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Palmyra’s Unknown God

In 2015 the terrorist army calling itself the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant’, or ‘ISIS’ captured the historic Syrian desert city of Palmyra and soon began to trash its ancient ruins which included carved references to an anonymous deity mentioned in numerous Aramaic inscriptions as “lord of the universe.” Ironically, whatever, the terrorists intended for this ‘unknown’ god, he and other pre-Islamic religious figures found in Palmyra have recently emerged from obscurity, at least among scholars.

Aleksandra Kubiak-Schneider, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wrocław in Poland, compared the inscriptions from Palmyra to others throughout Mesopotamia from the first millennium BC and discovered that the gods worshiped in Mesopotamia were referred to by names similar to the anonymous god from Palmyra like, “Bel-Marduk”—the supreme god of Babylon—who was also referred to as “merciful.” The phrase “lord of the world”—a title similar to “lord of the universe” was sometimes used to indicate “Baalshamin,” a sky god. The anonymous “god” mentioned in the Palmyra inscriptions she says was not a single god, but rather multiple deities including Bel-Marduk and Baalshamin. She also contends that the reason people did not mention the names of such deities, was to signify respect. 


The Palmyra story is reminicent of the Unknown God or Agnostos Theos mentioned in the New Testament. According to the Book of Acts, when the apostle Paul visited Athens, he saw an altar with an inscription dedicated to the ‘unknown god’, and, when invited to speak to the Athenian elite at the Areopagus, he contrasted this “unknown god” with his own.


To some, the attempt to wipe out the “idolatry” of ‘infidels,’ implies severe psychological dysfunction and a hysterical, defensive, need to rid the world of any knowledge of the very existence of earlier times to induce, and reinforce, what some have termed collective amnesia (“Fighting to Forget,” by Martin Ruggles, Atlantis Rising Magazine #113).


Our world today, it has been argued, is the product of a series of forgotten catastrophes. Like the ancient priests of Sais, whose story to the Greek lawgiver Solon, is the basis of Plato’s account of Atlantis, modern ‘catastrophists’ tell us that the story of humanity is a cycle of great ascents, followed by cataclysmic falls, and ensuing great forgetings—also known as ‘amnesia.’ Palmyra was not the first or the last time that one religion has tried to repress another, but it may have been the first where the attempt was put on display in real time for the entire world see.

AR #111

Catastrophism Reconsidered

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Strabo’s Temple of Poseidon Said Found

Austrian and Greek archaeologists think they have found the fabled temple of Temple of Samian Poseidon mentioned by an ancient Greek historian in southern Greece. In Geographica, his encyclopedia, Strabo wrote of a sanctuary to the sea god and an important center of identity for the ancient city of Samikon (also known as Samicum), which he said dated from 700 to 480 BCE.

Early in October of 2022 archaeologists located what they believe is the temple foundation which is 31 feet wide. They also found fragments of its laconic roof and a marble perirrhanterion (water basin used for rituals) confirming that the building dates to the archaic period. The team also discovered other architectural features typically found in ancient temples, including a pronaos (vestibule) and two inner rooms—one of which is a cella, filled with “a dense layer of tiles.”


According to Plato, the central temple of Atlantis was also dedicated to Poseidon, albeit, around 9000 years earlier. Although he described the temple in some detail, Plato told of only one ritual activity that took place there with ceremonial regularity. In the Kritias, he wrote that the ten Atlantean rulers, representing various regions within their imperial network, gathered in the Temple of Poseidon alternately every fifth and sixth year—to honor the sacred numerals of male and female energy, respectively—during the late afternoon of a particular holy day. Alone and without the assistance of priests or advisors, they “consulted on matters of mutual interest”; i.e., the diplomatic, commercial and military concerns that concerned the empire primarily.

AR #129

Ancient Temple of the Stars

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The Sound of Martian Dust Devils

When the rover Perseverance landed on Mars, it was equipped with the first working microphone on the planet’s surface. Scientists have used it to make the first-ever audio recording of an extraterrestrial whirlwind.

The study was published in Nature Communications by planetary scientist Naomi Murdoch and a team of researchers at the National Higher French Institute of Aeronautics and Space and NASA. Roger Wiens, professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences in Purdue University’s College of Science, leads the instrument team that made the discovery. He is the principal investigator of Perseverance’s SuperCam, a suite of tools that comprise the rover’s “head” that includes advanced remote-sensing instruments with a wide range of spectrometers, cameras and the microphone (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35100-z).


“We can learn a lot more using sound than we can with some of the other tools,” Wiens said. “They take readings at regular intervals. The microphone lets us sample, not quite at the speed of sound, but nearly 100,000 times a second. It helps us get a stronger sense of what Mars is like.”


The microphone is not on continuously; it records for about three minutes every couple of days. Getting the whirlwind recording, Wiens said, was lucky, though not necessarily unexpected. In the Jezero Crater, where Perseverance landed, the team has observed evidence of nearly 100 dust devils – tiny tornadoes of dust and grit – since the rover’s landing. This is the first time the microphone was on when one passed over the rover.


The sound recording of the dust devil, taken together with air pressure readings and time-lapse photography, help scientists understand the Martian atmosphere and weather.


“We could watch the pressure drop, listen to the wind, then have a little bit of silence that is the eye of the tiny storm, and then hear the wind again and watch the pressure rise,” Wiens said. It all happened in a few seconds. “The wind is fast — about 25 miles per hour, but about what you would see in a dust devil on Earth. The difference is that the air pressure on Mars is so much lower that the winds, while just as fast, push with about 1% of the pressure the same speed of wind would have back on Earth. It’s not a powerful wind, but clearly enough to loft particles of grit into the air to make a dust devil.”


The information indicates that future astronauts will not have to worry about gale-force winds blowing down antennas or habitats — so future Mark Watneys won’t be left behind — but the wind may have some benefits. The breezes blowing grit off the solar panels of other rovers — especially Opportunity and Spirit — may be what helped them last so much longer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Weir_novel)?).


“Those rover teams would see a slow decline in power over a number of days to weeks, then a jump. That was when wind cleared off the solar panels,” Wiens said.


The lack of such wind and dust devils in the Elysium Planitia where the InSIght mission landed may help explain why that mission is winding down.


“Just like Earth, there is different weather in different areas on Mars,” Wiens said. “Using all of our instruments and tools, especially the microphone, helps us get a concrete sense of what it would be like to be on Mars.”  

https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2022/Q4/scientists-get-first-ever-sound-recording-of-dust-devils-tiny-tornadoes-of-dust,-grit-on-mars.html


AR #69

Sound as the Sculptor of Life

by Jeff Volk

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Why Atlantis Still Matters

By J. Douglas Kenyon

No one in the past century is more directly linked with the notion that Earth’s forgotten history has been punctuated by memory-destroying catastrophic events, than Immanuel Velikovsky.

No one in the past century is more directly linked with the notion that Earth’s forgotten history has been punctuated by memory-destroying catastrophic events, than Immanuel Velikovsky.

When the late Russian/American scientist’s Worlds in Collision was published in 1950 it caused a sensation, and brought down upon the author’s head a virtual firestorm of scorn from the custodians of the natural history establishment. Subsequent books further elaborated his ideas and inflamed the controversy. Here was a scientist of considerable authority suggesting, among other things, that Earth and Venus might once have collided, leaving a vast chaotic aftermath which could have done much to explain our peculiar his‘tory. For such arguments, Velikovsky was, ever afterward, roundly ridiculed. Surprisingly, though, many of his predictions have now been validated, and an entire school of thought, known as ‘Catastrophism,’ has arisen.

This Article is from the new edition of Watkins MIND BODY SPIRIT magazine


Among the claims for which he was ridiculed, but which have since been established as true, are: Venus is still very hot; rich in petroleum and hydrocarbon gases; and has an abnormal orbit. Other, now-verified Velikovsky claims include: Jupiter emits radio noises; Earth’s magnetosphere reaches at least to the Moon; the Sun has an electric potential of approximately 10 to the 19th power in volts; the rotation of the Earth can be affected by electromagnetic fields. Some of Velikovsky’s critics, including the late Carl Sagan, have conceded that he might have been on to something. A practicing psychoanalyst himself, Velikovsky offered unique insight into the psycho/sociological impacts of cataclysmic events. The psychological condition and case history of planet Earth is, he observed, one of ‘amnesia.’

As in the mythic tales of many traditions we, the victims of amnesia, are left with few clues to guide us through a maze of incomprehensible signs and images, while the incoherent fragments of a lost identity—the artifacts of forgotten worlds—haunt our dreams, even as the princes of the darkness, become the tyrants whom we permit to enslave us. Whether in government, orthodox religion, society, academia, or the ‘twitterverse,’ such figures find the light of recovering consciousness, a threat—best stamped out, nipped in the bud, strangled in the cradle, silenced, canceled. Should we be surprised to learn that those dark princes will fight to preserve the perks and prerogatives of their dim domain?


In Ghosts of Atlantis, my new book published by Inner Traditions/Bear & Co. I argue that we live within the ruins of an ancient civilization whose vast size has hitherto rendered it invisible. Remembered in myth as Atlantis, Lemuria, or other lost-world archetypes, the remains of this advanced civilization have lain buried for millennia beneath the deserts and oceans of the world, but leaving us many mysterious and bewildering clues.


Investigating the perennial myth of a forgotten fountainhead of civilization, the book offers extensive physical and spiritual evidence for a lost great culture, and the collective amnesia that wiped it from planetary memory. We explore the countless ways ancient catastrophes still haunt us. We look at the case for advanced ancient technology, study anomalous ancient maps, extraterrestrial influence, time travel, crystal science, and the true age of the Sphinx, evidence in the Bible for Atlantis and ancient Armageddon, Stone Age high-tech at Gobekli Tepe, the truth of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the Zep Tepi monuments of Egypt, mysteries of the Gulf of Cambay, and what lies beneath the ice of Antarctica. We look at extinction events, Earth’s connection with Mars, and how our DNA reveals that humanity has had enough time to evolve civilization, and to lose it, more than once.


Exploring the advanced esoteric and spiritual knowledge of the ancients, our book also shows that the search for Atlantis and other lost worlds is, in fact, a search for the lost soul of humanity. Drawing upon Velikovsky’s notion of a species-wide amnesia brought on by the trauma of losing an entire civilization, the book reveals how the virtual ruins of a lost history are buried deep in our collective unconscious, constantly tugging at our awareness.


The popularity of the movie Titanic, not too many years ago had Hollywood scrambling to clone the formula. The secret of unlimited wealth seemed to be at stake. Most theories of the movie’s success had to do with star power, and special effects combined with a good love story, but could something else have been involved?


Call it an ‘archetype,’ if you will, but the idea of an enormous, technically advanced, and arrogant world—supposedly impervious to danger—yet suddenly destroyed by nature itself and banished to the bottom of the sea, may strike an even deeper chord than most Hollywood moguls would dare to consider.


If it is true that our civilization is, as Plato suggested, but the latest round in an eternal series of heroic ascensions followed by catastrophic falls, it makes sense that we share a deep need to better comprehend our predicament.
Velikovsky offered a compelling explanation for many of the world’s pathologies. The cataclysmic destruction of a society, and its subsequent descent into barbarism, he said, would result in a loss of collective memory and, whatever new order rose from the ashes of the old, the requirements of self-preservation would tend to block the recalling of the former world.


At deeper levels, we all understand somehow, that, before the dawn of recorded history—our collective memory—we once rose to the heights, but still, we then plunged into an abyss from which we have not yet fully emerged.
Like the watery ghosts of the Titanic, we long to be awakened, but we dread it too, and that’s the problem.

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Sarcophagus of Ramses II’s treasurer unearthed

By Nevine El-Aref

To the south of the causeway of King Unas in Saqqara necropolis, the archaeological mission of the Faculty of Archaeology, Cairo University, headed by Ola El-Aguizy, stumbled upon the sarcophagus of Ptahemwia from the reign of King Ramses II, whose tomb was discovered last year in Saqqara.

King Ramses II s

Mostafa Waziry, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said Ptahemwia holds several titles, including the royal scribe, the great overseer of the cattle in the temple of Ramses II, the head of the treasury, and the one responsible for the offerings of all gods of Lower and Upper Egypt.

Waziri said the entrance to the shaft of the tomb at the centre of the peristyle court measured 2.2 X 2.1 m. The subterranean burial chamber opened on the west side of the shaft at the depth of 7 m. It led to a square room measuring 4.2 X 4.5 m, leading to two other rooms on the western and the southern sides.  These two rooms were completely empty. In the main room, he added, a cut in the floor on the north side was noticed, leading to stairs that led to the burial chamber proper which measured 4.6 X 3.7 m. 

El-Aguizy explained that the sarcophagus was uncovered in the west side of the burial chamber. It was directed south-north with an anthropoid lid showing the facial features of the deceased with crossed arms on the chest holding the Djed symbol of the deity Osiris and the Tyet symbol of the goddess Isis. 

The sarcophagus is decorated with the usual inscriptions found on New Kingdom sarcophagi, with the bearded head of the owner, the sky-goddess Nut seated on the chest extending her wings.

Engraved on the lid and body of the sarcophagus are the name of Ptahemwia and his titles, representations of the four sons of Horus, and the prayers accompanying them all around the body of the sarcophagus.

“The lid of the sarcophagus was broken diagonally, and the missing part was found in the corner of the chamber. It has been restored to its original position. The sarcophagus was empty except for some residue of tar from the mummification on the bottom of the sarcophagus,” El-Aguizy pointed out.

Courtesy of Ahram.org.eg

https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/476369.aspx

AR Issue #101

The Black Box of Imohtep
by Robert Bauval

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Does Covid Distort Time?

The passage of time was altered for many people during the COVID-19 pandemic, ranging from difficulty in keeping track of days of the week to feeling that the hours themselves rushed by or slowed down. In prior work, these distortions have been associated with persistent negative mental outcomes such as depression and anxiety following trauma, making them an important risk factor to target with early interventions, according to a study by University of California, Irvine researchers.

The study, recently published online in the journal Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, documents how pervasive the experience, known as “temporal disintegration” in psychiatric literature, was in the first six months of the pandemic. The team also found that pandemic-related secondary stresses such as daily COVID-19-related media exposure, school closures, lockdowns and financial difficulties were predictors of distortions in perceived time.


“Continuity between past experiences, present life and future hopes is critical to one’s well-being, and disruption of that synergy presents mental health challenges,” said corresponding author E. Alison Holman, UCI professor of nursing. “We were able to measure this in a nationally representative sample of Americans as they were experiencing a protracted collective trauma, which has never been done before. This study is the first to document the prevalence and early predictors of these time distortions. There are relatively new therapies that can be used to help people regain a more balanced sense of time, but if we don’t know who is in need of those services, we can’t provide that support.”


Researchers assessed results of responses regarding distorted time perceptions and other pandemic related experiences from a probability-based national sample of 5,661 participants from the National Opinion Online Research Center AmericaSpeak panel. Surveys were conducted during March 18-April 18, 2020 and Sept. 26-Oct. 26, 2020 with respondents who had completed a mental and physical health survey prior to the COVID-19 outbreak.


“Given that distortions in time perception are a risk factor for mental health problems, our findings have potential implications for public health. We are now looking at temporal disintegration, loneliness, and mental health outcomes over 18 months into the pandemic,” Holman said. “This will help us gain insight into how these common experiences during the pandemic work together, so we can better understand how to help people struggling with these challenges.”


The UCI team included Nickolas M. Jones, psychological sciences postdoctoral researcher; Roxane Cohen Silver, Distinguished Professor of psychological science, medicine and health; and Dana Rose Garfin, assistant adjunct professor of nursing and public health, who is now with the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.


https://news.uci.edu/2022/08/23/uci-study-examines-distorted-time-perception-during-pandemic/

AR Issue #130
The Riddles of Time

by William B. Stoecker

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Where Do Myths, Legends & Folktales Come From?

By Carolyne Larrington

The British Isles have a very long history, stretching back well before written records began. Much of what we might think of as early history is really legend – tales about the Druids, the story of Cædmon (the ‘father of English poetry’, who lived at Whitby Abbey) and the exploits of King Arthur for example. Interwoven with our understanding of history are the threads of myth, legend and folklore; these shape and colour our understanding of both our past and our present.

Myths are usually understood as stories about gods or divine figures. They answer big questions such as: how was the world created? Where do humans come from? How did we learn to make fire, or to smith metal? What is the origin of the gods? The term ‘myth’ may be used more loosely to cover whole cycles of tales, like the stories of the Irish gods or the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, dealing with Welsh semi-divine characters. Stories that explain where certain peoples come from are known as ‘origin myths’; the most important and enduring origin myth for Britain is the legend of Brutus, a refugee from Troy who sailed to these shores and slew all the giants who were then the only inhabitants, giving his name to the British Isles.


Legends deal with heroes, imagined as human or superhuman, such as St George, Robin Hood, or Hereward the Wake. Sometimes there is a semi-historical basis for these stories. Hereward was a real person, descended from Viking lords on the one hand and English nobility on the other, who led a resistance movement to the Normans after the Conquest. Legends usually have a close connection with a particular place, such as Sherwood Forest, home of Robin Hood, or Tintagel, where King Arthur is said to have been conceived, Stonehenge, or Dover Castle, where the skull of Arthur’s famous knight, Sir Gawain, was long preserved.


Folklore covers a range of beliefs, from the existence of fairies who dance in certain places when the moon is full, to the habits of the Loch Ness Monster, to the belief that witches can turn into hares and steal milk from cows. Many of our most familiar stories, of dragons, black dogs, kelpies or hobs, are folkloric; they contain motifs which are commonly found in other stories told across Europe, or they tap into beliefs that are widely held across the British Isles.


Myths and legends have the remarkable property of often being rooted in particular places, and yet their general outlines tend to be surprisingly universal. Similar stories occur all over the world, varying only in particular details. So, versions of Cinderella or the Three Men who went to Search for Death can be found in places as far apart as China, India, Britain and North America. Sometimes it’s clear that these stories spread through migration, and were then passed down by word of mouth across the generations – thus, quite a few English folktales and ballads made it to North America and are still in circulation to this day.


The explanation for these internationally shared tales may be that they are rooted in general human experience. Our shared biology and universally similar life-cycles, from birth, marriage, child-rearing, ageing and death, may generate broadly similar stories: about true love or the perils of raising children, or futile attempts to surmount the barrier between life and death. Such dilemmas and difficulties are common to humans wherever they live, giving rise to universal patterns in the world’s store of traditional tales.


Experts are divided about exactly how stories develop and spread from place to place, but it is clear that myths and legends have always had important roles in our culture. Short tales are crucial in imparting vital information or life lessons in a memorable form – think of The Boy Who Cried “Wolf”, for example. Useful lore is transmitted from generation to generation in a brief and comprehensible form. They explain why small children shouldn’t be allowed to stray near a dangerous body of water or why it may be a bad idea to go up into the mountains alone. Groups that know how to pass on such stories improve the life-chances of those who hear them, and those folk in turn pass on the stories to their children.


Traditional tales often hinge on ethical or moral issues, or they permit insight into the way other people think. So they insist that you should keep your promises – and should avoid making rash ones; that courage and perseverance will be rewarded and that the wicked do not prevail in the end. It’s not always the big, beefy hero that is lauded in such tales; cunning and quick-wittedness, associated very often with the youngest child, or with a poor person can solve the immediate problem and win the day for the hero.

Famous British Myths
The British Isles have their myths and legends, preserved in some of our earliest written records. The story of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who battled monsters and a dragon, probably originated in eighth-century Northumbria, although it was not written down until the early eleventh century. Irish legends of gods and heroes were also written down in the twelfth century or later. In Welsh there are heroic poems from as early as the sixth century; one such poem contains the first ever reference to the hero Arthur.
England’s most famous heroes are probably King Arthur and Robin Hood.

King Arthur
Arthur is a blended type of heroic figure. Some of his characteristics stem from a legendary Welsh hero who fought monster-cats and dog-headed men and who went off to the Underworld to steal a magic cauldron. Yet Arthur also takes inspiration from a British war-leader, mentioned in early chronicles, who led his people against the invading Saxons. Arthur’s first full biography was related by Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1138, but elements of the story were already widely known across Europe. In the mid-fifteenth-century, Sir Thomas Malory who was confined as a prisoner in the Tower of London, wrote down the best-known version of the Arthur story, incorporating into it tales of the Knights of the Round Table, and the Holy Grail. Malory included the ancient mythic ending, in which Arthur does not die after his last battle, but rather is borne away by boat to the Isle of Avalon. He will return to come to the country’s aid in Britain’s darkest hour.

Robin Hood
There are references to various men called Robin Hood in thirteenth-century records, though it is not until 1377 that we hear of tales of ‘Robin the Outlaw’ being told in the tavern. Legends about Robin and his men, clad in Lincoln Green, who haunt Sherwood Forest, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, are first printed in the late fifteenth century. Later still, Robin is transformed from a thuggish and immoral thief to a dispossessed nobleman in exile in the greenwood.


These two myths became very popular once again in the Victorian period. Both stories were mobilised for political and ideological purposes. Arthur, the great king who ruled over much of the west and whose knights battled evil, rescued maidens and sought the Holy Grail, served as a model for Britain’s imperial and enlightened rule. Wherever the British went, the myth suggested, they tried to behave nobly, to establish law and order, and to bring Christian values to ‘less civilised’ peoples. Robin Hood and his Merry Men spoke to ideas of a peculiarly English democratic tradition and independence of mind. Robin stood for fairness and justice, for a certain amount of distribution of wealth, and he hated the hypocrisy and corruption of the establishment: the evil Sheriff of Nottingham and the bloated and greedy churchmen whose treasures Robin regularly stole. Robin came to stand for the sturdy average Englishman, mistrustful of authority, but loyal to his rightful king, gallant towards women and with a marked sense of humour. Both these mythic figures had important work to do in the contemporary culture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

How Do We Know About These Stories?
British myths, legends and folktales have survived in all kinds of different contexts. Some – like the stories of Brutus or Hereward the Wake – are recorded in medieval chronicles that purport to be ‘actual’ history. Others were written down as entertaining tales in early manuscripts, and from there were put into book form once the printing press was invented. Still other stories were not written down until the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, when people captured legends and folktales that were on the verge of dying out; many of our best sources for traditional stories are to be found in late eighteenth-century books of ballads or in Victorian folk-tale compilations.


Myths and legends began to be recorded just as soon as humans mastered the technology of writing. Often the very first texts were hymns to the gods or collections of mythological stories that became organised into cycles, explaining how the world was created, how humans came into existence or why Death is necessary. Such stories are recorded in the Bible – the Fall, Noah’s Flood, for example – and in Greek myth. Hero-tales are also among the most ancient of story-types.


In contrast to these very ancient written sources, most of the world’s myths and legends have been preserved in oral versions, passed on by word of mouth from one generation to the next. The recording of these tales began only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when explorers, scholars and anthropologists became interested in tradition, and were motivated to learn tribal languages and to record with pen and ink (and subsequently electronically) the vivid and unfamiliar tales they were told.

Myths And The Modern World
Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries myths, legends and folktales began to be seen as the province of children. They could be retold in simple and wholesome ways, shaped in order to point up important morals and to recommend particular models of behavior. The King Arthur myth became a staple of children’s literature, and the Knights of the Round Table, in particular such figures as Sir Galahad or Sir Lancelot, were held up as exemplifying the ideal of chivalry.


In the twentieth century, writers such as J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and after them, Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, Philip Pullman and J. K. Rowling seized on the myths and legends of the British Isles to inspire new fantasy worlds for both children and adults. The Old English epic of Beowulf, the first dragon-fighter in our tradition, inspired Tolkien’s Smaug in The Hobbit. The legend of King Arthur and the Sleeping Knights features in Garner’s stories about Alderley Edge; he also transposes a story from the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi to contemporary Wales in The Owl Service. Susan Cooper melds together Welsh legend, Arthurian myth and the tradition of Herne the Hunter. Pullman and Rowling appropriate both English and wider European folk-tradition in the worlds of their novels: house-elves and black dogs jostle with giants, witches and fairies, talking bears and hippogriffs.


 These authors wrote initially for a young adult audience, but the children and teenagers that learned to love this kind of story-telling grew up to appreciate – and to write their own – fantasy of various kinds. From the Star Wars films, which depend on classic models of the hero and the princess, good and evil, quests and family identity, to the powerful mythological elements that underlie the work of George R. R. Martin and the hit HBO TV series ‘Game of Thrones’, the elements of traditional story have crossed over into popular culture. ‘Game of Thrones’ contains elements of Old Norse myth – the ravens and direwolves, the Long Winter and the wights. The tale of Atlantis is reflected in the history of Valyria, and Westeros has its very own King Arthur, the lost heir who must reclaim his kingdom, in the form of Jon Snow.


Vampires and werewolves, creatures from European tradition symbolise contrasting elements in human nature: violence and desire, beauty and horror, featuring in titles such as the Twilight series and Buffy the Vampire-Slayer. Also drawing on myth from Scandinavia is the Thor franchise, while other superhero series use similar tropes of hero and monster, re-tooling and modernising many of the characters, themes and stereotypes of myth and legend. They are staples of video games that are often set in fantasy universes and structured around the quest as a framework.

The Importance of Place in Myth
Alongside the grand figures of gods, demi-gods, heroes and monsters that feature in the great myths and legends of the British Isles, there are many less well-known stories that often adhere to particular landscapes and places. One such is the story of how Merlin came to magic the Giant’s Dance stone circle away from Ireland across the sea to form Stonehenge as a monument to the great Romano-British battle leader Ambrosius Aurelius.


Many famous historic sites of the British Isles have long and fascinating pasts, and have played their part in the events that have shaped the nation. But just as many – perhaps even more – are linked to myths, legends and folktales, from the great legendary cycles of Arthur or Robin Hood, to figures such as Wayland of Wayland’s Smithy on the Ridgeway. He was a legendary smith, the most skilled craftsman of all, whose brutal story of maiming and cruel vengeance is retold in Anglo-Saxon sculpture and poetry, and in Old Norse legend. Britain’s landscapes and historic buildings form the backdrop to the vivid and exciting myths, legends and folktales of our spoken and written heritage; stories that fascinate, astonish and move us still today.

https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/article/where-do-myths-legends-and-folktales-come-from

AR Issue #107

The Mysterious Meaning of Myths

by William B. Stoecker

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Robert Schoch Lost Ancient Mysteries

Special Collector’s Edition, Robert Schoch, Ph.D. presented by The Atlantis Rising Research Group

Explore the planet’s greatest mysteries with the courageous and renowned geologist who challenged conventional Egyptology with undeniable evidence of water weathering for the Great Sphinx, proving that pre-flood civilization existed thousands of years earlier than once believed.

  • 309  fully indexed pages
  • 21 chapters personally researched and written by Dr. Schoch (previously published exclusively by Atlantis Rising Magazine)
  • Huge collection of spectacular photographs, personally taken by Dr. Schoch and his wife Catherine Ulissey, and published here in full-size HIGH-RESOLUTION for the first time.

—————————————————————————–

Chapters include:
• Return to the Great Sphinx of Egypt
• Easter Island
• The Underground Cities of Cappadocia
• Gunang Padang
• India’s Ajanta Caves
• Gobekli Tepe
• Nazca
• Newgrange
• Tiwanaku
And many more…

Download PDF 309 pages, 8.5 x 11 format

Stunning Photography in High-Resolution!

The Quest for Lost Ancient Secrets
with Robert M. Schoch, Ph.D.

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Blood and the Grail

By J. Douglas Kenyon

“One of the most sacred Catholic artifacts ever,” stolen in June from a French church, has now been returned by the repentant thief. According to Britain’s The Daily Mail newspaper, a professional art detective recovered the relic, believed by the faithful, to contain actual drops of Jesus’ blood. Arthur Brand, a reputed Dutch ‘Indiana Jones,’ tracked down the object taken, along with other valuables, from a church in Fécamp. The thief, apparently fearing he was cursed for his deed, left the relic anonymously in a cardboard box outside Brand’s house. Dutch police, it is reported, are returning it to France.

When it comes to sacred relics though, the ‘holy grail’ is… well… the “Holy Grail.” And on that point, holy “blood” has different meanings for different people. In 1982 researchers Michael Baigent, Richard Lee, and Henry Lincoln argued that the real grail is actually a bloodline. That narrative from their best-selling book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, was later made world famous in The Da Vinci Code by novelist Dan Brown. While the former had enjoyed considerable success, it was dwarfed by the latter, which became one of the best-selling novels ever. Hollywood’s version of The DaVinci Code, directed by Ron Howard, would make big waves at the box office. To anyone familiar with the first book, it was clear that the second owed much to it. Both books claimed that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, with whom he fathered children, and that the resultant bloodline survives even now. Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln took their claims to court, charging both Brown and publisher Random House with stealing their material, but the court sided with Brown.


As for the actual cup, or chalice, used by Jesus at the Last Supper and revered by early Christians: in their 2015 book, The Kings of the Grail, researchers Margarita Torres and Jose Ortega del Rio claimed that a bejeweled onyx vessel on display in Leon, Spain, is the original chalice. It has been in the basilica there since the eleventh century, and the cup’s age has been officially certified as indeed from the period 200 BC to AD 100.
It is doubtful, of course, if other potential claimants to the title of the ‘true’ Holy Grail will surrender without a fight. Many in England still believe the true grail was left by Joseph of Arimathea, in the Chalice Well at Glastonbury. Similar claims have been made for Ireland and other locations. Nazi SS head Heinrich Himmler thought an Aryan Holy Grail was to be found in Spanish Montserrat.


Grail legends of the middle ages tell us the guardian of the Holy Grail was the secretive chivalric order of the Knights Templar. Initially popularized by Wolfram von Eschenbach, himself a templar, the story of Parsifal, provided what is arguably the most comprehensive and compelling version of the grail legend. In addition to revelations regarding the templars, Eschenbach also claimed the Holy Grail could be something other than a chalice or platter (he said it was a stone), and that the original legend of the Holy Grail came not from the West but from the East. Eschenbach was emphatic on the latter point, stating that the originator of the grail legend was Flegetanis, an astrologer from the ancient middle east, Babylon perhaps, who “found it in the stars.”


In the meantime, those of a more metaphysical persuasion argue that literal interpretations often miss the real point of the grail story, that it is a symbol or archetype representing the true self of a virtuous and enlightened individual. They would maintain that the serpent in the tree in the Garden of Eden was a metaphor for kundalini energy that, serpent-like, travels up the hu­man spine, activating spiritual centers or chak­ras positioned along it—the “tree of life”—before ultimately bestowing ‘gnosis’ and immortality upon him or her. Others claim the serpent was an actual human being of ancient times who taught forbidden secrets of the holy grail to humanity.


According to Templar scholar Mark Amaru Pinkham, writing in Atlantis Rising Magazine #62, “John the Baptist was part of a lineage of holy grail masters known as the Mandean Nasurai that originated in the East.” This lineage began its journey on the paradisaical island of Sri Lanka before traveling west and eventually settling on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in southern Iraq. For the Mandeans, Sri Lan­ka was the Garden of Eden, a notion that was spread by Templars, as well as some religions, like Islam, which also considered the island to be home to the “water of life” or Fountain of Youth.


Scotland’s Rosslyn Chapel, one of a few surviving templar churches, thought to hide many ancient secrets, is still identified by practicing templars as the Chapel of the Holy Grail.

AR #62

Quest for the Grail
the Sri Lanka Connection

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Brushing with Shapeshifting Microrobots

A shapeshifting robotic microswarm may one day act as a toothbrush, rinse, and dental floss in one.

The technology, developed by a multidisciplinary team at the University of Pennsylvania, is poised to offer a new and automated way to perform the mundane but critical daily tasks of brushing and flossing. It’s a system that could be particularly valuable for those who lack the manual dexterity to clean their teeth effectively themselves.
The building blocks of these microrobots are iron oxide nanoparticles that have both catalytic and magnetic activity. Using a magnetic field, researchers could direct their motion and configuration to form either bristle-like structures that sweep away dental plaque from the broad surfaces of teeth, or elongated strings that can slip between teeth like a length of floss. In both instances, a catalytic reaction drives the nanoparticles to produce antimicrobials that kill harmful oral bacteria on site.


Experiments using this system on mock and real human teeth showed that the robotic assemblies can conform to a variety of shapes to nearly eliminate the sticky biofilms that lead to cavities and gum disease. The Penn team shared their findings establishing a proof-of-concept for the robotic system in the journal ACS Nano.


“Routine oral care is cumbersome and can pose challenges for many people, especially those who have hard time cleaning their teeth” says Hyun (Michel) Koo, a professor in the Department of Orthodontics and divisions of Community Oral Health and Pediatric Dentistry in Penn’s School of Dental Medicine and co-corresponding author on the study. “You have to brush your teeth, then floss your teeth, then rinse your mouth; it’s a manual, multistep process. The big innovation here is that the robotics system can do all three in a single, hands-free, automated way.”


“Nanoparticles can be shaped and controlled with magnetic fields in surprising ways,” says Edward Steager, a senior research investigator in Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and co-corresponding author. “We form bristles that can extend, sweep, and even transfer back and forth across a space, much like flossing. The way it works is similar to how a robotic arm might reach out and clean a surface. The system can be programmed to do the nanoparticle assembly and motion control automatically.”


Hyun (Michel) Koo is a professor in the Department of Orthodontics and divisions of Community Oral Health and Pediatric Dentistry in the School of Dental Medicine and co-director of the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry at the University of Pennsylvania.


Edward Steager is a senior research investigator in Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Koo and Steager’s coauthors on the paper are Penn Dental Medicine’s Min Jun Oh, Alaa Babeer, Yuan Liu, and Zhi Ren and Penn Engineering’s Jingyu Wu, David A. Issadore, Kathleen J. Stebe, and Daeyeon Lee.


This work was supported in part by the National Institute for Dental and Craniofacial Research (grants DE025848 and DE029985), Procter & Gamble, and the Postdoctoral Research Program of Sungkyunkwan University.

https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/penn-dental-engineering-shapeshifting-microrobots-can-brush-and-floss-teeth

Atlantis Rising Issue #58
9,000-Year-Old Dental Drilling

Early Rays