mythology and religion in art

[ftil]

Ziggurats were built by the Sumerians, Babylonians, Elamites, Akkadians, and Assyrians for local religions. Each ziggurat was part of a temple complex which included other buildings. The precursors of the ziggurat were raised platforms that date from the Ubaid period during the fourth millennium BC. The earliest ziggurats began near the end of the Early Dynastic Period. The latest Mesopotamian ziggurats date from the 6th century BC. Built in receding tiers upon a rectangular, oval, or square platform, the ziggurat was a pyramidal structure with a flat top. Sun-baked bricks made up the core of the ziggurat with facings of fired bricks on the outside. The facings were often glazed in different colors and may have had astrological significance. Kings sometimes had their names engraved on these glazed bricks. The number of tiers ranged from two to seven.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat

The reconstructed facade of the Neo-Sumerian Great Ziggurat of Ur, near Nasiriyah, Iraq

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:An..._Iraq_2005.jpg

Ziggurat at Ur (called by the Sumerians Etemennigur) - built around 2100 BC It was a sacred tower dedicated to the moon god Nanna

Ziggurat of Ur, Reconstruction

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...urat_of_ur.jpg

According to Herodotus, at the top of each ziggurat was a shrine, although none of these shrines has survived. One practical function of the ziggurats was a high place on which the priests could escape rising water that annually inundated lowlands and occasionally flooded for hundreds of miles, as for example the 1967 flood. Another practical function of the ziggurat was for security. Since the shrine was accessible only by way of three stairways, a small number of guards could prevent non-priests from spying on the rituals at the shrine on top of the ziggurat, such as cooking of sacrificial food and burning of carcasses of sacrificial animals. Each ziggurat was part of a temple complex that included a courtyard, storage rooms, bathrooms, and living quarters, around which a city was built.

E-temenanki ( "The house foundation / base of heaven and earth" ) - the temple in the form of ziggurat , located in Babylon , in the immediate vicinity of the Processional Way, according to popular opinion dedicated to the god Marduk , one of the most important sanctuaries of the State of Babylon . According to some researchers, this building was the inspiration for the biblical story of the Tower of Babel .

Model of Etemenanki. Pergamonmuseum (Berlin)


http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...nki_Berlin.jpg


The Babylonian tower Etemenanki,

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...323.tif&page=1


Choqa Zanbil, Ziggurat, Dur Untash, 13th century BC

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...a_Zanbil_2.jpg


Modern buildings.

The Ziggurat in West Sacramento,

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...amento,_CA.jpg


Chet Holifield Federal Building, Laguna Niguel, California

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...l_Building.jpg


University of East Anglia

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...ast_Anglia.jpg


Ziggurat in Budapest, Hungary. A free look-out tower in front of the Palace of Arts, next to the National Theater, with an exhibition room inside.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...t_budapest.jpg


MI6 Building

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi..._-_1138780.jpg


Hodges Library, UT Knoxville

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi..._Southeast.jpg

Step pyramids are structures which characterized several cultures throughout history, in several locations throughout the world. These pyramids typically are large and made of several layers of stone. The term refers to pyramids of similar design that emerged separately from one another, as there are no firmly established connections between the different civilizations that built them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Step_pyramid

El Castillo, Chichen Itza, Mexico

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ch...l_Castillo.jpg


The Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, Egypt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Py...joser_2010.jpg


Candi Sukuh in eastern Central Java.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Candi_Sukuh_2007.JPG


Borobudur temple view from northeast plateau, Central Java, Indonesia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bo...hwest-view.jpg

More step pyramids.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ca...:Step_pyramids

[ftil]

The House of Medici or Famiglia de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside, gradually rising until they were able to found the Medici Bank. The bank was the largest in Europe during the 15th century, seeing the Medici gain political power in Florence — though officially they remained simply citizens rather than monarchs.

The Medici produced four Popes of the Catholic Church—Pope Leo X (1513–1521),Pope Clement VII (1523–1534), Pope Pius IV (1559–1565), and Pope Leo XI (1605); two regent queens of France—Catherine de' Medici (1547–1559) and Marie de' Medici(1600–1610); and, in 1531, the family became hereditary Dukes of Florence. In 1569, the duchy was elevated to a grand duchy after territorial expansion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Medici

Pope Leo X (11 December 1475 – 1 December 1521), born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, was the Pope from 1513 to his death in 1521. He was the last non-priest (only a deacon) to be elected Pope. He is known for granting indulgences for those who donated to reconstruct St. Peter's Basilica and his challenging of Martin Luther's 95 Theses. He was the second son of Lorenzo de' Medici, the most famous ruler of the Florentine Republic, and Clarice Orsini. His cousin, Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici, would later succeed him as Pope Clement VII (1523–34).

Several modern historians have concluded that Leo was homosexual. Contemporary tracts and accounts such as that of Francesco Guicciardini have been found to allude to active same-sex relations – alleging Count Ludovico Rangone and Galeotto Malatesta among his lovers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Leo_X

Clement VII (26 May 1478 – 25 September 1534), born Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici, was a cardinal from 1513 to 1523 and was Pope from 1523 to 1534. He was born in Florence one month after his father's death. His father, Giuliano de' Medici, had been assassinated. Although his parents had not had a formal marriage, a canon law loophole allowing for the parents to have been betrothed per sponsalia de presenti meant that Giulio was considered legitimate. He was thus the nephew of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who educated him in his youth. Clement's mother, Fioretta Gorini, also died leaving him an orphan.

Giulio was made a Knight of Rhodes and Grand Prior of Capua, and, upon the election of his cousin Giovanni de' Medici to the pontificate as Leo X (1513–21), he soon became a powerful figure in Rome. Upon his cousin's accession to the papacy, Giulio became his principal minister and confidant, especially in the maintenance of the Medici interest at Florence as archbishop of that city. On 23 September 1513, he was made cardinal and he was consecrated on 29 September. He had the credit of being the main director of papal policy during the whole of Leo X's pontificate, especially as cardinal protector of England. He was also the titular Bishop of Worcester in the county of Worcestershire in England as Administrator or the See of Worcester.

As for the arts, Clement VII is remembered for having ordered, just a few days before his death, Michelangelo's painting of The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel.
Pope Clement VII - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pius IV (31 March 1499 – 9 December 1565), born Giovanni Angelo Medici, was Popefrom 1559 to 1565. He is notable for presiding over the culmination of the Council of Trent.

Under his reign Michelangelo re-built the basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli (in the Diocletian's Baths) and the eponymous Villa Pia, now known as Casina Pio IV and headquarters of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, was designed by Pirro Ligorio in the Vatican Gardens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_IV

Pope Leo XI (2 June 1535 – 27 April 1605), born Alessandro Ottaviano de' Medici, was Pope from 1 April 1605 to 27 April of the same year. He was born in Florence: his mother, Francesca Salviati, was a daughter of Jacopo Salviati and Lucrezia de' Medici, a sister of Leo X, Pietro Aldobrandini, the leader of the Italian party among the cardinals, allied with the French cardinals and brought about the election of Alessandro against the express wish of King Philip III of Spain. King Henry IV of France is said to have spent 300,000 écus in the promotion of Alessandro's candidacy. On 1 April 1605, Alessandro ascended the papal throne with the name Leo XI after his uncle Pope Leo X, being then almost seventy years of age, but was taken ill immediately after his coronation and died within the month.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Leo_XI

Pietro Aldobrandini (31 March 1571 – 10 February 1621) was an Italian Cardinal and patron of the arts.
He was made a cardinal in 1593 by his uncle, Pope Clement VIII. He took over the duchy of Ferrara in 1598 when it fell to the Papal States. He became archbishop of Ravenna in 1604.
He bought the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj,] and spent large sums on this and other buildings such as the Villa Aldobrandini. He was a patron of Torquato Tasso, and of Girolamo Frescobaldi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Aldobrandini

Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini was fascinated with Greek mythology. Centaur, Faun (god Pan), Atlas, and Polyphemus in delle Acque.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ni...dobrandini.JPG

Villa Aldrobandini - Teatro delle Acque


Another family.

Della Rovere is a noble family of Italy. Coming from modest beginnings in Savona, Liguria, the family rose to prominence through nepotism and ambitious marriages arranged by two Della Rovere popes, Francesco della Rovere, who ruled as Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) and his nephew Giuliano (Pope Julius II, 1503-1513). Pope Sixtus IV is known for having built the Sistine Chapel, which is named for him. The Basilica San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome is the family church of the della Rovere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_della_Rovere

Pope Julius II (5 December 1443 – 21 February 1513), nicknamed "The Fearsome Pope" (Il Papa Terribile)[1] and "The Warrior Pope" (Il Papa Guerriero),[2] born Giuliano della Rovere, was Pope from 1503 to 1513. His papacy was marked by an active foreign policy, ambitious building projects, and patronage for the arts.

He was promoted to cardinal, taking the same title formerly held by his uncle, Cardinal of San Pietro in Vincula. With his uncle as Pope, he obtained great influence, and he held no fewer than eight bishoprics, including Lausanne from 1472, and Coutances from 1476, along with the archbishopric of Avignon.

In the capacity of papal legate he was sent to France in 1480, where he remained four years, and acquitted himself with such ability that he soon acquired a paramount influence in the College of Cardinals, an influence which increased rather than diminished during the pontificate of Pope Innocent VIII. Shortly after in 1483 an illegitimate daughter was born, Felice della Rovere.

Julius was not the first pope to have fathered children before being elevated to the Chair of St Peter. His only known daughter to survive to adulthood, Felice della Rovere, was born in 1483. Pompeo Litta mistakenly ascribed Felice's two daughters, Giulia and Clarice to Julius. Felice's mother was Lucrezia Normanni, the daughter of an old Roman family. Shortly after Felice was born, Julius II arranged for Lucrezia to marry Bernardino de Cupis. Bernardino was maestro di casa of Julius' cousin, Cardinal Girolamo Basso della Rovere.

Despite an illegitimate daughter, rumors also surrounded Julius about his sexuality. Casting himself in the role of a warrior inevitably created enemies for Julius—many of whom accused him of being a sodomite. This was almost certainly done to discredit him but perhaps, in doing so, accusers were attacking a perceived weak point in their adversary's character. Venetians—who were opposed to the pope's new militaristic policy—were amongst the most vocal, most notably the diarist Giralomo Priuli,[16] and the historian Marino Sanudo. The reputation survived him, and the accusation was used without reservation by Protestant opponents in their polemics against "papism" and Catholic decadence. Philippe de Mornay while he accused all Italians of being sodomites, added specifically: "This horror is ascribed to good Julius." These Protestant libels certainly lack credibility, just as do the Catholic libels which discussed Calvin's purported conviction for sodomy.

He was a friend and patron of Bramante and Raphael, and a patron of Michelangelo. Several of Michelangelo's greatest works (including the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel) were commissioned by Julius.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Julius_II

Julius II's illegitimate daughter, Felice della Rovere (in black), on the left of the altar, at the top of the steps, portrayed by Raphael in The Mass at Bolsena.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Raffael_090.jpg

Pope Julius II commissioned Raphael to decorate with frescoes the rooms that are now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Palace of the Vatican.

The four Stanze di Raffaello ("Raphael's rooms") in the Palace of the Vatican form a suite of reception rooms, the public part of the papal apartments. They are famous for their frescoes, painted by Raphael and his workshop. Together with Michelangelo's ceiling frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, they are the grand fresco sequences that mark the High Renaissance in Rome.
The Stanze, as they are invariably called, were originally intended as a suite of apartments for Pope Julius II.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael_Rooms

Raphael, The Parnassus or Apollo and Muses

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ra...a,_1511%29.jpg

Apollo and muses detail

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ra...Apollon%29.jpg

Sappho

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Raffael_076.jpg

Mount Parnassus, also Parnassos, is a mountain of limestone in central Greece that towers above Delphi, north of the Gulf of Corinth, and offers scenic views of the surrounding olive groves and countryside. According to Greek mythology, this mountain was sacred to Apollo and the Corycian nymphs, and the home of the Muses. The mountain was also favored by the Dorians. There is a theory that Parna- derived from the same root as the word in Luwian meaning House.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Parnassus

Apollo and The Nine Muses

http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/gust...ine-muses-1856

As the Oracle of Delphi was sacred to the god Apollo, so did the mountain itself become associated with Apollo.

Apollo spoke through his oracle: the sibyl or priestess of the oracle at Delphi was known as the Pythia; she had to be an older woman of blameless life chosen from among the peasants of the area. She sat on a tripod seat over an opening in the earth. When Apollo slew Python, its body fell into this fissure, according to legend, and fumes arose from its decomposing body. Intoxicated by the vapors, the sibyl would fall into a trance, allowing Apollo to possess her spirit. In this state she prophesied. It has been postulated that a gas high in ethylene, known to produce violent trances, came out of this opening, though this theory remains debatable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_of_Delphi#Oracle

Eugene Delacroix, Apollo Slays Python

http://www.eugenedelacroix.org/Apoll...hon-large.html


John Collier - Priestess of Delphi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jo..._of_Delphi.jpg

The ageless Cumaean Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony located near Naples, Italy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumaean_Sibyl

Giovanni Domenico Cerrini, Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cerrini-apollo.jpg




The Cumaean Sibyl is one of the four sibyls painted by Raphael at Santa Maria della Pace.

Raphael The Sibyls, Santa Maria della Pace, Rome

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ra...The_Sibyls.jpg



And Cumaean Sibyl at the Sistine Chapel.


Michelangelo, Cumaean Sibyl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cu...chelangelo.jpg


I didn't expect to learn about mythology from Popes.

[ftil]

Looking at Medici’s family may explain why popes were fascinated with Roman /Greek mythology.

Marie de Médicis (1575 – 4 July 1642), Italian Maria de' Medici, was Queen consort of France, as the second wife of King Henry IV of France, of the House of Bourbon. She herself was a member of the wealthy and powerful House of Medici. Following the assassination of her husband in 1610, which occurred the day after her coronation, she acted as regent for her son, King Louis XIII of France, until he came of age.
The marriage was not a successful one. The queen feuded with Henry's mistresses in language that shocked French courtiers. She quarreled mostly with her husband's leading mistress, Catherine Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues, whom he had promised he would marry following the death of his former "official mistress", Gabrielle d'Estrées. When he failed to do so, and instead married Marie, the result was constant bickering and political intrigues behind the scenes.
She was noted for her ceaseless political intrigues at the French court and extensive artistic patronage.

The construction and furnishing of the Palais du Luxembourg, which she referred to as her "Palais Médicis", formed her major artistic project during her regency. The site was purchased in 1612 and construction began in 1615, to designs of Salomon de Brosse. Her court painter was Peter Paul Rubens.

A series of twenty-four triumphant canvases were commissioned from Peter Paul Rubens.Originally the paintings were hung clockwise in chronological order, decorating the walls of a waiting room expanding from a royal apartment in Marie de' Medici's Luxembourg Palace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_de%27_Medici

The first painting of the narrative cycle, The Destiny of Marie de' Medici, is a twisting composition of the three Fates on clouds beneath the celestial figures of Juno and Jupiter.

http://www.peterpaulrubens.org/The-F...-25-large.html


The Education of Marie de' Medici. We see Apollo, Athena, and Hermes.

http://www.peterpaulrubens.org/The-E...-24-large.html



Henry IV Receives the Portrait

http://www.peterpaulrubens.org/Henry...ait-large.html




The upper half of the painting shows Marie and Henry as the mythological Roman gods Juno and Jupiter.

The Meeting of Marie de Medicis and Henri IV at Lyon

http://www.peterpaulrubens.org/The-M...-25-large.html




Maria depicted as Athena, a goddess of war.

Marie de Medicis as Bellona

http://www.peterpaulrubens.org/Marie...-25-large.html




Paintings for Maria de Medici, Queen of France, scene the government of the queen.

http://www.peterpaulrubens.org/Paint...%29-large.html

Louis XIII (27 September 1601 – 14 May 1643) was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1610 to 1643.
Louis was only eight years old when he succeeded his father. His mother, Marie de Medici, acted as regent during Louis' minority.
Louis XIII's paternal grandparents were Antoine de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme and Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre; his maternal grandparents were Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany and Johanna, archduchess of Austria, and Eleonora de' Medici, his maternal aunt, was his godmother.
Cardinal Richelieu played a major role in Louis XIII's reign from 1624, decisively shaping the destiny of France for the next eighteen years. As a result of Richelieu's work, Louis XIII became one of the first examples of an absolute monarch.

Louis also worked to reverse the trend of promising French artists leaving for Italy to work and study. He commissioned the painters Nicolas Poussin and Philippe de Champaigne to decorate the Louvre.

There is no evidence that Louis had mistresses (consequently earning the title of 'Louis the Chaste'), but persistent rumors insinuated that he may have been homosexual or at least bisexual.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIII_of_France

Louis XIV ( son of Lous XIII) (5 September 1638 – 1 September 1715), known as Louis the Great or the Sun King (French: le Roi-Soleil), was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre.[1] He holds the distinction of being the longest-reigning king in European history, reigning for 72 years and 110 days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIV_of_France

Louis XIV chose the sun for his emblem. The sun was Apollo, god of Peace and the Arts; it was also the heavenly body giving life to all things, the embodiment of regularity, which rises and sets each day. Like the Sun God, Louis XIV, the warrior hero, brought peace to his people; he protected the arts and dispensed all the graces. Through the regularity of his work, his public levers and couchers (morning rising and evening retiring ceremonies), he insisted on the resemblance, carved in stone: the decor of Versailles was filled with the depictions and attributes of the god (laurels, lyre, tripod) on all the royal portraits and emblems.
http://en.chateauversailles.fr/histo...-by-divine-law

Nec pluribus impar (literally: "Not unequal to many") is a Latin motto adopted by Louis XIV of France from 1658. It was often inscribed together with the symbol of the "Sun King": a head within rays of sunlight.

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

The Nec pluribus impar motto and the sun-king emblem, on a de Vallière gun, 1745.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ne...ibus_Impar.jpg



The "S" letter (for Sun) with the motto Nec pluribus impar. Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française, 1694.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:16...ibus_Impar.jpg

Grand appartement du roi

Le Vau’s plan called for an enfilade of seven rooms, each dedicated to one of the then known planets and their associated titular Roman deity. Le Vau’s plan was bold as he designed a heliocentric system that centred on the Salon of Apollo. The salon d’Apollon originally was designed as the king’s bedchamber, but served as a throne room. During the reign of Louis XIV (until 1689), a solid silver throne stood on a Persian carpet covered dais on the south wall of this room (Berger, 1986; Dangeau, 1854–1860; Josephson, 1926; 1930; Verlet, 1985).
The original arrangement of the enfilade of rooms was:

• Salon de Diane (Diana, Roman goddess of the hunt; associated with the Moon)
• Salon de Mars (Mars, Roman god of war; associated with the planet Mars)
• Salon de Mercure (Mercury, Roman god of trade, commerce, and the Liberal Arts; associated with the planet Mercury)
• Salon d’Apollon (Apollo, Roman god of the Fine Arts; associated with the Sun)
• Salon de Jupiter (Jupiter, Roman god of law and order; associated with the planet Jupiter)
• Salon de Saturne (Saturn, Roman god of agriculture and harvest; associated with the planet Saturn)
• Salon de Vénus (Venus, Roman goddess of love and beauty; associated with the planet Venus)

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

The Apollo Salon is the main room of the Grand Apartment because it was originally the monarch's state chamber.

Salon d'Apollo

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier...Versailles.jpg

Salon d'Apollo

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...RS_DU_JOUR.jpg

[ftil]

I have noticed that The Art Thread is fully alive with paintings. What a great surprise!

http://www.online-literature.com/for...t=64250&page=3




I have been looking at Grand Apartment of Louis XIV,.

Solon of Mercury. An interesting paintings of Holly Family and god Mercury Greek god Hermes.





RAPHAËL





Titian



And Mercury/Hermes

HERMES was the great Olympian God of animal husbandry, roads, travel, hospitality, heralds, diplomacy, trade, thievery, language, writing, persuasion, cunning wiles, athletic contests, gymnasiums, astronomy, and astrology. He was also the personal agent and herald of Zeus, the king of the gods. Hermes was depicted as either a handsome and athletic, beardless youth, or as an older bearded man. His attributes included the herald's wand or kerykeion (Latin caduceus), winged boots, and sometimes a winged travellers cap and chlamys cloak.

Hermes, messenger of the gods, flies on winged boots. He holds his kerykeion or herald's wand in hand, and wears a petasos (traveller's cap) and chlamys (cloak) ca 500 - 450 BC

GOD OF DREAMS OF OMEN

Dreams of omen were messages sent by the gods and the ghosts of the dead. Hermes presided over these, both in his role as the Herald of the Gods (the agent of all divine messages), the God of Sleep, and as Guide of the Dead, who traversed the paths between the lands of the living and the dead.

"Dreams (Oneiroi) are beyond our unravelling - who can be sure what tale they tell? Not all that men look for comes to pass. Two gates there are that give passage to fleeting Oneiroi; one is made of horn, one of ivory. The Oneiroi that pass through sawn ivory are deceitful, bearing a message that will not be fulfilled; those that come out through polished horn have truth behind them, to be accomplished for men who see them." - Homer, Odyssey 19.562

"[Hermes] held in his hand the golden rod that he uses to lull men’s eyes asleep when he so wills, or again to wake others from their slumber; with this he roused them [the ghosts of the newly dead] and led them on, and they followed him, thinly gibbering ... Hermes led them down through the ways of dankness. They passed the streams of Oceanus, the 'Leukas Petre' (White Rock), the 'Pylai Helion' (Gates of the Sun) and the 'Demos Oneiron' (Land of Dreams), and soon they came to the 'Leimon Asphodelon' (Field of Asphodel) where the Psyche (souls) ... have their habitation." - Homer, Odyssey 24.1 & 99

"She [Maia] bare a son [Hermes] ... a bringer of dreams, a watcher by night." - Homeric Hymn 4 to Hermes


"A sculptor was selling a white marble statue of Hermes which two men wanted to buy: one of them, whose son had just died, wanted it for the tombstone, while the other was a craftsman who wanted to consecrate the statue to the god himself ... In his sleep, the sculptor saw Hermes himself standing at the Gate of Dreams (Pylai Oneiroi). The god spoke to him and said, 'Well, my fate hangs in the balance: it is up to you whether I will become a dead man or a god!" - Aesop, Fables 563 (from Babrius, Fabulae 30)

GOD OF RUSTIC DIVINATION

Hermes presided over the rustic art of divination by pebbles, practiced in the highlands of shepherds and cattle-herders.He was said to have learned the art from certain Nymph known as Thriai, given to him by Apollo in a trade for the music of the pipe.

"[Apollon to Hermes:] `As for sooth-saying, noble, heaven-born child, of which you ask, it is not lawful for you to learn it, nor for any other of the deathless gods ... But I will tell you another thing, Erikydes (all-glorious) Son of Maia and Zeus who holds the aegis, Daimon Eriounes Theon (luck-bringing genius of the gods). There are certain holy ones, sisters born - three virgins gifted with wings: their heads are besprinkled with white meal, and they dwell under a ridge of Parnassos. These are teachers of divination apart from me [divination from pebbles], the art which I practised while yet a boy following herds, though my father paid no heed to it. From their home they fly now here, now there, feeding on honey-comb and bringing all things to pass. And when they are inspired through eating yellow honey, they are willing to speak truth; but if they be deprived of the gods' sweet food, then they speak falsely, as they swarm in and out together. These, then, I give you; enquire of them strictly and delight your heart: and if you should teach any mortal so to do, often will he hear your response - if he have good fortune. Take these, Son of Maia [and preside over this primitive form of divination." - Homeric Hymn 4 to Hermes 550

"Hermes was tending the cattle, this time he fashioned a shepherd’s pipe which he proceeded to play. Covetous also of this, Apollon offered him the golden staff which he held when he herded cattle. But Hermes wanted both the staff and proficiency in the art of prophecy in return for the pipe. So he was taught how to prophesy by means of pebbles, and gave Apollon the pipe." - Apollodorus, The Library 3.115


GOD OF GUILE

Hermes was the god of guile in its many aspects: including deception, crafty words, persuasion, and the wiles of thieves and merchants. He also employed the sleep to maze the minds of men.

"May Maia's son [Hermes], as he rightfully should, lend his aid [to Orestes in the slaying of the murderers of his father, using a false identity and guile to gain access], for no one can better sail a deed on a favoring course, when he would do so. But by his mysterious utterance he brings darkness over men's eyes by night, and by day he is no more clear at all." - Aeschylus, Libation Bearers 811


GOD OF THIEVES & CATTLE HUSTLING

Another role of Hermes, derived from his function as the god of cattle, was thievery. A major form of banditry in ancient Greece was cattle-hustling.

"Autolykos ... excelled all mankind in thieving and subtlety of oaths, having won this mastery from the god Hermes himself." - Homer, Odyssey 19.396
She [Maia] bare a son [Hermes], of many shifts, blandly cunning, a robber, a cattle rustler, a bringer of dreams, a watcher by night, a thief at the gates." - Homeric Hymn 4 to Hermes

"[Infant Hermes to his mother Maia:] `I will go to Python to break into his great house [the temple of Apollo], and will plunder therefrom splendid tripods, and cauldrons, and gold, and plenty of bright iron, and much apparel; and you shall see it if you will." - Homeric Hymn 4 to Hermes 178

"[Apollo to Hermes:] `O rogue, deceiver, crafty in heart ... I most surely believe that you have broken into many a well-built house and stripped more than one poor wretch bare this night, gathering his goods together all over the house without noise. You will plague many a lonely herdsman in mountain glades, when you come on herds and thick-fleeced sheep, and have a hankering after flesh ... you comrade of dark night. Surely hereafter this shall be your title amongst the deathless gods, to be called the Arkhos Pheleteon (prince of robbers) continually." - Homeric Hymn 4 to Hermes 282

Hermes ... to rejoice is thine ... in fraud divine." - Orphic Hymn 28 to Hermes

Into the house came Hermes in the shape of a young man, unforeseen, uncaught, eluding the doorkeeper with his robber’s foot." - Nonnus, Dionysiaca 3.373


GOD OF LANGUAGE, LEARNING & CRAFTY WILES

Hermes came to be regarded as the god of language, alongside Mnemosyne (the goddess of memory). He was said to have been the inventor of writing, which in ancient Greece was first employed in the missives carried by heralds and the stock-taking of merchants and property owners. In addition, he was sometimes said to have taught mankind their many tongues, and so was the god of the "babelisation" of language, so to speak.
As well as writing, he presided over eloquence and persuasion, skills employed by those under his patronage: heralds, merchants, thieves and conmen. Similarly he was the god of crafty thoughts and wiles, and the use of persuasive deception and trickery.


GOD OF SPEECH, CRAFTY WORDS & ELOQUENCE

"Also the Guide, Argeiphontes [Hermes], contrived within her [Pandora, the first woman] lies and crafty words and a deceitful nature at the will of loud thundering Zeus, and the Herald of the gods [Hermes] put speech in her." - Hesiod, Works and Days 80

She [Maia] bare a son [Hermes], of many shifts, blandly cunning." - Homeric Hymn 4 to Hermes 4


lato, Cratylus 400d & 408a ff (trans. Fowler) (Greek philosopher C4th B.C.) :
"[Plato constructs philosophical etymologies for the names of the gods :]
Sokrates : Let us inquire what thought men had in giving them [the gods] their names . . . The first men who gave names [to the gods] were no ordinary persons, but high thinkers and great talkers . . . This name 'Hermes' seems to me to have to do with speech; he is an interpreter (hêrmêneus) and a messenger, is wily and deceptive in speech, and is oratorical. All this activity is concerned with the power of speech. Now, as I said before, eirein denotes the use of speech; moreover, Homer often uses the wordemêsato, which means 'contrive.' From these two words, then, the lawgiver imposes upon us the name of this god who contrived speech and the use of speech--eirein means 'speak'--and tells us : `Ye human beings, he who contrived speech (eirein emêsato) ought to be called Eiremes by you.' We, however, have beautified the name, as we imagine, and call him Hermes. Iris also seems to have got her name from eirein, because she is a messenger."

"Many people ... resorted to the temple of Hermes asking for the gift of wisdom [and offered him rich presents] ... Now when on the appointed day they arrived of the distribution of the gifts of wisdom, Hermes as the god of wisdom and eloquence and also of rewards, said to him who, as you may well suppose, had made the biggest offering: ‘Here is philosophy for you’; and to him who had made the next handsomest present he said: ‘Do you take your place among the orators’; and to others he said: ‘You shall have the gifts of astronomy or you shall be a musician, or you shall be an epic poet and write in heroic metre, or you shall be a write of iambics." - Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 5.15

Hermes: This is what they call a son of Zeus and Maia, which is, of mind and sense. For the word is engendered from mind and sense. On account of this they also make him winged, as if to be swift. For nothing is swifter than a word. And [that is why] Homer [says] 'winged words'. They create [images of] him as the youngest of all [the gods], because the word does not grow old; but they also make him quadrangular on account of the firmness of the true word. They also say he was responsible for profit and an overseer of the businesses: consequently they set up the statue of him weighing a purse." -Suidas s.v. Hermes



GUIDE OF THE DEAD

"To Hermes ... are attached traditions from the poems of Homer: that Hermes is the minister of Zeus and leads the souls of the departed down to Haides." - Pausanias, Guide to Greece 8.32.4
Those who, by permission of the Parcae [Moirai], returned from the lower world ... Mercurius [Hermes], son of Maia , in constant trips." - Hyginus, Fabulae 251

"And Hades shuddered [at the slaughter of the Sack of Troy] and looked forth from his seat under earth, afraid lest in the great anger of Zeus Hermes, conductor of souls, should bring down all the race of men." -
Tryphiodorus, The Taking of Ilias 568

"Hermes thy [Persephone's] musterer of ghosts." - Nonnus, Dionysiaca 44.198


GOD OF SLEEP

Hermes was often described as the bringer of sleep and dreams. The Daimones who personified these were Hypnos (Sleep) and the Oneiroi (Dreams). Although Hermes and Hypnos are distinct entities in Homer, they may have originally been regarded as one and the same.

"He [Hermes] caught up the staff (rhabdos), with which he mazes the eyes of those mortals whose eyes he would maze, or wakes again the sleepers. Holding this in his hands, Kratus (strong) Argeiphontes winged his way onward." - Homer, Iliad 24.339

"There were sentries ... but about these the courier Argeiphontes drifted sleep, on all [with his wand]." - Homer, Iliad 24.443

"And he [Hermes] took the rod that lulls men’s eyes for him, at his pleasure, or awakens others when they slumber." - Homer, Odyssey 5.4
"[Hermes] held in his hand the golden rod that he uses to lull men’s eyes asleep when he so wills, or again to wake others from their slumber." - Homer, Odyssey 24.1 & 99

"Odysseus stepped quickly over the threshold into the palace [of King Alkinous of the Phaiakians]. He found the Phaiakian lords and rulers pouring libations from their cups to the Euskopos (Keen-sighted) Argeiphontes (Radiant One) [Hermes] to whom by custom they poured libation last when they turned their thoughts to the night’s rest." - Homer, Odyssey 7.137
"May Maia's son [Hermes], as he rightfully should, lend his aid ... by his mysterious utterance he brings darkness over men's eyes by night, and by day he is no more clear at all." - Aeschylus, Libation Bearers 811
"[Hermes] grasped in his fist the wand that charms to sleep, put on his magic cap, and thus arrayed ... sprang from his father’s citadel down to earth [to slay the monster Argos Panoptes]. There he removed his cap, laid by his wings; only his wand he kept ... Cyllenius [Hermes] saw all Argus’ eyelids closed [after soothing him with the music of a shepherd's-pipe] and every eye vanquished in sleep. He stopped and with his wand, his magic wand, soothed the tired resting eyes and sealed their slumber." - Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.583

"[Hermes] saw that his wand, the wand he wields to bring and banish sleep, shone with a polish." - Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.730
"Mercurius [Hermes] with his wand that soothes to slumber touched her [Khione] on the lips; touch-tranced she lay and suffered his assault [he lay with her]." - Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.301

GOD OF ASTRONOMY & THE CALENDAR and GOD OF CONTESTS, ATHLETICS, GYMNASIUMS, THE GAMES

http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/HermesGod.html

France






Hermes Kriophoros





"Commerce": Mercury, god of commerce, with his winged cap and sandals and caduceus, hands a bag of gold to en:Robert Morris, financier of the Revolutionary War. On the left, men move a box on a dolly; on the right, the anchor and sailors lead into the next scene, "Marine."





Jupiter, Mercury and the Virtue, Dosso Dossi





Sculpted corbel showing a caduceus. Detail of the façade of a building at 9th Calle de Antonio Maura (street) in Madrid.






Russell A. Dixon Building Caduceus (Washington, DC)







"Medicine", sculpture by Alonzo Victor Lewis, 1922. North face of Miller Hall, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA. One of many sculptures by Lewis for this building

[ftil]

My joy to post paintings didn’t last long. I guess my post on the art thread evoked anxiety.
I don’t romanticize nudity but I show as it is and it has become ugly in modern art.
Time for magic. I have realized that I had a limited understanding of magic. I didn’t believe in demons. I didn’t believe in conjuring demons either until I studied occult books. Well, Paul Coelho was taking about black magicians. Let’s look at Giordano Bruno, a renaissance magician and occultist.

On magic

As with any other topic, before we begin our treatise On Magic, it is necessary to distinguish the various meanings of the term, for there are as many meanings of ‘magic’ as there are of ‘magician’.

First, the term ‘magician’ means a wise man; for example, the trismegistes among the Egyptians, the druids among the Gauls, the gymnosophists among the Indians, the cabalists among the Hebrews, the magi among the Persians (who were followers of Zoroaster), the sophists among the Greeks and the wise men among the Latins.

Second, ‘magician’ refers to someone who does wondrous things merely by manipulating active and passive powers, as occurs in chemistry, medicine and such fields; this is commonly called ‘natural magic’.

Third, magic involves circumstances such that the actions of nature or of a higher intelligence occur in such a way as to excite wonderment by their appearances; this type of magic is called ‘prestidigitation’.
Fourth, magic refers to what happens as a result of the powers of attraction and repulsion between things, for example, the pushes, motions and attractions due to magnets and such things, when all these actions are due not to active and passive qualities but rather to the spirit or soul existing in things. This is called ‘natural magic’ in the proper sense.

The fifth meaning includes, in addition to these powers, the use of words, chants, calculations of numbers and times, images, figures, symbols, characters, or letters. This is a form of magic which is intermediate between the natural and the preternatural or the supernatural, and is properly called ‘mathematical magic’, or even more accurately ‘occult philosophy’.

The sixth sense adds to this the exhortation or invocation of the intelligences and external or higher forces by means of prayers, dedications, incensings, sacrifices, resolutions and ceremonies directed to the gods, demons and heroes. Sometimes, this is done for the purpose of contacting a spirit itself to become its vessel and instrument in order to appear wise, although this wisdom can be easily removed, together with the spirit, by means of a drug. This is the magic of the hopeless, who become the vessels of evil demons, which they seek through their notorious art. On the other hand, this is sometimes done to command and control lower demons with the authority of higher demonic spirits, by honoring and entreating the latter while restricting the former with oaths and petitions. This is transnatural or metaphysical magic and is properly called ‘theurgy’.

Seventh, magic is the petition or invocation, not of the demons and heroes themselves, but through them, to call upon the souls of dead humans, in order to predict and know absent and future events, by taking their cadavers or parts thereof to some oracle. This type of magic, both in its subject matter and in its purpose, is called ‘necromancy’. If the body is its viscera with very active incantations, then this type of magic is properly called ‘Pythian’, for, if I may say so, this was the usual meaning of ‘inspired’ at the temple of the Pythian Apollo.

Eighth, sometimes incantations are associated with a person’s physical parts in any sense; garments, excrement, remnants, footprints and anything which is believed to have made some contact with the person. In that case, and if they are used to untie, fasten, or weaken, then this constitutes the type of magic called ‘wicked’, if it leads to evil. If it leads to good, it is to be counted among the medicines belonging to a certain method and type of medical practice. If it leads to final destruction and death, then it is called ‘poisonous magic’.

Ninth, all those who are able, for any reason, to predict distant and future events are said to be magicians. These are generally called ‘diviners’ because of their purpose. The primary groups of such magicians use either the four material principles, fire, air, water and earth, and they are thus called ‘pyromancers’, ‘hydromancers’, and ‘geomancers’, or they use the three objects of knowledge, the natural, mathematical and divine. There are also various other types of prophecy. For augerers, soothsayers and other such people make predictions from an inspection of natural or physical things. Geomancers make predictions in their own way by inspecting mathematical objects like numbers, letters and certain lines and figures, and also from the appearance, light and location of the planets and similar objects. Still others make predictions by using divine things, like sacred names, coincidental locations, brief calculations and persevering circumstances. In our day, these latter people are not called magicians, since, for us, the word ‘magic’ sounds bad and has an unworthy connotation. So this is not called magic but ‘prophecy’.

Finally, ‘magic’ and ‘magician’ have a pejorative connotation which has not been included or examined in the above meanings. In this sense, a magician is any foolish evil-doer who is endowed with the power of helping or harming someone by means of a communication with, or even a pact with, a foul devil. This meaning does not apply to wise men, or indeed to authors, although some of them have adopted the name ‘hooded magicians’, for example, the authors of the book De malleo maleficarum (The Witches’ Hammer). As a result, the name is used today by all writers of this type, as can be seen in the comments and beliefs of ignorant and foolish priests.
Giordano Bruno,Cause, Principle and Unity An Essays on Magic p. 105 -107

And more about magic.

The spirit is also bonded through vision, as has been said frequently above, when various forms are observed by the eyes. As a result, active and passive items of interest pass out from the eyes and enter into the eyes. As the adage says, ‘I do not know whose eyes make lambs tender for me’.

Beautiful sights arouse feelings of love, and contrary sights bring feelings of disgrace and hate. And the emotions of the soul and spirit bring something additional to the body itself, which exists under the control of the soul and the direction of the spirit. There are also other types of feelings which come through the eyes and immediately affect the body for some reason: sad expressions in other people make us sad and compassionate and sorry for obvious reasons.

There are also worse impressions which enter the soul and the body, but it is not evident how this happens and we are unable to judge the issue. Nevertheless, they act very powerfully through various things which are in us, that is, through a multitude of spirits and souls. Although one soul lives in the whole body, and all the body’s members are controlled by one soul, still the whole body and the whole soul and the parts of the universe are vivified by a certain total spirit.

Hence, the explanation of many spiritual feelings must be found in something else which lives and is conscious in us, and which is affcted and disturbed by things which do not affect or disturb us. And sometimes we are touched and injured more significantly by those things whose assaults we are not aware of than we are by things which we do perceive. As a result, many things which are seen, and forms which are absorbed through the eyes, do not arouse any consciousness in our direct and external sensory powers. Nevertheless, they do penetrate more deeply and lethally, so that the internal spirit is immediately conscious of them, as if it were a foreign sense or living thing. Thus, it would not be easy to refute some of the Platonists and all of the Pythagoreans, who believe that one human person of himself lives in many animals, and when one of these animals dies, even the most important one, the others survive for a long time.

Hence, it would obviously be stupid to think that we are affcted and injured only by those visible forms which generate clear awareness in the senses and the soul. That would not be much different from someone who thinks that he is injured more or less only by blows of which he is more or less conscious. However, we experience more discomfort and suffering by being pricked by a needle or by a thorn irritating the skin than we do by a sword thrust through from one side of the body to the other, whose effect is later felt a great deal more, but at the time we are unaware of the injury caused by its penetration of parts of the body.

So, indeed, there are many things which stealthily pass through the eyes and capture and continuously intrude upon the spirit up to the point of the death of the soul, even though they do not cause as much awareness as do less significant things. For example, seeing certain gestures or emotions or actions can move us to tears. And the souls of some faint at the sight of the spilling of another’s blood or in observing the dissection of a cadaver. There is no other cause of this than a feeling which binds through vision.
Giordano Bruono, Cause, Principle and Unity, And Essays on Magic. p. 137-138

According to Walker, the magic of Ficino used the human spiritus as its medium through which it worked. The spirit was the link between body and soul, and the human functions of sense-perception, imagination, and motor activity were connected to the spiritus. The human spiritus was made up of the four elements, and it formed a corporeal vapor that flowed from the brain, where it had its center, through the nervous system. Furthermore, the human spirit was connected to the spiritus mundi, which mostly consisted of the fifth element quinta essential or ether. Ficino considered music as especially connected to the human spiritus, since it used the same element as its medium - air. But more important than that, the sound consisted of movements where visionary impressions merely transmitted static images. These two reasons caused sound to affect the spirit more effectively than sight, and since it is in the spiritus that magic works, sounds were considered more potent than visual impressions. What the magician saw or felt was thus secondary to what he heard.Ficino used music in his magical workings. He composed hymns or put music to such texts as the Orphic Hymns
Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation by Henrik Bogdan

Magic action occurs through indirect contact(virtualem seu potetialem) through sound and images which excert their power over the senses of sight and hearing.(Theses de magia XV, vol. III p.466) Pasing through the openings of the senses, they impress on the imagination certain mental states of attraction or aversion, of joy or revulsion (ibid)
Sounds and images are not chosen at random; they stem from the occult knowledge of the universal spirit. With regard to sounds, the manipulator should know that tragic harmonies give rise to more passions that comic ones, being able to act on souls in doubt.There, too, it is necessary to take account of the subject’s personality for, though there are some people easily influenced there are others who react in an unexpected way to the magic of sound.

All affections are bonds of the will are reduced to two namely aversion and desire or hatred and love.Yet hatred itself is reduced to love, whence it follows that the will only bond is Eros. We see that the goal of Bruno’s erotic magic is to enable a manipulator to control both individuals and crowds. Everything is defined in relation to Eros, since aversion and hatred merely represents the negative side of the same universal attraction.
Love, Eros in Renaissance Ioan P. Culianu

The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is 'man' in a higher sense - he is 'collective man,' a vehicle and moulder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind.
(Carl Jung, Psychology and Literature, 1930)

The work of Frances Yates especially influential in anglophone scholarship, argues that Bruno was deeply influenced by the astronomy found in Arab astrology Neo-Platonism and Renaissance Hermeticism.
The Asclepius and the Corpus Hermeticum are the most important of the Hermetica, writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, which survive. During the Renaissance it was accepted that Hermes Trismegistus was a contemporary of Moses, however after Casaubon’s dating of the Hermetic writings as no earlier than the second or third century CE, the whole of Renaissance Hermeticism collapsed. As to their actual authorship:
.....they were certainly not written in remotest antiquity by an all wise Egyptian priest, as the Renaissance believed, but by various unknown authors, all probably Greeks, and they contain popular Greek philosophy of the period, a mixture of Platonism and Stoicism, combined with some Jewish and probably some Persian influences.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes_Trismegistus

"Though cast in a pseudo-Egyptian framework,these works have been thought by many scholars to contain very few genuine Egyptian elements. they were certainly not written in remotest antiquity by an all-wise Egyptian priest, as the Renaissance believed, but by various unknown authors, all probably Greeks, and they contain popular Greek philosophy of the period, a mixture of Platonism and Stoicism, combined with some Jewish and probably some Persian influences.
The content of the Hermetic writings fostered the illusion of the Renaissance Magus that he had in them a mysterious and precious account of most ancient Egyptian wisdom, philosophy, and magic. Hermes Trismegistus, a mythical name associated with a certain class of Gnostic philosophical revelations or with magical treatises and recipes, was, for the Renaissance, a real person, an Egyptian priest who had lived in times of remote antiquity and who had himself written all these works.

It was on excellent authority that the Renaissance accepted Hermes Trismegistus as a real person of great antiquity and as the author of the Hermetic writings, for this was implicitly believed by leading Fathers of the Church, particularly Lactantius and Augustine. "
Francis Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition

Let’s look at Vicca and neopagan religion. I was laughing because I learned from where 9 million of burnt witches comes from.

G. Gardner was instrumental in bringing the neopagan religion of Wicca to public attention and wrote some of its definitive religious texts.

Gerald Brosseau Gardner (1884 – 1964), also known by the craft name Scire, was an English Wiccan priest, as well as an amateur anthropologist and archaeologist, writer, weaponry expert and occultist.
In 1910 he was initiated as an Apprentice Freemason into a Lodge of the Irish Constitution (Sphinx Lodge No 107) in Colombo. He took the second and third degrees of Freemasonry within the next month, but this enthusiasm seems also to have waned and he resigned the next year. He joined the Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship, an occult society based upon Rosicrucianism. However, Gardner was quite critical of many of the group's practices; their leader, who went by the name of Aurelius, claimed to be the reincarnation of Pythagoras, Cornelius Agrippa and Francis Bacon.

He joined the Ancient Druid Order, an organisation that promoted the Neopagan religion of Druidry, as well as a mystical Christian group, the Ancient British Church, who ordained him as a priest. The researcher Philip Heselton also speculated that Gardner may well have met Dion Byngham, the leader of the pagan wing of the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry, whose beliefs and practices, termed Dionisianism after the Greco-Roman god Dionysus, bore many similarities with Gardnerian Wicca.

On May Day 1947, his friend, the stage magician Arnold Crowther, introduced Gardner to his friend, the Magus Aleister Crowley. Shortly before his death, Crowley elevated Gardner to the VII° of Ordo Templi Orientis[55] (O.T.O.) and issued a charter decreeing that Gardner could perform its preliminary initiation rituals. After Crowley's death on 1 December 1947, Gardner was considered the highest ranking O.T.O. member in Europe.

He also had several tattoos on his body, depicting magical symbols such as a snake, dragon, anchor and dagger. In his later life he wore a "heavy bronze bracelet... denoting the three degrees... of witchcraft" as well as a "large silver ring with... signs on it, which... represented his witch-name 'Scire', in the letters of the magical Theban alphabet."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Gardner

Let's see a bigger picture. I need to start with Starhawk, the author of The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (1979), a best-selling introduction to Wiccan teachings and rituals.

Starhawk (born Miriam Simos on June 17, 1951) is an American writer and activist. Starhawk received a BA in Fine Arts from UCLA. She received an MA in Psychology, with a concentration in feminist therapy, from Antioch University West in 1982.

Following her years at UCLA, after a failed attempt to become a fiction writer in New York City, Starhawk returned to California. She became active in the Neopagan community in the San Francisco Bay Area, and trained with Victor Anderson, founder of the Feri Tradition of witchcraft, and with Zsuzsanna Budapest, a feminist separatist involved in Dianic Wicca.

She is well known as a theorist of Paganism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starhawk

So, she is not a historian....but feminist therapist. Let's see what she says about neopagan religion.

Starhawk offers a vivid summary of the history of the faith, explaining that witchcraft is "perhaps the oldest religion extant in the West" and that it began "more than thirty-five thousand years ago," during the last Ice Age. The religion's earliest adherents worshiped two deities, one of each sex: "the Mother Goddess, the birthgiver, who brings into existence all life," and the "Horned God," a male hunter who died and was resurrected each year.

Male shamans "dressed in skins and horns in identification with the God and the herds," but priestesses "presided naked, embodying the fertility of the Goddess." All over prehistoric Europe people made images of the Goddess, sometimes showing her giving birth to the "Divine Child—her consort, son, and seed." They knew her as a "triple Goddess"—practitioners today usually refer to her as maiden, mother, crone—but fundamentally they saw her as one deity. Each year these prehistoric worshipers celebrated the seasonal cycles, which led to the "eight feasts of the Wheel": the solstices, the equinoxes, and four festivals—Imbolc (February 2, now coinciding with the Christian feast of Candlemas), Beltane (May Day), Lammas or Lughnasad (in early August), and Samhain (our Halloween).

Then came Christianity, which eventually insinuated itself among Europe's ruling elite. Still, the "Old Religion" lived, often in the guise of Christian practices.
[url]http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/01/the-scholars-and-the-goddess/5910/

We need to go back to Gardner.

Gardner developed his own variant of the Craft that has come to be named after him, Gardnerian Wicca. This combined the teachings he had received from the New Forest coven with ideas taken from a number of other sources, including Freemasonry, ceremonial magic, mediaeval grimoires and the writings of the occultist Aleister Crowley whom Gardner knew personally.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Gardner

The Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship was a Rosicrucian group founded by George Alexander Sullivan in about 1924.
Sabina Magliocco, in her examination of the influences of the study of folklore on the development of Wicca, considers it possible that by the late 1930s some members of the Crotona Fellowship were performing Wicca-like rituals based on Co-Masonry, and that this was the group referred to by Gerald Gardner as the 'New Forest Coven'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Forest_coven

One night in September 1939 they took him to a large house owned by "Old Dorothy" Clutterbuck, a wealthy local woman, where he was made to strip naked and taken through an initiation ceremony. Halfway through the ceremony, he heard the word "Wica", and he recognized it as an Old English word for witchcraft. He was already acquainted with Margaret Murray's theory of the Witch-cult. This group, he claimed, were the New Forest coven, and he believed them to be one of the few surviving covens of the ancient, pre-Christian Witch-Cult religion.

In 1954, Gardner published a non-fiction book, Witchcraft Today, containing a preface by Margaret Murray, who had published her theory of a surviving Witch-Cult in her 1921 book, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. In his book, Gardner not only espoused the survival of the Witch-Cult, but also his theory that a belief in faeries in Europe was due to a secretive pygmy race that lived alongside other communities, and that the Knights Templar had been initiates of the Craft.

Subsequent research by the likes of Hutton and Heselton has shown that in fact the New Forest coven was probably only formed in the early 20th century, based upon such sources as folk magic and the theories of Margaret Murray.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Gardner

So, he believed that he found pre-Christian Witch-Cult religion.

Let's see what scholars wrote.

In 1998 Philip G. Davis, a professor of religion at the University of Prince Edward Island, published Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality, which argued that Wicca was the creation of an English civil servant and amateur anthropologist named Gerald B. Gardner. Although Gardner claimed to have learned Wiccan lore from a centuries-old coven of witches who also belonged to the Fellowship of Crotona, Davis wrote that no one had been able to locate the coven and that Gardner had invented the rites he trumpeted, borrowing from rituals created early in the twentieth century by the notorious British occultist Aleister Crowley, among others. Wiccans today, by their own admission, have freely adapted and embellished Gardner´s rites.

In 1999 Ronald Hutton, a well-known historian of pagan British religion who teaches at the University of Bristol, published The Triumph of the Moon. Hutton, like Davis, could find no conclusive evidence of the coven from which Gardner said he had learned the Craft, and argued that the "ancient" religion Gardner claimed to have discovered was a mélange of material from relatively modern sources.

Gardner seems to have drawn on the work of two people: Charles Godfrey Leland, a nineteenth-century amateur American folklorist who professed to have found a surviving cult of the goddess Diana in Tuscany, and Margaret Alice Murray, a British Egyptologist who herself drew on Leland´s ideas and, beginning in the 1920s, created a detailed framework of ritual and belief. From his own experience Gardner included such Masonic staples as blindfolding, initiation, secrecy, and "degrees" of priesthood. He incorporated various Tarot-like paraphernalia, including wands, chalices, and the five-pointed star, which, enclosed in a circle, is the Wiccan equivalent of the cross.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...-goddess/5910/

Who was Margaret Murray?

Margaret Alice Murray (13 July 1863 - 13 November 1963), British Egyptologist and anthropologist, known for her work in Egyptology, which was "the core of her academic career," she is also known for her propagation of the Witch-cult hypothesis, the theory that the witch trials in the Early Modern period of Christianized Europe and North America were an attempt to extinguish a surviving pre-Christian, pagan religion devoted to a Horned God. Whilst this theory is today widely disputed and discredited by historians like Norman Cohn, Keith Thomas and Ronald Hutton, it has had a significant effect in the origins of Neopagan religions, primarily Wicca, a faith she supported.
Murray's best known and most controversial text, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, was published in 1921.

Ever since the first publication of Witch Cult in Western Europe 1921, Murray's theory has come under criticism for flaws in its use of evidence, with later historian Ronald Hutton remarking that it consisted of "a few well-known works by Continental demonologists, a few tracts printed in England and quite a number of published records of Scottish witch trials. The much greater amount of unpublished evidence was absolutely ignored." Various critics, including historian Norman Cohn and folklorist Jacqueline Simpson, have highlighted what they see as Murray's "extreme selectivity" in choosing only sources that backed her argument, and ignoring those that did not.

In a 1922 review of The Witch-Cult in Western Europe in the Folklore journal for instance, W.B. Halliday, an expert on ancient religion, dismissed her theory, and noted that her hypothesis relied upon "documents torn from the background of their own age and divorced from the serious study of their historical antecedents.

In 1962, Canadian historian Elliot Rose published A Razor for a Goat: A Discussion of Certain Problems in Witchcraft and Diabolism, in which he provided one of the first popular history books to openly criticize Murray's interpretation.

Jacqueline Simpson blames contemporary historians for doing little to refute Murray's ideas at the time they were written. It has been claimed by Norman Cohn that in the thirties her books led to the founding of Murrayite covens (small circles of witches), one of which taught Gerald Gardner in the 1940s.

In the 1950s Gardner publicized Wicca, a form of pagan religious witchcraft, which in turn helped to inspire the modern Neopagan movement. The phrase "the Old Religion," used by Wiccans and Neopagans to describe an ancestral pagan religion, derives from Murray’s theory. Other Wiccan terms and concepts like coven, esbat, the Wiccan Wheel of the Year, and the Horned God are, it has been suggested, influenced by or derived directly from Murray's works. Her ideas also inspired other writers, ranging from horror authors like H. P. Lovecraft and Dennis Wheatley to Robert Graves. The character of the obsessed academic Rose Lorimer in Angus Wilson's 1956 novel Anglo-Saxon Attitudes is said to have been inspired in part by Murray and Frances Yates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Murray

And an intelligent way of defending her theory.

Murray was also a believer and a practitioner of magic, performing spells such as cursing against those whom she felt deserved it: as Ronald Hutton noted, "Once she carried out a ritual to blast a fellow academic whose promotion she believed to have been undeserved, by mixing up ingredients in a frying pan in the presence of two colleagues. The victim actually did become ill, and had to change jobs. This was only one among a number of such acts of malevolent magic she perpetrates, and which the friend who recorded them assumed (rather nervously) were pranks, with coincidental effects."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Murray

Let’s go back to the Starhawk.

Starhawk offers a vivid summary of the history of the faith, explaining that witchcraft is "perhaps the oldest religion extant in the West" and that it began "more than thirty-five thousand years ago," during the last Ice Age. The religion's earliest adherents worshiped two deities, one of each sex: "the Mother Goddess, the birthgiver, who brings into existence all life," and the "Horned God," a male hunter who died and was resurrected each year.

In all probability, not a single element of the Wiccan story is true. The evidence is overwhelming that Wicca is a distinctly new religion, a 1950s concoction influenced by such things as Masonic ritual and a late-nineteenth-century fascination with the esoteric and the occult, and that various assumptions informing the Wiccan view of history are deeply flawed. Furthermore, scholars generally agree that there is no indication, either archaeological or in the written record, that any ancient people ever worshipped a single, archetypal goddess—a conclusion that strikes at the heart of Wiccan belief.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...-goddess/5910/

For example, the number of gods in Babylon and Assyria exceeded three thousand. The priests cataloged deities. The old gods disappeared, and in their place appeared new. Sometimes, forgotten gods combined several deities in one, or vice versa - with some new one arose.


Let's look at nine million burnt witches. My oh my......I believed that it was true.

During "the Burning Times," Starhawk wrote, some nine million were executed. The Old Religion went more deeply underground, its traditions passed down secretly in families and among trusted friends, until it resurfaced in the twentieth century. Like their ancient forebears, Wiccans revere the Goddess, practice shamanistic magic of a harmless variety, and celebrate the eight feasts, or sabbats, sometimes in the nude.

Subject to slight variations, this story is the basis of many hugely popular Goddess handbooks. It also informs the writings of numerous secular feminists—Gloria Steinem, Marilyn French, Barbara Ehrenreich, Deirdre English—to whom the ascendancy of "the patriarchy" or the systematic terrorization of strong, independent women by means of witchcraft trials are historical givens. Moreover, elements of the story suffuse a broad swath of the intellectual and literary fabric of the past hundred years, from James Frazer's The Golden Bough and Robert Graves's The White Goddess to the novels of D. H. Lawrence, from the writings of William Butler Yeats and T. S. Eliot to Jungian psychology and the widely viewed 1988 public-television series The Power of Myth.

The figure Starhawk cited—nine million executed over four centuries—derives from a late-eighteenth-century German historian; it was picked up and disseminated a hundred years later by a British feminist named Matilda Gage and quickly became Wiccan gospel (Gardner himself coined the phrase "the Burning Times"). Most scholars today believe that the actual number of executions is in the neighborhood of 40,000. The most thorough recent study of historical witchcraft is Witches and Neighbors (1996), by Robin Briggs, a historian at Oxford University. Briggs pored over the documents of European witch trials and concluded that most of them took place during a relatively short period, 1550 to 1630, and were largely confined to parts of present-day France, Switzerland, and Germany that were already racked by the religious and political turmoil of the Reformation. The accused witches, far from including a large number of independent-minded women, were mostly poor and unpopular. Their accusers were typically ordinary citizens (often other women), not clerical or secular authorities. In fact, the authorities generally disliked trying witchcraft cases and acquitted more than half of all defendants. Briggs also discovered that none of the accused witches who were found guilty and put to death had been charged specifically with practicing a pagan religion.

Hutton effectively demolished the notion, held by Wiccans and others, that fundamentally pagan ancient customs existed beneath medieval Christian practices. His research reveals that outside of a handful of traditions, such as decorating with greenery at Yuletide and celebrating May Day with flowers, no pagan practices—much less the veneration of pagan gods—have survived from antiquity. Hutton found that nearly all the rural seasonal pastimes that folklorists once viewed as "timeless" fertility rituals, including the Maypole dance, actually date from the Middle Ages or even the eighteenth century.

Hutton has also pointed out a lack of evidence that either the ancient Celts or any other pagan culture celebrated all the "eight feasts of the Wheel" that are central to Wiccan liturgy. "The equinoxes seem to have no native pagan festivals behind them and became significant only to occultists in the nineteenth century," Hutton told me. "There is still no proven pagan feast that stood as ancestor to Easter"—a festival that modern pagans celebrate as Ostara, the vernal equinox.

Some Gardnerian innovations have sexual and even bondage-and-discipline overtones. Ritual sex, which Gardner called "The Great Rite," and which was also largely unknown in antiquity, was part of the liturgy for Beltane and other feasts (although most participants simulated the act with a dagger—another of Gardner's penchants—and a chalice). Other rituals called for the binding and scourging of initiates and for administering "the fivefold kiss" to the feet, knees, "womb" (according to one Wiccan I spoke with, a relatively modest spot above the pubic bone), breasts, and lips.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...-goddess/5910/

Who was Matilda Gage?

Matilda Electa Joslyn Gage (Cicero, New York, March 24, 1826 – March 18, 1898 in Chicago) was a suffragist, a Native American activist. She became a Theosophist and encouraged her children and their spouses to do so, some of whom did.

Her daughter, Maud, initially horrified her mother when she chose to marry The Wonderful Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_Joslyn_Gage

Later, he and his wife, encouraged by Matilda Joslyn Gage, became Theosophists, in 1897. He wrote 17 of Oz books. One is titled The Emerld city of Oz.
In 1900, Baum and Denslow (with whom he shared the copyright) published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to much critical acclaim and financial success.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Frank_Baum

A circle of mutual admiration is getting smaller.


Let's look at demons and Egyptian Book of Dead.

I have noticed that links don't work. Interesting.

I guess attack from demons.

Egyptians believed in existence of spirits of deceased humans, deities and supernatural beings whose identities were never precisely defined. Egyptians gave a specific name and attributes to those beings rather than defining them as “ demons” In fact, no ancient Egyptian term exist that could be translated into demon, distinguishing demons from deities. Lucarelli interprets the demons of the Realm of the Dead as beings made of flesh and blood , as already proposed by Matthieu Heerma van Voss rather than as daimonen in the Greek mythology.

THE DAIMONES KHRYSEOI (Daemones Chrysei) were thirty thousand air-dwelling spirits who watched over the deeds of man and rewarded the just with with agricultural bounty. They were originally the Golden race of man who had lived a lfie of virtue in the time of Kronos (Cronus). After death the whole tribe was transformed into beneficient daimones. The Daimones Khryseoi (Golden Spirits) were superior to the Daimones Argeoi (or Silver Spirits)--the former resided in the air, while the latter dwelt within the earth.
http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/DaimonesKhryseoi.html

The Book of the Dead of Hunefer, sheet 7

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Book_of_the_Dead_of_Hunefer_sheet_7.jpg?usela ng=pl



The Book of the Dead of Hunefer, sheet 5

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Book_of_the_Dead_of_Hunefer_sheet_5.jpg?usela ng=pl

The existence of demons in Egyptian beliefs can be recognized by comparing demons and deities with respect to their function appearance and status as Egyptians gave names to the supernatural beings defining what those beings do and as such there were categorized as malevolent and benevolent. Consequently, two classes of demons were recognized wonderers and guardians. Wonderers who may act as emissaries for deities or on their own accord bring diseases, nightly terror, and misfortune. On the other hand, guardians who are tied to specific region protect from intrusion and pollution. In Ptolemaic and Roman Periods they were regarded as deities.

Anubis weighing the heart of Hunefer.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Weighing_of_the_heart3.jpg?uselang=pl

Demons being subordinate to gods posses special powers that is limited to a single task or they act under the command of a deity. Postulates that since demons act as emissaries of gods they are creation of gods. The Book of the Dead not only depicts individual demons occurring in isolated spells, but also classes of demons having collective names. Individual demons inhibit the netherworld. For instances, "the Fighters in Helio- polis" who threaten to take away the heart of the deceased in Ch. 28 of the Book of the Dead. Collective demons, on the other hand,inhibit both the netherworld and earth and can be found in the magical texts of the New Kingdom and later, which are concerned with daily magic and the world of the living. In the New Kingdom these demons were considered as having a stronger influence on earth than in the netherworld. There are hundreds of names and epithets of demons in the Book of the Dead. For instance, the"devourers" or "swallowers" are found rather often in the Book of the Dead. The act of devouring of human beings, animals or dead persons was a threat especially employed by demons of the ancient Egyptian netherworld. The most famous creature mentioned in the Book of the Dead that belongs to the devourers is "the devourer of the dead", a hybrid animal form and is said to swallow the deceased's heart. The devourers action is directed only against evil-doers and those who have no knowledge of the mysteries of the netherworld. The deceased faces the demon and his task is to avoid the demon's destructive power.

Ammut

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AmmutPapyrus.jpg?uselang=pl

Disembodied spirits who may show demonic nature are manifestation of deceased humans in netherworld. They acquire supernatural status after transformation generated by death and ritual. In contrast to demons ( mwt) who are always malevolent, those spirits can be benevolent or malevolent.Both demons and spirits of the dead are listed in spells due to the fact that they both can be harmful to humans.

Demons act on the border of order and chaos. They can manifest as a single entity or in pair or in a group. Wonderers that may travel in groups are under control of Ra or Osiris and act upon the will of gods and bring punishment to the earth or netherworld. In other cases, they act upon own will and bring misfortune or cause chaos. Egyptians believed that the influence of demons can be tempered by the use of magic. Nevertheless, it can not be fully destroyed. Wandering demons can cause certain physical and mental diseases or symptoms. For example, the demon Sahqeq can cause headache. Nightmares were also understood a caused by demons. Egyptians believed that nightmare demons could enter a human body from the outside therefore they were considered as a subcategory of wandering demons.In this sense they can be considered as the Egyptian equivalent of medieval incubi and succubi.

However, the sexual assault that is characteristic to incubi and succubi is not explicit in Egyptian spells.

Demonic possession could not only happened during the night but also during awaking . Moreover, wondering demons could enter and haunt houses. In fact, magical spells contain a list of the parts of the house that can be defended against demons. Demons can move between the earth and beyond. When demons act as guardians of gates to the netherworld, they can be benevolent if the deceased possess the magic to face them.

Both gods and demons are messengers and can act against humankind. Demons may sent death plague by furies goddess Sakhmet and Bastet. “The slaughterers"- evil-bringers –are mainly related to Sekhmet in her aggressive and potentially destructive aspect The role of the slaughterers in relation to the deceased of the Book of the Dead is a rather terrifying one: he attempts to make them content by praising them.

An extremely important topic of the ancient Egyptian funerary literature of the New Kingdom, involves the protection of the heart, which indirectly recalls the final judgment, the moment in which destructive forces and dangers in general, as symbolized by demons,reached their apex in the Realm of the Dead and therefore the deceased needed the protection of funerary magic.

In the Late Period and Ptolemiac and Roman Periods as the astrology gained prominence in Egyptian religious thought a certain astral bodies if Northern constellation were demonized. For instance, a certain astral bodies that were depicted on the astronomical ceiling of temples and tombs corresponded with demonic inhibitants called “ mounds of netherworld” as were described in Spell 149 of the Book of the Dead.

Spell 151

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ani_LDM_151.jpg?uselang=pl

Guardian, on the other hand, can be benevolent toward those who have the secret knowledge of their names as well as the knowledge how to face them. They attached to a specific places like pool, river or mauntain from where they attack the passerby. Similarly, other system of beliefs, for example Hellenistic world recognized the existence of such demons. Their aggressive nature is a result of the need to protect their abode. Thus, they differ from disease demons who attack the human body or places that don’t belong to them. They are described in the spells 144-147 of the Book of dead and the book of netherworld. Their dreadful nature made them suitable to protect sacred places and as such they took on the role of temple genni in Late and Ptolemaic Periods. Guardian demons have hybrid human animal appearance. In ancient Egypt teriomorphic traits accentuate most fearful aspects of demons stress those beings “otherness” Snakes, feline, reptailes, bulls, goats, scorpions, falcons or vultures can be a part of demonic body. This iconography is similar to deities depicted in animal or hybrid forms. Typical of demonic iconography are fantastic animals or monstrous iconographies that combine 2 or 3 animal and humans into one body, for example Ammut crocodile, leo and hippo“the devourer of the dead” Funerary compositions depict demons with snakes and anthropomorphic legs, multiple heads or wings. Those demons serve as benevolent or malevolent guardians. Gigantic python, Apep, is their prototype. But Apep is not considered as demon due to his cosmic role of being the enemy of Ra.

Book of the Dead spell 87 and 88 from the Papyrus of Ani

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ani_LDM_82_87_88.jpg?uselang=pl



A minor demon, Qed-Her had the head of a cat from which two serpents emerge and Knife Wielding demons seated before gates of the netherworld.
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/minorgods.htm



Atum and Apep

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apep_1.jpg




Detail from the papyrus of Hunefer; the sun god represented as a cat kills the serpent of darkness with a knife.


http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Papyrus_of_Hunefer,_detail.jpg?uselang=pl

The guardians of the Book of the Dead are representation of a hybrid creature with human body and animal head. Even though their appearance is not different from gods depicted in hybrid forms, the repertoire of the animals is more varied reptiles, felines, canines, donkeys, baboons, hippopotami, goats, bulls, insects, scorpions, and birds such as falcons and vultures. The role of the guardian-demons is that of opening the gates of the netherworld for Osiris. In fact, the private funerary sphere to which the Book of the Dead spells refer gains an amplified cosmogonical and ritual dimension that concerns the rebirth and power of Osiris in the netherworld.

Egyptian Book of Dead

http://www.egyptsbookofthedead.com/cont.php

Both funerary magic that involves opening the gates of the netherworld and temple ritual where the rituals were performed are based on ‘opening the way’ through gates and doors that separate different domains (earth/netherworld, pure/impure, sacred/profane).

The guardian demons become therefore the link among funerary and daily ritual magic. In BD 145 the deceased declares in front of the gates
‘Make way for me, since I know you, I know your name, I know the name of the god who guards you.’

Besides the fantastic creatures, the netherworld was the abode of animals considered as dangerous such as reptiles or insects or impure such as pigs or donkey that belong to the destructive god Seth. A spell s in Pyramid text or coffin text aim at protecting against snakes considered as an enemy of sun god. Magical and ritual objects depict demons being submitted and controlled by anthropomorphic deities who act as protectors. The example is Horus stele or Horus Shed.

Horus

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/childgod.htm
Horus shed on snakes

Encounters with creatures who watch over passages that are represented as gates, portals are described in Book of Dead 144-147. Doors or door watchers of the netherworld can also be found in other ancient Egyptian funerary text such as Book of gate or Book of Night.

Ch. 144-147 show a series of creatures guarding the doors of the netherworld, defined as more than genii, and as demons. They are potentially harmful for whoever is not provided with the appropriate knowledge to face them. They also have a positive function for the sacred place they guard, namely the doors and portals of the netherworld. The doorkeepers of the Book of the Dead are depicted with animal head and human body.


144 Lists the names of the creatures serving as keeper, guard, and announcer at each of seven gates. their names are fairly terrifying, for instance "He who lives on snakes", or "Hippopotamus-faced, raging of power". By knowing these gates, the deceased can persuade them to let him through. to the guardians the deceased says:

O you gates, you who keep the gates because of Osiris, O you who guard them and who report the affairs of the Two Lands to Osiris every day; I know you and I know your names.
—Book of the Dead, spell 144

If uttered correctly, this spell ensures "he will not be driven off or turned away at the portals of the Netherworld".

145 An alternative form of 146.

146 Describes twenty-one 'portals of the House of Osiris in the Field of Reeds', each with a deity and a door-keeper. The names and descriptions of these entities are more elaborate and just as terrifying as those in 144.

147 A gate spell
Doors or door watchers of the netherworld can also be found in other ancient Egyptian funerary text such as Book of gate or Book of Night.

Book of dead Spell 144-145

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bookofthedead-144145.jpg?uselang=pl

Demons play a central role in protecting sacred places that are located between earth and netherworld, the role that is confirmed in religions of Mesopotamia, Buddhism or Hinduism. However, the Book of Dead spells is unique in a sense that describes the interaction of deceased with demons.
Finally, among the demonic beings of the Book of the Dead there are also animals, which also populate the earth. Egyptians considered certain kinds of animals particularly dangerous and therefore associated with demonic forces. In fact, reptiles and some mammals like the pig, the donkey, the dog and the jackal were seen as negative manifestations of Seth.
Lucarelli, Rita ( 2010), Demons (benevolent and malevolent).

UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology
Rita Lucarelli, Leiden, Demons in the Book of the Dead

[ftil]

I was talking about occult in my previous post and a few occultists art.

Jean Delville (19 January 1867, Leuven – 1953) was a Belgian symbolist painter, writer, and occultist. In 1896, he founded the Salon d’Art Idealiste, which is considered the Belgian equivalent to the Parisian Rose & Cross Salon.
In 1895 Delville published his Dialogue entre nous, a text in which he outlined his views on occultism and esoteric philosophy. Brendan Cole discusses this text in his D.Phil. thesis on Delville (Christ Church, Oxford, 2000), pointing out that, though the Dialogue reflects the ideas of a number of occultists, it also reveals a new interest in Theosophy. In the mid or late 1890s, Delville joined the Theosophical Society. In 1896, he founded the Salon d’Art Idealiste, which is considered the Belgian equivalent to the Parisian Rose & Cross Salon and the Pre-Raphaelite movement in London. The Salon disbanded in 1898. In 1910 he became the secretary of the Theosophical movement in Belgium. In the same year he added a tower to his house in Forest, a suburb of Brussels. Following the ideas of Jiddu Krishnamurti, Delville painted the meditation room at the top, including the floorboards, entirely in blue. The Theosophical Emblem was placed at the summit of the ceiling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Delville

Jean Delville - Belgian Occultist Symbolism I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54IeQWD7QHI

More Jean Delville’s paintings.
http://jeandelville.org/Paintings/index.htm

Félicien Rops (7 July 1833 - 23 August 1898) was a Belgian artist, and printmaker in etching and aquatint.
Félicien Rops was a freemason and a member of the Grand Orient of Belgium.

Félicien Rops
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk8EFu2GakE

More paintings.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ca...%A9licien_Rops

Carlos Schwabe (July 21, 1866–1926) was a German Symbolist painter and printmaker.
Schwabe created a colour lithograph for the 1892 Salon de la Rose+Croix, the first of six exhibitions organized by Joséphin Péladan that demonstrated the Rosicrucian tendencies of French Symbolism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Schwabe

Carlos Schwabe - Occultist Symbolism II

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_X4dCtMuFY


More Carlos Schwabe’s paintings.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ca...Carlos_Schwabe

Fernand Edmond Jean Marie Khnopff ( 1858 – 1921 in Brussels) was a Belgian symbolist painter.
In 1885, he met the French novelist Joséphin Péladan the future grandmaster of the Rosicrucian "Ordre de la Rose + Croix". In 1892 he exhibited in Paris at the first Salon de la Rose+Croix, encouraged by his new friend, Joséphin Péladan. However, this friendship brought him trouble with The Twenty, some members having little regard for the Rose+Croix.
http://www.artmagick.com/pictures/ar...ernand-khnopff

Fernand Khnopff - Belgian Occultist Symbolism III

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b81TYTQva0g


More F. Khnopff’s paintings.

http://www.artmagick.com/pictures/ar...khnopff&page=1

Emile Fabry Bartelemy (1865 – 1966). Belgian painter movement symbolist. The subjects of his paintings are drawn from the writings of Josephin Peladan and theories of the Rose Cross.

Emile Fabry - Belgian Occultist Symbolism IV and last.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNnN2PtW1bg

[ftil]

I had a conversation on The Art Thread about Franz von Bayros and Félicien Rops, painters whose art reflects a deeply troubled mind. I didn’t expect that discussion about those painters would lead me to eastern religions to find connection of East with West.
http://www.online-literature.com/for...t=64250&page=6

Let's look at Buddhist gurus.

[O]nce you receive transmission and form the [guru-disciple] bond of samaya, you have committed yourself to the teacher as guru, and from then on, the guru can do no wrong, no matter what. It follows that if you obey the guru in all things, you can do no wrong either. This is the basis of Osel Tendzin’s [Trungpa’s eventual successor] teaching that “if you keep your samaya, you cannot make a mistake.” He was not deviating into his own megalomania when he said this, but repeating the most essential idea of mainstream Vajrayana [i.e., Tantric Buddhism] (Butterfield, 1994).

Q [student]: What if you feel the necessity for a violent act in order ultimately to do good for a person?

A [Trungpa]: You just do it (Trungpa, 1973).

A woman is stripped naked, apparently at Trungpa’s joking command, and hoisted into the air by [his] guards, and passed around—presumably in fun, although the woman does not think so (Marin, 1995).

We were admonished ... not to talk about our practice. “May I shrivel up instantly and rot,” we vowed, “if I ever discuss these teachings with anyone who has not been initiated into them by a qualified master.” As if this were not enough, Trungpa told us that if we ever tried to leave the Vajrayana, we would suffer unbearable, subtle, continuous anguish, and disasters would pursue us like furies....

To be part of Trungpa’s inner circle, you had to take a vow never to reveal or even discuss some of the things he did. This personal secrecy is common with gurus, especially in Vajrayana Buddhism. It is also common in the dysfunctional family systems of alcoholics and sexual abusers. This inner circle secrecy puts up an almost insurmountable barrier to a healthy skeptical mind....
[T]he vow of silence means that you cannot get near him until you have already given up your own perception of enlightenment and committed yourself to his (Butterfield, 1994).

The traditional Vajrayana teachings on the importance of loyalty to the guru are no less categorical:

Breaking tantric samaya [i.e., leaving one’s guru] is more harmful than breaking other vows. It is like falling from an airplane compared to falling from a horse (Tulku Thondup, in [Panchen and Wangyi, 1996]).

Allen [Ginsberg] asked Trungpa why he drank so much. Trungpa explained he hoped to determine the illumination of American drunkenness. In the United States, he said, alcohol was the main drug, and he wanted to use his acquired knowledge of drunkenness as a source of wisdom (Schumacher, 1992).
Geoffrey D. Falk, Stripping the Gurus:Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg...rs/trungpa.asp

LOL! That’s an enlightened justification….

Trungpa appointed an American acolyte named Thomas Rich, also known as Osel Tendzin, as his successor. Rich, a married father of four, died of AIDS in 1990 amid published reports that he had had unprotected sex with [over a hundred] male and female students without telling them of his illness (Horgan, 2003a). Tendzin had asked Trungpa what he should do if students wanted to have sex with him, and Trungpa’s reply was that as long as he did his Vajrayana purification practices, it did not matter, because they would not get the disease. Tendzin’s answer, in short, was that he had obeyed the instructions of his guru.
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg...rs/trungpa.asp

Interesting, I thoughts that his students looked for enlightenment not a sex with a guru. But sexual exploitation has been a modus operandi fir Buddhist teachers. Vajrayana purification practices didn’t help Trungpa as he died of acute alcoholism in 1987.

Let’s at another “guru”.

Sex Scandals In Religion,
Episode Three: In The Name Of Enlightenment.
Directed by Debi Goodwin.

An image of peace, meditation, gentle respect. Not serial sex abuse. But accusations of tawdry sexual exploitation are breaking out all over, threatening the elevated status of this beautiful religion. One of the Dalai Lama’s star protégés Sogyal Rinpoche, the author of one of the most powerful and popular books in the history of Buddhism, and the leader of a global network of holy centers, has left a wake of damaged women. Until now, they have been kept silent. Speaking out for the first time in this documentary, they accuse him of seduction, physical assault and moral deceit. It’s an extraordinary story of sexual aggression, spiritual arrogance and avoidance of moral leadership…to the very top.

In The Name Of Enlightenment

http://www.earthbook.tv/religion/cha...ideos/148/678/

It is not only “avant-garde” lamas who have “bent” the rules which one would otherwise have reasonably assumed were governing their behaviors. Rather, as June Campbell (1996) has noted from her own experience:

[I]n the 1970s, I traveled throughout Europe and North America as a Tibetan interpreter, providing the link, through language, between my lama-guru [Kalu Rinpoche, 1905 – 1989] and his many students. Subsequently he requested that I become his sexual consort, and take part in secret activities with him, despite the fact that to outsiders he was a very high-ranking yogi-lama of the Kagya lineage who, as abbot of his own monastery, had taken vows of celibacy. Given that he was one of the oldest lamas in exile at that time, had personally spent fourteen years in solitary retreat, and counted amongst his students the highest ranking lamas in Tibet, his own status was unquestioned in the Tibetan community, and his holiness attested to by all....

[I]t was plainly emphasized that any indiscretion [on my part] in maintaining silence over our affair might lead to madness, trouble, or even death [e.g., via magical curses placed upon the indiscreet one].

And how did the compassionate, bodhisattva-filled Tibetan Buddhist community react to such allegations?

[M]any rejected out of hand Campbell’s claims as sheer fabrication coming from somebody eager to gain fame at the expense of a deceased lama (Lehnert, 1998; italics added).
Geoffrey D. Falk, Stripping the Gurus:Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment

Secrecy is the modus operandi.

For more of the inside story on Tibetan Buddhism, consult Trimondi and Trimondi’s (2003) The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism.

Let’s look close at Vajrayana.

To have sexual relations with a prostitute paid by you and not by a third person does not, on the other hand, constitute improper behavior (Lama, 1996).
Geoffrey D. Falk, Stripping the Gurus:Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment

So, prostitution is not considered as improper behavior by Dalai Lama.

Every type of passion (sexual pleasure, fits of rage, hate and loathing) which is normally considered taboo by Buddhist ethical standards, is activated and nurtured in Vajrayana with the goal of then transforming it into its opposite. The Buddhist monks, who are usually subject to a strict, puritanical-seeming set of rules, cultivate such “breaches of taboo” without restriction, once they have decided to follow the “Diamond Path”.

Suitably radical instructions can be found in the Hevajra Tantra: “A wise man ... should remove the filth of his mind by filth ... one must rise by that through which one falls”, or, more vividly, “As flatulence is cured by eating beans so that wind may expel wind, as a thorn in the foot can be removed by another thorn, and as a poison can be neutralized by poison, so sin can purge sin” (Walker, 1982, p. 34). For the same reason, the Kalachakra Tantra exhorts its pupils to commit the following: to kill, to lie, to steal, to break the marriage vows, to drink alcohol, to have sexual relations with lower-class girls (Broido, 1988, p. 71). A Tantric is freed from the chains of the wheel of life by precisely that which imprisons a normal person.

In order to keep hidden from the public all the offensive things which are implicated by the required breaches of taboo, some tantra texts make use of a so-called “twilight language” (samdhya-bhasa).

For example, one says “lotus” and means “vagina”, or employs the term “enlightenment consciousness” (bodhicitta) for sperm, or the word “sun” (surya) for menstrual blood. Such a list of synonyms can be extended indefinitely.

Women were regarded as the greatest obstacle along the masculine path to enlightenment. Because the woman represents the feared gateway to rebirth, because she produces the world of illusion, because she steals the forces of the man — the origins of evil lie within her. Accordingly, to touch a woman was also the most serious breach of taboo for a Buddhist from the pre-tantric phase.

According to the “law of inversion”, the more gloomy, repulsive, aggressive and perverse a woman is, the more suitable she must be to serve as a sexual partner in the rituals.

But the preference of the yogis for especially young and attractive girls (which we mention above) seems to contradict this postulated ugliness.

Incidentally, the Kalachakra Tantra is itself aware of this contradiction, but is unable to resolve it. Thus the third book of the Time Tantra has the following suggestions to make: “Terrible women, furious, stuck-up, money-hungry, quarrelsome...are to be avoided” (Grünwedel, Kalacakra III, p. 121). But then, a few pages later, we find precisely the opposite: “A woman, who has abandoned herself to a lust for life, who takes delight in human blood ... is to be revered by the yogi” (Grünwedel, Kalacakra III, p. 146).

Due to their attractiveness the virgins are far more dangerous for the yogi than an old hag. The chances that he lose his emotional and sexual self-control in such a relationship are thus many times higher. This means that attractive women present him with a even greater challenge than do the ugly.

Women from lower castes are not just recommendable, but rather appear to be downright necessary for the performance of certain rituals. The Kalachakra Tantra lists female gardeners, butchers, potters, whores, and needle-workers among its recommendations (Grünwedel, Kalacakra III, pp. 130, 131)

“Courtesans are also favored”, writes the Tibet researcher Matthias Hermanns, “since the more lecherous, depraved, dirty, morally repugnant and dissolute they are, the better suited they are to their role” (Hermanns, 1975, p. 191).
http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Part-1-04.htm

More about Kalachkara rituals Victor & Victoria Trimondi, The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism.
http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Contents.htm

Those videos expose a child prostitution in India.


Temple Prostitution – India

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHfI2...eature=related


Sexual Slavery and enforced Prostitution in India

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1sTRMJQmho


Well, enough of Buddhist sex. How about some Buddhist violence?

More specifically, in keeping with such extreme contemporary brutality as is regularly portrayed in tulku Steven Seagal’s movies, it has been whispered that

in old Tibet ... the lamas were the allies of feudalism and unsmilingly inflicted medieval punishments such as blinding and flogging unto death (Hitchens, 1998).
Visiting the Lhasa [Tibet] museum, [journalist Alain Jacob] saw “dried and tanned children’s skins, various amputated human limbs, either dried or preserved, and numerous instruments of torture that were in use until a few decades ago”....

These were the souvenirs and instruments of the vanished lamas, proof, Jacob notes, that under the Buddhist religious rule in Tibet “there survived into the middle of the twentieth century feudal practices which, while serving a well-established purpose, were nonetheless chillingly cruel.”
The “well-established purpose”? Maintaining social order in a church-state (Clark, 1980).

The early twentieth-century, Viennese-born explorer Joseph Rock minced even fewer words:

“One must take for granted that every Tibetan, at least in this part of the world, was a robber sometime in his life,” he sardonically observed of the Goloks [tribe]. “Even the lamas are not averse to cutting one’s throat, although they would be horrified at killing a dog, or perhaps even a vermin” (Schell, 2000).

The caliber of monks today has not, it seems, radically improved:

[O]ver 90% of those who wear the robes [in India, and elsewhere] are “frauds” in the sense the questioners would connote by “fraud.” The idea that the monk is more perfect than the non-monk is inveterate, and it is kindled by the monks themselves. If perfection is to mean greater dedication to the search for spiritual emancipation, then there is undoubtedly more of it among the monks. But in terms of human morality and of human intellect, monks are nowhere more perfect than lay people (Bharati, 1980; italics added).
Far too many men become Buddhist monks, because it’s a good life and they have devotion. The Dalai Lama has publicly stated that only ten out of one hundred monks are true candidates (Mackenzie, 1999).

Likewise for Japanese Zen:

It seemed to me that most of the monks [at Suienji] were proud of their position, lazy, stupid, greedy, angry, confused, or some combination. Mainly they were the sons of temple priests putting in their obligatory training time so that they could follow in daddy’s footsteps. They listened to radios, drank at night and had pinups on the wall.

What they were really into, though, was power trips. It’s what got them off.... The senior monks were always pushing around the junior monks, who in turn were pushing around the ones that came after them (in Chadwick, 1994).
The observations of a Thai Buddhist monk, in Ward (1998), at a monastery run by Ajahn Chah, are no more flattering:

The farang [Westerners] at this wat [monastery] who call themselves monks are nothing but a bunch of social rejects who have found a place where they can get free food, free shelter and free respect. They are complacent and their only concern is their perks at the top end of the hierarchy.
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg...ters/dalai.asp

And something for a desert.

No discussion of Tibetan Buddhism would be complete without mention of T. Lobsang Rampa (d. 1981).
Rampa was the author, in the 1950s and ’60s, of more than a dozen popular books concerning his claimed experiences growing up as a lama in Tibet. Among them, we find 1956’s best-selling The Third Eye, concerning an operation allegedly undergone by Rampa to open up his clairvoyant faculties.

In the midst of that literary success, however, it was discovered that Rampa was in fact none other than a pen name for the Irish “son of a plumber,” Cyril Hoskins (Bharati, 1974).
Hoskins himself had never been to Tibet. But then, the average Tibetan, in Hoskins’ day at least, had never seen indoor plumbing.
Geoffrey D. Falk, Stripping the Gurus:Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment

LOL! I am wondering how many books he sold……..creativity without limits. Sadly, many were fooled.

As might be expected, radically enlightened practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism counted through the ages and today are as rare as they are on any other path.
When I asked an old lama from Tibet about whether these ten stages [of awakening to Buddha Nature, i.e., bhumis] are in fact a part of the practice, he said, “Of course they really exist.” But when I inquired who in his tradition had attained them, he replied wistfully, “In these difficult times I cannot name a single lama who has mastered even the second stage” (Kornfield, 2000).
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg...ters/dalai.asp

But many fooled into believing in enlightenment. Hard not to be angry.

G. Falk has brought to our attention Catharine Burroughs, the first female American tulku.

Further, this is also the very same Penor Rinpoche who, in 1986, recognized one Catharine Burroughs as the first female American tulku, saying that “the very fabric of her mind was the Dharma” (Sherrill, 2000). Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche later confirmed that reincarnation, i.e., of a sixteenth-century Tibetan saint, Genyenma Ahkön Lhamo—co-founder of the Palyul tradition of Tibetan Buddhism within the Nyingma School—as Burroughs. (Khyentse was the Dzogchen teacher of the Dalai Lama. He was also, of course, the same sage who reassured Trungpa’s and Tendzin’s followers that those gurus had given them authentic dharma, after Tendzin had already given some of them AIDS.) Burroughs herself, renamed as Jetsunma Ahkön Norbu Lhamo, went on to accumulate around a hundred followers—well short of the fifteen hundred which Penor Rinpoche had predicted would come. She also founded the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the United States, located outside Washington, DC.

The great, recognized female tulku had reportedly earlier claimed to be the reincarnation of one of Jesus’ female disciples, entrusted in those earlier times with the passing-down of Gnostic texts. She had further apparently told her future third husband, in channeled sessions, that the two of them had ruled ancient, unrecorded civilizations on Earth. They had also supposedly governed galaxies in previous lifetimes together (Sherrill, 2000).
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg...ters/dalai.asp

East and West meet each. The Johannites believed that Mary Magdalene received a secret teaching form Jesus. I am wondering if Dan Brown and Da Vinci Code was inspired by Johannites.

Gnostics
The Johannites are a sect of Gnostics who acknowledge John the Baptist as the prophesized [[Messiah that was to come before the greater Messiah, and Jesus Christ as the greater Messiah. The Church itself was founded by St. Bernard. The Church believes that Christ passed down his Gnosis to John the Divine and Mary Magdalene, who some also believe to be the equivalent of Jesus as the Daughter of Sophia and Venus/Aphrodite.

Knights Templar
The Knights Templar were secret adherents to Johannism when they came upon documents in Solomon's Temple and made Mary Magdalene their patroness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ps...ard/Johannites

I haven’t read Da Vinci Code but I did some research about falsity of his claims. Interestingly, I have Iearned about King, Harvard professor who has been cracking the codes of early Christianity for more than 20 years. I haven’t read her books yet. Since King has described herself as a feminist, I hope that she doesn’t falsify her research like feminists I posted earlier who have been promoting neopagan religion.

Let’s go back to American tulku who got the responsibilities in this life times not as impressive as galactic leadership. I have so much fun reading about gurus.

“The future of Dharma in the West is riding on us,” she told her students (Sherrill, 2000).
Nor was the Dharma everything to wind up “riding on” the former Brooklyn housewife. For, as her androgynously appealing, strong body of a triathlete, female personal trainer (Teri) was to reportedly discover, in the midst of a “very personal” relationship:

While Buddhists aren’t really supposed to proselytize, lamas are known to be very crafty, and they use all kinds of techniques—flattery, promises, even lies—to expose a student to the Dharma. And it is thought to be an enormous blessing if a lama chooses to have sex with you (Sherrill, 2000).

Oral sex and masturbation, out. Lesbian sex, in.
“Enormous blessings.”

Thence followed much additional reported financial and personal nonsense—including the forty-plus Jetsunma dropping Teri and instead taking one of her twenty-something male disciples as a “consort.” The latter was, however, himself apparently cut loose a year later. He was further unbelievably talked into becoming a monk in order to “keep the blessing” conferred upon him in having had sex with his lama/guru, by never again sleeping with an “ordinary woman.”

At the start of her “personal involvement” with the bisexual Teri, Jetsunma had been married to her third husband, in a relationship dating back to when she was near-completely unknown. In what must surely be one of the odder divorce settlements ever negotiated, that former, embittered husband received $2500 in cash and a “large crystal ball”—presumably to aid himself in not getting involved with any comparably mixed-up women in the future. The same man apparently later worked in public relations for the Naropa Institute for several years (Sherrill, 2000).

Jetsunma and many of her followers moved in the late ’90s from coastal Maryland to higher ground in Arizona. That was done in anticipation of the fulfillment of apocalyptic Hopi prophecies—her new boyfriend at the time was an American Indian shaman—that earthquakes, floods and famine would strike the United States in 1999 (Sherrill, 2000).http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg...ters/dalai.asp

I didn’t know about Hopi prophecies for 1999. It sounds that they have changed mind and have prophesied 2012 disaster. LOL!

The tulku phenomenon itself has an interesting, and very human, history.

The system of recognizing reincarnations was established at the beginning of the thirteenth century by the followers of Dusum Khyenpa, the first Karmapa Lama. As the religious influence of Tibet’s lamas came to be adapted for political purposes through the centuries, internally and via influence from China, the process of recognizing new tulkus was rather predictably affected.

The traditional method of scrutiny whereby the young hopefuls had to identify objects belonging to their past incarnation was often neglected.... It wasn’t at all uncommon to have two or more candidates—each backed by a powerful faction—openly and violently [italics added] challenging one well-known tulku seat (Lehnert, 1998).

Such intrigues are by no means buried merely in the dim and distant past. For, when it came time to recognize a new (Seventeenth) Karmapa Lama in the 1980s and ’90s.

Alleged “forgery, deceit, and a looming fight right at the top of the lineage,” with the high-ranking lamas there reportedly displaying “greed, pride, and lust for power”: “People were being intimidated, forced to sign petitions; some had been beaten.” Against that was heard the voice of one (European) Lama Ole Nydahl (Lehnert, 1998).

Interestingly, Trungpa himself, in 1984, had Osel Tendzin write to Vajradhatu members, warning them against Nydahl. Indeed, in that missive, Nydahl’s teaching style was described as being “contrary to everything we have been taught and have come to recognize as genuine.” Trungpa was further of the opinion that “there is some real perversion of the buddhadharma taking place by Mr. Nydahl” (Rawlinson, 1997).
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg...ters/dalai.asp

I didn’t know about the the Karma Kagyu Lineage conflict that brought fierce controversy since 1992.

The conflict arose after a young monk, Urgyen Trinley, was falsely proclaimed the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, head of the Karma Kagyu lineage by Tai Situ Rinpoche. Traditionally, the Karmapas are unique among all incarnate Buddhist lamas in that they leave specific instructions detailing their future rebirth. After the 16th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje died in 1981, the entire Kagyu world anxiously awaited word of his reincarnation.

In 1992, Situ Rinpoche, officially the third ranking lama in the lineage presented a letter to fellow Kagyu lamas, which he claimed was the "prediction letter" of the 16th Karmapa. Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche, the second ranking lama in the lineage rejected the authenticity of that letter outright and insisted the document undergo a forensic examination.

His demands were totally disregarded, particularly after H.H. the Dalai Lama, against all historic tradition, involved himself in the matter and gave his recognition of the candidate. The Chinese Communist Government also gave its full backing to Tai Situ Rinpoche's candidate and "officially" proclaimed the boy to be a "living buddha". China's recognition of Urgyen Trinley represented a sudden about face in its policy of not recognizing the reincarnation of any Buddhist lama. Based on the alleged forged letter, the young nomad boy, Urgyen Trinley was enthroned in Tibet/China. The enthronement took place without the seal of approval of Shamar Rinpoche , the active head of the Karma Kagyu lineage. Shamar Rinpoche has repeatedly pointed out to H.H. the Dalai Lama the glaring improprieties in the case and urged him to stay out of what is a strictly Kagyu issue.

In 1994, Shamar Rinpoche, in accordance with Kagyu tradition, found and recognized Thaye Dorje and proclaimed him the rightful 17th Karmapa.
Thaye Dorje is supported by many high ranking lamas of the Karma Kagyu lineage. However, the lineage is presently split into two camps: those following Thaye Dorje and those supporting Urgyen Trinley.

To this day, few members of the media have explored the complex issue of Tibetan politics, which led to this turbulent and often violent controversy. As a result of receiving H.H. the Dalai Lama's stamp of authenticity, much of the Buddhist world has been led to believe that Urgyen Trinley is the sole and legitimate Karmapa. In fact, the Dalai Lamas have never held any right over the confirmation, let alone recognition, of a Karmapa at any time throughout history. Indeed, the Karmapa line precedes that of the Dalai Lamas by over three hundred years and their lineages are and always have been entirely separate.

As yet no forensic examination has taken place of the original letter in question in spite of repeated calls by Shamar Rinpoche, and others to do so.
Updates to that continuing dispute exist at www.karmapa-controversy.org.

Interesting that Dalai Lama didn’t support forensic examination. The conflict would be resolved a long time ago. Well, politics and intrigues. More about Tibetan politics - Trimondi and Trimondi’s (2003) The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism.

[ftil]

To continue with sex and violence.

Let's look at Hindu gurus.

JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI WAS DISCOVERED as a teenage boy by Charles Leadbeater of the Theosophical Society, on a beach in Madras, India, in 1909.

The Theosophical Society itself had been founded in New York City by the east-European “seer” Madame Helena P. Blavatsky (HPB), in 1875. Its membership soon numbered over 100,000; an Asian headquarters was established in Adyar, India, in 1882.

The Theosophical Society ... was at first enormously successful and attracted converts of the intellectual stature of the inventor Thomas Edison and Darwin’s friend and collaborator Alfred Russel Wallace (Storr, 1996).

No less an authority than [Zen scholar] D. T. Suzuki was prepared to say that [Blavatsky’s] explication of Buddhist teachings in The Voice of Silence ... testified to an initiation into “the deeper side of Mahayana doctrine” (Oldmeadow, 2004).

Perhaps. And yet—

W. E. Coleman has shown that [Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled] comprises a sustained and frequent plagiarism of about one hundred contemporary texts, chiefly relating to ancient and exotic religions, demonology, Freemasonry and the case for spiritualism....

[The Secret Doctrine] betrayed her plagiarism again but now her sources were mainly contemporary works on Hinduism and modern science (Goodrick-Clarke, 2004).

Blavatsky herself taught the existence of a hierarchy of “Ascended Masters,” included among them one Lord Maitreya, the World Teacher whose incarnations had allegedly included both Krishna and Jesus. Those same Masters, however, were modeled on real figures from public life, e.g., on individuals involved in East Indian political reform (Vernon, 2001). They were fraudulently contacted in other ways as well:

[Blavatsky’s housekeeper, Emma Cutting, demonstrated] how she and HPB had made a doll together, which they ... manipulated on a long bamboo pole in semi-darkness to provide the Master’s alleged apparitions. Emma had also dropped “precipitated” letters on to Theosophical heads from holes in the ceiling, while her husband had made sliding panels and hidden entrances into the shrine room [adjoining HPB’s bedroom] to facilitate Blavatsky’s comings and goings and make possible the substitution of all the brooches, dishes and other objects that she used in her demonstrations [i.e., as purported materializations or “apports”]....

The Russian journalist V. S. Solovieff claimed to have caught [Blavatsky] red-handed with the silver bells which produced astral music [in séances].... Blavatsky confessed to Solovieff quite bluntly that the phenomena were fraudulent, adding that one must deceive men in order to rule them (Washington, 1995).

Madame Blavatsky died in 1891. Prior to that passing, however, Leadbeater had already begun claiming to channel messages himself, from Blavatsky’s “Masters.”

The famously clairvoyant Leadbeater, further, had before (and after) been accused of indecent behavior toward a series of adolescent males:

One of Leadbeater’s favorite boys [accused him] of secretly teaching boys to masturbate under cover of occult training, and insinuat[ed] that masturbation was only the prelude to the gratifying of homosexual lust (Washington, 1995).

Leadbeater found Krishnamurti to be a highly refined soul, apparently completely free of selfishness, i.e., ego. Krishnamurti was soon thereafter declared by Leadbeater to be the current “vehicle” for Lord Maitreya, and schooled accordingly within the Theosophical ranks.
Geoffrey D. Falk, Stripping the Gurus:Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg...ishnamurti.asp

Leadbeater made another attempt to bring “Great Teacher”.

The Rôle which the Theosophical Society attributes to itself is not limited to announcing the coming of the 'Great Teacher;' it has also to find and prepare...the chosen 'disciple' in which he will incarnate when the time arrives. To tell the truth, the accomplishment of this mission has not been without failures; there was at least a first attempt which failed piteously...It was in London, where a kind of Theosophical community existed in St. John's Wood. There they brought up a young boy, sickly in appearance and not very intelligent, but whose least word was listened to with respect and admiration, because he was no other, it appears, than 'Pythagoras reincarnated.'...Some time later the father of this child, a retired captain in the British Army, suddenly withdrew his son from Mr. Leadbeater's hands, who had been specially charged with his education (Soleil, August 1, 1913). There must have been some threat of scandal about this, for Mr. Leadbeater was in 1906 excluded from the Theosophical Society for reasons concerning which a discreet silence was kept...it was only later that a letter written by Mrs. Besant was made known, in which she speaks of methods, 'worthy of the severest reprobation' (Theosophical Voice, of Chicago, May 1908). Reinstated, however, in 1908, after 'having promised not to repeat these dangerous counsels' (Theosophist, February 1908) previously given to young boys, and reconciled with Mrs. Besant, whose constant collaborator he became in Adyar, Mr. Leadbeater played yet again the principal rôle in the second affair, much better known, and which had almost the same wind-up...
Christina Stoddard 1930, Light-Bearers of Darkness


At any rate, even prior to being discovered by Leadbeater, while still in India’s public school system, Krishnamurti’s own education had been a traumatic experience:

Never one to endear himself to schoolmasters, Krishna was punished brutally for his inadequacies and branded an imbecile (Vernon, 2001).

He was caned almost every day for being unable to learn his lessons. Half his time at school was spent in tears on the veranda (Lutyens, 1975).

Not surprisingly, then, in later years Krishnamurti evinced little regard for academic accomplishments:

[The Nobel-caliber physicist David Bohm] spoke of the humiliation he had experienced at the hands of Krishnamurti who, in his presence, made cutting jokes about “professors” and did not acknowledge the importance of Bohm’s work....
He suffered greatly under [Krishnamurti’s] disrespect of him, which at times was blatantly obvious (Peat, 1997).
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg...ishnamurti.asp

We saw Krishnamurti in 1926, the year appointed, presented by this society as the "World Teacher" or New Messiah!

"...for the moment we wish to point out only a few of these auxiliary groups (of the Theosophical Society), and first of all 'The Order of the Rising Sun,' organized at Benares by Mr. Arundale, afterwards converted, January 11, 1911, into the 'Independent Order of the Star in the East,' with Alcyone (Krishnamurti's astrological pseudonym) as nominal chief and Mrs. Besant as 'Protector,' 'in order to group together all those who, whether within or without the Theosophical Society, believed in the coming of the Supreme World Teacher.'

"The Order of the Star in the East, which exists for the sole purpose of preparing the way for the Coming, has over 50,000 members throughout the world...The Head of the Order is Krishnamurti, who is now thirty-one years old. The 'Protector' is Mrs. Annie Besant, International President of the Theosophical Society...On December 28, 1911, the first overshadowing of the World Teacher took place at Benares, when the Head, then a boy of sixteen, was giving out some certificates of membership. No words were spoken.

At the time of his first visit to Paris (he returned May 1914) Alcyone was sixteen years old; he had already written, or at least they had published under his name, a little book called 'At the Feet of the Master,' for which Theosophists have shown the greatest admiration, although it was scarcely more than a collection of moral precepts without much originality.

The next public manifestation came when Krishnamurti was thirty years old. On the evening of December 28 of last year he was speaking at the Jubilee Convention of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, in India. This time the World Teacher Himself spoke, although He only said a few sentences. Mr. Krishnamurti was explaining why the Teacher was coming and something of what He would do, when a Voice of penetrating sweetness, speaking in the first person, said these words: 'I come for those who want sympathy, who want happiness; who are longing to be released; who are longing to find happiness in all things; I come to reform not to tear down; not to destroy but to build.'...This same World Teacher will soon come again, speaking through another disciple, as he spoke through Jesus 1,926 years ago...In our view we draw a clear distinction between Jesus and Christ...We know that at the Baptism of Jesus, and again at the Transfiguration, something was added to Jesus that was not there before. That is perfectly explained by this distinction between the disciple Jesus and the Lord Christ...We look upon Krishnamurti as a disciple, whose body will be used by the World Teacher...At first months will separate the public manifestation of the Lord. Later He will speak more frequently, until we hope it will be possible for Christ to stay with us for many years. When He came before, He was only allowed to stay for three brief years doing public work, when He was murdered. As a result of that effort all He left was a little seed of 120 people...If we make it possible for Him to stay then times three years, what harvest will not that seed bring forth? When He came before, John the Baptist alone prepared the way for Him. Today tens of thousands of sincere people are His forerunners...We hope to make it possible for Him to stay many years once the body of His disciple is tempered to stand the strain sufficiently. Will the Christian Churches accept Him?

Finally, at Ommen 1927, Krishnamurti announced: "My Beloved and I are One." The obsession was completed, Krishnamurti's own personality was in absolute abeyance!

And his teachings what freedom means.

"The purpose, the manner of attaining this happiness, of gaining this liberation, is in your own hand. It does not lie in the hand of some unknown god, or in temples or in churches, but in your own self. For temples, churches, and religions bind, and you must be beyond all dreams of God in order to attain this Liberation. There is no external God as such who urges us to live nobly, or to live basely; there is but the voice of our own intuition...When that voice is sufficiently strong, when that voice, the result of accumulated experience, is obeyed, and you yourself become that voice, then you are God...So the most important thing is to uncover this God within each one of you. That is the purpose of life; to awaken the dormant God (the unused sex-force, the Kundalini within you) to give life to the speak which exists in each one of us, so that we become a flame (illuminised), and join the eternal flame of the world (the universal life-force or either, as above so below, of Hermes)...In the permanent is established, is seen, the only God in the world, yourself that has been purified."
Stoddart, 1930, Light-Bearers of Darkness,

An interesting details of camp at Ommen.

A correspondent in the "Patriot," August 29, 1929, gives some interesting details as to what went on at this Camp Meeting at Ommen which we give verbatim:

"I have studied Theosophy and its kindred movements, such as Co-Masonry, the Liberal Catholic Church, and the Star, for some years, and have formed the definite opinion that behind the mask of the innocent study of symbolism, brotherhood, and comparative religion there lies a deep-seated anti-British organization. The link between these movements is Dr. Annie Besant...

Last year the camp at Ommen was a most astounding place. though the key-note of the Star teaching is 'freedom for all,' the camp was surrounded by a seven-foot barbed-wire fence; all members had to wear a label which showed clearly their name and number, and without which they were not allowed in or out of the camp; there were endless irritating rules and regulations, all destined to reduce the inmates to the last stage of servility.

The table manners of the campers would have disgraced a farmyard, though, of course, Krishnamurti did not feed with the common herd, but in luxury at Eerde Castle, the residence of Baron von Pallandt, a prominent member of the Theosophical Society, who also holds a very high degree in the co-Masonic Order.

The 1929 camp at Ommen has just ended, and it was apparently there that Krishnamurti publicly announced that the Order of the Star would be dissolved. What is going to happen to his unfortunate dupes who have followed him slavishly, have given up their own religion, and who have worshipped him blindly is impossible to say. His own words and writings urge them to have no other support but themselves, which in plain English means having no other support but him; he is now casting them away with broken beliefs, no ideals, and no leader or Teacher on whom to rely. He has undermined their faith in God and their country, and now leaves them in a state of utter chaos.”
Stoddart, 1930, Light-Bearers of Darkness

What a freedom and a teacher who broke all foundations of his devotees! BTW, he wrote Total Freedom. Well, I read it before I researched who he was.

But there is more........

Krishnamurti’s contemporary appearance on Earth offered hope to Theosophists for the “salvation of mankind.” After years of being groomed for his role as their World Teacher, however, Krishnamurti’s faith in the protection of Theosophy’s Masters, and Leadbeater’s guiding visions of the same, was shattered in 1925 by the unexpected death of his own younger brother. (Jiddu had previously been assured, in his own believed meetings with the Masters on the astral plane, that his brother would survive the relevant illness.) Thereafter, he viewed those visions, including his own, as being merely personal wish-fulfillments, and considered the occult hierarchy of Masters to be irrelevant (Vernon, 2001).

That, however, did not imply any rejection of mysticism in general, on Krishnamurti’s part:

By the autumn of 1926 [following an alleged kundalini awakening which began in 1922] Krishna made it clear ... that a metamorphosis had taken place. [The kundalini is a subtle energy believed to reside at the base of the spine. When “awakened” and directed up the spine into the brain, it produces ecstatic spiritual realization.] His former personality had been stripped away, leaving him in a state of constant and irreversible union with the godhead (Vernon, 2001).

Or, as Krishnamurti (1969) himself put it, in openly proclaiming his status as World Teacher:

I have become one with the Beloved. I have been made simple. I have become glorified because of Him.

[Krishnamurti] maintained that his consciousness was merged with his beloved, by which he meant all of creation (Sloss, 2000).

In 1932, Krishnamurti and Rajagopal’s wife began an affair which would last for more than twenty-five years. The woman, Rosalind, became pregnant on several occasions, suffering miscarriages and at least two covert/illegal abortions. The oddity of that relationship is not lessened by Jiddu’s earlier regard for the same woman. For, both he and his brother believed that Rosalind was the reincarnation of their long-lost mother ... in spite of the fact that the latter had only died two years after Rosalind was born (Sloss, 2000).
The continuing affair with Rosalind was, not surprisingly, less than completely in line with the quasi-Messiah’s own teachings:

Krishnamurti had occasionally told young people that celibacy was significant, indicating that it encouraged the generation of great energy and intensity that could lead to psychological transformation. Krishnamurti seems to have raised the matter with [David] Bohm as well, and the physicist believed that the Indian teacher led a celibate life (Peat, 1997).
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg...ishnamurti.asp

Krishnamurti lectured:

When man becomes aware of the movement of his own consciousness he will see the division between the thinker and the thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation which is insight without any shadow of the past. This timeless insight brings about a deep radical change in the mind (Krishnamurti, in [Lutyens, 1983]).

Through that personal realization, Krishnamurti claimed (completely untenably) to be unconditioned by his own upbringing and, indeed, to have (conveniently) “forgotten” most of his past. Nevertheless, his own teachings have much in common with those of both the Buddha and the Upanishads. Not coincidentally, Jiddu had been intensively schooled in both of those philosophies during his early years at Adyar (Sloss, 2000).

He taught and practiced the meditative exercise as “a movement without any motive, without words and the activity of thought.”

[R]epeating mantras and following gurus were, he said, particularly stupid ways of wasting time (Peat, 1997).

And the Krinsh, with his krinsh-feet quite warm in Ojai,
Said, “Be independent, meditate my way!
Be free without gurus!
Be free without mantras!
Be free without beliefs, intentions or tantras!”

Jiddu himself, however, was a guru in everything but name. The authoritarian pronouncements, intolerance for disagreement, and grandiosity could have come from any of the other “enlightened” individuals with whom we shall soon become too familiar. Though Krishnamurti himself was “allergic” to the guru-disciple relationship, “if it looks like a guru, talks like a guru and acts like a guru....”

Krishnamurti lacked ordinary human compassion and kindness; he was intolerant, even contemptuous, of those who could not rise to his own high plane (Vernon, 2001).

Even as he lay on his deathbed, wasting away from pancreatic cancer, Krishnamurti stated firmly that “while he was alive he was still ‘the World Teacher’” (Vernon, 2001). (That terminal illness occurred in spite of his claimed possession of laying-on-of-hands healing abilities, which proved equally ineffectual in his own prior attempts at healing Bohm of his heart ailments.) Indeed, so enamored was the Krinsh of his own teaching position in the world that he recorded the following statement a mere ten days before his passing:

I don’t think people realize what tremendous energy and intelligence went through this body.... You won’t find another body like this, or that supreme intelligence operating in a body for many hundred years. You won’t see it again (in Lutyens, 1988).

Krishnamurti is supposed to have said that he is even greater than Buddha or the Christ (in Sloss, 2000).

Shortly before his death the Indian teacher had declared that no one had ever truly understood his teaching; no one besides himself had experienced transformation (Peat, 1997).
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg...ishnamurti.asp

More about Krishnamurti character.

[W]hen I interrogated Krishnamurti himself about the whole World Mother affair [i.e., the Theosophical Society’s short-lived programme for global spiritual upliftment under a chosen woman after the “World Teacher” plans for Krishnamurti had fallen through], he blurted out, “Oh, that was all cooked u—” before he caught himself in the realization that he was admitting to a recollection of events in his early life which he later came to deny he possessed (Sloss, 2000).

[Emily Lutyens] said she knew Krishna was a congenital liar but that she would nevertheless always adore him....

My mother asked him once why he lied and he replied with astonishing frankness, “Because of fear” (Sloss, 2000).

Krinsh was outraged. His voice changed completely from a formal indifference to heated anger. It became almost shrill.

“I have no ego!” he said. “Who do you think you are, to talk to me like this?” (Sloss, 2000).

One day, history will reveal everything; but the division in Krishnamurti himself will cast a very dark shadow on all he has said or written. Because the first thing the readers will say, is: “If he cannot live it, who can?” (in Sloss, 2000).
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg...ishnamurti.asp

LOL!!!! Oh, those gurus.

Let's look another famous guru.

Physicist John S. Hagelin ... has predicted that Maharishi’s influence on history “will be far greater than that of Einstein or Gandhi” (Gardner, 1996).

BORN IN 1918, THE MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI graduated with a physics degree from the University of Allahabad. Soon thereafter, he received the system of Transcendental Meditation® (TM®) from his “Guru Dev,” Swami Brahmanand Saraswati, who occupied the “northern seat” of yoga in India, as one of four yogic “popes” in the country.

Transcendental Meditation itself is an instance of mantra yoga.
The [TM] movement taught that the enlightened man does not have to use critical thought, he lives in tune with the “unbounded universal consciousness.” He makes no mistakes, his life is error free (Patrick L. Ryan, in [Langone, 1995]). Contemporary followers of the Maharishi have included actress Heather Graham and the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Brian Josephson. Plus Deepak Chopra [see TranceNet, 2004], whose best-selling book Quantum Healing was dedicated to the Maharishi.

The Beatles’ disillusionment with the Maharishi during their stay with him in India in 1968 involved allegations that Maharishi had sex with a visiting American student (Anthony, et al., 1987).

The Beatles ... parted with Maharishi in 1969 with the public comment that he was “addicted to cash” (Klein and Klein, 1979).

Details along the following lines as to the alleged horrendous goings-on within the Hare Krishna community, including widespread claims of child sexual abuse, drug dealing and weapons stockpiling, have long existed:

The founder of the institution, the late Prabhupada, was allegedly told about the physical and sexual abuse of minors in 1972, a time when he totally controlled the institution. The victims allege he and others conspired to suppress the alleged crimes, fearful that the public exposure would threaten the viability of the movement (S. Das, 2003).

[After Prabhupada’s death] the Hare Krishna movement degenerated into a number of competing [so-called] cults that have known murder, the abuse of women and children, drug dealing, and swindles that would impress a Mafia don (Hubner and Gruson, 1990).

The movement’s [post-Prabhupada] leadership was first forced to confront the victims of abuse at a meeting in May 1996, when a panel of ten former Krishna pupils testified that they had been regularly beaten and caned at school, denied medical care and sexually molested and raped homosexually at knife point (Goodstein, 1998).

More about sexual practice http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stg.../maharishi.asp

In 1973, Maharishi International University (MIU) was established in Santa Barbara, California, moving a year later to its permanent location in Fairfield, Iowa.

In 1976, the Maharishi discovered the principles which were to lead to the TM Sidhi [sic] Program—based on the siddhis or powers outlined in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Those include the technique of Yogic Flying, or levitation ... or “hopping down the yogi trail”:

During the first stage of Yogic Flying, the body—motivated only by the effortless mental impulse of the Sidhi technique—rises up in the air in a series of blissful hops (Maharishi, 1995).

The Maharishi has also claimed that advanced practitioners can develop powers of invisibility, mind-reading, perfect health and immortality (Epstein, 1995).

One three-year study done by the National Research Council on improving human performance concluded that “TM is ineffectual in improving human performance” and that pro-TM researchers were “deeply flawed in their methodology” (Ross, 2003a).

The [previous media] reports charged that at least five boys had died under mysterious circumstances and that about 8000 of the 10,000 children admitted to the vidya peeth in the past five years had run away from the ashram, allegedly because of the “torture” they had been subjected to inside.... To make matters more difficult for the ashram administration, [local MLA Mahendra Singh] Bhati and an ayurvedic physician, Dr. Govind Sharma, formerly employed at the ashram, charged that some of the boys were also subjected to sexual abuse by the teachers (Dutt, 1988).

Listed below are excerpts from articles, books and other studies which analyze the problems with research conducted by the TM Organization. These problems include allegations of suppression of negative evidence, of fraud and of "gross scientific incompetence", lack of double-blind controls, refusal to submit raw data, failure to control for set effects, failure to control for expectancy of relief, failure to control for placebo/suggestible-prone subjects, and others.

Study: The Various Implications Arising from the Practice of Transcendental Meditation: An empirical analysis of pathogenic structures as an aid in counseling. Bensheim, Germany: (Institut fur Jugend Und Gesellschaft, Ernst-Ludwig-Strasse 45, 6140.) Institute for Youth and Society, 1980 (188 pgs).

Excerpts:

"The T.M. movement only reports on positive effects of transcendental meditation, a rather different story has become known through parents and ex-meditators."

"Also, medicinal, psychological and sociological research ... is instigated by the 'Maharishi European Research University' (MERU), and is conducted mostly by scientists who themselves belong to the T.M. movement. ...Possible negative effects, are either not mentioned at all in the investigations, or are barely mentioned."

"The uncountable investigations, (billed as scientific) which the T.M. movement has instigated or have been conducted by active T.M. meditators, show the determination of the movement to keep up the image of 'the scientifically proven relaxation technique with a high therapeutic success rate', and to deny the general public an insight into the completely different meaning of T.M. for the 'insider'."

"It was only after negative changes which parents observed in their children, or married partners in their meditating spouse, that the initial favorable disposition of the parent/married partner became unfavorable. This shows that the claim made by the T.M. movement that the critical stance of parents has its roots in 'generation conflict' is without any foundation and obscures the actual state of affairs."

"A drastic alteration in the field of social intercourse becomes clear to the onlooker, as well as such changes occurring in school and career performance. Also documented are changes in the mental and physical health of the meditator."

"This major reduction in positive characteristics stands in total opposition to the promises made by the T.M. movement. ...It is a deliberate deception for the T.M. movement to claim greater achievements and social activity for meditators. ...The social behavior of meditators and the attitude of the T.M. movement towards social life exhibit sect-like tendencies, which have nothing to do with the relaxation technique presented to the public by the movement. The personality profile once more gives the trend of changes in all three groups: there is no development of personal attributes in the sense of an improvement in those attributes. Various attributes, like the emotions and a social responsibility, lose all importance throughout. T.M., however, promises an improvement of and increase in these attributes. Most strongly affected are the perception of reality, openness, and the ability to make critical evaluations."

"The mainly positive experiences in the earlier stages (pictures, feelings of happiness) are replaced in time - according to reports of the ex-meditators - by terrifying images and feelings of fear or anguish. This is known to the T.M. movement. The theory states that 'unstressing' is taking place during these conditions. It is advised that one should meditate more intensively. Only when all of that stress was released, would pleasant experiences again be had.

"Over 70% of those in our study had difficulties, statements made on tape list these difficulties mainly as being: problems with sleeping, anguish, increasing pain in the head, stomach, and back, (compare with section 6 of this chapter), problems with concentration, hallucinations, feelings of isolation, depression, over-sensitivity, and instability.

"It is significant that the percentage is high in each group. This shows that even the so-called easy meditation (2x20) can lead to serious problems. This is confirmed by comparing the ordinary meditators with sidhas, T.M. teachers, and governors. 70% of ordinary meditators had experienced difficulties as a result of the meditation, 82% of insiders."
http://www.behind-the-tm-facade.org/...h-problems.htm

TranceNet: Independent TM Research Archive
For the first time on the Web, TranceNet presents the entire text of this seminal report in English translation -- with charts. The TM movement attempted to suppress this report in German courts, but its findings were upheld by the German high court (The Federal Republic of Germany: OVG Muenster: 5 A 1152/84, The Bundesverwaltungsgericht: 23.5.87 7 C 2.87, The Bundesverfassungsgericht: 1 BvR 881/89).

Among the subjects studied:

• 76% of long-term meditators experience psychological disorders -- including
26% nervous breakdowns
• 63% experience serious physical complaints
• 70% recorded a worsening ability to concentrate
• Researchers found a startling drop in honesty among long-term meditators
• Plus a detailed examination of the history, culture, and secret teachings of
the TM movement.
"The Report of Germany's Institute for Youth and Society on TM"

Sworn affirmation from Attorney Anthony D. DeNaro , former Professor of Economics and Business Law and Director of Grants Administration at MIU. July 16, 1986. Presented to Judge Gasch of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia as part of Kropinsky civil suit, #85-2848.

Excerpts:

"9. The deliberate pattern and practice of fraud, deceit and misrepresentation by knowledgeable, aware, educated and intelligent people, including lawyers, Tarabilda and Druker in tax (IRS) matters, corruption of the curricula, inter alia, is very pertinent and material to understanding and gaining some insight into how and why the practices of the defendants was able to continue without interruption for so long. It also suggests why they are seeking to cover-up a very substantial and injurious pattern of deception, fraud and corruption:

"They demonstrate, for example, that:

"d) Scienter [informed or guilty knowledge] was clearly present in the frauds, but was justified in the name of a higher ideology, which presumably means they can lie, come into a federal court, and commit perjury;

"e) More significantly, an understanding of their wilful deceits and machinations in these areas, provides a useful insight and perspective into the more serious areas resulting in psychological and physical injury to very vulnerable, and easily manipulated young men and women;

"f) If it can be demonstrated that the zealous, and often fanatical, educated people, including lawyers associated with the TM cult, are willing, even eager, to engage in an active, deliberate, systematic pattern and practice of major fraud involving hundreds of millions of dollars against the federal government, it might reasonably be inferred that they are willing to deceive and injure (if necessary) innocent and very vulnerable private citizens, i.e., young students;"

"11. I have read an affidavit consisting of one and a half pages, sworn and subscribed to by Professor John W. Patterson on June 30, 1986, and agree with his observations and conclusions.

"At para 3, page 1, Professor Patterson suggests more than 'gross scientific incompetence' is involved and believes the misrepresentations are the result of 'dishonesty, deliberate deceit and fraud.' I agree unequivocally."

"12. The deceptions are intricate, fairly sophisticated, intentional, and are mainly designed to sell or market TM. ..."


Article entitled, "Maharishi Ayur-Veda: guru's marketing scheme promises the world eternal 'perfect health'" , by Andrew Skolnick, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Oct. 2, 1991, vol. 266: pp. 1741-45, 1749-50

Excerpts:

"IF THE CLAIMS of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi prove true, those who follow him soon will be blessed with eternal youth, 'perfect health,' and the 'strength of an elephant.' They will be able to 'walk through walls,' make themselves 'invisible,' and 'fly through the air' without the benefit of machines. In addition, there will be no more war or crime. Automobile accidents will be a thing of the past, and even the weather will have to obey their collective consciousness. Such are the widely promoted claims of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement and Maharishi Ayur-Veda, some of which were presented by authors Deepak Chopra, MD, Hari M. Sharma, MD, FRCPC, and Brihaspati Dev Triguna, in their 'Letter From New Delhi' ('Maharishi Ayur-Veda: Modern Insights Into Ancient Medicine,' JAMA.1991;265:2633-2637).

"But according to representatives of the TM movement, the Maharishi's plan to turn earth into heaven is not just wishful thinking; they say they have more than 500 scientific studies to prove they can do it. Among them now is the 'Letter From New Delhi,' which is being pointed to throughout the TM movement as a sign that the Maharishi's plan is gaining scientific respectability. However, among many authorities on quackery and long-time watchers of this movement, the article in JAMA has brought anger and dismay. (Please see Letters, pages 1769 through 1774.) They say that Maharishi Ayur-Veda is not traditional Indian medicine, but the latest of the Maharishi's schemes to boost the declining numbers of people taking TM courses, through which the movement recruits new members. This June, members of the TM community in Fairfield, Iowa, were called to a special assembly at one of the Maharishi International University's "Golden Domes of Pure Knowledge" to celebrate the news of JAMA's publication of 'Letter From New Delhi.' The same month, The Fairfield (Iowa) Source, a monthly newspaper that is run by members of the movement, reported that the 'Letter From New Delhi' was 'the lead article in JAMA.' (The newspaper has since published a correction identifying it as the first article in the issue rather than the lead scientific article --a subtle but important difference.)

"What the newspaper didn't report was what editors of THE JOURNAL learned shortly after the article was published: The authors are involved in organizations that promote and sell the products and services about which they wrote. Despite this, they submitted a signed financial disclosure form with their manuscript indicating that they had no such affiliations. The statement, which all authors of articles accepted by JAMA must sign before publication, says: "I certify that any affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with a direct financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript (eg, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, expert testimony) are listed below. Otherwise, my signature indicates that I have no such financial interest. "The authors of the "Letter from New Delhi" listed no involvements or affiliations. Upon learning otherwise, THE JOURNAL immediately requested a full accounting from the authors, which was published as a financial disclosure correction (JAMA.1991;266:798). Although the confusing list apparently holds the record in terms of length for corrections published in THE JOURNAL, it still is incomplete. In addition to being the medical director of TM's premiere health facility, the Maharishi Ayurveda Health Center for Stress Management and Behavioral Medicine, in Lancaster, Mass, and a former consultant and board member for Maharishi Ayur-Veda Products International (MAPI) Inc, also in Lancaster (the sole distributor of Maharishi Ayur-Veda TM products, an extensive line of herbs, teas, oils, food supplements, incense, and devices said to prevent or treat disease and reverse aging), Chopra performs many of the unproven and expensive Maharishi Ayur-Veda services throughout the country. Indeed, he claims to have treated more than 10,000 patients with these remedies between 1985 and 1990 (Perfect Health: The Complete Mind/Body Guide.New York, NY: Harmony Books; 1990:6).

"The authors misrepresented Maharishi Ayur-Veda to JAMA as Ayurvedic medicine, the ancient, traditional health care system of India, rather than a trademark for a brand of products and services marketed since 1985 by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's complex network of research, educational, and commercial organizations.

"An investigation of the movement's marketing practices reveals what appears to be a widespread pattern of misinformation, deception, and manipulation of lay and scientific news media. This campaign appears to be aimed at earning at least the look of scientific respectability for the TM movement, as well as at making profits from sales of the many products and services that carry the Maharishi's name."


Peer review analysis of the "Maharishi Effect", Evaluating Heterodox Theories . Markovsky, Barry and Fales, Evan. The University of North Carolina Press. Published December 1997 in Social Forces Volume 76 (2):511-25



Letter from Dr. Dennis Roark , former MIU Dean of Faculty and head of Physics Department, to Pat Ryan in Philadelphia, PA. From TM-EX Newsletter, Spring 1992

Excerpts:

"During my time at MIU, I had occasion to examine the scientific claims of the movement, to interact with those who had reportedly performed the research, to study the metaphysics, philosophy and religion associated with the TM technique, and to work with the founder of the movement and the college. It is my certain belief that the many scientific claims both to factual evidences of unique, beneficial effects of TM and to theoretical relationships between the experience of TM and physics are not only without any reasonable basis, but are in fact in many ways fraudulent."

"Confirmed to me by investigators at MIU was the suppression of negative evidence that these investigators had collected. Strong bias was present in selecting only data favourable to a conclusion that was made prior to the data collection. Because of the strong authoritarian (essentially cultic) aspects of the movement, only results supporting ideas generated by the movement leadership could receive any hearing. The 'scientific research' is without objectivity and is at times simply untrue."
http://www.behind-the-tm-facade.org/...h-problems.htm

Yoga and psychotherapy. Part 6

“First stage is deep breathing and movement. Second stage is screaming meditation. By the time you get to the third stage, you are hardly there…. Your mind lives your body. There were glowing reports published giving the credits to Gurus and psychological techniques but neglected to mention thousands of cases of emotional and mental breakdown, insanity, suicides, rape, murders……..This dangerous technique of enlightenment were incorporated in psychotherapy, self-help seminars, or even in Catholic and Protestant church” (quote from video)

A very interesting documentary movie about Hindu religion. Hindu practices were introduced to western psychotherapy.

New Age Mind Control Cults Part 6/13

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzmld...eature=related


It was a tip of the icberg. But I can finish with Osho, Indian mystic, and "sex guru".

He moved to a property in Koregaon Park, Poona, purchased with the help of Ma Yoga Mukta (Catherine Venizelos), a Greek shipping heiress where he taught from 1974 to 1981. From 1975, after the arrival of several therapists from the Human Potential Movement, the ashram began to complement meditations with a growing number of therapy groups, which became a major source of income for the ashram.

The Poona ashram was by all accounts an exciting and intense place to be, with an emotionally charged, madhouse-carnival atmosphere.

To decide which therapies to participate in, visitors either consulted Osho or made selections according to their own preferences. Some of the early therapy groups in the ashram, such as the Encounter group, were experimental, allowing a degree of physical aggression as well as sexual encounters between participants. Conflicting reports of injuries sustained in Encounter group sessions began to appear in the press.

Richard Price, at the time a prominent Human Potential Movement therapist and co-founder of the Esalen institute, found the groups encouraged participants to 'be violent' rather than 'play at being violent' (the norm in Encounter groups conducted in the United States), and criticised them for "the worst mistakes of some inexperienced Esalen group leaders". Price is alleged to have exited the Poona ashram with a broken arm following a period of eight hours locked in a room with participants armed with wooden weapons.

By 1981, Osho's ashram hosted 30,000 visitors per year. Daily discourse audiences were by then predominantly European and American. Many observers noted that Osho's lecture style changed in the late seventies, becoming less focused intellectually and featuring an increasing number of ethnic or dirty jokes intended to shock or amuse his audience.

In 1981, Osho relocated to the United States and his followers established an intentional community, later known as Rajneeshpuram, in the state of Oregon. Within a year, the leadership of the commune became embroiled in a conflict with local residents, primarily over land use, which was marked by hostility on both sides. The large collection of Rolls-Royce automobiles purchased for his use by his followers also attracted notoriety. The Oregon commune collapsed in 1985 when Osho revealed that the commune leadership had committed a number of serious crimes, including a bioterror attack (food contamination) on the citizens of The Dalles.

On 23 October 1985, a federal grand jury issued a thirty-five-count indictment charging Osho and several other disciples with conspiracy to evade immigration laws. On 28 October 1985, Osho and a small number of sannyasins accompanying him were arrested aboard a rented Learjet at a North Carolina airstrip; according to federal authorities the group was en route to Bermuda to avoid prosecution. Under the deal his lawyers made with the U.S. Attorney's office he was given a 10-year suspended sentence, five years' probation and a $400,000 penalty in fines and prosecution costs and agreed to leave the United States, not returning for at least five years without the permission of the United States Attorney General.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagwan_Shree_Rajneesh

Another prophet of world disaster.

The Oregon years saw an increased emphasis on Osho's prediction that the world might be destroyed by nuclear war or other disasters sometime in the 1990s.

So, if you don’t have 93 Rolls-Royces like Osho…forget about enlightenment.

How the East meets the West. Well, Lucyferian Tantra and Sex Magic by Micheal Ford may answer it. Well, I guess a devote of madame Balvatsky.

But how low people can fall??????

There are more "famous" gurus in Stripping the Gurus:Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment by Geoffrey D. Falk

[billl]

Well, I'm glad I checked in on this thread on a slow Sunday.

The last two posts seem like kind of a tangent from what the thread usually is about, but... it was nice to see so much on their subject in one place.

[ftil]

Well, I'm glad I checked in on this thread on a slow Sunday.

The last two posts seem like kind of a tangent from what the thread usually is about, but... it was nice to see so much on their subject in one place.

Well, this thread is about mythology and religion. I was inspired by discussion on The Art Thread.
Buddhism and Hindu religion didn’t get that much attention here so it deserved two long posts. It was a good opportunity to bring a very sensitive and troublesome subject about Eastern religions.

Second, since I can’t post paintings in the original size, I have to stay more focused. In the end of the day, it is good as I will not get immersed in art, forgetting to do my research. I can’t be upset, on the contrary, it helps a lot.

[Paulclem]

Well, I'm glad I checked in on this thread on a slow Sunday.

The last two posts seem like kind of a tangent from what the thread usually is about, but... it was nice to see so much on their subject in one place.

Oddly enough Billl, I posted a support of St Lukes on the art thread Ftil refers to after he came in for some criticism. (I have debated on this thread about the nature and purpose of a website quoted on here). Thus we have this response about Buddhism which is a very skewed view. I think it is aimed at myself. Not to worry.

[billl]

Buddhism and Hindu religion didn’t get that much attention here so it deserved two long posts. It was a good opportunity to bring a very sensitive and troublesome subject about Eastern religions.

I think you're right about it being a sensitive and troublesome subject that deserves attention, I was just looking at the lack of "art" in the posts.

If it's aimed at PaulClem at all, though, that'd be a bit unfortunate, because he isn't really involved in the guru and Vajrayana business, I don't think.

[Paulclem]

I think you're right about it being a sensitive and troublesome subject that deserves attention, I was just looking at the lack of "art" in the posts.

If it's aimed at PaulClem at all, though, that'd be a bit unfortunate, because he isn't really involved in the guru and Vajrayana business, I don't think.

My connection is with Tibetan Buddhism and HH The Dalai Lama, though you are right, I'm not a practitioner of Vajrayana.

The problem I have with some of the references above is that they mix valid criticism - such as Trogyam Trungpa - with websites which are full of willful (in my view), misrepresentation. i have pointed this out previously, so it's an old debate.

[ftil]

Originally posted by Paulclem


Oddly enough Billl, I posted a support of St Lukes on the art thread Ftil refers to after he came in for some criticism. (I have debated on this thread about the nature and purpose of a website quoted on here). Thus we have this response about Buddhism which is a very skewed view. I think it is aimed at myself. Not to worry.

My connection is with Tibetan Buddhism and HH The Dalai Lama, though you are right, I'm not a practitioner of Vajrayana.

The problem I have with some of the references above is that they mix valid criticism - such as Trogyam Trungpa - with websites which are full of willful (in my view), misrepresentation. i have pointed this out previously, so it's an old debate.

LOL! Don’t think that the world is centered around you. I was very clear that discussion about a few painters inspired and led me to Buddhist and Hindu religion. Please don’t start again. We have had conversation about Buddism and The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism and I am not interesting in repeating it.

You have expressed your opinion about book you haven't read and let others make up thier mind.

Second, you know very well that it is not a discussion thread. We have had also a conversation about it. Nothing has changed.

Anxiety, eh? Don't think that people who read this thread can't see your and Bill attempt to distract......and jump to another page so that others may miss uncomfortable truths.

As I said, I have been on forums and I have learned all methods to distract, silence or stop members.

Originally posted by Bill

I think you're right about it being a sensitive and troublesome subject that deserves attention, I was just looking at the lack of "art" in the posts.

It would be hard to provide art with that subject.

Bill, you also know very well that it is not a discussion thread.

Please respect it as you may see that this thread has a number of visitors who enjoys the format.

[Paulclem]

LOL! Don’t think that the world is centered around you. I was very clear that discussion about a few painters inspired and led me to Buddhist and Hindu religion. Please don’t start again. We have had conversation about Buddism and The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism and I am not interesting in repeating it.

You have expressed your opinion about book you haven't read and let others make up thier mind.

Second, you know very well that it is not a discussion thread. We have had also a conversation about it. Nothing has changed.

Anxiety, eh? Don't think that people who read this thread can't see your and Bill attempt to distract......and jump to another page so that others may miss uncomfortable truths.

As I said, I have been on forums and I have learned all methods to distract, silence or stop members.




It would be hard to provide art with that subject.

Bill, you also know very well that it is not a discussion thread.

Please respect it as you may see that this thread has a number of visitors who enjoys the format.

Yes. I am aware that people read posts.

As I said, I have been on forums and I have learned all methods to distract, silence or stop members.

I don't think you need any methods.