COMMUNICATION - CONSULTANCY - PERSONAL GROWTH - WISDOM TRADITION AMYDON-EXETER CENTRE 113 To and from Melanie Small CARJ SouthWest To Doctor M. A. Zaki Badawi Modern Science is catching up with Ancient Knowledge Postword - (a) Fr. Tissa Balasuriya's contributions to “theology in Asia” conflict with modern science and with traditional belief in the Near East, Africa and the Americas (b) Ninni, Innin, Inanna, Imini, Ishtar, Eshdar, Astarte, Ast, Ashtoreth, Anat, Isis, Venus, Aphrodite, Athena and Calypso may all be names for the same individual great-grand-daughter of Anu (c) Scientific & Human Implications of Ninurta's & Nergal's Detonation of Seven Atomic Bombs in the Sinai Peninsula in 2,024 B.C. Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key To Sig. Dott. Professore Giuliano Di Bernardo Where Is Everybody? - The Search For Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence To Dr. Brian C. Bates, BA, MA, PhD To Zecharia Sitchin To Revd Fr Robert Plourde To His Excellency Archbishop Pablo Puente To Doctor Edna Hamer To Zecharia Sitchin - 30 July 1999 To a gifted psychic   To Doctor M. A. Zaki Badawi Principal - The Muslim College 20/22 Creffield Road LONDON W5 3RP 16 April 1997 Dear Dr. Zaki Badawi, Christian-Jewish-Muslim Dialogue Thank you for replying (The Tablet, 12 April) to Sister Margaret Shepherd's letter (The Tablet, 22 March) in response to NOTEBOOK'S “A bridge too few” (The Tablet, 15 March, p.359). Although the cyclists portrayed with the camel in the Negev desert in Pugh's cartoon on the same page are relative strangers to that environment, our father Abraham appears to have been an accomplished camel-rider who knew that desert well! “Abraham - still called by his Sumerian name Abram in the Bible - moved with his father Terah (an oracle priest to judge by the meaning of his name) from Ur in Sumer to Harran on the Upper Euphrates. By our calculations this took place in 2096 B.C., when the great Sumerian king Ur-Nammu died unexpectedly and the people complained that the death occurred because ‘Enlil changed his word’ to Ur-Nammu. Against a background of a growing preoccupation in Sumer with ‘sinning’ cities in the west, along the Meditaerranean coast, Abram/Abraham was ordered by Yahweh to move southward with his family, retainers, and flocks and take a position in the Negev, the dry area bordering on the Sinai. The move took place upon the death in Sumer of Ur-Nammu's successor (Shulgi) in 2048 B.C., when the Hebrew Patriarch was seventy-five years old. It was the very same year when Marduk, in preparation for his seizing of the supremacy among the gods, arrived in the Land of the Hittites, north of Mesopotamia. Encountering a famine caused by a drought, Abram continued moving on, all the way to Egypt. There he was received by the Pharaoh - the last Pharaoh of the tenth northern dynasty, who a few years later (in 2040 B.C.) was overthrown by the princes and priests of Thebes in the south. Two years before, in 2042 B.C. by our calculations, Abram returned to his outpost in the Negev; he was now in command of a retinue of cavalrymen (probably fast camel riders). He returned in time to deflect an attempt, by a coalition of ‘Kings of the East’, to invade the Mediterranean lands and reach the Spaceport in the Sinai. Abram's mission was to guard the Spaceport's approaches, not to take sides in the war of the Easterns with the kings of Canaan…” (Z. Sitchin, Divine Encounters, New York: Avon Books, 1996, pp.285-6). I know no Arabic and so cannot read the Q'uran, but the Bible refers to Abraham quite extensively, and the date formula for year 7 in the year of Amar-Sin (whom the Bible calls Amar-Pal) reads: MU NE IB.RU.UM BA.HUL, i.e., “year the shepherding-abode of IB.RU.UM was attacked”. You were quoted by The Tablet as saying: “I want to fight my battles when I have my feet on the ground”. Jesus Christ, who in one of his parables acknowledged a good house's need of secure foundations, also stated that G-d could raise up children to Abraham from the very stones he saw around him… but he left it to us to discern whether the stones to which he referred were minerals on the ground or the obdurate hearts of unbelievers… Da mihi animas cœtera tolle has always been the motto of the Salesians of Saint John Bosco. You may recognize it as St. Jerome's translation of the king of Sodom's words to Abram (Gn 14:21): “Give me the people and take the possessions for yourself”. But Abram's reply is even more memorable: “I swear by G-d Most High, Creator of heaven and earth: not one thread, not one sandal strap, will I take of what is yours, for you to be able to say, ‘I made Abram rich’. For myself, nothing - except what the troops have used up, and the share due to the men who came with me, Eshcol, Aner and Mamre; let them take their share”. If only that were also the spirit of today's diplomats and of the governments and peoples they officially represent! I have no wish to distract your attention from whatever serves to alleviate suffering today and tomorrow, and I am not unaware of the chronological (and other) problems involved in opening our minds and hearts to the ancient knowledge Zecharia Sitchin has so zealously striven to integrate with the best results of modern science, but I hope and pray that my enclosed short paper is a useful contribution to the sort of dialogue you are now seeking how best to develop… Copy to: Sister Margaret Shepherd NDS, Deputy Director - Council of Christians and Jews Drayton House, 30 Gordon Street, LONDON WC1H 0AN. To Sig. Dott. Professore Giuliano Di Bernardo Gran Mæstro Gran Loggia Regolare degli Antichi, Liberi e Accettati Muratori d'Italia Lungotevere dei Mellini 17 00193 ROMA, Italy Solemnity of the Body & Blood of Christ - Thursday, 29 May 1997 Dear Gran Mæstro, In 1998, when a Spanish translation of the work here discussed was published in Madrid, Giuliano Di Bernardo (DoB 1 March 1939), who has two children, Jacopo and Silvia, was still a Professor of Logic & Philosophy of Science at the Università degli Studi in Trento (Via Verdi, 26, II piano), Alto Adige, Italy. Earlier publications to his credit include Normative Structures of the Social World (Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1988). More recently he presented a paper, "Bioethics - a philosophical foundation", at the First National Congress of Bioethics jointly sponsored by the Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences and Academy of Medical Sciences (Kiev, 18-21 September 2001), and an essay on "New Advances in Reproductive Techniques & Genetics" to the proceedings of the Sabaudia Conference: "Are there limits in science and research?" (19-22 May 2002). Although as a Freemason he founded the Grand Lodges of Romania, the Ukraine, and Moldavia, was highly regarded as Grand Master of the then 13,000 strong Italian Grand Orient (10 March 1990 - 16 April 1993; it has since lost at least 5,000 members), served as first Grand Master (17 April 1993 - December 2001) of the initially 107 strong GLRI, an Italian Grand Lodge of Regular and Accepted Masons which very quickly acquired a membership of 2,000, he is no longer himself a Freemason, not because he is or ever had been involved in any kind of madcap conspiracy, but because he no longer believes Masonry of any shape or form is equipped to meet today's challenges - these spring primarily from recent advancements in science, but require, in his view, a well coordinated and integrated response from economics, science, philosophy and religion. Frequently travelling outside Italy for this purpose, he has already found some support in Italy, Brazil, Switzerland and the Ukraine, and hopes that China and Yemen will follow. La ricostruzione del Tempio - Il progetto massonico per una nuova utopia   PREMESSE: La ringrazio di cuore per il dono molto apprezzato del suo libro più recente che ho letto attentamente con grandissimo interesse. Non è il caso di ripetere quanto gli ho scritto nella mia lettera del 18 gennaio né quello che ho notato in data di sabato, 5 aprile 1997 riguardo a The Hiram Key di Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas. La stessissima Provvidenza Divina che prima mi ha messo in contatto col suo Freemasonry and its Image of Man - A Philosophical Investigation ha anche disposto che ho potuto partecipare spiritualmente, sebbene da lontano, sabato sera, il 17 maggio scorso, al primo dialogo sul tema della massoneria in Italia trasmesso su RAI-DUE. Peccato che Monsignor Luigi Bettazzi coi suoi 73 anni di esperienza della vita non ha potuto prendere una posizione più lampeggiante rispetto ai detagli pratici di quanto è stato discusso. Per ciò che riguardo i suoi interventi, però, come gli ho già scritto poco tempo fa, in linea generale mi sono trovato pienamente d'accordo con quello che lei ha detto. Grazie perciò ad un' ammeliorata ed approfondita contestualizzazione del suo discorso mi è ora anche abbastanza chiaro nel quel senso lei parla sia di trasparenza, sia di parziale. Sempre in tema di contestualizzazione lo trovo curioso che proprio quando in Italia la Squola si propone di avanzare dall'utopia alla scienza un professore di Filosofia della scienza sente che è arrivato il momento di trascendere quattro secoli di convivenza sociale in base alla scienza, progettando una nuova utopia!…   INTRODUCTION: “1993” instead of “1983” on page 56 is not the only typographical error to have escaped correction before your book was printed, but I don't suppose Bob Gilbert will lose any sleep at being named on page 95 but indexed as resident on page 96!… If an English translation of this book is due to be published, it might be a good idea to extend at least slightly your BIBLIOGRAFIA ESSENZIALE and, in addition to any titles I may have mentioned in previous correspondence and to any I may have occasion to specify later in this letter, I venture to suggest…   MEDITATING YOUR BOOK IN OUR PRESENT CONTEXT:   (1) The book's title - As a Roman Catholic Christian I continue to speak of The Church, Churches and churches, just as Jews speak of The Synagogue and synagogues and, among others, Masons of The Temple and temples. Hence, I have no objection at all to your book's title and, especially in the light of your references to mysticism, have no doubt whatsoever that the primary meaning of your word Temple is precisely that which I, as a nuptial theologian totally committed to Primordial Catholicism, understand by Church. Nevertheless, for reasons which I have developed elsewhere, I believe that in several relevant contexts Creativity House will prove to be a preferable term and also that, as more and more individuals come to disabuse themselves of the prevailing misconceptions of how human life on this particular planet arose and developed, the name of The Neith Network may resonate helpfully in many minds and hearts.   (2) Surface contents -   pp.7-8: “Per risolvere i mali che affliggono l'umanità, [è] necessario abbandonare il progetto unitario basato sulle religioni per intraprendere quello basato sull'etica.” Even within the parameters of your declared concerns I would insist that any ethically based unifying project embarked upon can do no more than either complement (at least apparently from without) or morally inform and ennoble (from within) the universally mandatory religiously based unifying project initiated by Jesus Christ as Man at the moment of his virginal conception in the womb of Mary of Nazareth. However, I am not suggesting either that it is your mission in life today to make that statement nor to believe that I am correct in making it. Nevertheless, I believe it is important that all believing Monotheists are free socially as well as privately to acknowledge the universal primacy of their religious self-commitment. Since, however, the same laws of physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, etc. are seen to be at work in the lives of all of us, since, in other words, religious Faith (at least in its earlier and more commonly discernible stages of development) is a motive rather than a skill, its presence or absence often makes no immediately apparent difference to how social projects are best conceived, formulated, promoted and implemented. Read by persons without any sort of deep religious convictions your book may easily convey the impression that the September 1993 Chicago Parliament of World's Religions you mention was generally felt by most religious believers to be as important as a world congress of Masons would be for all Masons or as the Second Vatican Council was for all Roman Catholics. But, of course, such was not the case. The vast majority of religious believers are still largely unaware that such a Parliament ever assembled, and of those who are aware of its deliberations - not excluding those who actually took part in them - only a few, I suspect, even if a significant few, would see it as having been any more than a sign of hope for a future still alien to the mentality, habits and preferences of the present majority of religious believers. From a small acorn a mighty forest may, indeed, grow, and I certainly welcome your own efforts towards maximising the potential benefits of that Parliament. I am, however, far from certain that it was an event of sufficient immediate significance to carry the weight that your book seems to place upon it right now.   p.13: “I rappresentanti di tutte le religioni del mondo (cattolici, protestanti, ebrei, musulmani, cristiani ortodossi, induisti, buddisti, gianinisti), riuniti a Chicago… hanno approvato la Dichiarazione per un'etica mondiale, che viene commentata dal teologo ecumenico Hans Küng…” Although your statement is honestly written and even as it stands is materially true in the sense that it can logically be understood in such a way as to be neither more nor less than a straightforward enunciation of the facts of the case, I am also fully persuaded that it is importantly misleading, and that the sort of truth it contains is insufficient for it to provide you with an adequate basis for your opening Chapter - L'ETICA MONDIALE DELLE RELIGIONI. Please allow me to explain. Every religious believer is in a certain sense a representative of and for the religion he professes, just as every football-team is a representative sample of the sort of thing a football-team is, but the Italian Ambassador to the Court of St. James is, clearly, a representative of Italy in the United Kingdom in a sense in which the average Italian-born resident in this country is not. Those who wish urgently to abolish or at least reform the House of Lords in the British Parliament do not deny that the present Lords are a representative sample of the upper échelons of contemporary British society, but they do deny that they significantly represent the other members of their various peer-groups in anything like the way in which the democratically elected Members of the House of Commons are held to represent the interests of their particular constituents. Certainly several persons of quality attended the Chicago Parliament, but the extent to which most of them may properly be said to have represented the religions to which they professed to adhere is not by any stretch of imagination such as to constitute that body as a real Parliament. Hans Küng is a fair example. So far is he from being in the stronger sense of the word a representative of the Roman Catholic Church (to which he still professes himself to belong as a creatively loving critic) that the competent Vatican authorities long ago revoked his license to teach theology so that, as regards the present ecclesial situation, he is only a theologian in the sense that he is an academic expert on some aspects of theology and related matters, and he is only ecumenical in the sense that he is and is known to be personally committed to promoting Church unity along the lines he feels to be desirable. Very many Christians including many Roman Catholics acknowledge Küng as a relevant theological voice, but I believe this acknowledgment frequently amounts to little more than (a) wanting the under-dog to be allowed at least a fair crack of the whip along with the next fellow, and (b) using Küng's name and arguments as a convenient way of promoting a particular sort of church politics, especially as regards structural reform. Not all Christians, not all educated Christians agree that living Christianity is or is meant to be primarily about social structures of that sort. Keeping to the example of Roman Catholicism, suffice it to refer to the clearly authoritative Catéchisme de l'Église Catholique (Paris, Mame/Plon, 1992, translated into Italian as Catechismo della Chiesa Cattolica, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1992, and said to have been ‘translated’ into English as Catechism of the Catholic Church, London, Geoffrey Chapman, 1994). None of these editions contains an Index that is entirely satisfactory from my point of view, so I believe it may also help you if I mention here a few points I first raised in 1993: … Finally what is for Catholics the most important meaning of Theologia is introduced at no. 236: ‘I Padri della Chiesa fanno una distinzione tra la “Theologia” e l'“Oikonomia”, designando con il primo termine il mistero della vita intima del Dio-Trinità, e con il secondo tutte le opere di Dio, con le quali egli si rivela e comunica la sua vita. Attraverso l'“Oikonomia” ci è rivelata la “Theologia”; ma, inversamente, è la “Theologia” che illumina tutta l'“Oikonomia”. Le opere di Dio rivelano chi egli è in se stesso; e, inversamente, il mistero del suo Essere intimo illumina l'intelligenza di tutte le sue opere. Avviene così, analogicamente, tra le persone umane. La persona si mostra attraverso le sue azioni, e, quanto più conosciamo una persona, tanto più comprendiamo le sue azioni.’ It is interesting also to refer back to the French (the Latin, which is officially the authentic original text, has not yet been published!…[but it has now, 18 April 1999]): ‘Les Pères de l'Église distinguent entre la Theologia et l'Oikonomia, désignant par le premier terme le mystère de la vie intime du Dieu-Trinité, par le second toutes les œuvres de Dieu par lesquelles Il se révèle et communique sa vie. C'est par l'Oikonomia que nous est révelée la Theologia; mais inversement, c'est la Theologia qui éclaire toute l'Oikonomia. Les œuvres de Dieu révèlent qui Il est en Lui-même; et inversement, le mystère de son Etre intime illumine l'intelligence de toutes ses œuvres. Il en est ainsi, analogiquement, entre les personnes humaines. La personne se montre dans son agir, et mieux nous connaissons une personne, mieux nous comprenons son agir.’ These two versions illuminate each other. The use of double quotation marks (“ ”) in the Italian expresses a wish to introduce into contemporary Italian usage a meaning of Theologia which is recognised as somehow foreign to current speech, and so risks placing the emphasis more on terminology than on actuality. The presence of the italicised Theologia in the French text more clearly conveys that it is the actuality that is all important, but also comes near to implying that there is no chance of so influencing ordinary French speech-patterns as effectively to express this directly. Also, though I am far from being an authority as regards either Italian or French, I sense a measure of difference between illumina l'intelligenza and illumine l'intelligence; for me, at any rate, the Italian simply alludes to our improved understanding of creation, but the French seems to find a consequently enlivened self-understanding present in every aspect of creation itself. What about the English? “The Fathers of the Church distinguish between theology (theologia) and economy (oikonomia). ‘Theology’ refers to the mystery of God's inmost life within the Blessed Trinity and ‘economy’ to all the works by which God reveals himself and communicates his life. Through the oikononia the theologia is revealed to us; but conversely, the theologia illuminates the whole oikonomia. God's works reveal who he is in himself; the mystery of his inmost being enlightens our understanding of all his works. So it is, analogously, among human persons. A person discloses himself in his actions, and the better we know a person, the better we understand his actions.” Despite Ruth McCurry of Geoffrey Chapman's written assurance to me on 1 June 1993 that they had “been looking carefully at the details of the translation over recent months”, “had followed the discussion in The Tablet” (an influential international English-language Catholic weekly), and had found some of the points raised in my related letter “useful”, the English version completely ignores the most important use of capital letters in the text it purports to translate! Theology is thrown into the same bundle as theology, and Being is reduced to being!… In other words, although Ruth McCurry's official self-designation is “Religious Publisher”, if this sample of her work is anything to go by, her professional concern is not so much with Religion as with religion, or at best with Religion's outward secondary manifestations and with various related sets of human opinions and abstract notions. As a professor of the Philosophy of science it is likely that you have engaged yourself in recent discussions about the need for a new paradigm. Many academic theologians, too, seem to be greatly exercised in mind by this search for a different and better linguistic framework in terms of which to articulate our individual questioning and our shared dialogue. I see nothing wrong in this, just as at that level I see nothing wrong with what you are seeking to achieve in this, your most recent book - but I know you to be capable of far better and far more, and I know that theology is not Theology… which is not to say that theology cannot be an important aspect of Theology. Since you are concerned with social unity that last point is also, I suggest, an especially significant one. Were it part of my mission to teach you the elements of Catholic theology I could do no better than refer you to the 6-volume Sacramentum Mundi - an encyclopedia of theology edited by Karl Rahner (London, Burns & Oates, 1968-70), but here it will suffice briefly to quote from Joseph Bezzina's lucid Church History including an account of the Church in Malta - handbook for the advanced matriculation examination in religious knowledge (Victoria-Gozo, Gaulitana, 1994, pp.86 & 131): “Jean Gerson in a famous speech Ambulate dum lucem habetis (23 March 1415) established the reasons why the Pope had no right to dissolve the Council [of Constance] and why he was bound by its decisions… At the turn of the third millennium, the Catholic Church is in the grip of a crisis that appears to have no end. Nonetheless, it is the best equipped of all the churches to come to terms with modernity without sacrificing the essentials of its tradition. According to Langdon Gilkey, Catholicism confronts modernity - a protestant view, New York, 1975, this is due to: 1. its unique sense of being a people profoundly rooted in a tremendous history embracing a great part of the human family and covering a marvellous diversity of cultural epochs and geographical expanses; 2. its tenacious sense of tradition, which anchors it firmly in the past while allowing it to develop in response to changing times and customs; 3. its emphatically sacramental approach to the mysteries of life and God, an approach most effective in holding its members together in an age when people are so aware of the relativity of all concepts; and 4. its pastoral wisdom derived from the breadth of its experience with human beings, an attitude that allows it to be tolerant towards the frailty of the individual without compromising its commitment to the lofty ideas of the Gospel.” As is transparently evident, Freemasonry as you understand and promote it very largely shares in many, indeed, arguably in all the above characteristics, even if, after taking thought, you may wish, like me, to speak of G-d rather than God. I am not unsympathetic to Hans Küng's theological stance, but it cannot properly be said to be fairly representative of the Roman Catholic Church as a whole and, therefore, a fortiori, it can hardly serve your purpose well as a focal point in the ethical dialogue you are urging religious believers of all sorts to engage in with you and your fellow Masons.   p.14: “Non fare agli altri quello che non vuoi che gli altri facciano a te.” Precisely! Küng's list of supposed near equivalents from a variety of sources fails to differentiate between clearly valid negative formulations of this Golden Rule, such as your own, and various unsuccessful attempts to express it validly in a positive statement. I agree with J. D. Solomon's evaluation in The Mind's Ear (Hounslow, Bibliagora, 1979, p.38): “Shaw's rejection of the Golden Rule, which ran: ‘Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you; tastes differ’ is justified.” I also agree with Solomon that what is commonly termed ethics is perhaps far better categorised as a part of æsthetics but, since your book is not meant to be an abstract exercise in semantics, I do not choose to devote any further attention to the logical and philosophical arguments in favour of that point of view here and now. Instead, I refer you to some of the theological ramifications of this difference in emphasis; they are not without their own anthropological resonance. Hans Urs Von Balthasar has certainly helped me to grow in appreciation of this vital area. Cf. The Glory of the Lord - a theological æsthetics: Volume 1, Seeing the Form (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1982, pp.538-40): Mary “remains the archetype of the Church precisely as the hearer of the Word whom her Son declared blessed (Mt 11:28) - the hearer who also knows how to keep and guard, nourish and hear the Word and who, even after she has given it birth, continues to ponder it in her heart (Lk 2:19,51)… We recall how Mozart could write out the violin part on its own for an entire symphonic movement because he had the whole orchestra in his ear… The fleshly and personal relationship between Christ and Mary, however, was from the outset intended to lead into the universal and social relationships between Christ and the Church… the Church, who comes to be what she can and must be only in Christ [here actually in New Testament Greek in the passage quoted]. Because it contains Christ, this medium is no modernistic subjectivity, but rather an objective medium given by grace whose objectivity is demonstrated by the birth of the canon of Scripture. The Church's memoria…” … and so on… Referring on 13 September 1992 to what I claimed was the Church in its most authentic and uniquely primordial sense (and sense is to be understood as meaning not only meaning but also each individual's vital faculty of consciously focussed awareness), I quoted Iman Wilkens's Where Troy Once Stood (London, Rider, 1990,pp. 94, 185-7 & 212) extensively, but I restrict myself here to a brief reference: “In the Odyssey, we will find a Troy town of the figurative sort, a labyrinth containing knowledge. We will make acquaintance with the goddess Circe, the Great Initiatrice into the Mysteries and, as such, the central figure of the epic. Her name, Circe, is not accidental, for in its dialect form, Kirke, it is related, amongst others, to the word kirkos, which designated any bird of pray that circles above its pray… According to the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, the word ‘church’ comes from Old English cirice or circe, a word that clearly seems to be cognate with Circe. We also know that the dialectal form of Circe (also found in Greek) was Kirke and etymologists are agreed that the Dutch word for 'church', kerk, the German Kirche and the Scots kirk all come from the Old Saxon kirika, another word cognate with Kirke or Circe… Circe, the goddess whose name was Church with a capital 'c', must have been the highest authority of the Gnostic religion…”   p.42: “Poiché la Massoneria non è una religione né, tanto meno, una super religione, non si può sostenere la tesi dell'inconciliabilità.” I need not reiterate what I have previously written about the unresolved disagreement between your good self and Cardinal Ratzinger and it is, in any case, no part of my task as Preliminary LibrArian to attempt in any way either to update His Eminence's declaration in the light of more recent developments or to speculate about the precise circumstances in which the Holy See might exercise its right of derogation in respect of the provisions of the Declaration of 17 February 1981 (AAS 73/1981/pp.240-1) quoted in both your books. However, I believe you do need at an appropriate moment to explain how your own claims about Masonry within the context of your projected New Utopia are to be understood in the light of your own authoritative statement on page 59 of your most recent volume: “Una società massonica è regolare se ottiene il riconoscimento… In un dato territorio (Nazione, Pæse, Stato ecc.) può esistere una, e soltanto una, Massoneria regolare… Tutte le altre società massoniche, esistenti nello stesso territorio, sono, di conseguenza, irregolari…” You have explained that religious discussions are forbidden within the Lodge, and Gran Mæstro Franco Franchi and the other Grand Master(s) or persons of Grand Rank particpating in the recent RAI-DUE televised dialogue are, I take it, in agreement with you about this. Clearly at present in Italy in addition to Regular Masonry there are in existence a plurality of Irregular Masonries. Are discussions about this situation permitted within Regular Lodges? Within Irregular Lodges? How is it possible for Regular Masons sharing your understanding of the Grand Architect of the Universe as an ideale regolativo in senso non esclusivo (p.30) to justify the prevailing pluralism? Is this not a case to which Boccaccio and Lessing's Story of the Three Rings (p.35) is very poignantly relevant? Haven't you said yourself (p.36) that “tutte le concezioni dell'uomo… sono relativamente vere”? In particular, in the Light of Tradition, how can you justify the continuing exclusion of women from Regular Masonic Lodges? In his The Great Instauration… a commentary (Northampton, Francis Bacon Research Trust, 1983, p.8, my italics) Peter Dawkin states that to build the Pyramid - “requires a brotherhood or fraternity of men and women eager and willing to dedicate their lives in this service, to share willingly their discoveries and knowledges, and to work selflessly and patiently for the common good. The nature of the work and its method automatically selects those who can best carry it out, and excludes those who are not yet fitted to do so - because the first common rule is CHARITY or Love in Action, whilst the second rule is a desire to seek and bring Truth to light. Without these, none of the rest can be fulfilled… The original model for this world Society, as set up and governed by Francis Rosicross, was called (Peter Dawkins's italics) the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross or Knights of the Order of the Helmet, or alternatively the College of the Six Days' Work. Freemasonry is (my italics) one of the developments from the original model, as part of the overall scheme.” Interestingly, too, Mrs. Max Heindel in her widely read Freemasonry and Catholicism (first published in 1919, 10th edition revised reissued by The Rosicrucian Fellowship, Oceanside, California, 1995) states in her concluding Summary: “The term Catholicism as used in this work does not refere to the Roman Catholic Church alone, but Catholic is taken in the sense of Universal, so that the term includes all movements inaugurated by the Sons of Seth, the Priestcraft… The Sons of Fire…the Sons of Cain became the craftsmen of the world… Their ideal was male, Hiram Abiff, the Master workman. The Sons of Seth, on the other hand, became the feminine ideal, the Virgin Mary, and ruling their people by the magic water placed at their temple doors. Various attempts have been made to unite the two streams… Religion… is no longer Catholic… The more men and women who engage in Mystic Masonry to consciously build this Temple of the Soul, the sooner we shall see the second advent of Christ, and the stronger will be the race which He shall rule by the law of love.”   pp.12 & 94: “È convinzione di chi scrive che la nuova utopia debba rappresentare un dover essere attuabile e debba essere incentrata sul misticismo. Tutte le forme particolari di misticismo (cristiana, islamica, ebraica) sono idonee per esprimere il dover essere utopico. Una di esse, però, si presta meglio a tale scopo: trattasi del misticismo ebracio, la ‘Qabbalà'… Il misticismo fornisce alla Massoneria quel fondamento intuitivo che è condizione essenziale dei rituali massoni.” In expressing that conviction and in making that fundamental affirmation you clearly come very close to stating what you have nowhere actually said in so many words, viz. that when you insist that Masonry is not a religion nor a super-religion nor an amalgam of different religions nor an anti-religion what you principally intend to indicate is what some at least among your Brother Masons mean when they claim that Masonry symbolically expresses the essence of all religion. I pray G-d that this is, indeed, so. If it is so, I also, as a Roman Catholic, understand the Pope's claim as Vicar of Jesus Christ on Earth to have universal authority in foro externo (and as regards members of the Roman Catholic Communion at least, also in foro interno conscientiæ) to discern whether or not such a claim is or is not valid. That clearly and firmly stated, however, I also agree with John Henry Cardinal Newman that each individual's personal conscience is the primordial Vicar of Jesus Christ on Earth. The institutional Church serves and mediates the Mystery of G-d's Love; it neither has nor pretends to have any authority to obstruct our growth I+N that Unity of Life that IS Charity. Cf. canon 1752 of the present Codex Iuris Canonici: “In causis translationis applicentur præscripta canonis 1747, servata æquitate canonica et præ oculis habita salute animarum, quæ in Ecclesia suprema semper lex esse debet - In cases of transfer, the provisions of canon 1747 are to be applied, always observing canonical equity and keeping in mind the salvation of souls, which in the Church must always be the supreme law.” Although I believe that canon encapsulates the essentials of the minimum universal ethic your book has been written to advocate, consistently with all that I have written above I wish, before concluding this letter, specifically to draw to your assiduous attention Valentin Tomberg's Covenant of the Heart - meditations of a Christian Hermeticist on the Mysteries of Tradition (Element Books 1992), which is the English translation of Lazarus, komm heraus! (Freiburg, Verlag Herder Basel, 1985)… With cordial fraternal greetings and hoping what what I have so briefly and tentatively expressed may somehow serve to facilitate your own very considerable efforts on behalf of the Great Work… To Dr. Brian C. Bates, BA, MA, PhD Essex House, University of Sussex BRIGHTON Sussex BN1 9QN 22 July 1997 Dear Brian, Your entry in the May 1997 Scientific & Medical Network Directory reminds me that I have never yet seen your The Way of the Actor. The Way of Wyrd impressed me more deeply than your most recent The Wisdom of the Wyrd; it reminded me strongly of Michael Fairless's sensitively compassionate story about the monk who was advised to leave the seclusion of his cloister for a time, to regulate his life no longer by maintaining the even and steady rhythms that flow from the Roman Church's liturgical cycle, but to surrender himself in trust to the inspirations of G-d's Spirit manifested in an always unpredictable Nature - and in the even more utterly chaotic tapestry of manifest human beauty, suffering, nobility and need. In real life, as her daughter's biography of her most effectively demonstrates, Madame Curie and her beloved husband unselfishly sacrificed themselves, never for profit, and for a long time without any sort of appropriate recognition or recompense, in order to lessen the sufferings of others. The story of their discovery of both polonium and radium is an ample vindication of the truth contained in Michæl Polanyi's account in Personal Knowledge of what science actually is, on what sort of foundations it ultimately rests and, therefore, by which methods its well-being is most likely to be preserved and enhanced. Against that background I today take pleasure in sending you a copy of The Present Context. The Neith Network's Mission Statement (p.6) clearly transcends the boundaries of the Scientific & Medical Network, and I feel I ought to mention that, although the 1997 Directory identifies me as a ‘Librarian’, “LibrArian” is the correct term. I have now read Peter Plichta's God's Secret Formula - Deciphering the Riddle of the Universe and the Prime Number Code (Element Books: 1997) twice and increasingly appreciate its unique value. “Whoever wants to really understand these connections will understand them and be filled with awe. God arranged the world simply. He certainly did not intend that comprehension of His world would be restricted to élite groups in universities. It was humankind itself which took the infinite plurality of the cosmos and created an insurmountable complexity of formulas. But whoever wants to emerge from the captivity of contemporary knowledge, irrespective of the reason, will have to bear the consequences. Truth does not need people to understand it, but people need truth in order to really live…” (p.175) If Plichta is correct in saying that quantum mechanics is a complete mistake, that the only real subatomic particles are protons, electrons and neutrons, and that G-d has created this universe of ours with four real spatial dimensions in the infinite mathematical space that contains all real three-dimensional objects, and with four real temporal dimensions in the infinite duration that encompasses all our real pasts, presents and futures, then his two already published books proving this (to which the one I have read is simply a layman's introduction) have cleared a path much deeper into the very heart of things than any of the many masterpieces mentioned by Umberto Eco in his own most recent and utterly fascinating The Search for the Perfect Language have hitherto allowed us to penetrate… Unable to cite Plichta's German original, I conclude with just one more incomplete quotation: “The consequences arising from a recognition of the fact that there are two forms of space are far-reaching. Not only will the theory of the Big Bang now have to be totally discarded, which in itself will mean that a vast number of textbooks and schoolbooks have to be rewritten, the ‘modern’ theory of evolution which can be described as a very contrived result of the Big Bang will be put under an irreprievable death sentence by the new findings from chemistry and mathematics… The proverbial ‘ant colony’, which seems to be so much superior to our political structures yet is nevertheless a nightmare, turns out to be the highest life form in a world that is foreign to us. The solution to this problem is in the prime numbers. Just as an insect has no comprehension of the third dimension, we humans are also unable to comprehend the fourth dimension…” (pp. 199-202.)     To Zecharia Sitchin 7 August 1997 Dear Zecharia, Priorities This morning's post brought me my copy of the two-part video set, “An evening with Zecharia Sitchin”, which, sadly, seems to be incompatible with my U.K.-made video play-back machine, and also Of Heaven and Earth, which I have just finished reading through for a first time and with considerable interest. J. M. Cogswell's claim that you are mostly “a reporter” expresses an important part of the truth. So also does my March 1995 assessment that what you have written is “a dramatic narrative of truly epic proportions”! As well as resolving, in principle, the conflict between science and religion, you have also elevated your own style of ‘reporting’ to the level of ‘literature’; in other words, you are clearly a free citizen in The Republic of Letters. But you already know that… Refraining here from comment on any of the Essays others presented at the Study Day, I focus, as a matter of priority, on your use of the term “arbitrary” on page 24 (§ 2): “If we now shift our gaze from division to multiplication, we find that the base number 60, when multiplied by 6, gives us the number 360 which is the arbitrary number [italics yours] into which a circle is divided. Multiplying 360 by 10, we obtain the square of 60 and the number 3,600 - the SAR, the number representing Nibiru and its orbit.” Unless I am mistaken, I have already sent you a copy of the aide-mémoire, “The Present Context”, in which, among other things, I wrote: “Unless you have already read the original German text published in 1995 by Albert Langen Georg Müller Verlag in der F. A. Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH, München, Peter Plichta's most recent book, God's Secret Formula - Deciphering the Riddle of the Universe and the Prime Number Code (ISBN 1-86204-014- 1: Element Books, Shaftesbury, U.K. - Rockport, U.S.A. - Milton, Australia, 1997) also deserves to be brought to your attention.” In particular, I suggest you take Plichta's use (on p.104) of “arbitrary” very carefully into account: “While I had understood the reciprocal square law so far only in the physical sense, I now began to suspect that merely understanding such an important law would not be sufficient. It is much more important to ask why physical effects in space generally weaken according to numbers to the power of two. It is a curious fact that the greatest physicist in the history of the world (Newton) and the greatest philosopher (Kant) allowed for God's possibility of fitting out the world with natural laws different from the ones we know. Kant speaks in this context about replacing the ‘arbitrary’ reciprocal square law (to the power of 2) by some other law, namely the cubic law (to the power of 3). Although I did not doubt Newton's or Kant's belief in God's omnipotence, I was a bit suspicious, and although no physicist today talks about the omnipotence of God, nothing has changed with regard to the apparent arbitrariness of natural laws. Newton and Kant did not know that the number of electron pairs in the atomic ‘shell’ is limited. The maximum number of atomic pairs is, as we have seen, 1, 4, 9, 16 for the various electron orbits. On the innermost orbit around the atomic nucleus only one pair of electrons has place; a maximum of 4 pairs fit on the second level; 9 on the third; and 16 on the fourth. Because these four numbers are the squares of 1, 2, 3 and 4, the square law is therefore numerically anchored in the atom itself and therefore in the whole of nature…” In case you have not yet access to your own copy of Plichta's important book, that quotation is best contextualized by relating it to a few further short extracts: “I then gave her a fairly drastic account of what I thought of my fellow scientists. ‘They are satisfied with everything they can measure with their instruments. They are used to seeing nature as it appears to them. The notion that there is something mysterious under the surface is totally foreign to them. Matter, all that our universe is made up of, for them is sterile and dead. The fact that living organisms exist at all is due, in their opinion, to chance and to carbon's peculiar tendency to form beautiful organic compounds, which they entirely take for granted… It is probably just as difficult to get public attention for something really new as it is to discover it in the first place. When the truth is finally discovered and this discovery shows that all we have achieved so far has been wrong, the new facts cannot simply be published - certainly not at a time when scientists are constantly publishing as if there were no tomorrow. You just can't imagine how angry they would be if someone turned up and started pointing the finger at their hopeless deficiencies in matters of profound importance. They feel good in a world where truth remains hidden. In such a world anybody can claim what he wants, provided he is not a revolutionary and provided nobody can prove the contrary. Revolutions are always accepted as having been necessary only after they have succeeded. You only have to have a thorough knowledge of the history of science to realize that it has been one vast human tragedy all along. If it turns out that my suspicions of the existence of a construction plan for creation are well founded, I won't be able to publish it just like that. Nobody would ever take me seriously. Nobody would help me, either. I would have to furnish the entire proof myself. But even if I managed it, my colleagues would only glance in my direction to show me how crazy they think I am.’” (pp.94-5) “If numbers exist, and if the decimal system is also not a coincidence, then - I reasoned - the measurements of length, weight and time (centimetre-gram-second, the system) could be identical with the absolute dimensions in which nature is arranged. With regard to the dimension of time, this immediately appeared plausible to me because the Babylonians set the length of a second as the 3,600th part of an hour. Such a value may come as a bit of a surprise. It is, however, the product of the squares of the Pythagorean numbers 3, 4 and 5. 3,600 = 3² × 4² × 5² An hour was defined during the Babylonian period as the 24th part of a day (one rotation of the Earth). This number was very carefully chosen: 24 is the product of 1 × 2 × 3 × 4 and is the foundation of the natural prime number rhythm, which the Babylonians undoubtedly knew about. That physics was paralysed in dogma became more and more clear to me. The factor 3 within the equation for the speed of light is not recognized immediately because, in a world that sees its origin in the chance events of the Big Bang, the mere coincidence of the measured values may under no circumstances be put at risk. The exact value for the speed of light as 3 × 1010 = 30,000,000,000 can no longer be put down to mere chance…” (pp.126-7) “Most of my work in the first half of 1994 was devoted to examining the most important mathematical theorems in order to discover whether they were just different physical extensions of one and the same thing - the prime numbers. By June I had discovered the answer to the question. I knew then that the creaking edifice of that most vain of all sciences - mathematics - would soon collapse. More lies have been told in chemistry than in any other science. Nowhere is it possible to encounter so much bombastic bravado as in physics. And nowhere is there near as much foolishness as in biology, with its subdivisions of medicine, since in no other area has so much total nonsense been propounded - and again forgotten - as in the science of living matter. In all three natural sciences, the current errors - and by this I mean not only minor but also major, and especially the most preposterous, errors - soon disappear from the textbooks and are replaced by new ones. We therefore always live with the errors that happen to be valid at the present moment. In mathematics, on the other hand, it is alleged that no errors have ever been made because in this science only formal proof is accepted. Yet such an argument quite blatantly suppresses the question of how some extremely profound speculations exist in the world of numbers that can either be proven beyond doubt or conversely elude a definite solution. I spent two weeks coming to terms with the ramifications of the approaching collapse of mathematics. For that science will sink as surely as the world's proudest battleship would sink after being struck by a salvo of torpedoes. A fundamental and hitherto undiscovered harmony permeates mathematics. I can now prove conclusively what Europe's great thinkers - from Pythagoras, Plato, Bruno, Leibniz and Gauss to Einstein and Sommerfeld - could only guess at: without the existence of numbers as objects in reality there could not be a universe…” (pp.10-11). “Because we now know that the transition from ape to human was not a gradual process - and we know that by the different numbers of chromosomes in the cells of each species - the theory of the evolution of humans and apes from a common ancestor is not without a certain audacity. Nobody tells our children and students that the females of the three anthropoid apes - the gorillas, orang-utans and chimpanzees - do not have a clitoris. This fact is not hushed up because of any misplaced puritanism. It is ignored because it does not fit into the theory of evolution. The occurrence of this part of the female anatomy in humans had far-reaching consequences and cannot have evolved by coincidence.” (p.86)   In Gods of the New Millennium (Hodder & Stoughton, 1997, pp.44-45) Alan F. Alford makes no mention of the human clitoris, but he does refer to “the unique lack of penis bone in the male. This is in complete contrast to other mammals, which use the penis bone to copulate at short notice…” And he follows Desmond Morris in drawing attention to “the enlarged breasts of the female, the sensitive ear lobes and lips, and a vaginal angle that encouraged intimate face to face copulation.” In his “playfully serious” Origins of the Sacred - the ecstasies of love and war (Abacus 1993) Dudley Young also explores the significance of this modified vaginal angle and, while I deplore his seemingly unqualified acceptance of Darwin's and Dawkins's evolutionary theories, I heartily recommend this volume to readers wishing to understand myth as myth within a poetically rich context that both incorporates and transcends Frazer and Freud by learning from Robin Fox and by postulating a primordially religious experience as central in the pre-human ecstasy of shamanic dance… My own priorities are still in some way more elusive, and to what extent they coincide with yours I cannot say…   Postscript - 11 August 1997 Dear Zecharia, Two days ago I purchased a new VHS recorder which permits simulated PAL playback of NTSC-format tapes, and have now viewed both parts of “An Evening with Zecharia Sitchin” twice. You are especially to be congratulated on the excellent quality and detail of the close-up images of the 11' × 14' × 50' cut and squared Jerusalem Temple Mount stone-block, of the scar-crater in the Sinai Peninsula, and of the residual structures on Neptune, Uranus and Mars. The wording of your commentary surprised me slightly, since you appeared to attribute the decommissioning of Phobos-II to a voluntary action by one of the Igigi now living, rather than to a quasi-automatic pre-programmed response by one of their emissaries. I have also completed my third reading of Peter Plichta's God's Secret Formula, and hope that Doctor Amnon Sitchin is also able to read both of the author's related more technical studies as well. Since Peter Plichta and Klaus Kunkel “registered a radically novel type of rocket engine and a rocket long-distance aircraft (5,000-8,000 kilometres per hour at a height of over 50 kilometres) at the patent office” in the autumn of 1994” (o.c., p.208), since, as Spinoza says, “nothing in nature is by chance… something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge”, and since you have publicly expressed a wish to write at least one more book, I hope the fruits of Plichta's life-work can now fruitfully somehow be integrated into your own ongoing process. I was very briefly a member of the World Futures Society in the early '70s and have no doubt that Marlene Evans “earned” her doctorate at Syracuse University, but for me Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press 1962) is very small potatoes compared with Bernard F. J. Lonergan's Insight (Longman 1957; University of Toronto 1992) and other master-works - mainly in Latin but some in English, notably Method in Theology (Darton, Longman & Todd 1972). Like Gilbert Ryle's contributions to Probability Theory, Lonergan's and Plichta's profound insights also have important implications for anyone wishing objectively to assess the relevance of Madeleine Briskin's undoubtedly interesting report. Although you remain convinced that, when a shem is “a rocket”, it is rather more than “a name”, you also acknowledge a parallel between launching a space-craft and employing wired-up microphones to launch your voice into the conference-hall and onto a magnetized recording-tape for the benefit of those wishing to hear your words in some other place and at some other time. I understand that the wings or legs of birds in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics are sometimes broken to prevent their departure from their destined location, and our contemporary TV images are not, perhaps, when placed within a holistic context, anything like as efficacious media of communication as those ancient ikons. It is not for me to judge to what extent “the Universe” of Peter Plichta's title does or does not coincide with “the Universe” in which you are convinced that “we are not alone”, but although he now clearly understands (p.205) “the very fundamentals of physics” and justifiably says: “I had formerly not worried very much about why I had always been equally passionate about different subjects which, according to common understanding, had very little to do with each other. But now I knew the reason. All of these actually did have something to do with each other. It was a great joy for me to watch all the different pieces of the puzzle of my [italics added] life merge to form a wonderful mosaic,” not being Peter Plichta, I cannot just leave it at that… For, as you mentioned in your video-talk, further answers give rise to further questions! Thanks to the influence of Doctor J. D. Solomon (The Mind's Ear, Hounslow: Bibliagora 1979) and also of the Sumer-inspired Anglican writer Joan D'Arcy Cooper (The Ancient Teaching of Yoga and the Spiritual Evolution of Man, London 1979) I, like Leibniz, profess a pluriversal rather than a generalized universal cosmology, so that I am puzzled when Father Charles L. Moore devotes an entire paper to “The [emphasis added] Orthodox Connection”. Hence, I am looking forward to the new Encyclical Letter Pope John-Paul II is reported to be about to issue about individuality. Especially because of your restored reading of Genesis (1:1), I am also grateful to Cardinal Ratzinger for his recent statement that Christians need to learn afresh how to read the Holy Bible, and to the inhabitants of Malta for keeping alive one more language that comes close to the tongue of yester-year. Specialist studies of alphabets apart, Umberto Eco has greatly helped me to appreciate the rich tapestry of languages in which all that can be put into words (and some things that can't) are thought about and communicated to “other” minds… But Bodvar Schjelderup, Bonnie Gaunt, F. Bligh Bond & T. Simcox Leigh are not the only ones who have led me seriously to consider that the language of “numbers” is, as Plichta now appears to be at one with Pythagoras and Saint Bernard of Clairveaux in maintaining, primary and closer to the real essence… Vatican Television today carried an interesting report about the resurgent interest in “the occult”, focussing particularly on the Amsterdam-based contributions to the World-Wide Web which have already become at least “virtual reality” for millions… For V. Susan Ferguson (and I notice her Kali Yuga started early, in 3,400 instead of in 3,102 B.C.) it appears to be a “quantum reality” that “there is no quantum world” (Of Heaven and Earth, p. 100), while Plichta affirms (p.147) that “quantum mechanics” is no more than “a figment of the imagination”. “It is utter mathematical nonsense to try to link the three dimensions of space with one dimension of time” (p.160). He recommends that we learn to distinguish “two spaces… space around an object (infinite and four-dimensional) and the space in which the object is observed (finite and three-dimensional)… Three-dimensional space can only be appreciated as numerical space of the reciprocal numbers when the space of the whole numbers, four-dimensional space, has been comprehended” (p.178), but “just as an insect has no comprehension of the third dimension, we humans are also unable to comprehend the fourth dimension” (p.202). Unlike Plichta, I am not yet convinced that Kant is mankind's foremost philosopher - Aquinas and Lonergan are, in any case, out of the running, since they are theologians and, as I theologian, I agree that no creature can ever “comprehend” G-d but, since G-d IS Actually Infinite, That Dimension I+N Wi(†)ch Christians profess Trinity-I+N-Unity-&-Unity-I+N-Trinity manifestly cannot be “counted” by any creature (created or creatable) and, therefore, is not “the fourth dimension” as such… Peter Plichta's Epilogue (pp. 212-3) deserves to be read in its entirety; I offer no more than an excerpt: “In this book we have avoided coming to dialectic grips with the idea of the random creation of natural law by a big bang, simply because the elegance of a plan for the universe based on prime number will automatically assign the Big Bang theory to the realms of history… The construction of giant reflecting telescopes and radio telescopes has allowed our knowledge of the universe to grow to hitherto undreamed of dimensions. And at the same time as this discovery first got going, a new branch of physics was born - particle physics. This had its origins in nuclear physics and took as its subject extremely short-lived phenomena. These could only be seen as vapour trails on photographs but were nonetheless designated as (material) particles. Two different strands of physics thus came into fashion, one dealing with the immeasurably remote and large and the other dealing with the infinitesimally short-lived and small. These have some things in common, however. Both are capable of swallowing entire national budgets and each one is in itself contradictory. For one thing, we have the increasing red-shift of objects speeding away from us, whose interpretation is actually quite questionable, and on the other hand we have the particle zoo, the photographs of which mockingly remind us of the shadows in Plato's cave… Then came that ingenious marketing trick - the story of the first three minutes - which connected the practical scientific and business instincts of both of these extremely different directions in physics. Out of compressed energy a spherical structure was suddenly formed. Time and space were born. Between the zero point in time and a fraction of the first second, all the minute particles and anti-particles that we know from our laboratory experiments were created. As an inversion of this unimaginably short time, began unimaginably long time that allows the astrophysicists of today to receive light signals billions of years old. Computer animation in which the beginning is drawn out and the rest contracted in time gives these assumed events a realistic appearance, especially for the gullible young…”   I look forward to viewing “An Evening with Zecharia Sitchin” again soon, and wish you Health, Life, Strength… Shalom! Amydon-Exeter: Feast of Saint Clare of Assisi To Revd Fr Robert Plourde Millennium Office, CAFOD Romero Close, Stockwell Road LONDON SW9 9TY 7 November 1997 Dear Robert, The Millennium Moment … In his The Living Flame - the first 25 years of the Society of St Pius X in Britain Ronald Warwick quotes Cardinal Hume as having “recently likened the situation in the Church to a state of civil war, adding that he intended to be at the head of both armies!” An admirable resolution… … In focussing on our relationship with G-d in worship, I have no wish to distract your attention from your own efforts on behalf of the world's poor and, in case you have not already seen it, I enclose a copy of Guaicaipuro Cuautémoc's recent letter to all European governments to repay the gold and silver they borrowed between 1503 and 1660. As members of the People of G-d seeking to nurture and nourish the natural and supernatural life of all our brothers and sisters in the human family we have, I trust and pray, learned by now that answers to questions and solutions to problems may be proposed but can never helpfully be imposed. It may be that a majority of both our Jewish friends and of self-professed Christians would not actually benefit from making, as I suggest, Saturday 1 January 2000 A.D. the first of that Millennium's Christian Sabbaths and from, at the same time, expanding the Lord's Day of Resurrection from every Sunday to every 6-day period Sunday-Friday, in other words, seeing the work of human hands and our daily toil in cooperation with Nature in making bread and wine and so much else that is of benefit as a loving work of grateful celebration and no longer as servile drudgery from which we need to rest on a whirligig of enervating so called recreations! I am simply making what appears to me a radically important proposal, viz., that this questions should not be - at any level - shirked. A Church transparently seen willing to face it openly and squarely might also, for example, win the respect of the IRA when asking for a real change of heart… I do not disagree with the Revd John Bradley's claim6 that the original rift between Church and Synagogue occurred only gradually over a period of a hundred years and more, and that when it did occur, the difference between Sunday and Sabbath observance was not the decisive issue. More generally, as Peter Brown has noted: “A glance at the art and secular culture of the late empire makes one fact abundantly clear; when the ‘governing élite’ of this officially Christian empire presented themselves to themselves and to the world at large, as being ‘in truth governing’, the ‘set of symbolic forms’ by which they expressed this fact owed little or nothing to Christianity.” Since our pastoral concern in all aspects of the New Millennium is concrete and vital and we are not engaged in an academic exercise, having made my point, I could close this letter now, assuring you of my prayer and good wishes and beg you kindly to remember my needs and intentions in your prayer and at the altar of G-d. Since, however, the historical background to the question of Sunday and Sabbath observance is undeniably relevant and not without its own complexity, I have ventured to append a few brief notes based on W. B. Trevelyan's excellent Sunday (Longmans, Green & Co.,1902): (1) The view still held by some that it is a Christian duty to observe Sunday with the strictness of the Jewish Sabbath, and that all that the Bible says of the Sabbath has simply been transferred to Sunday is less than correct, even when subjected to the proviso that Christians should omit distinctively Jewish ceremonials. (2) Those who remind us that Sabbath observance was positively prescribed neither to our first parents nor by the patriarchs but only by Moses, claiming it has been abrogated within the New Dispensation and that Sunday Observance does not replace it but results from an ecclesiastical ordinance of the second, or possibly the very end of the first century A.D., and has as its primary purpose the refreshment of the whole person, also fail to provide us with an accurate account, since it is clear from the writings of the Church Fathers, from the canons of the early Councils and from the New Testament itself that Sunday Observance has Apostolic warrant. (3) Briefly, the early Christians expected their Old Testament Sabbath rest to come to its proper fulfilment in the eternal Sabbath of Heaven, but recognized Sunday as its appropriate successor by way of especially sanctifying one day in seven. (4) Several sources of far from easy interpretation are referred to in support of (3) - a: Ac 20:7, When Paul and his companions visited Troas, they “tarried seven days, and upon the first day of the week, when” the disciples “were gathered together to break bread, Paul discoursed with them.” b: 1 Co 16:1-2, “Now, concerning the collection for the saints, as I gave order to the churches of Galatia, so also do ye. Upon the first day of the week let each one of you lay by him in store, as he may prosper…” c: Rv 1:10, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day.” d: Didache, c.14, “And on the Lord's Day come together to break bread, and give thanks, after confessing your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure…” e: Pliny, lib. x, ep. 97, “The Christians affirm the whole of their guilt or error to be, that they were accustomed to assemble together on a fixed day, before it was light, and to sing hymns to Christ as G-d, and to bind themselves by a sacramentum…” f: Ep. S. Barnab, c.15, “We celebrate the eighth day with joy, on which too Jesus rose from the dead.” g: St Justin Martyr, Apol., i, §67, “On the day called Sunday is an assembly of all who live either in the cities or in the rural districts, and the memoirs of the Apostles and the writings of the Prophets are read.” h: St Irenæus quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., lib v,23, “The mystery of the Lord's Resurrection should be celebrated only on the Lord's Day.” i: Tertullian, Apol., c.16, “Sunday we give to joy… We, as we have received, ought on the day of the Lord's Resurrection alone to keep from not only that [kneeling], but every posture of painfulness, and to forbear worldly duties, deferring even our business, that we give no place to the devil.” j: St Cyprian (200-258) connects the Lord's Day with Jewish circumcision on the eighth day, and so as prefiguring Resurrection and newness of life. k: Didascalia Apostolorum (c.3rd) xxx, 14, “On the Lord's Day, laying aside all else, diligently assemble at church…” l: After referring to more recent relevant passages in SS Athanasius, Ambrose, Basil, Jerome & Augustine, Trevelyan adds: “The only General Council which speaks of the observance of Sunday is the Council of Nicæa (A.D.325); the 20th canon enacts that ‘since some kneel on the Lord's Day, and in the days of Pentecost… it is determined by the holy synod that the prayers be made to G-d standing.’… The Council of Elliberis (A.D.305), canon 21, threatens suspension from Communion to any person living in a town who shall absent himself for three Lord's Days from church…” m: Following references to the Councils of Sardica and Antioch, to the First Council of Toledo and to the Apostolical Constitutions, Trevelyan also cites the English Council of Cloveshoe's (747) prescription that “the Lord's Day be kept with due respect by all; that it be set apart for Divine worship alone, that monks and clerics keep within their monasteries and churches and celebrate Mass; that all worldly business and travelling be avoided, except from urgent cause,” noting that “as time went on, and the first fire of Christian zeal began to lose some of its intensity, it became necessary to encourage and even enforce the due observance of Sunday.” I would add a reminder that among the characteristics of Christian living in Apostolic and sub-apostolic times was a widespread expectation that the end of this world and the inauguration of the parousia was “at hand”, so that traditional observances dating back to that period cannot always properly be identified with the Tradition we ought always to treasure and transmit intact to posterity. n: The Emperor Constantine's Edict of Milan (313) officially tolerated Christians and in 321 he issued a further edict: “On the venerable day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country, however, persons engaged in the work of cultivation may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits; because it often happens that another day is not so suitable for grain sowing, or for vine planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost.” Without entering into any detailed discussion here of the implications of this extraordinarily significant edict, it is clear that Sunday Observance can no longer be understood as exclusively or even, perhaps (however much we may regret this) primarily a Christian and religious concern. If Trevelyan devoted most of the 300 pages of his only slightly dated and highly informative study to the subsequent history of Sunday observance and lack of observance right down to modern times, this was very largely in order to demonstrate that, our human nature being what it is, G-dly Observance rarely comes easily… “It appears likely that the strong Sabbatarian spirit which laid hold of England in the time of the Puritan ascendency was in part at least the outcome of the desire of the Puritans to belittle other festivals. No such exaggerated spirit has marked the observance of Sunday amongst foreign Protestants, wither at the time of the Reformation or in our own day. The following words, written in 1845, by Mr Samuel Laing, a Scottish Presbyterian, show what the state of affairs was in Geneva itself at that time. ‘In the villages along the Protestant side of the Lake of Geneva - spots especially intended, the traveller would say, to elevate the mind of man to his Creator by the glories of the surrounding scenery - the rattling of the billiard balls, the rumbling of the skittle-trough, the shout, the laugh, the distant shots of the rifle-clubs, are heard above the psalm, the sermon, and the barren forms of state-prescribed prayer during the one brief service on Sundays, delivered to very scanty congregations - in fact, to a few females and a dozen or so old men in very populous parishes, supplied with able and zealous ministers’.” - Sunday, pp.56-7, quoting from Baring Gould's Germany, Present and Past, vol.ii, p.164. … Indeed, if Professor Piatigorsky is correct in his belief that secularization is a contemporary phenomenon that much more deeply characterizes the life of the Church than it does that of the rest of our society - and perhaps the circumstances surrounding Princess Diana's funeral bear this out to some extent even on a world-wide scale, exploring afresh and in depth the realities of the Sabbath, of Sundays, Holy Days and holidays may be something we all, and not merely those of us who are Christians or Jews, very much need to commit time and energy to as part of our preparation for the coming Millennium. Yesterday, when we prayed together in Exeter Cathedral, we used the draft form of worship that has been suggested for Friday, 31 December 1999, and one of the selected readings was taken from Lk 4:14-21 [I am not sure which version was used, I am quoting from Heinz W. Cassirer, G-d's New Covenant - a New Testament translation, 1989]: “As for Jesus, he returned to Galilee, impelled by the power of the Spirit. The tale about him spread over the whole region. The task he set himself was to give instruction in the synagogues, and he found himself highly praised by everyone. So he came to Nazareth, the place where he was reared, and, as was his custom, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day. He rose to perform the office of public reader, and the scroll handed to him was that containing the writings of the prophet Isaiah. He opened it and looked until he came to the place where the following words are written: ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me because it is he who has given me my anointing. I was to proclaim happy news to those that are poor. He has sent me forth to announce to the captives that they would be set free, to the blind that they would recover their sight, to the down-trodden that they would be set at liberty. The task I was set was to make proclamation of the year of the Lord's favour.’ Upon this he rolled up the scroll, returned it to the attendant, and took his seat, everyone having his gaze fixed upon him. He then began to address them. ‘Today,’ he said, ‘this passage from scripture has found its fulfilment in your very hearing’.” It is our task and our privilege to renew that proclamation. G-d grant us his Grace! Yours sincerely in Jesus-I+N-Mary… [copied also to: His Excellency, The Apostolic Nuncio, Wimbledon; Bishop Christopher Budd, Plymouth; Revd John Bradley, Torrington; Mrs Janet Reynolds, Holsworthy; Very Revd Bernard Grogan, SDB, Rome; Dr Edna Hamer (Sister Dominic Savio, CP), Rome; Mr Tom Riordan, Exeter…]   “Listen to two Jews and you'll hear three opinions,” says the proverb. Hopefully, that means mutual enrishment… The Archives at Creativity House contain several documents expressing opinions, attitudes, positions and strong feelings not articulated in those here shared, but this Preliminary LibrArian trusts he has at least conveyed some sense of their glorious variety. Re-Member is the prime directive, true, but re-membering doesn't mean forgetting the Buddha's wise advice I have already quoted from the Sandhinimochana-sutra (q.v.)!     To His Excellency Archbishop Pablo Puente Apostolic Nunciature 34 Parkside Wimbledon LONDON SW19 5NE 18 January 1998 Dear Archbishop Puente, Primordial Wisdom for the New Millennium -   (1.) I had hoped before too long to be able to request Your Excellency to transmit to Rome for our Holy Father's personal attention an appropriately bound copy of the final published text of the Preliminary Volume I+N the Neith Network Library's preliminary series of thirteen mentioned in my previous letter. However, David Bolt, a literary agent with a special interest in religion and theology who has served me well in the past, advises me that negotiations with a suitable publisher are likely to consume more time than that he currently has available for this project, and colleagues are in agreement with my present feelings: (a) that a North American agent may now best serve my interests in the market-place, but that (b) Pope John-Paul and his relevant personal aides may very well share my conviction that this year - in which His Holiness has invited us all especially to listen to the Voice of the Holy Spirit - is the just moment I+N which the Church is invited to harvest the fruits of my life's work as a member of the Salesian Family, and to begin to apply them to our common pastoral advantage and spiritual profit. (2.) I therefore respectfully request Your Excellency, as soon as is conveniently practicable and with my sincere apologies for the material poverty of its presentation, graciously to transmit to His Holiness the enclosed copy (one of only five existing) of my unrevised draft-text of 6 January 1998, inside the back-cover of which I have inserted 4 additional pages summarising the ways in which this draft varies slightly (in content and arrangement) from my yesterday completed revised and enlarged version (of which no copies at all yet exist save within my computer's memory-bank!). (3.) Although that revised version will contain 33 additional pages and the titles of 426 books or articles not named in the present draft, the only formal change is a rearrangement of the bibliographical apparatus as specified on the inserted cream page 78D as replacing that originally adopted (and, I trust conveniently, summarised on p.68 of the enclosed draft). (4.) Although it is notionally now complete, I have dated that structural revision 24 January 1998, on which day I would be especially grateful for Your Excellency's memento of my needs and intentions at the altar of G-d, and for your prayer on my behalf to one of my long preferred spiritual Masters, Saint Francis of Sales, Patron before G-d of all Catholic writers - as well as, of course, of the humble yet great Salesian Family of Saint John Bosco to which I have belonged in one way or another since September 1945. With personal best wishes. Yours sincerely in Jesus-I+N-Mary, Dei gratia si quid est: Col+in His Benevolence, The Extra-Reverend Doctor Colin James Hamer DCH, MRP, STL, PhD, AFPhys (ITEC), DSc (otherwise known as SHIVANANDA) Preliminary LibrArian I+N The Neith Network     To His Excellency Archbishop Pablo Puente Apostolic Nunciature 34 Parkside Wimbledon 16 February 1998 Dear Archbishop Puente, Previsioning Our Future - … (5.) I notice that the late Dr. James B. Pritchard's most recent May 1997 edition of the HarperCollins Concise Atlas of the Bible indicates the Jabal al Lawz mountain in Saudi Arabia as a “probable and possible” location (along with the recently traditional choice near St. Catherine's Monastery in the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula) of the biblical Mount Sinai - obviously a potentially politically explosive as well as religiously a highly sensitive development, considering the present state of our shared world. (6.) Thank you for your much appreciated assistance in this matter. Please pray for me…     Letter to Zecharia Sitchin - 30 July 1999 Dear Zecharia, I am sorry Conway Hall wasn't more welcoming; it looked to me as if the walls haven't been decorated in any way since I used to lecture there occasionally in the early '70s. Nevertheless, well-timed to make your presentation coincide with the day of Cardinal Hume's funeral in Westminster Cathedral, attended by Prime Minister Blair. I wrote immediately afterwards to Cardinal Danneels, Archbishop of Malines-Brussels, about that syncrhonicity and received this morning a letter from his Secretary assuring me the Cardinal has now read my letter carefully… This morning, too, in the recently rearranged Royal Exeter Museum I took a good look at Cone with Cuneiform Inscription, 7: Pres. N. Corkill 86/966/M15,c.2141-2111 B.C.: "The cone records that Gudea, governor of Lagash, restored the temple Eninnu for the god Ningirsu, mighty champion of the god Ningirsu. The cone was found in Iraq, possibly at Lagash." It is yellowish white, tapers at one end, about 7cms long, perhaps 3cm in diameter at its fattest end, which is a plain semicircular ridged lip or circlet. In your most recent book you clarify the distinction (in Hebrew) between fate and destiny. I am sending you this below copied 28 July letter of mine to Doctor Edna Hamer (Sister Dominic Savio CP), because I sense what others call a karmic link between your work and Plichta's and my theology and the number 12 and some recent apparitions of Mary in Holland and my own sister's life and work: Dear Edna, Hello! Thanks for your cards [from North Wales, Oxford and Walsingham] - don't wear your feet out! I walked to Walsingham once, but don't forget Evesham and Glastonbury, especially the latter. I remember the water on the said to be blood-stained stone at St. Winefride's Well and, of course, the Prestatyn caravan. Am re-reading Wilson's life of Bl. Dominic, not yet a "Saint" but clearly blessed - and also not a 1999-type! For more signs and wonders as well as long prayer and much penance, read Monk P. of the Holy Mountain's Saint Arsenios of Cappadocia (1st edn, Convent of the Evangelist John The Theologian, Souroti, Thessaloniki, Greece, 1989). Its only 136 small pages, and enthralling. Arsenios was born about 1840, died on 10 November 1924, and was registered in the company of the Saints by a synodical Act of Demetrios, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople on 11 February 1986. "Cappadocia's new-sprung flower and precious vessel of virtues, Holy Arsenios, let me hymn. For as an angel he lived in the flesh, and now resides with all the Saints. With them, he ever prays to Christ to grant us forgiveness of our sins." Nowadays "sin" and "forgiveness" don't seem to be "in"… As Anne Brewer puts it in The Power of Twelve - Achieving 12-strand DNA consciousness (1998): "You should make peace with those who have angered you in the past. When working to release anger for past relationships, write a list of the names of those who have been involved and release them from your anger and blame. You may release them in person or at a soul level as long as you really feel the release of your anger toward them. Please note the use of the word 'release' rather than 'forgive' for this is an extremely important differentiation. Forgiveness is not part of Divine Creator truth because it is a value that assumes someone has done something wrong while the other has done something right. The Divine Creator holds no judgment so there can be no right or wrong. In the Creator's eyes, there is simply being, learning, and calibrating. Right and wrong are a result of the polarity on your planet, and it breeds judgment which separates beings. Separation keeps love from growing, thereby weakening you. A more appropriate value than forgiveness is 'acceptance' because it allows everyone to exist and learn at their own rate." ... You know already my website's default page. Well, I recently added a note to it [now moved to another page] saying: "if you can only make time to read one more book in the rest of your life, let it be Peter Plichta's…" As I may already have told you, I was referring to God's Secret Formula - Deciphering The Riddle Of The Universe And The Prime Number Code (hardback: Element Books 1997, ISBN 1-86204-014-1; paperback 1998, ISBN 1-86204-358-2). The German original, Gottes Geheime Formel, was published in 1995 by F. A. Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH, München, and I now more than ever feel that, if you can make time, you would very much enjoy reading it, that you would benefit from that experience, and that it would relate well in more than one way not only to your day-to-day life and work, but also to you heart's desire and long-term purpose in life. Quote: "I wanted to continue my research with all the power at my command, but suddenly I did not want to do it alone. I needed a female companion, a fellow scientist with whom I could share my daily life and also pursue my scientific interests. I was now 44 years old and had lived as a recluse for too long… 'If I cannot find her,' I said aloud, so that God could not help but hear me, 'then He will have to find someone else to do His work'… At the end of February 1984, I met Christina… She was 37 years old and had just received her doctorate… In our first conversation…" Tonight on WestCountry ITV there was a Program called "The Sexual Century"; perhaps you saw it? It was revealed that Mary Stope didn't find her husband exactly satisfactory, and the woman who mentioned this on the Program said that what Mary Stope really needed in a mate was a combination of Tarzan and Einstein in one man - I guess that when I first met Christine almost 30 years ago, I wasn't mentally or physically unsuited to Highest Yoga Tantric celibacy, which must be what Catholic mysticism at its best amounts to in Nature, but believed that if God no longer wanted me to live as a hermit, then He would give me a sign by sending me a beautiful lady who was both as brilliant and as lustful as the Queen of Sheba and Salome rolled into one, and that's, therefore, the ideal potential that I for a time insisted on imaging Christine then had in hiding! Even today however, seemingly not! Anyhow, you and I are at a very different stage and millions of developments have enriched both our lives - and that of several others known to us, since our childhood holidays in North Wales. With all that in heart and mind, I really do sincerely feel Peter Plichta has written a wonderful book. I am sorry not to have been able to read the German original - and also Peter's more scientific and immediately earlier 2-volume work called, I think, in German (it hasn't been translated): The Prime Number Cross. Plichta is a truly great scientist, one of 2 identical yet very different twins with strong karmic bonds, so that his book I am reading speaks for me on many different levels: medical, dream-world, spirit, physics, chemistry, biology, etc... Plichta knows there are no coincidences, so, providentially, instead of posting my letter to you at this point at 9.30am, I went to the 10am Mass first, and a fellow parishioner kindly lent me Josef Kunzli's edition of The Messages of The Lady of all Nations (Santa Barbara 1996) together with The Message of Amsterdam (nr 1) and Triumph of the Heart (PDF-Family of Mary Coredemptrix, 1998, 1, issue #6), p.12 of which reproduces an excerpt from Alphonsus Mary Cardinal Stickler SDB's letter of 13 May 1997 to the Faithful on the occasion of the Anniversary of the first apparition in Fatima. I lived in the same community as Father Stickler for 5 years and so know him well. Referring to the 1945 and more recent Amsterdam apparitions and messages, he writes: "I was impressed from the very beginning by their simplicity and profundiity… Mary is Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate." As soon as I have finished this letter, I shall be putting the short prayer Mary taught at Amsterdam on my website as She has requested. There are no coincidences. As well as the eminent Salesian canonist being a most punctillious stickler for law, I still remember his sermon on the relationship between scholarship and purity. On 31 May 1956 Mary said: "Tell the Sacristan to the Holy Father that he should indicate to him that 'Celibacy still is the great strength of the Church'… There are people who wish this changed, but this should happen only in very exceptional circumstances. Tell this to the Holy Father. He will understand Me." Interesting, too, [especially since Edna's birthday falls on 31 May] some other dates of (a) Mary's Amsterdam apparitions and messages: 25/3.'45; 21/4/'45,…31 May 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957,1958, 1959; (b) related Eucharistic experiences: 31 January 1960, 25 March 1960 & 1970, 31 May 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969 & 1970. To my mind the many who still oppose any honorific proclamation of a dogma that Mary is Coredemptrix (for fear of making things harder for non-Catholic/Orthodox Christians) fail to appreciate that what that "Co-" no more than hints at is the very substance of the Nuptial Theology I came to Earth to develop and announce. Blessed Dominic Barberi knew Gregory XVI well and it was on the Feast of Mary Help of Christians that he received his blessing before leaving Rome and Italy for Belgium, the Passionists' very first non-Italian foundation. Dominic had Mary to teach him and his pastoral theology was wonderful; despite Wilson's efforts to show otherwise, he clearly was neither a speculative theologian nor much of a philosophy in the professional sense, nor was he meant to be. It was when I was delaying my own ordination for yet another extra year by doing 2 and not 1 year of extra philosophy in Rome, 1958-1960, that Don Bosco's first non-Piedmontese successor, Renato Ziggiotti, insisted that Salesian asked to study philosophy in depth must follow wherever research took them, even if Superiors, himself not excluded, sometimes failed to perceive that such conduct was appropriate. So, even if you hate my webpages, I hope and pray that Mary approves them and blesses those who read them or view my assorted images…" Jack Miller... mentioned to me you were in Malta. I hope you found the experience rewarding. With best wishes and also to your wife, Shalom! From a Letter to a gifted psychic: New Moon + Christmas Day 2000 Dear Friend… The Egyptian Book of The Dead (1) Your related news suggests you may soon be reaching the beginning of your own journey. (2) From the standpoint of an Earth-based knower alive in 2001 A.D. a good reply to your request for information is best expressed as follows - 1. Despite almost countless spoken and written opposite claims:         A. There never was a Library in Alexandria (cf. Luciano Canfora, The Vanished Library (Vintage: 1991).         B. There is not and there never has been any Book of the Dead, Egyptian or otherwise. 2. The real title of the so called "Egyptian Book of the Dead" is something like Part One, the Book of The Master of The Hidden Places; Part Two, the Book of The Coming Forth by Day. Each Part was and is long and subdivided into a sequence of growth-stages. No coffin or tomb-wall was ever decorated with anything like the complete Book, but only with that fairly large part - or, more often, very tiny fragment of its contents which related to the immediately preceding Earth-life experiences of the deceased, for whose immediate post-'death' journey it was/is a helpful guide. Focus this well. 3. All today available published editions and translations of the "Egyptian Book of the Dead", whether or not issued under that particular title, are at their best selections and collections made by stringing together a variety of the above mentioned fragments and parts. 4. Your best available reference book to the contents of the Book itself is Zecharia Sitchin's The Stairway to Heaven, which is The Second Book in his The Earth Chronicles (ISBN 0-939680-89-0):         A.Sitchin's Chapters 1 & 2 prepare today's readers for a meeting with this Book by first reviewing Alexander the Great's journey to Egypt and his underground search for The Water of Life, the Prophet Elijah's flight to Heaven by Chariot, and Enoch's flight on an Eagle.         B.For the Book you then have his most interesting and well illustrated                     Chapter 3 "The Pharaoh's Journey to the Afterlife".                     Chapter 4 "The Stairway to Heaven".         C.The rest of Sitchin's book gives you more background and foreground. This is meant to help you to place the Book correctly in time and place, just as, for instance, today's Christians like to register Jesus Christ's Earthly birth as having been some 2000 years ago 'today' in Bethlehem, and just as you experience a need to think of your receiving some "communications" that have so far reached you "before" of "after" "others"… 5. Also deserving individual mention are:         A. Ch. H. S. Davis, The Egyptian Book of the Dead (1894).         B. E. A. W. Budge, The Egyptian Heaven and Hell (1906).         C. L. H. Lesko, The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Two Ways (1972).         D. R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts (1973).         E. W. Marsham Adams, The Book of the Master of the Hidden Places (1980).         F. N. Ellis, Awakening Osiris - The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Grand Rapids: Phanes Press 1988) 6. Perhaps the best closely related commentary on the Inner Journey within an Ancient Egyptian perspective is: Robert E. L. Masters, The Goddess Sekhmet - The Way of the Five Bodies (New York: Amity House 1988). See the related page within this website. 7. All the other texts and images within my website by both their contents and their arrangement clarify and illuminate all aspects of That you seek, especially (as far as you are at present concerned) the pages "yoga.htm", "yoga2.htm", etc., … These contain the complete text and notes of Joan D'Arcy Cooper's The Ancient Teaching of Yoga and the Spiritual Evolution of Man. In that text, I especially recommend you give particular attention to the distinction Joan has clearly made between seven inferior/negative and seven positive/superior leves of consciousness or stages in growth-awareness… 8. Above, I have drawn attention to the distinctions between "Mastery of Hidden Places" and "Coming Forth by Day", between seven negative stages consciousness may experience and seven positive stages through which it may progress. I have in this way sharply differentiated between Parts One and Two of the Book. 9. For the Catholic Christian the Gospel of Jesus whom the Shepherds, guided by Angels, found in Bethlehem, and whom the Wise from the East, guided by the Star, later found at home in Nazareth, and who, accompanied by Mary & Joseph, Himself later went down for some time into Egypt (in order, we are told, to fulfil the prophecy), the Gospel, I say, is of that same Book Part Three: "G-d having spoken, in times of old, to our forefathers by the mouth of the prophets - and that on many an occasion and in many different ways - has now, at the close of these days of ours, spoken to us in the person of one who is his Son, whom he has appointed to possess all things as his inheritance, just as it was through him that he created whatever there has been throughout the ages. It is he who radiates forth G-d's glory, who is the precise counterpart of his very being, who sustains all things by his mighty word of command. Moreover, having accomplished the purging away of sins, he took his seat at the right hand of the divine Majesty on high, being as highly exalted above the angels as the title which he has inherited is more excellent than theirs…" (Hebrews 1: 1-4) Relating this New Testament quotation to the Ancient Egyptians' Book, notice that what I have called Part One of the latter is all about what is here called "accomplishing the purging away of sins", and its Part Two is about deceased Pharaohs, Egyptian Nobles and others adequately equipped going to join those gods here called "the angels". All Christians are now cordially invited, in company with Jesus, Mary and Joseph, to ascend much higher, as the great Apostle Paul reminds us when he, as I do, writes and prays: "May you be endowed with all strength such as derives from the glory which belongs to G-d in his majesty, so as to be led to be steadfast and patient in every way, being filled with joy, and giving thanks to the Father, who has provided us with the sufficiency to obtain a share in the inheritance intended for those who have consecrated themselves to him, dwellers in a realm of light. It is he who has rescued us from the dominion where darkness reigns, and has moved us into the kingdom of his dearly-loved Son, through whom we are being set free from our bondage, obtaining pardon for the sins we had committed. He is the visible representation of the invisible G-d. He it is who takes precedence over everything created, since it is in him that all created things took their being, things in heaven and things upon Earth, not only visible ones but invisible orders as well, such as thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities. He has the primacy of them all, and in him all subsist…" (Colossians 1: 11-17) (3) In (1) and (2) above I have, I hope, sufficiently outlined a helpful reply to your recent inquiry about "The Egyptian Book of the Dead", as it continues to be labelled. Were you now to ask me how all this relates to my day to day living as a follower of Jesus Christ and to all of our contemporaries world-wide in this age of pluralism and globalisation, I would be inclined to add only one observation to all that I have already written elsewhere: Thanks to Saint Paul's understanding of theology, thanks to a dream Saint Peter had about there being no important difference between food ritually clean and food previously believed to be ritually unclean, and thanks to the related discussions among the other Apostles, non-Jews have never had to be first circumcised before being admitted to Christian Baptism. Even today, however, Christian missionaries behave as if information about Jesus of Nazareth's life on Earth, his suffering, and his painful death were and are essential parts of His Gospel Message. This is perhaps a mistake. The essential in Part Three of the Book is, as indicated above, Faith I+N and Hope & Love of G-d as manifest in the Risen Cosmic Christ. No need for traditional Christians to lumber graduates of Hindu, Buddhist, Ancient Egyptian or other not specifically "Christian" editions of Parts One & Two of this Book with the details of their own particular experience during the preceding stages in this Three-Step Journey I+N Faith… (4) Today's readers interested in "Books of the Dead" and especially those curious about a "Tibetan Book of the Dead" could do worse than read: 1. T. Leary, R. Metzner & R. Alpert, The Psychedelic Experience (London: Academy Press, 1971). 2. N. Planer & T. Blacker, Neil's Book of The Dead (Pavilion - Michael Joseph, 1984), from which I quote:         A. "A Book of the Dead isn't about death - it's really a Book of Life. Well, maybe there's one or two dead people in it, but it's really about my life, my quest through the beautiful jungle of my mind." (From the Prologue)         B. "Here are some things that I've really missed out on and resent. They're not in this Book of the Dead and haven't helped me in any way at all…" (From the Missedoutonography) 3. Section (4) 2. A. above is also pretty true of the whole of my main website, the main point of which is that section (4) 2. B. above doesn't apply to it at all - that's why it's so small!! (5) The Task "You have a duty to perform… Do anything else, do any number of things, occupy your time fully, and yet, if you do not do this task,all your time will have been wasted." Jalaludin Rumi (1207-1273) 1. Now                         In this inscrutable moment                             Stand we face to face                         With That for which no words are                             Yet must be spoken,                         That which, unformed, half-seen,                             Must be conveyed.                           Steeped in illusion of mortality                             How shall we demonstrate                         That we are Life at the core                             Instantly - now?                         And thro' intensified experience raise                             Sloth of unawareness                         Into high-charged environment?                           Shall we not call, using                             No cumbrous instruments                         But frequencies Known only to the Wise                             Thro' immemorial Time                         That they may speak - and we,                             At last, may hear? Margaret Forbes (ob. 1968) 2. Hope Tod, The Maze & The Arc of Light - a Journey with a Purpose (Findhorn Press 1989 - ISBN 0-905249-79-8), pages 195 & 170: "All is going according to plan. Rest yourself, relax and re-member that we are all close to you. Disregard those negative comments which other people make concerning cosmic energy. Stay positive and continue to be aware of us. The elementals, the fairies, the nature spirits and the angels of Light all love you and work with you. Develop this awareness - make it part of yourself; its strength will bring you peace of mind." "As you work to be at one with nature, rejoice in your home on Earth. Acknowledge your divinity and share its blessngs with all life. With great love and gratitude we say, may the light shine, the light and the love of the Cosmic Christ, shine for all life everywhere. G-d bless you all." Shalom! - Shalom & Welcome! -       © The Neith Network Library 2006 Webmaster: ExtraReverendDoctorColinJames Hamer, The Rainbow Programme Creativity House, 9 Oxford Street, St. Thomas, EXETER, Devon EX2 9AG, U.K. Updated for Full Moon 23:35 GMT Good Friday 14/04/2006