lords

"Barabbas" - David Olney

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcIiqC0RI0E

 

One of the criminals who were hanged there was hurling abuse at Him, saying, "Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!" But the other answered, and rebuking him said, "Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? "And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong." And he was saying, "Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!" And He said to him, "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise."

 

A quick look story of Judas Iscariot on Good Friday.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoVs3-P96mU

-David Olney "Brains"

 

photo_Arthur Koch_DSC_2650easter

"Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen."

 

Icon from the Greek Orthodox monastery of St Anthony in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.

The discipline of an elephant herd is to be seen to be believed. The Alpha Male takes a lead in rushing to the waterhole for the evening quench, followed by his harem, with the little calves chaperoned by their Mom & a few aunts around for good measure. The young sub adult males are at the end of the train. One young male jumped the gun, jumped into the waterhole next to the Alpha Male & he was rebuked by a loud & angry trumpet. The frightened youngster immediately withdrew & stood about Twenty five yards away, with his back towards the Captain & stood motionless for a few minutes! Such are the disciplinary ways of elephants in an African jungle! :-)

 

Isaiah Chapter 2 Verse 4

"And he shall judge among the nations, and rebuke many peoples.

And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.

Nation shall not lift up sword against nation.

Neither shall they learn war any more."

 

A prophecy for world peace. Inspired by the biblical verse.

Acrylic, mixed media on papier-mâché. 100cm X 70cm. 2002.

 

Thanks for the comments.

Have a peaceful life with wonderful people to accompany your life.

Copyrights(c) Nira Dabush.

Leaping after a snowball... Christmas has come early as far as Barney's concerned. This morning we woke up to a true white winter wonderland. Very, very cold but so beautiful. Took Barney and Dilly out for a little play in the local playing field first thing in the morning and was astounded when Dilly got the zoomies.

 

She actually got so excited and happy that she invited Barney to play with her!! This might not seem remarkable for most 2-dog households but these two never play together... They might sometimes chase the same ball but for Little Miss Grumpy to go all prancy and ask to be chased is amazing. I don't think Barney could believe it either, she usually rebukes any attempt by him to start a game! They dashed around in circles for a couple of minutes before going their separate ways. Must be the snow going to her head :) See below... So happy I had the camera with me!

 

Barney and I then went for a proper walk on the Malvern Hills for a couple of hours. We left Dilly behind to get warm (she was shivering by the time we got back from the field). Barney was truly in his element. He chased invisible squirrels in snowy woods, played catch on a frozen lake and dashed across the white hillsides. I took quite a few photos but really just enjoyed watching Barney have fun in his new cold, magically white world.

2 Timothy 3:16

 

16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness

  

Water always follows the path of the least resistance. This tangle of rocks and boulders along Goshen Creek creates more paths for runoff from a recent storm than you can shake a stick at. For us landscape photographers, “path of the least resistance” is often not to be found in our lexicon, as we lug equipment up and down these mountains. This scene, however, can be found right alongside the Blue Ridge Parkway, with no need for struggle.

 

By the way, I talked an older veteran the other day, and I thanked him for his service... he told me he had fought the war (Korean) from an office at the Pentagon. I asked him if he knew that when he signed on, and he said no. The point is that it takes some amount of courage to just sign up for enlistment when the world’s in turmoil... you never know where it will take you.

 

In the only account where Jesus is struck on the cheek (John 18:22&23), Jesus didn’t meekly turn the other cheek, but instead rebuked the man... there are times when turning the other cheek is the better part of valor. Then there are other times. After His arrest, an official strikes Jesus in the face for His supposed insolence against the Sanhedrin. Jesus responded, “If I said something wrong, testify to what is wrong. But if I spoke the truth, why did you strike me?” This is just one of many incidents where Jesus does something that pacifists never do… come to grips with reality. In fact, it happens so often throughout the New Testament that it’s quite clear that Jesus is no pacifist.

 

In Luke 22:36 Jesus makes one of His last statements to the disciples (prior to His crucifixion) at the last supper; He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.” Peter not only had a sword, he used it impetuously against a servant of the high priest, a police officer, if you will, charged with the authority to arrest Jesus. I think Peter intended to take the man’s head off; but, alas, he made a better fisherman than a swordsman. The man apparently ducked the blow. Though Peter did manage to get his ear, I often wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t missed. Peter was always impetuous, always the first to step up or answer in the company of Jesus and his fellow disciples. This is why Jesus admonished him, and then had him to put the sword away back in its scabbard. Jesus didn’t take it away from Peter or have him to toss it away. He knew the necessity of the sword as a weapon of protection for His beloved disciples was a fact of reality as they traveled through the wild areas between towns where violent thieves lay in wait.

 

War is yet another fact of reality, the result of much more than just two factions that can’t play well together. Yes, war is a terrible thing, which is why our military, strong and proficient as it is, is first and foremost a deterrent to those who are wise enough not to provoke it into action. But those that do need to understand that they do so at risk of paying a price as our soldiers are prepared for that inevitability.

 

Memorial Day is a day of remembrance for those who paid the ultimate price for freedom throughout this world. Please do so, and pray for the ones they left behind. Now, have a nice weekend, ya’ll! I’m headed back here.

  

"Jesus got into the boat followed by his disciples. Without warning a storm broke over the lake, so violent that the waves were breaking right over the boat. But he was asleep. So they went to him and woke him saying, ‘Save us, Lord, we are going down!’ And he said to them, ‘Why are you so frightened, you men of little faith?’ And with that he stood up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and all was calm again. The men were astounded and said, ‘Whatever kind of man is this? Even the winds and the sea obey him.’"

– Matt 8:23-27, which is today's Gospel at Mass.

 

This mosaic of Christ, symbolised by the Greek letters of his name, standing in the boat which symbolises the Church, is in the Abbey of the Dormition, on Mount Sion in Jerusalem.

the queen's rebuke - the crossing

the decemberists (the hazards of love 2009)

FB Lords

This is coming late in the day, but I had to give some thought in this over the last few days, especially in light of our nation as it currently is. I live in Durham, North Carolina, a university town steeped in both liberal politics and theology. As such, I've heard things from the likes of academia here, that, as an Air Force veteran, rile me no end. Truth is defined as that which conforms to reality... when one twists truth to conform to that of their own vision, of what good is that vision?

 

I’ve been told by theologians that you cannot be properly Christian unless you are also pacifist... that is a principle tenet for the likes of Professor Stanley Hauerwas at Duke Seminary. Yet, pacifism is no Christian ethic, as the Bible admonishes us to be at peace as best we can, not at any cost... history has proven that cost will always come at too heavy a price. I’ve been told that we should always turn the other cheek, that the military is neither good nor necessary, and that war is never the answer... yet, turning the other cheek is the reproach to individuals in quarrel, not to nations.

 

In the only account where Jesus is struck on the cheek (John 18:22&23), Jesus didn’t meekly turn the other cheek, but instead rebuked the man. After His arrest, an official strikes Jesus in the face for His supposed insolence against the Sanhedrin. Jesus responded, “If I said something wrong, testify to what is wrong. But if I spoke the truth, why did you strike me?” This is just one of many incidents where Jesus does something that pacifists never do… come to grips with reality. In fact, it happens so often throughout the New Testament that it’s quite clear that Jesus is no pacifist. In Luke 22:36 Jesus makes one of His last statements to the disciples (prior to His crucifixion) at the last supper; He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.” Peter not only had a sword, he used it impetuously against a servant of the high priest, a police officer, if you will, charged with the authority to arrest Jesus. I think Peter intended to take the man’s head off; but, alas, he made a better fisherman than a swordsman. The man apparently ducked the blow. Though Peter did manage to get his ear, I often wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t missed. Peter was always impetuous, always the first to step up or answer in the company of Jesus and his fellow disciples. This is why Jesus admonished him, and then had him to put the sword away back in its scabbard. Jesus didn’t take it away from Peter or have him to toss it away. He knew the necessity of the sword as a weapon of protection for His beloved disciples was a fact of reality as they traveled through the wild areas between towns where violent thieves lay in wait.

 

War is yet another fact of reality, the result of much more than just two factions that can’t play well together. Yes, war is a terrible thing, which is why our military, strong and proficient as it is, is first and foremost a deterrent to those who are wise enough not to provoke it into action. But those that do need to understand that they do so at risk of paying a price, as our soldiers are prepared for that inevitability.

 

Jesus stated in John 15:13 that, “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus didn’t just relate this application to Himself. There are many, having served honorably as members of this nation’s military and police forces, that understand the truth and the beauty of it… and because such people willingly give of themselves in sacrifice in times of war for a just cause, the “intellectuals” I sometimes face here have the freedom to live and be just as outrageous as they choose. Our service members put their lives on the line to stand up against a very real and prevalent evil so that others may live, and enjoy that life in peace and freedom. Explain to me just how that's not a Christian principle? I had a quiet time this morning, enjoying a cup of rich black coffee without fear for me or my family... because the freedom bought by the selflessness of those who chose to stand against evil provided it... and I'm forever grateful.

 

Our Father, I thank You for those veterans, past and present, for believing in a cause that transcended their own safety . . . who surrendered the pleasure and comfort of home and family . . . who fought the fierce fight and stood firm in dark and difficult times of conflict, and defined courage when faced with fear of the unknown.

 

I also thank You for those who serve today, especially those in close combat in battlefields far from home. Watch over them and take care of them. Love and comfort those whose hearts ache for their safe return.

 

Thank you for your hand on our nation in times we are strong... even now when we are weak, lacking the moral fiber that makes a nation great, You have still poured out Your protection and grace upon us. Thank You for being our shield and our defender... and for the enduring promise of Your presence. May Your righteousness and glory be exalted throughout this nation.

 

All of this I ask in the name of Christ, our Savior. Amen.

 

This image of an F-15E Strike Eagle was taken at an air show at Robins Air Force Base in 2012. There were warbirds there from other eras as well, brilliantly restored, slicing through the sky like they did back when they were called to duty by grateful nations. Perhaps this air superiority fighter will one day be relinquished as only an air show performer in a much more secure world. With markings indicating this particular aircraft as being out of the 48th Fighter Wing of RAF Lakenheath in England, it's likely one of many currently delivering American diplomacy to murderous ISIS, five-hundred pounds at a time.

   

“Your Lord has commanded that you worship none but Him, and be kind to parents.

If either or both of them reach old age with you, do not rebuke them, but speak to them in terms of honor and kindness.

Treat them with humility, and say, 'My Lord! Have mercy on them, for they did care for me when I was little'.”

From Holy Quran (17:23-4).

 

During week-ends I often meet families coming on the ghats along the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras).

There I enjoy to see how close fathers can be with their children.

This was shot from a boat last Friday.

 

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"With the coming of evening, Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Let us cross over to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind they took him, just as he was, in the boat; and there were other boats with him. Then it began to blow a gale and the waves were breaking into the boat so that it was almost swamped. But he was in the stern, his head on the cushion, asleep. They woke him and said to him, ‘Master, do you not care? We are going down!’ And he woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Quiet now! Be calm!’ And the wind dropped, and all was calm again. Then he said to them, ‘Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?’ They were filled with awe and said to one another, ‘Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him.’"

– Mark 4:35-41, which is today's Gospel for the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time.

 

Stained glass window from St Francis of Assisi church in San Francisco.

"The people stayed there before the cross watching Jesus. As for the leaders, they jeered at him. ‘He saved others,’ they said ‘let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.’ The soldiers mocked him too, and when they approached to offer vinegar they said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’ Above him there was an inscription: ‘This is the King of the Jews.’

One of the criminals hanging there abused him. ‘Are you not the Christ?’ he said. ‘Save yourself and us as well.’ But the other spoke up and rebuked him. ‘Have you no fear of God at all?’ he said. ‘You got the same sentence as he did, but in our case we deserved it: we are paying for what we did. But this man has done nothing wrong. Jesus,’ he said ‘remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ ‘Indeed, I promise you,’ he replied ‘today you will be with me in paradise.’"

– Luke 23:35-43, which is the Gospel for today's feast of Christ the King of the Universe.

 

Painting, c.1605 in the church of Salwator in Krakow, one of the oldest little churches in the city. To find out the story behind this painting, visit this page.

"Jesus and his disciples left for the villages round Caesarea Philippi. On the way he put this question to his disciples, ‘Who do people say I am?’ And they told him. ‘John the Baptist,’ they said ‘others Elijah; others again, one of the prophets.’ ‘But you,’ he asked ‘who do you say I am?’ Peter spoke up and said to him, ‘You are the Christ.’ And he gave them strict orders not to tell anyone about him.

And he began to teach them that the Son of Man was destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and to be put to death, and after three days to rise again; and he said all this quite openly. Then, taking him aside, Peter started to remonstrate with him. But, turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said to him, ‘Get behind me, Satan! Because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s.’

He called the people and his disciples to him and said, ‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.’"

– Mark 8:27-35 which is today's Gospel at Mass.

 

Fresco by Blessed Fra Angelico in the Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence.

While Levi’s mannequins preach the gospel of volume — “Baggy is Back” (and never looked worse?) — our man on Princes Street delivers a quiet rebuke in snug olive and grey.

He’s not buying into the denim delusion. Literally. He marches past the store with purpose, defiance in every thigh-flexing step. No stop. No side-eye. No interest.

 

Because let’s face it — baggy is all very well until it starts flapping like a mainsail in a mild breeze, obscuring the form and ruining the view.

It’s giving… confused cargo. Or worse: Dad Shorts 2.0.

Bring back the trim, the tapered, the tasteful tight.

 

Slim fit, we miss you. Mr Shorty clearly agrees.

  

Tom Lakenen's wonderful free sculpture park outside Marquette includes this recent tribute to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Providence is the capital and most populous city of the state of Rhode Island and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. It was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He named the area in honor of "God's merciful Providence" which he believed was responsible for revealing such a haven for him and his followers. The city is situated at the mouth of the Providence River at the head of Narragansett Bay.

 

Providence was one of the first cities in the country to industrialize and became noted for its textile manufacturing and subsequent machine tool, jewelry, and silverware industries. Today, the city of Providence is home to eight hospitals and seven institutions of higher learning which have shifted the city's economy into service industries, though it still retains some manufacturing activity.

 

Providence was settled in June 1636 by Roger Williams and grew into one of the original Thirteen Colonies. Williams was compelled to leave Massachusetts Bay Colony due to his differing religious views, and he and others established Providence Plantations. This settlement merged with others to become the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and it was a refuge for persecuted religious dissenters from the beginning.

 

Providence Plantations was burned to the ground in March 1676 by the Narragansetts during King Philip's War, despite the good relations between Williams and the sachems with whom the United Colonies of New England were waging war. Later in the year, the Rhode Island legislature formally rebuked the other colonies for provoking the war.

 

Providence residents were among the first Patriots to spill blood in the lead-up to the American Revolutionary War during the Gaspee Affair of 1772, and Rhode Island was the first of the Thirteen Colonies to renounce its allegiance to the British Crown on May 4, 1776. It was also the last of the Thirteen States to ratify the United States Constitution on May 29, 1790, once assurances were made that a Bill of Rights would become part of the Constitution.

 

Following the war, Providence was the country's ninth-largest city[b] with 7,614 people. The economy shifted from maritime endeavors to manufacturing, in particular machinery, tools, silverware, jewelry, and textiles. By the start of the 20th century, Providence hosted some of the largest manufacturing plants in the country, including Brown & Sharpe, Nicholson File, and Gorham Manufacturing Company.

Market Square was the center of civic life in the 19th Century, and Market House was home to the city council before Providence City Hall was built.

 

Providence residents ratified a city charter in 1831 as the population passed 17,000. The seat of city government was located in the Market House in Market Square from 1832 to 1878, which was the geographic and social center of the city. The city offices outgrew this building, and the City Council resolved to create a permanent municipal building in 1845. The city offices moved into the Providence City Hall in 1878.

City Hall was built in 1878

 

Local politics split over slavery during the American Civil War, as many had ties to Southern cotton and the slave trade. Despite ambivalence concerning the war, the number of military volunteers routinely exceeded quota, and the city's manufacturing proved invaluable to the Union. Providence thrived after the war, and waves of immigrants brought the population from 54,595 in 1865 to 175,597 by 1900.

 

By the early 1900s, Providence was one of the wealthiest cities in the United States. Immigrant labor powered one of the nation's largest industrial manufacturing centers. Providence was a major manufacturer of industrial products, from steam engines to precision tools to silverware, screws, and textiles. Giant companies were based in or near Providence, such as Brown & Sharpe, the Corliss Steam Engine Company, Babcock & Wilcox, the Grinnell Corporation, the Gorham Manufacturing Company, Nicholson File, and the Fruit of the Loom textile company.

 

From 1975 until 1982, $606 million of local and national community development funds were invested throughout the city. In the 1990s, the city pushed for revitalization, realigning the north-south railroad tracks, removing the huge rail viaduct that separated downtown from the capitol building, uncovering and moving the rivers (which had been covered by paved bridges) to create Waterplace Park and river walks along the rivers' banks, and constructing the Fleet Skating Rink (now the Alex and Ani City Center) and the Providence Place Mall.

 

Despite new investment, poverty remains an entrenched problem. Approximately 27.9 percent of the city population is living below the poverty line. Recent increases in real estate values further exacerbate problems for those at marginal income levels, as Providence had the highest rise in median housing price of any city in the United States from 2004 to 2005.

 

from Wikipedia

Today I learned, via Elizabeth Panko's tweet, that Disneyland has closed the wrought iron gates of Court of the Angels.

Elizabeth (@ElizabethNDP) October 7, 2013 Court of Angels is no more... #savecourtofangels #daylatedollarshort

(clicking on the date will show the photo that accompanied the tweet)

 

I'm typically an advocate for change at Disneyland. In order for the parks to continue growing, they need to constantly renovate and add new material. This is especially important when it's audience includes a large base of Annual Passholders that demand new things, lest the "magic" be lost and they decide not to renew. There are a number of reasons why Disney attractions are changed or replaced, but the chief problem the Disneyland Resort has in this aspect is a lack of space. From what I understand, Disney World has enough property to add new attractions without tearing the old ones down. Even though Disney World still has their PeopleMover, Country Bear Jamboree and Carousel of Progress, I consistently hear from people who visit both parks that Disneyland is better because it's space constraints forces Disney to distill the park down to it's best elements.

 

Naturally, all this comes at a price. I know a few people who are still grossly emotional that, fifteen years ago, Disney ceased operations on Submarine Voyage because they couldn't keep up with the maintenance. Even though the Finding Nemo replacement is something I rarely go out of my way for (and never if it's above 80 degrees), I'm just happy that they're doing something with the lagoon. I thought that the gratuitous Jack Sparrows inside Pirates of the Caribbean was a stupid addition because it changed the story of the ride, but it's not something that ruffles my feathers. There is, however, one closure in the name of funding that has me honestly bothered.

 

When I was growing up, I wanted to know everything there is to know about Disneyland. I wanted to know the history and understand the lore. We used to go every year, but sometime in middle school, that tradition stopped. By the time I was in high school, I was begging my parents for a Disneyland Pass. A generous gift from friends of the family got me my first So Cal pass. I don't remember the exact price, but it was about $70 (FYI, single park entry today is $92). Having an AP finally allowed me the time to explore Disneyland in a way I hadn't before. One of the places that I've always loved walking through is New Orleans Square. While you can't see the outside world anywhere in Disneyland, New Orleans Square is unique in that it actually took me out of Anaheim and into a different world. When I first stumbled upon Court of the Angels, I was absolutely enchanted. A lot of emotional rebuke to those who voiced their concern over the closure in the twitterverse came in the form of "It's just stairs!" but I assure you, it's not just the stunning architecture that makes it a special place. It's absolutely rewarding to travel off the beaten path and find corners in a truly immersive environment where you can find solace from rushing and pushing and shoving to be the next person to stand for 40 minutes before you can get on a ride.

 

I understand that Disney's goal is to be able to increase the amount of Club 33 memberships and there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but my Premium AP has gone up by about 335% since I first started buying them, and as a thrill seeker, I don't go to Disneyland for the rides. I visit Disneyland because it's truly immersive theming takes my mind off of every day life and inspires me. A couple years ago, I underwent some medical procedures and after I was cleared to leave the house, I went to Disneyland. It was the only place where I could forget about how crappy I felt and how little I was making on disability. I spent a lot of time in NoS and the Court. And I know I'm not the only one who has a story and personal attachment with the Court. While I was taking this photo, another park guest said to me 'I know, you're the PERFECT person to take our photo!" After talking with him and his family, I learned that every one of their visits, for upward of 20 years, they have had their family portraits taken on the stairs. The tradition began with him and his wife and now includes three generations. But as of today, October 7th, we have been shut out of possibly the last discoverable, quiet corner in our now incredibly crowded and noisy park. No more will Court des Anges be a part of our legacy.

Also named: Biserica de lemn din Borșa din Jos.

 

The "Archangelic Saints" wooden church is located in the central part of Borsa. The wooden church was rebuilt after 1717 because the former worship place suffered from the invasion of the Tartars in 1717.

The church has a craggy polygonal apse, a nave of rectangular shape, above which there is an elevated semi cylindrical vault. The pronaos is rolled up, and above it there is the belfry tower with a square base, with arcade in the arcade and a slender fleece. The church has a double-sided shingle roof. On the west façade there is an open-plan, upstairs porch. The porch has elegant arches, made of carved arches, fixed by wooden nails at the meeting with the crown and the supporting pillars. The parapet is made of perforated boards with fish and circle patterns. The entrance door has its top arched by cutting the beams, supporting the lateral lugs.

Very valuable is the interior painting made by anonymous craftsmen in the second half of the eighteenth century. The iconostasis, the royal icons and the heart-shaped medallions stand out. The church also preserves a beautiful wooden candlestick, numerous wooden icons with golden background, engraved with leaf decorations and numerous prints, showing the intense ties that this town had with the cultural centers of Wallachia and Moldavia.

The mural decoration dating from 1775, is the work of a painter whose works have little connection to the tradition in the area of Maramureş. The iconographic program is different from the other Maramures paintings.

On the vault of the nave are depicted the Holy Trinity, the Ascension of the Virgin and the Four Evangelists, the rest of the space being covered by many angels in the clouds.

In the altar there are disparate scenes, of which only some specific of this room: Jesus-Viţă de Vie, Jesus in the Cup, St. Peter's vision in Alexandria (Eucharistic themes) and the Annunciation; besides these, there appear St. John the Baptist and St. Nicholas in two scenes. In the series of saints hierarchs are intercalated military saints. A scene from the "Old Testament" is presented: the prophet Nathan rebukes King David.

The program of the nave illustrates a passion wall on the wall, and the other wonders and wonders. Of the passions, ten more important episodes are chosen; the painter respects the locals' preference for certain scenes, such as "Judas receiving the money from the three archbishops". The Temple of the Western Wall depicts in the center the protective Mother of God, framed by the Ascension of Saint Elijah and a Holly Saint, and in the next book, two themes from the cycle of the great feasts - the Resurrection of Lazarus and the Resurrection of Jesus - between which Saint Eustatius the cross between the horns.

 

More on:

www.flickr.com/photos/134469298@N03/44667894995/in/album-...

 

Meaning of defame in Hindi

 

SYNONYMS AND OTHER WORDS FOR defame

निन्दा करना→defame,insult,rebuke,reprehend,reflect,reproach मानहानि करना→defame अपवाद करना→defame,calumniate,denigrate,backbite गाली देना→revile,vilify,castigate,mistreat,rebuke,defame गलियां देना→defa...

Meaning of defame matlab, meaning defame hindi, synonyms defame hindi

#DefameMatlab, #MeaningDefameHindi, #SynonymsDefameHindi

This image is better viewed: LARGE

 

Benched in Southern California

Female jaguar was resting on top and male was waiting on river bank. Male finally makes a move to get close but was rebuked and had to go to river to cool off

Local guides told us that it will be few weeks before they pair up

“To all scientists, engineers, engineers, entrepreneurs, responsible citizens who were disappointed by the decision of the United States, I want to say that they will find in France a second homeland,” Macron said in his response to Trump. “I call on them: Come and work here with us — to work together on concrete solutions for our climate, our environment. I can assure you, France will not give up the fight.”French President Emmanuel Macron was disappointed with President Donald Trump’s announcement on Thursday that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement— but he had some fun too.In a speech and on Twitter, Macron adopted Trump’s signature slogan — “Make America Great Again” — but changed it slightly to invert the U.S. president’s agenda. “Make Our Planet Great Again,” Macron said.Like many other world leaders, Macron reiterated his commitment to the international climate agreement and to finding new ways to protect the planet from global warming.'Make our planet great again': Macron rebukes Trump over Paris withdrawal In a televised address, French president Emmanuel Macron rules out any renegotiation after Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris agreement on Thursday, calling the move a mistake. Macron, speaking in French and English, urged scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and anyone disappointed by the decision to see France as a ‘second homeland’, adding: ‘I call on them come and work here with us.’ The French president said: ‘The Paris agreement remain irreversible and will be implemented not just by France but by all the other nations. We will succeed because we are fully committed, because wherever we live, whoever we are, we all share the same responsibility: make our planet great again.’While America’s exit from the 2015 accord is not expected to doom the deal, it will weaken the agreement and could hurt U.S. businesses, the very thing Trump says his decision will help. The decision also isolates the U.S. on an important issue as the international community aims to continue efforts to curb climate change. Only two other countries — Syria and Nicaragua — did not sign the agreement in 2015. Nicaragua didn't sign on because the nation felt the agreement would not go far enough to fight climate change.Macron, for his part, was not deterred by America’s withdrawal. He called on all people to continue working to help the planet, and broadcast his remarks in English, helping promote his joke on Trump’s slogan.“I call on you to remain confident. We will succeed,” the French leader said. “Because we are fully committed, because wherever we live, whoever we are, we all share the same responsibility: Make our planet great again.”

 

time.com/4802549/emmanuel-macron-trolls-donald-trump-pari...

  

President Donald Trump fulfilled a campaign promise on the Paris climate accord, announcing that “pulling out” was getting his final rose in a ceremony appropriately held at the White House Rose Garden.“In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord,” Trump announced today. The Paris deal was just “the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the advantage of other countries” and “a massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries,” and “less about the climate and more about other countries gaining financial advantage over the United States.”“Thank you, thank you,” Trump beamed as the invited Rose Garden gathering applauded in approval. He said he will “re-negotiate” the Paris pact, or an “entirely new transaction, on terms fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers.”“So, we’re getting out, but will start to negotiate and see if we can make a deal that’s fair and if we can that’s great – and if we can’t, that’s fine,” Trump said.“As president, I can put no other consideration before the well-being of American citizens,” the president said.“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris. I promised to exit or renegotiate any deal which fails to serve America’s interest.”The mayor of Pittsburgh tweeted in response while Trump was still speaking: “I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris agreement for our people, our economy and our future.” Pittsburgh voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.Trump somewhat facetiously called upon the “obstructionists” of the Democratic Party to “get together with me” to either “renegotiate our way back into Paris on terms that are fair to the United States and its workers, or negotiate a new deal that protects our country and its taxpayers.”Trump had done a great job of creating much will-he-won’t-he suspense for Thursday’s big reveal, in the finest reality-TV tradition:I will be announcing my decision on Paris Accord, Thursday at 3:00 P.M. The White House Rose Garden. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

 

deadline.com/2017/06/donald-trump-pulls-out-paris-climate...

 

Trump Announces Withdrawal From Paris Agreement.President Trump announced plans to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate change Thursday, a move that will weaken a key international measure aimed at fighting global warming and isolate the U.S. on an issue of importance to allies across the globe.In a ceremony at the White House Rose Garden, Trump argued that dumping the deal as a win for his Administration's promise to create jobs and a rare success following through on a campaign promise."In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord but begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris accords or really an entire new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States," he said."So we are getting out, but we will start to negotiate and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair," he added.But energy and environmental policy experts say withdrawing will do little to bolster job growth and may actually hinder investment in the rapidly expanding clean energy sector, which has drawn $300 billion in annual investment in recent years. Executives from leading companies, including oil and gas giants like ExxonMobil and Shell, spent months lobbying the Trump White House to stay in the deal arguing that the pact provided a clear and effective structure for addressing climate change on an international scale. Even some in the coal industry pushed Trump to stay arguing the U.S. could use its seat at the table to promote fossil fuels, including the research and development of technology to decrease emissions from coal-fired power plants.California, New York and Washington Have United to Back the Paris Climate Accord

Trump also faced pressure to stay in the deal from the international community. Nearly every country across the globe supports the Agreement, with the exception of Nicaragua and Syria, and Trump has faced lobbying efforts through diplomatic channels since the early days of his presidency. That effort intensified in Italy during the G-7 summit last week where heads of government told Trump in stark terms that leaving the deal would be a mistake. The meeting ended with the U.S. declining to participate in a joint statement supporting the deal endorsed by the other countries.The move, which will take several years to implement according to a White House source, joins a long list of maneuvers from the Trump White House aimed at dismantling President Obama's legacy on climate change, from initiating a reevaluation of Obama's rules on power plant emissions to pushing the development of oil and gas pipelines. But how to approach the Paris Agreement divided senior members of the Trump administration unlike the other rollbacks of environmental protections. For months, advisers debated how the agreement would affect Trump's domestic policy agenda as well as the political implications of the decision.Ultimately, Trump sided with the hardliners within his Administration, including chief strategist Steve Bannon and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, who insisted that withdraw would further his domestic agenda and rally his base. He also received calls to leave from several conservative groups and 22 Republican senators. Still, the withdraw push faced considerable setbacks including disagreement from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, chief economic advisor Gary Cohn as well as his daughter, Ivanka, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.More than any other environmental policy change, the Paris Agreement represents a dramatic change in direction from the past decade of international discussions on climate change. Under Obama, the U.S. forged key partnerships with countries including China and India and helped structure the text of the deal to address concerns from developing countries. In many ways, the result was a symbolic commitment calling for every country to work to address climate change, setting their own targets and working to meet them with their own policies. Countries set only voluntary greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets and the most significant binding portion of the Agreement was only that countries report their progress transparently.

Ditching the agreement signals to the world that the U.S. has no interest in the issue, even symbolically without any cost or penalty, and is willing to toss aside years of grinding work from the global community. Negotiations have been ongoing since the early 1990s under a United Nations body charged with addressing climate change, and the Paris Agreement is widely considered the culmination of that effort.Still, a U.S. exit will not kill the Paris Agreement, and world leaders have only reaffirmed their commitments in response to Trump. China and the European Union have both tried to position themselves as the natural heirs to the mantel of leadership assumed by the U.S. during the Obama years. They announced last month a joint summit to bring together global leaders on the issue, a group that does not include the U.S. Both have said they will continue to help fund renewable energy projects in the developing world. "If the U.S. is not seen as one of the leading nations, it’s quite clear that other counties will turn more to us, more to Chinese," Maroš Šefčovič, vice president of the European Commission and the chief energy policymaker for the European Union, told TIME earlier this year.Indeed, the most significant consequence of withdraw for the U.S. may be the diplomatic fallout and the loss of respect for U.S. leadership. Former State Department Climate Envoy Todd Stern, who negotiated the Paris Agreement on behalf of the U.S., described this as "collateral damage" in an interview with TIME earlier this year.

"Countries all over the world are quite invested in the Paris Agreement," he said. "It was a long time coming and widely regarded as a historic step forward ... you’re going to have a lot of anger."Zeke Miller contributed to this report

 

time.com/4801134/paris-agreement-withdrawal-donald-trump-...

  

Dear Donald: Don't Make Your Anti-Climate-Change Announcement in a Garden.This afternoon President Donald Trump stood in the White House Rose Garden and announced that the country is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. You could practically hear the bushes withering in despair.According to United Nations climate change experts, if humans do nothing to halt the rise in global temperatures, by 2100 we'll face mass extinctions, flooding, drought, and starvation. Theoretical physicist and all-around genius Stephen Hawking gave our species 100 years to escape the planet or perish, and that was before Trump pulled out of the global commitment to prevent Earth from warming by more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the tipping point at which these catastrophic events will ensue.TRUMP MADE HIS SPEECH WHILE STANDING IN THE 83-DEGREE SUNSHINE SURROUNDED BY TREES AND FLOWERS AND CLEAN AIR AND ALL THE THINGS THIS ANNOUNCEMENT PROMISES TO DESTROY.The Paris treaty has been ratified by 146 other countries besides the U.S., so it's not as though the planet will spontaneously combust without our participation. But all is kind of lost: The success of the agreement hinges on developed countries like the United States—whose coal burning and car driving have gotten the world into this mess—helping to finance developing nations' move toward cleaner energy. Plus (and I'm a journalist, not a scientist, but I'd venture to guess) if you're not working to reduce global warming, there's a damn good chance you're increasing it.Donald Trump said "In the French version, he added: “The Unites States has turned its back on the world but we haven’t turned our backs on the Americans.”Emmanuel Macron said: “I want to say that they will find in France a second homeland. I call on them: ’Come, work and here with us, to work together on concrete solutions for our climate.’”It's not surprising that Trump pulled out. He's long claimed climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese and campaigned on the promise of doing just what he did today. In his speech he said that, "the Paris Climate Agreement is simply the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the U.S. to the exclusive benefit of other countries, leaving American workers—who I love—and taxpayers to absorb the cost."But the move was still shocking. And not just because this man has grandchildren who will likely live through the disaster scenarios described above. (Or that he'll probably have to replace his golf habit with, say, billiards.) But because he did it standing in the 83-degree sunshine on the first day of June (a slightly higher-than-average temperature, by the way) surrounded by trees and flowers and clean air and all the things this announcement promises to destroy..So next time you want to put on a press conference about how you're ruining the only planet the American people have, Donald, think about the irony and make that speech from the safety of one of your gilded ballrooms instead.

 

www.marieclaire.com/politics/news/a27478/donald-trump-par...

 

assures me that 'Trolley Envy', or the encouraging of the same, is "Not a thing".

 

I stand rebuked.

This image is better viewed: LARGE

 

Benched in Southern California

Rochester is a town and historic city in the unitary authority of Medway in Kent, England. It is situated at the lowest bridging point of the River Medway about 30 miles (50 km) from London.

 

Rochester was for many years a favourite of Charles Dickens, who owned nearby Gads Hill Place, Higham,[1] basing many of his novels on the area. The Diocese of Rochester, the second oldest in England, is based at Rochester Cathedral and was responsible for the founding of a school, now The King's School in 604 AD,[2] which is recognised as being the second oldest continuously running school in the world. Rochester Castle, built by Bishop Gundulf of Rochester, has one of the best preserved keepsin either England or France, and during the First Barons' War (1215–1217) in King John's reign, baronial forces captured the castle from Archbishop Stephen Langton and held it against the king, who then besieged it.[3]

 

Neighbouring Chatham, Gillingham, Strood and a number of outlying villages, together with Rochester, nowadays make up the MedwayUnitary Authority area. It was, until 1998,[4]under the control of Kent County Council and is still part of the ceremonial county of Kent, under the latest Lieutenancies Act.[5]

 

Toponymy[edit]

The Romano-British name for Rochester was Durobrivae, later Durobrivis c. 730 and Dorobrevis in 844. The two commonly cited origins of this name are that it either came from "stronghold by the bridge(s)",[6] or is the latinisation of the British word Dourbruf meaning "swiftstream".[7]Durobrivis was pronounced 'Robrivis. Bede copied down this name, c. 730, mistaking its meaning as Hrofi's fortified camp (OE Hrofes cæster). From this we get c. 730 Hrofæscæstre, 811 Hrofescester, 1086 Rovescester, 1610 Rochester.[6] The Latinised adjective 'Roffensis' refers to Rochester.[7]

Neolithic remains have been found in the vicinity of Rochester; over time it has been variously occupied by Celts, Romans, Jutes and/or Saxons. During the Celtic period it was one of the two administrative centres of the Cantiaci tribe. During the Roman conquest of Britain a decisive battle was fought at the Medway somewhere near Rochester. The first bridge was subsequently constructed early in the Roman period. During the later Roman period the settlement was walled in stone. King Ethelbert of Kent(560–616) established a legal system which has been preserved in the 12th century Textus Roffensis. In AD 604 the bishopric and cathedral were founded. During this period, from the recall of the legions until the Norman conquest, Rochester was sacked at least twice and besieged on another occasion.

The medieval period saw the building of the current cathedral (1080–1130, 1227 and 1343), the building of two castles and the establishment of a significant town. Rochester Castle saw action in the sieges of 1215 and 1264. Its basic street plan was set out, constrained by the river, Watling Street, Rochester Priory and the castle.

Rochester has produced two martyrs: St John Fisher, executed by Henry VIII for refusing to sanction the divorce of Catherine of Aragon; and Bishop Nicholas Ridley, executed by Queen Mary for being an English Reformation protestant.

The city was raided by the Dutch as part of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. The Dutch, commanded by Admiral de Ruijter, broke through the chain at Upnor[8] and sailed to Rochester Bridge capturing part of the English fleet and burning it.[9]

  

The ancient City of Rochester merged with the Borough of Chatham and part of the Strood Rural District in 1974 to form the Borough of Medway. It was later renamed Rochester-upon-Medway, and its City status transferred to the entire borough. In 1998 another merger with the rest of the Medway Towns created the Medway Unitary Authority. The outgoing council neglected to appoint ceremonial "Charter Trustees" to continue to represent the historic Rochester area, causing Rochester to lose its City status – an error not even noticed by council officers for four years, until 2002.[10][11]

Military History

Rochester has for centuries been of great strategic importance through its position near the confluence of the Thames and the Medway. Rochester Castle was built to guard the river crossing, and the Royal Dockyard's establishment at Chatham witnessed the beginning of the Royal Navy's long period of supremacy. The town, as part of Medway, is surrounded by two circles of fortresses; the inner line built during the Napoleonic warsconsists of Fort Clarence, Fort Pitt, Fort Amherst and Fort Gillingham. The outer line of Palmerston Forts was built during the 1860s in light of the report by the Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdomand consists of Fort Borstal, Fort Bridgewood, Fort Luton, and the Twydall Redoubts, with two additional forts on islands in the Medway, namely Fort Hoo and Fort Darnet.

During the First World War the Short Brothers' aircraft manufacturing company developed the first plane to launch a torpedo, the Short Admiralty Type 184, at its seaplane factory on the River Medway not far from Rochester Castle. In the intervening period between the 20th century World Wars the company established a world-wide reputation as a constructor of flying boats with aircraft such as the Singapore, Empire 'C'-Class and Sunderland. During the Second World War, Shorts also designed and manufactured the first four-engined bomber, the Stirling.

The UK's decline in naval power and shipbuilding competitiveness led to the government decommissioning the RN Shipyard at Chatham in 1984, which led to the subsequent demise of much local maritime industry. Rochester and its neighbouring communities were hit hard by this and have experienced a painful adjustment to a post-industrial economy, with much social deprivation and unemployment resulting. On the closure of Chatham Dockyard the area experienced an unprecedented surge in unemployment to 24%; this had dropped to 2.4% of the local population by 2014.[12]

Former City of Rochester[edit]

Rochester was recognised as a City from 1211 to 1998. The City of Rochester's ancient status was unique, as it had no formal council or Charter Trustees nor a Mayor, instead having the office of Admiral of the River Medway, whose incumbent acted as de facto civic leader.[13] On 1 April 1974, the City Council was abolished under the Local Government Act 1972, and the territory was merged with the District of Medway, Borough of Chatham and most of Strood Rural District to form a new a local government district called the Borough of Medway, within the county of Kent. Medway Borough Council applied to inherit Rochester's city status, but this was refused; instead letters patent were granted constituting the area of the former Rochester local government district to be the City of Rochester, to "perpetuate the ancient name" and to recall "the long history and proud heritage of the said City".[14] The Home Officesaid that the city status may be extended to the entire borough if it had "Rochester" in its name, so in 1979, Medway Borough Council renamed the borough to Borough of Rochester-upon-Medway, and in 1982, Rochester's city status was transferred to the entire borough by letters patent, with the district being called the City of Rochester-upon-Medway.[13]

On 1 April 1998, the existing local government districts of Rochester-upon-Medway and Gillingham were abolished and became the new unitary authority of Medway. The Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions informed the city council that since it was the local government district that officially held City status under the 1982 Letters Patent, the council would need to appoint charter trustees to preserve its city status, but the outgoing Labour-run council decided not to appoint charter trustees, so the city status was lost when Rochester-upon-Medway was abolished as a local government district.[15][16][17] The other local government districts with City status that were abolished around this time, Bath and Hereford, decided to appoint Charter Trustees to maintain the existence of their own cities and the mayoralties. The incoming Medway Council apparently only became aware of this when, in 2002, it was advised that Rochester was not on the Lord Chancellor's Office's list of cities.[18][19]

In 2010, Medway Council started to refer to the "City of Medway" in promotional material, but it was rebuked and instructed not to do so in future by the Advertising Standards Authority.[20]

Governance[edit]

Civic history and traditions[edit]

Rochester and its neighbours, Chatham and Gillingham, form a single large urban area known as the Medway Towns with a population of about 250,000. Since Norman times Rochester had always governed land on the other side of the Medway in Strood, which was known as Strood Intra; before 1835 it was about 100 yards (91 m) wide and stretched to Gun Lane. In the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act the boundaries were extended to include more of Strood and Frindsbury, and part of Chatham known as Chatham Intra. In 1974, Rochester City Council was abolished and superseded by Medway Borough Council, which also included the parishes of Cuxton, Halling and Cliffe, and the Hoo Peninsula. In 1979 the borough became Rochester-upon-Medway. The Admiral of the River Medway was ex-officio Mayor of Rochester and this dignity transferred to the Mayor of Medway when that unitary authority was created, along with the Admiralty Court for the River which constitutes a committee of the Council.[21]

  

Like many of the mediaeval towns of England, Rochester had civic Freemen whose historic duties and rights were abolished by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. However, the Guild of Free Fishers and Dredgers continues to the present day and retains rights, duties and responsibilities on the Medway, between Sheerness and Hawkwood Stone.[22] This ancient corporate body convenes at the Admiralty Court whose Jury of Freemen is responsible for the conservancy of the River as enshrined in current legislation. The City Freedom can be obtained by residents after serving a period of "servitude", i.e. apprenticeship (traditionally seven years), before admission as a Freeman. The annual ceremonial Beating of the Boundsby the River Medway takes place after the Admiralty Court, usually on the first Saturday of July.

Rochester first obtained City status in 1211, but this was lost due to an administrative oversight when Rochester was absorbed by the Medway Unitary Authority.[10] Subsequently, the Medway Unitary Authority has applied for City status for Medway as a whole, rather than merely for Rochester. Medway applied unsuccessfully for City status in 2000 and 2002 and again in the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Year of 2012.[23] Any future bid to regain formal City status has been recommended to be made under the aegis of Rochester-upon-Medway.

Ecclesiastical parishes[edit]

  

There were three medieval parishes: St Nicholas', St Margaret's and St Clement's. St Clement's was in Horsewash Lane until the last vicar died in 1538 when it was joined with St Nicholas' parish; the church last remaining foundations were finally removed when the railway was being constructed in the 1850s. St Nicholas' Church was built in 1421 beside the cathedral to serve as a parish church for the citizens of Rochester. The ancient cathedral included the Benedictine monastic priory of St Andrew with greater status than the local parishes.[24] Rochester's pre-1537 diocese, under the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome, covered a vast area extending into East Anglia and included all of Essex.[25]

As a result of the restructuring of the Church during the Reformation the cathedral was reconsecrated as the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary without parochial responsibilities, being a diocesan church.[26] In the 19th century the parish of St Peter's was created to serve the burgeoning city with the new church being consecrated in 1859. Following demographic shifts, St Peter's and St Margaret's were recombined as a joint benefice in 1953 with the parish of St Nicholas with St Clement being absorbed in 1971.[27] The combined parish is now the "Parish of St Peter with St Margaret", centred at the new (1973) Parish Centre in The Delce (St Peter's) with St Margaret's remaining as a chapel-of-ease. Old St Peter's was demolished in 1974, while St Nicholas' Church has been converted into the diocesan offices but remains consecrated. Continued expansion south has led to the creation of an additional more recent parish of St Justus (1956) covering The Tideway estate and surrounding area.[28]

A church dedicated to St Mary the Virgin at Eastgate, which was of Anglo-Saxon foundation, is understood to have constituted a parish until the Middle Ages, but few records survive.[29]

Geography

Rochester lies within the area, known to geologists, as the London Basin. The low-lying Hoo peninsula to the north of the town consists of London Clay, and the alluvium brought down by the two rivers—the Thames and the Medway—whose confluence is in this area. The land rises from the river, and being on the dip slope of the North Downs, this consists of chalksurmounted by the Blackheath Beds of sand and gravel.

As a human settlement, Rochester became established as the lowest river crossing of the River Medway, well before the arrival of the Romans.

It is a focal point between two routes, being part of the main route connecting London with the Continent and the north-south routes following the course of the Medway connecting Maidstone and the Weald of Kent with the Thames and the North Sea. The Thames Marshes were an important source of salt. Rochester's roads follow north Kent's valleys and ridges of steep-sided chalk bournes. There are four ways out of town to the south: up Star Hill, via The Delce,[30] along the Maidstone Road or through Borstal. The town is inextricably linked with the neighbouring Medway Towns but separate from Maidstone by a protective ridge known as the Downs, a designated area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

At its most limited geographical size, Rochester is defined as the market town within the city walls, now associated with the historic medieval city. However, Rochester historically also included the ancient wards of Strood Intra on the river's west bank, and Chatham Intra as well as the three old parishes on the Medway's east bank.

The diocese of Rochester is another geographical entity which can be referred to as Rochester.

Climate[edit]

Rochester has an oceanic climate similar to much of southern England, being accorded Köppen Climate Classification-subtype of "Cfb" (Marine West Coast Climate).[31]

On 10 August 2003, neighbouring Gravesend recorded one of the highest temperatures since meteorogical records began in the United Kingdom, with a reading of 38.1 degrees Celsius (100.6 degrees Fahrenheit),[32]only beaten by Brogdale, near Faversham, 22 miles (35 km) to the ESE.[33] The weather station at Brogdale is run by a volunteer, only reporting its data once a month, whereas Gravesend, which has an official Met Office site at the PLA pilot station,[34] reports data hourly.

Being near the mouth of the Thames Estuary with the North Sea, Rochester is relatively close to continental Europe and enjoys a somewhat less temperate climate than other parts of Kent and most of East Anglia. It is therefore less cloudy, drier and less prone to Atlanticdepressions with their associated wind and rain than western regions of Britain, as well as being hotter in summer and colder in winter. Rochester city centre's micro-climate is more accurately reflected by these officially recorded figures than by readings taken at Rochester Airport.[35]

North and North West Kent continue to record higher temperatures in summer, sometimes being the hottest area of the country, eg. on the warmest day of 2011, when temperatures reached 33.1 degrees.[36]Additionally, it holds at least two records for the year 2010, of 30.9 degrees[37] and 31.7 degrees C.[38] Another record was set during England's Indian summer of 2011 with 29.9 degrees C., the highest temperature ever recorded in the UK for October.

North and North West Kent continue to record higher temperatures in summer, sometimes being the hottest area of the country, eg. on the warmest day of 2011, when temperatures reached 33.1 degrees.[36]Additionally, it holds at least two records for the year 2010, of 30.9 degrees[37] and 31.7 degrees C.[38] Another record was set during England's Indian summer of 2011 with 29.9 degrees C., the highest temperature ever recorded in the UK for October.

 

Building

Rochester comprises numerous important historic buildings, the most prominent of which are the Guildhall, the Corn Exchange, Restoration House, Eastgate House, as well as Rochester Castle and Rochester Cathedral. Many of the town centre's old buildings date from as early as the 14th century up to the 18th century. The chapel of St Bartholomew's Hospital dates from the ancient priory hospital's foundation in 1078.

Economy

  

Thomas Aveling started a small business in 1850 producing and repairing agricultural plant equipment. In 1861 this became the firm of Aveling and Porter, which was to become the largest manufacturer of agricultural machinery and steam rollers in the country.[39] Aveling was elected Admiral of the River Medway (i.e. Mayor of Rochester) for 1869-70.

Culture[edit]

Sweeps Festival[edit]

Since 1980 the city has seen the revival of the historic Rochester Jack-in-the-Green May Day dancing chimney sweeps tradition, which had died out in the early 1900s. Though not unique to Rochester (similar sweeps' gatherings were held across southern England, notably in Bristol, Deptford, Whitstable and Hastings), its revival was directly inspired by Dickens' description of the celebration in Sketches by Boz.

The festival has since grown from a small gathering of local Morris dancesides to one of the largest in the world.[40] The festival begins with the "Awakening of Jack-in-the-Green" ceremony,[41] and continues in Rochester High Street over the May Bank Holiday weekend.

There are numerous other festivals in Rochester apart from the Sweeps Festival. The association with Dickens is the theme for Rochester's two Dickens Festivals held annually in June and December.[42] The Medway Fuse Festival[43] usually arranges performances in Rochester and the latest festival to take shape is the Rochester Literature Festival, the brainchild of three local writers.[44]

Library[edit]

A new public library was built alongside the Adult Education Centre, Eastgate. This enabled the registry office to move from Maidstone Road, Chatham into the Corn Exchange on Rochester High Street (where the library was formerly housed). As mentioned in a report presented to Medway Council's Community Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 28 March 2006, the new library opened in late summer (2006).[45]

Theatre[edit]

There is a small amateur theatre called Medway Little Theatre on St Margaret's Banks next to Rochester High Street near the railway station.[46] The theatre was formed out of a creative alliance with the Medway Theatre Club, managed by Marion Martin, at St Luke's Methodist Church on City Way, Rochester[47] between 1985 and 1988, since when drama and theatre studies have become well established in Rochester owing to the dedication of the Medway Theatre Club.[48]

Media[edit]

Local newspapers for Rochester include the Medway Messenger, published by the KM Group, and free newspapers such as Medway Extra(KM Group) and Yourmedway (KOS Media).

The local commercial radio station for Rochester is KMFM Medway, owned by the KM Group. Medway is also served by community radio station Radio Sunlight. The area also receives broadcasts from county-wide stations BBC Radio Kent, Heart and Gold, as well as from various Essex and Greater London radio stations.[49]

Sport[edit]

Football is played with many teams competing in Saturday and Sunday leagues.[50] The local football club is Rochester United F.C. Rochester F.C. was its old football club but has been defunct for many decades. Rugby is also played; Medway R.F.C. play their matches at Priestfields and Old Williamsonians is associated with Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School.[51]

Cricket is played in the town, with teams entered in the Kent Cricket League. Holcombe Hockey Club is one of the largest in the country,[52]and is based at Holcombe Park. The men's and women's 1st XI are part of the England Hockey League.[53] Speedway was staged on a track adjacent to City Way that opened in 1932. Proposals for a revival in the early 1970s did not materialise and the Rochester Bombers became the Romford Bombers.[54]

Sailing and rowing are also popular on the River Medway with respective clubs being based in Rochester.[55][56]

Film[edit]

The 1959 James Bond Goldfinger describes Bond driving along the A2through the Medway Towns from Strood to Chatham. Of interest is the mention of "inevitable traffic jams" on the Strood side of Rochester Bridge, the novel being written some years prior to the construction of the M2 motorway Medway bypass.

Rochester is the setting of the controversial 1965 Peter Watkins television film The War Game, which depicts the town's destruction by a nuclear missile.[57] The opening sequence was shot in Chatham Town Hall, but the credits particularly thank the people of Dover, Gravesend and Tonbridge.

The 2011 adventure film Ironclad (dir. Jonathan English) is based upon the 1215 siege of Rochester Castle. There are however a few areaswhere the plot differs from accepted historical narrative.

Notable people[edit]

  

Charles Dickens

The historic city was for many years the favourite of Charles Dickens, who lived within the diocese at nearby Gads Hill Place, Higham, many of his novels being based on the area. Descriptions of the town appear in Pickwick Papers, Great Expectations and (lightly fictionalised as "Cloisterham") in The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Elements of two houses in Rochester, Satis House and Restoration House, are used for Miss Havisham's house in Great Expectations, Satis House.[58]

Sybil Thorndike

The actress Dame Sybil Thorndike and her brother Russell were brought up in Minor Canon Row adjacent to the cathedral; the daughter of a canon of Rochester Cathedral, she was educated at Rochester Grammar School for Girls. A local doctors' practice,[59] local dental practice[60] and a hall at Rochester Grammar School are all named after her.[61]

Peter Buck

Sir Peter Buck was Admiral of the Medway in the 17th century; knightedin 1603 he and Bishop Barlow hosted King James, the Stuart royal familyand the King of Denmark in 1606. A civil servant to The Royal Dockyardand Lord High Admiral, Buck lived at Eastgate House, Rochester.

Denis Redman

Major-General Denis Redman, a World War II veteran, was born and raised in Rochester and later became a founder member of REME, head of his Corps and a Major-General in the British Army.

Kelly Brook

The model and actress Kelly Brook went to Delce Junior School in Rochester and later the Thomas Aveling School (formerly Warren Wood Girls School).

The singer and songwriter Tara McDonald now lives in Rochester.

The Prisoners, a rock band from 1980 to 1986, were formed in Rochester. They are part of what is known as the "Medway scene".

Kelly Tolhurst MP is the current parliamentary representative for the constituency.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochester,_Kent

  

Carte de visite by Stiles & King of Windsor, Vt. At first glance, the irregular uniforms, non-military hats, and title of this photo collage points to a band of brothers with Southern origins.

 

But the back of the mount reveals a different story. It is marked with the imprint of photographers Stiles & King, two veterans who briefly operated a gallery in Windsor, Vt.

 

George D. Stiles (about 1837-1869), a onetime clerk in a store in Strafford, Vt., served with the Union Navy's Pay Department and was stationed in New Orleans, La. According to a newspaper report, he participated in the Red River Campaign. After the end of his service, he and Wallace A. King opened a photo gallery in Windsor, Vt. Evidence suggests the business did not last long, as it is not mentioned in Stiles' 1869 obituary following his death from sunstroke in Cincinnati, Ohio. He had relocated to the Buckeye State and worked as a distributing agent for a tobacco warehouse.

 

Vermont native Wallace Albert King (1837-1919) studied art in high school and at seminary until 1857, when he relocated to Michigan. After the war started, he became a first lieutenant in the 4th Michigan Infantry. Illness prompted his resignation soon after he received his commission, and his return to Vermont. In 1862, he joined the 7th Rhode Island Cavalry Squadron for a 3-month enlistment. He went on to work in Vermont and New Hampshire after he mustered out of the army. His connection to photography and Stiles is not mentioned in his obituary, perhaps lending credence to the short life of the gallery. But we know he was a photographer based upon one image credited to him, a "View of Ascutney Mountain taken from High Bridge at Claremont, N.H.," which appeared as a lithograph in 1868. Claremont's northwestern boundary touches the southeast boundary of Windsor, Vt.

 

The back of the mount also includes a revenue stamp that was hand-cancelled by "S&R" on Nov. 1, 1865.

 

At this time, the state of Vermont contained active companies of home guards. Newspaper reports document the presence of these quasi-military organizations in Vermont before and during the war. The Confederate Raid on St. Albans, Vt., on Oct. 19, 1864, boosted the presence of these organizations.

 

An editorial in the July 1, 1865, edition of the Vermont Record stated, "last fall a raid was made at St. Albans, and the news flew with the velocity of lightning through the State, and in different portions of it, volunteer companies were formed, one of which was formed in Montpelier within forty-five minutes from the the time the news reached town, and contained one hundred and forty men ranged in line at the depot, ready to start for the scene of action, just as it was announced that the raiders had left and were on their way to Canada."

 

The editorial also noted, "We are of opinion that if an invasion of the State were attempted, to-day, it would meet a similar rebuke, and those that would fly to the rescue would not of necessity belong to the uniformed militia, but citizens would rally, and the 'brave boys in blue,' very few of which are found in the ranks of our 'home guard' would be first and foremost in the ranks for their State's defence."

 

It is entirely possible that this band of brothers was part of the wave of volunteer home guardsmen who rose up in the wake of the St. Albans Raid. Moreover, that they possessed a sense of humor that resulted in this self-deprecating photo illustration.

 

I encourage you to use this image for educational purposes only. However, please ask for permission.

Think Flickr!! Think!!!!

 

----

 

Internet censorship is control or suppression of the publishing or accessing of information on the Internet. The legal issues are similar to offline censorship.

  

The users make you! - don’t forget that flickr!

Also named: Biserica de lemn din Borșa din Jos.

 

The "Archangelic Saints" wooden church is located in the central part of Borsa. The wooden church was rebuilt after 1717 because the former worship place suffered from the invasion of the Tartars in 1717.

The church has a craggy polygonal apse, a nave of rectangular shape, above which there is an elevated semi cylindrical vault. The pronaos is rolled up, and above it there is the belfry tower with a square base, with arcade in the arcade and a slender fleece. The church has a double-sided shingle roof. On the west façade there is an open-plan, upstairs porch. The porch has elegant arches, made of carved arches, fixed by wooden nails at the meeting with the crown and the supporting pillars. The parapet is made of perforated boards with fish and circle patterns. The entrance door has its top arched by cutting the beams, supporting the lateral lugs.

Very valuable is the interior painting made by anonymous craftsmen in the second half of the eighteenth century. The iconostasis, the royal icons and the heart-shaped medallions stand out. The church also preserves a beautiful wooden candlestick, numerous wooden icons with golden background, engraved with leaf decorations and numerous prints, showing the intense ties that this town had with the cultural centers of Wallachia and Moldavia.

The mural decoration dating from 1775, is the work of a painter whose works have little connection to the tradition in the area of Maramureş. The iconographic program is different from the other Maramures paintings.

On the vault of the nave are depicted the Holy Trinity, the Ascension of the Virgin and the Four Evangelists, the rest of the space being covered by many angels in the clouds.

In the altar there are disparate scenes, of which only some specific of this room: Jesus-Viţă de Vie, Jesus in the Cup, St. Peter's vision in Alexandria (Eucharistic themes) and the Annunciation; besides these, there appear St. John the Baptist and St. Nicholas in two scenes. In the series of saints hierarchs are intercalated military saints. A scene from the "Old Testament" is presented: the prophet Nathan rebukes King David.

The program of the nave illustrates a passion wall on the wall, and the other wonders and wonders. Of the passions, ten more important episodes are chosen; the painter respects the locals' preference for certain scenes, such as "Judas receiving the money from the three archbishops". The Temple of the Western Wall depicts in the center the protective Mother of God, framed by the Ascension of Saint Elijah and a Holly Saint, and in the next book, two themes from the cycle of the great feasts - the Resurrection of Lazarus and the Resurrection of Jesus - between which Saint Eustatius the cross between the horns.

 

More on:

www.flickr.com/photos/134469298@N03/44667894995/in/album-...

 

Plate 06 [VIII]

Ubi Nathan profeta abluebat David, et Angelus Domini evaginato gladio illic stabat

Nathan profeta invita il Re Davide al pentimento

(Samuel 12; 1-14)

******************************************************************

Puglia, Foggia; Monte San Gargano, Basilica San Michele - Porta bizantina bronzea del Santuario di S. Michele Arcangelo, detail

 

At 394 feet, A is a mega yacht owned by 38-year old Russian Billionaire Andrei Melnichenko. Designed by Philippe Starck, A is reminiscent of a submarine warship. Her unique shape and name has brought A some attention, including being dubbed the "ugliest yacht in the world" by a Wall Street Journal columnist and incurring rebuke from yacht enthusiasts that the design makes this pleasure cruiser look like a "stealth yacht" or naval destroyer. The mega yacht's name "A" is a tribute to Andrei Melnichenko and his wife Aleksandra Nikolic. A was built to be bigger and more expensive than Pelorus, the pride of Russian Billionaire Roman Abramovich, (owner of the Chelsea Football Club) who has since commissioned a new mega yacht called Eclipse.

Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: γνωστικός gnostikos, "having knowledge", from γνῶσις gnōsis, knowledge) is a modern name for a variety of ancient religious ideas and systems, originating in Jewish Christian milieux in the first and second century AD. These systems believed that the material world is created by an emanation or 'works' of a lower god (demiurge), trapping the divine spark within the human body. This divine spark could be liberated by gnosis, spiritual knowledge acquired through direct experience. Some of the core teachings include the following:

All matter is evil, and the non-material, spirit-realm is good.

There is an unknowable God, who gave rise to many lesser spirit beings called Aeons.

The creator of the (material) universe is not the supreme god, but an inferior spirit (the Demiurge).

Gnosticism does not deal with "sin," only ignorance.

To achieve salvation, one needs gnosis (knowledge).

The Gnostic ideas and systems flourished in the Mediterranean world in the second century AD, in conjunction with and influenced by the early Christian movements and Middle Platonism. After the second century, a decline set in. In the Persian Empire, Gnosticism in the form of Manicheism spread as far as China, while Mandaeism is still alive in Iraq.

A major question in scholarly research is the qualification of Gnosticism, based on the study of its texts, as either an interreligious phenomenon or as an independent religion.

 

Gnosis refers to knowledge based on personal experience or perception. In a religious context, gnosis is mystical or esoteric knowledge based on direct participation with the divine. In most Gnostic systems, the sufficient cause of salvation is this "knowledge of" ("acquaintance with") the divine. It is an inward "knowing", comparable to that encouraged by Plotinus (neoplatonism), and differs from proto-orthodox Christian views.[1] Gnostics are "those who are oriented toward knowledge and understanding – or perception and learning – as a particular modality for living".

 

The usual meaning of gnostikos in Classical Greek texts is "learned" or "intellectual", such as used by Plato in the comparison of "practical" (praktikos) and "intellectual" (gnostikos). Plato's use of "learned" is fairly typical of Classical texts.

 

By the Hellenistic period, it began to also be associated with Greco-Roman mysteries, becoming synonymous with the Greek term musterion. The adjective is not used in the New Testament, but Clement of Alexandria[note 3] speaks of the "learned" (gnostikos) Christian in complimentary terms. The use of gnostikos in relation to heresy originates with interpreters of Irenaeus. Some scholars[note consider that Irenaeus sometimes uses gnostikos to simply mean "intellectual",[note 5] whereas his mention of "the intellectual sect" is a specific designation.

 

The term "Gnosticism" does not appear in ancient sources,[note 10] and was first coined in the 17th century by Henry More in a commentary on the seven letters of the Book of Revelation, where More used the term "Gnosticisme" to describe the heresy in Thyatira. The term Gnosticism was derived from the use of the Greek adjective gnostikos (Greek γνωστικός, "learned", "intellectual") by St. Irenaeus (c. 185 AD) to describe the school of Valentinus as he legomene gnostike haeresis "the heresy called Learned (gnostic)."

 

Origins

The earliest origins of Gnosticism are obscure and still disputed. The proto-orthodox Christian groups called Gnostics a heresy of Christianity,] but according to the modern scholars the theology's origin is closely related to Jewish sectarian milieus and early Christian sects. Scholars debate Gnosticism's origins as having roots in Neoplatonism and Buddhism, due to similarities in beliefs, but ultimately, its origins are currently unknown. As Christianity developed and became more popular, so did Gnosticism, with both proto-orthodox Christian and Gnostic Christian groups often existing in the same places. The Gnostic belief was widespread within Christianity until the proto-orthodox Christian communities expelled the group in the second and third centuries (C.E.). Gnosticism became the first group to be declared heretical.

 

Some scholars prefer to speak of "gnosis" when referring to first-century ideas that later developed into gnosticism, and to reserve the term "gnosticism" for the synthesis of these ideas into a coherent movement in the second century.No gnostic texts have been discovered that pre-date Christianity,and "pre-Christian Gnosticism as such is hardly attested in a way to settle the debate once and for all."

 

Jewish Christian origins

 

Contemporary scholarship largely agrees that Gnosticism has Jewish Christian origins, originating in the late first century AD in non rabbinical Jewish sects and early Christian sects.

 

Many heads of gnostic schools were identified as Jewish Christians by Church Fathers, and Hebrew words and names of God were applied in some gnostic systems. The cosmogonic speculations among Christian Gnostics had partial origins in Maaseh Bereshit and Maaseh Merkabah. This thesis is most notably put forward by Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) and Gilles Quispel (1916–2006). Scholem detected Jewish gnosis in the imagery of the merkavah, which can also be found in "Christian" Gnostic documents, for example the being "caught away" to the third heaven mentioned by Paul the Apostle. Quispel sees Gnosticism as an independent Jewish development, tracing its origins to Alexandrian Jews, to which group Valentinus was also connected.

 

Many of the Nag Hammadi texts make reference to Judaism, in some cases with a violent rejection of the Jewish God. Gershom Scholem once described Gnosticism as "the Greatest case of metaphysical anti-Semitism". Professor Steven Bayme said gnosticism would be better characterized as anti-Judaism. Recent research into the origins of Gnosticism shows a strong Jewish influence, particularly from Hekhalot literature.

 

Within early Christianity, the teachings of Paul and John may have been a starting point for Gnostic ideas, with a growing emphasis on the opposition between flesh and spirit, the value of charisma, and the disqualification of the Jewish law. The mortal body belonged to the world of inferior, worldly powers (the archons), and only the spirit or soul could be saved. The term gnostikos may have acquired a deeper significance here.

 

Alexandria was of central importance for the birth of Gnosticism. The Christian ecclesia (i. e. congregation, church) was of Jewish–Christian origin, but also attracted Greek members, and various strand of thought were available, such as "Judaic apocalypticism, speculation on divine wisdom, Greek philosophy, and Hellenistic mystery religions."

 

Regarding the angel Christology of some early Christians, Darrell Hannah notes:

 

[Some] early Christians understood the pre-incarnate Christ, ontologically, as an angel. This "true" angel Christology took many forms and may have appeared as early as the late First Century, if indeed this is the view opposed in the early chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Elchasaites, or at least Christians influenced by them, paired the male Christ with the female Holy Spirit, envisioning both as two gigantic angels. Some Valentinian Gnostics supposed that Christ took on an angelic nature and that he might be the Saviour of angels. The author of the Testament of Solomon held Christ to be a particularly effective "thwarting" angel in the exorcism of demons. The author of De Centesima and Epiphanius’ "Ebionites" held Christ to have been the highest and most important of the first created archangels, a view similar in many respects to Hermas’ equation of Christ with Michael. Finally, a possible exegetical tradition behind the Ascension of Isaiah and attested by Origen's Hebrew master, may witness to yet another angel Christology, as well as an angel Pneumatology.

 

The pseudepigraphical Christian text Ascension of Isaiah identifies Jesus with angel Christology:

 

[The Lord Christ is commissioned by the Father] And I heard the voice of the Most High, the father of my LORD as he said to my LORD Christ who will be called Jesus, ‘Go out and descend through all the heavens...

 

The Shepherd of Hermas is a Christian literary work considered as canonical scripture by some of the early Church fathers such as Irenaeus. Jesus is identified with angel Christology in parable 5, when the author mentions a Son of God, as a virtuous man filled with a Holy "pre-existent spirit".

 

Neoplatonic influences

See also: Platonic Academy, Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and Neoplatonism and Christianity

In the 1880s Gnostic connections with neo-Platonism were proposed.Ugo Bianchi, who organised the Congress of Messina of 1966 on the origins of Gnosticism, also argued for Orphic and Platonic origins.Gnostics borrowed significant ideas and terms from Platonism, using Greek philosophical concepts throughout their text, including such concepts as hypostasis (reality, existence), ousia (essence, substance, being), and demiurge (creator God). Both Sethian Gnostics and Valentinian Gnostics seem to have been influenced by Plato, Middle Platonism, and Neo-Pythagoreanism academies or schools of thought. Both schools attempted "an effort towards conciliation, even affiliation" with late antique philosophy, and were rebuffed by some Neoplatonists, including Plotinus.

 

Persian origins or influences

Early research into the origins of Gnosticism proposed Persian origins or influences, spreading to Europe and incorporating Jewish elements. According to Wilhelm Bousset (1865–1920), Gnosticism was a form of Iranian and Mesopotamian syncretism,[29] and Richard August Reitzenstein (1861–1931) most famously situated the origins of Gnosticism in Persia.

 

Carsten Colpe (b. 1929) has analyzed and criticised the Iranian hypothesis of Reitzenstein, showing that many of his hypotheses are untenable. Nevertheless, Geo Widengren (1907–1996) argued for the origin of (Mandaean) Gnosticism in Mazdean (Zoroastrianism) Zurvanism, in conjunction with ideas from the Aramaic Mesopotamian world.

 

Buddhist parallels

 

In 1966, at the Congress of Median, Buddhologist Edward Conze noted phenomenological commonalities between Mahayana Buddhism and Gnosticism, in his paper Buddhism and Gnosis, following an early suggestion put forward by Isaac Jacob Schmidt. The influence of Buddhism in any sense on either the gnostikos Valentinus (c. 170) or the Nag Hammadi texts (3rd century) is not supported by modern scholarship, although Elaine Pagels (1979) called it a "possibility".

 

Characteristics

Cosmology

 

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The Syrian–Egyptian traditions postulate a remote, supreme Godhead, the Monad. From this highest divinity emanate lower divine beings, known as Aeons. The Demiurge, one of those Aeons, creates the physical world. Divine elements "fall" into the material realm, and are locked within human beings. This divine element returns to the divine realm when Gnosis, esoteric or intuitive knowledge of the divine element within, is obtained.

 

Dualism and monism

Gnostic systems postulate a dualism between God and the world, varying from the "radical dualist" systems of Manichaeism to the "mitigated dualism" of classic gnostic movements. Radical dualism, or absolute dualism, posits two co-equal divine forces, while in mitigated dualism one of the two principles is in some way inferior to the other. In qualified monism the second entity may be divine or semi-divine. Valentinian Gnosticism is a form of monism, expressed in terms previously used in a dualistic manner.

 

Moral and ritual practice

Gnostics tended toward asceticism, especially in their sexual and dietary practice. In other areas of morality, Gnostics were less rigorously ascetic, and took a more moderate approach to correct behaviour. In normative early Christianity the Church administered and prescribed the correct behaviour for Christians, while in Gnosticism it was the internalised motivation that was important. Ritualistic behaviour was not important unless it was based on a personal, internal motivation. Ptolemy's Epistle to Flora describes a general asceticism, based on the moral inclination of the individual.

 

Concepts

Monad

 

In many Gnostic systems, God is known as the Monad, the One. God is the high source of the pleroma, the region of light. The various emanations of God are called æons. According to Hippolytus, this view was inspired by the Pythagoreans, who called the first thing that came into existence the Monad, which begat the dyad, which begat the numbers, which begat the point, begetting lines, etc.

 

The Sethian cosmogony as most famously contained in the Apocryphon ("Secret book") of John describes an unknown God, very similar to the orthodox apophatic theology, but different from the orthodox teachings that this God is the creator of heaven and earth. Orthodox theologians often attempt to define God through a series of explicit positive statements: he is omniscient, omnipotent, and truly benevolent. The Sethian hidden transcendent God is, by contrast, defined through negative theology: he is immovable, invisible, intangible, ineffable; commonly, "he" is seen as being hermaphroditic, a potent symbol for being, as it were, "all-containing". In the Apocryphon of John, this god is good in that it bestows goodness. After the apophatic statements, the process of the Divine in action is used to describe the effect of such a god.

 

Pleroma

Pleroma (Greek πλήρωμα, "fullness") refers to the totality of God's powers. The heavenly pleroma is the center of divine life, a region of light "above" (the term is not to be understood spatially) our world, occupied by spiritual beings such as aeons (eternal beings) and sometimes archons. Jesus is interpreted as an intermediary aeon who was sent from the pleroma, with whose aid humanity can recover the lost knowledge of the divine origins of humanity. The term is thus a central element of Gnostic cosmology.

 

Pleroma is also used in the general Greek language, and is used by the Greek Orthodox church in this general form, since the word appears in the Epistle to the Colossians. Proponents of the view that Paul was actually a gnostic, such as Elaine Pagels, view the reference in Colossians as a term that has to be interpreted in a gnostic sense.

 

Emanation

 

The Supreme Light or Consciousness descends through a series of stages, gradations, worlds, or hypostases, becoming progressively more material and embodied. In time it will turn around to return to the One (epistrophe), retracing its steps through spiritual knowledge and contemplation.

 

Aeon

 

In many Gnostic systems, the aeons are the various emanations of the superior God or Monad. From this first being, also an æon, a series of different emanations occur, beginning in certain Gnostic texts with the hermaphroditic Barbelo, from which successive pairs of aeons emanate, often in male–female pairings called syzygies. The numbers of these pairings varied from text to text, though some identify their number as being thirty. The aeons as a totality constitute the pleroma, the "region of light". The lowest regions of the pleroma are closest to the darkness; that is, the physical world.

 

Two of the most commonly paired æons were Christ and Sophia (Greek: "Wisdom"); the latter refers to Christ as her "consort" in A Valentinian Exposition.

 

Sophia

 

In Gnostic tradition, the term Sophia (Σoφíα, Greek for "wisdom") refers to the final and lowest emanation of God. In most if not all versions of the gnostic myth, Sophia births the demiurge, who in turn brings about the creation of materiality. The positive or negative depiction of materiality thus resides a great deal on mythic depictions of Sophia's actions. She is occasionally referred to by the Hebrew equivalent of Achamoth (this is a feature of Ptolemy's version of the Valentinian gnostic myth). Jewish Gnosticism with a focus on Sophia was active by 90 AD.[citation needed]

 

Sophia, emanating without her partner, resulted in the production of the Demiurge (Greek: lit. "public builder"),[50] who is also referred to as Yaldabaoth and variations thereof in some Gnostic texts.[43] This creature is concealed outside the pleroma;[43] in isolation, and thinking itself alone, it creates materiality and a host of co-actors, referred to as archons. The demiurge is responsible for the creation of mankind; trapping elements of the pleroma stolen from Sophia inside human bodies.[43][51] In response, the Godhead emanates two savior aeons, Christ and the Holy Spirit; Christ then embodies itself in the form of Jesus, in order to be able to teach man how to achieve gnosis, by which they may return to the pleroma.[52]

 

Demiurge[edit]

 

A lion-faced deity found on a Gnostic gem in Bernard de Montfaucon's L'antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures may be a depiction of Yaldabaoth, the Demiurge; however, cf. Mithraic Zervan Akarana[53]

Main article: Demiurge

The term demiurge derives from the Latinized form of the Greek term dēmiourgos, δημιουργός, literally "public or skilled worker".[note 20] This figure is also called "Yaldabaoth",[43] Samael (Aramaic: sæmʻa-ʼel, "blind god"), or "Saklas" (Syriac: sækla, "the foolish one"), who is sometimes ignorant of the superior god, and sometimes opposed to it; thus in the latter case he is correspondingly malevolent. Other names or identifications are Ahriman, El, Satan, and Yahweh.

 

The demiurge creates the physical universe and the physical aspect of humanity.[55] The demiurge typically creates a group of co-actors named archons who preside over the material realm and, in some cases, present obstacles to the soul seeking ascent from it.[43] The inferiority of the demiurge's creation may be compared to the technical inferiority of a work of art, painting, sculpture, etc. to the thing the art represents. In other cases it takes on a more ascetic tendency to view material existence negatively, which then becomes more extreme when materiality, including the human body, is perceived as evil and constrictive, a deliberate prison for its inhabitants.

 

Moral judgements of the demiurge vary from group to group within the broad category of Gnosticism, viewing materiality as being inherently evil, or as merely flawed and as good as its passive constituent matter allows.[56]

 

Archon[edit]

Main article: Archon (Gnosticism)

In late antiquity some variants of Gnosticism used the term archon to refer to several servants of the demiurge.[51] In this context they may be seen as having the roles of the angels and demons of the Old Testament.[citation needed]

 

According to Origen's Contra Celsum, a sect called the Ophites posited the existence of seven archons, beginning with Iadabaoth or Ialdabaoth, who created the six that follow: Iao, Sabaoth, Adonaios, Elaios, Astaphanos, and Horaios.[57] Similarly to the Mithraic Kronos and Vedic Narasimha, a form of Vishnu, Ialdabaoth had a head of a lion.[43][58][59]

 

Other concepts[edit]

Other Gnostic concepts are:[60]

 

sarkic – earthly, hidebound, ignorant, uninitiated. The lowest level of human thought; the fleshly, instinctive level of thinking.

hylic – lowest order of the three types of human. Unable to be saved since their thinking is entirely material, incapable of understanding the gnosis.

psychic – "soulful", partially initiated. Matter-dwelling spirits

pneumatic – "spiritual", fully initiated, immaterial souls escaping the doom of the material world via gnosis.

kenoma – the visible or manifest cosmos, "lower" than the pleroma

charisma – gift, or energy, bestowed by pneumatics through oral teaching and personal encounters

logos – the divine ordering principle of the cosmos; personified as Christ. See also Odic force.

hypostasis – literally "that which stands beneath" the inner reality, emanation (appearance) of God, known to psychics

ousia – essence of God, known to pneumatics. Specific individual things or being.

Jesus as Gnostic saviour[edit]

Jesus is identified by some Gnostics as an embodiment of the supreme being who became incarnate to bring gnōsis to the earth,[61][52] while others adamantly denied that the supreme being came in the flesh, claiming Jesus to be merely a human who attained divinity through gnosis and taught his disciples to do the same.[citation needed] Among the Mandaeans, Jesus was considered a mšiha kdaba or "false messiah" who perverted the teachings entrusted to him by John the Baptist.[62] Still other traditions identify Mani and Seth – third son of Adam and Eve – as salvific figures.

 

Development[edit]

Three periods can be discerned in the development of Gnosticism:[63]

 

Late first century and early second century: development of Gnostic ideas, contemporaneous with the writing of the New Testament;

mid-second century to early third century: high point of the classical Gnostic teachers and their systems, "who claimed that their systems represented the inner truth revealed by Jesus";[63]

end of second century to fourth century: reaction by the proto-orthodox church and condemnation as heresy, and subsequent decline.

During the first period, three types of tradition developed:[63]

 

Genesis was reinterpreted in Jewish milieus, viewing Jahweh as a jealous God who enslaved people; freedom was to be obtained from this jealous God;

A wisdom tradition developed, in which Jesus' sayings were interpreted as pointers to an esoteric wisdom, in which the soul could be divinized through identification with wisdom.[63][note 21] Some of Jesus' sayings may have been incorporated into the gospels to put a limit on this development. The conflicts described in 1 Corinthians may have been inspired by a clash between this wisdom tradition and Paul's gospel of crucifixion and arising;[63]

A mythical story developed about the descent of a heavenly creature to reveal the Divine world as the true home of human beings.[63] Jewish Christianity saw the Messiah, or Christ, as "an eternal aspect of God's hidden nature, his "spirit" and "truth", who revealed himself throughout sacred history".[25]

The movement spread in areas controlled by the Roman Empire and Arian Goths,[65] and the Persian Empire. It continued to develop in the Mediterranean and Middle East before and during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, but decline also set in during the third century, due to a growing aversion from the Catholic Church, and the economic and cultural deterioration of the Roman Empire.[66] Conversion to Islam, and the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229), greatly reduced the remaining number of Gnostics throughout the Middle Ages, though a few Mandaean communities still exist. Gnostic and pseudo-gnostic ideas became influential in some of the philosophies of various esoteric mystical movements of the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe and North America, including some that explicitly identify themselves as revivals or even continuations of earlier gnostic groups.

 

Relation with early Christianity[edit]

Dillon notes that Gnosticism raises questions about the development of early Christianity.[67]

 

Orthodoxy and heresy[edit]

See also: Diversity in early Christian theology

The Christian heresiologists, most notably Irenaeus, regarded Gnosticism as a Christian heresy. Modern scholarship notes that early Christianity was very diverse, and Christian orthodoxy only settled in the 4th century, when the Roman Empire declined and Gnosticism lost its influence.[68][66][69][67] Gnostics and proto-orthodox Christians shared some terminology. Initially, they were hard to distinguish from each other.[70]

 

According to Walter Bauer, "heresies" may well have been the original form of Christianity in many regions.[71] This theme was further developed by Elaine Pagels,[72] who argues that "the proto-orthodox church found itself in debates with gnostic Christians that helped them to stabilize their own beliefs."[67] According to Gilles Quispel, Catholicism arose in response to Gnosticism, establishing safeguards in the form of the monarchic episcopate, the creed, and the canon of holy books.[73]

 

Historical Jesus[edit]

See also: Jesus in comparative mythology and Christ myth theory

The Gnostic movements may contain information about the historical Jesus, since some texts preserve sayings which show similarities with canonical sayings.[74] Especially the Gospel of Thomas has a significant amount of parallel sayings.[74] Yet, a striking difference is that the canonical sayings center on the coming endtime, while the Thomas-sayings center on a kingdom of heaven that is already here, and not a future event.[75] According to Helmut Koester, this is because the Thomas-sayings are older, implying that in the earliest forms of Christianity Jesus was regarded as a wisdom-teacher.[75] An alternative hypothesis states that the Thomas authors wrote in the second century, changing existing sayings and eliminating the apocalyptic concerns.[75] According to April DeConick, such a change occurred when the endtime did not come, and the Thomasine tradition turned toward a "new theology of mysticism" and a "theological commitment to a fully-present kingdom of heaven here and now, where their church had attained Adam and Eve's divine status before the Fall."[75]

 

Johannine literature[edit]

The prologue of the Gospel of John describes the incarnated Logos, the light that came to earth, in the person of Jesus.[76] The Apocryphon of John contains a scheme of three descendants from the heavenly realm, the third one being Jesus, just as in the Gospel of John. The similarities probably point to a relationship between gnostic ideas and the Johannine community.[76] According to Raymond Brown, the Gospel of John shows "the development of certain gnostic ideas, especially Christ as heavenly revealer, the emphasis on light versus darkness, and anti-Jewish animus."[76] The Johannine material reveals debates about the redeemer myth.[63] The Johannine letters show that there were different interpretations of the gospel story, and the Johannine images may have contributed to second-century Gnostic ideas about Jesus as a redeemer who descended from heaven.[63] According to DeConick, the Gospel of John shows a "transitional system from early Christianity to gnostic beliefs in a God who transcends our world."[76] According to DeConick, John may show a bifurcation of the idea of the Jewish God into Jesus' Father in Heaven and the Jews' father, "the Father of the Devil" (most translations say "of [your] father the Devil"), which may have developed into the gnostic idea of the Monad and the Demiurge.[76]

 

Paul and Gnosticism[edit]

Tertullian calls Paul "the apostle of the heretics",[77] because Paul's writings were attractive to gnostics, and interpreted in a gnostic way, while Jewish Christians found him to stray from the Jewish roots of Christianity.[78] In I Corinthians Paul refers to some church members as "having knowledge" (Greek: τὸν ἔχοντα γνῶσιν, ton echonta gnosin).[79] James Dunn claims that in some cases, Paul affirmed views that were closer to gnosticism than to proto-orthodox Christianity.[80]

 

According to Clement of Alexandria, the disciples of Valentinus said that Valentinus was a student of a certain Theudas, who was a student of Paul,[80] and Elaine Pagels notes that Paul's epistles were interpreted by Valentinus in a gnostic way, and Paul could be considered a proto-gnostic as well as a proto-Catholic.[60] Many Nag Hammadi texts, including, for example, the Prayer of Paul and the Coptic Apocalypse of Paul, consider Paul to be "the great apostle".[80] The fact that he claimed to have received his gospel directly by revelation from God appealed to the gnostics, who claimed gnosis from the risen Christ.[81] The Naassenes, Cainites, and Valentinians referred to Paul's epistles.[82] Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy have expanded upon this idea of Paul as a gnostic teacher;[83] although their premise that Jesus was invented by early Christians based on an alleged Greco-Roman mystery cult has been dismissed by scholars.[84][note 22] However, his revelation was different from the gnostic revelations.[85]

 

Major movements[edit]

Syrian-Egyptian Gnosticism[edit]

Syrian-Egyptian Gnosticism includes Sethianism, Valentinianism, Basilideans, Thomasine traditions, and Serpent Gnostics, as well as a number of other minor groups and writers.[86] Hermeticism is also a western Gnostic tradition,[66] though it differs in some respects from these other groups.[87] The Syrian–Egyptian school derives much of its outlook from Platonist influences. It depicts creation in a series of emanations from a primal monadic source, finally resulting in the creation of the material universe. These schools tend to view evil in terms of matter that is markedly inferior to goodness and lacking spiritual insight and goodness rather than as an equal force.

 

Many of these movements used texts related to Christianity, with some identifying themselves as specifically Christian, though quite different from the Orthodox or Roman Catholic forms. Jesus and several of his apostles, such as Thomas the Apostle, claimed as the founder of the Thomasine form of Gnosticism, figure in many Gnostic texts. Mary Magdalene is respected as a Gnostic leader, and is considered superior to the twelve apostles by some gnostic texts, such as the Gospel of Mary. John the Evangelist is claimed as a Gnostic by some Gnostic interpreters,[88] as is even St. Paul.[60] Most of the literature from this category is known to us through the Nag Hammadi Library.

 

Sethite-Barbeloite[edit]

Main article: Sethianism

Sethianism was one of the main currents of Gnosticism during the 2nd to 3rd centuries, and the prototype of Gnosticism as condemned by Irenaeus.[89] Sethianism attributed its gnosis to Seth, third son of Adam and Eve and Norea, wife of Noah, who also plays a role in Mandeanism and Manicheanism. Their main text is the Apocryphon of John, which does not contain Christian elements,[89] and is an amalgam of two earlier myths.[90] Earlier texts such as Apocalypse of Adam show signs of being pre-Christian and focus on the Seth, third son of Adam and Eve.[91] Later Sethian texts continue to interact with Platonism. Sethian texts such as Zostrianos and Allogenes draw on the imagery of older Sethian texts, but utilize "a large fund of philosophical conceptuality derived from contemporary Platonism, (that is, late middle Platonism) with no traces of Christian content."[31][note 23]

 

According to John D. Turner, German and American scholarship views Sethianism as "a distinctly inner-Jewish, albeit syncretistic and heterodox, phenomenon", while British and French scholarship tends to see Sethianism as "a form of heterodox Christian speculation".[92] Roelof van den Broek notes that "Sethianism" may never have been a separate religious movement, and that the term refers rather to a set of mythological themes which occur in various texts.[93]

 

According to Smith, Sethianism may have begun as a pre-Christian tradition, possibly a syncretic cult that incorporated elements of Christianity and Platonism as it grew.[94] According to Temporini, Vogt, and Haase, early Sethians may be identical to or related to the Nazarenes (sect), the Ophites, or the sectarian group called heretics by Philo.[91]

 

According to Turner, Sethianism was influenced by Christianity and Middle Platonism, and originated in the second century as a fusion of a Jewish baptizing group of possibly priestly lineage, the so-called Barbeloites,[95] named after Barbelo, the first emanation of the Highest God, and a group of Biblical exegetes, the Sethites, the "seed of Seth".[96] At the end of the second century, Sethianism grew apart from the developing Christian orthodoxy, which rejected the docetian view of the Sethians on Christ.[97] In the early third century, Sethianism was fully rejected by Christian heresiologists, as Sethianism shifted toward the contemplative practices of Platonism while losing interest in their own origins.[98] In the late third century, Sethianism was attacked by neo-Platonists like Plotinus, and Sethianism became alienated from Platonism. In the early- to mid-fourth century, Sethianism fragmented into various sectarian Gnostic groups such as the Archontics, Audians, Borborites, and Phibionites, and perhaps Stratiotici, and Secundians.[99][31] Some of these groups existed into the Middle Ages.[99]

 

Samaritan Baptist sects[edit]

According to Magris, Samaritan Baptist sects were an offshoot of John the Baptist.[100] One offshoot was in turn headed by Dositheus, Simon Magus, and Menander. It was in this milieu that the idea emerged that the world was created by ignorant angels. Their baptismal ritual removed the consequences of sin, and led to a regeneration by which natural death, which was caused by these angels, was overcome.[100] The Samaritan leaders were viewed as "the embodiment of God's power, spirit, or wisdom, and as the redeemer and revealer of 'true knowledge'".[100]

 

The Simonians were centered on Simon Magus, the magician baptised by Philip and rebuked by Peter in Acts 8, who became in early Christianity the archetypal false teacher. The ascription by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and others of a connection between schools in their time and the individual in Acts 8 may be as legendary as the stories attached to him in various apocryphal books. Justin Martyr identifies Menander of Antioch as Simon Magus' pupil. According to Hippolytus, Simonianism is an earlier form of the Valentinian doctrine.[101]

 

The Basilidians or Basilideans were founded by Basilides of Alexandria in the second century. Basilides claimed to have been taught his doctrines by Glaucus, a disciple of St. Peter, but could also have been a pupil of Menander.[102] Basilidianism survived until the end of the 4th century as Epiphanius knew of Basilidians living in the Nile Delta. It was, however, almost exclusively limited to Egypt, though according to Sulpicius Severus it seems to have found an entrance into Spain through a certain Mark from Memphis. St. Jerome states that the Priscillianists were infected with it.

 

Valentinianism[edit]

Main article: Valentinianism

Valentinianism was named after its founder Valentinus (c. 100 – 180), who was a candidate for bishop of Rome but started his own group when another was chosen.[103] Valentinianism flourished after the middle of the 2nd century. The school was popular, spreading to Northwest Africa and Egypt, and through to Asia Minor and Syria in the east,[104] and Valentinus is specifically named as gnostikos by Irenaeus. It was an intellectually vibrant tradition,[105] with an elaborate and philosophically "dense" form of Gnosticism. Valentinus' students elaborated on his teachings and materials, and several varieties of their central myth are known.

 

Valentinian Gnosticism may have been monistic rather than dualistic.[note 24] In the Valentinian myths, the creation of a flawed materiality is not due to any moral failing on the part of the Demiurge, but due to the fact that he is less perfect than the superior entities from which he emanated.[108] Valentinians treat physical reality with less contempt than other Gnostic groups, and conceive of materiality not as a separate substance from the divine, but as attributable to an error of perception which becomes symbolized mythopoetically as the act of material creation.[108]

 

The followers of Valentinius attempted to systematically decode the Epistles, claiming that most Christians made the mistake of reading the Epistles literally rather than allegorically. Valentinians understood the conflict between Jews and Gentiles in Romans to be a coded reference to the differences between Psychics (people who are partly spiritual but have not yet achieved separation from carnality) and Pneumatics (totally spiritual people). The Valentinians argued that such codes were intrinsic in gnosticism, secrecy being important to ensuring proper progression to true inner understanding.[note 25]

 

According to Bentley Layton "Classical Gnosticism" and "The School of Thomas" antedated and influenced the development of Valentinus, whom Layton called "the great [Gnostic] reformer" and "the focal point" of Gnostic development. While in Alexandria, where he was born, Valentinus probably would have had contact with the Gnostic teacher Basilides, and may have been influenced by him.[109] Simone Petrement, while arguing for a Christian origin of Gnosticism, places Valentinus after Basilides, but before the Sethians. According to Petrement, Valentinus represented a moderation of the anti-Judaism of the earlier Hellenized teachers; the demiurge, widely regarded as a mythological depiction of the Old Testament God of the Hebrews, is depicted as more ignorant than evil.[110]

 

Thomasine traditions[edit]

The Thomasine Traditions refers to a group of texts which are attributed to the apostle Thomas.[111][note 26] Karen L. King notes that "Thomasine Gnosticism" as a separate category is being criticised, and may "not stand the test of scholarly scrutiny".[112]

 

Marcion[edit]

Marcion was a Church leader from Sinope (present-day Turkey), who preached in Rome around 150 CE,[113] but was expelled and started his own congregation, which spread throughout the Mediterranean. He rejected the Old Testament, and followed a limited Christian canon, which included only a redacted version of Luke, and ten edited letters of Paul.[114] Some scholars do not consider him to be a gnostic,[115][note 27] but his teachings clearly resemble some Gnostic teachings.[113] He preached a radical difference between the God of the Old Testament, the Demiurge, the "evil creator of the material universe", and the highest God, the "loving, spiritual God who is the father of Jesus", who had sent Jesus to the earth to free mankind from the tyranny of the Jewish Law.[113][2] Like the Gnostics, Marcion argued that Jesus was essentially a divine spirit appearing to men in the shape of a human form, and not someone in a true physical body.[116] Marcion held that the heavenly Father (the father of Jesus Christ) was an utterly alien god; he had no part in making the world, nor any connection with it.[116]

 

Hermeticism[edit]

Hermeticism is closely related to Gnosticism, but its orientation is more positive.[66][87]

 

Other Gnostic groups[edit]

Serpent Gnostics. The Naassenes, Ophites and the Serpentarians gave prominence to snake symbolism, and snake handling played a role in their ceremonies.[113]

Cerinthus (c. 100), the founder of a heretical school with gnostic elements. Like a Gnostic, Cerinthus depicted Christ as a heavenly spirit separate from the man Jesus, and he cited the demiurge as creating the material world. Unlike the Gnostics, Cerinthus taught Christians to observe the Jewish law; his demiurge was holy, not lowly; and he taught the Second Coming. His gnosis was a secret teaching attributed to an apostle. Some scholars believe that the First Epistle of John was written as a response to Cerinthus.[117]

The Cainites are so-named since Hippolytus of Rome claims that they worshiped Cain, as well as Esau, Korah, and the Sodomites. There is little evidence concerning the nature of this group. Hippolytus claims that they believed that indulgence in sin was the key to salvation because since the body is evil, one must defile it through immoral activity (see libertinism). The name Cainite is used as the name of a religious movement, and not in the usual Biblical sense of people descended from Cain.

The Carpocratians, a libertine sect following only the Gospel according to the Hebrews

The school of Justin, which combined gnostic elements with the ancient Greek religion.

The Borborites, a libertine Gnostic sect, said to be descended from the Nicolaitans[118]

Persian Gnosticism[edit]

The Persian Schools, which appeared in the western Persian province of Babylonia (in particular, within the Sassanid province of Asuristan), and whose writings were originally produced in the Aramaic dialects spoken in Babylonia at the time, are representative of what is believed to be among the oldest of the Gnostic thought forms. These movements are considered by most to be religions in their own right, and are not emanations from Christianity or Judaism.

 

Manichaeism[edit]

 

Manicheanism priests writing at their desks, with panel inscription in Sogdian. Manuscript from Khocho, Tarim Basin.

Main article: Manichaeism

Manichaeism was founded by the Prophet Mani (216–276). Mani's father was a member of the Jewish-Christian sect of the Elcesaites, a subgroup of the Gnostic Ebionites. At ages 12 and 24, Mani had visionary experiences of a "heavenly twin" of his, calling him to leave his father's sect and preach the true message of Christ. In 240–41, Mani travelled to the Indo-Greek Kingdom of the Sakhas in modern-day Afghanistan, where he studied Hinduism and its various extant philosophies. Returning in 242, he joined the court of Shapur I, to whom he dedicated his only work written in Persian, known as the Shabuhragan. The original writings were written in Syriac Aramaic, in a unique Manichaean script.

 

Manichaeism conceives of two coexistent realms of light and darkness that become embroiled in conflict. Certain elements of the light became entrapped within darkness, and the purpose of material creation is to engage in the slow process of extraction of these individual elements. In the end the kingdom of light will prevail over darkness. Manicheanism inherits this dualistic mythology from Zurvanist Zoroastrianism,[119] in which the eternal spirit Ahura Mazda is opposed by his antithesis, Angra Mainyu. This dualistic teaching embodied an elaborate cosmological myth that included the defeat of a primal man by the powers of darkness that devoured and imprisoned the particles of light.[120]

 

According to Kurt Rudolph, the decline of Manichaeism that occurred in Persia in the 5th century was too late to prevent the spread of the movement into the east and the west.[121] In the west, the teachings of the school moved into Syria, Northern Arabia, Egypt and North Africa.[note 28] There is evidence for Manicheans in Rome and Dalmatia in the 4th century, and also in Gaul and Spain. From Syria it progressed still farther, into Palestine, Asia Minor and Armenia. The influence of Manicheanism was attacked by imperial elects and polemical writings, but the religion remained prevalent until the 6th century, and still exerted influence in the emergence of the Paulicians, Bogomils and Cathari in the Middle Ages, until it was ultimately stamped out by the Catholic Church.[121]

 

In the east, Rudolph relates, Manicheanism was able to bloom, because the religious monopoly position previously held by Christianity and Zoroastrianism had been broken by nascent Islam. In the early years of the Arab conquest, Manicheanism again found followers in Persia (mostly amongst educated circles), but flourished most in Central Asia, to which it had spread through Iran. Here, in 762, Manicheanism became the state religion of the Uyghur Empire.[121]

 

Mandaeanism[edit]

Main article: Mandaeanism

 

Mandaean house of worship in Nasiriya, Iraq

The Mandaeans are Semites and speak a dialect of Eastern Aramaic known as Mandaic. Their religion has been practised primarily around the lower Karun, Euphrates and Tigris and the rivers that surround the Shatt-al-Arab waterway, part of southern Iraq and Khuzestan Province in Iran. Mandaeanism is still practiced in small numbers, in parts of southern Iraq and the Iranian province of Khuzestan, and there are thought to be between 60,000 and 70,000 Mandaeans worldwide.[124]

 

The name of the group derives from the term Mandā d-Heyyi, which roughly means "Knowledge of Life". Although the exact chronological origins of this movement are not known, John the Baptist eventually came to be a key figure in the religion, as an emphasis on baptism is part of their core beliefs. As with Manichaeism, despite certain ties with Christianity,[125] Mandaeans do not believe in Moses, Jesus, or Mohammed. Their beliefs and practices likewise have little overlap with the religions that manifested from those religious figures and the two should not be confused. Significant amounts of original Mandaean Scripture, written in Mandaean Aramaic, survive in the modern era. The primary source text is known as the Genzā Rabbā and has portions identified by some scholars as being copied as early as the 3rd century. There is also the Qolastā, or Canonical Book of Prayer and The Book of John the Baptist (sidra ḏ-iahia).

 

Middle Ages[edit]

After its demise in the Mediterranean world, Gnosticism lived on in the periphery of the Byzantine Empire, and resurfaced in the western world. The Paulicians, an Adoptionist group which flourished between 650 and 872 in Armenia and the Eastern Themes of the Byzantine Empire, were accused by orthodox medieval sources of being Gnostic and quasi Manichaean Christian. The Bogomils, emerged in Bulgaria between 927 and 970 and spread throughout Europe. It was as synthesis of Armenian Paulicianism and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church reform movement.

 

The Cathars (Cathari, Albigenses or Albigensians) were also accused by their enemies of the traits of Gnosticism; though whether or not the Cathari possessed direct historical influence from ancient Gnosticism is disputed. If their critics are reliable the basic conceptions of Gnostic cosmology are to be found in Cathar beliefs (most distinctly in their notion of a lesser, Satanic, creator god), though they did not apparently place any special relevance upon knowledge (gnosis) as an effective salvific force.[verification needed]

 

Islam[edit]

The message of the Islamic prophet Muhammad shows close similarities to many Gnostic ideas. The Quran, like Gnostic cosmology, makes a sharp distinction between this world and the afterlife. The notion of four rivers in heaven, as mentioned in the Quran, separating this world from the other , also appears frequently in Mandaean literature. God is commonly thought of as being beyond human comprehension. In some Islamic schools of thought, somehow identifiable with the Gnostic Monad.[126][127] However, according to Islam and unlike most Gnostic sects, not rejection of this world, but performing good deeds leads to the heaven. And according to the Islamic belief in strict Oneness of God, there was no room for a lower deity; such as the demiurge.[128] According to Islam, both good and evil come from one God, a position especially opposed by the Manichaeans. Ibn al-Muqaffa depicted the Islamic deity as a demonic entity who "fights with humans and boasts about His victories" and "sitting on a throne, from which He can descend". It would be impossible that both light and darkness were created from one source, since they were regarded as two different eternal principles.[129] Muslim theologists countered this accusation by the example of a repeating sinner, who says: "I laid, and I repent";[130] this would prove that good can also result out of evil.

 

Islam also integrated traces of an entity given authority over the lower world in some early writings: Iblis is regarded by some Sufis as the owner of this world, and humans must avoid the treasures of this world, since they would belong to him.[131] In the Isma'ili Shia work Umm al Kitab, Azazil's role resembles whose of the Gnostic demiurge.[132] Like the demiurge, he is endowed with the ability to create his own world and seeks to imprison humans in the material world, but here, his power is limited and depends on the higher God.[133] Such Gnostic anthropogenic can be found frequently among Isma'ili traditions.[134] However, Ismailism were often criticised as non-Islamic. Ghazali characterized them as a group who are outwardly Shias but were actually adherence of a dualistic and philosophical religion. Further traces of Gnostic ideas can be found in Sufi anthropogenic.[135] Like the gnostic conception of human beings imprisoned in matter, Sufi-traditions acknowledges the human soul is an accomplice of the material world and subject to bodily desires similar to the way archontic spheres envelop the pneuma.[136] The Ruh must therefore gain victory over the lower and material-bound psyche, to overcome his animal nature. A human being captured by his animal desires, mistakenly claims autonomy and independence from the "higher God", thus resembling the lower deity in classical gnostic traditions. However, since the goal is not to abandon the created world, but just to free oneself from ones own lower desires, it can be disputed whether this can still be Gnostic, but rather a completion of the message of Muhammad.[129] It seems that Gnostic ideas were an influential part of early Islamic development but later lost its influence. However the Gnostic light metaphorics and the idea of unity of existence still prevailed in later Islamic thought.[127]

 

Kabbalah[edit]

Gnostic ideas found a Jewish variation in the mystical study of Kabbalah. Many core Gnostic ideas reappear in Kabbalah, where they are used for dramatically reinterpreting earlier Jewish sources according to this new system.[137] The Kabbalists originated in 13th-century Provence,[note 29] which was at that time also the center of the Gnostic Cathars. While some scholars in the middle of the 20th century tried to assume an influence between the Cathar "gnostics" and the origins of the Kabbalah, this assumption has proved to be an incorrect generalization not substantiated by any original texts.[139] On the other hand, other scholars, such as Scholem, have postulated that there was originally a "Jewish gnosticism", which influenced the early origins of gnosticism.[140]

 

Kabbalah does not employ the terminology or labels of non-Jewish Gnosticism, but grounds the same or similar concepts in the language of the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible).[141] The 13th-century Zohar ("Splendor"), a foundational text in Kabbalah, is written in the style of a Jewish Aramaic Midrash, clarifying the five books of the Torah with a new Kabbalistic system that uses completely Jewish terms.[142]

 

Modern times[edit]

Main article: Gnosticism in modern times

The Mandaeans are an ancient Gnostic sect that have survived to this day and are found today in Iraq.[143] Their namesake owes to their following John the Baptist and in that country, they have about five thousand followers.[143] A number of ecclesiastical bodies that think of themselves as Gnostic have set up or re-founded since World War II, including the Ecclesia Gnostica, Apostolic Johannite Church, Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the Gnostic Church of France, the Thomasine Church, the Alexandrian Gnostic Church, the North American College of Gnostic Bishops,[144] and the Universal Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor.[145]

 

A number of 19th-century thinkers such as Arthur Schopenhauer,[146] Albert Pike and Madame Blavatsky studied Gnostic thought extensively and were influenced by it, and even figures like Herman Melville and W. B. Yeats were more tangentially influenced.[147] Jules Doinel "re-established" a Gnostic church in France in 1890, which altered its form as it passed through various direct successors (Fabre des Essarts as Tau Synésius and Joanny Bricaud as Tau Jean II most notably), and, though small, is still active today.[148]

 

Early 20th-century thinkers who heavily studied and were influenced by Gnosticism include Carl Jung (who supported Gnosticism), Eric Voegelin (who opposed it), Jorge Luis Borges (who included it in many of his short stories), and Aleister Crowley, with figures such as Hermann Hesse being more moderately influenced. René Guénon founded the gnostic review, La Gnose in 1909, before moving to a more Perennialist position, and founding his Traditionalist School. Gnostic Thelemite organizations, such as Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica and Ordo Templi Orientis, trace themselves to Crowley's thought.

 

The discovery and translation of the Nag Hammadi library after 1945 has had a huge effect on Gnosticism since World War II. Intellectuals who were heavily influenced by Gnosticism in this period include Lawrence Durrell, Hans Jonas, Philip K. Dick and Harold Bloom, with Albert Camus and Allen Ginsberg being more moderately influenced.[147] Celia Green has written on Gnostic Christianity in relation to her own philosophy.[149]

 

Alfred North Whitehead was aware of the existence of the newly discovered Gnostic scrolls. Accordingly, Michel Weber has proposed a Gnostic interpretation of his late metaphysics.[150]

 

Sources[edit]

Heresiologists[edit]

Prior to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945 Gnosticism was known primarily through the works of heresiologists, Church Fathers who opposed those movements. These writings had an antagonistic bias towards gnostic teachings, and were incomplete. Several heresiological writers, such as Hippolytus, made little effort to exactly record the nature of the sects they reported on, or transcribe their sacred texts. Reconstructions of incomplete Gnostic texts were attempted in modern times, but research on Gnosticism was coloured by the orthodox views of those heresiologists.

 

Justin Martyr (c. 100/114 – c. 162/168) wrote the First Apology, addressed to Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius, which criticising Simon Magus, Menander and Marcion. Since this time, both Simon and Menander have been considered as 'proto-Gnostic'.[151] Irenaeus (died c. 202) wrote Against Heresies (c. 180–185), which identifies Simon Magus from Flavia Neapolis in Samaria as the inceptor of Gnosticism. From Samaria he charted an apparent spread of the teachings of Simon through the ancient "knowers" into the teachings of Valentinus and other, contemporary Gnostic sects.[note 30] Hippolytus (170–235) wrote the ten-volume Refutation Against all Heresies, of which eight have been unearthed. It also focuses on the connection between pre-Socratic (and therefore Pre-Incantation of Christ) ideas and the false beliefs of early gnostic heretical leaders. Thirty-three of the groups he reported on are considered Gnostic by modern scholars, including 'the foreigners' and 'the Seth people'. Hippolytus further presents individual teachers such as Simon, Valentinus, Secundus, Ptolemy, Heracleon, Marcus and Colorbasus. Tertullian (c. 155–230) from Carthage wrote Adversus Valentinianos ('Against the Valentinians'), c. 206, as well as five books around 207–208 chronicling and refuting the teachings of Marcion.

 

Gnostic texts[edit]

See also: Gnostic texts and Nag Hammadi library

Prior to the discovery at Nag Hammadi, a limited number of texts were available to students of Gnosticism. Reconstructions were attempted from the records of the heresiologists, but these were necessarily coloured by the motivation behind the source accounts.

 

The Nag Hammadi library [note 31] is a collection of Gnostic texts discovered in 1945 near Nag Hammadi, Upper Egypt. Twelve leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local farmer named Muhammed al-Samman.[152] The writings in these codices comprised fifty-two mostly Gnostic treatises, but they also include three works belonging to the Corpus Hermeticum and a partial translation/alteration of Plato's Republic. These codices may have belonged to a nearby Pachomian monastery, and buried after Bishop Athanasius condemned the use of non-canonical books in his Festal Letter of 367.[153] Though the original language of composition was probably Greek, the various codices contained in the collection were written in Coptic. A 1st- or 2nd-century date of composition for the lost Greek originals has been proposed, though this is disputed; the manuscripts themselves date from the 3rd and 4th centuries. The Nag Hammadi texts demonstrated the fluidity of early Christian scripture and early Christianity itself.[note 32]

 

Academic studies[edit]

Development[edit]

Prior to the discovery of Nag Hammadi, the Gnostic movements were largely perceived through the lens of the early church heresiologists. Johann Lorenz von Mosheim (1694–1755) proposed that Gnosticism developed on its own in Greece and Mesopotamia, spreading to the west and incorporating Jewish elements. According to Mosheim, Jewish thought took Gnostic elements and used them against Greek philosophy.[33] J. Horn and Ernest Anton Lewald proposed Persian and Zoroastrian origins, while Jacques Matter described Gnosticism as an intrusion of eastern cosmological and theosophical speculation into Christianity.[33]

 

In the 1880s Gnosticism was placed within Greek philosophy, especially neo-Platonism.[29] Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), who belonged to the School of the History of Dogma and proposed a Kirchengeschichtliches Ursprungsmodell, saw gnosticism as an internal development within the church under the influence of Greek philosophy.[29][155] According to Harnack, Gnosticism was the "acute Hellenization of Christianity."[29]

 

The Religionsgeschichtliche Schule ("history of religions school", 19th century) had a profound influence on the study of Gnosticism.[29] The Religionsgeschichtliche Schule saw Gnosticism as a pre-Christian phenomenon, and Christian gnosis as only one, and even marginal instance of this phenomenon.[29] According to Wilhelm Bousset (1865–1920), Gnosticism was a form of Iranian and Mesopotamian syncretism,[29] and Eduard Norden (1868–1941) also proposed pre-Christian origins,[29] while Richard August Reitzenstein (1861–1931), and Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) also situated the origins of Gnosticism in Persia.[29] Hans Heinrich Schaeder (1896–1957) and Hans Leisegang saw Gnosticism as an amalgam of eastern thought in a Greek form.[29]

 

Hans Jonas (1903–1993) took an intermediate approach, using both the comparative approach of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule and the existentialist hermeneutics of Bultmann. Jonas emphasized the duality between God and the world, and concluded that Gnosticism cannot be derived from Platonism.[19]

 

Contemporary scholarship largely agrees that Gnosticism has Jewish or Judeo-Christian origins;[19] this theses is most notably put forward by Gershom G. Scholem (1897–1982) and Gilles Quispel (1916–2006).[156]

 

The study of Gnosticism and of early Alexandrian Christianity received a strong impetus from the discovery of the Coptic Nag Hammadi Library in 1945.[157][158] A great number of translations have been published, and the works of Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, especially The Gnostic Gospels, which detailed the suppression of some of the writings found at Nag Hammadi by early bishops of the Christian church, has popularized Gnosticism in mainstream culture,[web 3][web 4] but also incited strong responses and condemnations from clergical writers.[159]

 

Definitions of Gnosticism[edit]

According to Matthew J. Dillon, six trends can be discerned in the definitions of Gnosticism:[160]

 

Typologies, "a catalogue of shared characteristics that are used to classify a group of objects together."[160]

Traditional approaches, viewing Gnosticism as a Christian heresy[161]

Phenomenological approaches, most notably Hans Jonas[162]

Restricting Gnosticism, "identifying which groups were explicitly called gnostics",[163] or which groups were clearly sectarian[163]

Deconstructing Gnosticism, abandoning the category of "Gnosticism"[164]

Psychology and cognitive science of religion, approaching Gnosticism as a psychological phenomena[165]

Typologies[edit]

The 1966 Messina conference on the origins of gnosis and Gnosticism proposed to designate

 

... a particular group of systems of the second century after Christ" as gnosticism, and to use gnosis to define a conception of knowledge that transcends the times, which was described as "knowledge of divine mysteries for an élite.[166]

 

This definition has now been abandoned.[160] It created a religion, "Gnosticism", from the "gnosis" which was a widespread element of ancient religions,[note 33] suggesting a homogeneous conception of gnosis by these Gnostic religions, which did not exist at the time.[167]

 

According to Dillon, the texts from Nag Hammadi made clear that this definition was limited, and that they are "better classified by movements (such as Valentinian), mythological similarity (Sethian), or similar tropes (presence of a Demiurge)."[160] Dillon further notes that the Messian-definition "also excluded pre-Christian Gnosticism and later developments, such as the Mandaeans and the Manichaeans."[160]

 

Hans Jonas discerned two main currents of Gnosticism, namely Syrian-Egyptian, and Persian, which includes Manicheanism and Mandaeanism.[19] Among the Syrian-Egyptian schools and the movements they spawned are a typically more Monist view. Persian Gnosticism possesses more dualist tendencies, reflecting a strong influence from the beliefs of the Persian Zurvanist Zoroastrians. Those of the medieval Cathars, Bogomils, and Carpocratians seem to include elements of both categories.

 

Gilles Quispel divided Syrian-Egyptian Gnosticism further into Jewish Gnosticism (the Apocryphon of John)[89] and Christian Gnosis (Marcion, Basilides, Valentinus). This "Christian Gnosticism" was Christocentric, and influenced by Christian writings such as the Gospel of John and the Pauline epistles.[168] Other authors speak rather of "Gnostic Christians", noting that Gnostics were a prominent substream in the early church.[169]

 

Traditional approaches – Gnosticism as Christian heresy[edit]

The best known example of this approach is Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), who stated that "Gnosticism is the acute Hellenization of Christianity."[161] According to Dillon, "many scholars today continue in the vein of Harnack in reading gnosticism as a late and contaminated version of Christianity", notably Darrell Block, who criticises Elaine Pagels for her view that early Christianity was wildly diverse.[162]

 

Phenomenological approaches[edit]

Hans Jonas (1903–1993) t

The Redjak Cult Mechanicum in all its glory!

Once called the Crimson Priesthood and ruler over the Forge World Sarum and most of the Golgotha Sector. Cropped and rebuked by Angron and his Wolrd Eaters. Now bound under his rule supplying and supporting the 13th Expedition Fleet in the name of the Warmaster.

 

Glory to the XII Legion!

Glory to the Legio Audax!

And death to the false emperor!

Sharp sound of paper cut through the stale, musty air of Memorial Library. Lily winced as her friend turned the page of Encyclopaedia of Biology. Every sound was too loud. Even her heartbeat disturbed the grave (like) silence. Mrs Morrighan adjusted her glasses.

She turned to her friend and in the lowest voice she could muster, whispered: “Yesterday evening I saw her eyes glow in the dark. They were bright yellow.”

Deana’s skin crawled. “Do you think she’s a…” A loud cough resonated through the library in rebuke accompanied by the rustling of newspaper. That strange creature lady gave them a look across the room. She looked like Adams family member. Lily wondered if she could hear their thoughts.

It was already dark outside. They got absorbed in science project. There was no one left in the library. With gnarling anxiety twisting their bowels, they put their books in backpacks and quickly headed out. Mrs Morrighan saw them off with her cold glance.

Even outside, their steps resounded too loudly. Louder than usual. “Do you wanna stay over? I don’t want to go home alone. I feel they know what we were talking about…”

“Ssssh!” Deana froze. She was trying to listen but all she could hear was blood violently pumping and gushing through her veins. “What did you…”

“Little girls shouldn’t go home alone in this dark” Mrs Morrighan appeared from somewhere. She stretched her lips. “Let me accompany you. Have you called your parents?”

Lilly felt her bladder started giving out on her. Mrs Morrighan took her hand and pulled her closer. It was the coldest hand she ever touched…dead cold…

She breathed in to scream…

 

“Well… wasn’t that a nice little dinner” Mrs Morrighan took out the napkin from the collar of her blouse and wiped her mouth.

Ketu exhaled joyfully “When was the last time we had something fresh? I care about the quality of my food. This frozen and refrigerated stuff makes me feel bloated. Ahhh… those rare moments of joy…”

“I appreciate your sensibility for quality food, Ketu, but you know there are consequences. We better move now.” Mrs Morrighan opened her suitcase. Pack your stuff girls, the witch hunt is about to begin.”

“Oh, speaking of that…” Ketu pulled out an envelope from the inner pocket of her perfectly ironed suit. “We got an invite.”

Mrs Morrighan raised her brow. Clover looked at her in awe… you’d think that eyebrow couldn’t go any further but here it is. She chuckled.

“Lord D’Arcy is asking us to join his clan. He’s talking about some sort of war and Gathering… I have no idea…” Ketu threw he envelope in Mrs Morrighan’s direction. She frowned. “That ridiculous clown! Who does he think he is?!” her eyebrows were doing some sort of a wild dance above her, now rageful, eyes.

Clover was inspecting her face with curiosity. “Who’s that Lord D’Arcy anyways?” Ketu spoke instead of her. “Sounds like some sort of lame romantic novel character. Is he like a royalty or something? And… since we need to run… isn’t that the perfect solution?” Clover was waiting for her aunt’s reaction. They were always doing what she said. An easy life, really. You don’t have to make any decisions; you’re just fooling around… observing your environment. She enjoyed observing. And reading books in the library. There was so much to learn. She will miss it. Hopefully Lord D’Arcy had one. He surely sounded like he did.

Mrs Morrighan rolled her eyes. “Well, since that opportunity was bestowed upon us, I guess we’ll take it. Besides… D’Arcy might end up very surprised… Clover, hand me my notebook, I have some letters to send.” She sang in newly found enthusiasm.

The road back from Scotland was long and dull. The weather was grey and the road skirted around the edge of Dundee, Aberdeen, Perth, Edinburgh and Glasgow, without seeing anything of them. One bonus was I got to allow my abnormal mind to complete a task that was started over dinner the night before.

 

During the meal, Paul Simon's 'Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover' kept coming to mind, but I could only remember the line about Gus getting on the bus. A quick visit to google revealed that, great song as it is, there were only five ways suggested. The conversation turned to some new ways that could fill up the quota, but soon returned to more normal conversational topics.

 

However, after a stop off at (or more specifically under) the Forth Road Bridge, a new one sprung to mind. And then the rest of the trip flew past as I tried to think of 44 new ways, as well as try and retain those I'd already thought of in my mind. So, here is proof. Paul Simon said there must be fifty ways to leave your lover. And he was right.

 

You just slip out the back, Jack

Make a new plan, Stan

You don't need to be coy, Roy

Just get yourself free

Hop on the bus, Gus

You don't need to discuss much

Just drop off the key, Lee

And get yourself free

 

Cross over the bridge, Midge

Put her in the shed, Ned*

Move to Peru, Stew

That's what you should do

Pretend that you're dead, Fred

Just go on and pack, Mack

Fly your plane and flee, G

And get yourself free

 

Drive off on a quad, Rod

Don't go back again, Ben

Just up and leave, Steve

That's what I believe

Don't settle for this, Chris

Leave her in the park, Mark

Surf off on a wave, Dave

And get yourself Free

  

Just get on and pack, Barack

Sneak off to Iran, Dan

Ski off in the snow, Joe

You just gotta go

Break it off with a fax, Max

Ride off on a gnu, Lou

Hide away in your bin, Tim

And get yourself free

  

Give a strong rebuke, Luke

Find a new job, Bob

Hide out in a den, Ken

Got to be done now and then

Just cut yourself loose Bruce

Run off down the lane Shane

Go on make the call Paul

And get yourself free

  

Take a trip out to France, Lance

Just try your luck, Chuck

Swim off witha seal, Neil

If that's how you feel

Take up the life of a thief, Keith

Get her out of your head, Jed

Drive off in a tank, Frank

And get yourself free

  

Get on your bike, Mike

Get up off your seat, Pete

Start life anew, Drew

And just see it through

Walk out and be gone, John

Hide out in a barn, Arn

Pretend that you're sick, Nick

And get yourself free

  

Just got to be mean, Dean

Move out to Iraq, Mack

Stand by what you said, Ed

Its all in your head

Set off round Cape Horn, Sean

Fake your own death, Seth

Say you've had your fill, Will

And get yourself free

  

Just get on your way, Jay

Move on with a laugh, Garth

Leave her in your wake, Jake

And get yourself free

 

*In no way do I condone the actions of Ned

 

Once I'd completed this epic, yet inane task it suddenly occured to me that if I'd only used female names as well, it would have been a lot easier. It seems I've had a nightmare, Clare. Should have thought of that, Kat. And now all the time, I rhyme. And I'll never be free.

 

There was a least a century of assimilation of Gallic or Celtic tribes within ancient Thrace with their south eastern expansion into the Balkans and Anatolia /Asia Minor ; after the death of Alexander the great during the late Iron Age of central and southern Europe.

 

Cernunnos or Kernunno was an important, if ambiguous, deity of the Celts, essentially a nature god possibly associated with produce and fertility. He was called the "Horned One" (a literal translation of his name) or a "Horned God", and was one of a number of similar deities found in many ancient cultures. Like a lord of the animals and of subterranean wealth with connected powers of prophecy. Although the first letter of the name is defaced, it is probable it was 'Cernunnos' on the basis of linguistic and other archaeological evidence. The Gaulish word carnon or cernon means 'antler' or 'horn'. This can produce the names Carnonos, 'Deer-Hoofed One' or Cornonos 'Horned One'. The central syllable '-on-' denotes a deity, as in Epona or Maponos, ..

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maponos

..and would only have been replaced by '-un-' to provide a Latinised form of the name for inscriptions. Latin was the common language of Roman Europe and names mentioned in Latin texts are converted to a Latin form. This name-dualling,such as Britains Sulis-Minerva ,does not often imply acceptance in the Romans world.

www.timelessmyths.com/celtic/gallic.html

But he is almost cross-legged not sitting in the 'lotus', he is simply sitting on the

ground, as with one of two other Celtic figures found . His legs are not crossed.(View Large).Kernunnos surrounded by mystical animals. Held in one hand a ram-headed serpent is the symbol of balance between the solar forces and ground forces. On the other hand wears a torc / torque, which is a typical Celtic symbol for the nobility. Cernunnos was often called the "Lord of the Wild Things".He was clearly a god of nature, and probably of fertility of animals and agriculture. Cernunnos was also god of grains and fruits.

 

Cernunnos was equated with another god with stag-like antlers on his head, Belatucadnos, a British god of war. The Romans associated Cernunnos with their god Mercury (Hermes), though Julius Caesar associated him with Dis Pater, cthlonic god of the underworld. The Greek Pluto's Roman equivalent is Dis Pater, "The Shining Sky Father" is more universal .

 

Pluto (Greek: Πλούτων, Ploutōn) was the ruler of the underworld in classical mythology. The earlier name for the god was Hades, which became more common as the name of the underworld itself. In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Pluto represents a more positive concept of the god who presides over the afterlife. Ploutōn was frequently conflated with Ploutos (Πλοῦτος, Plutus), a god of wealth, because mineral wealth was found underground, and because as a chthonic god Pluto ruled the deep earth that contained the seeds necessary for a bountiful harvest.

The name Ploutōn came into widespread usage with the Eleusinian Mysteries, in which Pluto was venerated as a stern ruler but the loving husband of Persephone. The couple received souls in the afterlife, and are invoked together in religious inscriptions.

 

Later...The early Christians later associated or rebuked Cernunnos as ' the Devil', because of previous 'pagan' ritual.And Druids too , the Celtic belief in the killing power of satire...and a sense of otherworld eternity is here. 'Only the Devil Laughed' - Vision - Hildegard von Bingen www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB5WtpP1OS4&list=PL_ihIA8ygtw... 'Only the Devil laughed, honour to the scorn: in his envy he left no work of God untouched'..

 

The worship of Cernunnos could be found in the France, the Alps, Italy, and in Britain. The most famous depiction of Cerrunnos can be found here on the Gundestrup Cauldron (c. 1st century BC).

 

www.flickr.com/photos/28433765@N07/3219660215/

 

Further panels www.flickr.com/photos/28433765@N07/sets/72157612858689885...

  

Furthermore, his arms are in the primitive version of the orans position which can be seen on a number of other figures on the Gundestrup cauldron.

As well as depicted on at least one ancient Celtic coin from Britain by a druid figure.

Sometimes they are holding emblems, sometimes they are not. This position can also be seen on the rock art from Val Camonica where other "Cernunnos" figures are depicted -- one whose arms are also in the orans position and

has a torc and what is believed to be a horned serpent.

 

The orans position was slightly changed or adapted and was depicted in early Christianity, notably in the catacombs at Rome.

 

Cernunnos was worshipped over a wide area of Europe, from Romania to Ireland, as evinced by various representations found in around thirty different sites across the continent. The earliest known depiction of Cernunnos was found at Val Camonica in Italy, dating from the 4th century BC, while the best known depiction is on the famous Gundestrup cauldron found in Denmark and dating from the 1st century BC.

 

Cernunnos is the most common name used today for the deity called "Uindos" in Old Irish literature. He is also sometimes called "Finn," the name of a main hero in a cycle of ancient stories about the "Fianna" or warrior-bands of Old Ireland.

 

HERE , The Cauldron was likely to have been stolen by the (probably Germanic or Teutonic) Cimbri tribe yet with some Celtic influence (at least going by chieftain names) themselves.

Apart from Cernunnos and Taranis , there is no consensus regarding the other figures, and many scholars reject attempts to tie them in to figures known from much later and geographically distant sources.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimbri

who raided Gaul at least twice (see link

www.swartzentrover.com/cotor/bible/Timelines/Rome/Cimbri.htm )

or another tribe that later inhabited Jutland as it may have originated or been made from south east Europe, Thrace.

 

[ NB ...Bronze bridle ring from the Celtic Chariot burial from Mezek (detail) – Published by Bulgarian archaeologists as ‘Thracian’ and included in the ‘Thracian Treasures’ exhibition. (See Megaw 2004)]

balkancelts.wordpress.com/tag/institute-of-thracology/

   

His name ' ERNUNNO is known from the "Pillar of the Boatmen" ("Pilier des nautes"), a monument now displayed in the Muse national du Moyen Age in Paris. It is believed to have been erected as an altar by Gallic sailors in the early 1st century AD and was found in the foundations of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris on the site of the Celtic settlement of Lutetia. It depicts Cernunnos and other Celtic deities alongside Roman divinities, providing an illustration of the way in which Celtic gods were absorbed into the Roman pantheon.

www.flickr.com/photos/dameboudicca/7706430760/

(From the Gallo-Roman collection - a representation of two very Roman gods (Apollo to the left and Mercury to the right), complete with their usual attributes (a lyre for Apollo and Mercury has wings on his hat/helmet). And in the middle is the Celtic god Cernunnos, complete with horns and crossed legs and animals at his feet)

Indeed, Julius Caesar associated him with the Roman god Dis Pater, while other Roman sources associated him with Mercury.The celtic Breton pseudo-saint Korneli, a patron of horned creatures, also shows traces of Cernunnos.

 

The Pilier des nautes provides the earliest written record of the deity's name. It is not known whether the name Cernunnos (given as Kernunno) was a local name bestowed by the Parisii tribe (from whom Paris got its name). The structure of the name suggests otherwise. The word Cornu means "horned" in modern French and the cognate Celtic Cern_ means much the same. In Gallo-Roman religion, his name is known from the "Pillar of the Boatmen" (Pilier des nautes), a monument now displayed in the Musée National du Moyen Age in Paris. It was constructed by Gaulish sailors in the early first century CE, from the inscription (CIL XIII number 03026) probably in the year 14, on the accession of the emperor Tiberius. It was found in 1710 in the foundations of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris on the site of Lutetia, the civitas capital of the Celtic Parisii tribe. It depicts Cernunnos and other Celtic deities alongside Roman divinities such as Jupiter, Vulcan, Castor, and Pollux.

 

Additional evidence is given by two identical inscriptions on metal plaques from Seinsel-Rëlent in Luxembourg, in the territory of the Celtic Treveri tribe. These inscriptions (AE 1987, 0772) read Deo Ceruninco, "to the God Cerunincos". Lastly, a Gaulish inscription (RIG 1, number G-224) written in Greek letters from Montagnac (Hérault, Languedoc-Roussilion, France) reads αλλετ[ει]υος καρνονου αλ[ι]σο[ντ]εας thus giving the name "Carnonos".In Gallo-Roman religion, his name is known from the "Pillar of the Boatmen" (Pilier des nautes), a monument now displayed in the Musée National du Moyen Age in Paris. It was constructed by Gaulish sailors in the early first century CE, from the inscription (CIL XIII number 03026) probably in the year 14, on the accession of the emperor Tiberius.

www.deomercurio.be/en/cernunnos.html

 

Whether or not the name differed from place to place, the depictions of Cernunnos are strikingly consistent throughout the Celtic world. His most distinctive attribute are his stag's horns, and he is usually portrayed as a mature man with long hair and a beard. He wears a torc, an ornate neck-ring used by the Celts to denote nobility. He often carries other torcs in his hands or hanging from his horns, as well as a purse filled with coins. He is usually portrayed seated and almost cross-legged, in a position which some have interpreted as shamanic, or 'meditative' although it may only reflect the fact that the Celts squatted on the floor and did not use chairs.

 

Cernunnos is nearly always portrayed with animals, in particular the stag.

  

The 1st century B.C. ritual cauldron is an extremely important artifact in deciphering many aspects of Celtic mythology. This is the most commented upon panel of the cauldron in that it includes many intriguing hints about Celtic beliefs, not the least being the inclusion of Cernunnos, the antler-headed god. The depiction of the stag god is so prevalent in artifacts throughout the Celtic world that Cernunnos appears to have been the main Celtic deity. The shape-shifting aspect of Cernunnos in appearing as half man - half beast is certainly important and there are indeed many tales of changing shapes in Celtic mythology. He occupies space here as Lord of the Animals, being the only forward facing relief on the panel.

 

The other animals are also interesting from a mythological standpoint, especially the ram-headed serpent held in Cernunnos' hand (the other holding a Celtic torc, symbol of kingship). The horned serpent is a purely Celtic manifestation found in as far flung locations as prehistoric artifacts in Halstatt, Austria to horned serpent armlets in Scotland / Alba/ Scotia minor.

 

Also depicted are a stag, a wolf, two fighting lions, ibises and a boar. The stag could suggest, like another panel on the cauldron where a god holds two stags in his hands, the god's mastery over his animal nature. The wolf is also found on Celtic art and the boar is considered an important Celtic symbol of war. The ibises are a Middle Eastern motif and the lions look decidedly Oriental.

 

It is believed that the cauldron was commissioned by a Celtic tribe (Scordisci ) as a war offering and later thrown in the Danish bogs as an offering to the Gods. The Celts, retreating from Delphi (280–278 BC), settled on the mouth of the Sava and called themselves Scordisci. In the Celtic belief system, a great deal of power and magic was to be found in bogs and around water and therefore much religious activity, including both offerings and human sacrifices surrounded these places.

 

The worship of Cernunnos was particularly vehemently opposed by early Christianity, which saw him as an unacceptable symbol of paganism. Illustrations of Cernunnos-like figures were used to symbolise demonic and anti-Christian forces, and it may be presumed that shrines to Cernunnos were targets of early attempts to root out paganism. Even so, traces of the god survived well into Christian times. The literary traditions of both Wales and Ireland contain allusions to him, while in Brittany the legendary saint Korneli (or Cornly) had attributes of Cernunnos. It has also been suggested that the English myth of Herne the Hunter is an allusion to Cernunnos?

 

In the modern Neo-Pagan movements the 'worship' of the Horned or Antlered God has been revived. Whether or not these religious groups are modern reconstructions, the adherents generally follow the life-fertility-death cycle for Cernunnos, though his death is now usually set at Samhain, the Celtic New Year Festival usually associated with October 31.

 

The Cure for Despondency

by Arthur Pink

 

"Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God." Psalm 42:5

 

When the Psalmist gave utterance to these words, his spirit was dejected and his heart was heavy within him. In the checkered career of David, there was much which was calculated to sadden and depress: the cruel persecutions of Saul, who hunted him as a partridge upon the mountains; the treachery of his trusted friend Ahitophel; the betrayal of Absalom; and the remembrance of his own sins—were enough to overwhelm the stoutest heart! And David was a man of like passions with us—he was not always upon the mountain-top of joy, but sometimes spent seasons in the slough of despond and the gorge of gloom.

 

But David did not give way to despair, nor succumb to his sorrows. He did not lie down like a stricken beast and do nothing but fill the air with his howling. No, he acted like a rational creature, and like a man, looked his troubles squarely in the face. But he did more; he made diligent inquiry, he challenged himself, he sought to discover the cause of his despondency: he asked, "Why are you cast down, O my soul?" He desired to know the reason for such depression. This is often the first step toward recovery from depression of spirit. Repining arid murmuring get us nowhere. Fretting and wringing our hands bring no relief either temporally or spiritually. There needs to be self-interrogation, self-examination, self-condemnation.

 

"Why are you cast down, O my soul?" We need to seriously take ourselves to task. We need to fearlessly face a few plain questions. What is the good of giving way to despair? What possible gain can it bring me? To sit and sulk—is not "redeeming the time" (Ephesians 5:16). To mope and mourn—will not mend matters. Then let each despondent one call his soul to account, and inquire what adequate cause could be assigned for peevishness and fretting.

"We may have great cause to mourn for sin, and to pray against prevailing impiety. But our great dejection, even under the severest outward afflictions or inward trials—springs from unbelief and a rebellious will. We should therefore strive and pray against it." (Thomas Scott)

 

"Why are you cast down, O my soul?" Can you not discover the real answer, without asking counsel from others? Is it not true that, deep down in your heart, you already know, or at least suspect—the root of your present trouble? Are you "cast down" because of distressing circumstances which your own folly has brought you into? Then acknowledge with the Psalmist, "I know, O Lord, that Your judgments are right, and You in faithfulness have afflicted me" (Psalm 119:75).

Is it because of some sin, some course of self-will, some sowing to the flesh—that you are now of the flesh reaping corruption? Then confess the same to God and plead the promise found in Proverbs 28:13: "He who covers his sins shall not prosper; but whoever confesses and forsakes them shall have mercy."

 

Or are you grieved because Providence has not smiled upon you so sweetly as it has on some of your neighbors? "For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills." (Psalm 73:3-5).

 

Perhaps the cases suggested above do not exactly fit that of some of our readers. Not a few may say, "My soul is cast down and my heart is heavy because my finances are at so low an ebb, and the outlook is so dark." That is indeed a painful trial, and one which mere nature often sinks under. But, dear friend, there is a cure for despondency even when so occasioned. He who declares "the cattle upon a thousand hills are Mine," still lives and reigns! Can He who fed two million Israelites in the wilderness for forty years—not minister to you and your family? Can He who sustained Elijah in the time of famine—not keep you from starving?

 

"If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire—will He not much more clothe you? O you of little faith!" (Matthew 6:30).

Returning to our opening text, let us observe how that David not only did not succumb to his sorrows, interrogated his soul, and rebuked his unbelief—but he also preached to himself: "Hope in God!" Ah, that is what the despondent needs to do—nothing else will bring real relief to the depressed. The immediate outlook may be dark—but the Divine promises are bright. The creature may fail you—but the Creator will not, if you truly put your trust in Him. The world may be at its wits' end—but the Christian needs not be so. There is One who is "a very present help in times of trouble" (Psalm 46:1), and He never deserts those who really make Him their refuge. The writer has proved this, many, many a time—and so may the reader. The fact is that present conditions afford a grand opportunity for learning the sufficiency of Divine grace. Faith cannot be exercised, when everything needed is at hand to sight.

 

"Hope in God!"

 

Hope in His mercy: You have sinned, sinned grievously in the past, and now you are receiving your just deserts. True—but if you will penitently confess your sins, there is abundant mercy with the Lord to blot them all out (Isaiah 55:7).

Hope in His power: Every door may he shut against you, every channel of help be closed fast; but nothing is too hard for the Almighty!

 

Hope in His faithfulness: Men may have deceived you, broken their promises, and now desert you in the hour of need; but He who cannot lie is to be depended upon—O doubt not His promises.

 

Hope in His love: "Having loved His own who were in the world—He loved them unto the end" (John 13:1).

"For I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God." Such is ever the blessed assurance of those who truly hope in God. They know that, "Many are the afflictions of the righteous—but the Lord delivers him out of them all" (Psalm 34:19).

 

God has told them that "weeping may endure for a night—but joy comes in the morning" (Psalm 30:5). So Christian reader, when the fiery trial has done its work, and your bonds are burned off (Daniel 3:25), you will thank Him for the trials which are now so unpleasant! Then hopefully anticipate the future.

 

Count upon God—and He will not fail you.

Let each Christian reader who is not now passing through deep waters join with the writer in fervent prayer to God, that He will graciously sanctify the "present distress" unto the spiritual good of His own people, and mercifully supply their needs.

"Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen."

 

Stained glass window from St Dominic’s Church, San Francisco. 29 September is the feast of the Archangels.

Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel

    

Saint Michael the Archangel,

defend us in battle.

Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

May God rebuke him, we humbly pray;

and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host -

by the Divine Power of God -

cast into hell, satan and all the evil spirits,

who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.

Amen.

        

'"May prayer strengthen us for the spiritual battle we are told about in the Letter to the Ephesians: 'Draw strength from the Lord and from His mighty power' (Ephesians 6:10). The Book of Revelation refers to this same battle, recalling before our eyes the image of St. Michael the Archangel (Revelation 12:7). Pope Leo XIII certainly had a very vivid recollection of this scene when, at the end of the last century, he introduced a special prayer to St. Michael throughout the Church. Although this prayer is no longer recited at the end of Mass, I ask everyone not to forget it and to recite it to obtain help in the battle against forces of darkness and against the spirit of this world."

- Blessed John Paul II

Maid Barbie in baby blue and maid Katie in yellow. In Mistress Lady Penelope's kitchen.

 

Both maids have been ordered to turn around during Mistress Lady Penelope's inspection so that Mistress can check them properly. Normally if a maid should turn away from Mistress they would receive a severe rebuke and probably be awarded points which would later be translated into strokes of Mistress Lady Penelope's riding crop on their bare bottoms.

 

Mistress has a huge collection of punishment tools to choose from, canes, tawses, paddles, whips etc in a variety of materials, leather, rubber, hard plastic, fibreglass, kubo etc.

 

An errant maid instructed to go and fetch one of these fierce implements knows she will soon be ordered to pull down her knickers and bend over. Mistress will lift her skirt and petticoat revealing her defenceless naked bottom. She will be ordered to count off each stroke and thank her Mistress for the stroke. Her bottom will become very tender and may well throb and she will greatly regret her misbeviour. The bruises may well last several weeks unless the maid is a trainee who has said they cannot be marked lest their wife find out about their maid training session.

 

If you are interested in maid training, look at Mistress Lady Penelope's excellent free web site

mistressladypenelope.com

You can make an appointment with Mistress Lady Penelope by calling 07970183024

A colour edit of a previous posting. She and I prefer the colour edit, which is unusual for me.

I tend to think mono is preferable for getting inside a portrait but occasionally one comes along to rebuke you ;-)

 

www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_ele...

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Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House. BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

 

Page 1 2 3 4

The complete article, with Web-only citations, follows. For more, see exclusive documents, sources, charts and commentary.

Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush -- and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush's victory as nut cases in ''tinfoil hats,'' while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as ''conspiracy theories,''(1) and The New York Times declared that ''there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale.''(2)

 

But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote(4) -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8) malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast.(10)

 

The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.(11)

 

Any election, of course, will have anomalies. America's voting system is a messy patchwork of polling rules run mostly by county and city officials. ''We didn't have one election for president in 2004,'' says Robert Pastor, who directs the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. ''We didn't have fifty elections. We actually had 13,000 elections run by 13,000 independent, quasi-sovereign counties and municipalities.''

 

But what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004(12) -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.(13) (See Ohio's Missing Votes) In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.(14) And that doesn?t even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.(15)

 

''It was terrible,'' says Sen. Christopher Dodd, who helped craft reforms in 2002 that were supposed to prevent such electoral abuses. ''People waiting in line for twelve hours to cast their ballots, people not being allowed to vote because they were in the wrong precinct -- it was an outrage. In Ohio, you had a secretary of state who was determined to guarantee a Republican outcome. I'm terribly disheartened.''

 

Indeed, the extent of the GOP's effort to rig the vote shocked even the most experienced observers of American elections. ''Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen,'' Lou Harris, the father of modern political polling, told me. ''You look at the turnout and votes in individual precincts, compared to the historic patterns in those counties, and you can tell where the discrepancies are. They stand out like a sore thumb.''

 

I. The Exit Polls

The first indication that something was gravely amiss on November 2nd, 2004, was the inexplicable discrepancies between exit polls and actual vote counts. Polls in thirty states weren't just off the mark -- they deviated to an extent that cannot be accounted for by their margin of error. In all but four states, the discrepancy favored President Bush.(16)

 

Over the past decades, exit polling has evolved into an exact science. Indeed, among pollsters and statisticians, such surveys are thought to be the most reliable. Unlike pre-election polls, in which voters are asked to predict their own behavior at some point in the future, exit polls ask voters leaving the voting booth to report an action they just executed. The results are exquisitely accurate: Exit polls in Germany, for example, have never missed the mark by more than three-tenths of one percent.(17) ''Exit polls are almost never wrong,'' Dick Morris, a political consultant who has worked for both Republicans and Democrats, noted after the 2004 vote. Such surveys are ''so reliable,'' he added, ''that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries.''(18) In 2003, vote tampering revealed by exit polling in the Republic of Georgia forced Eduard Shevardnadze to step down.(19) And in November 2004, exit polling in the Ukraine -- paid for by the Bush administration -- exposed election fraud that denied Viktor Yushchenko the presidency.(20)

 

But that same month, when exit polls revealed disturbing disparities in the U.S. election, the six media organizations that had commissioned the survey treated its very existence as an embarrassment. Instead of treating the discrepancies as a story meriting investigation, the networks scrubbed the offending results from their Web sites and substituted them with ''corrected'' numbers that had been weighted, retroactively, to match the official vote count. Rather than finding fault with the election results, the mainstream media preferred to dismiss the polls as flawed.(21)

 

''The people who ran the exit polling, and all those of us who were their clients, recognized that it was deeply flawed,'' says Tom Brokaw, who served as anchor for NBC News during the 2004 election. ''They were really screwed up -- the old models just don't work anymore. I would not go on the air with them again.''

 

In fact, the exit poll created for the 2004 election was designed to be the most reliable voter survey in history. The six news organizations -- running the ideological gamut from CBS to Fox News -- retained Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International,(22) whose principal, Warren Mitofsky, pioneered the exit poll for CBS in 1967(23) and is widely credited with assuring the credibility of Mexico's elections in 1994.(24) For its nationwide poll, Edison/Mitofsky selected a random subsample of 12,219 voters(25) -- approximately six times larger than those normally used in national polls(26) -- driving the margin of error down to approximately plus or minus one percent.(27)

 

On the evening of the vote, reporters at each of the major networks were briefed by pollsters at 7:54 p.m. Kerry, they were informed, had an insurmountable lead and would win by a rout: at least 309 electoral votes to Bush's 174, with fifty-five too close to call.(28) In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair went to bed contemplating his relationship with President-elect Kerry.(29)

 

As the last polling stations closed on the West Coast, exit polls showed Kerry ahead in ten of eleven battleground states -- including commanding leads in Ohio and Florida -- and winning by a million and a half votes nationally. The exit polls even showed Kerry breathing down Bush's neck in supposed GOP strongholds Virginia and North Carolina.(30) Against these numbers, the statistical likelihood of Bush winning was less than one in 450,000.(31) ''Either the exit polls, by and large, are completely wrong,'' a Fox News analyst declared, ''or George Bush loses.''(32)

 

But as the evening progressed, official tallies began to show implausible disparities -- as much as 9.5 percent -- with the exit polls. In ten of the eleven battleground states, the tallied margins departed from what the polls had predicted. In every case, the shift favored Bush. Based on exit polls, CNN had predicted Kerry defeating Bush in Ohio by a margin of 4.2 percentage points. Instead, election results showed Bush winning the state by 2.5 percent. Bush also tallied 6.5 percent more than the polls had predicted in Pennsylvania, and 4.9 percent more in Florida.(33)

 

According to Steven F. Freeman, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in research methodology, the odds against all three of those shifts occurring in concert are one in 660,000. ''As much as we can say in sound science that something is impossible,'' he says, ''it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote count in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error.'' (See The Tale of the Exit Polls)

 

Puzzled by the discrepancies, Freeman laboriously examined the raw polling data released by Edison/Mitofsky in January 2005. ''I'm not even political -- I despise the Democrats,'' he says. ''I'm a survey expert. I got into this because I was mystified about how the exit polls could have been so wrong.'' In his forthcoming book, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count, Freeman lays out a statistical analysis of the polls that is deeply troubling.

 

In its official postmortem report issued two months after the election, Edison/Mitofsky was unable to identify any flaw in its methodology -- so the pollsters, in essence, invented one for the electorate. According to Mitofsky, Bush partisans were simply disinclined to talk to exit pollsters on November 2nd(34) -- displaying a heretofore unknown and undocumented aversion that skewed the polls in Kerry's favor by a margin of 6.5 percent nationwide.(35)

 

Industry peers didn't buy it. John Zogby, one of the nation's leading pollsters, told me that Mitofsky's ''reluctant responder'' hypothesis is ''preposterous.''(36) Even Mitofsky, in his official report, underscored the hollowness of his theory: ''It is difficult to pinpoint precisely the reasons that, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polls than Bush voters.''(37)

 

Now, thanks to careful examination of Mitofsky's own data by Freeman and a team of eight researchers, we can say conclusively that the theory is dead wrong. In fact it was Democrats, not Republicans, who were more disinclined to answer pollsters' questions on Election Day. In Bush strongholds, Freeman and the other researchers found that fifty-six percent of voters completed the exit survey -- compared to only fifty-three percent in Kerry strongholds.(38) ''The data presented to support the claim not only fails to substantiate it,'' observes Freeman, ''but actually contradicts it.''

 

What's more, Freeman found, the greatest disparities between exit polls and the official vote count came in Republican strongholds. In precincts where Bush received at least eighty percent of the vote, the exit polls were off by an average of ten percent. By contrast, in precincts where Kerry dominated by eighty percent or more, the exit polls were accurate to within three tenths of one percent -- a pattern that suggests Republican election officials stuffed the ballot box in Bush country.(39)

 

''When you look at the numbers, there is a tremendous amount of data that supports the supposition of election fraud,'' concludes Freeman. ''The discrepancies are higher in battleground states, higher where there were Republican governors, higher in states with greater proportions of African-American communities and higher in states where there were the most Election Day complaints. All these are strong indicators of fraud -- and yet this supposition has been utterly ignored by the press and, oddly, by the Democratic Party.''

 

The evidence is especially strong in Ohio. In January, a team of mathematicians from the National Election Data Archive, a nonpartisan watchdog group, compared the state's exit polls against the certified vote count in each of the forty-nine precincts polled by Edison/Mitofsky. In twenty-two of those precincts -- nearly half of those polled -- they discovered results that differed widely from the official tally. Once again -- against all odds -- the widespread discrepancies were stacked massively in Bush's favor: In only two of the suspect twenty-two precincts did the disparity benefit Kerry. The wildest discrepancy came from the precinct Mitofsky numbered ''27,'' in order to protect the anonymity of those surveyed. According to the exit poll, Kerry should have received sixty-seven percent of the vote in this precinct. Yet the certified tally gave him only thirty-eight percent. The statistical odds against such a variance are just shy of one in 3 billion.(40)

 

Such results, according to the archive, provide ''virtually irrefutable evidence of vote miscount.'' The discrepancies, the experts add, ''are consistent with the hypothesis that Kerry would have won Ohio's electoral votes if Ohio's official vote counts had accurately reflected voter intent.''(41) According to Ron Baiman, vice president of the archive and a public policy analyst at Loyola University in Chicago, ''No rigorous statistical explanation'' can explain the ''completely nonrandom'' disparities that almost uniformly benefited Bush. The final results, he adds, are ''completely consistent with election fraud -- specifically vote shifting.''

 

II. The Partisan Official

No state was more important in the 2004 election than Ohio. The state has been key to every Republican presidential victory since Abraham Lincoln's, and both parties overwhelmed the state with television ads, field organizers and volunteers in an effort to register new voters and energize old ones. Bush and Kerry traveled to Ohio a total of forty-nine times during the campaign -- more than to any other state.(42)

 

But in the battle for Ohio, Republicans had a distinct advantage: The man in charge of the counting was Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of President Bush's re-election committee.(43) As Ohio's secretary of state, Blackwell had broad powers to interpret and implement state and federal election laws -- setting standards for everything from the processing of voter registration to the conduct of official recounts.(44) And as Bush's re-election chair in Ohio, he had a powerful motivation to rig the rules for his candidate. Blackwell, in fact, served as the ''principal electoral system adviser'' for Bush during the 2000 recount in Florida,(45) where he witnessed firsthand the success of his counterpart Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state who co-chaired Bush's campaign there.(46)

 

Blackwell -- now the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio(47) -- is well-known in the state as a fierce partisan eager to rise in the GOP. An outspoken leader of Ohio's right-wing fundamentalists, he opposes abortion even in cases of rape(48) and was the chief cheerleader for the anti-gay-marriage amendment that Republicans employed to spark turnout in rural counties(49). He has openly denounced Kerry as ''an unapologetic liberal Democrat,''(50) and during the 2004 election he used his official powers to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Ohio citizens in Democratic strongholds. In a ruling issued two weeks before the election, a federal judge rebuked Blackwell for seeking to ''accomplish the same result in Ohio in 2004 that occurred in Florida in 2000.''(51)

 

''The secretary of state is supposed to administer elections -- not throw them,'' says Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat from Cleveland who has dealt with Blackwell for years. ''The election in Ohio in 2004 stands out as an example of how, under color of law, a state election official can frustrate the exercise of the right to vote.''

 

The most extensive investigation of what happened in Ohio was conducted by Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.(52) Frustrated by his party's failure to follow up on the widespread evidence of voter intimidation and fraud, Conyers and the committee's minority staff held public hearings in Ohio, where they looked into more than 50,000 complaints from voters.(53) In January 2005, Conyers issued a detailed report that outlined ''massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio.'' The problems, the report concludes, were ''caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.''(54)

 

''Blackwell made Katherine Harris look like a cupcake,'' Conyers told me. ''He saw his role as limiting the participation of Democratic voters. We had hearings in Columbus for two days. We could have stayed two weeks, the level of fury was so high. Thousands of people wanted to testify. Nothing like this had ever happened to them before.''

 

When ROLLING STONE confronted Blackwell about his overtly partisan attempts to subvert the election, he dismissed any such claim as ''silly on its face.'' Ohio, he insisted in a telephone interview, set a ''gold standard'' for electoral fairness. In fact, his campaign to subvert the will of the voters had begun long before Election Day. Instead of welcoming the avalanche of citizen involvement sparked by the campaign, Blackwell permitted election officials in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo to conduct a massive purge of their voter rolls, summarily expunging the names of more than 300,000 voters who had failed to cast ballots in the previous two national elections.(55) In Cleveland, which went five-to-one for Kerry, nearly one in four voters were wiped from the rolls between 2000 and 2004.(56)

 

There were legitimate reasons to clean up voting lists: Many of the names undoubtedly belonged to people who had moved or died. But thousands more were duly registered voters who were deprived of their constitutional right to vote -- often without any notification -- simply because they had decided not to go to the polls in prior elections.(57) In Cleveland's precinct 6C, where more than half the voters on the rolls were deleted,(58) turnout was only 7.1 percent(59) -- the lowest in the state.

 

According to the Conyers report, improper purging ''likely disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters statewide.''(60) If only one in ten of the 300,000 purged voters showed up on Election Day -- a conservative estimate, according to election scholars -- that is 30,000 citizens who were unfairly denied the opportunity to cast ballots.

 

III. The Strike Force

In the months leading up to the election, Ohio was in the midst of the biggest registration drive in its history. Tens of thousands of volunteers and paid political operatives from both parties canvassed the state, racing to register new voters in advance of the October 4th deadline. To those on the ground, it was clear that Democrats were outpacing their Republican counterparts: A New York Times analysis before the election found that new registrations in traditional Democratic strongholds were up 250 percent, compared to only twenty-five percent in Republican-leaning counties.(61) ''The Democrats have been beating the pants off us in the air and on the ground,'' a GOP county official in Columbus confessed to The Washington Times.(62)

 

To stem the tide of new registrations, the Republican National Committee and the Ohio Republican Party attempted to knock tens of thousands of predominantly minority and urban voters off the rolls through illegal mailings known in electioneering jargon as ''caging.'' During the Eighties, after the GOP used such mailings to disenfranchise nearly 76,000 black voters in New Jersey and Louisiana, it was forced to sign two separate court orders agreeing to abstain from caging.(63) But during the summer of 2004, the GOP targeted minority voters in Ohio by zip code, sending registered letters to more than 200,000 newly registered voters(64) in sixty-five counties.(65) On October 22nd, a mere eleven days before the election, Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett -- who also chairs the board of elections in Cuyahoga County -- sought to invalidate the registrations of 35,427 voters who had refused to sign for the letters or whose mail came back as undeliverable.(66) Almost half of the challenged voters were from Democratic strongholds in and around Cleveland.(67)

 

There were plenty of valid reasons that voters had failed to respond to the mailings: The list included people who couldn't sign for the letters because they were serving in the U.S. military, college students whose school and home addresses differed,(68) and more than 1,000 homeless people who had no permanent mailing address.(69) But the undeliverable mail, Bennett claimed, proved the new registrations were fraudulent.

 

By law, each voter was supposed to receive a hearing before being stricken from the rolls.(70) Instead, in the week before the election, kangaroo courts were rapidly set up across the state at Blackwell's direction that would inevitably disenfranchise thousands of voters at a time(71) -- a process that one Democratic election official in Toledo likened to an ''inquisition.''(72) Not that anyone was given a chance to actually show up and defend their right to vote: Notices to challenged voters were not only sent out impossibly late in the process, they were mailed to the very addresses that the Republicans contended were faulty.(73) Adding to the atmosphere of intimidation, sheriff's detectives in Sandusky County were dispatched to the homes of challenged voters to investigate the GOP's claims of fraud.(74)