Lady Gaga: A jerky aftermath



Bison Bull  (Public Domain)

We’ve come a long way (in an irreverent direction) since the days when hunting was considered to be a sacred activity.

Artemis (Diana) was considered by the ancient Greeks and Romans to be the goddess of the hunt.  At the same time, she was thought to be the goddess of wild animals and the wilderness.  By modern standards this might seem contradictory - but ancestral religions often paid homage to the sacrificial gifts of those
they hunted.

When the Native Americans hunted the buffalo, they greatly honored its essence.  According to the Nature  documentary,  American Buffalo: Spirit of a Nation, reverence for the bison was at the forefront of the Lakota hunting tradition.  Lakota tribe member Luther Standing Bear is quoted as saying:  The Indian was frugal in the midst of plenty.  When the buffalo roamed the plains in multitudes, he slaughtered only what he could eat and these he used to the hair and bones.

Neo-Pagans often nurture this same type of gratitude for nature’s gifts.  In November 2010, Nels Linde

presented their philosophy in his article, Pagans Hunting, A Sacred Way.  He describes the first day of deer-hunting season as “a time of purification and blessing, prayer and thanksgiving.”  One of the Pagan hunters whom he interviewed sees himself as part of the grand “circle of life.”  This hunter explains:  The
deer eat the vegetation, I eat the deer, and eventually I will go back and feed that vegetation with my remains.  He contemplates this animal’s beauty, even while hunting it.  Artemis also favored deer, and
is often depicted with one.

And then there’s Lady Gaga…  She’s back in the headlines (as if she ever left them) because her infamous meat-dress made it to the top of Time Magazine’s 2010 fashion list.  Although she claims that this meat-dress has served some sort of altruistic purpose - to many it seems far more jerky than quirky.

Resources

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/gossip/2010/12/lady-gaga-meat-dress-fashion-statement.html

http://www.rightcelebrity.com/?p=10226

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1647732/20100913/lady_gaga.jhtml

http://pncminnesota.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/pagans-hunting-%E2%80%93-a-sacred-way/

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/american-buffalo-spirit-of-a-nation/introduction/2183/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis

Copyright December 17, 2010 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved 

Ashura: On the Tenth Day of Muharram

Husayn ibn Ali standing before Yasid's army

Muharram is the first month of the Islamic calendar, and Ashura is the tenth day of that month. 

Besides Ramadan, Muharram is considered to be the  most sacred month of the year.  Fighting is prohibited, and the Day of Ashura is especially honored.

It is a Sunni Muslim belief that Prophet Musa (Moses) and the Israelites were victorious over the Egyptian

Pharoah on this day.  Muhammad fasted on Ashura because of this, and asked others to do the same.  He

called for an additional day of fasting (either right before or right after Ashura) in order to distinguish Muslims from Jews who were fasting on Ashura for the same reason.

Muslims also honor the martyrdom of Muhammad’s grandson, Husayn ibn Ali, on this holy day.  He was

killed on the tenth day of Muharram in the year 61 AH (680 CE) for refusing to give allegiance to Caliph Yazid I (whom he considered to be openly defiant of Islam).  Knowing full well what awaited him, but faithfully believing that it was nevertheless necessary, Husayn ibn Ali deliberately went before the Caliph’s army.  His group of 72 family members and supporters (including women, children, and the elderly) were slaughtered by Yazid’s 100,000-strong army.  Their bodies were then deliberately mutilated.

This Battle of Karbala took place in what is now Iraq, and is commemorated by both the Shi’ah and the Sunnis.  Both groups fast during part or all of the first ten days of Muharram.  It is considered to be a period of remembrance and mourning.  Some also believe that the world will one day come to an end on the Tenth of Muharram.

Resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_Ashura

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Karbala

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muharram

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Muharram

Copyright Decembeer 16, 2010 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved 



J. Paul Getty: Money ain't honey, but it sure is sticky

According to Jesus, it’s harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.  From the sorry sound of John Paul Getty’s voluminous commentary, it seems equally hard for a rich man to remain here on earth.

First off, you never really know who your friends are.  Would they still seem so fond of you if the many zeros on your billion-dollar credit statement were suddenly reduced to one?  Secondly, even dining out becomes a chore.  That’s because the often-inflated check is always handed to the alleged “big spender.”  Finally, there are all those requests for help to contend with.  Can’t people just understand that having a thousand (or million) times more than average is still no guarantee that there’s enough to go around…

Such were oft-repeated complaints of this richest man of his day.  However, there must have been something to this “rich” stuff because Getty sure did lay up those earthly treasures.  While bemoaning that “a billion dollars isn’t worth what it used to be,” he still found ways to squeeze each greenback until it turned gold.  One major way was to make business the top priority of his life (which negatively impacted each of his five marriages).  One wife was quoted as saying that business was Getty’s first love.  Getty himself said: 

A lasting relationship with a woman is only possible if you are a business failure.

Like Benjamin Franklin (another self-made tycoon), Getty believed that “a penny saved is a penny earned.”  He would wait on reduced-fee lines, and would pride himself upon washing his own socks.  Also like Franklin, Getty gave plenty of advice.  Since misery loves company, most of it concerned “how to be rich.”  For those who weren’t already rich, he offered this fail-safe formula:  Rise early.  Work hard.  Strike oil.

And then what?

Getty died of a heart attack at the age of 83.  All of his money (and preoccupation with health foods) couldn’t prevent that.  Hopefully, some of that cherished oil greased the needle’s eye just enough to allow him to slip through.

Resources

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1215.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Paul_Getty

Copyright December 15, 2010 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved

Nostradamus: Jewish ancestral mysteries

Michel de Nostredame has been closely associated with mysteries for centuries.



Michel de Nostredame

Some say they have no idea how Nostradamus could have predicted Hitler, Napoleon I, the Great Fire of London, the French Revolution, and even 9/11.  Others say that the only mystery about these so-called predictions is that so many believe them to be authentic.

Greater even than these mysteries might be the unsolved ones concerned Nostradamus’ own life.  Although biographers seem to agree that he was born in the year 1503, they can’t seem to agree upon what day.  Some say December 14^th -  others wonder whether it wasn’t the 19^th instead.  However, what allegedly occurred before his birth is even more mysterious.

Nostradamus lived during the era of the Inquisitions.  He himself was always afraid of being persecuted and/or killed.  Perhaps this fear was deeply rooted in his ancestral past.  Some say that both his parents were Jews who would have been murdered had they not converted to Catholicism.  All agree that his father definitely was threatened in this manner.

The plot then dramatically thickens.  The Jewish ancestors of Michel de Nostradame are said to be descendants of the lost Tribe of Issachar.  The Tribe of Issachar was one of the 12 original Israelite tribes – and was named after Jacob’s ninth son, Issachar.  (Even the name Issachar is mysterious – it literally means “man of hire,” which many think refers to the hiring of Jacob’s sexual favors by Issachar’s mother, Leah.  Some skeptics even refer to this as the very first “sex for drugs” deal since Leah traded an hallucinogenic mandrake for this interlude with Jacob.)

The territory of the Tribe of Issachar was eventually conquered by the Assyrians.  However, the Issachar reputation for religious scholarship and prophecy has remained throughout the ages, and is considered to be a link to Nostradamus’ own mysterious talents.

Resources

http://www.fortunesnow.com/newsite/library/nostra.asp

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/nostradamus.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostradamus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe_of_Issachar

http://www.theskepticalreview.com/tsrmag/1front97.html

Copyright 2010 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved 

I Am's number four

Whereas Descartes said “I think, therefore I am” – Yahweh said “I am that I am.”  No qualifications.  He simply is, was, and shall be.



Tetragrammaton

In the universe of this “I Am” Lord, the number four is said to have great significance.  Yahweh’s own name is signified by the Tetragrammaton (from the Greek:  meaning a word that has four letters) Y H W H (from the four Hebrew letters:  Yodh, He, Waw, He).  In Latin, these four letters become I H V H – in Dutch, German, and French they become J H W H – and in English, they often become J H V H (as in Jehovah).  In the Hebrew Bible, this Tetragrammaton first appears in Genesis 2:4, and then repeats more than 6,000 times throughout the text.

There are numerous other groupings of four throughout the Hebrew Bible.  Genesis 2:10 tells about the river of Eden dividing into four branches.  Ezekiel 1:10 describes four cherubim with four faces each (that of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle).  Daniel 7:2-3 speaks of the four winds of heaven and the four great beasts from the sea.

The significance of four continues in the New Testament.  There are four Gospels:  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Revelation 6:1-8 tells of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (riding on white, red, black and pale horses).  The four cherubim are said to reappear throughout Revelation 5.

Other religions also uphold the number four.  Islam has four archangels:  Jibrail (Gabriel) who revealed the Qur’an to Muhammad; Mikail (Michael) who doles out rewards to good people; Israfil (Raphael) who signals the coming of Judgment Day; and Izra’il (Azrael) who is the angel of death.  Buddhism has the Four

Noble Truths (regarding the nature of - and liberation from - suffering).  Hinduism has the Purusarthas (four aims of life).

Resources

http://www.biblestudy.org/bibleref/meaning-of-numbers-in-bible/4.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_(number)

http://www.themeaningofislam.org/beliefs/angels/archangels.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetragrammaton

Copyright December 13, 2010 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved



Titanic: A lot like Ozymandias

In this dog-eat-dog world, even the high and mighty are one day reduced to hamburger.



Look... and despair! (Photo by Hajor)

Percy Bysshe Shelley gave this a poetic nod in his 1818 sonnet Ozymandias.  Ozymandias, aka Ramesses the Great – famous Egyptian pharoah, was considered to be a god after the first 30 years of his reign.  He went on to complete 66 years as pharaoh - and is credited with bringing peace, prosperity, and power to Egypt.  Ramesses had a penchant for building monuments – and lots of them.  The bigger the better…

He hadn’t yet realized the harsh reality of “the bigger they are, the harder they fall”  – an egoic ignorance revealed by his added inscription to the east side of the already-renowned Heliopolis obelisk:  …Ramses (II), who has made his monuments like the stars of heaven, whose works mingle with the sky, rejoicing over which Re rises in his house of millions of years…

If the Egyptian sun-god Re is, indeed, rejoicing over Ramesses’ work – the monuments haven’t reflected this for a good long while.  Although they were supposedly made “like the stars of heaven,” they certainly haven’t lasted as long.  Chunks of them can be found in the British Museum, which is where Shelley is said to have gotten his inspiration for the poem.

Shelley’s poem mocks the arrogance of such self-glorification, and highlights the fleeting nature of all temporal things.  In more recent times, the Titanic was thought to be another indestructible monument.  Not only has it long ago also fallen, but its remains are now being eaten by the very lowest of the food chain -  a newly-discovered, rust-eating bacterium appropriately dubbed Halomonas titanicae.

Resources



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1336542/Halomonas-titanicae-New-rust-eating-bacteria-destroying-wreck-Titanic.html

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1904.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesses_II

http://books.google.com/books?id=7xVyAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA229&lpg=PA229&dq=ramses+statue+inscription&source=bl&ots=LUcwdJpZoF&sig=43d8CZH-K5pD_lo3rhYvh215jpI&hl=en&ei=rhIETaWoJ8H_lgfE5tz4CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=ramses%20statue%20inscription&f=false

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliopolis_(ancient)

Copyright December 12, 2010 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved





Barbara Ehrenreich: Smiling is highly overrated

According to Barbara Ehrenreich, positive thinking has long ago reached cult status in America.

Try this experiment:  The next time someone swats you with a bright and cheery “How are you?” – grimace, then look them straight in the eye.  Carefully note how few seconds it takes for that person to suddenly have somewhere else to be.  Perhaps it was the eye contact.  More likely it was the discomfort with anything less than a chirpy “Fine!”

In the introduction to her book, Blind-sided:  How positive thinking is undermining America, Ehrenreich

masterfully points out the difference between actual hope and pumped-up optimism.  Whereas she defines

“hope” as “an emotion, a yearning, the experience of which is not entirely within our control,” she defines

“optimism” as a “cognitive stance, a conscious expectation, which presumably anyone can develop through practice.”  Emphasis on presumably…

So what’s so bad about standing in front of a mirror and brushing up on one’s smile – not through flossing,

but through the presumed power of continuously telling oneself:   I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…

Unfortunately, proclaimed practices of this kind have resulted more in “little engines that should” than in

“little engines that could.”  Where did this prevalent belief (that it’s one’s duty as an American to think and act positively even - and especially - when everyday reality suggests otherwise) begin?

Ehrenreich points to 19^th-century religion as a cornerstone of this trend.  Whereas transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau began opening people’s minds to the vast possibilities of the Universe, many religionists soon began funneling this expanded consciousness into self-serving channels.  This eventually culminated in the “prosperity” doctrines that are so prominent today – the ones that often seem so diametrically opposed to Christ’s own teachings.

Resources

http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/brightsidedexcerpt.htm

Copyright December 11, 2010 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved