Category Archives: …and other stuff

miscellaneous postings by Lawrence R. Spencer

...and other stuff, BULLSHIT, FREE ADVICE, LIVES, POETIC NONSENSE, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

DOUBT EVERTHING

December 31, 2024 LRS

On planet Earth, it’s really not a good idea to “believe” or to accept ANYTHING on the surface. As safe bet is to DOUBT EVERYTHING.

This is especially true when it to do with “royalty” or “leaders” of governments. I very excellent example of this illustrated by the discovery that Sir Francis Bacon was the “bastard” son of Queen Elizabeth I of England. (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) This is compounded by the discovery that Sir Francis Bacon actually wrote the plays attributed to Bill Shakespeare!

Sir Francis Bacon was a scientist, philosopher, courtier, diplomat, essayist, historian and successful politician, who served as Solicitor General (1607), Attorney General (1613) and Lord Chancellor (1618). Those who subscribe to the theory that Sir Francis Bacon wrote the Shakespeare work generally refer to themselves as “Baconians”, while dubbing those who maintain the orthodox view that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote them “Stratfordians”.

The idea was first proposed by Delia Bacon in lectures and conversations with intellectuals in America and Britain. William Henry Smith was the first to publish the theory in a letter to Lord Ellesmere published in the form of a sixteen-page pamphlet entitled Was Lord Bacon the Author of Shakespeare’s Plays? Smith suggested that several letters to and from Francis Bacon hinted at his authorship. A year later, both Smith and Delia Bacon published books expounding the Baconian theory. In Delia Bacon’s work, “Shakespeare” was represented as a group of writers, including Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser, whose agenda was to propagate an anti-monarchial system of philosophy by secreting it in the text.

Baconian theory developed a new twist in the writings of Orville Ward Owen and Elizabeth Wells Gallup. Owen’s book Sir Francis Bacon’s Cipher Story (1893–5) claimed to have discovered a secret history of the Elizabethan era hidden in cipher-form in Bacon/Shakespeare’s works. The most remarkable revelation was that Bacon was the son of Queen Elizabeth. According to Owen, Bacon revealed that Elizabeth was secretly married to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who fathered both Bacon himself and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, the latter ruthlessly executed by his own mother in 1601. Bacon was the true heir to the throne of England, but had been excluded from his rightful place. This tragic life-story was the secret hidden in the plays.

Baconian theory had received support from a number of high profile individuals. Mark Twain showed an inclination for it in his essay Is Shakespeare Dead? Friedrich Nietzsche expressed interest in and gave credence to the Baconian theory in his writings. The German mathematician Georg Cantor believed that Shakespeare was Bacon. He eventually published two pamphlets supporting the theory in 1896 and 1897. By 1900 leading Baconians were asserting that their cause would soon be won.

In 1916 a judge in Chicago ruled in a civil trial that Bacon was the true author of the Shakespeare canon!

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READ MORE ABOUT BACON vs. SHAKESPEARE HERE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baconian_theory

...and other stuff, 1001 THINGS TO DO WHILE YOU'RE DEAD, LIVES, MOVING PICTURES, READING MATTER, SHERLOCK HOLMES: MY LIFE, SOUNDS

1910 FILM OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE SPEAKING ABOUT SHERLOCK HOLMES AND SPIRITUALISM

December 31, 2024 LRS

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

In this very rare filmed interview of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (filmed in 1910) the famous author speaks about the origins of Sherlock Holmes, and upon the afterlife of human souls. To learn a great deal more about both of these subjects read the following books by Lawrence R. Spencer: https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/pan

https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/pan

...and other stuff, ART, BULLSHIT, FREE ADVICE, LIVES, PICTURE POEMS, POETIC NONSENSE, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

THE MEANING OF “LIFE”

December 31, 2024 LRS

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

If you have spent any time with animals you should have observed that they experience emotions similar to our own. Animals can communicate between themselves, or with other species, including humans, with amazing sensitivity. Many experiments have been conducted that conclusively demonstrate extrasensory abilities and perceptions of animals. Millions of people in India consider that the reincarnated souls of humans inhabit the bodies of every kind of life form. Therefore, every life form is is “sacred” and entitled to live freely within human society.

However, the “civilized” Westerner does not possess an awareness of personal spiritual immortality. Instead, human beings in Western “civilization” considers themselves to be the “highest attainment of evolution”. Or, that humans embody “the image of The Creator”. There is no concept of “personal spiritual immortality”. It is virtually inconceivable to the “civilized Westerner” that spiritual beings inhabit and animate life forms. Rather, the animation of life is a “mysterious and unknowable” phenomenon that is being “studied” by the priests of Western culture: “scientists”.

A “scientist” is a professional academician or “priest” whose “religious belief” is that the “entire universe consists of nothing more than solid matter, energy, space and time”, including living organisms. These “priests” possess a profound inability to observe the obvious fact that LIFE FORMS ARE ANIMATED BY SPIRITUAL BEINGS!

Question: What is the definition, or meaning of “LIFE”?

Answer: A material form or organism which is animated and motivated by a non-material energy source, or “spirit”.

Factually, Western “science” does not have working definition for the word “LIFE”. As a consequence, the “average” American and European human view of themselves as a life form is egocentric, myopic, ignorant, self-aggrandizing and pathetically barbaric. Visit any grocery store or restaurant anywhere in the western world, and it becomes instantly apparent that human beings are carnivorous predators who consider that other animals are a primary and necessary food source!

This idea is very, very similar to the belligerently aristocratic notion of “great” Britain that “the brown races” are the natural subjects of the white race, and that it is the “manifest destiny” of Caucasians to rule over them and use them as slaves. Thus, the British Empire, which invaded and conquered all by 22 of the nations of Earth, entitled and bequeathed unto themselves the “god-given right” to murder, steal from, indenture or enslave nearly the entire population of humans and every other life form on the planet! The Nazis Third Reich was motivated and empowered with a religious conviction that they were entitled, as “the Master Race”, to rule the world!

What is the difference between the philosophy of these genocidal “civilizations” and the philosophy that “humans are the highest life form on Earth”? In both cases, these philosophies are used by humans as justification to murder, slaughter, enslave or EAT almost every living organism on Earth! I suggest that human beings are nothing more than stupid savages as regards their awareness and treatment of themselves and every other life form on Earth.

If you would like to “cure” your own ignorance or superstitions on the subject of “LIFE”, I recommend that you read the very excellent book, Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures by Virginia Morell.

From the publishers promo about the book:

“Did you know that ants teach, earthworms make decisions, rats love to be tickled, and chimps grieve? Did you know that some dogs have thousand-word vocabularies and that birds practice songs in their sleep? That crows improvise tools, blue jays plan ahead, and moths remember living as caterpillars?
Animal Wise takes us on a dazzling odyssey into the inner world of animals, from ants to elephants to wolves, and from sharp-shooting archerfish to pods of dolphins that rumble like rival street gangs. Morell probes the moral and ethical dilemmas of recognizing that even “lesser animals” have cognitive abilities such as memory, feelings, personality, and self-awareness–traits that many in the twentieth century felt were unique to human beings.”

...and other stuff

THE GREAT SPONGE

December 30, 2024 LRS

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

“As the Christian Church became more organized and regimented, it progressively absorbed the populations of the ancient Western world like A Great Sponge. It soaked up the common denominator of the local Pagan superstitions, rituals and practices in order to gain strength of membership, power and money.

Within several hundred years after the death of Jesus of Mary, the organizations of Christianity, founded by Paul and others, were no longer the persecuted disciples who endured prosecution, murder and martyrdom for the sake of their convictions. The Church controlled the political power that had once been the Roman State.

The Pontifex Maximus of the Temple of Jupiter was the highest office of the Roman State Religion. This office, which was bought and paid for in cash money by the first Roman Emperor, Julius Caesar, was thereafter held by the Emperor of Rome. The original Roman state religion, though hundreds of years old, was based on the ancient pantheon of gods borrowed from their remote origins in the Veda and transmitted through Babylonian, Egyptian and Greek personifications.

By the time of the Emperor Aurelias in the third century, the state religion of the Roman Empire and the predominant god of the Roman Army was Mithra, who was considered to be the God of Battles, among other attributes. The origin of this religion is the Rig-Veda’s god Mithra, later called by a very Japanese sounding name, Ahura-Mazda.

Mithraism* spread from India in various forms throughout the ancient world, including Iran, all of Persia, Asia Minor, Greece and throughout the Roman World. It was, itself, later merged with the Roman pantheon to become the official state religion of Rome and was spread around the known world by the travels of soldiers and along trade routes.

Many of the rites and beliefs of Mithraism, though not the deity itself, were absorbed into the practices of the Christian Church. These include the rite of baptism, the communion ritual using bread and water, robed priests and the symbol of the cross. The Pontifical hierarchy and the organization of the Temple of Jupiter, epiphany, the immaculate conception and virgin mother, the concepts of heaven and hell, priests called “fathers”, angels and Easter, to name a few, were also ideas borrowed from Mithraism.

The celebration of Christmas, held during the Winter Solstice to commemorate the birthday of Jesus was adapted from a variety of pagan cults. The celebration of the Roman holiday season of “Saturnalia”, for the god Saturn, was adapted to become Christmas in 336 AD. Saturnalia was a festival during which Roman slaves were given control of the household for one day each year. The festival was held between December 17th and 23rd during which families feasted together, slaves were given time off and presents were exchanged.

The evolution of the Christian Church is explored in many very interesting books. One of the most thoroughly documented histories of Western religions was written by the Oxford historian, Robin Lane Fox, ‘Pagans and Christians’, published by Knopf in 1986. Mr. Fox is marvelous in his ability to resurrect the souls of the pagan gods, obscured these thousands of years beneath tumbled down temples desecrated by jealous religious zealots. One can only speculate on the revenge those noble gods may have wrought on succeeding generations of those who have trampled the Spirit of gods and Man alike in the wake of soulless religious rhetoric.

EMPEROR JUSTINIAN

Over time, the practices and, to a large degree, the philosophy of the Christian Church were irrevocably altered by too close an alliance with the materialistic business of power politics.

The consolidation of the Church under the control of a totalitarian Roman State became state law. By the end of the fourth century, Pagan worship, both public and private, was prohibited with severe penalties. All Pagan temples were closed or destroyed. The institution of Christianity became the very same political entity which had persecuted it in its infancy.

In the fifth century, Pagans were barred from any community service. In 529 AD, Roman Emperor Justinian closed the thousand year old Platonic Academy in Athens and ordered all Pagans to become Christians. Any who refused were exiled and their property confiscated. Competitive religions such as Judaism, Samaritanism, Zoroastrianism and Manicheism were violently persecuted.

By Justinian’s time, the enormous growth of Church property and personnel caused a corresponding growth in the power and wealth of the Church hierarchy of bishops. They came to be part of the same class as the highest government officials, including senators.

A good-sized cathedral would employ 50 to 100 clergy. The election of Church officials was violently contested; one election in Rome left 137 dead in one day’s fighting. We are fortunate that modern day churches no longer employ so many priests with such covetous zeal!

By the year 543 AD, the writings of Origen, in keeping with the spiritual concepts of Christ and of the Greek philosophers that included the concept of past lives, had become politically “inconvenient”. In 553 AD at the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian decided to OUTLAW THE IDEA OF THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF SOULS! He officially cursed the doctrine and vowed to excommunicate anyone who believed in Origin’s teachings. In addition, these ideas were banned from all subsequent publications of the Bible.

Thereafter, the increase in poverty, caused by religious suppression and government taxation, led to a decline throughout the Roman Empire.

The era became characterized by a sort of mass paranoia of superstition, fanaticism and violence regarding incomprehensible religious formulas. “Demonic possession” grew to epidemic proportions; every church employed large staffs of exorcists. Magic became the most important branch of philosophy. Medicine was overrun with recipes for amulets which were later replaced by the relics of holy men, especially martyrs. Saints of the Church assumed the functions once filled by the Pagan gods to send rain, avert storms, drive away pestilence, and so forth. The most important cult became that of Mary, the all-holy Mother of God.

The Dark Ages had begun.

Was it a coincidence that the worst outbreak of plague in history occurred during Justinian’s rule? The plague spread from Palestine, the very home of the Christ, and struck the Roman capital of Byzantium in the spring of 542 AD. The mortality rate in the city rapidly rose to 10,000 deaths a day. So many were the deaths that graves could not be dug fast enough to dispose of the rotting bodies. Roofs were taken off the towers of forts, the towers filled with corpses and the roof replaced. Ships were loaded with the dead, rowed out to sea and abandoned! And, if the plague weren’t enough, the entire world experienced disastrous earthquakes during that time.

Such a series of events might persuade one to consider the possibility that there might be such a thing as the wrath of God!”

* NOTE: The religion of Mithraism, with its central theme of a dualistic battle between good and evil, was popular in the Roman Empire. It was especially favored by the military. Michael, like Mithras, is also connected to those in uniform, being considered the patron of police officers and soldiers.