1869 (8 December) - 1870 (18 July) First Ecumenical Vatican Council. Although only about 1 in 4 of the 700 initial participants were liberals, these represented important sees and had an important voice. Fifty-five bishops were dismayed by the procedural ruling that only the Pope could propose questions for discussion, and left Rome before the Council's Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus, defining the primacy and infallibility of the Pope as dogmas of Faith, was approved by 533 votes to 2 on the Council's last day in session.
1870 On 30 January St. John's Grand Lodge of Hungary was formed. On 20 April the Supreme Council of Guatemala was constituted. The Supreme Council of Paraguay was also established. The Earl de Grey and Ripon succeeded Lord Zetland as Grand Master. On 24 June the first Old Boys' Re-union for past pupils of Salesian schools was held in Valdocco. The Masonic Grand Lodge of British Columbia was founded on 20 December. On 20 September foreign troops occupied Rome, and the Papal States came to an end.
1871 In France the office of Grand Master was abolished; he was replaced by a President de l'Ordre.
1872 On 16 January the Grand Lodge of Utah was founded. John Yarker started the Antient and Primitive Rite in England. In Portugal the four independent Irish Lodges combined into one Irish Regeneration Lodge. The Scottish Grand Lodge adopted the Ceremony of Installing a Master of a Lodge. An Union of German Grand Lodges was instituted.
1873 Pope Pius IX again condemned Freemasonry. The Grand Orient of Italy absorbed the Supreme Council in Palermo. The Roman Helvetic Directory was dissolved, and a Supreme Council of Switzerland constituted. Prussian Grand Lodges combined to form a Grand Lodge League of Germany, which the Grand Lodge of Hamburg also joined.
1873-1897 St. Terea of the Child Jesus, Doctor of the Church, lived. She was born at Alencon in France, entered the Carmelite monastery at Lisieux, and taught novices there, praying especially for missionaries.
1874 On 13 April the Holy See definitively approved the Salesian rule of life, the Constitutions, which had, in all essentials, been written by St. John Bosco himself, aided by suggestions made to him by otherwise anticlerical leaders of the day. A Masonic Grand Lodge for the Indian Territory, U.S.A., was founded on 5 October, and on 15 December that of Wyoming. The Supreme Council for the Dominion of Canada was constituted.
1875 A Congress of Supreme Councils was held in Lausanne. Grand Lodges were founded in Manitoba on 12 June, on Prince Edward Island on 24 June and in South Dakota on 21 July. The Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward VIII, was installed as Grand Master. On 9 November St. John Bosco authorised the opening of the first Salesian House in France, at Nice; two days later he witnessed the departure of the first group of Salesian missionaries for South America.
1876 On 8 May the National Grand Lodge of Egypt was founded. On 9 May Pope Pius IX issued a Brief formally approving Don Bosco's new Pious Union of Salesian Cooperators. A Concordat was agreed between the Grand Lodge Suisse-Alpine and the Supreme Council of Switzerland.
1877 The Grand Lodge of New Mexico was founded on 6 April. The Dukes of Connaught and Albany were invested as Senior and Junior Grand Warden. The Grand Lodge of England appointed a Committee to report on the course to be pursued in the light of the Grand Orient of France having ceased to regard belief in the Grand Architect of the Universe as an essential qualification of Masons. A Congress of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite for both hemispheres was summoned to assemble in Edinburgh on 11 September, but proved a failure. The first plenary assembly or General Chapter of the Salesians to discuss overall problems of the Congregation was held from 5 September to 5 October. A first group of Salesian Sisters departed from Italy to South America in November.
1878 (elected 20 February, crowned 3 March) - 1903 (20 July) Leo XIII Bishop of Rome.
1878 The Committee of Grand Lodge reported on the course to be pursued in respect of the Grand Orient of France, and communication therewith ceased. In January the first issue of a monthly periodical developed out of Don Bosco's Catholic Book-Lover (which had been appearing regularly since 1875), and entitled The Salesian Bulletin, was published. 1879 Don Bosco sent missionaries to previously unexplored regions of Patagonia.
1880 Twenty Masonic Lodges united to form the National Grand Lodge of Roumania, where a Grand Lodge had been formed in 1857. The Franciscans of the Heart of Jesus were founded on the island of Gozo.
1881 On 8 September the National Grand Lodge of Roumania was consecrated. Both a Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite and a Supreme Council of the Rite of Memphis were established in Roumania. An Independent Grand Lodge was formed in Tunis.
1882-1941 James Joyce lived.
1882 A Grand Chapter of Royal-Arch Masons was aggregated to the Governing Bodies of Roumanian Masonry. A Provincial Grand Lodge, depending from Bavaria, was established in Norway. The Grand Lodge of Arizona was founded on 25 March. The Duke of Connaught was installed as Grand Warden of Egypt.
1883 A Grand Lodge of the Swedenborgian Masonic Rite was instituted in Roumania. In Indochina, where about 50,000 Christians had been martyred, religious freedom was restored in response to British, Dutch and French pressure. The Benedictines established a foundation in Malta, but remained there for only 2 years.
1884 On 16 April the Grand Lodge of Southern Australia was founded. on 20 April Pope Leo XIII issued a fully comprehensive Encyclical Humanum Genus in respect of Freemasonry. Don Bosco secured from the Holy See for his Salesians very many favours and privileges enjoyed by some of the older religious Orders, such as to make them relatively independent of local episcopal authority, and so more free to develop their own spirit.
1885 A Masonic Grand Lodge was formed in Puerta Rico, and the Prince of Wales, as Grand Master, initiated Prince Albert Victor into Masonry.
1885-1887 St. Charles Lwanga and twenty-one other Christians were martyred for the faith in Uganda, some being killed with the sword and other burned to death. King Mwanga hated Christians, and had many of them killed about this time.
1886 On 23 March the Grand Lodge and the Grand Orient of Hungary combined into the Symbolic and Grand Lodge of Hungary. Kenneth Mackenzie died on 3 July. The Grand Lodge of Puerta Rico was founded on 8 October. A Junior Grand Orient was founded in the Negro Republic of Haiti.
1887 A Masonic Grand Orient for Central America was established in Guatemala. The Ursulines of St. Angela Merici were founded in Malta.
1887 Theresa of Lisieux has an audience with Pope Leo XIII.
1888 When Don Bosco, the poor lad from Becchi, died on 31 January 774 Salesians were working in 57 different centres in various different countries, and 313 Salesian Sisters had foundations in 50 centres. On 11 February Blessed Michael Rua, his one-time pupil, was elected to succeed him as Superior General or Rector Major. The Masonic Grand Orient of Spain was founded in Madrid on 4 July. Other Spanish Masonic bodies then active were the National Grand Orient and the Symbolical Grand Lodge. On 1 September the Grand Lodge of New South Wales was founded.
1889 Prince Frederick Leopold of Prussia was initiated into Masonry. On 21 March the Grand Lodge of Victoria was founded in Melbourne. On 12 June the Grand Lodge of North Dakota was founded. A Masonic Congress to celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution was held in Paris. Freedom of worship was granted in Japan, and both there and in nearby Korea Catholicism experienced phenomenal growth. The Dominicans of St. Catherine were founded on the island of Gozo.
1890 On 29 April the Grand Lodge of New Zealand, and on 26 June that of Tasmania in Hobart was founded.
1890-1902 St. Maria Goretti lived. She was born in poverty at Ancona in Italy, spent her childhood in Nettuno, and was stabbed to death by a man attempting to rape her.
1890 Lavigerie's campaign leads to an international ban on the slave-trade.
1891 The Grand Lodge of Norway was formed on 10 May, and that of Cuba on 24 December. On 15 May Pope Leo XIII's Enyclical Rerum Novarum was issued after 50 years of study and discussion within the Church; it is rightly regarded as the Magna Carta of social Catholicism, asserted workers' rights to a living wage and an adequate place of work, and also defended their right to form associations in defence of their own interests. Christian trade-unions, several of which were already working in various countries, now became better organized, and subsequently several Christian democratic political parties were also established. The Salesians established a House at Oran in North Africa.
1892 Pope Leo XIII renewed his thorough condemnation of Freemasonry. Two Lodges seceded from the United Grand Orient of Lusitania which they felt had relinquished fundamental Masonic principles, and formed a Grand Lodge of Portugal of uncertain duration. On 10 November the Grand Lodge of Oklahoma was founded.
1893 Prince Frederick Leopold of Prussia became Protector of the three Prussian Grand Lodges. The Polar Star Provincial Grand Lodge was founded in Christiania, that of Rio Grande of the South on 30 June, and the National Grand Lodge of Venezuela on 26 July.
1894-1972 George V's eldest son, Edward VIII, lived. He reigned briefly in 1936, but was demoted to Duke of Windsor and never crowned, on account of his decision to marry a twice-divorced American, Mrs Wallis Simpson.
1894 The Grande Loge Ecossaise de France was founded in Paris. A Masonic Congress was held in Antwerp.
1895-1952 George V's second son and Duke of York lived, succeeding his brother as King and last Emperor of India (which became independent in 1947) from 1936 until 1952.
1895 Prince Frederick Leopold became Master of the Masonic Order in Germany. A Congress of Salesian Cooperators was held in Bologna, and on 6 November the Salesian Bishop Luigi Lasagna was martyred in Brazil.
1896 A Masonic Conference was held at the Hague, and an anti-Masonic Congress assembled in Trent. A Concordat was agreed between the Supreme Council of Switzerland and the Scottish Helvetic Directory. A Hellenic Grand Orient was founded in Athens. The entry of the Salesians into Paraguay signalled their effective presence in all the countries of South America.
1897 Leo Taxil admitted that he had misrepresented Freemasonry. The Salesians established in San Francisco their first Houses in the U.S.A.
1897 Theresa of Lisieux dies of tuberculosis at the age of 24.
1898 The Grand Lodge of Greece became the Grand Orient and Supreme Council of Greece. Publication began of the 20 volumes of the Biographical Memoirs of Father John Bosco, completed in Italian in 1948, by J.-B. Lemoyne (vols. I-IX), A. Amadei (vol. X), E. Ceria (Vols. XI-XIX) and E. Foglio (Index volume), a work of which a complete English translation has been recently published in the United States; cfr FRANCIS DESRAMAUT, "The methods adopted by the authors of the Memorie Biografiche", in PATRICK EGAN & MARIO MIDALI, editors, Don Bosco's Place in History (Roma: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano, 1993, pp. 39-68) for valuable remarks about the true meaning of "this Salesian bible... The problems posed are at times as complex as those of the synoptic gospels."
1899 Again, as in 1866, a Grand Lodge was founded in San Domingo. The Grand Lodge of Cuba was revived and reorganised. The Grand Lodge of Costa Rica and the Supreme Council of Chile were founded.
1900 An International Masonic Congress was held in Paris. The Grand Lodge Kaiser Frederik in Berlin became a Provincial Grand Lodge under the Grand Lodge of Hamburg. A Congress of Salesian Co-operators was held in Buenos Aires; there were then 2,723 Salesians (205 of them missionaries) working in 248 centres.
1901 The Grand Lodge of Hamburg celebrated the first centenary of its constitution. The National Grand Orient of Madrid comprised 95 Lodges; 42 Lodges gave their allegiance to the newly formed Grand Orient of Italy.
1902 An International Masonic Congress was held in Geneva, and an International Bureau of Masonic Relations was established.
1903 The Duke of Connaught became Grand Master, and King Edward VII Protector of the Craft. The Grand Lodge of Guatemala was founded. Both the Salesians and the De La Salle Brothers established foundations in Malta, where the Daughters of the Sacred Heart were also founded.
1903 (elected 4, crowned 9 August) - 1914 (20 August) St. Pius X Bishop of Rome. He promoted reform in the liturgy, especially in Church music; encouraged the frequent reception of Holy Communion; spear-headed a catechetical movement to overcome the religious ignorance of the masses; and set other reforms in motion.
1904 An International Masonic Congress was held in Brussels. The Salesians of Don Bosco held their tenth General Chapter.
1905 A Spanish-Portuguese Congress of Freemasons was held in Lisbon.
1906 John (Jonathan)David Solomon born. The Salesians established their first Houses in Macao, and in Tanjore. On 1 April the Daughters of Mary, Help of Christians, secured from the Holy See new Constitutions making them fully autonomous. The Salesian Regulations were also codified. Relations between German Masonic Grand Lodges and the Grand Lodge of France were established.
1907 A Masonic Congress of Supreme Councils was held in Brussels. The Supreme Council of Egypt was constituted in Cairo. A Masonic Hostel was esablished at Einbeck in Germany. On 6 June the Church of England purchased the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey for £30,000. Don Bosco was declared Venerable.
1908 (29 June) Pope Saint Pius X reformed the Roman Curia. 1909 22 June: the Prince of Wales, later George V, attended a special service in Glastonbury.
1909 A Masonic Supreme Council for the Ottoman Empire was constituted in Istanbul.
1910 An International Masonic Congress was held in Brussels. The Missionary Society of Saint Paul was founded in Malta. Blessed Michael Rua died, and on 16 August another of Don Bosco's pupils, Paul Albera, succeeded him as Rector Major of the Salesians, who then numbered 4,001, of whom 303 were missionaries.
1911 From 8 to 10 September the first international Congress of Salesian Past Pupils was held in Turin. On 23 September an International Masonic Congress opened in Rome. On 12 November the Salesians started their work in Katanga.
1913 A National Independent and Regular Grand Lodge of France was established.
1914 (elected 3, crowned 6 September) - 1922 (22 January) Benedict XV Bishop of Rome. 1914 The Grand Lodge of England broke off all relations with German and Austrian Masonry.
1915 The Salesian Co-operators held an international Congress at Sao Paulo in Brazil, and on 6 December one of Don Bosco's earliest and liveliest pupils became Cardinal John Cagliero.
1917 On 27 May Pope Benedict XV promulgated the first complete Code of Canon Law (Codex Iuris Canonici), which is considered the greatest achievement of his predecessor Pope Saint Pius X. On 19 June the Holy See empowered Salesian Rectors Major thenceforth to function as Apostolic Delegates to the Salesian Sisters, a faculty which increased the latter's autonomy with respect to the local bishops. On 24 June the second centenary of the establishment of Modern Freemasonry and of the Grand Lodge of England was celebrated.
1920 The official Acts of the Superior Council of the Salesians began publication. A small cup, believed to be a Roman scent jar, and which may be the historical Holy Grail or Marian Chalice, was discovered at Hawkstone Park.
1921 The third Rector Major of the Salesians, Father Paul Albera, died in October, and on 24 May 1922 was succeeded by Blessed Philip Rinaldi.
1922 The Salesians arrived in Australia.
1922 (elected 6, crowned 12 February) - 1939 (10 February) Pius XI Bishop of Rome. Although initially optimistic about Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany on account of their opposition to Marxism and Communism, he eventually denounced with equal vigour both atheistic Communism and all National Socialistic regimes.
1924 The Salesian Regulations were revised.
1925 Aerial photography revealed Glastonbury's Round Table Zodiac. The Salesians opened their first House in Japan.
1926 Elizabeth II born; she became Queen in 1952. In 1926 there were 7,156 Salesians and 5,392 Salesian Sisters with a total of 1,158 foundations, including 28 missions with 858 Salesians and 405 Salesians Sisters.
1929 Don Bosco was declared Blessed.
1930 Pluto rediscovered.
1931 March 27: Pope Pius XI, receiving in special audience the mayors of Bath, Colchester and Dorchester, "advanced the theory that it was St. Paul himself, and not Pope Gregory, who first introduced Christianity into Britain." Blessed Philip Rinaldi, Rector Major of the Salesians, died in December.
1932 (17 May) Father Peter Ricaldone was elected 4th successor of Don Bosco and 5th Rector Major of the Salesians.
1934 Fragments of Arthur's & Guinevere's tombs at Glastonbury rediscovered. On 1 April St. John Bosco was canonized. The Missionaries of Jesus of Nazareth were founded in Malta.
1936 Many Salesians were massacred or imprisoned in the Spanish Civil War which began this year.
1939 (elected 2, crowned 12 March) - 1958 (9 October) Pius XII Bishop of Rome. Throughout the Second World War (1939-1945) he made incessant appeals for peace, and the Vatican became the centre of tremendous war-relief services.
1939 Many Salesians suffered during the Nazi persecution in Poland.
1940 The Salesians numbered 12,055 with 851 foundations. On 3 May the first three Faculties of the Pontifical Salesian University were approved, and on 2 July its Higher Institute of Education was established.
1941 A Polish Salesian, Joseph Kowalski, died a heroic death in Auschwitz.
1944 (1 January) Malta was raised to Metropolitan status, with Gozo as its suffragan see. Although small, the Maltese Ecclesiastical Province now has its own Episcopal Conference, and there are currently some 320 churches and chapels in Malta, 50 in Gozo, and one in Comino. Across the years about sixty Maltese have been promoted to bishoprics in various parts of the world, and many others have been elected prelates to head mission stations, many of which they had themselves established.
1948 Two Salesian Houses in Pekin were occupied by the Communists.
1950 Three hundred Czechoslovakian Salesians were interned. Salesians world-wide numbered 14,754 with 1,091 houses, and there were 12,437 Salesians Sisters with 1,046 houses.
1951 Hostile conditions brought about the gradual paralysis of the Salesian work in Communist China, where Mgr Arduino, the Salesian Bishop of Shiu-Chow, was arrested. Throughout the world, about 1,900 Salesians were deported, exiled or imprisoned. Their 5th Rector Major, Father Peter Ricaldone, died in November.
1952 In June a young Salesian student for the priesthood, Peter Yeh, died in prison, and in Turin on 1 August Father Renato Ziggiotti was elected the 5th successor of Don Bosco, and 6th Superior General of the Salesians. In September Pope Pius XII delivered an Allocution providing detailed guide-lines for the renewal of the spirit of the Union of Salesian Co-operators.
1958 (elected 28 October, crowned 4 November) - 1963 (3 June) John XXIII Bishop of Rome. In 1933, shortly after having been shown an original autograph letter signed by Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, Le Comte de Saint-Germain and Le Comte de Cagliostro (!), he delivered to a private gathering his own prophecies for the period 1933-2033. The 20% that I have read are worthy of consideration and so, I believe, are those with which I am not at present familiar. His own devotion to the Lady of All Nations is, I am especially pleased to mention, also transparently evident.
1962 (11 October) - 1965 (8 December) Twenty-first Ecumenical Council - Vatican II. 2,540 Council Fathers participated in the opening ceremony, when the Pope delivered "one of the most remarkable papal addresses in the history of the Church," urging thorough and radical renewal (aggiornamento) upon one and all. The Council proceedings were spread over four periods. Sixteen documents running in the original Latin to some 105,014 words (exclusive of 992 footnotes of varying length) were promulgated: 4 constitutions, 9 decrees and 3 declarations. Major changes were reflected in the liturgy, the Catholic Church's self-understanding, her attitude towards other Christians, a developed appreciation of the historical dimensions of the Church's Faith and life, and openness to dialogue with the contemporary secular world. "Respect and love ought to be extended also to those who think or act differently than we do in social, political, and religious matters, too." (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World - Gaudium et Spes, Chapter 2, # 28)
1963 (elected 21, crowned 30 June) - 1978 (6 August) Paul VI Bishop of Rome.
1964 (21 September) The archipelago of Malta, Comino & Gozo became an independent, sovereign state within the British Commonwealth of Nations.
1965 (15 December) Full diplomatic relations were established between Malta and the Vatican. There were throughout the world 22,383 Salesians and 18,214 Salesian Sisters. Father Renato Ziggiotti became the first Salesian Rector Major to lay down his office during his life-time, and Father Luigi Ricci was on 27 April elected to succeed him.
1966 11 November: Mircea Eliade wrote in his Notebooks: "What René Guénon and the other 'hermetists' say of the tradition should not be understood on the level of historical reality (as they claim). These speculations constitute a universe of systematically articulated meanings: they are to be compared to a great poem or a novel. It is the same with Marxist or Freudian 'explanations'; they are true if they are considered as imaginary [potential] universes. The 'proofs' are few and uncertain - they correspond to the historical, social, psychological 'realities' of a novel or poem. All these global and systematic interpretations in reality constitute mythical creations, highly useful for understanding the world; but they are not, as their authors think, 'scientific explanations'."
1967 (29 September) A first post-Conciliar Synod of Bishops was convened in Rome to affirm the collegiality of the bishops and Pope in the universal government of the Catholic Church.
1968 (25 July) Pope Paul VI issued his eagerly awaited and still much discussed Encyclical Humanae Vitae - On the Right Ordering of the Procreation of Children.
1970 April: "When the spent third stage of the ill-fated Saturn rocket booster of Apollo 13 was propelled out of Earth orbit into a Moon trajectory, and by radio command crashed into the Moon, it hit with an impact equal to 11 tons of TNT, about 87 miles from the site where the Apollo 12 astronauts set up seismometers. The entire Moon vibrated for more than 3 hours, 20 minutes; the vibrations travelling to a depth of twenty-two to twenty-five miles. Scientists are dumbfounded, but if the Soviet theory of an inner metallic spaceship hull is correct, then these vibrations are naturally what should be expected."
1970 May: Biophysicist John Platt of Michigan University noted that what he called 'evolutionary leaps' are preceded by a period of dissonance, occur overall, are sudden, lead to simplification, and are brought about by jumping from the present sub-systems to some new super-system, bypassing the established system which is unable to change."
1971 (1 November) New Liturgy of the Hours approved by the Apostolic Constitution The Canticle of Praise.
1973 (27-31 August): Study Conference of the International Association for the History of Religions held in Turku in Finland; the proceedings were published in 1979 by Mouton Publishers, The Hague - Paris - New York, under the title: Science of Religion - Studies in Methodology.
1974 (13 December) Malta was declared a Republic. Those who deliberately chose not to schedule that declaration for 8 December served their own interests badly and have, thank G-d, in no sense diminished that most ancient Nation's appreciation of its own core-identity.
1975 Publication of 1st edition of George Steiner's After Babel - Aspects of Language & Translation.
1975 Easter Monday: Stephen Verney, a Canon of St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, wrote in the Foreword to his Into The New Age: "The title of this book is a translation of some Greek words, eis ton aiona (literally = into the æon), which occur like a refrain through St. John's Gospel," and cited as examples -
Here is Stephen Verney's related interpretation of the myth of the Holy Grail:
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1976 Don Wilson's Our Mysterious Spaceship Moon published in Great Britain by Sphere Books by arrangement with Dell Publishing Co. Inc. of New York, with references to Aristotle's, Plutarch's, Ovid's, Apollonius of Rhodes's and Censorinus's reports of the ancient belief that at an earlier period in human history no Moon occupied Earth's skies (cfr. The Neith Network Library Reference List, no. 2900). Stein & Day of New York also published a much more thoroughly researched work - the first edition of Zecharia Sitchin's The Earth Chronicles: Volume 1 - The Twelfth Planet. Sitchin's earliest book was based on thirty years' research into Sumerian and related writings and archaeological remains, and he has now devoted an entire life-time to reporting the results of his further explorations both in libraries and in the field.
1978 (elected 26 August, installed 3 September) - 1978 (28 September) John-Paul I Bishop of Rome.
1978 (elected 16, installed 22 October) John-Paul II (Karol Wojtyla) Bishop of Rome; he was born in Wadowice, Poland on 18 May 1920.
1980 The 13th centenary of the birth of St. Boniface was celebrated (better late than never) in Crediton, Devon.
1982 June: death and burial in Culbone of Joan D'Arcy Cooper, who composed this prayer: "Father of the sphere above us and beyond us, and of all creation, we praise You. May your power and influence reach every part of us. Direct our thoughts, open the pores of our minds, inspire us with visions that can nourish our spirits. Enable us to share in an experience of reality which is greater than any visible forms - through letting go these forms. Amen."
One of her favourite hymns was no. 373 in Hymns Ancient & Modern:
Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs
And works His sovereign Will.
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.
Judge not the LORD by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan His work in vain;
G-d is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain. Amen."
"At the close of 1983, astronomers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California announced that IRAS - the infrared telescope mounted on a spacecraft and launched under NASA's auspices with the cooperation of other nations - had discovered beyond Pluto a very distant 'mystery celestial body' about four times the size of Earth and moving toward Earth. They have not yet called it a planet" (The Wars of Gods and Men, p.110), but Sitchin's very full documentation from ancient sources convinces him that "the ultimate finding is in no doubt."
1984 (6 February) The Nottingham Evening Post published a short article about Robin Hood based on Colin Hamer's much more detailed historical and genealogical research-paper. This was subsequently expanded to form Chapter Fifteen of The Rainbow Cymbal.
1987 First British publication of Helen Lane's translation of Octavio Paz's Convergences - Essays on Art & Literature including (specially addressed to Helen Lane) his "Reading and Contemplation."
1990 (25-27 May) Pope John-Paul II became the first Pope to visit the islands of Malta and Gozo, which since the end of the second World War had witnessed a demographic explosion and a slow economic and financial revival.
1992 An importantly different 2nd edition of Professor George Steiner's After Babel - Aspects of Language & Translation published by Oxford University Press, as well as the French text of the best-selling Catechism of the Catholic Church, which distinguishes between 'Tradition' and 'tradition'. Although the latter work quickly became available in other languages, the sometimes less than helpful English version was considerably delayed.
1993 24 April, Feast of St. George - report in The Tablet: "Heather Woods, a widow from Lincoln and one of only two stigmatists living in England, this week spoke in public for the first time about her experiences. Ted Harrison writes:
Opening Prayer of the Mass for the Feast of All Saints: "Let us pray. God our Father, source of all holiness, the work of your hands is manifest in your saints, the beauty of your truth is reflected in their faith. May we who aspire to have part in their joy be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that having shared their faith on earth we may also know their peace in your kingdom. Through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who with you lives and reigns in the unity of the same Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen."
1993 13 May: In conversation with Joan Bakewell on Channel IV British Television, Professor George Steiner concluded by quoting Ludwig Wittgenstein: "To be religious is to know that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter."
1993: Colin James Hamer furnished ZechariaSitchin with what he trusts has proved a helpful 11-page critique of his then very recent (August 1993) When Time Began.
1994 5 January: In "The Way of Woman I+N Today's World" Colin James Hamer noted perhaps somewhat harshly:
I say 'perhaps somewhat harshly', because the general reader would probably accept the discussion on pages 132-9 of Sitchin's very first book, The Twelfth Planet, as a sufficiently representative survey of the most important meanings from among the thirty-odd nuances of the Sumerian word 'MU': viz.:
However, no competent theologian, philosopher or depth-psychologist is likely to remain satisfied with the following passage, which Sitchin appears to have written in entire good faith:
"The universal application of 'name' to early texts that spoke of an object used in flying has obscured the true meaning of the ancient records. Thus G.A. Barton (The Royal Inscriptions of Sumer and Akkad) established the unchallenged translation of Gudea's temple inscription - that 'Its MU shall hug the lands from horizon to horizon' - as 'Its name shall fill the lands.' A hymn to Iskhur, extolling his 'ray-emitting MU' that could attain the heights of Heaven, was likewise rendered: 'Thy name is radiant, it reaches Heaven's zenith.' Sensing, however, that mu or shem may mean an object and not 'name', some scholars have treated the term as a suffix or grammatical phenomenon not requiring translation and have thereby avoided the issue altogether. It is not too difficult to trace the etymology of the term, and the route by which the 'sky chamber' assumed the meaning of 'name.'
" I agree with Dom Sylvester Houédard (1924-1992) that G-d is that of which all persons and things are empty, and, like Bernard Lonergan, I use 'object' in some ways that may perplex Zecharia Sitchin (cf clear.htm). I also know that I am not alone in my judgment that the distinction between 'Tradition' and 'tradition' is the most important feature of the new Catéchisme de l'Église Catholique (Mame/Plon, Paris, 1992), and am, therefore, now more than ever convinced that it is foolish to neglect Sitchin's clearly helpful reports of so much patient work by a multitude of dedicated scholars and researchers through the ages. Those who neglect their own past scarcely merit a future!
As to the differences between 'hermetism' and 'hermeticism' and between 'esoterism' and 'esotericism', these are, I suggest, best understood by reference to Pierre A. Riffard's helpful L'Ésotérisme - Qu'est-ce que l'ésotérisme? Anthologie de l'ésotérisme occidental (Robert Laffont, Paris, 1990)...
1998 CANONBURY MASONIC RESEARCH CENTRE was founded on 23 October and moved into the Tower on 1 December.
1999 May: Sitchin Studies Association Newsletter, issue 6, pp.1-5, "A Theologian Looks At Sitchin's Works", published from P.O.Box 163, Iowa Falls, IA 50126, USA.
1999 (Friday 25 June): 11am, Westminster Cathedral, Requiem Mass for George Basil Cardinal Hume OSB OM; 6pm, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, Holborn, returned from his own first visit to Malta, Zecharia Sitchin during his first public appearance in UK presents a series of about 80 slides (including a Scientific American illustration of the globe of the Earth minus all its water) in support of his above discussed hypothesis.
2001 (9 May, Wednesday - St. Michael's day) Pope John-Paul II celebrates Mass for a congregation of 200,000 on the Granaries at Floriana, Malta, and beatifies Father George Preca, Cleric Nazju Falzon & Sister Marija Adeodata Pisani, OSB.
On 25 April 1995 I additionallly wrote:
"Dear Zechariah Sitchin,
I+N the moment of balance individual growth manifests!
I remain more than ever convinced that, as regards your own work, your own writings and video are the best vehicle for its still needed further communication.
David P. Myers's Two-Thirds with David S. Percy's lavishly generous Appendix of NASA photographs, ordnance-survey maps and diagrams, although limp as a novel and inaccurate here and there about known particulars, amazingly extends through "100 billion years" of hypothetical development the boundaries of the Lebensraum in which readers of your books are invited to exercise their minds.
The text of my RILKO Lecture additionally suggests that Iman Wilkens's Where Troy Once Stood merits consideration, that prehistoric remains on Malta and Gozo enter into the picture, that the claims advanced by various members of the World Federation of British Jews ought not to be brushed under the carpet, that if "Pope" Linus was a Welshman and had been "Bishop" of Rome even before Peter arrived for the first time in that city, such a fact is not irrelevant to the human family's ongoing quest for peace and reconciliation, and that if Jesus of Nazareth was educated for some time by Buddhists or Buddhist-influenced persons in or near Cairo, and that similar groups were then, if not earlier, also in culturally significant relationships with the people of Israel, all this requires centre-stage attention now.
Nevertheless, I counsel prior attention to Bernard Lonergan's Insight on the one hand and to Helen M. Luke's Kaleidoscope on the other - or, of course, to whichever processes effectively facilitate balanced development of the reader's powers of discernment, and I signal my own appreciation of J. D. Solomon's 1-dimensional cosmology of cosmic process as a non-spatial temporal pulsation in tune with what Joan D'Arcy Cooper has represented as the Ancient Sumerian Yogic teaching that G-d's eternally developing Free Mystery I+N Love IS within each uniquely individual person.
On none of these topics am I capable of improving in any way on the work of the already published writers whose works I have here and there mentioned. The library of Heythrop College in Kensington Square houses about 250,000 works of theololgy and philosophy and related subjects. It seems to me that, as knowledge grows in heart and head and guts and fingers and toes, etc., but not on library shelves, the present task is not without necessity to add to our embarras de richesse, but somehow to assist the less enlightened in their frequently haphazard frolics in the haystack of data. Not only is the needle hard to find; they are more often than not, not even looking for it!
This year the Jewish Passover, the Orthodox Christian Easter and the Anglican-&-R.C. Easter came together. That 1 January was this year a New Moon I also account significant. After attending the Good Friday service in Exeter, I half-slept under the Full Moon with my head against one of Avebury's standing stones, climbed to the top of Silbury Hill at dawn on Saturday, that afternoon visited both Glastonbury's folk-museum in the Tribunal and the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Glastonbury opposite the Abbey Ruins, and then returned to Exeter to celebrate the Easter Vigil and Christ's liturgical Resurrection I+N the Faith-community to which my Vocation has individually called me.
That Friday night at Avebury ritually concluded the work of my being 60, a year that ran for me from 25 March 1994 to 14 April 1995, since after two Saturn returns it is apparent that the Annunciation to Mary and the Death of Jesus are of greater relevance to my destiny than my emerging from my mother's womb in Bolton, Lancashire, at 4.20 am, on 18 April 1934.
As you will see from the enclosed copy of my letter to Jean Hutton of the Grubb Institute, to round off this ritual year I have also, at my own expense, therefore produced and given away 100 copies of a considerably extended version of the text of my RILKO talk. Call it, if you will, this poor widow's son's, nay, since 1934 was the year of the Dog, this dog's crumb of the bread of Wisdom now committed to the waters as they flow....
My final version includes a brief but substantial history of both the Catholic Church and of Free-Masonry, and my reference to Pierre A,. Riffard's L'Ésotérisme is to a book that includes its own valuable chronology which, therefore, I have not presumed to repeat. A Preliminary LibrArian's function has very obvious boundaries, and I have reached them.
However, because MS-DOS 6.22, WINDOWS 3.11 and WRITE are very widely used, any computer-literate person who wishes to further manipulate the Neith Library file BOOK0014.WRI (now subsumed into the Internet file sitchin.htm), subtracting from or adding to or re-arranging its data for her or his probably quite different purposes is, so far as I am concerned, welcome to have a copy of it for personal use....
Associate Professor Bodvar Schjelderup has now noticed that Trondheim is as many X.Y° North of Bethlehem as Bethlehem is North of the Equator, and hopes shortly himself to author, publish and distribute his third book, a Life of St. Olaf, which will explore the meaning for him of this coincidence.
I hope and pray that both in your domestic and in your public life all grows well for you, and if at any time there is any way in which I properly can serve you, please do not hesitate to ask.
Yours sincerely,
Dei gratia si quid est:
+ Creativity House - Amydon/Exeter
Saturday, 14 September 1996 Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy
Cross
Colin James Hamer,
Preliminary LibrArian I+N The Neith Network.
Zecharia Sitchin's books also contain several fascinating sections about happenings during the earlier part of the historical period all too briefly reviewed above, and Iman Wilkens reminds us that Plato (430-350 B.C.) expressed doubts regarding the Greek origin of Homer's works, precisely because the topographical descriptions in the poems do not match the present Greek environment, and because the philosophy implicit in them contrasted so sharply with the Greek mentality as this was known to Plato.
While mainstream Classical Greeks polarised between thesis/antithesis, good/bad, body/soul, life/death, form/content, Homer's typically Celtic philosophy also included a third intermediate: Spirit between body and soul, child between father and mother, each particular situation at any given moment between good and bad.
Although Sitchin has certainly never made this claim, it is my submission that this may very well turn out to be the most valuable lesson to be learned from all that which he has investigated so zealously, and which he has also so generously shared with his readers with persevering patience and unflagging zeal.
An increasing number of scientists who accept the theory of evolution also maintain that the emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens would not have occurred until about another two million years in the future, had not relatively wise extra-terrestrial agents intervened to speed up the process.
Together with Zecharia Sitchin, I now believe it is most likely true that some of the inhabitants of the planet Nibiru - for which + has from time immemorial been the astrological symbol, and which has a 3,600 years' orbit round our Sun - first landed on Earth 445,000 years ago, i.e., 432,000 of our years (but only 120 of their own years) before the Deluge - and that, as recorded both in the Book of Genesis and in its original sources, not until about 248,000 years ago (i.e., 52,000 years after Adam's first creation) did they expel us from their Garden of Eden and expect us to fend for ourselves on this Earth they had laboured so long and patiently to make habitable.
Such a long history of generously self-involving commitment to the promotion of the general good deserves to be repaid not by Earthlings conspiring together to prepare to wage Star Wars against our nearest neighbours in space at the earliest opportunity, but by our putting our own house in order so as to be able not only to receive them graciously and peacably, but also to help and serve them in their own needs, as they in the past have undoubtedly served us.
The confrontational style of official British politics ill suits the temper of our age, and so far the benefits of the current communications-media revolution appear to have exacerbated rather than alleviated the quite scandalous managerial posturings of far too many officially high-placed religious and political leaders in several other areas on our only one Planet of choice. To all such I say: "Chill out!"
A right relationship within ourselves and between ourselves can be both the cause and effect of progress in the direction above-mentioned and, therefore, no matter what our individual beliefs happen to be, I suggest that those ways of living out the One True Faith which most closely link us with the fabric of life as a whole ought now increasingly to be given first priority. Domestic 'Anglican', 'Buddhist', 'Catholic', 'Christian', 'Hindu', 'Islamic' and other traditionally (as distinct from Traditional) 'religious' questions will then come to be seen in a clearer and better perspective. Joergen Smit's Spiritual Development - Meditation in daily life (Floris Books, Edinburgh, 1991) is particularly helpful in this regard.
In A Guide To The Mysteries - An Ageless Wisdom Digest For The New Age (Lucis Press, 1990) Ina Crawford agrees with Foster Bailey's perception that although Freemasons "have as yet much inner work to do with themselves," Masonry will at some future date "be re-established as the custodian of the Mysteries of the spiritual life upon earth " (p.169). She also quite accurately notes that the Alice Bailey books "are now widely accepted in Europe and America as the classic reference-books for the New Age."
Her own book, the best available 1-volume synthesis of these teachings, is, however, best read in conjunction with Constance Cumbey's best-selling The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow - The New Age Movement and our Coming Age of Barbarism (revised edition, Huntington House, Lafayette, 1983) to which she has consistently neglected to refer. Martin Palmer discusses Marilyn Ferguson & Constance Cumbey's works in his own Coming of Age - An Exploration of Christianity and the New Age, Aquarian/Thorsons, 1993. I attach much more importance to Joan D'Arcy Cooper's (1927-1982) life and writings (cooper.htm), and Hans Urs Von Balthasar contributed a Foreword to the German Edition of another most significant work to which I have made a detailed Index (tarotdex.htm): the anonymously authored and only posthumously published Secrets of the Tarot - a Journey into Christian Hermeticism (currently available from Element Books).
It is, however, to Zecharia Sitchin that I am, of course, first of all indebted for most of the early dates and much of the related information provided in the earlier parts of this Paper.
The best shorthand way I know of preparing any intelligent reader of English to read Sitchin's books as they need to be read is to suggest they be read first in their order of publication, then that his related video-films be viewed right away, but that, before reading them again, the reader seeks to master, unless he has already done so, each of the following two books:
Indeed, if any person reading these pages has time available for the reading of two books only, these master-pieces by Lonergan and Luke deserve to be given priority. Anybody unable right away to make head or tail of either of these studies is advised instead to peruse Sallie Nichols' quite differently excellent Jung and Tarot - An Archetypal Journey, Samuel Weiser, New York, 1980.
I have also learned much from Isha Schwaller de Lubicz's Her-Bak - The Living Face of Ancient Egypt; Her-Bak - Egyptian Initiate; The Opening of the Way; and Journey into the Light (Inner Traditions International, 1978, 1979, 1981, 1984), as well as from R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz's The Temple in Man - Sacred Architecture and the Perfect Man; The Egyptian Miracle; Symbol and the Symbolic; Sacred Science; Esoterism and Symbol; A Study of Numbers (Inner Traditions International 1981, 1985, 1981, 1982, 1985, 1986); Nature Word - Verbe Nature (Lindisfarne Press, 1982) and Le Temple de l'homme: Apêt du sud à Louqsor (Caractères, Paris, 1958), and I also appreciate David M. Rohl's recently published argument in favour of a revised chronology.
Also significant for background, often as foreground too, of course, and always as very dear companions I+N The Way, the all too few works mentioned in A Treasury of Books (books.htm).
Zecharia Sitchin's Divine Encounters (New York: Avon Books 1996, ISBN 0-380-78076-3):
He suggests that it was in order to avoid offending their Babylonian exilers that the Bible's editors who scholars believe canonized its first five books (the Torah) during the Babylonian exile deliberately omitted its initial Aleph. Sitchin has therefore now restored this to give:
which he significantly translates:
as clear and incisive an opening statement as one could wish for.
Very reasonably, too, since Enki who, despite the opposition of the other Elohim and so under the pretence of sharing his private thoughts with a wall, instructed Noah re. the construction of his submarine-Ark, is known to have been a master of genetic engineering, Sitchin explains that it was the seeds of the various species of animals to be preserved rather than the animals themselves that were brought on board, quoting the Epic of Gilgamesh (tablet XI, lines 21-28):
For a variety of criticisms of Zecharia Sitchin's work it may be useful to refer to zindex.html and also to sitchinerrors.htm, and then to consider well…
IAN LAWTON & CHRIS OGILVIE-HERALD in their ambitiously titled Giza: The Truth - The People, Politics and History Behind the World's Most Famous Archæological Site (Virgin 1999) frequently over-reach themselves and advance a number of claims it would be difficult to justify. Interested readers will procure their own copy of this helpful compendium of recent work, but a minimum of relevant page-references, brief critical comments and related notes follow:
- Shalom & Welcome! - 
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