HOUDINI

 

Harry Houdini was born as Erik Weisz in Budapest, Hungary, on March 24, 1874. His parents were Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weisz and Cecelia. Houdini and was one of seven children.  The family emigrated to the United States and  arrived on July 3, 1878. They first lived in Appleton and became an American citizen. As a child, Ehrich AKA Harry Weiss took several jobs, making his public début as a 9-year-old trapeze artist, calling himself “Ehrich, the Prince of the Air”. Weiss became a professional magician and called himself “Harry Houdini” after the French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin.

 

Houdini began his magic career in 1891.  At the outset Houdini focused on traditional card tricks and performed in dime museums, sideshows and even circuses, but had little success.

 

Houdini’s “big break” came in 1899 when he performed on the Orpheum vaudeville circuit. In 1900, Houdini toured Europe. He gave a demonstration of escapology at Scotland Yard, and succeeded in baffling the police so effectively that he was booked to perform at the Alhambra theatre for a fixed six months.

 

Houdini toured England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Russia. In each city, he would challenge the police to restrain him with shackles and lock him in their jails. In many of these challenge escapes, Houdini would first be stripped nude and searched. In Moscow, Houdini escaped from a Siberian prison transport van. Houdini claimed that, had he been unable to free himself, he would have had to travel to Siberia, where the only key was kept. In Cologne, he sued a police officer, Werner Graff, who alleged that he made his escapes via bribery. Houdini won the case when he opened the judge’s safe. With his new-found wealth and success, Houdini purchased a dress said to have been made for Queen Victoria. He then arranged a grand reception where he presented his mother in the dress to all their relatives. Houdini said it was the happiest day of his life. In 1904, Houdini returned to the U.S. and purchased a house for $25,000, a brownstone at 278 W. 113th Street in Harlem, New York City.

 From 1907 and throughout the 1910s, Houdini performed with great success in the United States. He would free himself from jails, handcuffs, chains, ropes, and straitjackets, often while hanging from a rope in plain sight of street audiences. Because of imitators, on January 25, 1908, Houdini put his “handcuff act” behind him and began escaping from a locked, water-filled milk can. The possibility of failure and death thrilled his audiences. Houdini also expanded repertoire with his escape challenge act, in which he invited the public to devise contraptions to hold him. These included nailed packing crates (sometimes lowered into water), riveted boilers, wet-sheets, mailbags, and even the belly of a whale that had washed ashore in Boston. Brewers challenged Houdini to escape from a barrel after they filled it with beer in Scranton, PA and other cities.

 

Many of these challenges were pre-arranged with local merchants in what is certainly one of the first uses of mass tie-in marketing. Rather than promote the idea that he was assisted by spirits, as did the Davenport Brothers and others, Houdini’s advertisements showed him making his escapes via dematerializing although Houdini himself never claimed to have supernatural powers.

 

1912, Houdini introduced perhaps his most famous act, the Chinese Water Torture Cell, in which he was suspended upside-down in a locked glass-and-steel cabinet full to overflowing with water. The act required that Houdini hold his breath for more than three minutes. Houdini performed the escape for the rest of his career. Despite two Hollywood movies depicting Houdini dying in the Torture Cell, the act had nothing to do with his death. Throughout his career, Houdini explained some of his tricks in books written for the magic brotherhood. In Handcuff Secrets (1909), he revealed how many locks and handcuffs could be opened with properly applied force, others with shoestring. Other times, he carried concealed lock picks or keys, being able to regurgitate small keys at will. When tied down in ropes or straitjackets, he gained wiggle room by enlarging his shoulders and chest, moving his arms slightly away from his body, and then dislocating his shoulders.[citation needed]

 

His straitjacket escape was originally performed behind curtains, with him popping out free at the end. However, Houdini’s brother, (who was also an escape artist, billing himself as Theodore Hardeen), discovered that audiences were more impressed when the curtains were eliminated so they could watch him struggle to get out. On more than one occasion, they both performed straitjacket escapes whilst dangling upside-down from the roof of a building for publicity.[citation needed]

 For most of his career, Houdini was a headline act in vaudeville. For many years, he was the highest-paid performer in American vaudeville. One of Houdini’s most notable non-escape stage illusions was performed at New York’s Hippodrome Theatre, when he vanished a full-grown elephant (with its trainer) from the stage, beneath which was a swimming pool. In 1923, Houdini became president of Martinka & Co., America’s oldest magic company. The business is still in operation today. He also served as President of the Society of American Magicians (aka S.A.M.) from 1917 until his death in 1926. In the final years of his life (1925/26), Houdini launched his own full-evening show, which he billed as “3 Shows in One: Magic, Escapes, and Fraud Mediums Exposed

 

In 1901, Houdini introduced his own original act, the Milk Can Escape. In this act, Houdini would be handcuffed and sealed inside an over-sized milk can filled with water and make his escape behind a curtain. As part of the effect, Houdini would invite members of the audience to hold their breath along with him while he was inside the can. Advertised with dramatic posters that proclaimed “Failure Means A Drowning Death”, the escape proved to be a sensation. Houdini soon modified the escape to include the milk can being locked inside a wooden chest, being chained or padlocked, and even inside another milk can. Houdini only performed the milk can escape as a regular part of his act for four years, but it remains one of the acts most associated with the escape artist. Houdini’s brother, Theodore Hardeen, continued to perform the milk can (and the wooden chest variation) into the 1940s.

 

In 1912, the vast number of imitators prompted Houdini to replace his Milk Can act with the Chinese Water Torture Cell. In this escape, Houdini’s feet would be locked in stocks, and he would be lowered upside down into a tank filled with water. The mahogany and metal cell featured a glass front, through which audiences could clearly see Houdini. The stocks would be locked to the top of the cell, and a curtain would conceal his escape. In the earliest version of the Torture Cell, a metal cage was lowered into the cell, and Houdini was enclosed inside that. While making the escape more difficult (the cage prevented Houdini from turning), the cage bars also offered protection should the front glass break. The original cell was built in England, where Houdini first performed the escape for an audience of one person as part of a one-act play he called “Houdini Upside Down”. This was so he could copyright the effect and have grounds to sue imitators (which he did). While the escape was advertised as “The Chinese Water Torture Cell” or “The Water Torture Cell”, Houdini always referred to it as “the Upside Down” or “USD”. The first public performance of the USD was at the Circus Busch in Berlin, on September 21, 1912. Houdini continued to perform the escape until his death in 1926. One of Houdini’s most popular publicity stunts was to have himself strapped into a regulation straitjacket and suspended by his ankles from a tall building or crane. Houdini would then make his escape in full view of the assembled crowd. In many cases, Houdini would draw thousands of onlookers who would choke the street and bring city traffic to a halt. Houdini would sometimes ensure press coverage by performing the escape from the office building of a local newspaper. In New York City, Houdini performed the suspended straitjacket escape from a crane being used to build the New York subway. After flinging his body in the air, he escaped from the straitjacket. Starting from when he was hoisted up in the air by the crane, to when the straitjacket was completely off, it took him two minutes and thirty-seven seconds. After being battered against a building in high winds during one escape, Houdini performed the escape with a visible safety wire on his ankle so that he could be pulled away from the building if necessary.

 

Another one of Houdini’s most famous publicity stunts was to escape from a nailed and roped packing crate after it had been lowered into water. Houdini first performed the escape in New York’s East River on July 7, 1912. Police forbade him from using one of the piers, so Houdini hired a tugboat and invited press on board. Houdini was locked in handcuffs and leg-irons, then nailed into the crate which was roped and weighed down with two hundred pounds of lead. The crate was then lowered into the water. Houdini escaped in fifty-seven seconds. The crate was pulled to the surface and found to still be intact with the manacles inside. Houdini would perform this escape many times, and even performed a version on stage, first at Hamerstein’s Roof Garden (where a 5,500-gallon tank was specially built), and later at the New York Hippodrome.

 

Houdini performed at least three variations on a “Buried Alive” stunt/escape during his career. The first was near Santa Ana, California in 1915, and it almost cost Houdini his life. Houdini was buried, without a casket, in a pit of earth six feet deep. He became exhausted and panicky trying to dig his way to the surface and called for help. When his hand finally broke the surface, he fell unconscious and had to be pulled from the grave by his assistants. Houdini wrote in his diary that the escape was “very dangerous” and that “the weight of the earth is killing.”

 

Houdini’s second variation on Buried Alive was an endurance test designed to expose mystical Egyptian performer Rahman Bey, who claimed to use supernatural powers to remain in a sealed casket for an hour. Houdini bettered Bey on August 5, 1926, by remaining in a sealed casket submerged in the swimming pool of New York’s Hotel Shelton for one hour and a half. Houdini claimed he did not use any trickery or supernatural powers to accomplish this feat, just controlled breathing. He repeated the feat at the YMCA in Worcester Massachusetts on September 28, 1926, this time remaining sealed for one hour and eleven minutes.

 

Houdini’s final Buried Alive was an elaborate stage escape that was to feature in his full evening show. The stunt would see Houdini escape after being strapped in a strait-jacket, sealed in a casket, and then buried in a large tank filled with sand. While there are posters advertising the escape (playing off the Bey challenge they boasted “Egyptian Fakirs Outdone!”), it is unclear whether Houdini ever performed Buried Alive on stage. The stunt was to be the feature escape of his 1927 season, but Houdini died on October 31, 1926. The bronze casket Houdini created for Buried Alive was used to transport Houdini’s body from Detroit back to New York following his death on Halloween.

 

In 1906 Houdini started showing films of his outside escapes as part of his vaudeville act. In Boston he presented a short film called Houdini Defeats Hackenschmidt, a famous wrestler of the day. In 1909 Houdini made a film in Paris for Cinema Lux titled Marvelous Exploits of the Famous Houdini in Paris. It featured a loose narrative designed to showcase several of Houdini’s famous escapes, including his straitjacket and underwater handcuff escapes. That same year Houdini got an offer to star as Captain Nemo in a silent version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but the project never made it into production.

 

Neither Houdini’s acting career nor his own film production company FDC found success, and he gave up on the movie business in 1923, complaining that “the profits are too meager”. But his celebrity was such that, years later, he would be given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

 

In 1909, Houdini became fascinated with aviation. He purchased a French Voisin biplane for $5000 and painted his name in bold block letters on the  side panels and tail. After crashing once, he made his first successful flight on November 26, 1909 in Hamburg, Germany. The following year Houdini toured Australia. He brought along his Voisin biplane and made the first powered flight over Australia on March 18 at Diggers Rest, north of Melbourne. Following his Australia tour, Houdini put the Voisin into storage in England. He announced he would use it to fly from city to city during his next Music Hall tour, although Houdini never in fact flew again.

 

Houdini made the only known recordings of his voice on Edison wax cylinders on October 29, 1914, in Flatbush, New York. On them, Houdini practices several different introductory speeches for his famous Chinese Water Torture Cell. He also invites his sister, Gladys, to recite a poem. Houdini then recites the same poem in German. The six wax cylinders were discovered in the collection of magician John Mulholland after his death in 1970. They are part of the David Copperfield collection.

 In the 1920s Houdini turned his energies toward debunking self-proclaimed psychics and mediums, a pursuit that would inspire and be followed by later-day conjurers. Houdini’s training in magic allowed him to expose frauds who had successfully fooled many scientists and academics. He was a member of a Scientific American committee that offered a cash prize to any medium who could successfully demonstrate supernatural abilities. None were able to do so, and the prize was never collected. The first to be tested was medium George Valentine of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. As his fame as a “ghostbuster” grew, Houdini took to attending séances in disguise, accompanied by a reporter and police officer. Possibly the most famous medium whom he debunked was Mina Crandon, also known as “Margery”. Houdini chronicled his debunking exploits in his book, A Magician Among the Spirits. These activities cost Houdini the friendship of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle, a firm believer in Spiritualism during his later years, refused to believe any of Houdini’s exposés. Doyle came to believe that Houdini was a powerful spiritualist medium, and had performed many of his stunts by means of paranormal abilities and was using these abilities to block those of other mediums that he was ‘debunking’. This disagreement led to the two men becoming public antagonists.

 

Before Houdini died, he and his wife, Bess, agreed that if Houdini’s spirit came back to earth, he would utter “Rosabelle believe” as a secret codeword to prove that it was actually him. This was a phrase from a play that Bess performed in when the couple first met. Bess held yearly séances on Halloween for ten years after Houdini’s death, but Houdini’s spirit never appeared. In 1936, after a last unsuccessful séance on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel, she put out the candle that she had kept burning beside a photograph of Houdini since his death, later saying in 1943 that “ten years is long enough to wait for any man.” The tradition of holding a séance for Houdini continues by magicians throughout the world to this day; the Official Houdini Séance is currently organized by Sidney Hollis Radner, a Houdini aficionado from upstate New York. Yearly Houdini Séances are also conducted in Chicago at the Excaliber nightclub by “necromancer” Neil Tobin on behalf of the Chicago Assembly of the Society of American Magicians; and at the Houdini Museum in Scranton by magician Dorothy Dietrich who previously held them at New York’s famous Magic Towne House with such magical notables as Houdini biographers Walter B. Gibson and Milbourne Christopher. Gibson was asked by Bess Houdini to carry on the tradition. Before he died, Walter passed on the tradition to Dorothy Dietrich.

 

Harry Houdini died of peritonitis, secondary to a ruptured appendix on October 31, aged 52. Eyewitnesses to an incident at the Princess Theater in Montreal gave rise to speculation that Houdini’s death was caused by a McGill University student, J. Gordon Whitehead, who delivered multiple blows to Houdini’s abdomen to test Houdini’s claim that he was able to take any blow to the body above the waist without injury. Houdini’s funeral was held on November 4, 1926 in the Machpelah Cemetery, New York with more than 2,000 mourners in attendance.

 

 source        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Houdini

 

The Aqua Marcia

Excuse me for my excess.  I always get excited when I find something with my name on it.  I never heard of another Marcia in my childhood and adolesence and have still only met one other.  I’m 52, so this is dire.  So, I am delighted to find my name in history even though it is thousands of years ago.

The Aqua Marcia was the longest of the 11 aqueducts that supplied the city of ancient Rome. It arose from springs in the Anio valley, near the modern day towns of Arsoli and Agosta and followed an ancient road between Rome and Tivoli called the via Tiburtina. After a journey of over 91 km the aqueduct reached Rome and supplied water to the Viminal Hill, Caelian, Aventine, Palatine, and Capitoline regions of the city.

The Aqua Marcia was constructed between 144 – 140 BC by the Roman Magistrate PraetorQuintus Marcius Rex, after whom it was named. The aqueduct was funded from the spoils from the Roman conquests of Corinth and Carthage during the Third Punic War. The water provided by the Aqua Marcia was an important ingredient allowing Rome’s expansion into a large imperial city.

During its long history it was extended and joined to other aqueducts. One such extension to the Capitoline Hill caused controversy due to a warning in the prophetic Sibylline Books about bringing water there. The aqueduct was repaired on a number of occasions. Both Marcus Agrippa and then later the Emperor Augustus are recorded to have been responsible for renovation works on part of the aqueduct. Augustus also linked it to the Aqua Augusta, which doubled its output. However, in the time of the Emperor Nero the output was reduced to a trickle, having had much of its supply siphoned off by the populace before reaching the city. However, later generations insured the supply was increased again. By the time the distinguished Roman aristocrat Frontinus measured the city’s aqueducts in about 97AD, the Aqua Marcia was supplying 187,600,000 litres a day to the city. This made it the second-greatest source of the city’s water.

The Aqua Marcia can be seen today in various ruins around Rome and its outskirts. The still-functioning Aqua Felice, built in 1586, runs along long stretches of Aqua Marcia’s route.

The Ba, the Ka and the Akh

 

 

In 500 BCE the Greek historian Herodotus travelled extensively through Europe, the Middle East and Africa. On his visit to Egypt he described the people as “the happiest and healthiest of people he had come across.” He attributed this to the metaphysical nature of the Egyptian lifestyle which was extensively expressed in their complex system of beliefs and practices surrounding life and death. He noted that the Egyptians were the most religious people he had ever come across and that no other country had as many monuments and temples as Egypt. 

The Ancient Egyptians believed that the “soul” had three parts, the Ba, the Ka and the Akh.  The Akh was that part more similar to what we now think of as the soul.  It was the part of the person that would go on to live eternally in the heavenly realm known as the “field of reeds” providing they were a good person, otherwise their heart would be consumed by the devourer and their soul destroyed.  The Ka was thought to be a duplicate body, identical to the living body.  After death the Ka would be fed food with the offerings made to the dead and would use the many items left in the tomb.  The Ba was thought to be akin to the personality and would leave the body after death to venture out of the tomb, but would always return to be with the body. 

Today of course we laugh at such primitive and ancient ideas and yet there is some comparison with modern day beliefs and experiences.  Certainly most of the modern day religions, Christianity, Islam, Judaism and the Hindu’s believe the soul like the Akh leaves the body, faces a judgement and if good passes to some form of eternal life in a heavenly realm.  While the modern day description of ghosts is of the appearance of a person acting and looking as they did when they were alive.  This resembles the Egyptian Ka.  The Ba, while not existing in Christian beliefs has a resemblance to the Hindu and Buddhist concept of the Astral body which enables the persons consciousness to leave their body, wander around this and other planes of reality before returning to the body. Near death and out of body experiences also resemble the description of the Ba.  In both experiences people talk of floating or flying above their bodies, which is interesting since the Egyptian Ba is represented as a bird with a human head in Egyptian art.

As to personal experience, I have never seen a ghost but have had a few experiences with a soul. During one of these encounters I experienced a presence of love that resembled the love I had experienced many years before as a young girl when I had a transcendent experience.  I think Christianity would say this soul was in a state of grace.  To my mind it equates with that part of the person that passes on to an eternal state like the Akh.

One of the more puzzling experiences I had was what I can only describe as a very mundane yet peculiar out of body experience.  As a student nurse I was working on the ward one day and went to talk to a patient.  As I was sitting down in the chair next to the bed happily engage in a discussion with the patient I suddenly found myself looking down at the top and back of my head.  I noted that the conversation I was having with the patient continued uninterrupted.  As I watched my body ended the conversation, stood up from the chair and walked across the ward to the nurse’s station. At that point I suddenly found myself back in my body.  I was quite naturally alarmed and confused.  This incident has always puzzled me.  I have heard of out of body experiences and the astral body but had always imagined the body to be asleep or at least motionless when these types of things happened.  However, my experience was that even when I wasn’t in my body, my body seemed quite able to continue with-out me.  Was this, I wonder, the Ba that had left my body?

Ancient Mysteries Bill Ryan (Project Avalon and Camelot)

Over the years I have watched many different programmes and listened to many different shows about a variety of mysterious objects and structures found around the world.  Even the famous late author and scientist Arthur C Clark had a show on Ancient Mysteries. 

I personaly believe that rather than these objects being attributed to visiting aliens or ancient astronaughts we should look closer to home.  I believe that the legend of Atlantis and Lemuria may be just legends, but like many legends echoe faint memories of a distant and yet unrealized past. 

It is my belief that the many mysterious things found around the world point to an advanced ancient culture that once existed.  A question I recently possed on Youtube was whether evolution could have produced more than just two intelligent humanoid species.  The neanderthals were  the result of a seperate evolution to the homosapien.  So, if it could happen twice why not a third time.  Is it possible that way before we became human and before the neanderthal another type of human evolved.  If  they evolved to become sophisticated and technolgical and we at the time were little more than primitive homosapiens or perhaps still more apish than homosapien, then would they have bothered with us and would we have known much about them. 

This documentary once again provides hard physical evidence of something surprisingly sophisticated for it’s age.  The strange shaped skulls that lack the normal seams of a human skull would suggest another humanoid species.  The commentator points out that on the carvings the faces are strangely dissimular to a homosapien, but yet still human.  Could these have been another branch of ancient humans who rose in sophistication and technology only to either die out or destroy themselves, leaving us with little but definate evidence of their existence. 

The Truth of Christianity

I came across this impressive answer to a Yahoo question “What do you know about Jesus?”  I think more than any other answer I ever seen posted this spells out the facts and the truth of Christianity. 

“I know that almost everything that you listed is simply borrowed from some other older Mediterranean basin religion to create a mythology around Jesus.

What you need to remember is that the bible was compiled under the auspices of the roman emperor Constantine in an attempt to bring all of the various belief systems of the empire under a common faith.

The result was to be the universal or catholic faith. The word Catholic is derived from the Greek adjective καθολικός (katholikos), meaning “universal”.

There is nothing wrong with this and I do not mean for it to sound derogatory. You just need to realize that it is an amalgamation of the various faiths and the dogma and theology of these belief systems. Even assuming benevolence on the part of Constantine’s people, making this all make sense would have been a monumental task.

The bible relied heavily on Jewish scripture and the New Testament was highly modified to support Paul’s teachings, which included such localized ideas as blood sacrifices to wash away sins, virgin births and resurrection of deceased deities.

Sadly much of the central part of the Jesus theology was lost in the blended mythology. A mythology was created around a great teacher comparable to the Buddha and he was turned into an amalgam of all of the Mediterranean deities. His teachings on love and non-judgment were all but lost in a maze of judgmental often-vindictive gibberish that he would have never agreed with.

Sadly some of the greatest teachings of all time were all but lost in Rome’s effort to be all thing to all people

Love and blessings Don”

On the Origins of the word “Massacre”

I am at present reading a book entitled The World of Christopher Marlowe by David Riggs.  It is an ineresting read filled with historical fact and detail about life in post-reformation Tudor England.  Christopher Marlowe was a poet and playwrite in Elizabethan England.  Born and brought up in the great cathedral city of Cantebury at a time of religious upheavel the young Marlow was exposed to the horror’s and conflicts of his time. This is reflected in the famous play Dr Faustus and Paradise Lost.  Many of his other plays feature religous conflict ending in death and destruction  and  often included  a bloody massacre that echoed the real life horrifying events that occurred in France when the young Marlow was only eight years old. 

The St Bartholomew’s massacre occured on Sunday 24th August 1572.  On this day the leader of the French Protestants in Paris, Admiral Coligny, was murdered by a band of assassins led by the Catholic Duke of Guise.  The assassines then murdered the remaining Huguenot Protestant leaders.  The city gates of Paris were locked and a rampaging mob set about murdering any and every protestant within the city.  By the end of the month three thousand people were dead and their bodies dumped in the river Seine. Whether it was the sight of these corpses floating down the river or word of mouth news spread of the massacre in Paris and soon the same thing occurred in a dozen other cities through out France. .  In the first two weeks of September a further ten thousand French Protestants were killed through out France. 

Those that could fled accross the Channel to the port of  Dover carrying grusome details of what was occuring in France.  Canterbury, being on the road that travellers took from Dover to London was often a place were people would stop the night before continuing on to London.  Thus the people of Canterbury were well informed about the comings an goings of travellers entering England from accross the channel and news of events occuring in Europe. While the Catholic French King Charles IX encouraged the massacre of his French Protestant subjects Pope Gregory XIII gladly received the disembodied head of Admiral Coligny and held a Te Deum mass with King Phillip of Spain in attendance in celebration of the massacre.

 One particularly horrifying story told by the escaping French refugees was of an event that occurred in the city of  Lyons.  The  Catholic authorities of the city ordered the official executioner and soldiers to execute their Protestant prisoners held in the jail.  When they refussed to carry out the order the authorities gave the task to the cities butchers who dutifully carried out their task using choping knifes and butchers axes.  It is from this incident that the word “massacre” was introduced into the English language by French refugees . Originally a French noun, the word “massacre” referred to a slaughterhouse or butcher’s shambles.

THE ANCIENT GODS OF MODERN DAY

I believe our modern day astronauts who flew the Apollo missions and walked in space and on the moon were the ancient Gods depicted in, amongst other things, the cave art of ancient man. 

 

Erik von Däniken proposed in his book Chariots of the Gods that the Earth had been visited by ancient astronauts and  this is why you find so many ancient depictions on cave walls, ornaments and statues of something that looks remarkably similar to the modern day astronaut. These ancient artistic expressions can be found in South America, Africa and Asia.  The helmeted, bubble headed beings are depicted clearly floating, rather than standing, sitting or swimming.  Sometimes they have pack packs and tubes coming or going from their nose and mouth, sometimes they appear to be holding strange looking tools, while other times they are sitting in a small enclosed capsule in front of what looks like a panel of instruments. 

 

Psychologists, I suppose would say that we interpret what we see in the context of the culture we are most familiar with.  In other words,  we recognize the similarity between things we are familiar with and images or sounds that we have not encountered before.  The human brain is very good at identifying the world around it and when it comes across something new it draws on memory to see if there is anything similar to it.  In a similar way these strange  depictions do bare a resemblance with images of the modern day astronauts that we are so familiar with. 

 

Since the artists are long since dead by a couple of thousand years we can not say for sure what it is that they were trying to depict.  But, it does raise a question.  Where as we would recognise the image of an ancient astronaut in these images because of our familiarity with such images, where did the original artist get their inspiration from?  What inspired them to draw such strange looking figures?

 

I am a proponent of the idea that an ancient and highly sophisticated and technologically advanced civilization such as Atlantis once existed on Earth.  There certainly seems to be many enigmas, ignored by archaeologists that suggest a sophistication of academic and technical knowledge that existed way before our civilization came into existence.  I also believe it is likely that we have been visited by alien travellers long ago and may still be even to this day.  I tend to believe that these were some form of aquatic beings as described by the Dogon tribe of Somalia and other cultures.  The idea of intelligent fish visiting human beings in space ships and claiming they came from a distant star, in the case of the Dogon’s, Sirius B, is too ridiculous to make up.  But maybe I’m not giving enough credit to human imagination.  Whatever, I can understand why they would visit a planet covered with 75% water.  They must have been terribly disappoint when they found us!

 

Whether we were visited by ancient astronauts in the form of fish, lizards, tall grey men or what ever, is something  I am not sure about.  I believe we were visited rather than know.  What I am absolutely sure about however,  is that I on occasion get to see the future.  I have premonitions and have always had premonitions from the time I was a small child.  Most are so fleeting that I can’t take in what it is that I’m seeing and hearing, feeling, knowing etc.  But, many have been clear enough for me to realise exactly what I was seeing.  Even then, with out being in context, the premonition may not mean anything.  Yes, I am the one who had the premonition of Princess Diana’s funeral and wrote about it six years before it happened, and embarrassingly interpreted what I was seeing as a bizarre music video by Elton John.  However, when the actual event occurred the many who had read my description were able to recognize it easily.  Well, maybe I’m just a twat or not very good at interpreting things that are not in context.  So, have a little sympathy with me, I’M NOT PERFECT! and isn’t that obvious.

 

I do, however believe the ability to see the future is as old as the hills.  There are certainly enough legends going back through mans history from all over the world to suggest this ability was known by most human beings through out most of our history.   I tend to believe the ability was stronger or more developed in ancient people who worked closer with nature and had more time for the more subtle aspects of the world around them.  Where as most people today would not be able to tell you what stars are in the sky at Autumn or what is the first sign that Winter is coming to an end, our ancestors were very much more aware of their world.  However, because of the unknown nature of this ability it is easy to imagine our ancestors attributing it to God.  I think the old prophets of the Bible is a case of mistaken identity.  Premonitions were mistaken for prophecy’s given specifically by God. 

 

I think there is a possibility that ancient people had premonitions reaching far into the future.  It is not unthinkable to suggest that these people might have had visions or dreams about the Astronauts that manned the Apollo missions.  What would they have made of such images?  What would they have thought they were looking at.  These strange creatures with the faces of humans, bubble heads and strongly bulky bodies floated around or jumped incredible distances in strange looking places,  sat in small flying houses twiddling an odd array of objects in front of them.  They obviously couldn’t be humans, no humans looked like that.  The belief that premonitions and strange dreams are sent by God would therefore lead to the conclusion that these must be the images of Gods. 

 

Today, we are very matter of fact about the technology we have around us.  That man has travelled to the moon and even walked on it’s surface is something of history.  The astronauts, now long since retired from the space programme are some of the bravest and most adventurous  men in modern history, risking everything to go where no man has gone before.  They should be amongst the most respected and honoured of all the worlds citizens, yet, that is not the world we live in and many would rather meet the actors of fantasy films about space adventures rather than the thrill of meeting the real thing. 

It is however my postulation that, as ignored as they are today in our superficial society, once long ago Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Alan Shepherd and a dozen other brave men were worshiped by ancient cultures as Gods under many different names and depicted on the many cave walls, ornaments and statues riding their Chariot of the Gods.

Enigma of the Piri Reis Map

Islam and the culture of the Middle East are inextricably entwined and in the minds of many Westerners inseparable.  It is a sad reflection then that the reputation of both Islam and Middle Eastern culture has been reduced to the visage of the fundamentalist terrorist and their actions.   

The history and culture of the Middle East extends over millennia and includes many tribal traditions and faiths as well as the ancient history of Judaism, the early stirrings of Christianity and a thousand years of Islam. 

I am neither an historian nor anthropologist.  I have never been to the Middle East nor had many contacts with people from that region.  Like everyone else I only know what I can see on the news, read in the newspaper or learn from books and documentaries. 

From these sources I understand that the growth of Islam brought with it the development of a culturally rich society that expressed itself in impressive architecture, art and science. 

 

“A century after the death of Muhammad, an Islamic empire extended from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to Central Asia in the east. The subsequent empires of the Umayyads, Abbasids, the Fatimids, the Mughals, the Safavids, and Ottomans were among the largest and most powerful in the world. The Islamic civilization gave rise to many centers of culture and science and produced notable scientists, astronomers, mathematicians, doctors, nurses and philosophers during the Golden Age of Islam. Technology flourished; there was much investment in economic infrastructure, such as irrigation systems and canals; and especially, the importance of reading the Qur’an produced a comparatively high level of literacy in the general populace.”                               

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_history

Today we have many impressive artefacts of antiquity from that time. There are still in existence a variety of  ancient maps created by the Islamic mariners that document in great detail the regions of exploration and conquest. Many of these ancient maps are accredited to Piri Reis including the enigmatic map that shows the coast line of Antarctica.   Enigmatic because no human has ever seen this coast line which has been hidden by millions of years of ice.  With out the use of modern satellite technology it is impossible to map the hidden Antarctic coast line and yet this ancient map does just that.

 

 

 

 

 

The following is an article from an excellent web site called 

 

WORLD-MYSTERIES.COM

url:   http://www.world-mysteries.com/new_sar_1.shtml

 

In 1929, a group of historians found an amazing map drawn on a gazelle skin.

Research showed that it was a genuine document drawn in 1513 by Piri Reis, a famous admiral of the Turkish fleet in the sixteenth century.  

His passion was cartography. His high rank within the Turkish navy allowed him to have a privileged access to the Imperial Library of Constantinople.

The Turkish admiral admits in a series of notes on the map that he compiled and copied the data from a large number of source maps, some of which dated back to
the fourth century BC or earlier.  

The Controversy 

The Piri Reis map shows the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of Antarctica. The northern coastline of Antarctica is perfectly detailed. The most puzzling however is not so much how Piri Reis managed to draw such an accurate map of the Antarctic region 300 years before it was discovered, but that the map shows the coastline under the ice. Geological evidence confirms that the latest date Queen Maud Land could have been charted in an ice-free state is 4000 BC. 

The official science has been saying all along that the ice-cap which covers the Antarctic is million years old.
The Piri Reis map shows that the northern part of that continent has been mapped before the ice did cover it. That should make think it has been mapped million years ago, but that’s impossible since mankind did not exist at that time.

Further and more accurate studies have proven that the last period of ice-free condition in the Antarctic ended about 6000 years ago. There are still doubts about the beginning of this ice-free period, which has been put by different researchers everything between year 13000 and 9000 BC.
The question is: Who mapped the Queen Maud Land of Antarctic 6000 years ago? Which unknown civilization had the technology or the need to do that?

It is well-known that the first civilization, according to the traditional history, developed in the mid-east around year 3000 BC, soon to be followed within a millennium by the Indus valley and the Chinese ones. So, accordingly, none of the known civilizations could have done such a job. Who was here 4000 years BC, being able to do things that NOW are possible with the modern technologies?

Anne Frank Remembered Clip

Anne Frank Remembered Clip

Shared via AddThis

 

Thank you to  Arutz Sheva for the clip   

 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/132923. 

As a teenager I attended Oriel girls school in Rhodesia.  I remember going to a school play one evening.  It was the story of Anne Frank.  I was both impressed, intrigued and saddened at the story that was enacted before my eyes. 

 

 

As a child of the sixty’s, born just 15 years after the end of the Second World War I was remarkably ignorant about the war that devistated so much of the world and the holocaust that took so many lives.  I learned nothing about it in school and this play, along with various hellfire and glory movies were the only things to informing me about this tragic part of  history.  I think perhaps the world was trying to heal itself by forgetting what had happened.  It certainly wasn’t being openly discussed or was it that the adults were trying to keep the shocking, bitter truth from their children and preserve the innocence of childhood?  I saw war movies for what they were, making something very nasty into something exciting and even glorious.  I was not a man or a soldier but  a little girl just like Anne Frank. 

I think her story touched me because I came to know about her when I was the same age as she would have been.  Like her, as well, I kept a diary from the age of eleven onwards and like her I shared my thoughts, feelings, dreams and hopes for the future with the little book.  Although from a different time and place we would have shared many similarities as all young girls do.  The play being done by and presented in a school was the story of a child, a young girl and a human being and yet I do think of her as a hero, my hero.  She didn’t fight in any wars or save the world but fought a kind of a battle for her own survival.  Sadly she lost and what she experienced in those last days or weeks of her life in the concentration camp was also lost with her death.  But, we still have her to remember through her writing, a very personal, innocent and honest account of her trials and tribulations.  I believe I not only saw the play but read a book about her as well as seeing a film made many years ago. Now she is remembered through the film and book based on her diary; a German postage stamp commemorates her would be 80th birthday; a pink rose Soverneir  d Anne Frank is named after her and in her home town a small statue remembers her.    She has become somewhat of an icon amongst the many who died in the Holocaust.  But, no drama or account can ever bring close the atrocity of what we today remember distantly as the holocaust. The numers and events too catastrophic to envisage but made a little comprehensible by the account of one sadly missed young girl.

The facts of the holocaust of which she was a victim are accounted in Wikipaedea as follows

The Holocaust (from the Greek ὁλόκαυστον (holókauston): holos, “whole” and kaustos, “burnt”), also known as The Shoah (Hebrew: השואה, Latinized ha’shoah; Yiddish: חורבן, Latinized churben or hurban^[2]) is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, a program of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, its allies, and collaborators.^[3] Some scholars maintain that the definition of the Holocaust should also include the Nazis’ systematic murder of millions of people in other groups, including ethnic Poles, the Romani, Soviet civilians, Soviet prisoners of war, people with disabilities, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other political and religious opponents.^[4] By this definition, the total number of Holocaust victims is between 11 million and 17 million people.^[5]

 

The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages. Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labor until they died of exhaustion or disease. Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings. Jews and Romani were crammed into ghettos before being transported by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were killed in gas chambers. Every arm of Nazi Germany‘s bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called “a genocidal state”.^[6]

 ^{From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust}

^{May we never forget}

 

Sacajawea

Sacajawea was born on the banks of the River Lemhi,  in the northern reaches of the Rocky Mountains, in an area now called Idaho in 1788.  Her Shoshone name was Bo-I-Naiv meaning Grass Woman. As a member of the Lemhi tribe of the Northern Shoshone Nation her life as a female was hard.  Women had little respect and were expected to do all the physical work, while the men of the tribe would hunt and pursue leisurely activities.  The philosophy of the tribe allowed women to be beaten and physically abused, but would not behave this way to the males, since they believed it would undermine the spirit of the young braves.  

 

Having experienced a long period of frequent raids by other native Indians her tribe had become decimated and very poor.  One winter, during the fall of 1800, while wintering near the three forks of the Missouri River, in what is now Montana, Sacajawea was captured by a band of Minnetaree Indians from the Hidatsa village. While most of her tribe were killed, she and other women were captured and sold as slaves to the Mandan Indians.  The girls’ new master, Red Arrow treated them kindly, like his own daughters. However, one day, Red Arrow lost the girls in a game of chance to a French-Canadian fur trader named Troussaint Charbonneau. Bo-I Naiv and another native woman of her tribe called Otter Woman were taken to live amongst the Mandan Indians with Charbonneau and his wife.  Charbonneau’s wife had been ill for some time and on her death, Bo-I Naiv and Otter Woman became his  wife’s.  From that time on Bo-I Naiv was called Tsakakawea, which means Bird Woman.  

 

In 1803 America purchased the unexplored state of Louisiana from the French.  The then President Thomas Jefferson argued with congress for funding for an exploration of the North West Pacific, hoping to find a passable water route across the continent to the Pacific Ocean.  Once the funding was granted he appointed Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to head the expedition.  In May of 1804 they started out from Fort Dubois, Illinois. As well as Lewis and Clark, The Corps of Discovery  were accompanied by a troop of fourteen soldiers, nine frontiersmen, Clark’s servant, York, a couple of boatmen and a Newfoundland dog called Seaman.  In the winter of 1804–05, the party built Fort Mandan, near present-day Washburn, North Dakota. It was here that they first met Sacajawea. Toussaint Charbonneau offered the services of himself and his wife as a translator and guide to the expedition. Although six months pregnant and only fifteen years old, they welcomed the young woman as a valuable asset, since they would be exploring the region from which she had originally come.  Before continuing, Captain Lewis, who acted as the Doctor for the expedition, assisted Sacajawea in the birth of her first child, administering rattlesnake venom to ease her labour. The baby, named Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, called Pomp or Pompy by Sacajawea, was born healthy and active.

 

Together with Lewis and Clark and a party of thirty or so soldiers, Sacajawea, with her husband and baby, set out on the expedition that would take them 8000 miles over a period of 2 years, 4 months and 10 days, by foot, canoe and horse, through unknown lands with hostile natives to search out a route to the Pacific and so strengthen the American claim to the Oregon territory; and to explore the country of the Far West and gather information about the indigenous tribes of that region.  During the expedition many of the its members kept diaries of their adventure and often referred to Tsakakawea and how beneficial her presence was to the survival and success of their expedition, actively helping them find edible plants and roots; track and hunt game; and trade and negotiate with the Shoshone and Nez Perce for information, food, horses, various  needed supplies and safe passage.   An extract from one of the journals gives an account of an incident that occurred on May 14, 1805  which was typical of the calmness and self-possession Sacajawea was to display throughout the journey. It was recorded that the boat Sacajawea was in was hit by a sudden storm. In danger of capsizing, the other members of the crew worked desperately to right the boat, while Sacajawea, with her baby strapped to her back, busied herself with retrieving the valuable books whose loss would have brought their mission to an end.   It is also recorded how they met Chief Cameahwait or Black Bow.  The Shoshone chief, and long lost brother of Sacajawea, agreed to sell the party the horses they needed for the trek through the mountains. He also sketched a map of the country to the west and provided a guide, Old Toby, who took them through the mountains and safely to the Nez Perce country where they resumed their journey by river.  Sacagawea maintained a “helpful, uncomplaining attitude of cheerfulness in the face of hardship.” This was commented on in all the men’s diaries. The only record of her complaining is when she was denied the opportunity to see a beached whale 35 miles from the fort where they had their winter camp on the Columbia River. Nearby Indians reported that the whale had washed up on the beach. about.  Sacajawea said that she had “travelled a long way to see the great waters and, now that a monstrous fish was also to be seen, she thought it “very hard” that she could not be permitted to see it, and the ocean too.”  However, she got her wish and Captain Clark took a party of two canoes, including Sacajawea and her husband, to find the whale and possibly obtain some blubber. By the time they arrived there was nothing left but the skeleton, but they were able to buy about 35 pounds of blubber.

 

In the summer of 1806, the expedition was over,  Sacajawea, her husband and son remained at Fort Mandan where Lewis and Clark had found them. In August 1806, Captain Clark wrote to Charbonneau and invited him to come to St. Louis, they accepted the offer and lived near St. Louis for a time. In March 1811, however, Charbonneau sold his land back to Clark and returned to the Dakotas with Sacajawea. Their son  remained in St. Louis in the care of Cpt. Clark, who was the Indian Agent of the Louisiana Purchase at that time.   The exact date and place of Sacajawea’s death is uncertain.  One rumour claims she died young in the  near by  Ft. Manuel.  The local clerk recorded the death of a young Shoshone squaw, wife to Charbonneau, who left a baby girl to the care of Cpt. Clark. However, the  Shoshones say that Sacajawea stayed with her husband among the Mandan Indians for many years, while others say she left him soon after the expedition, because he took another wife.   It is believed that afterwards she married a Comanche man named Jerk Meat.  After his death she returned to her own people at the Wind River reservation, where her son Jean Baptiste and adopted son Bazil were living.   Interestingly enough, the claims that she returned to her native tribe and died a venerable and honoured member are supported by the historical fact of a woman named Porivo, who was known to have lived amongst the tribe at that time.  Porivo, which means “chief”,  is reported to have worn a Jefferson medal, knew French, and knew details of the expedition. Those around her believed her to be Sacajawea, who was know to be the sister of the Shoshone chief Black Bow. When she died in 1884 at the age of nearly 100, she was the last survivor of the expedition. The Grave of Sacajawea is located in the Shoshone Cemetery at Fort Washakie, Wyoming, and next to it is a monument to her first son Jean Baptiste. During editing of the expedition journals her name was changed to Sacajawea, and this was the spelling etched on monuments dedicated to her.