"I will confess this: If you play the spot backwards it says, 'Paul is dead. Paul is dead,'"
Really I heard Huckabee's quote and he said Paul is Dead, three times with no reference to McCartney. Now he is claiming he was referring to Paul McCartney but was he really?"Merry Christmas," Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said simply Tuesday in Houston in response to criticism that his latest campaign commercial mixes too much religion with politics.
Huckabee, here to raise campaign money, said the nation is in serious trouble if it is politically incorrect for him to use his TV spot to remind voters about the religious meaning of this holiday season.
Departing from the standard pitches for the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary two weeks from now, the former Arkansas governor and Southern Baptist minister appears on television screens in some states with the shape of a cross behind him and Silent Night playing in the background.
"Are you about worn out by all the television commercials you've been seeing, mostly about politics? Well, I don't blame you," he says in the commercial. "At this time of year, sometimes it's nice to pull aside from all of that and just remember that what really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ and being with our family and friends."
Subliminal message?
Some political observers see the ad as appealing directly to evangelical voters and tapping into the religious differences between Huckabee and one of his chief rivals for the GOP presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, a Mormon. Others such as candidate Ron Paul, the Republican congressman from Lake Jackson, said the ad goes overboard."It reminds me of what Sinclair Lewis once said. He says, 'when fascism comes to this country, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross,' " Paul, a Protestant, told Fox News. "Now I don't know whether that's a fair assessment or not, but you wonder about using a cross, like he is the only Christian or implying that subtly. So, I don't think I would ever use anything like that."
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights President Bill Donohue said images of a cross in the commercial are an attempt to send a subliminal message.
"What he's trying to say to the evangelicals in western Iowa (is): 'I'm the real thing,' " Donohue said on the same news network. "You know what? Sell yourself on your issues, not on what your religion is."
Play it backward
Huckabee said Tuesday that he mentioned Jesus Christ in his unscripted commercial because, considering the meaning of the holiday, "I don't know what else to say about Christmas."Some people are drawing such wild inferences from the commercial, Huckabee joked, that they might believe the ad says "Paul is dead" when played backward. It was a reference to the myth that the hidden news of Beatle Paul McCartney's "death" was revealed in the backward playing of one of the band's songs.
Codex Gigas, also known as the Devil's Bible - a medieval manuscript said to have been written 800 years ago with the devil's help - has returned to Prague after an absence of 359 yearsThe priceless piece, considered the biggest medieval book, was taken from the Prague Castle by Swedish troops at the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648. It is in Prague on loan from Sweden's Royal Library in Stockholm. It was put on display last week under high security at the Czech National Library.
According to myth, a Benedictine monk promised to write the book overnight to atone for his sins. When he realized the task was impossible, he asked the devil for help. The page with the illustration of the devil is the one visitors see.
The manuscript was likely written by one monk from the Benedictine monastery in Podlazice located some 100 kilometres east of Prague sometime at the beginning of the 13th century, said Zdenek Uhlir, a specialist on medieval manuscripts at the National Library.
It contains "a sum of the Benedictine order's knowledge" of the time, including the Old and New Testament, "The War of the Jews" by the first-century historian Josephus Flavius, a list of saints, or a guideline how to determine the date of Easter, Uhlir said.
"I would estimate it took him between 10 and 12 years to write," he said about the piece, which weighs 75 kilograms. Originally, it had 640 pages, of which 624 survived in relatively good condition, he said.
With the publication of the War of the Jews in this bible one has to ask if it is the original or the latter Christianized account. For if it is the latter, which I suspect it is, being it was originally of Slavic origin and it was in circulation at the time of writing of this bible. If it is then like the grain of sand in the oyster, this maybe another example of the origin of Antisemitism within Christianity in Medieval Germania and Eastern Europe.
In 93, the Jewish historian Josephus published his work Antiquities of the Jews. The extant copies of this work, which all derive from Christian sources, even the recently recovered Arabic version, contain two passages about Jesus.
"The problem here is that Josephus' account is too good to be true, too confessional to be impartial, too Christian to be Jewish." Three passages stood out: "if it be lawful to call him a man … He was [the] Christ … for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him." To some these seem directly to address Christological debates of the early 4th century. Consequently, some scholars regard at least these parts of the Testimonium as later interpolations.
The entire passage is also found in one manuscript of Josephus' earlier work, The Jewish War, in an Old Russian translation written c.1250. Interestingly, the passage dealing with Jesus is not the only significant difference from the usual collations; Robert Eisler has suggested that it was produced from one of Josephus's drafts (noting that the "Slavonic Version" has Josephus escaping his fellow Jews at Jotapata when "he counted the numbers [of the lot cast in the suicide pact] cunningly and so managed to deceive all the others", which is in striking contrast to the conventional version's account:
- "Without hesitation each man in turn offered his throat for the next man to cut, in the belief that a moment later his commander would die too. Life was sweet, but not so sweet as death if Josephus died with them! But Josephus - shall we put it down to divine providence or just luck - was left with one other man....he used persuasion, they made a pact, and both remained alive.
The fact is that this 'Old Russian translation' coincides with the publication date of the Devils Bible which would have been available for translation from Latin at the time. And Prague was home to many Jews at the time. Thus our Benedictine monk would have been familiar with the Jews of Prague. And at the time of this bibles publication the Jews were being subjected to the Blood Libel campaign across Europe.
With the inclusion of Josephus perhaps it was not Satan who helped the priest but since this versi0n of his text is Anti-Semitic it may be that by including a history of Jews in the bible to prove Jesus existed the author considered that he was making a compact with the Devil. When this bible was written Jews were seen by Medieval Christians as demons, devils, dragons, etc. all in league with the coming Anti-Christ.
During the crusades, Ethiopians, Jews, Muslims, and Mongols were branded enemies of the Christian majority. Illustrated with strikingly imaginative and still disturbing images, this book reveals the outrageously pejorative ways these rejected social groups were represented--often as monsters, demons, or freaks of nature. Such monstrous images of non-Christians were not rare displays but a routine aspect of medieval public and private life. These images, which reached a broad and socially varied audience across western Europe, appeared in virtually all artistic media, including illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, sculpture, metalwork, and tapestry. Debra Higgs Strickland introduces and decodes images of the "monstrous races," from demonlike Jews and man-eating Tartars to Saracens with dog heads or animal bodies. Strickland traces the origins of the negative pictorial code used to portray monsters, demons, and non-Christian peoples to pseudoscientific theories of astrology, climate, and physiognomy, some dating back to classical times. She also considers the code in light of contemporary Christian eschatological beliefs and concepts of monstrosity and rejection. This is the first study to situate representations of the enemies of medieval Christendom within the broader cultural context of literature, theology, and politics. It is also the first to explore the elements of that imagery as a code and to elucidate the artistic means by which boundaries were effectively blurred between imaginary monsters and rejected social groups.
Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003. 336 pp.
This book is the history of an imaginary people -- the Red Jews -- in vernacular sources from medieval and early modern Germany. From the twelfth to the seventeenth century, German-language texts repeated and embroidered on an antisemitic tale concerning an epochal threat to Christianity, the Red Jews. This term, which expresses a medieval conflation of three separate traditions (the biblical destroyers Gog and Magog, the 'unclean peoples' enclosed by Alexander, and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel), is a hostile designation of wickedness. The Red Jews played a major role in late medieval popular exegesis and literature, and appeared in a hitherto-unnoticed series of sixteenth-century pamphlets, in which they functioned as the medieval 'spectacles' through which contemporaries viewed such events as Turkish advances in the Near and Middle East. The Red Jews disappear from the sources after 1600, and consequently never found their way into historical scholarship.
The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age; 1200-1600.
Blood, Jews and Monsters in Medieval Culture
The Monstrous Middle Ages
Josephus was a reliable historian and historical source so attempts to reinterpret him as a 'Christian' would give veracity to revisionist claims of biblical authors like that of the Codex Gigas. This bible then is probably the original source of the pseudo-Josephus, the so called Christian Jospehus.
Some Biblical literaltists, including followers of St. John of Chrysostom who was revered by the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Church was a notorious anti-Semite, interpret this as being proof that Jesus existed, and that all biblical miracles and prophecies were fulfilled by the fall of the Second Temple. Thus there was no need for the continuation of the Jewish religion it had been superseded by Christianity. Thus if you eliminate their religion you effectively eliminate the Jews.
Thus this Devils Bible is devilish because it includes a historical text by a Jewish historian. It is devilish work because it revises his writings to make him appear as a convert to Christianity.
Recently a tunnel described by Josephus has been discovered in old Jerusalem and earlier this year King Herod's tomb was discovered, as described in the War of the Jews.
Joseph Atwill contends that Josephus proves that the Jesus mythos was developed by the Roman Empire in its dying days to create a new state religion. One that of course was based on divorcing Jesus from his Jewish roots. And thus an attempt to destroy the Jewish Messianic movements, which themselves were militantly anti-Rome.Under threat from Romans ransacking Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, many of the city's Jewish residents crowded into an underground drainage channel to hide and later flee the chaos through Jerusalem's southern end.
The ancient tunnel was recently discovered beneath rubble, a monument to one of the great dramatic scenes of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D.
The tunnel was dug beneath what would become the main road of Jerusalem, the archeology dig's directors, Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa and Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said Sunday. Shukron said excavators looking for the road happened upon a small drainage channel that led them to the discovery two weeks ago of the massive tunnel.
As the temple was being destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, people took shelter in the drainage tunnel and lived inside it until they fled Jerusalem through its southern end, according to Josephus Flavius, a first century historian who wrote "The War of the Jews."
An Israeli archeologist walked in a tunnel discovered near Jerusalem's Old City. (emilio morenatti/associated press)
Lost, Then Found: Herod’s Tomb
By Mike NizzaFor decades, archaeologists looking for the tomb of King Herod have focused on one site in particular, based on an account in the first volume of “The Wars of the Jews,” written by the first-century historian Flavius Josephus.
Josephus wrote that a 25-mile funeral procession for the Roman Empire’s man in Judea and the great builder of Jerusalem ended at “Herodium, where he had given order to be buried,” according to a translation at The Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
Instead of continuing on about the procession’s final steps, and perhaps revealing further clues about the tomb’s location, the historian evidently considered the chapter done with the next sentence.
“And this shall suffice for the conclusion of the life of Herod,” he wrote.
The omission sets up what The Los Angeles Times has called “one of the Holy Land’s greatest archeological mysteries.”Chasing that mystery and others for the past 35 years has been Professor Ehud Netzer of Hebrew University.
Today, he was finally able to announce an answer: The tomb was on the northeastern slope of Mount Herodium, a site that his team has been excavating since last summer.
Herodium, which Mr. Netzer called “the most outstanding among King Herod’s building projects,” may have been best described by Josephus in an earlier section of “the War of the Jews:”
SEE:
Caesar's Messiah - The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus
Joseph Atwill makes the incredibly compelling case that the Christian Gospels were actually written under the direction of first-century Roman emperors. The purpose of these texts was to establish a peaceful Jewish sect to counterbalance the militaristic Jewish forces that had just been defeated by the Roman Emperor Titus in 70 A.D.
Atwill uncovered the secret key to this story in the writings of Josephus, the famed first-century Roman historian. Reading Josephus's chronicle, The War of the Jews, the author found detail after detail that closely paralleled events recounted in the Gospels.
Atwill skillfully demonstrates that the emperors used the Gospels to spark a new religious movement that would aid them in maintaining power and order. What's more, by including hidden literary clues, they took the story of the Emperor Titus's glorious military victory, as recounted by Josephus, and embedded that story in the Gospels - a sly and satirical way of glorifying the emperors through the ages.Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus
Joseph Atwill
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1569754578
Feb. 2005
Condensed blurb:
>>The Christian Gospels were written under the direction of first-century Roman emperors. The purpose of these texts was to establish a peaceful Jewish sect to counterbalance the militaristic Jewish forces that had just been defeated by the Roman Emperor Titus in 70 A.D. The key to this story is in the writings of Josephus, the first-century Roman historian. Josephus's chronicle The War of the Jews parallels events recounted in the Gospels.
>>The emperors used the Gospels to spark a new religious movement that would aid them in maintaining power and order. By including hidden literary clues, they took the story of the Emperor Titus's glorious military victory, as recounted by Josephus, and embedded that story in the Gospels - a sly and satirical way of glorifying the emperors through the ages.
The Roman Origins of Christianity
Book by Joe Atwill
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0974092800
July 2003
Publisher: Joe Atwill
ISBN: 0974092800
http://www.joeatwill.com -- "...the Roman Emperor Titus Flavius created Christianity to replace the Jewish Messianic movement that waged war against the Empire with a pacifistic, pro-Roman religion. Titus also designed the story line of Jesus' ministry in the New Testament as a satire of his military campaign through Judea so that posterity would learn that he had invented Christianity and recognize his genius. Though the New Testament had always been seen as a religious document it is actually a monument to the vanity of a Caesar."
In 1976, Falwell said, "The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the devil to keep Christians from running their own country."Seen to the left Jerry with a portrait of his god.
Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and 24 other Christian leaders this year tried to pressure the National Association of Evangelicals to silence its Washington director, the Rev. Rich Cizik, because Cizik is trying to convince evangelicals that global warming is real. In a February sermon, Falwell warned worshippers at his Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, that environmental activism by evangelicals "is Satan's attempt to redirect the church's primary focus" away from spreading the Gospel.
Over the years, Falwell waged a landmark libel case against Hustler magazine founder Larry Flynt over a raunchy parody ad, and created a furor in 1999 when one of his publications suggested that the purse-carrying "Teletubbies" character Tinky Winky was gay.
In recent years, Falwell had become a problematic figure for the GOP. His remarks a few days after Sept. 11, 2001, essentially blaming feminists, gays and liberals for bringing on the terrorist attacks, drew a rebuke from the White House, and he apologized.
Prior to the election, Dr. Jerry Falwell wrote in a newsletter and on his Web site: "I believe it is the responsibility of every political conservative, every evangelical Christian, every pro-life Catholic, and every traditional Jew, every Reagan Democrat, and everyone in between to get serious about re-electing President Bush."Since Jerry entered Hell there has been no official comment from those close to him. Those in the know say that Satan however was downplaying his newest guests importance saying the reception wasn't quite the same as when the Pope arrives.
Reverend Falwell, national chairman of the Faith and Values Coalition and Moral Majority founder, also labeled the National Organization for Women (NOW) the "National Order of Witches," and called Americans United for Separation of Church and State "an anti-Christ" group.
And at one point on Meet the Press, Dr. Falwell asked James Wallis of Sojourners how, as an ordained minister he could vote for Mr. Kerry, who supports abortion rights.
Many had already been looking beyond Falwell and his allies for new leaders when the pastor died. A 2004 poll for PBS's "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly" found that U.S. evangelicals had a lower regard for Falwell than for Pope John Paul II. Falwell became such a polarizing figure that his role in the 2004 Republican National Convention was limited to appearing at a closed-door rally for religious activists.
Evangelicals Prefer Satan to Hillary Clinton
Enjoying a comfortable lead over her GOP punching-bag opponent in her Senate re-election bid, New York's own Hillary Clinton was cast by evangelist Jerry Falwell as a favorite candidate for the 2008 presidential election:
Clinton's spokesman decried this "demonizing" maneuver, though no one would speculate on evangelicals' potential reaction to a Clinton versus Satan race. The Prince of Darkness declined to comment, saying he has every confidence in GOP Senate majority leader Bill Frist."I certainly hope that Hillary is the candidate," Falwell said at a breakfast session Friday in Washington. "I hope she's the candidate, because nothing will energize my (constituency) like Hillary Clinton," he said. "If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't."
My Son, the Antichrist - By Alex Heard - Slate Magazine
The Anti-Defamation League is hopping mad at Jerry Falwell for his speech lastweekend in Kingsport, Tenn., where he told a gathering of prophecy-heeding Christians that the Antichrist is "probably" alive and, as a "full-grown counterfeit of Christ," is without a doubt a Jewish male. The ADL said the remarks were typical of "an especially vicious tradition of Christian theological anti-Judaism."
The Antichrist is Jewish? It does sound bad, especially given the 2,000 year history of Jewish persecution by cranky Christians. The speech was also confusing to longtime Falwell buffs and those of us who have watery knowledge of the Book of Revelation, the New Testament text that causes all this prophecy hubbub. Isn't Falwell a longtime "friend of Israel"? Then why is he making anti-Semitic comments? And does Revelation really say the Antichrist must be a Jew?
See:Even Tammy Faye Messner appeared by phone in an interview with CNN’s Larry King, telling him that she “broke into tears” upon hearing the news of Falwell’s death, despite years of animosity between them that began when Falwell stole the ministry founded by Tammy and Jim Bakker.
But his fortunes changed in the late 1980s when televangelists took a hit from the bad publicity surrounding the financial scandal involving Jim and Tammy Bakker.
Falwell and his ministries faced some tough financial challenges as well in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and he withdrew somewhat from the national limelight as he worked to get Liberty University and his other ministries on a sounder financial footing.
Mendelssohn’s Walpurgisnacht
Conductor : Valérie Fayet
Walpurgis Night, based on a work by Goethe, celebrates the popular tradition which talks about pagan gatherings taking place on the “witches' mountain” during the night of May 1 st.
Mendelssohn's work is admirably clear, colourful and full of energy.
Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, cantata for chorus & orchestra, Op. 60 So weit gebracht, daß wir bei Nacht
Die erste Walpurgisnacht Op. 60: So weit gebracht, dass wir bei Nacht Listen
Composed by Felix Mendelssohn
Performed by Chamber Orchestra Europe
Conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt
A period of travel and concert-giving introduced Mendelssohn to England, Scotland (1829) and Italy (1830-31); after return visits to Paris (1831) and London (1832, 1833) he took up a conducting post at Düsseldorf (1833-5), concentrating on Handel's oratorios. Among the chief products of this time were The Hebrides (first performed in London, 1832), the g Minor Piano Concerto, Die erste Walpurgisnacht, the Italian Symphony (1833, London)
SEE
5. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: Ouverture: 1. Das schlechte 2. Der Ubergang zum Fruhling -
6. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: I Es lacht der Mai! -
7. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: II Konnt ihr so verwegen handeln? -
8. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: III Wer Opfer heut' zu bringen scheut -
9. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: IV Verteilt euch hier -
10. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: V Diese dumpfen Pfaffenchristen - Kommt mit Zacken und mit Gabeln -
11. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: VII So weit gebracht - VIII Hilf, ach hilf mir, Kriegsgeselle - IX Die Flamme reinigt sich vom Rauch -
O+1+2.nwc: 0: Overture : 1: Now may again : 2: Know ye not a deed so daring? 3+4.nwc : 3: The man who flies : 4: Disperse, ye gallant men 5+6+7+8+9.nwc: 5: Should our Christian foes assail us : 6: Come with torches brightly flashing : 7: Restrain'd by might : 8: Help, my comrades : 9: Unclouded now, the flame is bright
"...don't you think this could become a new kind of cantata?" Rituality, Authenticity and Staging in Mendelssohn’s Walpurgisnacht
Assuming a potential analogy between art and ritual, or between art and the interpretation of ritual as a Gesamtkunstwerk, the question arises as to what degree boundaries or transitions between aesthetic presentation, staging and identification with ritual can be determined in art. This topic could be discussed in terms of reception-aesthetics, with the question of the participation of an implicit or exclusive audience in ritual or in art. On the other hand, the perspective of this question can also be developed, as in this article, in terms of production-aesthetics, using the model of a musical composition based on a preexisting literary text. In Goethe's and Mendelssohn's texts,' not only their cultic-religious rituality will be investigated, but also the problem of how far beyond the cultic subject the immanent formative principles of ritual in terms of music are effective. Although in his early ballad Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night) of 1799 Goethe distinguished the pagan Walpurgis night from the classical and romantic in both stages of Faust, in his own way Mendelssohn related these three forms of ritual directly to one another within one work.Cantata - LoveToKnow 1911
In modern times the term cantata is applied almost exclusively to choral, as distinguished from solo vocal music. There has, perhaps, been only one kind of cantata since Bach which can be recognized as an art form and not as a mere title for works otherwise impossible to classify. It is just possible to recognize as a distinct artistic type that kind of early r9th-century cantata in which the chorus is the vehicle for music more lyric and songlike than the oratorio style, though at the same time not exclude ing the possibility of a brilliant climax in the shape of a light order of fugue. Beethoven's Glorreiche Augenblick is a brilliant "pot-boiler" in this style; Weber's Jubel Cantata is a typical specimen, and Mendelssohn's Walpurgisnacht is the classic.
The Jews seem fated to wanDer forever among other nations and be faced perpetually with minority status and a legitimate pressure to acculturate and assimilate. If one compares the ending of The Eternal Road to Felix Mendelssohn's setting of Goethe's Die erste Walpurgisnacht, one is struck by a vital difference. Mendelssohn, although bearing the most celebrated name in early nineteenth-century German-Jewish history, had been converted and become a devout Protestant. Nevertheless through his music he celebrated with empathy and pride the courageous resistance of the Druids to the siege on their traditions and beliefs laid by violent Christian attackers. In contrast, The Eternal Road ends much more ambiguously with a vague hope for a return to Zion among a defeated and divided community, bowing to a fate of perpetual exclusion, persecution, and powerlessness.
Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the Walpurgis Night
The Heathen Muse in European Culture, 1700-1850
John Michael Cooper
Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the Walpurgis Night is a book about tolerance and acceptance in the face of cultural, political, and religious strife. Its point of departure is the Walpurgis Night. The Night, also known as Beltane or May Eve, was supposedly an annual witches' Sabbath that centered around the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz Mountains.
After exploring how a notoriously pagan celebration came to be named after the Christian missionary St. Walpurgis (ca. 710-79), John Michael Cooper discusses the Night's treatments in several closely interwoven works by Goethe and Mendelssohn. His book situates those works in their immediate personal and professional contexts, as well as among treatments by a wide array of other artists, philosophers, and political thinkers, including Voltaire, Lessing, Shelley, Heine, Delacroix, and Berlioz.
In an age of decisive political and religious conflict, Walpurgis Night became a heathen muse: a source of spiritual inspiration that was neither specifically Christian, nor Jewish, nor Muslim. And Mendelssohn's and Goethe's engagements with it offer new insights into its role in European cultural history, as well as into issues of political, religious, and social identity -- and the relations between cultural groups -- in today's world.
Among some of his (Goethe’s) most engaging/compelling musical experiences of his late maturity were the visits of Felix Mendelssohn, who was 12 years old in 1821 and had been introduced to Goethe personally in Weimar by his (Mendelssohn’s) teacher, Zelter. Further visits took place in 1822, 1825, and 1830. Goethe had Mendelssohn play for him and explain to him technical matters concerning music and music history. This relationship became one of tender devotion on the part of Goethe towards Mendelssohn: in 1822 Goethe said to Mendelssohn: “I am Saul and you are my David,” and in his last letter to Mendelssohn, Goethe began with “My dear son.” Mendelssohn dedicated his Piano Quartet in B minor, opus 3 to Goethe and composed music for “Die erste Walpurgisnacht” (1st version in 1832)…. Goethe was eager to hear instrumental music which was played by Reichardt, Kayser, Zelter, Eberwein, Hummel, Spohr, Beethoven, Baron Oliva, Szymanowska (female pianist), J. H. F. Schütz, and finally by Mendelssohn whom he repeatedly asked to play something for him.”]
Mendelssohn's Die erste Walpurgisnacht, one of his greatest cantatas, was based on Goethe's Faust, and on Goethe's personal interpretation of the scene (Grove Dictionary 146). Mendelssohn's friendship with the poet lasted for a great many years, up until Goethe's death in 1832.The first Walpurgisnacht
The Ouverture represents the transition from the winter to spring. The beginning in A-Moll is overwritten with “the bad weather”, while with the idiom into the Dur variant approaching the Walpurgisnacht in spring is announced. It is described in the following, as the priests and Druiden of the Celts meet secretly in the inhospitable mountains of the resin, in order to address after old custom with fire their prayer to the all father of the sky and the earth. Since their rites are forbidden by the Christian gentlemen however, everything must happen in the secret one. With cheat and to linings the soldiers of the Christians were frightened in such a manner that the Celts in peace can celebrate their Walpurgisnacht.
There are two Walpurgisnächte in Goethe's work. Admits is above all that from that fist I, in which a typical Hexensabbat is sworn to in visionär grotesque way. On the other hand Goethe takes poem the first Walpurgisnacht a heidnisches victim celebration developed to 1799 in that during thunderstorm eight to the cause to confront two incompatible ways of thinking and being LV each other.
Whole 19. Through century the romantic composers let themselves fist be inspired again and again from the picture world of the I and fist II, while the first Walpurgisnacht remained almost unknown. Only Carl Friedrich Zelter, Goethe friend and musical advisor, have try, the poem tone. It kept full fifteen years it under its papers, before it took distance finally from a project, which exceeded its imagination.
That was introduced by Zelter at that time twelve-year-old boy Mendelssohn with around sixty years the older Olympier Goethe, whom time and fame had coined/shaped. By Beethoven and Schubert to judge, understood the old gentleman not much about music. In its youth he had heard some of the Mozarts' works, whose clarity and harmony it zollte still at the age attention and acknowledgment; and it found favours to feel with the citizen of Berlin miracle child from good family the aftereffect of those melodies in those the ideal of its own youth lived. It would be inaccurate to speak of a co-operation between Goethe and Mendelssohn. The first important piece, to which the poet energized the young musician, was the Ouvertüre sea silence and lucky travel, which arrived only in the year 1832, Goethe's death year, at the public performance. That Goethe would have known to appreciate a music, so clearly under Beethovens the influence is to be doubted. Just as little it the score of the first Walpurgisnacht would have probably behagt. The work, in which orchestras and voices verwoben closely into one another are, becomes not completely fair the central thought of the artist Philosphen. From its “Faible for witches” seduced, Mendelssohn stated little interest in the deeper meaning of the poem: the always-lasting conflict between the instinktiven natural forces on the one hand and the mental clarity of a thought world coined/shaped by the clearing-up on the other hand. With the primarily romantic treatment of the article it remains on the level of a descriptive poem and tears us in tumbles uncontrolled thunderstorm eight.
The 1831 completed first minute of the score experienced substantial changes, before she arrived to 1842 at the premiere. Goethe did not experience no more, which regulation to his verses assign became, whose Vertonung lends a fascinating juvenile fire to them. Mendelssohn proves here as genuine romantics. It uses a pallet of magnificent tone qualities, lets the horns from the supple fabric of the Streicher step out and gives to the Holzbläsern a most personal note. The choirs are from a Schlichtheit, which lends occasionally the serious character of a Volksliedes to them, while proper large airs are assigned to the soloist.
The whole wealth of the romantic opera is united in this musical illustration of a poem, which reminds at the Feenzauber of shakespearscher scenes. The choir of the Druiden (No. 6 of the score) is from an imaginativeness, which only the late Verdi in the last act of its Falstaff reaches again. The composer, at whom Goethe estimated the causing its own youth, somehow not completely up-to-date one, appears here surprisingly as one of the prophets of the music 19. Century. With deciveness it secures the transition from Beethoven to the large rhapsodies of Brahms.Jean Francois Labie
(Translation: Ingrid trusting man)G O E T H E ' S P A G A N P O E T R Y
Goethe, a genius with unmistakable Pagan sympathies,
excelled as a poet, dramatist, novelist, essayist,
philosopher and scientist (his works occupy 140
volumes!). Here are several of his Pagan poems,
including his ballade "The First Walpurgis-Night," in
which the Pagans score a Discordian victory over their
oppressors. (I'm sure Goethe now dwells happily among
the Pagan Gods.) The ballade has been set to music by
Mendelssohn (Die Erste Walpurgisnacht), which is quite
good, but not suitable for small group performance.
Perhaps the Muses will help some modern Pagan to
compose a version for contemporary witches' sabbats.
Although only the God (Allvater) is mentioned, I've
left Goethe's text unchanged; it's easy to substitute
"Mother" for some or all of the "Father"s if you like.
-- John Opsopaus
THE FIRST WALPURGIS-NIGHT
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A DRUID.
Sweet smiles the May!
The forest gay
From frost and ice is freed;
No snow is found,
Glad songs resound
Across the verdant mead.
Upon the height
The snow lies light,
Yet thither now we go,
There to extol our Father's name,
Whom we for ages know.
Amid the smoke shall gleam the flame;
Thus pure the heart will grow.
THE DRUIDS.
Amid the smoke shall gleam the flame;
Extol we now our Father's name,
Whom we for ages know!
Up, up, then, let us go!
ONE OF THE PEOPLE.
Would ye, then, so rashly act?
Would ye instant death attract?
Know ye not the cruel threats
Of the victors we obey?
Round about are placed their nets
In the sinful Heathen's way.
Ah! upon the lofty wall
Wife and children slaughter they;
And we all
Hasten to a certain fall.
CHORUS OF WOMEN.
Ay, upon the camp's high wall
All our children loved they slay.
Ah, what cruel victors they!
And we all
Hasten to a certain fall.
A DRUID.
Who fears to-day
His rites to pay,
Deserves his chains to wear.
The forest's free!
This wood take we,
And straight a pile prepare!
Yet in the wood
To stay 'tis good
By day till all is still,
With watchers all around us placed
Protecting you from ill.
With courage fresh, then, let us haste
Our duties to fulfil.
CHORUS OF WATCHERS.
Ye valiant watchers now divide
Your numbers through the forest wide,
And see that all is still,
While they their rites fulfil.
A WATCHER.
Let us in a cunning wise,
Yon dull Christian priests surprise!
With the devil of their talk
We'll those very priests confound.
Come with prong and come with fork,
Raise a wild and rattling sound
Through the livelong night, and prowl
All the rocky passes round.
Screech-owl, owl,
Join in chorus with our howl!
CHORUS OF WATCHERS.
Come with prong, and come with fork,
Like the devil of their talk,
And with wildly rattling sound,
Prowl the desert rocks around!
Screech owl, owl,
Join in chorus with our howl!
A DRUID.
This far 'tis right,
That we by night
Our Father's praises sing;
Yet when 'tis day,
To Thee we may
A heart unsullied bring.
'Tis true that now,
And often, Thou
Favorest the foe in fight.
As from the smoke is freed the blaze,
So let our faith burn bright!
And if they crush our olden ways,
Who e'er can crush Thy light?
A CHRISTIAN WATCHER.
Comrades, quick! your aid afford!
All the brood of hell's abroad:
See how their enchanted forms
Through and through with flames are glowing!
Dragon-women, men-wolf swarms,
On in quick succession going!
Let us, let us haste to fly!
Wilder yet the sounds are growing,
And the arch fiend roars on high;
From the ground
Hellish vapors rise around.
CHORUS OF CHRISTIAN WATCHERS.
Terrible enchanted forms,
Dragon-women, men-wolf swarms!
Wilder yet the sounds are growing!
See, the arch fiend comes, all-glowing!
From the ground
Hellish vapors rise around.
CHORUS OF DRUIDS
As from the smoke is freed the blaze,
So let our faith burn bright!
And if they crush our olden ways,
Whoe'er can crush Thy light?
[Bowring translation]
THE CONSECRATED SPOT
When in the dance of the Nymphs, in the
moonlight so holy assembled,
Mingle the Graces, down from Olympus in secret
descending,
Here doth the minstrel hide, and list to their
numbers enthralling,
Here doth he watch their silent dances'
mysterious measure.
[tr. Bowring]
[All selections from "The Poems of Goethe," New York:
John D. Williams, 1882.]
finisThe Romantic Mendelssohn: The Composition of Die erste Walpurgisnacht
JSTOR: The Music of To-Day
THE FAUST LEGEND IN MUSIC
Among the Cannibal Christians, by Earl Lee.
Did the early christians take the command, "Eat of my body," just a bit too literally? And just what did the "Body and Blood of Christ" really consist of? For evidence that the attitude of the early christians toward mind-altering substances was a wee bit more liberal than that of their brethren today, check this out.
Christian Cannibalism
(Communion, Eucharist)“Jesus said, ‘Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man.’” (The Gospel of Thomas)
Christianity is the literal and symbolic consumption of the man god, the human sacrifice meant to atone for humanities original sin. Thus it was to be the final sacrifice to end religions based on sacrifice. Or it was supposed to be. However since then the sacrifice continues to be celebrated with ritual consumption of the god, and the sacrifices continue to be made in the gods name.
As repulsive as the notion may seem, it is a fact that "theophagy"--the technical term for the consumption of a god's body and blood--has been considered a religious experience worldwide for thousands of years. While certain cults/religions may think that they invented the concept of the Eucharist, and that the Eucharist has nothing whatsoever to do with cannibalism, the ritual of sacrificing a god or goddess and sharing his or her blood and body as a sacrament is an act found throughout the ancient world. The only thing so-called modern religion has done is to maintain the form of the Eucharist in a symbolic rather than literal sense, and for that perhaps we should be grateful.
The success of Christianity as a religion in ending cannibalism and human sacrifice is because it incorporates them as symbolic instead of actual practices in their rites.
An early example is J. A. MacCulloch in the year 1932. He discusses all possible theories
why cannibalism decreased in many places. In this context MacCulloch mentions the
“presence of a higher developed civilisation and especially a higher developed religion”.
He hints at the fact that Islam made an end to cannibalism in North- and East Africa and
only at the end, so to say, casually concludes: “Christianity together with other European
civilising influences has put an end to it (to cannibalism), that is in many parts of South
America, New Zealand, on many islands of the South Pacific, the former center of
cannibalism and in many parts of the African continent”.Apparently the value principle takes precedence over the exchange principle. (The cannibal may kill his enemy because he sees him as food.) It is important for the Christian, however, to note that the basis for definition of value can differ. The Christian "cannibal" loves his enemy because he sees him as a human soul. Such a perception is difficult to make, however, unless there is a more abundant food supply.
Lestringant's point about cannibals, in the plural, is that anthropophagy (the practice of eating human flesh) does not equal cannibalism. He objects both to the reduction of the cannibal to the anthropophagite, and to the association of all anthropophagous rituals (not the least of which is the Christian Eucharist) with cannibalism. Cannibals demonstrates that, from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the identities of cannibals and the meanings of cannibalism were multitudinous and uncertain, and the figure of the cannibal was employed by European authors toward various rhetorical and didactic ends. By the nineteenth century, however, the identity and qualities of the cannibal had been reduced to a wholly non-European savage, who possessed "natural" appetites for human flesh and engaged in "primitive" cannibalistic rites. Montaigne's noble Brazilian cannibals, whose loquacity had dazzled the king's court in 1562, were replaced by hairy and lubricious African savages, whose nineteenth-century performances in two-bit colonial sideshow filled the likes of French novelist Gustave Flaubert with dread and disgust.
The term "cannibal," Lestringant reminds us, was invented by Christopher Columbus upon his 1492 arrival in Cuba. The word was a corruption of "Caribs," the enemies of the peace-loving Arawaks who welcomed the Italian captain. In the coining of canibal, Columbus created a portmanteau word by joining canis (the dog-headed cynocephalous of Pliny) with bal (belonging to "the lordship of the Great Khan"). On his second voyage, Columbus discovered the remains of cooked human flesh in a recently abandoned Carib village on Guadeloupe. Thus, Columbus's canibals came into being, an impossible combination of dog-headed and human flesh-eating descendants of the Great Khan. Although the canine and Asiatic genealogy was soon put behind, the "monstrous table manners" (p. 17) of the cannibal swiftly and tenaciously captured the imagination of Europeans.
Although colonial records are replete with references to "cannibals," consider the historical context. A 1503 decree from Queen Isabella of Spain, during the heyday of Spanish colonial conquest, allowed the enslavement of cannibals.
The edict, Whitehead says, "created quite a strong interest in 'discovering' cannibals in the New World. Then you wouldn't even have to observe the minimum notion of human rights they would get as human beings and as God's subjects. It demonized the native population, and legally produced an economic benefit."
So during the first 100 years of colonization of the vast Spanish New-World dominion, you could make good money by branding someone a cannibal. Indians were plantation slaves until about 1600, when legions of African slaves arrived. (Over the past quarter-century, some anthropologists have used this history to question the very existence of cannibalism. In their view -- see "The Man-eating Myth..." in the bibliography -- all evidence for cannibalism is so sketchy or biased as to be incredible.)
The accusation of blood libel begins with Christianity. It was first applied against the early Christians by the Romans. The Christians in Europe would later use this same accusation against Jews. Despite human sacrifice being a sin in the Old Testament; the Hebrew Bible strictly prohibits human sacrifices (e.g., Lev 18:21, 24-25; Deut 18:10; Jer 7:31, 19:5; Ezek 23:37,39).
In the early centuries of Christianity, the church existed under the Roman Empire, which granted its subjects freedom in some issues, but demanded conformity to its own ideals in others. Romans commonly thought Christians strayed from certain core morals of the state, summarized by three widespread stereotypes — that Christians practiced atheism, cannibalism, and incest.
As for cannibalism, Romans were appalled to hear that Christians ate the body and drank the blood of their Lord. The "rumors grew to absurd proportions," historical theologian D. Jeffrey Bingham writes. "Christians were even accused of eating infants."
The charges of incest and cannibalism arose from the fact that only the baptized were permitted to attend the Eucharist. What, therefore, was done in secret by such people was quite likely, in the pagan's mind, to be immoral. Moreover, the fragmentary knowledge which the pagan gained by hearsay about the meaning of the Lord's Supper—eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ—quickly led to the suspicion of cannibalism; while the Christian emphasis on love and brotherhood was easily distorted into a cloak for incest.
The Blood Libel is still with us today applied to other religions in competition with Christianity.Ancient History Sourcebook: The Ritual Cannabilism Charge Against Christians
Now the story about the initiation of young novices is as much to be detested as it is well known. An infant covered over with meal, that it may deceive the unwary, is placed before him who is to be stained with their rites: this infant is slain by the young pupil, who has been urged on as if to harmless blows on the surface of the meal, with dark and secret wounds. Thirstily - O horror! they lick up its blood; eagerly they divide its limbs. By this victim they are pledged together; with this consciousness of wickedness they are covenanted to mutual silence.
From Minucius Felix, Octavius, R. E. Wallis, trans. in The Ante-Nicene Fathers
(Buffalo, N. Y.: The Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887), Vol. 4, pp. 177-178.
A strange relationship has developed between Christianity and cannibalism over the centuries. Christianity is a faith that believes in one god, believes in forgiveness and being kind to one’s neighbour. However there is firm evidence that believers in this one faith became at times a believer of eating one’s enemies. For example Syrian crusaders 1000 years ago reverted to cannibalism due to their Christian beliefs.
A report found that was written by a Christian leader Rudolph Caen about the village of Maarra stated:"Our troops boiled pagan adults in cooking pots; they impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled."
Increasingly since 1970 fundamentalist Protestant sects, almost exclusively from the United States, have taken up the strong battle against Voodoo, accusing it of devil worship, suggesting cannibalism and demanding of converts a complete separation from their Voodoo connection.
The Bible is the source for all things Christian.
Notice Acts 12:1. King Herod began to persecute the Church, culminating in the brutal death of the apostle James by sword. This pleased the Jews so much that the apostle Peter was also taken prisoner by Herod. The plan was to later deliver him to the Jews. Verse 3 says, “Then were the days of unleavened bread.” The New Testament Church was observing these feast days described in Leviticus 23. Now read verse 4: “And when he [Herod] had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions [sixteen] of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people.”
Is this Bible authority for Easter?
This passage is not talking about Easter. How do we know? The word translated Easter is the Greek word pascha (derived from the Hebrew word pesach; there is no original Greek word for Passover), and it has only one meaning. It always means Passover—it can never mean Easter! For this reason, we find a Hebrew word used in the Greek New Testament. Once again, this Hebrew word can only refer to Passover. And other translations, including the Revised Standard Version, correctly render this word Passover.
Instead of endorsing Easter, this verse really proves that the Church was still observing the supposedly Jewish Passover ten years after the death of Christ!
What About the New Testament?
If the Passover was instituted forever, then New Testament instruction for its observance should be clear. This instruction is found in I Corinthians 5:7-8: “Purge out therefore the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened. For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast (of unleavened bread, which always followed Passover, as explained above)…”
Christ, as the Lamb of God (John 1:29; Acts 8:32; I Peter 1:19; Rev. 5:6), replaced the Old Testament lamb eaten on Passover evening each year. The New Testament symbols of the bread and wine were instituted so that Christians could eat the body and drink the blood of Christ, the true Lamb of God. Jesus’ sacrifice replaced the need to kill a spring lamb. Luke 22:19 shows that Jesus substituted the bread and wine to be taken annually in commemoration of His sacrifice for the remission of our sins—both spiritual and physical.
Christian Cannibals
Even if you still stubbornly cling to the belief that the Eucharist represents only a symbol of eating flesh and drinking blood, that still makes you a cannibal, if only a symbolic cannibal. If you partake in communion as a metaphorical representation of eating Christ's body, then that still makes you a metaphorical cannibal. You simply have no easy out of this predicament as a symbolic cannibal sits as a subset of cannibalism.Communion: Ritualized Cannibalism
From such a beginning, thousands and thousands of years ago, there developed and evolved basic ritualistic behavioral patterns, and mythological motifs, or themes, that have spread by a process of diffusion from, at least, the Neanderthal period through Cro-Magnon caves, and into the Christian churches and cathedrals of 20th-century America.
One of the more obvious of these is the "sacred meal" or ritualistic cannibalism. We still practice this ritual today in the Protestant and Roman Catholic communion, where we eat the body and drink the blood of the divine leader.
The Christian church calls it "communion," or "taking communion." The communicant eats and drinks, symbolically or literally, the flesh and blood of the divine "leader." The traditional invitation to Communion, spoken by the presiding clergy, is this: "Take, eat, this is my body . . . this cup is the new covenant is my blood . . . drink."
Eating a body and drinking blood is a cannibalistic theme, no matter how hard the clergy try to water it down, or theo-babble around it by calling it "only symbolic" cannibalism. In the 9th century, the clergy said that God made the flesh of Jesus only look like a wafer so as not to upset the worshipers. They were really cannibals, but they didn't have to face up to it, admit it, or be vividly aware of it.
And the blood libel about Christian Cannibalism continues even now, except the blood libel is used against liberals and Catholics. So it is not all Christians that are cannibals just those that are Catholic. Which is rather ironic considering it was the Catholic Empire that declared those it colonized cannibals.
Published 13 April 1998 in the News & Record (Greensboro, NC)
Could Clinton actually be a cannibal, too?
I have a problem with President Clinton's recent trip to Africa.
As a Republican who was raised blue-collar, union, and Southern (Do I have to say Democrat?), I'm not surprised that the president would make politically motivated blanket apologies for historical transgressions for which no one living is responsible. I'm not perturbed that while he was apologizing for our ancestors' wrongdoing that he didn't call on his African hosts to apologize for their ancestors' complicity in the slave trade as well.
As an atheist who was raised as a Protestant, I'm not upset that the president took Holy Communion while in South Africa, or that he, as a Southern Baptist, did so inappropriately in a Catholic church, or even that he, as a political partisan, did so as a shameless photo op.
The problem I have with the president's participation in this sacrament involves the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation. By this doctrine, the bread and wine retain their appearance but miraculously become the actual body and blood of Christ upon their consecration. Persons who participate in the Catholic Eucharist do so believing that they are eating real human flesh and drinking real human blood.
As if being an inveterate liar, an unapologetic draft dodger, and a self-confessed adulterer weren't bad enough, I am absolutely horrified to learn that Bill Clinton is also a cannibal.
James M. Wallace
Greensboro
And we would not be forgiven if we didn't round our post with some Crowley.
Documents selected as Scripture
The Scriptures, too, are testimony by the early Christians. In 1 Cor 10:16, St. Paul states: "The chalice of benediction, which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? And the bread, which we break, is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord?" In the next chapter, he draws the same association we find in the Didache and elsewhere, i.e. the need for purity in receiving the Eucharist. First, Paul narrates the meal with Jesus: (11:24) "And giving thanks, broke, and said: Take ye, and eat: this is my body, which shall be delivered for you: this do for the commemoration of me." Likewise with the chalice; then Paul states (11:27) "Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord." So we find that the early letters and documents, as well as the letters that became Holy Scripture among Christians, appear strongly to affirm a belief in what is today called by many the Real Presence, a summary term that refers to the notion that Jesus Christ is "really, truly, and substantially present" in the Eucharist.
Over the centuries
Christian documents show that this dogma was maintained with the passage of time. From Origen, c 244: "[W]hen you have received the Body of the Lord, you reverently exercise every care lest a particle of it fall..." (Jurgens §490). From St. Ephraim, ante 373: "Do not now regard as bread that which I have given you; but take, eat this Bread, and do not scatter the crumbs; for what I have called My Body, that it is indeed" (Jurgens §707). From St. Augustine, c 412: "He walked here in the same flesh, and gave us the same flesh to be eaten unto salvation. But no one eats that flesh unless first he adores it; and thus it is discovered how such a footstool of the Lord's feet is adored; and not only do we not sin by adoring, we do sin by not adoring" (Jurgens §1479a). At the Roman Council VI, 1079, Berengarius affirmed: "I, Berengarius, in my heart believe and with my lips confess that through the mystery of the sacred prayer and the words of our Redeemer the bread and wine which are placed on the altar are substantially changed into the true and proper and living flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, our Lord..." (Denziger [Dz] §355). In a discussion of the form of consecration (the word now used to refer to the blessing given by Jesus), Pope Innocent III states (1202) "For the species of bread and wine is perceived there, and the truth of the body and blood of Christ is believed and the power of unity and of love.... The form is of the bread and wine; the truth, of the flesh and blood..." (Dz §414-4). The dogma was affirmed repeatedly by the Roman Catholic Church and within Roman Catholic theology, e.g. at the Council of Lyon, A.D. 1274 (Dz §465); by Pope Benedict XII, 1341 (Dz §544); by Pope Clement VI, 1351 (Dz §574a); at the Council of Constance, 1418 (Dz §583); at the Council of Florence, 1439 (Dz §698); by Pope Julius III at the Council of Trent, 1551 (Dz §874); by Pope Benedict XIV, 1743 (Dz §1469); by Pope Pius VI, 1794 (Dz §1529); and by Pope Leo XIII, 1887 (Dz §1919), inter alia. Other examples can be found to flesh out any interim.
THE GODEATER
1903
<<1.>>
[The idea of this obscure and fantastic play is as follows: By
a glorious act human misery is secured (History of Christianity).
Hence, appreciation of the personality of Jesus is no excuse for being a Christian.
Inversely, by a vile and irrational series of acts human happiness is secured (Story of the
play).
Hence, attacks on the Mystics of History need not cause us to condemn Mysticism.
Also, the Knowledge of Good and Evil is a Tree whose fruit Man has not yet tasted: so
that the Devil cheated Eve indeed; or (more probably) Eve cheated Adam. Unless (most
probable of all) God cheated the Devil, and the fruit was a common apple after all. Cf. H.
Maudsley, "Life in Mind and Conduct."]
