Natural Born Mystic™. Ascension Discourse on Love Pt XVll. The Empathy Series. Sacred Farewell/The Return. Amera Ziganii Rao

The Love Xll Pt ll (Artwork) 

Natural Born Mystic™. Ascension Discourse on Love Pt XVll. The Empathy Series. Sacred Farewell/The Return. Amera Ziganii Rao 

Quotes 

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.  Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Sometimes when a person means that much to you, not even the truth can change your mind. Lovelace Furlong 

Dare to be imperfect and one day there will tug at your sleeve a soulmate. ~ Robert Brault 

A lady is a lady not by the way she acts. A lady is a lady by the way she is treated. ~ Unknown 

The wound is the place where the Light enters you. ~ Rumi 

In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit. Anne Frank. The Diary of Anne Frank 

"America is the land of the uncommon man (woman). It is the land where man (woman) is free to develop his (her) genius—and to get its just rewards. It is the land where each man (woman) tries to develop whatever quality he (she) may possess and to rise to whatever degree he (she) can, great or modest. It is not the land where one glories or is taught to glory in one’s mediocrity. No self-respecting man (woman) in America is or thinks of himself (herself) as “little,” no matter how poor he (she) may be." | Screen Guide For Americans. Ayn Rand 

Start from wherever you are and with whatever you've got. Jim Rohn 

You are to become a creator, not a competitor, you are going to get what you want, but in such a way that when you get it every other man (woman) will have more than he (she) has now. Wallace D Wattles

Rumi Quotes 

The minute I heard my first love story,

I started looking for you, not knowing

how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,

they're in each other all along.

From Essential Rumi

by Coleman Barks

Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity.

The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death.

Tomorrow, when resurrection comes,

The heart that is not in love will fail the test.

From Thief of Sleep

by Shahram Shiva

When I am with you, we stay up all night,

When you're not here, I can't get to sleep.

Praise God for these two insomnias!

And the difference between them.

From Essential Rumi

by Coleman Barks 

Suddenly the drunken sweetheart appeared out of my door.

She drank a cup of ruby wine and sat by my side.

Seeing and holding the lockets of her hair

My face became all eyes, and my eyes all hands.

From Thief of Sleep

by Shahram Shiva 

I have phrases and whole pages memorized,

but nothing can be told of love.

You must wait until you and I

are living together.

In the conversation we'll have 

then...be patient...then.

From Essential Rumi

by Coleman Barks 

When the sweet glance of my true love caught my eyes,

Like alchemy, it transformed my copper-like soul.

I searched for Him with a thousand hands,

He stretched out His arms and clutched my feet.

From Thief of Sleep

by Shahram Shiva 

With the Beloved's water of life, no illness remains

In the Beloved's rose garden of union, no thorn remains.

They say there is a window from one heart to another

How can there be a window where no wall remains?

From Thief of Sleep

by Shahram Shiva 

A Smile and A Gentleness

There is a smile and a gentleness

inside. When I learned the name

and address of that, I went to where

you sell perfume. I begged you not 

to trouble me so with longing. Come

out and play! Flirt more naturally.

Teach me how to kiss. On the ground

a spread blanket, flame that's caught

and burning well, cumin seeds browning,

I am inside all of this with my soul.

From Essential Rumi

by Coleman Barks 

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,

absentminded. Someone sober

will worry about things going badly.

Let the lover be.

From Essential Rumi

by Coleman Barks 

When your chest is free of your limiting ego,

Then you will see the ageless Beloved.

You can not see yourself without a mirror;

Look at the Beloved, He is the brightest mirror.

From Thief of Sleep

by Shahram Shiva 

The Freshness

When it's cold and raining,

you are more beautiful.

And the snow brings me

even closer to your lips.

The inner secret, that which was never born,

you are that freshness, and I am with you now.

I can't explain the goings,

or the comings. You enter suddenly,

and I am nowhere again.

Inside the majesty.

From Soul of Rumi

by Coleman Barks 

When you find yourself with the Beloved, embracing for one breath,

In that moment you will find your true destiny.

Alas, don't spoil this precious moment

Moments like this are very, very rare.

From Thief of Sleep

by Shahram Shiva 

Your love lifts my soul from the body to the sky

And you lift me up out of the two worlds.

I want your sun to reach my raindrops,

So your heat can raise my soul upward like a cloud.

From Thief of Sleep

by Shahram Shiva 

Some Kiss We Want

There is some kiss we want with 

our whole lives, the touch of 

spirit on the body. Seawater

begs the pearl to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately

it needs some wild darling! At

night, I open the window and ask

the moon to come and press its

face against mine. Breathe into

me. Close the language- door and

open the love window. The moon

won't use the door, only the window.

From Soul of Rumi

by Coleman Barks 

I am filled with you. Skin, blood, bone, brain and soul. There's no room for lack of trust, or trust. Nothing in this existence but that existence. 

Rumi 

The Love Xl (Artwork) 

Rumi 

....he was "not a prophet — but surely, he has brought a scripture".....

....The nation of Love has a different religion of all religions — For lovers, God alone is their religion....

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī (Persian: جلالالدین محمد بلخى‎), also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (جلالالدین محمد رومی), and more popularly in the English-speaking world simply as Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic.

Iranians, Turks, Afghans, Tajiks, and other Central Asian Muslims as well as the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy in the past seven centuries. 

Rumi's importance is considered to transcend national and ethnic borders. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. In 2007, he was described as the "most popular poet in America."

Rumi's works are written in Persian and his Mathnawi remains one of the purest literary glories of Persia, and one of the crowning glories of the Persian language. His original works are widely read today in their original language across the Persian-speaking world (Iran, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and parts of Persian speaking Central Asia). 

Translations of his works are very popular in other countries. His poetry has influenced Persian literature as well as Urdu, Punjabi, Turkish and some other Iranian, Turkic and Indic languages written in Perso-Arabic script e.g. Pashto, Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai and Sindhi.

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (Persian: جلالالدین محمد بلخى‎ Persian pronunciation: [dʒælɒːlæddiːn mohæmmæde bælxiː]) is also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (جلالالدین محمد رومی Persian pronunciation: [dʒælɒːlæddiːn mohæmmæde ɾuːmiː]). He is widely known by the sobriquet Mawlānā/Molānā (Persian: مولانا‎ Persian pronunciation: [moulɒːnɒː]) in Iran and Afghanistan, and popularly known as Mevlâna in Turkey. 

According to the authoritative Rumi biographer Franklin Lewis of the University of Chicago, "[t]he Anatolian peninsula which had belonged to the Byzantine, or eastern Roman empire, had only relatively recently been conquered by Muslims and even when it came to be controlled by Turkish Muslim rulers, it was still known to Arabs, Persians and Turks as the geographical area of Rum. 

As such, there are a number of historical personages born in or associated with Anatolia known as Rumi, a word borrowed from Arabic literally meaning “Roman,” in which context Roman refers to subjects of the Byzantine Empire or simply to people living in or things associated with Anatolia. In Muslim countries, therefore, Jalal al-Din is not generally known as "Rumi"." The terms مولوی Mawlavi (Persian) and Mevlevi (Turkish) which mean "having to do with the master" are more often used for him.

Life 

Rumi was born to native Persian speaking parents, probably in the village of Wakhsh, a small town located at the river Wakhsh in Persia (in what is now Tajikistan). Wakhsh belonged to the larger province of Balkh (parts of now modern Afghanistan and Tajikistan), and in the year Rumi was born, his father was an appointed scholar there.

Greater Balkh was at that time a major center of a Persian culture and Khorasani Sufism had developed there for several centuries. Indeed, the most important influences upon Rumi, besides his father, are said to be the Persian poets Attar and Sanai.

Rumi in one poem express his appreciation: "Attar was the spirit, Sanai his eyes twain, And in time thereafter, Came we in their train" and mentions in another poem: "Attar has traversed the seven cities of Love, We are still at the turn of one street". His father was also connected to the spiritual lineage of Najm al-Din Kubra.

He lived most of his life under the Persianate Seljuq Sultanate of Rum, where he produced his works and died in 1273 AD. He was buried in Konya and his shrine became a place of pilgrimage. Following his death, his followers and his son Sultan Walad founded the Mevlevi Order, also known as the Order of the Whirling Dervishes, famous for its Sufi dance known as the Sama ceremony.

He was laid to rest beside his father, and over his remains a splendid shrine was erected. A hagiographical account of him is described in Shams ud-Din Ahmad Aflāki's Manāqib ul-Ārifīn (written between 1318 and 1353). This hagiographical account of his biography needs to be treated with care as it contains both legends and facts about Rumi. For example, Professor Franklin Lewis, Chicago University, in the most complete biography on Rumi has a separate section for the hagiographical biography on Rumi and actual biography about him.

Rumi's father was Bahā ud-Dīn Walad, a theologian, jurist and a mystic from Wakhsh, who was also known by the followers of Rumi as Sultan al-Ulama or "Sultan of the Scholars". The popular hagiographer assertions that have claimed the family's descent from the Caliph Abu Bakr does not hold on closer examination and is rejected by modern scholars. The claim of maternal descent from the Khwarazmshah for Rumi or his father is also seen as a non-historical hagiographical tradition designed to connect the family with royalty, but this claim is rejected for chronological and historical reasons. The most complete genealogy offered for the family stretches back to six or seven generations to famous Hanafi Jurists.

We do not learn the name of Baha al-Din's mother in the sources, but only that he referred to her as "Māmi" (Colloquial Persian for Māma) and that she was a simple woman and that she lives in 13th century. The mother of Rumi was Mu'mina Khātūn. The profession of the family for several generations was that of Islamic preachers of the liberal Hanafi rite and this family tradition was continued by Rumi (see his Fihi Ma Fih and Seven Sermons) and Sultan Walad (see Ma'rif Waladi for examples of his everyday sermons and lectures).

When the Mongols invaded Central Asia sometime between 1215 and 1220, Baha ud-Din Walad, with his whole family and a group of disciples, set out westwards. According to hagiographical account which is not agreed upon by all Rumi scholars, Rumi encountered one of the most famous mystic Persian poets, Attar, in the Iranian city of Nishapur, located in the province of Khorāsān. Attar immediately recognized Rumi's spiritual eminence. He saw the father walking ahead of the son and said, "Here comes a sea followed by an ocean." He gave the boy his Asrārnāma, a book about the entanglement of the soul in the material world. This meeting had a deep impact on the eighteen-year-old Rumi and later on became the inspiration for his works.

From Nishapur, Walad and his entourage set out for Baghdad, meeting many of the scholars and Sufis of the city. From Baghdad they went to Hejaz and performed the pilgrimage at Mecca. The migrating caravan then passed through Damascus, Malatya, Erzincan, Sivas, Kayseri and Nigde. They finally settled in Karaman for seven years; Rumi's mother and brother both died there. In 1225, Rumi married Gowhar Khatun in Karaman. They had two sons: Sultan Walad and Ala-eddin Chalabi. When his wife died, Rumi married again and had a son, Amir Alim Chalabi, and a daughter, Malakeh Khatun.

On 1 May 1228, most likely as a result of the insistent invitation of 'Alā' ud-Dīn Key-Qobād, ruler of Anatolia, Baha' ud-Din came and finally settled in Konya in Anatolia within the westernmost territories of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm.

Baha' ud-Din became the head of a madrassa (religious school) and when he died, Rumi, aged twenty-five, inherited his position as the Islamic molvi. One of Baha' ud-Din's students, Sayyed Burhan ud-Din Muhaqqiq Termazi, continued to train Rumi in the Shariah as well as the Tariqa, especially that of Rumi's father. For nine years, Rumi practiced Sufism as a disciple of Burhan ud-Din until the latter died in 1240 or 1241. Rumi's public life then began: he became an Islamic Jurist, issuing fatwas and giving sermons in the mosques of Konya. He also served as a Molvi (Islamic teacher) and taught his adherents in the madrassa.

During this period, Rumi also traveled to Damascus and is said to have spent four years there.

It was his meeting with the dervish Shams-e Tabrizi on 15 November 1244 that completely changed his life. From an accomplished teacher and jurist, Rumi was transformed into an ascetic.

Shams had traveled throughout the Middle East searching and praying for someone who could "endure my company". A voice said to him, "What will you give in return?" Shams replied, "My head!" The voice then said, "The one you seek is Jalal ud-Din of Konya." On the night of 5 December 1248, as Rumi and Shams were talking, Shams was called to the back door. He went out, never to be seen again. It is rumored that Shams was murdered with the connivance of Rumi's son, 'Ala' ud-Din; if so, Shams indeed gave his head for the privilege of mystical friendship.

Rumi's love for, and his bereavement at the death of, Shams found their expression in an outpouring lyric poems, Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi. He himself went out searching for Shams and journeyed again to Damascus. There, he realized:

Why should I seek? I am the same as

He. His essence speaks through me.

I have been looking for myself!

Mewlana had been spontaneously composing ghazals (Persian poems), and these had been collected in the Divan-i Kabir or Diwan Shams Tabrizi. Rumi found another companion in Salaḥ ud-Din-e Zarkub, a goldsmith. After Salah ud-Din's death, Rumi's scribe and favorite student, Hussam-e Chalabi, assumed the role of Rumi's companion. One day, the two of them were wandering through the Meram vineyards outside Konya when Hussam described to Rumi an idea he had had: "If you were to write a book like the Ilāhīnāma of Sanai or the Mantiq ut-Tayr of 'Attar, it would become the companion of many troubadours. They would fill their hearts from your work and compose music to accompany it." Rumi smiled and took out a piece of paper on which were written the opening eighteen lines of his Masnavi, beginning with:

Listen to the reed and the tale it tells,

How it sings of separation...

Hussam implored Rumi to write more. Rumi spent the next twelve years of his life in Anatolia dictating the six volumes of this masterwork, the Masnavi, to Hussam.

In December 1273, Rumi fell ill; he predicted his own death and composed the well-known ghazal, which begins with the verse:

How doest thou know what sort of king I have within me as companion?

Do not cast thy glance upon my golden face, for I have iron legs.

Rumi died on 17 December 1273 in Konya; his body was interred beside that of his father, and a splendid shrine, the Yeşil Türbe (Green Tomb, قبه الخضراء; today the Mevlâna Museum), was erected over his place of burial. His epitaph reads:

When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men (women).

The 13th century Mevlâna Mausoleum, with its mosque, dance hall, dervish living quarters, school and tombs of some leaders of the Mevlevi Order, continues to this day to draw pilgrims from all parts of the Muslim and non-Muslim world. Jalal al-Din who is also known as Rumi, was a philosopher and mystic of Islam. His doctrine advocates unlimited tolerance, positive reasoning, goodness, charity and awareness through love. To him and to his disciples all religions are more or less truth. Looking with the same eye on Muslim, Jew and Christian alike, his peaceful and tolerant teaching has appealed to people of all sects and creeds.

Teachings 

The general theme of Rumi's thought, like that of other mystic and Sufi poets of Persian literature, is essentially that of the concept of tawhid — union with his beloved (the primal root) from which/whom he has been cut off and become aloof — and his longing and desire to restore it.

The Masnavi weaves fables, scenes from everyday life, Qur'anic revelations and exegesis, and metaphysics into a vast and intricate tapestry. In the East, it is said of him that he was "not a prophet — but surely, he has brought a scripture".

Rumi believed passionately in the use of music, poetry and dance as a path for reaching God. For Rumi, music helped devotees to focus their whole being on the divine and to do this so intensely that the soul was both destroyed and resurrected. It was from these ideas that the practice of whirling Dervishes developed into a ritual form. His teachings became the base for the order of the Mevlevi which his son Sultan Walad organized.

Rumi encouraged Sama, listening to music and turning or doing the sacred dance. In the Mevlevi tradition, samāʿ represents a mystical journey of spiritual ascent through mind and love to the Perfect One. In this journey, the seeker symbolically turns towards the truth, grows through love, abandons the ego, finds the truth and arrives at the Perfect. The seeker then returns from this spiritual journey, with greater maturity, to love and to be of service to the whole of creation without discrimination with regard to beliefs, races, classes and nations.

In other verses in the Masnavi, Rumi describes in detail the universal message of love:

The lover’s cause is separate from all other causes

Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries.

Major Works 

Rumi's poetry is often divided into various categories: the quatrains (rubayāt) and odes (ghazal) of the Divan, the six books of the Masnavi. The prose works are divided into The Discourses, The Letters, and the Seven Sermons.

Poetic works

Rumi's major work is the Maṭnawīye Ma'nawī (Spiritual Couplets; مثنوی معنوی), a six-volume poem regarded by some Sufis[40] as the Persian-language Qur'an. It is considered by many to be one of the greatest works of mystical poetry. It contains approximately 27000 lines of Persian poetry.

Rumi's other major work is the Dīwān-e Kabīr (Great Work) or Dīwān-e Shams-e Tabrīzī (The Works of Shams of Tabriz; دیوان شمس تبریزی), named in honor of Rumi's master Shams. Besides approximately 35000 Persian couplets and 2000 Persian quatrains, the Divan contains 90 Ghazals and 19 quatrains in Arabic, a couple of dozen or so couplets in Turkish (mainly macaronic poems of mixed Persian and Turkish) and 14 couplets in Greek (all of them in three macaronic poems of Greek-Persian).

Prose works

Fihi Ma Fihi (In It What's in It, Persian: فیه ما فیه) provides a record of seventy-one talks and lectures given by Rumi on various occasions to his disciples. It was compiled from the notes of his various disciples, so Rumi did not author the work directly. An English translation from the Persian was first published by A.J. Arberry as Discourses of Rumi(New York: Samuel Weiser, 1972), and a translation of the second book by Wheeler Thackston, Sign of the Unseen(Putney, VT: Threshold Books, 1994). The style of the Fihi ma fihi are colloqual and are meant for middle-class men and women, and lack the sophisticated wordplay.

Majāles-e Sab'a (Seven Sessions, Persian: مجالس سبعه) contains seven Persian sermons (as the name implies) or lectures given in seven different assemblies. The sermons themselves give a commentary on the deeper meaning of Qur'an and Hadeeth. The sermons also include quotations from poems of Sana'i, 'Attar, and other poets, including Rumi himself. As Aflakī relates, after Shams-e Tabrīzī, Rumi gave sermons at the request of notables, especially Salāh al-Dīn Zarkūb. The style of Persian is rather simple, but quotation of Arabic and knowledge of history and the Hadith show Rumi's knowledge in the Islamic sciences. His style is the typical of the genre of lectures given by Sufis and spiritual teachers.

Makatib (The Letters, Persian: مکاتیب) is the book containing Rumi's letters in Persian to his disciples, family members, and men of state and of influence. The letters testify that Rumi kept very busy helping family members and administering a community of disciples that had grown up around them. Unlike the Persian style of the previous two mentioned work (which are lectures and sermons), the letters is consciously sophisticated and epistolar, which is in conformity with the expectations of correspondence directed to nobles, statement and kings.

Philosophical outlook

Rumi was an evolutionary thinker in the sense that he believed that the spirit after devolution from the divine Ego undergoes an evolutionary process by which it comes nearer and nearer to the same divine Ego. All matter in the universe obeys this law and this movement is due to an inbuilt urge (which Rumi calls "love") to evolve and seek enjoinment with the divinity from which it has emerged. Evolution into a human being from an animal is only one stage in this process. 

The doctrine of the Fall of Adam is reinterpreted as the devolution of the Ego from the universal ground of divinity and is a universal, cosmic phenomenon. The French philosopher Henri Bergson's idea of life being creative and evolutionary is similar, though unlike Bergson, Rumi believes that there is a specific goal to the process: the attainment of God. For Rumi, God is the ground as well as the goal of all existence.

However Rumi need not be considered a biological evolutionary creationist. In view of the fact that Rumi lived hundreds of years before Darwin, and was least interested in scientific theories, it is probable to conclude that he does not deal with biological evolution at all. Rather he is concerned with the spiritual evolution of a human being: Man not conscious of God is akin to an animal and true consciousness makes him divine. Nicholson has seen this as a Neo-Platonic doctrine: the universal soul working through the various spheres of being, a doctrine introduced into Islam by Muslim philosophers like Al Farabi and being related at the same time to Ibn Sina's idea of love as the magnetically working power by which life is driven into an upward trend.

I died as a mineral and became a plant,

I died as plant and rose to animal,

I died as animal and I was Man.

Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?

Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar

With angels bless'd; but even from angelhood

I must pass on: all except God doth perish.

When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,

I shall become what no mind e'er conceived.

Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence

Proclaims in organ tones,

To Him we shall return.

از جمادی مُردم و نامی شدم — وز نما مُردم به حیوان سرزدم

مُردم از حیوانی و آدم شدم — پس چه ترسم؟ کی ز مردن کم شدم؟

حملهٔ دیگر بمیرم از بشر — تا برآرم از ملائک بال و پر

وز ملک هم بایدم جستن ز جو — کل شیء هالک الا وجهه

بار دیگر از ملک پران شوم — آنچه اندر وهم ناید آن شوم

پس عدم گردم عدم چو ارغنون — گویدم کانا الیه راجعون

Universality

It is often said that the teachings of Rumi are ecumenical in nature. For Rumi, religion was mostly a personal experience and not limited to logical arguments or perceptions of the senses. Creative love, or the urge to rejoin the spirit to divinity, was the goal towards which every thing moves. The dignity of life, in particular human life (which is conscious of its divine origin and goal), was important.

ملت عشق از همه دینها جداست — عاشقان را ملت و مذهب خداست

The nation of Love has a different religion of all religions — For lovers, God alone is their religion. 

Wikipedia 

The Love Xl Pt ll (Artwork) 

Quotes 

Certainly we ought to be discontented, we ought not simply to find out ways of making the best of a bad job, and yet if we kill all pleasure in the actual process of life, what sort of future are we preparing for ourselves? If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia? What will he do with the leisure that the machine will give him?

George Orwell. "Some Thoughts on the Common Toad", Tribune (12 April 1946)

On Religious Conspiracy. Amera Ziganii Rao 

What an interesting statement....

"Satan seeks to defeat you by tempting you to trust your own wisdom. TRUST IN GOD." Quoted by 'Daughters of God' on Twitter

......Errr, GOD is wisdom. And who is Satan? Wisdom is the journey to hear the wisdom. Wisdom is God. Funny that. So religion says, doubt yourself, don't listen to yourself and whatever. Yet, there is no mention of illness or cowardice or courage manufacturing, just sin. No mention of ego, if it is talking about wrong wisdom. Just that wisdom from one's own self, one's self believing self, is Satan. The same story as Narcissus being told not to look within. 

Not looking within is why the planet is so ridiculously awful. I used to contribute to it myself. Got it. It's all crap. Religion is the ultimate brainwashing. We think we are not listening. Oh yes, we are, from birth. Hence the need for total re-programming. Total Re-programming = liberation - wisdom. Wisdom is the only thing of Spirit on earth. Wisdom has to be worked for. Hierophant style. Funny that. Oh, yes, Eve fucked it up. Got it. 

So we are to ignore our own higher selves, because that is apparently arrogant I am sure, to even think we are of soul, we are to have no self belief and we are to only 'trust in God'. And of course, there is someone to tell us what that trust and what that God is. Got it. Religion teaches how to give up all intelligence. Spirituality teaches how to find it. 

That shift is the courage. To walk away from that fear. It's not real. 'The fear of God' is manmade for us. Human made, for human. Humility yes. Trusting the silent partner, yes. Following the silent partner, wherever it takes you, oh, yes. It takes work and THE MANUFACTURING OF WISDOM to trust GOD. And that is why existentialism through to all philosophy teaches a fuck of a lot more, than that. 

The propaganda machine. Intelligence is being able to see it. Intelligence is manufactured too. 

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013

On George Orwell

Several words and phrases from Nineteen Eighty-Four have entered popular language. 

Newspeak is a simplified and obfuscatory language designed to make independent thought impossible. 

Doublethink means holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. 

The Thought Police are those who suppress all dissenting opinion. 

Prolefeed is homogenised, manufactured superficial literature, film and music, used to control and indoctrinate the populace through docility. 

Big Brother is a supreme dictator who watches everyone.

Wikipedia

On George Orwell

(Cyril) Connolly remarked of him as a schoolboy, "The remarkable thing about Orwell was that alone among the boys he was an intellectual and not a parrot for he thought for himself". At Eton, John Vaughan Wilkes, his former headmaster's son recalled, "...he was extremely argumentative—about anything—and criticising the masters and criticising the other boys.... We enjoyed arguing with him. He would generally win the arguments—or think he had anyhow." Roger Mynors concurs: "Endless arguments about all sorts of things, in which he was one of the great leaders. He was one of those boys who thought for himself...."

Wikipedia 

George Orwell

"one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century and..one of the most important chroniclers of English culture of his generation"

Though I speak with the tongues of men (women) and of angels, and have not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. 

Money suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. ... And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is money.

George Orwell. I Corinthians xiii (adapted) Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), opening lines.

One cannot really be Catholic (religious) & grown-up. George Orwell 

George Orwell 

Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism and commitment to democratic socialism.

Commonly ranked as one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century and as one of the most important chroniclers of English culture of his generation, Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. 

He is best known for the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945), which together (as of 2009) have sold more copies than any two books by any other 20th-century author. His book Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, is widely acclaimed, as are his numerous essays on politics, literature, language, and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Orwell's work continues to influence popular and political culture, and the term Orwellian — descriptive of totalitarian or authoritarian social practices — has entered the language together with several of his neologisms, including Cold War, Big Brother, thought police, Room 101, doublethink, and thoughtcrime.

Early Years 

Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903, in Motihari, Bihar, in India. His great-grandfather Charles Blair was a wealthy country gentleman in Dorset who married Lady Mary Fane, daughter of Thomas Fane, 8th Earl of Westmorland, and had income as an absentee landlord of plantations in Jamaica.

His grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was a clergyman. Although the gentility passed down the generations, the prosperity did not; Eric Blair described his family as "lower-upper-middle class". His father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service. His mother, Ida Mabel Blair (née Limouzin), grew up in Moulmein, Burma, where her French father was involved in speculative ventures.

Eric had two sisters: Marjorie, five years older, and Avril, five years younger. When Eric was one year old, his mother took him and his older sister to England.

In 1904, Ida Blair settled with her children at Henley-on-Thames. Eric was brought up in the company of his mother and sisters, and apart from a brief visit in the summer of 1907, they did not see the husband and father Richard Blair until 1912. His mother's diary from 1905 describes a lively round of social activity and artistic interests.

The family moved to Shiplake before the First World War, where Eric became friendly with the Buddicom family, especially their daughter Jacintha. When they first met, he was standing on his head in a field. On being asked why, he said, "You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up." 

Jacintha and Eric read and wrote poetry, and dreamed of becoming famous writers. He said that he might write a book in the style of H. G. Wells's A Modern Utopia. During this period, he also enjoyed shooting, fishing and birdwatching with Jacintha's brother and sister.

At the age of five, Eric was sent as a day-boy to a convent school in Henley-on-Thames, which Marjorie also attended. It was a Roman Catholic convent run by French Ursuline nuns, who had been exiled from France after religious education was banned in 1903. His mother wanted him to have a public school education, but his family could not afford the fees, and he needed to earn a scholarship. 

Ida Blair's brother Charles Limouzin recommended St Cyprian's School, Eastbourne, East Sussex. Limouzin, who was a proficient golfer, knew of the school and its headmaster through the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club, where he won several competitions in 1903 and 1904. The headmaster undertook to help Blair to win the scholarship, and made a private financial arrangement that allowed Blair's parents to pay only half the normal fees. In September 1911 Eric arrived at St Cyprian's. He boarded at the school for the next five years, returning home only for school holidays. He knew nothing of the reduced fees although he "soon recognised that he was from a poorer home".

Blair hated the school and many years later wrote an essay "Such, Such Were the Joys", published posthumously, based on his time there. At St. Cyprian's, Blair first met Cyril Connolly, who became a noted writer and, as the editor of Horizon, published many of Orwell's essays.

As part of school work, Blair wrote two poems that were published in the Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard. He came second to Connolly in the Harrow History Prize, had his work praised by the school's external examiner, and earned scholarships to Wellington and Eton Colleges. But an Eton scholarship did not guarantee a place, and none was immediately available for Blair. He chose to stay at St Cyprian's until December 1916, in case a place at Eton became available.

In January, Blair took up the place at Wellington, where he spent the Spring term. In May 1917 a place became available as a King's Scholar at Eton. He studied at Eton until December 1921, when he left at age 18½. Wellington was "beastly", Orwell told his childhood friend Jacintha Buddicom, but he said he was "interested and happy" at Eton. His principal tutor was A. S. F. Gow, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who also gave him advice later in his career.

Blair was briefly taught French by Aldous Huxley. Stephen Runciman, who was at Eton with Blair, noted that he and his contemporaries appreciated Huxley's linguistic flair. Cyril Connolly followed Blair to Eton, but because they were in separate years, they did not associate with each other.

Blair's academic performance reports suggest that he neglected his academic studies, but during his time at Eton he worked with Roger Mynors to produce a College magazine, The Election Times, joined in the production of other publications—College Days and Bubble and Squeak—and participated in the Eton Wall Game. His parents could not afford to send him to university without another scholarship, and they concluded from his poor results that he would not be able to win one. Runciman noted that he had a romantic idea about the East and the family decided that Blair should join the Imperial Police, the precursor of the Indian Police Service. For this he had to pass an entrance examination. His father had retired to Southwold, Suffolk by this time; Blair was enrolled at a crammer there called Craighurst, and brushed up on his classics, English and History. Blair passed the exam, coming seventh out of the 26 candidates who exceeded the pass mark.

Policing in Burma

Blair's maternal grandmother lived at Moulmein, so he chose a posting in Burma. In October 1922 he sailed on board S.S. Herefordshire via the Suez Canal and Ceylon to join the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. A month later, he arrived at Rangoon and travelled to the police training school in Mandalay. After a short posting at Maymyo, Burma's principal hill station, he was posted to the frontier outpost of Myaungmya in the Irrawaddy Delta at the beginning of 1924.

Working as an imperial policeman gave him considerable responsibility while most of his contemporaries were still at university in England. When he was posted farther east in the Delta to Twante as a sub-divisional officer, he was responsible for the security of some 200,000 people. At the end of 1924, he was promoted to Assistant District Superintendent and posted to Syriam, closer to Rangoon. Syriam had the refinery of the Burmah Oil Company, "the surrounding land a barren waste, all vegetation killed off by the fumes of sulphur dioxide pouring out day and night from the stacks of the refinery." But the town was near Rangoon, a cosmopolitan seaport, and Blair went into the city as often as he could, "to browse in a bookshop; to eat well-cooked food; to get away from the boring routine of police life." In September 1925 he went to Insein, the home of Insein Prison, the second largest jail in Burma. In Insein, he had "long talks on every conceivable subject" with Elisa Maria Langford-Rae (who later married Kazi Lhendup Dorjee). She noted his "sense of utter fairness in minutest details".

In April 1926 he moved to Moulmein, where his maternal grandmother lived. At the end of that year, he was assigned to Katha in Upper Burma, where he contracted dengue fever in 1927. Entitled to a leave in England that year, he was allowed to return in July due to his illness. While on leave in England and on holiday with his family in Cornwall in September 1927, he reappraised his life. Deciding against returning to Burma, he resigned from the Indian Imperial Police to become a writer. He drew on his experiences in the Burma police for the novel Burmese Days (1934) and the essays "A Hanging" (1931) and "Shooting an Elephant" (1936).

In Burma, Blair acquired a reputation as an outsider. He spent much of his time alone, reading or pursuing non-pukka activities, such as attending the churches of the Karen ethnic group. A colleague, Roger Beadon, recalled (in a 1969 recording for the BBC) that Blair was fast to learn the language and that before he left Burma, "was able to speak fluently with Burmese priests in 'very high-flown Burmese.'" Blair made changes to his appearance in Burma that remained for the rest of his life. "While in Burma, he acquired a moustache similar to those worn by officers of the British regiments stationed there. [He] also acquired some tattoos; on each knuckle he had a small untidy blue circle. Many Burmese living in rural areas still sport tattoos like this – they are believed to protect against bullets and snake bites." Later, he wrote that he felt guilty about his role in the work of empire and he "began to look more closely at his own country and saw that England also had its oppressed..."

London and Paris 

In England, he settled back in the family home at Southwold, renewing acquaintance with local friends and attending an Old Etonian dinner. He visited his old tutor Gow at Cambridge for advice on becoming a writer. Early in autumn 1927 he moved to London. Ruth Pitter, a family acquaintance, helped him find lodgings, and by the end of 1927 he had moved into rooms in Portobello Road; a blue plaque commemorates his residence there.

Pitter's involvement in the move "would have lent it a reassuring respectability in Mrs Blair's eyes." Pitter had a sympathetic interest in Blair's writing, pointed out weaknesses in his poetry, and advised him to write about what he knew. In fact he decided to write of "certain aspects of the present that he set out to know" and "ventured into the East End of London – the first of the occasional sorties he would make to discover for himself the world of poverty and the down-and-outers who inhabit it. He had found a subject. These sorties, explorations, expeditions, tours or immersions were made intermittently over a period of five years."

In imitation of Jack London, whose writing he admired (particularly The People of the Abyss), Orwell started to explore slumming the poorer parts of London. On his first outing he set out to Limehouse Causeway, spending his first night in a common lodging house, possibly George Levy's 'kip'. For a while he "went native" in his own country, dressing like a tramp and making no concessions to middle-class mores and expectations; he recorded his experiences of the low life for use in "The Spike", his first published essay in English, and in the second half of his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933).

In the spring of 1928 he moved to Paris. He lived in the Rue du Pot de Fer, a working class district in the 5th Arrondissement. His aunt Nellie Limouzin also lived in Paris and gave him social and, when necessary, financial support. He began to write novels, including an early version of Burmese Days but nothing else survives from that period. He was more successful as a journalist and published articles in Monde, a political/literary journal edited by Henri Barbusse, – his first article as a professional writer, "La Censure en Angleterre", appeared in that journal on 6 October 1928 – G. K.'s Weekly – where his first article to appear in England, "A Farthing Newspaper", was printed on 29 December 1928 – and Le Progrès Civique (founded by the left-wing coalition Le Cartel des Gauches). Three pieces appeared in successive weeks in Progrès Civique: discussing unemployment, a day in the life of a tramp, and the beggars of London, respectively. "In one or another of its destructive forms, poverty was to become his obsessive subject – at the heart of almost everything he wrote until Homage to Catalonia."

He fell seriously ill in February 1929 and was taken to the Hôpital Cochin in the 14th arrondissement, a free hospital where medical students were trained. His experiences there were the basis of his essay "How the Poor Die", published in 1946. He chose not to identify the hospital, indeed was deliberately misleading about its location. Shortly afterwards, he had all his money stolen from his lodging house. Whether through necessity or simply to collect material, he undertook menial jobs like dishwashing in a fashionable hotel on the rue de Rivoli, which he later described in Down and Out in Paris and London. In August 1929, he sent a copy of "The Spike" to John Middleton Murry's New Adelphi magazine in London. The magazine was edited by Max Plowman and Sir Richard Rees, and Plowman accepted the work for publication.

Southwold

In December 1929, after nearly two years in Paris, Blair returned to England and went directly to his parents' house in Southwold, which was to remain his base for the next five years. The family was well-established in the town and his sister Avril was running a tea-house there. He became acquainted with many local people, including Brenda Salkeld, the clergyman's daughter who worked as a gym-teacher at St Felix Girls' School, Southwold. Although Salkeld rejected his offer of marriage, she was to remain a friend and regular correspondent for many years. He also renewed friendships with older friends, such as Dennis Collings, whose girlfriend Eleanor Jacques was also to play a part in his life.

In the spring he stayed briefly in Bramley, Leeds, with his sister Marjorie and her husband Humphrey Dakin, who was as unappreciative of Blair as when they knew each other as children. Blair was writing reviews for Adelphi and acting as a private tutor to a disabled child at Southwold. He then became tutor to three young brothers, one of whom, Richard Peters, later became a distinguished academic.

"His history in these years is marked by dualities and contrasts. There is Blair leading a respectable, outwardly eventless life at his parents' house in Southwold, writing; then in contrast, there is Blair as Burton (the name he used in his down-and-out episodes) in search of experience in the kips and spikes, in the East End, on the road, and in the hop fields of Kent." He went painting and bathing on the beach, and there he met Mabel and Francis Fierz who were later to influence his career. Over the next year he visited them in London, often meeting their friend Max Plowman. He also often stayed at the homes of Ruth Pitter and Richard Rees, where he could "change" for his sporadic tramping expeditions. One of his jobs was to do domestic work at a lodgings for half a crown a day.

Blair now contributed regularly to Adelphi, with "A Hanging" appearing in August 1931. From August to September 1931 his explorations of poverty continued, and, like the protagonist of A Clergyman's Daughter, he followed the East End tradition of working in the Kent hop fields. He kept a diary about his experiences there. Afterwards, he lodged in the Tooley Street kip, but could not stand it for long and with financial help from his parents moved to Windsor Street, where he stayed until Christmas. "Hop Picking", by Eric Blair, appeared in the October 1931 issue of New Statesman, whose editorial staff included his old friend Cyril Connolly. Mabel Fierz put him in contact with Leonard Moore, who was to become his literary agent.

At this time Jonathan Cape rejected A Scullion's Diary, the first version of Down and Out. On the advice of Richard Rees, he offered it to Faber & Faber, whose editorial director, T. S. Eliot, also rejected it. Blair ended the year by deliberately getting himself arrested, so he could experience Christmas in prison, but the authorities did not regard his "drunk and disorderly" behaviour as imprisonable, and he returned home to Southwold after two days in a police cell.

Teaching career

In April 1932 Blair became a teacher at The Hawthorns High School, a prep school for boys in Hayes, West London. This was a small school offering private schooling for children of local tradesmen and shopkeepers, and had only twenty boys and one other master. While at the school he became friendly with the curate of the local parish church and became involved with activities there. Mabel Fierz had pursued matters with Moore, and at the end of June 1932, Moore told Blair that Victor Gollancz was prepared to publish A Scullion's Diary for a £40 advance, through his recently founded publishing house, Victor Gollancz Ltd, which was an outlet for radical and socialist works.

At the end of the summer term in 1932, Blair returned to Southwold, where his parents had used a legacy to buy their own home. Blair and his sister Avril spent the summer holidays making the house habitable while he also worked on Burmese Days. He was also spending time with Eleanor Jacques, but her attachment to Dennis Collings remained an obstacle to his hopes of a more serious relationship.

"Clink", an essay describing his failed attempt to get sent to prison, appeared in the August 1932 number of Adelphi. He returned to teaching at Hayes and prepared for the publication of his book, now known as Down and Out in Paris and London. He wished to publish under a different name in order to avoid any embarrassment to his family over his time as a "tramp".

In a letter to Moore (dated 15 November 1932), he left the choice of pseudonym to him and to Gollancz. Four days later, he wrote to Moore, suggesting the pseudonyms P. S. Burton (a name he used when tramping), Kenneth Miles, George Orwell, and H. Lewis Allways. He finally adopted the nom de plume George Orwell because, as he told Eleanor Jacques, "It is a good round English name." 

Down and Out in Paris and London was published on 9 January 1933, as Orwell continued to work on Burmese Days. Down and Out was successful and was next published by Harper and Brothers in New York.

In the summer of 1933 Blair left Hawthorns to become a teacher at Frays College, in Uxbridge, West London. This was a much larger establishment with 200 pupils and a full complement of staff. He acquired a motorcycle and took trips through the surrounding countryside. On one of these expeditions he became soaked and caught a chill that developed into pneumonia. He was taken to Uxbridge Cottage Hospital, where for a time his life was believed to be in danger. When he was discharged in January 1934, he returned to Southwold to convalesce and, supported by his parents, never returned to teaching.

He was disappointed when Gollancz turned down Burmese Days, mainly on the grounds of potential suits for libel, but Harper were prepared to publish it in the United States. Meanwhile, Blair started work on the novel A Clergyman's Daughter, drawing upon his life as a teacher and on life in Southwold. Eleanor Jacques was now married and had gone to Singapore and Brenda Salkield had left for Ireland, so Blair was relatively isolated in Southwold—working on the allotments, walking alone and spending time with his father. Eventually in October, after sending A Clergyman's Daughter to Moore, he left for London to take a job that had been found for him by his Aunt Nellie Limouzin.

This job was as a part-time assistant in Booklovers' Corner, a second-hand bookshop in Hampstead run by Francis and Myfanwy Westrope, who were friends of Nellie Limouzin in the Esperanto movement. The Westropes were friendly and provided him with comfortable accommodation at Warwick Mansions, Pond Street. He was sharing the job with Jon Kimche, who also lived with the Westropes. Blair worked at the shop in the afternoons and had his mornings free to write and his evenings free to socialise. These experiences provided background for the novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936). 

As well as the various guests of the Westropes, he was able to enjoy the company of Richard Rees and the Adelphi writers and Mabel Fierz. The Westropes and Kimche were members of the Independent Labour Party, although at this time Blair was not seriously politically active. He was writing for the Adelphi and preparing A Clergyman's Daughter and Burmese Days for publication.

At the beginning of 1935 he had to move out of Warwick Mansions, and Mabel Fierz found him a flat in Parliament Hill. A Clergyman's Daughter was published on 11 March 1935. In the spring of 1935 Blair met his future wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy, when his landlady, Rosalind Obermeyer, who was studying for a masters degree in psychology at University College London, invited some of her fellow students to a party. One of these students, Elizaveta Fen, a biographer and future translator of Chekhov, recalled Orwell and his friend Richard Rees "draped" at the fireplace, looking, she thought, "moth-eaten and prematurely aged." Around this time, Blair had started to write reviews for the New English Weekly.

In June, Burmese Days was published and Cyril Connolly's review in the New Statesman prompted Orwell (as he then became known) to re-establish contact with his old friend. In August, he moved into a flat in Kentish Town, which he shared with Michael Sayers and Rayner Heppenstall. The relationship was sometimes awkward and Orwell and Heppenstall even came to blows, though they remained friends and later worked together on BBC broadcasts. 

Orwell was now working on Keep the Aspidistra Flying, and also tried unsuccessfully to write a serial for the News Chronicle. By October 1935 his flatmates had moved out and he was struggling to pay the rent on his own. He remained until the end of January 1936, when he stopped working at Booklovers' Corner......

Wikipedia

The Love lll Pt ll (Artwork) 

Most Women Work Because They Have To. Amanda Marcotte

"........ambitious women are mostly lying to themselves and would prefer to be home, serving their manly men who go out in the world......" Gavin McInnes

Last week, Vice co-founder and conservative jerk Gavin McInnes threw a sexist temper tantrum on HuffPo Live, insisting that ambitious women are mostly lying to themselves and would prefer to be home, serving their manly men who go out in the world.  "Women are forced to pretend to be men. They’re feigning this toughness. They’re miserable," he railed, claiming "studies" show that feminism makes women unhappy. "They're not happy in the work force, for the most part."

Though it's tempting to just laugh him off, a couple of brave souls squelched that urge and instead pointed out a major flaw in his argument. McInnes assumes that women work because "women are forced to pretend to be men," but as Matt Bruenig and Elizabeth Stoker at Salon explain, most women, married or not, work because of this thing we call "money," which they need:

But our analysis of 2012 census data shows that most families with two incomes rely upon the wife’s work to stay afloat financially. The census reveals that out of 59 million married couples, 36 million feature wives with positive earnings. When we subtracted the wives’ incomes from those 36 million families, roughly 7 million fell below the federal poverty line, with another 6 million falling below 1.5 times the poverty line, and a further 6 million falling below twice the poverty line. Thus, were the incomes of working wives to be suddenly subtracted from their families, a full 54 percent of families with two incomes would be in or near poverty.

Bruenig helpfully supplied a chart at the American Prospect for manly men like McInnes who are too busy killing boars (watching Internet porn) to do feminine stuff like read.........

.......It is somewhat unfair to accuse conservatives, hipster or otherwise, of not knowing that women work because they have to. The truth is that when folks like McInnes are yelling about how "women" are meant to be at home, they are talking about a very narrow subset of women—upper-middle-class women of the sort that men of privilege look forward to marrying, basically. They don't care if working-class families don't enjoy the benefits of having a full-time housewife. In fact, when it comes to the working class, there's often an about-face from conservatives, who start emphasizing how important it is for women to get out of the house and go get a job. 

Amanda Marcotte. 

(Brooklyn-based writer and DoubleX contributor. She also writes regularly for the Daily Beast, Alternet, and USA Today.)

Quotes 

Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. William Shakespeare 

Be selective in choosing your inner circle in all life places; these are the people who help to define your spiritual DNA. Wisdom Alive 

To be mature means to face, and not evade, every fresh crisis that comes. Fritz Kunkel 

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is to love and be loved, just to love and be loved. ~ Eden Ahbez 

I wish to die knowing that I took a fleeting instant of eternity and fashioned from it a lifetime. ~ Robert Brault

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. Edgar Allan Poe 

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Gandhi 

A friend is someone who is there for you when he'd (she'd) rather be anywhere else. Len Wein 

Listening is one of the greatest gifts we can give to those we love. Rock Christopher 

The greatest danger to our future is apathy. Jane Goodall 

Studies indicate that over 50% of women desire a sexually submissive experience. Not so uncommon as some may think! Sacred Leather 

You're never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. Richard Bach 

Wise men (women) are not always silent, but they know when to be. Inspirational Women 

Great moments... are born from great opportunity. And that's what you (we) have here. "Miracle"

Sacred Leather Quotes 

(The literals and the symbolisms. The spectrum of choice and truth. But it all means the same thing. Anti religion and anti tribe and anti 'normal' and all things 'rebellious'. The alchemist's job is to clarify what is what and create. The impending exodus cannot be avoided. The tribe has to be left, once consciousness has been integrated. It is inevitable. You are nobly in surrender. The rest is expansion and time. The beings at Sacred Leather always help. Anti bourgeois training and enlightenment training of the emotions. Accepting the pain. AZR) 

Some discover the spirituality in BDSM by chance (divine intervention?) When during or after a scene, a transcendent moment occurs. 

Ancient & modern cultures have used physical, emotional & sexual ordeals to achieve spiritually altered states more than most realize.

Many, though not all by far, pagans are accepting of BDSM lifestyle & familiar with "All acts of love & pleasure are Her rituals" ~ Aradia 

"..bring the bottom into an altered state by using their own endorphins & thus bring them closer to Spirit" Raven Kaldera 

Using pain to reach a spiritual transcendent state has been done via many ancient sacred rituals, like the Lakota Sun Dance. 

Using pain to reach a spiritual transcendent state has been done via many sacred rituals, like the Hindu Kavandi ceremony & ball dances. 

Using pain to induce spiritual transcendence has been done via many sacred rituals, ie flagellation whipping scourging in Catholicism.

Pain has been used to reach states of euphoria allowing mind to transcend to a higher state of clarity & open & prepared to receive.

"The linking of sex & pain with spirituality is not peculiar to BDSM. The image of crucified Jesus, is shot through with it." Sasha 

The Kama Sutra describes slapping & hitting during making love & also references consensual biting, pinching & other impact play.

"Masochism comes naturally to man (human)...Man (human) is naturally humble, naturally grateful, naturally guilty, naturally transcended.." E Becker 

Studies indicate that over 50% of women desire a sexually submissive experience. Not so uncommon as some may think! 

Sacred Leather on Twitter 

Quotes 

We are born princes (princesses) and the civilizing process makes us frogs. ~ Syrus 

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy permanent planet. ~ Jack London 

It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop. ~ Confucius 

You can't lead anyone else further than you have gone yourself. ~ Gene Mauch 

I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet. ~ Mahatma Gandhi 

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one. ~ Mother Teresa 

If you focus on results, you will never change. ~ If you focus on change, you will get results. ~ Jack Dixon 

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. ~ H.G. Wells, The Outline of History

Two things are infinite; the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. Albert Einstein 

The Soul of the World tells me that its greatest problem is that only the minerals + vegetables understand that all things are one. Paulo Coelho 

The most delightful surprise in life is to suddenly recognise your own worth. Maxwell Maltz 

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? Abraham Lincoln

Sourcery. Amera Ziganii Rao 

Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™. The Sacred Whore High Priestess Hierophant Monarch™ and Sacred Pimp Warrior Protector, Brother Lover Earth King™ Society. The Sacred Whore High Priestess Hierophant Avatar Valkyrie Monarch™ and Sacred Pimp Warrior Protector, Brother Father Friend Lover King™ Society. The kings and queens of old. Angels and Sorcerers together in each of themselves and in the other. The Wizard life. Forever. Living and loving from The Source. Sourcery, Carlos Castaneda first said. I'll say it again. Sourcerers together. Living a life worth living again. At last. Living as giants again. Authentic, soulful, primal, high minded, ambitious, humanitarian, compassionate, passionate, liberated, courageous, personal, public life. Wizardry. 

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013

Quotes 

Uncle Joe. Winston Churchill's name for Joseph Stalin 

Professor John Ramsden. Lectures on Churchill 

When your spirit vibrates at the same frequency as another the experience is love. Deepak Chopra 

Forever is composed of nows. Emily Dickinson 

If you'll not settle for anything less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your lives. Vince Lombardi 

If you have no critics you'll likely have no success. M.Forbes 

No matter how many years you sit doing zazen, you will never become anything special. ~ Zen Master Sawaki 

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions. Dalai Lama 

Your world is a living expression of how you are using and have used your mind. E. Nightingale 

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons. Aristotle 

The person who minds nobody's business but his (her) own is probably a millionaire. Unknown 

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. Nelson Mandela

Astrology Update. Kathy Biehl

(Generic) 

We’re passing through a doorway in personal and collective evolution. You may already be far enough through it to be blasting off, diving deep, or zooming through a wormhole. Or you may be in the dark, sensing vaguely that life is different, maybe not at all sure of where you are at this point. One thing’s for certain, for all of us: We’re well into new territory, flying blind, navigating more by instruments (or sonar) (or trust).

Last weekend’s catalyzing-to-cataclysmic influences are still in effect. Sunday’s life-altering Scorpio solar eclipse is only beginning to play out, refocusing our priorities, direction and intimate relationships. (Get the full scoop about it in my mooncast.) Endings are still in store; it will help to see them as clearing room for the more choice developments that are blossoming.

The pressure is on (though not as fiercely as last week!) to move into a new way of living, courtesy of cosmic change agents Uranus and Pluto holding their ground in the degrees of their clash last Friday.  The foundations of our lives have cracked open, but this stage of the process, which stretches from 2012 to 2015,  is less about disruption and more about healing. (Read more in last week’s forecast.)

Shine light into the fissures and onto wounds and grievances, no matter how ancient; exposure will lessen their pain and power. (My high school class’ Facebook group turned into a communal therapy room last week, with people voicing decades-old grievances and others voicing solidarity, or explaining what had been going on in their homes, or arguing that we were children then and are, largely, compassionate adults now.) Give yourself credit for how you’ve far you’ve come. Consider the toll it takes on you to continue feeding the complaints you’re still dragging around. Since you’re rebuilding your life platform anyway, why not carry some of them out with the construction debris?

Cost is increasingly a topic of interest, with Venus moving into no-nonsense Capricorn on Tuesday. Here the goddess of love and creativity loses interest in romantic gestures, bouquets and sweet nothings. She casts a calculating eye on all advances, offers and investments and looks instead for lasting value. What does “it” cost? Is it worth what you get in exchange? Do you really want “it,” anyway? Watch this attitude show up in your relationships, agreements, finances and even gift purchases. We won’t be interested in liaisons unless they fit our values and promise stability and permanence. We’ll also be honing and focusing our desires, and likely cutting out what no longer fits, as Venus glides toward her meeting with Pluto at the end of next week.

This pragmatic approach is with us for far longer than this week and next. It’s here until almost the spring. Venus’ stay in Capricorn is uncommonly long, into the beginning of March, due to her scheduled retrograde from December 20 through the end of January.  (Start checking off your gift list now, by the way; last-minute shopping, after she turns retrograde, is likely to bring disappointment.)

In the midst of the ongoing eruptions, and shifts, and launches, life takes on a slower, calmer, even stuck quality as we get into the weekend. Mercury, the ruler of communication and transportation, is stationing to end his retrograde on Sunday. From Saturday, when he hits the degree of his turnaround, until Wednesday, when he clears it, we may feel suspended in time. The floating can provide the opportunity to get a thorough, probing look at a situation. Instead of succumbing to frustration this week, resolve to seek out the benefits of delays and mishaps. Treasure is lurking in those Scorpio waters. What more can you uncover?

Monday:  The dreamworld explores issues close to our hearts, and not in a sweet, consoling way. You could be chafing at impediments or delays, or trembling at the prospect of responsibilities and commitment. After an uncomfortable night, we awaken into a void Moon (what that means). Ease into the day and the week. Pushing won’t amount to much just yet. The vague and formless atmosphere  lasts until 3:04 PM EST, when the Moon clears the void and enters un-loving Sagittarius. After that, the mood lifts and people are inclined to believe fairy tales, for now.

Tuesday: A shift in attitude takes place overnight, as Venus, ruler of all we value, moves from tenacious Scorpio to goal-oriented Capricorn. Make a game of spotting evidence of this in actions and language (and, of course, your own thoughts). Bouts of sorting wheat from chaff dot the day. Note how easy it is to discard limitations, broken situations/concepts/relationships or cheap imitations of what you want(ed). Knowing your heart and mind better leads to effortless, unapologetic acts of personal power. Though the sorting process is unfolding organically, you will likely help it along with a kick or two. The Moon begins a void (what that means) at 11:49 PM EST that will last for most of tomorrow.  At the very end of the day, whether you’re awake or not, a sensation washes over you of groundedness and comfort with yourself.

Wednesday:  Yesterday’s late night stabilizing locks in today. You’re finding secure footing, now matter how rocky the last few weeks have been, or how volatile your environment remains. Walk around a bit and enjoy the sensation, but hold off strutting onto a mainstage . The Moon is void of course (what that means) until 4:44 PM EST, when she enters no-nonsense Capricorn and promptly meets up with Venus. Your heart could experience something of personal, lasting value, thanks to beneficial links to dreamweaver Neptune and Saturn, ruler of order and structure.

Thursday:  Jupiter begins a four-month retrograde, which will take us back over issues of family and nurturing (the first object being, as always, your own). In the meantime, today brings a personal evolutionary leap. You hit a new stage in processing the most recent imperative to change. You are so over something, so on board with the new, so apt to kick out a wall and throw a flaming bottle at a bridge you’ve recently crossed. Careful, now: the power at your disposal is such that a wall could fall at the slightest touch. The odds favor acting appropriately, fortunately. Acting maturely, responsibly and authentically is within everyone’s reach. A lovely link between the two rulers of love, Venus and Neptune, invites tenderness, kindness, artistic inspiration and even romance. Nothing interferes to break the good vibes, since The Moon goes void of course (what that means) at 7:44 PM EST until tomorrow evening. Enjoy.

Friday: The Moon is void of course (what that means) until 6:31 PM EST. Until then, last night’s lovely atmosphere continues to waft gently on the breeze. Messages from above and from the heart are everywhere; trust what you’re hearing. Treat today like it’s Thanksgiving, too. Expressions of gratitude flow easily and keep all your connections in good repair. The vibe of connectedness becomes more philosophical than personal after the Moon ends her void and enters Aquarius. Late night brainstorms and forced conversations are likely. Consider them pennies from heaven.

Saturday:  The day starts with a big vat of elbow grease and the invitation to get down to work. Watch for another round of emotional processing, less intense and dramatic than Thursday’s. Inspired and heart-opening messages are flowing. Ask for guidance; ask for answers; speak from the heart yourself. The emotions you express have the power to knock down walls.

Sunday:  Take today off. Rest. Rejuvenate. Please? The last few weeks have been pedal-to-the metal. Nothing in the sky is forcing, coaxing or encouraging any action today.  The Moon is void of course (what that means) from 12:59 AM until 9:37 PM EDT, when she enters all-encompassing Pisces.  During the void, cosmic messenger Mercury stations direct, creating a languid, slo-mo atmosphere. Useful, revealing tidbits may float past you, or bubble up from your own cauldron. 

Kathy Biehl 

(Kathy Biehl is a professional astrologer and Aquarian who has lived on the bridge between intuition and the rational mind for more than 30 years. Visit EmpowermentUnlimited.net for her podcasts, recordings and information about her services. You can also find her on Facebook, and at the Professional Aquarian YouTube channel.)

Quotes 

Dance first.  Think later.  It's the natural order. ~ Samuel Beckett 

Reporting child sex abuse ‘must be made compulsory’. The Times of London 

"The human race needs the novel. We need all the experience we can get. Those who say the novel is dead can’t write them." Bernard Malamud 

How we long to remove the clutter from our lives not realizing that the clutter is our lives.  ~ Robert Brault 

A good friend will always stab you in the front. Oscar Wilde  

The only way a relationship will last is if you see it as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take. Anthony Robbins 

"The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react." George Bernard Shaw 

"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past." Thomas Jefferson  

"Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more." Oprah Winfrey 

Who knew? Granting women land rights in Kenya can boost girl education and delay childmarriage! Quoted by Girls Not Brides 

The first step is to make friends with ourselves. ~ Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche 

"Ride your horse along the edge of a sword; hide yourself in the middle of flames." ~ Zen Proverb 

"In your tremendous helplessness the whole existence suddenly starts helping you." ~ Osho

The Return to Lemuria ll (Artwork) 

Mircea Eliade 

.....hierophanies.......

....."The most representative mystical experience of the archaic societies, that of shamanism, betrays the Nostalgia for Paradise, the desire to recover the state of freedom and beatitude before 'the Fall'." This concern—which, by itself, is the concern of almost all religious behavior, according to Eliade—manifests itself in specific ways in shamanism........

......Third, the shamanistic phenomenon of repeated death and resurrection also represents a transfiguration in other ways. The shaman dies not once but many times: having died during initiation and risen again with new powers, the shaman can send his (her) spirit out of his (her) body on errands; thus, his (her) whole career consists of repeated deaths and resurrections. The shaman's new ability to die and return to life shows that he (she) is no longer bound by the laws of profane time, particularly the law of death: "the ability to 'die' and come to life again [...] denotes that [the shaman] has surpassed the human condition".......

.......By profession, Eliade was a historian of religion. However, his scholarly works draw heavily on philosophical and psychological terminology. In addition, they contain a number of philosophical arguments about religion. In particular, Eliade often implies the existence of a universal psychological or spiritual "essence" behind all religious phenomena. Because of these arguments, some have accused Eliade of over-generalization and "essentialism", or even of promoting a theological agenda under the guise of historical scholarship. However, others argue that Eliade is better understood as a scholar who is willing to openly discuss sacred experience and its consequences........

.......In viewing himself as the proper maker of history, nonreligious man resists all notions of an externally (for instance, divinely) imposed order or model he must obey: modern man "makes himself, and he only makes himself completely in proportion as he desacralizes himself and the world. [...] He will not truly be free until he has killed the last god".......

......Eliade sees the widespread myth of the Golden Age, "which, according to a number of traditions, lies at the beginning and the end of History", as the "precedent" for Karl Marx's vision of a classless society. Finally, he sees Marx's belief in the final triumph of the good (the proletariat) over the evil (the bourgeoisie) as "a truly messianic Judaeo-Christian ideology". Despite Marx's hostility toward religion, Eliade implies, his ideology works within a conceptual framework inherited from religious mythology.

Likewise, Eliade notes that Nazism involved a pseudo-pagan mysticism based on ancient Germanic religion. He suggests that the differences between the Nazis' pseudo-Germanic mythology and Marx's pseudo-Judaeo-Christian mythology explain their differing success:

In comparison with the vigorous optimism of the communist myth, the mythology propagated by the national socialists seems particularly inept; and this is not only because of the limitations of the racial myth (how could one imagine that the rest of Europe would voluntarily accept submission to the master-race?), but above all because of the fundamental pessimism of the Germanic mythology. [...] For the eschaton prophesied and expected by the ancient Germans was the ragnarok--that is, a catastrophic end of the world........

......Călinescu notes that Eliade's fiction works tend to depict a male figure "possessing all practicable women in [a given] family". He also considered that, as a rule, Eliade depicts woman as "a basic means for a sexual experience and repudiated with harsh egotism."

For Călinescu, such a perspective on life culminated in "banality", leaving authors gripped by the "cult of the self" and "a contempt for literature"........

Mircea Eliade 

Mircea Eliade (Romanian: [ˈmirt͡ʃe̯a eliˈade]; March 13 [O.S. February 28] 1907 – April 22, 1986) was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. 

He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day. His theory that hierophanies form the basis of religion, splitting the human experience of reality into sacred and profane space and time, has proved influential.

One of his most influential contributions to religious studies was his theory of Eternal Return, which holds that myths and rituals do not simply commemorate hierophanies, but, at least to the minds of the religious, actually participate in them.

His literary works belong to the fantastic and autobiographical genres. The best known are the novels Maitreyi ("La Nuit Bengali" or "Bengal Nights"), Noaptea de Sânziene ("The Forbidden Forest"), Isabel și apele diavolului ("Isabel and the Devil's Waters") and Romanul Adolescentului Miop ("Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent"), the novellas Domnișoara Christina ("Miss Christina") and Tinerețe fără tinerețe ("Youth Without Youth"), and the short stories Secretul doctorului Honigberger ("The Secret of Dr. Honigberger") and La Țigănci ("With the Gypsy Girls").

Early in his life, Eliade was a noted journalist and essayist, a disciple of Romanian far right philosopher and journalist Nae Ionescu and a member of the literary society Criterion. He also served as cultural attaché to the United Kingdom and Portugal. 

Several times during the late 1930s, Eliade publicly expressed his support for the ultra-nationalist and anti-communist Iron Guard and which were the frequent topic of criticism after World War II.

Noted for his vast erudition, Eliade had fluent command of five languages (Romanian, French, German, Italian, and English) and a reading knowledge of three others (Hebrew, Persian, and Sanskrit). He was elected a posthumous member of the Romanian Academy.

Work 

The general nature of religion

In his work on the history of religion, Eliade is most highly regarded for his writings on Alchemy, Shamanism, Yoga and what he called the eternal return—the implicit belief, supposedly present in religious thought in general, that religious behavior is not only an imitation of, but also a participation in, sacred events, and thus restores the mythical time of origins. Eliade's thinking was in part influenced by Rudolf Otto, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Nae Ionescu and the writings of the Traditionalist School (René Guénon and Julius Evola). For instance, Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane partially builds on Otto's The Idea of the Holy to show how religion emerges from the experience of the sacred, and myths of time and nature.

Eliade is noted for his attempt to find broad, cross-cultural parallels and unities in religion, particularly in myths. Wendy Doniger, Eliade's colleague from 1978 until his death, notes that "Eliade argued boldly for universals where he might more safely have argued for widely prevalent patterns". His Treatise on the History of Religions was praised by French philologist Georges Dumézil for its coherence and ability to synthesize diverse and distinct mythologies.

Robert Ellwood describes Eliade's approach to religion as follows. Eliade approaches religion by imagining an ideally "religious" person, whom he calls homo religiosus in his writings. Eliade's theories basically describe how this homo religiosus would view the world. This does not mean that all religious practitioners actually think and act like homo religiosus. Instead, it means that religious behavior "says through its own language" that the world is as homo religiosus would see it, whether or not the real-life participants in religious behavior are aware of it. However, Ellwood notes that Eliade "tends to slide over that last qualification", implying that traditional societies actually thought like homo religiosus.

Sacred and profane

Moses taking off his shoes in front of the burning bush (illustration from a 16th-century edition of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis).

Eliade argues that religious thought in general rests on a sharp distinction between the Sacred and the profane; whether it takes the form of God, gods, or mythical Ancestors, the Sacred contains all "reality", or value, and other things acquire "reality" only to the extent that they participate in the sacred.

Eliade's understanding of religion centers on his concept of hierophany (manifestation of the Sacred)—a concept that includes, but is not limited to, the older and more restrictive concept of theophany (manifestation of a god). From the perspective of religious thought, Eliade argues, hierophanies give structure and orientation to the world, establishing a sacred order. The "profane" space of nonreligious experience can only be divided up geometrically: it has no "qualitative differentiation and, hence, no orientation [is] given by virtue of its inherent structure".

Thus, profane space gives man no pattern for his behavior. In contrast to profane space, the site of a hierophany has a sacred structure to which religious man conforms himself. A hierophany amounts to a "revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the non-reality of the vast surrounding expanse". As an example of "sacred space" demanding a certain response from man, Eliade gives the story of Moses halting before Yahweh's manifestation as a burning bush (Exodus 3:5) and taking off his shoes.

Origin myths and sacred time

Eliade notes that, in traditional societies, myth represents the absolute truth about primordial time. According to the myths, this was the time when the Sacred first appeared, establishing the world's structure—myths claim to describe the primordial events that made society and the natural world be that which they are. Eliade argues that all myths are, in that sense, origin myths: "myth, then, is always an account of a creation".

Many traditional societies believe that the power of a thing lies in its origin. If origin is equivalent to power, then "it is the first manifestation of a thing that is significant and valid" (a thing's reality and value therefore lies only in its first appearance).

According to Eliade's theory, only the Sacred has value, only a thing's first appearance has value and, therefore, only the Sacred's first appearance has value. Myth describes the Sacred's first appearance; therefore, the mythical age is sacred time, the only time of value: "primitive man was interested only in the beginnings [...] to him it mattered little what had happened to himself, or to others like him, in more or less distant times". Eliade postulated this as the reason for the "nostalgia for origins" that appears in many religions, the desire to return to a primordial Paradise.

Eternal return and "Terror of history"

Eliade argues that traditional man (woman) attributes no value to the linear march of historical events: only the events of the mythical age have value. To give his own life value, traditional man performs myths and rituals. Because the Sacred's essence lies only in the mythical age, only in the Sacred's first appearance, any later appearance is actually the first appearance; by recounting or re-enacting mythical events, myths and rituals "re-actualize" those events. Eliade often uses the term "archetypes" to refer to the mythical models established by the Sacred, although Eliade's use of the term should be distinguished from the use of the term in Jungian psychology.

Thus, argues Eliade, religious behavior does not only commemorate, but also participates in, sacred events:

In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythical hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.

Eliade called this concept the "eternal return" (distinguished from the philosophical concept of "eternal return"). Wendy Doniger noted that Eliade's theory of the eternal return "has become a truism in the study of religions".

Eliade attributes the well-known "cyclic" vision of time in ancient thought to belief in the eternal return. For instance, the New Year ceremonies among the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, and other Near Eastern peoples re-enacted their cosmogonic myths. Therefore, by the logic of the eternal return, each New Year ceremony was the beginning of the world for these peoples. According to Eliade, these peoples felt a need to return to the Beginning at regular intervals, turning time into a circle.

Eliade argues that yearning to remain in the mythical age causes a "terror of history": traditional man desires to escape the linear succession of events (which, Eliade indicated, he viewed as empty of any inherent value or sacrality). Eliade suggests that the abandonment of mythical thought and the full acceptance of linear, historical time, with its "terror", is one of the reasons for modern man's anxieties. Traditional societies escape this anxiety to an extent, as they refuse to completely acknowledge historical time.

Coincidentia oppositorum

Eliade claims that many myths, rituals, and mystical experiences involve a "coincidence of opposites", or coincidentia oppositorum. In fact, he calls the coincidentia oppositorum "the mythical pattern".

Many myths, Eliade notes, "present us with a twofold revelation":

they express on the one hand the diametrical opposition of two divine figures sprung from one and the same principle and destined, in many versions, to be reconciled at some illud tempus of eschatology, and on the other, the coincidentia oppositorum in the very nature of the divinity, which shows itself, by turns or even simultaneously, benevolent and terrible, creative and destructive, solar and serpentine, and so on (in other words, actual and potential).

Eliade argues that "Yahweh is both kind and wrathful; the God of the Christian mystics and theologians is terrible and gentle at once". He also thought that the Indian and Chinese mystic tried to attain "a state of perfect indifference and neutrality" that resulted in a coincidence of opposites in which "pleasure and pain, desire and repulsion, cold and heat [...] are expunged from his awareness".

According to Eliade, the coincidentia oppositorum’s appeal lies in "man's deep dissatisfaction with his actual situation, with what is called the human condition". In many mythologies, the end of the mythical age involves a "fall", a fundamental "ontological change in the structure of the World". Because the coincidentia oppositorum is a contradiction, it represents a denial of the world's current logical structure, a reversal of the "fall".

Also, traditional man's dissatisfaction with the post-mythical age expresses itself as a feeling of being "torn and separate". In many mythologies, the lost mythical age was a Paradise, "a paradoxical state in which the contraries exist side by side without conflict, and the multiplications form aspects of a mysterious Unity".

The coincidentia oppositorum expresses a wish to recover the lost unity of the mythical Paradise, for it presents a reconciliation of opposites and the unification of diversity:

On the level of pre-systematic thought, the mystery of totality embodies man's endeavor to reach a perspective in which the contraries are abolished, the Spirit of Evil reveals itself as a stimulant of Good, and Demons appear as the night aspect of the Gods.

Exceptions to the general nature

Eliade acknowledges that not all religious behavior has all the attributes described in his theory of sacred time and the eternal return. The Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions embrace linear, historical time as sacred or capable of sanctification, while some Eastern traditions largely reject the notion of sacred time, seeking escape from the cycles of time.

Because they contain rituals, Judaism and Christianity necessarily—Eliade argues—retain a sense of cyclic time:

by the very fact that it is a religion, Christianity had to keep at least one mythical aspect—liturgical Time, that is, the periodic rediscovery of the illud tempus of the beginnings [and] an imitation of the Christ as exemplary pattern.

However, Judaism and Christianity do not see time as a circle endlessly turning on itself; nor do they see such a cycle as desirable, as a way to participate in the Sacred. Instead, these religions embrace the concept of linear history progressing toward the Messianic Age or the Last Judgment, thus initiating the idea of "progress" (humans are to work for a Paradise in the future).

However, Eliade's understanding of Judaeo-Christian eschatology can also be understood as cyclical in that the "end of time" is a return to God: "The final catastrophe will put an end to history, hence will restore man to eternity and beatitude".

The pre-Islamic Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, which made a notable "contribution to the religious formation of the West", also has a linear sense of time. According to Eliade, the Hebrews had a linear sense of time before being influenced by Zoroastrianism.

In fact, Eliade identifies the Hebrews, not the Zoroastrians, as the first culture to truly "valorize" historical time, the first to see all major historical events as episodes in a continuous divine revelation. However, Eliade argues, Judaism elaborated its mythology of linear time by adding elements borrowed from Zoroastrianism—including ethical dualism, a savior figure, the future resurrection of the body, and the idea of cosmic progress toward "the final triumph of Good".

The Dharmic religions of the East generally retain a cyclic view of time—for instance, the Hindu doctrine of kalpas. According to Eliade, most religions that accept the cyclic view of time also embrace it: they see it as a way to return to the sacred time. However, in Buddhism, Jainism, and some forms of Hinduism, the Sacred lies outside the flux of the material world (called maya, or "illusion"), and one can only reach it by escaping from the cycles of time. Because the Sacred lies outside cyclic time, which conditions humans, people can only reach the Sacred by escaping the human condition. According to Eliade, Yoga techniques aim at escaping the limitations of the body, allowing the soul (atman) to rise above maya and reach the Sacred (nirvana, moksha). Imagery of "freedom", and of death to one's old body and rebirth with a new body, occur frequently in Yogic texts, representing escape from the bondage of the temporal human condition. Eliade discusses these themes in detail in Yoga: Immortality and Freedom.

Symbolism of the Center

A recurrent theme in Eliade's myth analysis is the axis mundi, the Center of the World. According to Eliade, the Cosmic Center is a necessary corollary to the division of reality into the Sacred and the profane. The Sacred contains all value, and the world gains purpose and meaning only through hierophanies:

(HIEROPHANIES? AZR The term "hierophany" appears frequently in the works of the religious historian Mircea Eliade as an alternative to the more restrictive term "theophany" (an appearance of a god).

Eliade argues that religion is based on a sharp distinction between the sacred (God, gods, mythical ancestors, etc.) and the profane. 

According to Eliade, for traditional man, myths describe "breakthroughs of the sacred (or the 'supernatural') into the World" – that is, hierophanies.

In the hierophanies recorded in myth, the sacred appears in the form of ideal models (the actions and commandments of gods, heroes, etc.). By manifesting itself as ideal models, the sacred gives the world value, direction, and purpose: "The manifestation of the sacred ontologically founds the world". According to this view, all things need to imitate or conform to the sacred models established by hierophanies in order to have true reality: to traditional man, things "acquire their reality, their identity, only to the extent of their participation in a transcendent reality".) 

In the homogeneous and infinite expanse, in which no point of reference is possible and hence no orientation is established, the hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, a center.

Because profane space gives man no orientation for his life, the Sacred must manifest itself in a hierophany, thereby establishing a sacred site around which man can orient himself. The site of a hierophany establishes a "fixed point, a center". This Center abolishes the "homogeneity and relativity of profane space", for it becomes "the central axis for all future orientation".

A manifestation of the Sacred in profane space is, by definition, an example of something breaking through from one plane of existence to another. Therefore, the initial hierophany that establishes the Center must be a point at which there is contact between different planes—this, Eliade argues, explains the frequent mythical imagery of a Cosmic Tree or Pillar joining Heaven, Earth, and the underworld.

Eliade noted that, when traditional societies found a new territory, they often perform consecrating rituals that reenact the hierophany that established the Center and founded the world. In addition, the designs of traditional buildings, especially temples, usually imitate the mythical image of the axis mundi joining the different cosmic levels. For instance, the Babylonian ziggurats were built to resemble cosmic mountains passing through the heavenly spheres, and the rock of the Temple in Jerusalem was supposed to reach deep into the tehom, or primordial waters.

According to the logic of the eternal return, the site of each such symbolic Center will actually be the Center of the World:

It may be said, in general, that the majority of the sacred and ritual trees that we meet with in the history of religions are only replicas, imperfect copies of this exemplary archetype, the Cosmic Tree. Thus, all these sacred trees are thought of as situated at the Centre of the World, and all the ritual trees or posts [...] are, as it were, magically projected into the Centre of the World.

According to Eliade's interpretation, religious man apparently feels the need to live not only near, but at, the mythical Center as much as possible, given that the Center is the point of communication with the Sacred.

Thus, Eliade argues, many traditional societies share common outlines in their mythical geographies. In the middle of the known world is the sacred Center, "a place that is sacred above all"; this Center anchors the established order. Around the sacred Center lies the known world, the realm of established order; and beyond the known world is a chaotic and dangerous realm, "peopled by ghosts, demons, [and] 'foreigners' (who are [identified with] demons and the souls of the dead)". According to Eliade, traditional societies place their known world at the Center because (from their perspective) their known world is the realm that obeys a recognizable order, and it therefore must be the realm in which the Sacred manifests itself; the regions beyond the known world, which seem strange and foreign, must lie far from the Center, outside the order established by the Sacred.

The High God 

According to some "evolutionistic" theories of religion, especially that of Edward Burnett Tylor, cultures naturally progress from animism and polytheism to monotheism. According to this view, more advanced cultures should be more monotheistic, and more primitive cultures should be more polytheistic. However, many of the most "primitive", pre-agricultural societies believe in a supreme sky-god. Thus, according to Eliade, post-19th-century scholars have rejected Tylor's theory of evolution from animism. Based on the discovery of supreme sky-gods among "primitives", Eliade suspects that the earliest humans worshiped a heavenly Supreme Being.

In Patterns in Comparative Religion, he writes, "The most popular prayer in the world is addressed to 'Our Father who art in heaven.' It is possible that man's earliest prayers were addressed to the same heavenly father."

However, Eliade disagrees with Wilhelm Schmidt, who thought the earliest form of religion was a strict monotheism. Eliade dismisses this theory of "primordial monotheism" (Urmonotheismus) as "rigid" and unworkable. "At most," he writes, "this schema [Schmidt's theory] renders an account of human [religious] evolution since the Paleolithic era". If an Urmonotheismus did exist, Eliade adds, it probably differed in many ways from the conceptions of God in many modern monotheistic faiths: for instance, the primordial High God could manifest himself as an animal without losing his status as a celestial Supreme Being.

According to Eliade, heavenly Supreme Beings are actually less common in more advanced cultures. Eliade speculates that the discovery of agriculture brought a host of fertility gods and goddesses into the forefront, causing the celestial Supreme Being to fade away and eventually vanish from many ancient religions. Even in primitive hunter-gatherer societies, the High God is a vague, distant figure, dwelling high above the world. Often he has no cult and receives prayer only as a last resort, when all else has failed. Eliade calls the distant High God a deus otiosus ("idle god").

In belief systems that involve a deus otiosus, the distant High God is believed to have been closer to humans during the mythical age. After finishing his works of creation, the High God "forsook the earth and withdrew into the highest heaven". This is an example of the Sacred's distance from "profane" life, life lived after the mythical age: by escaping from the profane condition through religious behavior, figures such as the shaman return to the conditions of the mythical age, which include nearness to the High God ("by his flight or ascension, the shaman [...] meets the God of Heaven face to face and speaks directly to him, as man sometimes did in illo tempore"). The shamanistic behaviors surrounding the High God are a particularly clear example of the eternal return.

Shamanism

Overview

Eliade's scholarly work includes a study of shamanism, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, a survey of shamanistic practices in different areas. His Myths, Dreams and Mysteries also addresses shamanism in some detail.

In Shamanism, Eliade argues for a restrictive use of the word shaman: it should not apply to just any magician or medicine man, as that would make the term redundant; at the same time, he argues against restricting the term to the practitioners of the sacred of Siberia and Central Asia (it is from one of the titles for this function, namely, šamán, considered by Eliade to be of Tungusic origin, that the term itself was introduced into Western languages).

Eliade defines a shaman as follows:

he (she) is believed to cure, like all doctors, and to perform miracles of the fakir type, like all magicians [...] But beyond this, he (she) is a psychopomp, and he may also be a priest, mystic, and poet.

If we define shamanism this way, Eliade claims, we find that the term covers a collection of phenomena that share a common and unique "structure" and "history". (When thus defined, shamanism tends to occur in its purest forms in hunting and pastoral societies like those of Siberia and Central Asia, which revere a celestial High God "on the way to becoming a deus otiosus". Eliade takes the shamanism of those regions as his most representative example.)

In his examinations of shamanism, Eliade emphasizes the shaman's attribute of regaining man's condition before the "Fall" out of sacred time: "The most representative mystical experience of the archaic societies, that of shamanism, betrays the Nostalgia for Paradise, the desire to recover the state of freedom and beatitude before 'the Fall'." This concern—which, by itself, is the concern of almost all religious behavior, according to Eliade—manifests itself in specific ways in shamanism.

Death, resurrection and secondary functions

According to Eliade, one of the most common shamanistic themes is the shaman's supposed death and resurrection. This occurs in particular during his initiation. Often, the procedure is supposed to be performed by spirits who dismember the shaman and strip the flesh from his bones, then put him back together and revive him. In more than one way, this death and resurrection represents the shaman's elevation above human nature.

First, the shaman dies so that he can rise above human nature on a quite literal level. After he has been dismembered by the initiatory spirits, they often replace his old organs with new, magical ones (the shaman dies to his profane self so that he can rise again as a new, sanctified, being).

Second, by being reduced to his bones, the shaman experiences rebirth on a more symbolic level: in many hunting and herding societies, the bone represents the source of life, so reduction to a skeleton "is equivalent to re-entering the womb of this primordial life, that is, to a complete renewal, a mystical rebirth". Eliade considers this return to the source of life essentially equivalent to the eternal return.

Third, the shamanistic phenomenon of repeated death and resurrection also represents a transfiguration in other ways. The shaman dies not once but many times: having died during initiation and risen again with new powers, the shaman can send his (her) spirit out of his (her) body on errands; thus, his (her) whole career consists of repeated deaths and resurrections. The shaman's new ability to die and return to life shows that he (she) is no longer bound by the laws of profane time, particularly the law of death: "the ability to 'die' and come to life again [...] denotes that [the shaman] has surpassed the human condition".

Having risen above the human condition, the shaman is not bound by the flow of history. Therefore, he enjoys the conditions of the mythical age. In many myths, humans can speak with animals; and, after their initiations, many shamans claim to be able to communicate with animals. According to Eliade, this is one manifestation of the shaman's return to "the illud tempus described to us by the paradisiac myths".

The shaman can descend to the underworld or ascend to heaven, often by climbing the World Tree, the cosmic pillar, the sacred ladder, or some other form of the axis mundi. Often, the shaman will ascend to heaven to speak with the High God. Because the gods (particularly the High God, according to Eliade's deus otiosus concept) were closer to humans during the mythical age, the shaman's easy communication with the High God represents an abolition of history and a return to the mythical age.

Because of his (her) ability to communicate with the gods and descend to the land of the dead, the shaman frequently functions as a psychopomp and a medicine man (woman).

Eliade's philosophy

Early contributions

In addition to his political essays, the young Mircea Eliade authored others, philosophical in content. Connected with the ideology of Trăirism, they were often prophetic in tone, and saw Eliade being hailed as a herald by various representatives of his generation.

When Eliade was 21 years old and publishing his Itinerar spiritual, literary critic Şerban Cioculescu described him as "the column leader of the spiritually mystical and Orthodox youth." Cioculescu discussed his "impressive erudition", but argued that it was "occasionally plethoric, poetically inebriating itself through abuse".

Cioculescu's colleague Perpessicius saw the young author and his generation as marked by "the specter of war", a notion he connected to various essays of the 1920s and 30s in which Eliade threatened the world with the verdict that a new conflict was looming (while asking that young people be allowed to manifest their will and fully experience freedom before perishing).

One of Eliade's noted contributions in this respect was the 1932 Soliloquii ("Soliloquies"), which explored existential philosophy. George Călinescu who saw in it "an echo of Nae Ionescu's lectures", traced a parallel with the essays of another of Ionescu's disciples, Emil Cioran, while noting that Cioran's were "of a more exulted tone and written in the aphoristic form of Kierkegaard".

Călinescu recorded Eliade's rejection of objectivity, citing the author's stated indifference towards any "naïveté" or "contradictions" that the reader could possibly reproach him, as well as his dismissive thoughts of "theoretical data" and mainstream philosophy in general (Eliade saw the latter as "inert, infertile and pathogenic"). Eliade thus argued, "a sincere brain is unassailable, for it denies itself to any relationship with outside truths."

The young writer was however careful to clarify that the existence he took into consideration was not the life of "instincts and personal idiosyncrasies", which he believed determined the lives of many humans, but that of a distinct set comprising "personalities". He described "personalities" as characterized by both "purpose" and "a much more complicated and dangerous alchemy". This differentiation, George Călinescu believed, echoed Ionescu's metaphor of man, seen as "the only animal who can fail at living", and the duck, who "shall remain a duck no matter what it does". According to Eliade, the purpose of personalities is infinity: "consciously and gloriously bringing [existence] to waste, into as many skies as possible, continuously fulfilling and polishing oneself, seeking ascent and not circumference."

In Eliade's view, two roads await man in this process. One is glory, determined by either work or procreation, and the other the asceticism of religion or magic—both, Călinescu believed, where aimed at reaching the absolute, even in those cases where Eliade described the latter as an "abyssal experience" into which man may take the plunge. The critic pointed out that the addition of "a magical solution" to the options taken into consideration seemed to be Eliade's own original contributions to his mentor's philosophy, and proposed that it may have owed inspiration to Julius Evola and his disciples. He also recorded that Eliade applied this concept to human creation, and specifically to artistic creation, citing him describing the latter as "a magical joy, the victorious break of the iron circle" (a reflection of imitatio dei, having salvation for its ultimate goal).

Philosopher of religion

Anti-reductionism and the "transconscious"

By profession, Eliade was a historian of religion. However, his scholarly works draw heavily on philosophical and psychological terminology. In addition, they contain a number of philosophical arguments about religion. In particular, Eliade often implies the existence of a universal psychological or spiritual "essence" behind all religious phenomena. Because of these arguments, some have accused Eliade of over-generalization and "essentialism", or even of promoting a theological agenda under the guise of historical scholarship. However, others argue that Eliade is better understood as a scholar who is willing to openly discuss sacred experience and its consequences.

In studying religion, Eliade rejects certain "reductionist" approaches. Eliade thinks a religious phenomenon cannot be reduced to a product of culture and history. He insists that, although religion involves "the social man, the economic man, and so forth", nonetheless "all these conditioning factors together do not, of themselves, add up to the life of the spirit".

Using this anti-reductionist position, Eliade argues against those who accuse him of overgeneralizing, of looking for universals at the expense of particulars. Eliade admits that every religious phenomenon is shaped by the particular culture and history that produced it:

When the Son of God incarnated and became the Christ, he had to speak Aramaic; he could only conduct himself as a Hebrew of his times [...] His religious message, however universal it might be, was conditioned by the past and present history of the Hebrew people. If the Son of God had been born in India, his spoken language would have had to conform itself to the structure of the Indian languages.

However, Eliade argues against those he calls "historicist or existentialist philosophers" who do not recognize "man in general" behind particular men produced by particular situations (Eliade cites Immanuel Kant as the likely forerunner of this kind of "historicism"). He adds that human consciousness transcends (is not reducible to) its historical and cultural conditioning, and even suggests the possibility of a "transconscious". By this, Eliade does not necessarily mean anything supernatural or mystical: within the "transconscious", he places religious motifs, symbols, images, and nostalgias that are supposedly universal and whose causes therefore cannot be reduced to historical and cultural conditioning.

Platonism and "primitive ontology"

According to Eliade, traditional man feels that things "acquire their reality, their identity, only to the extent of their participation in a transcendent reality". To traditional man, the profane world is "meaningless", and a thing rises out of the profane world only by conforming to an ideal, mythical model.

Eliade describes this view of reality as a fundamental part of "primitive ontology" (the study of "existence" or "reality"). Here he sees a similarity with the philosophy of Plato, who believed that physical phenomena are pale and transient imitations of eternal models or "Forms" (see Theory of forms). He argued:

Plato could be regarded as the outstanding philosopher of 'primitive mentality,' that is, as the thinker who succeeded in giving philosophic currency and validity to the modes of life and behavior of archaic humanity.

Eliade thinks the Platonic Theory of forms is "primitive ontology" persisting in Greek philosophy. He claims that Platonism is the "most fully elaborated" version of this primitive ontology.

In The Structure of Religious Knowing: Encountering the Sacred in Eliade and Lonergan, John Daniel Dadosky argues that, by making this statement, Eliade was acknowledging "indebtedness to Greek philosophy in general, and to Plato's theory of forms specifically, for his own theory of archetypes and repetition". However, Dadosky also states that "one should be cautious when trying to assess Eliade's indebtedness to Plato". Dadosky quotes Robert Segal, a professor of religion, who draws a distinction between Platonism and Eliade's "primitive ontology": for Eliade, the ideal models are patterns that a person or object may or may not imitate; for Plato, there is a Form for everything, and everything imitates a Form by the very fact that it exists.

Existentialism and secularism

Behind the diverse cultural forms of different religions, Eliade proposes a universal: traditional man, he claims, "always believes that there is an absolute reality, the sacred, which transcends this world but manifests itself in this world, thereby sanctifying it and making it real". Furthermore, traditional man's behavior gains purpose and meaning through the Sacred: "By imitating divine behavior, man puts and keeps himself close to the gods—that is, in the real and the significant."

According to Eliade, "modern nonreligious man assumes a new existential situation". For traditional man, historical events gain significance by imitating sacred, transcendent events. In contrast, nonreligious man lacks sacred models for how history or human behavior should be, so he must decide on his own how history should proceed—he "regards himself solely as the subject and agent of history, and refuses all appeal to transcendence".

From the standpoint of religious thought, the world has an objective purpose established by mythical events, to which man should conform himself: "Myth teaches [religious man] the primordial 'stories' that have constituted him existentially."

From the standpoint of secular thought, any purpose must be invented and imposed on the world by man. Because of this new "existential situation", Eliade argues, the Sacred becomes the primary obstacle to nonreligious man's "freedom". 

In viewing himself as the proper maker of history, nonreligious man resists all notions of an externally (for instance, divinely) imposed order or model he must obey: modern man "makes himself, and he only makes himself completely in proportion as he desacralizes himself and the world. [...] He will not truly be free until he has killed the last god".

Religious survivals in the secular world

Eliade says that secular man cannot escape his bondage to religious thought. By its very nature, secularism depends on religion for its sense of identity: by resisting sacred models, by insisting that man make history on his own, secular man identifies himself only through opposition to religious thought: "He [secular man] recognizes himself in proportion as he 'frees' and 'purifies' himself from the 'superstitions' of his ancestors." 

Furthermore, modern man "still retains a large stock of camouflaged myths and degenerated rituals". For example, modern social events still have similarities to traditional initiation rituals, and modern novels feature mythical motifs and themes. Finally, secular man still participates in something like the eternal return: by reading modern literature, "modern man succeeds in obtaining an 'escape from time' comparable to the 'emergence from time' effected by myths".

Eliade sees traces of religious thought even in secular academia. He thinks modern scientists are motivated by the religious desire to return to the sacred time of origins: 

One could say that the anxious search for the origins of Life and Mind; the fascination in the 'mysteries of Nature'; the urge to penetrate and decipher the inner structure of Matter—all these longings and drives denote a sort of nostalgia for the primordial, for the original universal matrix. Matter, Substance, represents the absolute origin, the beginning of all things.

Eliade believes the rise of materialism in the 19th century forced the religious nostalgia for "origins" to express itself in science. He mentions his own field of History of Religions as one of the fields that was obsessed with origins during the 19th century:

The new discipline of History of Religions developed rapidly in this cultural context. And, of course, it followed a like pattern: the positivistic approach to the facts and the search for origins, for the very beginning of religion.

All Western historiography was during that time obsessed with the quest of origins. [...] This search for the origins of human institutions and cultural creations prolongs and completes the naturalist's quest for the origin of species, the biologist's dream of grasping the origin of life, the geologist's and the astronomer's endeavor to understand the origin of the Earth and the Universe. From a psychological point of view, one can decipher here the same nostalgia for the 'primordial' and the 'original'.

In some of his writings, Eliade describes modern political ideologies as secularized mythology. According to Eliade, Marxism "takes up and carries on one of the great eschatological myths of the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean world, namely: the redemptive part to be played by the Just (the 'elect', the 'anointed', the 'innocent', the 'missioners', in our own days the proletariat), whose sufferings are invoked to change the ontological status of the world."

Eliade sees the widespread myth of the Golden Age, "which, according to a number of traditions, lies at the beginning and the end of History", as the "precedent" for Karl Marx's vision of a classless society. Finally, he sees Marx's belief in the final triumph of the good (the proletariat) over the evil (the bourgeoisie) as "a truly messianic Judaeo-Christian ideology". Despite Marx's hostility toward religion, Eliade implies, his ideology works within a conceptual framework inherited from religious mythology.

Likewise, Eliade notes that Nazism involved a pseudo-pagan mysticism based on ancient Germanic religion. He suggests that the differences between the Nazis' pseudo-Germanic mythology and Marx's pseudo-Judaeo-Christian mythology explain their differing success:

In comparison with the vigorous optimism of the communist myth, the mythology propagated by the national socialists seems particularly inept; and this is not only because of the limitations of the racial myth (how could one imagine that the rest of Europe would voluntarily accept submission to the master-race?), but above all because of the fundamental pessimism of the Germanic mythology. [...] For the eschaton prophesied and expected by the ancient Germans was the ragnarok--that is, a catastrophic end of the world.

Modern man and the "Terror of history"

According to Eliade, modern man displays "traces" of "mythological behavior" because he intensely needs sacred time and the eternal return. Despite modern man's claims to be nonreligious, he ultimately cannot find value in the linear progression of historical events; even modern man feels the "Terror of history": "Here too [...] there is always the struggle against Time, the hope to be freed from the weight of 'dead Time,' of the Time that crushes and kills."

According to Eliade, this "terror of history" becomes especially acute when violent and threatening historical events confront modern man—the mere fact that a terrible event has happened, that it is part of history, is of little comfort to those who suffer from it. Eliade asks rhetorically how modern man can "tolerate the catastrophes and horrors of history—from collective deportations and massacres to atomic bombings—if beyond them he can glimpse no sign, no transhistorical meaning".

Eliade indicates that, if repetitions of mythical events provided sacred value and meaning for history in the eyes of ancient man, modern man has denied the Sacred and must therefore invent value and purpose on his own. Without the Sacred to confer an absolute, objective value upon historical events, modern man is left with "a relativistic or nihilistic view of history" and a resulting "spiritual aridity". In chapter 4 ("The Terror of History") of The Myth of the Eternal Return and chapter 9 ("Religious Symbolism and the Modern Man's Anxiety") of Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, Eliade argues at length that the rejection of religious thought is a primary cause of modern man's anxieties.

Inter-cultural dialogue and a "new humanism"

Eliade argues that modern man may escape the "Terror of history" by learning from traditional cultures. For example, Eliade thinks Hinduism has advice for modern Westerners. According to many branches of Hinduism, the world of historical time is illusory, and the only absolute reality is the immortal soul or atman within man. According to Eliade, Hindus thus escape the terror of history by refusing to see historical time as the true reality.

Eliade notes that a Western or Continental philosopher might feel suspicious toward this Hindu view of history:

One can easily guess what a European historical and existentialist philosopher might reply [...] You ask me, he would say, to 'die to History'; but man is not, and he cannot be anything else but History, for his very essence is temporality. You are asking me, then, to give up my authentic existence and to take refuge in an abstraction, in pure Being, in the atman: I am to sacrifice my dignity as a creator of History in order to live an a-historic, inauthentic existence, empty of all human content. Well, I prefer to put up with my anxiety: at least, it cannot deprive me of a certain heroic grandeur, that of becoming conscious of, and accepting, the human condition.

However, Eliade argues that the Hindu approach to history does not necessarily lead to a rejection of history. On the contrary, in Hinduism historical human existence is not the "absurdity" that many Continental philosophers see it as. According to Hinduism, history is a divine creation, and one may live contentedly within it as long as one maintains a certain degree of detachment from it: "One is devoured by Time, by History, not because one lives in them, but because one thinks them real and, in consequence, one forgets or undervalues eternity."

Furthermore, Eliade argues that Westerners can learn from non-Western cultures to see something besides absurdity in suffering and death. Traditional cultures see suffering and death as a rite of passage. In fact, their initiation rituals often involve a symbolic death and resurrection, or symbolic ordeals followed by relief. Thus, Eliade argues, modern man can learn to see his historical ordeals, even death, as necessary initiations into the next stage of one's existence.

Eliade even suggests that traditional thought offers relief from the vague anxiety caused by "our obscure presentiment of the end of the world, or more exactly of the end of our world, our own civilization". Many traditional cultures have myths about the end of their world or civilization; however, these myths do not succeed "in paralysing either Life or Culture". These traditional cultures emphasize cyclic time and, therefore, the inevitable rise of a new world or civilization on the ruins of the old. Thus, they feel comforted even in contemplating the end times.

Eliade argues that a Western spiritual rebirth can happen within the framework of Western spiritual traditions. However, he says, to start this rebirth, Westerners may need to be stimulated by ideas from non-Western cultures. In his Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, Eliade claims that a "genuine encounter" between cultures "might well constitute the point of departure for a new humanism, upon a world scale".

Christianity and the "salvation" of History 

Mircea Eliade sees the Abrahamic religions as a turning point between the ancient, cyclic view of time and the modern, linear view of time, noting that, in their case, sacred events are not limited to a far-off primordial age, but continue throughout history: "time is no longer [only] the circular Time of the Eternal Return; it has become linear and irreversible Time". He thus sees in Christianity the ultimate example of a religion embracing linear, historical time. When God is born as a man, into the stream of history, "all history becomes a theophany". According to Eliade, "Christianity strives to save history". In Christianity, the Sacred enters a human being (Christ) to save humans, but it also enters history to "save" history and turn otherwise ordinary, historical events into something "capable of transmitting a trans-historical message".

From Eliade's perspective, Christianity's "trans-historical message" may be the most important help that modern man could have in confronting the terror of history. In his book Mito ("Myth"), Italian researcher Furio Jesi argues that Eliade denies man the position of a true protagonist in history: for Eliade, true human experience lies not in intellectually "making history", but in man's experiences of joy and grief. Thus, from Eliade's perspective, the Christ story becomes the perfect myth for modern man. In Christianity, God willingly entered historical time by being born as Christ, and accepted the suffering that followed. By identifying with Christ, modern man can learn to confront painful historical events.

Ultimately, according to Jesi, Eliade sees Christianity as the only religion that can save man from the "Terror of history". In Eliade's view, traditional man sees time as an endless repetition of mythical archetypes. In contrast, modern man has abandoned mythical archetypes and entered linear, historical time—in this context, unlike many other religions, Christianity attributes value to historical time. Thus, Eliade concludes, "Christianity incontestably proves to be the religion of 'fallen man'", of modern man who has lost "the paradise of archetypes and repetition".

"Modern gnosticism", Romanticism and Eliade's nostalgia

In analyzing the similarities between the "mythologists" Eliade, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, Robert Ellwood concluded that the three modern mythologists, all of whom believed that myths reveal "timeless truth", fulfilled the role "gnostics" had in antiquity. The diverse religious movements covered by the term "gnosticism" share the basic doctrines that the surrounding world is fundamentally evil or inhospitable, that we are trapped in the world through no fault of our own, and that we can be saved from the world only through secret knowledge (gnosis). Ellwood claimed that the three mythologists were "modern gnostics through and through", remarking: 

Whether in Augustan Rome or modern Europe, democracy all too easily gave way to totalitarianism, technology was as readily used for battle as for comfort, and immense wealth lay alongside abysmal poverty. [...] Gnostics past and present sought answers not in the course of outward human events, but in knowledge of the world's beginning, of what lies above and beyond the world, and of the secret places of the human soul. To all this the mythologists spoke, and they acquired large and loyal followings.

According to Ellwood, the mythologists believed in gnosticism's basic doctrines (even if in a secularized form). Ellwood also believes that Romanticism, which stimulated the modern study of mythology, strongly influenced the mythologists. Because Romantics stress that emotion and imagination have the same dignity as reason, Ellwood argues, they tend to think political truth "is known less by rational considerations than by its capacity to fire the passions" and, therefore, that political truth is "very apt to be found [...] in the distant past".

As modern gnostics, Ellwood argues, the three mythologists felt alienated from the surrounding modern world. As scholars, they knew of primordial societies that had operated differently than the modern world. And as people influenced by Romanticism, they saw myths as a saving gnosis that offered "avenues of eternal return to simpler primordial ages when the values that rule the world were forged". 

In addition, Ellwood identifies Eliade's personal sense of nostalgia as a source for his interest in, or even his theories about, traditional societies. He cites Eliade himself claiming to desire an "eternal return" like that by which traditional man returns to the mythical paradise: "My essential preoccupation is precisely the means of escaping History, of saving myself through symbol, myth, rite, archetypes".

In Ellwood's view, Eliade's nostalgia was only enhanced by his exile from Romania: "In later years Eliade felt about his own Romanian past as did primal folk about mythic time. He was drawn back to it, yet he knew he could not live there, and that all was not well with it." He suggests that this nostalgia, along with Eliade's sense that "exile is among the profoundest metaphors for all human life", influenced Eliade's theories. Ellwood sees evidence of this in Eliade's concept of the "Terror of history" from which modern man is no longer shielded. In this concept, Ellwood sees an "element of nostalgia" for earlier times "when the sacred was strong and the terror of history had barely raised its head".

Criticism of Eliade's scholarship

Overgeneralization

Eliade cites a wide variety of myths and rituals to support his theories. However, he has been accused of making over-generalizations: many scholars think he lacks sufficient evidence to put forth his ideas as universal, or even general, principles of religious thought. According to one scholar, "Eliade may have been the most popular and influential contemporary historian of religion", but "many, if not most, specialists in anthropology, sociology, and even history of religions have either ignored or quickly dismissed" Eliade's works.

The classicist G. S. Kirk criticizes Eliade's insistence that Australian Aborigines and ancient Mesopotamians had concepts of "being", "non-being", "real", and "becoming", although they lacked words for them. Kirk also believes that Eliade overextends his theories: for example, Eliade claims that the modern myth of the "noble savage" results from the religious tendency to idealize the primordial, mythical age.

According to Kirk, "such extravagances, together with a marked repetitiousness, have made Eliade unpopular with many anthropologists and sociologists". In Kirk's view, Eliade derived his theory of eternal return from the functions of Australian Aboriginal mythology and then proceeded to apply the theory to other mythologies to which it did not apply. For example, Kirk argues that the eternal return does not accurately describe the functions of Native American or Greek mythology. Kirk concludes, "Eliade's idea is a valuable perception about certain myths, not a guide to the proper understanding of all of them".

Even Wendy Doniger, Eliade's successor at the University of Chicago, claims (in an introduction to Eliade's own Shamanism) that the eternal return does not apply to all myths and rituals, although it may apply to many of them. However, although Doniger agrees that Eliade made over-generalizations, she notes that his willingness to "argue boldly for universals" allowed him to see patterns "that spanned the entire globe and the whole of human history". Whether they were true or not, she argues, Eliade's theories are still useful "as starting points for the comparative study of religion". She also argues that Eliade's theories have been able to accommodate "new data to which Eliade did not have access".

Lack of empirical support

Several researchers have criticized Eliade's work as having no empirical support. Thus, he is said to have "failed to provide an adequate methodology for the history of religions and to establish this discipline as an empirical science", though the same critics admit that "the history of religions should not aim at being an empirical science anyway". Specifically, his claim that the sacred is a structure of human consciousness is distrusted as not being empirically provable: "no one has yet turned up the basic category sacred". Also, there has been mention of his tendency to ignore the social aspects of religion. Anthropologist Alice Kehoe is highly critical of Eliade's work on Shamanism, namely because he was not an anthropologist but a historian. She contends that Eliade never did any field work or contacted any indigenous groups that practiced Shamanism, and that his work was synthesized from various sources without being supported by direct field research.

In contrast, Professor Kees W. Bolle of the University of California, Los Angeles argues that "Professor Eliade's approach, in all his works, is empirical": Bolle sets Eliade apart for what he sees as Eliade's particularly close "attention to the various particular motifs" of different myths. French researcher Daniel Dubuisson places doubt on Eliade's scholarship and its scientific character, citing the Romanian academic's alleged refusal to accept the treatment of religions in their historical and cultural context, and proposing that Eliade's notion of hierophany refers to the actual existence of a supernatural level.

Ronald Inden, a historian of India and University of Chicago professor, criticized Mircea Eliade, alongside other intellectual figures (Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell among them), for encouraging a "romantic view" of Hinduism. He argued that their approach to the subject relied mainly on an Orientalist approach, and made Hinduism seem like "a private realm of the imagination and the religious which modern, Western man lacks but needs."

The Love lV (Artwork) 

Literary works

Generic traits

Many of Mircea Eliade's literary works, in particular his earliest ones, are noted for their eroticism and their focus on subjective experience. Modernist in style, they have drawn comparisons to the contemporary writings of Mihail Sebastian, I. Valerian, and Ion Biberi. Alongside Honoré de Balzac and Giovanni Papini, his literary passions included Aldous Huxley and Miguel de Unamuno, as well as André Gide. Eliade also read with interest the prose of Romain Rolland, Henrik Ibsen, and the Enlightenment thinkers Voltaire and Denis Diderot. As a youth, he read the works of Romanian authors such as Liviu Rebreanu and Panait Istrati; initially, he was also interested in Ionel Teodoreanu's prose works, but later rejected them and criticized their author.

Investigating the works' main characteristics, George Călinescu stressed that Eliade owed much of his style to the direct influence of French author André Gide, concluding that, alongside Camil Petrescu and a few others, Eliade was among Gide's leading disciples in Romanian literature. He commented that, like Gide, Eliade believed that the artist "does not take a stand, but experiences good and evil while setting himself free from both, maintaining an intact curiosity." A specific aspect of this focus on experience is sexual experimentation—Călinescu notes that Eliade's fiction works tend to depict a male figure "possessing all practicable women in [a given] family". He also considered that, as a rule, Eliade depicts woman as "a basic means for a sexual experience and repudiated with harsh egotism."

For Călinescu, such a perspective on life culminated in "banality", leaving authors gripped by the "cult of the self" and "a contempt for literature". Polemically, Călinescu proposed that Mircea Eliade's supposed focus on "aggressive youth" and served to instill his interwar Romanian writers with the idea that they had a common destiny as a generation apart. He also commented that, when set in Romania, Mircea Eliade's stories lacked the "perception of immediate reality", and, analyzing the non-traditional names the writer tended to ascribe to his Romanian characters, that they did not depict "specificity". Additionally, in Călinescu's view, Eliade's stories were often "sensationalist compositions of the illustrated magazine kind." Mircea Eliade's assessment of his own pre-1940 literary contributions oscillated between expressions of pride and the bitter verdict that they were written for "an audience of little ladies and high school students".

A secondary but unifying feature present in most of Eliade's stories is their setting, a magical and part-fictional Bucharest. In part, they also serve to illustrate or allude to Eliade's own research in the field of religion, as well as to the concepts he introduced. Thus, commentators such as Matei Călinescu and Carmen Mușat have also argued that a main characteristic of Eliade's fantasy prose is a substitution between the supernatural and the mundane: in this interpretation, Eliade turns the daily world into an incomprehensible place, while the intrusive supernatural aspect promises to offer the sense of life. The notion was in turn linked to Eliade's own thoughts on transcendence, and in particular his idea that, once "camouflaged" in life or history, miracles become "unrecognizable".

Oriental themed novels

One of Eliade's earliest fiction writings, the controversial first-person narrative Isabel şi apele diavolului, focused on the figure of a young and brilliant academic, whose self-declared fear is that of "being common". The hero's experience is recorded in "notebooks", which are compiled to form the actual narrative, and which serve to record his unusual, mostly sexual, experiences in British India—the narrator describes himself as dominated by "a devilish indifference" towards "all things having to do with art or metaphysics", focusing instead on eroticism. The guest of a pastor, the scholar ponders sexual adventures with his host's wife, servant girl, and finally with his daughter Isabel. Persuading the pastor's adolescent son to run away from home, becoming the sexual initiator of a twelve-year-old girl and the lover of a much older woman, the character also attempts to seduce Isabel. Although she falls in love, the young woman does not give in to his pressures, but eventually allows herself to be abused and impregnated by another character, letting the object of her affection know that she had thought of him all along.

One of Eliade's best-known works, the novel Maitreyi, dwells on Eliade's own experience, comprising camouflaged details of his relationships with Surendranath Dasgupta and Dasgupta's daughter Maitreyi Devi. The main character, Allan, is an Englishman who visits the Indian engineer Narendra Sen and courts his daughter, herself known as Maitreyi. The narrative is again built on "notebooks" to which Allan adds his comments. This technique Călinescu describes as "boring", and its result "cynical".

Allan himself stands alongside Eliade's male characters, whose focus is on action, sensation and experience—his chaste contacts with Maitreyi are encouraged by Sen, who hopes for a marriage which is nonetheless abhorred by his would-be European son-in-law. Instead, Allan is fascinated to discover Maitreyi's Oriental version of Platonic love, marked by spiritual attachment more than by physical contact. However, their affair soon after turns physical, and she decides to attach herself to Allan as one would to a husband, in what is an informal and intimate wedding ceremony (which sees her vowing her love and invoking an earth goddess as the seal of union). Upon discovering this, Narendra Sen becomes enraged, rejecting their guest and keeping Maitreyi in confinement. As a result, his daughter decides to have intercourse with a lowly stranger, becoming pregnant in the hope that her parents would consequently allow her to marry her lover. However, the story also casts doubt on her earlier actions, reflecting rumors that Maitreyi was not a virgin at the time she and Allan first met, which also seems to expose her father as a hypocrite.

George Călinescu objected to the narrative, arguing that both the physical affair and the father's rage seemed artificial, while commenting that Eliade placing doubt on his Indian characters' honesty had turned the plot into a piece of "ethnological humor". Noting that the work developed on a classical theme of miscegenation, which recalled the prose of François-René de Chateaubriand and Pierre Loti, the critic proposed that its main merit was in introducing the exotic novel to local literature.

Mircea Eliade's other early works include Șantier ("Building Site"), a part-novel, part-diary account of his Indian sojourn. George Călinescu objected to its "monotony", and, noting that it featured a set of "intelligent observations", criticized the "banality of its ideological conversations." Șantier was also noted for its portrayal of drug addiction and intoxication with opium, both of which could have referred to Eliade's actual travel experience.

Portraits of a generation

In his earliest novel, titled Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent and written in the first person, Eliade depicts his experience through high school. It is proof of the influence exercised on him by the literature of Giovanni Papini, and in particular by Papini's story Un uomo finito. Each of its chapters reads like an independent novella, and, in all, the work experiments with the limits traced between novel and diary. Literary critic Eugen Simion called it "the most valuable" among Eliade's earliest literary attempts, but noted that, being "ambitious", the book had failed to achieve "an aesthetically satisfactory format". According to Simion, the innovative intent of the Novel... was provided by its technique, by its goal of providing authenticity in depicting experiences, and by its insight into adolescent psychology. The novel notably shows its narrator practicing self-flagellation.

Eliade's 1934 novel Întoarcerea din rai ("Return from Paradise") centers on Pavel Anicet, a young man who seeks knowledge through what Călinescu defined as "sexual excess". His search leaves him with a reduced sensitivity: right after being confronted with his father's death, Anicet breaks out in tears only after sitting through an entire dinner. The other characters, standing for Eliade's generation, all seek knowledge through violence or retreat from the world—nonetheless, unlike Anicet, they ultimately fail at imposing rigors upon themselves. Pavel himself eventually abandons his belief in sex as a means for enlightenment, and commits suicide in hopes of reaching the level of primordial unity. The solution, George Călinescu noted, mirrored the strange murder in Gide's Lafcadio's Adventures. Eliade himself indicated that the book dealt with the "loss of the beatitude, illusions, and optimism that had dominated the first twenty years of 'Greater Romania'." Robert Ellwood connected the work to Eliade's recurring sense of loss in respect to the "atmosphere of euphoria and faith" of his adolescence. Călinescu criticizes Întoarcerea din rai, describing its dialog sequences as "awkward", its narrative as "void", and its artistic interest as "non-existent", proposing that the reader could however find it relevant as the "document of a mentality".

The lengthy novel Huliganii ("The Hooligans") is intended as the fresco of a family, and, through it, that of an entire generation. The book's main protagonist, Petru Anicet, is a composer who places value in experiments; other characters include Dragu, who considers "a hooligan's experience" as "the only fertile debut into life", and the totalitarian Alexandru Pleşa, who is on the search for "the heroic life" by enlisting youth in "perfect regiments, equally intoxicated by a collective myth." Călinescu thought that the young male characters all owed inspiration to Fyodor Dostoevsky's Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov (see Crime and Punishment). Anicet, who partly shares Pleșa's vision for a collective experiment, is also prone to sexual adventures, and seduces the women of the Lecca family (who have hired him as a piano teacher). Romanian-born novelist Norman Manea called Anicet's experiment: "the paraded defiance of bourgeois conventions, in which venereal disease and lubricity dwell together." In one episode of the book, Anicet convinces Anișoara Lecca to gratuitously steal from her parents—an outrage which leads her mother to moral decay and, eventually, to suicide. George Călinescu criticized the book for inconsistencies and "excesses in Dostoyevskianism", but noted that the Lecca family portrayal was "suggestive", and that the dramatic scenes were written with "a remarkable poetic calm."

The novel Nuntă în cer depicts the correspondence between two male friends, an artist and a common man, who complain to each other about their failures in love: the former complains about a lover who wanted his children when he did not, while the other recalls being abandoned by a woman who, despite his intentions, did not want to become pregnant by him. Eliade lets the reader understand that they are in fact talking about the same woman.

Fantastic and fantasy literature

Mircea Eliade's earliest works, most of which were published at later stages, belong to the fantasy genre. One of the first such literary exercises to be printed, the 1921 Cum am găsit piatra filosofală, showed its adolescent author's interest in themes that he was to explore throughout his career, in particular esotericism and alchemy. Written in the first person, it depicts an experiment which, for a moment, seems to be the discovery of the philosophers' stone. These early writings also include two sketches for novels: Minunata călătorie a celor cinci cărăbuși in țara furnicilor roșii ("The Wonderful Journey of the Five Beetles into the Land of the Red Ants") and Memoriile unui soldat de plumb ("The Memoirs of a Lead Soldier"). In the former, a company of beetle spies is sent among the red ants—their travel offers a setting for satirical commentary. Eliade himself explained that Memoriile unui soldat de plumb was an ambitious project, designed as a fresco to include the birth of the Universe, abiogenesis, human evolution, and the entire world history.

Eliade's fantasy novel Domnișoara Christina, was, on its own, the topic of a scandal. The novel deals with the fate of an eccentric family, the Moscus, who are haunted by the ghost of a murdered young woman, known as Christina. The apparition shares characteristics with vampires and with strigoi: she is believed to be drinking the blood of cattle and that of a young family member. The young man Egor becomes the object of Christina's desire, and is shown to have intercourse with her. Noting that the plot and setting reminded one of horror fiction works by the German author Hanns Heinz Ewers, and defending Domnişoara Christina in front of harsher criticism, Călinescu nonetheless argued that the "international environment" in which it took place was "upsetting".  He also depicted the plot as focused on "major impurity", summarizing the story's references to necrophilia, menstrual fetish and ephebophilia.

Eliade's short story Șarpele ("The Snake") was described by George Călinescu as "hermetic". While on a trip to the forest, several persons witness a feat of magic performed by the male character Andronic, who summons a snake from the bottom of a river and places it on an island. At the end of the story, Andronic and the female character Dorina are found on the island, naked and locked in a sensual embrace. Călinescu saw the piece as an allusion to Gnosticism, to the Kabbalah, and to Babylonian mythology, while linking the snake to the Greek mythological figure and major serpent symbol Ophion. He was however dissatisfied with this introduction of iconic images, describing it as "languishing".

The short story Un om mare ("A Big Man"), which Eliade authored during his stay in Portugal, shows a common person, the engineer Cucoanes, who grows steadily and uncontrollably, reaching immense proportions and ultimately disappearing into the wilderness of the Bucegi Mountains. Eliade himself referenced the story and Aldous Huxley's experiments in the same section of his private notes, a matter which allowed Matei Călinescu to propose that Un om mare was a direct product of its author's experience with drugs. The same commentator, who deemed Un om mare "perhaps Eliade's most memorable short story", connected it with the uriași characters present in Romanian folklore.

Other writings

Eliade's reinterpreted the Greek mythological figure Iphigeneia in his eponymous 1941 play. Here, the maiden falls in love with Achilles, and accepts to be sacrificed on the pyre as a means to ensure both her lover's happiness (as predicted by an oracle) and her father Agamemnon's victory in the Trojan War. Discussing the association Iphigenia's character makes between love and death, Romanian theater critic Radu Albala noted that it was a possible echo of Meşterul Manole legend, in which a builder of the Curtea de Argeș Monastery has to sacrifice his wife in exchange for permission to complete work. In contrast with early renditions of the myth by authors such as Euripides and Jean Racine, Eliade's version ends with the sacrifice being carried out in full.

In addition to his fiction, the exiled Eliade authored several volumes of memoirs and diaries and travel writings. They were published sporadically, and covered various stages of his life. One of the earliest such pieces was India, grouping accounts of the travels he made through the Indian subcontinent. Writing for the Spanish journal La Vanguardia, commentator Sergio Vila-Sanjuán described the first volume of Eliade's Autobiography (covering the years 1907 to 1937) as "a great book", while noting that the other main volume was "more conventional and insincere." In Vila-Sanjuán's view, the texts reveal Mircea Eliade himself as "a Dostoyevskyian character", as well as "an accomplished person, a Goethian figure".

A work that drew particular interest was his Jurnal portughez ("Portuguese Diary"), completed during his stay in Lisbon and published only after its author's death. A portion of it dealing with his stay in Romania is believed to have been lost. The travels to Spain, partly recorded in Jurnal portughez, also led to a separate volume, Jurnal cordobez ("Cordoban Diary"), which Eliade compiled from various independent notebooks. Jurnal portughez shows Eliade coping with clinical depression and political crisis, and has been described by Andrei Oișteanu as "an overwhelming [read], through the immense suffering it exhales." Literary historian Paul Cernat argued that part of the volume is "a masterpiece of its time", while concluding that some 700 pages were passable for the "among others" section of Eliade's bibliography. Noting that the book featured parts where Eliade spoke of himself in eulogistic terms, notably comparing himself favorably to Goethe and Romania's national poet Mihai Eminescu, Cernat accused the writer of "egolatry", and deduced that Eliade was "ready to step over dead bodies for the sake of his spiritual 'mission' ". The same passages led philosopher and journalist Cătălin Avramescu to argue that Eliade's behavior was evidence of "megalomania".

Eliade also wrote various essays of literary criticism. In his youth, alongside his study on Julius Evola, he published essays which introduced the Romanian public to representatives of modern Spanish literature and philosophy, among them Adolfo Bonilla San Martín, Miguel de Unamuno, José Ortega y Gasset, Eugeni d'Ors, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez and Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo. He also wrote an essay on the works of James Joyce, connecting it with his own theories on the eternal return ("[Joyce's literature is] saturated with nostalgia for the myth of the eternal repetition"), and deeming Joyce himself an anti-historicist "archaic" figure among the modernists. In the 1930s, Eliade edited the collected works of Romanian historian Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu.

Wikipedia

Mircea Eliade 

Quotes

The crude product of nature, the object fashioned by the industry of man, acquire their reality, their identity, only to the extent of their participation in a transcendent reality.

The Experience of Sacred Space makes possible the "founding of the world": where the sacred Manifests itself in space, the real unveils itself, the world comes into existence.

Each one of these divine figures, each of these myths or symbols, is connected to a danger that was confronted and overcome...

The crude product of nature, the object fashioned by the industry of man, acquire their reality, their identity, only to the extent of their participation in a transcendent reality.

The Myth of the Eternal Return (1954) [also published as Cosmos and History (1959)]

The Experience of Sacred Space makes possible the "founding of the world": where the sacred Manifests itself in space, the real unveils itself, the world comes into existence.

The Sacred and the Profane : The Nature of Religion: The Significance of Religious Myth, Symbolism, and Ritual within Life and Culture (1961), translated from the French by William R. Trask, [first published in German as Das Heilige und das Profane (1957)]

Man becomes aware of the sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane. To designate the act of manifestation of the sacred, we have proposed the term hierophany. It is a fitting term, because it does not imply anything further; it expresses no more than is implicit in its etymological content, i.e., that something sacred shows itself to us. It could be said that the history of religions — from the most primitive to the most highly developed — is constituted by a great number of hierophanies, by manifestations of sacred realities. From the most elementary hierophany — e.g. manifestation of the sacred in some ordinary object, a stone or a tree — to the supreme hierophany (which, for a Christian, is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ) there is no solution of continuity. In each case we are confronted by the same mysterious act — the manifestation of something of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world, in objects that are an integral part of our natural "profane" world.

The Sacred and the Profane : The Nature of Religion: The Significance of Religious Myth, Symbolism, and Ritual within Life and Culture (1961), translated from the French by William R. Trask, [first published in German as Das Heilige und das Profane (1957)]

For those who have a religious experience all nature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality.

These thirty years, and more, that I've spent among exotic, barbaric, indomitable gods and goddesses, nourished on myths, obsessed by symbols, nursed and bewitched by so many images which have come down to me from those submerged worlds, today seem to me to be the stages of a long initiation. Each one of these divine figures, each of these myths or symbols, is connected to a danger that was confronted and overcome. How many times I was almost lost, gone astray in this labyrinth where I risked being killed... These were not only bits of knowledge acquired slowly and leisurely in books, but so many encounters, confrontations, and temptations. I realize perfectly well now all the dangers I skirted during this long quest, and, in the first place, the risk of forgetting that I had a goal... that I wanted to reach a "center".

Journal entry (10 November 1959) published in No Souvenirs (1977) , 74-5. Journal II, 1957-1969 (1989)

For those to whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into supernatural reality. In other words, for those who have a religious experience all nature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality.

The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion: The Significance of Religious Myth, Symbolism, and Ritual within Life and Culture (1961)

To try to grasp the essence of such phenomenon by means of physiology, psychology, sociology, economics, linguistics, art or any other study is false; it misses the one unique and irreducible element in it — the element of the sacred.

A religious phenomenon will only be recognized as such if it is grasped at its own level, that is to say, if it is studied as something religious. To try to grasp the essence of such phenomenon by means of physiology, psychology, sociology, economics, linguistics, art or any other study is false; it misses the one unique and irreducible element in it — the element of the sacred.

Patterns in Comparative Religion (1963), as translated by Rosemary Sheed, p. xiii

The history of religions reaches down and makes contact with that which is essentially human: the relation of man to the sacred.

Psychoanalysis justifies its importance by asserting that it forces you to look to and accept reality. But what sort of reality? A reality conditioned by the materialistic and scientific ideology of psychoanalysis, that is, a historical product...

Journal entry (7 October 1965) as published in No Souvenirs (1977) later retitled Journal II, 1957-1969 (1989), p. 269

The History of Religions is destined to play an important role in contemporary cultural life. This is not only because an understanding of exotic and archaic religions will significantly assist in a cultural dialogue with the representatives of such religions. It is more especially because ... the history of religions will inevitably attain to a deeper knowledge of man. It is on the basis of such knowledge that a new humanism, on a world-wide scale, could develop.

The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion (1969), p. 3

It is not without fear and trembling that a historian of religion approaches the problem of myth. This is not only because of that preliminary embarrassing question: what is intended by myth? It is also because the answers given depend for the most part on the documents selected.

The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion (1969), p. 72

The history of religions reaches down and makes contact with that which is essentially human: the relation of man to the sacred. The history of religions can play an extremely important role in the crisis we are living through. The crises of modern man are to a large extent religious ones, insofar as they are an awakening of his awareness to an absence of meaning.

Ordeal by Labyrinth, Conversations with Claude-Henri Rocquet (1982), p. 148

The interpretations of Freud are more and more successful because they are among the myths accessible to modern man...

The interpretations of Freud are more and more successful because they are among the myths accessible to modern man. The myth of the murdered father, among others, reconstituted and interpreted in Totem and Taboo. It would be impossible to ferret out a single example of slaying the father in primitive religions or mythologies. This myth was created by Freud. And what is more interesting: the intellectual élite accept it (is it because they understand it? Or because it is "true" for modern man?)

No Souvenirs (1977) later retitled Journal II, 1957-1969 (1989), p.117

TRINITY. Trinitarian doctrine touches on virtually every aspect of Christian faith, theology, and piety, including Christology and pneumatology, theological epistemology (faith, revelation, theological methodology), spirituality and mystical theology, and ecelesial life (sacraments, community, ethics). This article summarizes the main lines of trinitarian doctrine without presenting detailed explanations of important ideas, persons, or terms. The doctrine of the Trinity is the summary of Christian faith in God, who out of love creates humanity for union with God, who through Jesus Christ redeems the world, and in the power of the Holy Spirit transforms and divinizes (2 Cor. 3:18). The heart of trinitarian theology is the conviction that the God revealed in Jesus Christ is involved faithfully and unalterably in covenanted relationship with the world. Christianity is not unique in believing God is "someone" rather than something," but it is unique in its belief that Christ is the personal Word of God, and that through Christ's death and resurrection into new life, "God was in Christ reconciling all things to God" (2 Cor. 5:19). Christ is not looked upon as an intermediary between God and world but as an essential agent of salvation. The Spirit poured out at Pentecost, by whom we live in Christ and are returned to God (Father), is also not a "lesser God" but one and the same God who creates and redeems us. The doctrine of the Trinity is the product of reflection on the events of redemptive history, especially the Incarnation and the sending of the Spirit.

"Trinity" article in The Encyclopedia of Religion (1987) Vol 15, p. 53

It is above all the valorizing of the present that requires emphasizing.

Exegetes and theologians today are in agreement that the Hebrew Bible does not contain a doctrine of the Trinity, even though it was customary in past dogmatic tracts on the Trinity to cite texts like Genesis 1:26, "Let us make humanity in our image, after our likeness" (see also Gn. 3:22, 11:7; Is. 6:23) as proof of plurality in God. Although the Hebrew Bible depicts God as the father of Israel and employs personifications of God such as Word (davar), Spirit (ruah), Wisdom (hokhmah), and Presence (shekhinah), it would go beyond the intention and spirit of the Old Testament to correlate these notions with later trinitarian doctrine. Further, exegetes and theologians agree that the New Testament also does not contain an explicit doctrine of the Trinity. God the Father is source of all that is (Pantokrator) and also the father of Jesus Christ; "Father" is not a title for the first person of the Trinity but a synonym for God. Early liturgical and creedal formulas speak of God as "Father of our Lord Jesus Christ"; praise is to be rendered to God through Christ (see opening greetings in Paul and deutero-Paul).

"Trinity" article in The Encyclopedia of Religion (1987) Vol 15, Subsection : "Development of Trinitarian Doctrine"

It is above all the valorizing of the present that requires emphasizing. The simple fact of existing, of living in time, can comprise a religious dimension. This dimension is not always obvious, since sacrality is in a sense camouflaged in the immediate, in the "natural" and the everyday. The joy of life discovered by the Greeks is not a profane type of enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of sharing — even fugitively — in the spontaneity of life and the majesty of the world. Like so many others before and after them, the Greeks learned that the surest way to escape from time is to exploit the wealth, at first sight impossible to suspect, of the lived instant.

As quoted in Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade (2002) by Douglas Allen, p. 90

To believe that I could, at twenty-three, sacrifice history and culture for "the Absolute" was further proof that I had not understood India. My vocation was culture, not sainthood.

As quoted in Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade (2002) by Douglas Allen, p. 216

When the sacred manifests itself in any hierophany, there is not only a break in the homogeneity of space; there is also a revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the nonreality of the vast surrounding expanse. The manifestation of the sacred ontologically founds the world. In the homogenous and infinite expanse, in which no point of reference is possible and hence no orientation can be established, the hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, a center.

As quoted in The Structure of Religious Knowing : Encountering the Sacred in Eliade and Lonergan (2004) by John Daniel Dadosky, p. 89

It would be frightening to think that in all the cosmos, which is so harmonious, so complete and equal to itself, that only human life is happening randomly, that only one's destiny lacks meaning.

Attributed in The Little Book of Romanian Wisdom (2011) edited by Diana Doroftei and Matthew Cross

The way towards 'wisdom' or towards 'freedom' is the way towards your inner being. This is the simplest definition of metaphysics.

Attributed in The Little Book of Romanian Wisdom (2011) edited by Diana Doroftei and Matthew Cross

Wikipedia

The Love X (Artwork) 

Life At The Top 

Life At The Top is the third novel by the English author John Braine, first published in the UK by Eyre & Spottiswoode and in the US by Houghton Mifflin & Co. in 1962. It continues the story of the life and difficulties of Joe Lampton, an ambitious young man of humble origins. A 1965 film adaptation of the novel was made starring Laurence Harvey. In September 2012, BBC television finally broadcast a two-part television adaptation of Room at the Top that had been delayed because of copyright difficulties. Matthew McNulty was in the lead role.

Plot summary

It is ten years further on from when last we learned of Joe's life in Room At The Top. He now has everything he thought he wanted - the upper-class wife, an executive job, two cars and two children for his new house. Yet, Joe is still a dissatisfied man - his job had not moved significantly forward in the last ten years.

This dissatisfaction leads him back to his old philandering ways - spurred on by the knowledge of his wife's own infidelity. Joe and Susan separate temporarily but, towards the novel's close, Joe is drawn back to his life in Warley in response to trouble with his children and the self-knowledge of what his life needs.

The Film 

Life at the Top is a 1965 drama film a production of Romulus Films released by Columbia Pictures. The screenplay was by Mordecai Richler, based on the novel Life at the Top by John Braine, and is a sequel to the film Room at the Top (1959). It was directed by Ted Kotcheff and produced by James Woolf with William Kirby as associate producer. The music score was by Richard Addinsell and the cinematography by Oswald Morris.

The film stars Laurence Harvey, once again playing Joe Lampton, with Jean Simmons, Honor Blackman and Michael Craig.

In Room at the Top Joe Lampton's escape from his working-class background through his seduction of, and marriage to, the daughter of a wealthy mill owner had been portrayed.

Ten years on Joe is living the dream of the successful young executive, complete with luxurious suburban house, white Jaguar, and two wonderful children. But Joe finds it hard to stand face to face with himself.

……Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™ Pt lX. First Musings on Noah Pt V. The Misogyny. As Usual. Again ll. Amera Ziganii Rao….. 

....The Ego Run Up To Soul. Amera Ziganii Rao 

Men are bred, to hate women, because men (and the women like men, for some reason) are bred, to be SELFISH about women. That is the silent killer. Men are bred, to hate women, because men are bred, to be SELFISH about women. That explains everything. 

And me, don’t worry, I’m cool. Racism had the same simple key. Now, I am free. And you may be, one day too. And I will be waiting for you. You are programmed to be selfish, only about me. That, my dear, will be your threshold into soul. 

Male selfishness towards female is therefore the essence of your ego. The projection of your generic ego terror that we all carry in the same state. Selfishness is your projection from that terror. Get rid of the selfishness and the terror will have to be seen. Face the terror and all that is in it, and from where and how and when, and it will either kill you or you will defeat it forever. And then you will be free......

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013

Erin Brockovich 

Erin Brockovich is a 2000 biographical film directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Susannah Grant. The film is a dramatization of the true story of Erin Brockovich, portrayed by Julia Roberts, who fought against the energy corporation Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E). The film was a massive box office hit, and critical reviews were highly positive.

Roberts won the Academy Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors' Guild Award and BAFTA for Best Actress. The film itself was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Director for Steven Soderbergh at the 73rd Academy Awards. Early in the film the real Erin Brockovich has a cameo appearance as a waitress named Julia.

In 1993, Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts) is an unemployed single mother of three children, who has recently been injured in a traffic accident with a doctor and is suing him. Her lawyer, Ed Masry (Albert Finney), expects to win, but Erin's courtroom behavior loses her the case. After she makes several attempts to contact Ed at his office with no reply, Ed arrives at work to find her in the office, appearing to do work. He confronts her, and she says that he told her things would work out and they didn't, and that she needed a job. He feels bad for her, and decides to give her a try at the office.

Erin is given files for a real-estate case where Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) is offering to purchase the home of Hinkley, California, resident Donna Jensen. Erin is surprised to see medical records in the file and visits Donna, who explains that she had simply kept all her PG&E correspondence together. Donna appreciates PG&E's help: she has had several tumors and her husband has Hodgkin's disease, but PG&E has always supplied a doctor at their own expense. Erin asks why they would do that, and Donna replies, "because of the chromium". Erin begins digging into the case and finds evidence that the groundwater in Hinkley is contaminated with carcinogenic hexavalent chromium, but PG&E has been telling Hinkley residents that they use a safer form of chromium. She persuades Ed to allow her to do further research, and wins the trust of many Hinkley residents. She finds many cases of tumors and other medical problems in Hinkley. Everyone has been treated by PG&E's doctors and thinks the cluster of cases is just a coincidence, unrelated to the "safe" chromium.

A man tells her he was tasked with destroying documents at PG&E, but noticed the medical conditions plaguing the workers and kept the documents instead. He then gives the documents to her. A 1966 memo proves corporate headquarters knew the water was contaminated with hexavalent chromium, did nothing about it, and advised the Hinkley operation to keep this secret.

Rather than delay any settlement for years, Ed takes the opportunity to arrange for disposition by binding arbitration. Erin persuades all 634 plaintiffs to go along. The judge orders PG&E to pay a settlement amount of $333 million to be distributed among the plaintiffs. In the final scene, Ed hands Erin her bonus payment for the case, but says he has changed the amount. She starts to complain that she deserves more respect, but is astonished to find that he has increased it to $2 million.

Wikipedia 

The Horse Whisperer 

The Horse Whisperer is a 1998 American drama film directed by and starring Robert Redford, based on the 1995 novel The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans. Redford plays the title role, a talented trainer with a remarkable gift for understanding horses, who is hired to help an injured teenager (played by Scarlett Johansson) and her horse back to health following a tragic accident.

Teenager Grace MacLean (Scarlett Johansson) and her best friend Judith (Kate Bosworth) go out early one winter's morning to ride their horses, Pilgrim and Gulliver. As they ride up an icy slope, Gulliver slips and hits Pilgrim. Both horses fall, dragging the girls onto a road and colliding with a truck. Judith and Gulliver are killed, while Grace and Pilgrim are both severely injured. Grace, left with a partially amputated right leg, is bitter and withdrawn after the accident. Meanwhile, Pilgrim is traumatized and uncontrollable to the extent that it is suggested he be put down. Grace's mother, Annie (Kristin Scott Thomas), a strong-minded but workaholic magazine editor, refuses to allow Pilgrim to be put down, sensing that somehow Grace's recovery is linked with Pilgrim's.

Desperate for a way to heal both Grace and Pilgrim, Annie tracks down a "horse whisperer", Tom Booker (Robert Redford), in the remote Montana mountains. Tom agrees to help, but only if Grace also takes part in the process. Grace reluctantly agrees, and she and Annie go to stay at the Booker ranch where Tom lives with his brother and his brother's family. As Pilgrim and Grace slowly overcome their trauma, Annie and Tom begin to have mutual romantic feelings. However, they are both reluctant to act on these feelings – Annie is married and Tom had his heart broken before, when his wife left him because she belonged to the city, not the ranch.

The status quo is broken when Robert MacLean (Sam Neill), Grace's father and Annie's husband, unexpectedly shows up at the ranch. Annie is increasingly torn by her feelings for Tom and her love for her family. Soon, with Tom's help, Grace finally takes the last step to heal herself and Pilgrim – riding Pilgrim again. As the MacLeans get ready to leave the Booker ranch, Robert tells Annie that he knew Annie was in love with Tom, and gently asks Annie to make her decision one way or another before going home. Although Annie wishes she could stay with Tom on the ranch, she also knows that she belongs to the city, just like Tom's wife. The film ends with Annie driving away from the ranch, while Tom watches her go from the top of a hill.

Wikipedia 

Jonathan Swift 

Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.

He is remembered for works such as Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift originally published all of his works under pseudonyms – such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, MB Drapier – or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire: the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.

Youth

Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland. He was the second child and only son of Jonathan Swift (1640–1667) and his wife Abigail Erick (or Herrick), of Frisby on the Wreake. His father, a native of Goodrich, Herefordshire, accompanied his brothers to Ireland to seek their fortunes in law after their Royalist father's estate was brought to ruin during the English Civil War. Swift's father died in Dublin before he was born, and his mother returned to England. He was left in the care of his influential uncle, Godwin, a close friend and confidant of Sir John Temple, whose son later employed Swift as his secretary.

Swift's family had several interesting literary connections: His grandmother, Elizabeth (Dryden) Swift, was the niece of Sir Erasmus Dryden, grandfather of the poet John Dryden. The same grandmother's aunt, Katherine (Throckmorton) Dryden, was a first cousin of Elizabeth, wife of Sir Walter Raleigh. His great-great grandmother, Margaret (Godwin) Swift, was the sister of Francis Godwin, author of The Man in the Moone which influenced parts of Swift's Gulliver's Travels. His uncle, Thomas Swift, married a daughter of the poet and playwright Sir William Davenant, a godson of William Shakespeare.

His uncle Godwin Swift (1628–1695) a benefactor, took primary responsibility for the young Jonathan, sending him with one of his cousins to Kilkenny College (also attended by the philosopher George Berkeley). In 1682, financed by Godwin's son, Willoughby, he attended Dublin University (Trinity College, Dublin), from where he received his BA in 1686, and developed his friendship with William Congreve. Swift was studying for his Master's degree when political troubles in Ireland surrounding the Glorious Revolution forced him to leave for England in 1688, where his mother helped him get a position as secretary and personal assistant of Sir William Temple at Moor Park, Farnham. Temple was an English diplomat who, having arranged the Triple Alliance of 1668, retired from public service to his country estate to tend his gardens and write his memoirs. Gaining the confidence of his employer, Swift "was often trusted with matters of great importance." Within three years of their acquaintance, Temple had introduced his secretary to William III, and sent him to London to urge the King to consent to a bill for triennial Parliaments.

When Swift took up his residence at Moor Park, he met Esther Johnson, then eight years old, the daughter of an impoverished widow who acted as companion to Temple's sister, Lady Giffard. Swift acted as her tutor and mentor, giving her the nickname "Stella", and the two maintained a close but ambiguous relationship for the rest of Esther's life.

In 1690, Swift left Temple for Ireland because of his health, but returned to Moor Park the following year. The illness, fits of vertigo or giddiness – now known to be Ménière's disease—would continue to plague Swift throughout his life. During this second stay with Temple, Swift received his M.A. from Hart Hall, Oxford in 1692. Then, apparently despairing of gaining a better position through Temple's patronage, Swift left Moor Park to become an ordained priest in the Established Church of Ireland and in 1694 he was appointed to the prebend of Kilroot in the Diocese of Connor, with his parish located at Kilroot, near Carrickfergus in County Antrim.

Swift appears to have been miserable in his new position, being isolated in a small, remote community far from the centres of power and influence. While at Kilroot, however, Swift may well have become romantically involved with Jane Waring, whom he called "Varina", the sister of an old college friend.

A letter from him survives, offering to remain if she would marry him and promising to leave and never return to Ireland if she refused. She presumably refused, because Swift left his post and returned to England and Temple's service at Moor Park in 1696, and he remained there until Temple's death. There he was employed in helping to prepare Temple's memoirs and correspondence for publication. During this time Swift wrote The Battle of the Books, a satire responding to critics of Temple's Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1690), though Battle was not published until 1704.

On 27 January 1699 Temple died. Swift, normally a harsh judge of human nature, said that all that was good and amiable in humankind died with him. He stayed on briefly in England to complete the editing of Temple's memoirs, and perhaps in the hope that recognition of his work might earn him a suitable position in England. However, Swift's work made enemies of some of Temple's family and friends, in particular Temple's formidable sister, Lady Giffard, who objected to indiscretions included in the memoirs.

Swift's next move was to approach King William directly, based on his imagined connection through Temple and a belief that he had been promised a position. This failed so miserably that he accepted the lesser post of secretary and chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley, one of the Lords Justice of Ireland. However, when he reached Ireland he found that the secretaryship had already been given to another. However, he soon obtained the living of Laracor, Agher, and Rathbeggan, and the prebend of Dunlavin in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.

At Laracor, a mile or two from Trim, County Meath, and twenty miles (32 km) from Dublin, Swift ministered to a congregation of about fifteen, and had abundant leisure for cultivating his garden, making a canal (after the Dutch fashion of Moor Park), planting willows, and rebuilding the vicarage. As chaplain to Lord Berkeley, he spent much of his time in Dublin and travelled to London frequently over the next ten years. In 1701, Swift published, anonymously, a political pamphlet, A Discourse on the Contests and Dissentions in Athens and Rome.

Writer

In February 1702, Swift received his Doctor of Divinity degree from Trinity College, Dublin. That spring he travelled to England and returned to Ireland in October, accompanied by Esther Johnson—now 20—and his friend Rebecca Dingley, another member of William Temple's household. There is a great mystery and controversy over Swift's relationship with Esther Johnson nicknamed "Stella". Many, notably his close friend Thomas Sheridan believed that they were secretly married in 1716; others, like Swift's housekeeper Mrs Brent, and Rebecca Dingley (who lived with Stella all through her years in Ireland) dismissed the story as absurd.

During his visits to England in these years, Swift published A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books (1704) and began to gain a reputation as a writer. This led to close, lifelong friendships with Alexander Pope, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot, forming the core of the Martinus Scriblerus Club (founded in 1713).

Swift became increasingly active politically in these years. From 1707 to 1709 and again in 1710, Swift was in London, unsuccessfully urging upon the Whig administration of Lord Godolphin the claims of the Irish clergy to the First-Fruits and Twentieths ("Queen Anne's Bounty"), which brought in about £2,500 a year, already granted to their brethren in England. He found the opposition Tory leadership more sympathetic to his cause and Swift was recruited to support their cause as editor of The Examiner when they came to power in 1710. In 1711, Swift published the political pamphlet "The Conduct of the Allies," attacking the Whig government for its inability to end the prolonged war with France. The incoming Tory government conducted secret (and illegal) negotiations with France, resulting in the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) ending the War of the Spanish Succession.

Swift was part of the inner circle of the Tory government, and often acted as mediator between Henry St John (Viscount Bolingbroke) the secretary of state for foreign affairs (1710–15) and Robert Harley (Earl of Oxford) lord treasurer and prime minister (1711–1714). 

Swift recorded his experiences and thoughts during this difficult time in a long series of letters to Esther Johnson, collected and published after his death as A Journal to Stella. The animosity between the two Tory leaders eventually led to the dismissal of Harley in 1714. With the death of Queen Anne and accession of George I that year, the Whigs returned to power and the Tory leaders were tried for treason for conducting secret negotiations with France.

Also during these years in London, Swift became acquainted with the Vanhomrigh family (Dutch merchants who had settled in Ireland, then moved to London) and became involved with one of the daughters, Esther, yet another fatherless young woman and another ambiguous relationship to confuse Swift's biographers. 

Swift furnished Esther with the nickname "Vanessa" and she features as one of the main characters in his poem Cadenus and Vanessa. The poem and their correspondence suggests that Esther was infatuated with Swift, and that he may have reciprocated her affections, only to regret this and then try to break off the relationship. Esther followed Swift to Ireland in 1714, and settled at her old family home, Celbridge Abbey. Their uneasy relationship continued for some years; then there appears to have been a confrontation, possibly involving Esther Johnson. Esther Vanhomrigh died in 1723 at the age of 35, having destroyed the will she had made in Swift's favour. Another lady with whom he had a close but less intense relationship was Anne Long, a toast of the Kit-Cat Club.

Maturity 

Before the fall of the Tory government, Swift hoped that his services would be rewarded with a church appointment in England. 

However, Queen Anne appeared to have taken a dislike to Swift and thwarted these efforts. Her dislike has been attributed to The Tale of a Tub, which she thought blasphemous, compounded by The Windsor Prophecy, where Swift, with a surprising lack of tact, advised the Queen on which of her bedchamber ladies she should and which she should not trust.

The best position his friends could secure for him was the Deanery of St Patrick's: this was not in the Queen's gift and Anne, who could be a bitter enemy, made it clear that Swift would not have received the preferment if she could have prevented it. With the return of the Whigs, Swift's best move was to leave England and he returned to Ireland in disappointment, a virtual exile, to live "like a rat in a hole".

Once in Ireland, however, Swift began to turn his pamphleteering skills in support of Irish causes, producing some of his most memorable works: Proposal for Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720), Drapier's Letters (1724), and A Modest Proposal (1729), earning him the status of an Irish patriot. This new role was unwelcome to the Government, which made clumsy attempts to silence him. His printer, Edward Waters, was convicted of seditious libel in 1720, but four years later a grand jury refused to find that the Drapier Letters (which, though written under a pseudonym, were universally known to be Swift's work) were seditious. Swift responded with an attack on the Irish judiciary almost unparalleled in its ferocity, his principal target being the "vile and profligate villain" William Whitshed, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.

Also during these years, he began writing his masterpiece, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships, better known as Gulliver's Travels. Much of the material reflects his political experiences of the preceding decade. For instance, the episode in which the giant Gulliver puts out the Lilliputian palace fire by urinating on it can be seen as a metaphor for the Tories' illegal peace treaty; having done a good thing in an unfortunate manner. 

In 1726 he paid a long-deferred visit to London, taking with him the manuscript of Gulliver's Travels. During his visit he stayed with his old friends Alexander Pope, John Arbuthnot and John Gay, who helped him arrange for the anonymous publication of his book. First published in November 1726, it was an immediate hit, with a total of three printings that year and another in early 1727. French, German, and Dutch translations appeared in 1727, and pirated copies were printed in Ireland.

Swift returned to England one more time in 1727 and stayed with Alexander Pope once again. The visit was cut short when Swift received word that Esther Johnson was dying, and rushed back home to be with her. On 28 January 1728, Esther Johnson died; Swift had prayed at her bedside, even composing prayers for her comfort. Swift could not bear to be present at the end, but on the night of her death he began to write his The Death of Mrs Johnson. He was too ill to attend the funeral at St Patrick's. Many years later, a lock of hair, assumed to be Esther Johnson's, was found in his desk, wrapped in a paper bearing the words, "Only a woman's hair".

Death became a frequent feature of Swift's life from this point. In 1731 he wrote Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, his own obituary published in 1739. In 1732, his good friend and collaborator John Gay died. In 1735, John Arbuthnot, another friend from his days in London, died. In 1738 Swift began to show signs of illness, and in 1742 he may have suffered a stroke, losing the ability to speak and realising his worst fears of becoming mentally disabled. ("I shall be like that tree," he once said, "I shall die at the top.") 

He became increasingly quarrelsome, and long-standing friendships, like that with Thomas Sheridan, ended without sufficient cause. To protect him from unscrupulous hangers on, who had begun to prey on the great man, his closest companions had him declared of "unsound mind and memory". However, it was long believed by many that Swift was actually insane at this point. In his book Literature and Western Man, author J. B. Priestley even cites the final chapters of Gulliver's Travels as proof of Swift's approaching "insanity".

In part VIII of his series, The Story of Civilization, Will Durant describes the final years of Swift's life as such:

"Definite symptoms of madness appeared in 1738. In 1741 guardians were appointed to take care of his affairs and watch lest in his outbursts of violence he should do himself harm. In 1742 he suffered great pain from the inflammation of his left eye, which swelled to the size of an egg; five attendants had to restrain him from tearing out his eye. He went a whole year without uttering a word."

In 1744, Alexander Pope died. On 19 October 1745, Swift also died. After being laid out in public view for the people of Dublin to pay their last respects, he was buried in his own cathedral by Esther Johnson's side, in accordance with his wishes. The bulk of his fortune (£12,000) was left to found a hospital for the mentally ill, originally known as St Patrick’s Hospital for Imbeciles, which opened in 1757, and which still exists as a psychiatric hospital.

Jonathan Swift wrote his own epitaph:

Hic depositum est Corpus

IONATHAN SWIFT S.T.D.

Hujus Ecclesiæ Cathedralis

Decani,

Ubi sæva Indignatio

Ulterius

Cor lacerare nequit,

Abi Viator

Et imitare, si poteris,

Strenuum pro virili

Libertatis Vindicatorem.

Obiit 19º Die Mensis Octobris

A.D. 1745 Anno Ætatis 78º.

Here is laid the Body

of Jonathan Swift, Doctor of Sacred Theology,

Dean of this Cathedral Church,

where fierce Indignation

can no longer

injure the Heart.

Go forth, Voyager,

and copy, if you can,

this vigorous (to the best of his ability)

Champion of Liberty.

He died on the 19th Day of the Month of October,

A.D. 1745, in the 78th Year of his Age.

W. B. Yeats poetically translated it from the Latin as:

Swift has sailed into his rest;

Savage indignation there

Cannot lacerate his breast.

Imitate him if you dare,

World-besotted traveller; he

Served human liberty.

Works 

Swift was a prolific writer, notable for his satires. The most recent collection of his prose works (Herbert Davis, ed. Basil Blackwell, 1965–) comprises fourteen volumes. A recent edition of his complete poetry (Pat Rodges, ed. Penguin, 1983) is 953 pages long. One edition of his correspondence (David Woolley, ed. P. Lang, 1999) fills three volumes.

Major Prose Work 

Swift's first major prose work, A Tale of a Tub, demonstrates many of the themes and stylistic techniques he would employ in his later work. It is at once wildly playful and funny while being pointed and harshly critical of its targets. In its main thread, the Tale recounts the exploits of three sons, representing the main threads of Christianity, who receive a bequest from their father of a coat each, with the added instructions to make no alterations whatsoever. 

However, the sons soon find that their coats have fallen out of current fashion, and begin to look for loopholes in their father's will that will let them make the needed alterations. As each finds his own means of getting around their father's admonition, they struggle with each other for power and dominance. Inserted into this story, in alternating chapters, the narrator includes a series of whimsical "digressions" on various subjects.

In 1690, Sir William Temple, Swift's patron, published An Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning a defence of classical writing (see Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns) holding up the Epistles of Phalaris as an example. William Wotton responded to Temple with Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1694) showing that the Epistles were a later forgery. A response by the supporters of the Ancients was then made by Charles Boyle (later the 4th Earl of Orrery and father of Swift's first biographer). A further retort on the Modern side came from Richard Bentley, one of the pre-eminent scholars of the day, in his essay Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris (1699). However, the final words on the topic belong to Swift in his Battle of the Books (1697, published 1704) in which he makes a humorous defence on behalf of Temple and the cause of the Ancients.

In 1708, a cobbler named John Partridge published a popular almanac of astrological predictions. Because Partridge falsely determined the deaths of several church officials, Swift attacked Partridge in Predictions for the Ensuing Year by Isaac Bickerstaff, a parody predicting that Partridge would die on 29 March. Swift followed up with a pamphlet issued on 30 March claiming that Partridge had in fact died, which was widely believed despite Partridge's statements to the contrary. According to other sources, Richard Steele uses the personae of Isaac Bickerstaff and was the one who wrote about the "death" of John Partridge and published it in The Spectator, not Jonathan Swift.*

Drapier's Letters (1724) was a series of pamphlets against the monopoly granted by the English government to William Wood to provide the Irish with copper coinage. It was widely believed that Wood would need to flood Ireland with debased coinage in order make a profit. In these "letters" Swift posed as a shop-keeper—a draper—to criticise the plan. Swift's writing was so effective in undermining opinion in the project that a reward was offered by the government to anyone disclosing the true identity of the author. 

Though hardly a secret (on returning to Dublin after one of his trips to England, Swift was greeted with a banner, "Welcome Home, Drapier") no-one turned Swift in, although there was an unsuccessful attempt to prosecute the publisher Harding. The government eventually resorted to hiring none other than Sir Isaac Newton to certify the soundness of Wood's coinage to counter Swift's accusations. In "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" (1739) Swift recalled this as one of his best achievements.

Gulliver's Travels, a large portion of which Swift wrote at Woodbrook House in County Laois, was published in 1726. It is regarded as his masterpiece. As with his other writings, the Travels was published under a pseudonym, the fictional Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon and later a sea captain. Some of the correspondence between printer Benj. Motte and Gulliver's also-fictional cousin negotiating the book's publication has survived. 

Though it has often been mistakenly thought of and published in bowdlerised form as a children's book, it is a great and sophisticated satire of human nature based on Swift's experience of his times. Gulliver's Travels is an anatomy of human nature, a sardonic looking-glass, often criticised for its apparent misanthropy. 

It asks its readers to refute it, to deny that it has adequately characterised human nature and society. Each of the four books—recounting four voyages to mostly-fictional exotic lands—has a different theme, but all are attempts to deflate human pride. Critics hail the work as a satiric reflection on the shortcomings of Enlightenment thought.

In 1729, Swift published A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick, a satire in which the narrator, with intentionally grotesque arguments, recommends that Ireland's poor escape their poverty by selling their children as food to the rich: "I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food..." 

Following the satirical form, he introduces the reforms he is actually suggesting by deriding them:

Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients...taxing our absentees...using [nothing] except what is of our own growth and manufacture...rejecting...foreign luxury...introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance...learning to love our country...quitting our animosities and factions...teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants....Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like expedients, 'till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice.

Wikipedia

The Love XVl Pt lll (Artwork) 

Contact 

Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway is the director of "Project Argus," in which scores of radio telescopes in New Mexico have been dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The project discovers the first confirmed communication from extraterrestrial beings. The communication is a repeating series of the first 261 prime numbers (a sequence of prime numbers is a commonly predicted first message from alien intelligence, since mathematics is considered a universal language, and it is conjectured that algorithms that produce successive prime numbers are sufficiently complicated so as to require intelligence to implement them). 

Further analysis reveals that a second message is contained in polarization modulation of the signal. The second message is a retransmission of Earth's first television signal broadcast powerful enough to escape the ionosphere and be received in interstellar space; in this case, Adolf Hitler's opening speech at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.

A third message is discovered containing over 30,000 pages describing plans for a machine that appears to be a kind of highly advanced vehicle, with seats for five human beings. But they cannot understand the third message until they find the fourth message, a primer hidden in phase modulation. The primer allows them to translate the alien language to human language.

Ultimately, a machine is successfully built and activated, transporting five passengers – including Ellie – through a series of wormholes to a place near the center of the Milky Way galaxy, where they meet the senders in the guise of persons significant in the lives of the travelers, whether living or dead. 

Some of the travelers' questions are answered by the senders, with the senders suggesting a message is contained within one of the transcendental numbers. Upon returning to Earth, the passengers discover that what seemed like many hours to them passed by in no time at all (from Earth's perspective), and that all their video footage has been erased, presumably by the time changing magnetic fields they were exposed to inside of the wormholes. They are left with no proof of their stories and are accused of fabrication. 

Therefore, though Ellie has traveled across the galaxy and actually encountered extraterrestrial beings, she cannot prove it. The government officials deduce an international conspiracy, blaming the world's richest man in an attempt to perpetuate himself, embarrass the government, and get lucrative deals from the machine consortium's multi-trillion-dollar project.

The message is claimed to be a fabrication from a secret artificial man-made satellite(s) that cannot be traced, because the message stopped once the machine was activated, a feat that is impossible unless one considers time travel feasible, and Ellie and other scientists are implicated. Ellie, a lifelong religious skeptic, finds herself asking the world to take a leap of faith and believe what she and the others say happened to them. She finds only one person willing to take that leap: Palmer Joss, a minister introduced early in the book.

Ellie, acting upon a suggestion by the senders of the message, works on a program which computes the digits of pi to record lengths in different bases. Very far from the decimal point (1020) and in base 11, it finds that a special pattern does exist when the numbers stop varying randomly and start producing 1s and 0s in a very long string. The string's length is the product of 11 prime numbers. The 1s and 0s when organized as a square of specific dimensions form a rasterized circle. The extraterrestrials suggest that this is a signature incorporated into the Universe itself. Yet the extraterrestrials are just as ignorant to its meaning as Ellie, as it could be still some sort of a statistical anomaly. They also make reference to older artifacts built from space time itself (namely the wormhole transit system) abandoned by a prior civilization. A line in the book suggests that the image is a foretaste of deeper marvels hidden even further within pi. This new pursuit becomes analogous to SETI; it is another search for meaningful signals in apparent noise.

The Film 

Contact is a 1997 American science fiction drama film adapted from the Carl Sagan novel of the same name and directed by Robert Zemeckis. Both Sagan and wife Ann Druyan wrote the story outline for the film adaptation of Contact.

Jodie Foster portrays the film's protagonist, Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway, a SETI scientist who finds strong evidence of extraterrestrial life and is chosen to make first contact. The film also stars Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, Jake Busey, and David Morse.

Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan began working on the film in 1979. Together, they wrote a 100+ page film treatment and set up Contact at Warner Bros. with Peter Guber and Lynda Obst as producers. When the project to make the film became mired in development hell, Sagan published Contact as a novel in 1985 and the film adaptation was rejuvenated in 1989. Roland Joffé and George Miller had planned to direct it, but Joffé dropped out in 1993 and Warner Bros. fired Miller in 1995. Robert Zemeckis was eventually hired to direct, and filming for Contact lasted from September 1996 to February 1997. Sony Pictures Imageworks handled most of the visual effects sequences.

The film was released on July 11, 1997, to mostly positive reviews. Contact grossed approximately $171 million in worldwide box office totals. The film won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and received multiple awards and nominations at the Saturn Awards. The release of Contact was publicized by controversies from the Clinton administration and CNN, as well as individual lawsuits from George Miller and Francis Ford Coppola.

Encouraged to explore as a child by her late father, Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway works for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. She listens to radio transmissions hoping to find signals sent by extraterrestrial life. Science Advisor to the President David Drumlin pulls the funding from SETI because he believes the endeavor is futile. Arroway gains backing from secretive billionaire industrialist S. R. Hadden, who has followed her career and allows her to continue her studies at the Very Large Array (VLA) in Socorro County, New Mexico.

Four years later, with Drumlin seeking to close SETI, Arroway finds a signal repeating a sequence of prime numbers, apparently sent from the star Vega. This announcement causes Drumlin and the National Security Council, led by National Security Advisor Michael Kitz, to attempt to take control of the facility. As Arroway, Drumlin and Kitz argue, members of the team at the VLA discover a video source buried in the signal: Adolf Hitler's welcoming address at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Arroway and her team postulate that this would have been the first significantly strong television signal to leave Earth's atmosphere, which was then transmitted back from Vega, 25 light years away.

The project is put under tight security and its progress followed worldwide. Arroway learns that the signal contains more than 60,000 "pages" of what appear to be technical drawings. Hadden decodes the pages; the drawings are meant to be interpreted in three dimensions. This reveals a complex machine allowing for one human occupant inside a pod to be dropped into three spinning rings.

The nations of the world fund the construction of the machine in Cape Canaveral at the Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39. An international panel is assembled to choose a candidate to travel in the machine. Although Arroway is one of the top selections, Christian philosopher Palmer Joss, a panel member whom Arroway met in Puerto Rico and with whom she had a brief romantic encounter, brings attention to her lack of religious faith. As this differentiates her from most humans, the panel selects Drumlin as more representative. On the day the machine is tested, a religious fanatic destroys the machine in a suicide bombing, killing Drumlin and many others.

Hadden reveals to Arroway that a second machine is hidden in Hokkaido, Japan, and that Arroway will be its pilot. Arroway, outfitted with several recording devices, is locked into the pod of the Japanese machine, dropped into the spinning rings, and disappears. When the pod apparently travels through a series of wormholes, she experiences displacement and can observe the outside environment, including a radio array-like structure at Vega and signs of an advanced civilization on an unknown planet. Arroway finds herself in a surreal beachfront landscape similar to a childhood picture she drew of Pensacola, Florida, and a blurry figure approaches that becomes her deceased father. Arroway recognizes him as an alien taking her father's form and attempts to ask questions. The alien deflects her inquiries, explaining that this journey was just humanity's first step to joining other spacefaring species. Arroway considers these answers and falls unconscious. 

She awakens to find herself on the floor of the pod; the machine's control team is repeatedly calling for her. She learns that from outside the machine it appears the pod merely dropped through the machine's rings and landed in the safety net. Arroway insists that she was gone for approximately 18 hours, but her recording devices show only static. Kitz resigns as national security advisor to lead a congressional committee to determine whether the machine was a hoax designed by Hadden, who has died. Arroway is described as an unwitting accomplice in the hoax; she asks them to accept her testimony on faith. In a private conversation, Kitz and White House Chief of Staff Rachel Constantine reflect on confidential information that although Arroway's recording device only recorded static, it recorded 18 hours of it. Arroway and Joss reunite, and Arroway receives ongoing financial support for the SETI program at the Very Large Array.

Horse Whisperers. Amera Ziganii Rao  

And just remember that all Horse Whisperers have had to heal themselves first. You are a Horse Whisperer too. We were all corrupted out of ourselves. Find your way back and you find the Whisperer again. Find yourself back and you find me again. As you are. As you most definitely are.

The same 'sensitivity' of soul is the rage of all that is not soul. The more sensitive, the more angry. The more we disappear. As Tom Booker says in Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer, to Grace, don't disappear. 

You fight now to end your stay in no man's land. In the land of Nazgul (Tolkein). We are all 'Pilgrim'. We can all heal. You deserve healing too. You deserve to heal. 

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013

Only everyone can know the truth. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

The Bad and The Beautiful 

The Bad and the Beautiful is a 1952 MGM melodramatic film that tells the story of a film producer who alienates all around him. It stars Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Barry Sullivan, Gloria Grahame and Gilbert Roland.

The film was directed by Vincente Minnelli and written by George Bradshaw and Charles Schnee. It won Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Gloria Grahame); Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White (Cedric Gibbons; Edward Carfagno, Edwin B. Willis; F. Keogh Gleason); Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; Best Costume Design, Black-and-White and Best Writing, Screenplay. Douglas was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

The Bad and the Beautiful holds the record for most Oscars won (five) by a movie that was not nominated for Best Picture. It was screened within the official program of Venice Film Festival (1953).

In 2002, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. The song, "Bad and the Beautiful", penned by David Raksin, has since become a jazz standard.

In Hollywood, screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell), movie star Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner), and director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan) each refuse to speak by phone to Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas) in Paris. Movie producer Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon) gathers them in his office and begs them to help Shields out.

The backstory of their involvement with Shields unfolds in a series of flashbacks. Shields is the son of a notorious old filmmaker who had been dumped by the industry. He was so unpopular that his son had to hire "extras" to attend his funeral. Shields is determined to make it in Hollywood by any means necessary.

Shields partners with aspiring director Amiel, whom he meets at his father's funeral. Shields intentionally loses money he does not have in a poker game to film executive Pebbel, so he can talk Pebbel into letting him work off the debt. Shields and Amiel learn their respective trades making low-budget films for Pebbel. Amiel decides he is ready to direct a project he has been nursing along. Shields pitches it to the studio. He gets a large budget to produce the film, but betrays Amiel by allowing someone with an established reputation to be chosen as director.

Shields next encounters alcoholic small-time actress Lorrison, the daughter of a famous actor Shields admired. He builds up her confidence and gives her the leading role in one of his movies over everyone else's objections. When she falls in love with him, he lets her think that he feels the same way so that she does not self-destruct and he gets the performance he needs. After a smash premiere makes her a star overnight, she finds him with a beautiful bit player named Lila (Elaine Stewart). He drives Lorrison away, telling her that he will never allow anyone to have that much control over him. Meanwhile, the film's success allows Shields to start his own studio, and Pebbel comes to work for him there.

Finally, Bartlow is a contented professor at a small college who has written a bestselling book. Shields wants to turn it into a film and have him write the script. Bartlow is not interested, but his shallow Southern belle wife, Rosemary (Gloria Grahame) is, so he agrees to do it for her sake. They go to Hollywood, where Shields is annoyed to find that her constant distractions are keeping her husband from his work. He gets his suave actor friend Victor "Gaucho" Ribera (Gilbert Roland) to keep her occupied. Freed from interruption, Bartlow has no trouble finishing the script. 

Rosemary, however, runs off with Gaucho and they are killed in a plane crash. Shields employs Bartlow to help him produce the film. On the fourth day of filming, Shields disagrees with the director, and decides to direct the film himself. It is the first time Shields has directed a film, and he botches it, which leads to his bankruptcy. Then Shields slips and reveals that he knew Gaucho was going away with Rosemary, so Bartlow walks out on him.

After the flashbacks are complete, all three reject Shields' offer to work together again. Pebbel sarcastically agrees that Shields "ruined" their lives, pointing out that all three are now at the top of their professions thanks to their work with Shields. As they leave, Pebbel is still talking to Shields. Out of his sight, the three eavesdrop using an extension phone while Shields describes his new idea, and become more and more interested.

Wikipedia 

Clarissa Pinkola Estes 

Untie the Strong Woman: Blessed Mother's Immaculate Love for the Wild Soul 

Call her Our Lady, La Nuestra Señora, Holy Mother—or one of her thousands of other names,” says Dr. Estés. “She wears hundreds of costumes, dozens of skin tones, is patroness of deserts, mountains, stars and oceans. Thus she comes to us in billions of images, but at her center, she is the Great Immaculate Heart.” With Untie the Strong Woman, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés invites us to reconnect with “the fierce and loving Blessed Mother who is friendly, but never tame—she who flies to our aid when the road is long and our hearts are broken, ever ready to rekindle the inner fire of our creative souls.”

In her first book in more than a decade, Dr. Estés illuminates Our Lady through blessings, images, and narrative, including:

Stories of connecting with the Blessed Mother, including “Meeting the Lady in Red,” and “Untie the Strong Woman”

Blessed Mother’s many images from around the world, including “Litany of The Mother Road: A Chant of Her Incandescent Names;” “A Man Named Mary;” and “The Marys of Mother Africa”

The wild side of her love, including “Massacre of the Dreamers: The Maiz Mother;” “Holy Card of Swords Through the Heart;” and “Guadalupe is a Girl Gang Leader in Heaven”

“The Blessed Mother is often ‘Friend to the friendless one’ and Mother to all—yet too many of us have been estranged from her for far too long.” Untie the Strong Woman opens a channel to this sacred and nurturing force—“breaking through walls that have held us back from her presence, and instead, inviting us to shelter under her starry green mantle.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estes 

Women Who Run With The Wolves. Clarissa Pinkola Estes 

“ The way to maintain one's connection to the wild is to ask yourself what it is that you want. This is the sorting of the seed from the dirt. One of the most important discriminations we can make in this matter is the difference between things that beckon to us and things that call from our souls.

Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the choice of mates and lovers. A lover cannot be chosen a la smorgasbord. A lover has to be chosen from soul-craving. To choose just because something mouthwatering stands before you will never satisfy the hunger of the soul-self. And that is what the intuition is for; it is the direct messenger of the soul.” 

― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

Clarissa Pinkola Estes 

“How does one know if she (he) has forgiven? You tend to feel sorrow over the circumstance instead of rage, you tend to feel sorry for the person rather than angry with him (her). You tend to have nothing left to say about it all.” 

― Clarissa Pinkola Estes

“Guadalupe is a Girl Gang Leader in Heaven” Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Pete Townshend on Facing The Past. Talent Development  

Pete Townshend is a guitarist, vocalist and songwriter for the rock group The Who, in a career of more than 40 years. Rolling Stone magazine listed him among the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

His new memoir ‘Who I Am‘ is, according to a Rolling Stone review, “intensely intimate, candid to the point of self-lacerating. It’s a rock god opening up his most human frailties.”

The review adds, “Throughout the book, Townshend makes himself uncomfortably vulnerable, especially in his deeply saddening memories of childhood sexual abuse…left parentless, at the mercy of predators…he turned this trauma into the 1969 breakthrough Tommy.

“Those feelings of rage, shame and inadequacy never left him, even after he fought his way to the top of the music world.”

From Book Review: Pete Townshend’s ‘Who I Am’ Could Be the Most Conflicted Rock Memoir of All Time, By Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone September 28, 2012.

Roland Kelts wrote the book “Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S.” and notes that Townshend responded after reading it: “This story shows how today we all use movies, comics, music, art and advertising to face our past and its traumas, rather than to escape.”

From Pete Townshend’s War, by Roland Kelts, The New Yorker, October 9, 2012.

Of course, Townshend’s life – and memoir – are rich, complex stories, with far more than just his experiences of abuse. But I continue to be struck by how many artists suffer from and respond creatively to trauma.

A Guardian newspaper review notes that at age six “he was sent to live with his mentally ill grandmother, Denny, ‘a perfect wicked witch,’ who, he is convinced, allowed him to be sexually abused by her lovers; he also alludes to giving his mother’s lover ‘the green light.’ The precise events elude him (‘My memory just shut down’) but the shards of detail are chilling… He retrospectively interprets his 1966 ‘mini-opera’ medley ‘A Quick One, While He’s Away’ as a cryptic account of his time with Denny.”

From Who I Am: A Memoir by Pete Townshend – review by Dorian Lynskey, The Guardian, 9 October 2012.

Another review article describes passages of his early life as “harrowing to read, as he acts out by starting fires and retreating into himself. As an adult, he will become incredibly self-conscious and introverted, describing ‘the polarities of my ego’ as ‘the artistic grandiosity and the desperately low self-regard.’

From Pete Townshend: “I wasn’t trying to make beautiful music” By Stephen Deusner, Salon.com, Oct 19, 2012.

Talent Development. Com 

Clarissa Pinkola Estes 

“When a woman is frozen of feeling, when she can no longer feel herself, when her blood, her passion, no longer reach the extremities of her psyche, when she is desperate; then a fantasy life is far more pleasurable than anything else she can set her sights upon. Her little match lights, because they have no wood to burn, instead burn up the psyche as though it were a big dry log. The psyche begins to play tricks on itself; it lives now in the fantasy fire of all yearning fulfilled. This kind of fantasizing is like a lie: If you tell it often enough, you begin to believe it.” 

― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

Facing Yourself. The 2009 Ascension. Amera Ziganii Rao  

There is only one thing. Need is not love. Other people are not responsible for my happiness. I want to love just for the sake of loving again and don’t want all the other bullshit that has suffocated my mind and heart for so long. I want to feel again and not be afraid. And for that, I have to take the most courageous step of all. Believing in good instead of believing in bad. Believing I am loveable, loving, loved, of love and Divinely loved. Believing I am safe and that I can read all the signs because he (she) wants to love me and is not pretending or any of the other things that my stupid mind tells me in my panic. I don’t want that panic anymore and release all doubt. I am not going to let doubt control me anymore and that terrible conditional love of terror that I have carried around since ego landed at the age of 8. I don’t want it anymore. Intention says intend a better world and a better life. Listen to the signs and the intuitions and fly and imagine and believe in the imagination for a change, instead of believing all the bullshit in my mind instead. Need is not love and the less I need as a state of being, the more I am attractive to be around, as anyone else is. I can do it. I can change anything about me and any state of mind. I am now, devastated and utterly convinced that the only way to get rid of terror (ego) is to accept that need, per se is not love, per se. To just accept it and start programming my mind. And that that need is not love is for the person I MOST love, not the person I least love. I want that and am capable of doing it now. I have left the past behind and forgiven and forgotten everyone and understand why they are and were who they are and whatever. It’s all about me now. What do I do with the terror of those memories and the hijacking of my real self by this terrible ego of rage and anger and terror? I don’t it anymore. Need is not love. I believe in what is in front of me and I believe it is everything my greater self tells me it is. I value everything that is unseen and unsaid. It’s all real and the only thing that blocks me from it is me. ‘Your own worst enemy’ and all that. I am not going to let ‘them’ block me anymore. ‘They’ have taught me to hate myself and to believe that no one can ever truly love me. I reject all ‘their’ teachings. They are fools themselves and can help no one and everything happens for a reason, in the most acute sense of bringing us to You. To ourselves. To the silence and the aloneness and safety in just being. Just being and just loving. And just smiling at all the pigs. They are fools. I am not. I want to prove that to myself. I do not want this ego of non  love anymore. I want to live. 

There are no prince charmings and why should there be? It was all a myth and here is a real man. The prince charming of my ego is some crazy thing of him looking after all my emotional and material and everything needs and just cradling me. That is not something I need to carry round in my poor and mad and wounded ego anymore. It’s not real. It’s infantile and for the old woundings. Sure. And oh, my god, did it work for years. But the terror is just crippling. And it has to go. I don’t need it anymore and I don’t want it anymore, because it gets in the way! What’s the point of that? I can’t be open and relaxed and calm for one second, with that thing hanging over me. I want to enjoy existence for fuck’s sake and not shake through it anymore, with terror and terror and terror. Fuck terror. Need is not love. 

I was dependent on friends in exactly the same way and did that first. Then the birth family. Anyone who I used to get close to, I became the same untrusting, dependent, dissatisfied person with. And ended up spending so much stupid time with people I did not really want to be with all the bloody time, let alone half the time we spent together. That is not friendship and not love. All the co-dependencies have gone and paradoxically I have showed up as myself for ages now, for the first time in my life, and it was all for the same reason. I had to give up need as love. Now, it is the last frontier. The one I never expected to have to, of course. Need not being love is what the courage is. The more I have embraced that, the more I have actually loved and the more I have actually been able to show up as my true self. It works. That’s the fuckery of it. How can I be any different with a man? Anything else is what is called ‘taking someone for granted’. That one person you can ‘be yourself’with. That’s bullshit. That self is the self one shouldn’t show to ANYONE!! That is the point and I am finally ready to accept that. No one should ever have to see that side of me. That is my wound and my problem and my fear and my past and my experience. The person I love the MOST should be the person I should show that to the LEAST. How the fuck would I know that after the parents? How the fuck would I know that with any of the people I have called my friends for so long? Taking for granted, co-dependency and insulting each other seems to be the fucking norm. But I left it. I became need is not love and I began to see and live the truth. And the same thing now has to be applied to that last frontier. And it is the worst. 

Once again and for the last time. Need is not love. Need is never love. Need can never be love. Love is love. Just giving. Just loving. Just being. 

The thought process. April 2009. My shift from ego to soul. Ascension. Alchemy. Self healing. Shaman. Hierophant. 

The visceral, etheric energy, emotional transformation. The ejection of the mortal husk. It all comes from the thought process. Parenting yourself. Like you’ve never been parented before. 

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013

The Search (Artwork) 

Mary Wollstonecraft

Exalted by their inferiority...they constantly demand homage as women. 

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was born in 1759 into a middle-class family whose status steadily sank as her inept, brutal, drunken father frittered away the family fortune. She did what she could to protect her mother from his aggression; meanwhile, her brother was slated to inherit much of the remaining fortune, while she was to receive nothing.

From this unpromising but radicalising start, Wollstonecraft's career took a dizzying trajectory through a bleak period as a governess to becoming a writer, launching a polemical broadside against the political star of the day, witnessing the bloodshed of the French Revolution up close, rescuing her lover's stolen ship in Scandanavia, then marrying one of the leading philosophers of the day, William Godwin, and with him having a daughter who - though she never lived to see her grow up - would go on to write Frankenstein.

But most importantly, in 1792, she published her great work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which marks her out as one of the great thinkers of the British Enlightenment, with a much stronger, more lasting influence than Godwin.

The Vindication was an attempt to apply the Enlightenment logic of rights and reason to the lives of women. Yet it was not a manifesto for the extension of the vote or the reform of divorce law, but a work of political philosophy.

And surprisingly, as recent scholarship has highlighted, it was infused with Rational Dissenting Christianity, which Wollstonecraft had absorbed during her time as a struggling teacher and writer in north London.

BBC Radio 4. In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg

Quotes 

“we all begin the process before we are ready, before we are strong enough, before we know enough; we begin a dialogue with thoughts and feelings that both tickle and thunder within us. We respond before we know how to speak the language, before we know all the answers, and before we know exactly to whom we are speaking.” 

― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

“When a creature is exposed to violence, it will tend to adapt to that disturbance, so that when the violence ceases or the creature is allowed its freedom, the healthy instinct to flee is hugely diminished, and the creature stays put instead.” 

― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

"A man (woman) cannot be comfortable without his (her) own approval." ~ Mark Twain 

The question is whether the distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge is theoretically adequate. Leo Strauss 

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream. ~ Vincent Van Gogh 

You are awareness, disguised as a person. Eckhart Tolle 

Your greatness is continuously assured, regardless of what’s going on around you. Doreen Virtue 

Every person, all the events of your life are there because u have drawn them there. What u choose to do with them is up to u. Richard Bach 

In the beginning was the conversation (NOT the word. AZR). Erasmus 

Life is the dancer and you are the dance. Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth 

There are 2 primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them. ~ Dr. Denis Waitley 

Everyone has the power for greatness, not for fame, but greatness, because greatness is determined by service. ~ Martin Luther King Jr

The Path to Ascension. Amera Ziganii Rao 

Pace and confidence or now. You need to be loved, just for who you are. You are. My job was grace and becoming all that I am. 'Getting an education' against all odds. Done. The rest is love and the rest is unconditional love. 

You know what you look like. You need to remember and find out what you are also like. The good to master the bad. Pace and confidence or now. It is as you see it. It is as you become it. It is. 

A dream has to be stepped out of, before it can be retaken. You have all the polaroids of your ego. The rest is joining the dots. That is a process and nothing to do with anything, now, other than the nice kind of love. From me, that is. For you, you are now at war. I salute you. You are to become Jedi. If you make life mythical, myth makes you. To ascend from ego to soul, to become unconditional love and to shed off the wounds of everything that is the dark and stupid self, is nothing short of Jedi. You are to become Jedi. You will need to remember that as you face yourself. Be mythical. Be big. Be strong. Be a lion and kill the killer within you. Before it finally kills you. 

My job is done. I am scholar and lover. I can be pretty and powerful and my MIND all in one. And I can help you too. Lover to hunter, hunter to whisperer, I am whole. And at least know what I love to work at becoming. Because of you. Because of this. 

I am free and I can wait for you to be too. Grace was my journey. It's done. 'What will be, will be'. It is the love that is. 

The love for you. 

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013

The Path to Ascension ll. Amera Ziganii Rao  

However, waking up in this country again, that I am condemned to live in, despite hating any temperature under 25 degrees, despite having wanted to get out of here since I was 12, despite the fact that grey skies make me want to vomit, I am also in give up mode. Time for new decisions. I am in hell. This is no anti climax. This is hell. 

My work is done and I have shit to face as a reward. A mess of a life in limbo, in yet another winter of discontent in the country I probably hate more than any other, due to having overstayed my welcome by 40 years. And I hated it 40 years ago. I hate cold weather and grey skies and grey people. I live in a country with cold, grey skies and grey people. My life didn't work. 

Unconditional love sucks. Duty to higher purpose sucks. Following one's dreams sucks. Now, life is surreal where it should be real. And too real where it should be surreal. Life is truly a mess. A soul life is truly, carnage. 

My job is just to experience, try and fail and report the findings. Before the new decisions are made. None of this has worked. You are okay. I am not. Time for something new. You have the polaroids of the male ego. I have the polaroids of a life of hell. Time for new perspectives. Time for a new portfolio. I cannot live ten months of winter anymore. I don't deserve it. 

I believed in what I saw. And I didn't sell my soul. I was wrong. You do what you need to do. I need to make plans. Plans that only include Heathrow airport. I am leaving these shores. Dead or alive, I am leaving. Winter 2013 is the end of the line. I no longer want my 'home'. Grace, yes. But fuck this. I deserve more. And I deserve it right now. 

I deserve more than the un-inhabitable cave of piss that this country is. I have had enough. 

Peace. 

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013

The Path to Ascension lll. Amera Ziganii Rao  

Love, truly then, is an impossible dream. Healing is real. Love is the impossible dream. Partnership. No wonder, marriage is so relentlessly rigid in its rules. It's a falsehood. 

No matter. Love may be an impossible dream, to be worked on for one's whole life. And therefore an agonising skill base acquirement to be worked into a single life. And therefore nothing that it is touted to be. Other than in the truth of literature of course. But it is the connection in itself, that changes one's life. The existence of the twin soul. The existence of love. At all. 

The connection was the gift. The connection will always be the gift. The rest is grey, concrete skies, grey people and grey weather. The new challenges. Exodus. As single now, as I was then. The connection was the gift. And the greatest gift of my life. 

The rest is automatic pilot. No one can choose their destiny and no one can change it. All of this was written. The connection is the real partnership. Anything else is as banned then as it is now. 

It is the reptilian forefathers you fear, when you fear the tribe. The so called gods. What is called God. The fear of God is the fear of the reptilian thugs at the top. Fantastical to the point of absolute truth. Love is as banished now as it was then. I am the sacrifice now as I was then. 

The difference is I know, I live in a free word and I was built strong. I am a Sacred Whore High Priestess Hierophant Avatar Valkyrie. I am returned. 

I have survived. And I still honour the connection. I still honour you and all lost wizards. The reptilian bosses run you. The Matrix has you. And I can no longer condemn that. It is your tragedy. It is the tragedy of the world. And why the love connection is the gift. Anything else is only possible, long after it is completely impossible.

In this life or the next.  

Perhaps. 

But you carry on. Ego will be transcended. If you want it. That is also, written. 

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013

The Myth of Sisyphus. Albert Camus  

The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical essay by Albert Camus. It comprises about 119 pages and was published originally in 1942 in French as Le Mythe de Sisyphe; the English translation by Justin O'Brien followed in 1955.

In the essay, Camus introduces his philosophy of the absurd: man's (woman's) futile search for meaning, unity, and clarity in the face of an unintelligible world devoid of God and eternal truths or values. 

Does the realization of the absurd require suicide? Camus answers: "No. It requires revolt." He then outlines several approaches to the absurd life. The final chapter compares the absurdity of man's (woman's) life with the situation of Sisyphus, a figure of Greek mythology who was condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again. The essay concludes, "The struggle itself [...] is enough to fill a man's (woman's) heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

The work can be seen in relation to other absurdist works by Camus: the novel The Stranger (1942), the plays The Misunderstanding (1942) and Caligula (1944), and especially the essay The Rebel (1951).

Chapter 1: An Absurd Reasoning

Camus undertakes to answer what he considers to be the only question of philosophy that matters: Does the realization of the meaninglessness and absurdity of life necessarily require suicide?

He begins by describing the absurd condition: much of our life is built on the hope for tomorrow yet tomorrow brings us closer to death and is the ultimate enemy; people live as if they didn't know about the certainty of death; once stripped of its common romanticisms, the world is a foreign, strange and inhuman place; true knowledge is impossible and rationality and science cannot explain the world: their stories ultimately end in meaningless abstractions, in metaphors. "From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all."

It is not the world that is absurd, nor human thought: the absurd arises when the human need to understand meets the unreasonableness of the world, when "my appetite for the absolute and for unity" meets "the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle."

He then characterizes a number of philosophies that describe and attempt to deal with this feeling of the absurd, by Heidegger, Jaspers, Shestov, Kierkegaard, and Husserl. All of these, he claims, commit "philosophical suicide" by reaching conclusions that contradict the original absurd position, either by abandoning reason and turning to God, as in the case of Kierkegaard and Shestov, or by elevating reason and ultimately arriving at ubiquitous Platonic forms and an abstract god, as in the case of Husserl.

For Camus, who set out to take the absurd seriously and follow it to its final conclusions, these "leaps" cannot convince. Taking the absurd seriously means acknowledging the contradiction between the desire of human reason and the unreasonable world. 

Suicide, then, also must be rejected: without man (woman), the absurd cannot exist. The contradiction must be lived; reason and its limits must be acknowledged, without false hope. However, the absurd can never be accepted: it requires constant confrontation, constant revolt.

While the question of human freedom in the metaphysical sense loses interest to the absurd man (woman), he (she) gains freedom in a very concrete sense: no longer bound by hope for a better future or eternity, without a need to pursue life's purpose or to create meaning, "he (she) enjoys a freedom with regard to common rules".

To embrace the absurd implies embracing all that the unreasonable world has to offer. Without a meaning in life, there is no scale of values. "What counts is not the best living but the most living."

Thus, Camus arrives at three consequences from the full acknowledging of the absurd: revolt, freedom and passion.

Chapter 2: The Absurd Man (Woman)

How should the absurd man (woman) live? Clearly, no ethical rules apply, as they are all based on higher powers or on justification. "Integrity has no need of rules." 'Everything is permitted' "is not an outburst of relief or of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgment of a fact."

Camus then goes on to present examples of the absurd life. He begins with Don Juan, the serial seducer who lives the passionate life to the fullest. "There is no noble love but that which recognizes itself to be both short-lived and exceptional."

The next example is the actor, who depicts ephemeral lives for ephemeral fame. "He demonstrates to what degree appearing creates being." "In those three hours he travels the whole course of the dead-end path that the man in the audience takes a lifetime to cover."

Camus' third example of the absurd man (woman) is the conqueror, the warrior who forgoes all promises of eternity to affect and engage fully in human history. He (she) chooses action over contemplation, aware of the fact that nothing can last and no victory is final.

Chapter 3: Absurd Creation 

Here Camus explores the absurd creator or artist. Since explanation is impossible, absurd art is restricted to a description of the myriad experiences in the world. "If the world were clear, art would not exist." Absurd creation, of course, also must refrain from judging and from alluding to even the slightest shadow of hope.

He then analyzes the work of Dostoyevsky in this light, especially The Diary of a Writer, The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov. All these works start from the absurd position, and the first two explore the theme of philosophical suicide. But both The Diary and his last novel, The Brothers Karamazov, ultimately find a path to hope and faith and thus fail as truly absurd creations. 

Chapter 4: The Myth of Sisyphus 

In the last chapter, Camus outlines the legend of Sisyphus who defied the gods and put Death in chains so that no human needed to die. When Death was eventually liberated and it came time for Sisyphus himself to die, he concocted a deceit which let him escape from the underworld. Finally captured, the gods decided on his punishment for all eternity. He would have to push a rock up a mountain; upon reaching the top, the rock would roll down again, leaving Sisyphus to start over. Camus sees Sisyphus as the absurd hero who lives life to the fullest, hates death, and is condemned to a meaningless task.

Camus presents Sisyphus's ceaseless and pointless toil as a metaphor for modern lives spent working at futile jobs in factories and offices. "The workman (woman) of today works every day in his (her) life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious."

Camus is interested in Sisyphus' thoughts when marching down the mountain, to start anew. This is the truly tragic moment, when the hero becomes conscious of his wretched condition. He does not have hope, but "there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn." 

Acknowledging the truth will conquer it; Sisyphus, just like the absurd man (woman), keeps pushing. Camus claims that when Sisyphus acknowledges the futility of his task and the certainty of his fate, he is freed to realize the absurdity of his situation and to reach a state of contented acceptance. 

With a nod to the similarly cursed Greek hero Oedipus, Camus concludes that "all is well," indeed, that "one must imagine Sisyphus happy."

Appendix 

The essay contains an appendix titled "Hope and the Absurd in the work of Franz Kafka". While Camus acknowledges that Kafka's work represents an exquisite description of the absurd condition, he maintains that Kafka fails as an absurd writer because his work retains a glimmer of hope.

Wikipedia

Samuel Beckett Quotes  

You're on Earth. There's no cure for that. Samuel Beckett

All the life of life is gone. Samuel Beckett 

For mostly I do not know, it is perhaps no longer so, it is too soon to know, I simply do not know, perhaps shall never know. Samuel Beckett 

I can't go on, I'll go on. Samuel Beckett

The end is in the beginning and yet you go on. Samuel Beckett

What would I do without this world faceless incurious. Samuel Beckett

I did my best to go in a circle, hoping in this way to go in a straight line. Samuel Beckett

Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile. Samuel Beckett

Dream Failure l. Amera Ziganii Rao 

So, as the new dawn of damp hell of British winter settles in once more, 36 years too many for me, having intended consciously and belligerently, my exodus from this country at the age of 12, I embrace something new. Failure. 

I had a dream too. It was that love could be shared and that with intelligent, emotional, sickness healing work, it could be done. I believed and knew this because I had done the same work on myself. My work has shown that there is some reason why no one else can join me. 

At the moment, I don’t care why. I don’t care about anything other than the truth that I am being asked to face. That whatever destiny has been allocated down the way, the only destiny I have now is ‘being and nothingness’. 

Even as a fledgling philosopher, it is extremely apparent that to have the courage to face the truth about life, is to have the courage to face the truth about life. And that takes courage and courage is the hardest thing for any of us to face. The truth of life is the meek who love and the non meek meek who don’t. The truth is also, different kinds of people. The truth is also tribe marriage. Tribe marriage it seems has to be experienced no matter what. It doesn’t matter whether a woman – like most all over the world – enters marriage, has children and gives up her career – or whether she goes into sacred overdrive of philosophical enquiry to keep a man at arm’s length until he can heal too. It doesn’t matter. The result is the same. Divorce. 

So this is a new dawn. Either the questor decides that everything about them is ridiculous and a programme of self judgment can begin, to go along with the ignorances of all judgment, or the new truth within the truth has to be faced. I came back to save him once again and it didn’t work. If it does work, it will be down the line. 

That is a dangerous statement. If. If, nothing is finally the only thing a questor can do. Every quest has an end. The questor is obviously the only person who should decide. 

The decision though, if made correctly, cannot be about just the person involved. It has to be about the sort of situation that has been entered into. In other words, I do not just give up my twin soul quest today. I give up men. 

The only thing that has come through with all my experience and work this year in particular is that the gulf between men and women, between the werewolf archetype and the nymph archetype is too big. Second, relationship has nothing to do with life. Third, I cannot attract love. I can only attract tribe love. I don’t want it. 

Which means that my eight year old observations about life are absolutely accurate, irreversible and insurmountable. Life is a truly disgusting experience and the relief that I have finally joined the rarest breed on this planet – the truth of truth seekers – I actually no longer give a flying fuck. I only wanted an answer. 

The truth of the truth of the truth is that I never believed in love. I was a legendary harridan in my day, just for that reason. I had terror of loss. Funny that. It doesn’t matter. I was right. Love is not possible. Not the pure love of advanced beings. There is no advanced being that I can attract into my life, so if they exist, I am meant to be alone. 

Which is the point. Life is a truly, lonely business. As an orphaned child, adult, literally or metaphorically (emotionally), that is an impossible burden to bear. As a healed human being it is finally, bearable. Life is lonely. The only relationships that are available, other than the rare friendship, are co-dependent. Sick. 

And frankly, I am not that dependent a human being. I tried and I tried for 40 straight years. But I have recently been reminded of the first freedom journey (the right to self determination like anyone else and the right to be loved as I self determinate) that took the best part of 17 years. Leaving the birth family. I was born to fascists and sick people. I feel nothing but peace. Now, it is leaving men. I leave relationship now and all that is ‘Donald Draper’. I am simply, bored. 

I don’t know what the problem is, but I sadly, suspect that the twin soul journey (Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton is the most famous example) is not for earth. Not in some silly, fanciful, self judgmental, mad victim way. It is not, finally, for earth. It is too profound and too big for earth. The compatibility on earth does not correlate with what is inside. And it seems, there is no answer other than waiting and waiting and consistently entering the labyrinth to ‘make someone see’. 

Of course there comes a point where a vacuum has to be created again. The vacuum is clogged by a hanger on who just can’t do it, no matter how much he genuinely wants to do it. What is to be done? 

Exactly. There has to come the turning point and any person, any woman, usually, any Sacred Whore High Priestess Hierophant Avatar Valkyrie, for sure, has to then ‘master her destiny’ by going into existentialist overdrive. 

The experiments have been conducted, the chances have been taken, the wounds have been entered and re-entered and re-entered. Then the decision has to be made. 

Fate is a very accurate thing. If I was being ‘taken care of’ – fate has dealt me deathly blows both in my place of residence and the this fucking country which I now regard as a fridge version of Casablanca in the famed story where everyone is languishing in a country they don’t want to be in. I fucking wish it had the fucking weather of Casablanca, let alone the colours. The colour of this country is black. But,no. Which means that I am to be deliberately so uncomfortable, so furious, that I do finally ‘do something about it’. Absolutely. 

The past is over. The grieving begins. Relationship of any kind is not a waste of time at all. It builds you. But it is impossible. He just ‘loves me too much’. I know what he means. But I am bored and no, I no longer believe again. When that happens once, that’s fair enough. When it happens again and again, you have to start listening. 

Life is ugly and affiliative power useless. There is no interaction with another for me. It’s too dangerous and too heavy a life to continue with. I would rather fight my way out of this black and godless country, by myself. Myself, I can rely on. Myself, loves me. Myself, has the courage. Myself, has the alchemical skill. To be and do anything I want. 

As long, it seems as there is no one else involved in my life. I have lived a truly inhumane life and had to do everything completely and utterly alone. And I have forgiven and my heart I only more compassionate and empathetic. Nothing works. Fuck it. I am too numb and disgusted and bored to argue. Life is shit and my job is to thrive, by educating everyone / sharing art with everyone, like me, just how shit it is and what to do about it. How to grow the will to live and how to get rid of the will to love. I don’t have to be empty like everyone else. I just have to be with myself, or professionally like my men and man have shown me, only show myself when money depends on my connections. Fuck it. I don’t believe shit anymore either. Love is to not to be shared on this planet. I get it. 

And like the gorgeous and maligned Kate Winslet once said – she was obviously speaking about the bizarre attack on her physical shape – she was not here to carry the flag for ‘big women’. I am not here to carry the flag for unrequited love. Fuck it. Keep it. I have his heart. The rest is some other bullshit and basically it comes down to one thing. Can you actually live your dreams or you just dream? I live my dreams. That is why, it seems, I live alone. Fuck it. And fuck everyone else. There is no correlation. The only relief is finally giving up and facing the harsh reality that one’s first impressions about life, were absolutely spot on. And that any speaking of it, is perceived as moralistic superiority. This is not a planet of love is the politest way of saying it. No imagination, no feeling, no passion, no courage and no intelligence. If that makes me morally superior, you are wrong. What I am is unique. You are not. My heart is beyond broken. I took 17 years to leave the mediocrity of people who wanted to drag me down to feel comfortable with me – I am speaking outside of the sinister and casual and osmosified slavery of women, that means we have no brothers, sisters, mothers or fathers – and now I make my new journey to get away from you. 

It turns out that ‘waiting’ in any way is still waiting. I can’t wait for you. If you can catch up , you can. Otherwise, I have to accept that once again, I have outgrown you. I always outgrow people. I have no home. 

Love is only for oneself. High Priestess skills are lonely. So are philosopher skills and so are writing skills and so, indeed, are scholars and mad scientists. All my skills are lonely. And ‘men don’t marry women like me’ anyway. So fucking what. You tried. I think you should let it go. 

At least I know love. And at least you love me. You are always with me. And if life has to be about failed great loves, with only a replacement of friendships and lovers, and that on the ONLY, psychic and senses level, ie, unmanifested and walked away from, other than ‘keeping you in my heart’, who cares anymore? Women are brought up to believe that love is the issue. Men are brought up to desire. The gulf is too big. 

We are the proof. Pedestrian loving is just not enough I am afraid. You have got to love, to ascend and that only comes down to one thing. Time for sure, with education and emotional alchemy, but also one other thing. Will. 

You, my love, do not have the will and I think you should finally accept it and let me go. And you don’t have the will because you doubt that you can actually tolerate anything about me other than how I look and what I can do for YOU. That means you don’t like me. You are only in love. That means you don’t love. I am letting you go. 

Relationship is for other people. I don’t know if a real one even exists on earth. I truly, no longer, care. That is my success. Life, per se, is a failure. Life on earth is the Universe’s greatest failure. That is no longer my problem. My job was to find out. I am just going to try and live a little life like every other mad scientist. Do my time and then die. I can’t fucking wait. At last I can be honest. I have hated every single minute of life. Now, I know why. In that clarity and self belief and self honouring is the only freedom. It takes courage to see the truth. I no longer need illusions. My tribe marriage and marriages , are over. I HATE love. I HATE life. I am at peace. I have the proof to back up all my worst fears. Whatever the fuck anyone else is talking about, who knows. I hate it all. And will only put myself first from now on. And embrace the relentless hollow nothing of what life really is. With people like me, the only beings who even notice. Mine is now a professional gypsy life. I am an entertainer on the road for ever. I no longer want a home. And most certainly with anyone else. 

And men don’t marry women like me anyway. Duality in a woman is not allowed. From now on, men, are not allowed in me. I ban it. Love as spirit will have to do. Across the board. Grace is fucked up. It only leads to the truth. 

I was meant to be alone. I was meant to be rejected and isolated and abused and unloved. I was not meant to live in a black country with howling wind and rain as a norm. I am, I completely accept, unloved. I have to do it all alone.  

That changes a person forever. I have no loyalty to anything. And I believe in nothing and I respect and revere and honour nothing. I am myself. I am my own love. Everything else, on earth or off earth is one thing; business. Life is a business. The business of living. The love comes only at death. 

And it turns out that I am the last to find out. That, can be my only pride. My only currency. I know love. Unfortunately, it is not a currency for this planet. The proof of my shitty life is definitely in the pudding. A quintessentially English word for a black pudding of a country. It should be banned. Like men. My new journey begins. No more abuse of power, ever again. 

No more exploration of ‘love’. It is not for earth. Sharing love is a business. Like everything else. 

And like everything that I am forced to do in this disgusting life, I had to see it through to the end. To tell me what I knew 40 years ago. There is no ‘in tyranny there is only failure’. In tyranny there is only success. Good for you, if you are able to live with that skill. The rest of us have to do it differently. With love. Our love for ourselves. The tyranny, emptiness, cowardice, hollowness, RESPECTABILITY, co-dependency, HOMICIDAL SELFISHNESS™, dryness, impotence, cynicism and bitterness of trying to control women, I leave to you. 

You truly have my sympathies. ‘Everything is as it is meant to be’. And you do not revolt. Your madness only makes me ‘Sisyphus’. I can no longer, help you. I can only work on escaping black skies. It is only, now, myself that I can try to save. You truly do not care. I, no longer, can care, that you do not care. You have to care about what you care about. Interpretation of destiny is not exactly easy. It seems, too, that I was absolutely, meant, to get it wrong. 

I give up. I am allowed to detest life and I am allowed to revolt against all the bullshit. I can’t ask anyone to join me if the person doesn’t want to. You did. You have changed your mind. That is the risk we take. Someone has to put a lid on it. The black skies have done it for us. You’re never coming for me, in any stretch of the imagination. Let’s face it. Affiliative power is shit. Supporting another human being or helping someone else is shit. I embrace total self serving selfishness. Maybe then, I can finally join your ranks. Just some of the lessons, lambs like me are beaten into learning. But ultimately, it is about one thing. It was a tribe marriage after all. Wife or mistress it is the same thing. Tribe marriage is a bourgeois life. You are still bourgeois. I am not. 

You are going to have to accept that you remain bourgeois, even now, because, my sweet, that is who you are. I am not. I left the tribe. Now, I live with the effects of tribe all over again.  Because I leave the tribe all over again. You. I leave relationship alone forever. I leave the tribe all over again. 

Earth really is this bad. And it is only nutters like me who are forced to care. Have a good life. And stay in touch. Anything else is over. I live in a black, godless, ice cold, concrete nightmare of a piss wet country. I have a new dream. And it can only now, include me. I have had enough. I no longer believe in any of you. 

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013

The Love lX (Artwork) 

Quotes 

Dear past, thank you for all the lessons. Dear future, I am ready. Inspiration Station 

Knowledge increases when  it is shared, Love increases when you show care. Navee 

We must give value to our existence by behaving as if our very existence were a work of art. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche 

There are 2 primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.  ~ Dr. Denis Waitley 

"You'll Never get ahead of anyone as you try to get even with him (her)" Lou Holtz 

Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) The Wizard of Oz 1939 

If you can't you must, and if you must you can. Anthony Robbins 

The only thing we can control is us ~ our attitudes,our choices. Don’t stress over the rest. FOCUS on what we can control.~ Garst 

"These are wounds that are not described in surgical textbooks," war surgeon Capt. Joseph Rappold says. CBS News 

Wild Orchid 

Wild Orchid is a 1989 American erotic film directed by Zalman King and starring Mickey Rourke, Carré Otis, Jacqueline Bisset, Bruce Greenwood, and Assumpta Serna.

Emily Reed (Otis) travels to New York City for an interview with an international law firm, which immediately offers her a job on the condition that she can fly to Rio de Janeiro the following morning. Emily agrees and is introduced to Claudia Dennis (Bisset), one of the firm's top executives. They arrive in Rio to finalize the purchase of a hotel, but an angry Claudia must fly to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to meet the man the hotel's owner. 

Claudia instructs Emily to take her date for the night. While viewing the hotel, Emily sees two locals having animalistic sex, which unnerves her and she returns to her own hotel. She meets Claudia's date; a wealthy man named James Wheeler (Rourke). They have dinner, accompanied by James' bodyguards.

Emily is intrigued by James; he is quiet and asks personal questions without being demanding or rude. After dinner, they attend a street carnival; Emily leaves after a masked man who looks like James tries to seduce her. The next morning, Emily wakes to find James watching her. He gives her a bouquet of orchids and denies making advances to her the previous evening, and as an apology he offers to show her the city. She is initially reluctant but consents; they attend a party with a married couple that they noticed in the restaurant the night before. 

Some military personnel at the party try to make advances on the wife; James fights them and he, Emily, and the couple leave quickly. The married couple are having marital problems because of the wife's infidelity. She want to reconcile with her husband. James encourages the couple to have sex, which they do. Emily finds their actions disturbing. Emily and James then visit the hotel that her firm wants to buy, and she tells James that she fears he would disappear if she touched him. When Emily hugs James, he pulls away from her, telling her that he does not like to be touched.

The married couple give James a necklace; he gives it to Emily. That night, Emily dresses up for the carnival festivities and is propositioned by a man in a mask, who offers her the key to his room. She initially refuses the offer but James encourages her to accept. She realizes James is incapable of acting upon his own emotions and tries to experience passion through others. Emily agrees to the stranger's proposal and has sex with him.

The next day, Claudia returns to Rio with the hotel's owner and arranges a meeting at the airport. Emily is humiliated; Jerome, the owner's attorney, is the stranger she slept with. Jerome uses this information to intimidate Emily to get a better deal for his client. Claudia discovers the truth and uses the information to threaten Jerome; if he does not complete the deal she will tell his wife about the affair. Claudia and Emily get a very good deal. 

After the meeting, Claudia asks Emily about her impressions of James. She tells Emily that James was an only child who stuttered, and is a completely self-made man. Emily says that she became obsessed with James, but that he would never touch her. Claudia's assistants tell her that a man bought the deed to the old hotel before the deal was finalized; both women realize it was James, who confirms it was him. Claudia is angry and decides to proceed with the hotel's sale even though she does not own it, hoping that she will be able to circumvent James' actions.

Claudia arranges a huge party to commemorate the sale of the hotel. The next morning, Claudia invites a young surfer to her room, and asks Emily—who can speak Portuguese—to translate what the surfer says. Claudia, Emily and the surfer are about to have sex when James interrupts them. Emily accuses James of setting people up to disappoint him and then throwing them aside when they do. He responds that he never sets anybody up and that they disappoint him of their own accord. James leaves and Emily shouts after him. Later that day, a package is delivered to Emily's room; James has signed over the old hotel's deed to her, saving the deal. Emily goes to the hotel, finds James and tells her she loves him, but leaves when he does not respond.

Later that night, Emily returns to her room, where James is waiting for her. He tells Emily that he hardly spoke for years after his father abandoned him as a child, and that because of this his teachers thought he was retarded. He left school at a young age and worked hard, and while still a teenager he bought a run-down house and repaired it. 

After he began to accumulate wealth, women became attracted to him and he started playing games to keep things interesting. The games became a way of life and he cannot stop playing them. Emily encourages James to reach out to her, offering him her love if he makes an effort to touch her. At first he resists, but reaches out and holds her when he thinks she will leave him. The two embrace and have sex. They ride away happily on a motorcycle together.

Wikipedia 

Lord Jim 

Lord Jim is a novel by Joseph Conrad originally published as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine from October 1899 to November 1900.

An early and primary event is the abandonment of a ship in distress by its crew including the young British seaman Jim. He is publicly censured for this action and the novel follows his later attempts at coming to terms with his past.

In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Lord Jim No. 85 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

Jim (his surname is never disclosed), a young British seaman, becomes first mate on the Patna, a ship full of pilgrims travelling to Mecca for the hajj. When the ship starts rapidly taking on water and disaster seems imminent, Jim joins his captain and other crew members in abandoning the ship and its passengers. A few days later, they are picked up by a British ship. However, the Patna and its passengers are later also saved, and the reprehensible actions of the crew are exposed. The other participants evade the judicial court of inquiry, leaving Jim to the court alone. The court strips him of his navigation command certificate for his dereliction of duty. Jim is angry with himself, both for his moment of weakness, and for missing an opportunity to be a 'hero'.

At the trial, he meets Charles Marlow, a sea captain, who in spite of his initial misgivings over what he sees as Jim's moral unsoundness, comes to befriend him, for he is "one of us". Marlow later finds Jim work as a ship chandler's clerk. Jim tries to remain incognito, but whenever the opprobrium of the Patna incident catches up with him, he abandons his place and moves further east.

At length, Marlow's friend Stein suggests placing Jim as his factor in Patusan, a remote inland settlement with a mixed Malay and Bugis population, where Jim's past can remain hidden. While living on the island he acquires the title 'Tuan' ('Lord'). 

Here, Jim wins the respect of the people and becomes their leader by relieving them from the predations of the bandit Sherif Ali and protecting them from the corrupt local Malay chief, Rajah Tunku Allang. Jim wins the love of Jewel, a woman of mixed race, and is "satisfied... nearly". 

The end comes a few years later, when the town is attacked by the marauder "Gentleman" Brown. Although Brown and his gang are driven off, Dain Waris, the son of the leader of the Bugis community, is slain. Jim returns to Doramin, the Bugis leader, and willingly takes a fatal bullet in the chest from him as retribution for the death of his son.

Marlow is also the narrator of three of Conrad's other works: Heart of Darkness, Youth, and Chance.

Criticial Interpretation 

The novel is in two main parts, firstly Jim's lapse aboard the Patna and his consequent fall, and secondly an adventure story about Jim's rise and the tale's denouement in the fictional country of Patusan, presumed a part of the Indonesian archipelago. The main themes surround young Jim's potential ("...he was one of us", says Marlow, the narrator) thus sharpening the drama and tragedy of his fall, his subsequent struggle to redeem himself, and Conrad's further hints that personal character flaws will almost certainly emerge given an appropriate catalyst. Conrad, speaking through his character Stein, called Jim a romantic figure, and indeed Lord Jim is arguably Conrad's most romantic novel.

In addition to the lyricism and beauty of Conrad's descriptive writing, the novel is remarkable for its sophisticated structure. The bulk of the novel is told in the form of a story recited by the character Marlow to a group of listeners, and the conclusion is presented in the form of a letter from Marlow. Within Marlow's narration, other characters also tell their own stories in nested dialogue. Thus, events in the novel are described from several viewpoints, and often out of chronological order.

The reader is left to form an impression of Jim's interior psychological state from these multiple external points of view. Some critics (using deconstruction) contend that this is impossible and that Jim must forever remain an enigma, whereas others argue that there is an absolute reality the reader can perceive and that Jim's actions may be ethically judged. The omniscient narrator of the first part remarks of the trial: "They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything!" 

Ultimately, Jim remains mysterious, as seen through a mist: "that mist in which he loomed interesting if not very big, with floating outlines – a straggler yearning inconsolably for his humble place in the ranks... It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun." It is only through Marlow's recitation that Jim lives for us – the relationship between the two men incites Marlow to "tell you the story, to try to hand over to you, as it were, its very existence, its reality – the truth disclosed in a moment of illusion."

Postcolonial interpretation of the novel, while not as intensive as that of Heart of Darkness, points to similar themes in the two novels – its protagonist sees himself as part of a 'civilising mission', and the story involves a 'heroic adventure' at the height of the British Empire's hegemony. Conrad's use of a protagonist with a dubious history has been interpreted as an expression of increasing doubts with regard to the Empire's mission; literary critic Elleke Boehmer sees the novel, along with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as part of a growing suspicion that 'a primitive and demoralising other' is present within the governing order.

The Film 

Lord Jim is a 1965 adventure film made by Columbia Pictures.The picture was produced and directed by Richard Brooks with Jules Buck and Peter O'Toole as associate producers, from a screenplay by Brooks. The film stars O'Toole, James Mason, Curt Jürgens, Eli Wallach, Jack Hawkins, Paul Lukas, and Daliah Lavi.

It is the second film adaptation of the 1900 novel of the same name by Joseph Conrad. The first was a silent film released in 1925 and directed by Victor Fleming.

The film received two BAFTA nominations, for best British art direction and best British cinematography.

Jim (Peter O'Toole) is a promising young English merchant seaman who rises to first officer under Captain Marlow (Jack Hawkins). However, Jim is injured and left at Java. When he is fit again, he signs on with the first available ship, a dilapidated freighter called the S.S. Patna, crammed with hundreds of Muslims on pilgrimage to Mecca. When a storm threatens the leaking ship, the crew panics and takes to the lifeboats without a thought for their passengers; Jim in a moment of weakness joins them.

When they reach port, the sailors are stunned to find an intact Patna already there before them. The rest of the crew disappears, but Jim insists on confessing his guilt at an official enquiry and is stripped of his sailing papers. Filled with self-loathing, Jim becomes a drifter.

One day, he saves a boatload of gunpowder from sabotage. Stein (Paul Lukas), the cargo's owner, offers him an extremely dangerous job: transporting it and some rifles by river to distant Patusan to help Stein's old friend, the town's chief, lead an uprising against bandits led by the General (Eli Wallach).

When Schomberg (Akim Tamiroff) is bribed to deny Stein the use of the motorboat he had promised, Jim takes a sailboat with two native crewmen, leaving the aged Stein behind. As they near their destination, one of the crewmen reveals himself to be working for the General. He kills the other sailor then flees to warn the warlord. Jim manages to hide the cargo before he is captured.

Though tortured, he refuses to divulge the location. This surprises Cornelius (Curt Jürgens), the drunken, cowardly agent of Stein's trading company, who in fact obeys the General. That night, the Girl (Daliah Lavi) leads Jim's rescue.

Jim distributes the arms and plans the attack on the General's stockade. He is assisted by Waris (Juzo Itami), the chief's son. After much bloody fighting, Jim delivers the crushing blow, pushing a barrel of gunpowder through a hail of bullets into the bandits' final stronghold, blowing it up along with the General. Only Cornelius survives, hidden in a secret underground room with the General's loot.

Jim is hailed as a hero. One of the grateful natives bestows the title tuan on him. The Girl translates it as "Lord".

While Jim is content to live in Patusan with the Girl, Cornelius and Schomberg recruit notorious cutthroat "Gentleman" Duncan Brown (James Mason) and his men to steal the treasure. However, they are detected and cornered. Brown offers to leave peacefully, but no one, with one exception, trusts him. Jim insists they be allowed to go, going so far as to offer his own life as forfeit if anybody is killed as a result. However, under cover of heavy fog, Brown and his men make one last attempt at the treasure, killing a sentry and fatally wounding Waris, before Waris and Jim dispatch them.

Afterward, Stein pleads with his grieving old friend to spare Jim; the chief agrees not to hinder Jim's departure, but if he is still in Patusan the next day, there will be no mercy. Despite Stein's urgings, Jim refuses to desert again. In broad daylight, he calmly walks up to the chief as the people are lined up for Waris's funeral procession, cocks the rifle he brought and places it near the chief, then awaits his fate. The bodies of Jim and Waris are cremated together.

Wikipedia 

Quotes 

I was invited on the David Letterman show a couple of times and I told him that my Mama taught me that ‘the way to keep a man was to be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom.’ I told him that I would hire the first two and do the last bit myself! 

Jerry Hall

....He wanted a wife, not a movie star...he never wanted me to go to Hollywood.... Jennifer Lopez on her first husband. 

....sadly, yet again she has it all going right in her career and all going wrong in her love life. Men may love a domestic goddess, but few can handle a domestic superstar. Jennifer, I wish you luck.

Writer Louise Gannon. Grazia. August 2011

I don't pretend to be an ordinary housewife. Elizabeth Taylor

That tight little island. Lord Byron on England

Quotes. The New New World  

Got to sleep down in the parlour and relive my dreams. I close my eyes and wonder, is everything as hollow as it seems? Bob Dylan 

Today let your breath be your soundtrack, smile and breathe in every pose. Russell Simmons 

I'd rather have a life of 'OH WELLS' than a life of 'WHAT IFS.' Inspirational Women 

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. Ray Bradbury 

Every day your memory goes dimmer. It doesn't haunt me like it did before. I've been walking in the middle of nowhere, trying to get to heaven before they close the doors. Bob Dylan 

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot. Charlie Chaplin 

When you’re outdoors breathing fresh air, you’re more easily able to hear the voice of the Divine. Doreen Virtue 

Entrepreneurship isn't selling things - it's finding innovative ways to improve people's lives. Richard Branson 

I chose nothing. I was born and this is what I am. Achilles. Wolfgang Peterson's Troy 

You gave me peace in a lifetime of war. Achilles to Briseis. Wolfgang Peterson's Troy 

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness. Aristotle 

It was a Pit — with fathoms under it —

Its Circuit just the same.

Seed — summer — tomb —

Whose Doom to whom? 

Emily Dickinson 

"Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment." Jim Rohn 

"Like most things of consequence in American history, the Wu-Tang Clan started as a moneymaking scheme." David Haglund 

I couldn't wait for success, so I went ahead without it. Jonathan Winters 

"Russell (Crowe) is the type of actor who cracks open his chest and lets you stare right into his heart." Paul Haggis 

“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.” Robert Louis Stevenson 

"Men fell in love with Gilda, but they wake up with me." Rita Hayworth 

My sense of humanity has gone down the drain. Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain. Bob Dylan 

Tantric sex (and companionship) = true love = S&M = transcendental love. Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011

Spiritual power = emotional power = emotional intelligence = mental intelligence = re-programming of the whole self = spiritual intelligence = The Lost Knowledge™ = power = The New World. 

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013 

The Sacred Farewell. Amera Ziganii Rao 

Don't worry about it my beautiful. We have the afterlife. What you and I do, truly is only for eternity. Our marriage is done. Marriage is, for me, done. I am to be with my other. My warrior twin soul. You were my (tribe) husband twin soul. He is my warrior partner twin soul. And we are both being stripped again of all sentimentality about marriage and relationship. We are warriors and here to serve. Ridley Scott's Gladiator is not my favourite film and story, probably of all time now, for no reason. It used to be Sir Walter Scott's story of Ivanhoe. He leaves the Jewish priestess (The Sacred Whore High Priestess Hierophant Avatar Valkyrie) to return to his (anglo saxon) queen. I think we're done. The love is eternal. The life journeys transient. 

Who could have known. We only have about 30 or 40 years left in this life anyway. The rest for all of us is the afterlife and if my warrior king and I get it right in our serving, and indeed you in your serving in the life you could not leave, maybe we can all do the afterlife forever, instead of returning to this shithole of a planet again. 

You are always with me. Be at peace. You loved and lost, just like me. I am Maximus to my Lucilla and Lucilla to my Maximus. I live the film and have only just lost my love. Now, it is 'giving Rome back to the people'. For both my warrior king and me. Warriors together. We are the frontline. And that means being on the road forever. You be at peace. I am always with you too. 

We are clearly, made up of more than one love. We are after all, all the same soul. 

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013

And God Created Woman ll Pt lll (ll). A Self Portrait 

AMERA ZIGANII RAO

A PROFILE  

FEMINIST AND HUMAN RIGHTS, METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHER. WRITER. MENTALIST AND ARTIST

AMERA ZIGANII RAO ALCHEMY & LIBERATION & HUMANITY™

The Sacred Whore High Priestess Society™

The Super Sacred Brother Lover™

The Return To The Source. Ascension.

The Sacred Whore High Priestess Society™. When we were giants. All of us. When you did more than rape me.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013

Neo Feminist™, Post Tribe Social Reformer™ and Sacred Sexualist™. Human Rights Healer. Metaphysical Philosopher, Writer, Spiritual Intelligence Teacher, Hierophant (Interpreter of The Universe) and Mentalist Self Actualiser.

I can help you grow power, from nothing.

Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013

The Sacred Whore High Priestess Hierophant™ and Sacred Pimp Warrior Protector, Brother Lover™ Society. The kings and queens of old. Angels and Sorcerers together in each of themselves and in the other. The Wizard life. Forever. Living and loving from The Source. Sourcery, Carlos Castaneda first said. I'll say it again. Sourcerers together. Living a life worth living. At last.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013

Witches are healers. Witches are the Love Healers and SOURCErers of The Lost World, when we were the giant warriors. We were good and so were were you. 'The World of Men'. The Tribe of Misogyny and Bourgeois™.

Gives us all a bad name. And poisons all hearts.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013

Feminist Lolita Intellectuals™. You lucky man. A place at the table, a place at the Executive Table. That's all. The rest is easy.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013

THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS: APPLIED CONSCIOUSNESS™, NEO FEMINISM™, METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY & SACRED SEXUALISM™. POST TRIBE SOCIAL REFORM™. POWER IS THE NEW LOVE. FREEDOM + HOPELESSNESS + SEX. NIHILISM FOR A SUCCESSFUL LIFE™ THE LOST KNOWLEDGE™ THE WIZARDRY OF BEING™ POLITICAL SPIRITUALITY™ TRUE NEW LOVE. BEYOND THE REVOLUTION™

SOCIAL REFORM. THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM AND LOVE. SHAMANISM. PHILOSOPHY. TRUE (UNIVERSAL) LOVE. NEO FEMINISM™. ANTI MISOGYNY. THE ARTIST'S WAY. WIZARDRY. TRUE INTELLECTUALISM™. WISDOM. GONZO SPIRITUALITY. NIHILISM. SEX. SOUL. GOD, THE MOTHER, THE UNIVERSE™. SPIRITUAL EXISTENTIALISM™. THE VOID OF CREATION™. ALCHEMY & LIBERATION & HUMANITY™. HELL. SUFFERING. GROWTH. ASCENSION. LOVE. LIFE. DEATH. WARLORDS OF LIGHT™ TRUE LOVE & TRUE SEX. THE POST TRIBE SOCIETY™

The Company.

Writer, Speaker and Enlightener, Amera Ziganii Rao, is now putting together a comprehensive and unique programme of Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™. A programme of learning that is specifically about one particular kind of woman. And one particular kind of man. The Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and the Sacred Whore High Priest™, and the true society that they come from and the one they, in particular, she can and has to return to and that anyone can join her and him in. This is about Paradise on Earth.

This is about The Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and the Sacred Whore High Priest™, and the Alchemy and Liberation and Humanity that is for all as a result of their healing and in particular, hers. This is about the kind of woman who is at the bottom of the pile in a Patriarchal Toilet Tribe from Hell Society™, the norm, the conventional world and the world of the Tribe. This is about the kind of man who is next in line from the bottom. The sensitive man and the female chattel. The High Priestess and High Priest of a profane society, that has long forgotten who they are.

This is about being at the bottom of the pile, for the forgotten and strangled shamans, and for her, the story of escape. Abused by her family, her friends, her men, her whole society, by the very nature of who she is and who they are and what has happened on this Earth. It is about women of love, of Spirit and of sex. It is about men of love, of Spirit and of sex. It is about the Cinderellas of this world. It is about the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™. Who she is and how, loving her is the secret to Paradise on Earth and how we have been living a lie for 8000+ years. A lie of male (non High Priest) religion with a male ‘God’ and with Patriarchs and Patriarchal types and Matriarchs and Matriarchal types ruling over us and making our lives hell, all in the name of family, the tribe and the way things are and should remain. Hate, fascism and profanity. A sick society that vilifies, more than anyone else, the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™, just because it was told to. A sick society that calls her Eve. A sick society that has forgotten who we all are, let alone the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and the Sacred Whore High Priest™. This is about us remembering and knowing who WE are.

This is a programme of healing for the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™, and the Sacred Whore High Priest™, to take them and particularly, her, from monstrous levels of low self esteem and lack of self knowledge, back to herself and it is a programme for all those who truly want to love her, and indeed, him. This is a programme for the greatest carers on Earth, who are vilified, destroyed, ridiculed, ignored, abused, used, misused and hated for being everything that those who would steal from us are not. This is a programme to turn Cinderellas into The Sacred Whore High Priestesses and for anyone who wants to love her or live by the values of the The Sacred Whore High Priestess Society™. And this is a programme to turn sensitive men into Sacred Whore High Priests™ and for anyone who wants to love him and live by the values of the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and High Priest Society. Love, humanity, Spirit and sex. This is a programme to reverse 8000+ years of witch burning, women hating and healer ridicule. This is about the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and all those who would love her and live by her values.

This is about the chance for Paradise on Earth. This is a programme for the most beautiful, kind hearted, wounded women and men on this planet. A programme of how to implement a system of how to beat life, how to survive life and how to resurrect from the grief that is a true life. Alchemy and Liberation and Humanity of the lower mind into the higher mind, the soul and the inner heart and therefore one's true, confident, ‘happy’, successful, creative, sexual, sensual, individual, intelligent, emotionally healed, capable of loving and being loved self. How to turn grief into creation and survive and thrive, despite all the shit, all the pain and all the hurt. How to live in a world of madness, hollowness and cruelty and how to be a winner. How to stand up for oneself and to take back the power that has been stolen from anyone with heart, Spirit and sex. The art and science of Alchemy.

This is a programme, based on my scholarly and non scholarly work over 15 years (so far), if not for my whole life, and my extensive and intense, visceral experiences of self transformation from resignation, cynicism and despair to a state of relative bliss, and above all, the right to be. The programme and the courses and my speaking and indeed my forthcoming book, will cover the method of change. The psychological, sociological, spiritual, cultural, political, emotional and physical and even anthropological methods of change. Why we are here. Who the Sacred Whore High Priestess™ is and why she is here. And who the Sacred Whore High Priest™ is. Why we are here. Who we are and what we are and why we are. The beauty and glory of the truth. The meaning of life, no less. This will be on offer in the future.

My first book of consciousness, my first book of the spiritual politics of humanity, of authentic power and of self love and strength. A comprehensive series of online courses, live events and audio and visual material. Books, live events, CDs and DVDs. And one on one personal empowerment consultations. The Amera Ziganii Rao Method of Change™. The right to be and the way to have the right to be. And indeed, how to maintain the will to live without love. How to BE unconditional, self sufficient, self caring, self love. The right to be and the will to be and the unparalleled success that comes with that. The Lost Knowledge™. HOW to live. And how to heal others, the profane and the sick and the soulless. The others. My Business and that of any Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and Sacred Whore High Priest™, is Human Rights, The Right to a Sexual Society, Self Actualisation and Freedom.

My Business is To Overthrow Fascism, in the Home and in the Country. My business is also mastering destiny. Overthrowing the ultimate 'fascism'. Our journey on Earth and The Return To The Source. Our healing, our ascension and our redemption. Fate. The daily crucifixions of a true life, the challenges and the fury of being healers and people of love on a planet like Earth.

Submitting to the journey to liberate and evolve oneself, through following one's heart, however much heartbreak and devastation it leads to on the long long long journey to freedom and then the longer journey to happiness. 'Long Road to Freedom', as Nelson Mandela says. My business is always taking risks, never giving up and making the endless sacrifices it takes to become whole. Enlightenment, Nirvana and then Parinirvana and beyond. My business is pain. My business is bliss.

My business is seeing the truly glory of Spirit on Earth. The Sacred Whore High Priestess Society™ and all that it is. Spirit, humanity, sex and love again at last. And the end of our legacy as either servants or witches or unpaid carers or indeed, ignored mistresses, other women, other men even, and the weirdos that are at the bottom of society. This is our world and it is time to take it back and I can show you how. And that makes my life, truly, worth living.

I want you to feel the way I do. Alive, with the right to be and the belligerence to exist in this profane and male ‘God’ led world of male supremacy, female supremacy, domestic, casual fascism, tribe rules from hell, with beautiful and kind, love intelligence laden, female and male Cinderella warriors at the bottom, caring for everyone else and getting nothing but hatred, ridicule and isolation for it. The meek are already inheriting the Earth and I can show you how.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012

I am THE High Priestess Monarch of the ancient past and I forgive you for becoming enslaved and taken over by the machines of the alien reptile force that invaded and took over Earth 8000 years ago. They taught you to hate me and my kind and you believed them. They told you I and my kind were dictators and that you were slaves, when all we had done was love you, honour you as companions and above all, we had let you just live.

We were the holy communers, the ones who gave birth to human beings, the leaders of society, the creators of society, the vehicles of Divinity on Earth and the channels of wisdom. The ones who looked after everything and the ones who built everything and ran everything, because we could. And because we loved it. We are and were the force of creation. And you loved us and you lived.

But they told you that you ‘deserved’ power too and that we were the ones standing in your way. And you believed them. The oldest ‘divide and rule’ strategy of hate in history and it worked. They used it and you bought it, hook, line and sinker. You had to give up sex, love, magic and your own spiritual gifts and you burnt, destroyed and violated me for 8000 years.

The world calls that male supremacy. And indeed, family supremacy, Matriarchal supremacy and supremacy of the material world and all who believe in it. Men and women like you. When all that you are are slaves to a reptile force to generate hate energy for them to live and thrive and vampire the human race. The puppets of a hate force, that chose to destroy women and men like me, for hate to grow, so they could live. You bought it and it worked. The greatest fraud in the history of the world.

I am THE High Priestess Monarch of the ancient past and I forgive you for becoming enslaved and taken over by the machines of the alien reptile force that invaded and took over Earth 8000 years ago. They taught you to hate me and my kind and you believed them. They taught you that my mind was evil. My mind, my sex, my body and my ways of life.

The humanity, the glory of sexuality and the glory of creation and creativity and the glory of Divinity in each and every one of us. Our souls. They taught you that human beings are separate from Divinity, that sex was wrong and that women who have minds of their own are uppity slaves. They vilified us but much much worse than that, they destroyed your relationship with all that is unseen, all that we honour and love.

They taught you to hate what is really God. By teaching you to hate us, you hated all that is good in yourselves. They taught you to hate the light. They taught you to kill us. The daughters of The Universe. The High Priestesses of God. The Spiritual Mothers. The Sacred Whore High Priestess Avatars of The Universe™. The Sacred Army of Love on Earth.

The Shamans, the Mystics and the Communers. The Hierophants.

They called me Eve and blamed me for the downfall of the human race and created the awesome profanity that is religion. Of men, by men and from men. Of reptiles, by reptiles and from reptiles. Christianity, Islam and Judaism and every other philosophy around the world was poisoned. There are no female spiritual leaders left. It is all profanity. They chose you to represent them because they wanted to divide us and they did. They told you to hate me. And you believed them. Now I am back and I forgive you.

I forgive you because I can. Because I came here to save your soul. And because I finally know who I am. I am THE High Priestess Monarch of the ancient past. I came here to return your soul to The Source. God, The Mother, The Universe. To return you to what is really God. Because I love you. And because She loves you and your kind, whatever you have done.

Whatever you have done to me and whatever you have done to Her. And most of all, whatever you have done to yourself. We forgive you. This is your redemption. Your freedom and your ascension. We are here to save your soul.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012

You bought the Sacred Whore like a piece of meat and you called that a wife. Your trophy wives. Your dancing girls. Your chattel and serving girls. Your piece of beauty. You bought us like you would cattle. Then you called it wives. Now you call it prostitution. The High Priestesses of the real God. You bought us to buy God, The Mother, The Universe and you caged us, separated us from our Divine gifts and skills in the Temple and drove us mad and then lost interest in us, because we had no gifts left, no excitement, no hunter in ourselves and no hope or joy left. Then you just called us mad and discarded us. You called us evil and you call love obedience, even though it had already killed us. You moved into our Temples and you played with the divination tools and thought you communed. The destruction of Atlantis was your gift.

You stole us from God, The Mother, The Universe and you tried to usurp us. You vilified us, enslaved us and you still envy us today. You call it intuition. You might want to think about this when you hate us out of your jealousy. The mystic gene means physical tortuous pain and taking on the empathy of the human race. All their pains, evils and dark thoughts. We see and feel everything. We make crucial sacrifices to be near Spirit and the unseen and we go without for years. To be shaman is not glamour. I make it glamour. To be shaman is a specific Samurai existence, ascetic and harsh. We commune to be guides. And you take that and you shame yourselves because you just want the meat. You didn’t just want the meat. You wanted our beauty of spirit, our personalities and our love and kindness. And you destroyed them, because you caged us and called us wife.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012

The High Priestess Sacred Whores, the High Priests and the true protectors. Those who do not have the gift like either the High Priests or especially like the highest of all, the High Priestess Sacred Whores but who honour, protect and facilitate them to the world. Who honour the Shaman Sacred Whores of this world most of all, and who know who they are and who they are not. Who know the difference, who do not envy and who protect and love the representatives of Spirit, GOD, THE MOTHER, THE UNIVERSE, on Earth. Who honour their wisdom and who honour the latent Shaman in themselves too and who honour the communing ability of the High Priestess Sacred Whores. The non violators. Our only friends. The New Society exists. It is called Enlightenment. It is called Love. It is The Holy Grail.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012

The master race. It's all a lie. You are brought up to be a despot king and it is only your sister who ever tells you that you have become a pratt. The master race is all a lie. There are no kings in an equal world. Your father was misinformed. What he brought you up to be was a killer. Pure and simple. A misogynist. A modern misogynist. A polite killer.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011

I enter the magical hours of pure feeling, pure thought, pure imagination and I think and I write and I 'mysticise' the Universe. I escape at will, the truth of my humanless, Samurai solitude, and I pursue the truth of love in myself and in everyone else. I am philosopher. I am shaman. I am alone. I frontier the Soul to be spirit on Earth.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011

Amera Ziganii Rao is a former hard news journalist who is now turning professional with her art forms and indeed, her healing forms, after a long journey of inner searching, self teaching and exploring many layers and areas of both craft and wisdom. She is now working on her first book of philosophy and esoteric thought, and social, cultural and spiritual commentary. She is also showing her first photography collections. And last but most definitely not least, she is building a business to share her Sacred Whore High Priestess Society consciousness and empowering explorations to reach as many people as possible across the world. She is in her forties and lives in London.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011

In the meantime, please enjoy this website. I have included many of the subjects I am covering, areas of experience and insight that I will be exploring to the fullest in my book, the courses and all the other work that is to come as a dramatist, novelist and essayist. I also of course, include many of the wise people on this planet, who have come long before me; authors, screen dramatists, playwrights, film makers, artists, and other enlighteners and grand carriers of the wisdom I have found the most helpful on my journey, to find peace and become enlightened. The seemingly impossible journey, in the face of oneself and one’s circumstances. People who have contributed massively to my healing on this mad journey called life, in this insane existence called The Universe. People who have helped to make me as good a carrier of wisdom as I in turn, can be. Thank you.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011

Copyright and intellectual property rights are serious issues. And legally protected. Please do not reproduce my work anywhere without due credit and obviously, never for financial gain. 'Big Sister' is watching you! Other than that, please continue to enjoy my original work and the work of (credited) others, for free, while I work on using my material in further professional formats. Thank you for your interest and support.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012

Thank you to outside sources for photography and artwork. Darkroomed by Amera Ziganii Rao