian monarchist organizations maintain a vigil over the royal tombs in the Pantheon. This has aroused protests from time to time from republicans, but the Catholic authorities allow the practice to continue, although the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage is in charge of the security and maintenance.

The Pantheon is still used as a church. Masses are celebrated there, particularly on important Catholic days of obligation, and weddings.

The building is circular with a portico of three ranks of huge granite Corinthian columns (eight in the first rank and two groups of four behind) under a pediment opening into the rotunda, under a coffered, concrete dome, with a central opening (oculus), the Great Eye, open to the sky. A rectangular structure links the portico with the rotunda. Though often still drawn as a free-standing building, there was a building at its rear into which it abutted; of this building there are only archaeological remains.

In the walls at the back of the portico were niches, probably for statues of Caesar, Augustus and Agrippa, or for the Capitoline Triad, or another set of gods. The large bronze doors to the cella, once plated with gold, still remain but the gold has long since vanished. The pediment was decorated with a sculpture — holes may still be seen where the clamps which held the sculpture in place were fixed.

The 4,535 metric ton (5,000 tn) weight of the concrete dome is concentrated on a ring of voussoirs 9.1 metres (30 ft) in diameter which form the oculus while the downward thrust of the dome is carried by eight barrel vaults in the 6.4 metre (21 ft) thick drum wall into eight piers. The thickness of the dome varies from 6.4 metres (21 ft) at the base of the dome to 1.2 metres (4 ft) around the oculus. The height to the oculus and the diameter of the interior circle are the same, 43.3 metres (142 ft), so the whole interior would fit exactly within a cube (alternatively, the interior could house a sphere 43.3 metres (142 ft) in diameter). The Pantheon holds the record for the largest unreinforced concrete dome. The interior of the roof was possibly intended to symbolize the arched vault of the heavens. The Great Eye at the dome's apex is the source of all light in the interior. The oculus also serves as a cooling and ventilation method. During storms, a drainage system below the floor handles the rain that falls through the oculus.

The interior features sunken panels (coffers), which, in antiquity, may have contained bronze stars, rosettes, or other ornaments. This coffering was not only decorative, but also reduced the weight of the roof, as did the elimination of the apex by means of the Great Eye. The top of the rotunda wall features a series of brick-relieving arches, visible on the outside and built into the mass of the brickwork. The Pantheon is full of such devices — for example, there are relieving arches over the recesses inside — but all these arches were hidden by marble facing on the interior and possibly by stone revetment or stucco on the exterior. Some changes have been made in the interior decoration.

It is known from Roman sources that their concrete is made up of a pasty hydrate of lime, with pozzolanic ash (Latin pulvis puteolanum) and lightweight pumice from a nearby volcano, and fist-sized pieces of rock. In this, it is very similar to modern concrete. No tensile test results are available on the concrete used in the Pantheon; however Cowan discussed tests on ancient concrete from Roman ruins in Libya which gave a compressive strength of 2.8 ksi (20 MPa). An empirical relationship gives a tensile strength of 213 psi (1.5 MPa) for this specimen. Finite element analysis of the structure by Mark and Hutchison found a maximum tensile stress of only 18.5 psi (0.13 MPa) at the point where the dome joins the raised outer wall. The stresses in the dome were found to be substantially reduced by the use of successively less dense concrete in higher layers of the dome. Mark and Hutchison estimated that if normal weight concrete had been used throughout the stresses in the arch would have been some 80% higher.

The 16 gray granite columns Hadrian ordered for the Pantheon's pronaos were quarried at Mons Claudianus in Egypt's eastern mountains. Each was 39 feet (11.8 m) tall, five feet (1.5 m) in diameter, and 60 tons in weight. These were dragged on wooden sledges when transporting on land. They were floated by barge down the Nile and transferred to vessels to cross the Mediterranean to the Roman port of Ostia where they were transferred back onto barges and up the Tiber to Rome.

As the best-preserved example of an Ancient Roman monumental building, the Pantheon has been enormously influential in Western Architecture from at least the Renaissance on; starting with Brunelleschi's 42-meter dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, completed in 1436 – the first sizeable dome to be constructed in Western Europe since Late Antiquity. The style of the Pantheon can be detected in many buildings of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; numerous city halls, universities and public libraries echo its portico-and-dome structure. Examples of notable buildings influenced by the Pantheon include: the Panthéon in Paris, the Temple in Dartrey, the British Museum Reading Room, Manchester Central Library, Thomas Jefferson's Rotunda at the University of Virginia, the Rotunda of Mosta, in Malta, Low Memorial Library at Columbia University, New York, the domed Marble Hall of Sanssouci palace in Potsdam, Germany, the State Library of Victoria, and the Supreme Court Library of Victoria, both in Melbourne, Australia, the 52-meter-tall Ottokár Prohászka Memorial Church in Székesfehérvár, Hungary, Holy Trinity Church in Karlskrona by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, Sweden, The National Gallery of Art West Building by John Russell Pope, located in Washington, D.C, as well as the California State Capitol in Sacramento.

The present high altar and the apse were commissioned by Pope Clement XI (1700-1721) and designed by Alessandro Specchi. In the apse, a copy of a Byzantine icon of the Madonna is enshrined. The original, now in the Chapel of the Canons in the Vatican, has been dated to the 13th century, although tradition claims that it is much older. The choir was added in 1840, and was designed by Luigi Poletti.

The first niche to the right of the entrance holds a Madonna of the Girdle and St Nicholas of Bari (1686) painted by an unknown artist. The first chapel on the right, the Chapel of the Annunciation, has a fresco of the Annunication attributed to Melozzo da Forli. On the left side is a canvas by Clement Maioli of St Lawrence and St Agnes (1645-1650). On the right wall is the Incredulity of St Thomas (1633) by Pietro Paolo Bonzi.

The second niche has a 15th century fresco of the Tuscan school, depicting the Coronation of the Virgin. In the second chapel is the tomb of King Victor Emmanuel II (died 1878). It was originally dedicated to the Holy Spirit. A competition was held to decide which architect should be given the honor of designing it. Giuseppe Sacconi participated, but lost — he would later design the tomb of Umberto I in the opposite chapel. Manfredio Manfredi won the competition, and started work in 1885. The tomb consists of a large bronze plaque surmounted by a Roman eagle and the arms of the house of Savoy. The golden lamp above the tomb burns in honor of Victor Emmanuel III, who died in exile in 1947.

The third niche has a sculpture by Il Lorenzone of St Anne and the Blessed Virgin. In the third chapel is a 15th-century painting of the Umbrian school, The Madonna of Mercy between St Francis and St John the Baptist. It is also known as the Madonna of the Railing, because it originally hung in the niche on the left-hand side of the portico, where it was protected by a railing. It was moved to the Chapel of the Annunciation, and then to its present position some time after 1837. The bronze epigram commemorated Pope Clement XI's restoration of the sanctuary. On the right wall is the canvas Emperor Phocas presenting the Pantheon to Pope Boniface IV (1750) by an unknown. There are three memorial plaques in the floor, one conmmemorating a Gismonda written in the vernacular. The final niche on the right side has a statue of St. Anastasio (1725) by Bernardino Cametti.

On the first niche to the left of the entrance is an Assumption (1638) by Andrea Camassei. The first chapel on the left, is the Chapel of St Joseph in the Holy Land, and is the chapel of the Confraternity of the Virtuosi at the Pantheon. This refers to the confraternity of artists and musicians that was formed here by a 16th-century Canon of the church, Desiderio da Segni, to ensure that worship was maintained in the chapel. The first members were, among others, Antonio da Sangallo the younger, Jacopo Meneghino, Giovanni Mangone, Zuccari, Domenico Beccafumi and Flaminio Vacca. The confraternity continued to draw members from the elite of Rome's artists and architects, and among later members we find Bernini, Cortona, Algardi and many others. The institution still exists, and is now called the Academia Ponteficia di Belle Arti (The Pontifical Academy of Fine Arts), based in the palace of the Cancelleria. The altar in the chapel is covered with false marble. On the altar is a statue of St Joseph and the Holy Child by Vincenzo de Rossi. To the sides are paintings (1661) by Francesco Cozza, one of the Virtuosi: Adoration of the Shepherds on left side and Adoration of the Magi on right. The stucco relief on the left, Dream of St Joseph is by Paolo Benaglia, and the one on the right, Rest during the flight from Egypt is by Carlo Monaldi. On the vault are several 17th-century canvases, from left to right: Cumean Sibyl by Ludovico Gimignani; Moses by Francesco Rosa; Eternal Father by Giovanni Peruzzini; David by Luigi Garzi and finally Eritrean Sibyl by Giovanni Andrea Carlone.

The second niche has a statue of St Agnes, by Vincenco Felici. The bust on the left is a portrait of Baldassare Peruzzi, derived from a plaster portrait by Giovanni Duprè. The tomb of King Umberto I and his wife Margherita di Savoia is in the next chapel. The chapel was originally dedicated to St Michael the Archangel, and then to St. Thomas the Apostle. The present design is by Giuseppe Sacconi, completed after his death by his pupil Guido Cirilli. The tomb consists of a slab of alabaster mounted in gilded bronze. The frieze has allegorical representations of Generosity, by Eugenio Maccagnani, and Munificence, by Arnaldo Zocchi. The royal tombs are maintained by the National Institute of Honour Guards to the Royal Tombs, founded in 1878. They also organize picket guards at the tombs. The altar with the royal arms is by Cirilli.

The third niche holds the mortal remains — his Ossa et cineres, "Bones and ashes", as the inscription on the sarcophagus says — of the great artist Raphael. His fiancée, Maria Bibbiena is buried to the right of his sarcophagus; she died before they could marry. The sarcophagus was given by Pope Gregory XVI, and its insription reads ILLE HIC EST RAPHAEL TIMUIT QUO SOSPITE VINCI / RERUM MAGNA PARENS ET MORIENTE MORI, meaning "Here lies Raphael, by whom the mother of all things (Nature) feared to be overcome while he was living, and while he was dying, herself to die". The epigraph was written by Pietro Bembo. The present arrangement is from 1811, designed by Antonio Munoz. The bust of Raphael (1833) is by Giuseppe Fabris. The two plaques commemorate Maria Bibbiena and Annibale Carracci. Behind the tomb is the statue known as the Madonna del Sasso (Madonna of the Rock) so named because she rests one foot on a boulder. It was commissioned by Raphael and made by Lorenzetto in 1524.

In the Chapel of the Crucifixion, the Roman brick wall is visible in the niches. The wooden crucifix on the altar is from the 15th century. On the left wall is a Descent of the Holy Ghost (1790) by Pietro Labruzi. On the right side is the low relief Cardinal Consalvi presents to Pope Pius VII the five provinces restored to the Holy See (1824) made by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. The bust is a portrait of Cardinal Agostino Rivarola. The final niche on this side has a statue of St. Rasius (S. Erasio) (1727) by Francesco Moderati.

 

Rochester Cathedral has been transformed by ‘Peace Doves’ an artwork by Peter Walker Sculptor

 

Bringing a message of peace and hope, the Peace Doves artwork has been created from around fifteen thousand individually hand made paper doves, together they collectively form this beautiful artwork which as a whole reflects joining together in unity, peace and hope moving forward.

 

Peace Doves is an artwork that has been re-curated for different spaces as it tours the UK, adaptations have been seen in Liverpool, Lichfield, Derby, Sheffield and now at Rochester.

 

The Peace Doves project has incorporated educational engagement with many schools and community groups in the local area and each person has written individual messages of peace and hope onto each dove.

 

Throughout history the dove has been viewed as a symbol of peace in many different cultures. For example in Greek mythology the dove is a symbol of the renewal of life, and liturgically within the Bible the dove appears at the Baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan and in the teachings of Noah and the Ark as a symbol of the Holy Spirit.

 

www.rochestercathedral.org/peacedoves

 

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The church is the cathedral of the Diocese of Rochester in the Church of England and the seat (cathedra) of the Bishop of Rochester, the second oldest bishopric in England after that of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The edifice is a Grade I listed building (number 1086423)

 

The Rochester diocese was founded by Justus, one of the missionaries who accompanied Augustine of Canterbury to convert the pagan southern English to Christianity in the early 7th century. As the first Bishop of Rochester, Justus was granted permission by King Æthelberht of Kent to establish a church dedicated to Andrew the Apostle (like the monastery at Rome where Augustine and Justus had set out for England) on the site of the present cathedral, which was made the seat of a bishopric. The cathedral was to be served by a college of secular priests and was endowed with land near the city called Priestfields.[3][a][b]

 

Under the Roman system, a bishop was required to establish a school for the training of priests.[4] To provide the upper parts for music in the services a choir school was required.[5] Together these formed the genesis of the cathedral school which today is represented by the King's School, Rochester. The quality of chorister training was praised by Bede.

 

The original cathedral was 42 feet (13 m) high and 28 feet (8.5 m) wide. The apse is marked in the current cathedral on the floor and setts outside show the line of the walls. Credit for the construction of the building goes to King Æthelberht rather than St Justus. Bede describes St Paulinus' burial as "in the sanctuary of the Blessed Apostle Andrew which Æthelberht founded likewise he built the city of Rochester."[c][7]

 

Æthelberht died in 617 and his successor, Eadbald of Kent, was not a Christian. Justus fled to Francia and remained there for a year before he was recalled by the king.[8]

 

In 644 Ithamar, the first English-born bishop, was consecrated at the cathedral.[d] Ithamar consecrated Deusdedit as the first Saxon Archbishop of Canterbury on 26 March 655.[9]

 

The cathedral suffered much from the ravaging of Kent by King Æthelred of Mercia in 676. So great was the damage that Putta retired from the diocese and his appointed successor, Cwichelm, gave up the see "because of its poverty".[10]

 

In 762, the local overlord, Sigerd, granted land to the bishop, as did his successor Egbert.[e][11] The charter is notable as it is confirmed by Offa of Mercia as overlord of the local kingdom.

 

Following the invasion of 1066, William the Conqueror granted the cathedral and its estates to his half-brother, Odo of Bayeux. Odo misappropriated the resources and reduced the cathedral to near-destitution. The building itself was ancient and decayed. During the episcopate of Siward (1058–1075) it was served by four or five canons "living in squalor and poverty".[12] One of the canons became vicar of Chatham and raised sufficient money to make a gift to the cathedral for the soul and burial of his

 

Gundulf's church

 

Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, amongst others, brought Odo to account at the trial of Penenden Heath c. 1072. Following Odo's final fall, Gundulf was appointed as the first Norman bishop of Rochester in 1077. The cathedral and its lands were restored to the bishop.

 

Gundulf's first undertaking in the construction of the new cathedral seems to have been the construction of the tower which today bears his name. In about 1080 he began construction of a new cathedral to replace Justus' church. He was a talented architect who probably played a major part in the design or the works he commissioned. The original cathedral had a presbytery of six bays with aisles of the same length. The four easternmost bays stood over an undercroft which forms part of the present crypt. To the east was a small projection, probably for the silver shrine of Paulinus which was translated there from the old cathedral.[f] The transepts were 120 feet long, but only 14 feet wide. With such narrow transepts it is thought that the eastern arches of the nave abuted the quire arch.[14] To the south another tower (of which nothing visible remains) was built. There was no crossing tower.[15] The nave was not completed at first. Apparently designed to be nine bays long, most of the south side but only five bays to the north were completed by Gundulf. The quire was required by the priory and the south wall formed part of its buildings. It has been speculated that Gundulf simply left the citizens to complete the parochial part of the building.[16] Gundulf did not stop with the fabric, he also replaced the secular chaplains with Benedictine monks, obtained several royal grants of land and proved a great benefactor to his cathedral city.

 

In 1078 Gudulf founded St Bartholomew's Hospital just outside the city of Rochester. The Priory of St Andrew contributed daily and weekly provisions to the hospital which also received the offerings from the two altars of St James and of St Giles.[17]

 

During the episcopates of Ernulf (1115–1124) and John (I) (1125–1137) the cathedral was completed. The quire was rearranged, the nave partly rebuilt, Gundulf's nave piers were cased and the west end built. Ernulf is also credited with building the refectory, dormitory and chapter house, only portions of which remain. Finally John translated the body of Ithamar from the old Saxon cathedral to the new Norman one, the whole being dedicated in 1130 (or possibly 1133) by the Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by 13 bishops in the presence of Henry I, but the occasion was marred by a great fire which nearly destroyed the whole city and damaged the new cathedral. It was badly damaged by fires again in 1137 and 1179. One or other of these fires was sufficiently severe to badly damage or destroy the eastern arm and the transepts. Ernulf's monastic buildings were also damaged.

 

Probably from about 1190, Gilbert de Glanville (bishop 1185–1214) commenced the rebuilding of the east end and the replacement on the monastic buildings. The north quire transept may have been sufficiently advanced to allow the burial of St William of Perth in 1201, alternatively the coffin may have lain in the north quire aisle until the transept was ready. It was then looted in 1215 by the forces of King John during siege of Rochester Castle. Edmund de Hadenham recounts that there was not a pyx left "in which the body of the Lord might rest upon the altar".[14] However, by 1227, the quire was again in use when the monks made their solemn entry into it. The cathedral was rededicated in 1240 by Richard Wendene (also known as Richard de Wendover) who had been translated from Bangor.[14][18]

 

The shrines of Ss Paulinus and William of Perth, along with the relics of St Ithamar, drew pilgrims to the cathedral. Their offerings were so great that both the work mentioned above and the ensuing work could be funded.

 

Unlike the abbeys of the period (which were led by an abbot) the monastic cathedrals were priories ruled over by a prior with further support from the bishop.[19] Rochester and Carlisle (the other impoverished see) were unusual in securing the promotion of a number of monks to be bishop. Seven bishops of Rochester were originally regular monks between 1215 and the Dissolution.[20] A consequence of the monastic attachment was a lack of patronage at the bishop's disposal. By the early 16th century only 4% of the bishop's patronage came from non-parochial sources.[21] The bishop was therefore chronically limited in funds to spend on the non-monastic part of the cathedral.

 

The next phase of the development was begun by Richard de Eastgate, the sacrist. The two eastern bays of the nave were cleared and the four large piers to support the tower were built. The north nave transept was then constructed. The work was nearly completed by Thomas de Mepeham who became sacrist in 1255. Not long after the south transept was completed and the two bays of the nave nearest the crossing rebuilt to their current form. The intention seems to have been to rebuild the whole nave, but probably lack of funds saved the late Norman work.

 

The cathedral was desecrated in 1264 by the troops of Simon de Montfort, during sieges of the city and castle. It is recorded that armed knights rode into the church and dragged away some refugees. Gold and silver were stolen and documents destroyed. Some of the monastic buildings were turned into stables.[22] Just over a year later De Montfort fell at the Battle of Evesham to the forces of Edward I. Later, in 1300, Edward passed through Rochester on his way to Canterbury and is recorded as having given seven shillings (35p) at the shrine of St William, and the same again the following day. During his return he again visited the cathedral and gave a further seven shillings at each of the shrines of Ss Paulinus and Ithamar.

 

The new century saw the completion of the new Decorated work with the original Norman architecture. The rebuilding of the nave being finally abandoned. Around 1320 the south transept was altered to accommodate the altar of the Virgin Mary.

 

There appears to have been a rood screen thrown between the two western piers of the crossing. A rood loft may have surmounted it.[23] Against this screen was placed the altar of St Nicholas, the parochial altar of the city. The citizens demanded the right of entrance by day or night to what was after all their altar. There were also crowds of strangers passing through the city. The friction broke out as a riot in 1327 after which the strong stone screens and doors which wall off the eastern end of the church from the nave were built.[24] The priory itself was walled off from the town at this period. An oratory was established in angulo navis ("in the corner of the nave") for the reserved sacrament; it is not clear which corner was being referred to, but Dr Palmer[25] argues that the buttress against the north-west tower pier is the most likely setting. He notes the arch filled in with rubble on the aisle side; and on nave side there is a scar line with lower quality stonework below. The buttress is about 4 feet (1.2 m) thick, enough for an oratory. Palmer notes that provision for reservation of consecrated hosts was often made to the north of the altar which would be the case here.

 

The central tower was at last raised by Hamo de Hythe in 1343, thus essentially completing the cathedral. Bells were placed in the central tower (see Bells section below). The chapter room doorway was constructed at around this time. The Black Death struck England in 1347–49. From then on there were probably considerably more than twenty monks in the priory.

 

The modern paintwork of the quire walls is modelled on artwork from the Middle Ages. Gilbert Scott found remains of painting behind the wooden stalls during his restoration work in the 1870s. The painting is therefore part original and part authentic. The alternate lions and fleurs-de-lis reflect Edward III's victories, and assumed sovereignty over the French. In 1356 the Black Prince had defeated John II of France at Poitiers and took him prisoner. On 2 July 1360 John passed through Rochester on his way home and made an offering of 60 crowns (£15) at the Church of St Andrew.[27]

 

The Oratory provided for the citizens of Rochester did not settle the differences between the monks and the city. The eventual solution was the construction of St Nicholas' Church by the north side of the cathedral. A doorway was knocked through the western end of the north aisle (since walled up) to allow processions to pass along the north aisle of the cathedral before leaving by the west door.[27][28]

 

In the mid-15th century the clerestory and vaulting of the north quire aisle was completed and new Perpendicular Period windows inserted into the nave aisles. Possible preparatory work for this is indicated in 1410–11 by the Bridge Wardens of Rochester who recorded a gift of lead from the Lord Prior. The lead was sold on for 41 shillings.[g][29] In 1470 the great west window at the cathedral was completed and finally, in around 1490, what is now the Lady Chapel was built.[27] Rochester Cathedral, although one of England's smaller cathedrals, thus demonstrates all styles of Romanesque and Gothic architecture.[30]

 

In 1504 John Fisher was appointed Bishop of Rochester. Although Rochester was by then an impoverished see, Fisher elected to remain as bishop for the remainder of his life. He had been tutor to the young Prince Henry and on the prince's accession as Henry VIII, Fisher remained his staunch supporter and mentor. He figured in the anti-Lutheran policies of Henry right up until the divorce issue and split from Rome in the early 1530s. Fisher remained true to Rome and for his defence of the Pope was elevated as a cardinal in May 1535. Henry was angered by these moves and, on 22 June 1535, Cardinal Fisher was beheaded on Tower Green.

 

Henry VIII visited Rochester on 1 January 1540 when he met Ann of Cleves for the first time and was "greatly disappointed".[31] Whether connected or not, the old Priory of St Andrew was dissolved by royal command later in the year, one of the last monasteries to be dissolved.

 

The west front is dominated by the central perpendicular great west window. Above the window the dripstone terminates in a small carved head at each side. The line of the nave roof is delineated by a string course above which rises the crenelated parapet. Below the window is a blind arcade interrupted by the top of the Great West Door. Some of the niches in the arcade are filled with statuary. Below the arcade the door is flanked with Norman recesses. The door itself is of Norman work with concentric patterned arches. The semicircular tympanum depicts Christ sitting in glory in the centre, with Saints Justus and Ethelbert flanking him on either side of the doorway. Supporting the saints are angels and surrounding them are the symbols of the Four Evangelists: Ss Matthew (a winged man), Mark (a lion), Luke (an ox) and John (an eagle).[52] On the lintel below are the Twelve Apostles and on the shafts supporting it King Soloman and the Queen of Sheba.[53] Within the Great West Door there is a glass porch which allows the doors themselves to be kept open throughout the day.

 

Either side of the nave end rises a tower which forms the junction of the front and the nave walls. The towers are decorated with blind arcading and are carried up a further two stories above the roof and surmounted with pyramidal spires. The aisle ends are Norman. Each has a large round headed arch containing a window and in the northern recess is a small door. Above each arch is plain wall surmounted by a blind arcade, string course at the roof line and plain parapet. The flanking towers are Norman in the lower part with the style being maintained in the later work. Above the plain bases there are four stories of blind arcading topped with an octagonal spire.[54]

 

The outside of the nave and its aisles is undistinguished, apart from the walled up north-west door which allowed access from the cathedral to the adjacent St Nicholas' Church.[28] The north transept is reached from the High Street via Black Boy Alley, a medieval pilgrimage route. The decoration is Early English, but reworked by Gilbert Scott. Scott rebuilt the gable ends to the original high pitch from the lower one adopted at the start of the 19th century. The gable itself is set back from the main wall behind a parapet with walkway. He also restored the pilgrim entrance and opened up the blind arcade in the northern end of the west wall.[55]

 

To the east of the north transept is the Sextry Gate. It dates from Edward III's reign and has wooden domestic premises above. The area beyond was originally enclosed, but is now open to the High Street through the memorial garden and gates. Beyond the Sextry Gate is the entrance to Gundulf's Tower, used as a private back door to the cathedral.

 

The north quire transept and east end are all executed in Early English style, the lower windows light the crypt which is earlier. Adjoining the east end of the cathedral is the east end of the Chapter Room which is in the same style. The exact form of the east end is more modern than it appears, being largely due to the work of Scott in the 19th century. Scott raised the gable ends to the original high pitch, but for lack of funds the roofs have not been raised; writing in 1897 Palmer noted: "they still require roofs of corresponding pitch, a need both great and conspicuous".[56]

 

On the south side of the cathedral the nave reaches the main transept and beyond a modern porch. The aisle between the transepts is itself a buttress to the older wall behind and supported by a flying buttress. The unusual position of this wall is best explained when considering the interior, below. The southern wall of the presbytery is hidden by the chapter room, an 18th-century structure.

 

he western part of the nave is substantially as Gundulf designed it. According to George H. Palmer (who substantially follows St John Hope) "Rochester and Peterborough possess probably the best examples of the Norman nave in the country".[60] The main arcade is topped by a string course below a triforium. The triforium is Norman with a further string course above. The clerestory above is of perpendicular style. From the capitals pilasters rise to the first string course but appear to have been removed from the triforium stage. Originally they might have supported the roof timbers, or even been the springing of a vault.[61]

 

The easternmost bay of the triforium appears to be Norman, but is the work of 14th-century masons. The final bay of the nave is Decorated in style and leads to the tower piers. Of note is the north pier which possibly contains the Oratory Chapel mentioned above.[62]

 

The aisles are plain with flat pilasters. The eastern two bays are Decorated with springing for vaulting. Whether the vault was ever constructed is unknown, the present wooden roof extends the full length of the aisles.

 

The crossing is bounded to the east by the quire screen with the organ above. This is of 19th-century work and shows figures associated with the early cathedral. Above the crossing is the central tower, housing the bells and above that the spire. The ceiling of the crossing is notable for the four Green Men carved on the bosses. Visible from the ground is the outline of the trapdoor through which bells can be raised and lowered when required. The floor is stepped up to the pulpitum and gives access to the quire through the organ screen.

 

The north transept is from 1235 in Early English style. The Victorian insertion of windows has been mentioned above in the external description. Dominating the transept is the baptistery fresco. The fresco by Russian artist Sergei Fyodorov is displayed on the eastern wall. It is located within an arched recess. The recess may have been a former site of the altar of St Nicholas from the time of its construction in 1235 until it was moved to the screen before the pulpitum in 1322. A will suggests that "an altar of Jesu" also stood here at some point, an altar of some sort must have existed as evidenced by the piscina to the right of the recess.[64] The vaulting is unusual in being octpartite, a development of the more common sexpartite. The Pilgrim Door is now the main visitor entrance and is level for disabled access.

 

he original Lady Chapel was formed in the south transept by screening it off from the crossing. The altar of the Blessed Virgin Mary was housed in the eastern arch of the transept. There are traces of painting both on the east wall and under the arch. The painting delineates the location of the mediaeval north screen of the Lady Chapel. Around 1490 this chapel was extended westwards by piercing the western wall with a large arch and building the chapel's nave against the existing south aisle of cathedral. From within the Lady Chapel the upper parts of two smaller clerestory windows may be seen above the chapel's chancel arch. Subsequently, a screen was placed under the arch and the modern Lady Chapel formed in the 1490 extension.

 

The south transept is of early Decorated style. The eastern wall of it is a single wide arch at the arcade level. There are two doorways in the arch, neither of which is used, the northern one being hidden by the memorial to Dr William Franklin. The south wall starts plain but part way up is a notable monument to Richard Watts, a "coloured bust, with long gray beard".[65] According to Palmer there used to be a brass plaque to Charles Dickens below this but only the outline exists, the plaque having been moved to the east wall of the quire transept.[66] The west wall is filled by the large arch mentioned above with the screen below dividing it from the present Lady Chapel.

 

The Lady Chapel as it now exists is of Decorated style with three lights along southern wall and two in the west wall. The style is a light and airy counterpart to the stolid Norman work of the nave. The altar has been placed against the southern wall resulting in a chapel where the congregation wraps around the altar. The window stained glass is modern and tells the gospel story.

 

The first, easternmost, window has the Annunciation in the upper light: Gabriel speaking to Mary (both crowned) with the Holy Spirit as a dove descending. The lower light shows the Nativity with the Holy Family, three angels and shepherds. The next window shows St Elizabeth in the upper light surrounded by stars and the sun in splendour device. The lower light shows the Adoration of the Magi with Mary enthroned with the Infant. The final window of the south wall has St Mary Magdelene with her ointment surrounded by Tudor roses and fleurs-de-lis in the upper light with the lower light showing the Presentation in the Temple. The west wall continues with St. Margaret of Scotland in the upper light surrounded by fouled anchor and thistle roundels. The reference is to the original dedication of the cathedral as the Priory of St Andrew. The lower light shows the Crucifixion with Mary and St Peter. The final window is unusual, the upper light is divided in three and shows King Arthur with the royal arms flanked by St George on the left and St Michael on the right. The lower light shows the Ascension: two disciples to the left, three women with unguents to the right and three bare crosses top right.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochester_Cathedral

Marc Zakharovich Chagall (/ʃəˈɡɑːl/ shə-GAHL;[3][nb 1] born Moishe Zakharovich Shagal;[4] 6 July [O.S. 24 June] 1887 – 28 March 1985) was a Russian-French artist of Belarusian Jewish origin.[1] An early modernist, he was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in virtually every artistic format, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints.

 

Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century" (though Chagall saw his work as "not the dream of one people but of all humanity"). According to art historian Michael J. Lewis, Chagall was considered to be "the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists". For decades, he "had also been respected as the world's preeminent Jewish artist". Using the medium of stained glass, he produced windows for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, windows for the UN, and the Jerusalem Windows in Israel. He also did large-scale paintings, including part of the ceiling of the Paris Opéra.

 

Before World War I, he travelled between Saint Petersburg, Paris and Berlin. During this period he created his own mixture and style of modern art based on his idea of Eastern European Jewish folk culture. He spent the wartime years in Soviet Belarus, becoming one of the country's most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avant-garde, founding the Vitebsk Arts College before leaving again for Paris in 1922.

 

He had two basic reputations, writes Lewis: as a pioneer of modernism and as a major Jewish artist. He experienced modernism's "golden age" in Paris, where "he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism". Yet throughout these phases of his style "he remained most emphatically a Jewish artist, whose work was one long dreamy reverie of life in his native village of Vitebsk."[5] "When Matisse dies," Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, "Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is".[6]

 

Contents

 

1 Early life and education

1.1 Early life

1.2 Art education

1.3 Artistic inspiration

2 Art career

2.1 Russia (1906–1910)

2.2 France (1910–1914)

2.3 Russia and Soviet Belarus (1914–1922)

2.4 France (1923–1941)

2.4.1 The Bible illustrations

2.4.2 Nazi campaigns against modern art

2.4.3 Escaping occupied France

2.5 United States (1941–1948)

2.5.1 Aleko ballet (1942)

2.5.2 Coming to grips with World War II

2.5.3 Post-war years

2.6 France (1948–1985)

2.6.1 Ceiling of the Paris Opera (1963)

3 Art styles and techniques

3.1 Color

3.2 Subject matter

3.2.1 From life memories to fantasy

3.2.2 Jewish themes

  

Early life and education

Chagall's Parents

 

Marc Chagall was born Moishe Segal in a Lithuanian Jewish family in Liozna,[7] near the city of Vitebsk (Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire) in 1887.[note][8] At the time of his birth, Vitebsk's population was about 66,000, with half the population being Jewish.[5] A picturesque city of churches and synagogues, it was called "Russian Toledo", after a cosmopolitan city of the former Spanish Empire. As the city was built mostly of wood, little of it survived years of occupation and destruction during World War II.

 

Chagall was the eldest of nine children. The family name, Shagal, is a variant of the name Segal, which in a Jewish community was usually borne by a Levitic family.[9] His father, Khatskl (Zachar) Shagal, was employed by a herring merchant, and his mother, Feige-Ite, sold groceries from their home. His father worked hard, carrying heavy barrels but earning only 20 roubles each month (the average wages across the Russian Empire being 13 roubles a month). Chagall would later include fish motifs "out of respect for his father", writes Chagall biographer, Jacob Baal-Teshuva. Chagall wrote of these early years:

 

Day after day, winter and summer, at six o'clock in the morning, my father got up and went off to the synagogue. There he said his usual prayer for some dead man or other. On his return he made ready the samovar, drank some tea and went to work. Hellish work, the work of a galley-slave. Why try to hide it? How tell about it? No word will ever ease my father's lot... There was always plenty of butter and cheese on our table. Buttered bread, like an eternal symbol, was never out of my childish hands.[10]

 

One of the main sources of income of the Jewish population of the town was from the manufacture of clothing that was sold throughout Russia. They also made furniture and various agricultural tools.[11] From the late 18th century to the First World War, the Russian government confined Jews to living within the Pale of Settlement, which included modern Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, almost exactly corresponding to the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth recently taken over by Imperial Russia. This caused the creation of Jewish market-villages (shtetls) throughout today's Eastern Europe, with their own markets, schools, hospitals, and other community institutions.[12]:14

 

Most of what is known about Chagall's early life has come from his autobiography, My Life. In it, he described the major influence that the culture of Hasidic Judaism had on his life as an artist. Vitebsk itself had been a center of that culture dating from the 1730s with its teachings derived from the Kabbalah. Chagall scholar Susan Tumarkin Goodman describes the links and sources of his art to his early home:

 

Chagall's art can be understood as the response to a situation that has long marked the history of Russian Jews. Though they were cultural innovators who made important contributions to the broader society, Jews were considered outsiders in a frequently hostile society... Chagall himself was born of a family steeped in religious life; his parents were observant Hasidic Jews who found spiritual satisfaction in a life defined by their faith and organized by prayer.[12]:14

 

Chagall was friends with Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, and later with Menachem M. Schneerson.[13]

Art education

Portrait of Chagall by Yehuda (Yuri) Pen, his first art teacher in Vitebsk

 

In Russia at that time, Jewish children were not allowed to attend regular Russian schools or universities. Their movement within the city was also restricted. Chagall therefore received his primary education at the local Jewish religious school, where he studied Hebrew and the Bible. At the age of 13, his mother tried to enroll him in a Russian high school, and he recalled, "But in that school, they don't take Jews. Without a moment's hesitation, my courageous mother walks up to a professor." She offered the headmaster 50 roubles to let him attend, which he accepted.[10]

 

A turning point of his artistic life came when he first noticed a fellow student drawing. Baal-Teshuva writes that for the young Chagall, watching someone draw "was like a vision, a revelation in black and white". Chagall would later say that there was no art of any kind in his family's home and the concept was totally alien to him. When Chagall asked the schoolmate how he learned to draw, his friend replied, "Go and find a book in the library, idiot, choose any picture you like, and just copy it". He soon began copying images from books and found the experience so rewarding he then decided he wanted to become an artist.[11]

 

He eventually confided to his mother, "I want to be a painter", although she could not yet understand his sudden interest in art or why he would choose a vocation that "seemed so impractical", writes Goodman. The young Chagall explained, "There's a place in town; if I'm admitted and if I complete the course, I'll come out a regular artist. I'd be so happy!" It was 1906, and he had noticed the studio of Yehuda (Yuri) Pen, a realist artist who also operated a small drawing school in Vitebsk, which included the future artists El Lissitzky and Ossip Zadkine. Due to Chagall's youth and lack of income, Pen offered to teach him free of charge. However, after a few months at the school, Chagall realized that academic portrait painting did not suit his desires.[11]

Artistic inspiration

Marc Chagall, 1912, Calvary (Golgotha), oil on canvas, 174.6 × 192.4 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Alternative titles: Kreuzigung Bild 2 Christus gewidmet [Golgotha. Crucifixion. Dedicated to Christ]. Sold through Galerie Der Sturm (Herwarth Walden), Berlin to Bernhard Koehler (1849–1927), Berlin, 1913. Exhibited: Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon, Berlin, 1913

 

Goodman notes that during this period in Russia, Jews had two basic alternatives for joining the art world: One was to "hide or deny one's Jewish roots". The other alternative—the one that Chagall chose—was "to cherish and publicly express one's Jewish roots" by integrating them into his art. For Chagall, this was also his means of "self-assertion and an expression of principle."[12]:14

 

Chagall biographer Franz Meyer, explains that with the connections between his art and early life "the hassidic spirit is still the basis and source of nourishment for his art."[14] Lewis adds, "As cosmopolitan an artist as he would later become, his storehouse of visual imagery would never expand beyond the landscape of his childhood, with its snowy streets, wooden houses, and ubiquitous fiddlers... [with] scenes of childhood so indelibly in one's mind and to invest them with an emotional charge so intense that it could only be discharged obliquely through an obsessive repetition of the same cryptic symbols and ideograms... "[5]

 

Years later, at the age of 57 while living in the United States, Chagall confirmed this when he published an open letter entitled, "To My City Vitebsk":

 

Why? Why did I leave you many years ago? ... You thought, the boy seeks something, seeks such a special subtlety, that color descending like stars from the sky and landing, bright and transparent, like snow on our roofs. Where did he get it? How would it come to a boy like him? I don't know why he couldn't find it with us, in the city—in his homeland. Maybe the boy is "crazy", but "crazy" for the sake of art. ...You thought: "I can see, I am etched in the boy's heart, but he is still 'flying,' he is still striving to take off, he has 'wind' in his head." ... I did not live with you, but I didn't have one single painting that didn't breathe with your spirit and reflection.[15]

 

Art career

Russia (1906–1910)

 

In 1906, he moved to Saint Petersburg which was then the capital of Russia and the center of the country's artistic life with its famous art schools. Since Jews were not permitted into the city without an internal passport, he managed to get a temporary passport from a friend. He enrolled in a prestigious art school and studied there for two years.[11] By 1907, he had begun painting naturalistic self-portraits and landscapes.

 

Between 1908 and 1910, Chagall was a student of Léon Bakst at the Zvantseva School of Drawing and Painting. While in Saint Petersburg, he discovered experimental theater and the work of such artists as Paul Gauguin.[16] Bakst, also Jewish, was a designer of decorative art and was famous as a draftsman designer of stage sets and costumes for the Ballets Russes, and helped Chagall by acting as a role model for Jewish success. Bakst moved to Paris a year later. Art historian Raymond Cogniat writes that after living and studying art on his own for four years, "Chagall entered into the mainstream of contemporary art. ...His apprenticeship over, Russia had played a memorable initial role in his life."[17]:30

 

Chagall stayed in Saint Petersburg until 1910, often visiting Vitebsk where he met Bella Rosenfeld. In My Life, Chagall described his first meeting her: "Her silence is mine, her eyes mine. It is as if she knows everything about my childhood, my present, my future, as if she can see right through me."[11]:22

France (1910–1914)

Marc Chagall, 1911–12, The Drunkard (Le saoul), 1912, oil on canvas. 85 × 115 cm. Private collection

Marc Chagall, 1912, The Fiddler, an inspiration for the musical Fiddler on the Roof[18]

 

In 1910, Chagall relocated to Paris to develop his artistic style. Art historian and curator James Sweeney notes that when Chagall first arrived in Paris, Cubism was the dominant art form, and French art was still dominated by the "materialistic outlook of the 19th century". But Chagall arrived from Russia with "a ripe color gift, a fresh, unashamed response to sentiment, a feeling for simple poetry and a sense of humor", he adds. These notions were alien to Paris at that time, and as a result, his first recognition came not from other painters but from poets such as Blaise Cendrars and Guillaume Apollinaire.[19]:7 Art historian Jean Leymarie observes that Chagall began thinking of art as "emerging from the internal being outward, from the seen object to the psychic outpouring", which was the reverse of the Cubist way of creating.[20]

 

He therefore developed friendships with Guillaume Apollinaire and other avant-garde luminaries such as Robert Delaunay and Fernand Léger.[21] Baal-Teshuva writes that "Chagall's dream of Paris, the city of light and above all, of freedom, had come true."[11]:33 His first days were a hardship for the 23-year-old Chagall, who was lonely in the big city and unable to speak French. Some days he "felt like fleeing back to Russia, as he daydreamed while he painted, about the riches of Russian folklore, his Hasidic experiences, his family, and especially Bella".

 

In Paris, he enrolled at Académie de La Palette, an avant-garde school of art where the painters Jean Metzinger, André Dunoyer de Segonzac and Henri Le Fauconnier taught, and also found work at another academy. He would spend his free hours visiting galleries and salons, especially the Louvre; artists he came to admire included Rembrandt, the Le Nain brothers, Chardin, van Gogh, Renoir, Pissarro, Matisse, Gauguin, Courbet, Millet, Manet, Monet, Delacroix, and others. It was in Paris that he learned the technique of gouache, which he used to paint Belarusian scenes. He also visited Montmartre and the Latin Quarter "and was happy just breathing Parisian air."[11] Baal-Teshuva describes this new phase in Chagall's artistic development:

 

Chagall was exhilarated, intoxicated, as he strolled through the streets and along the banks of the Seine. Everything about the French capital excited him: the shops, the smell of fresh bread in the morning, the markets with their fresh fruit and vegetables, the wide boulevards, the cafés and restaurants, and above all the Eiffel Tower.

 

Another completely new world that opened up for him was the kaleidoscope of colours and forms in the works of French artists. Chagall enthusiastically reviewed their many different tendencies, having to rethink his position as an artist and decide what creative avenue he wanted to pursue.[11]:33

 

During his time in Paris, Chagall was constantly reminded of his home in Vitebsk, as Paris was also home to many painters, writers, poets, composers, dancers, and other émigrés from the Russian Empire. However, "night after night he painted until dawn", only then going to bed for a few hours, and resisted the many temptations of the big city at night.[11]:44 "My homeland exists only in my soul", he once said.[20]:viii He continued painting Jewish motifs and subjects from his memories of Vitebsk, although he included Parisian scenes—- the Eiffel Tower in particular, along with portraits. Many of his works were updated versions of paintings he had made in Russia, transposed into Fauvist or Cubist keys.[5]

Marc Chagall, 1912, Still-life (Nature morte), oil on canvas, private collection

 

Chagall developed a whole repertoire of quirky motifs: ghostly figures floating in the sky, ... the gigantic fiddler dancing on miniature dollhouses, the livestock and transparent wombs and, within them, tiny offspring sleeping upside down.[5] The majority of his scenes of life in Vitebsk were painted while living in Paris, and "in a sense they were dreams", notes Lewis. Their "undertone of yearning and loss", with a detached and abstract appearance, caused Apollinaire to be "struck by this quality", calling them "surnaturel!" His "animal/human hybrids and airborne phantoms" would later become a formative influence on Surrealism.[5] Chagall, however, did not want his work to be associated with any school or movement and considered his own personal language of symbols to be meaningful to himself. But Sweeney notes that others often still associate his work with "illogical and fantastic painting", especially when he uses "curious representational juxtapositions".[19]:10

 

Sweeney writes that "This is Chagall's contribution to contemporary art: the reawakening of a poetry of representation, avoiding factual illustration on the one hand, and non-figurative abstractions on the other". André Breton said that "with him alone, the metaphor made its triumphant return to modern painting".[19]:7

Russia and Soviet Belarus (1914–1922)

 

Because he missed his fiancée, Bella, who was still in Vitebsk—"He thought about her day and night", writes Baal-Teshuva—and was afraid of losing her, Chagall decided to accept an invitation from a noted art dealer in Berlin to exhibit his work, his intention being to continue on to Belarus, marry Bella, and then return with her to Paris. Chagall took 40 canvases and 160 gouaches, watercolors and drawings to be exhibited. The exhibit, held at Herwarth Walden's Sturm Gallery was a huge success, "The German critics positively sang his praises."[11]

People's Art School where the Vitebsk Museum of Modern Art was situated

 

After the exhibit, he continued on to Vitebsk, where he planned to stay only long enough to marry Bella. However, after a few weeks, the First World War began, closing the Russian border for an indefinite period. A year later he married Bella Rosenfeld and they had their first child, Ida. Before the marriage, Chagall had difficulty convincing Bella's parents that he would be a suitable husband for their daughter. They were worried about her marrying a painter from a poor family and wondered how he would support her. Becoming a successful artist now became a goal and inspiration. According to Lewis, "[T]he euphoric paintings of this time, which show the young couple floating balloon-like over Vitebsk—its wooden buildings faceted in the Delaunay manner—are the most lighthearted of his career".[5] His wedding pictures were also a subject he would return to in later years as he thought about this period of his life.[11]:75

Bella with White Collar, 1917

 

In 1915, Chagall began exhibiting his work in Moscow, first exhibiting his works at a well-known salon and in 1916 exhibiting pictures in St. Petersburg. He again showed his art at a Moscow exhibition of avant-garde artists. This exposure brought recognition, and a number of wealthy collectors began buying his art. He also began illustrating a number of Yiddish books with ink drawings. He illustrated I. L. Peretz's The Magician in 1917.[22] Chagall was 30 years old and had begun to become well known.[11]:77

 

The October Revolution of 1917 was a dangerous time for Chagall although it also offered opportunity. By then he was one of the Russia's most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avant-garde, which enjoyed special privileges and prestige as the "aesthetic arm of the revolution".[5] He was offered a notable position as a commissar of visual arts for the country[clarification needed], but preferred something less political, and instead accepted a job as commissar of arts for Vitebsk. This resulted in his founding the Vitebsk Arts College which, adds Lewis, became the "most distinguished school of art in the Soviet Union".

 

It obtained for its faculty some of the most important artists in the country, such as El Lissitzky and Kazimir Malevich. He also added his first teacher, Yehuda Pen. Chagall tried to create an atmosphere of a collective of independently minded artists, each with their own unique style. However, this would soon prove to be difficult as a few of the key faculty members preferred a Suprematist art of squares and circles, and disapproved of Chagall's attempt at creating "bourgeois individualism". Chagall then resigned as commissar and moved to Moscow.

 

In Moscow he was offered a job as stage designer for the newly formed State Jewish Chamber Theater. It was set to begin operation in early 1921 with a number of plays by Sholem Aleichem. For its opening he created a number of large background murals using techniques he learned from Bakst, his early teacher. One of the main murals was 9 feet (2.7 m) tall by 24 feet (7.3 m) long and included images of various lively subjects such as dancers, fiddlers, acrobats, and farm animals. One critic at the time called it "Hebrew jazz in paint". Chagall created it as a "storehouse of symbols and devices", notes Lewis.[5] The murals "constituted a landmark" in the history of the theatre, and were forerunners of his later large-scale works, including murals for the New York Metropolitan Opera and the Paris Opera.[11]:87

 

Famine spread after the war ended in 1918. The Chagalls found it necessary to move to a smaller, less expensive, town near Moscow, although he now had to commute to Moscow daily using crowded trains. In 1921, he worked as an art teacher in a Jewish boys' shelter in suburban Malakhovka, which housed orphaned refugees from Ukrainian pogroms.[6]:270 While there, he created a series of illustrations for the Yiddish poetry cycle Grief written by David Hofstein, who was another teacher at the Malakhovka shelter.[6]:273

 

After spending the years between 1921 and 1922 living in primitive conditions, he decided to go back to France so that he could develop his art in a more comfortable country. Numerous other artists, writers, and musicians were also planning to relocate to the West. He applied for an exit visa and while waiting for its uncertain approval, wrote his autobiography, My Life.[11]:121

France (1923–1941)

 

In 1923, Chagall left Moscow to return to France. On his way he stopped in Berlin to recover the many pictures he had left there on exhibit ten years earlier, before the war began, but was unable to find or recover any of them. Nonetheless, after returning to Paris he again "rediscovered the free expansion and fulfillment which were so essential to him", writes Lewis. With all his early works now lost, he began trying to paint from his memories of his earliest years in Vitebsk with sketches and oil paintings.[5]

 

He formed a business relationship with French art dealer Ambroise Vollard. This inspired him to begin creating etchings for a series of illustrated books, including Gogol's Dead Souls, the Bible, and the La Fontaine's Fables. These illustrations would eventually come to represent his finest printmaking efforts.[5] In 1924, he travelled to Brittany and painted La fenêtre sur l'Île-de-Bréhat.[23] By 1926 he had his first exhibition in the United States at the Reinhardt gallery of New York which included about 100 works, although he did not travel to the opening. He instead stayed in France, "painting ceaselessly", notes Baal-Teshuva.[11] It was not until 1927 that Chagall made his name in the French art world, when art critic and historian Maurice Raynal awarded him a place in his book Modern French Painters. However, Raynal was still at a loss to accurately describe Chagall to his readers:

 

Chagall interrogates life in the light of a refined, anxious, childlike sensibility, a slightly romantic temperament ... a blend of sadness and gaiety characteristic of a grave view of life. His imagination, his temperament, no doubt forbid a Latin severity of composition.[6]:314

 

During this period he traveled throughout France and the Côte d'Azur, where he enjoyed the landscapes, colorful vegetation, the blue Mediterranean Sea, and the mild weather. He made repeated trips to the countryside, taking his sketchbook.[6]:9 He also visited nearby countries and later wrote about the impressions some of those travels left on him:

 

I should like to recall how advantageous my travels outside France have been for me in an artistic sense—in Holland or in Spain, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, or simply in the south of France. There, in the south, for the first time in my life, I saw that rich greenness—the like of which I had never seen in my own country. In Holland I thought I discovered that familiar and throbbing light, like the light between the late afternoon and dusk. In Italy I found that peace of the museums which the sunlight brought to life. In Spain I was happy to find the inspiration of a mystical, if sometimes cruel, past, to find the song of its sky and of its people. And in the East [Palestine] I found unexpectedly the Bible and a part of my very being.[15]:77

 

The Bible illustrations

"The Prophet Jeremiah" (1968)

 

After returning to Paris from one of his trips, Vollard commissioned Chagall to illustrate the Old Testament. Although he could have completed the project in France, he used the assignment as an excuse to travel to Israel to experience for himself the Holy Land. He arrived there in February 1931 and ended up staying for two months. Chagall felt at home in Israel where many people spoke Yiddish and Russian. According to Jacob Baal-Teshuva, "he was impressed by the pioneering spirit of the people in the kibbutzim and deeply moved by the Wailing Wall and the other holy places".[11]:133

 

Chagall later told a friend that Israel gave him "the most vivid impression he had ever received". Wullschlager notes, however, that whereas Delacroix and Matisse had found inspiration in the exoticism of North Africa, he as a Jew in Israel had different perspective. "What he was really searching for there was not external stimulus but an inner authorization from the land of his ancestors, to plunge into his work on the Bible illustrations".[6]:343 Chagall stated that "In the East I found the Bible and part of my own being."

 

As a result, he immersed himself in "the history of the Jews, their trials, prophecies, and disasters", notes Wullschlager. She adds that beginning the assignment was an "extraordinary risk" for Chagall, as he had finally become well known as a leading contemporary painter, but would now end his modernist themes and delve into "an ancient past".[6]:350 Between 1931 and 1934 he worked "obsessively" on "The Bible", even going to Amsterdam in order to carefully study the biblical paintings of Rembrandt and El Greco, to see the extremes of religious painting. He walked the streets of the city's Jewish quarter to again feel the earlier atmosphere. He told Franz Meyer:

 

I did not see the Bible, I dreamed it. Ever since early childhood, I have been captivated by the Bible. It has always seemed to me and still seems today the greatest source of poetry of all time.[6]:350

 

Chagall saw the Old Testament as a "human story, ... not with the creation of the cosmos but with the creation of man, and his figures of angels are rhymed or combined with human ones", writes Wullschlager. She points out that in one of his early Bible images, "Abraham and the Three Angels", the angels sit and chat over a glass of wine "as if they have just dropped by for dinner".[6]:350

 

He returned to France and by the next year had completed 32 out of the total of 105 plates. By 1939, at the beginning of World War II, he had finished 66. However, Vollard died that same year. When the series was completed in 1956, it was published by Edition Tériade. Baal-Teshuva writes that "the illustrations were stunning and met with great acclaim. Once again Chagall had shown himself to be one of the 20th century's most important graphic artists".[11]:135 Leymarie has described these drawings by Chagall as "monumental" and,

 

...full of divine inspiration, which retrace the legendary destiny and the epic history of Israel to Genesis to the Prophets, through the Patriarchs and the Heroes. Each picture becomes one with the event, informing the text with a solemn intimacy unknown since Rembrandt.[20]:ix

 

Nazi campaigns against modern art

 

Not long after Chagall began his work on the Bible, Adolf Hitler gained power in Germany. Anti-Semitic laws were being introduced and the first concentration camp at Dachau had been established. Wullschlager describes the early effects on art:

 

The Nazis had begun their campaign against modernist art as soon as they seized power. Expressionist, cubist, abstract, and surrealist art—anything intellectual, Jewish, foreign, socialist-inspired, or difficult to understand—was targeted, from Picasso and Matisse going back to Cézanne and van Gogh; in its place traditional German realism, accessible and open to patriotic interpretation, was extolled.[6]:374

 

Beginning during 1937 about twenty thousand works from German museums were confiscated as "degenerate" by a committee directed by Joseph Goebbels.[6]:375 Although the German press had once "swooned over him", the new German authorities now made a mockery of Chagall's art, describing them as "green, purple, and red Jews shooting out of the earth, fiddling on violins, flying through the air ... representing [an] assault on Western civilization".[6]:376

 

After Germany invaded and occupied France, the Chagalls naively remained in Vichy France, unaware that French Jews, with the help of the Vichy government, were being collected and sent to German concentration camps, from which few would return. The Vichy collaborationist government, directed by Marshal Philippe Pétain, immediately upon assuming power established a commission to "redefine French citizenship" with the aim of stripping "undesirables", including naturalized citizens, of their French nationality. Chagall had been so involved with his art, that it was not until October 1940, after the Vichy government, at the behest of the Nazi occupying forces, began approving anti-Semitic laws, that he began to understand what was happening. Learning that Jews were being removed from public and academic positions, the Chagalls finally "woke up to the danger they faced". But Wullschlager notes that "by then they were trapped".[6]:382 Their only refuge could be America, but "they could not afford the passage to New York" or the large bond that each immigrant had to provide upon entry to ensure that they would not become a financial burden to the country.

Escaping occupied France

 

According to Wullschlager, "[T]he speed with which France collapsed astonished everyone: the French army, with British support, capitulated even more quickly than Poland had done" a year earlier. "Shock waves crossed the Atlantic... as Paris had until then been equated with civilization throughout the non-Nazi world."[6]:388 Yet the attachment of the Chagalls to France "blinded them to the urgency of the situation."[6]:389 Many other well-known Russian and Jewish artists eventually sought to escape: these included Chaim Soutine, Max Ernst, Max Beckmann, Ludwig Fulda, author Victor Serge and prize-winning author Vladimir Nabokov, who although not Jewish himself, was married to a Jewish woman.[24]:1181 Russian author Victor Serge described many of the people living temporarily in Marseille who were waiting to emigrate to America:

 

Here is a beggar's alley gathering the remnants of revolutions, democracies and crushed intellects... In our ranks are enough doctors, psychologists, engineers, educationalists, poets, painters, writers, musicians, economists and public men to vitalize a whole great country.[6]:392

 

After prodding by their daughter Ida, who "perceived the need to act fast",[6]:388 and with help from Alfred Barr of the New York Museum of Modern Art, Chagall was saved by having his name added to the list of prominent artists whose lives were at risk and who the United States should try to extricate. Varian Fry, the American journalist, and Hiram Bingham IV, the American Vice-Consul in Marseilles, ran a rescue operation to smuggle artists and intellectuals out of Europe to the US by providing them with forged visas to the US. Chagall was one of over 2,000 who were rescued by this operation. He left France in May 1941, "when it was almost too late", adds Lewis. Picasso and Matisse were also invited to come to America but they decided to remain in France. Chagall and Bella arrived in New York on 23 June 1941, the day after Germany invaded the Soviet Union.[11]:150 Ida and her husband Michel followed on the notorious refugee ship SS Navemar with a large case of Chagall's work.[25] A chance post-war meeting in a French café between Ida and intelligence analyst Konrad Kellen led to Kellen carrying more paintings on his return to the United States.[26]

United States (1941–1948)

Photo portrait of Chagall in 1941 by Carl Van Vechten

 

Even before arriving in the United States in 1941, Chagall was awarded the Carnegie Prize third prize in 1939 for "Les Fiancés". After being in America he discovered that he had already achieved "international stature", writes Cogniat, although he felt ill-suited in this new role in a foreign country whose language he could not yet speak. He became a celebrity mostly against his will, feeling lost in the strange surroundings.[17]:57

 

After a while he began to settle in New York, which was full of writers, painters, and composers who, like himself, had fled from Europe during the Nazi invasions. He lived at 4 East 74th Street.[27] He spent time visiting galleries and museums, and befriended other artists including Piet Mondrian and André Breton.[11]:155

 

Baal-Teshuva writes that Chagall "loved" going to the sections of New York where Jews lived, especially the Lower East Side. There he felt at home, enjoying the Jewish foods and being able to read the Yiddish press, which became his main source of information since he did not yet speak English.[11]

 

Contemporary artists did not yet understand or even like Chagall's art. According to Baal-Teshuva, "they had little in common with a folkloristic storyteller of Russo-Jewish extraction with a propensity for mysticism." The Paris School, which was referred to as 'Parisian Surrealism,' meant little to them.[11]:155 Those attitudes would begin to change, however, when Pierre Matisse, the son of recognized French artist Henri Matisse, became his representative and managed Chagall exhibitions in New York and Chicago in 1941. One of the earliest exhibitions included 21 of his masterpieces from 1910 to 1941.[11] Art critic Henry McBride wrote about this exhibit for the New York Sun:

 

Chagall is about as gypsy as they come... these pictures do more for his reputation than anything we have previously seen... His colors sparkle with poetry... his work is authentically Russian as a Volga boatman's song...[28]

 

He was offered a commission by choreographer Leonid Massine of the Ballet Theatre of New York to design the sets and costumes for his new ballet, Aleko. This ballet would stage the words of Pushkin's verse narrative The Gypsies with the music of Tchaikovsky. While Chagall had done stage settings before while in Russia, this was his first ballet, and it would give him the opportunity to visit Mexico. While there he quickly began to appreciate the "primitive ways and colorful art of the Mexicans," notes Cogniat. He found "something very closely related to his own nature", and did all the color detail for the sets while there.[17] Eventually, he created four large backdrops and had Mexican seamstresses sew the ballet costumes.

 

When the ballet premiered on 8 September 1942 it was considered a "remarkable success."[11] In the audience were other famous mural painters who came to see Chagall's work, including Diego Rivera and José Orozco. According to Baal-Teshuva, when the final bar of music ended, "there was a tumultuous applause and 19 curtain calls, with Chagall himself being called back onto the stage again and again." The ballet also opened in New York City four weeks later at the Metropolitan Opera and the response was repeated, "again Chagall was the hero of the evening".[11]:158 Art critic Edwin Denby wrote of the opening for the New York Herald Tribune that Chagall's work:

 

has turned into a dramatized exhibition of giant paintings... It surpasses anything Chagall has done on the easel scale, and it is a breathtaking experience, of a kind one hardly expects in the theatre.[29]

 

Coming to grips with World War II

 

After Chagall returned to New York in 1943, however, current events began to interest him more, and this was represented by his art, where he painted subjects including the Crucifixion and scenes of war. He learned that the Germans had destroyed the town where he was raised, Vitebsk, and became greatly distressed.[11]:159 He also learned about the Nazi concentration camps.[11] During a speech in February 1944, he described some of his feelings:

 

Meanwhile, the enemy jokes, saying that we are a "stupid nation." He thought that when he started slaughtering the Jews, we would all in our grief suddenly raise the greatest prophetic scream, and would be joined by the Christian humanists. But, after two thousand years of "Christianity" in the world—say whatever you like—but, with few exceptions, their hearts are silent... I see the artists in Christian nations sit still—who has heard them speak up? They are not worried about themselves, and our Jewish life doesn't concern them.[15]:89

 

In the same speech he credited Soviet Russia with doing the most to save the Jews:

 

The Jews will always be grateful to it. What other great country has saved a million and a half Jews from Hitler's hands, and shared its last piece of bread? What country abolished antisemitism? What other country devoted at least a piece of land as an autonomous region for Jews who want to live there? All this, and more, weighs heavily on the scales of history.[15]:89

 

On 2 September 1944, Bella died suddenly due to a virus infection, which was not treated due to the wartime shortage of medicine. As a result, he stopped all work for many months, and when he did resume painting his first pictures were concerned with preserving Bella's memory.[17] Wullschlager writes of the effect on Chagall: "As news poured in through 1945 of the ongoing Holocaust at Nazi concentration camps, Bella took her place in Chagall's mind with the millions of Jewish victims." He even considered the possibility that their "exile from Europe had sapped her will to live."[6]:419

With Virginia Haggard McNeil

 

After a year of living with his daughter Ida and her husband Michel Gordey, he entered into a romance with Virginia Haggard, daughter of diplomat Sir Godfrey Digby Napier Haggard and great-niece of the author Sir Henry Rider Haggard; their relationship endured seven years. They had a child together, David McNeil, born 22 June 1946.[11] Haggard recalled her "seven years of plenty" with Chagall in her book, My Life with Chagall (Robert Hale, 1986).

 

A few months after the Allies succeeded in liberating Paris from Nazi occupation, with the help of the Allied armies, Chagall published a letter in a Paris weekly, "To the Paris Artists":

 

In recent years I have felt unhappy that I couldn't be with you, my friends. My enemy forced me to take the road of exile. On that tragic road, I lost my wife, the companion of my life, the woman who was my inspiration. I want to say to my friends in France that she joins me in this greeting, she who loved France and French art so faithfully. Her last joy was the liberation of Paris... Now, when Paris is liberated, when the art of France is resurrected, the whole world too will, once and for all, be free of the satanic enemies who wanted to annihilate not just the body but also the soul—the soul, without which there is no life, no artistic creativity.[15]:101

"Those who are in Purgatory do not lack peace. They are perfectly at peace, perfectly sure of their salvation and perfectly beyond sin, even though they are themselves not perfect. Dante brings this out in the early stages of his Purgatorio, by portraying two bitter enemies in life, who sit comforting one another as they wait to make the great journey to heaven. The souls in Purgatory are in love with each other and with God. Purgatory is not a place where bad people become good people, but where good people become perfected in love. How that works is open to speculation, which is why there is a great and legitimate variety of speculation about its nature, among mystics and visionaries, as well as theologians.

 

We would do better to concentrate on the fact of prayer. This is where the doctrine has its life. We pray for the dead, and we do this, not because they need our prayers but because this is what the Holy Spirit has taught us to do. It is a gift of God, to allow us to share in his work in bringing his people to perfection. It is a special gift of hope from God, a great divine courtesy, but it is also a great responsibility on our part.

 

We need to pray for the dead, because this is a task put into our hands. It is why cemeteries should be happy places for us, as they were in the early church; places to celebrate the power of God, places to live in God. The dead, unlike stocks and shares, can only go in one direction, upwards. Either they are not changing at all, or they are improving."

 

– Fr Euan Marley, O.P. from his sermon on Torch.op.org.

 

This triptych of the Holy Souls in Purgatory being purified by the fires of divine charity, which comes from Christ Crucified, and comforted by the angels and our prayers, is in the Dominican church of St Catherine of Siena, New York City.

 

A couple of weeks back, we met a couple in a pub in Canterbury, and they had been out exploring the city and said they were disappointed by the cathedral.

 

Not enough labels they said.

 

That not withstanding, I thought it had been some time since I last had been, so decided to revisit, see the pillars of Reculver church in the crypt and take the big lens for some detail shots.

 

We arrived just after ten, so the cathedral was pretty free of other guests, just a few guides waiting for groups and couples to guide.

 

I went round with the 50mm first, before concentrating on the medieval glass which is mostly on the south side.

 

But as you will see, the lens picked up so much more.

 

Thing is, there is always someone interesting to talk to, or wants to talk to you. As I went around, I spoke with about three guides about the project and things I have seen in the churches of the county, and the wonderful people I have met. And that continued in the cathedral.

 

I have time to look at the tombs in the Trinity Chapel, and see that Henry IV and his wife are in a tomb there, rather than ay Westminster Abbey. So I photograph them, and the Black Prince on the southern side of the chapel, along with the Bishops and Archbishops between.

 

Round to the transept and a chance to change lenses, and put on the 140-400mm for some detailed shots.

 

------------------------------------------

 

St Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, arrived on the coast of Kent as a missionary to England in 597AD. He came from Rome, sent by Pope Gregory the Great. It is said that Gregory had been struck by the beauty of Angle slaves he saw for sale in the city market and despatched Augustine and some monks to convert them to Christianity. Augustine was given a church at Canterbury (St Martin’s, after St Martin of Tours, still standing today) by the local King, Ethelbert whose Queen, Bertha, a French Princess, was already a Christian.This building had been a place of worship during the Roman occupation of Britain and is the oldest church in England still in use. Augustine had been consecrated a bishop in France and was later made an archbishop by the Pope. He established his seat within the Roman city walls (the word cathedral is derived from the the Latin word for a chair ‘cathedra’, which is itself taken from the Greek ‘kathedra’ meaning seat.) and built the first cathedral there, becoming the first Archbishop of Canterbury. Since that time, there has been a community around the Cathedral offering daily prayer to God; this community is arguably the oldest organisation in the English speaking world. The present Archbishop, The Most Revd Justin Welby, is 105th in the line of succession from Augustine. Until the 10th century, the Cathedral community lived as the household of the Archbishop. During the 10th century, it became a formal community of Benedictine monks, which continued until the monastery was dissolved by King Henry VIII in 1540. Augustine’s original building lies beneath the floor of the Nave – it was extensively rebuilt and enlarged by the Saxons, and the Cathedral was rebuilt completely by the Normans in 1070 following a major fire. There have been many additions to the building over the last nine hundred years, but parts of the Quire and some of the windows and their stained glass date from the 12th century. By 1077, Archbishop Lanfranc had rebuilt it as a Norman church, described as “nearly perfect”. A staircase and parts of the North Wall – in the area of the North West transept also called the Martyrdom – remain from that building.

 

Canterbury’s role as one of the world’s most important pilgrimage centres in Europe is inextricably linked to the murder of its most famous Archbishop, Thomas Becket, in 1170. When, after a long lasting dispute, King Henry II is said to have exclaimed “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”, four knights set off for Canterbury and murdered Thomas in his own cathedral. A sword stroke was so violent that it sliced the crown off his skull and shattered the blade’s tip on the pavement. The murder took place in what is now known as The Martyrdom. When shortly afterwards, miracles were said to take place, Canterbury became one of Europe’s most important pilgrimage centres.

 

The work of the Cathedral as a monastery came to an end in 1540, when the monastery was closed on the orders of King Henry VIII. Its role as a place of prayer continued – as it does to this day. Once the monastery had been suppressed, responsibility for the services and upkeep was given to a group of clergy known as the Chapter of Canterbury. Today, the Cathedral is still governed by the Dean and four Canons, together (in recent years) with four lay people and the Archdeacon of Ashford. During the Civil War of the 1640s, the Cathedral suffered damage at the hands of the Puritans; much of the medieval stained glass was smashed and horses were stabled in the Nave. After the Restoration in 1660, several years were spent in repairing the building. In the early 19th Century, the North West tower was found to be dangerous, and, although it dated from Lanfranc’s time, it was demolished in the early 1830s and replaced by a copy of the South West tower, thus giving a symmetrical appearance to the west end of the Cathedral. During the Second World War, the Precincts were heavily damaged by enemy action and the Cathedral’s Library was destroyed. Thankfully, the Cathedral itself was not seriously harmed, due to the bravery of the team of fire watchers, who patrolled the roofs and dealt with the incendiary bombs dropped by enemy bombers. Today, the Cathedral stands as a place where prayer to God has been offered daily for over 1,400 years; nearly 2,000 Services are held each year, as well as countless private prayers from individuals. The Cathedral offers a warm welcome to all visitors – its aim is to show people Jesus, which we do through the splendour of the building as well as the beauty of the worship.

 

www.canterbury-cathedral.org/heritage/history/cathedral-h...

 

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History of the cathedral

THE ORIGIN of a Christian church on the scite of the present cathedral, is supposed to have taken place as early as the Roman empire in Britain, for the use of the antient faithful and believing soldiers of their garrison here; and that Augustine found such a one standing here, adjoining to king Ethelbert's palace, which was included in the king's gift to him.

 

This supposition is founded on the records of the priory of Christ-church, (fn. 1) concurring with the common opinion of almost all our historians, who tell us of a church in Canterbury, which Augustine found standing in the east part of the city, which he had of king Ethelbert's gift, which after his consecration at Arles, in France, he commended by special dedication to the patronage of our blessed Saviour. (fn. 2)

 

According to others, the foundations only of an old church formerly built by the believing Romans, were left here, on which Augustine erected that, which he afterwards dedicated to out Saviour; (fn. 3) and indeed it is not probable that king Ethelbert should have suffered the unsightly ruins of a Christian church, which, being a Pagan, must have been very obnoxious to him, so close to his palace, and supposing these ruins had been here, would he not have suffered them to be repaired, rather than have obliged his Christian queen to travel daily to such a distance as St. Martin's church, or St. Pancrace's chapel, for the performance of her devotions.

 

Some indeed have conjectured that the church found by St. Augustine, in the east part of the city, was that of St.Martin, truly so situated; and urge in favor of it, that there have not been at any time any remains of British or Roman bricks discovered scattered in or about this church of our Saviour, those infallible, as Mr. Somner stiles them, signs of antiquity, and so generally found in buildings, which have been erected on, or close to the spot where more antient ones have stood. But to proceed, king Ethelbert's donation to Augustine was made in the year 596, who immediately afterwards went over to France, and was consecrated a bishop at Arles, and after his return, as soon as he had sufficiently finished a church here, whether built out of ruins or anew, it matters not, he exercised his episcopal function in the dedication of it, says the register of Christ-church, to the honor of Christ our Saviour; whence it afterwards obtained the name of Christ-church. (fn. 4)

 

From the time of Augustine for the space of upwards of three hundred years, there is not found in any printed or manuscript chronicle, the least mention of the fabric of this church, so that it is probable nothing befell it worthy of being recorded; however it should be mentioned, that during that period the revenues of it were much increased, for in the leiger books of it there are registered more than fifty donations of manors, lands, &c. so large and bountiful, as became the munificence of kings and nobles to confer. (fn. 5)

 

It is supposed, especially as we find no mention made of any thing to the contrary, that the fabric of this church for two hundred years after Augustine's time, met with no considerable molestations; but afterwards, the frequent invasions of the Danes involved both the civil and ecclesiastical state of this country in continual troubles and dangers; in the confusion of which, this church appears to have run into a state of decay; for when Odo was promoted to the archbishopric, in the year 938, the roof of it was in a ruinous condition; age had impaired it, and neglect had made it extremely dangerous; the walls of it were of an uneven height, according as it had been more or less decayed, and the roof of the church seemed ready to fall down on the heads of those underneath. All this the archbishop undertook to repair, and then covered the whole church with lead; to finish which, it took three years, as Osbern tells us, in the life of Odo; (fn. 6) and further, that there was not to be found a church of so large a size, capable of containing so great a multitude of people, and thus, perhaps, it continued without any material change happening to it, till the year 1011; a dismal and fatal year to this church and city; a time of unspeakable confusion and calamities; for in the month of September that year, the Danes, after a siege of twenty days, entered this city by force, burnt the houses, made a lamentable slaughter of the inhabitants, rifled this church, and then set it on fire, insomuch, that the lead with which archbishop Odo had covered it, being melted, ran down on those who were underneath. The sull story of this calamity is given by Osbern, in the life of archbishop Odo, an abridgement of which the reader will find below. (fn. 7)

 

The church now lay in ruins, without a roof, the bare walls only standing, and in this desolate condition it remained as long as the fury of the Danes prevailed, who after they had burnt the church, carried away archbishop Alphage with them, kept him in prison seven months, and then put him to death, in the year 1012, the year after which Living, or Livingus, succeeded him as archbishop, though it was rather in his calamities than in his seat of dignity, for he too was chained up by the Danes in a loathsome dungeon for seven months, before he was set free, but he so sensibly felt the deplorable state of this country, which he foresaw was every day growing worse and worse, that by a voluntary exile, he withdrew himself out of the nation, to find some solitary retirement, where he might bewail those desolations of his country, to which he was not able to bring any relief, but by his continual prayers. (fn. 8) He just outlived this storm, returned into England, and before he died saw peace and quientness restored to this land by king Canute, who gaining to himself the sole sovereignty over the nation, made it his first business to repair the injuries which had been done to the churches and monasteries in this kingdom, by his father's and his own wars. (fn. 9)

 

As for this church, archbishop Ægelnoth, who presided over it from the year 1020 to the year 1038, began and finished the repair, or rather the rebuilding of it, assisted in it by the royal munificence of the king, (fn. 10) who in 1023 presented his crown of gold to this church, and restored to it the port of Sandwich, with its liberties. (fn. 11) Notwithstanding this, in less than forty years afterwards, when Lanfranc soon after the Norman conquest came to the see, he found this church reduced almost to nothing by fire, and dilapidations; for Eadmer says, it had been consumed by a third conflagration, prior to the year of his advancement to it, in which fire almost all the antient records of the privileges of it had perished. (fn. 12)

 

The same writer has given us a description of this old church, as it was before Lanfranc came to the see; by which we learn, that at the east end there was an altar adjoining to the wall of the church, of rough unhewn stone, cemented with mortar, erected by archbishop Odo, for a repository of the body of Wilfrid, archbishop of York, which Odo had translated from Rippon hither, giving it here the highest place; at a convenient distance from this, westward, there was another altar, dedicated to Christ our Saviour, at which divine service was daily celebrated. In this altar was inclosed the head of St. Swithin, with many other relics, which archbishop Alphage brought with him from Winchester. Passing from this altar westward, many steps led down to the choir and nave, which were both even, or upon the same level. At the bottom of the steps, there was a passage into the undercroft, under all the east part of the church. (fn. 13) At the east end of which, was an altar, in which was inclosed, according to old tradition, the head of St. Furseus. From hence by a winding passage, at the west end of it, was the tomb of St. Dunstan, (fn. 14) but separated from the undercroft by a strong stone wall; over the tomb was erected a monument, pyramid wife, and at the head of it an altar, (fn. 15) for the mattin service. Between these steps, or passage into the undercroft and the nave, was the choir, (fn. 16) which was separated from the nave by a fair and decent partition, to keep off the crowds of people that usually were in the body of the church, so that the singing of the chanters in the choir might not be disturbed. About the middle of the length of the nave, were two towers or steeples, built without the walls; one on the south, and the other on the north side. In the former was the altar of St. Gregory, where was an entrance into the church by the south door, and where law controversies and pleas concerning secular matters were exercised. (fn. 17) In the latter, or north tower, was a passage for the monks into the church, from the monastery; here were the cloysters, where the novices were instructed in their religious rules and offices, and where the monks conversed together. In this tower was the altar of St. Martin. At the west end of the church was a chapel, dedicated to the blessed Virgin Mary, to which there was an ascent by steps, and at the east end of it an altar, dedicated to her, in which was inclosed the head of St. Astroburta the Virgin; and at the western part of it was the archbishop's pontifical chair, made of large stones, compacted together with mortar; a fair piece of work, and placed at a convenient distance from the altar, close to the wall of the church. (fn. 18)

 

To return now to archbishop Lanfranc, who was sent for from Normandy in 1073, being the fourth year of the Conqueror's reign, to fill this see, a time, when a man of a noble spirit, equal to the laborious task he was to undertake, was wanting especially for this church; and that he was such, the several great works which were performed by him, were incontestable proofs, as well as of his great and generous mind. At the first sight of the ruinous condition of this church, says the historian, the archbishop was struck with astonishment, and almost despaired of seeing that and the monastery re edified; but his care and perseverance raised both in all its parts anew, and that in a novel and more magnificent kind and form of structure, than had been hardly in any place before made use of in this kingdom, which made it a precedent and pattern to succeeding structures of this kind; (fn. 19) and new monasteries and churches were built after the example of it; for it should be observed, that before the coming of the Normans most of the churches and monasteries in this kingdom were of wood; (all the monasteries in my realm, says king Edgar, in his charter to the abbey of Malmesbury, dated anno 974, to the outward sight are nothing but worm-eaten and rotten timber and boards) but after the Norman conquest, such timber fabrics grew out of use, and gave place to stone buildings raised upon arches; a form of structure introduced into general use by that nation, and in these parts surnished with stone from Caen, in Normandy. (fn. 20) After this fashion archbishop Lanfranc rebuilt the whole church from the foundation, with the palace and monastery, the wall which encompassed the court, and all the offices belonging to the monastery within the wall, finishing the whole nearly within the compass of seven years; (fn. 21) besides which, he furnished the church with ornaments and rich vestments; after which, the whole being perfected, he altered the name of it, by a dedication of it to the Holy Trinity; whereas, before it was called the church of our Saviour, or Christ-church, and from the above time it bore (as by Domesday book appears) the name of the church of the Holy Trinity; this new church being built on the same spot on which the antient one stood, though on a far different model.

 

After Lanfranc's death, archbishop Anselm succeeded in the year 1093, to the see of Canterbury, and must be esteemed a principal benefactor to this church; for though his time was perplexed with a continued series of troubles, of which both banishment and poverty made no small part, which in a great measure prevented him from bestowing that cost on his church, which he would otherwise have done, yet it was through his patronage and protection, and through his care and persuasions, that the fabric of it, begun and perfected by his predecessor, became enlarged and rose to still greater splendor. (fn. 22)

 

In order to carry this forward, upon the vacancy of the priory, he constituted Ernulph and Conrad, the first in 1104, the latter in 1108, priors of this church; to whose care, being men of generous and noble minds, and of singular skill in these matters, he, during his troubles, not only committed the management of this work, but of all his other concerns during his absence.

 

Probably archbishop Anselm, on being recalled from banishment on king Henry's accession to the throne, had pulled down that part of the church built by Lanfranc, from the great tower in the middle of it to the east end, intending to rebuild it upon a still larger and more magnificent plan; when being borne down by the king's displeasure, he intrusted prior Ernulph with the work, who raised up the building with such splendor, says Malmesbury, that the like was not to be seen in all England; (fn. 23) but the short time Ernulph continued in this office did not permit him to see his undertaking finished. (fn. 24) This was left to his successor Conrad, who, as the obituary of Christ church informs us, by his great industry, magnificently perfected the choir, which his predecessor had left unfinished, (fn. 25) adorning it with curious pictures, and enriching it with many precious ornaments. (fn. 26)

 

This great undertaking was not entirely compleated at the death of archbishop Anselm, which happened in 1109, anno 9 Henry I. nor indeed for the space of five years afterwards, during which the see of Canterbury continued vacant; when being finished, in honour of its builder, and on account of its more than ordinary beauty, it gained the name of the glorious choir of Conrad. (fn. 27)

 

After the see of Canterbury had continued thus vacant for five years, Ralph, or as some call him, Rodulph, bishop of Rochester, was translated to it in the year 1114, at whose coming to it, the church was dedicated anew to the Holy Trinity, the name which had been before given to it by Lanfranc. (fn. 28) The only particular description we have of this church when thus finished, is from Gervas, the monk of this monastery, and that proves imperfect, as to the choir of Lanfranc, which had been taken down soon after his death; (fn. 29) the following is his account of the nave, or western part of it below the choir, being that which had been erected by archbishop Lanfranc, as has been before mentioned. From him we learn, that the west end, where the chapel of the Virgin Mary stood before, was now adorned with two stately towers, on the top of which were gilded pinnacles. The nave or body was supported by eight pair of pillars. At the east end of the nave, on the north side, was an oratory, dedicated in honor to the blessed Virgin, in lieu, I suppose, of the chapel, that had in the former church been dedicated to her at the west end. Between the nave and the choir there was built a great tower or steeple, as it were in the centre of the whole fabric; (fn. 30) under this tower was erected the altar of the Holy Cross; over a partition, which separated this tower from the nave, a beam was laid across from one side to the other of the church; upon the middle of this beam was fixed a great cross, between the images of the Virgin Mary and St. John, and between two cherubims. The pinnacle on the top of this tower, was a gilded cherub, and hence it was called the angel steeple; a name it is frequently called by at this day. (fn. 31)

 

This great tower had on each side a cross isle, called the north and south wings, which were uniform, of the same model and dimensions; each of them had a strong pillar in the middle for a support to the roof, and each of them had two doors or passages, by which an entrance was open to the east parts of the church. At one of these doors there was a descent by a few steps into the undercroft; at the other, there was an ascent by many steps into the upper parts of the church, that is, the choir, and the isles on each side of it. Near every one of these doors or passages, an altar was erected; at the upper door in the south wing, there was an altar in honour of All Saints; and at the lower door there was one of St. Michael; and before this altar on the south side was buried archbishop Fleologild; and on the north side, the holy Virgin Siburgis, whom St. Dunstan highly admired for her sanctity. In the north isle, by the upper door, was the altar of St. Blaze; and by the lower door, that of St. Benedict. In this wing had been interred four archbishops, Adelm and Ceolnoth, behind the altar, and Egelnoth and Wlfelm before it. At the entrance into this wing, Rodulph and his successor William Corboil, both archbishops, were buried. (fn. 32)

 

Hence, he continues, we go up by some steps into the great tower, and before us there is a door and steps leading down into the south wing, and on the right hand a pair of folding doors, with stairs going down into the nave of the church; but without turning to any of these, let us ascend eastward, till by several more steps we come to the west end of Conrad's choir; being now at the entrance of the choir, Gervas tells us, that he neither saw the choir built by Lanfranc, nor found it described by any one; that Eadmer had made mention of it, without giving any account of it, as he had done of the old church, the reason of which appears to be, that Lanfranc's choir did not long survive its founder, being pulled down as before-mentioned, by archbishop Anselm; so that it could not stand more than twenty years; therefore the want of a particular description of it will appear no great defect in the history of this church, especially as the deficiency is here supplied by Gervas's full relation of the new choir of Conrad, built instead of it; of which, whoever desires to know the whole architecture and model observed in the fabric, the order, number, height and form of the pillars and windows, may know the whole of it from him. The roof of it, he tells us, (fn. 33) was beautified with curious paintings representing heaven; (fn. 34) in several respects it was agreeable to the present choir, the stalls were large and framed of carved wood. In the middle of it, there hung a gilded crown, on which were placed four and twenty tapers of wax. From the choir an ascent of three steps led to the presbiterium, or place for the presbiters; here, he says, it would be proper to stop a little and take notice of the high altar, which was dedicated to the name of CHRIST. It was placed between two other altars, the one of St. Dunstan, the other of St. Alphage; at the east corners of the high altar were fixed two pillars of wood, beautified with silver and gold; upon these pillars was placed a beam, adorned with gold, which reached across the church, upon it there were placed the glory, (fn. 35) the images of St. Dunstan and St. Alphage, and seven chests or coffers overlaid with gold, full of the relics of many saints. Between those pillars was a cross gilded all over, and upon the upper beam of the cross were set sixty bright crystals.

 

Beyond this, by an ascent of eight steps towards the east, behind the altar, was the archiepiscopal throne, which Gervas calls the patriarchal chair, made of one stone; in this chair, according to the custom of the church, the archbishop used to sit, upon principal festivals, in his pontifical ornaments, whilst the solemn offices of religion were celebrated, until the consecration of the host, when he came down to the high altar, and there performed the solemnity of consecration. Still further, eastward, behind the patriarchal chair, (fn. 36) was a chapel in the front of the whole church, in which was an altar, dedicated to the Holy Trinity; behind which were laid the bones of two archbishops, Odo of Canterbury, and Wilfrid of York; by this chapel on the south side near the wall of the church, was laid the body of archbishop Lanfranc, and on the north side, the body of archbishop Theobald. Here it is to be observed, that under the whole east part of the church, from the angel steeple, there was an undercrost or crypt, (fn. 37) in which were several altars, chapels and sepulchres; under the chapel of the Trinity before-mentioned, were two altars, on the south side, the altar of St. Augustine, the apostle of the English nation, by which archbishop Athelred was interred. On the north side was the altar of St. John Baptist, by which was laid the body of archbishop Eadsin; under the high altar was the chapel and altar of the blessed Virgin Mary, to whom the whole undercroft was dedicated.

 

To return now, he continues, to the place where the bresbyterium and choir meet, where on each side there was a cross isle (as was to be seen in his time) which might be called the upper south and north wings; on the east side of each of these wings were two half circular recesses or nooks in the wall, arched over after the form of porticoes. Each of them had an altar, and there was the like number of altars under them in the crost. In the north wing, the north portico had the altar of St. Martin, by which were interred the bodies of two archbishops, Wlfred on the right, and Living on the left hand; under it in the croft, was the altar of St. Mary Magdalen. The other portico in this wing, had the altar of St. Stephen, and by it were buried two archbishops, Athelard on the left hand, and Cuthbert on the right; in the croft under it, was the altar of St. Nicholas. In the south wing, the north portico had the altar of St. John the Evangelist, and by it the bodies of Æthelgar and Aluric, archbishops, were laid. In the croft under it was the altar of St. Paulinus, by which the body of archbishop Siricius was interred. In the south portico was the altar of St. Gregory, by which were laid the corps of the two archbishops Bregwin and Plegmund. In the croft under it was the altar of St. Owen, archbishop of Roan, and underneath in the croft, not far from it the altar of St. Catherine.

 

Passing from these cross isles eastward there were two towers, one on the north, the other on the south side of the church. In the tower on the north side was the altar of St. Andrew, which gave name to the tower; under it, in the croft, was the altar of the Holy Innocents; the tower on the south side had the altar of St. Peter and St. Paul, behind which the body of St. Anselm was interred, which afterwards gave name both to the altar and tower (fn. 38) (now called St. Anselm's). The wings or isles on each side of the choir had nothing in particular to be taken notice of.— Thus far Gervas, from whose description we in particular learn, where several of the bodies of the old archbishops were deposited, and probably the ashes of some of them remain in the same places to this day.

 

As this building, deservedly called the glorious choir of Conrad, was a magnificent work, so the undertaking of it at that time will appear almost beyond example, especially when the several circumstances of it are considered; but that it was carried forward at the archbishop's cost, exceeds all belief. It was in the discouraging reign of king William Rufus, a prince notorious in the records of history, for all manner of sacrilegious rapine, that archbishop Anselm was promoted to this see; when he found the lands and revenues of this church so miserably wasted and spoiled, that there was hardly enough left for his bare subsistence; who, in the first years that he sat in the archiepiscopal chair, struggled with poverty, wants and continual vexations through the king's displeasure, (fn. 39) and whose three next years were spent in banishment, during all which time he borrowed money for his present maintenance; who being called home by king Henry I. at his coming to the crown, laboured to pay the debts he had contracted during the time of his banishment, and instead of enjoying that tranquility and ease he hoped for, was, within two years afterwards, again sent into banishment upon a fresh displeasure conceived against him by the king, who then seized upon all the revenues of the archbishopric, (fn. 40) which he retained in his own hands for no less than four years.

 

Under these hard circumstances, it would have been surprizing indeed, that the archbishop should have been able to carry on so great a work, and yet we are told it, as a truth, by the testimonies of history; but this must surely be understood with the interpretation of his having been the patron, protector and encourager, rather than the builder of this work, which he entrusted to the care and management of the priors Ernulph and Conrad, and sanctioned their employing, as Lanfranc had done before, the revenues and stock of the church to this use. (fn. 41)

 

In this state as above-mentioned, without any thing material happening to it, this church continued till about the year 1130, anno 30 Henry I. when it seems to have suffered some damage by a fire; (fn. 42) but how much, there is no record left to inform us; however it could not be of any great account, for it was sufficiently repaired, and that mostly at the cost of archbishop Corboil, who then sat in the chair of this see, (fn. 43) before the 4th of May that year, on which day, being Rogation Sunday, the bishops performed the dedication of it with great splendor and magnificence, such, says Gervas, col. 1664, as had not been heard of since the dedication of the temple of Solomon; the king, the queen, David, king of Scots, all the archbishops, and the nobility of both kingdoms being present at it, when this church's former name was restored again, being henceforward commonly called Christ-church. (fn. 44)

 

Among the manuscripts of Trinity college library, in Cambridge, in a very curious triple psalter of St. Jerome, in Latin, written by the monk Eadwyn, whose picture is at the beginning of it, is a plan or drawing made by him, being an attempt towards a representation of this church and monastery, as they stood between the years 1130 and 1174; which makes it probable, that he was one of the monks of it, and the more so, as the drawing has not any kind of relation to the plalter or sacred hymns contained in the manuscript.

 

His plan, if so it may be called, for it is neither such, nor an upright, nor a prospect, and yet something of all together; but notwithstanding this rudeness of the draftsman, it shews very plain that it was intended for this church and priory, and gives us a very clear knowledge, more than we have been able to learn from any description we have besides, of what both were at the above period of time. (fn. 45)

 

Forty-four years after this dedication, on the 5th of September, anno 1174, being the 20th year of king Henry II.'s reign, a fire happened, which consumed great part of this stately edifice, namely, the whole choir, from the angel steeple to the east end of the church, together with the prior's lodgings, the chapel of the Virgin Mary, the infirmary, and some other offices belonging to the monastery; but the angel steeple, the lower cross isles, and the nave appear to have received no material injury from the flames. (fn. 46) The narrative of this accident is told by Gervas, the monk of Canterbury, so often quoted before, who was an eye witness of this calamity, as follows:

 

Three small houses in the city near the old gate of the monastery took fire by accident, a strong south wind carried the flakes of fire to the top of the church, and lodged them between the joints of the lead, driving them to the timbers under it; this kindled a fire there, which was not discerned till the melted lead gave a free passage for the flames to appear above the church, and the wind gaining by this means a further power of increasing them, drove them inwardly, insomuch that the danger became immediately past all possibility of relief. The timber of the roof being all of it on fire, fell down into the choir, where the stalls of the manks, made of large pieces of carved wood, afforded plenty of fuel to the flames, and great part of the stone work, through the vehement heat of the fire, was so weakened, as to be brought to irreparable ruin, and besides the fabric itself, the many rich ornaments in the church were devoured by the flames.

 

The choir being thus laid in ashes, the monks removed from amidst the ruins, the bodies of the two saints, whom they called patrons of the church, the archbishops Dunstan and Alphage, and deposited them by the altar of the great cross, in the nave of the church; (fn. 47) and from this time they celebrated the daily religious offices in the oratory of the blessed Virgin Mary in the nave, and continued to do so for more than five years, when the choir being re edified, they returned to it again. (fn. 48)

 

Upon this destruction of the church, the prior and convent, without any delay, consulted on the most speedy and effectual method of rebuilding it, resolving to finish it in such a manner, as should surpass all the former choirs of it, as well in beauty as size and magnificence. To effect this, they sent for the most skilful architects that could be found either in France or England. These surveyed the walls and pillars, which remained standing, but they found great part of them so weakened by the fire, that they could no ways be built upon with any safety; and it was accordingly resolved, that such of them should be taken down; a whole year was spent in doing this, and in providing materials for the new building, for which they sent abroad for the best stone that could be procured; Gervas has given a large account, (fn. 49) how far this work advanced year by year; what methods and rules of architecture were observed, and other particulars relating to the rebuilding of this church; all which the curious reader may consult at his leisure; it will be sufficient to observe here, that the new building was larger in height and length, and more beautiful in every respect, than the choir of Conrad; for the roof was considerably advanced above what it was before, and was arched over with stone; whereas before it was composed of timber and boards. The capitals of the pillars were now beautified with different sculptures of carvework; whereas, they were before plain, and six pillars more were added than there were before. The former choir had but one triforium, or inner gallery, but now there were two made round it, and one in each side isle and three in the cross isles; before, there were no marble pillars, but such were now added to it in abundance. In forwarding this great work, the monks had spent eight years, when they could proceed no further for want of money; but a fresh supply coming in from the offerings at St. Thomas's tomb, so much more than was necessary for perfecting the repair they were engaged in, as encouraged them to set about a more grand design, which was to pull down the eastern extremity of the church, with the small chapel of the Holy Trinity adjoining to it, and to erect upon a stately undercroft, a most magnificent one instead of it, equally lofty with the roof of the church, and making a part of it, which the former one did not, except by a door into it; but this new chapel, which was dedicated likewise to the Holy Trinity, was not finished till some time after the rest of the church; at the east end of this chapel another handsome one, though small, was afterwards erected at the extremity of the whole building, since called Becket's crown, on purpose for an altar and the reception of some part of his relics; (fn. 50) further mention of which will be made hereafter.

 

The eastern parts of this church, as Mr. Gostling observes, have the appearance of much greater antiquity than what is generally allowed to them; and indeed if we examine the outside walls and the cross wings on each side of the choir, it will appear, that the whole of them was not rebuilt at the time the choir was, and that great part of them was suffered to remain, though altered, added to, and adapted as far as could be, to the new building erected at that time; the traces of several circular windows and other openings, which were then stopped up, removed, or altered, still appearing on the walls both of the isles and the cross wings, through the white-wash with which they are covered; and on the south side of the south isle, the vaulting of the roof as well as the triforium, which could not be contrived so as to be adjusted to the places of the upper windows, plainly shew it. To which may be added, that the base or foot of one of the westernmost large pillars of the choir on the north side, is strengthened with a strong iron band round it, by which it should seem to have been one of those pillars which had been weakened by the fire, but was judged of sufficient firmness, with this precaution, to remain for the use of the new fabric.

 

The outside of this part of the church is a corroborating proof of what has been mentioned above, as well in the method, as in the ornaments of the building.— The outside of it towards the south, from St. Michael's chapel eastward, is adorned with a range of small pillars, about six inches diameter, and about three feet high, some with santastic shasts and capitals, others with plain ones; these support little arches, which intersect each other; and this chain or girdle of pillars is continued round the small tower, the eastern cross isle and the chapel of St. Anselm, to the buildings added in honour of the Holy Trinity, and St. Thomas Becket, where they leave off. The casing of St. Michael's chapel has none of them, but the chapel of the Virgin Mary, answering to it on the north side of the church, not being fitted to the wall, shews some of them behind it; which seems as if they had been continued before, quite round the eastern parts of the church.

 

These pillars, which rise from about the level of the pavement, within the walls above them, are remarkably plain and bare of ornaments; but the tower above mentioned and its opposite, as soon as they rise clear of the building, are enriched with stories of this colonade, one above another, up to the platform from whence their spires rise; and the remains of the two larger towers eastward, called St. Anselm's, and that answering to it on the north side of the church, called St. Andrew's are decorated much after the same manner, as high as they remain at present.

 

At the time of the before-mentioned fire, which so fatally destroyed the upper part of this church, the undercrost, with the vaulting over it, seems to have remained entire, and unhurt by it.

 

The vaulting of the undercrost, on which the floor of the choir and eastern parts of the church is raised, is supported by pillars, whose capitals are as various and fantastical as those of the smaller ones described before, and so are their shafts, some being round, others canted, twisted, or carved, so that hardly any two of them are alike, except such as are quite plain.

 

These, I suppose, may be concluded to be of the same age, and if buildings in the same stile may be conjectured to be so from thence, the antiquity of this part of the church may be judged, though historians have left us in the dark in relation to it.

 

In Leland's Collectanea, there is an account and description of a vault under the chancel of the antient church of St. Peter, in Oxford, called Grymbald's crypt, being allowed by all, to have been built by him; (fn. 51) Grymbald was one of those great and accomplished men, whom king Alfred invited into England about the year 885, to assist him in restoring Christianity, learning and the liberal arts. (fn. 52) Those who compare the vaults or undercrost of the church of Canterbury, with the description and prints given of Grymbald's crypt, (fn. 53) will easily perceive, that two buildings could hardly have been erected more strongly resembling each other, except that this at Canterbury is larger, and more pro fusely decorated with variety of fancied ornaments, the shafts of several of the pillars here being twisted, or otherwise varied, and many of the captials exactly in the same grotesque taste as those in Grymbald's crypt. (fn. 54) Hence it may be supposed, that those whom archbishop Lanfranc employed as architects and designers of his building at Canterbury, took their model of it, at least of this part of it, from that crypt, and this undercrost now remaining is the same, as was originally built by him, as far eastward, as to that part which begins under the chapel of the Holy Trinity, where it appears to be of a later date, erected at the same time as the chapel. The part built by Lanfranc continues at this time as firm and entire, as it was at the very building of it, though upwards of seven hundred years old. (fn. 55)

 

But to return to the new building; though the church was not compleatly finished till the end of the year 1184, yet it was so far advanced towards it, that, in 1180, on April 19, being Easter eve, (fn. 56) the archbishop, prior and monks entered the new choir, with a solemn procession, singing Te Deum, for their happy return to it. Three days before which they had privately, by night, carried the bodies of St. Dunstan and St. Alphage to the places prepared for them near the high altar. The body likewise of queen Edive (which after the fire had been removed from the north cross isle, where it lay before, under a stately gilded shrine) to the altar of the great cross, was taken up, carried into the vestry, and thence to the altar of St. Martin, where it was placed under the coffin of archbishop Livinge. In the month of July following the altar of the Holy Trinity was demolished, and the bodies of those archbishops, which had been laid in that part of the church, were removed to other places. Odo's body was laid under St. Dunstan's and Wilfrid's under St. Alphage's; Lanfranc's was deposited nigh the altar of St. Martin, and Theobald's at that of the blessed Virgin, in the nave of the church, (fn. 57) under a marble tomb; and soon afterwards the two archbishops, on the right and left hand of archbishop Becket in the undercrost, were taken up and placed under the altar of St. Mary there. (fn. 58)

 

After a warning so terrible, as had lately been given, it seemed most necessary to provide against the danger of fire for the time to come; the flames, which had so lately destroyed a considerable part of the church and monastery, were caused by some small houses, which had taken fire at a small distance from the church.— There still remained some other houses near it, which belonged to the abbot and convent of St. Augustine; for these the monks of Christ-church created, by an exchange, which could not be effected till the king interposed, and by his royal authority, in a manner, compelled the abbot and convent to a composition for this purpose, which was dated in the year 1177, that was three years after the late fire of this church. (fn. 59)

 

These houses were immediately pulled down, and it proved a providential and an effectual means of preserving the church from the like calamity; for in the year 1180, on May 22, this new choir, being not then compleated, though it had been used the month be fore, as has been already mentioned, there happened a fire in the city, which burnt down many houses, and the flames bent their course towards the church, which was again in great danger; but the houses near it being taken away, the fire was stopped, and the church escaped being burnt again. (fn. 60)

 

Although there is no mention of a new dedication of the church at this time, yet the change made in the name of it has been thought by some to imply a formal solemnity of this kind, as it appears to have been from henceforth usually called the church of St. Thomas the Martyr, and to have continued so for above 350 years afterwards.

 

New names to churches, it is true. have been usually attended by formal consecrations of them; and had there been any such solemnity here, undoubtedly the same would not have passed by unnoticed by every historian, the circumstance of it must have been notorious, and the magnificence equal at least to the other dedications of this church, which have been constantly mentioned by them; but here was no need of any such ceremony, for although the general voice then burst forth to honour this church with the name of St. Thomas, the universal object of praise and adoration, then stiled the glorious martyr, yet it reached no further, for the name it had received at the former dedication, notwithstanding this common appellation of it, still remained in reality, and it still retained invariably in all records and writings, the name of Christ church only, as appears by many such remaining among the archives of the dean and chapter; and though on the seal of this church, which was changed about this time; the counter side of it had a representation of Becket's martyrdom, yet on the front of it was continued that of the church, and round it an inscription with the former name of Christ church; which seal remained in force till the dissolution of the priory.

 

It may not be improper to mention here some transactions, worthy of observation, relating to this favorite saint, which passed from the time of his being murdered, to that of his translation to the splendid shrine prepared for his relics.

 

Archbishop Thomas Becket was barbarously murdered in this church on Dec. 29, 1170, being the 16th year of king Henry II. and his body was privately buried towards the east end of the undercrost. The monks tell us, that about the Easter following, miracles began to be wrought by him, first at his tomb, then in the undercrost, and in every part of the whole fabric of the church; afterwards throughout England, and lastly, throughout the rest of the world. (fn. 61) The same of these miracles procured him the honour of a formal canonization from pope Alexander III. whose bull for that purpose is dated March 13, in the year 1172. (fn. 62) This declaration of the pope was soon known in all places, and the reports of his miracles were every where sounded abroad. (fn. 63)

 

Hereupon crowds of zealots, led on by a phrenzy of devotion, hastened to kneel at his tomb. In 1177, Philip, earl of Flanders, came hither for that purpose, when king Henry met and had a conference with him at Canterbury. (fn. 64) In June 1178, king Henry returning from Normandy, visited the sepulchre of this new saint; and in July following, William, archbishop of Rhemes, came from France, with a large retinue, to perform his vows to St. Thomas of Canterbury, where the king met him and received him honourably. In the year 1179, Lewis, king of France, came into England; before which neither he nor any of his predecessors had ever set foot in this kingdom. (fn. 65) He landed at Dover, where king Henry waited his arrival, and on August 23, the two kings came to Canterbury, with a great train of nobility of both nations, and were received with due honour and great joy, by the archbishop, with his com-provincial bishops, and the prior and the whole convent. (fn. 66)

 

King Lewis came in the manner and habit of a pilgrim, and was conducted to the tomb of St. Thomas by a solemn procession; he there offered his cup of gold and a royal precious stone, (fn. 67) and gave the convent a yearly rent for ever, of a hundred muids of wine, to be paid by himself and his successors; which grant was confirmed by his royal charter, under his seal, and delivered next day to the convent; (fn. 68) after he had staid here two, (fn. 69) or as others say, three days, (fn. 70) during which the oblations of gold and silver made were so great, that the relation of them almost exceeded credibility. (fn. 71) In 1181, king Henry, in his return from Normandy, again paid his devotions at this tomb. These visits were the early fruits of the adoration of the new sainted martyr, and these royal examples of kings and great persons were followed by multitudes, who crowded to present with full hands their oblations at his tomb.— Hence the convent was enabled to carry forward the building of the new choir, and they applied all this vast income to the fabric of the church, as the present case instantly required, for which they had the leave and consent of the archbishop, confirmed by the bulls of several succeeding popes. (fn. 72)

 

¶From the liberal oblations of these royal and noble personages at the tomb of St. Thomas, the expences of rebuilding the choir appear to have been in a great measure supplied, nor did their devotion and offerings to the new saint, after it was compleated, any ways abate, but, on the contrary, they daily increased; for in the year 1184, Philip, archbishop of Cologne, and Philip, earl of Flanders, came together to pay their vows at this tomb, and were met here by king Henry, who gave them an invitation to London. (fn. 73) In 1194, John, archbishop of Lions; in the year afterwards, John, archbishop of York; and in the year 1199, king John, performed their devotions at the foot of this tomb. (fn. 74) King Richard I. likewise, on his release from captivity in Germany, landing on the 30th of March at Sandwich, proceeded from thence, as an humble stranger on foot, towards Canterbury, to return his grateful thanks to God and St. Thomas for his release. (fn. 75) All these by name, with many nobles and multitudes of others, of all sorts and descriptions, visited the saint with humble adoration and rich oblations, whilst his body lay in the undercrost. In the mean time the chapel and altar at the upper part of the east end of the church, which had been formerly consecrated to the Holy Trinity, were demolished, and again prepared with great splendor, for the reception of this saint, who being now placed there, implanted his name not only on the chapel and altar, but on the whole church, which was from thenceforth known only by that of the church of St. Thomas the martyr.

  

On July 7, anno 1220, the remains of St. Thomas were translated from his tomb to his new shrine, with the greatest solemnity and rejoicings. Pandulph, the pope's legate, the archbishops of Canterbury and Rheims, and many bishops and abbots, carried the coffin on their shoulders, and placed it on the new shrine, and the king graced these solemnities with his royal presence. (fn. 76) The archbishop of Canterbury provided forage along all the road, between London and Canterbury, for the horses of all such as should come to them, and he caused several pipes and conduits to run with wine in different parts of the city. This, with the other expences arising during the time, was so great, that he left a debt on the see, which archbishop Boniface, his fourth successor in it, was hardly enabled to discharge.

 

¶The saint being now placed in his new repository, became the vain object of adoration to the deluded people, and afterwards numbers of licences were granted to strangers by the king, to visit this shrine. (fn. 77) The titles of glorious, of saint and martyr, were among those given to him; (fn. 78) such veneration had all people for his relics, that the religious of several cathedral churches and monasteries, used all their endeavours to obtain some of them, and thought themselves happy and rich in the possession of the smallest portion of them. (fn. 79) Besides this, there were erected and dedicated to his honour, many churches, chapels, altars and hospitals in different places, both in this kingdom and abroad. (fn. 80) Thus this saint, even whilst he lay in his obscure tomb in the undercroft, brought such large and constant supplies of money, as enabled the monks to finish this beautiful choir, and the eastern parts of the church; and when he was translated to the most exalted and honourable place in it, a still larger abundance of gain filled their coffers, which continued as a plentiful supply to them, from year to year, to the time of the reformation, and the final abolition of the priory itself.

 

www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol11/pp306-383

A universal principle for helping others is that we must above all else give hope that comes from God to the person going through a difficult time.

 

1. Hope is the anticipation that there are answers or solutions to our problems, that our needs will be met.

 

Psalm 39:7 What, then, can I hope for, Lord? I put my hope in you. (GNT)

 

Romans 15:13 May God, the source of hope, fill you with all joy and peace by means of your faith in him, so that your hope will continue to grow by the power of the Holy Spirit. (GNT)

 

2. Going through difficult times does not mean that God has forsaken us or that we have no hope.

 

Psalm 43:5 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. (ESV)

 

Psalm 145:14, 18–19 The LORD sustains all who fall and raises up all who are bowed down.… The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him; He will also hear their cry and will save them. (NASB)

 

Psalm 42:5–6; Jeremiah 29:11–14; Romans 5:3–5; 1 Peter 4:12–13

 

3. Despair can come when sin is part of the problem. As a sinning and captive Israel was given hope for their future, so can we have hope for forgiveness and restoration regarding our sins.

 

Jeremiah 31:16–17 Thus says the LORD: “Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your work, declares the LORD, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, declares the LORD, and your children shall come back to their own country.” (ESV)

 

Daniel 9:9 The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him. (NIV)

 

1 John 1:9

 

4. Our only true source of hope is God himself, our rock of strength and refuge, our very present help in trouble.

 

2 Chronicles 32:7–8 “Be strong and courageous, do not fear or be dismayed because of the king of Assyria nor because of all the horde that is with him; for the one with us is greater than the one with him. With him is only an arm of flesh, but with us is the LORD our God to help us and to fight our battles.” And the people relied on the words of Hezekiah king of Judah. (NASB)

 

Psalm 62:5–8 My soul, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold; I shall not be shaken. On God my salvation and my glory rest; the rock of my strength, my refuge is in God. Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us. (NASB)

 

Haggai 2:4–5 But now don’t be discouraged, any of you. Do the work, for I am with you. When you came out of Egypt, I promised that I would always be with you. I am still with you, so do not be afraid. (GNT)

 

Psalm 25:5; 39:7; 71:5–6; Lamentations 3:21–24; 1 Timothy 4:10; Hebrews 12:1–2; 13:5

 

5. Men who rely on God for wisdom, strength, and resources will find him to be their secure anchor and hope.

 

Jeremiah 9:23–24 Thus says the LORD: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.” (ESV)

 

Hebrews 6:18–20 By two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us. (NASB)

 

Zechariah 4:6

 

6. Walking closely with the Lord is required for blessing, hope, and success.

 

Deuteronomy 10:12–13, 20 What does the LORD your God require of you? He requires only that you fear the LORD your God, and live in a way that pleases him, and love him and serve him with all your heart and soul. And you must always obey the LORD’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good.… You must fear the LORD your God and worship him and cling to him. (NLT)

 

John 15:4–5 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. (ESV)

 

Proverbs 10:28; 1 John 3:3

 

7. As believers in Jesus, we have a guaranteed hope that our future in heaven is secure.

 

Job 19:25–27 But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and he will stand upon the earth at last. And after my body has decayed, yet in my body I will see God! I will see him for myself. Yes, I will see him with my own eyes. I am overwhelmed at the thought! (NLT)

 

1 Peter 1:3, 13 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.… Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (ESV)

 

1 Thessalonians 5:8–9; Titus 3:5–7

 

8. For further study, see the benefits of hope in the following:

 

Isaiah 57:10; Romans 8:24–25; 12:12; Philippians 1:20; Colossians 1:4–5; 1 Thessalonians 1:3; 4:13; 1 Timothy 4:10; Hebrews 7:19; 1 John 3:3

  

Biblical Narratives

 

• Job’s great statement of hope, Job 13:15

• Israelites sinned but were not without hope, Ezra 10:2

• Sons of Korah, musicians, Psalm 42

  

Practical Steps

 

• Memorize Romans 15:13. Write it on a card and keep it close at hand—in your wallet, on a nightstand or office desk, for example.

• Participate in men’s Bible study. Fellowship with other men and the discipline in the Word are crucial when hope is needed.

• Study Romans 5:1–8. Complete a word study on the word hope.

 

Keith R. Miller, Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling Men (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2014), 169–172.

Aberystwyth University is a public research university in Aberystwyth, Wales. Aberystwyth was a founding member institution of the former federal University of Wales. The university has over 8,000 students studying across three academic faculties and 17 departments.

 

Founded in 1872 as University College Wales, Aberystwyth, it became a founder member of the University of Wales in 1894, and changed its name to the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. In the mid-1990s, the university again changed its name to become the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. On 1 September 2007, the University of Wales ceased to be a federal university and Aberystwyth University became independent again.

 

In 2019, it became the first university to be named "University of the year for teaching quality" by The Times/Sunday Times Good University Guide for two consecutive years. It is the first university in the world to be awarded Plastic Free University status (for single-use plastic items).

 

In the middle of the 19th century, eminent Welsh people were advocating the establishment of a university in the principality. One of these, Thomas Nicholas, whose book, Middle and High Class Schools, and University Education for Wales (1863), is said to have "exerted great influence on educated Welshmen".

 

Funded through public and private subscriptions, and with five regional committees (London, Manchester, Liverpool, North and South Wales) guaranteeing funds for the first three years' running costs, the university opened in October 1872 with 26 students. Thomas Charles Edwards was the principal. In October 1875, chapels in Wales raised the next tranche of funds from over 70,000 contributors. Until 1893, when the college joined the University of Wales as a founder member, students applying to Aberystwyth sat the University of London's entrance exams. Women were admitted in 1884.

 

In 1885, a fire damaged what is now known as the Old College, Aberystwyth, and in 1897 the first 14 acres of what became the main Penglais campus were purchased. Incorporated by Royal Charter in 1893, the university installed the Prince of Wales as chancellor in 1896, the same year it awarded an honorary degree to the British prime minister, William Gladstone.

 

The university's coat of arms dates from the 1880s. The shield features two red dragons to symbolise Wales, and an open book to symbolise learning. The crest, an eagle or phoenix above a flaming tower, may signify the college's rebirth after the 1885 fire. The motto is Nid Byd, Byd Heb Wybodaeth (a world without knowledge is no world at all).

 

In the early 1900s, the university added courses that included law, applied mathematics, pure mathematics and botany. The Department for International Politics, which Aberystwyth says is the oldest such department in the world, was founded in 1919. By 1977, the university's staff included eight Fellows of the Royal Society, such as Gwendolen Rees, the first Welsh woman to be elected an FRS.

 

The Department of Sports and Exercise Science was established in 2000. Joint honours psychology degrees were introduced in September 2007, and single honours psychology in 2009.

 

The chancellor of the university is The Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, who took up the position in January 2018. The visitor of the university is an appointment made by the Privy Council, under the Royal Charter of the university. Since July 2014, the holder of this office is Mr Justice Sir Roderick Evans KC.

 

In 2011, the university appointed a new vice chancellor under whom the academic departments were restructured as larger subject-themed institutes.

 

In 2022, the university celebrated its 150th anniversar,y being established in 1872 (known at the time as The University College of Wales).

 

Aberystwyth is a university and seaside town as well as a community in Ceredigion, Wales. Located in the historic county of Cardiganshire, Aberystwyth means "the mouth of the Ystwyth". Aberystwyth University has been a major educational location in Wales since the establishment of University College Wales in 1872.

 

The town is situated on Cardigan Bay on the west coast of Wales, near the confluence of the River Ystwyth and Afon Rheidol. Following the reconstruction of the harbour, the Ystwyth skirts the town. The Rheidol passes through the town.

 

The seafront, with a pier, stretches from Constitution Hill at the north end of the Promenade to the harbour at the south. The beach is divided by the castle. The town is divided into five areas: Aberystwyth Town; Llanbadarn Fawr; Waunfawr; Llanbadarn; Trefechan; and the most populous, Penparcau.

 

In 2011 the population of the town was 13,040. This rises to nearly 19,000 for the larger conurbation of Aberystwyth and Llanbadarn Fawr.

  

Aberystwyth Bay from a 1748 survey by Lewis Morris (1701–1765)

The distance to Swansea is 55 miles (89 km); to Shrewsbury 60 miles (97 km); to Wrexham 63 miles (101 km); to Cardiff 76 miles (122 km); and to London 180 miles (290 km).

 

Aberystwyth is a university town and tourist destination, and forms a cultural link between North Wales and South Wales. Constitution Hill, scaled by the Aberystwyth Cliff Railway, gives access to panoramic views and to other attractions at the summit, including a camera obscura. Scenic Mid Wales landscape within easy reach of the town includes the wilderness of the Cambrian Mountains, whose valleys contain forests and meadows which have changed little in centuries. A convenient way to access the interior is by the preserved narrow-gauge Vale of Rheidol Railway.

 

Although the town is relatively modern, there are a number of historic buildings, including the remains of the castle and the Old College of Aberystwyth University nearby. The Old College was originally built and opened in 1865 as a hotel, but after the owner's bankruptcy the shell of the building was sold to the university in 1867.

 

The new university campus overlooks Aberystwyth from Penglais Hill to the east of the town centre. The station, a terminus of the main railway, was built in 1924 in the typical style of the period, mainly in a mix of Gothic, Classical Revival, and Victorian architecture.

 

The town is the unofficial capital of Mid Wales, and several institutions have regional or national offices there. Public bodies located in the town include the National Library of Wales, which incorporates the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales, one of six British regional film archives. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales maintains and curates the National Monuments Record of Wales (NMRW), providing the public with information about the built heritage of Wales. Aberystwyth is also the home to the national offices of UCAC and Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (Welsh Language Society), and the site of the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research, the Welsh Books Council and the offices of the standard historical dictionary of Welsh, Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru. A purpose built Welsh Government office and an adjoining office of Ceredigion County Council are also located in the town.

 

At the 2001 census, the population of the town was 15,935. This reduced to 13,040 at the 2011 census. Including neighbouring Llanbadarn Fawr, the population was 16,420, and the greater Aberystwyth conurbation having a population of 18,749 in 2011

 

Aberystwyth experiences an oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification Cfb) similar to almost all of the United Kingdom. This is particularly pronounced due to its west coast location facing the Irish Sea. Air undergoes little land moderation and so temperatures closely reflect the sea temperature when winds are coming from the predominant onshore (westerly) direction. The nearest Met Office weather station is Gogerddan, 3 miles to the northeast, and at a similar elevation.

 

The absolute maximum temperature is 34.6 °C (94.3 °F), set during July 2006. This is also the July record maximum for all of Wales, suggesting that the area's low lying situation, aided by a possible föhn effect when winds are offshore can act to achieve high temperatures on occasion. Typically the warmest day will average 28.0 °C (82.4 °F) and 5.6 days will achieve a maximum of 25.1 °C (77.2 °F) or above.

 

The absolute minimum temperature is −13.5 °C (7.7 °F), set in January 2010. Typically 39.8 days will register an air frost.

 

Rainfall averages 1,112 mm (44 in) a year, with over 1mm recorded on 161 days. All averages refer to the 1981–2010 period.

 

There is evidence that during the Mesolithic Age the area of Tan-y-Bwlch at the foot of Pen Dinas (Penparcau) was used as a flint knapping floor for hunter-gatherers making weapons from flint that was deposited as the ice retreated.

 

The remains of a Celtic fortress on Pen Dinas (or more correctly 'Dinas Maelor'), a hill in Penparcau overlooking Aberystwyth, indicates that the site was inhabited before 700 BC. On a hill south of the present town, across the River Ystwyth, are the remains of a medieval ringfort believed to be the castle from which Princess Nest was abducted. This rare survival is now on private land and can only be accessed by arrangement.

 

The recorded history of Aberystwyth may be said to date from the building of a fortress in 1109 by Gilbert Fitz Richard (grandfather of Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow, the Cambro-Norman lord notable for his leading role in the Norman invasion of Ireland). Gilbert Fitz Richard was granted lands and the lordship of Cardigan by Henry I, including Cardigan Castle. The fortress built in Aberystwyth was located about a mile and a half south of today's town, on a hill over the south bank of the Ystwyth River, thus giving the settlement of Aberystwyth its name. The location is now known as Tan-Y-Castell.

 

Aberystwyth was usually under the control of the princes of Deheubarth, but its position close to the border with Gwynedd and Powys left it vulnerable to attacks from the leaders of those polities. The town was attacked by Gwenwynwyn ab Owain in 1197, an assault in which Maelgwn ap Rhys was captured. Llywelyn the Great attacked and seized the town in late 1208, building a castle there before withdrawing.

 

Edward I replaced Strongbow's castle in 1277, after its destruction by the Welsh. His castle was, however, built in a different location, at the current Castle Hill, the high point of the town. Between the years 1404 and 1408 Aberystwyth Castle was in the hands of Owain Glyndŵr but finally surrendered to Prince Harry (the future King Henry V of England). Shortly after this, the town was incorporated under the title of Ville de Lampadarn (the ancient name of the place being Llanbadarn Gaerog or the fortified Llanbadarn, to distinguish it from Llanbadarn Fawr, the village one mile (1.6 km) inland. It is thus styled in a Royal charter granted by Henry VIII but, by Elizabeth I's time, the town was invariably named Aberystwyth in all documents.

 

From 1639 to 1642, silver coins were minted at Aberystwyth Castle on behalf of the Royal Mint, using silver from local mines. £10,500 in currency was produced, equivalent to 2.5 million silver pennies.

 

In 1649, Parliamentarian troops razed the castle, although portions of three towers still exist. In 1988, an excavation within the castle area revealed a complete male skeleton, deliberately buried. Though skeletons rarely survive in Wales' acidic soil, this skeleton was probably preserved by the addition of lime from the collapsed building. Affectionately known as "Charlie" and now housed in the Ceredigion Museum in the town, he probably dates from the English Civil War period, and is likely to have died during the Parliamentarian siege. His image is featured in one of nine mosaics created to adorn the castle's walls.

 

The development of Aberystwyth's Port contributed to the town’s economic development during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Port improvements were carried out in both 1780 and 1836, with a new Customs House constructed in 1828. Rural industries and craftsmen were also an important part of life in this country town. The local trade directory for 1830 shows that there were in Aberystwyth: Twenty boot makers, eight bakers, two corn millers, eleven carpenters and joiners, one cooper, seven tailors, two dressmakers, two straw hat makers, two hat makers, three curriers, four saddlers, two tinsmiths, six maltsters, two skinners, four tanners, eight stonemasons, one brewer, four lime burners, three shipwrights, three wheelwrights, five cabinet makers, one nail maker, one rope maker and one sail maker.

 

The Cambrian Railways line from Machynlleth reached Aberystwyth in 1864, closely followed by rail links to Carmarthen, which resulted in the construction of the town's impressive station. The Cambrian line opened on Good Friday 1869, the same day that the new 292 metres (958 ft) Royal Pier (designed by Eugenius Birch) opened, attracting 7,000 visitors.

 

The railway's arrival gave rise to something of a Victorian tourist boom, with Aberystwyth becoming a significant holiday destination for working and middle class families from South Wales in particular. The town was once even billed as the "Biarritz of Wales". During this time, a number of hotels and fine townhouses were built including the Queens Hotel, later renamed Swyddfa'r Sir (County Office) when used as offices by the town council, and most recently used as the external scenes of the police station in the television show Hinterland. One of the largest of these hotels, "The Castle Hotel", was never completed as a hotel but, following bankruptcy, was sold cheaply to the Welsh National University Committee, a group of people dedicated to the creation of a Welsh University. The University College of Wales (later to become Aberystwyth University) was founded in 1872 in this building.

 

Aberystwyth was a contributory parliamentary borough until the Third Reform Act, which merged its representation into that of the county in 1885.

 

In 1895, various businessmen who had been behind the Aberystwyth New Harbour Company formed the Aberystwyth Improvement Company (AIC) to take over the works of the defunct Bourne Engineering & Electrical. In 1896, the AIC completed three projects: the new landside pavilion for the Royal Pier; built the Cambria Hotel (later the United Theological College) and formed Constitution Hill Ltd, to develop a Victorian theme park. Chief engineer George Croydon Marks designed all the AIC developments, including the United Kingdom's second longest funicular railway, which takes passengers up a 50% gradient to a park and camera obscura.

 

Aberystwyth hosted the National Eisteddfod in 1865, 1916, 1952 and 1992.

 

On the night of Friday, 14 January 1938, a storm with estimated wind speeds of up to 90 mph (140 km/h) struck the town. Most of the promenade was destroyed, along with 200 feet (60 m) of the pier. Many properties on the seafront were damaged, with every property from the King's Hall north affected; those on Victoria Terrace suffered the greatest damage. Work commenced on a protective coffer dam which continued into 1940, with total costs of construction coming to £70,000 (equivalent to £2.5 million today).

 

Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (Welsh Language Society) held their historic first protest on Trefechan Bridge in Aberystwyth, on 2 February 1963. The first independent Welsh Evangelical Church was established in Aberystwyth (see Evangelical Movement of Wales).

 

On 1 March 2005, Aberystwyth was granted Fairtrade Town status.

 

In March 2009 mayor Sue Jones-Davies, who had played the role of Judith Iscariot in the film Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), organised a charity screening of the film. Principal actors Terry Jones and Michael Palin also attended. There is a popular, but incorrect, urban myth that the town had banned the film (as some authorities did) when it was first released.

 

During the aftermath storms from Cyclone Dirk on Friday 3 January 2014, the town was one of the worst hit in Wales. Properties on the adjoining promenade were then evacuated for the next five days, including 250 students from the University. Ceredigion Council appealed to the Welsh Assembly Government for funds, whilst Natural Resources Wales undertook surveys and emergency preventative measures.

 

North Parade, Aberystwyth was reported to be the most expensive street in Wales in 2018, based on property prices.

 

Penglais Nature Park (Welsh: Parc Natur Penglais) is a woodland overlooking the town. The park was created in 1995 from a disused quarry and surrounding woodland that had formerly been part of the Richardes family estate. In spring a carpet of bluebells bloom, in common with the many other bluebell woods.

 

The park covers 27 acres (11 ha). It was the first Nature reserve to open in Ceredigion and is the only UNESCO Man and Biosphere urban reserve in Wales.

 

Aberystwyth's local government administration has a two-tier structure consisting of two separate councils. As local government is a devolved matter in Wales, the legislation for both Councils is a responsibility of the Senedd.

 

Aberystwyth Town Council is the first tier of local government, which is the closest to the general public; there are 19 elected town councillors from five wards. The last elections were held in 2022. The council is responsible for cycle paths, public footpaths, CCTV, public Wi-Fi, bus shelters, parks, gardens (including the castle grounds and the skateboard park) and allotments. The council is a statutory body which is consulted regarding planning decisions in the town area and makes recommendations to the planning authority, Ceredigion County Council. The Town Council is also involved in leisure, tourism, business (through providing more than half of Menter Aberystwyth's funding in grants), licence applications, wellbeing and environmental health, recycling and refuse collection.

 

A borough council existed in Aberystwyth from 1832 and the Aberystwyth School Board was established in 1870.

 

Ceredigion County Council is another statutory body incorporated by Act of Parliament. It is the second tier of local government in the area and is a unitary authority with a wide range of powers and responsibility. The Council deals with roads (except trunk roads), street lighting, some highways, social services, children and family care, schools and public libraries. Aberystwyth elects six of the 42 councillors in five separate wards (Bronglais, Central, North and Rheidol wards elect one councillor each while Penparcau ward elects two).

 

Aberystwyth has five Senedd members, one of whom (Elin Jones) was elected as a constituency MS for Ceredigion, and four who are elected on the regional list for Mid and West Wales.

 

The town is in the Ceredigion constituency for elections to the House of Commons. Since June 2017, Aberystwyth's MP has been Plaid Cymru's Ben Lake.

 

The first ever public library in Aberystwyth was opened in Compton House, Pier Street on 13 October 1874. In 1882 the library was moved to the Assembly Rooms which were leased to the council for 21 years. The lease expired in 1903 and the library returned to Pier Street, this time to the Old Banking Library at the corner with Eastgate Street, although this was short lived. A Carnegie library was built in Aberystwyth in 1905, with a grant of £3,000. Located in Corporation Street, it was designed by the architect Walter Payton of Birmingham, who was one of 48 who entered the competition to design the building. It was formally opened on 20 April 1906 by Mrs Vaughan Davies, wife of the local MP. The town library moved to Aberystwyth Town Hall, now known as Canolfan Alun R. Edwards, following the building's refurbishment in 2012.

 

The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, is the national legal deposit library of Wales. Established in 1907, it is a Welsh Government sponsored body. According to Cyril Evans, the library's centenary events co-ordinator, "The library is considered to be one of the world's greatest libraries, and its international reputation is certainly something that all Welsh men and women are intensely ... proud of". Welsh is the main medium of communication within the organisation; it aims to deliver all public services in Welsh and English.

 

Aberystwyth Arts Centre is one of the largest and busiest arts centres in Wales. It encompasses a 312-seat theatre, 900-seat concert hall, 125-seat cinema, and has accompanied studio, galleries, plus public spaces which include cafes and a bar. Arad Goch is an Arts Council funded community theatre and art gallery based in the town. The premises holds a theatre, gallery, several art studios and meeting rooms, and a darkroom.

 

The town has three works by the Italian sculptor Mario Rutelli; the War Memorial on the promenade, the Tabernacle Chapel Memorial on Powell Street, and the statue of Edward VIII as Prince of Wales in the Old College. All are Grade II listed structures. Rutelli’s connection with the town came through Thomas Jenkins of Aberystwyth, who ran a shipping business. Jenkins was a frequent visitor to Italy where he admired Rutelli’s work. Jo Darke, in her work, The Monument Guide to England and Wales: A National Portrait in Bronze and Stone, describes Rutelli’s war memorial as “striking and rare” and suggests that the life-size statue of Edward VIII is the only recorded example.

 

Aberystwyth has a live music scene which has produced bands and artists such as: The Crocketts; The Hot Puppies; Murry the Hump; and The Lowland Hundred. The University Music Centre promotes a varied programme for instrumentalists, singers and listeners from the university and the wider community. The University chamber choir, The Elizabethan Madrigal Singers, have been singing in the town since 1950 and continue to hold a number of concerts throughout the year. Aberystwyth gives its name to a well known hymn tune composed by Joseph Parry.

 

Aberystwyth RFC is the local rugby union club and acts as a feeder club to professional side Scarlets. It was formed in 1947 and for the 2017/18 season played in the WRU Division One West. Aberystwyth Town F.C. is a semi-professional football club that was formed in 1884. The team currently compete in the Cymru Premier, Wales' top division. The town also has a cricket club which plays in local leagues, an athletics club (founded 1955), and boxing club in Penparcau. The town's golf course opened in 1911.

 

Ceredigion, the county in which Aberystwyth is located, is one of the four most Welsh-speaking counties in Wales and remained majority Welsh speaking until the 2011 census. Since the town's growth as a seaside resort in the Victorian era, it has been more anglicised than its hinterland and the rest of the county in general. The university has also attracted many English-speaking students from England, non-Welsh speaking parts of Wales and elsewhere. The 1891 census recorded that, of the 6635 inhabitants who completed the language section, 3482 (52.5%) were bilingual, 1751 (26.4%) were Welsh monoglots, and 1402 people (21.1%) were returned as English monoglots. Ceredigion (then named Cardiganshire) as a whole was 95.2% Welsh-speaking and 74.5% monoglot Welsh. Although the town remained majority Welsh-speaking for many more decades, English had already replaced Welsh in certain domains, such as entertainment and tourism. By 1961, only 50.0% of the town's population could speak Welsh, compared to 79.5% for Cardiganshire as a whole; by 1971, these numbers had fallen to 44.9% and 67.6% respectively. The 2001 census reported that, in the seven wards of Aberystwyth, 39% of the residents self-identified as able to speak or read or write Welsh. This is lower than Ceredigion as a whole (54%) but higher than Wales overall (19%).

 

Aberystwyth parish church is St Michael's and All Angels, located in Laura Place. The parish was a Rectoral Benefice until 2019, incorporating the Anglican churches of Holy Trinity, Santes Fair (services in Welsh) and Saint Anne's, Penparcau. The Rectoral Benefice has now been converted to a local ministry area (LMA). The church was built between 1886 and 1890, replacing an earlier church. It was designed in a Gothic Revival style and is a Grade II listed building.

 

In addition to the Anglican churches, there are many existing and former Welsh Calvinistic Methodist chapels that have these days merged into Saint David's (United Reformed) and Capel y Morfa (Welsh language services). A former Calvinistic Methodist Sunday school house, Ysgoldy Tanycae, is now the meeting place of the Elim Pentecostal church. Meanwhile there is a Wesleyan Methodist church, Saint Paul's Methodist Centre, located in Bath Street. An Independent Baptist church is located in Alfred Place. In 2021, amid some controversy, Aberystwyth's Catholic church, Saint Winefride's, was closed and the congregation relocated to a new-build church located in Penparcau.

 

There are a number of other smaller congregations, and many former churches that have now been converted to alternative use, such as the Academy bar.

 

Aberystwyth has two comprehensive schools serving the town and a wide rural area: Ysgol Gyfun Gymunedol Penweddig and Ysgol Penglais School. Ysgol Gyfun Gymunedol Penweddig uses Welsh as the primary language of tuition; Ysgol Penglais School teaches in English and in Welsh as a subject.

 

There are currently three primary schools within the town limits, which are: Plascrug, Saint Padarns (Roman Catholic) and Ysgol Gymraeg. Ysgol Gymraeg was the first designated Welsh medium school in Wales, originally established as a private school in 1939 by Sir Ifan ab Owen Edwards as Ysgol Gymraeg yr Urdd.

 

Aberystwyth is home to Aberystwyth University (Welsh: Prifysgol Aberystwyth) whose predecessor, University College Wales, was founded in 1872 and renamed the 'University of Wales, Aberystwyth' in the mid-1990s. Prior to the college's establishment, Wales had very limited academic-degree capability through St David's College, Lampeter (founded in 1822, now the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David).

 

As well as having two cinemas and a golf course, the town's attractions include:

The Aberystwyth Cliff Railway, a funicular railway

A Victorian camera obscura at the top of Constitution Hill.

The Vale of Rheidol steam railway (Aberystwyth to Devil's Bridge)

Aberystwyth Arts Centre.

The Parc Penglais nature reserve

The Ystwyth Trail cycle path

National Library of Wales

Park Avenue. Football stadium home to Aberystwyth Town F.C.

The all organic dairy unit of Rachel's Organic is based in Glan yr Afon, and is the largest private sector employer in Aberystwyth.

 

The Cambrian News newspaper came to Aberystwyth from Bala in 1870, after it was purchased by Sir John Gibson. Printed in Oswestry, in May 1880 the paper integrated operations in a former Malthouse in Mill Street. Owned by the Read family from 1926, in 1993 printing was contracted out, enabling the move of editorial staff to the current open-plan offices on Llanbadarn Fawr Science Park. On the death of Henry Read, the paper was purchased in 1999 by Sir Ray Tindle, whose company owns more than 200 weekly newspapers in Britain. Now printed in tabloid format, Cambrian News is the second-largest weekly-print circulation newspaper in Wales, with 24,000 copies in six regional editorial versions, read by 60,000 weekly readers. The circulation area of mid, west and north Wales covers 3,000 square miles (7,800 km2).

 

Since the TV series Hinterland has been filmed in and around Aberystwyth, the area is being promoted as an opportunity for tourists to visit filming locations; many are well publicised.

 

Aberystwyth railway station is situated in the town centre and is the terminus of the scenic Cambrian Line. Transport for Wales Rail operate a mostly hourly service (with some two-hour intervals) to Shrewsbury via Machynlleth and Mid Wales, with nearly all trains continuing to Birmingham International. Connecting services from Dovey Junction provide a link to Gwynedd's west coast as far as Pwllheli, along the Cambrian Coast Line. There is no longer a southbound connection: the Carmarthen–Aberystwyth line was closed in 1965 as part of the Beeching cuts.

 

Aberystwyth station is also the terminus of the Vale of Rheidol Railway, a steam-operated narrow gauge heritage railway. Constructed between 1901 and 1902, it was intended to ship mineral cargo, primarily lead, from Devil's Bridge down to Aberystwyth for trans-shipment. By the time it was finished, lead mining was in a deep downturn and—thanks to the Aberystwyth Improvement Company—the railway came to rely largely on the tourist industry, opening for passengers in December 1902. It still remains open for the summer season, with a journey of 12 miles (19 km).

 

In 1896, the Aberystwyth Improvement Company formed Constitution Hill Ltd which, under the direction of chief engineer George Croydon Marks, developed the United Kingdom's second longest funicular railway, the Aberystwyth Cliff Railway, which takes passengers up a 50% gradient.

 

A TrawsCymru T1 service on the A4120 in Aberystwyth

Aberystwyth is a hub for the TrawsCymru bus network, with four routes serving the town:

 

T1 - hourly service to Carmarthen (connects with T1S to Swansea, Monday-Saturday) via Aberaeron and Lampeter - with one service a day (Monday-Saturday) extended to Cardiff

T1C - daily express coach service to Cardiff, via Aberaeron, Carmarthen (connects with T1S to Swansea, Monday-Saturday), Swansea (Sunday & Bank Holidays only), Port Talbot Parkway and Bridgend

T2 - every 1–2 hours to Bangor via Machynlleth, Dolgellau (connects with T3 to Barmouth and Wrexham), Porthmadog and Caernarfon

T5 - hourly service to Haverfordwest via Aberaeron, New Quay, Cardigan and Fishguard

(TrawsCymru services run less-frequently on Sundays.)

 

There is a daily National Express coach, service 409 to London via Birmingham, along with local bus services within the town and into the surrounding area.

 

The A44 and A487 meet with much traffic between North Wales and South West Wales passing through the town. The A4120 links the A44 and A487 between Llanbadarn Fawr and Penparcau, allowing through traffic to bypass the town centre.

 

The B4574 mountain road linking the town to Rhayader is described by the AA as one of the ten most scenic drives in the world.

 

The port of Aberystwyth, although it is small and relatively inconsequential today, used to be an important Atlantic Ocean entryway. It was used to ship locally, to Ireland and as a transatlantic departure point. Commercially, the once important Cardiganshire lead mines exported from this location.

 

The importance of maritime trade in the 19th century is reflected in the fact that a lifeboat has been based at Aberystwyth since 1843, when a 27 ft (8.2 m) boat powered by six oars was funded by public subscription and placed under the control of the harbourmaster. The RNLI took over the service in 1861 and established Aberystwyth Lifeboat Station which celebrated 150 years in 2011. The station uses the Atlantic 85-class inshore lifeboat Spirit of Friendship.

 

The Owl Service by Alan Garner, a well-known and -loved multi-award-winning classic published 1967, is set in north Wales and has two of its core characters —Gwyn and his mam (mother) Nancy— recently arrived from Aberystwyth for 3 weeks' work, with Nancy repeatedly threatening to return there immediately. They and the Welsh locals refer to it as "Aber"; the English characters use its full name.

Aberystwyth (albeit an alternative universe version) is the setting for the cult Louie Knight series by Malcolm Pryce, which transfers Chandleresque "noir" stories and dialogue to this small seaside town. This alternative reality features many landmarks of Aberystwyth, such as the University and the National Library of Wales, but the social situation is radically altered to more closely resemble the pulp/noir stereotypical "Dirty Town" that the narrative plays off. Most of the humour in the books is derived from the almost seamless juxtaposition of the real Aberystwyth and the fictional, noir Aberystwyth. Various aspects of Welsh culture are reflections of what you might expect to see in reality, but with a pulp twist – for example, prostitutes wear Welsh stovepipe hats.

Stripping Penguins Bare, the book 2 of Michael Carson's Benson Trilogy of comic novels, is set in the town and university in the 1960s.

The local writer Niall Griffiths has set many of his novels here and reflects local slang, settings, and even individuals. Grits and Sheepshagger are set wholly in Aberystwyth, which also features prominently in his other novels such as Kelly and Victor and Stump. He portrays a more gritty side of Aberystwyth.

‘Cofiwch Aberystwyth’ by science fiction writer Val Nolan, is a near-future post-apocalyptic novelette about three young urban explorers visiting Aberystwyth years after a nuclear disaster on the west coast of Wales. It was originally published in Interzone (magazine) and later anthologised in Best of British Science Fiction 2020. The title references the Cofiwch Dryweryn graffiti outside nearby Llanrhystyd, Ceredigion.

 

Television

Y Gwyll (2013–2016), a Welsh-language television programme, and the English-language version Hinterland , broadcast on S4C, BBC One Wales, BBC Four, and syndicated around the world, is set in Aberystwyth. It is filmed in and around the town, often in rural locations.

 

Film

Y Llyfrgell (2017) is an award-winning Welsh language film set in and around the National Library, which was filmed on location in 2016. The 2009 book on which it was based was released in English in 2022.

 

The following people and military units have received the Freedom of the Town of Aberystwyth.

Individuals

1912 – Sir John Williams

1912 – David Davies

1912 – Stuart Rendel

1922 – David Lloyd George

1923 – Lewis Pugh Evans

1923 – Matthew Vaughan-Davies

1923 – Sir Herbert Lewis

1928 – Stanley Baldwin

1936 – Sir David Charles Roberts

1936 – Ernest Vaughan

1951 – Winston Churchill

1956 – Sir David James

2011 – Fritz Pratschke

2015 – Jean Guezennec

 

Military Units

1955 – The Welsh Guards

 

Twinning

Arklow in Wicklow, Republic of Ireland Ireland

Kronberg im Taunus in Hesse Hesse, Germany Germany

Saint-Brieuc in Brittany Brittany, France France

Esquel in Patagonia, Argentina Argentina

The Hymn of God's Word "God Hopes That Mankind Can Continue to Live"

 

1. God had despised man because man opposed Him, but in His heart, His care, concern, and mercy for humanity remained unchanged. Even when He destroyed mankind, His heart remained unchanged. When humanity was full of corruption and disobedient toward God to a certain extent, God had to, because of His disposition and His essence, and in accordance with His principles, destroy this humanity. But because of God’s essence, He still pitied mankind, and even wanted to use various ways to redeem mankind so they could continue to live, so they could continue to live.

 

2. Instead, man opposed God, continued to disobey God, and refused to accept God’s salvation, that is, refused to accept His good intentions. No matter how God called to them, reminded them, supplied them, helped them, or tolerated them, man did not understand or appreciate it, nor did they pay attention. In His pain, God still did not forget to give man His maximum tolerance, waiting for man to turn around. After He reached His limit, He did what He had to do without any hesitation. In other words, there was a specific time period and process from the moment God planned to destroy mankind to the official start of His work in destroying mankind. This process existed for the purpose of enabling man to turn around, and was the last chance God gave to man.

 

from “God’s Work, God’s Disposition, and God Himself I” in A Continuation of The Word Appears in the Flesh

  

“The successful adept must be endowed with a knowledge of the material of the Great Work; also with faith, silence, purity of heart, and prayerfulness. After passing through the gate surmounted with the hieroglyph of philosophic mercury he traverses the seven angles of the citadel, representing the chief operations of the Great Work - calcination, dissolution, purification, introduction into the sealed Vase of Hermes, transference of the Vase to the Athanor [furnace], coagulation, putrefaction, ceration, multiplication and projection. And even upon reaching the Petra Philosophalis, he finds it is held in custody by a formidable dragon.”

 

Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae, Heinrich Khunrath

Saturn is related to Mercury in alchemical text, and is given the same ambiguous sexuality, or androgyny, and named it ‘Mercurius senex’.In Tiphareth, the geometric symbol is the interlaced triangles of water and fire, or the Star of David. When expanded to connect the planetary sepheroth of the Tree (with Saturn being attributed to Daath), the Triangle of Water connects the spheres of Mars, Jupiter, and Luna. The Triangle of Fire connects Saturn, Venus, and Mercury.

Just as Ouroboros is cosmic energy (the serpent) limiting itself (Saturn), Venus is the creative cosmic force multiplying itself in life (its vegetative nature) as a prism splits the light of the sun. Mercury, like Saturn in many respects, is androgynous, and controls the fire of creation, directing it in the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone. Mercury holds the Caduceus, or winged staff with two serpents intertwined around it. The Wings represent sublimation, the serpents the basic forces of creation. There crossing over is the psychic centers, often given as seven in number, here representing the colors in the spectrum, plus white (Venus). Central to the diagram is Sol, which is the cosmic creative forces which unify, enliven, and harmonize creation, and which we can hope to contact. It is central, and directs and controls all of the other planets, psychic centers, or aspects of Cosmic energy.By contacting the fire of the Sun, we can open the fire of the other psychic centers (via Venus), and more easily direct the restrictive and enlightening energy of Saturn, through the powers of the Mind, or Mercury.To understand these multi-faceted aspects of the planets, particularly Venus and Mercury, it is important to have done the Pathworkings up to Tiphareth. While this is not required to perform the techniques later in this monograph, it is a help for an understanding of the theoretical part.However, we can begin to understand the relationship of the Spheres to each other by undertaking a series of meditations based on the following idea:Venus is the regenerating, sensual, active life force in its vegetative and unconscious manner. It responds to heat, light, and emotion. On the Path of the Decent, Venus splits the singular rays of the Sun into the many facets of the color spectrum, and as such, can lead us to a better understanding of the relationship between multiplicity and unity, the psychic centers and planets, and their unique natures. On the Path of Ascent, Venus re-unites the divergent energies, both planetary and personal (psychic centers) and harmonizes it into a singular force, although still multi-colored, until it returns to the Sun as pure light.

“This Stone rises in growing, greening things. Wherefore when the Green is reduced to its former nature, whereby things sprout and come forth in due time, it must be decocted and putrefied in the way of our secret art.” Splendor solis, Trismosin.The Stone is made through the greening of nature (Netzach) and it returning to its source (Tipahreth) by putrefaction (Death card of the path connecting them).Mercury gives form and meaning to the diverse energies made by the splitting actions of Venus, and re-unites them as fundamental forces, symbolized by the Caduceus. Mercury is Psychopomp, or Guide of the Soul, and directs the energies that Venus represents. Since both Venus and Mercury sit at the base of the Pillars of kabbalah, they access the material, astral, and mental realms, and can influence all three to some degree. On the Descent, Mercury creates form and structure, for the body, the mind, or the soul, and on the ascent, Mercury helps free us from the limitations of form, without forgetting its lessons.The serpent is primordial force or energy, fire and water being the principle two of creation, with air and earth following them. Because it shed it’s skin, it is seen as a symbol of regeneration and renewal. It is also dangerous, deadly, can be found often in ‘guardian’ roles near springs or water as well as deserts. When controlled or mastered, it is seen as mastering a powerful and deadly, yet regenerating force, basic to creation, or possibly from which creation came.

The Secret Fire is directly linked to the sexual, (i.e. principle and most basic creative forces) in humanity. Here, the relationship between ‘bliss’ ‘ecstasy’ and the erotic impulse can be clearly seen and experienced. The development of a host of ‘sexual yogas’ and ‘sex magic(k)’ practices bear this out to some degree. However, it is the sexual desire in humanity that acts as its basic drive and evolutionary force. It also suggests that the ability and need for mystical experience is biologically rooted. Only by ignoring the most basic of pleasures, sex, can we ignore the drive to ecstatic union on some level. The ‘little death’ or petite morte, is a forerunner of the ‘big death’ as we let go and experience divine oblivion.Sexual power, linked to our innate drive for mystical experiences, is also linked to human evolution, and some kind of predetermined point or state to which we are being directed.This is a significant point, in that almost all of modern Western societies psychological illnesses are focused around sexual repression and obsession.If the Secret Fire flows freely, or with greater strength than before, without the proper purification of the Vital Energy of the physical body, it is possible that it will result in what appears to be extreme physical, but more likely psychological, illness in the form of schizophrenia and psychosis, instead of psychic gifts, genius, and either transpersonal states, or simply altered states of consciousness.Wilhelm Reich, the father of Orgon Therapy states that the basis for all mental-emotional disturbances are anchored in the physical body, and that these anchors can be released through breathing techniques, somewhat similar to pranayamana. Since the body is the “Salt” of alchemy, and partially composed of accessible unconscious elements through its “Watery Element” all of our emotional and physical experiences become indelibly marked, associated, or stored in our physical body. If these blocks, or energy concentrations of emotional and physical trauma (composed of Vital Energy) are not removed before the Secret Fire begins to flow more intensely, the so-called negative side effects of ‘Kundalini phenomena’ will appear.

Abuse of drugs, alcohol, and sexual extremes only worsen the condition in that they inadvertently release the Secret Fire by weakening the physical body and its link to the astral, thereby damaging the etheric substructure, and create energy blocks in the end rather than diminish them, when the mind and body attempt to make repairs.A nervous system damaged by substance abuse makes a tricky vehicle for the clear, clean, and powerful expression of the Secret Fire. It is through our nervous system (under the domain of Yesod-Luna) that we engage both the physical world, as well as out interior world. It links the body (Malkooth) with the Mind-Intellect (Hod) as well as instinctual, creative, and sensual urges (Netzach). If it is damaged, our ability to relate fully, creatively, and productively to these psyhco-physical-spiritual parts of our self becomes endangered. If it is damaged, then our most direct and important link to our Holy Guardian Angel, and means of releasing the Secret Fire safely (via Tiphareth) is threatened in this incarnation.

“Listen, then while I make known the Grand Arcanum of this wonder-working Stone, which at the same time is not a stone, which exists in every man, and may be found in its own place at all times…. It is called a stone, not because it is like a stone, but only because by virtue of its fixed nature, it resists the action of fire as successfully as any stone….If we say that its nature is spiritual, it would be no more than the truth; if we describe it as corporeal, the expression would be equally correct; for it is subtle, penetrative, glorified, spiritual gold. It is the noblest of all created things…it is a spirit or quintessence.”

hermetic.com/stavish/essays/secret-fire.html

 

The American artist Mark Dion invests Fine Arts in Paris which he is invited in 2016. It offers a labyrinthine exhibition consisting of works from the heritage collection of fine arts, contemporary works and his own productions. The theme of the supernatural, they open to a reinterpretation of the collections and the historic site of Fine Arts.Extending the exhibition, two exceptional nocturnal journey in the Fine Arts in Paris will be offered during the night of the opening (Tuesday May 17) and as part of the Museum Night (Saturday 21 May).Since the 1990s, Mark Dion speaks regularly at the heart of cultural and scientific institutions such as museums and natural history museums which it involves typologies and scenic codes. In his speech to the Fine Arts, he will hold a series of works chosen for their report more or less allegorical in the supernatural.Extranatural, large immersive installation, will engage older pieces (drawings, prints, photographs, sculptures ...) and contemporary works, some produced by students and graduates of Fine Arts in Paris, which will result in an original narrative form close of the investigation.Chosen for their enigmatic power, and the power of suggestion, not reducible to a genus, the works assembled by Mark Dion is an opportunity to probe the report to the strange and the supernatural, which passes through art and creation: magic and alchemy, hybrid, and grotesque monsters, witches and sabbaths, unusual objects, morphological elements ...The issue of representation, that of anthropological works and their resonance, form the issues of the work of Mark Dion, whose scenography thwarts the traditional codes, sometimes diverting objects from their original meaning and function.The central device, the Palace of Fine Arts, each room corresponds to one of the four elements (earth, water, air, fire), will mingle including Dürer and Goya, and Kawanabe Goltzius and contemporary works by Jimmie Durham , Extra Lucid, Matt Mullican, morgane tschiember ...Both nocturnal journey to the heart of Beaux-Arts in Paris will allow visitors to discover surprising places, some of which opened for the first time to the public. From the room Melpomene, the course will provide access to lounges and hotel garden Chimay, library, collections, to the cellars of the Palace of studies.Extranatural result of a collaborative process of reflection and research, conducted in close collaboration with the curators of collections of Fine Arts. Particularly significant in the eyes of the artist, the historical continuity of the collection, closely linked to his vocation of transmitting artistic practices, echoes his visual approach and the fact archaeologist museum. The choice of institution and venues that will host this specific work, then makes sense.The works collected by Mark Dion invite the viewer to renew his experience of curiosity through 500 years of history.

www.beauxartsparis.com/fr/expositions/expositions-en-cours

What is the significance of the right hand of God?

In ancient times, a person with high or highest rank stood to the king's right side. Even today, a person may be called someone's "right hand man" or "wingman" when he or she serves as the closest person to another leader. An example of this can be found in Genesis 48:13-14 where Jacob blessed the child who would receive a greater blessing with his right hand. The right hand of God likewise relates to this concept of someone being right next to God, acknowledging both authority and closeness to Him.While God the Father does not consist of a physical body like humans do, the right hand of God is often used figuratively in Scripture. In the Old Testament, the phrase is used to refer to the coming Messiah. For example, Psalm 110:1 predicts, "The LORD says to my Lord: 'Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool'" (also quoted in Matthew 22:44). Psalm 118:16 adds, "the right hand of the LORD exalts, the right hand of the LORD does valiantly!" In the New Testament, we find additional expressions of this phrase in reference to Jesus Christ. Ephesians 1:20-21 notes, "…that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come." Romans 8:34 teaches, "Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us."In fact, many times the New Testament writers use "the right hand of God" to express where Jesus is now. Mark 16:19 shares, "So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God." Acts 2:33 shares a portion of Peter's sermon on Pentecost that includes, "Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing." The first martyr Stephen was said to have looked into the sky and saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God (Acts 7:55). Colossians 3:1 also notes that Jesus is seated at the right hand of God.Hebrews 10:12-13 describes this right hand of God as a place of honor and exaltation for Jesus, sharing, "But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet." This location gives Him reign over all powers: "Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him" (1 Peter 3:21-22).The right hand of God, therefore, is a reference to both a place of proximity to God the Father and a position of power above all other powers. Jesus the Messiah exists at this right hand of God today, perfectly reigning with God the Father and God the Spirit in community and power.

www.compellingtruth.org/right-hand-of-God.html

The term at the right hand of God points to his exalted position he now is active on. There is numerous things that need to be considered to understand this phrase. The phrase right hand is a metaphor, God exercises his authority by his right hand.

 

Right after Peter writes of the resurrection he says 1 Pt.3:22 Who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having made subject to him". If he is God the Father then they are already subjected to him, If he is only a man, then the ruling of the universe is in a humans hands. So it is as in Mt.28:18 all authority was given to him in both heaven and earth. This is something he did not have as he came to earth in a state of humility Phil.2:5-8.

christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/3237/what-is-so-...

AT THE RIGHT HAND OF THE FATHER

To sit at ones right hand means a place of authority, it was a place of honor it meant dignity and rulership. Throughout the O.T there is used what are called anthropomorphism to describe God in some function or characteristic. this is figurative language describing a certain characteristic of God it is describing his divine actions from a human view point. For example there are the scriptures such as the eyes of the Lord go to and through upon the earth. There are mention of his ears, feet, mouth, back, fingers, arms, and hands. None of these should be taken in the solid literal sense that God has form as a human creature, these are meant to communicate something of his being of service. Example God is called a shield, a buckler, a high tower, a vine, a door, a hen, the Lion of the tribe of Judah his eyes run to and fro upon the earth. Men are called sheep, lambs, salt, branches, we seek his face (do we really look for his face literally) we are to keep our eyes on Jesus (can we really see him). Their are examples of his arm which was a symbol of his power. the arm was used as the agency of strength, when the Bible refers the arm of the Lord it is consistently about the son, as God reaches into the Earth to do his work. Ex.6:6 the Lord redeemed Israel "with an outstretched arm." Isa.53:1 " to who has the arm of the Lord been revealed." Isa.63:5 "therefore my own arm brought salvation for me. Also in like manner his hand is used to most often symbolize an activity of service. Isa.48:13 'speaks of his hand laying the foundation of the Earth, and my right hand spanned the heavens..." Isa.62:8 " the Lord has sworn by his right hand, and by his arm of strength." Isa. 59:1" the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save." We also have numerous scriptures combining both the arm and hand. Duet. 26:8 " so the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm." ( also Duet.5:15, 7:19, 11:2; Ps.44:3; Jer. 32:21; Ez. 20:33) We need to distinguish when anthropormorphic or symbolic terms are used and when they are not. The term at the right hand of God points to his exalted position he now is active on. There is numerous things that need to be considered to understand this phrase. The phrase right hand is a metaphor, God exercises his authority by his right hand. Right after Peter writes of the resurrection he says 1 Pt.3:22 Who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having made subject to him". If he is God the Father then they are already subjected to him, If he is only a man, then the ruling of the universe is in a humans hands. So it is as in Mt.28:18 all authority was given to him in both heaven and earth. This is something he did not have as he came to earth in a state of humility Phil.2:5-8. The term to lift up in Greek is epeirthei which means to lift up, it is in the passive state showing us that the Son was taken to heaven by God the Father. He was received up to him and sat down next to him continuing to function in his high priestly office. Jesus returned to Father sitting down showing his work is done. Jn.14:28, 16:16,17, 20:17. Their is now a man at the right hand of God the Father, who is God the Son. Acts 2:32-35, Heb.10:12, Eph. 1:20, 1 Pt. 3:22. He is now functioning in his high priestly ministry Rom.8:34; Heb. 4:14-16, 7:24-25. 1 Tim.2:5. Because of his exaltation and new position he is able to send the Holy Spirit Acts 2:33, Jn. 7:39, and give spiritual gifts to the Church Eph. 4:7-11. Ps. 80:17 " Let your hand be on the man of your right hand, upon the Son of man whom you made strong for yourself." The Son of man was a messianic term for the messiah, coming in human flesh. While the phrase right hand means prominence some argue that there is only one person on the throne. Yet the scripture reads the right hand of God. Eph. 3:11 Christ is sitting at the right hand of God." The question that arises is God a person? Yes, and we find that Christ Jesus is sitting at the Fathers right hand.The father is a person (not human of course)The Son is also a person as both God and man. . However we know from other scriptures the Son was sent by the Father from heaven and is later received back to his former place by the Father. Ps.110:1 "The Lord said to my Lord sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool." In Heb. 1:13 we find it is the Father who says to the Son " to which of the angels has he ever said, sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool." Notice I will make your enemies, whose enemies, God's enemies. The question that arises is God a person? Yes, and we find that Christ Jesus is sitting at the Fathers right hand. Since there is only one at a time which one of these is not a person? The Father is designating a different place of position to the son. Bernard and others insists "this passage describes the dual nature of Christ, with the spirit of God (the Lord) speaking prophetically to the human manifestation of Christ (the Lord)." (p.107). the Lord is speaking to himself as the Lord not only the man. Notice he says your enemies, not my enemies. Are they only the enemy of his humanity or of his whole person? Bernard says we should note the word until. Have his enemies been made his footstool? No this event has not happen, this will occur at the 2nd coming. So he's still at the right hand he didn't change into the Holy spirit. In Eph.1:20 " according to his mighty power which he ( the Father) worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places." So we find that there are two persons involved here. the one who raised Jesus and sat him next to him. God is a person not an it, nor just a title he is the Lord Jesus next to the Father, not just the humanity. Heb 1:3 says he sat down at the right hand of majesty, Heb. 8:1 the right hand of the throne of majesty."Heb.1:8 The Father speaking-" But to the Son he says "Your throne, O God is forever and ever... God, even thy God, hath anointed you with the oil of gladness above thy fellows." Here is God the Father saying to the Son he is God and his throne is eternal. According to the Oneness view the Son is only his humanity. Bernard says "the first portion of the above passage clearly refers to the deity in the Son, while the second portion refers to the humanity of the Son." Again he attributes this to prophecy of the future incarnation of God in the flesh. (p.121) The term at the right hand of God points to his exalted position he now is active in. The phrase right hand is a figurative expression of a literal event. God exercises his authority by his right hand. Acts 5:31 Him (Christ) God has exalted to his right hand to be prince and savior. Only God is the savior. Rev.4:2 John sees the same scene that Stephen did in Acts 7, a throne set in heaven and one who sat on the throne ( God ). Rev.5:6-7 Stood a lamb as though it had been slain...vs.7 and he came to take the scroll out of the right hand of him who sat upon the throne." The lamb is Identified as Jesus and the one who sits on the throne is the Father. We then see the angels and the creatures and the elders worship both the lamb and the Father. vs.13 " Blessing and honor and glory and power be to him who sits upon the throne and to the lamb, forever and ever." According to Oneness the lamb who is only the man is being worshipped in heaven, now we have idolatry going on in heaven! Certainly Jesus is still the God/man and the father is distinct from him as he is sitting and Jesus is not. Rev3:21" to him who overcomes I will grant to sit down with me on my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne." Whether the thrones are literal is inconsequential right now to what we want to distinguish. Here we have a analogy of us sitting down on his throne, just as he did on his Fathers throne. Clearly two individuals are portrayed. In Hebrews the father says to the Son 1:8 your throne is forever, O God. He goes on and says to the Son "you Lord in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the work of your hands,"The father calls the Son God, he does not call him Father. Neither does Jesus call the Father Jesus.Right hand of God Rom. 8:34, Col.3:1, Eph. 3:20 Heb. 10;12, 12:2,1 Pt. 3:21.Right hand of power Mt. 26:64 Mk.14:62,The Lord said to my Lord. Mt.22:43-45, Mk.12:35-37, Lk.20:41-44

www.letusreason.org/onenes10.htm

Mount Buzhou (不周山), a pillar holding up the sky. The pillar collapsed and caused the sky to tilt towards the northwest and the earth to shift to the southeast. This caused great floods and suffering to the people....

The characters 伏羲 Fu Xi lit. mean “lie prostrate” & “sacrifice”. In 女媧 Nü Wa, Nü 女literally means ‘female’, whereas ‘Wa’ 媧 has no meaning. Contrary to Shen Nong and Huang Di, Fu Xi and Nü Wa are a rather obscure and distant couple in the misty fog of Chinese antiquity, and only very little is known about them.Fu Xi and Nü Wa pictured with dragon tails intertwined. (Picture by Hughes Songe)..Every school-child in China, Taiwan, and other Chinese places, learns already early on about their original Chinese patriarchs and their histories. But the most ancient Chinese history has become quite embellished over 4 1/2 thousand years and changed into mythology. As a result, the 21st Century Chinese are quite confused about their earliest primo-genitors, and if it weren’t for a very interesting discovery that this article reveals, their earliest patriarchs would have stayed obscure until the end of time.The earliest records speak of “Sān Huáng Wǔ Dì”, meaning the “Three August Ones, Sovereigns or Kings” and the “Five Emperors.” These 3+5= 8 god-kings or demi-gods purportedly used their magical powers to improve the lives of their people. Because of their lofty virtue, they lived to a great age and ruled over a period of great peace.The three Sovereigns are generally denoted as Fu Xi, Nü Wa, and Shen Nong Shi, but in other literary sources Nü Wa is often replaced by Huang Di, one of the five Emperors. Actually, depending on the source, there are six to seven known variations of who classifies as the “Three Sovereigns & the Five Emperors”. Many of these sources were written long after the actual events, during much later dynasties. Hence the distortion.These Three + Five = Eight Chinese primo-patriarchs, concur with a global occurrence of eight Flood survivors in ancient legends.

India: Manu and his 7 ‘Rishis’ = 8. (picture above)

S-India: Satyavratha (Noah) + 3 sons Sharma, Charma, Yapheti +their 4 wives = 8.

Egypt: The ‘Ogdoad‘ [octo=8], Nun {Noah} Heh, Kuk, & (h)Amun + 3 wives = 8.

Sumeria: Uan or Oannes and 7 ‘Apkallu’ (wise men) = 8. OR the 4 post-diluvian Apkalluh with 4 wives would also make 8.

Hebrews: Noah, Shem, Ham, Yapheth + their 4 wives= 8.

Others: Also 8, as we’ll show about the Miao Zu people.The ‘Ogdoad’ also puts to rest the mistaken idea that the Egyptians did not have a Flood story! See how Nun upholds the boat with 7 survivors.In yet another version of the more than 700 global flood stories, the Chinese legend tells how the world was swept by a Great Flood, and only Fu Xi and his sister NüWa survived. They then retired to Kunlun Mountain where they prayed for a sign from the Emperor of Heaven — God — or as he is called in Chinese Shang Di.The Divine Being approved their union and the siblings set about to procreate the human race all over again. It was mythically told of them that in order to speed up the natural procreation of humans, Fu Xi and Nüwa found an additional way by using clay to create human figures, and with divine power entrusted to them, they made these figures come alive. The Han period book Fengsu tongyi 風俗通義 says that in the beginning, just when Heaven and Earth had separated, Nü Wa formed humans out of mud, giving birth to the human race.The new father of humanity Fu Xi then came to rule over his descendants, although reports of his long reign vary between sources. He is supposed to have lived mid 29th century BC, or 2.900 BC, which is very close to the timing of the Biblical flood of about 2.500 BC. Nü Wa after surviving the great flood, “fixed the broken sky/heaven (Tian) with either five or seven colored stones.” “女媧補天 = Nü Wa Bu Tian!”Now the three earliest Chinese historians mentioned Nü Wa. The fourth, the noted Chinese historian Si Ma Qian (in the Shiji, Chapter Benji or prologue) clearly identifies Nüwa as a man with the last name of Feng.“Herbert James Allen erroneously translated Tang dynasty historian Sima Zhen’s interpolated prologue to the Han dynasty Sima Qian’s Shiji. In one of his more serious flaws, Nüwa was described as male even though the Nü (女) in the name means female and the wa (媧) also contains the female radical. ]”Why does obfuscating W.P. dislike Allen’ s translation? Read on and get the full picture why!Some scholars consider Nüwa a tribal leader (or emperor); others consider the name Nüwa a title. Only after the fourth (Si Ma Qian) Nü Wah was suddenly cast into a woman’s role, and became known as Fu Xi’s wife! Over time these histories grew into even more bizarre myths, as the two of them are still proudly reported by Chinese people today, as being half dragons! Their early depictions as a couple shows both of them with intertwined reptilian tails. (see picture at the top) The legend goes as follows:The earliest literary role seems to be the upkeep and maintenance of the Wall of Heaven*, whose collapse would obliterate everything. [Note the association with Flood traditions.] There was a quarrel between two of the more powerful gods, and they decided to settle it with a fight. When the water god Gong Gong saw that he was losing, he smashed his head against Mount Buzhou (不周山), a pillar holding up the sky. The pillar collapsed and caused the sky to tilt towards the northwest and the earth to shift to the southeast. This caused great floods and suffering to the people. Nüwa cut off the legs of a giant tortoise and used them to supplant the fallen pillar, alleviating the situation and sealing the broken sky using stones of seven different colours, but she was unable to fully correct the tilted sky. This explains the phenomenon that sun, moon, and stars move towards the northwest, and that rivers in China flow southeast into the Pacific Ocean. (this account is similar to the Huainanzi account; it was added as The Upkeep and Maintenance of Heaven).Other versions of the story describe Nüwa going up to heaven and filling the gap with her body (half human half serpent) and thus stopping the flood. According to this legend some of the minorities in South-Western China hail Nüwa as their goddess and some festivals such as the ‘Water-Splashing Festival’ are in part a tribute to her sacrifices.Other versions of the story describe Nüwa going up to heaven and filling the gap with her body (half human half serpent) and thus stopping the flood. According to this legend some of the minorities in South-Western China hail Nüwa as their goddess and some festivals such as the ‘Water-Splashing Festival’ are in part a tribute to her sacrifices.As the ancient Chinese also originated from Sumeria, they were most likely familiar with the early Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh adopting its symbolisms.Seeing the similarity between dragontail Nüwa and fishtail Vishnu (next picture) also holding instruments in their hands, there is evidence that perhaps also the early Xia in proximity to the sea, as the Jomon had naval contacts not just with America where the Chinese left 3000 yr. Old stone sea anchors, and the Jomon with Ecuador, seeing the Jomon similarity with Valdivan pottery (Betty Meggers Smithsonian!), but also with seafaring ancient Indians or Dravidians and their versions of the ubiquitous 700 ethnic Flood legends, where Noah was called MaNu (plus his 7 Rishis make 8), or in South India Satyavratha and his three sons Charma, Sharma and Phra Yapeti! (As Biblical Noah, Ham, Shem, Japheth) plus 4 wives also make 8!).Seeing that Ham named the “Land of Cham” in Vietnam and Chambodia and other places in between like India Cambay, after himself, perhaps Ham was one of the very “Oannes sailors of the sea wizards” who personally came as far as the Yellow Sea in his astronomical surveys to map the stars and measure the new post-Flood Earth! Because whether it is politically correct with historical (qu)academia or not, it is a fact that the ancients DID travel the entire earth and its oceans, seeing the ubiquitous spread of pyramids (25 in China!) and Bronze Age megaliths in almost every part of the world!Like Nüwa the Indian god Vishnu who guided Manu also sports a fishtail. Manu was instructed by the god Vishnu who came from the ocean as a fish with a fish tail, (Fish Nu!) to save himself from an impending global deluge! We find a similar symbolism in the early Sumerian demi-god Oannes, who emerged from the sea half fish/half man and taught humans civilisation and culture! Man obviously likes to embellish history!

NOW WHO COULD ‘FU XI’ BE?If we look at the meaning of the characters Fu and Xi, as its sound does not coincide at all with any of the other historical records, unless it is a bastardisation of Vishnu?, we get the following meanings: “Fu” means “lying prostrate” and “Xi” has the meaning of “sacrifice.” The picture arises of a man lying prostrate in front of an animal sacrifice.

 

According to both the Miao and Hebrew records, after Noah’s Ark had landed, he ordered that his family should present a great thanksgiving sacrifice to God, and so they offered and barbecued some animals. Is it possible that Noah’s original name in Chinese, was the honorable “Fu Xi Nü-Wa“, meaning the “Prostrating Sacrificer Noah”?

 

Is it perhaps also possible that originally Fu meant Father Noah? Was the character Fu changed perhaps from Fu meaning “father” to Fu meaning “prostrate”, around the same time when Nü-Wa was turned female, and that Fu Xi Nü-Wa was suddenly spliced into two people? Only God knows what really happened. Is that perhaps also the reason why their tails were entwined?

 

But the most interesting and IMHO most likely explanation for the names Fu Xi Nü-Wa, is when you consider the Chinese accent and its bastardisation of non-Chinese accents. A “bus” in Chinese (& Japanese) becomes “Ba Se” or “Ba Su” for example. Now the Chinese may have been aware of the name NüWa through the Han legends coming overland like Noah, Noe, Nuh, Nu-Uh, Nur, or Noach from the Middle East and Babylon originally. But the Xia (dynasty) who settled closer to the ocean than Huang Di, most likely introduced the concept of fish tailed Vish-NU into China from their contact with the seafaring sons of Ham like Dravidian Cushites from India, where Noah is called Manu under god Vishnu.

 

And when those early Chinese tried to pronounce Vish-Nu, it probably came out very similar to Fishi-Nüwa or FuXi-NüWa. And that makes a whole lot of sense in the light of Chinese pronunciation. Perhaps the Dravidian/Indian name VishNu was itself a bastardisation of NuAh or Noah, the common patriarch of us all mixed with some of that fish-man Oannes influence! We’ll find out in the Heavenly Museum of REAL History! Ha!

 

Ararat-Ximu-Nuwa-Huangdi-Xia

 

And why did Fu Xi & Nü-Wa live such long lives, as Shen Nong did too? Because, according to the most detailed and accurate Biblical account in Genesis, Noah, his wife, and three sons, lived to amazing old ages. According to the Greek ‘Sibylline Oracles’, even the wives of Shem, Ham & Japheth also enjoyed fantastically long life-spans, living for centuries! Noah lived almost a thousand years, totally 950 years in fact! 600 years until the Flood began, and 350 after!

 

Shem (Miao: Lo-Shen, or Shen Nong Shi?) lived a total of 600 years, according to Genesis. If you divide 600 years by a generation of 35-40 years, you easily arrive at a total of 15 or 17 generations. Huang Di was purportedly a distant descendant of Shen Nong, while also his friend and fellow scholar! Well, if he was 7-18 generations removed from Shem or Shen Nong, that would have been very possible being Shem’s great (17 times) -grandchild.

 

Shem is considered the forefather of most Arabs and of some Asian tribes. The following are the haplo DNA groups found in nations all over the world. You see that the (orange D) South Asians/South Chinese/Tibetans, and (blue O) Han Chinese belong to different groups. (And most originating in the Middle East where Noah landed his ark in Eastern Turkey on the mountains of Ararat!). (NB: The C3 and Q3 “going across the Bering Street” is pure Darwinist propaganda, because the Bering street was frozen until quite recently. It could not have happened!)

 

DNAmap

 

There are many legends about Fuxi and Nü-Wa recorded in several ancient Chinese books such as ‘Book of Changes’, ‘Elegies of Chu’, ‘Writings of Prince Huai Nan’ and the ‘Book of Mountains and Seas’. These legends were all passed on orally until written down, but sadly not via rhyming stanzas, yet their impact is very wide and profound. Now the leading aspects and basic facts of these myths become very meaningful in this new Miao and other inter-ethnic context.

 

BaGua8Story has it, that Fu Xi is not only the clan leader in the East and the chief of the three sage kings and five virtuous emperors of China at the dawn of human civilization, but also an omnipotent wise man capable of various kinds of skills. He is told to have created the Eight Diagrams and simulated the spider to weave fishing net. He was not only able to make musical instruments, but also good at cooking tasty food. Moreover, he contributed a lot to the traditional Chinese medicine and was the forefather of Chinese civilization. He also formulated etiquette’s and regulations for people, reducing the barbaric marriage by plundering. All that could easily be said of the Patriarch Noah as well!

 

Was Fu Xi Father Sin of the Chinese?

hittiteshoeHITTITE SHOE with upturned toes

 

OR was Fu Xi the most ancient patriarch of the Chinese “Father Sin” — son of Canaan & grandson of Ham — the patriarch of the Sinites? Sin was the brother of Heth, the patriarch of the Hittites who lived in Anatolia (now Turkey) but after the Bronze Age Collapse they were defeated and dispersed mixing with conquering tribes. Hittites had long pony tails and turned up shoes!

 

However Sin and his Sinites were totally lost from history. There are no ancient Middle Eastern records or memorials left of them. Many think that they left the Sumerian homeland already very early, traveling across the Silk Route Eastward and fathered the ancient Chinese and other tribes. Study of ancient China and its language is still called ‘Sinology‘ today, while the ancient Arabs called the Chinese the people of “Sin” & the Greeks called them ‘Sinae’.

 

Nü-Wa Chinese Name for Noah

Nü-Wa, during the remote legendary period of China, had powerful abilities. It is said that when a great flood took place that the heaven collapsed, and the earth sank under water, while wild beasts cruelly killed common people. Then Nü-Wa repaired the heaven/sky (same character Tian!) with five or seven colored rocks and killed the brutal beasts.

 

All this coincides nicely with the Hebrew scriptures, where the windows of heaven were broken open! After the flood reached its peak they were closed up, and after the water had retreated God showed Noah a beautiful seven-colored rainbow in that broken sky! It seemed to have appeared for the first time in history, the earth being newly covered with clouds!

 

Most likely some special ante-diluvial condition prevented clouds or water vapour projecting a rainbow, as well as a clear view of the sun which for some odd reason suddenly became much more visible! So much so that Noah’s global descendants, mostly those fathered by the family rebel Ham even began to worship it, and him as “Hamon Ra the Sun God!”

 

Instead of worshipping the saving God of their Grandfather Noah, they became ardent Sun worshippers! Egyptians, Canaanites, those early megalith builders in Peru, Mexico, Atlantis, Dwarka, China, and in many other places all over the globe, they all began to worship “that magnificent red sun” shining between the horns of their beloved “mother of all life!” The Holy Cow! Now you know where India got that idea via their early Indus Valley civilisation, and Dravidians? From Ham and his Pharaohs!

 

whitecow

 

They even had special sun boxes in many megalithic structures and the solar Temple of Amon-Ra at Karnak (Thebes – at present, Luxor city) in Egypt built some time after 2000 B.C. near the present day Luxor was located in such a way as to align with the summer solstice sunrise and is considered the day of the “manifestation of Ra”.

 

Yet for all she tried Nü-Wa could not fix the “tilt of the sky” and winter, spring, summer, and fall became permanent! Obviously there was no tilt in the Earth’s axis before the Deluge, as witnessed in the wood-sample found in the mysterious ship-shape in Armenia many believe to be the 5000 year old remains of Noahs’ Ark. That wood has no rings in it!

 

Nü-Wa and Fu Xi also used clay to create humans and human society by simulating their own appearance. That makes sense when you consider that all of us are the offspring of Noah and his wife, their children created in their likeness!

 

Nü-Wa also invented a kind of musical instrument called reed pipe wind instrument so that she is esteemed as a musical goddess. Moreover, she created the marriage system to enable humans to multiply offspring, so she is called the marriage goddess, which is very likely, because of her being the mother of all resultant humans. I’m sure they all wanted to be married by Noah and his wife!

 

And so, all this taken into consideration, everything certainly starts to make a lot more sense than some of the myths and embellishments that sprung up in the minds of the early Chinese storytellers long ago. You can hardly blame them, not having any other comparative historical records to consult with, as we have today.

 

Again, evidence has come to light that Noah, Shem, Ham & Japheth were real historical people, who built a real historical boat, and survived a real genuine global flood, no matter what skeptic intellectuals are saying against it in the name of “science” falsely so-called. Certainly not my kind of science!

 

But there is one even more important thing we can conclude from all this, and that is that we need to remember that we are all one family! And that we, as Chinese or Westerners, should all reverence and respect our great great great great great grandfather “Fu Xi Nü Wa” and his Father God! And each and every one of us as well, for we all turn out to be brothers and sisters! True or not?

 

God bless you brother! God bless you sister!

 

Love and Peace! Lu.

 

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中國神話的苗族說明證實了諾亞洪水的歷史

每一位在中國、台灣以及大中華地區的學子們很早就已經學過中國的始祖和歷史。 但大部分的中國古老歷史都被修飾美化超過近4500年而且演變成了神話。因此現今21世紀的中國人對於他們最早的祖先相當模糊，若不是這篇文章裡揭露這有 趣的發現，直到末日前，他們可能對自己最早的祖先仍然是模糊不清的。

三皇五帝

 

最早記載的 ”三皇五帝” 就是指 ”三位尊者” 或是三位君主或王，以及 ”五位皇帝” 。 這些3+5神般的王或半仙人據稱他們運用法力來提昇人類的生活，也因為他們崇高的品德讓他們得以長壽並統治世界帶來長久的和平。 這三位王者分別為伏羲、女媧和神農氏。但在別的文獻記載中女媧通常是被五皇之一的黃帝取而代之。實際上依據資料的來源，有6~7種已知的說法列出到底誰才 是三皇五帝。很多這些資料來源都是在實際事件之後的好幾個朝代所寫的，因此多少會被扭曲

黃帝

那誰會是伏羲呢?

 

假如讓我們來看伏和羲這兩字，他們的發音雖然和其他歷史記載中的名字不太接近，但我們知道”伏”意謂著”屈身”以及”羲”代表著”犧牲”的意思，我們便可以聯想到一個人屈身於動物貢品前面。

 

根據苗族和希伯來兩者的記載，在諾亞的方舟停下後，他便告訴他的家人應該要對神感恩，所以他們烤了一些動物來祭拜神，那諾亞原來的中文名字會有可能是”伏羲女媧”嗎? 意謂著”諾亞向神朝貢”?

 

或者也有可能是”伏”指的是”父親”諾亞? 從”父”的”父親”意思轉變到”伏地”，且在差不多同一個時間，女媧變成了女性而伏羲女媧從一個人分成兩個人? 真相只有神知道! 這或許也解釋了為什麼他們的尾巴會交纏在一起?

 

再者為什麼伏羲和女媧還有神農都可以那麼長壽呢? 因為根據聖經創世紀裡所記載的，諾亞的妻子和3個兒子也都非常非常的長壽，而根據希臘” Sibylline Oracles”記錄，就連Shem、Ham 和 Japheth的妻子都活的非常久超過一世紀! 諾亞就活了近1000年(事實上是960年)!

 

Shem(神)(lo-shen神農 or Shen Nong shi神農氏)活了整整600年，根據聖經所記載，假如你將35-40年訂為一代，那600年就將近是15到17代，據稱黃帝是神農的後代,也是他的朋友及之後學者，那黃帝有可能就是神農的(第17代)曾孫子。

 

神(shem)被視為大部分亞洲人及部分的歐洲部落的先父，以下是一些在世界各地發現的單一DNA族群，藍色D為南方的中國人和橘色O為漢人，兩者分別為不同的族群。

HuangDi-YellowEmperor1-201x300皇 帝或黃帝(姓黃)，認為如此比較像傳奇人物而非神話，也因為他被視為真實歷史人物以及在夏朝前的第一位皇帝，因此伏羲、女媧和神農氏被視為神話中的人物因 為較不為人所知。 黃帝又名軒轅氏，是五位傳奇皇帝中的領袖。黃帝和他的兄弟炎帝一同被認為是中國人的祖先，所以後代的中國人也被稱之為炎黃子孫。(炎帝和黃帝的子孫) 目前中國學術界普遍主張，黃帝是出生於有熊(現今湖南省新鄭)並安葬於陜西的橋山(現今黃陵縣)。黃帝及炎帝兩者都是中國兩大族的祖先，也在之後再度融而 為一。 早期的歷史學家”司馬遷”則記載黃帝事實上是神農氏(簡稱神農)的後裔，雖然只約8到17代的血統，儘管在這中間相隔久遠，黃帝仍被視為是神農的朋友和學 者，很明顯地據說非常的長壽。

在很多中國古老的書籍裡都有記載著伏羲及女媧的傳說，如易經、楚辭集注、淮南子以及山海經，這些傳說有著深遠的影響力且一直被流傳著，這些神話的有部分觀點對這個新苗族及不同族群間是非常有意義的。

 

故事裡有說到，伏羲不只是東方部落或三皇五帝的領袖，同時也是樣樣精通非常聰明的人。他創造了八卦和模擬蜘蛛網而演變出的魚網，他不只會做樂器也很 會做好吃的飯菜，更對中藥上做出了許多貢獻，身為中國人民文明的始祖，他更替人民規劃出了禮儀規範，變革婚姻習俗，倡導男聘女嫁的婚俗禮節，使血緣婚改為 族外婚，這些和諾亞都很相似。

 

女媧在古老的中國傳奇裡有著強大的法力，傳說中大洪水時天崩塌，地球被下沉到水裡面，各式猛獸都跑出來虐殺人類，女媧用七彩石補天及捕殺這些猛獸。

 

這和希伯來文聖經裡的創世紀都有些雷同的地方，上面說到”天堂之窗裂開”! 當大洪水淹到最高點時窗就關起來了，當水乾的時候，神讓諾亞看到了天上的七色彩虹，因這是歷史上的第一次。地球被雲給蓋住，很可能因為天空上面外殼的水的 遮蓋這些紫外線防老化，所以人類可以活得更久一點且還沒有雲彩!

 

女媧和伏羲也同樣用泥土以他們的外表來造人類社會，那這樣就會很合理如果我們都是諾亞和他妻子的子孫，他們的孩子都很像他們的爸媽，女媧也發明一種樂器叫簧管吹奏樂器，所以她也被稱為音樂女神，因為她作為所有人類的母親，我敢肯定他們都希望能嫁給諾亞和他的妻子!

 

綜合以上我們所提到的，所有事情似乎比那經過修飾過後的古老神話更加合理。我們也無法怪罪當時這些傳說為何沒辦法像我們現在可以找到其他歷史記載來做比對。

 

再者，所有證據都指向諾亞、神(Shem) 、漢(Ham)和賈費斯(Japheth)都是那些曾蓋過方舟和真的從大洪水中生還的真實歷史人物，無論說什麼所謂的知識分子在科學的角度上仍還是持懷疑的態度。

 

ancientpatriarchs.wordpress.com/2016/04/24/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9...

  

This splendid sage lived for 197 years, a number of presumably tremendous significance. Now he is in Heaven where he looks after Cosmic Harmony and Contemplation, which makes him very popular in DAOist circles.FU-XI is very strong on home improvements, and also spiritual improvements. He’s often seen with a carpenter’s square — which symbolizes both as he created the Eight Trigrams for Divination.Fu Xi 伏羲, also written 伏犧 or 伏戲, also called Mi Xi 宓羲 (also written 宓犧), or Pao Xi 包犧, (also written 包羲, 炮犧 or 庖犧), is one of the mythical Three Augusts 三皇 or Five Emperors 五帝. He is therefore known as Xi Huang 犧皇 or Huang Xi 皇羲 "August Shepherd". His cognomen is Tai Hao 太皞 (also written 太昊) "Great Brightness", his tribal name Huang Xiong 黄熊氏. He was the brother and husband of Nü Wa 女媧. The couple was, according to legend, the creators of the world. Han period 漢 (206 BCE-220 CE) stone bricks therefore depict Fu Xi and Nü wa with a human body ending in intertwining dragon tails, each of them holding an instrument of architects, namely scissors (ju 榘) and rulers (gui 規). The story of the couple was very widespread in southern China, where the Miao people 苗 saw themselves as descendants of Fu Xi and Nü Wa. The two of them were, in other words, the parents of mankind. Fu Xi is also the deity representing the east and reigning the element wood (mu 木). According to the books Huainanzi 淮南子 and Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋, he is assisted by the spirit Gou Mang 句芒 who pull out the sprouts of all plants in spring. A story in the Shanhaijing 山海經 says that the mother of Fu Xi was Lady Huaxu 華胥氏 who conceived when she tread on the footpint of the God of Thunder (Leishen 雷神). Fu Xi is credited by several inventions, like the Eight Trigrams (bagua 八卦) used for prognostication. Each one of the trigrams represented a formation of the cosm, like Heaven and Earth, mountains and rivers, wind and thunder, and so on. According to the book Baopuzi 抱朴子 Fu Xi is also credited with the invention of the fishing net. In the song collection Chuci 楚辭 he is called the inventor of music. The book Yishi 繹史 says he invented matrimonial rites that are otherwise attributed to his sister Nü Wa. The Hetu ting fuzuo 河圖挺輔佐 praises him as the one who told men how to use the fire.

Emperor Tai Hao is not always identified with Fu Xi. According to other legends, Tai Hao had the surname Feng 風. His officials had the designations of dragons. His residence was Chen 陳 (modern Huaiyang 淮陽, Henan), and he reigned over the lower course of the Yellow River. The families of this region with the surnames Ren 任, Su 宿, Xugou 須句 and Zhuansou 頊臾 (rather the ruling houses of these minor fiefs of the Spring and Autumn period 春秋, 770-5th cent. BCE) are said to be his descendants. Tai Hao or Fu Xi are also called Green Emperor (Qing Di 青帝 or Cang Di 蒼帝) and ruled over the East.

www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Myth/personsfuxi.html

 

"In the sign on the right hand, the etymologists know how to read a precept, and the right hand is used for eating. The right hand is therefore appropriate to the things of the earth, and the element D is found in the sign adopted for the Left This square is the symbol of all the arts, especially the religious and magical arts, and is the insignia of Fuxi, the first sovereign , The first soothsayer, Fou-hi is the husband or brother of Niu-koua, whose compass is the insignia. This primordial couple invented marriage also to say good morals. The pictures represent Fou-hi and Niu-koua holding each other by the lower part of the body, and Niu-koua, who occupies the right, holds the compass with his right hand. Left, holds the square with the left hand The square, which produces the Square, emblem Earth, can not be insigned to until after an exchange hierogamic of attributes; , the square rightly deserves to be the emblem of the sorcerer is , and especially of Fuxi, a scholar in the bones of heaven as in those of the earth . Fou-hi can therefore carry the square of the left hand, and the left hand (with the square) evoke the Royal Work, the first hierogamy, the magico-religious activity. The Chinese do not strongly oppose religion to magic, any more than pure to impure. The sacred and the profane do not themselves form two distinct genres. The Right can be devoted to secular works and earthly activities without becoming the antagonist of the Left. Chinese thought is concerned not with contraries, but with contrasts, alternations, correlatives, and hierogamic exchanges of attributes."

Marcel Granet

The war with Zhurong tRAh, banged his head against Mount Buzhou RR Ill the pillar of the sky and the terrestrial a until it broke d 25 There are numerous examples showing how excessive anger, or even joy, can be delete- rious. In another example, the viscount of Zhu furious that one of his employees could inadvertently fell into a brazicr and was burnt alivc xie Hogwei on the other hand, died in a fit of rage while playing weigi, when his oppo nent, on the point of losing, was given a hint by a guest watching the game broad meaning of also encompasses the concepts of fury and rage, as is made clear in the phrase "unable to control one's rage" HIB), to contain one's fury" (8 RBJiA), and "in a towering rage (s HUR). It is also used to refer to the fury of elements, as in "the howl of the vio- ent wind's blowin (1EH89t). In various chéngyii it is described as rage (ili&Z& US), fierce and frightening ourning rage (L & E). Indiscriminate arbitrarily complain about what is here and there U8 illi B), and "venting one's anger on others" TN. It can be hidden (i Tri nursing one's anger and rancour"; to be furious but not dare to speak out), manifested ("showing one's rage th), or modulated ("restraining one's anger at home and venting it outside.

books.google.fr/books?id=lQ55CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA466&lp...(%E4%B8%8D%E5%91%A8%E5%B1%B1&source=bl&ots=28Vw4K4HLv&sig=BSxz_Zn8jm88IhvIhaKdOEeI4GM&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjigJ7h357TAhUBvBQKHQfyAZoQ6AEILDAC#v=onepage&q=Mont%20Buzhou%20(%E4%B8%8D%E5%91%A8%E5%B1%B1&f=false

Depiction of the original sin by Hughes Songe

 

Forbidden fruit is a phrase that originates from the Book of Genesis concerning Adam and Eve in Genesis 2:16–17. In the narrative, Adam and Eve eat the fruit of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden, which they had been commanded not to do by God. As a metaphor, the phrase typically refers to any indulgence or pleasure that is considered illegal or immoral.

15 Answers

Mike Reddy

Mike Reddy, former Ex Forensic Investigator student of Religion

Updated Mar 1, 2019 · Author has 1.7k answers and 122k answer views

This story is written in cryptic language and is not intended to be taken literally. The “forbidden fruit” is a metaphor for something else.

 

According to several Jewish and Christian commentators:

 

The “forbidden fruit” in this context is the sex act. Because Eve had partaken of the forbidden fruit she was cursed to suffer pain during childbirth.

 

She was not yet “married” to Adam and she had no knowledge of sex. The “Serpent” a metaphor for a Man like animal, seduced Eve. Eve conceived by the Serpent and had sex with Adam and also conceived.

 

Cain is believed to be of the devil because he was the son of the Serpent. Abel was the son of Adam. later both groups (Adams lineage and Cain’s lineage) would mix and it is believed that we are the products of this hybrid race of humans.

 

Lest, readers think I am sucking this out of my thumb, the story of the Serpent Seed Doctrine first appeared in the Gospel of Phillip in the first century, and was preached by certain Jewish Rabbis in the 5th and 9th century. These writings appear in the 9th century Jewish Midrash and Kaballah.

 

Later it was preached by a leading Christian evangelist in the 18th century, and revived in the 19th and 20th century by the controversial and world famous (or infamous) Reverend William Branham.

 

Did Adam and Eve have bellybuttons?

Why did God use Adam's rib to create Eve?

Did God set Adam and Eve up to fail knowing that they'd eat the fruit?

Why did Adam and Eve eat that damn fruit, anyway?

How do we know that the fruit Adam and Eve consumed was Apple?

Crowly Mathew Arackal

Crowly Mathew Arackal, The message of Bible is the word of God.

Answered Apr 29, 2019 · Author has 9.1k answers and 7.1m answer views

Originally Answered: What fruit did Adam and Eve actually eat?

If you really need to understand what fruit it was please read Genesis Chapter 3 once.

 

Now let us re-read it for clarity.

 

1Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

 

Serpent is used to represent the Evil. Why not a monkey? We will see this later.

 

He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”

 

God had asked Adam not to eat from the tree in the midst of the garden (the tree of knowledge of good and evil). Satan knows it. At least the Satan had seen both Adam and Eve eating fruits of other trees. But still Satan asks “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’” This is a harmless question that compels Eve to answer.

 

Here the evil made an opportunity for a dialogue. A harmless dialogue. Eve did not see anything threatening in the question. So she feels free to answer the Satan. The first target of evil is achieved. Starting a dialogue with the woman! Is it not the way every evil enter people’s mind and influence them? It appears as something harmless, and slowly lead people into temptation and then in to sin or do something unwanted.

 

And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

 

See, Eve is fully aware of the command. The command was very clear and simple. Both Adam and Eve had been enjoying the life in the Garden of Eden and they obeyed it so far. And so far they never thought of eating from that tree. They simply avoided it. They do not want to disobey God.

 

4But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

 

“You will be like God”, you will be “knowing good and evil”. What a temptation? They always knew God and they respected Him, revered Him, venerated Him. They looked at God as their father. Never thought of becoming like Him! It may took some time to grow the seed of temptation in their minds.

 

6So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

 

This is a process of justifying own decision. Once we wanted to do something evil we will start balancing the merits and demerits of proceeding with it. Here Eve is finding justifications to eat the fruit. She ate it not because it was good for food (it was the same yesterday) a delight to the eyes (it was the same yesterday). But remember she ignored the value of being obedient to God.

 

They knew a lot of things including it was God who created them, entrusted the whole creations to him for maintaining them. God was interested in their happiness and God visited them very often! But after all they trusted the Satan and took God for a liar!! God had clearly said they would die if they eat from the tree, but Satan said they will not die. They trusted the Satan more than God who was known to them.

 

Is it not true even in our case? We all know it is our parents who want our safety and well being more than anybody else. Then comes our teachers and our good friends. But many a times we ignore the guidelines given by them and we proceed to embrace evil not to become God, but to enjoy some pleasure, satisfy our greed, revenge to somebody etc. Evil always comes with sugar coated. It always comes with some kind of satisfaction. Is it not meaningful even to our lives as it was to Adam and Eve?

 

7Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

 

See what did the disobedience did to them? It changed their vision. They were always naked. But it was acceptable to them. Then why they “sewed fig leaves together” and try to cover themselves? It is very clear that they spoiled the relationships by disobedience, sin. They spoiled the relationship with God, with oneself, and with each other. They could not accept themselves, then how they can present themselves to others?

 

Reading this some interpret that the sin they did was sexual, or the sin was sexual intercourse. No. It was not. God created everything as male and female so that they will multiply. It is true in the case of Adam and Eve also. Now let us read further.

 

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

 

When our parents or authorities are away and as they come back we will be happy to greet them. But we will be hiding our-self, or keep away from them, if we did some damages in their absence. It means we spoiled the relationship with something undesirable we did, in short we disobeyed!

 

9But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

 

We feel we are not presentable before you! If one cannot accept himself how do he present himself to others?

 

Being naked also explains helplessness. Ancient Indian scriptures use the word ‘nakedness’ to indicate the ones who are out of protection of four Vedas. It points to the ones who lost the protection of God.

 

11He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

 

Did you disobey me?

 

12The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

 

When Adam saw Eve for first see what he said about Eve: “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”. Wow, he is accepting her as himself. What a love, what an acceptance! But after they spoiled their relationship with God Adam now says “the woman whom you gave to be with me”. See how detached he is now from Eve. He also sounds as if what happened was the mistake of God!

 

Eve says “the serpent deceived me, and I ate”. Remember the only knowledge they gained by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was that Satan was telling a lie!! What a pity?

 

What did really happen here? What is this knowledge of good and evil? It is nothing other than rejection of God. It is the stand “I know what is good and evil” and you need not try to direct me or teach me. “I know” so I do not want you any more! Is this not happening in everybody’s life? We had moments when we disobeyed our true well wishers thinking our knowledge is better and rejected or refused to listen to God, parents, or other well wishers and gave ear to evil.

 

14The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

 

Answering a common question why snake travel on its belly!

 

15I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

 

The first prophesy about someone who will overpower evil. The first prophesy about Jesus Christ.

 

16To the woman he said,“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”

 

Answering a common question why childbearing is painful?

 

17And to Adam he said,“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

 

Life on earth is painful and difficult today only because we are away from God and we sinned against him.

 

20The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.g 21And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

 

“And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them”. Adam and Eve sinned against God, disobeyed God and went away from Him saying they know what is good and evil and they do not need the guidance of God anymore. But still the loving Father, God accept them and protect them.

 

22Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

 

God protected the tree of life for his love for human beings. Being away from God and eating from the tree of life, they will live for ever away from God and their life in this earth is not easy. So God give them an opportunity to go back to God after death in this world and then have the fruit from the tree of life! God wanted men to be with God for ever.

 

Why snake, why not monkey? This part of the Bible was written during the time of king Solomon. In those days the greatest damage they faced to the Jews was from Canaanites who also worshiped snake. Their feasts were an opportunity for adultery and liquor. The people of Israel also were attracted to these celebrations. The writer wanted to keep the Israelis away from worshiping snake and joining such celebrations.

 

Is it Historical? Genesis chapters from 12 onward have a historical background. But chapters 1 to 11 deal with prehistory. It is written to convey a very clear message and it is packed with intelligence. The message is word of God. There is no meaning in asking if the fruit was apple or orange! Same is the case with the question why God planted the tree in the Garden? Man disobeyed God and went away from Him. The message is very clear to both a scholar as well as a child. Both understand it in their own way.

 

I do not claim I have explained everything in Chapter 3 of Genesis. There are much more. But what we need to understand is that anything in the Bible have a meaning and a message.

 

There are good and bad, good people and bad people, good events and bad events recorded in the Bible. The good is to follow. The bad is lessons. So doing something and saying ‘it is written in bible’ does not justify it.

 

Judging Bible should be done after studying it from the right resources. Bible use different forms of literature. Metaphor is one of them. Bible carry poetry, drama, history, apocalyptic writings, etc. It is the history of salvation.

 

While reading Bible it is fine we picture what is written. That is the elementary meaning but still give a message. When you read again you will understand it is not just something that happened in the past but have a relevance TODAY in the world you are living in, and it has a meaning and message for you.

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Thando Xaluva

Thando Xaluva

Answered Sep 28, 2018 · Author has 259 answers and 16k answer views

it's not the fruit that matters it is the knowledge that the fruit held. such knowledge was forbidden, that is self awareness.

 

ie. it is when man became aware of himself, but also became aware of time and so had to be given physical form and live out his day's on earth, because he now had days to count when before there was no time and no awareness of self.

 

no physical body, no aging, no future, no past, only the present and what was “right” with consciousness.

 

this isn't like what the animals had to go through mind you, the animals had to partake in survival of the fittest. man was simply given form physical on the back of an already existing creation, hence the missing link.

 

we are still in the image of the creator mind you because we can detach from the physical and experience all time via dreams or narcotics, though not at will. we are capable of creation and we do this in more aspects than people care to think, (this very post is in the spirit of the image of the creator, I manifest it incorporeal from the ether that is consciousness and bring it forth into the physical with either my hands or my voice.) we also shape people around us like clay, sometimes in machiavellian fashion pending a malevolent turn.

 

enter chaos to disrupt the perfect order that was, in the form of a snake, specifically aimed at the women, (explanation for this choice by the ancients is pending another less PC era) and so we were banished from the land of the incorporeal and had to experience time as the creation itself does, but not as the creator does.

 

one can only hope this makes sense lol

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Brown Mosa

Brown Mosa, Bakery Supervisor (2016-present)

Answered Apr 6, 2018

Why should it be an apple when apples were never mentioned in the Word of God in reference to the Garden of Eden? Although the Bible speaks that they were not to eat of the TREE of the knowledge of good and evil, but never can we find in the entire Scriptures that it was an apple that have caused our transgressions and fall (Genesis 2:17). It will be difficult for many readers to believe this, but of a truth, it was SEX or ADULTERY with the SERPENT that caused the fall of EVE and ADAM, through which sin came into the world and brought each of us under its curse.

 

Here is where we receive the true revelation of the SERPENT’S SEED, and here is what really happened in the Garden of Eden. The Word says that Eve was beguiled by the serpent. She was actually seduced by the serpent. Satan took advantage of the serpent’s physical characteristics to use him to beguile Eve. Remember that it was Lucifer’s ambition to build himself a greater kingdom than Michael did in heaven, before he was kicked out on earth. And still, he wanted to pursue his evil plan in this world after that. And the only way for Satan to accomplish what he wanted to do was to enter the serpent in Eden even as he entered by evil spirits into the swine at Gadara. He could not have a child directly by Eve as did God by Mary, so he entered into the serpent and then beguiled Eve. He seduced her and by her did Satan have a child vicariously - CAIN, the seed of the serpent, who bore the full spiritual characteristics of Satan and the animalistic ( sensual, fleshly) characteristic of the serpent, and a murderer, too.

 

It says in Genesis 3:1, “Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.” This beast was so close to a human being (and yet was pure animal) that he could reason and talk. He was close to a man. He was almost man. He was an upright creature and was somewhat in between a chimpanzee and a man, but closer to a man. He was so close to being human that his seed could, and did mingle with that of the woman and cause her to conceive. Before Adam ever had a carnal knowledge of Eve, the serpent had that knowledge ahead of him. And that one born of it was CAIN. “Cain was of (born of, begotten of) that “Wicked One”, according to I John 3:12.

 

Notice what God said to the SERPENT in the garden. Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed, It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel.” If we give credit to the Word that the woman did have a seed, then the serpent must have surely had a SEED also. If the SEED of the woman was a MAN-CHILD apart from the man, then the SEED of the serpent will have to be in the same pattern, and that is another male must be born apart from human male instrumentality.

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Contents

1Biblical narrative

2Identifications and depictions

2.1Apple

2.2Grape

2.3Fig

2.4Pomegranate

2.5Wheat

2.6Mushroom

3Parallel concepts

3.1Ancient Greeks

4Other views

4.1Islamic traditions

5See also

6References

7External links

Biblical narrative[edit]

Main articles: Tree of the knowledge of good and evil and Original sin

The narrative of the Book of Genesis places the first man and woman (Adam and Eve) in a garden where they may eat the fruit of many trees but are forbidden by God to eat from the "tree of knowledge of good and evil".

 

And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

 

— Genesis 2:16–17[1]

In Genesis 3, a serpent tempts the woman:

 

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.

 

— Genesis 3:4–5[2]

Desiring this wisdom, the woman eats the forbidden fruit and gives some to the man who also eats it. They become aware of their "nakedness" and make fig-leaf clothes, and hide themselves when God approaches. God curses The Serpent, The Woman then The Man, and expels the Man and Woman from the garden and thereby from eternal life.

 

Identifications and depictions[edit]

 

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The word fruit appears in Hebrew as פֶּ֫רִי (pərî ). As to which fruit may have been the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden, possibilities include apple, grape, pomegranate,[3] fig,[4] carob,[3] etrog or citron,[3] pear, and mushrooms. The pseudepigraphic Book of Enoch describes the tree of knowledge: "It was like a species of the Tamarind tree, bearing fruit which resembled grapes extremely fine; and its fragrance extended to a considerable distance. I exclaimed, How beautiful is this tree, and how delightful is its appearance!" (1 Enoch 31:4).

 

An alternative view is that the forbidden fruit is metaphorical, possibly the fruit of the womb, i.e. sex and procreation from the tree of life. In his Autobiography of a Yogi, Hindu spiritual teacher Paramhansa Yogananda cites an interpretation by his master Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri that the Garden of Eden refers to man's body, with the fruit in the center being that of the sexual organs.[5]

 

Apple[edit]

In Western Europe, the fruit was often depicted as an apple. This was possibly because of a misunderstanding of – or a pun on – mălum, a native Latin noun which means evil (from the adjective malus), and mālum, another Latin noun, borrowed from Greek μῆλον, which means apple. In the Vulgate, Genesis 2:17 describes the tree as de ligno autem scientiae boni et mali : "but of the tree [literally wood ] of knowledge of good and evil" (mali here is the genitive of malum).

 

The larynx, specifically the laryngeal prominence that joins the thyroid cartilage, in the human throat is noticeably more prominent in males and was consequently called an Adam's apple, from a notion that it was caused by the forbidden fruit getting stuck in Adam's throat as he swallowed it.[6]

 

Grape[edit]

Rabbi Meir says that the fruit was a grape, made into wine.[7] The Zohar explains similarly that Noah attempted (but failed) to rectify the sin of Adam by using grape wine for holy purposes.[8][9] The midrash of Bereishit Rabah states that the fruit was grape,[10] or squeezed grapes (perhaps alluding to wine).[11] Chapter 4 of 3 Baruch, also known as the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, designates the fruit as the grape. 3 Baruch is a first to third century text that is either Christian or Jewish with Christian interpolations. [12]

 

Fig[edit]

See also: Figs in the Bible

The Bible states in the book of Genesis that Adam and Eve had made their own fig leaf clothing: "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves girdles".[13] Based on that reference, the forbidden fruit may have been the fig.

 

Rabbi Nechemia, based on the Talmud, supports the idea that the fruit was a fig, as it was from fig leaves that God made garments for Adam and Eve upon expelling them from the Garden. "By that with which they were made low were they rectified."[14]

 

Since the fig is a long-standing symbol of female sexuality, it enjoyed a run as a favorite understudy to the apple as the forbidden fruit during the Italian Renaissance. The most famous depiction of the fig as the forbidden fruit was painted by Michelangelo Buonarroti in his masterpiece fresco on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.[15]

 

Pomegranate[edit]

Proponents of the theory that the Garden of Eden was located somewhere in what is now known as the Middle East suggest that the fruit was actually a pomegranate, a plant indigenous from Iran to the Himalayas and cultivated since ancient times.[16] The association of the pomegranate with knowledge of the underworld as provided in the Ancient Greek legend of Persephone may also have given rise to an association with knowledge of the otherworld, tying-in with knowledge that is forbidden to mortals.

 

Wheat[edit]

Rabbi Yehuda proposes that the fruit was wheat, because "a baby does not know to call its mother and father until it tastes the taste of grain."[7]

 

In Hebrew, wheat is "khitah", which has been considered to be a pun on "khet", meaning "sin".[3]

 

Although commonly confused with a seed, in the study of botany a wheat berry is technically a simple fruit known as a caryopsis, which has the same structure as an apple. Just as an apple is a fleshy fruit that contains seeds, a grain is a dry fruit that absorbs water and contains a seed. The confusion comes from the fact that the fruit of a grass happens to have a form similar to some seeds.[17]

 

Mushroom[edit]

A fresco in the 13th-century Plaincourault Abbey in France depicts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, flanking a Tree of Knowledge that has the appearance of a gigantic Amanita muscaria, a psychoactive mushroom.[18] Terence McKenna proposed that the forbidden fruit was a reference to psychotropic plants and fungi, specifically psilocybin mushrooms, which he theorized played a central role in the evolution of the human brain.[19] Earlier, in a well-documented and heavily criticized study,[20][21] John M. Allegro proposed the mushroom as the forbidden fruit.[22]

 

Parallel concepts[edit]

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Ancient Greeks[edit]

The similarities of the story to the story of Pandora's box were identified by early Christians such as Tertullian, Origen, and Gregory of Nazianzus.[23]

 

Other views[edit]

Islamic traditions[edit]

See also: Adam and Eve § Islamic tradition, and Original sin § Islamic view

According to the Quran, Surah Al-A'raf 7:19 describes Adam and his wife in Paradise where they may eat what is provided, except that they may not eat from one particular tree, lest they be considered Zalimun (wrongdoers).[24] Surah Ibrahim 14:26 describes the forbidden tree as an evil tree that is forbidden for guidance.[25]

 

Surah Al-A'raf 7:22 describes the ˈibliːs (Satan) who misled them with deception, and then it was Adam who initiated eating from the forbidden tree. Then when they tasted of the tree, that which was hidden from them of their shame became manifest to them and they began to cover themselves with the leaves of Paradise. And their Lord called out to them: "Did I not forbid you that tree and tell you; Verily, Shaitân is an open enemy unto you?" (Quran 7:19). The Quran holds both Adam and his wife accountable for eating the forbidden fruit. As punishment, they were forced to leave the garden, banished from Heaven and sent to the Earth where they were forgiven after repenting.

 

The fruit is commonly either identified with wheat or with grapevine in Islamic tradition.[26]

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_fruit

"This was the unfortunate child who, on December 25,1886, went to Notre-Dame de Paris for Christmas services. I was then beginning to write and it seemed to me that in Catholic ceremonies, considered with a superior dilettantism, I would find an appropriate excitement and the subject of some decadent exercises. It was in these arrangements that, bent and shoved by the crowd, I attended the high Mass with mediocre pleasure. Then, having nothing better to do, I returned to Vespers. The children of the master's degree in white dresses and the students of the small seminary of St Nicolas du Chardonnet who attended them, were singing what I later knew to be the Magnificat. I myself was standing in the crowd, next to the second pillar at the entrance of the choir on the right side of the sacristy. And then came the event that dominated my whole life. In an instant my heart was touched and I believed. I believed, with such a force of adherence, such an upheaval of my whole being, such a powerful conviction, such a certainty leaving no room for any kind of doubt, that since then, all the books, all the reasoning, all the chance of a troubled life, have not been able to shake my faith, nor, indeed, to touch it".

 

The Photography of Christ:Dear Sir, I read with the strongest interest the opuscule that you had the kind thought to send me: Christ in his passion revealed by the Holy Shroud of Turin. I have the striking images that accompany it4 are considered at length.. I don' t Wishes it to reach the general public and help Christianity in France to realize the importance of this religious event which is discovery.

photograph of the Holy Shroud of Turin. It's so important that

I can only compare it to a second resurrection. I am referring by the thought to this sinister period from 1890 to 1910,

where my youth and my mature age passed, a period of materialism and materialism. of aggressive and triumphant scepticism, dominated by the figure of Ernest. Renan.. How much effort, then, to obscure the divinity of Christ, to veiling this unbearable face, to flatten the Christian fact, to erase it

the contours under the criss-crossed strips of erudition and doubt! The little pieces of the Gospel were no more than a mass of incoherent and suspicious materials, where every amateur was going to search the elements of a construction as pretentious as it is temporary. The figure of Jesus was drowned until it disappeared in a fog of historical, mystagogical and romantic literature. I mean, we had successful! Jesus Christ, it was only a pale outline, a few words, a few words. lineaments fluid and ready to go. Madeleine could now go to the tomb. His Lord was taken from him. And now, after centuries gone by, the obliterated image suddenly reappears. underneath the fabric with appalling truthfulness, with authenticity, no more. only an irrefutable document, but a current fact. The interval of the nineteen centuries is destroyed all at once. The past is transferred in the immediate future. "What our eyes have seen," says St. John,"what we have seen," says St. John.

let us at leisure consider, what our hands have done with the Word of life, what we have done, what we have done with it.

is not only an official document, as would be, for example, an official signed and initialled: it is a verbatim record of the proceedings, a large judgment duly signed and initialled.

a decal, it's an image bearing her own caution. Plus

that an image is a presence! More than a presence, it's a photograph, something printed and unalterable. And more than just a photograph, it's a "negative ", i. e. a hidden activity (a bit like the Sacred Scripture itself, will I take the liberty of suggesting) and able, under the objective, to achieve positive evidence!

All of a sudden,in 1898, after Strauss, after Renan, at Loisy6's very time.and as a coronation of this prodigious work of excavation and exegesis.realized by the century that will end, we are in possession of the photograph of Christ! Like that!

It's Him! It's His face! This face that so many saints and prophets have been consumed with the desire to contemplate, following this word of the Word of God.

Psalm:"My face has sought You: Lord, I will seek Your face ". It is in us! From this life, we are allowed as long as we want to

to consider the Son of God face to face! Because a photograph is not a portrait of a man's hand. Between that face and us there was no one as a human intermediary. It is He who materially impregnated this plate, and it is this plate in turn that comes to take possession of our spirit What a face! We understand these executioners who couldn't stand it. and who, in order to overcome it, are still trying today, as they can, to hide it. I will express my thoughts by saying that what we brings this wonderful appearance, it is even less a vision of overwhelming majesty that the feeling in us, beneath sin, of our complete and radical indignity, the exterminating conscience of our nothingness. There are in these closed eyes, in this definitive figure and as a mark of eternity, something destructive. Like a sword strike in the heart that brings death, it brings consciousness. Something so horrible and beautiful that there's no way to get him.to escape only through worship.

Photography has given us back this body that the greatest mystics have barely dared to consider, literally martyred since the plant. from feet to the top, all wrapped in whiplashes, all dressed up.of this sacred flesh has escaped. to the atrocious inquisition of Justice, these straps armed with lead and lead

hooks on it unleashed!

 

He was born in Villeneuve-sur-Fère (Aisne), into a family of farmers and government officials. His father, Louis-Prosper, dealt in mortgages and bank transactions. His mother, the former Louise Cerveaux, came from a Champagne family of Catholic farmers and priests. Having spent his first years in Champagne, he studied at the lycée of Bar-le-Duc and at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in 1881, when his parents moved to Paris. An unbeliever in his teenage years, he experienced a sudden conversion at the age of eighteen on Christmas Day 1886 while listening to a choir sing Vespers in the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris: "In an instant, my heart was touched, and I believed." He would remain a strong Catholic for the rest of his life. He studied at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (better known as Sciences Po).

The young Claudel seriously considered entering a Benedictine monastery, but in the end began a career in the French diplomatic corps, in which he would serve from 1893 to 1936. He was first vice-consul in New York (April 1893), and later in Boston (December 1893). He was French consul in China (1895–1909), including consul in Shanghai (June 1895), and vice-consul in Fuzhou (October 1900), consul in Tianjin (Tientsin) (1906–1909), in Prague (December 1909), Frankfurt am Main (October 1911), Hamburg (October 1913), ministre plénipotentiaire in Rio de Janeiro (1916), Copenhagen (1920), ambassador in Tokyo (1922–1928), Washington, D.C. (1928–1933) and Brussels (1933–1936). While he served in Brazil during the First World War he supervised the continued provision of food supplies from South America to France. (His secretaries during the Brazil mission included Darius Milhaud, later world-famous as a composer, and who wrote incidental music to a number of Claudel's plays.) In 1930, Claudel received an LL.D. from Bates College.

In 1936 he retired to his château in Brangues (Isère).

Claudel married Reine Sainte-Marie-Perrin on 15 March 1906.

 

In his youth Claudel was heavily influenced by the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud and the Symbolists. Like them, he was horrified by modern materialist views of life. Unlike most of them[citation needed], his response was to embrace Catholicism. All his writings are passionate rejections of the idea of a mechanical or random universe, instead proclaiming the deep spiritual meaning of human life founded on God's all-governing grace and love.

Claudel wrote in a unique verse style. He rejected traditional metrics in favour of long, luxuriant, unrhymed lines of free verse, the so-called verset claudelien, influenced by the Latin psalms of the Vulgate. His language and imagery was often lush, mystical, exhilarating, consciously 'poetical'; the settings of his plays tended to be romantically distant, medieval France or sixteenth-century Spanish South America, yet spiritually all-encompassing, transcending the level of material realism. He used scenes of passionate, obsessive human love to convey with great power God's infinite love for humanity. His plays were often extraordinarily long, sometimes stretching to eleven hours, and pressed the realities of material staging to their limits. Yet they were physically staged, at least in part, to rapturous acclaim, and are not merely closet dramas. The most famous of his plays are Le Partage de Midi ("The Break of Noon", 1906), L'Annonce Faite a Marie ("The Tidings Brought to Mary", 1910) focusing on the themes of sacrifice, oblation and sanctification through the tale of a young medieval French peasant woman who contracts leprosy, and Le Soulier de Satin ("The Satin Slipper", 1931), his deepest exploration of human and divine love and longing set in the Spanish empire of the siglo de oro, which was staged at the Comédie-Française in 1943. In later years he wrote texts to be set to music, most notably "Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher" ("Joan of Arc at the Stake", 1939), an "opera-oratario" with music by Arthur Honegger.

Claudel was always a controversial figure during his lifetime, and remains so today. His devout Catholicism and his right-wing political views, both slightly unusual stances among his intellectual peers, made him, and continue to make him, unpopular in many circles

His address of a poem ("Paroles au Maréchal," "Words to the Marshal") to Marshal Philippe Pétain after the defeat of France in 1940, commending Petain for picking up and salvaging France's broken, wounded body, has been unflatteringly remembered, though it is less a paean to Petain than a patriotic lament over the condition of France. As a Catholic, he could not avoid a certain sense of bitter satisfaction at the fall of the anti-clerical French Third Republic. However, accusations that he was a collaborationist based on the 1941 poem ignore the fact that support for Marshal Petain and the surrender was, in the catastrophic atmosphere of defeat, emotional collapse and exhaustion in 1941, widespread throughout the French populace (witness the large majority vote in favour of Petain and the dissolution of the Third Republic in the French Parliament in 1940, with support stretching across the political spectrum). Claudel's diaries make clear his consistent contempt for Nazism (condemning it as early as 1930 as "demonic" and "wedded to Satan," and referring to communism and Nazism as "Gog and Magog"), and his attitude to the Vichy regime quickly hardened into opposition.

He also committed his sister Camille Claudel to a psychiatric hospital in March 1913, where she remained for the last 30 years of her life, visiting her seven times in those 30 years (see Camille Claudel's Wiki page for further details).Records show that while she did have mental lapses, she was clear-headed while working on her art. An exhibition of her bronzes in the Swiss Foundation Gianadda from 16 November 1990 until February 1991 shows clearly what can be considered only a small proof of the timeless beauty of her sculptures, inspired by a genuine talent. Doctors tried to convince the family that she need not be in the institution, but still they kept her there. (The story forms the subject of a novel by Michèle Desbordes, La Robe bleue, The Blue Dress.)

Despite sharing in his earlier years in the old-fashioned antisemitism of conservative France, his response to the radical racialist Nazi version was unequivocal; he had written an open letter to the World Jewish Conference in 1935 condemning the Nuremberg Laws as "abominable and stupid." The sister of his daughter-in-law had married a Jew, Paul-Louis Weiller, who was arrested by the Vichy government in October 1940. Claudel went to Vichy to intercede for him, to no avail; luckily Weiller managed to escape (with Claudel's assistance, the authorities suspected) and flee to New York. Claudel made known his anger at the Vichy government's anti-Jewish legislation, courageously writing a published letter to the Chief Rabbi, Israel Schwartz, in 1941 to express "the disgust, horror, and indignation that all decent Frenchmen and especially Catholics feel in respect of the injustices, the despoiling, all the ill treatment of which our Jewish compatriots are now the victims... Israel is always the eldest son of the promise [of God], as it is today the eldest son of suffering." The Vichy authorities responded by having Claudel's house searched and keeping him under observation. His support for Charles de Gaulle and the Free French forces culminated in his victory ode addressed to de Gaulle when Paris was liberated in 1944.

Claudel, a conservative of the old school, was clearly not a fascist. The French writers who were attracted by, and collaborated with, the Nazi "New Order" in Europe, much younger men like Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, tended to come from a very different background to Claudel's: they were nihilists, ex-dadaists, and futurists rather than old-fashioned Catholics (neither of the other two major French Catholic writers, François Mauriac and Georges Bernanos, were supporters of the Nazi occupation or the Vichy regime).

An interesting parallel to Claudel, for Anglophones, is T. S. Eliot, whose later political and religious views were similar to Claudel's. As with Eliot, even those who dislike Claudel's religious and political beliefs, have generally admitted his genius as a writer. The British poet W. H. Auden, at that time a left-leaning agnostic, acknowledged the importance of Paul Claudel in his famous poem "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" (1939). Writing about Yeats, Auden says in lines 52–55:

Time that with this strange excuse/Pardoned Kipling and his views,/And will pardon Paul Claudel,/Pardons him for writing well. (These lines are from the originally published version; they were excised by Auden in a later revision.)

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac wrote a song "La soeur de Paul" pour Mareva Galanter/2010. George Steiner, in The Death of Tragedy, calls him one of the three "masters of drama" in the twentieth century.

Paul Claudel was elected to the Académie française on 4 April 1946.

As well as his verse dramas, Claudel also wrote much lyric poetry, for example the Cinq Grandes Odes (Five Great Odes)

 

Claudel, a conservative of the old school, was clearly not a fascist. The French writers who were attracted by, and collaborated with, the Nazi "New Order" in Europe, much younger men like Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, tended to come from a very different background to Claudel's, nihilists, ex-dadaists, and futurists rather than old-fashioned Catholics (neither of the other two major French Catholic writers, François Mauriac and Georges Bernanos, were supporters of the Nazi occupation or the Vichy regime).

An interesting parallel to Claudel, for Anglophones, is T. S. Eliot, whose later political and religious views were similar to Claudel's. As with Eliot, even those who dislike Claudel's religious and political beliefs, have generally admitted his genius as a writer. The British poet W. H. Auden, at that time a left-leaning agnostic, acknowledged the importance of Paul Claudel in his famous poem "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" (1939). Writing about Yeats, Auden says in lines 52-55:

"Time that with this strange excuse/Pardoned Kipling and his views,/And will pardon Paul Claudel,/Pardons him for writing well." (These lines are from the originally published version; they were excised by Auden in a later revision.)

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac wrote a song "La soeur de Paul" pour Mareva Galanter/2010. George Steiner, in "The Death of Tragedy," calls him one of the three "masters of drama" in the twentieth century.

Paul Claudel was elected to the Académie française on 4 April 1946.

Paul Claudel évoque sa conversion le jour de Noël

" Les cinq grandes odes ", Paul Claudel (1906-1910) - Ode II, "Salut donc, ô monde nouveau à mes yeux..."

L'expérience mystique

Une expérience poétique

Un lyrisme religieux

L'oeuvre de Claudel ne se comprend pas sans la puissante inspiration religieuse qui l'anime. Depuis qu'il eut la révélation de l'existence de Dieu le jour de Noël."Tel était le malheureux enfant qui, le 25 décembre 1886, se rendit à Notre-Dame de Paris pour y suivre les offices de Noël. Je commençais alors à écrire et il me semblait que dans les cérémonies catholiques, considérées avec un dilettantisme supérieur, je trouverai un excitant approprié et la matière de quelques exercices décadents. C'est dans ces dispositions que, coudoyé et bousculé par la foule, j'assistai, avec un plaisir médiocre, à la grand-messe. Puis, n'ayant rien de mieux à faire, je revins aux vêpres. Les enfants de la maîtrise en robes blanches et les élèves du petit séminaire de saint Nicolas du Chardonnet qui les assistaient, étaient en train de chanter ce que je sus plus tard être la Magnificat. J'étais moi-même debout dans la foule, près du second pilier à l'entrée du choeur à droite du côté de la sacristie. Et c'est alors que se produisit l'événement qui domine toute ma vie. En un instant mon coeur fut touché et je crus. Je crus, d'une telle force d'adhésion, d'un tel soulèvement de tout mon être, d'une conviction si puissante, d'une telle certitude ne laissant place à aucune espèce de doute, que, depuis, tous les livres, tous les raisonnements, tous les hasards d'une vie agitée, n'ont pu ébranler ma foi, ni, à vrai dire, la toucher."

 

L'esprit de Dieu m'a ravi tout d'un coup par-dessus le mur et me voici dans ce pays inconnu.

Oû est le vent maintenant ? oû est la mer? oû la route qui ma mené jusqu'ici...

Oû sont les hommes?il n'y a plus rien que le ciel toujours pur. Oû est l'ancienne tempête?

Je prête l'oreille:et n'y a plus que cet arbre qui frémit.

J'écoute: et il n'y que cette feuille insistante.

Je sais que la lutte est finie...

Il y a eu le passé, mais il n'est plus. Je sens sur ma face un souffle plus froid.

Voici de nouveau la Présence, l'effrayante solitude, et soudain le souffle de nouveau sur ma face.

Seigneur, ma vigne est en ma présence et je vois ma délivrance ne peut plus m'échapper.

Celui qui connaît la délivrance, il se rit maintenant de tout les lien, et qui comprendra le rire qu'il a son coeur?

Il regarde toutes choses et rit.

Seigneur, il fait bon pour nous en ce lieu,que je ne retourne pas à la vue des hommes,que je sois plus connu d'aucun d'eux,

Et comme l'étoile éternelle.

Sa lumière,qu'il ne reste rien en moi que la voix seule.

Le verbe intelligible et la parole exprimée et la qui est l'esprit et l'eau....

Frère, je ne puis vous donner mon coeur, mais ou la matière ne sert point vaut et va la parole subtile.

Et moi-même avec une intelligence éternelle.

Ecoute, mon enfant et incline vers moi la tête, et te donnerais mon âme.

CINQ GRANDES ODES L ESPRIT ET L EAU

PAUL CLAUDEL

 

Cher Monsieur,

J'ai lu avec le plus vif intérêt l’opuscule que vous avez eu l'aimable pensée de m'envoyer : Le Christ dans sa passion révélée par le Saint Suaire de Turin. J'ai longuement considéré les saisissantes images qui l’accompagnent4

. Je souhaite qu'il atteigne le grand public et qu'il aide la chrétienté de France à réaliser l'importance de cet événement religieux qu'est la découverte photographique du Saint Suaire de Turin. Une importance si grande que

je ne puis la comparer qu'à une seconde résurrection.

Je me reporte par la pensée à cette sinistre période qui va de 1890 à 1910,où s'est écoulée ma jeunesse et mon âge mûr, période de matérialisme et de scepticisme agressifs et triomphants et que domine la figure d'Ernest

Renan. Que d'efforts alors pour obscurcir la divinité du Christ, pour voiler ce visage insoutenable, pour aplatir le fait chrétien, pour en effacer les contours sous les bandelettes entrecroisées de l'érudition et du doute ! L’Évangile mis en petits morceaux ne constituait plus qu'un amas de

matériaux incohérents et suspects, où chaque amateur allait rechercher les éléments d'une construction aussi prétentieuse que provisoire. La figure de Jésus était noyée jusqu'à disparaître dans un brouillard de

littérature historique, mystagogique et romanesque. Enfin, on avait réussi ! Jésus-Christ, ce n’était plus qu'un pâle contour, quelques linéaments fluides et tout prêts à s'effacer. Madeleine pouvait maintenant aller au tombeau. On lui avait enlevé son Seigneur. Et voilà qu'après les siècles écoulés, l'image oblitérée reparaît tout à coup sous le tissu avec une véracité épouvantable, avec l'authenticité, non plus

seulement d'un document irréfragable, mais d’un fait actuel. L'intervalle des dix-neuf siècles est anéanti d'un seul coup. Le passé est transféré dans l’immédiat. "Ce que nos yeux ont vu ", dit saint Jean, ce que nous avons à loisir considéré, ce que nos mains ont manié du Verbe de vie, ce n’est pas seulement une pièce officielle, comme serait, par exemple, un

procès-verbal, une grosse de jugement dûment signée et paraphée : c'est un décalque, c’est une image portant avec elle sa propre caution. Plus qu'une image, c'est une présence ! Plus qu'une présence, c'est une photographie,

quelque chose d'imprimé et d'inaltérable. Et plus qu’une photographie, c'est un "négatif ", c’est-à-dire une activité cachée (un peu comme la Sainte Écriture elle-même, prendrai-je la liberté de suggérer) et capable, sous l'objectif, de réaliser en positif une évidence ! Tout à coup,

en 1898, après Strauss, après Renan, au temps même de Loisy6, et comme un couronnement de ce travail prodigieux de fouilles et d'exégèse réalisé par le siècle qui va finir, nous sommes en possession de la photographie du Christ ! Comme cela ! C'est Lui ! C'est Son visage ! Ce visage que tant de saints et de prophètes ont été consumés du désir de contempler, suivant cette parole du psaume : "Ma face T'a recherché : Seigneur, je rechercherai Ta face ". Il est à

nous ! Dès cette vie, il nous est permis tant que nous voulons de considérer le Fils de Dieu face à face ! Car une photographie, ce n'est pas un portrait fait de main d'homme. Entre ce visage et nous il n'y a pas eu d'intermédiaire humain. C'est Lui matériellement qui a imprégné cette

plaque, et c'est cette plaque à son tour qui vient prendre possession de notre esprit. Quel visage !

 

Voilà pour la convenance subjective. Mais que dire de la coïncidence matérielle et de la superposition minutieuse et détaillée du document ainsi placé entre nos mains et du quadruple récit de la Passion ? Tous les traits en sont là inscrits, ineffaçables : les plaies des mains, celles des

pieds, celle du côté jusqu'au cœur, celle de l'épaule ; la couronne d'épines qui nous rappelle l’interrogation de Pilate "Ergo tu Rex es ? ", et ces traces de la flagellation, si réelles que la vue encore aujourd'hui nous en fait frémir. La photographie nous a rendu ce corps que les plus grands mystiques ont à peine osé envisager, martyrisé littéralement depuis la plante des pieds jusqu’à la cime, tout enveloppé de coups de fouet, tout habillé de blessures, en sorte que pas un pouce de cette chair sacrée n'a échappé à l'atroce inquisition de la Justice, ces lanières armées de plombs et de

crochets sur elle déchaînées !... Ce ne sont point des phrases que nous déchiffrons ligne à ligne : c’est toute la Passion d'un seul coup qu’on nous livre en pleine figure. L'heure même est écrite : c’est le soir, il fallait se presser ; la hâte avec laquelle on a roulé ce corps souillé dans un linge, sans prendre le temps de le nettoyer pour obéir aux prescriptions du

Sabbat immédiat. Le temps pendant lequel cet enveloppement a duré et qui est indiqué par l'avancement du travail destructeur sur le cadavre. L’obligation clairement imposée aux amis du Christ de procéder à ce supplément de toilette funèbre que l’intervention du Sabbat les avait

obligés d’ajourner. La disponibilité elle-même de cette carapace rejetée ainsi qu'une dépouille d'insecte après la mue ; enfin, malgré les explications ingénieuses des savants qui se sont occupés du Saint Suaire, il est bien difficile de voir, dans cette impression détaillée du corps du Christ en négatif sur une toile non préparée et grâce uniquement à quelques

aromates disposés au hasard, un phénomène purement naturel. II n'y a, dans la vaste expérience que nous possédons des ensevelissements antiques, aucun analogue. Une vertu est sortie de Lui et a laissé cette trace prodigieuse. Il n’est pas moins remarquable que, pendant toute cette suite de siècles et d'événements, les différents incendies qui ont

attaqué le Suaire aient respecté l’image sacrée et que leurs vestiges ne constituent autour d'elle qu'une espèce d'encadrement ! Aussi quelle reconnaissance devons-nous aux autorités civiles et religieuses qui ont enfin permis l'examen minutieux de l'insigne relique et aux hommes de science qui l'ont étudiée avec tant d'ingéniosité et de bonne

foi, tels que M. Paul Vignon ! Le moment est venu des vulgarisations, et c'est à ce titre que je salue avec joie le travail si remarquable que vous m’avez envoyé et auquel je souhaite la plus large diffusion.

Paul Claudel

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Claudel

The Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed (Russian: Собо́р Васи́лия Блаже́нного, tr. Sobór Vasíliya Blazhénnogo), commonly known as Saint Basil's Cathedral, is an Orthodox church in Red Square of Moscow, and is one of the most popular cultural symbols of Russia. The building, now a museum, is officially known as the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, or Pokrovsky Cathedral. It was built from 1555 to 1561 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan. Its completion, with its colors, was made in 1683. It was the city's tallest building until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.

 

The original building, known as Trinity Church and later Trinity Cathedral, contained eight chapels arranged around a ninth, central chapel dedicated to the Intercession; a tenth chapel was erected in 1588 over the grave of the venerated local saint Vasily (Basil). In the 16th and 17th centuries, because it was perceived as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly City, like all churches in Byzantine Christianity, the church was popularly known as the "Jerusalem" and served as an allegory of the Jerusalem Temple in the annual Palm Sunday parade attended by the Patriarch of Moscow and the Tsar.

 

The cathedral has nine domes (each one corresponding to a different church) and is shaped like the flame of a bonfire rising into the sky. Dmitry Shvidkovsky, in his book Russian Architecture and the West, states that "it is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to the fifteenth century ... a strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design." The cathedral foreshadowed the climax of Russian national architecture in the 17th century.

 

As part of the program of state atheism, the church was confiscated from the Russian Orthodox community as part of the Soviet Union's antireligious campaigns and has operated as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely secularized in 1929, and remains a federal property of the Russian Federation. The church has been part of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, weekly Orthodox Christian services with prayer to St. Basil have been restored since 1997.

 

Construction under Ivan IV

The site of the church had been, historically, a busy marketplace between the St. Frol's (later Saviour's) Gate of the Moscow Kremlin and the outlying posad. The centre of the marketplace was marked by the Trinity Church, built of the same white stone as the Kremlin of Dmitry Donskoy (1366–68) and its cathedrals. Tsar Ivan IV marked every victory of the Russo-Kazan War by erecting a wooden memorial church next to the walls of Trinity Church; by the end of his Astrakhan campaign, it was shrouded within a cluster of seven wooden churches. According to the report in Nikon's Chronicle, in the autumn of 1554 Ivan ordered the construction of the wooden Church of Intercession on the same site, "on the moat". One year later, Ivan ordered the construction of a new stone cathedral on the site of Trinity Church to commemorate his campaigns. Dedication of a church to a military victory was "a major innovation" for Muscovy. The placement of the church outside the Kremlin walls was a political statement in favour of posad commoners and against hereditary boyars.

 

Contemporary commentators clearly identified the new building as Trinity Church, after its easternmost sanctuary; the status of "katholikon" (собор, sobor, large assembly church) had not been bestowed on it yet:

 

On the Trinity on the Moat in Moscow.

In the same year, through the will of czar and lord and grand prince Ivan began making the pledged church, as he promised for the capture of Kazan: Trinity and Intercession and seven sanctuaries, also called "on the moat". And the builder was Barma with company.

 

— Piskaryov Chronicle, 1560 (7068 per Byzantine calendar)

The identity of the architect is unknown. Tradition held that the church was built by two architects, Barma and Postnik, the official Russian cultural heritage register lists "Barma and Postnik Yakovlev". Researchers proposed that both names refer to the same person, Postnik Yakovlev or, alternatively, Ivan Yakovlevich Barma (Varfolomey). Legend held that Ivan blinded the architect so that he could not re-create the masterpiece elsewhere. Many historians are convinced that it is a myth, as the architect later participated in the construction of the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Moscow as well as in building the walls and towers of the Kazan Kremlin. Postnik Yakovlev remained active at least throughout the 1560s. This myth likely originated with Jerome Horsey's account of Ivan III of Moscow having blinded the architect of the fortress of Ivangorod.

 

There is evidence that construction involved stonemasons from Pskov and German lands.

 

Architectural style

Because the church has no analog—in the preceding, contemporary, or later architecture of Muscovy and Byzantine cultural tradition, in general,—the sources that inspired Barma and Postnik are disputed. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc rejected European roots for the cathedral, opining that its corbel arches were Byzantine and ultimately Asian. A modern "Asian" hypothesis considers the cathedral a recreation of Qolşärif Mosque, which was destroyed by Russian troops after the Siege of Kazan.

 

Nineteenth-century Russian writers, starting with Ivan Zabelin,[5] emphasized the influence of the vernacular wooden churches of the Russian North; their motifs made their ways into masonry, particularly the votive churches that did not need to house substantial congregations. David Watkin also wrote of a blend of Russian and Byzantine roots, calling the cathedral "the climax" of Russian vernacular wooden architecture.

 

The church combines the staggered layered design of the earliest (1505–1508) part of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, the central tent of the Church of Ascension in Kolomenskoye (1530s), and the cylindric shape of the Church of Beheading of John the Baptist in Dyakovo (1547); but the origin of these unique buildings is equally debated. The Church in Kolomenskoye, according to Sergei Podyapolsky, was built by Italian Petrok Maly, although mainstream history has not yet accepted his opinion. Andrey Batalov revised the year of completion of Dyakovo church from 1547 to the 1560s–70s, and noted that Trinity Church could have had no tangible predecessors at all.

 

Dmitry Shvidkovsky suggested that the "improbable" shapes of the Intercession Church and the Church of Ascension in Kolomenskoye manifested an emerging national renaissance, blending earlier Muscovite elements with the influence of Italian Renaissance. A large group of Italian architects and craftsmen continuously worked in Moscow in 1474–1539, as well as Greek refugees who arrived in the city after the fall of Constantinople. These two groups, according to Shvidkovsky, helped Moscow rulers in forging the doctrine of Third Rome, which in turn promoted assimilation of contemporary Greek and Italian culture. Shvidkovsky noted the resemblance of the cathedral's floorplan to Italian concepts by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Donato Bramante, but most likely Filarete's Trattato di architettura. Other Russian researchers noted a resemblance to sketches by Leonardo da Vinci, although he could not have been known in Ivan's Moscow. Nikolay Brunov recognized the influence of these prototypes but not their significance; he suggested that mid-16th century Moscow already had local architects trained in Italian tradition, architectural drawing and perspective, and that this culture was lost during the Time of Troubles.

 

Andrey Batalov wrote that judging by the number of novel elements introduced with Trinity Church, it was most likely built by German craftsmen. Batalov and Shvidkovsky noted that during Ivan's reign, Germans and Englishmen replaced Italians, although German influence peaked later during the reign of Mikhail Romanov. German influence is indirectly supported by the rusticated pilasters of the central church, a feature more common in contemporary Northern Europe than in Italy.

 

The 1983 academic edition of Monuments of Architecture in Moscow takes the middle ground: the church is, most likely, a product of the complex interaction of distinct Russian traditions of wooden and stone architecture, with some elements borrowed from the works of Italians in Moscow. Specifically, the style of brickwork in the vaults is Italian.

 

Layout

Instead of following the original ad hoc layout (seven churches around the central core), Ivan's architects opted for a more symmetrical floor plan with eight side churches around the core, producing "a thoroughly coherent, logical plan" despite the erroneous latter "notion of a structure devoid of restraint or reason" influenced by the memory of Ivan's irrational atrocities. The central core and the four larger churches placed on the four major compass points are octagonal; the four diagonally placed smaller churches are cuboid, although their shape is hardly visible through later additions. The larger churches stand on massive foundations, while the smaller ones were each placed on a raised platform as if hovering above ground.

 

Although the side churches are arranged in perfect symmetry, the cathedral as a whole is not. The larger central church was deliberately offset to the west from the geometric centre of the side churches, to accommodate its larger apse on the eastern side. As a result of this subtle calculated asymmetry, viewing from the north and the south presents a complex multi-axial shape, while the western façade, facing the Kremlin, appears properly symmetrical and monolithic. The latter perception is reinforced by the fortress-style machicolation and corbeled cornice of the western Church of Entry into Jerusalem, mirroring the real fortifications of the Kremlin.

 

Inside the composite church is a labyrinth of narrow vaulted corridors and vertical cylinders of the churches. Today the cathedral consists of nine individual chapels. The largest, central one, the Church of the Intercession, is 46 metres (151 ft) tall internally but has a floor area of only 64 square metres (690 sq ft). Nevertheless, it is wider and airier than the church in Kolomenskoye with its exceptionally thick walls. The corridors functioned as internal parvises; the western corridor, adorned with a unique flat caissoned ceiling, doubled as the narthex.

 

The detached belfry of the original Trinity Church stood southwest or south of the main structure. Late 16th- and early 17th-century plans depict a simple structure with three roof tents, most likely covered with sheet metal. No buildings of this type survive to date, although it was then common and used in all of the pass-through towers of Skorodom. August von Meyenberg's panorama (1661) presents a different building, with a cluster of small onion domes.

 

Structure

The foundations, as was traditional in medieval Moscow, were built of white stone, while the churches themselves were built of red brick (28 by 14 by 8 cm (11.0 by 5.5 by 3.1 in)), then a relatively new material (the first attested brick building in Moscow, the new Kremlin Wall, was started in 1485). Surveys of the structure show that the basement level is perfectly aligned, indicating use of professional drawing and measurement, but each subsequent level becomes less and less regular. Restorers who replaced parts of the brickwork in 1954–1955 discovered that the massive brick walls conceal an internal wooden frame running the entire height of the church. This frame, made of elaborately tied thin studs, was erected as a life-size spatial model of the future cathedral and was then gradually enclosed in solid masonry.

 

The builders, fascinated by the flexibility of the new technology, used red bricks as a decorative medium both inside and out, leaving as much brickwork open as possible; when location required the use of stone walls, it was decorated with a brickwork pattern painted over stucco. A major novelty introduced by the church was the use of strictly "architectural" means of exterior decoration. Sculpture and sacred symbols employed by earlier Russian architecture are completely missing; floral ornaments are a later addition. Instead, the church boasts a diversity of three-dimensional architectural elements executed in brick.

 

Colour

The church acquired its present-day vivid colours in several stages from the 1680s to 1848. Russian attitude towards colour in the 17th century changed in favour of bright colours; iconographic and mural art experienced an explosive growth in the number of available paints, dyes and their combinations. The original colour scheme, missing these innovations, was far less challenging. It followed the depiction of the Heavenly City in the Book of Revelation:

 

And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.

And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats, I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.

 

— Revelation, 4:3–4 (KJV)

The 25 seats from the biblical reference are alluded to in the building's structure, with the addition of eight small onion domes around the central tent, four around the western side church and four elsewhere. This arrangement survived through most of the 17th century. The walls of the church mixed bare red brickwork or painted imitation of bricks with white ornaments, in roughly equal proportion. The domes, covered with tin, were uniformly gilded, creating an overall bright but fairly traditional combination of white, red and golden colours. Moderate use of green and blue ceramic inserts provided a touch of rainbow as prescribed by the Bible.

 

While historians agree on the colour of the 16th-century domes, their shape is disputed. Boris Eding wrote that they most likely were of the same onion shape as the present-day domes. However, both Kolomenskoye and Dyakovo churches have flattened hemispherical domes, and the same type could have been used by Barma and Postnik.

 

Development

1583–1596

The original Trinity Church burnt down in 1583 and was refitted by 1593. The ninth sanctuary, dedicated to Basil Fool for Christ (the 1460s–1552), was added in 1588 next to the north-eastern sanctuary of the Three Patriarchs. Another local fool, Ivan the Blessed, was buried on the church grounds in 1589; a sanctuary in his memory was established in 1672 inside the south-eastern arcade.

 

The vault of the Saint Basil Sanctuary serves as a reference point in evaluating the quality of Muscovite stonemasonry and engineering. As one of the first vaults of its type, it represents the average of engineering craft that peaked a decade later in the church of the Trinity in Khoroshovo (completed 1596). The craft was lost in the Time of Troubles; buildings from the first half of the 17th century lack the refinement of the late 16th century, compensating for poor construction skill with thicker walls and heavier vaults.

 

1680–1683

The second, and most significant, round of refitting and expansion took place in 1680–1683. The nine churches themselves retained their appearance, but additions to the ground-floor arcade and the first-floor platform were so profound that Nikolay Brunov rebuilt a composite church from an "old" building and an independent work that incorporated the "new" Trinity Church. What once was a group of nine independent churches on a common platform became a monolithic temple.

 

The formerly open ground-floor arcades were filled with brick walls; the new space housed altars from thirteen former wooden churches erected on the site of Ivan's executions in Red Square. Wooden shelters above the first-floor platform and stairs (the cause of frequent fires) were rebuilt in brick, creating the present-day wrap-around galleries with tented roofs above the porches and vestibules.

 

The old detached belfry was demolished; its square basement was reused for a new belltower. The tall single tented roof of this belltower, built in the vernacular style of the reign of Alexis I, significantly changed the appearance of the cathedral, adding a strong asymmetrical counterweight to the church itself. The effect is most pronounced on the southern and eastern facades (as viewed from Zaryadye), although the belltower is large enough to be seen from the west.

 

The first ornamental murals in the cathedral appeared in the same period, starting with floral ornaments inside the new galleries; the towers retained their original brickwork pattern. Finally, in 1683, the church was adorned with a tiled cornice in yellow and blue, featuring a written history of the church in Old Slavic typeface.

 

1737–1784

In 1737 the church was damaged by a massive fire and later restored by Ivan Michurin. The inscriptions made in 1683 were removed during the repairs of 1761–1784. The church received its first figurative murals inside the churches; all exterior and interior walls of the first two floors were covered with floral ornamentation. The belltower was connected with the church through a ground-floor annex; the last remaining open arches of the former ground-floor arcade were filled during the same period, erasing the last hint of what was once an open platform carrying the nine churches of Ivan's Jerusalem.

 

1800–1848

Paintings of Red Square by Fyodor Alekseyev, made in 1800–1802, show that by this time the church was enclosed in an apparently chaotic cluster of commercial buildings; rows of shops "transformed Red Square into an oblong and closed yard." In 1800 the space between the Kremlin wall and the church was still occupied by a moat that predated the church itself. The moat was filled in preparation for the coronation of Alexander I in 1801. The French troops who occupied Moscow in 1812 used the church for stables and looted anything worth taking. The church was spared by the Fire of Moscow (1812) that razed Kitai-gorod, and by the troops' failure to blow it up according to Napoleon's order. The interiors were repaired in 1813 and the exterior in 1816. Instead of replacing missing ceramic tiles of the main tent, the Church preferred to simply cover it with a tin roof.

 

The fate of the immediate environment of the church has been a subject of dispute between city planners since 1813. Scotsman William Hastie proposed clearing the space around all sides of the church and all the way down to the Moskva River; the official commission led by Fyodor Rostopchin and Mikhail Tsitsianov agreed to clear only the space between the church and Lobnoye Mesto. Hastie's plan could have radically transformed the city, but he lost to the opposition, whose plans were finally endorsed by Alexander I in December 1817 (the specific decision on clearing the rubble around the church was issued in 1816).

 

Nevertheless, actual redevelopment by Joseph Bove resulted in clearing the rubble and creating Vasilyevskaya (St. Basil's) Square between the church and Kremlin wall by shaving off the crest of the Kremlin Hill between the church and the Moskva River. Red Square was opened to the river, and "St. Basil thus crowned the decapitated hillock." Bove built the stone terrace wall separating the church from the pavement of Moskvoretskaya Street; the southern side of the terrace was completed in 1834. Minor repairs continued until 1848, when the domes acquired their present-day colours.

 

1890–1914

Preservationist societies monitored the state of the church and called for a proper restoration throughout the 1880s and 1890s, but it was regularly delayed for lack of funds. The church did not have a congregation of its own and could only rely on donations raised through public campaigning; national authorities in Saint Petersburg and local in Moscow prevented financing from state and municipal budgets. In 1899 Nicholas II reluctantly admitted that this expense was necessary, but again all the involved state and municipal offices, including the Holy Synod, denied financing. Restoration, headed by Andrey Pavlinov (died 1898) and Sergey Solovyov, dragged on from 1896 to 1909; in total, preservationists managed to raise around 100,000 roubles.

 

Restoration began with replacing the roofing of the domes. Solovyov removed the tin roofing of the main tent installed in the 1810s and found many original tiles missing and others discoloured; after a protracted debate the whole set of tiles on the tented roof was replaced with new ones. Another dubious decision allowed the use of standard bricks that were smaller than the original 16th-century ones. Restorers agreed that the paintwork of the 19th century must be replaced with a "truthful recreation" of historic patterns, but these had to be reconstructed and deduced based on medieval miniatures. In the end, Solovyov and his advisers chose a combination of deep red with deep green that is retained to the present.

 

In 1908 the church received its first warm air heating system, which did not work well because of heat losses in long air ducts, heating only the eastern and northern sanctuaries. In 1913 it was complemented with a pumped water heating system serving the rest of the church.

 

1918–1941

During World War I, the church was headed by protoiereus Ioann Vostorgov, a nationalist preacher and a leader of the Black-Hundredist Union of the Russian People. Vostorgov was arrested by Bolsheviks in 1918 on a pretext of embezzling nationalized church properties and was executed in 1919.[citation needed] The church briefly enjoyed Vladimir Lenin's "personal interest"; in 1923 it became a public museum, though religious services continued until 1929.

 

Bolshevik planners entertained ideas of demolishing the church after Lenin's funeral (January 1924). In the first half of the 1930s, the church became an obstacle for Joseph Stalin's urbanist plans, carried out by Moscow party boss Lazar Kaganovich, "the moving spirit behind the reconstruction of the capital". The conflict between preservationists, notably Pyotr Baranovsky, and the administration continued at least until 1936 and spawned urban legends. In particular, a frequently-told story is that Kaganovich picked up a model of the church in the process of envisioning Red Square without it, and Stalin sharply responded "Lazar, put it back!" Similarly, Stalin's master planner, architect Vladimir Semyonov, reputedly dared to "grab Stalin's elbow when the leader picked up a model of the church to see how Red Square would look without it" and was replaced by pure functionary Sergey Chernyshov.

 

In the autumn of 1933, the church was struck from the heritage register. Baranovsky was summoned to perform a last-minute survey of the church slated for demolition, and was then arrested for his objections. While he served his term in the Gulag, attitudes changed and by 1937 even hard-line Bolshevik planners admitted that the church should be spared. In the spring of 1939, the church was locked, probably because demolition was again on the agenda; however, the 1941 publication of Dmitry Sukhov's detailed book on the survey of the church in 1939–1940 speaks against this assumption.

 

1947 to present

In the first years after World War II renovators restored the historical ground-floor arcades and pillars that supported the first-floor platform, cleared up vaulted and caissoned ceilings in the galleries, and removed "unhistoric" 19th-century oil paint murals inside the churches. Another round of repairs, led by Nikolay Sobolev in 1954–1955, restored original paint imitating brickwork, and allowed restorers to dig inside old masonry, revealing the wooden frame inside it. In the 1960s, the tin roofing of the domes was replaced with copper.

 

The last round of renovation was completed in September 2008 with the opening of the restored sanctuary of St. Alexander Svirsky. The building is still partly in use today as a museum and, since 1991, is occasionally used for services by the Russian Orthodox Church. Since 1997 Orthodox Christian services have been held regularly. Nowadays every Sunday at Saint Basil's church there is a divine liturgy at 10 a.m. with an Akathist to Saint Basil.

 

Naming

The building, originally known as "Trinity Church",[8] was consecrated on 12 July 1561, and was subsequently elevated to the status of a sobor (similar to an ecclesiastical basilica in the Catholic Church, but usually and incorrectly translated as "cathedral"). "Trinity", according to tradition, refers to the easternmost sanctuary of the Holy Trinity, while the central sanctuary of the church is dedicated to the Intercession of Mary. Together with the westernmost sanctuary of the Entry into Jerusalem, these sanctuaries form the main east–west axis (Christ, Mary, Holy Trinity), while other sanctuaries are dedicated to individual saints.

 

Sanctuaries of the cathedral

Compass point Type Dedicated to Commemorates

Central coreTented churchIntercession of Most Holy TheotokosBeginning of the final assault of Kazan, 1 October 1552

WestColumnEntry of Christ into JerusalemTriumph of the Muscovite troops

North-westGroin vaultSaint Gregory the Illuminator of ArmeniaCapture of Ars Tower of Kazan Kremlin, 30 September 1552

NorthColumnSaint Martyrs Cyprian and Justinia (since 1786 Saint Adrian and Natalia of Nicomedia)Complete capture of Kazan Kremlin, 2 October 1552

North-eastGroin vaultThree Patriarchs of Alexandria (since 1680 Saint John the Merciful)Defeat of Yepancha's cavalry on 30 August 1552

EastColumnLife-giving Holy TrinityHistorical Trinity Church on the same site

South-eastGroin vaultSaint Alexander SvirskyDefeat of Yepancha's cavalry on 30 August 1552

SouthColumnThe icon of Saint Nicholas from the Velikaya River (Nikola Velikoretsky)The icon was brought to Moscow in 1555.

South-westGroin vaultSaint Barlaam of KhutynMay have been built to commemorate Vasili III of Russia

North-eastern annex (1588)Groin vaultBasil the BlessedGrave of venerated local saint

South-eastern annex (1672)Groin vaultLaying the Veil (since 1680: Nativity of Theotokos, since 1916: Saint John the Blessed of Moscow)Grave of venerated local saint

The name "Intercession Church" came into use later, coexisting with Trinity Church. From the end of the 16th century[66] to the end of the 17th century the cathedral was also popularly called Jerusalem, with reference to its church of Entry into Jerusalem as well as to its sacral role in religious rituals. Finally, the name of Vasily (Basil) the Blessed, who died during construction and was buried on-site, was attached to the church at the beginning of the 17th century.

 

Current Russian tradition accepts two coexisting names of the church: the official "Church of Intercession on the Moat" (in full, the "Church of Intercession of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat"), and the "Temple of Basil the Blessed". When these names are listed together the latter name, being informal, is always mentioned second.

 

The common Western translations "Cathedral of Basil the Blessed" and "Saint Basil's Cathedral" incorrectly bestow the status of cathedral on the church of Basil, but are nevertheless widely used even in academic literature. Especially during the 19. century, in English and other languages the Saint Basil's Cathedral was also called (Cathedral or Church of) Vassili Blagennoi.

 

Sacral and social role

On the day of its consecration the church itself became part of Orthodox thaumaturgy. According to the legend, its "missing" ninth church (more precisely a sanctuary) was "miraculously found" during a ceremony attended by Tsar Ivan IV, Metropolitan Makarius with the divine intervention of Saint Tikhon. Piskaryov's Chronist wrote in the second quarter of the 17th century:

 

And the Tsar came to the dedication of the said church with Tsaritsa Nastasia and with Metropolitan Makarius and brought the icon of St Nicholas the Wonderworker that came from Vyatka. And they began to offer a prayer service with sanctified water. And the Tsar touched the base with his own hands. And the builders saw that another sanctuary appeared, and told the Tsar. And the Tsar, and Metropolitan, and all the clergy were surprised by the finding of another sanctuary. And the Tsar ordered it to be dedicated to Nicholas ...

 

— Piskaryov Chronicle, 1560 (7068 per Byzantine calendar)

 

Allegory of Jerusalem

Construction of wrap-around ground-floor arcades in the 1680s visually united the nine churches of the original cathedral into a single building. Earlier, the clergy and the public perceived it as nine distinct churches on a common base, a generalized allegory of the Orthodox Heavenly City similar to fantastic cities of medieval miniatures. At a distance, separate churches towering over their base resembled the towers and churches of a distant citadel rising above the defensive wall. The abstract allegory was reinforced by real-life religious rituals where the church played the role of the biblical Temple in Jerusalem:

 

The capital city, Moscow, is split into three parts; the first of them, called Kitai-gorod, is encircled with a solid thick wall. It contains an extraordinary beautiful church, all clad in shiny bright gems, called Jerusalem. It is the destination of an annual Palm Sunday walk, when the Grand Prince must lead a donkey carrying the Patriarch, from the Church of Virgin Mary to the church of Jerusalem which stands next to the citadel walls. Here is where the most illustrious princely, noble and merchant families live. Here is, also, the main muscovite marketplace: the trading square is built as a brick rectangle, with twenty lanes on each side where the merchants have their shops and cellars ...

 

— Peter Petreius, History of the Great Duchy of Moscow, 1620

Templum S. Trinitatis, etiam Hierusalem dicitur; ad quo Palmarum fest Patriarcha asino insidens a Caesare introducitur.

Temple of Holy Trinity, also called Jerusalem, to where the tsar leads the Patriarch, sitting on a donkey, on the Palm Holiday.

 

— Legend of Peter's map of Moscow, 1597, as reproduced in the Bleau Atlas

The last donkey walk (хождение на осляти) took place in 1693. Mikhail Petrovich Kudryavtsev noted that all cross processions of the period began, as described by Petreius, from the Dormition Church, passed through St. Frol's (Saviour's) Gate and ended at Trinity Cathedral. For these processions the Kremlin itself became an open-air temple, properly oriented from its "narthex" (Cathedral Square) in the west, through the "royal doors" (Saviour's Gate), to the "sanctuary" (Trinity Cathedral) in the east.

 

Urban hub

Tradition calls the Kremlin the centre of Moscow, but the geometric centre of the Garden Ring, first established as the Skorodom defensive wall in the 1590s, lies outside the Kremlin wall, coincident with the cathedral. Pyotr Goldenberg (1902–71), who popularized this notion in 1947, still regarded the Kremlin as the starting seed of Moscow's radial-concentric system, despite Alexander Chayanov's earlier suggestion that the system was not strictly concentric at all.

 

In the 1960s Gennady Mokeev (born 1932) formulated a different concept of the historical growth of Moscow. According to Mokeev, medieval Moscow, constrained by the natural boundaries of the Moskva and Neglinnaya Rivers, grew primarily in a north-easterly direction into the posad of Kitai-gorod and beyond. The main road connecting the Kremlin to Kitai-gorod passed through St. Frol's (Saviour's) Gate and immediately afterwards fanned out into at least two radial streets (present-day Ilyinka and Varvarka), forming the central market square. In the 14th century the city was largely contained within two balancing halves, Kremlin and Kitai-gorod, separated by a marketplace, but by the end of the century it extended further along the north-eastern axis. Two secondary hubs in the west and south spawned their own street networks, but their development lagged behind until the Time of Troubles.

 

Tsar Ivan's decision to build the church next to St. Frol's Gate established the dominance of the eastern hub with a major vertical accent, and inserted a pivot point between the nearly equal Kremlin and Kitai-gorod into the once amorphous marketplace. The cathedral was the main church of the posad, and at the same time it was perceived as a part of the Kremlin thrust into the posad, a personal messenger of the Tsar reaching the masses without the mediation of the boyars and clergy. It was complemented by the nearby Lobnoye mesto, a rostrum for the Tsar's public announcements first mentioned in chronicles in 1547 and rebuilt in stone in 1597–1598. Conrad Bussow, describing the triumph of False Dmitriy I, wrote that on 3 June 1606 "a few thousand men hastily assembled and followed the boyarin with [the impostor's] letter through the whole Moscow to the main church they call Jerusalem that stands right next to the Kremlin gates, raised him on Lobnoye Mesto, called out for the Muscovites, read the letter and listened to the boyarin's oral explanation."

 

Replicas

A scale model of Saint Basil's Cathedral has been built in Jalainur in Inner Mongolia, near China's border with Russia. The building houses a science museum.

This Nestorian Church officially known as the Church of St. George the Exiler, lies within the walls of the old town of Famagusta.

 

St. George of the Greeks, not to be confused with the similarly named St. George of the Latins, is the second largest church in Famagusta, and during the middle ages it served as the Cathedral for the Greek Orthodox community. It was built in the 12th century, to the west of a much earlier church dedicated to St. George and around a similar time the grand building of the Latin St. Nicholas Cathedral was initiated.

 

The build is thought to be financed by East Syrian Nestorian merchants, the Lakhas brothers, who were known for their immense wealth. The architecture and decorations of the building were reminiscent of the Southern French and Italian Gothic churches of the time and may have been influenced by King Peter I’s visit to Avignon in 1363. This version of the church’s history represents the virtual consensus of scholars of medieval Famagusta – however its architecture is also reminiscent of the 12th–13th century Crusader architecture in Palestine and Syria.

 

The Orthodox Cathedral

 

When the French Catholic Lusignans took rule of the island in 1191, they inherited an island that was predominately eastern Orthodox, and they immediately reduced the power of the church. In doing so, the southeast corner of Famagusta became a compact Greek quarter, and a conglomeration of several churches came about, most still inherent today and within close proximity of one another.

 

Although there was a perfectly serviceable cathedral church, namely the small Byzantine St. Simeon Church, the Orthodox community wanted a place of worship that rivalled its neighbouring counterparts. They built the much greater church with a wide central nave, two side aisles and huge columns that held up the nave vaulting.

 

Gothic elements were also added to the church’s north side to create a hybrid form of architecture that makes this 14th century Byzantine figure somewhat rare amongst Mediterranean churches, let alone those found in North Cyprus. The central nave also featured chapels on both sides, leading to a cross nave, all with rounded apses.

 

St. George of the Greeks became theOrthodox cathedral of Famagusta and was dedicated to St. Epiphanius Bishop of Salamis, who had gained a reputation as a strong defender of orthodoxy. It is believed the saint’s remains were formerly buried at the adjacent St. Simeon before his body was hauled off to the former Eastern Roman Empire capital of Constantinople, by Emperor Leo in the 9th century.

 

Unfortunately however, the structure was too large, with insufficient buttressing and a roof that was just too heavy, and years of modifications and renovations followed. The pillars throughout the nave were expanded to take more weight and the roof was inserted with large upturned terracotta pots to spread the load.

 

The church was not in existence long enough to find out if the revised compositions were sustainable. Taking the brunt of the Ottomans, evidence of which is still very evident in the remaining walls, the main of the build stood for a little over a hundred years.

 

Siege of Famagusta

 

After the capture of the city, the church was converted into a stable for camels, with worship here only being permitted once a year, during the feast of St. George the Exiler.

 

The Ottoman siege in 1571 left its marks on the structure and visitors today can still see cannon ball marks on the top of the church – look closely enough and you will also see some of the cannonballs still embedded in the walls. Consequently, little remains of its vaulted roof.

 

It is believed that during this era the apse was used as a shooting gallery, and there is much evidence in the form of bullet holes to be seen. By the 18th century, the walled city of Famagusta was more or less abandoned, with only a handful of residents living near to the desolate churches. Sailors from the nearby port would disembark and come into the city, sometimes sketching drawings of their ships into the plaster of these derelict churches. Some of these etchings can be seen at the western end of the St. George Greek church.

 

A passing glance and you will miss them though, a careful inspection of the wall is required.

 

British Era

 

In 1905, the British administration handed the church to the Greek Cypriots, who used it as their parish. By the 1930’s, many frescoes that were previously observed had disappeared, and between 1937 and 1939, Greek Cypriots undertook excavations and repaired some parts of the build.

 

Present Ruins

 

The church is still nevertheless home to numerous frescoes dated to the 14th and 15th centuries, depicting the life of Christ. Unlike Byzantine Orthodox churches, the frescoes in the Nestorian Church were not part of a unified design, and many were painted in differing periods by various artists. Visitors can still make out the faint outlines of once-rich frescos upon the interior stone walls.

 

The apse on the other hand may have had a unified design, but this is impossible to ascertain given the level of damage.

 

The church walls are made of ashlarand the structure has three naves and three apses. All three naves have entrances to their west. Originally, the church was built with a single nave and a protruding apse – the other two naves and two minor apses were added at a later date.

 

Some fragments of wall paintings still cling to the walls of the eastern apse and pieces of pottery jars sit within ceiling, which were thought to improve the church acoustics.

 

During the pre-Ottoman modifications, collars were added to support the overweight, and visitors will notice the remains of the iron clamps that were used to hold the blocks together.

 

A drawing of the church from the 18th century shows a dome on the church, not unlike the one on the nearby St. Nikolas Church, an octagonal drum with the dome sat on top. Even with the extra support added to the pillars, eventually the dome has fallen to inexistence.

 

Along the walls of the church, you can see several arched niches. These alcoves were the tombs of the patrons of the church. The sarcophagus was at ground level, while the brackets you can see would have held a stone slab, probably with an effigy of the deceased carved on it. It is believed that these niches were built after the walls, and their construction further weakened the roof support.

 

Excavations on this site have also unearthed coloured glass, most likely from the old church windows.

 

The only church in Famagusta that still has a bell, the Church of St. George of the Greeks is one of the best-preserved ones from the medieval times albeit the damage incurred and yet another impressive ruin to add to your visit list with much to discover.

 

Famagusta is a city on the east coast of the de facto state Northern Cyprus. It is located east of Nicosia and possesses the deepest harbour of the island. During the Middle Ages (especially under the maritime republics of Genoa and Venice), Famagusta was the island's most important port city and a gateway to trade with the ports of the Levant, from where the Silk Road merchants carried their goods to Western Europe. The old walled city and parts of the modern city are de facto part of Northern Cyprus as the capital of the Gazimağusa District.

 

The city was known as Arsinoe or Arsinoë (Greek: Ἀρσινόη, Arsinóē) in antiquity, after Ptolemy II of Egypt's sister and wife Arsinoe II.

 

By the 3rd century, the city appears as Ammochostos (Greek: Ἀμμόχωστος or Αμμόχωστος, Ammókhōstos, "Hidden in Sand") in the Stadiasmus Maris Magni.[5] This name is still used in modern Greek with the pronunciation [aˈmːoxostos], while it developed into Latin Fama Augusta, French Famagouste, Italian Famagosta, and English Famagusta during the medieval period. Its informal modern Turkish name Mağusa (Turkish pronunciation: [maˈusa]) came from the same source. Since 1974, it has formally been known to Turkey and Northern Cyprus as Gazimağusa ([ɡaːzimaˈusa]), from the addition of the title gazi, meaning "veteran" or "one who has faught in a holy war".

 

In the early medieval period, the city was also known as New Justiniana (Greek: Νέα Ἰουστινιανία, Néa Ioustinianía) in appreciation for the patronage of the Byzantine emperor Justinian, whose wife Theodora was born there.

 

The old town of Famagusta has also been nicknamed "the City of 365 Churches" from the legend that, at its peak, it boasted a church for every day of the year.

 

The city was founded around 274 BC, after the serious damage to Salamis by an earthquake, by Ptolemy II Philadelphus and named "Arsinoe" after his sister.[6] Arsinoe was described as a "fishing town" by Strabo in his Geographica in the first century BC. In essence, Famagusta was the successor of the most famous and most important ancient city of Cyprus, Salamis. According to Greek mythology, Salamis was founded after the end of the Trojan War by Teucros, the son of Telamon and brother of Aedes, from the Greek island of Salamis.

 

The city experienced great prosperity much later, during the time of the Byzantine emperor Justinian. To honor the city, from which his wife Theodora came, Justinian enriched it with many buildings, while the inhabitants named it New Justiniania to express their gratitude. In AD 647, when the neighboring cities were destroyed by Arab raiding, the inhabitants of these cities moved to Famagusta, as a result of which the city's population increased significantly and the city experienced another boom.

 

Later, when Jerusalem was occupied by the Arabs, the Christian population fled to Famagusta, as a result of which the city became an important Christian center, but also one of the most important commercial centers in the eastern Mediterranean.

 

The turning point for Famagusta was 1192 with the onset of Lusignan rule. It was during this period that Famagusta developed as a fully-fledged town. It increased in importance to the Eastern Mediterranean due to its natural harbour and the walls that protected its inner town. Its population began to increase. This development accelerated in the 13th century as the town became a centre of commerce for both the East and West. An influx of Christian refugees fleeing the downfall of Acre (1291) in Palestine transformed it from a tiny village into one of the richest cities in Christendom.

 

In 1372 the port was seized by Genoa and in 1489 by Venice. This commercial activity turned Famagusta into a place where merchants and ship owners led lives of luxury. By the mid-14th century, Famagusta was said to have the richest citizens in the world. The belief that people's wealth could be measured by the churches they built inspired these merchants to have churches built in varying styles. These churches, which still exist, were the reason Famagusta came to be known as "the district of churches". The development of the town focused on the social lives of the wealthy people and was centred upon the Lusignan palace, the cathedral, the Square and the harbour.

 

In 1570–1571, Famagusta was the last stronghold in Venetian Cyprus to hold out against the Turks under Mustafa Pasha. It resisted a siege of thirteen months and a terrible bombardment, until at last the garrison surrendered. The Ottoman forces had lost 50,000 men, including Mustafa Pasha's son. Although the surrender terms had stipulated that the Venetian forces be allowed to return home, the Venetian commander, Marco Antonio Bragadin, was flayed alive, his lieutenant Tiepolo was hanged, and many other Christians were killed.

 

With the advent of the Ottoman rule, Latins lost their privileged status in Famagusta and were expelled from the city. Greek Cypriots natives were at first allowed to own and buy property in the city, but were banished from the walled city in 1573–74 and had to settle outside in the area that later developed into Varosha. Turkish families from Anatolia were resettled in the walled city but could not fill the buildings that previously hosted a population of 10,000. This caused a drastic decrease in the population of Famagusta. Merchants from Famagusta, who mostly consisted of Latins that had been expelled, resettled in Larnaca and as Larnaca flourished, Famagusta lost its importance as a trade centre. Over time, Varosha developed into a prosperous agricultural town thanks to its location away from the marshes, whilst the walled city remained dilapidated.

 

In the walled city, some buildings were repurposed to serve the interests of the Muslim population: the Cathedral of St. Nicholas was converted to a mosque (now known as Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque), a bazaar was developed, public baths, fountains and a theological school were built to accommodate the inhabitants' needs. Dead end streets, an Ottoman urban characteristic, was imported to the city and a communal spirit developed in which a small number of two-storey houses inhabited by the small upper class co-existed with the widespread one-storey houses.

 

With the British takeover, Famagusta regained its significance as a port and an economic centre and its development was specifically targeted in British plans. As soon as the British took over the island, a Famagusta Development Act was passed that aimed at the reconstruction and redevelopment of the city's streets and dilapidated buildings as well as better hygiene. The port was developed and expanded between 1903 and 1906 and Cyprus Government Railway, with its terminus in Famagusta, started construction in 1904. Whilst Larnaca continued to be used as the main port of the island for some time, after Famagusta's use as a military base in World War I trade significantly shifted to Famagusta. The city outside the walls grew at an accelerated rate, with development being centred around Varosha. Varosha became the administrative centre as the British moved their headquarters and residences there and tourism grew significantly in the last years of the British rule. Pottery and production of citrus and potatoes also significantly grew in the city outside the walls, whilst agriculture within the walled city declined to non-existence.

 

New residential areas were built to accommodate the increasing population towards the end of the British rule,[11] and by 1960, Famagusta was a modern port city extending far beyond Varosha and the walled city.

 

The British period saw a significant demographic shift in the city. In 1881, Christians constituted 60% of the city's population while Muslims were at 40%. By 1960, the Turkish Cypriot population had dropped to 17.5% of the overall population, while the Greek Cypriot population had risen to 70%. The city was also the site for one of the British internment camps for nearly 50,000 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust trying to emigrate to Palestine.

 

From independence in 1960 to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus of 1974, Famagusta developed toward the south west of Varosha as a well-known entertainment and tourist centre. The contribution of Famagusta to the country's economic activity by 1974 far exceeded its proportional dimensions within the country. Whilst its population was only about 7% of the total of the country, Famagusta by 1974 accounted for over 10% of the total industrial employment and production of Cyprus, concentrating mainly on light industry compatible with its activity as a tourist resort and turning out high-quality products ranging from food, beverages and tobacco to clothing, footwear, plastics, light machinery and transport equipment. It contributed 19.3% of the business units and employed 21.3% of the total number of persons engaged in commerce on the island. It acted as the main tourist destination of Cyprus, hosting 31.5% of the hotels and 45% of Cyprus' total bed capacity. Varosha acted as the main touristic and business quarters.

 

In this period, the urbanisation of Famagusta slowed down and the development of the rural areas accelerated. Therefore, economic growth was shared between the city of Famagusta and the district, which had a balanced agricultural economy, with citrus, potatoes, tobacco and wheat as main products. Famagusta maintained good communications with this hinterland. The city's port remained the island's main seaport and in 1961, it was expanded to double its capacity in order to accommodate the growing volume of exports and imports. The port handled 42.7% of Cypriot exports, 48.6% of imports and 49% of passenger traffic.

 

There has not been an official census since 1960 but the population of the town in 1974 was estimated to be around 39,000 not counting about 12,000–15,000 persons commuting daily from the surrounding villages and suburbs to work in Famagusta. The number of people staying in the city would swell to about 90,000–100,000 during the peak summer tourist period, with the influx of tourists from numerous European countries, mainly Britain, France, Germany and the Scandinavian countries. The majority of the city population were Greek Cypriots (26,500), with 8,500 Turkish Cypriots and 4,000 people from other ethnic groups.

 

During the second phase of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus on 14 August 1974 the Mesaoria plain was overrun by Turkish tanks and Famagusta was bombed by Turkish aircraft. It took two days for the Turkish Army to occupy the city, prior to which Famagusta's entire Greek Cypriot population had fled into surrounding fields. As a result of Turkish airstrikes dozens of civilians died, including tourists.

 

Unlike other parts of the Turkish-controlled areas of Cyprus, the Varosha suburb of Famagusta was fenced off by the Turkish army immediately after being captured and remained fenced off until October 2020, when the TRNC reopened some streets to visitors. Some Greek Cypriots who had fled Varosha have been allowed to view the town and journalists have been allowed in.

 

UN Security Council resolution 550 (1984) considers any attempts to settle any part of Famagusta by people other than its inhabitants as inadmissible and calls for the transfer of this area to the administration of the UN. The UN's Security Council resolution 789 (1992) also urges that with a view to the implementation of resolution 550 (1984), the area at present under the control of the United Nations Peace-keeping Force in Cyprus be extended to include Varosha.

 

Famagusta's historic city centre is surrounded by the fortifications of Famagusta, which have a roughly rectangular shape, built mainly by the Venetians in the 15th and 16th centuries, though some sections of the walls have been dated earlier times, as far as 1211.

 

Some important landmarks and visitor attractions in the old city are:

The Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque

The Othello Castle

Palazzo del Provveditore - the Venetian palace of the governor, built on the site of the former Lusignan royal palace

St. Francis' Church

Sinan Pasha Mosque

Church of St. George of the Greeks

Church of St. George of the Latins

Twin Churches

Nestorian Church (of St George the Exiler)

Namık Kemal Dungeon

Agios Ioannis Church

Venetian House

Akkule Masjid

Mustafa Pasha Mosque

Ganchvor monastery

 

In an October 2010 report titled Saving Our Vanishing Heritage, Global Heritage Fund listed Famagusta, a "maritime ancient city of crusader kings", among the 12 sites most "On the Verge" of irreparable loss and destruction, citing insufficient management and development pressures.

 

Famagusta is an important commercial hub of Northern Cyprus. The main economic activities in the city are tourism, education, construction and industrial production. It has a 115-acre free port, which is the most important seaport of Northern Cyprus for travel and commerce. The port is an important source of income and employment for the city, though its volume of trade is restricted by the embargo against Northern Cyprus. Its historical sites, including the walled city, Salamis, the Othello Castle and the St Barnabas Church, as well as the sandy beaches surrounding it make it a tourist attraction; efforts are also underway to make the city more attractive for international congresses. The Eastern Mediterranean University is also an important employer and supplies significant income and activity, as well as opportunities for the construction sector. The university also raises a qualified workforce that stimulates the city's industry and makes communications industry viable. The city has two industrial zones: the Large Industrial Zone and the Little Industrial Zone. The city is also home to a fishing port, but inadequate infrastructure of the port restricts the growth of this sector. The industry in the city has traditionally been concentrated on processing agricultural products.

 

Historically, the port was the primary source of income and employment for the city, especially right after 1974. However, it gradually lost some of its importance to the economy as the share of its employees in the population of Famagusta diminished due to various reasons. However, it still is the primary port for commerce in Northern Cyprus, with more than half of ships that came to Northern Cyprus in 2013 coming to Famagusta. It is the second most popular seaport for passengers, after Kyrenia, with around 20,000 passengers using the port in 2013.

 

The mayor-in-exile of Famagusta is Simos Ioannou. Süleyman Uluçay heads the Turkish Cypriot municipal administration of Famagusta, which remains legal as a communal-based body under the constitutional system of the Republic of Cyprus.

 

Since 1974, Greek Cypriots submitted a number of proposals within the context of bicommunal discussions for the return of Varosha to UN administration, allowing the return of its previous inhabitants, requesting also the opening of Famagusta harbour for use by both communities. Varosha would have been returned to Greek Cypriot control as part of the 2004 Annan Plan but the plan had been rejected by a majority(3/4) of Greek Cypriot voters.

 

The walled city of Famagusta contains many unique buildings. Famagusta has a walled city popular with tourists.

 

Every year, the International Famagusta Art and Culture Festival is organized in Famagusta. Concerts, dance shows and theater plays take place during the festival.

 

A growth in tourism and the city's university have fueled the development of Famagusta's vibrant nightlife. Nightlife in the city is especially active on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights and in the hotter months of the year, starting from April. Larger hotels in the city have casinos that cater to their customers. Salamis Road is an area of Famagusta with a heavy concentration of bars frequented by students and locals.

 

Famagusta's Othello Castle is the setting for Shakespeare's play Othello. The city was also the setting for Victoria Hislop's 2015 novel The Sunrise, and Michael Paraskos's 2016 novel In Search of Sixpence. The city is the birthplace of the eponymous hero of the Renaissance proto-novel Fortunatus.

 

Famagusta was home to many Greek Cypriot sport teams that left the city because of the Turkish invasion and still bear their original names. Most notable football clubs originally from the city are Anorthosis Famagusta FC and Nea Salamis Famagusta FC, both of the Cypriot First Division, which are now based in Larnaca. Usually Anorthosis Famagusta fans are politically right wing where Nea Salamis fans are left wing.

 

Famagusta is represented by Mağusa Türk Gücü in the Turkish Cypriot First Division. Dr. Fazıl Küçük Stadium is the largest football stadium in Famagusta. Many Turkish Cypriot sport teams that left Southern Cyprus because of the Cypriot intercommunal violence are based in Famagusta.

 

Famagusta is represented by DAÜ Sports Club and Magem Sports Club in North Cyprus First Volleyball Division. Gazimağusa Türk Maarif Koleji represents Famagusta in the North Cyprus High School Volleyball League.

 

Famagusta has a modern volleyball stadium called the Mağusa Arena.

 

The Eastern Mediterranean University was founded in the city in 1979. The Istanbul Technical University founded a campus in the city in 2010.

 

The Cyprus College of Art was founded in Famagusta by the Cypriot artist Stass Paraskos in 1969, before moving to Paphos in 1972 after protests from local hoteliers that the presence of art students in the city was putting off holidaymakers.

 

Famagusta has three general hospitals. Gazimağusa Devlet Hastahanesi, a state hospital, is the biggest hospital in city. Gazimağusa Tıp Merkezi and Gazimağusa Yaşam Hastahanesi are private hospitals.

 

Personalities

Saint Barnabas, born and died in Salamis, Famagusta

Chris Achilleos, illustrator of the book versions on the BBC children's series Doctor Who

Beran Bertuğ, former Governor of Famagusta, first Cypriot woman to hold this position

Marios Constantinou, former international Cypriot football midfielder and current manager.

Eleftheria Eleftheriou, Cypriot singer.

Derviş Eroğlu, former President of Northern Cyprus

Alexis Galanos, 7th President of the House of Representatives and Famagusta mayor-in-exile (2006-2019) (Republic of Cyprus)

Xanthos Hadjisoteriou, Cypriot painter

Oz Karahan, political activist, President of the Union of Cypriots

Oktay Kayalp, former Turkish Cypriot Famagusta mayor (Northern Cyprus)

Harry Luke British diplomat

Angelos Misos, former international footballer

Costas Montis was an influential and prolific Greek Cypriot poet, novelist, and playwright born in Famagusta.

Hal Ozsan, actor (Dawson's Creek, Kyle XY)

Dimitris Papadakis, a Greek Cypriot politician, who served as a Member of the European Parliament.

Ṣubḥ-i-Azal, Persian religious leader, lived and died in exile in Famagusta

Touker Suleyman (born Türker Süleyman), British Turkish Cypriot fashion retail entrepreneur, investor and reality television personality.

Alexia Vassiliou, singer, left here as a refugee when the town was invaded.

George Vasiliou, former President of Cyprus

Vamik Volkan, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry

Derviş Zaim, film director

 

Famagusta is twinned with:

İzmir, Turkey (since 1974)

Corfu, Greece (since 1994)

Patras, Greece (since 1994)

Antalya, Turkey (since 1997)

Salamina (city), Greece (since 1998)

Struga, North Macedonia

Athens, Greece (since 2005)

Mersin, Turkey

 

Northern Cyprus, officially the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), is a de facto state that comprises the northeastern portion of the island of Cyprus. It is recognised only by Turkey, and its territory is considered by all other states to be part of the Republic of Cyprus.

 

Northern Cyprus extends from the tip of the Karpass Peninsula in the northeast to Morphou Bay, Cape Kormakitis and its westernmost point, the Kokkina exclave in the west. Its southernmost point is the village of Louroujina. A buffer zone under the control of the United Nations stretches between Northern Cyprus and the rest of the island and divides Nicosia, the island's largest city and capital of both sides.

 

A coup d'état in 1974, performed as part of an attempt to annex the island to Greece, prompted the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. This resulted in the eviction of much of the north's Greek Cypriot population, the flight of Turkish Cypriots from the south, and the partitioning of the island, leading to a unilateral declaration of independence by the north in 1983. Due to its lack of recognition, Northern Cyprus is heavily dependent on Turkey for economic, political and military support.

 

Attempts to reach a solution to the Cyprus dispute have been unsuccessful. The Turkish Army maintains a large force in Northern Cyprus with the support and approval of the TRNC government, while the Republic of Cyprus, the European Union as a whole, and the international community regard it as an occupation force. This military presence has been denounced in several United Nations Security Council resolutions.

 

Northern Cyprus is a semi-presidential, democratic republic with a cultural heritage incorporating various influences and an economy that is dominated by the services sector. The economy has seen growth through the 2000s and 2010s, with the GNP per capita more than tripling in the 2000s, but is held back by an international embargo due to the official closure of the ports in Northern Cyprus by the Republic of Cyprus. The official language is Turkish, with a distinct local dialect being spoken. The vast majority of the population consists of Sunni Muslims, while religious attitudes are mostly moderate and secular. Northern Cyprus is an observer state of ECO and OIC under the name "Turkish Cypriot State", PACE under the name "Turkish Cypriot Community", and Organization of Turkic States with its own name.

 

Several distinct periods of Cypriot intercommunal violence involving the two main ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, marked mid-20th century Cyprus. These included the Cyprus Emergency of 1955–59 during British rule, the post-independence Cyprus crisis of 1963–64, and the Cyprus crisis of 1967. Hostilities culminated in the 1974 de facto division of the island along the Green Line following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The region has been relatively peaceful since then, but the Cyprus dispute has continued, with various attempts to solve it diplomatically having been generally unsuccessful.

 

Cyprus, an island lying in the eastern Mediterranean, hosted a population of Greeks and Turks (four-fifths and one-fifth, respectively), who lived under British rule in the late nineteenth-century and the first half of the twentieth-century. Christian Orthodox Church of Cyprus played a prominent political role among the Greek Cypriot community, a privilege that it acquired during the Ottoman Empire with the employment of the millet system, which gave the archbishop an unofficial ethnarch status.

 

The repeated rejections by the British of Greek Cypriot demands for enosis, union with Greece, led to armed resistance, organised by the National Organization of Cypriot Struggle, or EOKA. EOKA, led by the Greek-Cypriot commander George Grivas, systematically targeted British colonial authorities. One of the effects of EOKA's campaign was to alter the Turkish position from demanding full reincorporation into Turkey to a demand for taksim (partition). EOKA's mission and activities caused a "Cretan syndrome" (see Turkish Resistance Organisation) within the Turkish Cypriot community, as its members feared that they would be forced to leave the island in such a case as had been the case with Cretan Turks. As such, they preferred the continuation of British colonial rule and then taksim, the division of the island. Due to the Turkish Cypriots' support for the British, EOKA's leader, Georgios Grivas, declared them to be enemies. The fact that the Turks were a minority was, according to Nihat Erim, to be addressed by the transfer of thousands of Turks from mainland Turkey so that Greek Cypriots would cease to be the majority. When Erim visited Cyprus as the Turkish representative, he was advised by Field Marshal Sir John Harding, the then Governor of Cyprus, that Turkey should send educated Turks to settle in Cyprus.

 

Turkey actively promoted the idea that on the island of Cyprus two distinctive communities existed, and sidestepped its former claim that "the people of Cyprus were all Turkish subjects". In doing so, Turkey's aim to have self-determination of two to-be equal communities in effect led to de jure partition of the island.[citation needed] This could be justified to the international community against the will of the majority Greek population of the island. Dr. Fazil Küçük in 1954 had already proposed Cyprus be divided in two at the 35° parallel.

 

Lindley Dan, from Notre Dame University, spotted the roots of intercommunal violence to different visions among the two communities of Cyprus (enosis for Greek Cypriots, taksim for Turkish Cypriots). Also, Lindlay wrote that "the merging of church, schools/education, and politics in divisive and nationalistic ways" had played a crucial role in creation of havoc in Cyprus' history. Attalides Michael also pointed to the opposing nationalisms as the cause of the Cyprus problem.

 

By the mid-1950's, the "Cyprus is Turkish" party, movement, and slogan gained force in both Cyprus and Turkey. In a 1954 editorial, Turkish Cypriot leader Dr. Fazil Kuchuk expressed the sentiment that the Turkish youth had grown up with the idea that "as soon as Great Britain leaves the island, it will be taken over by the Turks", and that "Turkey cannot tolerate otherwise". This perspective contributed to the willingness of Turkish Cypriots to align themselves with the British, who started recruiting Turkish Cypriots into the police force that patrolled Cyprus to fight EOKA, a Greek Cypriot nationalist organisation that sought to rid the island of British rule.

 

EOKA targeted colonial authorities, including police, but Georgios Grivas, the leader of EOKA, did not initially wish to open up a new front by fighting Turkish Cypriots and reassured them that EOKA would not harm their people. In 1956, some Turkish Cypriot policemen were killed by EOKA members and this provoked some intercommunal violence in the spring and summer, but these attacks on policemen were not motivated by the fact that they were Turkish Cypriots.

 

However, in January 1957, Grivas changed his policy as his forces in the mountains became increasingly pressured by the British Crown forces. In order to divert the attention of the Crown forces, EOKA members started to target Turkish Cypriot policemen intentionally in the towns, so that Turkish Cypriots would riot against the Greek Cypriots and the security forces would have to be diverted to the towns to restore order. The killing of a Turkish Cypriot policeman on 19 January, when a power station was bombed, and the injury of three others, provoked three days of intercommunal violence in Nicosia. The two communities targeted each other in reprisals, at least one Greek Cypriot was killed and the British Army was deployed in the streets. Greek Cypriot stores were burned and their neighbourhoods attacked. Following the events, the Greek Cypriot leadership spread the propaganda that the riots had merely been an act of Turkish Cypriot aggression. Such events created chaos and drove the communities apart both in Cyprus and in Turkey.

 

On 22 October 1957 Sir Hugh Mackintosh Foot replaced Sir John Harding as the British Governor of Cyprus. Foot suggested five to seven years of self-government before any final decision. His plan rejected both enosis and taksim. The Turkish Cypriot response to this plan was a series of anti-British demonstrations in Nicosia on 27 and 28 January 1958 rejecting the proposed plan because the plan did not include partition. The British then withdrew the plan.

 

In 1957, Black Gang, a Turkish Cypriot pro-taksim paramilitary organisation, was formed to patrol a Turkish Cypriot enclave, the Tahtakale district of Nicosia, against activities of EOKA. The organisation later attempted to grow into a national scale, but failed to gain public support.

 

By 1958, signs of dissatisfaction with the British increased on both sides, with a group of Turkish Cypriots forming Volkan (later renamed to the Turkish Resistance Organisation) paramilitary group to promote partition and the annexation of Cyprus to Turkey as dictated by the Menderes plan. Volkan initially consisted of roughly 100 members, with the stated aim of raising awareness in Turkey of the Cyprus issue and courting military training and support for Turkish Cypriot fighters from the Turkish government.

 

In June 1958, the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was expected to propose a plan to resolve the Cyprus issue. In light of the new development, the Turks rioted in Nicosia to promote the idea that Greek and Turkish Cypriots could not live together and therefore any plan that did not include partition would not be viable. This violence was soon followed by bombing, Greek Cypriot deaths and looting of Greek Cypriot-owned shops and houses. Greek and Turkish Cypriots started to flee mixed population villages where they were a minority in search of safety. This was effectively the beginning of the segregation of the two communities. On 7 June 1958, a bomb exploded at the entrance of the Turkish Embassy in Cyprus. Following the bombing, Turkish Cypriots looted Greek Cypriot properties. On 26 June 1984, the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktaş, admitted on British channel ITV that the bomb was placed by the Turks themselves in order to create tension. On 9 January 1995, Rauf Denktaş repeated his claim to the famous Turkish newspaper Milliyet in Turkey.

 

The crisis reached a climax on 12 June 1958, when eight Greeks, out of an armed group of thirty five arrested by soldiers of the Royal Horse Guards on suspicion of preparing an attack on the Turkish quarter of Skylloura, were killed in a suspected attack by Turkish Cypriot locals, near the village of Geunyeli, having been ordered to walk back to their village of Kondemenos.

 

After the EOKA campaign had begun, the British government successfully began to turn the Cyprus issue from a British colonial problem into a Greek-Turkish issue. British diplomacy exerted backstage influence on the Adnan Menderes government, with the aim of making Turkey active in Cyprus. For the British, the attempt had a twofold objective. The EOKA campaign would be silenced as quickly as possible, and Turkish Cypriots would not side with Greek Cypriots against the British colonial claims over the island, which would thus remain under the British. The Turkish Cypriot leadership visited Menderes to discuss the Cyprus issue. When asked how the Turkish Cypriots should respond to the Greek Cypriot claim of enosis, Menderes replied: "You should go to the British foreign minister and request the status quo be prolonged, Cyprus to remain as a British colony". When the Turkish Cypriots visited the British Foreign Secretary and requested for Cyprus to remain a colony, he replied: "You should not be asking for colonialism at this day and age, you should be asking for Cyprus be returned to Turkey, its former owner".

 

As Turkish Cypriots began to look to Turkey for protection, Greek Cypriots soon understood that enosis was extremely unlikely. The Greek Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios III, now set independence for the island as his objective.

 

Britain resolved to solve the dispute by creating an independent Cyprus. In 1959, all involved parties signed the Zurich Agreements: Britain, Turkey, Greece, and the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders, Makarios and Dr. Fazil Kucuk, respectively. The new constitution drew heavily on the ethnic composition of the island. The President would be a Greek Cypriot, and the Vice-President a Turkish Cypriot with an equal veto. The contribution to the public service would be set at a ratio of 70:30, and the Supreme Court would consist of an equal number of judges from both communities as well as an independent judge who was not Greek, Turkish or British. The Zurich Agreements were supplemented by a number of treaties. The Treaty of Guarantee stated that secession or union with any state was forbidden, and that Greece, Turkey and Britain would be given guarantor status to intervene if that was violated. The Treaty of Alliance allowed for two small Greek and Turkish military contingents to be stationed on the island, and the Treaty of Establishment gave Britain sovereignty over two bases in Akrotiri and Dhekelia.

 

On 15 August 1960, the Colony of Cyprus became fully independent as the Republic of Cyprus. The new republic remained within the Commonwealth of Nations.

 

The new constitution brought dissatisfaction to Greek Cypriots, who felt it to be highly unjust for them for historical, demographic and contributional reasons. Although 80% of the island's population were Greek Cypriots and these indigenous people had lived on the island for thousands of years and paid 94% of taxes, the new constitution was giving the 17% of the population that was Turkish Cypriots, who paid 6% of taxes, around 30% of government jobs and 40% of national security jobs.

 

Within three years tensions between the two communities in administrative affairs began to show. In particular disputes over separate municipalities and taxation created a deadlock in government. A constitutional court ruled in 1963 Makarios had failed to uphold article 173 of the constitution which called for the establishment of separate municipalities for Turkish Cypriots. Makarios subsequently declared his intention to ignore the judgement, resulting in the West German judge resigning from his position. Makarios proposed thirteen amendments to the constitution, which would have had the effect of resolving most of the issues in the Greek Cypriot favour. Under the proposals, the President and Vice-President would lose their veto, the separate municipalities as sought after by the Turkish Cypriots would be abandoned, the need for separate majorities by both communities in passing legislation would be discarded and the civil service contribution would be set at actual population ratios (82:18) instead of the slightly higher figure for Turkish Cypriots.

 

The intention behind the amendments has long been called into question. The Akritas plan, written in the height of the constitutional dispute by the Greek Cypriot interior minister Polycarpos Georkadjis, called for the removal of undesirable elements of the constitution so as to allow power-sharing to work. The plan envisaged a swift retaliatory attack on Turkish Cypriot strongholds should Turkish Cypriots resort to violence to resist the measures, stating "In the event of a planned or staged Turkish attack, it is imperative to overcome it by force in the shortest possible time, because if we succeed in gaining command of the situation (in one or two days), no outside, intervention would be either justified or possible." Whether Makarios's proposals were part of the Akritas plan is unclear, however it remains that sentiment towards enosis had not completely disappeared with independence. Makarios described independence as "a step on the road to enosis".[31] Preparations for conflict were not entirely absent from Turkish Cypriots either, with right wing elements still believing taksim (partition) the best safeguard against enosis.

 

Greek Cypriots however believe the amendments were a necessity stemming from a perceived attempt by Turkish Cypriots to frustrate the working of government. Turkish Cypriots saw it as a means to reduce their status within the state from one of co-founder to that of minority, seeing it as a first step towards enosis. The security situation deteriorated rapidly.

 

Main articles: Bloody Christmas (1963) and Battle of Tillyria

An armed conflict was triggered after December 21, 1963, a period remembered by Turkish Cypriots as Bloody Christmas, when a Greek Cypriot policemen that had been called to help deal with a taxi driver refusing officers already on the scene access to check the identification documents of his customers, took out his gun upon arrival and shot and killed the taxi driver and his partner. Eric Solsten summarised the events as follows: "a Greek Cypriot police patrol, ostensibly checking identification documents, stopped a Turkish Cypriot couple on the edge of the Turkish quarter. A hostile crowd gathered, shots were fired, and two Turkish Cypriots were killed."

 

In the morning after the shooting, crowds gathered in protest in Northern Nicosia, likely encouraged by the TMT, without incident. On the evening of the 22nd, gunfire broke out, communication lines to the Turkish neighbourhoods were cut, and the Greek Cypriot police occupied the nearby airport. On the 23rd, a ceasefire was negotiated, but did not hold. Fighting, including automatic weapons fire, between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and militias increased in Nicosia and Larnaca. A force of Greek Cypriot irregulars led by Nikos Sampson entered the Nicosia suburb of Omorphita and engaged in heavy firing on armed, as well as by some accounts unarmed, Turkish Cypriots. The Omorphita clash has been described by Turkish Cypriots as a massacre, while this view has generally not been acknowledged by Greek Cypriots.

 

Further ceasefires were arranged between the two sides, but also failed. By Christmas Eve, the 24th, Britain, Greece, and Turkey had joined talks, with all sides calling for a truce. On Christmas day, Turkish fighter jets overflew Nicosia in a show of support. Finally it was agreed to allow a force of 2,700 British soldiers to help enforce a ceasefire. In the next days, a "buffer zone" was created in Nicosia, and a British officer marked a line on a map with green ink, separating the two sides of the city, which was the beginning of the "Green Line". Fighting continued across the island for the next several weeks.

 

In total 364 Turkish Cypriots and 174 Greek Cypriots were killed during the violence. 25,000 Turkish Cypriots from 103-109 villages fled and were displaced into enclaves and thousands of Turkish Cypriot houses were ransacked or completely destroyed.

 

Contemporary newspapers also reported on the forceful exodus of the Turkish Cypriots from their homes. According to The Times in 1964, threats, shootings and attempts of arson were committed against the Turkish Cypriots to force them out of their homes. The Daily Express wrote that "25,000 Turks have already been forced to leave their homes". The Guardian reported a massacre of Turks at Limassol on 16 February 1964.

 

Turkey had by now readied its fleet and its fighter jets appeared over Nicosia. Turkey was dissuaded from direct involvement by the creation of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) in 1964. Despite the negotiated ceasefire in Nicosia, attacks on the Turkish Cypriot persisted, particularly in Limassol. Concerned about the possibility of a Turkish invasion, Makarios undertook the creation of a Greek Cypriot conscript-based army called the "National Guard". A general from Greece took charge of the army, whilst a further 20,000 well-equipped officers and men were smuggled from Greece into Cyprus. Turkey threatened to intervene once more, but was prevented by a strongly worded letter from the American President Lyndon B. Johnson, anxious to avoid a conflict between NATO allies Greece and Turkey at the height of the Cold War.

 

Turkish Cypriots had by now established an important bridgehead at Kokkina, provided with arms, volunteers and materials from Turkey and abroad. Seeing this incursion of foreign weapons and troops as a major threat, the Cypriot government invited George Grivas to return from Greece as commander of the Greek troops on the island and launch a major attack on the bridgehead. Turkey retaliated by dispatching its fighter jets to bomb Greek positions, causing Makarios to threaten an attack on every Turkish Cypriot village on the island if the bombings did not cease. The conflict had now drawn in Greece and Turkey, with both countries amassing troops on their Thracian borders. Efforts at mediation by Dean Acheson, a former U.S. Secretary of State, and UN-appointed mediator Galo Plaza had failed, all the while the division of the two communities becoming more apparent. Greek Cypriot forces were estimated at some 30,000, including the National Guard and the large contingent from Greece. Defending the Turkish Cypriot enclaves was a force of approximately 5,000 irregulars, led by a Turkish colonel, but lacking the equipment and organisation of the Greek forces.

 

The Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1964, U Thant, reported the damage during the conflicts:

 

UNFICYP carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances; it shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish-Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting.

 

The situation worsened in 1967, when a military junta overthrew the democratically elected government of Greece, and began applying pressure on Makarios to achieve enosis. Makarios, not wishing to become part of a military dictatorship or trigger a Turkish invasion, began to distance himself from the goal of enosis. This caused tensions with the junta in Greece as well as George Grivas in Cyprus. Grivas's control over the National Guard and Greek contingent was seen as a threat to Makarios's position, who now feared a possible coup.[citation needed] The National Guard and Cyprus Police began patrolling the Turkish Cypriot enclaves of Ayios Theodoros and Kophinou, and on November 15 engaged in heavy fighting with the Turkish Cypriots.

 

By the time of his withdrawal 26 Turkish Cypriots had been killed. Turkey replied with an ultimatum demanding that Grivas be removed from the island, that the troops smuggled from Greece in excess of the limits of the Treaty of Alliance be removed, and that the economic blockades on the Turkish Cypriot enclaves be lifted. Grivas was recalled by the Athens Junta and the 12,000 Greek troops were withdrawn. Makarios now attempted to consolidate his position by reducing the number of National Guard troops, and by creating a paramilitary force loyal to Cypriot independence. In 1968, acknowledging that enosis was now all but impossible, Makarios stated, "A solution by necessity must be sought within the limits of what is feasible which does not always coincide with the limits of what is desirable."

 

After 1967 tensions between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots subsided. Instead, the main source of tension on the island came from factions within the Greek Cypriot community. Although Makarios had effectively abandoned enosis in favour of an 'attainable solution', many others continued to believe that the only legitimate political aspiration for Greek Cypriots was union with Greece.

 

On his arrival, Grivas began by establishing a nationalist paramilitary group known as the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston B or EOKA-B), drawing comparisons with the EOKA struggle for enosis under the British colonial administration of the 1950s.

 

The military junta in Athens saw Makarios as an obstacle. Makarios's failure to disband the National Guard, whose officer class was dominated by mainland Greeks, had meant the junta had practical control over the Cypriot military establishment, leaving Makarios isolated and a vulnerable target.

 

During the first Turkish invasion, Turkish troops invaded Cyprus territory on 20 July 1974, invoking its rights under the Treaty of Guarantee. This expansion of Turkish-occupied zone violated International Law as well as the Charter of the United Nations. Turkish troops managed to capture 3% of the island which was accompanied by the burning of the Turkish Cypriot quarter, as well as the raping and killing of women and children. A temporary cease-fire followed which was mitigated by the UN Security Council. Subsequently, the Greek military Junta collapsed on July 23, 1974, and peace talks commenced in which a democratic government was installed. The Resolution 353 was broken after Turkey attacked a second time and managed to get a hold of 37% of Cyprus territory. The Island of Cyprus was appointed a Buffer Zone by the United Nations, which divided the island into two zones through the 'Green Line' and put an end to the Turkish invasion. Although Turkey announced that the occupied areas of Cyprus to be called the Federated Turkish State in 1975, it is not legitimised on a worldwide political scale. The United Nations called for the international recognition of independence for the Republic of Cyprus in the Security Council Resolution 367.

 

In the years after the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus one can observe a history of failed talks between the two parties. The 1983 declaration of the independent Turkish Republic of Cyprus resulted in a rise of inter-communal tensions and made it increasingly hard to find mutual understanding. With Cyprus' interest of a possible EU membership and a new UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1997 new hopes arose for a fresh start. International involvement from sides of the US and UK, wanting a solution to the Cyprus dispute prior to the EU accession led to political pressures for new talks. The believe that an accession without a solution would threaten Greek-Turkish relations and acknowledge the partition of the island would direct the coming negotiations.

 

Over the course of two years a concrete plan, the Annan plan was formulated. In 2004 the fifth version agreed upon from both sides and with the endorsement of Turkey, US, UK and EU then was presented to the public and was given a referendum in both Cypriot communities to assure the legitimisation of the resolution. The Turkish Cypriots voted with 65% for the plan, however the Greek Cypriots voted with a 76% majority against. The Annan plan contained multiple important topics. Firstly it established a confederation of two separate states called the United Cyprus Republic. Both communities would have autonomous states combined under one unified government. The members of parliament would be chosen according to the percentage in population numbers to ensure a just involvement from both communities. The paper proposed a demilitarisation of the island over the next years. Furthermore it agreed upon a number of 45000 Turkish settlers that could remain on the island. These settlers became a very important issue concerning peace talks. Originally the Turkish government encouraged Turks to settle in Cyprus providing transfer and property, to establish a counterpart to the Greek Cypriot population due to their 1 to 5 minority. With the economic situation many Turkish-Cypriot decided to leave the island, however their departure is made up by incoming Turkish settlers leaving the population ratio between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots stable. However all these points where criticised and as seen in the vote rejected mainly by the Greek Cypriots. These name the dissolution of the „Republic of Cyprus", economic consequences of a reunion and the remaining Turkish settlers as reason. Many claim that the plan was indeed drawing more from Turkish-Cypriot demands then Greek-Cypriot interests. Taking in consideration that the US wanted to keep Turkey as a strategic partner in future Middle Eastern conflicts.

 

A week after the failed referendum the Republic of Cyprus joined the EU. In multiple instances the EU tried to promote trade with Northern Cyprus but without internationally recognised ports this spiked a grand debate. Both side endure their intention of negotiations, however without the prospect of any new compromises or agreements the UN is unwilling to start the process again. Since 2004 negotiations took place in numbers but without any results, both sides are strongly holding on to their position without an agreeable solution in sight that would suit both parties.

ON DETACHMENT

 

"I have read many writings of pagan masters, and of the prophets, and of the Old and New Testaments, and have sought earnestly and with all diligence to discover which is the best and highest virtue whereby a man may chiefly and most firmly join himself to God,and whereby a man may become by grace what God is by nature, and whereby a man may come closest to his image when he was in God, wherein there was no difference between him and God, before God made creatures. After a thorough study of these writings I find, as well as my reason can testify or perceive, that only pure detachment surpasses all things, for all virtues have some regard to creatures, but detachment is free of all creatures. Therefore our Lord said to Martha, "unum est necessarium " (Luke 1 0 : 42), which is as much as to say, 'Martha, he who would be serene and pure needs but one thing: detachment.'

 

The teachers greatly praise love, as does St. Paul who says, "Whatever things I may do, and have not love, I am nothing" (cf. 1 Cor. 1 3 : 1 ). But I extol detachment above any love. First, because, at best, love constrains me to love God, but detachment compels God to love me. Now it is a far nobler thing my constraining God to me than for me to constrain myself to God. That is because God is more readily able to adapt Himself to me, and can more easily unite with me than I could unite with God. That detachment forces God to me, I can prove thus: everything wants to be in its natural place. Now God's natural place is unity and purity, and that comes from detachment. Therefore God is bound to give Himself to a detached heart.

 

In the second place I extol detachment above love because love compels me to suffer all things for God's sake, whereas detachment makes me receptive of nothing but God. Now it is far nobler to be receptive of nothing but God than to suffer all things for God, for in suffering a man has some regard to the creatures from which he gets the suffering, but detachment is quite free of all creatures. But that detachment is receptive of nothing but God, I can prove this way: whatever is to be received must be taken in somewhere. Now detachment is so nearly nothing that there is no thing subtle enough to maintain itself in detachment except God alone. He is so subtle and so simple that He can stay in a detached heart. Therefore detachment is receptive of nothing but God.

 

The masters also extol humility above many other virtues. But I extol detachment above humility for this reason: humility can exist without detachment, but perfect detachment cannot exist without perfect humility, for perfect humility ends in the destruction of self. Now detachment comes so close to nothing, that between perfect detachment and nothing no thing can exist. Therefore perfect detachment cannot be without humility. But two virtues are always better than one.

 

The second reason why I praise detachment above humility is because humility means abasing oneself beneath all creatures, and in that abasement man goes out of himself into creatures, but detachment rests within itself. Now no going out can ever be so noble, but remaining within is nobler still. As the prophet David says, "Omnis gloria eius filiae regis ab intus " (Ps. 44 : 14), which is to say, "All the glory of the daughter comes from her inwardness. " Perfect detachment is not concerned about being above or below any creature; it does not wish to be below or above, it would stand on its own, loving none and hating none, and seeks neither equality nor inequality with any creature, nor this nor that: it wants merely to be. But to be either this or that it does not wish at all. For whoever would be this or that wants to be something, but detachment wants to be nothing. It is therefore no burden on anything.

 

Now somebody might say, 'Well, our Lady possessed all virtues to perfection, and so she must have had perfect detachment. But ifdetachment is higher than humility, why then did our Lady glory in her h umility and not in her detachment when she said, "Quia respexit dominus humilitatem ancillae suae " (Luke 1 : 48 ) , that is to say, " He regarded the humility of his handmaiden " ? '

 

I reply that in God there is detachment and humility, insofar as

we can speak of God's having virtues. You should know that it was loving humility that led God to stoop to enter human nature, while detachment stood immovable within itself when he became man, just as it did when He created heaven and earth, as I shall tell you later. And because our Lord, when he would become man, stood unmoved in his detachment, our Lady knew that he required the same of her too, and that in this case he looked to her humility and not her detachment. For if she had thought once about her detachment and said, 'he regarded my detachment,' that detachment would have been sullied and would not have been whole and perfect, since a going forth would have occurred. But nothing, however little, may proceed from detachment without staining it. There you have the reason why our Lady gloried in her humility and not her detachment. Concerning this, the prophet said, "Audiam, quid Loquatur in me dominus deus " (Ps. 84:9), that is to say, " I will (be silent and) hear what my lord God says within me,'' as if he were to say, 'If God wishes to speak to me, let Him come into me, for I will not go out.'

 

I also praise detachment above all compassion, for compassion isnothing but a man's going out of himself by reason of his fellow creatures' lack, by which his heart is troubled. But detachment is freeof this, stays in itself and is not troubled by any thing: for as long asany thing can trouble a man, he is not in a right state. In short, when I consider all the virtues, I find none so completely without lack and so conformed to God as detachment.

 

A master called Avicenna declares that the mind of him who

stands detached is of such nobility that whatever he sees is true, and whatever he desires he obtains, and whatever he commands must be obeyed. And this you must know for sure: when the free mind is quite detached, it constrains God to itself, and if it were able to stand formless and free of all accidentals, it would assume God's proper nature. But God can give that to none but Himself, therefore God can do no more for the detached mind than give Himself to it. But

the man who stands thus in utter detachment is rapt into eternity in such a way that nothing transient can move him, and that he is aware of nothing corporeal and is said to be dead to the world, for he has no taste for anything earthly. That is what St. Paul meant when he said, "I live and yet do not live - Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20).

 

Now you may ask what this detachment is that is so noble in

itself. You should know that true detachment is nothing else but a mind that stands unmoved by all accidents of joy or sorrow, honor, shame, or disgrace, as a mountain of lead stands unmoved by a breath of wind. This immovable detachment brings a man into the greatest likeness to God. For the reason why God is God is because of His immovable detachment, and from this detachment He has His purity, His simplicity, and His immutability. Therefore, if a man is to be like

God, as far as a creature can have likeness with God, this must come from detachment. This draws a man into purity, and from purity into simplicity, and from simplicity into immutability, and these things make a likeness between God and that man; and this likeness must occur through grace, for grace draws a man away from all temporal things and purges him of all that is transient. You must know, too, that to be empty of all creatures is to be full of God, and to be full of all creatures is to be empty of God.

 

You should also know that God has stood in this unmoved detachment from all eternity, and still so stands; and you should know further that when God created heaven and earth and all creatures, this affected His unmoved detachment just as little as if no creature had ever been created. I say further: all the prayers and good works that a man can do in time affect God's detachment as little as if no prayers or good works had ever occurred in time, and God never became more ready to give or more inclined toward a man than if he had never uttered the prayer or performed the good works. I say still further: when the Son in the Godhead wanted to become man, and became man and endured martyrdom, that affected God's unmoved detachment as little as if he had never become man. You might say atthis, 'Then I hear that all prayers and good works are wasted because God does not allow Himself to be moved by anyone with such things, and yet it is said that God wants us to pray to Him for everything.'

 

Now you should mark me well, and understand properly if you

can, that God in His first eternal glance (if we can assume that there was a first glance) saw all things as they should occur, and saw in the same glance when and how He would create all creatures and when the Son would become man and suffer; He saw too the least prayer and good work that anyone should do, and saw which prayers and devotion He would and should accede to; He saw that you will call upon Him earnestly tomorrow and pray to Him, but God will not grant your petition and prayer tomorrow, for He has granted it in His eternity, before ever you became a man. But if your prayer is not sincere and in earnest, God will not deny it to you now, for He has denied it to you in His eternity.

 

And thus God has regarded all things in His first eternal glance, and God performs nothing afresh, for all has been performed in advance. Thus God ever stands in His immovable detachment, and yet the prayers and good works of people are not wasted, for he who does well will be rewarded, and he who does evil will reap accordingly. This is explained by St. Augustine in the fifth book of On the Trinity, in the last chapter thus: 'Deus autem, etc. ' which means, 'God forbid that anyone should say that God loves anyone in time, for with Him there is no past and no future, and He loved all the saints before the world was ever created, as He foresaw them. And when it comes to be that He displays in time what He has seen in eternity, then people think He has gained a new love for them; so too, when God is angry or does some good thing, it is we who are changed while He remains

unchanged, j ust as the sun's ray hurts a sick eye and delights a sound one, and yet the sunshine remains unchanged in itself.' Augustine also touches on the same idea in the twelfth book of On the Trinity in the fourth chapter, where he says, 'Nam Deus non ad tempus videt, nee aliquid fit novi in eius visione, ' 'God does not see in temporal fashion, and no new vision arises in Him.' In the same sense Isidore speaks in his book On the Highest Good, saying, 'Many people ask, What did God do before He created heaven and earth, or whence came the new will in God that He made creatures?' and he answers, 'No new will ever arose in God, for although a creature did not exist in itself (as it is now), yet it was before all time in God and in His reason.' God did not create heaven and earth as we (perishable beings) might say, 'let that be so! ' for all creatures were spoken in the Eternal Word. To this we can add what our Lord said to Moses when Moses said, " Lord, if Pharaoh asks me who you are, how am I to answer him ? " and the Lord said, " Say, 'He who IS has sent me" (Exod. 3 : 1 3 -1 4 ) . That is as much as to say, He who is immutable in Himself has sent me.

 

But someone might say, 'Was Christ in unmoved detachment when he said: " My soul is sorrowful even unto death" (Matt. 26: 3 8; Mark 1 4 : 34), and Mary when she stood before the cross? How is all this compatible with unmoved detachment?' Concerning this, you should know what the masters say, that in every man there are two kinds of man.? The one is called the outer man, that is, the life of the senses: this man is served by the five senses, though the outer man functions by the power of the soul. The other is called the inner man, that is, man's inward nature. You should understand that a spiritual man, who loves God, makes use of the powers of the soul in the outer man only to the extent that the five outer senses need it: the inward nature is not concerned with the five senses except insofar as it is a guide or ruler of those senses, guarding them so that they do not yield to sense objects in a bestial fashion, as some folk do who live for carnal pleasures like beasts unendowed with reason; such people should be termed beasts rather than men. And whatever powers the soul has over and above what it gives to the five senses are all devoted to the inner man. And when such a man perceives a noble or elevated object, the soul draws into itself all the powers it has granted to the five senses, and then that man is said to be insensible or entranced, for his object is an intelligible image or something intelligible without an image. But you should know that God requires of every spiritual man to love Him with all the powers of the soul. He says, " Love your God with all your heart" (Deut. 6 : 5; Matt. 22 : 3 7; Mark 1 2 : 3 0; Luke 1 0 :27). Now some people use up all the powers of the soul in the outer man. These are people who turn all their senses and their reason toward perishable goods, knowing nothing of the inner man.

 

You should know that the outer man can be active while the inner man is completely free of this activity and unmoved. Now Christ too had an outer man and an inner man, and so did our Lady, and whatever Christ and our Lady ever said about external things, they did so according to the outer man, but the inner man remained in unmoved detachment. Thus it was when Christ said, " My soul is sorrowful unto death," and whatever lamentations our Lady made, or whatever else she said, inwardly she was in a state of unmoved detachment. Here is an analogy: a door swings open and shuts on its hinge. I would compare the outer woodwork of the door to the

outer man, and the hinge to the inner man. When the door opens and shuts, the boards move back and forth, but the hinge stays in the same place and is never moved thereby. It is the same in this case, if you understand it rightly. Now I ask, 'What is the object of pure detachment? ' My answer is that the object of pure detachment is neither this nor that. It rests on absolutely nothing, and I will tell you why: pure detachment rests on the highest, and he is at his highest, in whom God can work all His will. But God cannot work all His will in all hearts, for, although God is almighty, He can only work where He finds readiness or creates it. I say 'creates it' on account of St. Paul, because in him God found no readiness, but made him ready by infusion of grace. And so I say God works according as He finds us ready. His working is different in a man and in a stone. Here is an example from nature. If you heat a baker's oven and put in it dough of oats, barley, rye, and wheat, there is only one heat in the oven, but it does not have the same effect on the different kinds of dough, for one turns into fine bread, the second coarser, and the third coarser still. And that is not the fault of the heat, it is due to the materials which are unlike. In the same way God does not work alike in all our hearts: He works as He finds readiness and receptivity. Now in whatever heart there is this or that, there may be something in 'this' or 'that' which God cannot bring to the highest peak. And so, if the heart is to be ready to receive the highest, it must rest on absolutely nothing, and in that lies the greatest potentiality which can exist. For when the detached heart rests on the highest, that can only be on nothing, since that has the greatest receptivity. Let us take an example from nature: if I want to write on a wax tablet, then anything written on that tablet already, however wonderful it may be, will prevent me from writing there; and if I want to write I must erase or destroy whatever is on the tablet, and the tablet is never so suitable for me to write on as when there is nothing on it. Similarly, if God is to write the highest on my heart, then everything called 'this and that' must be expunged from my heart, and then my heart stands in detachment. Then God can work the highest according to His supreme will. Therefore the object of a detached heart is neither this nor that.

 

Again I ask, 'What is the prayer of a detached heart? ' My answer is that detachment and purity cannot pray, for whoever prays wants God to grant him something, or else wants God to take something from him. But a detached heart desires nothing at all, nor has it anything it wants to get rid of. Therefore it is free of all prayers, or its prayer consists of nothing but being uniform with God. That is all its prayer. In this sense we can take St. Dionysius's comment on the saying of St. Paul, "There are many who run, but only one gains the crown " ( 1 Cor. 9 : 25 ) . All the powers of the soul compete for the crown but the essence alone can win it. Dionysius says the race is nothing but a turning away from all creatures and a union with the uncreated. And when the soul has got so far, it loses its name and is drawn into God, so that in itself it becomes nothing, j ust as the sun draws the dawn into itself and annihilates it. To this state nothing brings a man but pure detachment. To this we may add a saying of St. Augustine, 'The soul has a secret entrance to the divine nature, when all things become nothing for it.' On earth, this entrance is nothing but pure detachment, and when the detachment reaches its climax, it becomes ignorant with knowing, loveless with loving, and dark with enlightenment. Thus we may understand the words of a master, that the poor in spirit are they who have abandoned all things to God, j ust as He possessed them when we did not exist. None can do this but a pure, detached heart.

 

That God would rather be in a detached heart than in all other hearts, appears if you ask me, 'What does God seek in all things ? ' to which I answer from the Book of Wisdom, where He says, " In all things I seek rest" (Sir. 24: 1 1 ). But nowhere is perfect rest to be found but in a detached heart. That is why God prefers to be there rather than in other virtues or in anything else. You should know, too, that the more a man strives to be receptive to divine influence, the more blessed he is; and whoever can gain the highest readiness in this is in the highest state of blessedness. But none can make himself receptive to divine influence but by uniformity with God, for insofar as a man is uniform with God, to that extent he is receptive to the divine influence. But uniformity comes from man's subjecting himself to God, and the more a man is subject to creatures, the less he is uniform with God. Now the pure detached heart stands free of all creatures. Therefore it is totally subject to God, and therefore it is in the highest degree of uniformity with God, and is also the most receptive to divine influence. This was what St. Paul meant when he said, " Put on Christ, " meaning unformity with Christ, for this putting on can only take place through uniformity with Christ. You should know that when Christ became man, he took on, not a man, but human nature. Therefore, go out of all things and then there will remain only what Christ took on, and thus you will have put on Christ.

 

Whoever would know the nobility and profit of perfect detachment, let him note Christ's saying concerning his humanity, when he said to his disciples, "It is expedient for you that I should go away from you, for if I do not go away, the Holy Spirit cannot come to you" (John 1 6 : 7). This is just as if he had said, 'You rejoice too much in my present form, and therefore the perfect joy of the Holy Ghost cannot be yours.' So, leave all images and unite with the formless essence, for God's spiritual comfort is delicate; therefore He will not offer Himself to any but to him who scorns physical comforts.

 

Now take note, all who are sensible! No man is happier than he who has the greatest detachment. There can be no fleshly and physical comfort without some spiritual harm, for "the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh" (cf. Gal. 5 : 1 7) . Therefore, whoever in the flesh sows disorderly love reaps death, and whoever in the spirit sows ordered love, reaps from the spirit eternal life. Therefore, the quicker a man flees from the created, the quicker the Creator runs toward him. So, take note, all sensible men! Since the joy we might have from the physical form of Christ hinders us in receiving the Holy Ghost, how much more of a hindrance to gaining God is our inordinate delight in evanescent comforts! That is why detachment is best, for it purifies the soul, purges the conscience, kindles the heart, awakens the spirit, quickens the desire, makes us know God and, cutting off creatures, unites us with God.

 

Now take note, all who have good sense! The swiftest steed to bear you to His perfection is suffering, for none will enjoy greater eternal bliss than those who stand with Christ in the greatest bitterness. Nothing is more gall-bitter than suffering, nothing more honey-sweet than having suffered. Nothing disfigures the body before men like suffering, and nothing beautifies the soul before God like having suffered. The finest foundation on which this perfection can rest is humility. For whatever man's nature creeps here below in the deepest lowliness, that man's spirit will soar aloft to the heights of the Godhead, for j oy brings sorrow and sorrow joy. And so, whoever would attain perfect detachment should strive for perfect humility, and thus he will come to the neighborhood of God. That this may be all our lot, so help us the highest detachment, which is God Himself. Amen."

 

Meister Eckhart

Lucy House, Kesgrave, Ipswich

 

Work by Margaret Agnes Rope and Margaret Edith Rope is on display in the offices of the Rope charitable trust, adjacent to Holy Family and St Michael church, for which there is an entry on the Suffolk Churches site.

 

There are ages of faith which leave their traces in splendour and beauty, as acts of piety and memory. East Anglia is full of silent witnesses to tides which have ebbed and flowed. Receding, they leave us in their wake great works from the passing ages, little Norman churches which seem to speak a language we can no longer understand but which haunts us still, the decorated beauty of the 14th Century at odds with the horrors of its pestilence and loss, the perpendicular triumph of the 15th Century church before its near-destruction in the subsequent Reformation and Commonwealth, the protestant flowering of chapels and meeting houses in almost all rural communities, and most obvious of all for us today the triumphalism of the Victorian revival.

 

But even as tides recede, piety and memory survive, most often in quiet acts and intimate details. The catholic church of Holy Family and St Michael at Kesgrave is one of their great 20th Century treasure houses.

 

At the time of the 1851 census of religious worship, Kesgrave was home to just 86 people, 79 of whom attended morning service that day, giving this parish the highest percentage attendance of any in Suffolk. However, they met half a mile up the road at the Anglican parish church of All Saints, and the current site of Holy Family was then far out in the fields. In any case, it is unlikely that any of the non-attenders was a Catholic. Today, Kesgrave is a sprawling eastern suburb of Ipswich, home to about 10,000 people. It extends along the A12 corridor all the way to Martlesham, which in turn will take you pretty much all the way to Woodbridge without seeing much more than a field or two between the houses.

 

Holy Family was erected in the 1930s, and serves as a chapel of ease within the parish of Ipswich St Mary. However, it is still in private ownership, the responsibility of the Rope family, who, along with the Jolly family into which they married, owned much of the land in Kesgrave that was later built on.

 

The growth of Kesgrave has been so rapid and so extensive in these last forty years that radical expansions were required at both this church and at All Saints, as well as to the next parish church along in the suburbs at Rushmere St Andrew. All of these projects are interesting, although externally Holy Family is less dramatic than its neighbours. It sits neatly in its trim little churchyard, red-brick and towerless, a harmonious little building if rather a curious shape, of which more in a moment. Beside it, the underpass and roundabout gives it a decidedly urban air. But this is a church of outstanding interest, as we shall see.

 

It was good to come back to Kesgrave. As a member of St Mary's parish I generally attended mass at the parish's other church, a couple of miles into town, but I had been here a number of times over the years, either to mass or just to wander around and sit for a while. These days, you generally approach the church from around the back, where you'll find a sprawling car park typical of a modern Catholic church. To the west of the church are Lucy House and Philip House, newly built for the work of the Rope family charities. Between the car park and the church there there is a tiny, formal graveyard, with crosses remembering members of the Rope and Jolly families.

 

Access to the church is usually through a west door these days, but if you are fortunate enough to enter through the original porch on the north side you will have a foretaste of what is to come, for to left and right are stunning jewel-like and detailed windows depicting St Margaret and St Theresa on one side and St Catherine and the Immaculate Conception on the other. Beside them, a plaque reveals that the church was built to the memory of Michael Rope, who was killed in the R101 airship disaster of 1930.

 

Blue Peter-watching boys like me, growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, were enthralled by airships. They were one of those exciting inventions of a not-so-distant past which were, in a real sense, futuristic, a part of the 1930s modernist project that imagined and predicted the way we live now. And they were just so big. But they were doomed, because the hydrogen which gave them their buoyancy was explosive.

 

As a child, I was fascinated by the R101 airship and its disaster, especially because of that familiar photograph of its wrecked and burnt-out fuselage sprawled in the woods on a northern French hillside. It is still a haunting photograph today. The crash of the R101 put an end to airship development in the UK for more than half a century.

 

Of course, this is all ancient history now, but in the year 2001 I had the excellent fortune to be shown around Holy Family by Michael Rope's widow, Mrs Lucy Doreen Rope, née Jolly, who was still alive, and then in her nineties. She was responsible for the building of this church as a memorial to her husband. We paused in the porch so that I could admire the windows. "Do you like them?" Mrs Rope asked me. "Of course, my sister-in-law made them."

 

Her sister-in-law, of course, was Margaret Agnes Rope, who in the first half of the twentieth century was one of the finest of the Arts and Craft Movement stained glass designers. She studied at Birmingham, and then worked at the Glass House in Fulham with her cousin, Margaret Edith Aldrich Rope, whose work is also here. But their work can be found in churches and cathedrals all over the world. What Mrs Rope did not tell me, and what I found out later, is that these two windows in the porch were made for her and her husband Michael as a wedding present.

 

Doreen Jolly and Michael Rope were married in 1929. Within a year, he was dead. Mrs Rope was just 23 years old.

 

The original church from the 1930s is the part that you step into. You enter to the bizarre sight of a model of the R101 airship suspended from the roof. The nave altar and tabernacle ahead are in the original sanctuary, and you are facing the liturgical east (actually south) of the original building, and what an intimate space this must have been before the church was extended. Red brick outlines the entrance to the sanctuary, and here are the three windows made by Margaret Rope for the original church. The first is the three-light sanctuary window, depicting the Blessed Virgin and child flanked by St Joseph and St Michael. Two doves sit on a nest beneath Mary's feet, while a quizzical sparrow looks on. St Michael has the face of Michael Rope. The inscription beneath reads Pray for Michael Rope who gave up his soul to God in the wreck of His Majesty's Airship R101, Beauvais, October 5th 1930.

 

Next, a lancet in the right-hand side of the sanctuary contains glass depicting St Dominic, with a dog running beneath his feet and the inscription Laudare, Benedicere, Praedicare, ('to praise, to bless, to preach'). The third window is in the west wall of the church (in its day, the right hand side of the nave), depicting St Thomas More and St John Fisher, although at the time the window was made they had not yet been canonised. The inscription beneath records that the window was the gift of a local couple in thankfulness for their conversion to the faith for which the Blessed Martyrs Thomas More and John Fisher gave their lives. A rose bush springs from in front of the martyrs' feet.

 

By the 1950s, Holy Family was no longer large enough for the community it served, and it was greatly expanded to the east to the designs of the archtect Henry Munro Cautley. Cautley was a bluff Anglican of the old school, the retired former diocesan architect of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, but he would have enjoyed designing a church for such an intimate faith community, and in fact it was his last major project before he died in 1959. The original sanctuary was retained as a blessed sacrament chapel, and the church was turned ninety degrees to face east for the first time. The north and south sides of the new church received three-light Tudor windows in the style most beloved by Cautley, as seen also at his Ipswich County Library in Northgate Street, and the former Fosters (now Lloyds) Bank in central Cambridge.

 

Although the Rope family had farmed at Blaxhall near Wickham Market for generations, Margaret Rope herself was not from Suffolk at all, and nor was she at first a Catholic. She was born in Shrewsbury in 1882, the daughter of Henry Rope, a surgeon at Shrewsbury Infirmary, and a son of the Blaxhall Rope family. The largest collection of Margaret Rope's glass is in Shrewsbury Cathedral. When Margaret was 17, her father died. The family were received into the Catholic church shortly afterwards. A plaque was placed in the entrance to Shrewsbury Infirmary to remember her father. When the hospital was demolished in the 1990s, the plaque was moved to here, and now sits in the north aisle of the 1950s church. In her early days in London Margaret Rope designed and made the large east window at Blaxhall church as a memorial to her grandparents. It features her younger brother Michael, and is believed to be the only window that she ever signed.

 

In her early forties, Margaret Rope took holy orders and entered the Carmelite Convent at nearby Woodbridge, but continued to produce her stained glass work until the community moved to Quidenham in Norfolk, when poor health and the distances involved proved insurmountable. She died there in 1953, and so she never saw the expanded church. Her cartoons, the designs for her windows, are placed on the walls around Holy Family. Some are for windows in churches in Scotland and Wales, one for a window in the English College in Rome. Among them are the roundels for within the enclosure of Tyburn Convent in London. "They had to remove the windows there during the War", said Mrs Rope. "Of course, with me, you have to ask which war!"

 

Turning to the east, we see the new sanctuary with its high altar, completed in 1993 as part of a further reordering and expansion, which gave a large galilee porch, kitchen and toilets to the north side of the church. The window above the new sanctuary has three lights, and the two outer windows were made by Margaret Rope for the chapel of East Bergholt convent to the south of Ipswich. They remember the Vaughan family, into which Margaret Rope's sister had married, and in particular one member, a sister in the convent, to celebrate her 25 year jubilee.

 

The convent later became Old Hall, a famous commune. They depict the prophet Isaiah and King David.

 

The central light between them is controversial. Produced in the 1990s and depicting the risen Christ, it really isn't very good, and provides the one jarring note in the church. It is rather unfortunate that it is in such a prominent position. It is not just the quality of the design that is the problem. It lets in too much light in comparison with the two flanking lights. "The glass in my sister-in-law's windows is half an inch thick", Mrs Rope told me. "In the workshop at Fulham they had a man who came in specially to cut it for them". The glass in the modern light is simply too thin.

 

Despite the 1990s extension, and as so often in modern urban Catholic churches, Holy Family is already not really big enough, although it is hard to see that there could ever be another expansion. We walked along Munro Cautley's south aisle, and at that time the stations of the cross were simple wooden crosses. However, about three months after my conversation with Mrs Rope, the World Trade Centre in New York was attacked and destroyed, and among the three thousand people killed were two local Kesgrave brothers who were commemorated with a new set of stations in cast metal.

 

Here also is a 1956 memorial window by Margaret Rope's cousin, Margaret Edith Aldrich Rope, to Mrs Rope's mother Alice Jolly, depicting the remains of the shrine at Walsingham and the Jolly family at prayer before it. Another MEA Rope window is across the church in the galilee, a Second World War memorial window, originally on the east side of the first church before Cautley's extension. It depicts three of the English Martyrs, Blessed Anne Lynne, Blessed Robert Southwell and Blessed John Robinson, as well as the shipwreck of Blessed John Nutter off of Dunwich, with All Saints church on the cliffs above.

 

The galilee is designed for families with young children to play a full part in mass, and is separated from the church by a glass screen. At the top of the screen is a small panel by Margaret Rope which is of particular interest because it depicts her and her family participating in the Easter vigil, presumably in Shrewsbury Cathedral. This is hard to photograph because it is on an internal window between two rooms.

 

A recent addition to the Margaret Edith Aldrich Rope windows here is directly opposite, newly installed on the south side of the nave. It was donated by her great-nephew. It depicts a nativity scene, the Holy Family in the stable at Bethlehem, an angel appearing to shepherds on the snowy hills beyond. It is perhaps her loveliest window in the church.

 

Finally, back across the church. Here, beside the brass memorial to Margaret Rope, is a window depicting the Blessed Virgin and child, members of the Rope family in the Candlemas procession beneath. The inscription reminds us to pray for the soul of Sister Margaret of the Mother of God, mistress of novices and stained glass artist, Monastery of the Magnificat of the Mother of God, Quidenham, Norfolk, entered Carmel 14th September 1923, died 6th December 1953. Sister Margaret of the Mother of God was, of course, Margaret Rope herself. She was buried in the convent at Quidenham, a Shrewsbury exile at rest in the East Anglian soil of her forebears. The design is hers, and the window was made by her cousin Margaret Edith Aldrich Rope.

 

Back in 2001, we were talking about the changing Church, and I asked Mrs Rope what she thought about the recently introduced practice of transferring Holy Days on to the nearest Sunday, so that the teaching of them was not lost. Mrs Rope approved, a lady clearly not stuck in the past. She had a passion for ensuring that the Faith could be shared with children. As we have seen, her church is designed so that young families can take a full part in the Mass. But she was sympathetic to the distractions of the modern age. "The world is so exciting for children these days", she said. "I think it must be difficult to bring them up with a sense of the presence of God." She smiled. "Mind you, my son is 70 now! And I do admire young girls today. They have such spirit!"

 

She left me to potter about in her wonderful treasure house. As I did so, I thought of medieval churches I have visited, which were similarly donated by the Mrs Ropes of their day, perhaps even for husbands who had died young. They not only sought to memorialise their loved ones, but to consecrate a space for prayer, that masses might be said for the souls of the dead. This was the Catholic way, a Christian duty. Before the Reformation, this was true in every parish in England. It remained true here at Kesgrave.

 

And finally, back outside to the small graveyard. Side by side are two crosses. One remembers Margaret Edith Aldrich Rope, artist, 1891-1988. The other remembers Lucy Doreen Rope, founder of this church, 1907-2003.

  

St. Hilda’s By The Sea is a small Anglican church in Sechelt. Set among the verdant green trees of the temperate rainforest, it is an eclectic mix of old and new: retired British pensioners polish the altar crystal and set out flowers for Sunday services, presided over by a gay Chinese-Canadian priest. Tai chi mixes with Celtic mysticism in a melange that is somehow stronger than its parts. And isn’t that what community is all about?

  

From the official website:

 

Walking the labyrinth is an ancient spiritual act that is being rediscovered during our time.

 

Usually constructed from circular patterns, labyrinths are based on principles of sacred geometry. Sometimes called “divine imprints”, they are found around the world as sacred patterns that have been passed down through the ages for at least 4,000 years. When a pattern of a certain size is constructed or placed on the ground, it can be used for walking meditations and rituals.

 

Labyrinths and their geometric cousins (spirals and mandalas) can be found in almost every religious tradition. For example, the Kabbala, or Tree of Life, is found in the Jewish mystical tradition. The Hopi Medicine Wheel, and the Man in the Maze are two forms from the Native American labyrinth traditions. The Cretan labyrinth, the remains of which can be found on the island of Crete, has seven path rings and is the oldest known labyrinth (4,000 or 5.000 years old).

 

In Europe, the Celts and later the early Christian Celtic Church revered labyrinths and frequently built them in natural settings. Sacred dances would be performed in them to celebrate solar and religious festivals. During the Middle Ages, labyrinths were created in churches and cathedrals throughout France and Northern Italy. These characteristically flat church or pavement labyrinths were inlaid into the floor of the nave of the church.

 

The Chartres Labyrinth

 

The labyrinth constructed at St. Hilda’s is an 11-circuit labyrinth. It is a replica of the one embedded in the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France. The design of this labyrinth, and many of the other church labyrinths in Europe, is a reworking of the ancient labyrinth design in which an equal-armed cross is emphasized and surrounded by a web of concentric circles. As with many Christian symbols, this was an adaptation of a symbol; that is known to have predated the Christian faith. This medieval variation is considered a breakthrough in design because it is less linear than the preceding, more formal, Roman design that developed from quadrant to quadrant. The medieval design made one path as long as possible, starting at the outer circumference and leading to the centre. Fraught with twists and turns, the path’s meanderings were considered symbolic representations of the Christian pilgrim’s journey to the Holy City of Jerusalem and of one’s own journey through life. This classical design is sometimes referred to as “the Chartres Labyrinth” due to the location of its best known example. The labyrinth was built at Chartres in the early 13th century (~ 1215 A.D.). No one knows the source of this classical 11-circuit labyrinth design, and much of its spiritual meaning and use has been lost.

 

The Chartres Labyrinth is located in the west end of the nave, the central body of the cathedral. When you walk in the main doors and look towards the high altar, you see the center of the labyrinth on the floor about 50 feet in front of you. It is approximately 42 feet in diameter and the path is 16 inches wide. At Chartres, the center of the Rose Window mirrors the center of the labyrinth. The cathedral is perfectly proportioned, so that if we put the west wall of the cathedral on hinges and folded it down on the labyrinth, the Rose Window would fit almost perfectly over the labyrinth.

 

Labyrinth or Maze?

 

The difference between a labyrinth used for meditation and mazes can be confusing. Mazes often have many entrances, dead-ends and cul-de-sacs that frequently confound the human mind. In contrast, meditation labyrinths offer only one path. By following the one path to the center, the seeker can use the labyrinth to quiet his or her mind and find peace and illumination at the center of his or her being. “As soon as one enters the labyrinth, one realizes that the path of the labyrinth serves as a metaphor for one’s spiritual journey. The walk, and all that happens on it, can be grasped through the intuitive, pattern-discerning faculty of the person walking it. The genius of this tool is that it reflects back to the seeker whatever he or she needs to discover from the perspective of a new level of conscious awareness.”

 

The Labyrinth is a Universal Meditation Tool

 

Anyone from any tradition or spiritual path can walk into the labyrinth and, through reflecting in the present moment, can benefit from it. A meditation labyrinth is one of many tools that can be used for spiritual practice. Like any tool, it is best used with a proper, good, intention. A church or temple can be used simply as a refuge from a rainstorm, but it can be so much more with a different intention. The same is true of the labyrinth. The seeker is only asked to put one foot in front of the other. By stepping into the labyrinth, we are choosing once again to walk the contemplative spiritual path. We are agreeing to let ourselves be open to see, to be free to hear, and to becoming real enough to respond. The labyrinth is a prayer path, a crucible of change, a meditation tool, a blueprint where psyche meets soul.

 

The best way to learn about the labyrinth is to walk a well-constructed one a few times, with an open heart and an open mind. Then allow your experience to guide you as to whether this will be a useful spiritual tool for you.

 

The Chartres Labyrinth and the Pilgrim’s Journey

 

Pilgrims are persons in motion – passing through territories not their own – seeking something we might call completion, or perhaps the word clarity will do as well, a goal to which only the spirit’s compass points the way.

Richard R. Niebuhr in Pilgrims and Pioneers

 

“The tradition of pilgrimage is as old as religion itself. Worshippers on pilgrimage traveled to holy festivals whether to solstice celebrations, to Mecca to gather around the Ka’aba for the high holy days of Islam, or to Easter festivals in the Holy City of Jerusalem. Pilgrimages were a mixture of religious duty and holiday relaxation for the peasant, the commoner and rich land owner alike. The journey was often embarked on in groups with designated places to stay at night. The pilgrims were restless to explore the mystical holy places, and many were in search of physical or spiritual healing.

 

The Christian story, which emphasized the humanity of Christ, fascinated the pilgrims. In the Middle Ages, most people did not read. As a result, they were much more oriented to the senses than we are today. They learned the story by traveling to Jerusalem to walk where Jesus walked, to pray where he prayed, and to experience, in a solemn moment, where he died. Unlike today, Pilgrims encountered the truth of the Christian mystery through an ongoing intimacy with all their senses.

 

When a person committed his or her life to Christ in the early Middle Ages, they sometimes made a vow to make a pilgrimage to the Holy City of Jerusalem. However, by the 12th century when the Crusades swept across Europe and the ownership of Jerusalem was in tumultuous flux, travel became dangerous and expensive. In response to this situation, the Roman Church appointed seven pilgrimage cathedrals to become “Jerusalem” for pilgrims. Consequently, in the pilgrimage tradition, the path within the labyrinth was called the Chemin de Jerusalem and the center of the labyrinth was called “New Jerusalem”.

 

The walk into the labyrinth marked the end of the physical journey across the countryside and served as a symbolic entry-way into the spiritual realms of the Celestial City. The image of the Celestial City – taken straight out of the Book of Revelation to John – captivated the religious imagination of many during the Middle Ages. The wondrous Gothic cathedrals, with painted walls either in bright, even gaudy colours, or else white-washed, were designed to represent the Celestial City. The stained glass windows – when illuminated by the sun – created the sense of colourful, dancing jewels, allowing the pilgrim to experience the awesome mystery of the City of God.”

 

The Journey of Life

 

A fundamental approach to the labyrinth is to see it as a metaphor for life’s journey. The labyrinth reminds us that all of life, with its joys, sorrows, twists and turns, is a journey that comes from God (birth) and goes to God (death). It is a physical metaphor for the journey of healing, spiritual and emotional growth and transformation. Following the path is like any journey. Sometimes you feel you are at or nearing your destination, and at other times you may feel distant or even lost. Only by faithfully keeping to the path will you arrive at the physical center of the labyrinth, which signifies God, the center of our lives and souls.

 

Applying the Three Fold Mystical Tradition to the Labyrinth

 

In the Christian mystical tradition, the journey to God was articulated in the three stages. These stages have become recognized as being universal to meditation: to release and quiet; to open and receive; and to take what was gained back out into the world.

 

The Three Stages

 

The first part of the Three- Fold Mystical Path is Purgation. This archaic word is from the root word “to purge”, meaning to cleanse, to let go. Shedding is another way of describing the experience. The mystical word is empting or releasing. It is believed that monks journeyed the first part of the labyrinth Purgation on their knees as a penitential act. This was not done for reasons of punishment as we might think, but as a way to humble oneself before God.

 

The second stage of the Three-Fold Path, Illumination, is found in the center of the labyrinth. Usually it is a surprise to reach the center because the long winding path seems “illogical” and cannot be figured out by the linear mind. After quieting the mind in the first part of the walk, the center presents a new experience: a place of meditation and prayer. Often people at this stage in the walk find insight into their situation in life, or clarity about a certain problem, hence the label “illumination”. As one enters the

center, the instruction is simple: enter with an open heart and mind; receive what there is for you.

 

The third stage, Union, begins when you leave the center of the labyrinth and continues as you retrace the path that brought you in. In this stage the meditation takes on a grounded, energized feeling. Many people who have had an important experience in the center feel that this third stage of the labyrinth gives them a way of integrating the insights they received. Others feel that this stage stokes the creative fires within. It energizes insight. It empowers, invites, and even pushes us to be more authentic and confident and to take risks with our gifts in the world. Union means communing with God.

 

The Monastic Orders experienced a union with God through their community life by creating a fulfilling balance between the work that was assigned, sleep and the many hours of worship attended daily. Our times present a similar challenge: we struggle to find balance between work, sleep, family and friends, leisure and spiritual life. The lack of structured communities in which people share work responsibilities and the “every person for himself or herself” mentality (or every family for itself) prevalent in our highly individualistic society makes the task of finding balance even more difficult.

 

Monastic communities offered a mystical spirituality that spoke to highly intuitive and intensely introverted people and (paradoxically to some) at the same time provided an economic structure throughout Europe. Monasteries during the Middle Ages provided schools and hospitals managed by monks; yet, at the same time, cloistered life helped the monks stay inwardly directed. Today, without any reliable structure directing us, the way of union needs to be re-thought. Our times call for most of us to be outer-directed. We are called to action in every aspect of our society in order to meet the spiritual challenges that confront us in the 21st century. Gratefully, there are still people in religious orders holding the candle for deep contemplation, but the majority of people involved in the spiritual transformation are searching for a path that guides them to service in the world in an active, extroverted, compassionate way. The third stage of the labyrinth empowers the seeker to move back into the world replenished and directed – which makes the labyrinth a particularly powerful tool for transformation.

 

Walking the Labyrinth: The Process

 

The purpose of all spiritual disciplines – prayer, fasting, meditation – is to help create an open attentiveness that enables us to receive and renew our awareness of our grounding and wholeness in God.

 

The Experience of Walking Meditation

 

Many of us have trouble quieting our minds. The Buddhists call the distracted state of mind the “monkey mind”, which is an apt image of what the mind is frequently like: thoughts swinging like monkeys from branch to branch, chattering away without any rhyme or conscious reason. When the mind is quiet, we feel peaceful and open, aware of a silence that embraces the universe.

 

Complete quiet in the mind is not a realistic goal for most of us. Instead, the task is to dis-identify with the thoughts going through our minds. Don’t get hooked by the thoughts, let them go. Thomas Keating, a Cistercian monk who teaches Centering Prayer (meditation) in the Christian tradition, described the mind as a still lake. A thought is like a fish that swims through it. If you get involved with the fish (“Gee what an unusual fish, I wonder what it is called?”), then you are hooked. Many of us have discovered through learning meditation how difficult it is to quiet the mind; yet, the rewards are great.

 

In the labyrinth, the sheer act of walking a complicated, attention demanding path begins to focus the mind. Thoughts of daily tasks and experiences become less intrusive. A quiet mind does not happen automatically. You must gently guide the mind with the intention of letting go of extraneous thoughts. This is much easier to do when your whole body is moving – when you are walking. Movement takes away the excess charge of psychic energy that disturbs our efforts to quiet our thought processes.

 

Two Basic Approaches to the Walk

 

One way to walk the labyrinth is to choose to let all thought go and simply open yourself to your experience with gracious attention. Usually – though not always – quieting happens in the first stage of the walk. After the mind is quiet, you can choose to remain in the quiet. Or use the labyrinth as a prayer path. Simply begin to talk to God. This is an indication that you are ready to receive what is there for you, or you allow a sincere part of your being to find its voice.

 

A second approach to a labyrinth walk is to consider a question. Concentrate on the question as you walk in. Amplify your thoughts about it; let all else go but your question. When you walk into the center with an open heart and an open mind, you are opening yourself to receiving new information, new insights about yourself.

 

Guidelines for the Walk

 

Find your pace. In our chaotic world we are often pushed beyond a comfortable rhythm. In this state we lose the sense of our own needs. To make matters worse, we are often rushed and then forced to wait. Anyone who has hurried to the bank only to stand in line knows the feeling. Ironically, the same thing can happen with the labyrinth, but there is a difference. The labyrinth helps us find what our natural pace would be and draws our attention to it when we are not honouring it.

 

Along with finding your pace, support your movement through the labyrinth by becoming conscious of your breath. Let your breath flow smoothly in and out of your body. It can be coordinated with each step – as is done in the Buddhist walking meditation – if you choose. Let your experience be your guide.

 

Each experience in the labyrinth is different, even if you walk it often in a short period of time. The pace usually differs each time as well. It can change dramatically within the different stages of the walk. When the labyrinth has more than a comfortable number of seekers on it, you can “pass” people if you want to continue to honour the intuitive pace your inner process has set. If you are moving at a slower pace, you can allow people to pass you. At first people are uncomfortable with the idea of “passing” someone on the labyrinth. It looks competitive, especially since the walk is a spiritual exercise. Again, these kinds of thoughts and feelings, we hope, are greeted from a spacious place inside that smiles knowingly about the machinations of the human ego. On the spiritual path we meet every and all things. To find our pace, to allow spaciousness within, to be receptive to all experience, and to be aware of the habitual thoughts and issues that hamper our spiritual development is a road to self-knowledge.

 

Summary of How to Walk the Labyrinth

 

Pause at the entry way to allow yourself to be fully conscious of the act of stepping into the labyrinth. Allow about a minute, or several turns on the path, to create some space between yourself and the person in front of you. Some ritual act, such as a bow, may feel appropriate during the labyrinth walk. Do what comes naturally.

 

Follow your pace. Allow your body to determine the pace. If you allow a rapid pace and the person in front of you is moving slower, feel free to move around this person. This is easiest to do at the turns by turning earlier. If you are moving slowly, you can step onto the labyrs (wide spaces at the turns) to allow others to pass.

 

The narrow path is a two-way street. If you are going in and another person is going out, you will meet on the path. If you want to keep in an inward meditative state, simply do not make eye contact. If you meet someone you know, a touch of the hand or a hug may be an important acknowledgement of being on the path together.

 

Symbolism and Meanings Found in the Chartres Labyrinth

 

Circles and Spirals

 

The circle is the symbol of unity or union and it is the primary shape of all labyrinths. The circle in sacred geometry represents the incessant movement of the universe (uncomprehensible) as opposed to the square which represents comprehensible order. The labyrinth is a close cousin to the spiral and it, too, reflects the cyclical element of nature and is regarded as the symbol of eternal life.

 

The labyrinth functions like a spiral, creating a vortex in its center. Upon entering, the path winds in a clockwise pattern. Energy is being drawn out. Upon leaving the center the walker goes in a counter clockwise direction. The unwinding path integrates and empowers us on our walk back out. We are literally ushered back out into the world in a strengthened condition.

 

The Path

 

The path lies in 11 concentric circles with the 12th being the labyrinth center. The path meanders throughout the whole circle. There are 34 turns on the path going into the center. Six are semi-right turns and 28 are 180° turns. So the 12 rings that form the 11 pathways may symbolically represent, the 12 apostles, 12 tribes of Israel or 12 months of the year. Twelve is a mystical number in Christianity. In sacred geometry three represents heaven and four represents earth. Twelve is the product of 3 x 4 and, therefore, the path which flows through the whole is then representative of all creation.

 

The obvious metaphor for the path is the difficult path to salvation, with its many twists and turns. Since we cannot see a straight path to our destination, the labyrinth can be viewed as a metaphor for our lives. We learn to surrender to the path (Christ) and trust that he will lead us on our journey.

 

The path can also be viewed as grace or the Church guiding us through chaos.

 

The Cruciform and Labyrs

 

The labyrinth is divided equally into four quadrants that make an equal-armed cross or cruciform. The four arms represent in symbol what is thought to be the essential

 

structure of the universe for example, the four spatial directions, the four elements (earth, wind, water and fire), the four seasons and, most important, salvation through the cross. The four arms of the cross emerging from the center seem to give order to the would-be chaos of the meandering path around it.

 

The Chartres labyrinth cross or cruciform is delineated by the 10 labyrs (labyr means to turn and this is the root of the word labyrinth). The labyrs are double-ax shaped and visible at the turns and between turns. They are traditionally seen as a symbol of women’s power and creativity.

 

The Centre Rosette

 

In the Middle Ages, the rose was regarded as a symbol for the Virgin Mary. Because of its association with the myths of Percival and the Holy Grail at that time, it also was seen as a sign of beauty and love. The rose becomes symbolic of both human and divine love, of passionate love, but also love beyond passion. The single rose became a symbol of a simple acceptance of God’s love for the world.

 

Unlike a normal rose (which has five petals) the rosette has six petals and is steeped in mysticism. Although associated with the Rose of Sharon, which refers to Mary, it may also represent the Holy Spirit (wisdom and enlightenment). The six petals may have corresponded to the story of the six days of creation. In other mystical traditions, the petals can be viewed as the levels of evolution (mineral, plant, animal, humankind, angelic and divine).

 

The Lunations

 

The lunations are the outer ring of partial circles that complete the outside circle of the labyrinth. They are unique to the Chartres design.

 

Celtic Symbols on the St. Hilda’s Labyrinth

 

The Celtic peoples have given us seven enduring spiritual principles:

 

1. A deep respect of nature, regarding creation as the fifth Gospel.

 

2. Quiet care for all living things.

3. The love of learning.

4. A wonder-lust or migratory nature.

5. Love of silence and solitude.

6. Understanding of time as a sacred reality and an appreciation of ordinary life, worshipping God through everyday life, and with great joy.

7. The value of family and clan affiliation, and especially spiritual ties of soul friends.

To show our respect for such wisdom, two Celtic designs adorn the St. Hilda’s labyrinth.

 

To mark the entrance to the labyrinth is a Celtic zoomorphic design painted in red. Traditionally, Celtic monks used intricate knotwork and zoomorphic designs (odd animals intertwined in uncomfortable ways) as mere filler for their illuminated gospel texts. They had no discernible meaning.

 

However, because of their unique design components, zoomorphs are now associated with transformations.

 

Transformation, change, action, and passion are also associated with red, the colour of fire. Therefore, this entrance symbol may well be an appropriate sign for the journey ahead.

At the labyrinth’s centre is a Celtic triquetra. This interlocked knotwork design of three stylized fish (whales) is often interpreted as the Trinity knot. It is a perfect representation of the concept of "three in one" in Christian trinity beliefs. Having the design enclosed within the centre circle further emphasizes the unity theme.

 

The triquetra can also be considered to represent the triplicities of mind, body, and soul, as well as the three domains of earth- earth, sea, and sky.

 

Final Reflection: The Labyrinth as a “Thinning Place”

 

In Celtic Christianity, places where people felt most strongly connected with God’s presence were referred to as thin places. It was these places in nature (forest groves, hilltops and deep wells) that the seen and unseen worlds were most closely connected, and the inhabitants of both worlds could momentarily touch the other. Today our churches, temples and sacred sites are the new thin places to meet the Divine. Here, at St Hilda’s, we have opportunities to encounter many thinning places – whether it be during Eucharistic or Taize services, while singing or praying, or through the love of a welcoming inclusive community. The labyrinth is a welcome addition; and with the right intent can also become a new thinning place for the modern pilgrim/spiritual seeker.This outward journey is an archetype with which we can have a direct experience. We can walk it. It can serve to frame the inward journey – a journey of repentance, forgiveness and rebirth, a journey that seeks a deeper faith, and greater holiness, a journey in search of God.

 

This High Dynamic Range panorama was stitched from 84 bracketed images with PTGUI Pro, tone-mapped with Photomatix, and touched up in Aperture.

 

Original size: 18160 × 9080 (164.9 MP; 194 MB).

 

Location: St. Hilda’s By The Sea Anglican Church, Sechelt, British Columbia, Canada

  

My poor dreams/

of love blessed /

in the best of joy you perished /

you arose proud but unfortunate /

like birds /

in the woods you perished.

 

Poveri sogni miei/

d'amor beati /

nel meglio del gioir siete periti /

sorgeste fieri ma sfortunati /

come gli uccelli /

nei boschi siete periti.

 

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Gesualdo Bufalino, an expert connoisseur of Sicily, wrote that the Sicilies are many, it is impossible to count them all, in Sicily "everything is mixed, changing, contradictory, as in the most composite of continents" ... and again " There is a "babba" Sicily, that is mild…a “crafty” Sicily, that is smart…there is a lazy Sicily and a frenetic one…”; but why so many Sicilies? Bufalino explained “because Sicily has had the good fortune to act as a link over the centuries between the great Western culture and the temptations of the desert and the sun, between reason and magic, the temperatures of feeling and the heat of passion. Sicily suffers from an excess of identity, and I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing." Even Leonard Sciascia, an immense Sicilian thinker, said "I continue to be convinced that Sicily offers the representation of many problems, of many contradictions, not only Italian but also European, to the point of being able to constitute the metaphor of today's world". This start to introduce the character whose life (and violent death) I wish to recall with some of my photographs (except for two images, belonging to the weekly "Epoca"), with information taken both from the WEB and from direct testimonies that I have collected in years, in summary a character who seems to embody the many faces of Sicily, his name is Salvatore Giuliano, known as the Bandit Giuliano; there are many Salvatore Giulianos, it changes according to who knew him, according to the many facts told by others or by himself (in his memoirs), he is described now as a "Robin Hood" with a noble heart, now as a ferocious brigand unscrupulous, but in any case, in this story, the use of all the "adverbs of doubt" that we know is always mandatory, because speaking of him, knowing the real truth is an illusion ... this is a story in which the pain of the many dead is the background. In speaking of him I will try to use almost telegraphic language. Salvatore Giuliano was born in Sicily in Montelepre (November 16, 1922), the son of a farmer who emigrated to America, and then returned to Sicily for the birth of his son; Salvatore soon left school to work in the fields, privately continuing to cultivate his studies. These are the years of the Second World War, the fascist regime has introduced bread rationing (the real problem is the grinding of wheat, with the mills controlled by the army, the Giulianos have a small clandestine mill), the clandestine trade in necessity becomes common, even Salvatore becomes a small smuggler, he is inexperienced when he is stopped with two sacks of wheat by two carabinieri and two country guards, they take everything from him including his documents, a distraction by the guards and quickly Salvatore tries to escape, the a few shots are fired at him, two hit him at his side, a carabiniere approaches him (Salvatore describes what happened in one of his memoirs) who is shot to death by him: from this moment on he will always be the Bandit Salvatore Giuliano ( or Turiddu, which in Sicilian means Salvatore). According to some Turiddu is a hero of the people, he hopes for a civil redemption of the Sicilian people, establishes relations with the political world, with the deviated secret services, with the Sicilian separatist movement whose initials are MIS (Sicilian Independent Movement) of which, also pushed by a colonel of the American army who deluded him that Sicily could be annexed as a state of the U.S.A. , joins his armed wing, the E.V.I.S. (Volunteer Army for Sicilian Independence), fighting with the rank of colonel against the Italian army in the two-year period 1945/46: the EVIS was commanded by the lawyer Antonio Canepa, who was killed on 17 June 1945 in a clash with the carabineer in the town of Randazzo. During this period the legend of the Bandit Giuliano was born, the peasants, the poor people in general, see in him a hope of redemption from a life of hardship and sacrifices, he is seen as a fiery lover with many fleeting stories, with women who join him in his lair by passing "the filter" of his men (he hosted a young Swedish journalist, Maria Cyjliakus, she was interested in interviewing him, with whom he also had a relationship), but he himself could reach to love the women while running many risks: in the collective imagination the idea of a brigand with a kind and good heart was developing, he often gave to the poor what he stole from the rich; but there was the dark and brutal side of his personality, he tended ambushes and assaults on the forces of order, he killed whoever he considered to be an informer of the carabinieri; the bandit was elusive, there were numerous ambushes and roundups from which he and his men managed to escape, indeed, every action carried out by the military was always followed by a retaliatory reaction, with the consequence that the killed soldiers always increased by more. The descending phase of Giuliano begins to appear on the horizon, the M.I.S. enters legality being recognized as belonging to the Sicilian Special Statute, Giuliano does not accept the agreement by continuing with his men to wage war against the state, in 1946 the new Italian government grants a pardon to the EVIS guerrillas, in this way Giuliano loses his army and his role as colonel (thus the female component of EVIS was dissolved too, with about 20 women, his sister Mariannina was also part of it); with the first institutional referendum the monarchy falls, the Republic is born, the peasant movement hopes for change and agrarian reform, the struggle in defense of their rights leads to the killing of trade unionists (Miraglia, Rizzotto, Carnevale) whose instigators will never be discovered ; Giuliano establishes relations with the mafia, meets men of the institutions, leading to suspect that behind many (villainous) actions of Giuliano and behind his death, many responsibilities and mysteries are hidden, on which no light has yet been shed. We arrive on May 1, 1947, in the countryside of Portella della Ginestra near Piana degli Albanesi (PA), there is a large crowd of peasants gathered to celebrate Workers' Day, there are also many women and children, suddenly the The festive atmosphere is dramatically interrupted by the shots of a machine gun and other weapons of various kinds, including the launch of grenades, 11 people remain lifeless on the field (including two children), and many injured on whose number there is no concordance; the massacre began the "crisis of May 1947" with attacks on the headquarters of left-wing parties and labor chambers in the area, the reasons for which would be linked, it has been said ... to Giuliano's aversion to the Communists ... but also to the will of the mafia powers to maintain the old balance in the new institutional framework (editor's note: it seems that Giuliano a Portella only wanted to teach a lesson to Girolamo Li Causi, leader of the communists, who was warned of the ambush, and did not show up in Portella, in my opinion Giuliano's aforementioned aversion to the Communists does not stand up, he who always found warmth, protection and complicity precisely on the part of those peasants who were slaughtered; whoever organized the massacre was a criminal and refined mind, he frightened peasant movements, and at the same time decreed the unpopularity of the bandit Giuliano who saw scorched earth around him: mafia men extraneous to Giuliano's gang equipped with 9-gauge rifles fired, while the men of the the band had 6.5 caliber weapons, just as Giuliano's men did not possess grenade launchers; Giuliano tried to exculpate himself by writing his "Memorial on the events of Portella della Ginestra" in the newspapers, claiming that he was in possession of documents that would have demonstrated who were the real culprits of the massacre). The circle was tightening around Giuliano, the forces of order made use of the mafia to convince his trusted lieutenant Gaspare Pisciotta to collaborate with them, they made use of informants, such as Salvatore Ferreri, known as frà Diavolo, head of the anti-banditry forces was the colonel of the carabinieri Ugo Luca; on July 5, 1950 Salvatore Giuliano was killed, it seems there was a firefight with the carabinieri in the courtyard of the house of the lawyer. De Maria in Castelvetrano (TP), however it is a staging, the journalists who immediately rushed to the place where the body lies notice it, the blood impregnates the undershirt on the back, no blood comes out of several holes, on the side of the arm there is a " laceration of the skin" (as if the limb had been in contact with ice), one of the journalists who notices these and other details, Tommaso Besozzi, writes his journalistic article by titling it "certainly there is only that he died ” (l'Europeo n. 29, year 1950), actually to kill him while he was sleeping with a pistol shot, perhaps stunned by a drug put in the wine, it would have been his most trusted man, Gaspare Pisciotta, who was subsequently arrested, and during the Viterbo trial he would scream from the cage "we were one body, bandits, police and mafia, like the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit" , he is ready to name names, revelations, but he won't have time, inside the Ucciardone prison in Palermo, to deliver a lethal dose of strychnine put in a medicine prescribed for his tuberculosis (not in coffee) he will kill him sooner trying to vomit. The story does not seem to have to end when, following a report from Professor Giuseppe Casarrubea, an important historian, who had Giuliano's body exhumed in 2010 with his complaint to the Public Prosecutor's Office, assuming that the tomb held the corpse of a double, the However, DNA tests would have shown a genetic profile compatible with that of a nephew of Giuliano. On Salvatore's tomb, a month later, the verses sent by letter to his mother by a woman who signed herself “Santuzza” were carved, verses which declared that she had received them personally from her son Salvatore: “My poor dreams/of love blessed /in the best of joy you perished /you arose proud butunfortunate/like birds /in the woods you perished”. Santuzza was the pseudonym of Maddalena Lo Giudice, when she was young she is described as a beautiful, shy, reserved girl, she was the daughter of the Podestà of her town (during the fascist regime, the Podestà was the head of the municipal administration), it seems they met in a hospital in Catania, each visiting an acquaintance of their own, Maddalena would have had from Giuliano: a son (she was subjected to a gynecological examination to ascertain its veracity against her will), a box with valuables, and a memorial, in which Giuliano would have wrote very important things about his relationships with "men of the state and not"; Maddalena later said that she had handed everything over to a trusted person, who would have bricked everything up, later perhaps frightened by the great clamor that had arisen around her, in a journalistic interview she declared that she had dreamed and invented everything… (note of the editor: I have always tried much emotion for this poor woman, it would be interesting to be able to trace a psychological profile, her father was the Podestà of the town, always benefiting from the doubt, as in all this story, people told me that His father as Podestà took away from the poor people even what little they had, who knows if the poor Maddalena fell in love with Giuliano also because he represented her antithesis, giving to the poor what she took away from the rich people...), Maddalena went to give birth in secret from the well-meaning eyes of the town (not being a married woman it would have created a scandal) in Calabria, that son to protect him was immediately placed in an orphanage (all the forces of order in Sicily were looking for the bandit Giuliano, who knows what would have happened if he had come to know of a son of him ..! they would have used it as one does with a lamb tied to a post, waiting for the arrival of the fair…); upon Giuliano's death, this woman was joined by Salvatore's mother (Maria Giuliano Lombardo) and sister (Mariannina Giuliano), to have all that Salvatore had left to Maddalena, who certainly had sworn not to give anyone what she had received from him, certainly until when Maddalena would have kept "the treasure" hidden with her (certainly not the jewels, the true value was her memorial!), no one would have hurt her; however, Maddalena took this secret of hers with her to her grave. In her old age Maddalena lived secluded, she was a solitary type, she had to resort to dialysis for a serious kidney infection, for which she had to be accompanied several times a week by a driver to the hospital, she had severe pain for which she had to resort to powerful analgesics, the only ones who gave her any affection were her many dogs, the only ones who managed to reassure her, she never had the affection of that only son she had from Salvatore, of whom nothing was ever known (there were a couple of characters who declared themselves the children of the bandit, but nothing has ever been ascertained). In conclusion, I learned of a Sicilian film operator, who worked for Incom Week (it was an Italian newsreel, distributed weekly in cinemas), who at the news of the killing of the bandit Giuliano (like many journalists) immediately went to Castelvetrano to the house of the lawyer De Maria, where he allegedly found Salvatore's body, he said that when Salvatore's mother arrived, she kissed him in a heartbreaking, terribly moving way, including the parts covered in blood, that Incom operator said, that the emotion was so great for him to seeing that Mother …he did not have the courage to continue filming: I would like to end by saying that the tremendous pain of that Mother was the tremendous pain of All those Mothers who saw their son (or their husbands) to perish in that so dark not so far period of history of Sicily.

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Scriveva Gesualdo Bufalino, esperto conoscitore della Sicilia, che le Sicilie sono tante, impossibile contarle tutte, in Sicilia “tutto è mischiato, cangiante, contraddittorio, come nel più composito dei continenti”…ed ancora ” Vi è una Sicilia “babba”, cioè mite…una Sicilia “sperta”, cioè furba…vi è una Sicilia pigra ed una frenetica…”; ma come mai così tante Sicilie? Bufalino spiegava “perché la Sicilia ha avuto la sorte di ritrovarsi a far da cerniera nei secoli fra la grande cultura occidentale e le tentazioni del deserto e del sole, tra la ragione e la magia, le temperie del sentimento e le canicole della passione. Soffre, la Sicilia, di un eccesso d'identità, né so se sia un bene o sia un male.” Anche Sciascia, immenso pensatore siciliano, diceva “Continuo ad essere convinto che la Sicilia offre la rappresentazione di tanti problemi, di tante contraddizioni, non solo italiani ma anche europei, al punto da poter costituire la metafora del mondo odierno”. Questo incipit per introdurre il personaggio del quale desidero rievocarne la vita (e la morte violenta) con alcune mie fotografie (tranne due immagini, appartenenti al settimanale “Epoca”), con notizie prese sia dal WEB, sia da testimonianze dirette che ho raccolto negli anni, in sintesi un personaggio che sembra incarnare i tanti volti della Sicilia, lui si chiama Salvatore Giuliano, noto come il Bandito Giuliano; sono tanti i Salvatore Giuliano, cambia in base a chi lo conobbe, in base ai tantissimi fatti raccontati da altri o da lui stesso (nei suoi memoriali), viene descritto ora come un “Robin Hood” dal cuore nobile, ora come un feroce brigante privo di scrupoli, però in ogni caso, in questa storia, è sempre obbligatorio l’uso di tutti gli “avverbi di dubbio o dubitativi” che conosciamo, perché parlando di lui conoscere la vera verità è una utopia…una vicenda questa, nella quale il dolore dei tanti morti, fa da sfondo. Nel parlarne cercherò di adoperare un linguaggio quasi telegrafico. Salvatore Giuliano nasce in Sicilia a Montelepre (il 16 novembre 1922), figlio di un contadino emigrato in America, e poi rientrato in Sicilia per la nascita del figlio; Salvatore abbandonò presto la scuola per lavorare nei campi, continuando privatamente a coltivare i suoi studi. Sono gli anni della seconda guerra mondiale, il regime fascista ha introdotto il razionamento del pane (il vero problema è la macinazione del grano, coi mulini controllati dall’esercito, i Giuliano hanno un piccolo mulino clandestino), il commercio clandestino degli alimenti di prima necessità diviene comune, anche Salvatore diviene un piccolo contrabbandiere, è inesperto quando viene fermato con due sacchi di grano da due carabinieri e da due guardie campestri, gli prendono tutto incluso i suoi documenti, una distrazione delle guardie e lestamente Salvatore tenta la fuga, gli vengono sparati contro alcuni colpi, due lo raggiungono ad un fianco, gli si avvicina un carabiniere (Salvatore descrive l’accaduto in un suo memoriale) che viene da lui colpito a morte: da questo momento in poi sarà per sempre il Bandito Salvatore Giuliano (o Turiddu, che in siciliano significa Salvatore). Secondo alcuni Turiddu è un eroe del popolo, egli spera in un riscatto civile del popolo siciliano, allaccia rapporti col mondo politico, coi servizi segreti deviati, col movimento separatista siciliano la cui sigla è MIS (Movimento Indipendentista Siciliano) del quale, spinto anche da un colonnello dell’esercito americano che lo illuse che la Sicilia poteva essere annessa come stato degli U.S.A. , entra a far parte del suo braccio armato, l’E.V.I.S. (Esercito Volontario per l’Indipendenza Siciliana), combattendo col grado di colonnello contro l’esercito italiano nel biennio 1945/46: l’EVIS era comandato dall’avv. Antonio Canepa, che viene ucciso il 17 giugno del 1945 in uno scontro coi carabinieri nel paese di Randazzo. Durante questo periodo nasce la leggenda del Bandito Giuliano, i contadini, la povera gente in generale, vede in lui una speranza di riscatto di una vita di stenti e di sacrifici, viene visto come un focoso amante dalle tante fugaci storie, con donne che lo raggiungono nel suo covo oltrepassando “il filtro” dei suoi uomini (ospitò una giovane giornalista svedese, Maria Cyjliakus, interessata ad intervistarlo, con la quale ebbe anche una relazione), ma poteva egli stesso raggiungere le amate pur correndo molti rischi: nell’immaginario collettivo si andava maturando l’idea di un brigante dal cuore gentile e buono, egli spesso donava ai poveri quello che sottraeva ai ricchi; però c’era il lato oscuro e brutale della sua personalità, egli tendeva agguati ed assalti alle forze dell’ordine, uccideva chi considerava essere un informatore dei carabinieri; il bandito era imprendibile, numerosi erano gli agguati ed i rastrellamenti ai quali lui ed i suoi uomini riuscivano a sottrarsi, anzi, ad ogni azione condotta dai militari, faceva sempre seguito una reazione di rappresaglia, con la conseguenza che i militari uccisi aumentavano sempre di più. La fase discendente di Giuliano incomincia ad apparire all’orizzonte, il M.I.S. entra nella legalità venendo riconosciuta come appartenente allo Statuto Speciale Siciliano, Giuliano non accetta l’accordo continuando coi suoi uomini a fare guerra allo stato, nel 1946 il nuovo governo italiano concede l’indulto ai guerriglieri dell’EVIS, in tal modo Giuliano perde il suo esercito ed il suo ruolo di colonnello (viene così sciolta la componente femminile dell’EVIS, con circa 20 donne, vi faceva anche parte sua sorella Mariannina); col primo referendum istituzionale cade la monarchia, nasce la Repubblica, il movimento contadino spera nel cambiamento e nella riforma agraria, la lotta in difesa dei loro diritti porta alla uccisione di sindacalisti (Miraglia, Rizzotto, Carnevale) dei quali non si scopriranno mai i mandanti; Giuliano stringe rapporti con la mafia, incontra uomini delle istituzioni, inducendo a sospettare che dietro molte azioni (scellerate) di Giuliano e dietro la sua morte, si celino tante responsabilità e misteri, sulle quali non si è fatto ancora luce. Arriviamo al 1° Maggio del 1947, nelle campagne di Portella della Ginestra nei pressi di Piana degli Albanesi (PA), c’è una gran folla di contadini riuniti per celebrare la festa dei lavoratorI, ci sono anche tante donne e bambini, improvvisamente l’atmosfera festosa viene interrotta drammaticamente dai colpi di una mitragliatrice e di altre armi di vario genere, tra queste anche lancio di granate, sul campo restano senza vita 11 persone (tra queste due bambini), e molti feriti sul cui numero non c’è concordanza; la strage dette inizio alla “crisi del maggio 1947” con assalti alle sedi dei partiti di sinistra e delle camere del lavoro della zona, le cui motivazioni sarebbero legate, si è detto… all’avversione di Giuliano per i comunisti…ma anche alla volontà dei poteri mafiosi di mantenere i vecchi equilibri nel nuovo quadro istituzionale (n.d.r. sembra che Giuliano a Portella volesse solo dare una lezione a Girolamo Li Causi, leader dei comunisti, il quale fu avvisato dell’agguato,e non si presentò a Portella, secondo me non regge la citata avversione di Giuliano per i comunisti, lui che trovava sempre calore, protezione e complicità proprio da parte di quei contadini che furono trucidati; chi organizzò la strage era una mente criminale e raffinata, spaventò i movimenti contadini, e nel contempo decretò la subentrata impopolarità del bandito Giuliano che vide farsi attorno terra bruciata: spararono uomini mafiosi estranei alla banda di Giuliano dotati di fucili calibro 9, mentre gli uomini della banda avevano armi calibro 6,5, così come gli uomini di Giuliano non possedevano lanciagranate; Giuliano tentò di discolparsi scrivendo sui giornali un suo “Memoriale sui fatti di Portella della Ginestra”, sostenendo di essere in possesso di documenti che avrebbero dimostrato chi erano i veri colpevoli della strage). Il cerchio si andava stringendo attorno a Giuliano, le forze dell’ordine si avvalsero della mafia per convincere a collaborare con loro il suo fidatissimo luogotenente Gaspare Pisciotta, si avvalsero di informatori, come Salvatore Ferreri, detto frà Diavolo, a capo delle forze antibanditismo c’era il colonnello dei carabinieri Ugo Luca; il 5 luglio del 1950 viene ucciso Salvatore Giuliano, sembra ci sia stato un conflitto a fuoco coi carabinieri nel cortile della casa dell’avv. De Maria a Castelvetrano (TP), però è una messinscena, se ne accorgono i giornalisti accorsi immediatamente sul luogo dove giace il corpo, il sangue impregna la canottiera sul dorso, da diversi fori non fuoriesce sangue, sul lato del braccio è presente una “lacerazione della cute” (come se l’arto fosse stato a contatto con del ghiaccio), uno dei giornalisti che si accorge di questi ed altri dettagli, Tommaso Besozzi, scrive il suo articolo giornalistico intitolandolo “di sicuro c’è solo che è morto” (l'Europeo n. 29, anno 1950), in realtà ad ucciderlo mentre dormiva con un colpo di pistola, forse stordito da una droga messa nel vino, sarebbe stato il suo uomo più fidato, Gaspare Pisciotta, il quale successivamente viene arrestato, e durante il processo di Viterbo dalla gabbia urlerà “noi eravamo un corpo solo, banditi, polizia e mafia, come il Padre, il Figlio e lo Spirito Santo”, Pisciotta è pronto a fare nomi, rivelazioni, ma non farà in tempo, all’interno del carcere dell’Ucciardone di Palermo, una dose letale di stricnina messa dentro un medicinale prescrittogli per la sua tubercolosi (non dentro il caffè) lo stroncherà prima che possa tentare di vomitare. La storia sembra non dover finire, quando, in seguito ad una segnalazione del professore Giuseppe Casarrubea, importante storiografo, che fece riesumare con un suo esposto in Procura la salma di Giuliano nel 2010, ipotizzando che la tomba custodiva il cadavere di un sosia, il test del DNA avrebbe però dimostrato un profilo genetico compatibile con quello di un nipote di Giuliano. Sulla tomba di Salvatore, un mese dopo, vennero scolpiti i versi inviati per lettera a sua madre (Maria Giuliano Lombardo) di una donna che si firmava “Santuzza”, versi che dichiarava di averli avuti personalmente da suo figlio Salvatore: “Poveri sogni miei d’amor beati, nel meglio del gioir siete periti, sorgeste fieri ma sfortunati, e come uccello nei boschi siete spariti”. “Santuzza” in realtà si chiamava Maddalena Lo Giudice, quando era giovane viene descritta come una bellissima ragazza, timida, riservata, era la figlia del Podestà del suo paese (durante il regime fascista, il Podestà era il capo dell'amministrazione comunale), sembra si conobbero in un nosocomio di Catania, visitando ognuno un proprio conoscente, Maddalena avrebbe avuto da Salvatore un figlio (fu sottoposta suo malgrado a visita ginecologica per appurarne la veridicità), un cofanetto con dei valori, ed un memoriale, nel quale Giuliano avrebbe scritto cose importantissime circa i suoi rapporti con “uomini dello stato e non”; Maddalena successivamente disse di aver consegnato tutto ad una persona fidata, la quale avrebbe murato tutto, successivamente forse impaurita dal grande clamore che si era alzato attorno a lei, in una intervista giornalistica dichiarò che si era sognato ed inventato tutto…(n.d.r. ho sempre provato molta commozione per questa povera donna, sarebbe interessante poterne tracciare un profilo psicologico, suo padre era il Podestà del paese, beneficiando sempre del dubbio, come in tutta questa storia, mi dissero che toglieva ai poveri anche quel poco che avevano, chissà se la povera Maddalena si innamorò di Giuliano anche perché lui ne rappresentava l’antitesi, dando ai poveri quel che toglieva ai possidenti…), Maddalena andò a partorire di nascosto dagli occhi benpensanti del paese (non essendo una donna sposata avrebbe creato scandalo) in Calabria, quel figlio per proteggerlo fu messo subito in un orfanotrofio (tutte le forze dell’ordine della Sicilia cercavano il bandito Giuliano, chissà cosa sarebbe accaduto se si fosse venuto a sapere di un figlio suo..! lo avrebbero usato come si fa con un agnello legato al palo, aspettando l’arrivo della fiera…); questa donna alla morte di Giuliano fu raggiunta dalla sua mamma (Maria Giuliano Lombardo) e da sua sorella Mariannina (Mariannina Giuliano), per avere tutto quello che Salvatore aveva lasciato a Maddalena, la quale sicuramente gli aveva fatto un giuramento, di non dare a nessuno quanto da lui aveva ricevuto, certamente fino a quando Maddalena avrebbe tenuto nascosto con se “il tesoro” (non certo i gioielli, il vero valore era il suo memoriale !), nessuno le avrebbe fatto del male; comunque, Maddalena si è portata con se nella tomba questo suo segreto. In vecchiaia Maddalena viveva appartata, era un tipo solitario, doveva fare ricorso alla dialisi per una grave infezione renale, per la qual cosa doveva farsi accompagnare varie volte la settimana da un autista in ospedale, aveva forti dolori per i quali doveva fare ricorso a potenti analgesici, gli unici a darle un po’ di affetto, erano i suoi molti cani, gli unici che riuscivano a rasserenarla, non ebbe mai l’affetto di quell’unico figlio avuto da Salvatore, del quale non si è mai saputo nulla (ci furono un paio di personaggi che si autodichiararono i figli del bandito, ma non si è mai appurato nulla). Concludo, seppi di un operatore cinematografico siciliano, che lavorava per La Settimana Incom (essa era un cinegiornale italiano, distribuito settimanalmente nei cinema), il quale alla notizia dell’uccisione del bandito Giuliano (come tanti giornalisti) si recò immediatamente a Castelvetrano in casa dell’avv. De Maria, dove avrebbe trovato il corpo di Salvatore, egli raccontò che quando arrivò la madre di Salvatore, lo baciò in maniera struggente, terribilmente commovente, incluse le parti coperte di sangue, quell’operatore Incom disse, che fu talmente grande la commozione che provò nel vedere quella Madre, che non ebbe il coraggio di continuare le riprese: vorrei terminare dicendo, che il dolore tremendo di quella Madre, è stato il dolore tremendo di Tutte quelle Madri che hanno visto perire i loro figli (od i loro mariti) in quel periodo così buio della storia di Sicilia.

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St. Hilda’s By The Sea is a small Anglican church in Sechelt. Set among the verdant green trees of the temperate rainforest, it is an eclectic mix of old and new: retired British pensioners polish the altar crystal and set out flowers for Sunday services, presided over by a gay Chinese-Canadian priest. Tai chi mixes with Celtic mysticism in a melange that is somehow stronger than its parts. And isn’t that what community is all about?

 

From the official website:

 

Walking the labyrinth is an ancient spiritual act that is being rediscovered during our time.

 

Usually constructed from circular patterns, labyrinths are based on principles of sacred geometry. Sometimes called “divine imprints”, they are found around the world as sacred patterns that have been passed down through the ages for at least 4,000 years. When a pattern of a certain size is constructed or placed on the ground, it can be used for walking meditations and rituals.

 

Labyrinths and their geometric cousins (spirals and mandalas) can be found in almost every religious tradition. For example, the Kabbala, or Tree of Life, is found in the Jewish mystical tradition. The Hopi Medicine Wheel, and the Man in the Maze are two forms from the Native American labyrinth traditions. The Cretan labyrinth, the remains of which can be found on the island of Crete, has seven path rings and is the oldest known labyrinth (4,000 or 5.000 years old).

 

In Europe, the Celts and later the early Christian Celtic Church revered labyrinths and frequently built them in natural settings. Sacred dances would be performed in them to celebrate solar and religious festivals. During the Middle Ages, labyrinths were created in churches and cathedrals throughout France and Northern Italy. These characteristically flat church or pavement labyrinths were inlaid into the floor of the nave of the church.

 

The Chartres Labyrinth

 

The labyrinth constructed at St. Hilda’s is an 11-circuit labyrinth. It is a replica of the one embedded in the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France. The design of this labyrinth, and many of the other church labyrinths in Europe, is a reworking of the ancient labyrinth design in which an equal-armed cross is emphasized and surrounded by a web of concentric circles. As with many Christian symbols, this was an adaptation of a symbol; that is known to have predated the Christian faith. This medieval variation is considered a breakthrough in design because it is less linear than the preceding, more formal, Roman design that developed from quadrant to quadrant. The medieval design made one path as long as possible, starting at the outer circumference and leading to the centre. Fraught with twists and turns, the path’s meanderings were considered symbolic representations of the Christian pilgrim’s journey to the Holy City of Jerusalem and of one’s own journey through life. This classical design is sometimes referred to as “the Chartres Labyrinth” due to the location of its best known example. The labyrinth was built at Chartres in the early 13th century (~ 1215 A.D.). No one knows the source of this classical 11-circuit labyrinth design, and much of its spiritual meaning and use has been lost.

 

The Chartres Labyrinth is located in the west end of the nave, the central body of the cathedral. When you walk in the main doors and look towards the high altar, you see the center of the labyrinth on the floor about 50 feet in front of you. It is approximately 42 feet in diameter and the path is 16 inches wide. At Chartres, the center of the Rose Window mirrors the center of the labyrinth. The cathedral is perfectly proportioned, so that if we put the west wall of the cathedral on hinges and folded it down on the labyrinth, the Rose Window would fit almost perfectly over the labyrinth.

 

Labyrinth or Maze?

 

The difference between a labyrinth used for meditation and mazes can be confusing. Mazes often have many entrances, dead-ends and cul-de-sacs that frequently confound the human mind. In contrast, meditation labyrinths offer only one path. By following the one path to the center, the seeker can use the labyrinth to quiet his or her mind and find peace and illumination at the center of his or her being. “As soon as one enters the labyrinth, one realizes that the path of the labyrinth serves as a metaphor for one’s spiritual journey. The walk, and all that happens on it, can be grasped through the intuitive, pattern-discerning faculty of the person walking it. The genius of this tool is that it reflects back to the seeker whatever he or she needs to discover from the perspective of a new level of conscious awareness.”

 

The Labyrinth is a Universal Meditation Tool

 

Anyone from any tradition or spiritual path can walk into the labyrinth and, through reflecting in the present moment, can benefit from it. A meditation labyrinth is one of many tools that can be used for spiritual practice. Like any tool, it is best used with a proper, good, intention. A church or temple can be used simply as a refuge from a rainstorm, but it can be so much more with a different intention. The same is true of the labyrinth. The seeker is only asked to put one foot in front of the other. By stepping into the labyrinth, we are choosing once again to walk the contemplative spiritual path. We are agreeing to let ourselves be open to see, to be free to hear, and to becoming real enough to respond. The labyrinth is a prayer path, a crucible of change, a meditation tool, a blueprint where psyche meets soul.

 

The best way to learn about the labyrinth is to walk a well-constructed one a few times, with an open heart and an open mind. Then allow your experience to guide you as to whether this will be a useful spiritual tool for you.

 

The Chartres Labyrinth and the Pilgrim’s Journey

 

Pilgrims are persons in motion – passing through territories not their own – seeking something we might call completion, or perhaps the word clarity will do as well, a goal to which only the spirit’s compass points the way.

Richard R. Niebuhr in Pilgrims and Pioneers

 

“The tradition of pilgrimage is as old as religion itself. Worshippers on pilgrimage traveled to holy festivals whether to solstice celebrations, to Mecca to gather around the Ka’aba for the high holy days of Islam, or to Easter festivals in the Holy City of Jerusalem. Pilgrimages were a mixture of religious duty and holiday relaxation for the peasant, the commoner and rich land owner alike. The journey was often embarked on in groups with designated places to stay at night. The pilgrims were restless to explore the mystical holy places, and many were in search of physical or spiritual healing.

 

The Christian story, which emphasized the humanity of Christ, fascinated the pilgrims. In the Middle Ages, most people did not read. As a result, they were much more oriented to the senses than we are today. They learned the story by traveling to Jerusalem to walk where Jesus walked, to pray where he prayed, and to experience, in a solemn moment, where he died. Unlike today, Pilgrims encountered the truth of the Christian mystery through an ongoing intimacy with all their senses.

 

When a person committed his or her life to Christ in the early Middle Ages, they sometimes made a vow to make a pilgrimage to the Holy City of Jerusalem. However, by the 12th century when the Crusades swept across Europe and the ownership of Jerusalem was in tumultuous flux, travel became dangerous and expensive. In response to this situation, the Roman Church appointed seven pilgrimage cathedrals to become “Jerusalem” for pilgrims. Consequently, in the pilgrimage tradition, the path within the labyrinth was called the Chemin de Jerusalem and the center of the labyrinth was called “New Jerusalem”.

 

The walk into the labyrinth marked the end of the physical journey across the countryside and served as a symbolic entry-way into the spiritual realms of the Celestial City. The image of the Celestial City – taken straight out of the Book of Revelation to John – captivated the religious imagination of many during the Middle Ages. The wondrous Gothic cathedrals, with painted walls either in bright, even gaudy colours, or else white-washed, were designed to represent the Celestial City. The stained glass windows – when illuminated by the sun – created the sense of colourful, dancing jewels, allowing the pilgrim to experience the awesome mystery of the City of God.”

 

The Journey of Life

 

A fundamental approach to the labyrinth is to see it as a metaphor for life’s journey. The labyrinth reminds us that all of life, with its joys, sorrows, twists and turns, is a journey that comes from God (birth) and goes to God (death). It is a physical metaphor for the journey of healing, spiritual and emotional growth and transformation. Following the path is like any journey. Sometimes you feel you are at or nearing your destination, and at other times you may feel distant or even lost. Only by faithfully keeping to the path will you arrive at the physical center of the labyrinth, which signifies God, the center of our lives and souls.

 

Applying the Three Fold Mystical Tradition to the Labyrinth

 

In the Christian mystical tradition, the journey to God was articulated in the three stages. These stages have become recognized as being universal to meditation: to release and quiet; to open and receive; and to take what was gained back out into the world.

 

The Three Stages

 

The first part of the Three- Fold Mystical Path is Purgation. This archaic word is from the root word “to purge”, meaning to cleanse, to let go. Shedding is another way of describing the experience. The mystical word is empting or releasing. It is believed that monks journeyed the first part of the labyrinth Purgation on their knees as a penitential act. This was not done for reasons of punishment as we might think, but as a way to humble oneself before God.

 

The second stage of the Three-Fold Path, Illumination, is found in the center of the labyrinth. Usually it is a surprise to reach the center because the long winding path seems “illogical” and cannot be figured out by the linear mind. After quieting the mind in the first part of the walk, the center presents a new experience: a place of meditation and prayer. Often people at this stage in the walk find insight into their situation in life, or clarity about a certain problem, hence the label “illumination”. As one enters the

center, the instruction is simple: enter with an open heart and mind; receive what there is for you.

 

The third stage, Union, begins when you leave the center of the labyrinth and continues as you retrace the path that brought you in. In this stage the meditation takes on a grounded, energized feeling. Many people who have had an important experience in the center feel that this third stage of the labyrinth gives them a way of integrating the insights they received. Others feel that this stage stokes the creative fires within. It energizes insight. It empowers, invites, and even pushes us to be more authentic and confident and to take risks with our gifts in the world. Union means communing with God.

 

The Monastic Orders experienced a union with God through their community life by creating a fulfilling balance between the work that was assigned, sleep and the many hours of worship attended daily. Our times present a similar challenge: we struggle to find balance between work, sleep, family and friends, leisure and spiritual life. The lack of structured communities in which people share work responsibilities and the “every person for himself or herself” mentality (or every family for itself) prevalent in our highly individualistic society makes the task of finding balance even more difficult.

 

Monastic communities offered a mystical spirituality that spoke to highly intuitive and intensely introverted people and (paradoxically to some) at the same time provided an economic structure throughout Europe. Monasteries during the Middle Ages provided schools and hospitals managed by monks; yet, at the same time, cloistered life helped the monks stay inwardly directed. Today, without any reliable structure directing us, the way of union needs to be re-thought. Our times call for most of us to be outer-directed. We are called to action in every aspect of our society in order to meet the spiritual challenges that confront us in the 21st century. Gratefully, there are still people in religious orders holding the candle for deep contemplation, but the majority of people involved in the spiritual transformation are searching for a path that guides them to service in the world in an active, extroverted, compassionate way. The third stage of the labyrinth empowers the seeker to move back into the world replenished and directed – which makes the labyrinth a particularly powerful tool for transformation.

 

Walking the Labyrinth: The Process

 

The purpose of all spiritual disciplines – prayer, fasting, meditation – is to help create an open attentiveness that enables us to receive and renew our awareness of our grounding and wholeness in God.

 

The Experience of Walking Meditation

 

Many of us have trouble quieting our minds. The Buddhists call the distracted state of mind the “monkey mind”, which is an apt image of what the mind is frequently like: thoughts swinging like monkeys from branch to branch, chattering away without any rhyme or conscious reason. When the mind is quiet, we feel peaceful and open, aware of a silence that embraces the universe.

 

Complete quiet in the mind is not a realistic goal for most of us. Instead, the task is to dis-identify with the thoughts going through our minds. Don’t get hooked by the thoughts, let them go. Thomas Keating, a Cistercian monk who teaches Centering Prayer (meditation) in the Christian tradition, described the mind as a still lake. A thought is like a fish that swims through it. If you get involved with the fish (“Gee what an unusual fish, I wonder what it is called?”), then you are hooked. Many of us have discovered through learning meditation how difficult it is to quiet the mind; yet, the rewards are great.

 

In the labyrinth, the sheer act of walking a complicated, attention demanding path begins to focus the mind. Thoughts of daily tasks and experiences become less intrusive. A quiet mind does not happen automatically. You must gently guide the mind with the intention of letting go of extraneous thoughts. This is much easier to do when your whole body is moving – when you are walking. Movement takes away the excess charge of psychic energy that disturbs our efforts to quiet our thought processes.

 

Two Basic Approaches to the Walk

 

One way to walk the labyrinth is to choose to let all thought go and simply open yourself to your experience with gracious attention. Usually – though not always – quieting happens in the first stage of the walk. After the mind is quiet, you can choose to remain in the quiet. Or use the labyrinth as a prayer path. Simply begin to talk to God. This is an indication that you are ready to receive what is there for you, or you allow a sincere part of your being to find its voice.

 

A second approach to a labyrinth walk is to consider a question. Concentrate on the question as you walk in. Amplify your thoughts about it; let all else go but your question. When you walk into the center with an open heart and an open mind, you are opening yourself to receiving new information, new insights about yourself.

 

Guidelines for the Walk

 

Find your pace. In our chaotic world we are often pushed beyond a comfortable rhythm. In this state we lose the sense of our own needs. To make matters worse, we are often rushed and then forced to wait. Anyone who has hurried to the bank only to stand in line knows the feeling. Ironically, the same thing can happen with the labyrinth, but there is a difference. The labyrinth helps us find what our natural pace would be and draws our attention to it when we are not honouring it.

 

Along with finding your pace, support your movement through the labyrinth by becoming conscious of your breath. Let your breath flow smoothly in and out of your body. It can be coordinated with each step – as is done in the Buddhist walking meditation – if you choose. Let your experience be your guide.

 

Each experience in the labyrinth is different, even if you walk it often in a short period of time. The pace usually differs each time as well. It can change dramatically within the different stages of the walk. When the labyrinth has more than a comfortable number of seekers on it, you can “pass” people if you want to continue to honour the intuitive pace your inner process has set. If you are moving at a slower pace, you can allow people to pass you. At first people are uncomfortable with the idea of “passing” someone on the labyrinth. It looks competitive, especially since the walk is a spiritual exercise. Again, these kinds of thoughts and feelings, we hope, are greeted from a spacious place inside that smiles knowingly about the machinations of the human ego. On the spiritual path we meet every and all things. To find our pace, to allow spaciousness within, to be receptive to all experience, and to be aware of the habitual thoughts and issues that hamper our spiritual development is a road to self-knowledge.

 

Summary of How to Walk the Labyrinth

 

Pause at the entry way to allow yourself to be fully conscious of the act of stepping into the labyrinth. Allow about a minute, or several turns on the path, to create some space between yourself and the person in front of you. Some ritual act, such as a bow, may feel appropriate during the labyrinth walk. Do what comes naturally.

 

Follow your pace. Allow your body to determine the pace. If you allow a rapid pace and the person in front of you is moving slower, feel free to move around this person. This is easiest to do at the turns by turning earlier. If you are moving slowly, you can step onto the labyrs (wide spaces at the turns) to allow others to pass.

 

The narrow path is a two-way street. If you are going in and another person is going out, you will meet on the path. If you want to keep in an inward meditative state, simply do not make eye contact. If you meet someone you know, a touch of the hand or a hug may be an important acknowledgement of being on the path together.

 

Symbolism and Meanings Found in the Chartres Labyrinth

 

Circles and Spirals

 

The circle is the symbol of unity or union and it is the primary shape of all labyrinths. The circle in sacred geometry represents the incessant movement of the universe (uncomprehensible) as opposed to the square which represents comprehensible order. The labyrinth is a close cousin to the spiral and it, too, reflects the cyclical element of nature and is regarded as the symbol of eternal life.

 

The labyrinth functions like a spiral, creating a vortex in its center. Upon entering, the path winds in a clockwise pattern. Energy is being drawn out. Upon leaving the center the walker goes in a counter clockwise direction. The unwinding path integrates and empowers us on our walk back out. We are literally ushered back out into the world in a strengthened condition.

 

The Path

 

The path lies in 11 concentric circles with the 12th being the labyrinth center. The path meanders throughout the whole circle. There are 34 turns on the path going into the center. Six are semi-right turns and 28 are 180° turns. So the 12 rings that form the 11 pathways may symbolically represent, the 12 apostles, 12 tribes of Israel or 12 months of the year. Twelve is a mystical number in Christianity. In sacred geometry three represents heaven and four represents earth. Twelve is the product of 3 x 4 and, therefore, the path which flows through the whole is then representative of all creation.

 

The obvious metaphor for the path is the difficult path to salvation, with its many twists and turns. Since we cannot see a straight path to our destination, the labyrinth can be viewed as a metaphor for our lives. We learn to surrender to the path (Christ) and trust that he will lead us on our journey.

 

The path can also be viewed as grace or the Church guiding us through chaos.

 

The Cruciform and Labyrs

 

The labyrinth is divided equally into four quadrants that make an equal-armed cross or cruciform. The four arms represent in symbol what is thought to be the essential

 

structure of the universe for example, the four spatial directions, the four elements (earth, wind, water and fire), the four seasons and, most important, salvation through the cross. The four arms of the cross emerging from the center seem to give order to the would-be chaos of the meandering path around it.

 

The Chartres labyrinth cross or cruciform is delineated by the 10 labyrs (labyr means to turn and this is the root of the word labyrinth). The labyrs are double-ax shaped and visible at the turns and between turns. They are traditionally seen as a symbol of women’s power and creativity.

 

The Centre Rosette

 

In the Middle Ages, the rose was regarded as a symbol for the Virgin Mary. Because of its association with the myths of Percival and the Holy Grail at that time, it also was seen as a sign of beauty and love. The rose becomes symbolic of both human and divine love, of passionate love, but also love beyond passion. The single rose became a symbol of a simple acceptance of God’s love for the world.

 

Unlike a normal rose (which has five petals) the rosette has six petals and is steeped in mysticism. Although associated with the Rose of Sharon, which refers to Mary, it may also represent the Holy Spirit (wisdom and enlightenment). The six petals may have corresponded to the story of the six days of creation. In other mystical traditions, the petals can be viewed as the levels of evolution (mineral, plant, animal, humankind, angelic and divine).

 

The Lunations

 

The lunations are the outer ring of partial circles that complete the outside circle of the labyrinth. They are unique to the Chartres design.

 

Celtic Symbols on the St. Hilda’s Labyrinth

 

The Celtic peoples have given us seven enduring spiritual principles:

 

1. A deep respect of nature, regarding creation as the fifth Gospel.

 

2. Quiet care for all living things.

3. The love of learning.

4. A wonder-lust or migratory nature.

5. Love of silence and solitude.

6. Understanding of time as a sacred reality and an appreciation of ordinary life, worshipping God through everyday life, and with great joy.

7. The value of family and clan affiliation, and especially spiritual ties of soul friends.

To show our respect for such wisdom, two Celtic designs adorn the St. Hilda’s labyrinth.

 

To mark the entrance to the labyrinth is a Celtic zoomorphic design painted in red. Traditionally, Celtic monks used intricate knotwork and zoomorphic designs (odd animals intertwined in uncomfortable ways) as mere filler for their illuminated gospel texts. They had no discernible meaning.

 

However, because of their unique design components, zoomorphs are now associated with transformations.

 

Transformation, change, action, and passion are also associated with red, the colour of fire. Therefore, this entrance symbol may well be an appropriate sign for the journey ahead.

At the labyrinth’s centre is a Celtic triquetra. This interlocked knotwork design of three stylized fish (whales) is often interpreted as the Trinity knot. It is a perfect representation of the concept of "three in one" in Christian trinity beliefs. Having the design enclosed within the centre circle further emphasizes the unity theme.

 

The triquetra can also be considered to represent the triplicities of mind, body, and soul, as well as the three domains of earth- earth, sea, and sky.

 

Final Reflection: The Labyrinth as a “Thinning Place”

 

In Celtic Christianity, places where people felt most strongly connected with God’s presence were referred to as thin places. It was these places in nature (forest groves, hilltops and deep wells) that the seen and unseen worlds were most closely connected, and the inhabitants of both worlds could momentarily touch the other. Today our churches, temples and sacred sites are the new thin places to meet the Divine. Here, at St Hilda’s, we have opportunities to encounter many thinning places – whether it be during Eucharistic or Taize services, while singing or praying, or through the love of a welcoming inclusive community. The labyrinth is a welcome addition; and with the right intent can also become a new thinning place for the modern pilgrim/spiritual seeker.This outward journey is an archetype with which we can have a direct experience. We can walk it. It can serve to frame the inward journey – a journey of repentance, forgiveness and rebirth, a journey that seeks a deeper faith, and greater holiness, a journey in search of God.

 

This 360° High Dynamic Range panorama was stitched from 66 bracketed photographs images with PTGUI Pro, tone-mapped with Photomatix, processed with Color Efex, and touched up in Aperture.

 

Original size: 20000 × 10000 (200.0 MP; 1.04 GB).

 

Location: St. Hilda’s By The Sea Anglican Church, Sechelt, British Columbia, Canada

Here is a strange interpretation on why this building is cursed by the Unseen thousands and allowed to decay. Decay is contagious.

 

I am in NYC, I have to obvious physical connection to this Synagogue. However; I have been watching it for the last 3 Years as I found it through my bible studies. To Matthew Kopaid do not fret for this Historical Building is PROTECTED IN THE UNSEEN SPIRIT REALM. Blessings will follow for a qualified Minister of Gods Works and kept as a Religious Facility, this portion of land is given to the Isrealites,Jews, Gentile Ordained to Maintain it As Such Purposed For. The Reason for its current state and vacancy is that Curses have been imposed on the property and the land itself, for the thousands of past congregations that cannot be removed without Application of the Proper Legal Spirit Law which is found in..Yes; The Holy Bible . What most non-believers or the general public call ghosts. There are 1000's times 7 that inhabit dwell within every inch of this Historical Building.Whomever legally buys this land and demolishes this building will by the Legal Spirit Realm Law inherit a Legion that will become part of their own personal family residence. I would buy this building for $50,000 not because of any emotional attachment but only to spare the new owners or future tenants from the Doors that they are about to Open by Legally Purchasing this Synagogue and to keep the spirits within in their Eternal Rest. I would buy it to Spare the Writing on the Walls and to Keep the 1000 Voices from been heard. The Principality will Order every unqualified hands that takes away, diminishes or removes any article of this ordained parcel, or removes illegally the generations upon generations that are currently dormant in here or until awaken by any New Living Tenants to OPEN THE FLOOD GATES. Judgment is Here 2016 for either the Historical Building itself or the Company which purchased it, they will start to lose other Property Owned Tenants due to the New inherited transparent occupants that will through Legal Ground in the Unseen Realm Consume and Occupy all their other Properties. To Samoylovich I have no connection to Chicago or this Building but as a Silent Watchman whom is familiar with Territorial Demons On and Off for the last 10 years with much respect Wash Your Hands from this Property there is a reason why is in the Decaying Condition it is {is been disturbed}This Decay is Contagious. No one will be bold to say all of this but..I am not worry or fearful of the Dead; My interest is that the living will avoid such Blessings and Curses Signed Contracts Established more than Half a Century Ago. Only One Worthy to Break this Spirit Realm Contract can keep those asleep within Resting in Peace. PS I worked in Law Enforcement for several years, and am also a Veteran , this information is only to stop the battle in the spirit realm from coming against the living or those about to occupy their space. If it were a Cemetery Same Unseen Laws Applies.

The Bible says; "Chose Blessings or Curses" also "Above All Chose Life"

 

Queanbeyan Age (NSW : 1867 - 1904) | Thu 23 May 1872 | Page 2

 

Local and District News.

CEREMONY OF LAYING THE FOUNDATION STONE OF ST. STEPHEN'S CHURCH QUEANBEYAN.

LAST Thursday the first practical effort, towards church building on the part of the Presbyterians of Queanbeyan was made and attended with great success. We refer to the interesting ceremony of laying the foundation stone of the church intended for the accommodation of Presbyterian worshippers. The hour fixed for the ceremony was noon of that day, but it was nearly one o'clock before everything was in readiness. The weather previously had been very unpropitious, and up to midnight of Wednesday it threatened anything but a pleasant day. Notwithstanding, Thursday proved all that could be desired for the season of the year; the day was bright. The site was rendered very attractive by a profusion of bunting flaunting over the suspended stone, which hung in readiness for its final disposition by the lady who was to be entrusted with the resposibility and honour of declaring the same well and truly laid. Near at hand was a spacious pavilion occupied by a long table and seats —the former crowded with substantial viands intended for the refreshment of those who would attend the ceremony.

 

All things being in readiness, the Rev. John Gibson, of Yass, moderator of the presbytery of Goulburn, commenced the proceedings by giving out the Old Hundreth Psalm, which was sung by those present—about a hundred persons.

 

The Rev. James Paterson, M.A., of Braidwood, read an appropriate psalm, and offered prayer.

 

Mr. John Gale then came forward and said, as honorary secretary to the building committee he had been requested to make a financial statement, read certain communications, and offer a few preliminary remarks. It was to him a matter of surprise that the Presbyterians of Queanbeyan were so late in undertaking the building of a church for their better accommodation when assembled for the purpose of worshipping the God of their fathers after the manner, which to them seems right and proper. They had long worshipped under disadvantages, and though for some time past they had enjoyed the comparative convenience of the Court-house, yet they felt it was not exactly the place—that they might and ought to assemble in a place of their own set apart exclusively to the use of public worship. Although they were now, for the first time, met to witness the laying of the foundation stone of their long projected church, it reflected unfavourably upon them as a body that they had not done this long ago. Something like ten years ago, he recollected they got the promise of about £400 for the purpose of building a church, but for want of proper combination and energy nothing was done for a long lapse of time—so long, that subscribers became morally and legally relieved from the obligations of their promises. A little while ago they renewed their exertions, with very good results. A building committee was appointed, and that committee felt themselves justified in commencing operations without delay, which they did by calling for and accepting tenders for the work. The sum already promised was about £400, of which at least £350 was good; and it was thought it was with such a list quite safe to undertake the erection of a church whose estimated cost would be from £500 to £550. Their esteemed. fellow-townsman, the Rev. A. D. Soares, had generously furnished them with a plan and specifications of the work, and thus all things were in readiness. Acting under the instructions of the committee he (Mr Gale) had sent circulars far and wide, and on the whole the result had been very encouraging. If some whom they had invited were not present, in a few instances they had sent satisfactory apologies, and something encouraging to represent them. He would proceed to read letters from some to whom circulars had been sent. The first was from the Rev. A. D. Soares, who had been unexpectedly called away on professional business, but sent his first year's subscription and best wishes for the success of the undertaking. Then there followed a letter from their friend the Rev. S. F. Mackenzie, of Goulburn, whose late return after a long absence from home, had rendered it impossible to give his attendance, but whose letter closed with these kind words :—"I trust you may have a very successful gathering, and that the divine blessing may rest on your undertaking." He also read a letter from Mr Slatterie, of Gundaroo, stating his inability to attend, promising a further subscription, and wishing them "a pleasant day and a pledge of good things to come." These letters were as good as so many speeches, and obviated the necessity of many more words from him, beyond exhorting those present to contribute liberally and cheerfully to the fund by laying their contributions on the stone as soon as it should be declared well and truly laid. He was pleased to be able to announce that a lady whom they all knew and respected, the excellent wife of a most worthy man, had consented to lay the stone. There, in that cavity underneath the stone hanging under the triangle, the bottle which he held in his hand was to be laid. That homely looking bottle contained what in course of time antiquarians might regard with much interest and curiosity—viz., several coins of the realmu of different value, copies of the Queanbeyan Age of that day, of the Presbyterian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Evening News, and of the following document:—

 

"The foundation stone of this St. Stephen's Presbyterian Church was laid on Thursday, the 16th day of May, A.D., 1872, by Elizabeth, wife of Charles McKeahnie Esq., of Booroomba, county of Cowley, district of Queanbeyan, an elder of the Presbyterian congregation of the said district.

 

"His Excellency Sir Alfred Stephen, Knight, Chief Justice of the Colony of New South Wales, administering the Government thereof.

 

"The Reverend Archibald Constable Geekie, D.D., Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of New South Wales.

 

"The Reverend John Gibson, Moderator of the Presbytery of Goulburn.

 

"Minister of the Presbyterlan Church, Queanbeyan—vacant.

 

"Elder—Charles McKeahnie, Esq.

 

"Building Commlttee—Andrew Morton, Esq:, JP Chairman, R. W. McKellar, Esq., Treasurer. Mr. John Gale, Secretary. Messrs. J. J. Wright,. W. Graham, and E. McDonald.

 

"Trustees—Andrew Morton, Esq., J.P., Andrew Cunningham; Esq., J,P., Alexander Ryrie, Esq., J.P., J. J. Wright, Esq., J.P.

 

"Architect.—The Reverend A. D. Soares of Christ Church, Queanbeyan.

 

"Contractors.—Thomas Priest, for masonry; Thomas Jordan, for carpenter's work."

 

Nothing more remained for him to say than that the ceremony of laying the stone would now be proceeded with.

 

Rev. John Gibson then introduced Mrs McKeahnie, and having placed in her hand the bottle, that lady deposited it in the cavity prepared for its reception. The mortar having been spread, Mrs

McKeahnie smoothed it with a trowel, and the stone having been carefully lowered to its position, she struck it with a hammer, and in remarkably clear voice and pleasing manner said, "I declare this foundation stone of St. Stephen's Prebyterlaun church truly laid, and humbly dedicate the same in the name of the, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Amen."

 

The Rev. J. Gibson came forward and said, that having been suffering for some days with neuralgic pains, and fearing that he would be unable to address them, otherwise to-day, he would read an address. The rev. gentleman then read as follows:—My dear Christian friends,—we are assembled now at the interesting ceremonial of laying the foundation stone of a Presbyterian Church on this spot. The time is brief since this scene of busy life was an extensive sweep of undulating land occupied by the blackfellow and kangaroo; but now we behold it, as if by magic, converted into a busy and Important town. The presence of humanity, with relations temporal and eternal, has imparted to the place secular worth and religious Interest. From a benovolent solicitude for the spiritual and social welfare of this important town and neighbourhood, the Presbyterians are about erecting a house for the Triune God. If it be asked, For what purpose are you going to erect this temple? we answer, The highest conceivable one—the sanctuary is for the Most High who condescends to dwell with men on the earth—to promote his glory, to serve his cause, and promote the kingdom of his dear Son. No personal or selfish interests are to be promoted by its erection, but it is to stand as a free will offering and memorial to the God of heaven. This will invest it with a beauty far transcending any architectural merits which it may possess. This will give it a glory which will cause it to outvie many a more towering structure. What purpose Is this building to serve? It is to promote the spiritual interests of the members of the community in which it is placed. It will stand on the side of order, virtue, and social progress. It will stand Identified with the rights of Cæsar, with the rule of the magistrate, and with the free obedience of the citizen. It will stand associated with the honour and integrity of the tradesman, with the love of the domestic circle, and with the peace and progress of the individual mind—with its future perfection, glory, and immortality. If the design of its erection be accomplished, it will be another well sunk in the arid plains of man's existence. Here the pure waters of salvation are intended to flow. Here the ignorant are to be instructed, the wanderer brought in, the backslider invited back, the far off prodigal called home. This is to stand as a sister lighthouse, to intimate to the voyager to eternity that there are shoals, rocks, and breakers ahead, and to guide to the port of eternal life and glory. May the preachers and people here ever keep near the desired chart and infallible compass, and harmoniously voyage on to the eternal ocean of love and joy! Dear friends, unless this object be effected—that is, subserve the interests of vital godliness in the district, our labour will be in vain. Let our prayer be, "God be merciful to us, and bless us. Save now we beseech thee, and send prosperity." We would not forget that other denominations are operating here to advance the same momentous and vital interests, and we would bid them God speed, and we trust they will heartily reciprocate our good wishes for their prosperity and usefulness. We have, as Presbyterians, our peculiarities, and we attach to them considerable importance—we hold them firmly, because conscientiously, and take them from the New Testament as our sufficient directory and model. We say in reference to human authority in the church—

 

"Let Cæsar's dues be ever paid,

To Cæsar and his throne,

But consciences and souls were made

To be the Lord's alone.

 

In the Christian ministry, we believe one alone is the Master, and all ministers brethren. Christ the head, and all his people "members one of another." But whilst we hold our scriptural polity with the greatest tenacity, we hold in common with other denominations, principles and truths infinitely more piecious, and we trust our piety will ever be strong enough to sustain the pratical pre-eminence of these, and the due subordination of the other. Looking at man in his fallen condition—debased, polluted, condemned, involved in a ruin from which there is no extrication without the redemption by Jesus Christ, and regeneration by the Holy Spirit, and holding tenaciously the proper divinity of the incarnate Redeemer, and to the consequent ineffable dignity and moral worth and power of his atoning death, and discarding with all vehemence the sacramental virtue of ordinances as the medium of the Spirit's regenerative action—a notion untenable in scripture, and philosopically absurd—for the sound old doctrine of the instrumentality of divine truth, which, permeated by the evangelical element, (our preaching and teaching take their inspiration from the cross)—proclaims Jesus Christ and him crucified as the only basis of a sinner's hope, and insists upon the apostolic testimony—repentence towards God and faith in Jesus Christ. May these precious soul-quickening truths be ever preached in the new edifice, and of many here, and others growing up may it be said, These were born in her and may the Highest establish her. Amen.

 

Dr. Andrew Morton, J.P., followed. He said, as one of the oldest Presbyterlans of the district, it was expected of him that he should say a few words. The Presbyterians were not the most numerous religious body in the district, and moreover they were for the greater part poor. To accomplish the task they had begun, it was necessary they should continue to exert themselves. Already they were encouraged by the presence and assistance of other religious bodies. But still they must depend mainly on themselves. They must put their shoulders to the wheel again and again, not in brief spasmodic efforts, but by unremitting perseverance, and then they would soon have the pleasure of seeing their undertaking finished in a manner creditable to all who took part in the same. He congratulated them that they were resolved to lie no longer under the reproach of being the only religious denomination in the town who had not a church of their own. It was true that God was not confined to buildings made by hands. Their ancestors, the grand old Covenanters, worshipped the Most High on the hill sides of their native land, owing to a persecuting government. But now the necessity for this no longer existed. Those who formerly persecuted were now found amongst the number who were assisting them in their noble work. While they were proud of the time when God was confessed under circumstances of persecution, he could not help thinking that these were better days, when all denominationse are found working side by side and mutually assisting each other in one grand object they had in view.

(Cheers,)

 

At the close of Dr. Morton's address contributions amounting to £22 10s were laid upon the stone, and upon the sum being announced, and the doxology sung, the company present adjourned to the pavilion to lunch.

 

THE LUNCHEON,

which was an ample spread, was provided by the generous oontributions. of town and country friends, and consisted of all the seasonable, dishes, with a liberal supply of wines. About one hundred sat down to the refreshments provided, but so abundant were the supplies, that not one-half of the provisions were consumed.

 

At the close of the meal, the Rev. J. Gibson called for three cheers for the Queen, which were loyally given, and the company dispersed for a short time.

 

THE TEA MEETING.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent by several active ladies and gentlemen in preparing for tea at the oddfellows' hall. At about seven, p.m., the hall was filled, and on the arrival of the clergymen, grace was sung, and tea served. The ladles presiding at, and who had provided the tables, were—Mrs Graham, Mrs Mackellar, and Mrs Gale: They were assisted in their pleasant but arduous task of serving by several other ladles. A very pleasant hour was spent over tea, and then the company adjourned to the open air, while the tables were being removed and preparations completed for

 

THE PUBLIC MEETING.

The chair was occupied by Dr. Morton, who called upon the Rev. J. Gibson to give out a hymn and offer prayer, after which

 

The Chairman, acknowledging the honour conferred upon him in calling him to preside over the meeting, and regretting that he was not better quailfied to fill the chair, said he felt gratified to find that after long years of delay, and procrastination, the Presbyterians of Queanbeyan at length had the prospect before them of seeing a church of their own erected. It was well known that as a religious community they were poor—few were poorer than they, but he felt confident that what had occurred that day was an earnest that they were able to remove the stigma which had too long rested upon them —that they were the only religious denomination in the town who were not in a position to possess a church of their own. There were no difficulties before them but such as they might overcome, especially when, as they saw today, members of other religious persuasions were so ready to come forward to their assistance. There was a time when the various religious bodies were antagonistic to each other; there was a time when the Presbyterians were the objects of persecution by those who were now so ready to encourage and support them. It was a hopeful sign of the times that they were all able and disposed to throw aside minor differences to carry on the great work of spreading the gospel. He trusted they would never more witness those painful dissentions and strifes which had so characterised the past. It was not needful for him to say more as there were present those who would do full justice to the occasion which had brought them together. Having congratulated, the Presbyterians of the district on witnessing the laying of the foundation stone of St. Stephen's Church, and expressed a hope that at no very distant day they would assemble to witness its opening, the Chairman concluded by calling upon the secretary for a statement and a few remarks.

 

Mr Gale rose and said, in obedience to the request of the chairman he would, for the information of those who were not present at the laying of the foundation stone, repeat in substance what he stated on that occasion. He then gave a brief statement of the means at the disposal of the building committee, the probable estimate of their undertaking, and the amount still necessary to be raised in order to liquidate the debt which the committee would incur. After a few words of congratulation on the success which had so far attended their efforts, and giving expression to his belief that their exertions would not be relaxed until they had brought their undertaking to a succeesful issue, he concluded by urging upon Presbyterians the duty of renewed consecration of themselves to the service of God and more unity of purpose and effort amongst themselves.

 

The Rev. J. Gibson, the next speaker, said he was glad, seeing what great preparations bad been made, that he had made an effort to be present, and regretted that others whom they, had expected were not there also. Since they last met he noticed there had been a divorce and a marriage, but fortunately no breach of promise case. Their late pastor was in one sense married to them, but he had chosen nevertheless to go and settle elsewhere. This was the divorce. The marriage he referred to—that of the Rev. S F. Mackenzie—doubtless had something to do with that gentleman's absence from the interesting ceremonies of the day. He was pleased to notice that notwithstanding the Presbyterians of Queanbeyan were deprived of their minister they had the pluck to commence the erection of a church. He had not seen the plan, but presumed the design would be chaste and appropriate. He emphatically denounced the miserable spirit which was content with erecting a mean building for the worship of the Most High. Their style of church architecture ought to be improved; they ought to launch out more—

 

Larger boats may venture more, While smaller boats keep close to shore.

 

He hoped the Queanbeyan church of St Stephen's would be a beautiful one, and that the press, the pulpit, and the ladies would use their best energies to secure that laudable object. He complimented Mrs McKeahnie on the graceful and efficient manner in which she had discharged her honourable duty that day, and well and truly laid the foundation stone. Such ceremonies were not new to him, and he professed to know something about them. Referring to his being present, during his last visit to England, when the Prince of Wales laid a foundation-stone, he said he was glad that Almighty God In his good providence had raised up his Royal Highness from the gates of death (loud cheers), and he hoped he was spared to become a better man. He referred also to his church-building experience in the West Indies, and related some interesting incidents connected therewith; and said he was proud to observe that morning so much money laid on the stone instead of being buried underneath it. If Queanbeyan could not finish unaided the noble work they had undertaken, he hoped they would send a deputation to Yass where he knew they would find help; and a noble church he hoped they would have. The Presbyterlans of Yass had lately improved their own church in a way that they had no reason to be ashamed of it, for he thought It would now compare favourably with any other church in Yass. He admitted there were many degenerate sons of the noble old Covenanters who had turned away from them and were giving the cold shoulder to the cause; but he exhorted all present nevertheless to cleave to the church of their fathers, and they would be sure to prosper in the work they had undertaken. Referring to the past, he blushed to think that the Presbyterians of Queanbeyan, had had over them men who were not fit to be ministers—of course their late pastor formed a honourable exceptian; but, though he did not approve of the Rev. W. Mackenzie leaving them he trusted God would overrule all for good, and send them a man after His own heart. He added —" Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do do it with thy might." Let it not be said "these men began to build and were not able to finish." Of this, he said, there was little fear while they had their McKeahnies and Mortons to stand by them; and his concluding words were, "Establish Thou the work of our hands upon us: yea, the work of, our hands establish Thou it."

 

Mr. W. G. O'Neill was then called upon, and rising expressed the pleasure it afforded him to coöperate with the Presbyterians in furthering the interests of their church. Some 14 or 15 years ago, when the late Rev. Mr Ross was conducting a meeting in the old court house over the river, an effort was put forth to build a Presbyterian Church, but through all these past years nothing had actually been done until to-day; and now they had got the steam up he trusted they would go ahead at the rate of 30 or 40 knots an hour. One gentleman had spoken of having beautiful churches. The realisation of this object lay with the ladies. If one-half of what they spent in personal adournment were appropriated to church-building there would be no difficulty in the way. Again, there were plenty of rich men who had the means, if they only had the will, to render miaterial assistance,and all should give according to their means, in which case they would have a church which would be a credit to. the Presbyterian body, and all would be able to say they had a few bricks in the structure. They were bound by the claims of Christian brotherhood to help one another, in accordance with the spirit of the well-known hymn beginning—

 

"Help us to help each other, Lord."

 

The Presbyterians of Queanbeyan were not very strong and they needed help, but as they had been liberally disposed towards others he knew that others would help them now, He hoped they would get on from this out. If he could solicit subscriptions for the new church he would be happy to do so, and thus return their favours. He concluded by wishing all success to the undertaking they had commenced that day.

 

The Rev. Charles Jones was next asked to address the meeting. He was glad to see such a number present, but felt disappointed In having to, speak before the senior ministers had addressed the meeting. He was glad to be associated with gatherings of the members of the church of the Redeemer. Such occasions called to mind the God on high who helps them in their undertakings for his glory, and was their Father and Friend, whom they had promised to obey, and whose laws they had taken as their guide through life. Their great desire was success in all sections of the church. If they had that day been successful in laying the foundation stone, what was to prevent their success in raising the superstructure of their chureh, and in paying their minister's stipend, and this would be matter for thankfulness. It was pleasant to see one of their fair ones come forth, as had been done that day, and lay the foundation stone of their new chiurch, and it was pleasant to see the various signs of prosperity which surrounded them, But it was possible to witness all this, and yet fall short of true success. Success of the best kind must be looked for in other things. It lay in the salvation of men, and not in the erection of a building or in attention to secular affairs. Their grand work lay in achieving the wonders of redeeming grace in the salvation of perishing men. Jesus's words to his disciples were " Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." The great work of the present day was to raise the fallen and spread scriptural holiness throughout the world, and thus anticipate the joys of everlasting life. In his humble opinion, when a church ceased to be a soul-saving church it mistook its mission ; if it was not successful in bringing souls to God, it was not successful at all. To be successful required nothing more than to follow the Lord Jesus, and be true to their principles and the truths of God. It was dillicult at all times to be faithful to God, but he instanced the case of Ahab and Elijah to show that courage and fidelity were necessary in reproving superiors. Something more than spasmodic effort was necessary to accomplish their object—their's was a life-plan work. And it would not do to break down their precepts by ill example. The present standard of Christian morals was lower than it ought to be—was enough to make them ashamed, and it was no wonder they were not more successful. The duty of the Christian church was to let its light shine, and if every Christian did but observe his duty in this respect there would be more conversions to God. He reminded them of the command given to the disciples to tarry at Jerusalem until endued with power from on high, and argued that in like manner all Christians were to look for the baptism of the Spirit in order to be enabled to adorn the gospel of God. He concluded by exhorting his hearers to trust in the promises of God and look forward to the time when Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands unto God and heaven and earth should be filled with one song— Hallelujah! for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth! He wished them every success, not only in their church building, but in winning souls, for thus should they shine as the brightness df the firmament and as the stars for ever and ever.

 

The Rev. James Paterson said, when their honorary secretary invited him to the laying of, the foundation stone of their new church, he did not tell him of the tea meeting which was to follow, or, like another reverend brother, he might have found an excuse for his absence; but having promised he was determined not to back out. After some remarks on the weather, and the bright day and pleasant ceremony they had enjoyed, he observed that he was disappointed at seeing so few present at the ceremony. Such an event did not occur every day, and more ought to have been present, though perhaps money considerations kept some away. Having passed censure, he would now bestow praise upon those who had so well furnished the tables both at luncheon and and tea. He felt very happy, and wished to thank those of other denominations for their promises of help, and to remind Presbyterians that they could not expect, others to labour for them unless they did their best for themselves. They should remember the old proverb—" God helps those who help them selves." He accorded all praise to the McKeahnies, and Mortons, and Grahams of their number, but it was necessary that all should put their shoulder to the wheel. He gave them an illustration from natural history of the power of combination. There was a variety of monkey, which when wishing to cross a river selected an overhanging tree and ascending it linked head and tail and thus formed a chain until it became long enough to reach by a process of oscillation a tree on the opposite bank of the river, which was grasped by the monkey at the extremity of the chain, and thusa bridge was formed over which they all passed in safety. It was wonderful what could be done by combined action. He urged them not to have a large debt upon their church; nothing could be more to their discredit or discouragement, and it was well known that people would not go into a debt-laden church for fear of being taxed for its liquidation, and moreover ministers were loth to accept a call in such cases. He exhorted them to cleave to each other and live on the best of terms with other denominations of Christians. He shoped that ere long they would have a minister sent amongst them, and he hoped they would encourage him by attending regularly on the ordinances. Referring to their own ecclesiastical system, he said be should like to see in it more pliancy. There were excellences in the Wesleyan and Church of England systems which they might copy with advantage. He referred to the employment of lay preachers, and of sending out catechists or candidates for the ministry to occupy stations for which they had no ordained ministers, and under the supervision of ministers of neighbouring districts, and to go up annually to pass an examination until they were fitted for ordination. Thus they could supplement the work of the college, and from Wollongong to Eden, and elsewhere, fields of labour existed which an agency of this sort could fill. He concluded by expreesiong a hope that the Presbyterians of Queanbeyan would date a new era from that day for great spiritual prosperity, and that amongst them many sons and daughters might be born to the Lord.

 

Mr R. W. Mackellar rose to propose a vote of thanks, and not to make a speech, for the subjects under consideration were exhausted. He moved that the thanks of the meeting be accorded to the ladies and others who had so liberally provided for their, wants that day.

 

Mr C. McKeahnie seconded the motion, which was carried by acclamation.

 

Mr Gale moved, and Mr O'Neill seconded, a vote of thanks to the chairman and clerical visitors, and this also being carried by acclamation, and duly acknowledged, the benediction was pronounced, and the meeting broke up.

 

We understand total proceeds for the day including remittances from absentees, amounted to over £85.

 

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Queanbeyan Age (NSW : 1867 - 1904) | Wed 11 Mar 1874 | Page 2

 

LOCAL INTELLIGENCE.

ST. STEPHEN'S CHURCH, QUEANBEYAN.

THE OPENING SERVICES

OF this, the first place of Presbyterian worship built in Queanbeyan, were conducted on Sunday last under very encouraging and auspicious circumstances.

 

The building was commenced about two years ago, the foundation being completed and the chief corner stone laid by Mrs Charles McKeahie, with the usual ceremonies, on the 16th May, 1872. Owing to oversight in not binding the various contractors to time the works have been carried on but tardily, and even now the church is in a very incomplete state, as stated in our last issue.

 

A description of the building may not be out of place here, before we notice more particularly the services of Sabbath last. The design is gothic, and the material of the walls is rubble stone, neatly jointed, the copings of the buttresses, the parapets, string courses, &c., being of Portland cement. The building. comprises the body of the church, which furnishes accomodation for about 150 hearers, a neat porch, and a "session room," or vestry, at the rear. A bell-turret, surmounted by a spire-which is covered with zinc, and from its paltry appearance is the only defect noticeable in the building to ordinary spectators—springs from the right angle of the front gable of the building. The corbels from which the arches of the doors and windows spring are chastely wrought flowers and human heads of Grecian features. There are ten narrow windows in the main building, two smaller ones in the porch, and one in the vestry. These, as well as a large quatre-foil window in the gable behind the pulpit, are to be of stained glass, and although the order for them was given some time ago they had not arrived in time for the opening.

 

Exteriorly the church is, with the, defect already mentioned, a very handsome structure, and reflects great credit on the architect who designed it and when the grounds around it are properly laid out, and the gates and ornamental fence erected, the Presbyterian Church of St. Stephen's will be one of the handsomest public buildings in Queanbeyan ; and facing, as it does, the public recreation reserve, will always have the advantage of being a conspicuous object in, the foreground.

 

The interior of the church is beautiful, and in thorough keeping with the exterior. Ascending three broad steps the porch is gained, and thence, passing through folding doors, the church is entered. The first object which strikes the attention of the observer is a very handsome rostrum, rising from a low platform, and surmounted by a bookboard. This is lighted by two chaste lamps. We may mention that this necessary piece of church furniture is the workmanship, as well as the gift, of Mr John Kealman, who has the contracts for the seats—a portion of which only are as yet completed—and the gates and palisading fence enclosing the allotment. Two elaborate four-burner lamps, of the same pattern as those on the pulpit or desk mentioned above, depend from the ceiling and light the body of the church. The lamps were selected by Mr J. J. Wright on his recent visit to Sydney. The inner roof or ceiling is somewhat peculiar, and in our opinion the interior would have had a better effect to the eye if the ordinary open roof had been substituted for the present arrangement. Though, perhaps, for acoustic purposes the plan adopted is preferable. The ceiling springs from the wallplates erect for a foot or eighteen inches, and then by two or three slight angles, or "covings" rises archlike to the centre. It is lined with tongued-and-grooved pine, coloured and varnished in harmony with the oak graining of the doors and window frames.

 

Mr Thos. Priest was the contractor for the masonry Mr T. Jordon, for the carpenters' work; Mr J. Evitts, for the plastering ; Mr F. A. Helmund, for the painters' work; and Mr John Kealman, for the interior fittings, the windows, and the gates and fencing. The belfry is fitted with a bell, the gift of Mr Holdsworth, of Sydney.

 

The cost of the building is not exactly estimated ; but will probably exceed £500.

 

Although the seats for the Church were not completed in readiness for the opening services, through the courtesy of the Rev. C. Jones, who lent the spare seats of the Wesleyan Church, and Colonel Russell, P.M., who gave permission for the use of the Court-house forms ; ample accomodation, it was believed, had been provided for those who would attend the services of Sabbath last. Indeed, considering that the seats used were not made for the building, they were capable of very convenient arrangement and provided nearly as much sitting accommodation as the church can afford. But, nevertheless, long before the hour of morning service it was evident that the church would be crowded. And by eleven o'clock, all the available sitting and standing room, including the porch its-self, was occupied—the congregation crowding to the very feet of the minister, and a large number, who had been unable to gain admittance, were obliged to go away. There could not have been less than two hundred persons crowded into the church and porch during the morning service, many of whom had come from the country—some as far as twenty-five or thirty miles distant.

 

The Rev. R. Steel, M.A., Ph. D., of St. Stephen's Church, Sydney, conducted the opening services. The morning service began by singing the Old Hundredth Psalm, and a dedicatory prayer, appropriate chapters from the Bible, and other devotional exercises, the reverend docter announced his text from the Book of Genesis, 28th chap. v. 22—" And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house." The preacher introduced his subject by reminding his hearers of the object which had brought them together that day—to dedicate that building to the worship of Almighty God.

 

"The sound of the church-going bell,"

 

had that morning called to mind a multitude of reminiscences—Bible scenes—associations of their youth, and of other lands. He dwelt upon these in a descriptive manner, which arrested the breathless attention of the congregation, and awoke the tenderest emotions of their hearts. Churches were places of prayer, praise, and instruction. He expatiated on these points of discourse at large, showing the duty and advantages of public worship, and concluded an eloquent and powerful sermon, which occupied about an hour in delivery, by expressing his earnest wish that the place wherein they were assembled might become the birthplace of many souls.

 

The Sacrament of Baptism was then administered to two infants, and the service was brought to a close by prayer, singing, and the Apostolic Benediction.

 

The collection at morning service amounted to £7 14s 8d.

 

The evening service was begun at 7 o'clock ; and many who were disappointed of a seat in the morning, were there betimes in order to secure accommodation. As in the morning the church was crowded, the porch also, and many persons stood around the building wherever they could hear the sermon. The evening text was Ephesians v. 1.—"Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children." The discourse founded upon these words was very fine. The love which God bears for mankind was dwelt upon and illustrated in a variety of ways which could not have failed to carry conviction to the hearts of those who heard the preacher's fervent words ; and the manner in which God's children are to imitate Him in His communicable attribites was ably set forth.

 

The collection at the close of the evening service amounted to £2 19s 8d.

Saturday, and hey, hey it's the weekend.

 

I felt as though the weather had kept me trapped in the house pretty much all week, so I wanted to go out.

 

Jools came back from work evening, saying that her old boss had visited Rochester Cathedral and said there is a fantastic art display of thousands of paper doves, and a huge table made from reclaimed 5,000 tree trunk found in a fen in Norfolk.

 

Yes, we would like some of that action, and as it has been three years since we were last there, seemed like a good idea.

 

In fact, at the beginning of March 2020, it was the first trip we took in the new Audi, and of course, two weeks later there was lockdown and deaths.

 

So, a trip back, at Easter, for a rebirth and to see some art and a huge table.

 

But first, shopping.

 

And being the start of the month, we get much more than usual, including wine to make sloe port and stuff for washing and cleaning.

 

Back home to put it all away and have breakfast and second coffee before heading out. Though because of Brexit-related delays in the port, we did have to leave through Guston and Pineham to get to the A2 as traffic through Whitfield was at a standstill.

 

Up the A2 to Faversham, then along the Motorway until we turned off just after the Medway bridge. It was later than we had hoped, but thought nothing of it, really.

 

But there was a food festival on near the caste, and all parking was full, we drove along the river thinking we would just give up, then following the sat nav back into town we find a tiny car park with spaces, and just a few minutes walk from the cathedral and castle.

 

Perfect.

 

As we drove past the parish church in Strood, I saw thatt he door was open: oh good.

 

On the way to the cathedral, we called into a café for breakfast. Second breakfast. Elevenses. I had a bacon butty and Jools had a panini, which hit the spot, meaning we were ready to go and mingle with people.

 

By the time we emerged, and walked along the High Street to the church, it was closed. So I took some shots of the outside, and then we headed for the bridge over the Medway, and before the Cathedral, there was the Bridge Chapel.

 

I had discovered from a fr

 

iend that the Bridge over the Medway at Rochester was owned, repaired and funded by a charity/trust, and had been this was pretty much from the 14th century.

 

Only the other shell of the Chantry Chapel of the Bridge now remains, but a new roof has been put on, and the chapel now used for meetings, and has a large wooden table filling most of the Chancel. I record the details, say thanks to the two friendly guides, and we finally walk to the Cathedral.

 

The food festival needed tickets to go in, it smelled good, and a band was playing poor Britpop numbers to entertain the thin crowds.

 

We entered the cathedral, and hit by the sight of over 10,000 paper doves, all lit with pink light, having over the Nave.

 

It was impressive.

 

As was the table, pushed to one side but half the length of the Nave, and made of two and three thick planks.

 

I went round taking shots of the stained glass with the big lens, whilst Jools sat and looked after the camera bag.

 

Despite it being a cool day, with my fleece on I was hot, so needed a drink, and along the old High Street was The George, and they showed us to the "garden", which was a huge tent filled with people, one party were loudly celebrating someone's 40th birthday.

 

But our drinks were brought quickly, and being in the corner we could people watch, of course.

 

It was two, and time to go home. The traffic jams of earlier had melted away, so we walked to the car, turned out onto the main road out of town, to the motorway and home.

 

On the radio Citeh put 4 (four) past Liverpool, then all was about preparations for the main group of games.

 

We arrived back home at three, time for a brew and two hot cross buns each, and for me, listen to the footy on the radio, and hopeful that City's late push to the play-offs would start today.

  

It didn't.

 

A 1-0 loss to Sheffield Utd, just one shot on goal, and the season is deader than flares.

 

I watched the evening game, Chelsea losing to Villa, whilst Craig returned on the radio and spun some funk and soul.

 

Perfect.

 

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Rochester Cathedral has been transformed by ‘Peace Doves’ an artwork by Peter Walker Sculptor

 

Bringing a message of peace and hope, the Peace Doves artwork has been created from around fifteen thousand individually hand made paper doves, together they collectively form this beautiful artwork which as a whole reflects joining together in unity, peace and hope moving forward.

 

Peace Doves is an artwork that has been re-curated for different spaces as it tours the UK, adaptations have been seen in Liverpool, Lichfield, Derby, Sheffield and now at Rochester.

 

The Peace Doves project has incorporated educational engagement with many schools and community groups in the local area and each person has written individual messages of peace and hope onto each dove.

 

Throughout history the dove has been viewed as a symbol of peace in many different cultures. For example in Greek mythology the dove is a symbol of the renewal of life, and liturgically within the Bible the dove appears at the Baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan and in the teachings of Noah and the Ark as a symbol of the Holy Spirit.

 

www.rochestercathedral.org/peacedoves

 

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The church is the cathedral of the Diocese of Rochester in the Church of England and the seat (cathedra) of the Bishop of Rochester, the second oldest bishopric in England after that of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The edifice is a Grade I listed building (number 1086423)

 

The Rochester diocese was founded by Justus, one of the missionaries who accompanied Augustine of Canterbury to convert the pagan southern English to Christianity in the early 7th century. As the first Bishop of Rochester, Justus was granted permission by King Æthelberht of Kent to establish a church dedicated to Andrew the Apostle (like the monastery at Rome where Augustine and Justus had set out for England) on the site of the present cathedral, which was made the seat of a bishopric. The cathedral was to be served by a college of secular priests and was endowed with land near the city called Priestfields.[3][a][b]

 

Under the Roman system, a bishop was required to establish a school for the training of priests.[4] To provide the upper parts for music in the services a choir school was required.[5] Together these formed the genesis of the cathedral school which today is represented by the King's School, Rochester. The quality of chorister training was praised by Bede.

 

The original cathedral was 42 feet (13 m) high and 28 feet (8.5 m) wide. The apse is marked in the current cathedral on the floor and setts outside show the line of the walls. Credit for the construction of the building goes to King Æthelberht rather than St Justus. Bede describes St Paulinus' burial as "in the sanctuary of the Blessed Apostle Andrew which Æthelberht founded likewise he built the city of Rochester."[c][7]

 

Æthelberht died in 617 and his successor, Eadbald of Kent, was not a Christian. Justus fled to Francia and remained there for a year before he was recalled by the king.[8]

 

In 644 Ithamar, the first English-born bishop, was consecrated at the cathedral.[d] Ithamar consecrated Deusdedit as the first Saxon Archbishop of Canterbury on 26 March 655.[9]

 

The cathedral suffered much from the ravaging of Kent by King Æthelred of Mercia in 676. So great was the damage that Putta retired from the diocese and his appointed successor, Cwichelm, gave up the see "because of its poverty".[10]

 

In 762, the local overlord, Sigerd, granted land to the bishop, as did his successor Egbert.[e][11] The charter is notable as it is confirmed by Offa of Mercia as overlord of the local kingdom.

 

Following the invasion of 1066, William the Conqueror granted the cathedral and its estates to his half-brother, Odo of Bayeux. Odo misappropriated the resources and reduced the cathedral to near-destitution. The building itself was ancient and decayed. During the episcopate of Siward (1058–1075) it was served by four or five canons "living in squalor and poverty".[12] One of the canons became vicar of Chatham and raised sufficient money to make a gift to the cathedral for the soul and burial of his

 

Gundulf's church

 

Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, amongst others, brought Odo to account at the trial of Penenden Heath c. 1072. Following Odo's final fall, Gundulf was appointed as the first Norman bishop of Rochester in 1077. The cathedral and its lands were restored to the bishop.

 

Gundulf's first undertaking in the construction of the new cathedral seems to have been the construction of the tower which today bears his name. In about 1080 he began construction of a new cathedral to replace Justus' church. He was a talented architect who probably played a major part in the design or the works he commissioned. The original cathedral had a presbytery of six bays with aisles of the same length. The four easternmost bays stood over an undercroft which forms part of the present crypt. To the east was a small projection, probably for the silver shrine of Paulinus which was translated there from the old cathedral.[f] The transepts were 120 feet long, but only 14 feet wide. With such narrow transepts it is thought that the eastern arches of the nave abuted the quire arch.[14] To the south another tower (of which nothing visible remains) was built. There was no crossing tower.[15] The nave was not completed at first. Apparently designed to be nine bays long, most of the south side but only five bays to the north were completed by Gundulf. The quire was required by the priory and the south wall formed part of its buildings. It has been speculated that Gundulf simply left the citizens to complete the parochial part of the building.[16] Gundulf did not stop with the fabric, he also replaced the secular chaplains with Benedictine monks, obtained several royal grants of land and proved a great benefactor to his cathedral city.

 

In 1078 Gudulf founded St Bartholomew's Hospital just outside the city of Rochester. The Priory of St Andrew contributed daily and weekly provisions to the hospital which also received the offerings from the two altars of St James and of St Giles.[17]

 

During the episcopates of Ernulf (1115–1124) and John (I) (1125–1137) the cathedral was completed. The quire was rearranged, the nave partly rebuilt, Gundulf's nave piers were cased and the west end built. Ernulf is also credited with building the refectory, dormitory and chapter house, only portions of which remain. Finally John translated the body of Ithamar from the old Saxon cathedral to the new Norman one, the whole being dedicated in 1130 (or possibly 1133) by the Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by 13 bishops in the presence of Henry I, but the occasion was marred by a great fire which nearly destroyed the whole city and damaged the new cathedral. It was badly damaged by fires again in 1137 and 1179. One or other of these fires was sufficiently severe to badly damage or destroy the eastern arm and the transepts. Ernulf's monastic buildings were also damaged.

 

Probably from about 1190, Gilbert de Glanville (bishop 1185–1214) commenced the rebuilding of the east end and the replacement on the monastic buildings. The north quire transept may have been sufficiently advanced to allow the burial of St William of Perth in 1201, alternatively the coffin may have lain in the north quire aisle until the transept was ready. It was then looted in 1215 by the forces of King John during siege of Rochester Castle. Edmund de Hadenham recounts that there was not a pyx left "in which the body of the Lord might rest upon the altar".[14] However, by 1227, the quire was again in use when the monks made their solemn entry into it. The cathedral was rededicated in 1240 by Richard Wendene (also known as Richard de Wendover) who had been translated from Bangor.[14][18]

 

The shrines of Ss Paulinus and William of Perth, along with the relics of St Ithamar, drew pilgrims to the cathedral. Their offerings were so great that both the work mentioned above and the ensuing work could be funded.

 

Unlike the abbeys of the period (which were led by an abbot) the monastic cathedrals were priories ruled over by a prior with further support from the bishop.[19] Rochester and Carlisle (the other impoverished see) were unusual in securing the promotion of a number of monks to be bishop. Seven bishops of Rochester were originally regular monks between 1215 and the Dissolution.[20] A consequence of the monastic attachment was a lack of patronage at the bishop's disposal. By the early 16th century only 4% of the bishop's patronage came from non-parochial sources.[21] The bishop was therefore chronically limited in funds to spend on the non-monastic part of the cathedral.

 

The next phase of the development was begun by Richard de Eastgate, the sacrist. The two eastern bays of the nave were cleared and the four large piers to support the tower were built. The north nave transept was then constructed. The work was nearly completed by Thomas de Mepeham who became sacrist in 1255. Not long after the south transept was completed and the two bays of the nave nearest the crossing rebuilt to their current form. The intention seems to have been to rebuild the whole nave, but probably lack of funds saved the late Norman work.

 

The cathedral was desecrated in 1264 by the troops of Simon de Montfort, during sieges of the city and castle. It is recorded that armed knights rode into the church and dragged away some refugees. Gold and silver were stolen and documents destroyed. Some of the monastic buildings were turned into stables.[22] Just over a year later De Montfort fell at the Battle of Evesham to the forces of Edward I. Later, in 1300, Edward passed through Rochester on his way to Canterbury and is recorded as having given seven shillings (35p) at the shrine of St William, and the same again the following day. During his return he again visited the cathedral and gave a further seven shillings at each of the shrines of Ss Paulinus and Ithamar.

 

The new century saw the completion of the new Decorated work with the original Norman architecture. The rebuilding of the nave being finally abandoned. Around 1320 the south transept was altered to accommodate the altar of the Virgin Mary.

 

There appears to have been a rood screen thrown between the two western piers of the crossing. A rood loft may have surmounted it.[23] Against this screen was placed the altar of St Nicholas, the parochial altar of the city. The citizens demanded the right of entrance by day or night to what was after all their altar. There were also crowds of strangers passing through the city. The friction broke out as a riot in 1327 after which the strong stone screens and doors which wall off the eastern end of the church from the nave were built.[24] The priory itself was walled off from the town at this period. An oratory was established in angulo navis ("in the corner of the nave") for the reserved sacrament; it is not clear which corner was being referred to, but Dr Palmer[25] argues that the buttress against the north-west tower pier is the most likely setting. He notes the arch filled in with rubble on the aisle side; and on nave side there is a scar line with lower quality stonework below. The buttress is about 4 feet (1.2 m) thick, enough for an oratory. Palmer notes that provision for reservation of consecrated hosts was often made to the north of the altar which would be the case here.

 

The central tower was at last raised by Hamo de Hythe in 1343, thus essentially completing the cathedral. Bells were placed in the central tower (see Bells section below). The chapter room doorway was constructed at around this time. The Black Death struck England in 1347–49. From then on there were probably considerably more than twenty monks in the priory.

 

The modern paintwork of the quire walls is modelled on artwork from the Middle Ages. Gilbert Scott found remains of painting behind the wooden stalls during his restoration work in the 1870s. The painting is therefore part original and part authentic. The alternate lions and fleurs-de-lis reflect Edward III's victories, and assumed sovereignty over the French. In 1356 the Black Prince had defeated John II of France at Poitiers and took him prisoner. On 2 July 1360 John passed through Rochester on his way home and made an offering of 60 crowns (£15) at the Church of St Andrew.[27]

 

The Oratory provided for the citizens of Rochester did not settle the differences between the monks and the city. The eventual solution was the construction of St Nicholas' Church by the north side of the cathedral. A doorway was knocked through the western end of the north aisle (since walled up) to allow processions to pass along the north aisle of the cathedral before leaving by the west door.[27][28]

 

In the mid-15th century the clerestory and vaulting of the north quire aisle was completed and new Perpendicular Period windows inserted into the nave aisles. Possible preparatory work for this is indicated in 1410–11 by the Bridge Wardens of Rochester who recorded a gift of lead from the Lord Prior. The lead was sold on for 41 shillings.[g][29] In 1470 the great west window at the cathedral was completed and finally, in around 1490, what is now the Lady Chapel was built.[27] Rochester Cathedral, although one of England's smaller cathedrals, thus demonstrates all styles of Romanesque and Gothic architecture.[30]

 

In 1504 John Fisher was appointed Bishop of Rochester. Although Rochester was by then an impoverished see, Fisher elected to remain as bishop for the remainder of his life. He had been tutor to the young Prince Henry and on the prince's accession as Henry VIII, Fisher remained his staunch supporter and mentor. He figured in the anti-Lutheran policies of Henry right up until the divorce issue and split from Rome in the early 1530s. Fisher remained true to Rome and for his defence of the Pope was elevated as a cardinal in May 1535. Henry was angered by these moves and, on 22 June 1535, Cardinal Fisher was beheaded on Tower Green.

 

Henry VIII visited Rochester on 1 January 1540 when he met Ann of Cleves for the first time and was "greatly disappointed".[31] Whether connected or not, the old Priory of St Andrew was dissolved by royal command later in the year, one of the last monasteries to be dissolved.

 

The west front is dominated by the central perpendicular great west window. Above the window the dripstone terminates in a small carved head at each side. The line of the nave roof is delineated by a string course above which rises the crenelated parapet. Below the window is a blind arcade interrupted by the top of the Great West Door. Some of the niches in the arcade are filled with statuary. Below the arcade the door is flanked with Norman recesses. The door itself is of Norman work with concentric patterned arches. The semicircular tympanum depicts Christ sitting in glory in the centre, with Saints Justus and Ethelbert flanking him on either side of the doorway. Supporting the saints are angels and surrounding them are the symbols of the Four Evangelists: Ss Matthew (a winged man), Mark (a lion), Luke (an ox) and John (an eagle).[52] On the lintel below are the Twelve Apostles and on the shafts supporting it King Soloman and the Queen of Sheba.[53] Within the Great West Door there is a glass porch which allows the doors themselves to be kept open throughout the day.

 

Either side of the nave end rises a tower which forms the junction of the front and the nave walls. The towers are decorated with blind arcading and are carried up a further two stories above the roof and surmounted with pyramidal spires. The aisle ends are Norman. Each has a large round headed arch containing a window and in the northern recess is a small door. Above each arch is plain wall surmounted by a blind arcade, string course at the roof line and plain parapet. The flanking towers are Norman in the lower part with the style being maintained in the later work. Above the plain bases there are four stories of blind arcading topped with an octagonal spire.[54]

 

The outside of the nave and its aisles is undistinguished, apart from the walled up north-west door which allowed access from the cathedral to the adjacent St Nicholas' Church.[28] The north transept is reached from the High Street via Black Boy Alley, a medieval pilgrimage route. The decoration is Early English, but reworked by Gilbert Scott. Scott rebuilt the gable ends to the original high pitch from the lower one adopted at the start of the 19th century. The gable itself is set back from the main wall behind a parapet with walkway. He also restored the pilgrim entrance and opened up the blind arcade in the northern end of the west wall.[55]

 

To the east of the north transept is the Sextry Gate. It dates from Edward III's reign and has wooden domestic premises above. The area beyond was originally enclosed, but is now open to the High Street through the memorial garden and gates. Beyond the Sextry Gate is the entrance to Gundulf's Tower, used as a private back door to the cathedral.

 

The north quire transept and east end are all executed in Early English style, the lower windows light the crypt which is earlier. Adjoining the east end of the cathedral is the east end of the Chapter Room which is in the same style. The exact form of the east end is more modern than it appears, being largely due to the work of Scott in the 19th century. Scott raised the gable ends to the original high pitch, but for lack of funds the roofs have not been raised; writing in 1897 Palmer noted: "they still require roofs of corresponding pitch, a need both great and conspicuous".[56]

 

On the south side of the cathedral the nave reaches the main transept and beyond a modern porch. The aisle between the transepts is itself a buttress to the older wall behind and supported by a flying buttress. The unusual position of this wall is best explained when considering the interior, below. The southern wall of the presbytery is hidden by the chapter room, an 18th-century structure.

 

he western part of the nave is substantially as Gundulf designed it. According to George H. Palmer (who substantially follows St John Hope) "Rochester and Peterborough possess probably the best examples of the Norman nave in the country".[60] The main arcade is topped by a string course below a triforium. The triforium is Norman with a further string course above. The clerestory above is of perpendicular style. From the capitals pilasters rise to the first string course but appear to have been removed from the triforium stage. Originally they might have supported the roof timbers, or even been the springing of a vault.[61]

 

The easternmost bay of the triforium appears to be Norman, but is the work of 14th-century masons. The final bay of the nave is Decorated in style and leads to the tower piers. Of note is the north pier which possibly contains the Oratory Chapel mentioned above.[62]

 

The aisles are plain with flat pilasters. The eastern two bays are Decorated with springing for vaulting. Whether the vault was ever constructed is unknown, the present wooden roof extends the full length of the aisles.

 

The crossing is bounded to the east by the quire screen with the organ above. This is of 19th-century work and shows figures associated with the early cathedral. Above the crossing is the central tower, housing the bells and above that the spire. The ceiling of the crossing is notable for the four Green Men carved on the bosses. Visible from the ground is the outline of the trapdoor through which bells can be raised and lowered when required. The floor is stepped up to the pulpitum and gives access to the quire through the organ screen.

 

The north transept is from 1235 in Early English style. The Victorian insertion of windows has been mentioned above in the external description. Dominating the transept is the baptistery fresco. The fresco by Russian artist Sergei Fyodorov is displayed on the eastern wall. It is located within an arched recess. The recess may have been a former site of the altar of St Nicholas from the time of its construction in 1235 until it was moved to the screen before the pulpitum in 1322. A will suggests that "an altar of Jesu" also stood here at some point, an altar of some sort must have existed as evidenced by the piscina to the right of the recess.[64] The vaulting is unusual in being octpartite, a development of the more common sexpartite. The Pilgrim Door is now the main visitor entrance and is level for disabled access.

 

he original Lady Chapel was formed in the south transept by screening it off from the crossing. The altar of the Blessed Virgin Mary was housed in the eastern arch of the transept. There are traces of painting both on the east wall and under the arch. The painting delineates the location of the mediaeval north screen of the Lady Chapel. Around 1490 this chapel was extended westwards by piercing the western wall with a large arch and building the chapel's nave against the existing south aisle of cathedral. From within the Lady Chapel the upper parts of two smaller clerestory windows may be seen above the chapel's chancel arch. Subsequently, a screen was placed under the arch and the modern Lady Chapel formed in the 1490 extension.

 

The south transept is of early Decorated style. The eastern wall of it is a single wide arch at the arcade level. There are two doorways in the arch, neither of which is used, the northern one being hidden by the memorial to Dr William Franklin. The south wall starts plain but part way up is a notable monument to Richard Watts, a "coloured bust, with long gray beard".[65] According to Palmer there used to be a brass plaque to Charles Dickens below this but only the outline exists, the plaque having been moved to the east wall of the quire transept.[66] The west wall is filled by the large arch mentioned above with the screen below dividing it from the present Lady Chapel.

 

The Lady Chapel as it now exists is of Decorated style with three lights along southern wall and two in the west wall. The style is a light and airy counterpart to the stolid Norman work of the nave. The altar has been placed against the southern wall resulting in a chapel where the congregation wraps around the altar. The window stained glass is modern and tells the gospel story.

 

The first, easternmost, window has the Annunciation in the upper light: Gabriel speaking to Mary (both crowned) with the Holy Spirit as a dove descending. The lower light shows the Nativity with the Holy Family, three angels and shepherds. The next window shows St Elizabeth in the upper light surrounded by stars and the sun in splendour device. The lower light shows the Adoration of the Magi with Mary enthroned with the Infant. The final window of the south wall has St Mary Magdelene with her ointment surrounded by Tudor roses and fleurs-de-lis in the upper light with the lower light showing the Presentation in the Temple. The west wall continues with St. Margaret of Scotland in the upper light surrounded by fouled anchor and thistle roundels. The reference is to the original dedication of the cathedral as the Priory of St Andrew. The lower light shows the Crucifixion with Mary and St Peter. The final window is unusual, the upper light is divided in three and shows King Arthur with the royal arms flanked by St George on the left and St Michael on the right. The lower light shows the Ascension: two disciples to the left, three women with unguents to the right and three bare crosses top right.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochester_Cathedral

 

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The priory and cathedral church

ABOUT THE YEAR 600, Ethelbert, king of Kent, at the instance of St. Augustine, began to build a CHURCH at Rochester, in honour of St. Andrew, and a MONASTERY adjoining to it, of which church St. Augustine in 604, appointed Justus to be bishop, and placed secular priests in the monastery; for the maintenance of whom the king gave a portion of land to the south of the city, called Prestefelde; to be possessed by them for ever, and he added other parcels of land, both within and without the walls of the city. (fn. 1) And notwithstanding in after times the gifts to this church were many and extensive, yet by the troubles which followed in the Danish wars, it was stripped of almost all of them, and at the time of the conquest it was in such a state of poverty, that divine worship was entirely neglected in it, and there remained in it only five secular priests, who had not sufficient for their maintenance.

 

Many of the possessions belonging to the church of Rochester had come into the hands of the conqueror at his accession to the crown, most of which he gave to his half-brother, Odo, bishop of Baieux, from whom archbishop Lanfranc recovered them, amongother lands belonging to his own church, in the solemn assembly of the whole county, held by the king's command at Pinnenden-heath, in the year 1076.

 

Soon after this, Gundulf was elected bishop of Rochester, to whom and to this church, archbishop Lanfranc immediately restored all those lands which he had recovered, formerly belonging to it.

 

Bishop Gundulf displaced the secular canons which he found here, and with the advice and assistance of archbishop Lanfranc, placed Benedictine monks in their room, the number of which, before his death, amounted to sixty. Besides which, the bishop continuing his unwearied zeal in promoting the interest of his church, recovered and purchased back again many other lands and manors, which had been formerly given to it by several kings, and other pious persons, and had been at different times wrested from it. He followed the example of archbishop Lanfranc, and separated his revenues from those of his monks; for before the bishop and his monks lived in common as one family. He rebuilt the church and enlarged the priory; and though he did not live to complete the great improvements he had undertaken, yet he certainly laid the foundation of the future prosperity of both. (fn. 2) The most material occurrences which happened to the church and priory, from the above time to the dissolution of the latter, will be found in the subsequent account of the several priors and bishops of this church.

 

From the conquest to the reign of Henry VIII. almost every king granted some liberties and privileges, as well to the bishop of Rochester as to the prior of the convent; each confirmed likewise those granted by his predecessors. The succeeding bishops and archbishops confirmed the possessions of the priory to the monks of it, as did many of the popes. The Registrum Roffense is full of these grants in almost every page and as the most material of them are mentioned under the respective places they relate to in the course of this history, the reader will, it is hoped, the more readily excuse the omission of them in this place.

 

A list of the Priors of Rochester.

Ordowinus was appointed the first prior, and was witness to the charter of foundation, dated Sept. 20, 1089. He afterwards resigned. (fn. 3)

 

Arnulph, originally a monk of Christ church, was constituted in his room, and continued here till he was elected prior of Canterbury, in 1096, from whence he was preferred to the abbot of Peterborough, and in 1115, to the see of Rochester. He was a good benefactor to this priory, and built the dormitory, chapter house, and refectory.

 

Ralph succeeded him; he had been a monk at Caen, and came over into England with Lanfranc, in 1107. On his being chosen abbot of Battle, in Sussex, he resigned this office. On the death of bishop Gundulf, the monks of Rochester desired him for their bishop, but in vain.

 

Ordowinus was again restored in 1107. He is said to have held this office under bishop Ernulph, therefore he was living in 1115.

 

Letard presided here under the same bishop.

 

Brian presided in 1145; and died on Decemb. 5, 1146.

 

Reginald, who in the year 1154, obtained from pope Adrian IV. a confirmation of the privliges of the church of Rochester. He is said to have died on April 29, in the obituary of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, but the year is not mentioned, nor that of the election of

 

Ernulf II. who was prior in the time of bishop Walter. The next I find is

 

William de Borstalle, who was preferred to the priorship from being cellarer to this monastery.

 

Silvester, who was his successor, from being cellarer was likewise made prior. In his time, anno 1177, the church and the offices, as well within as without the walls were burnt. He rebuilt the refectory and dormitory, and three windows in the chapter house, towards the east. His successor was

 

Richard, who in 1182, resigned this office on being chosen abbot of Burton, in Staffordshire.

 

Alfred succeeded him as prior, and quitted it on being made abbot of Abingdon by king Henry II. between the years 1185 and 1189. (fn. 4)

 

Osbert de Scapella, from being sacrist was chosen prior. He wrote several books, and made the window of St. Peter's altar, and did many other works; he was a great benefactor to the buildings of this church.

 

Ralph de Ros, who presided in 1199, was the next prior, and whilst he was sacrist built the brewhouse, and the prior's great and lesser chamber, the stone houses in the church yard, the hostiary, stable, and the barn in the vineyard, and caused the church to be covered and most of it leaded.

 

Helias seems to have succeeded him. He finished the covering of the church with lead, and built with stone a stable for himself and his successors. He also leaded that part of the cloisters next the dormitory, and made the laundry and door of the refectory.

 

William is said after him to have enjoyed this office in 1222.

 

Richard de Derente was elected prior of Rochester in 1225; he, among others, in the year 1227, signified to the archbishop the election of Henry de Sandford to the see of Rochester, and he is said to have presided in the year 1238, and to have been succeeded by

 

William de Hoo, sacrist of this church, who was chosen prior in 1239. He built the whole choir of this church, from the north and south wings, out of the oblations made at the shrine of St. William; and after having governed here for two years, because he would not consent to the sale of some lands belonging to his convent, he was much persecuted, and resigning this office, became a monk at Wooburn, and there died. In his time, in 1240, the altar in the infirmary chapel was dedicated to St. Mary; and on the nones of November that year the cathedral church itself being finished, was dedicated by the bishop, assisted by the bishops of Bangor and St. Andrew. (fn. 5)

 

Alexander de Glanville succeeded him, who dying suddenly of grief, in 1252, was succeeded by

 

John de Renham or Rensham. In his time the church and monastery were plundered, and many ornaments and charters taken away. He is said by some to have resigned in Dec. 1283; but in reality he was then deposed by John, archbishop of Canterbury, visiting this church as metropolitan.

 

Thomas de Woldham, alias Suthflete, was elected bishop of Rochesler, and refused it; but being elected a second time, was consecrated in the parish of Chartham, in Kent, the 6th of January, 1291. (fn. 6)

 

Simon de Clyve, sacrist of this church, who growing infirm, resigned this office of prior in 1622, and was the same year succeeded by

 

John de Renham or Rensham who, was again chosen prior, in 1292. He died in 1294, and

 

Thomas de Shuldeford succeeded him, who being infirm, resigned in 1301, and was succeeded by

 

John de Greenstreet in February the same year, on whose resignation, in 1314.

 

Hamo de Hethe was elected to this office that year, as he was to the see of Rochester in 1317, though he was not consecrated till two years afterwards; during the time he governed this church as prior and bishop he was a great benefactor to it.

 

John de Westerham succeeded him, in 1320, and died in 1321, and was succeeded by

 

John de Speldhurst, cellarer of this convent, who was chosen by the monks, and confirmed by the bishop; he resigned in 1333. His successor was

 

John de Shepey, S. T. P. In 1336, he built the new refectory, and received towards the expence of it one hundred marcs. In his time also, in 1344, the shrines of St. Michael, St. Paulinus, and St. Ythamar, were now made with marble and alabaster, which cost two hundred marcs; and the year before he caused the tower to be raised higher with wood and stone, and covered it with lead, and placed four new bells there, calling them Dunstan, Paulin, Ythamar, and Lanfranc. On December 27, 1352, he was elected bishop of Rochester by papal bull. (fn. 7)

 

Robert de Suthflete, warden of Filchestowe cell succeeded on his predecessor's preferment to the bishop. ric in 1352, he died in 1361.

 

John de Hertlepe or Hertley, warden of the same cell, was chosen to succeed him that year; he resigned in 1380, and was succeeded by

 

John de Shepey, S. T. P. the subprior, who was elected the same year; he governed the priory thirtynine years, and died in 1419.

 

William de Tunbrigg was the next prior, who having been elected by the monks, was confirmed by the archbishop of Canterbury (the see of Rochester being vacant) the same year; he presided in 1444, and was soon succeeded by John Clyfe, in 1447. After him,

 

John Cardone was prior, in 1448.

 

William Wode was prior in the reign of king Edward IV. and he was succeeded by

 

Thomas Bourne, who was prior in 1480, to whom

 

William Bishop probably succeeded; he occurs prior in 1496, and seems to have been succeeded by

 

William Frysell, who was elected to this office in 1509. His successor in it was probably

 

Laurence. Mereworth, who occurs prior in 1533 and 1534, when he, with eighteen monks, subscribed to the king's supremacy.

 

Walter Boxley was the next, and last prior of this monastery; for king Henry VIII. in the 31st year of his reign, granted a commission to the archbishop of Canterbury, George lord Cobham, and others, to receive the surrendry of this priory; and accordingly, the above mentioned prior and convent, by their instrument, under their common seal, dated April 8, that year (1540) with their unanimous assent and consent, deliberately, and of their own certain knowledge and mere motion, from certain just and reasonable causes, especially moving their minds and consciences, of their own free good will, gave and granted all that their monastery, and the scite thereof, with all their churches, yard, debts, and moveable goods, together with all their manors, demesnes, messuages, &c. to king Henry. VIII. with a general warrantry against all persons whatsoever. This deed was executed in the presence of a master in chancery, and was afterwards inrolled in the court of augmentation.

 

The prior above mentioned, after the dissolution of this monastery, again took on him his original family and lay name of Phillips; for when any person took upon him the monastic habit, he immediately assumed the name of the place of his dwelling or birth, that by having so done, he might be divested and alienated from all former family connections and relationship, and consider himself entirely as the son of the church, and as having no other relations than those who were his brethren in the monastery.

 

The priory of Rochester was valued at 486l. 11s. 5d. yearly income; (fn. 8) the whole of which came into the king's hands, as above mentioned; who, though he was empowered by parliament to erect new sees, and ecclesiastical corporate bodies out of the estates belonging to these suppressed monasteries, yet more than two years passed before there was any new establishment founded by him here.

 

AFTER the dissolution of the priory of Rochester, king Henry VIII. by his charter under his privy seal, dated June 18, in his 33d year, founded within the precincts of the late monastery here, to the glory and honour of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, a CATHEDRAL CHURCH of one dean and six prebendaries, who were to be priests, together with other ministers necessary for the performing of divine service, in future to be called, The Cathedral church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary of Rochester, and to be the episcopal seat of the bishop of Rochestet and his successors; and he granted the same episcopal seat within the precincts of the late monastery, to him and his successors for ever; and he appointed Walter Philippes, late prior there, the first dean of this church, and Hugh Aprice, John Wildbore, Robert Johnson, John Symkins, Robert Salisbury, and Richard Engest, the six prebendaries of it; and he incorporated them by the name of the dean and chapter of it, and granted that they should have perpetual succession, and be the chapter of the bishopric of Rochester, to plead and be impleaded by that name, and have a common seal; and he granted to the dean and chapter and their successors, the scite and precincts of the late monastery, the church there, and all things whatsoever within it, excepting and reserving to the king the particular buildings and parts of it therein mentioned; which premises, or at least the greatest part of them, seem to have been afterwards granted to the dean and chapter; and also excepting always to the bishop of Rochester and his successors, the great messuage, called the Bishop's palace, with all other his lands and tenements, in right of his bishopric, to hold the said scite, precincts, church, and appurtenances, to the dean and chapter and their successors for ever in pure and perpetual alms; and he granted them full power of making and admitting the inferior officers of the church, and afterwards of correcting and displacing them as they thought fit; saving to the king the full power of nominating the dean and six prebendaries, and also six almsmen, by his letters patent, as often as they should become vacant; and lastly, he granted, that they should have these his letters patent made and sealed in the accustomed manner, under his great seal. These letters patent were sealed with the great seal, June 20th following.

 

The dotation charter, under the king's privy seal, is dated the same day; by which he granted to the dean and chapter, and their successors, sundry premises, manors, lands, tenements, rents, advowsons and appropriations, part of the possessions of the late priory of Rochester, of the late priory of Ledys, of the hospital of Stroud and of the priory of Boxley, in the counties of Kent, Buckingham, Surry, and in the city of London, to hold in pure and perpetual alms, and he granted them, and each of them to be exempt and discharged from all payments of first fruits and tenths, reserving to him and his successors, in lieu thereof, the yearly sum of one hundred and fifteen pounds, (which rent has been since increased to 124l 6s. for reasons as has been already mentioned under Southfleet and Shorne in the former volumes of this history) and lastly, that they should have these his letters patent made and sealed with his great seal, &c. On the 4th of July following, the king granted a commission to George, lord Cobham, and others, reciting, that whereas he had lately founded and erected the said cathedral church in the scite and place of the late priory at Rochester, and in the same one dean, six prebendaries, six minor canons, one deacon and subdeacon, six lay clerks, one master of the choristers, eight choristers, one teacher of the boys in grammar, to consist of twenty scholars, two subsacrists, and six poor men, he gave power and authority to them, or any two of them, to repair to the scite of the late priory, and there, according as they thought fit, to allot the whole of it, and to assign to the dean and canons separate and fit stalls in the choir, and separate places in the chapter there, and to allot to the dean the new lodging, containing two parlours, a kitchen, four bedchambers, the gallery, the study over the gate, with all other buildings leading to the house of John Symkins, one of the residentiaries, together with the garden adjoining, on the north side of the king's lodging. The hay, barn in the woodyard of the dean under the vestry, a stable for the dean adjoining the gate of the tower, and the pidgeon-house on the wall adjoining the ponds; and also to the prebendaries and minor canons and other ministers, and persons above-mentioned, and to each of them, according to their degree, convenient houses, and places about the church to be divided and assigned to each of them, as far as the buildings and ground of the scite would allow, so that the said dean and canons might have separate houses for their convenient habitation, and that the rest of the ministers and persons, that is, minor canons, deacon and subdeacon, scholars, choiristers, and upper and under master, should have smaller houses, in which they and their families should inhabit, and further, that they should put the dean, canons and other ministers in possession of the houses and premises so assigned as asoresaid, provided always, that the said minor canons, and other ministers (except the dean and prebendaries) should eat at one common table, according to the statutes to be prescribed to them, and that they should certify under their seals to the chancellor and court of augmentation what they had done in it.

 

About three years afterwards, a body of statutes for the government of this church was delivered to it by three commissioners appointed by the king for that purpose, but like many others, they were neither under the great seal nor indented, so that their validity continued in dispute till the reign of queen Anne, in the sixth year of whose reign, an act passed to make them good and valid in law, so far as they were not inconsistent with the constitution of the church, or the laws of the land.

 

In these statutes, besides the members already mentioned, there is named a porter, who was likewise to be a barber, a butler, a cook and an under-cook; all the members still subsist in this church, except the deacon and subdeacon, the butler, cook and under-cook; the two first have been disused ever since the reformation, or at least very soon afterwards, and the other three are not necessary, as there is not. any common table kept, nor indeed does there appear to have been one kept as directed by the statutes, for the several members of this church, excepting the dean and prebendaries, and the six almsmen. There were also by the statutes yearly exhibitions of five pounds to be paid to four scholars, two at each university. By the statutes they were to be more than fifteen, and under twenty years of age, to be chosen from this school in preference, and if none such were here, then from any other, so that there were neither fellow or scholar in either university; the pension of five pounds to continue till they commenced bachelor, and that within the space of four years; after which they were to enjoy the same for three years; when commencing master of arts they were to be allowed six pounds per annum, and after that 6l. 13s. 4d. The college to be at the option of the dean, or vice-dean, and chapter, who nominate the scholars, and forty pounds was directed to be laid out yearly in charity, and the repairing of highways and bridges.

 

By the charter of foundation, king Henry VIII. reserved to himself and his successors the right of nominating and appointing, by his letters patent, the dean and prebendaries, and by the statutes the dean must be a doctor of divinity, a batchelor, or doctor of law, and each of the prebendaries the same, or master of arts, or batchelor of laws, and to be appointed by the king's letters patent under his great seal, and presented to the bishop. The dean continues to be nominated by the king, four of the prebends are in the gift of the lordkeeper of the great seal, one is annexed by letters patent, and confirmed by act of parliament, anno 12 queen Anne, to the provostship of Oriel college, in Oxford, and confirmed by parliament the same year, and another was by letters patent, anno 13 king Charles I. annexed to the archdeaconry of Rochester. The crown likewise nominates the six poor bedesmen, who are admitted by warrant under the sign manual; these are in general old and maimed sailors, who are pensioners of the chest at Chatham.

 

Walter Phillips, the last prior, on the surrendry of this monastery into the king's hands, was, by the foundation charter of the dean and chapter, dated June 18, anno 33 Henry VIII. appointed the first dean. He died in 1570. (fn. 9)

 

Edmund Freake, S. T. P. was installed in 1570, and was consecrated bishop of Rochester in 1571.

 

Thomas Willoughby, S. T. P. and prebendary of Canterbury, in 1574, he died in 1585.

 

John Coldwell, M. D. of St. John's college, Cambridge, in 1585, and was consecrated bishop of Salisbury in 1591.

 

Thomas Blague, S. T. P. master of Clare-hall, and rector of Bangor, in 1591, and died in 1611.

 

Richard Milbourne, A. M. rector of Cheam, in Surry, and vicar of Sevenoke, in 1611, and was consecrated bishop of St. David's in 1615. (fn. 10)

 

Robert Scott, S. T. P. and master of Clare-hall, in 1615. He died in 1620.

 

Godfrey Goodman, a native of Essex, and fellow of Trinity college, then master of Clare-hall, Cambridge, afterwards prebendary of Westminster, rector of Kemmerton, in Gloucestershire, and West Isley, in Berkshire, and S. T. P. in 1620, and was consecrated bishop of Gloucester in 1624.

 

Walter Balcanquall, a native of Scotland, and S. T. P. in 1624. He was first fellow of Pembroke-hall, Cambridge, then master of the Savoy. (fn. 11) He resigned this deanry for that of Durham in 1638. (fn. 12)

 

Henry King, S. T. P. of Christ-church, Oxford, archdeacon of Colchester, residentiary of St. Paul's, and canon of Christ-church, (fn. 13) in 1638, and was consecrated bishop of Chichester in 1641.

 

Thomas Turner, S. T. P. canon residentiary of St. Paul's, London, rector of St. Olave's, Southwark, and of Fetcham, in Surry, in 1641, and was made dean of Canterbury in 1643.

 

Benjamin Laney, S. T. P. master of Pembroke-hall, vicar of Soham, in Cambridgeshire, rector of Buriton, in Hampshire, and prebendary of Westminster and Winchester, in 1660, and was consecrated bishop of Peterborough, at the latter end of that year. (fn. 14)

 

Nathaniel Hardy S. T. P. rector of St. Dionis Backchurch, archdeacon of Lewes, and rector of Henley upon Thames, in 1660. He died at Croydon in 1670, and was buried in the church of St. Martin's in the Fields, of which church he was vicar, having been by his will a good benefactor to the members of this cathedral, and their successors, as well as to the parishes of this city.

 

Peter Mew, S. T. P. succeeded in 1670. He had been canon of Windsor, archdeacon of Berks, and pre sident of St. John's college, Oxford. He was consecrated bishop of Bath and Wells at the end of the year 1672. (fn. 15)

 

Thomas Lamplugh, S. T. P. in 1672. He was first fellow of queen's college, Oxford, then principal of Alban-hall, and vicar of St. Martin's in the Fields. He was consecrated bishop of Exeter in 1676. (fn. 16)

 

John Castilion, S. T. P. prebendary of Canterbury, and vicar of Minster, in Thanet, in 1676. He died in 1688, and was buried in Canterbury cathedral.

 

On the death of Dr. Castilion, Simon Lowth, A. M. was nominated that year by king James II. to succeed him; but not being qualified as to his degree according to the statutes, his admittance and installation was refused, and the revolution quickly after following, he was set aside, and Dr. Ullock was nominated in his itead.

 

Henry Ullock, S. T. P. succeeded in 1689, at that time prebendary of this church, and rector of Leyborne. He died in 1706, and was buried there.

 

Samuel Pratt, S. T. P. clerk of the closet, succeeded in 1706. (fn. 17) He was canon of Windsor, vicar of Twickenham, and chaplain of the Savoy chapel. He died in 1723.

 

Nicholas Claggett, S. T. P. rector of Brington, in Northamptonshire, and of Overton sinecure, in Hampshire, and archdeacon of Buckingham in 1724. He was promoted to the bishopric of St. David's in 1731.

 

Thomas Herring, S. T. P. was first of Jesus college, Cambridge, and afterwards fellow of Bennet college. After a variety of parochial preferments he was advanced to this deanry in 1731, which he held in commendam from 1737, when he was promoted to the bi shopric of Bangor till his translation to the archbishopric of York in 1743. (fn. 18)

 

William Bernard, S. T. P. prebendary of Westminster, (fn. 19) succeeded in 1743, but next year was promoted to the see of Raphoe, in Ireland. (fn. 20)

 

John Newcome, S. T. P. lady Margaret's lecturer of divinity, and master of St. John's college, Cambridge, in 1744. He had supplied the divinity chair at Cambridge with great reputation, during the latter part of Dr. Bentley's life, then regius professor, who for several years before his death had retired from all public business. He died in 1765.

 

William Markham, LL. D. and prebendary of Durham, in 1765. He was a great benefactor to the deanry-house, the two wings of which were erected by him, but were not finished before his quitting this preferment for the deanry of Christ-church, Oxford, which he did in 1767. (fn. 21)

 

Benjamin Newcombe, S. T. P. and rector of St. Mildred's, in the Poultry, in 1767. He was afterwards vicar of Lamberhurst, and died at Rochester in 1775.

 

Thomas Thurlow, D. D. and master of the Temple, in 1775, was in 1779 made bishop of Lincoln. (fn. 22)

 

Richard Cust, S. T. P. canon of Christ-church, in Oxford, which he resigned on this promotion. He was a younger brother of the late Sir John Cust, bart. of Lincolnshire, speaker of the house of commons, and uncle to lord Brownlow. He resigned this deanry in 1781, on being made dean of Lincoln, and residentiary of that cathedral.

 

Thomas Dampier, son of Thomas Dampier, dean of Durham, was educated at Eton, and was afterwards fellow of King's college, in Cambridge, vicar of Boxley, prebendary of Durham, and master of Sherborne hospital. In 1780 he was created by royal mandate S. T. P. and in March 1782, succeeded to this deanry, with which he holds, excepting the fellowship, the several preferments before-mentioned.

 

THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ROCHESTER is situated at a small distance from the south side of the middle of the High-street, within the antient gate of the priory.

 

This church was rebuilt by bishop Gundulph in the year 1080, and some part of this building still remains. The whole bears venerable marks of its antiquity, but time has so far impaired the strength of the materials with which it is built, that in all likelihood the care and attention of the present chapter towards the support of it will not be sufficient to prevent the fall of great part of it at no great distance of time.

 

The cathedral consists of a body and two isles, the length of it from the west door to the steps of the choir is fifty yards; at the entrance of the choir is the lower or great cross isle, the length of which is one hundred and twenty-two feet; from the steps of the choir to the east end of the church is fifty-two yards; at the upper end of the choir is another cross isle of the length of ninety feet. In the middle of the western cross isle, at the entrance of the choir, stands the steeple, which is a spire covered with lead, being one hundred and fifty-six feet in height, in which hang six bells. Between the two cross isles, on the north side without the church, stands an old ruined tower, no higher than the roof of the church. This is generally allowed to have been erected by bishop Gundulph, and there is a tradition of its having been called the bell tower, and of its having had five bells hanging in it; yet the better conjecture is, that it was first intended as a place of strength and security, either as a treasury or a repository for records. The walls of it are six feet thick, and the area on the inside twenty-four feet square. On the opposite side, at the west end of the south isle, is a chapel of a later date than the isle, wherein the bishop's consistory court is held, and where early prayers were used to be read till within these few years. The roof of the nave or body of the church, from the west end to the first cross isle, is flat at the top like a parish church, as it is likewise under the great steeple; but all the other parts, viz. the four cross isles, the choir, and those on each side of it, except the lower south isle, which was never finished, are handsomely vaulted with stone groins.

 

The choir is upwards of five hundred and seventy years old, being first used at the consecration of Henry de Sandford in 1227. It is ornamented, as well as other parts of the church, with small pillars of Petworth marble, which however, as well as many of those in a neighbouring cathedral, have been injudiciously covered with whitewash, and several of them with thick coats of plaister. The choir was repaired, as to new wainscot, stalls, pews, &c. at a large expence, in 1743, and very handsomely new paved; at which time the bishop's throne was rebuilt at the charge of bishop Wilcocks.

 

The organ is over the entrance into the choir. The late one was erected early in the last century, and was but a very indifferent instrument. In the room of which a new one, built by Green, was erected in in 1791, which is esteemed an exceeding good instrument.

 

At the north end of the upper cross isle, near the pulpit, is a chapel, called St. Williams's chapel, a saint whose repute brought such considerable profit to this priory, as to raise it from a state of poverty to affluence and riches. A large stone chest, much defaced, is all that remains of his shrine.

 

At the south-east corner of the opposite cross isle is an arched door-way, richly carved and ornamented with a variety of figures, which formerly led to the chapter-house of the priory, in the room of which there is erected a small mean room, which is made use of as a chapter-house and library; for the increase of this library, the same as was intended at Canterbury; every new dean and prebendary gives a certain sum of money at their admission towards the increase of books in it, instead of making an entertainment, as was formerly the custom. In this library is that well known and curious MSS. called the Textus Roffensis, compiled chiefly by bishop Ernulfus in the 12th century, which was published by Thomas Hearne, from a copy in the Surrenden library. During the troubles in the last century this MSS. was conveyed into private hands, nor could the dean and chapter after the restoration, for two years, discover where it was; and at last they were obliged to solicit the court of chancery for a decree to recover it again. Since which they have been once more in great danger of being deprived of it; for Dr. Harris, having borrowed it for the use of his intended history of this county, sent it up to London by water, and the vessel being by the badness of the weather overset, this MSS. lay for some hours under water before it was discovered, which has somewhat damaged it.

 

There is also another antient MSS. here, entitled Custumale Roffense, thought by some to be more antient than the other. Great part of this MSS. has been published by Mr. Thorpe in a volume under that title.

 

Near the west end, in the same isle, is a square chapel, called St. Edmund's chapel; hence you descend into the undercroft, which is very spacious and vaulted with stone. There seems to have been part of it well ornamented with paintings of figures and history, but the whole is so obliterated, that nothing can be made out what it was intended for.

 

The body of this church, the greatest part of which is the same as was erected by bishop Gundulph, is built with circular arches on large massy pillars, with plain capitals; the smaller arches above them being decorated with zigzag ornaments. The roof of the nave seems to have been raised since, and all the windows made new and enlarged at different times, particularly the large one in the west front; though the roof is now flat, by the feet of the groins still remaining, it appears as if this part of the church had been, or at least was intended to be vaulted. The breadth of it, with the side isles, is twenty-two yards. The west front extends eighty-one feet in breadth; the arch of the great door is certainly the same which bishop Gundulph built, and is a most curious piece of workmanship; every stone has been engraved with some device, and it must have been very magnificent in its original state. It is supported the depth of the wall, on each side the door, by several small columns, two of which are carved into statues representing Gundulph's royal patrons, Henry I. and his queen Matilda. The capitals of these columns, as well as the whole arch, are cut into the figures of various animals and flowers The key-stone of the arch seems to have been designed to represent our Saviour in a niche with an angel on each side, but the head is broken off; under this figure are twelve others, representing the apostles, few of which are entire.

 

In this front were four towers, one on each side the great door, and the others at the two extremes; three of these terminated in a turret, and the other in an octangular tower, above the roof. That tower at the north corner being in danger of falling, was taken down a few years ago, in order to be rebuilt. Dean Newcombe left one hundred pounds towards the finishing of it. Against the lower part of this tower was the figure of bishop Gundulph, with his crozier in his hand; on the rebuilding of which it was replaced, but the tower remains unfinished, at not half the height it was before, to the great disfigurement of the front of this church. Since which the tower at the opposite, or south-west corner, being ruinous, has likewise been taken down even with the roof of the church.

 

The royal grammar school of this foundation, besides the exhibitions before-mentioned, has had a later benefactor in Robert Gunsley, clerk, rector of Titsey, in Surry, who by his will in 1618, gave to the master and fellows of University college, Oxford, sixty pounds per annum, for the maintenance of four scholars to be chosen by them from the free school of Maidstone, and from this grammar school, such as are natives of the county of Kent only, of whom those of his name and kindred to have the preference, who are to be allowed chambers, and fifteen pounds per annum.

 

To conclude the account of this priory and cathedral, it should be observed that the precincts of it, after the dissolution, seem to have been a scene of devastation and confusion: the buildings were huge, irregular and ruinous, and little calculated to be turned into separate dwellings for small private families. Even a century afterwards, in the great rebellion in 1647, they were reported to be in a ruinous and woeful condition; at which time the church itself does not seem to have been much better; for archbishop Laud, in his return of the state of this diocese to Charles I. in 1633, says, that the cathedral suffered much for want of glass in the church windows, that the church-yard lay very indecently, and that the gates were down; about nine years afterwards this church suffered much from the fury of the rebel soldiers under colonel Sandys, who having plundered it, and broken to pieces what they could, made use of it as a tipling house, (fn. 23) and the body of the church was used as a carpenter's shop and yard, several sawpits being dug, and frames for houses made by the city joiners in it.

 

After the restoration dean Hardy took great pains to repair the whole of it, which was effected by means of the benefactions of the gentry of the county, and 7000l. added by the dean and chapter; notwithstanding which, time has so corroded and weakened every part of this building, that its future existence for any length of time has been much feared, but this church has lately had every endeavour used, and great repairs have been made which it is hoped will secure it from the fatal ruin which has threatened it, the inside has been beautified, and being kept exceeding clean, it makes at this time a very pleasing appearance.

 

In this cathedral, among other monuments, inscriptions, &c. are the following:— In the choir, within the altar rails on the south wall, under three small arches, are pictures of three bishops with their mitres and crosiers, now almost defaced, on the outside these arms, first, the see of Rochester; second, the priory of Canterbury; third, a cross quartier pierced azure; within the rails, under the north and south windows, are several stone coffins and other remains of bishops monuments, but no inscriptions or arms; on the north side the choir a large altar monument for bishop Lowe, on the south side of it, these arms on a bend, three wolves

Canticle: Wisdom 9:1-6, 9-11

Lord, give me wisdom

 

I will inspire you with wisdom which your adversaries will be unable to resist (Luke 21:15).

 

God of my fathers, Lord of mercy, *

you who have made all things by your word

and in your wisdom have established man *

to rule the creatures produced by you,

to govern the world in holiness and justice, *

and to render judgment in integrity of heart:

 

Give me Wisdom, the attendant at your throne, *

and reject me not from among your children;

for I am your servant, the son of your handmaid, †

a man weak and short-lived *

and lacking in comprehension of judgment and of laws.

 

Indeed, though one be perfect among the sons of men, †

if Wisdom, who comes from you, be not with him, *

he shall be held in no esteem.

 

Now with you is Wisdom, who knows your works *

and was present when you made the world;

who understands what is pleasing in your eyes *

and what is conformable with your commands.

 

Send her forth from your holy heavens *

and from your glorious throne dispatch her

that she may be with me and work with me, *

that I may know what is your pleasure.

 

For she knows and understands all things, †

and will guide me discreetly in my affairs *

and safeguard me by her glory.

 

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, *

and to the Holy Spirit:

as it was in the beginning, is now, *

and will be for ever. Amen.

 

Ant. Wisdom of God, be with me, always at work in me.

The exhibition "Picasso 1932. Erotic Year" at the Musée Picasso Paris examines the link between the artist's personal life and his creation. Pablo Picasso's creative process and daily life are followed day after day through more than one hundred and ten paintings, drawings, engravings and sculptures and a hundred archival documents..? The title of the exhibition, "Picasso 1932. Erotic Year" underlines the significance of sensual works in this year's production process. The exhibition "Picasso 1932. Erotic Year" at the Musée Picasso Paris focuses on a particularly dense year of the artist's creation through paintings, drawings, engravings and sculptures, including some major pieces from his career, and documents that place them in their biographical context. He misses the essential in the comments on his genesis but disregards the true sources of inspiration in an interpretation very much focused on the libido and often very superficial, too bad that the analyses are so simplistic ? Her quest soon took Arieans to France, the centre of the art world at the time. Via Cocteau she automatically arrived at Picasso, a central figure in the Parisian artistic environment. In order to gain more insight into the occult movements that turned out to be literally 'in fashion' in the Parisian artistic world at the beginning of the last century, she consulted a variety of connoisseurs for advice: the French centrepiece of research into the esoteric Antoine Faivre, the religious scientist Jean Pierre Laurant, who mapped out the circles of the Eglise Gnostique, and the occultism connoisseur Robert Amadou. In The Hague she went into the Alchemist’s library and joined a research group of philosophers, philosophers and art historians at the University of Amsterdam.

A 'wildly interesting' research, as she calls it, that because of its interdisciplinary approach does not confine itself to a fragment - the interpretation of one painting - but colours an entire image of a time artistically and philosophically. Arian provides detailed information about the occult currents and orders that were active in Paris around 1900 and about the magazines, such as L'Initiation, that brought esoteric ideas to the attention of a wide audience.

Of great importance was the the philosophically inspired by Order Martinist, founded in 1884 by Gérard Encausse, nicknamed Papus, one of the most influential occultists of the fin-de siècle. Because of the "chaine de silence", the chain of silence that the members of the order never break through, it is not possible to establish with certainty, but it was probably this order that Picasso was a member of during his Cubist period.

The martinists, just like the Alchemists, knew three degrees of initiation: the 'pupil', 'companion' and 'master' of the alchemists were called 'member', 'initiated' and 'initiator' among the martinists, or Superior, Inconnu, who was abbreviated to SI. These letters can be found in some of Picasso's paintings and especially in Picasso's collages,'' Ariens discovered. And there is more: some of the canvases depict black eye masks as they are worn in the martinist lodges; here and there martinist signs roam around, on the canvas La cuisine even a whole kitchen floor full. The square, the symbol of the freemasons, is also a recurring theme. One collage even shows cow letters OR MA -OR(dre) MA(rtiniste) - which prompted one of Picasso's friends to comment that the painter 'advertised order'. In addition to the martyrs, the 'Ordre kabbalistique de la Rose-Croix', which entered into organic cooperation with the martyrdom order, and the Gnostic Church, which is related to martinism, were also influential. The later recruited many of her bishops from the Order Martinist. Inspired by the circle around Picasso, Arian's roles mention the names of famous artists over each other; one appears to be even better introduced into the secrets and symbolism of occultism than the other. According to her, Picasso's main inspirators are the writer Alfred Jarry and the painters Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne, and his contemporaries and friends, the writers Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire and André Salmon. In more than the ones picture it’s Skull and Bones that was founded in 1832 at Yale University. The order is also known as "Bones", and members are called "Bonesmen" who are some of the world's most powerful elites.

How many bones did Picasso paint in this work? Probably Picasso could be readed with two modes, one is written in the official catalog, and one other live in gnostic, probably forgotten in the blockchain of silencing? In French the word Songe give Song in English ( Songe is like visionary's dream and Song is a note of dream) The "Songe" of Ezekiel could be the roots of this painting?

In chapter 37 of Ezekiel, we have a classic metaphysical outline upon which very exciting sermons can be built. Very much the same as the David and Goliath thing. When you read that chapter of the valley of the dry bones and you're aware of metaphysical Bible interpretation, you can almost see how the author is winding it all up for you. Here's the valley, here's the dry bones, they're all dry, very disconnected, then comes the Lord and instructions and then this Ezekiel's blewing this to obey them, he obeys them and these things begin happening to the bones. It gets so far and no farther. All the connections are made, all of the shapes and forms are made, but there's one thing lacking, there's no what? There's no life, they are there in form potential, but they haven't become living actualities yet. So Ezekiel says, now what do I do? He says, "Prophesy now, not to the bones, but prophesy now to the four winds, to the all four winds and prophesy now to the winds to tell the bones to live and the bones became a living army." The prophet Ezekiel saw a vision of vast numbers of people resurrected to live again as physical human beings. What is the meaning of this mystifying vision, and what does it teach us about God's plan? The remains of human bones in a dirt grave. 123RF

Much of God’s revelation to Ezekiel revolved around the distant decendants of Israel and crucial, end-time events centuries in the future. From early youth Ezekiel had been educated and trained to be a priest in the kingdom of Judah. But his hopes and dreams had been dashed by King Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion, taking him and other young Jews captive to Babylon. Now far separated from the temple in Jerusalem, how could his education and training be of any real value? There was no need to worry. God was looking after His own. The Creator had called Ezekiel to be a great prophet, ranked alongside Isaiah and Jeremiah. Christian writer Christopher Wright put it this way: “So while we can value all the positive contributions that Ezekiel’s education and training as a priest brought to his prophetic ministry, we must also appreciate the immense personal, professional and theological shock it must have been to him … [Yet] God would use all that He had built into Ezekiel’s life during his years of preparation” ( The Message of Ezekiel, 2001, p. 27). Most in mainstream Christendom erroneously believe that today is the only day of salvation. But this belief simply is not found in the Bible. When he was 30 years old, Ezekiel began to experience astonishing visions from Almighty God. Perhaps in a personal diary, he recorded the exact date on which the first vision occurred: “Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the River Chebar, that the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God” (Ezekiel 1:1, emphasis added throughout). The invisible barriers between heaven and earth were supernaturally parted for Ezekiel. But what did this prophet actually see in vision? Moving beyond the introductory revelation of the awesome angelic realm, we fast-forward to verses 26 and 28. “On the likeness of the throne was a likeness with the appearance of a man high above it… This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.”There's a beautiful ready-made outline for a metaphysical interpretation. The valley always stands for a low point in your current pathway of life. A downsy, and everybody hits them, in his pathway of life. And when you're in a downsy, and you look around you, what do you usually see all about you? Discouraging, hopeless-looking details - dry bones. Everything is wrong down there. This is a dry bone, meaning a discouraging appearance or a hopeless looking state of affairs. That's what you see in these depressions, these valley periods of your journey of life. But then, you hear the voice of the Lord, "Prophesy unto these bones, say unto them, Oh, ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord". Now, what does Unity call the word of the Lord - affirmations of Truth, declarations of Truth right in the face of the discouraging, negative, hopeless looking conditions or situations. And, as he does this, as we affirm right into the teeth - bones, get it? - of discouraging looking appearances, things begin to happen.

It says, first the bones begin to shake, and then move, and then they began to connect bone to bone. In other words, new connections are formed right in the midst of discouraging or contradictory outer appearances. In the realm of the invisible, every affirmation of Truth results in new connections for future good. This is an occult law of metaphysics. It is absolutely true, in the invisible realm, every affirmation of truth results in new connections of factors for future good. From one point of view, these factors are dry bones, but from another point of view, these factors will become living good, a living army of good, and so, he prophesies and these bones all become connected. Then everything stops ... So then, there has to be a change of the type of prophecies or affirming ... To prophesy, to declare the Truth in every possible direction, that is, let God activity enter into this as He wills, from any direction His spirit choose. Ezekiel initially reacted just like the prophet Daniel and the apostles Paul and John did later. “So when I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard a voice of One [God] speaking. And He said to me, ‘Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak to you’…And He said to me; ‘Son of man, I am sending you to the children of Israel’ ” (Ezekiel 1:28; Ezekiel 2:1-3). God gave Ezekiel a great mission to accomplish. He had important announcements to make. These were intended to reach people far beyond his own time to people down through the ages. And one important vision would serve to encourage all who have ever lived in facing the same remorseless enemy—the seemingly hopeless ending of life in death. The prophet did have a comparatively small personal audience in Babylon of fellow captives from Judah (Ezekiel 3:11). But the real import of his message was not primarily for these deported, displaced prisoners who could do little about their circumstance.It’s important to understand that the kingdoms of Israel and Judah had separated after King Solomon’s death and that the people of the kingdom of Israel had already gone into captivity at the hands of the Assyrians during the latter part of the eighth century B.C.—well over a century before Ezekiel prophesied. And by the time his prophecies began, some of the inhabitants of the kingdom of Judah were likewise already in captivity, first by the Assyrians and then the Babylonians, with most of the rest soon to follow as a result of later Babylonian invasions. Careful reading of Ezekiel’s prophetic message will reveal that it was aimed mainly at the distant future, primarily directed to the end-time descendants of Israel. Much of God’s revelation to him revolved around crucial, end-time events—both positive and negative—that would take place centuries in the future. In the prophecy Jesus Christ gave on the Mount of Olives the week He died, He plainly stated regarding the end-time, “For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written [in the Old Testament prophets, including Ezekiel] may be fulfilled” (Luke 21:22). But cataclysmic occurrences at the close of man’s age are just one aspect of this overall prophetic scenario. Notice the apostle Peter’s words to the crowd gathered in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost seven weeks after Jesus’ death and resurrection: “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets [again including Ezekiel] since the world began” (Acts 3:19-21). This insightful passage depicts a future golden age brought to a suffering humanity by the returning Jesus Christ, lasting 1,000 years (see Revelation 20:1-6). Israel’s prophets aptly describe this long period of peace, prosperity and well-being. One of God’s annual festivals, the Feast of Tabernacles, corresponds directly to Christ’s coming millennial reign.

 

A rebellious analysts lost forever?

God continued to instruct Ezekiel: “Then He said to me, ‘Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with My words to them’ ” (Ezekiel 3:4). Our Creator speaks to a rebellious people who have rarely been inclined to take His warning messages seriously. Their descendants down through time have most often chosen to remain in the depths of idolatry and Sabbath-breaking, two sins against God that Ezekiel emphasized (Ezekiel 14:1-6; Ezekiel 20:12-13; Ezekiel 20:16-17; Ezekiel 20:24; Ezekiel 22:3; Ezekiel 22:8). Tragically, these two trends continue unabated today. But who truly represents the “Israel” today to whom these prophecies are intended? The present tiny state of Israel consists mostly of Jews descended from those of the kingdom of Judah, so the name Israel is a misnomer. History and Bible prophecy show that the modern descendants of the other tribes of Israel stand clearly identified as the Americans, British Commonwealth and peoples of northwestern Europe. For the biblical and historical evidence, request or download our free booklet The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy . You cannot truly grasp God’s prophetic message to humankind apart from the essential knowledge disclosed in this eye-opening publication. The modern descendants of Israel have been likewise rebellious against God. And all share in the same fate—national punishment and, for each individual, the ultimate penalty of sin, which is death (Romans 6:23). The prophecies of future national blessings are encouraging, but what good are they to those who have died? After the Exodus from Egypt, a whole generation of disobedient Israelites perished in the wilderness. Later, many died at the hands of ruthless Assyrian invaders. Much later, about 40 years after Christ’s death and resurrection, many died tragically as a result of the Roman invasion of Judea and the capture of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Of course, the same fate is shared by those who never had the opportunity to choose a way of life to follow. Consider all those little babies Herod cruelly killed in a failed effort to murder the Christ child. Their parents were devastated with unrelieved grief. “A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, because they are no more” (Matthew 2:18). Are these children, then, now lost? Now, instead of affirming about things or prophesying to the bones, now he's told prophesy to and about what? The winds, all four winds. What is wind often a symbol for in the Bible? The Holy Spirit, the activity of God, the movement of God as the Holy Spirit. Now, why would he designate all four winds? Well, you're talking about the movement of God to bring changes and good into your life. To prophesy, to declare the Truth in every possible direction, that is, let God activity enter into this as He wills, from any direction His spirit chooses. North, east, south or west. Not from where I insist it's got to come from - south by southeast only! Don't we often do this? We don't realize it, but we say, all directions of the wind, wherever God chooses, in God's way, let this fulfillment come. So many people among the Israelites have died as victims of evil and injustice. Today we remember the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were callously murdered in Central and Eastern Europe. How should we try to understand all of these tragic occurrences? Is there no hope for even innocent children who died in infancy without ever knowing why? Of course, these questions beset people of every nation—not just Israel. But God has given a special message through Ezekiel to Israel in this regard—one that holds significance for all people. The French martyrs, Rosicrucians and Gnostics of the beginning of the last century treated alchemy, kabbalah and tarot as analogous systems, which they brought together under one heading. According to art historians, this mixture of symbolism from the Kabbalah, Tarot and Alchemy, which inspired Picasso in his cubist work, is the key to the painter's true intentions in his famous painting 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon'. André Breton, pope and surrealist ideologist, persuaded art dealer Doucet to buy the canvas. He wrote, "If this canvas escapes us, most of our mysteries will go along. But the art historians left that sentence out''.

The final part of Ariean's research, a case study in which she removes the veil of mystery, differs slightly, to put it mildly, from the reception of the canvas so far. Seen through the occult spectacles which she - with an abundance of material - shows that Picasso also had them on at the time, the canvas points Aryan in a very different way from the 'philosophical brothel' for which it was long regarded. Supported by her study of the hundreds of sketches and preliminary studies, she discovers neither 'African art' nor 'syphilis sufferers' in the painting. No 'naked bodies', but 'naked facts': signs and numbers. The order was incorporated in 1856 by General William Huntington Russell, and Alphonso Taft who became Secretary of War under President Grant in 1876. The numerical value of this year is 1+8+7+6 = 22, and the numerical motto for Skull and Bones is 322, or 3 x's 22 which you will see below is not a coincidence. 22 bones are represented in Picasso’s engraving.... In numerology, the number 22 is often called the Master Builder. The Phoenician-Hebrews possess 22 books and their alphabet is made up of 22 letters, which was created to compose the Word of God. The Kabbalah teaches us that the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are the building blocks of universe. The underlying occult scientific significance of the number 22 in science would represent the bones of the skull, of which there are twenty-two. 8 form the cranium, or braincase, and 14 are associated with the face.

Our brains are what we use to think, reason and come to know the divine or God. The 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet created to compose the Word of God is our 22 boned skull, and the place where we receive the light to become illuminated, or enlightened beings. Hence, to be like Saint John and have our own Revelation.

Portrait by Picasso of the great resurrection

Ezekiel continued to have visions throughout his prophetic ministry. The one in the 37th chapter speaks directly to the desperate plight of Israel down through the ages. Its intriguing description of the valley of dry bones was the subject of a popular song, “Dry Bones,” during the mid-1950s. No matter how many times one rereads it, this account remains both arresting and suspenseful to the converted mind. But even more important is the profound meaning for us—and for our departed loved ones, who may never have been called of God or spiritually converted during this age. This remarkable, comforting vision assures us that we will see them again! The hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; and it was full of bones . . . and He said to me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ So I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know’ ” (Ezekiel 37:1-3). Then, what happens to those potential bones, those skeletons become a living army. In other words, the potential good which you have declared and affirmed come to your life from any direction God chooses. The static good becomes living good, which means a part of their life, a part of the goodness of their life. A living army, an army of blessings come into manifestation through prophesying according to the direction or the guidance of the Lord. God must not be underestimated. He asked the patriarch Abraham, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14). Centuries later He posed the same question to the prophet Jeremiah: “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me?” (Jeremiah 32:27). Remember that one of the meanings of prophesying simply means affirming. Affirming the Truth regardless of circumstances. Weren't the prophets constantly talking about future events? So often the prophets have been interpreted as sort of fortune-tellers, or clairvoyants in all this. Well, metaphysically, this is not so. What it really means on the metaphysical level is declaring the Truth which will insure a future good outcome. Of course, the prophets also prophesy in what other manner - negative, too. Therein lies part of the problem.

Ezekiel’s vision continues: “Thus says the Lord God to these bones: ‘Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live’ . . . Also He said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, “Thus says the Lord God: ‘Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live’ ”’” (Ezekiel 37:5; Ezekiel 37:9). Physical human beings cannot live without drawing breath—the essence of our fleshly life. Even excellent swimmers, experts at holding their breath, cannot survive long without breathing air. So I prophesied as He commanded me, and breath came into them, and they lived , and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly great army” (Ezekiel 37:10).. Then He said to me, ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel’ ” (Ezekiel 37:11). God then summarizes what He had just described in detail. “Thus says the Lord God: ‘Behold, O My people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 37:12-13). Most pictured here never really knew God during their previous human lives. The closing verse of this vision reveals why God, who never does anything without purpose, has just resurrected all these people: “I will put My [Holy] Spirit in you, and you shall live” (Ezekiel 37:14). At that time all of these people will have an opportunity to be converted—that is, to repent of their sins, be forgiven and baptized, and receive God’s Holy Spirit by which they can truly be converted and receive God’s gift of eternal life. The indication of this preceding verse is that the majority of this great multitude of people will obtain everlasting life in God’s Kingdom.The New Testament also speaks to this incredible, miraculous phenomenon. The apostle Paul wrote: “And so all Israel will be saved , as it is written: ‘The Deliverer [Jesus Christ] will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob [whose name was changed to Israel ]; For this is My covenant with them [i.e., the New Covenant], when I take away their sins’ ” (Romans 11:26-27). By no stretch of the imagination is all of Israel being saved now during this present age of man. But God promises that the whole of Israel will have their opportunity for salvation in the future. Relatively few are being called now to join with the firstfruits of God’s salvation. These called-out ones, true Christians, will be resurrected to receive everlasting life when Christ returns (1 Corinthians 15:50-54; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Philippians 3:20-21). Is this great resurrection exclusively for Israel? Or will other peoples and nations also be included? Remember that our loving Creator remains “the God of all flesh” (Jeremiah 32:27). Several passages in the Gospel accounts show that non-Israelite rulers and peoples are to be resurrected as well. The queen of the South (Sheba), the peoples of Tyre, Sidon and Nineveh (ancient nations and city-states that long predated Jesus’ human lifetime), and even the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah will be resurrected to physical life alongside Christ’s generation of Israelites (see Matthew 11:20-24; Matthew 12:41-42; Luke 10:12-14). Jesus plainly stated: “Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live . . . Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice” (John 5:25; John 5:28). Later Christ revealed to this same apostle John that “the rest of the dead”—referring to those not raised to life in this resurrection —”did not live again until the thousand years were finished” (Revelation 1:1; 20:5). This tells us that the timing of this resurrection is after the thousand-year period known as the Millennium. This verse also clearly shows that there is more than one resurrection.

 

Is today the only day of salvation for Picasso’s explanations?

Most in mainstream Christendom erroneously believe that today is the only day of salvation. But this belief simply is not found in the Bible. In fact the vast majority of mankind will receive their opportunity for salvation during the great resurrection to judgment that we have been reading about in Ezekiel 37:1-14. The apostle John also refers to this resurrection to temporary physical life in Revelation 20:11-13: “Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it…And I saw the dead, small and great [now resurrected], standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books [plural, the books of the Bible].” The “great white throne” judgment occurs not in an instant as people are raised from the dead, but instead over a considerable period of time. God will judge them over time, just as those called to salvation today are judged over time during this present age by this very same standard, the books of the Bible (1 Peter 4:17; 2 Timothy 3:15-17). Many Bible readers misunderstand the nature and meaning of judgment, nearly always associating the term with sentencing to condemnation—not realizing that God is a merciful judge who patiently evaluates human existence with righteous discernment. He earnestly desires to see the blood of His Son Jesus blot out the sins of as many as possible. Christ Himself firmly stated, “ And I, if I am lifted up from the earth [by crucifixion], will draw all peoples to Myself” (John 12:32). Paul writes of “God our Saviour, whose will it is that all should find salvation and come to know the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3-4, Revised English Bible). And in Ezekiel 18:32 we read, “ ‘For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies,’ says the Lord God. ‘Therefore turn [to righteousness] and live!’” This coming time of judgment will give those who never really knew God during their previous lifetime a just and fair opportunity for salvation— not a second chance. The special meaning of the biblical eighth-day festival As mentioned earlier, the Feast of Tabernacles, also known as the Feast of Ingathering, pictures Christ’s millennial reign. But immediately following this seven-day Feast is a separate one-day celebration referred to simply as “the eighth day” (Leviticus 23:34-36; Numbers 29:35; 2 Chronicles 7:9; Nehemiah 8:18). The real meaning of this celebration is rarely understood in modern theological circles. Yet it represents an essential missing piece to the puzzle of salvation. This special Holy Day directly corresponds to the Great White Throne Judgment period, during which God will give all those who have ever lived but never really understood the truth their first real opportunity for salvation. Because few people are aware of the God-ordained festivals spelled out in the Bible, few understand God’s step-by-step plan of salvation revealed through these celebrations. The meaning of the eighth day corresponds to Ezekiel’s vision of the Valley of Dry Bones, referring to a time when lost family members will be joyously joined together again to learn God’s ways while living under utopian conditions of mutual love, peace and prosperity. This Holy Day reminds us that God’s plan promises to offer every human being the opportunity to truly repent of sin and receive a permanent place in His everlasting family, the Kingdom of God. Q. Going back to the four winds idea, if we were praying for healing, instead of concentrating on the liver, for instance, we would pray for perfect and whole health. A. Right, the healing idea, the health principle, the perfect life idea and then add the extra mile to it - and however it shall come - I am completely open and willing in all four directions of the Holy Spirit. Let it come anyway that it is proper according to God's will, in this situation. You will find that when you are faithful on the metaphysical realm of thinking and believing it will become chemicalized on the physiological level, and verifiable on that level. However, there will often be a big time lapse, nevertheless, it will occur, and science is catching up. I'm very smart on this subject, aren't I, because I have John Salunek as a progress counselee.

 

www.trouw.nl/home/picasso-putte-uit-occulte-bron~a4692077/

What is the Mother flame? The Mother flame (Kundalini) has been described as coiled energy, white fire or light located at the base-of-the-spine chakra. This white light has to be awakened and raised through each of the chakras. Chakras are spiritual centers of light and energy located along the spinal column that are "gateways" to the "spiritual self."

 

Raising the Mother flame brings healing and as we heal, we magnetize the light of the Father and experience the divine interchange of energy that occurs between the Father (masculine polarity) and the Mother (feminine polarity). We start to integrate the two polarities.”Energy always follows consciousness…" Because of the purifying action of the Mother flame, care has to be taken in how it is raised. The safest way is through prayer and devotion. The goal is to reunite the light of the Mother with the light of the Father in the heart chakra. When this happens, we give birth to the Christ consciousness. The Divine Mother is our great teacher and guru. As the Mother flame rises, we begin to see the things we need to do and work on. Memories will surface and some will be painful. Healing our psychology is a fundamental step on the spiritual path and it is important to take hold of the hand of the Mother during this time as she gives us the inner guidance and strength to press onward. The blessings we receive from the Mother are endless. One of her primary attributes is to awaken us. As the Mother light rises, our consciousness begins to undergo a profound change. We become illumined. The wisdom of the Mother teaches us better ways of doing things. She helps us to fine-tune our communication skills and to improve our interactions with people. She teaches us to build healthy relationships and to open our eyes to see the needs of others. From her we learn to be more responsible and efficient. She brings harmony and order. All of this is the result of the Mother's energy flowing through us.

 

What is the ascension? Simply put, the ascension is a spiritual ritual whereby we "victoriously" return to God after passing our spiritual tests and meeting certain requirements. Author Annice Booth says:

Through the flame of the ascension, we become one with our own Higher Self and then with God the Father, our own I AM Presence… The ascended masters say we "ascend daily" and every good work, deed and thought aligns us closer to our Higher Self. Raising the Mother flame must be accompanied by spiritual devotion. If this is not done, the rising flame will activate all kinds of inordinate desires instead of the God qualities and virtues we are seeking.

The Mother flame and the ascension flame are one and the same. The ascension flame is the consciousness of the Mother and the Mother is the white light of the ascension flame. As we raise the Mother flame we begin to weave our spiritual garment of light called the seamless garment. Our seamless garment is woven by our thoughts and feelings and the threads represent our,consciousness. We have to replace our old garment with a new one. If we are prone towards being selfish, then we have to start giving to others. If we are filled with self-hate, then we must replace this with self-love. As we pass our initiations and start to heal we begin to add virtues to our garment of light. Sages and saints are often described as having one or more special virtues. Perhaps it is grace, honor or integrity. Some are called truth bearers and others are praised for being noble and just. Virtues are one of the gifts that come from the Mother. As we weave them into our seamless garment we can truthfully say we are walking the path of Beauty, the path of the Divine Mother and the ascension.

 

Whether male or female, we each have a masculine and feminine side. Everything in the spiritual and material world dances in a rhythmic flow of male and female energy. The Chinese call this yin (feminine) and yang (masculine). Wholeness requires the balancing of our masculine and feminine sides. The Mother shows us the way to do this. Our feminine side is nurturing, creative, intuitive, sensitive, comforting, caring and patient. She is the healer as well as the teacher. Our masculine side is associated more so with the "law" and as being analytical. He is power, strength, protection and discipline. When we are out of balance we feel chaotic and lack harmony. We are out of sync with the universe and our energy is scattered. We become uncaring and insensitive, abusive, aggressive or passive, indecisive and weak-willed. We become spiritually bankrupt. The Mother (Teacher-Guru) provides the nurturing, guidance and wisdom we need to successfully balance our polarities. One of the ways she does this is by explaining the laws of Father. Sometimes she is required to become the disciplinarian dispensing the discipline that is necessary for balancing to occur. Her overall desire is to liberate and restore us to wholeness. The soul of both man and woman is feminine and Spirit is the masculine side. We have to raise the feminine ray to magnetize the masculine. Until we do this, we will not manifest the fullness of our wholeness.

 

When we are in deep prayer and communion with God we enter into our inner altar and our "heart of hearts." This sacred place is called the secret chamber of the heart. Mystics speak of seeing a blazing flame, a divine spark within the secret chamber. This spark is also called the threefold flame or the Holy Christ flame and represents the sacred Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It has three rays or plumes coming forth from it. The blue ray represents the Father (Power), the yellow ray represents the Son (Wisdom), and the pink ray represents the Holy Spirit (Love). There is a white sphere of the Trinity located at the base of the threefold flame that is a "veritable fount of the Mother Flame." The Ascended Masters have taught us to be sensitive to these plumes and to take notice when one or more are out of balance. Are you throwing your power around? Then the blue plume is out of alignment. If you are not exercising your God given wisdom to the fullest, then the yellow plume needs improvement and if you feel hardness of heart or are unable to give love then it is the pink plume that needs healing. Ideally, all three plumes should be equal in height. A balanced threefold flame is one of the requirements for the ascension.

 

The Aquarian Age is also the age of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit "conveys the essence of God" throughout our being. This is done through the seven rays. Many of the world religions talk about the seven levels of being or the seven heavens that connect us to the spiritual world. The seven rays come forth from the white light of the Holy Spirit. Each ray contains an aspect of the Christ consciousness and certain healing qualities. Most of us have heard about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Basically these are: the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, faith, healing, working of miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits, diverse kinds of tongues and interpretation of tongues. The Holy Spirit is very mystical and the action of the Holy Spirit manifests in a variety of ways. Mystics say our prayers and thoughts flow in the Holy Spirit. The dove is one of the more well known symbols used to represent the Holy Spirit. The flame of the Holy Spirit is a joyous flame, the soundless sound. It is the music of the spheres, the gentle rain, the foam that moves with the crest of the wave and mingles with the sand. The flame of the Holy Spirit is the fresh, cool air that comes from the mountains at eventide. The flame of the Holy Spirit is the love that burns within your heart when you meet a kindred soul along life's way and when you see the beauty of a child or a devotee kneeling in prayer. It is flame of Christ-illumination that fires the mind – that sparks creative thought and gives will to the imagination. The Holy Spirit is the presence of the Father adorned by the love of the Mother nourishing Life in the newborn child. Known also as the Holy Ghost, Holy Comforter or Heavenly Comforter, the Holy Spirit can be gentle or mighty depending on the occasion and to encounter the Holy Spirit is not only purifying but also a spiritually transforming experience. According to the Ascended Masters, when we unlock the energy of the Mother it opens the door for the Holy Spirit to release the flow of light through us. The Mother helps us to pass our initiations and teaches us not only how to cultivate the gifts of the Holy Spirit but also how to be a just steward of these gifts.

 

Mystics and seers have always known about the violet flame. The violet flame is the seventh-ray aspect of the Holy Spirit and contains the God qualities of mercy, forgiveness and compassion. It is called the flame of transmutation and freedom as it can transmute the cause, effect, record and memory of negative karma. Karma is energy-consciousness. It is every action, thought, feeling, word, and deed. It is the "law of cause and effect" or the "law of the circle." Whatever we say or do comes full circle. We've all heard the expression, "You reap what you sow." This is karma. Everything we send out into the universe returns back to us. Karma can be good or bad. The Mother teaches us to transmute and balance our karma so that we can return back to Spirit. We are entering into a new Age, the Aquarian Age. Ages,last,approximately 2,150 years and each new cycle begins under one of the seven rays of the Holy Spirit. Each age has a sponsor. Saint Germain is the Chohan (Lord) of the Seventh Ray. He, along with his twin flame Portia (Goddess of Justice), are the hierarchs for the age of Aquarius. Portia is also known as the Mother of Aquarius. On May 1, 1954, Saint Germain and Portia were crowned as directors for the coming cycle of the seventh ray. Freedom and justice are the yin and the yang of the seventh ray of Aquarius, and together with mercy, they provide the foundation for all other attributes of God to be outpictured in this seventh dispensation. Saint Germain, whose name means "holy brother" is the seventh angel prophesied in the Book of Revelation. His gift to the earth and to all mankind is the spiritual fire of the violet flame. The violet flame is called the flame of freedom because of its alchemical ability to transmute karma. As the Chohan of the Seventh Ray, Saint Germain focuses the flame of freedom to the earth. The violet flame is the flame of the Aquarian Age.

 

www.sacredwind.com/divinemother.php

 

We can invoke the violet flame through prayer and mantra. One very simple mantra taught by the Summit Lighthouse † is:

 

I AM a being a violet fire!

I AM the purity God desires!

 

The healing benefits that come from giving the violet flame are as vast as the stars in the cosmos. The violet flame can melt hardness of heart, balance old karma and free us from the baggage we've carried around not only in this lifetime but also from past lifetimes. It can transmute negative thoughts and painful memories as well as heal old hurts and wounds.

 

The transforming power of the Mother will be more effective if we use it in conjunction with the violet flame. It is recommended that we give at least fifteen minutes of the violet flame each day.

The Grunwald Monument (Polish: Pomnik Grunwaldzki) is an equestrian statue of King of Poland Władysław II Jagiełło (1352–1434) located at Matejko Square in Kraków's Old Town and constructed in 1910 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald.

 

The statue depicts Jagiełło atop his horse with his cousin, and Grand Duke of Lithuania, Vytautas to his front. On either side of Jagiełło are soldiers lifting their arms in celebration of victory. Depicted lying dead at the steps of the statue is Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights Ulrich von Jungingen. It was destroyed in 1939 by Nazi Germans and reconstructed in 1976 according to project by Marian Konieczny.

 

History

Origin

The monument was designed by Polish sculptors Antoni Wiwulski and Franciszek Black and funded by renowned pianist and future Prime Minister of Poland, Ignacy Jan Paderewski. He wanted to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the victorious Battle of Grunwald fought between Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania against the Teutonic Knights on 15 July 1410. The battle has an enormous relevance in Polish history and is seen as one of the nation's greatest military victories.

 

Construction

Initially, there was controversy where to locate the monument and various different locations were proposed including the Holy Spirit Square (Plac Św. Ducha) supported by Paderewski, the square in front of St. Bernard's Church and the Matejko Square. Eventually, the latter option was chosen partly thanks to its close proximity to the Kraków's defensive walls, which reflected in their appearance the early Jagiellonian era. The foundation stone for the monument was laid in April 1910. The project was carried out in secrecy in the Austrian Partition of Poland and even Wiwulski himself did not know the final purpose of the project when he worked on the details of the monument. The granite obtained for the construction of the pedestal came from the Vanevick quarry in Sweden owned by French company Le Granite from Abainville. Antoni Wiwulski worked on the statue of King Jagiełło during his stay in Paris but the project was temporarily halted due to the sculptor's sudden illness. The figures displayed on the monument were cast in bronze by the French company Malleset. The sculptures were then transported by train from France through Switzerland to Kraków. The entire cost of the project is estimated at 500,000 Austro-Hungarian krones.

 

Grand opening

The official and ceremonial opening of the monument took place on 15 July 1910. The unveiling of the Grunwald Monument was witnessed by 150,000 spectators and by many prominent dignitaries including Land Marshal of Galicia (and a de facto Prime Minister) Stanisław Badeni, Mayor of Kraków Juliusz Leo and the sponsor of the monument Ignacy Jan Paderewski.

 

World War II and post-war years

During the Second World War, the monument was systematically destroyed by Nazi Germans from November 1939 until April 1940. The pedestal of the monument was blown up using dynamite while the bronze statues were looted and transported to Germany. On 28 January 1945, a decision was made to reconstruct the monument. Granite blocks which were recovered from the original monument were placed on the site where the monument was located. In 1972, a special committee was established whose aim was to reconstruct the Grunwald Monument known as Komitet Odbudowy Pomnika Grunwaldzkiego. Based on a miniature model of the original monument kept by the Historical Museum of Kraków as well as pre-war photographs, artist Marian Konieczny carried out the reconstruction of the monument. The granite was obtained from the region of Szklarska Poręba and the figures were cast in bronze in Gliwice. On 16 October 1976, the Grunwald Monument was officially re-opened. In front of the monument, a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was located featuring a symbolic marble plaque designed by Wiktor Zin.

 

100th anniversary celebrations

On 10 September 2010, a ceremonial reenactment of the events related to the opening of the monument took place in Kraków as well as celebrations of the 600th anniversary of the battle and the 100th anniversary of the construction of the monument. In 2016, the Grunwald Monument underwent an extensive renovation and cleaning.

 

Description

The monument is 24 meters (78 ft) tall and at the top of it an equestrian statue of King Władysław Jagiełło is located. The king holds the bridle in his left hand and a sword in his right hand. On the front side of the monument there are sunk relieves for the Grunwald Swords and a statue of Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas at the feet of whom lies the figure of fallen in battle Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights Ulrich von Jungingen. The eastern side features a Polish knight and his page collecting the abandoned Teutonic banners. The western side features a Lithuanian warrior blowing a horn and leading a captured Teutonic knight. The northern side features a peasant symbolically throwing off the shackles of enslavement.

 

Antoni Wiwulski (Lithuanian: Antanas Vivulskis; 20 February 1877 – 10 January 1919) was a Polish-Lithuanian architect and sculptor.

 

Biography

He was born 20 February 1877 in Totma, in Russia, where his father Antoni, veteran of the January Uprising of 1863, served as a forest superintendent. Both parent were born in Samogitia, his mother Adelajda Karpuszko was able to speak in Samogitian. Antoni Wiwulski graduated from the German gymnasium in Mitau, and later from the reputable Jesuit boarding school in Khyriv. There he met Jan Beyzym, who developed in him a passion for carving. He graduated in 1897 and then two of the most prestigious art and architecture universities of the epoch: the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the Higher Technical School in Vienna. In Paris he met Władysław Mickiewicz and, through this acquaintance, Ignacy Paderewski. In July 1908 he stayed at Paderewski's residence in Morges, Switzerland, where the idea of creating a monument commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald was born. His work was part of the sculpture event in the art competition at the 1912 Summer Olympics.

 

Among the most notable of his works are:

 

the Grunwald Monument in Kraków, Poland (1910)

Chapel in Šiluva, Lithuania (1912-1924)

the Holy Heart of Jesus' Church [pl] in Vilnius, Lithuania (started in 1913, unfinished)

Three Crosses on the Hill of the Three Crosses Vilnius, Lithuania (1916)

The Holy Heart of Jesus' Church was started in 1913 and was the first monumental building created with usage of reinforced concrete in the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Wiwulski, impressed by the possibility of building gigantic buildings with the newly rediscovered material prepared a project of a giant church with a stylised gigantic sculpture of the Creator sitting on the dome. However, the project was discontinued after Wiwulski's death on 10 January 1919.

 

In 1919, despite suffering from tuberculosis, he volunteered for the Polish militia (Self-Defence of Lithuania and Belarus) and took part in the defence of Vilnius against Bolshevik assault in the early stages of the Polish-Bolshevik War campaigns. He contracted pneumonia while on guard in the Vilnius' suburb of Užupis. After his death he was buried in the cellars beneath the church he had designed. When it was converted by the Soviets into a Palace of the Construction Workers in 1964, his ashes were moved to Rasos Cemetery.

 

Franciszek Ksawery Black (born 1881 in Warsaw , died 1959 in Paris) - Polish sculptor and medalist working in exile in France and Switzerland .

 

Biography

At a young age he emigrated to London , where from 1901 he attended the School of Decorative Wood Carving. From 1903 he was a student of Antonin Mercié at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris . Together with Antoni Wiwulski, he created the design of the Krakow Grunwald Monument , his work is a figure of a fallen Teutonic knight in full armor. While working with Wiwulski in the years 1907-1910, he visited Krakow many times , where he met Ignacy Jan Paderewski , who, appreciating Black's abilities, provided him with a scholarship that enabled him to travel around Europe , where he became acquainted with the most important museum collections. He visited, among others: The Vatican Museums, the Prado, the British Museum and the Munich Pinacothek. In 1908, he joined the elite group of foreigners who were admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts . He made his debut at the Salon des Artistes Français organized by them, which took place on the Champs de Mars . From that moment on, portrait sculpture, made in various sculptural genres, became the basis of Franciszek Black's work. Before World War I, he moved to Lausanne and lived there until 1920, this period is considered by critics to be the most active in his entire work. He created portraits, but he did not stop sculpting female nudes and genre scenes. In 1920 he returned to Paris and joined the Société du Salon d'Automne. During this time, he completed commissions from wealthy Parisians and portrayed important figures from Polish national life: Juliusz Słowacki (1927), Adam Mickiewicz (1930), Fryderyk Chopin (1934), Józef Hoene-Wroński (1936–1937), Ewelina Hańska (1932), Władysław Mickiewicz (1926). He also created sculptures of people associated with Ignacy Jan Paderewski, including: a monument to the co-founder of the League of Nations, Edward Mandell House (1933), which is located in Warsaw's Skaryszewski Park . A side thread of his work were tombstone sculptures that can be found in Parisian cemeteries. This group includes the monuments of Leopold Sudre at the Montparnasse Cemetery (1933), Józef Hoene-Wroński at the cemetery in Neuilly-sur-Seine (1937), and the figure of Christ on the grave of Eugeniusz Kucharski at the Père-Lachaise cemetery (1955). After the Nazi troops entered France, he went to Grenoble , helped Poles who were active in the French resistance, and in 1951 he was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of "Polonia Restituta" .

 

He died in 1959 and was buried in the Polish cemetery in Montmorency . In 1982, Franciszek Black's daughter Maya fulfilled his will and donated 24 sculptures to the collections of the National Museum in Poznań. In France, the artist's sculptures are in the collections of the Saint-Maur-des-Fossés Museum and the Polish Library in Paris.

 

Kraków, also seen spelled Cracow or absent Polish diacritics as Krakow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 and has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, economic, cultural and artistic life. Cited as one of Europe's most beautiful cities, its Old Town with Wawel Royal Castle was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978, one of the world's first sites granted the status.

 

The city has grown from a Stone Age settlement to Poland's second-most-important city. It began as a hamlet on Wawel Hill and was reported by Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, a 10th-century merchant from Córdoba, as a busy trading centre of Central Europe in 985. With the establishment of new universities and cultural venues at the emergence of the Second Polish Republic in 1918 and throughout the 20th century, Kraków reaffirmed its role as a major national academic and artistic centre. As of 2023, the city has a population of 804,237, with approximately 8 million additional people living within a 100 km (62 mi) radius of its main square.

 

After the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany at the start of World War II, the newly defined Distrikt Krakau (Kraków District) became the capital of Germany's General Government. The Jewish population of the city was forced into a walled zone known as the Kraków Ghetto, from where they were sent to Nazi extermination camps such as the nearby Auschwitz, and Nazi concentration camps like Płaszów. However, the city was spared from destruction and major bombing.

 

In 1978, Karol Wojtyła, archbishop of Kraków, was elevated to the papacy as Pope John Paul II—the first non-Italian pope in 455 years. Also that year, UNESCO approved Kraków's entire Old Town and historic centre and the nearby Wieliczka Salt Mine as Poland's first World Heritage Sites. Kraków is classified as a global city with the ranking of "high sufficiency" by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Its extensive cultural heritage across the epochs of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture includes Wawel Cathedral and Wawel Royal Castle on the banks of the Vistula, St. Mary's Basilica, Saints Peter and Paul Church and the largest medieval market square in Europe, Rynek Główny. Kraków is home to Jagiellonian University, one of the oldest universities in the world and traditionally Poland's most reputable institution of higher learning. The city also hosts a number of institutions of national significance such as the National Museum, Kraków Opera, Juliusz Słowacki Theatre, National Stary Theatre and the Jagiellonian Library. The city is served by John Paul II International Airport, the country's second busiest airport and the most important international airport for the inhabitants of south-eastern Poland.

 

In 2000, Kraków was named European Capital of Culture. In 2013, Kraków was officially approved as a UNESCO City of Literature. The city hosted World Youth Day in 2016 and the European Games in 2023.

 

Kraków is one of the largest and oldest cities in Poland, with the urban population of 804,237 (June, 2023). Situated on the Vistula river (Polish: Wisła) in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. It was the capital of Poland from 1038 to 1596, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Kraków from 1846 to 1918, and the capital of Kraków Voivodeship from the 14th century to 1999. It is now the capital of the Lesser Poland Voivodeship.

 

Timeline of Kraków

Historical affiliations

Vistulans, pre X century

Duchy of Bohemia, X century–ca. 960

Duchy of Poland, ca. 960–1025

Kingdom of Poland, 1025–1031

Duchy of Poland, 1031–1320

∟ Seniorate Province, 1138–1227

Duchy of Kraków, 1227–1320

Kingdom of Poland, 1320–1569

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1569–1795

Austrian Empire, 1795–1809

∟ Galicia

Duchy of Warsaw, 1809–1815

Free City of Cracow, 1815–1846

Austrian Empire, 1846–1867

Austria-Hungary, 1867–1918

∟ Grand Duchy of Kraków (subdivision of Galicia)

Republic of Poland, 1918–1939

General Government, 1939–1945 (part of German-occupied Europe)

Provisional Government of National Unity, 1945–1947

Polish People's Republic, 1947–1989

Poland, 1989–present

 

Early history

The earliest known settlement on the present site of Kraków was established on Wawel Hill, and dates back to the 4th century. Legend attributes the town's establishment to the mythical ruler Krakus, who built it above a cave occupied by a ravenous dragon, Smok Wawelski. Many knights unsuccessfully attempted to oust the dragon by force, but instead, Krakus fed it a poisoned lamb, which killed the dragon. The city was free to flourish. Dragon bones, most likely that of mammoth, are displayed at the entrance of the Wawel Cathedral. Before the Polish state had been formed, Kraków was the capital of the tribe of Vistulans, subjugated for a short period by Great Moravia. After Great Moravia was destroyed by the Hungarians, Kraków became part of the kingdom of Bohemia. The first appearance of the city's name in historical records dates back to 966, when a Sephardi Jewish traveller, Abraham ben Jacob, described Kraków as a notable commercial centre under the rule of the then duke of Bohemia (Boleslaus I the Cruel). He also mentioned the baptism of Prince Mieszko I and his status as the first historical ruler of Poland. Towards the end of his reign, Mieszko took Kraków from the Bohemians and incorporated it into the holdings of the Piast dynasty.

 

By the end of the 10th century, the city was a leading center of trade. Brick buildings were being constructed, including the Royal Wawel Castle with the Rotunda of Sts. Felix and Adauctus, Romanesque churches, a cathedral, and a basilica. Sometime after 1042, Casimir I the Restorer made Kraków the seat of the Polish government. In 1079 on a hillock in nearby Skałka, the Bishop of Kraków, Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów, was slain by the order of the Polish king Bolesław II the Generous. In 1138, the Testament of Bolesław III Wrymouth came into effect upon his death. It divided Poland into five provinces, with Kraków named as the Seniorate Province, meant to be ruled by the eldest male member of the royal family as the High Duke. Infighting among brothers, however, caused the seniorate system to soon collapse, and a century-long struggle between Bolesław's descendants followed. The fragmentation of Poland lasted until 1320.

 

Kraków was almost entirely destroyed during the Mongol invasion of Poland in 1241, after the Polish attempt to repulse the invaders had been crushed in the Battle of Chmielnik. Kraków was rebuilt in 1257, in a form which was practically unaltered, and received self-government city rights from the king based on the Magdeburg Law, attracting mostly German-speaking burgers. In 1259, the city was again ravaged by the Mongols, 18 years after the first raid. A third attack, though unsuccessful, followed in 1287. The year 1311 saw the Rebellion of wójt Albert against Polish High Duke Władysław I. It involved the mostly German-speaking burghers of Kraków who, as a result, were massacred. In the aftermath, Kraków was gradually re-Polonized, and Polish burghers rose from a minority to a majority.

 

Further information: History of Poland in the Middle Ages

Medieval Kraków was surrounded by a 1.9 mile (3 km) defensive wall complete with 46 towers and seven main entrances leading through them (see St. Florian's Gate and Kraków Barbican). The fortifications were erected over the course of two centuries. The town defensive system appeared in Kraków after the city's location, i.e. in the second half of the 13th century (1257). This was when the construction of a uniform fortification line was commenced, but it seems the project could not be completed. Afterwards the walls, however, were extended and reinforced (a permit from Leszek Biały to encircle the city with high defensive walls was granted in 1285). Kraków rose to new prominence in 1364, when Casimir III of Poland founded the Cracow Academy, the second university in central Europe after the University of Prague. There had already been a cathedral school since 1150 functioning under the auspices of the city's bishop. The city continued to grow under the joint Lithuanian-Polish Jagiellon dynasty (1386–1572). As the capital of a powerful state, it became a flourishing center of science and the arts.

 

Kraków was a member of the Hanseatic League and many craftsmen settled there, established businesses and formed craftsmen's guilds. City Law, including guilds' depictions and descriptions, were recorded in the German language Balthasar Behem Codex. This codex is now featured at the Jagiellonian Library. By the end of the thirteenth century, Kraków had become a predominantly German city. In 1475 delegates of the elector George the Rich of Bavaria came to Kraków to negotiate the marriage of Princess Jadwiga of Poland (Hedwig in German), the daughter of King Casimir IV Jagiellon to George the Rich. Jadwiga traveled for two months to Landshut in Bavaria, where an elaborate marriage celebration, the Landshut Wedding took place. Around 1502 Kraków was already featured in the works of Albrecht Dürer as well as in those of Hartmann Schedel (Nuremberg Chronicle) and Georg Braun (Civitates orbis terrarum).

 

During the 15th century extremist clergymen advocated violence towards the Jews, who in a gradual process lost their positions. In 1469 Jews were expelled from their old settlement to Spiglarska Street. In 1485 Jewish elders were forced into a renunciation of trade in Kraków, which led many Jews to leave for Kazimierz that did not fall under the restrictions due to its status as a royal town. Following the 1494 fire in Kraków, a wave of anti-Jewish attacks took place. In 1495, King John I Albert expelled the Jews from the city walls of Kraków; they moved to Kazimierz (now a district of Kraków).

 

Renaissance

The Renaissance, whose influence originated in Italy, arrived in Kraków in the late 15th century, along with numerous Italian artists including Francesco Fiorentino, Bartolommeo Berrecci, Santi Gucci, Mateo Gucci, Bernardo Morando, and Giovanni Baptista di Quadro. The period, which elevated the intellectual pursuits, produced many outstanding artists and scientists such as Nicolaus Copernicus who studied at the local Academy. In 1468 the Italian humanist Filip Callimachus came to Kraków, where he worked as the teacher of the children of Casimir IV Jagiellon. In 1488 the imperial Poet Laureate and humanist Conrad Celtes founded the Sodalitas Litterarum Vistulana ("Literary Society on the Vistula"), a learned society based on the Roman Academies. In 1489, sculptor Veit Stoss (Wit Stwosz) of Nuremberg finished his work on the high altar of St. Mary's Church. He later made a marble sarcophagus for his benefactor Casimir IV Jagiellon. By 1500, Johann Haller had established a printing press in the city. Many works of the Renaissance movement were printed there during that time.

 

Art and architecture flourished under the watchful eye of King Sigismund I the Old, who ascended to the throne in 1507. He married Bona Sforza of a leading Milan family and using his new Italian connections began the major project (under Florentine architect Berrecci) of remaking the ancient residence of the Polish kings, the Wawel Castle, into a modern Renaissance palace. In 1520, Hans Behem made the largest church bell, named the Sigismund Bell after King Sigismund I. At the same time Hans Dürer, younger brother of Albrecht Dürer, was Sigismund's court painter. Around 1511 Hans von Kulmbach painted a series of panels for the Church of the Pauline Fathers at Skałka and the Church of St. Mary. Sigismund I also brought in Italian chefs who introduced Italian cuisine.

 

In 1558, a permanent postal connection between Kraków and Venice, the capitals of the Kingdom of Poland and the Republic of Venice respectively, was established and Poczta Polska was founded. In 1572, King Sigismund II died childless, and the throne passed briefly to Henry of Valois, then to Sigismund II's sister Anna Jagiellon and her husband Stephen Báthory, and then to Sigismund III of the Swedish House of Vasa. His reign changed Kraków dramatically, as he moved the government to Warsaw in 1596. A series of wars ensued between Sweden and Poland.

 

After the partitions of Poland

In the late 18th century, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was partitioned three times by its expansionist neighbors: Imperial Russia, the Austrian Empire, and the Kingdom of Prussia. After the first two partitions (1772 and 1793), Kraków was still part of the substantially reduced Polish nation. In 1794 Tadeusz Kościuszko initiated a revolt against the partitioning powers, the Kościuszko Uprising, in Kraków's market square. The Polish army, including many peasants, fought against the Russian and Prussian armies, but the larger forces ultimately put down the revolt. The Prussian army specifically took Kraków on 15 June 1794, and looted the Polish royal treasure kept at Wawel Castle. The stolen regalia, valued at 525,259 thalers, was secretly melted down in March 1809, while precious stones and pearls were appropriated in Berlin. Poland was partitioned for the third time in 1795, and Kraków became part of the Austrian province of Galicia.

 

When Napoleon Bonaparte of the French Empire captured part of what had once been Poland, he established the Duchy of Warsaw (1807) as an independent but subordinate state. West Galicia, including Kraków, was taken from the Austrian Empire and added to the Duchy of Warsaw in 1809 by the Treaty of Schönbrunn, which ended the War of the Fifth Coalition. The Congress of Vienna (1815) restored the partition of Poland, but gave Kraków partial independence as the Free City of Cracow.

 

The city again became the focus of a struggle for national sovereignty in 1846, during the Kraków Uprising. The uprising failed to spread outside the city to other Polish lands, and was put down. This resulted in the annexation of the city state to the Austrian Empire as the Grand Duchy of Cracow, once again part of the Galician lands of the empire.

 

In 1850 10% of the city was destroyed in the large fire.

 

After the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Austria granted partial autonomy to Galicia, making Polish a language of government and establishing a provincial Diet. As this form of Austrian rule was more benevolent than that exercised by Russia and Prussia, Kraków became a Polish national symbol and a center of culture and art, known frequently as the "Polish Athens" (Polskie Ateny) or "Polish Mecca" to which Poles would flock to revere the symbols and monuments of Kraków's (and Poland's) great past. Several important commemorations took place in Kraków during the period from 1866–1914, including the 500th Anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald in 1910, in which world-renowned pianist Ignacy Paderewski unveiled a monument. Famous painters, poets and writers of this period, living and working in the city include Jan Matejko, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Jan Kasprowicz, Juliusz Kossak, Wojciech Kossak, Stanisław Wyspiański and Stanisław Przybyszewski. The latter two were leaders of Polish modernism.

 

The Fin de siècle Kraków, even under the partitions, was famously the center of Polish national revival and culture, but the city was also becoming a modern metropolis during this period. In 1901 the city installed running water and witnessed the introduction of its first electric streetcars. (Warsaw's first electric streetcars came in 1907.) The most significant political and economic development of the first decade of the 20th century in Kraków was the creation of Greater Kraków (Wielki Kraków), the incorporation of the surrounding suburban communities into a single administrative unit. The incorporation was overseen by Juliusz Leo, the city's energetic mayor from 1904 to his death in 1918 (see also: the Mayors of Kraków).

 

Thanks to migration from the countryside and the fruits of incorporation from 1910 to 1915, Kraków's population doubled in just fifteen years, from approx. 91,000 to 183,000 in 1915. Russian troops besieged Kraków during the first winter of the First World War, and thousands of residents left the city for Moravia and other safer locales, generally returning in the spring and summer of 1915. During the war Polish Legions led by Józef Piłsudski set out to fight for the liberation of Poland, in alliance with Austrian and German troops. With the fall of Austro-Hungarian Empire, Poles liberated the city and it was included with the newly reborn Polish state (1918). Between the two World Wars Kraków was also a major Jewish cultural and religious center (see: Synagogues of Kraków), with the Zionist movement relatively strong among the city's Jewish population.

 

World War II

Poland was partitioned again at the onset of the Second World War. The Nazi German forces entered Kraków on September 6, 1939. The residents of the city were saved from German attack by the courageous Mayor Stanisław Klimecki who went to meet the invading Wehrmacht troops. He approached them with the call to stop shooting because the city was defenseless: "Feuer einstellen!" and offered himself as a hostage. He was killed by the Gestapo three years later in the Niepołomice Forest. The German Einsatzgruppen I and zbV entered the city to commit atrocities against Poles. On September 12, the Germans carried out a massacre of 10 Jews. On November 4, Kraków became the capital of the General Government, a colonial authority under the leadership of Hans Frank. The occupation took a heavy toll, particularly on the city's cultural heritage. On November 6, during the infamous Sonderaktion Krakau 184 professors and academics of the Jagiellonian University (including Rector Tadeusz Lehr-Spławiński among others) were arrested at the Collegium Novum during a meeting ordered by the Gestapo chief SS-Obersturmbannführer Bruno Müller. President of Kraków, Klimecki was apprehended at his home the same evening. After two weeks, they were sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and in March 1940 further to Dachau. Those who survived were released only after international protest involving the Vatican. On November 9–10, during the Intelligenzaktion, the Germans carried out further mass arrests of 120 Poles, including teachers, students and judges. The Sicherheitspolizei took over the Montelupich Prison, which became one of the most infamous in German-occupied Poland. Many Poles arrested in Kraków, and various other places in the region, and even more distant cities such as Rzeszów and Przemyśl, were imprisoned there. Over 1,700 Polish prisoners were eventually massacred at Fort 49 of the Kraków Fortress and its adjacent forest, and deportations of Polish prisoners to concentration camps, incl. Ravensbrück and Auschwitz, were also carried out. The prison also contained a cell for kidnapped Polish children under the age of 10, with an average capacity of about 70 children, who were then sent to concentration camps and executed. From September to December 1939, the occupiers also operated a Dulag transit camp for Polish prisoners of war.

 

Many relics and monuments of national culture were looted and destroyed (yet again), including the bronze statue of Adam Mickiewicz stolen for scrap. The Jewish population was first ghettoized, and later murdered. Two major concentration camps near Kraków included Płaszów and the extermination camp of Auschwitz, to which many local Poles and Polish Jews were sent. Specific events surrounding the Jewish ghetto in Kraków and the nearby concentration camps were famously portrayed in the film Schindler's List, itself based on a book by Thomas Keneally entitled Schindler's Ark. The Polish Red Cross was also aware of over 2,000 Polish Jews from Kraków, who escaped from the Germans to Soviet-occupied eastern Poland, and then were deported by the Soviets to the USSR.

 

The Polish resistance movement was active in the city. Already in September 1939, the Organizacja Orła Białego resistance organization was founded. Kraków became the seat of one of the six main commands of the Union of Armed Struggle in occupied Poland (alongside Warsaw, Poznań, Toruń, Białystok and Lwów). A local branch of the Żegota underground Polish resistance organization was established to rescue Jews from the Holocaust.

 

The Germans operated several forced labour camps in the city, and in 1942–1944, they also operated the Stalag 369 prisoner-of-war camp for Dutch, Belgian and French POWs. In 1944, during and following the Warsaw Uprising, the Germans deported many captured Poles frow Warsaw to Kraków.

 

A common account popularized in the Soviet-controlled communist People's Republic of Poland, held that due to a rapid advance of the Soviet armies, Kraków allegedly escaped planned destruction during the German withdrawal. There are several different versions of that account. According to a version based on self-written Soviet statements, Marshal Ivan Konev claimed to have been informed by the Polish patriots of the German plan, and took an effort to preserve Kraków from destruction by ordering a lightning attack on the city while deliberately not cutting the Germans from the only withdrawal path, and by not aiding the attack with aviation and artillery. The credibility of those accounts has been questioned by Polish historian Andrzej Chwalba who finds no physical evidence of the German master plan for demolition and no written proof showing that Konev ordered the attack with the intention of preserving the city. He portrays Konev's strategy as ordinary – only accidentally resulting in little damage to Kraków – exaggerated later into a myth of "Konev, savior of Kraków" by Soviet propaganda. The Red Army entry into the city was accompanied by a wave of rapes of women and girls resulting in official protests.

 

Post-war period

After the war, the government of the People's Republic of Poland ordered the construction of the country's largest steel mill in the suburb of Nowa Huta. This was regarded by some as an attempt to diminish the influence of Kraków's intellectual and artistic heritage by industrialization of the city and by attracting to it the new working class. In the 1950s some Greeks, refugees of the Greek Civil War, settled in Nowa Huta.

 

The city is regarded by many to be the cultural capital of Poland. In 1978, UNESCO placed Kraków on the list of World Heritage Sites. In the same year, on October 16, 1978, Kraków's archbishop, Karol Wojtyła, was elevated to the papacy as John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in 455 years.

 

Kraków's population has quadrupled since the end of World War II. After the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the subsequent joining of the European Union, Offshoring of IT work from other nations has become important to the economy of Kraków and Poland in general in recent years. The city is the key center for this kind of business activity. There are about 20 large multinational companies in Kraków, including centers serving IBM, General Electric, Motorola, and Sabre Holdings, along with British and German-based firms.

 

In recent history, Kraków has co-hosted various international sports competitions, including the 2016 European Men's Handball Championship, 2017 Men's European Volleyball Championship, 2021 Men's European Volleyball Championship and 2023 World Men's Handball Championship.