Matthew Williamson

Matthew Williamson has visited India over 40 times. He experienced the Holi festival in one of his trips, and the idea of carnival-goers throwing brightly colored powders over each other really had him thinking, moreover he drew on this for the powder prints in his Spring/Summer 2013 collection.

Pinks bled into whites on a smooth sheath dress with ambers dripped into ochres over a mountainous scene printed on Bermuda shorts, all of which were brought to life from Matthew Willamson’s colorful India memories.

Marchesa

Marchesa is one of our favorite designers who also found their influence in just a beat of a heart from India this season! Layered gowns were fashioned to form saree-like shapes. Meticulously arranged crystals sat encrusted on radiant fuchsia tones, while a white lehenga inspired two-piece dress floated with feather-like softness down the runway.

We love how the result of the line honored Indian costumes with evolution towards modernity while retaining the classic elegance and modification of our traditions. This season’s designer, Georgina Chapman said that she used traditional Indian techniques and that the silhouettes are embellished with pearls and crystals.

Vera Wang

Vera Wang’s use of layering coupled with South Asian textures, colors, prints, and embroideries. Her inspiration was the masculine tailoring of Indian men’s traditional dress with the delicate grace of saree, and new less literal translation of Indian glamor.

The sumptuous, intricate brocades, gauzy ikats, and the deep color palette of jade, sapphire, and gold were suggestive of India. We think Vera Wang’s dance with the country and its sweeping history and luscious visual liveliness was expertly assembled.

Mary Katrantzou

Mary Katrantzou sure knows how to command a crowd, and she sure knows how to command a print to do something different with it and move it on to a whole new place. Her Spring/Summer collection was of beautiful old Indian stamps splashed with symbolic birds, icons, national symbols, history, and works of art.

She used earthy tones of amber and green to represent India’s rich agriculture wealth, and hints of fresh blue to represent the all-year sunshine and blue skies India experiences. The zig-zag lines are not only to represent the stamps’ edges but also the hundred of railway lines that goes around India. We love how Mary’s perception of the line was more about the stories and print!

So there it is! The richness of India’s visual heritage is always an inspiration to abroad designers. The embroideries and color from India are so magnificent that they will always be an influence in the fashion industry. What’s your take? Leave us and comment and let us know!

Written exclusively for ‘Borrow It Bindaas’ by Monika Rajwani

Photo Courtesy: Vogue UK

Sumerian necklaces and headgear discovered in the royal (and individual) graves, showing the way they may have been worn. British Museum. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Ishtar Gate refers to Ishtar previously known as Innana (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

troops near the ruins of the biblical city of Babylon during the Iraq war (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Head of Gudea, prince of Lagash. Diorite, Telloh (ancient city of Girsu), ca. 2120 BC. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Ancient cities of Sumer Español: Antiguas ciudades de Sumeria Magyar: Ókori sumer városok (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Map with the locations of the main cities of Sumer and Elam. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

2500 BCE Sumerian Star (Photo credit: zeevveez)

The 12th Planet written by Zecharia Sitchin (Audiobook).

My research about the origins of man and ancient societies was greatly aided by the research of scholars such as Zecharia Sitchin.

I was first introduced to his works about 20 years ago during my research of ancient Babylon and Sumer.

Moshe

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Love these gold summer shoes!! The gold goes great with the navy!

Curiously, Scooby-Doo is a good measure of mainstream cultural symbolism. As a monster, once you make it on Scooby-Doo, you can make it anywhere. Scooby-Doo, Mystery Incorporated (Season 2, Episode 8, “Night on Haunted Mountain”, originally aired August 8, 2012) features the demonic “Dark Lilith” on Mount Diabla. Showtime’s True Blood 5^th Season features the blood-drenched, manipulative, mad vampire god Lilith as the powerful, destructive, and central antagonist. The CW’s Supernatural boasted a tween Lilith (see Humbert Humbert) as Lucifer’s awesome second in command and author of a horrific apocalypse. Numerous books, movies, comics, and other communicative forms of popular culture have included a demonic incarnation of Lilith from 1993 to 2012. The revival of Lilith as evil incarnate appears to have a great deal of traction, and is multiplying exponentially across the semiosphere. Is this suggestive of a new archetype populating the collective subconscious of America and our Western cultural analogues?

Women have only actually had the right to vote in the United States for 92 years, and obviously equality did not immediately ensue upon suffrage, particularly as we are still bemoaning in 2012 that women earn seventy-seven cents on the dollar compared to male counterparts, but clearly great strides in women’s opportunity, prominence, and power have been made. Historically, there is no shortage of examples of powerful and extraordinary women from Cleopatra and Catherine the Great, to Joan of Arc and Queen Elizabeth, often respected, revered, and loved by many. The precedent for strong female leadership is well-established, but the emerging personification of the ultimate evil as female (in the form of Lilith) in popular culture would seem to be more closely related not to the increasing presence of women in positions of power (which is not unique in Western history), but rather resulting from the global ascendance of “ordinary” equality of women. It is far less cognitively dissonant to worship a Queen that it is to recognize the worldwide impact of increasingly successful female entrepreneurship, greatly expanded mid-level and corporate management opportunities for highly educated women (and women are quickly outpacing men in education – 58% of college students are women, women are much more likely to graduate, complete degrees faster, and get higher grades). To observe this we should take a closer look at the monstrous Lilith throughout history.

There is an academic dispute over whether the Sumerian class of female demons called Līlīṯu are direct etymological descendants of Lilith, but given the tendency of biblical sources to demonize the gods of their neighbors (the Canaanite deity Ba’al becomes the demon Belial; the Phoenician goddess Astarte becomes the abomination Ashteroth) this does not seem unlikely, since many shared characteristics are evident. Līlīṯu was originally regarded as an ancient fertility/agricultural goddess with a bit of a dark edge, and a Sumerian clay tablet c.a. 2500 B.C. (the first appearance of Lilith in literature) refers to her as “the dark maid” or “maiden of desolation”. In the first recorded reference to her in the Epic of Gilgamesh (at which point she is already identified as a demon) and Sumerian artwork is undeniable, depicted as a nude, bat-winged, bird-footed goddess, but the Akkadian “lilu” (shape-shifting demon) and Sumerian “lil” (wind, spriti, or demon) are likely loan words to the Classical Hebrew “lilith”.

Lilith’s first appearance would seem to be in the 5000 year old story from the Epic of Gilgamesh called “Inanna and The Huluppa Tree” as a Mesopatamian storm demon, credited with appearing to men in erotic dreams, and blamed as the bearer of diseases, illness, and death. The passage below is from the Sumerian Huluppa Tree myth and suggests that Innana planted a tree, representative of her womanhood, which was taken over by the lascivious Lilith. Gilgamesh drives Lilith away, a rather transparent metaphor for the dangers of sexual license and the value of virtuousness.

Inanna tended the tree carefully and lovingly
she hoped to have a throne and a bed
made for herself from its wood.
After ten years, the tree had matured.
But in the meantime, she found to her dismay
that her hopes could not be fulfilled.
because during that time
a dragon had built its nest at the foot of the tree
the Zu-bird was raising its young in the crown,
and the demon Lilith had built her house in the middle.
But Gilgamesh, who had heard of Inanna’s plight,
came to her rescue.
He took his heavy shield
killed the dragon with his heavy bronze axe,
which weighed seven talents and seven minas.
Then the Zu-bird flew into the mountains
with its young,
while Lilith, petrified with fear,
tore down her house and fled into the wilderness (Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet 12)

By the time that the Epic of Gilgamesh was written down, it appears that an oral tradition of Lilith as a demon already existed, as she is mentioned incidentally, as if the reader is already expected to understand who she is. “It would be beneficial to now acquaint oneself with some of the aspects of this text which will appear again in these ‘founding’ literatures. First, there is the association of Lilith with the snake, usually equated with evil. Second, there is the bird who flees, presumably through flight, something which Lilith will later do also. Third, the tree invokes an image of the Tree of Knowledge, in which Lilith is said to dwell in some later myths. Similarly, this tree is located in Inanna’s “holy garden,” again harking back to the image of the Garden of Eden. Finally, it is noteworthy that while Lilith and her bestial companions inspire fear in Inanna, they do not have any fear of her. It is Gilgamesh, the great male Sumerian hero, who kills the snake and frightens the other creatures out of the tree and garden” (Scerba, 1999, “Gilgamesh and the Hulupp-Tree“). This establishes the relative hierarchy of man and woman in the great chain of being, the subordination of woman to man being largely a fixture of the ancient Semitic culture from which these legends, myths, and theology derive. While we do not have documented evidence of earlier conceptions of Lilith, it seems clear that oral tradition had cast her in the role of usurper, attempting to corrupt the works of culture hero and supreme goddess Inanna who is saved by Gilgamesh.

Subsequent Sumerian conceptions subordinate Lilith to Inanna, referring to her as the “handmaiden of Inanna” (more aptly interpreted as “hand of Inanna”), tasked with guiding men to Inanna’s temple for sacred sex rituals. Sacred prostitution was arguably a common practice in the Ancient Near East, some scholars equating what little documentation there is as referencing something more along the lines off “sacred marriage” rituals practiced by the Kings of Sumer, but the ancient Greek historian Herodutus’ (484-425 B.C.) Histories disparagingly references Mesopotamian temple rites:

The foulest Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger once in her life. Many women who are rich and proud and disdain to mingle with the rest, drive to the temple in covered carriages drawn by teams, and stand there with a great retinue of attendants. But most sit down in the sacred plot of Aphrodite, with crowns of cord on their heads; there is a great multitude of women coming and going; passages marked by line run every way through the crowd, by which the men pass and make their choice. Once a woman has taken her place there, she does not go away to her home before some stranger has cast money into her lap, and had intercourse with her outside the temple; but while he casts the money, he must say, “I invite you in the name of Mylitta” (that is the Assyrian name for Aphrodite). It does not matter what sum the money is; the woman will never refuse, for that would be a sin, the money being by this act made sacred. So she follows the first man who casts it and rejects no one. After their intercourse, having discharged her sacred duty to the goddess, she goes away to her home; and thereafter there is no bribe however great that will get her. So then the women that are fair and tall are soon free to depart, but the uncomely have long to wait because they cannot fulfill the law; for some of them remain for three years, or four. There is a custom like this in some parts of Cyprus (Herodotus, Histories).

Assyrian texts referring to the Lilitu, the Akkadian Ardat-Lili and the Assyrian La-bar-tu like Lilith came to be associated with disease and uncleanliness. Ardat is derived from “ardatu,” a title of prostitutes and young unmarried women, meaning “maiden.” Scholars argue whether there are true etymological connections between the Assyrian and Mesopotamian Liliths, but by the time Lilith emerges in ancient Judaic literature, Lilith is clearly identified as a demon with a particular interest in childbirth, harming pregnant women, killing unborn children, killing foliage, drinking blood, and causing disease. It is highly likely this an amalgam of several pre-biblical Semitic demons, with particular attention to the integration of those elements most closely associated with female sexuality and sexual power.

Prior to the rise of monotheistic religion, we might argue that the conception of monsters was somewhat ambiguous, as the world was seen to be populated by all manner of semi-divine heroes, fearsome beasts, spirits, devils, imps, and other supernatural creatures associated with natural phenomena, but divorced from the idea of moral culpability. With the emergence of monotheistic religions in the ancient Near East, we begin to see the emergence of the adversarial universe, an absolute good vs. an absolute evil, and the rise in the importance of what has been termed “sacred terror”. As observed by Kearney, “In short, if demonizing monsters (as impure) keeps God on our side (as pure), deifying them brings us into a zone of ‘religious horror’. We here enter that ambivalent world of the magico-mystical Holy which Rudolf Otto linked with the long tradition of sacred ‘terror and awe’ running from the Old Testament heirophanies and certain mystical notions of the mysterium tremendum right down to postmodern theories of the hysterical sublime” (Kearney, 2002, p.42).

Feminist theorists delight in pointing out that monotheistic religion has tended to support patriarchal social organization, but fail to recognize that monotheism precipitates a crisis in the symbol of masculinity, as it imagines the relationship of man to God as matrimonial, that is men are depicted in imagery and symbolism that reflects on them as “married to God”. As observed by Eilberg-Schwartz, “When male-female complementarity is the structure of religious imagery, human women are the natural partners of a divine male, but this connection also renders human males superfluous in the divine-human relationship…the potential superfluousness of human masculinity may offer additional insights into the misogynist tendencies of ancient Judaism: women were deemed impure and men were feminized in contradiction to what in this religious culture was a natural complementarity between the divine male and human females…still another set of dilemmas are generated by the monotheistic image of a sexless father God” (Eilberg-Schwartz, 1994, p.3-4). Thus, symbols of female sexual power would be specifically singled out for demonization, and in the foundational scriptures of Judaism, this is precisely how Lilith is treated. Female sexuality is regarded as animalistic, and associated with the hyena, the goat, jackals, owls, dragons, and demons, with which Lilith is specifically mentioned. Lilith is the killer of children, the seducer of men, the mother of bastard spirits, and the inhabitant of the wasteland.

Wildcats shall meet with hyenas,
goat-demons shall call to each other;
there too Lilith shall repose,
and find a place to rest
There shall the owl nest
and lay and hatch and brood in its shadow (Isaiah 34:14)

And I, the Sage,
declare the grandeur of his radiance
in order to frighten and terrify
all the spirits of the ravaging angels
and the bastard spirits,
demons, Liliths, owls and [jackals...]
and those who strike unexpectedly
to lead astray the spirit of knowledge…. (Dead Sea Scrolls, 11QPsAp)

But we, the living, woe to us,
because we have seen those afflictions of Zion
and that which has befallen Jerusalem.
I shall call the Sirens from the sea,
and you, Lilin, come from the desert,
and you, demons and dragons from the woods.
Awake and gird up your loins to mourn,
and raise lamentations with me,
and mourn with me. (Second Apocalypse of Baruch, 2 Baruch 10:7-8)

You are bound and sealed,
all you demons and devils and liliths,
by that hard and strong,
mighty and powerful bond with which are tied Sison and Sisin….
The evil Lilith,
who causes the hearts of men to go astray
and appears in the dream of the night
and in the vision of the day,
Who burns and casts down with nightmare,
attacks and kills children,
boys and girls.
She is conquered and sealed
away from the house
and from the threshold of Bahram-Gushnasp son of Ishtar-Nahid
by the talisman of Metatron,
the great prince
who is called the Great Healer of Mercy….
who vanquishes demons and devils,
black arts and mighty spells
and keeps them away from the house
and threshold of Bahram-Gushnasp, son of Ishtar-Nahid.
Amen, Amen, Selah. (Inscription Exorcising Lilith on a 6-8^th Century A.D. Persian Incantation Bowl)

In the span of 2000 years, we see Lilith transformed from storm spirit, to handmaiden of the Queen of the Gods, to demon of death in childbirth, to the embodiment of demonized female sexuality in monotheism, but the history of the Lilith symbol was not to end with this characterization. The evolution of a more robust Judaic theology and Jewish mysticism changed the way in which Lilith was regarded.

Rabbi Jeremia ben Eleazar said, “During those years (after their expulsion from the Garden), in which Adam, the first man, was separated from Eve, he became the father of ghouls and demons and lilin.” Rabbi Meir said, “Adam, the first man, being very pious and finding that he had caused death to come into the world, sat fasting for 130 years, and separated himself from his wife for 130 years, and wore fig vines for 130 years. His fathering of evil spirits, referred to here, came as a result of erotic dreams. (Babylonian Talmud, Erubin 18b)

Lilith is a far more complicated entity in the Talmud and Kabbalistic writings such as the Zohar, deemed to be the original wife of Adam, preceding Eve. I have argued elsewhere that Kabbalistic interpretations of Judaism (which are various) tend to be designed to deal with a central problem of monotheism, that is, how to understand evil in relation to a deity conceived as infallible, all-powerful, and omniscient. This requires the elaboration of relationships within the mythology outside of the accepted canon. Much of the Kabbalistic literature is devoted to precisely this exercise, including a detailed account of the existence of Lilith. This serves as an intellectual interpretation of why Lilith (representative of female sexual power) is aligned with adversaries of God, but also addresses the symbolic disconnect with masculinity. Although a current of mysticism appeared in ancient Judaism, the Golden Age of Kabbalah began in the 12-13^th Centuries in Southern France and Spain. Lilith is still regarded as demonic, but her relationship to Adam firmly establishes her estrangement from the divine as a result of believing she was Adam’s equal.

Come and see: There is a female, a spirit of all spirits, and her name is Lilith, and she was at first with Adam. And in the hour when Adam was created and his body became completed, a thousand spirits from the left [evil] side clung to that body until the Holy One, blessed be He, shouted at them and drove them away. And Adam was lying, a body without a spirit, and his appearance was green, and all those spirits surrounded him. In that hour a cloud descended and pushed away all those spirits. And when Adam stood up, his female was attached to his side. And that holy spirit which was in him spread out to this side and that side, and grew here and there, and thus became complete. Thereafter the Holy One, blessed be He, sawed Adam into two, and made the female. And He brought her to Adam in her perfection like a bride to the canopy. When Lilith saw this, she fled. And she is in the cities of the sea, and she is still trying to harm the sons of the world. (Zohar 3:19)

“The wife brought the mirror and all of the fine furnishings in the cellar to her own home and proudly displayed it. She hung the mirror in the room of their daughter, who was a dark-haired coquette. The girl glanced at herself in the mirror all the time, and in this way she was drawn into Lilith’s web….For that mirror had hung in the den of demons, and a daughter of Lilith had made her home there. And when the mirror was taken from the haunted house, the demonness came with it. For every mirror is a gateway to the Other World and leads directly to Lilith’s cave. That is the cave Lilith went to when she abandoned Adam and the Garden of Eden for all time, the cave where she sported with her demon lovers. From these unions multitudes of demons were born, who flocked from that cave and infiltrated the world. And when they want to return, they simply enter the nearest mirror. That is why it is said that Lilith makes her home in every mirror… (Jewish Folktale)

Ironically, the satirical Alphabet of Ben Sira, considered one of the earliest literary parodies in Hebrew literature (written in the 9^th Century A.D.), mimicking midrashic commentaries unintentionally offers deep insight into the symbol of Lilith, characterizing Lilith as “a quarreling head-strong wife, unwilling to submit to her husband. She refuses to lie beneath Adam during sexual intercourse, but demands only to lie on top. Eventually she flees Adam and the garden. The dejected Adam complains to God that his wife has left him. God, then rather ineptly sends three angels to bring the wayward wife back. They fail against the head-strong woman. There is nothing left for God to do but make a new wife for Adam. The entire tale has an irreverent tone (as does the entire book), and it has inflammatory references to sex. Lilith’s refusal to ‘lie below’ was seen as sarcastic entertainment for the Rabbis, something purely inconceivable and laughable” (Biggs, 2010). Unfortunately, it is this particular view of Lilith with which we are most familiar and that emerged as a cultural icon, first for the suppression of the pagan mother goddess, and then for masculine oppression and the liberation of women.

Consider a modern revisionist reconceptualization of Lilith as a perversion of ancient mother goddesses, which is contradicted by more or less all early texts that mention her. One wonders how this conclusion was even reached. Early texts clearly identify Lilith as a destructive spirit, and latter monotheistic characterizations are unanimous in her demonization, but were it accurate, we can certainly see the appeal for feminist theory.

The myth of Lilith is a good example to show these contingent changes. Considering the various mythological features of this religious figure, ranging from the Mesopotamian religions to 18th century’s cabbalistic tractates, we recognize the changing social attitudes towards the feminine. Against this background it is not advisable to obtain the simple doctrine of the ‘genders’s battle’ and its psychological construction of ‘male’ and ‘female.’ Lilith is not the dark half of the (masculine) self but an aspect of the Great Goddess worshipped in antiquity under many names. This can be proven through the study of the oldest documents relating to Lilith. Later texts, though, belong to a religious discourse that tends to conceal or even destroy the strong aspects of the goddess. To use these texts uncritically and to skip hundreds and even thousands of years in order to proof a preconceived interpretation establishes a circulus vitiosus that fits to patriarchal interpretation but fails to illuminate the many aspects of femininity. Pragmatic analysis, instead, uncovers the social and religious contexts of these documents that generate social meanings about femininity adopted by men and women alike. (Stuckrad, 1999, p.12)

The Victorian occult revival, which coincided with early Western women’s rights movements, reinvigorated the notion of women’s sexual power, and there was no finer exemplar of this than Lilith. Returning a maligned female goddess to her rightful place undoubtedly was in concert with the contemporary yearning for the emancipation of women. “This consonance of occultism with contemporary feminism had undoubtedly been prepared by the prominence women had already enjoyed in the spiritualist movement, where feminist ideas were widespread enough. However, it could be argued that occultism went even farther. After all, the role of women in spiritualism was often (but with some significant exceptions) reduced to that of passive mediums. In Anglo-American occultism, on the other hand, not only were women freely admitted as members in organizations such as the Theosophical Society and the Order of the Golden Dawn, but they very often held positions of responsibility, if not even leadership” (Pasi, 2009, p.64)

Now Lilith has returned to her original demoniacal status, at least with regard to the popular imagination, if we measure by appearance in contemporary fiction. Lilith has always represented the seductress, and that depiction has taken on a decidedly malevolent tone, where beyond demonic, Lilith is now commonly depicted as evil incarnate, the author of our doom – if that’s sounding familiar, it would be the familiar appellation of Satan, the ultimate adversary – power only matched by the divine. Beyond the femme fatale, the ingenue or temptress, Lilith is repeatedly used in current films, shows, and books as the vessel from which ‘sacred terror’ springs, possessing a boundless and fearsome power to destroy our reality. How did the symbol that not long ago gave rise to the Lilith Fair and a host of women’s empowerment magazines, books, and websites, emerge as the ultimate repository for evil? As far as I can determine, seismic shifts in our social organization with respect to the day to day role of women in society, that is the acceptance of “ordinary” equality as a functional reality – yes there are still fewer women in congress and fewer women CEO’s, but the assumption that women can do any job a man can, and often better, faster, and more intelligently is prevalent in fact, if not in actual thought. We have moved light years away from the notion of male and female specific jobs in Western society, a notion that was common only 50 years ago. Consequently, everyday masculinity and femininity are rapidly being redefined. Symbolic systems that have existed for millennia are being overturned, and perhaps this is a good thing, a sign of an evolving society, but we must watch the metamorphosis of our symbols closely. We may learn a thing or two both about our monsters and ourselves.

REFERENCES

Biggs, Mark Wayne. The Case for Lilith: 23 Biblical Evidences Identifying the Serpent as Adam’s First Failed Wife in Genesis. Samson Books, 2010.

Eilberg-Schwartz: God’s Phallus: And Other Problems for Men and Monotheism. Boston: Beacon, 1994.

Kearney, Richard. Strangers, Gods, and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness. London: Routledge, 2002.

Kramer, Samuel Noah. “Gilgamesh And The Huluppu-Tree: A Reconstructed Sumerian Text” Originally:Assyriological Studies of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago 10. Chicago: 1938.

Martinez, Florentino Garcia. The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English. Leiden; New York : E.J. Brill ;Grand Rapids : W.B. Eerdmans, 1996.

Pasi, Marco. “The Modernity of Occultism” from Hermes in the Academy, Hanegraaff, W.J. & Pijnenburg, J. eds. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2009.

Scerba, Amy. “Gilgamesh and the Hulupp-Tree (2000 BC)” Changing Literary Representations of Lilith and the Evolution of a Mythical Heroine. 1999. Feminism and Women’s Studies Eserver. Downloaded from http://feminism.eserver.org/theory/papers/lilith/gilgamesh.html.

Herodotus, The Histories 1.199, tr A.D. Godley , 1920.

Stuckrad, Kocku von. Constructing Femininity: The Lilith Case. Paper (Universität Duisburg. Linguistic Agency): General & theoretical papers, 1999.

I really wanted to like it.  It’s got a funky future setting that is kind of interesting.  But the story is kind of a stretch, even for fiction.  Mainly due to the overarching impression I got that the author doesn’t really understand computers.  As you will see, that really impacts the whole storyline.  (Hmm, I sound really conceited here.  But I feel at least somewhat qualified to make such a statement.  I’ve designed a computer – yes, a very simple one; yes, as part of a class – but all the basic blocks were there.  Something about that activity just really makes it all click – computers aren’t some magical device, it is possible to go down through the layers all the way to the silicon to find out what’s going on; indeed some engineers some where at some time designed all those connections and processes.

But I have digressed, majorly.  My apologies.  Back to “Snow Crash.”)

My first beef is with the Metaverse.  This is “Snow Crash”‘s concept of everything Second Life wished it could be.  (Is Second Life still a thing in our day of Facebook et al?  [Me in 5 years: Is Facebook still a thing in our day of X et al?]  Arg, I did it again.  Sorry.)

So the Metaverse.  Think an MMO.  But the weird part is that the graphical quality of the avatars and sophistication of the virtual homes, clubs and places differs wildly.  Each “thing” in the Metaverse is only as high fidelity as the software algorithms the individual who owns that “thing” has bought or has coded themselves.  This is just really different weird.  Is each “thing” rendered separately on the user’s machine, then uploaded to a central server and propagated to all other users?  I guess you could do that if you had close to infinite internet bandwidth.  The whole virtual reality interface is kind of swept under the rug, too.  When Hiro (the main character is named “Hiro Protagonist”, hardy-har-har) runs or rides a motorcycle or sword fights in the Metaverse, what kind of user interface is he using in reality?  He’s got virtual reality goggles on, but I don’t remember any other description of how he’s “jacked in.”

That said, my criticisms of the Metaverse are kind of unfair.  This book was written in the late 80′s (published 1992) so it was anyone’s guess what the internet or virtual reality would become.  Stephenson probably got way, way closer than most.

But the whole central storyline about the Snow Crash virus is complete baloney.  Because we call a malicious software exploit a “virus”, the author decided that a computer virus was pretty much the same thing as a real virus that infects people.   No, no, no!  Besides crashing computer systems, Snow Crash is a information-vector virus that only programmers can get, by looking at a bitmap of binary code.  The bad guys then can spread the virus to non-programmers via blood transfusions.  Stephenson totally misunderstands the “virus” terminology in the computer sense.  His backstory is that the Sumerian Enki found out how to break an ancient (biological?) Metavirus’s control over humans, initiating the Tower of Babel confusion of languages (really a waking-up for humanity from Metavirus control).   The Metavirus has been rediscovered, and is being put to nefarious purposes.

Anyway, I’ve made it sound like I hated the book, but I really didn’t.  As I mentioned, the future setting is entertaining; although it is a depressing future for America.  The nation is broken into millions of “franchulates” – effectively each business is its own nation – and the remaining Feds are paranoid and obsessed with security.  Think Homeland Security gone wild, with weekly polygraph tests and constant monitoring for all pencil pushing employees.  Pizza delivery is handled by the Mafia, and all government functions have been privatized to an absurd degree.

One final oddity is that the dates in the book don’t really match up.  Hiro was born in 1972 and I’m sure he isn’t older than 40, so I’m guessing we’re in the 2002-2012 timeframe.   But the funkiness of fractured America and some of the technology (ie Rat Thing) seem to me like 50 year or 100 year stuff.  I think the author specified the the dates the way he did so that the fathers of both Hiro and Raven (his archenemy) could have known each other back in Japanese POW camp during WWII.

The End of Days is upon us and if we have  interpreted the numerous pieces of evidence, beginning soon our world will undergo an enormous paradigm shift of reality.  It will be important to arm yourselves with information to help with the transition and survival of the human race.

11/07/2012 – We have expedited the release of our book due to the re-election of Barak Obama who we believe is either the End of Days Contemptible King of the book of Daniel or the one who prepares the way for his arrival. Though we would have liked more time to fine tune the first book, we feel it is important now more than ever to get the information out.  His re-election along with the coming galactic alignment places us at a crossroads or threshold of earth-shaking events. We hope we can continue to provide information to our readers, but we are also aware of his desire to control the internet. If that becomes a reality, sites that speak out against him, the Illuminati and their agenda will be taken off the web.  Please read the book and send it to your friends. You can request a copy of my file by posting a comment on the blog and requesting a free copy.

To access Book I – The Foundations of Tyranny, just go to the ebook tab at the top of the page and click

Dr. Steven Greer MD, founder of the Disclosure Project

There are all stepping-stones to what some call “Disclosure” from world governments into admitting, primarily, that aliens have and continue to visit Earth. If we get deeper into the Disclosure Project, people want the US government to admit that there are currently living ETs working with military officials. This was revealed at the NPC during the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure by Paul Hellyer, Former Canadian Minister of Defense.

There has been a lot of hype about this whole disclosure project, with some in UFOlogy circles hoping this will force an admission out of western governments – particularly the USA.

But I must ask, do people really need their government to tell them that UFOs and ETs exist? To me – this is just my personal opinion – people who are relying on their government to tell them stuff, are in effect letting their government think for them. We all have a mind of our own. Why not use it?

I like to think of myself as a free-thinker. Let’s not raise age-old philosophical questions here. I mean, I like to think for myself. Not rely on someone bearing a title to tell me what to believe and what not to believe, what to think and what not to think, what to say and what not to say and what to do and what not to do.

Nick Pope. Skeptic-turned-believer, after working for the MoD investigating UFOs

Do we really need a “disclosure”? unfortunately, there are some people in the world (namely skeptics and religious persons (both extreme ends of the spectrum)) who will not think outside of a box that is drawn around them, either by themselves (skeptics) or for them (conservatively religious). Skeptics close off their mind to everything, unless it is scientifically proven or told to them by a scientist. Even then in some cases, if it doesn’t fit in to their rationale or sense of reasoning, they will concoct an explanation which is far more zany than a UFO or something of a paranormal nature.

Religious people on the other hand (talking about the fanatics and extremists) refuse to think for themselves unless their Holy Book says so, or a religious leader tells them what to think. Their reasoning for things that they don’t agree with is usually, “the work of the devil” or evil.

I, on the other hand like to take the “middle way”. I have said that in so many of my blog posts. I like to formulate my own truths based on what I see, feel and experience, while also applying what resonates with me, what I feel to be true and by opening my mind to every possibility. What I do here is mix logic with faith. Having the right balance of each, to me at least, is the best path to go down. We don’t need someone of authority or a higher being to tell us what to believe and what not to believe.

A lot of people I speak to about UFOlogy ask me “If aliens landed here, why is there no evidence?”. I can only respond with the truth. “Anytime you see evidence or read about it, you reject it. How can anyone present evidence to you when you are intent on rejecting it right from the beginning?” That’s the common problem. People simply don’t wish to believe it, because it threatens to shake the very foundations of who they are – their beliefs.

I’m not trying to convert people. People simply ask my opinion. I give it to them. They don’t like it. They get hostile and attempt to attack and/or ridicule my belief simply because it differs from theirs.

So why do people need disclosure when evidence of their existence can be found all around us? Alien visitation is not a recent thing. It didn’t start with Kenneth Arnold or Roswell incident. Though Kenneth was the one who coined the term “flying saucer”, because of his description of the flight characteristic of several unidentified craft. Evidence stretches way back into history. All the way back to the times of Sumer.

Pilot and Businessman, Kenneth Arnold, explains what he saw.

Religions have spawned from UFO and alien visits. Visits are documented in ancient texts such as the Old Testament, Sumerian Cylinder Seals and Clay tables. They’re documented in statues, carvings, paintings and drawings. Remote tribes around the world tell of their origins from the “star people” and how those visitors gave their ancestors the advanced knowledge that we simply don’t have today. One tribe of particular interest is the Dogon Tribe, located in west Africa, who stunned explorers and scientists of their knowledge of the Sirius star system. The Dogons were able to tell us that Sirius was actually 3 stars. One of which was invisible. It’s only in recent times that we have been able to confirm this. How did the Dogons know? They claim that beings from that star system told them. Who’s to dispute that?

An artists interpretation of Ezekiel meeting Yahweh (God) and his description of the event. Reading it today, we can easily identify artificial craft being describe by Ezekiel

Legends and stories about “gods” and “demigods” alike spawn from ancient times. In recent times however, some of the “mythology” has been proven to have taken place, thanks to the finds of archaeological evidence.

The genealogy of the “gods” can be traced to people living today. A good example of which is our royal dynasties – the “blue bloods”, thanks to their rare blood type, which some researchers suggest originates “off-planet”. Ancient records tell us that the “gods” mated with our women, producing demigods. Some records even suggest that when the ‘gods’ returned to the heavens (the sky), they left the demigods to rule over their regions.

A detailed family tree of the Greek gods who “came from the heavens”. Ancient texts not only document their genealogy, but their quarrels, accomplishments and family feuds. (Right click and select view image to get full size)

The list of evidence in ancient times is virtually endless. But it’s ignored by most, if not all, branches of mainstream science, simply because it doesn’t fit in with their ‘logical’ reasoning. Instead, they insult our ancestors and designate these accounts to the realm of fiction and mythology. According to our scientists, our ancestors were mathematically intelligent, but had to concoct stories so their simple and “primitive” minds can have an understaning of the universe.

Ancient depictions of “gods” traveling in winged disks. Could these disks been interpretations of flying vehicles?

Evidence in recent times? Footage has appeared all over the world of strange, unidentified craft. Pictures too, but unfortunately, technology is readily available at the click of a button that can manipulate images and films. But it seems that no matter what footage or stills emerge, they’re all assigned to the hoax pile. Those cases that genuinely can’t be explained are ignored by our leaders and smart alecs. No one, it seems, that is in a position of good standing, wants to believe that life can exist anywhere other than here. They deny that aliens can travel here, simply because humans haven’t yet mastered or even created inter-stellar propulsion devices themselves. But if we were to judge life in the universe solely on the model of human progress on earth, then our universe would be a sad, unhappy place

In 1952, A fleet of white flying disks flew over the white house. Whistle blowers claim it was the Greys. Skeptics have tried to brush this under the carpet

Whistleblowers have come out and spoke of governmental and military co-operation with ET life. People have revealed what they knew about Area 51, what happened at Roswell, UFO’s disarming nuclear warheads and what they found on the moon. They’re assumed to be bonkers, off their rocker or in it for the money.

It seems to make some people uneasy… the thought of life elsewhere in the universe. It makes some people uneasy of the idea that the human race may not be as advanced as we’d like to think – that we’re still primitive by universal standards. But the idea of being alone in the universe makes others uneasy.

A man who used to work on a USAF base spoke of how a missile carrying a nuclear war head to the moon was disarmed by an unidentified craft

But what I’m trying to say is, think for yourself. Don’t rely on someone with a title to tell you how to think. Look for the evidence yourself and be free. No one is any greater or lesser than you are. In this universe we are all equal. We know that aliens have and continue to visit us to this day. Evidence points towards it. And no, they won’t openly land among us because the world as a whole is just not ready for that. Think about it like this. If aliens landed in your country, what would be your first reaction? Disbelief? Hostility? A call to arms? I can guess it would at least be one of those three. The sad fact is that we humans are too primitive in modern times. Our answer to everything is war and conflict. Their answer however is that of peace and love. For if they intended on destroying us, they would have done a long, long, time ago.

So, while it seems that official disclosure is just around the corner, the question is would then everyone be accepting of it?

Namaste

Well hello there. How do you do?

Today is a bright, sunshiny day. Only one more week and I’ll be enjoying it to the fullest. It’s that time of year. Classes are coming to an end and the plans begin for the summer. Until the end of next week I’ll be dreaming of the summer days exploring new cities and enjoying the ocean. What are your plans for the summer? Traveling to a new place or to a long time favorite? Tell me about it.

Happy Tuesday, Friends!

The Deluge tablet, carved in stone, of the Gilgamesh epic in Akkadian, circa 2nd millennium BC. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yes, the writing’s on the tablet and I’m not talking computer tablets here, in terms of writing and technology, it seems we’ve come full circle!

Like many of us, when I was a child I believed that the ancient Egyptians invented writing. That hieroglyphics were man’s earliest endeavour at making sense of the world in written form.

Of course, we all know this to be untrue now, that actually Sumer (southern Mesopotamia) and the ancient Sumerians invented writing, Sumerian cuneiform by writing on clay tablets with a reed called a stylus, at least 200 years before the Egyptians.

“The Flood Tablet. This is perhaps the most famous of all cuneiform tablets. It is the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic, and describes how the gods sent a flood to destroy the world. Like Noah, Utnapishtim was forewarned and built an ark to house and preserve living things. After the flood he sent out birds to look for dry land. ME K 3375.” In the . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As we grow and get older, thus our knowledge grows. What will we learn tomorrow?    The reason for my focusing on ancient history, apart from the fact that I love it, study it and it continually inspires me, is simply the wonderment of the act of writing itself. That miracle of thought made manifest that we all take for granted.The Sumerians were this planet’s earliest known civilisation, although new discoveries are being made all the time so never let your knowledge be set in stone!

Clay tablet with Sumerian cuneiform script listing gods in order of seniority, 2400-2200 BC (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As well as inventing writing, the Sumerians invented the round wheel, astronomy and agriculture as we know it. A truly amazing people, thousands of years ahead of their time. Yet we know so little about them. Their great ziggurats (pyramids) have not withstood the ravages of time as well as their later Egyptian cousins, many of their stele ‘stelae’ (huge standing stones inscribed with cuneiform) are but broken fragments. Of course, time has not been the only eroding factor. Sumer as it was, lying between the great river deltas of the Tigris and Euphrates, is modern-day Iraq, a country which has been ravaged by war for hundreds of years.

English: Ruins from a temple in Naffur (ancient Nippur), Iraq, are said to be the site for the meeting of Sumerian gods, as well as the place that man was created. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sumer’s greatest city states were Uruk, Ur, Nippur, Eridu and Kish, though these are ruins now, their history overwritten by the Babylonian Empire which followed, the Akkadians, Assyrians, Hittites and a host of other invading and overlapping peoples. In such a rich environment, it was hardly surprising that the fertile ground of the Tigris and Euphrates would be a prize worthy of fighting for.

English: Ancient cities of Sumer Español: Antiguas ciudades de Sumeria Magyar: Ókori sumer városok (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But, the reason I’m focusing on the Sumerians in particular, is simply because they also gave the world its very first story, The Epic of Gilgamesh. A wonderful fantasy adventure story on an epic scale, with our hero Gilgamesh, along with his friend Enkidu, trying to defy the gods and find the secret to immortality.

Gilgamesh Sumerian King (Photo credit: tonynetone)

Think of it, the world’s very first story, long before the Bible, Torah, Qur’an (Koran), the ancient Vedic Rig-Veda (early Hindu sagas), Buddhist tales, Zoroastrian writings or ancient Chinese scrolls of Confucius, the Sumerians were writing about their lives and they were writing stories. We have SO much to thank the Sumerians for!

What made them first think of projecting their thoughts in written form? No doubt the need for trade pushed the need for communication between peoples.

Evidence suggests that it was this cuneiform, written on clay tablets, that travelled to Egypt and India and other parts of near/middle Asia as part of the ancient trade links of the time; and that these later inspired the Egyptian earliest proto-hieroglyphics and the written language of the Indus Valley Civilisation (centred around Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa), covering modern-day India and Pakistan.

English: Mohenjo-daro (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I suppose that is one of the contributing factors to my liking fantasy, particularly epic fantasy -  the fact that such sagas were written thousands of years ago, is certainly fuel for the imagination. The Sumerian King List for instance, a legendary text now where fantasy and fact certainly mix. The King List simply lists all the great rulers of the time, but it is not this which makes the record so extraordinary. It is the fact that this document cites many of those Kings as having lived and ruled for hundreds even thousands of years! Immortals? Talk about a feast for the imagination. If you’re looking for inspiration look to history.

Mace dedicated to the hero Gilgamesh (fifth king of Uruk, according to the Sumerian king list) by Urdun, civil servant of Lagash, Ur III. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The melding of fiction and fact is something I adore. Looking at history as we know it and daring to ask, what if this happened? For me, researching for an ancient forgotten people/culture that pre-date humanity, I had a lot of rich source material to draw from. Were these Sumerian Kings immortal exiles perhaps? Banished from their own Ǽllfren or Dworllian kin, to live amongst lesser humans? Perhaps it was these early sun-gods with their advanced knowledge and long life that seeded our civilisations? Are they the reason for the sudden unexplained jump in technology and culture all those thousands of years ago?

For me, my mind boggled with the possibilities. Certainly a rich pre-history from which to hang the tapestry of imagination.

But, fact and fiction aside, all we do know for certain, is that as readers and writers and lovers of the written word, we owe much to that ancient civilisation and their miraculous inventions!

xx

Ziggurat at Ur (Photo credit: jmcfall)

The husband and I are going to the doctor to have his shoulder checked out. And then off to the park for a round of C25K. I am also going to try out a pancake recipe that is actually healthy!! So more on that later!

Hidden Human History Movie – Hypothesis for Consideration Purpose Only! [Extraordinary Theory]

Lịch sử loài người được lấp đầy bởi những cuộc xung đột. Một số chỉ là vụ xô xát trong cuộc sống giữa một số người, một số xảy ra khi các bang phái tranh giành địa bàn…nhưng đó đều chỉ là những vụ xô xát nhỏ, và thường không kéo dài. Mọi việc thật sự nghiêm trọng khi xung đột diễn ra giữa các quốc gia với nhau. Những cuộc chiến này có thể kéo dài tới cả thập kỷ. Sau nhiều thế kỷ, con người đã từng mô tả chiến tranh như là tất cả những gì vinh quang nhất, đáng tự hào nhất, rồi sau đó họ nhận ra cuối cùng đó chỉ là những hành động vô nghĩa, bạo lực và thiếu nhân tính. Phải chăng là chúng ta luôn luôn gây chiến với nhau?

Muốn tìm hiểu điều đó trước hết ta phải biết chiến tranh là gì. Theo như từ điển của công ty Merriam-Webster, chiến tranh “là tình trạng thường xuyên xảy ra xung đột có vũ trang giữa các bang hoặc giữa các quốc gia.” Điều này giúp chúng ta thu nhỏ phạm vi tìm kiếm thời gian con người phát minh ra chiến tranh. Vì có lẽ khi chưa hình thành nên các quốc gia khác nhau, con người chúng ta đều thuộc về các bộ lạc, và thường không cư trú ở một nơi cố đinh. Và chỉ khi chúng ta định cư ở một nơi nào đó, phát triển nông nghiệp, chúng ta mới có đủ lương thực cần cho chiến tranh.

Vậy chẳng nhẽ giữa các bộ lạc thì không có xung đột à? Rõ ràng là có, nhưng xung đột giữa các bộ lạc đa phần thuộc về bản chất hiếu chiến của con người thời bấy giờ, nên có thể coi là đó chưa hẳn là chiến tranh.

Khi nền nông nghiệp của chúng ta đã phát triển, con người đã có thể xây dựng những cộng đồng lớn hơn. Chúng ta không còn chịu sự ràng buộc vào các bộ lạc nhỏ và du cư nữa. Nhưng chính khi đó, các nền văn hóa sơ khai lại phải chiến đấu để bảo vệ đất đai, lương thực của họ khỏi nạn cướp bóc. Và chính những tên cướp đó là những kẻ phát triển vũ khí nhằm phục vụ cho chiến tranh.

Chiến tranh thời nay đã không còn là cuộc chiến bằng gươm hoặc giáo

Nhìn lại thuở ban đầu của các nền văn hóa, chúng ta thấy rằng không phải mọi thứ đều thực sự là văn minh. Trên vùng đất Sumer (nay chính là Iraq) có một vài các thành phố tự trị. Chúng hoàn toàn độc lập với nhau, mặc dù trong lịch sử, họ có đôi lần hợp sức để chống lại kẻ thù chung. Nhưng bản thân các thành phố đó cũng gây chiến với nhau. Thời Sumer cổ đại, chiến tranh là một điều gì đó hết sức bình thường. Con người thời đó đã phát minh ra nhiều kỹ thuật để chế tạo vũ khí. Những phát minh như bánh xe trở thành một điểm quan trọng trong các phương tiện chiến tranh ví dụ như xe ngựa. Trận chiến sớm nhất được ghi lại vào khoảng những năm 2700 trước Công Nguyên. Người Sumer cổ đại đã ghi lại thông tin về trận chiến đó trên các phiến đá.

Cuộc xung đột giữa người Sume và người hàng xóm Elamite (nay là Iran). Chúng ta không thể nói rằng trận chiến giữa hai quốc gia đó là trận chiến đầu tiên của thế giới – vì cuộc xung đột đầu tiên diễn ra vào khoảng 10000 năm trước vào cuối thời kỳ đồ đá cũ hoặc đầu thời kỳ đồ đá mới, nhưng chẳng có tài liệu nào ghi chép về việc đó cả. Vào khoảng năm 2700 trước Công Nguyên, vua Sume là Enmebaragesi đã dẫn quân tấn công Elamite và dành chiến thắng. Lí do cuộc chiến này xảy ra được cho là vì người Sume cho rằng người Elamite đe dọa đất nước của họ, và ở Elamite có những nguồn tài nguyên mà người Sume muốn có được.

Còn hậu quả của nó thì thiết nghĩ không cần phải tranh luận nữa!

Để chiến tranh có thể tồn tại, các quốc gia hoặc các bang phải duy trì tình trạng tự do và độc lập với các nước khác. Chừng nào vẫn còn sự khác biệt giữa các nền văn hóa, thì lúc ấy vẫn tiềm tàng nguy cơ xung đột. Các quốc gia có thể nhận thấy nguy hiểm từ một bang ngoại tộc và có thể gây chiến nhằm chế ngự và kiểm soát khu vực đó trong tương lai. Hoặc cũng có thể gây chiến nhằm cướp đi nguồn tài nguyên của các nơi khác. Tóm lại, điều cần thiết cho chiến tranh chính là chúng ta tự xác định mình thuộc về một nhóm người nào đó đồng thời khai trừ những người khác.

NTC

(nguồn ảnh: Internet)