Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Snakes Alive

Magick predates all relgion as this new discovery confirms. Ritual is NOT religion, it is human conciousness making itself known to itself and the other. A message and a rememberance.


World's Oldest Ritual Discovered --
Worshipped The Python 70,000 Years Ago


A startling archaeological discovery this summer changes our understanding of human history. While, up until now, scholars have largely held that man's first rituals were carried out over 40, 000 years ago in Europe, it now appears that they were wrong about both the time and place.

Associate Professor Sheila Coulson, from the University of Oslo, can now show that modern humans, Homo sapiens, have performed advanced rituals in Africa for 70,000 years. She has, in other words, discovered mankind's oldest known ritual.

The archaeologist made the surprising discovery while she was studying the origin of the Sanpeople. A group of the San live in the sparsely inhabited area of north-western Botswana known as Ngamiland.

Coulson made the discovery while searching for artifacts from the Middle Stone Age in the only hills present for hundreds of kilometers in any direction. This group of small peaks within the Kalahari Desert is known as the Tsodilo Hills and is famous for having the largest concentration of rock paintings in the world.

The Tsodilo Hills are still a sacred place for the San, who call them the "Mountains of the Gods" and the "Rock that Whispers".

The python is one of the San's most important animals. According to their creation myth, mankind descended from the python and the ancient, arid streambeds around the hills are said to have been created by the python as it circled the hills in its ceaseless search for water.

Sheila Coulson's find shows that people from the area had a specific ritual location associated with the python. The ritual was held in a little cave on the northern side of the Tsodilo Hills. The cave itself is so secluded and access to it is so difficult that it was not even discovered by archaeologists until the 1990s.

When Coulson entered the cave this summer with her three master's students, it struck them that the mysterious rock resembled the head of a huge python. On the six meter long by two meter tall rock, they found three-to-four hundred indentations that could only have been man-made.

"You could see the mouth and eyes of the snake. It looked like a real python. The play of sunlight over the indentations gave them the appearance of snake skin. At night, the firelight gave one the feeling that the snake was actually moving".

It was a major archaeological find five years ago that made it possible for Sheila Coulson to date the finds in this little cave in Botswana. Up until the turn of the century, archaeologists believed that human civilisation developed in Europe after our ancestors migrated from Africa. This theory was crushed by Archaeologist Christopher Henshilwood when he published his find of traces from a Middle Stone Age dwelling in the Blombos Cave in Southern Cape, South Africa.


Some still do.....

Study: First Europeans lived in Italy

ROME, Nov. 7 (UPI) -- A team of Italian scientists says it has determined the first Europeans lived in southern Italy and not Spain, as had been thought.

Researchers from universities in Rome, Turin, Florence and Ferrara say a collection of fossilized flint tools and other instruments found in the southeastern region of Puglia has been dated to about 1.7 million years ago -- predating the oldest Spanish finds by nearly 1 million years, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.

The researchers say their discovery means paleontologists will have to redraw maps charting the path of ancient man out of Africa.

"This discovery reopens the debate on the origin of the population of the whole of Europe," said Carmelo Petronio of Rome's La Sapienza University. "It supports the theory that the first Europeans migrated westward across the Near East and not from northwestern Africa.



Once ritual becomes institionalized as a Theism which then maintains specialists; priests, it goes from being empowering spirituality of the community/commune to oppression. As I wrote here;


“The Shaman/Trickster appears in the cave paintings of the Early European Tribes, about 18,000 about years ago. Warriors don't appear until about 9,000 years ago. Kings appeared even later. It appears historically that the Shaman/Trickster came a lot earlier, perhaps even before the cave painters appeared. The Shaman/Trickster is closely tied to hunting, and hunting and gathering were the origin of human society, maybe 50,000 years ago. The warrior and the king are possible only after the development of cities. “ THEORIES ON THE NORTH AMERICAN TRICKSTER

Magick in practice is mnemonic, it is a remembrance of mans development of tool making and technics, the subconscious memory that labour altered our consciousness. The tools of magick, the cup, the pentangle, the athame, the wand and the sword are mnemonic symbols of the development and transition of the human from the dominance of the world of nature, into nature’s transformer, the magi. The invocations and the evocations of magickal chants are the voice of humankind speaking of and to the names of the natural world as it are transformed by our labour. [4] As the world changes so do the deities, the reifications of the world made in the image of man. Or to put it another way "That which is mostly observed, is that which replicates the most."

“Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world,” as Marx says in his introduction to his Critique of Hegel below. And we could add that man also makes science, and that magick which originates science[5], as it does religion, it continues to be a different form of science, natural science as opposed to technic based science of capitalism.

And as Frazer says in the Golden Bough; "So far, therefore, as the public profession of magic has been one of the roads by which men have passed to supreme power, it has contributed to emancipate mankind from the thraldom of tradition and to elevate them into a larger, freer life, with a broader outlook on the world. This is no small service rendered to humanity. And when we remember further that in another direction magic has paved the way for science, we are forced to admit that if the black art has done much evil, it has also been the source of much good; that if it is the child of error, it has yet been the mother of freedom and truth."[6]


Ophism is the earliest and longest living magickal meme in our memories and continues through Christianity and the other Abrahamaic religions thanks to Ophidian Gnosticism.


Serpent

The worship of the serpent is found in many parts of the Old World, although it is not unknown in the Americas. In Australia, the Aboriginal people worship a huge python, known by a variety of names but universally referred to as the Rainbow Serpent, that was said to have created the landscape, embodied the spirit of fresh water and punished lawbreakers. The Aborigines in southwest Australia called the serpent the Waugyl, while the Warramunga of the east coast worshipped the mythical Wollunqua. In Africa the chief centre of serpent worship was Dahomey. but the cult of the python seems to have been of exotic origin, dating back to the first quarter of the 17th century. By the conquest of Whydah the Dahomeyans were brought in contact with a people of serpent worshippers, and ended by adopting from them the beliefs which they at first despised. At Whydah, the chief centre, there is a serpent temple, tenanted by some fifty snakes. Every python of the danh-gbi kind must be treated with respect, and death is the penalty for killing one, even by accident. Danh-gbi has numerous wives, who until 1857 took part in a public procession from which the profane crowd was excluded; a python was carried round the town in a hammock, perhaps as a ceremony for the expulsion of evils. The rainbow-god of the Ashanti was also conceived to have the form of a snake. His messenger was said to be a small variety of boa. but only certain individuals, not the whole species, were sacred. In many parts of Africa the serpent is looked upon as the incarnation of deceased relatives. Among the Amazulu, as among the Betsileo of Madagascar, certain species are assigned as the abode of certain classes. The Masai, on the other hand, regard each species as the habitat of a particular family of the tribe.


SERPENT - WORSHIP. 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.

From all parts of the world there is a very considerable body of evidence for the prominence of the serpent in religion, mythology and folk-lore. Snake-. Preval- worship still prevails largely in India, and a writer e p ee in in 1896 remarks that the previous census showed in varying the North-West Provinces over 25,000 Naga (serpent) forms. worshippers, 123,000 votaries of the snake-god Gaga, and, in the Punjab, some 35,000 special votaries of the snake godlings.' The evidence from modern India can be supplemented by the medieval and ancient Indian sources, and, in particular, by the representations of the adoration of snake-deities on the Buddhist topes of Sanchi and Amravati. 2 There we find, not indeed living serpents, but deities with serpent-symbolism, indicating a composition of various strata of religious belief, analogous to the evidence for serpent-symbolism from Babylonia, Crete, Greece or Peru; for the higher religions have almost invariably retained in their ritual and belief, sometimes with only slight modification, cruder conceptions which can still be studied in less elevated form among the lower races of India, Africa or America. The result is instructive when we turn to the numerous serpent myths and legends from the Old World and the New, to the stray notices in old writers, or to the fragmentary scraps of popular superstition everywhere. Modern scientific research has vividly illustrated the stereotyped nature of the human mind; there is a general similarity in the effect of similar phenomena upon people at a similar stage of mental growth; there is an almost inherent or unconscious belief which has been transmitted through the countless ages of man's history. At the same time, apart from the gradual evolution of religious and other conceptions there are the more incidental and artificial influences which have shaped them. Hence, our evidence for serpent-cults everywhere represents varying stages in the historical development of a few related fundamental ideas which are psychologically explicable; and it is impossible to deal with the subject geographically or historically. It is most useful, perhaps, to survey some of the general features of belief as an introduction to the more complex inquiries which involve a consideration of other subjects over a larger field.

Ophis (greek ophis: serpent)

Cornelius Agrippa wrote: "Pherecydes the Syrian describeth the fall of the devils, and that Ophis, that is the devilish serpent, was the head of that rebelling army" (Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book III, Ch. 18).

This history of Ophis as a demon is particularly unusual: he appears to be one of those creatures carried over from earlier greek mythology, eventually making the transition from Titan (and godhead) to being mis-identified as a possible Lucifer.

Ophion is the presumed origin of this name, a titan who had the form of an enormous serpent. Ophion, by some earlier greek myths, ruled Olympus with his wife, Eurynome, long before the appearance of Zeus and the other olympian gods. He was displaced by Cronus, another titan, who was later deposed by the thunder god.

A sect of Gnostics named the Ophites worshipped Ophis as the serpent (whom was later reincarnated as Christ) in Genesis¹. Ophis is identified as the serpent who persuaded Adam and Eve to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge, thus disobeying the Demiurge's attempt at witholding knowledge from them.

OPHITES [Ophites] [Gr.,=believers in the serpent], group of Gnostic sects notorious for extreme cultism and inverted morality. Certain of these sects were known as Naasseni. Almost all that is known of Ophitism has been gleaned from St. Irenaeus, Origen, and other writers opposed to Gnosticism . The Ophites carried to extremes the teaching of Marcion that an essential hostility exists between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. The Ophites held that the Old Testament villains were actually heroes and revered Cain, the Sodomites, and the Egyptians. Specially worshiped was the serpent, as the creature in Eden that tried to give Adam and Eve the knowledge withheld from them by Jehovah. Much of the serpent worship and the occult ritualism was probably symbolic of certain esoteric knowledge. The Ophites acknowledged Jesus as the savior, but rejected the importance of the crucifixion; Christ came to reveal gnosis (knowledge), not to die for people's sins. One Ophitic hymn, the Hymn of the Naasenes, survives.

Bibliography: See E. Buonaiuti, Gnostic Fragments (1924); R. M. Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity (1959, rev. ed. 1966).

The Ophite Diagrams are ritual and esoteric diagrams used by the Ophite gnostic sect, who worshipped the serpent from the Garden of Eden. They also viewed the Old Testament god as the evil god Yaltabaoth.

Celsus described them as ten separate circles, circumscribed by one circle, the world-soul, Leviathan, divided by a thick black line, Tartarus, together with a square, with words said at the gates of Paradise. Further to this, the Ophites were said by Celsus to add the sayings of prophets, and circles upon circles, with some things written within the two great cosmological circles representing god the father, and god the son.


 Moses' Brazen Serpent as It Relates to Serpent Worship in Mesoamerica
Wallace E. Hunt Jr.
Provo, Utah: Maxwell Institute, 1993. Pp. 121–31


The Ignorant Demiurge

When gnostic Genesis interpretation comes as far as the Snake, the main lines of gnostic narrative are already clear. The Snake may only cover a few logical possibilities: He is good, evil, or neutral. If good, then the Tree of Knowledge has to be good, and for the sake of economy the Snake may only be one of the available good characters of the narrative in disguise, unless an uneconomical solution is chosen and the Snake becomes a new character. Thus he can only be Sophia (or a duplicate thereof), the Savior, or a third representative of the Pleroma. If the Snake is evil, then the Tree of Knowledge must be evil as well, unless a solution of compromise is chosen and the Snake, although evil, would act for a while like a channel for the Pleroma. As evil, the Snake can only be the Devil or the Demiurge or a duplicate (angel) of one of them. As neutral, “the Snake is the Snake” (to paraphrase Lord Byron)—he is just a temporary mouthpiece for someone else’s message. Yet this would be an uneconomical solution that gnostics tend to avoid.

Taken altogether, gnostic hermeneutical candor is total. No limit is imposed on the number of transformations of myth. In the case of the Snake, as well as in other cases, we may say that the number of logical bricks that could be inserted at that point in the narrative sequence has been exhausted. Any other brick would be fanciful or, worse, redundant. Then why does tradition, which appears to be on the wrong side of logic, seem so austere and the antitraditional gnostics, whose logic is almost impeccable, so fantastical? Because a mythical narrative is a multiple-choice sequence, and gnostic thinkers (those who shared the two premises, or rather rejections, mentioned above) were able, at least for a while, to fill in not one but all cases.

Toward the beginning of Islam, gnostics were exhausted, wrung out from history by the relentless pressure of traditional powers and especially the Christians, who had switched from a persecuted religion at the beginning of the IVth century into a totalitarian, persecuting state religion by the end of the same century. Christians were motivated in suppressing gnosticism by that peculiar feeling of guilt one gets from the existence of a brash, heedless, and decidedly troublesome close relative. Yet the system set in motion by the gnostics was not exhausted. Therefore new, so-called dualistic trends sprang up to manifest it, realizing more of its potentialities.

The Serpent Code


The Tale of Serpent Worship in Ireland and Christianity's Role in its Destruction


Ireland was once infested with snakes. It was, if you believe the Christian stories of St. Patrick, who supposedly expelled them with his Baculum Jesu or Staff of Jesus (according to Giraldus Cambrensis or Gerald of Wales.) Of course Ireland has no indigenous snakes at all and so we must be speaking here of a symbolic representation - but, symbolic of what?

For years, scholars, Christians and even alternative historians have been arguing over what exactly St Patrick was eradicating. Of course, there is precious little evidence that even St Patrick came to Ireland, just as there is no evidence St Paul went to Malta and kicked out the snakes there too! In fact, this wonderfully symbolic tale can be found in many places and always in association with the serpent. So what's the truth?

Across Ireland there are hundreds of crosses, many of which can be proven to have pre-Christian origins, and many are entwined with images of serpents. The same is true of other locations, such as Malta we have just mentioned - although here the snakes are found upon ancient megalithic monuments. These are remnants of a pre-existent serpent-worshipping cult that we discovered existed across the known world in ancient times. In fact, the very reason that Ireland was said to be infested with serpents, was in reality a Christian code word for serpent worshippers. And Ireland has not been the only place infested and eradicated of serpent worshippers. Malta, Rhodes, India, Greece and many more have all at one time or another been laid waste of the serpent cult, so often misread as solar worshippers. The truth of the solar worship becomes obvious once one understands the beliefs of the serpent cults. They worshipped the esoteric or inner light of themselves or wisdom which was manifested in the sky as the sun and this light came about via methods pertaining to the inner serpent energies, [1] as they perceived them. These inner serpentine and solar linked visions were then manifested or physically represented in megalithic monuments, oral folktales and art.

Samuel Zwemer, The Influence of Animism on Islam - CHAPTER XI ...

We turn finally to Serpent-worship in Islam. Here also we are surprised to find how much animism remains in Moslem lands and lives and literature; all covered of course with the charitable mantle of their creed. The Arabic dictionary gives two hundred names for snakes. As-Suhaili says that when God caused the serpent to come down to the earth, He caused it to alight in Sijistan which is the part of God's earth abounding most in serpents, and that if it were not for the 'Irbadd — (the male viper) eating and destroying many of them, Sijistan would (now) have been empty of its people owing to the large number of them (in it).

Ka'b-al-Ahber states that "God caused the serpent to alight in Ispahan, Iblis in Jeddah, Eve on Mount 'Arafah, and Adam on the mountain Sarandib (Ceylon) which is the land of China in the Indian Ocean." The curious may find much on serpent lore in Damiri (Vol.I, p. 631). The most common belief is that serpents are often human beings in the form of snakes. The serpent has a place also in the story of Creation which is given as follows: "Al-Kurtubi relates in the commentary on the XL chapter of the Kuran on the authority of Thawr b. Yazid, who had it from Khalid b. Ma'dan regarding Ka'b al-Ahbar as having said, 'When God created the Throne, it said, 'God has not created anything greater than myself,' and exulted with joy out of pride. God therefore caused it to be surrounded by a serpent having 70,000 wings; each wing having 70,000 feathers in it, each feather having in it 70,000 faces, each face having in it 70,000 mouths, and each mouth having in it 70,000 tongues, with its mouths ejaculating every day praises of God, the number of drops of rain, the number of the leaves of trees, the number of stones and earth, the number of days of this world, and the number of angels,— all these numbers of times. The serpent then twisted itself round the Throne which was taken up by only half the serpent while it remained twisted round it. The Throne thereupon became humble."6

The following story is told on the authority of one of the Companions of Mohammed: "We went out on the pilgrimage, and when we reached al-'Ari, we saw a snake quivering, which not long afterwards died. One of the men out of us took out for it a piece of cloth in which he wrapped it up, and then digging a hole buried it in the ground. We then proceeded to Makkah and went to the sacred mosque, where a man came to us and said, 'Which of you is the person that was kind to 'Amer b. Jabir?' Upon which we replied, 'We do not know him.' He then asked, 'Which of you is the person that was kind to the Jann?' and they replied, 'This one here,' upon which he said (to him), 'May God repay you good on our account! As to him (the serpent that was buried) he was the last of the nine genii who had heard the Koran from the lips of the Prophet?'"




And it seems that the best literature on the subject remains that published over 100 years ago. Or at least the most prolific publishing. Of course it was the age of Imperialism, colonial Africa was a rich find for would be anthropologists.

Worship of the Serpent

This is an early 19th century study of Ophiolatreia, or snake-worship. Deane's primary thesis here is that ancient serpent worship was based on memories of the Garden of Eden. He has a monomaniacal devotion to the subject of snake worship and sees evidence of it everywhere. Deane reviews a massive amount of data from antiquity, travelers tales, and legend and folklore. A particularly compelling portion of the book describes ancient megalithic temples such as the Avebury and Carnac complexes as giant representations of snakes. One wonders what he would have made of the ancient American mound builders, who made huge sinuous earth sculptures in the Ohio valley.

Because he wrote before such advances such as the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics, excavations in Mesopotamia, detailed knowledge of eastern religions in the west, and the systematic study of folklore and anthropology, much of this information is outdated or incorrect. For instance, many of his etymologies can't be supported by modern historical linguistics. On the other hand, many later discoveries added to our understanding of the special role that snakes and other reptiles play in religion and mythology.

Modern writers from Carl Sagan to David Icke have taken the same themes and derived interesting, if controversial theses of their own. Sagan (in The Dragons of Eden) wrote about the ancient relationship between mammals and reptiles which goes back to the time of the dinosaurs. Sagan pointed out that there is a section of our brain, which is morphologically and functionally similar to a reptile brain, embedded in our brain stem, called the "Reptilian Complex". He also discussed the fear of snakes which seems to be hard-wired into our brains, and inferred that it began in the primordial struggle for survival between reptiles and mammals. At the other end of the spectrum, Icke believes that a shapeshifting race of reptilians have dominated history and even today are the secret rulers of our planet. Certainly, the full account of this topic has yet to be written.


Serpent and Siva Worship
and Mythology in Central America, Africa, and Asia and the Origin of Serpent Worship (1877)

Hyde Clarke and C. Staniland Wake

Comprehensive treatise on the Serpent Cultus.

From the Preface:
The researches and explorations of travelers, scientists and learned investigators, are every day adding to our knowledge of teh Serpent-Cultus. It is rising above the old conception of an obscure and ill-defined superstition, to the dimensions of a religion, distinctly outlined in its characteristic features, and by no means without a recondite metaphysical basis. Not only did the children of Israel burn incense to the symbolical animal from Moses til Hezehiah, but the Hamitic races " from Memphis to Babylon," and all indeed at the far East and remote West, who accepted as sacred, what Mr. Brown denominates, "The Great Dionysiak Myth."

Tree and Serpent Worship

By S. Beal
The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland
New Series, 1888, pp. 547-548

Universality of Serpent-Worship
W. G. Moorehead
Old Testament Student, Vol. 4, No. 5 (Jan., 1885), pp. 205-210

Tree and Serpent Worship: Or Illustrations of Mythology and Art in India in the First and Fourth Centuries after Christ. From the Sculptures of the Buddhist Topes at Sanchi and Amravati by James Fergusson Anthropological Review, Vol. 7, No. 26 (Jul., 1869), pp. 217-230
And somethings never change when it comes to Africa and the thousands year old cultures of the Kalahari desert. DeBeers versus the Bushmen


Of course we knew it would all end up with sex. You know Sex=Sin, so how could you avoid it. In the begining was Adam, Eve and Steve the serpent makes three. Since the serpent in all ages and belief systems is the icon for procreation.

The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - Sex Worship II

An animal symbol which has probably been of universal use is that of the snake or serpent. Serpent worship has been described in almost every country of which we have records or legends. In Egypt, we find the serpent on the headdress of many of the Gods. In Africa the snake is still sacred with many tribes. The worship of the hooded snake was probably carried from India to Egypt. The dragon on the flag and porcelain of China is also a serpent symbol. In Central America were found enormous stone serpents carved in various forms. In Scandinavia divine honors were paid to serpents, and the druids of Britain carried on a similar worship.

Serpent worship has been shown by many writers to be a form of sex worship. It is often phallic, and we are told by Hargrave Jennings that the serpent possibly was added to the male and female symbols to represent desire. Thus, the Hindu women carried the lingam in procession between two serpents; and in the sacred procession of Bacchus the Greeks carried in a sacred casket the phallus, the egg, and a serpent.

The Greeks also had a composite or ideal figure. Rays were added to the head of a serpent thereby bringing it into relation with the sun god Apollo; or the crest or comb of a cock was added with similar meaning.

Many reasons have been offered to explain why the serpent has been used to represent the male generative attribute. Some have called attention to its tenacity of life; others have spoken of its supposed mystic power of regeneration by casting its skin. Again, it seems probable that the form is of symbolic significance. However this may be, we find that this universal serpent worship of primitive man was a form of phallicism so prevalent in former times.


As is often the case in the Ophidian mythos; the snake contains within intself that sexual dualism so necassary for creation. And the result is again another form of berdache, or transgender shamanism as Edward Carpenter noted a hundred years ago.


NAAGAMANDALA (Serpent worship/ritual)

Nagamandala
Coastal Karnataka (Dakshina Kannada and Udupi district) has a fantastic all night ritual performed during December to April. The ritualistic performance starts before monsoon. Serpent worship is common among the Hindus all over India. Serpent God is a symbol of fertility and life.

This ritual is observed mostly by the Brahmins. 'Naagamandala' is performed by two groups of performers; the 'paatri' (a Brahmin) who gets possessed after inhaling the areca flowers becomes the cobra God. The second group of propitiating is 'Naagakannika'. The 'Naagakannika', a female serpent, which is actually a male disguised in female dress or visual costume (half male and half female costumes). This character is identified as 'ardhanaari' or 'naagakannika' who dances and sings around an elaborate serpent design drawn with natural colors on the sacred ground.

The dance 'naaga' takes place around this 'mandala' drawings. The all night dance and song propitiation creates an awe inspiring experience. Brahmins utter the mantras in sanskrit and the other proceedings take place in Kannada.


And no article dealing with Snakes, Ophites, Ophidian worship, serpents, serpent worship, is complete without reference to, well you know.....





























See


Primitive People

Primitive Man

Magick

Gnosis

Gnostic

Serpent

Sea Serpents/Sea Monsters


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Engels Was Right


Further evidence that Engels was correct in his ground breaking study; The role of Labour in the Transition From Ape to Man. Once again proving Hobbes wrong.



Gendered division of labor gave modern humans advantage over Neanderthals

Diversified social roles for men, women, and children may have given Homo sapiens an advantage over Neanderthals, says a new study in the December 2006 issue of Current Anthropology. The study argues that division of economic labor by sex and age emerged relatively recently in human evolutionary history and facilitated the spread of modern humans throughout Eurasia.

"The competitive advantage enjoyed by modern humans came not just from new weapons and devices but from the ways in which their economic lives were organized around the advantages of cooperation and complementary subsistence roles for men, women, and children," write Steven L. Kuhn and Mary C. Stiner (University of Arizona).

Kuhn and Stiner note that the rich archaeological record for Neanderthal diets provides little direct evidence for a reliance on subsistence foods, such as milling stones to grind nuts and seeds. Instead, Neanderthals depended on large game, a high-stakes resource, to fuel their massive body mass and high caloric intake. This lack of food diversity and the presence of healed fractures on Neanderthal skeletons�attesting to a rough-and-tumble lifestyle�suggest that female and juvenile Neanderthals participated actively in the hunt by serving as game drivers, beating bushes or cutting off escape routes.

The Middle Paleolithic Neanderthal record also lacks the artifacts commonly used to make weather-resistant clothing or artificial shelters, such as bone needles. Thus, it was the emergence of "female" roles � subsistence and skill-intensive craft � that allowed H. sapiens in ecologically diverse tropical and sub-tropical regions to take advantage of other foods and live at higher population densities.

"Earlier hominins pursued more narrowly focused economies, with women's activities more closely aligned with those of men with respect to schedule and ranging patterns," write the authors. "It is impossible to argue that [Neanderthal] females and juveniles were fulfilling the same roles�or even an equally diverse suite of economic roles�as females and juveniles in recent hunter-gatherer groups," they add.


See:

Engels

Neadertal

Neanderthal

Anthropology

Dialectics

Evolution

Science

Evolution

Darwin

Primitive Man




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December 6 Will Live In Infamy


Yes I know this was FDR's famous quote about December 7, but for Canadians who had never experienced deliberate gender based misogynist mass murder, well today, December 6th, is that day.

The War on Women remains the foremost criminal social issue today. And it remains one that this current New Law and Order Government fails to address.

In fact it avoids addressing it except tangetally. In eliminating funding for all forms of advocacy, the Conservative State says there is no problem that cannot be fixed by increasing minimum sentences, more cops and more state control over judges.

And the rememberance celebrations that will happen today across Canada will be overshadowed in Parliament by the Same Sex Marriage Issue raised by the Patriarchs of the Right. That is their biggest concern, the sacredness of the social institution of womens slavery as chattel property; marriage.

The original meaning of the word "family" (familia) is not that compound of sentimentality and domestic strife which forms the ideal of the present-day philistine; among the Romans it did not at first even refer to the married pair and their children, but only to the slaves. Famulus means domestic slave, and familia is the total number of slaves belonging to one man.

Fredrick Engels,

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State


It is Harpers attempt to appease the Counter-Reformists of the Right who have a political anathema to the Sexual Revolution, The politcal/social origin of both Feminism and Gay Rignts.

Religion, especially the Christian religion, has condemned woman to the life of an inferior, a slave. It has thwarted her nature and fettered her soul, yet the Christian religion has no greater supporter, none more devout, than woman. Indeed, it is safe to say that religion would have long ceased to be a factor in the lives of the people, if it were not for the support it receives from woman. The most ardent churchworkers, the most tireless missionaries the world over, are women, always sacrificing on the altar of the gods that have chained her spirit and enslaved her body.

Emma Goldman,

Woman Suffrage


See

Violence Against Women

Same Sex Marriage

SSM

Feminism

Polyamory

Gun Registry

Real Crime


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Tuesday, December 05, 2006

The War On Christmas


Takes a new twist;

Dwarf Mistletoe Joins War on Christmas, Attacks Christmas Trees they are in Canada, heading towards the North Pole and Santa Clause.

One source indicates the christmas hating mistletoe has opened a fifth column here in the United States.

Damn secular socialists in Canada and their secret weapon, mistletoe. So we do have a mistle system, good to know.


See

Xmas

Christmas

Solstice


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Socialism Is Love



Some say Chavez embraces Castroism, I would contend that it is Gueveraism. Che Guevera, paraphrased by Hugo Chavez.

"Long live the socialist revolution! Destiny has been written," Chávez told supporters Sunday night. "No one should fear socialism; socialism is human. Socialism is love."


At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.Che Guevera


But then again Chavez is catholic in his beliefs.

Socialism is solidarty, mutual aid, hence love in action, that same Agape that Gnostic heretics applied humanistically during the Third Revolution commonly known as the Reformation.

See

Chavez

Che


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Globalization Sucks


The Americans and French have more in common than they think.

Job worries damp public support for globalisation

Public support for economic globalisation is rising on both sides of the Atlantic but US and French voters are worried that freer trade costs jobs, according to a survey released yesterday. There is much less support for further liberalisation of trade, with 59 per cent of Americans and 58 per cent of French thinking that freer trade will cost them more jobs than it creates.

Despite the apparent free-market consensus in US politics, worries about stagnant real earnings across most of the workforce have raised fears that trade, particularly with China, is holding down pay and eliminating jobs. The cost of losing a job is far higher in the US than in the European Union because of a less generous public welfare system and the paucity of publicly provided healthcare.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Paris-based intergovernmental policy institute, calculates that the income of a single-earner household in the US drops to 41 per cent of its former level if the breadwinner's job is lost, compared with 68 per cent in Germany, 70 per cent in France and 73 per cent in the UK.

Jack Thurston, transatlantic fellow of the GMF, said: "In both France and the US there is a strain of economic nationalism where any particular proposition is judged on whether it is good for the country or a vocal minority within it, rather than supported on principle."

Its what Lou Dobbs and LePen have in common too.

Lou Dobbs and the Dead-End of White Anti-Corporate Populism


See

Globalization

Migration

Jobs

Lou Dobbs


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Vive Chavez


Chavez hails landslide election victory as defeat for 'devil' Bush

How many democratic elections does a guy have to win, by a landslide, before the American media will stop refering to him as a "Dictator".

Venezuelans Give Chávez a Mandate to Tighten His Grip


 The landslide victory of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela's presidential election Sunday caps off 12 elections across Latin America since November 2005 that, taken together, reveal a broad electoral shift to the left.


Any day now I suspect reading these headlines.

Chávez triumph brings emollient words from US Guardian Unlimited

Envoys offer Chavez an olive branch
Houston Chronicle, United States - 1 hour ago
CARACAS, VENEZUELA — High-level US diplomats reached out to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Monday, a day after the loudest Latin American critic of the ...

US welcomes Chavez's victory NDTV.com

US praises Venezuela's democracy


Chavez's revenge against those who call him Tyrant, Despot, Dictator, Devil, Evil, etc. is to get re-elected.

CITGO is the retail arm of Venezuela's Nationalized Oil Company. Which has a very effective PR campaign underway on America TV about being a socially and environmentally responisble company. Venezuela uses petro-dollars to help US poor

Joe Kennedy and U.S. Rep. William Delahunt (D-Quincy) yesterday defended the expansion of Citgo’s expanded ties with Kennedy’s energy-assistance program, saying the Venezuelan firm is the only oil company to make a major commitment to helping the poor.

In order to counteract the US Government National Security State Politicians who are promoting political boycotts of CITGO.

Hearts and Minds. It's all about Hearts and Minds. In the war against American Hegemony and Imperialism.


See

Chavez


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Monday, December 04, 2006

Bush Sr. Declares Son A Loser

At his final official Leadership Council, today, Florida Govenor Jeb Bush invited Daddy to speak. Unfortunately Daddy broke down, shown on video on CNN's the Situation Room, and declared that his other son, the current President, was incapable of accepting defeat. As he choked back the tears he declared that some people never learn. A clear reference to his namesake in the the White House.

He was celebrating Jebs forced retirement as Govenor, and talking about his victories and defeats when the spirit of the lord came upon him in a swelling epiphany. That upon the mention of the word defeat the image of Chavez's devil Bush came upon the old man, overwhelming him with guilt.

The enoromity of the Iraq SNAFU literally left him a brokenman. Speechless he simply sobbed piteously, in public.

http://2005.piou.org/photos/j18antiwar/Images/24.jpg



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Strom's Curse


Others are now commenting on the Curse. Ed Stelmach being Alberta's 13th Premier will he inherit the Strom Curse? I have said so pundits from the right including his opponent Ted Morton have said so. And now the MSM are speculating.

Stelmach confronts ghost of Harry Strom
Albertans ask if new Premier will suffer fate of Socred boss's 1971 loss to Lougheed

The worst criticism of Stelmach during the campaign was that he was dull and unimaginative. More than once, particularly in the last week, he was referred to unfavourably as the ''next Harry Strom,'' the last Social Credit premier in that party's 36-year reign.

But even if he can suture his party's wounds, another question is being whispered in Tory circles: is Stelmach the next Harry Strom? Strom was the province's last farmer turned premier. He was elected leader of the Social Credit party in 1968, then lost the next general election to Peter Lougheed's Progressive Conservatives in 1971.

Alliance Party Leader Paul Hinman said Stelmach's "good guy" persona is reminiscent of Socred Harry Strom, who turned over the reins of power to the Tories in 1971. "He's working on healing the party and talking to the grassroots," said Hinman. "I think it's a little too late and that this is the beginning of the end of the Tories."


Strom and Stelmach share something else. They are Alberta's 'rural' Premiers. Sharing the roles of Minister of Agriculture and now the Minister of Everything.

Mr. Stelmach's victory was due in large part to the thousands of rural voters who turned out to support him across northern Alberta, compared with the hundreds who voted for his rivals in each of the province's urban and southern ridings. "People wanted somebody they could believe in and trust," said Luke Ouellette, a rural Tory backbencher who supported Mr. Stelmach's bid.



It's the curse. Not that Strom was a bad Premier he was just a lame duck Premier in a province about to burst forth in a decade long boom. Hmmm sounds familiar.

He Had good ideas and put public education and post secondary education at the top of his agenda. The Socreds opened the U of L as one of few truly experimental open liberal arts universities in North America.

All in all Strom's short term in office was good for Alberta. It just was the party, it had staled and now rather than being a beer bash was really suffering a thrity years hangover, and the blahs. Like a bad guest you discover has stayed behind, after the last partier left, still wearing a lampshade because he thought it was funny before he passed out.

The party was stale, out of ideas, marking time, pacing in one place, in other words it sounds like the Tories of today. Is there really a Strom Curse?

Is 13 really unlucky? And what will it mean for Alberta's 13th Premier?

The origin of Unlucky 13


Or does it signify ultimate change, as in the 13th card in the Tarot.


XIII

Death

13. Death.--Death, Change, Transformation, Alteration for the worse; R. Death just escaped, Partial change, Alteration for the better.
Click to enlarge color image

The veil or mask of life is perpetuated in change, transformation and passage from lower to higher, and this is more fitly represented in the rectified Tarot by one of the apocalyptic visions than by the crude notion of the reaping skeleton. Behind it lies the whole world of ascent in the spirit. The mysterious horseman moves slowly, bearing a black banner emblazoned with the Mystic Rose, which signifies life. Between two pillars on the verge of the horizon there shines the sun of immortality. The horseman carries no visible weapon, but king and child and maiden fall before him, while a prelate with clasped hands awaits his end.

Death (La Mort)
The Child of the Great Transformers; The Lord of the Gate of Death

Card Number: 13
Key Number: 24
Rulership: Scorpio
Hebrew Letter: Nun
Translation: Fish
Numerical Value: 12

Divinatory meaning
Upright - The beginning of a new life. As a result of underlying circumstances transformation and change. Major changes. The end of a phase in life which has served its purpose. Abrupt and complete change of circumstances, way of life and patterns of behaviour due to past events and actions. Alterations.


Ill Dignified or Reversed - Change that is both painful and unpleasant. A refusal to face the fear of change or change itself. Agonising periods of transition. Inertia. Lethargy. Mental, physical or emotional exhaustion.

The Symbolism of the Tarot
by P. D. Ouspensky [1913]

Fatigued by the flashing of the Wheel of Life, I sank to earth and shut my eyes. But it seemed to me that the Wheel kept turning before me and that the four creatures continued sitting in the clouds and reading their books.

Suddenly, on opening my eyes, I saw a gigantic rider on a white horse, dressed in black armour, with a black helmet and black plume. A skeleton's face looked out from under the helmet. One bony hand held a large, black, slowly-waving banner, and the other held a black bridle ornamented with skulls and bones.

And, wherever the white horse passed, night and death followed; flowers withered, leaves drooped, the earth covered itself with a white shroud; graveyards appeared; towers, castles and cities were destroyed.

Kings in the full splendour of their fame and their power; beautiful women loved and loving; high priests invested by power from God; innocent children--when they saw the white horse all fell on their knees before him, stretched out their hands in terror and despair, and fell down to rise no more.

Afar, behind two towers, the sun sank.

A deadly cold enveloped me. The heavy hoofs of the horse seemed to step on my breast, and I felt the world sink into an abyss.

But all at once something familiar, but faintly seen and heard, seemed to come from the measured step of the horse. A moment more and I heard in his steps the movement of the Wheel of Life!

An illumination entered me, and, looking at the receding rider and the descending sun, I understood that the Path of Life consists of the steps of the horse of Death.

The sun sinks at one point and rises at another. Each moment of its motion is a descent at one point and an ascent at another. I understood that it rises while sinking and sinks while rising, and that life, in coming to birth, dies, and in dying, comes to birth.

"Yes," said the voice. The sun does not think of its going down and coming up. What does it know of earth, of the going and coming observed by men? It goes its own way, over its own orbit, round an unknown Centre. Life, death, rising and falling--do you not know that all these things are thoughts and dreams and fears of the Fool"?


Which means the death of the Tories under Ed just as it was the trouble with Harry for the Socreds.

And in Canadian politics 13 has been unlucky.

 13th Prime Minister
 John Diefenbaker
(Progressive Conservative)



Harry Corwin Nixon
Harry Nixon
In office
May 18, 1943 – August 17, 1943

13th PM of Quebec

Félix-Gabriel Marchand

As premier, Marchand attempted to create a Ministry of Education in 1898. At the time, education was entirely in the hands of the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church in the province. His legislation was passed by the Legislative Assembly (the lower chamber of Quebec's legislature), but was defeated in the Legislative Council (the upper house). It was not until 1964 that a Ministry of Education was finally created in Quebec.

As it has in American politics

Millard Fillmore
Millard Fillmore
In office
July 9, 1850 – March 4, 1853
Vice President(s) none
Preceded by Zachary Taylor
Succeeded by Franklin Pierce
In office
March 4, 1849 – July 9, 1850
President Zachary Taylor
Preceded by George M. Dallas
Succeeded by William R. King
Born January 7, 1800
Summerhill, New York
Died March 8, 1874
Buffalo, New York
Political party Whig
Spouse Abigail Powers Fillmore (1st wife)
Mrs. Caroline Carmichael McIntosh (2nd wife)
Religion Unitarian
Signature

Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874) was the thirteenth President of the United States, serving from 1850 until 1853, and the last member of the Whig Party to hold that office. He succeeded from the Vice Presidency on the death of President Zachary Taylor, who died of acute gastroenteritis, becoming the second U.S. President to assume the office in this manner. Fillmore was never elected President in his own right; after serving out Taylor's term he was not nominated for the Presidency by the Whigs in the 1852 Presidential election, and in 1856 he again failed to win election as President as the Know Nothing Party candidate.



After all when it comes to the irrational, politics and the occult share a common psychology.


See

Conservative Leadership Race

Harry Strom

Socreds

Ed Stemach


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