Infinitum

Library of Constantinople

The Library of Constantinople, in the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, was the last of the great libraries of the ancient world. Long after the destruction of the library of Alexandria and the other ancient libraries, it preserved the knowledge of the ancient Greeks and Romans for almost 1,000 years, until it was mostly destroyed during the Fourth Crusade in 1204.

The fourth century was a critical time for the classical literature of Greece and Rome. Written on papyrus, manuscripts were gradually crumbling away and threatened to sink into oblivion unless transferred to parchment. Constantine the Great had begun that process by having the books of Holy Scripture copied, and his son the Emperor Constantius II undertook to continue the effort. The result of his initiative was the first imperial library of Constantinople, which contained more than 100,000 volumes. The leader of the project was Themistios, who commanded a considerable team of calligraphers and librarians.

Collection

One of the main problems was, as it is today, to choose what to save, for it was impossible to save everything. First, Themistios and the Emperor chose to save older literature–Homer and other great authors of the golden age of Greece. Themistios seems to have been uninterested in Latin authors. He did not, and did not want to, understand Latin. He was an arrogant Greek who regarded all other peoples, including Romans, as simple barbarians. But the emperors were Romans and Latin speaking, so Constantius saw that Roman classical literature was also transferred to parchment.

Although the older literature was regarded as more valuable than contemporary work, no one any longer spoke the Greek of the great Attic authors. So it was necessary to save commentaries and works of grammar as well as the texts of Sophocles, Plautus and other classical authors. From the record, we can see that Themistios knew many more classical authors than we have today. For instance, he mentions a triad of Stoic philosophers whose work is completely lost to us except for a few citations by other classical authors and some scraps among the carbonized remains at Herculaneum.

Themistios also had a remedy for the papyrus rolls that could not possibly be transcribed. He tried to delay their decay by putting these rolls into parchment coverings, rather like our attempt to encase brittle books in special envelopes or boxes.

Destruction of the library

The greatest enemy of ancient literature was not time but fire. Several fires in the Constantinople library eventually destroyed much of the collection over the centuries, but Themistios’ efforts had not been wholly in vain, for visitors came to the library from throughout the provinces to consult and transcribe the works, and some of the copies were themselves recopied. Without the efforts of Constantius and Themistios our knowledge of Greek and Roman classical literature would certainly be even less than it is today.

However, by and large, the library remained intact until, in 1204, the knights of the Fourth Crusade decended upon and sacked the city. Most of the library’s books were burnt or sold off by the Latins. Much of it, however, was saved or copied, and in that way much ancient literature did survive. What little remained of the library was afterwards absorbed into the Ottoman library, when the Turks captured the Constantinople after a long seige in 1453.

Tags: 13th Century, 4th crusade, Constantinople, Library, Maps

Spring Heeled Jack

Spring heeled jack

Spring Heeled Jack (also Springheel Jack, Spring-heel Jack, etc), is a character from English folklore said to have existed during the Victorian era and able to jump extraordinarily high. The first claimed sighting of Spring Heeled Jack that is known occurred in 1837. Later alleged sightings were reported all over England, from London up to Sheffield and Liverpool, but they were especially prevalent in suburban London and later in the Midlands and Scotland.

Many theories have been proposed to ascertain the nature and identity of Spring Heeled Jack. The urban legend of Spring Heeled Jack gained immense popularity in its time due to the tales of his bizarre appearance and ability to make extraordinary leaps, to the point where he became the topic of several works of fiction.

Spring Heeled Jack was described by people claiming to have seen him as having a terrifying and frightful appearance, with diabolical physiognomy that included clawed hands and eyes that “resembled red balls of fire”. One report claimed that, beneath a black cloak, he wore a helmet and a tight-fitting white garment like an “oilskin”. Many stories also mention a “Devil-like” aspect. Spring Heeled Jack was said to be tall and thin, with the appearance of a gentleman, and capable of making great leaps. Several reports mention that he could breathe blue and white flames and that he wore sharp metallic claws at his fingertips. At least two people claimed that he was able to speak in comprehensible English.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Heeled_Jack

Tags: mystery, occult, unsolved

The Greenwich Observatory

Went to Greenwich park on Saturday.

What a fine day out that was, the whole of Greenwich park and the observatory, Maritime museum etc was a great inspiration to the infinitum thought process.

In the main you can still picture how it would have been back in the days of Cook and Halley.

And as long as you ignore the tourists and the looming vision of the 21st century city in the background it has still got some of the magic that I’m looking for …

Also it’s free.

Greenwich Observatory 1

Tags: Greenwich, Maritime, Observatory

John Dee

John Dee

John Dee (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was a noted English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, occultist, and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I. He also devoted much of his life to alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy.

Dee straddled the worlds of science and magic just as they were becoming distinguishable. One of the most learned men of his age, he had been invited to lecture on advanced algebra at the University of Paris while still in his early twenties. Dee was an ardent promoter of mathematics, a respected astronomer and a leading expert in navigation, having trained many of those who would conduct England’s voyages of discovery. In one of several tracts which Dee wrote in the 1580s encouraging British exploratory expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage, he appears to have coined the term “British Empire”.

Simultaneously with these efforts, Dee immersed himself in the worlds of magic, astrology and Hermetic philosophy. Indeed, he devoted the last third of his life almost exclusively to attempting to commune with angels in order to learn the universal language of creation. A student of the Renaissance Neo-Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, Dee did not draw distinctions between his mathematical research and his investigations into Hermetic magic and divination, instead considering both ventures to constitute different facets of the same quest: the search for a transcendent understanding of the divine forms which underlie the visible world.

Dee’s status as a respected scholar also allowed him to play a role in Elizabethan politics. He served as an occasional adviser and tutor to Elizabeth I and nurtured relationships with her two leading ministers, Francis Walsingham and William Cecil.

According to scholars Frances Yates and Peter French, in his lifetime Dee amassed the largest library in England and one of the largest in Europe.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee

Tags: 16th Century, alchemy, Hermetic, Magic, occult, royal

The Knight’s Tour

The Knight’s Tour is a mathematical problem involving a knight on a chessboard. The knight is placed on the empty board and, moving according to the rules of chess, must visit each square exactly once.

There are a great many solutions to the problem, of which exactly 26,534,728,821,064 have the knight finishing on a square from which it attacks the starting square, on an 8 × 8 board. Such a tour is described as directed and closed. (A directed tour is a directed graph: the direction of the tour is specified. A closed tour is one that ends on the starting square.) The number of undirected closed tours is half this number, since every tour can be traced in reverse. Otherwise the tour is open (as in the first diagram). There are 9,862 undirected closed tours on a 6 × 6 board, and no such tours on smaller boards.

Knights tour

The pattern of a Knight’s Tour on a half-board has been presented in verse form (as a literary constraint) in the highly stylized Sanskrit poem Kavyalankara^[4] written by the 9th century Kashmiri poet Rudrata, which discusses the art of poetry, especially with relation to theater (Natyashastra). As was often the practice in ornate Sanskrit poetry, the syllabic patterns of this poem elucidate a completely different motif, in this case an open knight’s tour on a half-chessboard.

The first algorithm for completing the Knight’s Tour was Warnsdorff’s algorithm, first described in 1823 by H. C. Warnsdorff.

Tags: Knights, puzzle

Madame Blavatsky

Blavatsky_and_Olcott

Elena Petrovna Gan

(Russian: Елена Петровна Ган, also Hélène, 12 August [O.S. 31 July] 1831, Yekaterinoslav, Ukraine, Russian Empire — May 8, 1891, London), better known as Helena Blavatsky (Russian: Елена Блаватская) or Madame Blavatsky, born Helena von Hahn, was a founder of Theosophy and the Theosophical Society.

It was in 1873 that she emigrated to New York City. Impressing people with her psychic abilities, she was spurred on to continue her mediumship. Mediumship (among other psychical and spiritual sciences of the time), based upon the quasi-religion known as Spiritualism having began at Rochester, NY, was a widely popular and fast-spreading field upon which Blavatsky based her career.^[3]

Throughout her career she claimed to have demonstrated physical and mental psychic feats which included levitation, clairvoyance, out-of-body projection, telepathy, and clairaudience. Another claim of hers was materialization, that is, producing physical objects out of nothing, though in general, her interests were more in the area of ‘theory’ and ‘laws’ rather than demonstration.

In 1874 at the farm of the Eddy Brothers, Helena met Henry Steel Olcott, a lawyer, agricultural expert, and journalist who covered the Spiritualist phenomena. Soon they were working together in the “Lamasery” (alternate spelling: “Lamastery”) where her book Isis Unveiled was written.

Madame Blavatsky wrote that all religions were both true in their inner teachings and problematic or imperfect in their external conventional manifestations. Her writings connecting esoteric spiritual knowledge with new science may be considered to be the first instance of what is now called New Age thinking. In fact, many researchers feel that much of New Age thought started with Blavatsky.

She also lived in Philadelphia for part of 1875, where she resided at 3420 Sansom Street, now home of the White Dog Cafe. While living on Sansom Street, Madame Blavatsky became ill with an infected leg. She claimed to have undergone a “transformation” during her illness which inspired her to found the Theosophical Society. In a letter dated June 12, 1875, she described her recovery, explaining that she dismissed the doctors and surgeons who threatened amputation. She is quoted as saying “Fancy my leg going to the spirit land before me!,” and had a white dog sleep across her leg by night.

To India

She had moved to India, landing at Bombay on 16 February 1879, where she first made the acquaintance of A.P. Sinnett. In his book Occult World he describes how she stayed at his home in Allahabad for six weeks that year, and again the following year.

Sometime around December 1880, while at a dinner party with a group including A.O. Hume and his wife, she is claimed to have been instrumental in causing the materialization of Mrs. Hume’s lost brooch.

By 1882 the Theosophical Society became an international organization, and it was at this time that she moved the headquarters to Adyar near Chennai, India (then known as Madras).

The society headquartered here for some time, but she later went to Germany for a while, in between she stayed at Ostend (15 July 1886 – 1 May 1887) where she could easily meet her English friends. She wrote a big part of the Secret Doctrine in Ostend ^[9] and there she claimed a revelation during an illness telling her to continue the book at any cost. Finally she went to England.

A disciple put her up in her own house in England and it was here that she lived until the end of her life.

Final years

In August, 1890 she formed the “Inner Circle” of 12 disciples: “Countess Constance Wachtmeister, Mrs Isabel Cooper-Oakley, Miss Emily Kislingbury, Miss Laura Cooper, Mrs Annie Besant, Mrs Alice Cleather, Dr Archibald Keightley, Herbert Coryn, Claude Wright, G.R.S. Mead, E.T. Sturdy, and Walter Old”.^[10]

Suffering from heart disease, rheumatism, Bright’s disease, and complications from influenza, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky died at 19 Avenue Road, St Johns Wood,^[11] the home she shared, in England on May 8, 1891.

Her last words in regard to her work were: “Keep the link unbroken! Do not let my last incarnation be a failure.”

Her body was cremated; one third of her ashes were sent to Europe, one third with William Quan Judge to the United States, and one third to India where her ashes were scattered in the Ganges River. May 8 is celebrated by Theosophists, and it is called White Lotus Day.

She was succeeded as head of one branch of the Theosophical Society by her protégé, Annie Besant. Her friend, W.Q. Judge, headed the American Section.

Influences

Blavatsky was influenced by the following authors:

• Helene Fadeev, her mother
• William Blake
• Edward Bulwer-Lytton
• Louis Jacolliot
• Paschal Beverly Randolph

Tags: Blavatsky, Secret Societies, Spititualism, Theosoph

Fomorians

The fomorians, whose name means ‘dark of the sea,’ were a race of Gaelic demons said to be the offspring of Noah’s son, Ham. They are said to have the body of a man and the head of a goat, according to an 11th century text called The Book of the Dun Cow.

Most sources list the Fomorians as one of the 4 races of Ireland who were defeated by the Tuatha De Danaan.

The fomorians consisted of Buarainech; Balor, the son of Buarainech, whose one eye is kept permanently closed because it could kill any mortal or god with one glance and king of the fomorians; Bress, whose consort is Brigit, the daughter of the Dagda and who briefly ruled the Tuatha De Danaan; Elathan; and Ethniu, the daughter of Balor who is the mother of Lugh Lamhfada.

Tags: celtic, Flood, Fomorians

H.P. Lovecraft: Cthulhu

The most detailed descriptions of Cthulhu in “The Call of Cthulhu” are based on statues of the creature. One, constructed by an artist after a series of baleful dreams, is said to have “yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature…. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings.” Another, recovered by police from a raid on a murderous cult, “represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind.”

When the creature finally appears, the story says that the “thing cannot be described,” but it is called “the green, sticky spawn of the stars”, with “flabby claws” and an “awful squid-head with writhing feelers.” The phrase “a mountain walked or stumbled” gives a sense of the creature’s scale.

Cthulhu is depicted as having a worldwide cult centered in Arabia, with followers in regions as far-flung as Greenland and Louisiana. There are leaders of the cult “in the mountains of China” who are said to be immortal. Cthulhu is described by some of these cultists as the “great priest” of “the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky.”

The cult is noted for chanting its horrid phrase or ritual: “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” which translates as “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.” This is often shortened to “Cthulhu fhtagn,” which might possibly mean “Cthulhu waits”, “Cthulhu dreams,” or “Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

One cultist, known as Old Castro, provides the most elaborate information given in Lovecraft’s fiction about Cthulhu. The Great Old Ones, according to Castro, had come from the stars to rule the world in ages past.

Castro points to the “much-discussed couplet” from Abdul Alhazred’s Necronomicon:

That is not dead which can eternal lie.

And with strange æons even death may die.

Castro explains the role of the Cthulhu Cult: When the stars have come right for the Great Old Ones, “some force from outside must serve to liberate their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented them from making an initial move.” At the proper time,

Castro reports that the Great Old Ones are telepathic and “knew all that was occurring in the universe.” They were able to communicate with the first humans by “moulding their dreams,” thus establishing the Cthulhu Cult, but after R’lyeh had sunk beneath the waves, “the deep waters, full of the one primal mystery through which not even thought can pass, had cut off the spectral intercourse.”

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu

Tags: Cthulhu, Lovecraft

The Cuicuilco Pyramid

There is a great deal of controversy in certain circles regarding the Cuicuilco Pyramid.

Cuicuilco was an ancient city in the central Mexican highlands, on the southern shore of the Lake Texcoco in the southeastern Valley of Mexico, and for sometime there was speculation that it may be one of the most ancient structures on the planet.

Though recognised as “the oldest”, a central question was “how old”? National Geographic discussed Cuicuilco in 1923 (no. 44). In the 1922, Byron Cummings of the University of Arizona became interested in the structure when he learned that a geologist named George E. Hyde had estimated the age of the flow, the Pedregal lava flow, as being 7000 years old. This resulted in an obvious contradiction: how could a pyramid be 5000 years younger than the lava covering it?
Cummings decided to confirm or deny and found 18 feet of sediment and ashes between the bottom of the Pedregal layer and the pavement surrounding the temple pyramid. He came up with 8500 years as the timeframe how long it would require to accumulate. If correct, it would make Cuilcuilco by far the oldest building in Mexico – and the oldest pyramid in the world. But immediately, there was a problem, for the eruption of the volcano had never been dated to 6050 BC, but considered to be after 450 BC. It is clearly something was wrong, and the likeliest person to be wrong, was Cummings. Rather surprisingly, his conclusions were not immediately attacked or considered unlikely.

It seemed to fantastical to be true. That they had discovered something far older than any other exsiting structure:

Cummings worked before the invention of carbon-dating and hence he was only able to estimate, not date, the age of the sediments. In fact, rather than 8500 years old, he actually gave a timeframe of 8500 to 30,000 Before Present (BP).
With the invention of radiocarbon-dating, the sediments were dated to be only as old as 2200 BP (250 BC). Cummings’ observations were proven erroneous. At first, distinctive pottery from mounds associated with the pyramid and found buried beneath the Xitli lava flows by quarrying operations dated the initial construction of the “pyramid” to be between 800 to 600 BC, which was still older than commonly accepted, but at least not extravagantly outside the “accepted” timeframe.

Huehueteotl

Although science could not disprove everything:

Science brought answers. Though the dating of Cuicuilco has been ironed out, it was but one episode in a long list of anomalies that have attached themselves to the pyramid. The Spanish physician Hernandez, sent to Mexico by order of (King) Philip II, visited Cuicuilco and wrote to his sovereign about having found the bones of large beasts, along with those of “men” in excess of five meters tall. Natives expressed a belief that Cuicuilco’s enigmatic structure had been built by giants. Whereas the bones of these giants seem to have been lost, the beasts are now believed to have been the toxodon and the titanothere.
Furthermore, while Cummings was carrying out his excavations in the early 1920s, the site was apparently visited one night by an unidentified flying light that hovered over the ruins before speeding off into the distance.

Source: http://www.philipcoppens.com/nap_art5.html

Tags: aztec, pyramid

The Great Flood Myth…

For years i have discounted the idea of the Flood, probably because it was linked so heavily to the Bible and all those other apocryphal stories.

Then I happened upon a book called ‘The day the Sky fell‘ by Rand Flem-Ath, and found myself wondering if there wasn’t something in it all along.

Check out some of the versions from other cultures:

Before the Apaches emerged from the underworld, there were other people on the earth. Dios told an old man and old woman that it would rain forty days and nights. People were warned to go to the tops of four mountains (Tsisnatcin, Tsabidzilhi, Becdilhgai, and another whose identity isn’t known) and not to look at the flood or sky. The people didn’t believe the old couple. When the rains came, only a few people made it to the mountain tops and shut their eyes. Those who looked at the flood turned into fish or frogs; if they looked at the sky, they turned into birds. After eighty days, Dios told the 24 people remaining to open their eyes and come down. These 24 people went into mountains. Eight other people survived the flood who were able to travel by looking where they wanted to go, and they were there. These people told the Apaches about the flood before going into two mountains themselves. Around the turn of the millennium, the surface of the earth will again be destroyed, this time by fire.

And from the Aztec:

In the Valley of Mexico there lived a pious man named Tapi. Creator told him to build a boat to live in, to take his wife and a pair of every animal that existed. Neighbors thought he was crazy. As soon as he finished, it began to rain. The valley flooded; men and animals went to mountains, but they were submerged. The rain ended, waters receded, etc. Tapi realized that the flood waters had receded after having sent a dove that did not return. Tapi rejoiced.

Then here from Hindu:

Manu, the first human, saved a small fish from the jaws of a larger fish. After hearing the smaller one beg for protection, Manu kept the fish safe, transferring it to larger and larger containers as it grew, finally returning it to the ocean.

Because of this kindness, the fish returned to warn Manu about an imminent flood and told him to build a boat, stocking it with samples of every species. After the flood waters rose, Manu tied a rope to the fish’s horn. The fish led him to a mountain and told Manu to fasten the ship’s rope to a tree so that it would not drift. He stayed on the mountain (known as Manu’s Descent) while the flood swept away all living creatures. Manu alone survived.

Greco-Roman:

Zeus decided to punish humanity for its evil ways. Other Gods grieved at the destruction because there would be no beings to worship them. Zeus promised a new stock, a race of miraculous origin. He was going to use thunderbolts when he remembered one of Fate’s decrees: that a time would come when sea and earth and dome of the sky would blaze up, and the massive structure of the universe would collapse in ruins. With Poseidon’s help, he caused storm and earthquake to flood every part of the land except the summit of Mount Parnassus. When Zeus crushed the hanging clouds in his hand, there was a loud crash, and sheets of rain fell from heaven. The rivers began rushing to the sea. When Neptune struck the earth with his trident, the rivers raced across the plains. Sea and earth could no longer be distinguished; all was sea without any shores, covering every living being except for one fortunate couple, Deucalion and Pyrrha. Earlier, Deucalion and Pyrrha had consulted Themis at her oracular shrine. She warned of a future flood, and they prepared by acquiring a boat. In time, their boat ran aground on the summit of Mount Parnassus. (Note: This is the mountain at Delphi, “navel of the earth” and home of the great oracle.)

Recognizing their piety, Zeus allowed them to live and withdrew the waters. It was then that Deucalion and Pyrrha remembered the other oracle given by Themis: to repopulate the world by throwing “behind you the bones of your great mother.” Pyrrha didn’t want to injure her mother’s ghost by disturbing her bones. Prometheus soothed her fears. “Oracles are righteous and never advise guilty action…” They decided that the “bones” were stones in the body of the earth (“Great Mother”). They threw the stones, which became humans; men of the stones thrown by Deucalion; women, of those cast by Pyrrha. Animals were produced by earth of its own volition. According to Plato: “Many great deluges have taken place during the nine thousand years.”

These and many more examples can be found on the web, try www.dreamscape.com/morgana/titania.htm

It seems that at some point in earths history there was a deluge, and it has embedded itself in every creation  story of every culture. What Flem-Ath believes is that the poles shifted and the ice melted, amongst other catastrophic events came the flood. Something rather ominous about this if you ask me…

Tags: Antartica, Atlantis, Flood