The Philosophical Research Society and the Library of Esoteric Knowledge

For all the years I lived in Los Angeles, I never visited the Philosophical Research Society.  I knew it was off in Los Feliz somewhere.  

Generally speaking, back in the day, I would rarely go east of Western and only go as far as Western because that is where the AFI was located.  

But the PRS is an example of the best of old Los Angeles.  Founded in the 1930s by a self-educated mystic, Manly Hall, he eventually built a library for his 30,000 plus titles of his collections of Esoteric Knowledge and wrote many classics in the field.  Their bookstore is the best of its type since the Bodhi Tree.  The library is open Thursday & Friday from noon to six.  The bookstore is open normal business hours and in the evening during an event.

An entertaining and informative article on the PRS, Manly Hall, and their history, is here:  
https://www.laweekly.com/the-strange-history-of-los-felizs-mysterious-metaphysical-research-center/

If you can judge a place by its people, then the PRS is a very interesting place.  We should all spend more time there.

Knight's Templar and my Friend Speer

 Not everyone who is a right wing Trump supporter is a nut, but Steve Speer sure is.  Stay away from him is my advice.

This is an image of the Knight's Templar courtesy of Midjourney.  That was our topic of discussion.

draft 

Did you notice that the internal security forces in Nashville had never heard what is arguably one of the more famous pop songs of a previous generation? Did you notice the police did not seem to understand or mention one possible reason for the song, which is at least plausibly as a motivational aid (think "Ride of the Valkyries").

And go down town.
Things will be great when you're
Down town.
No finer place for sure,
Down town.
Everything's waiting for you.

We have further information that Warner was a seeker of truth about the Lizard Conspiracy to control civilization.  This makes more sense now.

Picture of my Patron

draft

This is a picture of my patron, who is on Facebook, but must remain nameless. It has been nearly two years since she picked me up out of the gutter and placed me here at the Monastery in Santa Barbara to study the Esoteric Knowledge.

No one knows where this is going, not really.

The Esoteric Truth About Stuff, Revealed

draft

Who is to know when the truth is revealed? The slaves have been told lies so many times, that the truth seems to them to be just another lie.

On a train from Oceanside to Los Angeles, there are the four of us. The doctor, the car dealer turned volunteer drug rehabilitation assistant, the very quiet Black man. Behind us, the electrician, the young woman who wants to be heard, the friend of the Bentley owner who wants his hat, and myself.

But really it is the three of us, the doctor, the car dealer, and me. The car dealer runs Bentley dealerships in Del Mar and Los Gatos, he owns houses in three cities. He volunteers 3 days a week at a drub rehab hospital. At one point he reveals to me the eternal truth that explains all.

"There is not enough stuff to go around", he says, sadly. "That is the problem".

The esoteric truth that lies behind our corrupt politics has been revealed to us, here, in plain English. Now you know.  Some must be rich and many poor because there is not enough stuff.

Esoteric Wisdom and Our Government

draft

This blog will take a detour for a while to discuss the Trump disaster and the minimum the corrupt US Government will have to do to restore trust.

Personally I dont think there is a chance in hell that “they” will do it. I think that the corrupt slaves of the rich control the government and everything else is just hand-waving.

I have diagrammed below a thought on how our government should really be run.

Administrative Note: The "Conclusions" Category on Global Wahrman

We announce here a new category, or tag, for Global Wahrman, the so-called “conclusions” category.

One purpose of Global Wahrman is to explore a variety of ideas and beliefs about such things as the role of the Illuminated Masters in determining algorithms for Google, the failure of the cultural myth, the role of corruption in our civic governance and whether our politicians are motivated directly by Satan or merely *appear* to be motivated by Satan. These are just a few examples of the ideas that we discuss here on Global Wahrman.  

But from time to time, I think it is fair to say that we reach conclusions, or proximate conclusions, about these weighty and complex issues, and want to mark these posts as being of particular interest. Such posts will be marked with the “Conclusions” tag. Eventually these posts will also be collected and put in some category on the right hand side of the blog to also make them easier to find.

As an example of this, consider Globalization and Its Discontents which discusses the role of our government in the collapse of the American economy.  Although perhaps not the final statement on the culpability of our government in this collapse, it is certainly a partial statement on this topic. Did our government know full well that their policies would impoverish millions of Americans in order to increase the profits of the rich?  Of course they did.

So while the term "Conclusions" is a little overblown, it is fair I think to identify these posts as being a little less speculative and of greater interest to those who want some of the ideas of this blog boiled down, distilled as it were, into a relatively few posts.

Implications of the 270 Riverside Drive Experience

As readers of this blog know well, no event is random, and no situation should be assumed to be without consequence but all of them should be analyzed and re-analyzed for their deeper meaning and for clues to our mysterious future and probable doom.

In this search for meaning in our pointless lives, sometimes the use of the Esoteric Knowledge is necessary but sometimes it is not. In this case, no esoteric knowledge is required to see our stark choices. The future is only too clear.

First review my little post about my former living conditions at 270 Riverside Drive to understand the situation. Now lets ask some questions about what living there might have meant.

At the time I was living there, I was vaguely aware of how lucky I was and that this was a situation that would be hard to recreate were it to ever go away, which inevitably it must. In part that was mixed in with my conclusion that living there also allowed me to live in Manhattan which was itself quite a blessing. But beyond that, what did it mean?

What was really going on, I conclude in retrospect, is that through an artifact of the ancient rent control laws of Manhattan, themselves left over from a more Socialist period when, briefly, the living conditions of the poor and disenfranchised were a concern, however modest, of our political elite. Through a series of lucky breaks, I had been permitted to live in a situation that I could otherwise never afford. But even more important, this was a living situation that I also did not deserve.

This is where the lower animals deserve to live

You see, in America, it is only the rich who are permitted to live in a way that their life is enhanced and ennobled. The rest of the population, by the very definition of being not-rich, are a lower animal form who are unworthy of any of this. They should live in dreary poverty, stupid stucco dingbats, or endlessly similar suburban housing, where they can pay inflated rents and mortgages, buy from chain supermarkets, and live out what is left of their so-called lives as servants of the rich.

The kind of lifestyle I had when at 270 RSD was thus completely anomalous and should not be allowed to occur and in general it does not. My choices now are to live in poverty and despair or in some way prove myself by making in excess of many tens of millions of dollars, no doubt through entrepreneurial activity or, to judge from the history of great fortunes in America, through various types of theft, crime or amoral and sociopathic behavior.

This does not seem like such a hard lesson to learn, but somehow it is.

The Obsolete Vision of Dr. Heywood Floyd

When I was very young, I went to see 2001 in what must have been a 35 mm print in Richmond, VA.  . I was of course bored out of my mind.  I remember the concerns in the city that people might go to see this movie stoned, and I could certainly understand why.   Boring but beautiful.      But even though I was bored, it was clear to me, even then, that a particularly innocuous scene, that of Dr. Heywood Floyd's briefing on the Moon was filled with meaning.   A meaning that I, as a callow youth, could not understand.

Many critics have noticed this scene as well.  And completely misunderstood it.    One of the more well known, by Tony Macklin of Film Comment, said as early as 1969 that this scene was filled with tongue-in-cheek Kubrick irony.   And he made fun of his fellow critics for not realizing this irony and satire.  Or maybe it is the case that Macklin completely screwed the pooch here and himself misunderstood this subtle but criitical scene.

But before we go much futher, perhaps it would be best if you reviewed the scene to refresh your memory.

The scene can be found on Youtube. Note the natty checker suit of the photographer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdbhZBpqNPM

A partial transcript of the scene:

Dr. Ellison: Well, I know you will all want to join with me in welcoming our distinguished friend and colleague from the National Council of Astronautics, Dr. Heywood Floyd. Dr. Floyd has come up especially to Clavius to be with us today. And before the briefing I know he would like to have a few words with you. Dr. Floyd ?

(applause)

Dr. Floyd: Well, thank you Dr. Ellison. Hi everybody. Nice to be back with you. Well, first of all I bring a personal message from Dr. Howell who asked me to convey his deepest appreciation to all of you for the many sacrifices you have had to make. And of course his congratulations on your discovery which may well prove to be among the most significant in the history of science. Well, uh, (laughs), I know there have been some conflicting views held by some of you about the need for complete security in this matter. More specifically, your opposition to the cover story, created to give the impression that there is an epidemic at the base. I understand that beyond it being a matter of principle, Well, I completely sympathize with your point of view. I found this cover story personally embarrassing myself. However, I accept the need for absolute secrecy and I hope you will too. Now I am sure you are all aware of the extremely grave potential for cultural shock and social disorientation if the facts were made known without (bla bla bla, I got tired transcribing this dialog).. Anyway this is the view of the council. Oh yes, the Council has requested that a formal security oath be signed by everyone present. Well, are there any more questions?

Now how does our intellectual interpret this scene in Film Comment ? Tony Macklin says:

“When Floyd gives his remarks at the briefing the satire of the inept language fairly leaps out. It is trite and inarticulate. But it is not Kubrick's (or Clarke's) inadequacy, it is the characters' inarticulateness, their loss of language. A parade of meagre "well"s fills the air. Halvorsen, who introduces Floyd, starts out, "Well, . . . " He sticks his hands in his pockets. If this were done once, one might assume that it didn't matter. But this stance and feeble language are the imprint of the scene, the exposing of dullness.

“Floyd is no more competent in talking, "Hi, everybody, nice to be back with you," He follows this with the refrain, "Well, . . . " and then comments "Now, ah . . . " He too puts his hands in his pockets. When the floor is opened for questions, there is only one, about the danger of "cultural shock." Floyd responds, "Well, I, ah, sympathize with your point of view." (The questioner is against the cover story of an epidemic which has been used to protect the secret of the monolith on the moon.) Floyd concludes. "Well, I think that's about it. Any questions?" Halvorsen thanks Floyd, "Well, ... " "No more questions [there was only one]. We should get on with the briefing."

http://tonymacklin.net/content.php?cID=169

In my humble opinion, this is wrong, wrong and completely wrong.  Idiots.  Wouldnt you know that he would write for Film Comment, a nutty intellectual film magazine if there ever was one.

Instead of seeing Dr. Floyd's speech as inept, I see it as a masterwork; a bureaucratic tour de force and just what the situation called for. You see, Dr. Floyd is not there to bring new information: his mission is to tell everyone that they must keep quiet and do as they are told, and he finds the nicest possible way to say that.

In other words, Dr. Floyd demonstrates that he is in fact a senior and skilled bureaucrat perfectly capable of getting up in front and saying absolutely nothing in a genial and businesslike fashion.  And if there are no more questions as he points out, they can go on with their briefing.

But this is not the end of the story of the search for meaning in 2001.  Although 2001 is a solid 14 years behind us, clearly we can see that our psychohistorians have gone awry.  Pan Am and AT&T are way out of business, we do not have bases on the moon.  We did not send a manned expedition to Jupiter.   The interpretation of Dr. Floyd's speech required a firm grasp of the cold war aesthetic and the cold war bureaucracy.   But where is that bureaucracy now that Communism no longer exists and we have in its place the gangster capitalists of China and gangster gangsters of Russia not to mention the incompetent scum-politicos of America without two neurons to rub together?

New art requires new artists and our new society requires a new Heywood Floyd.  In the modern cinematic aesthetic, I can envisage Heywood Floyd ducking into the back to put on his superhero outfit and go out and punch a monolith in the nose.   Take that you damn monolith, he will say, go back to your masters, the giant robots, we will never allow you to turn Jupiter into a mini-mall.

Archaeology of the Cold War: The CIA Comes Clean on the Black Helicopter

As a student of the intelligence community, of conspiracy theories and of the archaeology of the cold war, I want to bring to your attention an entertaining footnote to one of the memes of the nutty boy, lunatic fringe, the concept of the “black helicopter”.

We all know the joke “just because he is paranoid doesn't mean that people are not out to get him” or variations on that theme. In a similar fashion, just because something is part of a conspiracy theory by lunatics does not mean that it is impossible for certain elements of that theory to be true, even if only partially true. Its a delicate subject, for those of us who believe (or pretend to believe) that there is a hollow earth wherein live benign superior races in a utopian society do not want to sneer too loudly at those fools who believe in other equally ridiculous fantasies. One must tread lightly when confirming a part of a conspiracy theory that one does not step on the toes of fellow-travelers by dismissing their particular craziness. It is also the case that even a clock that has stopped working is correct twice a day, as some wit once put it.

But nevertheless, when studying the history of the intelligence community, there are a number of principles one should keep in mind and these principles are a large part of the appeal. The first thing to realize is that contrary to what you are told, the intelligence community in this country is not evil, but it is very much a bureaucracy that can occasionally transcend its organizational limitations and achieve excellence, and when it does, from time to time, when it is all over, they are happy to talk about it to give credit to those who have accomplished something so that history can know about their work and so their work can act as an inspiration for the future.

It is also the case that these stories are usually also interesting because they involve national purpose in a time of crisis or conflict, and when they are allowed to move forward, also involve great cleverness and often are provided with excellent resources and often very specialized technologies that are the best that we can provide under the circumstances, whatever those may be.

But, this being the intelligence community, which by definition must keep secrets to be effective, these stories are not told until long after the fact, and usually only in part.

For those of you who know what the “black helicopter” conspiracy meme is about and how “black” projects work, you may skip to the last part of this post which describes the entertaining report from the CIA about a quiet helicopter that they built during the Cold War for some as-yet-unidentified mission. For those of you who are blessedly ignorance of the conspiracy theories of the 1990 militia movement in this country, I will try to be brief.

In the 1990s, a part of the radical right-wing fringe of this country formed what has been called the “militia movement” which involved a bunch of armed lunatics who were convinced that our military was planning a coup in conjunction with various elements of our government to end democracy in this country and bring us into a global government which would be known as the “New World Order”. I am not too sure about many of the details of this movement or its personalities and doctrines. I could not tell you for sure whether this was part of the conspiracies of the Rockefellers, the Illuminati or the Catholic Church but one of their particular and idiosyncratic fantasies was the concept of the “black helicopters”. The black helicopters were unmarked, black of course, completely silent helicopters that were run by a secret organization which was planning the aforementioned coup. They would hover above military bases and spy on the militia movement in an effort to destroy them. 

If you want to know more, just go to your favorite search engine and type in “black helicopter” and you will immediately get a bunch of references to them.

Now to any student of intelligence or the military what is funny about this is that, in the absence of any hard information, it is not so improbable that something that one might call a “black helicopter” might exist in the world.

There are several reasons for this hypothetical possibility and here are a few of them. First, “black” is a term of art in the intelligence and military to refer to a project or technology which is being kept especially secret and not acknowledged. These technologies are usually a part of projects which are directed by the security apparatus of this country, such as the National Security Council. The U2 and the SR-71 are two very famous “black airplanes” in this category and both were developed out of a requirement by the President and the NSC to get better intelligence about the USSR's ability to wage nuclear war. Second, one could imagine that there might be projects out there that would require a helicopter that had special capabilities that were held back, kept secret, to be used only under special circumstances. Third, anyone who has ever been around a helicopter knows how noisy they are, but you may not be aware that from the earliest days of helicopters, people have been doing research into how to make them quieter, and they have come up with a number of techniques to do so. Proven techniques. (1) So why dont they use them then, you might wonder. The answer is always a variation of the old adage that “nothing in this world is free”. A technology that makes a helicopter quieter might greatly increase its cost, or limit its speed and range, or reduce its reliability.

Finally, we had hard evidence that at least one stealth helicopter had been built, or two of them, because SEAL Team Six had crashed one of them on their raid on Bin Laden.

Which leads us to this interesting report.

Once upon a time, about 1970, the CIA had the need to be able to sneak into a foreign country, unnoticed, and either bring in, or bring out, someone or something. The place it would be going would be suitable for a helicopter, in other words, it could be an empty parking lot or someone's back yard. But it had to be totally silent, invisible to radar, fly in the dark, be able to go a long distance, pick something up (or drop something off) and then make the return trip.

The problems they had to solve included increasing the range of the helicopter, reducing the noise signature of the helicopter so that it could fly very close to people and not be noticed, and because it would be flying very close to the ground to avoid radar, it needed some sort of navigation aid that would let the pilot avoid obstacles and still not be visible to the naked eye.

In a remarkably short period of time, and with the help of a variety of defense contractors and individuals working on their own time, they were able to do so, and in doing so, they proved a number of technologies which were of immense value moving forward in the non-secret world, including a much better version of FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared).

The report can be found on the www.cryptome.org site and can be located here:

http://cryptome.org/2014/09/cia-quiet-helo.pdf

So now, about 40 years later, they tell us about the helicopter. But they are still not telling us a damn thing about where they used it and for what purpose. What glorious episode from the Cold War does this conceal?  A flight to freedom of one of our agents?  We will know one day.

Of course this report will not satisfy those noble seekers-of-truth who are working to prevent the government take over to create the New World Order.  But at least it does reveal that some of this technology does exist.  We must all be vigilant to see that these proud covert creators of anti-freedom helicopters are not permitted to implement socialized health care.

Its up to us.

________________________________________________________

Notes

1. An example of a “proven technique” to make a helicopter quieter is simply to move the rotors more slowly as much of the noise that a helicopter generates in flight comes from the movement of their rotors in the air. But obviously this technique has an impact on the performance of the helicopter.

What Are Those Damn Pirates Mumbling About Anyway

In Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland there is a place near the start of the attraction which involves some different voices warning you of something (the accursed treasure, as it turns out). For years I went on that ride but could never quite make out what they were saying what with the rushing water and the screams of the people in front of you not to mention the cheerful yet ominous pirate music that is coming in and out of focus as you move through different areas.

Jwalt Adamczyk, renowned impressario and real-time animation performer, pointed me to the following Youtube soundtrack from the attraction and I finally know what they are saying. I have transcribed it here for other people who have been anxious to know (not that it really makes a difference, the intent of the voices comes through clearly: we are being warned of some terrible danger, and really that is all we have to know).

The soundtrack can be found here.

There are three voices. A Distant Voice which is muddied and always repeats "dead men tell no tales" and two other voices, which I will call the Dark Ominous Voice (DOV) and a crusty less ominous, but still concerned, voice (Voice 3).

Distant Voice:

                          Dead men tell no tales. Dead men tell no tales. Dead men tell no tales.

Then we have an interlude of cheerful music that suddenly becomes ominous in tone. The music changes instrument to be (primarily) harpsichord to help set the time period in which our dark ride takes place.

Dark Ominous Voice (DOV):

                         No fear have ye of evil curses, says you. Ha (chuckle). 

                         Properly warned ye be, says I.

                         Who knows when that evil curse will strike the greedy beholders 

                         of this bewitched treasure.

Distant Voice:

                         Dead men tell no tales.

Voice 3:

                         Perhaps he knows too much. He has seen the cursed treasure;

                         he knows where it be. Now proceed at your own risk. These be

                         the last friendly words you'll hear.

                         You may not survive to pass this way again.

Distant voice:

                         Dead men tell no tales.

And that is what they say.

I am sure you will sleep better knowing this.

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.

Order Out of Chaos in Pi (1998)

NB: The following does not contain a spoiler but it does refer to one of the fundamental concepts of the movie Pi (1998)..

There is a sequence in the movie Pi which I am very fond of and which I wish to bring to your attention.  The purpose of the sequence is, imho, to explain to the audience what is meant by the idea of nature exhibiting mathematical principles.  This is a rather abstract concept for our filmgoers who are used to a steady diet of giant robots and teenage lust dilemmas.

The heart of the movie Pi (1998) by Darren Aronofsky is the search by a mathematician for a number, a number which describes the underlying structure of reality. In a sense this missing number would be to chaos theory what 3.14159 is to geometry but even more profound, it would be the single number that is the key to understanding the chaos that is our universe. Finding such a number would bring meaning to randomness, and order out of chaos. It would change everything: one could predict the weather or know which way Wall Street was going to go, and this very same number may even contain the secret name of God, according to some orthodox Jewish mystics.

Of course no such single number exists, that we know of, but its still an amusing premise and Aronofsky extracts some entertaining plot points from the idea.

The filmmaking problem becomes how do you explain to a general audience what it means to say that there is mathematics underlying the structure of reality. The audience for Pi will be a bright independent film going crowd, but likely math is not their strong subject. Probably most of the audience gets no closer to number theory than figuring out how to calculate the mortgage on their house or the interest on their student loan. So how do you explain this to them?

Well, one way to do this, and the way I think would also be entertaining, would be to stop the movie, bring up a white board, and have a famous mathematician give a short lecture on the origins and meaning of chaos theory. But there is this age old bias against this sort of thing in the conventional and anti-intellectual motion picture business, so giving a lecture in the middle of the film is out.

How else would one present the idea that that there is math everywhere in nature?

I put the 2:28 minute sequence up on Youtube and the right thing to do is to watch it before I say anything more. The mathematician is the guy sitting at the counter reading the paper.

The sequence is at http://youtu.be/wQnaMUoC1G8

 

                                  

So Max, our mathematician, is at the counter in a coffee shop trying to get some work done when someone he has recently met, but doesn't really know, comes in. Its Lenny, the orthodox student of Jewish mysticism who proceeds to explain the number theory of the Gematria (1) to Max. The idea is that Hebrew is all numbers and the Torah is a long series of cyphers and crossword puzzles. As Lenny starts to add up the "garden of Eden" and the "Tree of Knowledge", while Max looks on, he comes up with two numbers in the Fibonacci sequence. Max hijacks this discussion of numerology in the Torah and moves it to more standard high school math.   The Fibonacci sequence is one of those concepts that keep mathematicians happy because there are so many uses and weird coincidences, but the only one that Max/Aronofsky goes for here is that you can use the Fibonacci sequence to calculate Theta which is a number that describes a kind of spiral.   So we go effortlessly from Torah numerology to Fibonacci numbers to spirals and boom we are home.   All that is left to do is smoke your cigarette or pour cream in your coffee and the point is made.

"You see", says Lenny, "there is math everywhere".

I still think having a mathematician give a lecture would have worked, but this is probably more concise and any excuse to discuss numerology is OK by me.

__________________________________________________

For an introduction to Fibonacci numbers see

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

An introduction to Numerology in general

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

A reasonable introduction to Gematria and Jewish Mysticism in general

http://www.inner.org/torah_and_science/mathematics/gematria/index.php

A Gematria Calculator

http://www.gematrix.org/

Pi (1998) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138704/

____________________________________________________

Notes

1. Actually he fails to explain the Gematria to Max, getting a variety of things wrong but hey its good enough to get the point across.

Commentary on the Proposed Voynich Solution

This news item is getting a lot of Internet play but I felt that the the commentary out there did not emphasize one of the most appealing elements of the proposed Voynich solution and so we will do so here.

To backup a bit, a manuscript was acquired in 1912 by a collector of rare manuscripts whose text appeared to be enciphered and whose illustrations were exotic and whose provenance appeared to be about 16th century. Many, many people have tried to decode the text and failed. Many others have asserted that the document is a forgery or fraud and at least as many have said they believe it is genuine.

But the biggest mystery was, if it was genuine, what is its backstory? How could it have come out of nothing without someone having known about it? A secret cult ? A mysterious religion ? Proof once more of aliens from outer space who have come for our women ?

What makes this story all the better is that the proposed solution comes from a retired botanist and antiquarian who has published in the journal of the American Botany Council.

So far the response to this paper, from other botanists at least, has been very positive.

What appealed to me was the implied answer to the questions of why the language seems unknown, why no one knew of this document, why the plants are exotic and so forth.  The answer suggested by the proposal is because it was created by indiginous people in New Spain (e.g. Mexico) who later died of one of the epidemics, whose dialect went extinct with so many others in that period, and whose related documents were all burned by the Spanish as they burned so many documents in order to destroy the culture of their conquered territory.

See

http://cms.herbalgram.org/press/2014/Voynich_Manuscript.html?ts=1391064184&signature=74b0f44c56dcfc15368e7c3e2f129934

and the essay itself

http://cms.herbalgram.org/herbalgram/issue100/hg100-feat-voynich.html

The Visual Effects Bakeoff for 2013

Tonight is the so-called Bakeoff  at the Academy for the Visual Effects nominations. The screening is for the Visual Effects subsection but anyone can attend, space permitting. Ten minutes of each film under consideration is shown, there is a question and answer period which guests can only listen to, and then the subsection members vote on which films will be nominated for visual effects.  This is a very long, very loud night.  I find it annoying but useful.

It is always nice to have an opportunity to see old friends.   And I don't really mind seeing the others as well.  

This year Gravity is going to win the Academy Award.   I have foreseen it with my tremendously expanded mental powers and the use of the esoteric knowledge.

The films which will be screened tonight, in no particular order, are

1. Gravity
2. The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug
3. Pacific Rim
4. Star Trek Into Darkness
5. Iron Man 3
6. World War Z
7. Oblivion
8. Elysium
9. The Lone Ranger
10. Thor: The Dark World

This is an interesting list. Not necessarily any great films here, but certainly a few entertaining ones. I have seen worse years.

Obviously everyone wants to win. But winning is very difficult so getting a nomination is much more likely and is also incredibly valuable to one's career. If one is trying to be an effects supervisor, to be nominated for an Academy Award is a big deal and explains some of the politics around who gets to be one of the "four" who are selected by the producer to be in consideration.

There is almost always a surprise that comes from seeing ten minutes from all these films at one time, or perhaps from the questions and answers from the effects team. But in advance of the screening, here is my take on why this is a very important year.

1. This is the year of solid state lighting.

This is the first year that the revolution in solid state lighting completely takes over on stage production in visual effects. Its been coming for a while, and many of the ideas are quite old, but the availability of arrays of LED's at reasonable prices has enabled this in a major way. Using film as a projection map was never very flexible, and using normal wheat lights would generate too much heat to be very practical. But using arrays of solid state lights to project environments brings a whole new level of sophistication to the "blue screen" plate photography process.  Now we can integrate live action photography into the visual effects, and visual effects into live action photography, with a whole new level of sophistication and accuracy.

Historical footnote: wheat lights used to be a significant part of model creation. The Bladerunner pyramid buildings, such as the Tyrell Headquarters, were models made with a lot of wheat lights. I saw the famous Las Vegas model made for One From the Heart years ago. Supposedy the lights on the thing either used to blow out the power supplies or melt the thing down from all the heat that the lights emitted.   Although one could and did build grids of this thing, and one could control them with computers, I doubt it was done much.  It just wan't practical.   LED's are now practical and there are lots of good components around to control them.  And you wont have to wait all the time to replace the damn little lights as they burn out.

A selection of wheat lamps from Bladerunner and EEG

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

2. This is the second part of the synthetic human breakout

The first element of the breakout was "Benjamin Button". This is the second. There may have to be a third before the tsunami of shit emerges of computer generated lead actors, or this may be sufficient. I am not sure, perhaps I will have an opinion after tonight.

3. Gravity wins and was in part distinguished by its effects

The award is for the film where the visual effects most support the movie and the story.  It is not for the best visual effects per se.  The classic example of that, for me, was the first Matrix movie which was truly enhanced by the visual effects.

For the second year in a row, a movie is distinguished and made notable by its visual effects (last year was Life of Pi). I do not know if this is a good thing or not, but its probably not a bad thing. If visual effects is to be worth all the money, this is a useful thing to have happen. If visual effects people are to rise above being considered commodities, having work that distinguishes themselves and is not just like everyone else's is also helpful.

4. American dominance of this award is completely over

This has been coming for a while.  American companies no longer dominate this award.   No one else beyond ILM or Sony is left except for maybe Digital Domain (I do not understand their status).  This has been true for quite a while now, but this year sets the pattern, I think.   I am less certain what this means for the nationality of the effects supervisor, however.  The award goes to the four people identified by the producer, but the facility that did the work also gets credit in practice.  Every year some films will be done at ILM or SONY, but the vast majority of effects will be done at facilities in London, New Zealand and Canada.

5. The nominations are ...

I think that Gravity and The Hobbit will be nominated.   I am rooting for Pacific Rim to be nominated because I think it is important to have giant mutated sea monsters in cinema from a content point of view.    

I will report back what happens.

The Old Religion at the End of the Year

The years go by faster and faster, it seems, and our fate is known and approaches swiftly and inevitably. Yet as horrifying as our reality may be, it is always fun for me to remember that they have put up an evergreen in the center of Manhattan and decorated it with toys and mistletoe again this year. I doubt very much if most of the people who view the tree are aware of the meaning these rituals had to some of our ancestors, but it is impressive that the tradition survives at all.

This is the story of an ancient state religion that survived disaster not once, but twice, and survives to this day in two different forms. And whose fundamental principles you recreate every time you look at a clock or tell the time. But first lets set the stage for what the French historians call the longue duree. (2), or the long view.  It has various other names, but it means to try and take a longer perspective.

So first I indicate how astronomy does not change much in our lifetimes, but does change over a longer period.... so ...

The earth spins on its axis in a somewhat eliptical orbit around the so-called Sun and while it does so, entropy inevitably increases and nothing you or I can do will change that. The universe is by no means static and will change on the scale of the solar orbits, but we won't notice because by that time the trillions of nanomachines partitioned into the various cellular entities that make up our so-called individual physical existence will have collapsed into a soup of decayed matter long before.

I know that is a little depressing, but read on, it picks up.

We call the circle of circles around the solar mass a "year", having picked a point on that ellipse to demark the beginning and the end for accounting purposes and because it corresponds to an inflection point on the curve. This subdivision of a year into 360 circles as the planet rotated and circled the sun was noticed by an ancient people "between the rivers" (== Meso Potamia) many years ago and they developed a "sacred mathematics" to explain what they observed in the sky and all around them and made this a central part of their religion and world view. In fact, it formed one of the pillars of their religion and the rituals that held up the state that they lived in.

Consider what it means for there to be a state religion in a country. It means that certain beliefs that are critical to the legitimacy of the government are built into the fabric of society in a very functional and specific set of ways that has evolved over time. When our constitution discusses "separation of church and state", they did not mean that it was unconstitutional to have religion in our government, it meant that the religious leaders would not be selected by the state, or paid for by the state, or that these religious leaders would be part of government by the very fact of their role in the religion. The specific counterexample for the American Revolution was that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the top bishop of the Church of England, was chosen by the King and acknowledged the authority of the King over the Bishop of Rome (e.g. the Pope).

In ancient times, this relationship was much stronger between religion and governance, though of course there was a huge amount of variation. To give some examples and to simplify to make the point, the heads of religion of the Roman Republic were all members of the leading familes of Rome. The rituals that were performed and how they were performed were considered of the utmost importance to the survival of Rome and its rule in the world. They did not care for the most part what people believed as long as those rituals were performed in the correct way and that whatever else you did or believed did not prevent you from doing those essential rituals.

In many ancient societies that we know of, the ruling class or monarch would consult with various religious leaders before starting a war, or fighting a battle. The Romans certainly did. It was believed that the gods that you worshipped had an opinion about what was the right thing to do in such a situation and by using certain technical arts that the gods would tell you and help you to choose wisely. Or possibly that you could influence the outcome of the situation with proper ritual and sacrifice. The ancient Romans were big on making deals with "god".... you do this and I will sacrifice 100 cows to you, etc.

Although there was huge variation in the ancient world, I think it is fair to say that aspects of the religion of a people was very tighly bound up into the legimacy and process of how they lived their lives, paid their taxes, went to war, and chose who ruled over them and in what way. The more formal a state, with a bureaucracy, taxes, and so forth, the more likely they were to have a formal state religion.

But if the state religion said that the rulers ruled by divine right and were in fact themselves gods, or Gods, whatever, then if they got deposed that was bad for the religion. To say the least. And that is what happened to the Neo Bablylonians when their boys lost the war and the Persians came in about 539 BC.

So what is a religion to do? Well, it adapts. Now instead of the gods being planets and stars and comets, they are more universal forces and archetypes. And you formalize some of the loose influences of the stellar bodies into their archetypal forms. And if you are lucky enough to have Alexander the Great around, you adapt all this to Hellenistic culture and become the dominant way of predicting the future with the cachet of being based on "old Babylonian religion" and there you have it: modern astrology. Based on the former state religion of NeoBabylon.

On top of that, and not entirely independently, part of that astrology branches off and without the prediction part and morphs into a science of Astronomy. Now the astronomers don't much believe in the influence of the Zodiac, for example, but they do take a lot of terminology and conventions and continue using them: like 360 degrees in a circle, to name one obvious example. And so, too, Astronomy maintains some fundamental beliefs that comes from the Old Religion.

We should only hope that some of our belief systems should be so resilient and last even half as long.

For a good bibliography of Babylonian Astronomy & Astrology, see:

http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/babylon/babybibl.htm

The Prophesy of John Hendrix (1865 - 1915)

This post is part of the "Archaeology of the Cold War" series.

From time to time, we will review entertaining stories of anomalous events, events which are unlikely to have occurred but would be very interesting if they had as that would imply unknown physics or stand as examples of phenomena such as time travel, ghosts, predicting the future and so forth. This category is in opposition to another topic of discussion on this blog, which is the creation of entertainment fiction that purports to predict the future. That however is a different topic from the one in this post. This topic is more in the nature of oral history that, if true, would mean that someone long ago had predicted the future.

The story goes something like this...

Once upon a time, in a very rural area of Tennessee, there lived a man named John Hendrix. Mr. Hendrix, who was born in 1865 and died in 1915, became distraught after the death of his daughter and his separation from his wife and the rest of his family. He became very religious and started to report having visions. Supposedly he told everyone about his visions and nobody paid much attention.

As silent as the grave

Hendrix described the vision that was given him as follows:

In the woods, as I lay on the ground and looked up into the sky, there came to me a voice as loud and as sharp as thunder. The voice told me to sleep with my head on the ground for 40 nights and I would be shown visions of what the future holds for this land.... And I tell you, Bear Creek Valley someday will be filled with great buildings and factories, and they will help toward winning the greatest war that ever will be. And there will be a city on Black Oak Ridge and the center of authority will be on a spot middle-way between Sevier Tadlock's farm and Joe Pyatt's Place. A railroad spur will branch off the main L&N line, run down toward Robertsville and then branch off and turn toward Scarborough. Big engines will dig big ditches, and thousands of people will be running to and fro. They will be building things, and there will be great noise and confusion and the earth will shake. I've seen it. It's coming.

Of course no one believed him, John was being just a little crazy, they thought. Well maybe more than a little crazy and it seemed that he was institutionalized for a time. But the years went by and there was no great city in Bear Creek Valley or up on Black Oak Ridge. There was a great war but the war got fought and won without any thousands of people running around in Eastern Tennessee or new railway lines or earthquakes either. John died before what we now call World War I ended and that was all there was to say about the matter until 1942 when the government came to kick the people of the four rural communities of that part of the world off their land.

Army Corps of Engineers picture of the old Hendrix home before they tore it down

About 60 years after Hendrix first started having his visions, the US Army Corps of Engineers began researching potential sites for several very large, experimental industrial plants that needed to be built on a rush basis for some project they would not talk about.   The plants needed to be far enough away from population centers and industrial areas so in the event that they exploded, the damage would be limited. They wanted to find a place that was sparsely settled so that they could quickly evict the people who were there and get started immediately.   They also hoped to find a place that had physical barriers in the case that one plant exploded it would not cause others nearby to also explode.  Access to a dam for water and a lot of electric power was critical.   The further out in the country it was the easier it would be to keep secret.   It needed to be near a rail line and existing road network because that would save time.

So one day the people of the four rural communities in this part of East Tennessee came home to find eviction notices nailed to their door. Some of them were out in the rain within two weeks, some in six weeks. They got a small amount of money for their land, but it was not enough to buy its equivalent somewhere else. And to their amazement, thousands of workers were bused in, a city with hundreds and hundreds of houses and dozens of stores and restaurants was built seemingly overnight, security fences were put up and, strangest of all, very large factories were built behind those fences that had armed guards who promised to shoot you if you did not go away.

These new people chose a name for what was now their community and they chose to modify the name of part of the countryside thereabouts.   They named their town for the same Black Oak Ridge that crazy old John Hendrix had talked about in his visions.  

Only they left out the "Black" and just called it Oak Ridge.

Scarboro?   Never heard of it. 

So as time went by, people remembered crazy old John Hendrix and his visions. You can read more about them in the links below. People marvelled at the amazing story of the man who saw the future and predicted the project that may have won the war.

So what are the possible explanations. On the one hand, Hendrix may have seen the future as described. Who knows, it wasn't particularly written down, it was just something people remembered. Hendrix certainly lived and he was on record for having been institutionalized and people can point to his grave. Maybe he did see the future, or maybe when the future imposed itself so violently on the peaceful citizens of that valley in Tennessee, the pissed-off locals chose to repurpose a member of their community, now deceased, who had truly lived when they said he did and died when they said he did and who had been a little crazy and got put away for a time because of that.  All true, all part of the public record.   Maybe, now that you mention it, this was one of his visions, I seem to recall.

Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't, ain't too many people around these days who were around then and would contradict us, so you are going to have to take our word for it, I reckon. And maybe we can make a few dollars selling trinkets and entertaining all those thousands of gullible people who are running to and fro on what used to be our land up there on Black Oak Ridge.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/wp-style/2013/09/13/the-prophets-of-oak-ridge/