The Cornucopia and Giving Thanks

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

The cornucopia is an ancient symbol, stretching back at least to the days of the ancient Greeks, representing abundance which is given as a gift from the gods and indeed from the infinite realm -- for a cornucopia is a "horn of plenty" which brings forth good things in overflowing, infinite abundance, and can never be exhausted. 

It may come as a surprise to learn that in the myths of ancient Greece, the cornucopia was often associated with the god Hades, the god of the underworld and of the realm of the dead, who among the three divine brothers of Zeus, Poseidon and Hades when they were determining who would rule which realm drew the lot corresponding to the earth and all beneath it, even as Poseidon drew the lot corresponding to the sea, and Zeus to the sky and heavens.

But the symbolism becomes clear when we realize that all the gifts which sustain life (and even the gift of life itself) are understood in the world's ancient myths to originate in the infinite realm. The life-giving rain and the sunshine and the streams and the fertile soil and the abundance of the ocean and the fruit-bearing trees are all explicitly depicted in ancient myth as gifts of the gods, each belonging to a specific deity and bestowed upon men and women by their blessing.

In the myths of ancient Greece, the riches of the soil and all the wealth beneath the earth were understood as belonging to the god Hades, lord of the underworld, and for this reason he was often referred to as Plouton, meaning "the wealthy one," in part (the ancient sources tell us) because men and women were hesitant to pronounce his dreaded name.

The ancient Orphic Hymn dedicated "To Plouton" expresses this understanding. The translation of "To Plouton" by Thomas Taylor (1758 - 1835) declares in part:

Earth's keys to thee, illustrious king, belong, its secret gates unlocking, deep and strong,

'Tis thine, abundant fruits to bear, for needy mortals are thy constant care.

To thee, great king, Avernus is assign'd, the seat of Gods, and basis of mankind.

The same lines are rendered in the contemporary translation by Apostolos N. Athanassakis and Benjamin M. Wolkow thusly: 

O Plouton, holder of the keys

to the whole earth.

To mankind you give

the wealth of the year's fruits,

yours is the third portion, 

earth, queen of all,

seat of the gods,

mighty lap of mortals.

From these lines we see that the riches of the earth's yield were understood to be given by the gracious blessing of the magnanimous Plouton. Thus, the frequent ancient depictions of this god holding a tremendous cornucopia, the horn of plenty which unendingly provides the fruits of the earth to mortal men and women, year-in and year-out.

In my 2016 book entitled Star Myths of the World, Volume Two: Myths of Ancient Greece, I provide evidence to conclude that this same god of the underworld can be confidently associated with the important constellation Ophiuchus, whose outline is shown in the star-chart below:

In the image above, shown from the perspective of an observer in the northern hemisphere who is facing towards the south, east is towards the left as we face the chart and west is towards the right (as indicated by the letters "E" and "W" which I have added to the lower two corners of the chart).

Notice how the outline of Ophiuchus consists of a central body (the tall rectangle topped by a triangle) flanked by two "serpent halves" (Ophiuchus is often envisioned as though holding a serpent, hence the name "Ophiuchus" which signifies the "serpent-holder" or "serpent-bearer"). The western serpent-half (on the right as we face the chart, and marked in this diagram by the letter "a.") is usually envisioned as the "head-end" of the serpent held by Ophiuchus, while the eastern half (on the left as we face the chart, and marked in this diagram by the letter "c.") is usually envisioned as the "tail-end" of the serpent.

As you observe this chart, and knowing that the god of the underworld is almost certainly associated with this constellation, can you guess what part of the constellation might represent the great "horn of plenty" held by the deity?

If you thought it would most likely be associated with the form on the west side of the central body, marked by the letter "a." in this star-chart, and topped with a small inverted triangular shape (the "serpent-half" just identified as the "head-end" of the serpent), then I agree! Note the rather "twisty" shape of the serpent-half on the west side of the constellation, as well as the widening at the top (created by the stars which outline the feature often envisioned as the "serpent-head"): these aspects certainly match up well with the traditional shape of the cornucopia -- and it would be quite a large cornucopia, too! 

And that is just what we see depicted in the ancient artwork, such as shown on the pottery at the top of the post. Note that in that artwork, the god is holding two different implements: one is the cornucopia and one is a straight staff. As I show with numerous examples, the "serpent-half" on the east side of Ophiuchus (the "tail-end" of the serpent, marked with the letter "c.") is often envisioned in ancient myth as framing a straight line, often a staff or a spear (just draw a line or envision a line from the top star on that side to the star just below the letter "c." and on downwards to create the line of the staff or the spear). 

Thus, the ancient artwork depicting the god of the underworld has strong correlation to the features of the constellation Ophiuchus: a staff on one side and a cornucopia on the other. 

Note that the ancient artist has even placed these accessories on the two sides of the god which correspond to the two sides of Ophiuchus: the cornucopia is held on his left side (held by his left arm and above his left shoulder in the artwork) and the staff is held in his right hand -- just as the cornucopia feature on the constellation (on the west side of the central body, and marked by the letter "a.") would be held by the left hand and protrude above the left shoulder of the central body of Ophiuchus, if we imagine the central body as facing towards us. The staff represented by the tail-end of the serpent (marked by the letter "c." on the east side of the central body) would thus be envisioned as being held by the right hand of Ophiuchus, just as the staff in the artwork is held in the right hand of the god.

In modern times, the cornucopia is closely associated with the holiday of Thanksgiving, when we acknowledge that the blessings of the land and the harvest and the fruits of the earth, and all that sustains life, originate and have their source in the divine realm.

It is a most fitting symbol, and at this time of year it is most appropriate to contemplate the gifts which we enjoy by the gracious blessing of the divine, upon which we are dependent for every aspect of this life, and indeed for life itself.

November 22, 2020

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

As we arrive at yet another November 22, it is most appropriate to pause and consider the magnitude of the significance of the criminal and treasonous murder of the elected president of the nation in 1963 in broad daylight in Dallas, Texas.

Above is a photograph showing President John F. Kennedy "pardoning" a turkey on November 19, 1963.

The tradition of pardoning a turkey -- sparing its life from becoming a Thanksgiving meal -- may seem quaint and light-hearted, and of course it is both of those things to some degree.

But the tradition actually has extremely ancient roots and goes all the way back to the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia, when the ruler could declare amnesty for debts which were owed. Economist Michael P. Hudson explores the significance of this declaration of forgiveness in his most-recent book, entitled . . . and forgive them their debts: Lending, Foreclosure, and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year (2018).

Another manifestation of this concept was already a well-established tradition at the US Military Academy at West Point for many decades by the time I attended: it was understood any visiting head of state could proclaim "amnesty," and that if he or she did so, then all of the hours of "area tours" owed for infractions against the regulations of the Academy would be instantly cancelled on the spot. 

I will never forget the visit by President Reagan in 1987, when I was a plebe at the Academy, during which the president had lunch with the cadets, sitting at a table high in the "poop deck," a kind of open patio situated within a tower-like edifice in the center of the mess hall, where he was served by two of my good friends who were also plebes and who were required to perform all the "table duties" such as pouring out the beverages and passing them up to everyone else on the table, or cutting the dessert into the correct number of servings, and so on. 

During every meal, the brigade adjutant would rise from this table and walk to a spot overlooking the entire corps of cadets and announce "attention to orders" from the edge of the poop deck over a loudspeaker, and from there read out all the various administrative updates to schedules and other minutiae. 

During that meal, at the time when we would normally hear these mundane announcements, President Reagan himself went up to the microphone and said: "I have an announcement that I've been asked to make, and I wrote it down on this piece of paper . . ." 

He then paused for a moment for dramatic effect, before uttering just a single word: "Amnesty!"

As he said it, the president threw his hands upwards and forwards in a kind of victory gesture, and the entire corps of cadets erupted in complete and utter bedlam, standing on chairs, banging on empty metal water pitchers with utensils, and generally making wild shouts of approval and applause for several minutes.

As Professor Hudson explains in the above-cited book, the ability to forgive debts was anciently understood to be vested in those who are tasked with protecting the gifts given to the people of that nation by nature and the gods (or those gifts given by the divine realm, if you prefer -- by heaven). The natural resources of a nation were universally understood to be gifts of heaven: the land, the crop-growing soil, the life-giving sunshine, the rain, the rivers, the woods, the ports, the gifts of the sea, the mineral resources under the earth, and so on. 

The role of the king in ancient times was to protect those resources from being "cornered" by oligarchs.

And that is why the sovereign could forgive debts: in order to protect the nation from devolving into oligarchy. In an oligarchy, the natural resources are cornered by powerful individuals and families and "fenced off" such that they benefit only the elites and not the entire nation.

That ancient tension was recognized in the ability of the sovereign to forgive debts, spelled out explicitly in ancient Mesopotamian texts. As Professor Hudson explains, that function acts as a check against oligarchy, because otherwise whenever there was some kind of calamity that caused (for example) a loss of the crops (such as a war, or a flood, or a plague or pandemic), then debtors would be unable to pay their creditors, and they would lose their land to the creditors, who would build their own fiefdoms of land and wealth taken from others, and impose oligarchy.

In a modern democracy or democratic republic, the power of the people, expressed through their elected officials in the legislature and the executive branch, is supposed to play this same role of preventing oligarchy, and of ensuring that the gifts bestowed upon the nation benefit all the people of that nation and not just a tiny elite. The murder of President Kennedy represents -- as the late great Vince Salandria perceived almost immediately in 1963 and declared with absolute clarity in this important video interview from 1994 -- not just the killing of a president, but effectively the killing of the presidency (that quotation is found at approximately the 0:33-minute mark in the interview).

If the elected president can be murdered with complete impunity by coordinated plotters, and if the law enforcement agencies and the entire news media can be made to cover up the facts surrounding that murder from that day to this one, then it should be quite clear that the elected government which is supposed to serve as a mechanism to express the will of the people and stand as an obstacle to oligarchy has been hijacked and is now being controlled by usurpers.

And that killing was not an isolated killing, but takes its place alongside the killing of other leaders who stood against the seizure of the resources given to the people of their nation and who stood against impoverishment and oppression of the people, both around the world (such as the killing of Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of Congo and of many other leaders in subsequent decades) and also domestically (such as the killing of Malcolm X, the killing of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the killing of Robert F. Kennedy).

This November 22, I would highly encourage listening to that interview with Vince Salandria again, in its entirety.

I would also recommend reading this reflection upon the trauma-inducing nature of the JFK assassination, as well as of subsequent trauma-inducing crimes including the September 11 operation, written by author and teacher Edward Curtin and published in Global Research.

And I would recommend taking time to contemplate the impact that killing fifty-seven years ago has had on the world that we live in today, and the likelihood that we cannot effectively move forward until we face the reality of what took place that day and address it.

Consider attending this year's CAPA 2020 JFK Conference (Virtual): More important than ever

I've just purchased my reservation to attend this year's conference presented by CAPA: Citizens Against Political Assassinations, which was founded and is still chaired by the legendary Dr. Cyril Wecht, a famous forensic pathologist who in 1965 presented a paper to the American Academy of Forensic Scientists in which he argued against the conclusions of the Warren Commission and gave his analysis and supporting evidence that the murder could not possibly be the work of a lone gunman but rather represented "the overthrow of the American government."

This year's conference is entirely virtual, and runs from Friday 20 November through Sunday 22 November (the 22nd of November, of course, being the anniversary of the murder of President Kennedy). The cost is $50 USD and enables live access to all the presentations as well as participation in the Q&A sessions after each presentation, as well as access to replays of each presentation and Q&A session. You can reserve your space through the sign-up page here.

The murder of President Kennedy, along with the subsequent murders of Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, eliminated the leaders of an entire generation, overthrew the will of the people, and set the nation on its current course: a course which has led to the place in which we find ourselves today, with repercussions felt around the world.

The late researcher and attorney Vincent Salandria declared that the murder of John F. Kennedy did not only kill the president: it effectively killed the presidency itself. 

Some of the researchers presenting at this year's CAPA conference, including Dr. Cyril Wecht, have been bravely and tirelessly working to alert the people of the world to the significance of those assassinations for decades. 

This year's conference also includes a full day dedicated to students, on Friday the 20th, for which registration is completely free.

Welcome to new visitors from the "My Family Thinks I'm Crazy" podcast! (and to returning friends)

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

Big thank-you to Mark Steeves and his friends Jameson and Adam for inviting me over to their new podcast, My Family Thinks I'm Crazy, for a conversation about high school, libraries, dropping in, and many more subjects that I hope you will find to be of interest!

Welcome to anyone visiting for the first time after hearing about my work on the podcast -- please visit again and tell your friends (and your family too, if they will listen).

You can listen to our interview online through the "Google podcasts" player here, or via Spotify here. Or, you can download the audio file to a mobile device to listen while riding the bus or working in the yard, by going to the Podcast FM page for that episode here or the Podcast Addict page for the episode here.

Our conversation was recorded on 08 November, 2020. For this conversation, Mark, Jay and Adam were located in Connecticut, and I was located in California.

Please support their podcast and give them some positive feedback on the interview if you enjoyed it, and thank you for listening!

BONUS DOUBLE FEATURE! Atum & the Ennead: Celestial Foundations of Egyptian Myth

I've just posted a new video entitled "Atum & the Ennead: Celestial Foundations of Egyptian Myth," demonstrating just a tiny sliver of the overwhelming evidence which shows that the mythology of ancient Egypt has as its foundation the very same system of celestial metaphor underlying the ancient myths, scriptures and sacred stories of virtually every culture on our earth.

I originally prepared these slides to share with Cometan during our second conversation, which took place this past weekend, but due to the direction that our discussion took, there was not a good opportunity to share these, and so I made a separate video presenting some of the evidence to back up the assertion that the mythology of ancient Egypt shares the same foundation found around the world (as well as in the stories of the Old and New Testaments, so-called, of the Bible).

Cometan had requested that our second conversation focus specifically on the subject of ancient Egypt. You can see the video of our conversation below: 

For our previous conversation, you can follow this link.

The evidence presented in the video above regarding Atum and the Ennead is discussed in greater depth in my 2019 book, The Ancient World-Wide System: Star Myths of the World, Volume One (Second Edition), along with many other aspects of the myths of ancient Egypt which conclusively demonstrate that these myths are celestial in nature and share the same system found around the globe.

I hope you will enjoy the above videos and that the information in them will be a blessing to you in some way. Please feel free to share either or both video with those who would find their message to be positive. 

Welcome to new visitors from The Amish Inquisition Podcast! (and to returning friends)

Very big triple thank-you goes out to hosts Phil, Ben and Matt of the Amish Inquisition Podcast for inviting me over to a conversation, tracking me down all the way from their hometown of Preston in Lancashire along the River Ribble in England, north of Manchester!

The conversation is best followed on video, because it contains visuals including artwork and star-charts, beginning at about 0:38:30 in the file above, which you can also watch on YouTube here.

This interview was recorded on 01 November 2020.

We covered a range of important topics during our visit, some of which have not been discussed on any previous podcast. Below are links to blog posts which pertain to some of the subjects we touched upon, for those wishing to explore further:

• "Happy Anniversary to Moby Dick!"

• "The divine spark descends to the mortal realm"

• "Ancient mosaic with esoteric celestial elements discovered during recent Pompeii excavations"

• "Simon Shack, Tycho Brahe, Retrograde Mars & the vital importance of our Moon: Exploring the Tychos!"

• "The Judgment of Solomon"

• "The Blessing Mother, the Cursing Mother, the Dream, and the King"

• "Some lessons for us, from the dream of King Solomon"

• "Solomon at Gibeon"

• "The bad judgment of King Midas, and what it teaches us"

• "Who is Doubting Thomas?"

• "The Gospel of Thomas and the Divine Twin"

• "The Self: the hidden treasure"

• "Important interviews with Dr. Richard Schwartz and Dr. Frank Anderson of Internal Family Systems Therapy"

Additionally, prior to watching the video, it would be helpful to carefully study this high-resolution image of the planet Jupiter that the lads posted to their social media recently, since it comes up during the discussion of some ancient artwork and myths:

I hope you will enjoy this interview and the subjects discussed! Please give Phil, Ben and Matt some positive feedback under the video, and subscribe to their YouTube channel if you're interested in seeing more of their podcasts and videos.

A perfect time to contemplate the Pleiades

This is an excellent time of year to observe the gorgeous and mythologically-important star cluster which goes by many names in the various cultures of our earth, and which is most familiar to

civilizations influenced by ancient Greece by the name of the Pleiades (a name which signifies the "daughters of Pleione," Pleione being an immortal daughter of Oceanus).

Now that Hallowe'en and All Hallow's Day have past, and the Moon is beginning to wane towards New Moon again, we have an opportune window for the next two weeks in which to observe the region of the night sky shown in the star-chart above, including the dazzling Pleiades, which are rising in the east during the hours after sunset at this time of year.

The chart above shows the mighty forms of Hercules and Ophiuchus sinking down into the west in the hours after sunset, followed by Sagittarius and the planets Jupiter and Saturn, which are presently close to the head of Sagittarius (I have circled these two planets in the star-chart above).

Above Jupiter and Saturn you can easily find the two "great birds of the Milky Way," Aquila the Eagle and Cygnus the Swan, whose brightest individual stars are Altair (in Aquila) and Deneb (in Cygnus), respectively. These two bright stars together with the brightest star in the constellation Lyra the Lyre (the star Vega) make up what is known as the "Summer Triangle," because these three are high in the sky during the summer months of the northern hemisphere, although now that we are moving through autumn the stars of the Summer Triangle are much further towards the west as the sky grows dark after sundown.

In the chart above I have also circled the location of the Red Planet, Mars, which is now high in the sky and very bright during the hours after sunset, and located in between the Great Square and the "eye" of the constellation Cetus the Whale, as discussed in this previous post.

One of the easiest ways to locate the beautiful cluster of the Pleiades is to look below the most-visible and easily-identified "foot" of the constellation Perseus, which is a constellation consisting of several fairly bright stars in its outline and easily located if you know what to look for and where to look. Perseus is presently rising in the east during the hours following sunset, now fairly high above the eastern horizon by the time the sky grows dark (a month ago Perseus would be much lower above the eastern horizon as the sky grew dark).

The Pleiades are located in between the most-visible "foot" of Perseus and the V-shaped group of stars in Taurus known as the Hyades. In the mythology of ancient Greece, the Hyades were sisters of the Pleiades. The star-chart below shows the sky a couple hours later than the chart above, and zooms-in slightly in order to show the respective locations of the Hyades and the Pleiades more clearly:

The stars of the Hyades form a distinctive "V" in the sky, the two tips of this "V" pointing directly to two stars which I like to envision as the two horns of the Bull of Taurus (I differ from the outlining system suggested by H. A. Rey in this particular regard).

As you can see from the second chart above, another way to locate the Hyades is to use the very distinctive constellation Orion, which is rising in the east and clears the eastern horizon by about 9pm or 9:30, depending on your latitude and the terrain to the east of your observation point. The chart above should help you to find the V-shaped Hyades relative to the location of Orion, and then you should be able to find the Pleiades in between the Hyades and the foot of the constellation Perseus.

The charts above are for the 5th of November of this year: each night after that, the Moon will be rising later and later and will be waning (becoming thinner as it moves towards its final crescent stage prior to New Moon on the 14th of November).

If you have access to a good pair of binoculars or a telescope, I would highly recommend using their enhanced optics to observe the cluster of the Pleiades, after you have located the Pleiades with your naked eye.

The Pleiades play different roles in the world's ancient myths. Often, they are described as being seven in number (although you will see that there are many more stars than seven in the Pleiades cluster, if you look at them using binoculars or a telescope).  

A previous post discussing the celestial foundations of the story of Balaam and the talking donkey (found in the Old Testament book of Numbers) provides my analysis in which Balaam (and his "twisted foot") is associated with the constellation Perseus, and the "seven altars" described in the text, upon which Balaam makes burnt offerings of bulls and rams, are almost certainly associated with the seven blazing stars of the Pleiades. Note that the Pleiades are located in between the Ram of Aries and the Bull of Taurus, which is an additional detail which supports this interpretation of the seven altars described in the ancient scriptures.

This previous post discusses the analysis of James Mavor and Byron Dix in their 1989 book entitled Manitou, which shows that the Upton Chamber in Massachusetts is aligned with the setting of the Pleiades above a hill across a body of water from the opening of the Chamber, and that cairns upon the skyline of that hill form a kind of "front sight" window between which the stars of the Pleiades could be seen to set by an observer within the Upton Chamber at the appropriate time of year.

I myself have visited the Upton Chamber more than once, and written blog posts about the experience each time, the first one in 2011 here (the blog post about it was written in 2012) and the second time in 2016 (blog post here).

Among the Maori of Aotearoa, the beautiful cluster of the Pleiades is known as Matariki, and the heliacal rising of this cluster (when it first becomes visible above the eastern horizon prior to sunrise) marks the beginning of the New Year -- usually observed in conjunction with either the following Full Moon or the following New Moon, thus making this observation a lunar and solar New Year, as was common in virtually all the ancient cultures of the world prior to the rise of literalist Christianity, which replaced the ancient ways with a solar-centered monotheistic and literalistic paradigm, embarking on a centuries-long campaign to obliterate the world's ancient wisdom wherever the agents of the new literalistic religion went. 

But the stars and heavenly cycles continue to follow their ancient rhythms, pointing us back to the precious inheritance of myth and tradition given to every culture on earth in the far-distant past, and  can still be seen wheeling their silent way across the celestial realm for those who are able to take the time to look.

I hope that you can make the effort to find the Pleiades at this time of year, if it is at all possible for you to do so, and that these dazzling stars will have significance to you as you meditate on their timeless importance and the wisdom given to us in the world's ancient myths.