When All Roads Lead to Rome

A friend has just finished a chapter of his life and is making a pilgrimage to Rome as a reward of sorts.  My friend has tastes that lean towards the exotic and the esoteric.   He has studied well the ancient mysteries and is a worthy recipient of the ancient knowledge.  He has asked me what he might see when in Rome and I have come up with a tentative first list that does not begin to be exhaustive.   It is also a little terse and will hopefully be somewhat annotated and extended later.

Before you go to Rome, buy the Oxford Archaeological Guide to Rome.

Review the website listed below which is about underground Rome. http://www.romasotterranea.it/homepage.html

When in Rome, do these things:

Remember when you are there that the accursed Christians stole from everyone and desecrated the sacred buildings that were left in their trust.  Whenever you see ancient concrete you are seeing the foundations of a building that has had its stone and marble exterior and other accessories, windows, doors, lamps and so forth,  stolen.

Remember that there have been styles of restoration over the last few millennia and that it can be very hard to tell without guidance how old certain things are, what is a restoration, what is authentic etc.  

Some of the most hated architecture is from the Fascist period of the last century.  But this posed hatred is an affectation and history will probably judge their work better than the art snobs of a few years ago.  Or maybe not, I am just biased against art snobs in principle and haven't really looked that closely.

When the Roman Empire "fell", it did not actually fall and lasted another 1000 years or so in the East, and that nothing architectural really went away.  The population dived from a high of about one million to a number that is quite small, quite possibly a few tens of thousands.

The entire city then was a ruin and a garden.  As time went by, some of the rich families acquired great tracts of Rome and made them their private gardens.  And why not?  No one else was taking care of things.  If only they had not destroyed so many antiquities in the process of making their gardens.  See the Farnese Gardens here at Wikipedia.

Remember that Rome is not open all the time, things have weird hours, sometimes an attendant or guard will let you in if you ask nicely or perhaps provide a tip or honoraium.  Apparently you need to make a reservation in advance to see the Vatican.   Same with the Borghese gallery which comes highly recommended.

Many of the originals of things you see are in museums and what is in situ, on the street as it were, is a restoration.

See the Museum of Roman Civilization which has among other things a recreation of the 2nd century Rome from the Forma Urba..

Count how many words in this post are standard English and yet are also perfectly good Latin.   

Climb the victory tower of Trajan which inside has a spiral staircase to the top. 

See one of the vast caverns inside the hills of Rome left over from quarrying the local tufa before they built their monuments out of marble, an affectation they picked up from the Greeks.   I keep reading about these caverns but I have never heard of anyone who has actually seen them.  Possibly they are closed or just dangerous.

Constantine giving the "finger"

When you see a giant marble head, or hand or foot, recall that Romans often made their cult statues (the image of the God for the temple) in a way that economized on the marble or other stone required. The head, hand, and feet are what was exposed of the statue, the rest might be in a toga and therefore did not have to be carved (not to mention quarried, transported, etc).

See the black stone from the 6th century BC and ponder the meaning of the archaic Latin.

Walk the floor of the original Roman senate (not the one that Augustus built) and stand where Julius stood when he was murdered by his fellow senators in the name of freedom, which really meant to preserve the privileges of their class.

See the aqueduct switching center and distribution system.

Find the recently discovered Orbs of Imperium hidden by Maxentius when he was defeated by the traitor Constantine at the Milvius Bridge.

Horatius at the Bridge.   Find the bridge.

Make contact with those who are attempting to revive the old religion in Rome against the hated Christians and perform some ceremony with them.

Go to the Kings House (the Regia) and ponder what it means about the origins of Rome, the kings of Rome and what is true and what is not.

Go to the bridges of Rome and remember that the leading religious figure was the Pontifex Maximus and that bridges and early Roman religion are somehow connected. (The Pope is still officially the Pontifex Maximus of Rome).

Go to the House of the Vestals and light a fire.

Go to Alba Longa and wonder if the brother-murderer Romulus really came from there.

Trace the route of the Lupercalia. Best to do so naked while wearing a thong made of the sacrificed goats or dog.   The Lupercalia was probably an initiation rite of young men to a brotherhood from the time of the earliest Rome or before.

Trace the route of the Triumph.

Go to where the Sibylline books were kept (in the archives of one of the Temples) and lament the loss of important knowledge in the various fires and tragedies of Rome.

Go underground at one of the Baths and see how the plumbing worked.

Go to Ostia / Portus and see the port of Rome which has much more of an authentic Roman city from the late empire.

Go to Pompeii/Herculaneum before they are destroyed by being exposed to the weather and the light and ask yourself why the roads had those stepping stones.

Go to the tombs and memorials of the murdered Gracchi Brothers and learn about the Social Wars and then think about the future of America.

Find the Milvius Bridge and realize that this is where Western Civilization was destroyed  by Constantine who fell into superstition and began to worship the hateful murdered god/king of the Christians.

See the Parthenon and imagine what it looked like before the wretched Christians got there.  It has stood for 2000 years and we can't make buildings that last for 100.

Tour some of the catacombs and realize that they were not just for Christians and that Christians never really worshipped there in secret.  The catacombs were a response to the lack of space in and around Rome and its expense.  So they dug underground and put their crypts there.    Many of the catacombs have not been explored (or at least we are told that).

Realize that the Romans were not permitted to bury the dead within the sacred boundaries of the city (the Pomeranium) so they built their tombs on roads leading out of the city. Therefore go to the Appian way and outside the formal walls of Rome see some of the tombs.   In a prime spot outside the walls of the city is the tomb of the Scipio Family, the family of the famous Scipio Africanus.

When in Rome keep your eyes open for the family name Colonna.   I am friends with Kerry Colonna who worked with us at deGraf/Wahrman.   The Colonna mansion and private art collection, one of the three most prestigious private art collections in the world, is open for tourists on Saturday morning each week.  Go see it.

See the tomb of Augustus and imagine what it looked like before the Christians plundered it.  (Note: I read that the tomb will have some restoration work done to it after all these years of being essentially ignored. Something to do with the 2000 year anniversary of the death of Augustus).

See the Golden House of Nero underneath one of the Christian Slave Churches.

See the secret library of the Vatican where both truth and lies are told.

Visit the Etruscan tombs.  What were the "mirrors" for?

The Cloaca Maxima was originally above ground and used as drainage for rivers that flooded what would become the Forum.   It was started in the 6th century BC and many workers were killed building it.

See the great sewer of Rome, the Cloaca Maxima, built in the time of the Kings.   A good article on the history of the Cloaca Maxima can be found here.

Remember that the Cult of Mithra was a a late empire cult, mostly in the army. Perseus slaying the Bull probably refers to the secret information involving what the soul must do after death to pass safely among the stars. This Mithra may or may not have anything to do with the religions of the East, although they are certainly an Eastern import.

Ave Imperator, Morituri te Salutant.

Read about the time I first saw a Roman ruin in this post.

Designing a Latin Motto for Your New Crime Organization

Most American's have realized by now that if they are on the outside of the vast wealth in this country, that the only way to change that situation is through the time-honored American tradition of crime.  All great fortunes in this country started with a crime or crimes, and people are not being metaphorical when they say that. (3)

But if you are going to have a criminal organization, particularly an international criminal organization, then you are going to have to have a motto to inspire your members, and that motto has to be in Latin.  There are strict rules about such things: from Annuit Coeptus to Semper Fidelis to In Hoc Signo Vinces, (1)  our mottos in the West are required to be in Latin even for criminals.

Since our educational system has for years fallen into decadence and shame and failed to teach everyone how to read and write Latin, it is permissible, under the circumstances to use certain Internet-based crutches, such as the recent Google Tranlate English->Latin and Latin->English service.

You may find this useful capability here:  http://translate.google.com/#en/la/

We all know that the United States has mottos designed by Freemasons under the control of the Illuminati, hence the mottos Annuit Coeptus and Novus Ordo Seclorum.   Its fun to have people deny that there was Freemason influence in the creation of this country and show them the Great Seal of the United States.

One interpretation of the "Eye in the Pyramid" is that the Egyptians built the Pyramids with sacred knowledge, but that knowledge came directly from Satan.   

Some of our most notable mottos / slogans are in fact fictional, including my favorite from Edgar Allen Poe's A Cask of Amontillado.  In this short story our hero, Montresor, lures his enemy into a dungeon, secures him with chains, and imprisons him up behind a wall of bricks to leave him to die of starvation.  The motto of the Montresor family is Neme Me Impune Lacessit or "none may attack me with impunity".    (2)

So now what would constitute a good Latin motto for a crime organization, whether international or local?   Presumably the motto would indicate either a lofty goal, or an act of revenge, or in some way indicate what made our criminal group a center of excellence, e.g. the very best bank robbers, the very best despoilers of virgins, the best at repressing justice hand-in-hand with the politicians, that sort of thing.   In the case of organizations rising up from oppression, one could imagine an oddly paranoid phrase as a contender, and I included one below.

To inspire complete and efficient vengeance, perhaps

     Debent Omnes Morimur  -- They Must All Die

     Occidite Eos Celeriter  --  Kill Them Quickly


To inspire discipline and accuracy among our members, we might have

    Stultus Est Errare  --  To Err is Stupid    

   
To remind us what our goals are, consider

    Pecunia et Potentia  --  Money and Power

    Carpe Pecuniam  --  Seize the Money

    Nisi Mentis Inops, Pauper Est  --  Only an Idiot is Poor

    Furantur a Divitibus  --  Steal From the Rich


Finally, my favorite, for those of us with low self-esteem

    Omnes Me Oderunt  --  They All Hate Me


Here are a few thoughts on the technicalities of using Google English / Latin / English translator. Remember that Latin is an inflected language (defined in a moment) and English has lost most of its inflections.   By inflected, linguists mean that the form of the word changes depending on its use in a sentence, and specifically, the end(ing) of the word changes.  In English, I may call someone stupid, and stupid bacially has one form.  But in Latin, it may have six forms, depending on its uses.   I am fucked, he is fucked, you are fucked, we are fucked and so forth, has one ending in English but would have six in Latin.  Why should you care?

Because in using the English to Latin translator, giving it a few words, a short phrase, is much better than giving it a single word, e.g. a verb.  "They are stupid and must die" is much better than "Stupid. Die" because of how the languages work.

I hope that this has inspired you to design a motto for your new career in crime and I look forward to reading some of your efforts in this area.

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Notes:

1. They mean "he knows and approves", "always faithful" and "by this sign you shall conquer" respectively.

2. You can find this story here on the Internet, below.  "For the love of God, Montresor! Yes, for the love of God."

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/POE/cask.html

3. Real honest to gosh crime is meant here.   You know, guys with guns, that sort of thing.  But with good politicians and friends in high places to make it all look good and cover it up later.  You know, like the Railroads, or the Trusts or the slave labor (Chinese and Irish) use to build the railroads and so forth.

Anti-Platonic Counterrevolutionaries and the Significance of George Pal's Lost Movie About Atlantis

For decades an important film, George Pal's Atlantis: The Lost Continent was completely unavailable in any form.  You could look throughout the world and not find it.   Not even the parlors of obscure films from the mysterious east as found on 8th Avenue near 42nd street in NY carried it.  A civilization that can make many seasons of Baywatch available should be able to distribute a film by George Pal, one might think.   Some people believe that this suppression was an indication of a conspiracy at the highest levels, a conspiracy to deny the existence of Atlantis and thus of Atlantean Crystal Wisdom.

This essay argues the opposite:  that the suppression of this film is evidence of a conspiracy of a different type.   We believe that this film is a fraud and not made by George Pal at all,  but by anti-Platonic counterrevolutionaries who intended to destroy our society by attacking the underpinnings of Western Civilization philosophical thought by slandering the history and purpose of this important and misunderstood civilization and its advanced crystal-based technology.   The suppression of the film was a way to suppress lies created by a previously unsuspected secret society of Plato Haters.

Robert Graves, in his work The Greek Myths (1), reminds us that many myths contain within them the record of political events of the past.   A classic example, from his point of view is the birth of Athene/Minerva from the head of Zeus.   The backstory here is that Zeus had previously swallowed Metis, a previous goddess of wisdom.  According to Graves, this story is really about the Hellenic invaders controlling an indigenous religion by making the goddess of wisdom clearly subservient to and descended from the patriarchal and intrusive religion of the invaders as represented by their chief phallus wielder, Zeus (2).   The point that Graves makes time and again is that myth is not random, or some reflection of a collective Jungian unconsciousness, but contains elements of genuine political and religious struggle from the past.

With that in mind, let us consider the case of Atlantis and this mysteriously missing film Atlantis The Lost Continent from 1961.

This movie was seen by every young boy in the Los Angeles area many times on television where they were amazed by the evil crystal death rays, the exotic and dangerous women, and the horrible priests of an evil religion who used crystals to turn prisoners into beasts as slaves.    It was obvious even to a 10 year old that this was a bad movie, even a very bad movie, but it was entertaining.    Then, like a dream, it disappeared.

As time went by it became clear that this film must have some sort of history around it.   It was both produced and directed by George Pal, and yet the film was nowhere near the quality of his other films, which included War of the Worlds, the 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, The Time Machine, When Worlds Collide and other classics of the genre.  Some people suspected that it was being suppressed by Disney, who had their own Atlantis film to promote.   Others, that the rights were tied up in some way that made it awkward to release on DVD.   But others suspected that something else was going on, something behind the scenes, something that did not want to be exposed.

Then after all these years, I discovered that Atlantis: The Lost Continent had just been released on DVD and that the trailer, with a narration/appreciation by John Landis, was on Youtube.    Landis recounts how he saw the movie in the theatre when it came out, talks about how as an 11 year old he really loved the movie and relates trivia about the film including such things as the submarine model was a feature of Forrest Ackerman's landscape for many years, that all the crowd scenes are lifted from Quo Vadis, also an MGM movie.   He ends the piece by wondering how George Pal could have made such a terrible film, and what a shame it is that it could not be as good as the memories of an 11 year old.

Here is the trailer with John Landis narration. (3) I think you should watch it first, and then I will disclose my theory about why this film was unavailable for so long.

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

It is probably unnecessary to remind the reader that Atlantis holds a very special place in the hearts of all scholars of the field of ancient history and religion.   All one has to do is to bring up the topic and ask an innocent question, such as what light archaeology can shed on the well-known fact that the Egyptians used Atlantean Crystal Wisdom to build the Pyramids, and one is placed irrevocably in a "certain category" in the eyes of most scholars. One never has to worry about being taken seriously again.

And yet, the first attestation of Atlantis in the received literature is from none other than Plato.   Yes, that Plato, one of the philosophers whose work lies at the very foundation of Western Civilization and thought.   The one who was a student and devoted follower of Socrates, the guy who wrote The Republic.  He is the one who first mentions Atlantis with an apparent straight face, claiming that he got his information from the Egyptians.

Clearly this is the face of an honest man.  How could we not believe something that came from Plato?

Almost immediately, Plato's followers started spreading the story that of course the great man wasn't serious, he was just using this story to make a point about political economy.  It was a metaphor, for goodness' sake, they would say, don't be so literal about everything.  This seems like a very dangerous course to take.  Once you start chipping away at this and that, where do you stop?   Today its Atlantis, tomorrow perhaps its the tripartite theory of the soul, and then where are you?  No, I think you have to accept pretty much all of Plato or none of it.  This is somewhat of a strict-constructionist approach, but let us go with that and see what light it sheds on the issue at hand: why you could not get this important film on DVD for decades.

From the very beginning, enemies of Plato and Platonic Thought attacked Plato and his followers over the issue of Atlantis as a way of discrediting the whole of Plato's work.   And this movie shows Atlantis not as a triumph of government and technology, but a society that has fallen into evil and decay, and which is destroyed because of that.

But why would George Pal make a movie that attacked Plato and Science? Clearly Pal was a friend of science, not an enemy!  My theory is that George Pal was duped and used to create this slam on Plato's as part of a behind-the-scenes effort to discredit this great man.

Take for example this frame from the trailer, referring to "The Weird Cult of Science Worship."  That is not something George Pal would say.   Never.   This is the man who brought HG Wells War of the Worlds to the screen in which the science of evolutionary biology and of our immune system brings down the haughty Martians.  Pal was devoted to science.   This could not be his work.  No, it must be the work of people who hate science.  QED.

It is my thesis that in reaction to this travesty, supporters of Pal and Plato worked after the fact to suppress this disingenuous propaganda piece and thus defend the good name of both Pal and Plato. One day we will learn the truth.

Look into the crystal and become a beast slave !

Exotic women ! 

revised 5-9-2013]
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1. The Greek Myths by Robert Graves is considered the classic reference work in English on the topic of Greek mythology because of its thorough research by Graves of the literary sources and his meticulous citations to those sources.    Grave's interpretations of the myths themselves are more controversial, however.  See http://www.amazon.com/dp/0143106716/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

2. In the world of historical linguistics, Zeus is believed to be cognate with the Latin word deus, as in deus ex machina.

3. Students of voice over will recognize and appreciate the voice of Paul Frees on the trailer.

Atlantis the Lost Continent (1961) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054642/

George Pal on Wikipedia

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

The Importance of a Classical Education for Writing Renderman Shaders

[NB: Scott Anderson supervised the visual effects of Starship Troopers for Paul Verhoeven, and many facilities participated, including Sony Imageworks, ILM, Tippet and MASS ILLUSIONS.  The pictures below are just to illustrate the movie and, in a few cases the types of elements involved, e.g. thrusters.   I have no idea who did these particular shots, with the possible exception of the one of the escape pod, which was probably done at MASS ILLUSION.  People are very touchy about their credits and who can blame them?]

Through this story I hope to demonstrate the importance of knowing Latin, or of at least having a classical education, when writing Renderman Shaders. It is also a story about what a small world the world of visual effects is.

In 1997 or so, I had been hired by MASS ILLUSION to help them finish their work on Starship Troopers (1997) and get it out the door. They had two other projects that were about to start, What Dreams May Come (1998) and The Matrix (1999), and people needed to segue from Starship onto the new projects. MASS ILLUSON won two academy awards for these latter two projects, an amazing achievement. (1)

If you look closely at the lower picture, the thrust exhaust has a detailed structure which animates slightly

So new talent was needed to help finish the project so that the regulars could move on, and I was available, on the East Coast, and actually like to help finish projects. Often bringing in new people near the end of a long complicated project can be a help, because the new people in many ways are, frankly, unaware of the history and can just look at things with fresh eyes, and they are not yet tired of the project, so they can be energetic. Its not unrelated to some of the tactics of replacements in sports.

I had some credentials for this because I have supervised lots and lots of shots and projects and happen to be very good at rendering, having a Scitech award for writing a renderer, and very good at using Renderman (2), having helped bring it into production in its earliest form at deGraf/Wahrman and enjoyed using it.

MASS ILLUSION was a pioneer in attempting to do visual effects projects remotely from Los Angeles, in this case Western Massachusetts, and not all the bugs were worked out yet, and there was friction which I attributed in part to the problem of communicating 3,000 or so miles away, as well as other complications having to do with a very complicated project and a famously demanding director.

One of the ongoing and unresolved issues was matching the thrusters, or exhaust, of the starships. The exhaust in the starships done at Imageworks had a specific look and we were not close enough to that look for the starships we were doing. But it wasn't clear what Sony had done to make their thrusters, though, because as is so often the case, the people who had done the work at Sony had moved onto other projects, and possibly also because they had used a consultant who was no longer with them to write the primary Renderman shader for the thrusters.

Escape pod thruster detail 

They were hesitant to give us the shader and when I got on the project this was one of the long standing issues between the facilities. But obviously, given that we were having trouble matching the look, having the specific shader would be a big help, and communicate to us in no uncertain terms what was going on here. We thought that they might have some proprietary technology in the shader, but that was probably not the concern. It may have been nothing more than caution, or concern that they would be asked how the shader worked, or didn't know where it was, or who knows.

The shader was called "ROSASRF" for some reason.

Finally, after some effort, I had a success and many, many months after MASS ILLUSION had first asked, we got the source to the shader after a particularly colorful telephone conference call in which I quoted a famous biblical prophecy of what would happen if they did not give us the shader. (3)

Now, I have to backup a little. I have read and written hundreds, perhaps thousands, of shaders, about half of which are written by other people and about half of which were written by myself. Of those which are written by others, if you find a single comment in their shader its a miracle from Jesus himself. Shader writers do not often write comments, it seems, perhaps they believe that it is all self-explanatory.

But ROSASRF which was a very dense and complicated shader was not only well-commented, but one of those comments was highlighted with the cryptic two letters: NB.

NB?

I started laughing. I hardly ever read shaders with Latin abbreviations, in fact it had never happened before. NB, of course, is Latin for "Nota Bene" or "note well", its a convention used by mathematicians of the old school and classical scholars of all types. It basically means "pay attention".  Its the sort of thing one would expect to find when reading a scholarly treatise about St. Augustine's City of God (de Civitate Dei) or perhaps the notes of a 17th century alchemist. Or a mathematical proof.

So whoever Rosa was, as by that time I had determined that ROSASRF was named for the consultant, someone named Rosa, clearly she had a classical education and was not one of the "repurposed garage mechanics" we normally get in visual effects. The shader was very well written, well commented, and indeed, without it, it would have been very hard to figure out how to solve the problem. So we were happy.

But I was even happier to discover that I already knew Rosa, that in fact this was my old friend Rosa Farre, whom I had met a decade before in Barcelona at a company called Animatica, and who had married my friend Darnell Williams of Symbolics. I had never seen her work before, I just knew her as this very pleasant person from Barcelona, but now I had seen her work, and clearly she was not only good at what she did, but most important of all, had a classical education and was comfortable with her Latin abbreviations.

I hope that everyone reading this will take away the final thought that they should study Latin and incorporate Latin abbreviations in all their shaders.

Thank you.

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Notes:

1. By the time these two projects were done, the company had gone through at least one and possibly two different reorganizations, and may or may not have been called MASS ILLUSION by then. However, the people were the same for the most part and the same spirit and sense of excellence existed, so far as I can tell. Also, a facility does not win an Academy Award, only people do. But they had been the primary facility on those two films (What Dreams and The Matrix).

2. Technically, Renderman is the standard and the actual renderer was called Photo Realistic Renderman or PRman. The name may have changed a few times since then.

3. I dont actually remember exactly what was said during the call, but I vaguely recall telling them that we really, really wanted the shader and for them to remember the prophecy "The sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood when the great and terrible (day) of the Lord shall come", which in Medieval Latin, by the way, is SOL TENEBRAS ET LUNA IN SANGUINEM MAGNUS ET HORRIBILIS DEI VENIET, which I think has a nice feel to it. Anyway, they gave us the shader.

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References:

Starship Troopers on Imdb

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120201/

City of God (De Civitate Dei) by St. Augustine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_God_(book)

Latin Abbreviations on Wikipedia

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