Tag Archives: plague

THE GREATEST MASSACRE

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“The greatest massacre in history was wrought not with armor-plated soldiers wielding weapons of steel, or even with the clumsy flintlock muskets of the Conquistadors. Europeans possessed an unlimited arsenal of biological warfare weapons acquired through many generations of prohibition against the practice of bathing. Taking a bath in the 1400s was forbidden by the Christian Church as protest against the public baths so popular in the “pagan” Roman Empire.

Biological weapons were carried in the bodily filth of each and every soldier, sailor and priest who landed in the New World. Billions of unseen little soldiers–the bacilli of bubonic plague, yellow fever, malaria, cholera, small pox, diphtheria, measles, influenza, and legions of other unseen, unsuspected, unstoppable bacteria attacked the native inhabitants of the New World.

Like the terrifying science fiction story by HG Wells, “War of the Worlds”, the Conquistadors were real life invaders from an alien universe who effortlessly devastated the people of the New World. If a race of alien beings actually landed on Earth from a distant solar system or galaxy, it is quite conceivable that the fate of mankind would be sealed, not by military conquest, but by single-cell life forms carried on the skin or in the lungs of the other-worldly invaders.

Approximately 20 consecutive waves of pestilence swept the American Continents between 1492 AD and 1600 AD. Disease killed nine out of every ten people. By the year 1600 AD, it is estimated that 90 percent of the 100 million native inhabitants living in the Americas had died of diseases carried to them by the alien invasion forces of Europe!

Imagine what would happen to our current civilization if nine out of every ten people were to die of disease within the next 100 years?”

— Excerpt from the book THE OZ FACTORS, by Lawrence R. Spencer.  

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THE GREAT SPONGE

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GREAT SPONGE“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.

Oz Factors_LULUWithin 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.Support independent publishing: Buy this book on Lulu.

 

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.

MithraismMithraism* 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.

justinianBy 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.

black-deathWas 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.

~ excerpt from THE OZ FACTORS

by Lawrence R. Spencer

VOLTAIRE OPINIONS

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Opinion“Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.”  ~ Voltaire ~

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) lived from 21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778.  He was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and separation of church and state.

His book Candide was listed as one of The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written, by Martin Seymour-Smith.

Voltaire was a versatile writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken advocate of several liberties, despite the risk this placed him in under the strict censorship laws of the time. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day.

Voltaire was also known to have been an advocate for coffee, as he was reported to have drunk it 50–72 times per day. It has been suggested that high amounts of caffeine acted as a mental stimulant to his creativity.

He is remembered and honoured in France as a courageous polemicist who indefatigably fought for civil rights (as the right to a fair trial and freedom of religion) and who denounced the hypocrisies and injustices of the Ancien Régime. The Ancien Régime involved an unfair balance of power and taxes between the three Estates: clergy and nobles on one side, the commoners and middle class, who were burdened with most of the taxes, on the other. He particularly had admiration for the ethics and government as exemplified by Confucius.

CATHOLIC CAT CURSE CATASTROPHE

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The decree that “cats are evil” by the catholic church created the conditions that lead up to THE BLACK DEATH by associating the common house cat with Satan. The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe’s population, reducing the world’s population from about 450 million to between 350 and 375 million around 1400.

Remember that the plague was spread by fleas that lived on rats. A viscous cycle kept the disease going. Infected fleas would bite a rat, and the rodent would become infected. Then other fleas biting the infected rat would become infected themselves. Once the host rat died of the plague, any fleas living on it would find themselves homeless and would go in search of a new host. Unfortunately, this often took the form of a human. When the sick infected fleas bit the human in order to feed, the human would become infected. So why didn’t the Europeans just keep plenty of cats around to kill the rats and thereby reduce the incidence of the plague? They had cats at the time. They were originally brought to Europe by the Romans, who had discovered the felines in Egypt. Keeping pet cats as mousers had become popular in Europe by the time of the first plague.

The black plague, also known as the Black Death, is a disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. It enters the body through the skin and travels via the lymph system. The bacteria live in the digestive tracts of fleas. The fleas, of course, live off blood from a host, and when the fleas swallow the blood, it becomes infected with the bacteria. As the bacteria multiply inside the flea, an intestinal blockage forms, starving the parasite because nutrients cannot be absorbed. The flea vomits in an effort to clear the blockage, and since the flea is starving, it feeds voraciously. When the infected flea vomits the diseased blood into a bite site on a host animal or human, the host becomes infected with black plague.

The disease was once devastating, and the resulting death was horrible. There were actually three forms of the black plague – the bubonic form, the pneumonic form, and the septicemic form. Victims of the bubonic plague suffered painful swollen lymph nodes in the neck and the underarms, called buboes. They were also wracked with high fever, vomiting, pounding headaches, and gangrene. Some were so weak that they barely had the energy to swallow.

The pneumonic form was even more punishing. As the body tried to fight off the disease, large amounts of phlegm were produced. The victims had to constantly cough up sputum in an effort to breathe, and more than ninety-five percent of the time, the patient drowned in his own body fluids. The pneumonic form of the plague didn’t need rats or fleas to spread – it was an airborne bacterium spread by the coughs of infected individuals.

Septicemic black plague was a form of blood poisoning and had a mortality rate of one hundred percent. With this type of plague, the individual suffered from high fever and purple blotches on the skin. Fortunately, this deadliest form was also the rarest.

From the middle of the 1300s until the 1700s, the black plague terrorized much of Europe and parts of Asia. Most historians believe the plague was first brought to Europe on ships from Asia. The most likely culprit was the black rats that often foraged among the ships’ holds for food scraps. These were smaller relatives of the brown rats.

The initial outbreak of the plague in fourteenth-century Europe was the most virulent. In fact, much of the populations of England and France were decimated. In some parts of England the death toll was 50%. Some parts of France suffered an astounding loss of ninety percent of their populations.

Many modern readers assume that there was only one outbreak of the black plague, but there were actually several. In fact, it raged through Europe about once every generation until the beginning of the eighteenth century. One of the last major outbreaks occurred in England with the Great Plague of London, which took place in 1665-1666.

SOURCE: https://owlcation.com/humanities/Cats-and-the-Black-Plague