Christmasology: The First American Christmas, 1622?

The Puritans and Quakers did not celebrate Christmas, objecting to its secularization and that December 25 was not the birth date of the Messiah anyway. The New Company which arrived on the ship Fortune were “adventurers,” and not religious pilgrims. There is no Santa Claus here yet.

On the day called Christmas day, the Governor called them out to work as was used, but most of this new company excused themselves, and said it went against their conscience to work on that day. So the Governor told them that if they made it a matter of conscience, he would spare them until they were better informed; so he led away the rest and left them But when they came home at noon from their work, he found them in the street at play, openly, some pitching the bar, and some at stool-ball and such like sport. So he went to them and took away their implements and told them that it was against his conscience that they should play while others worked. If they made the keeping of it a matter of devotion, let them keep their houses, but there should be no gaming or reveling in the streets. Since which time nothing hath been attempted that way, at least openly.

William Bradford Of Plymouth Plantation

From The American Tradition in Literature, p. 28

That Christmas is to spread the Christmas spirit through the less religious elements of the community, even and especially to children who won’t yet see the things in the gospels, is interesting in light of its non-Puritan origin or first instance on the American continent. Stool ball is a game like the English game cricket, an ancestor of baseball, and so, by divine coincidence, the first American Christmas may have included baseball.

Louie Louie: Rock Commentaries Selection:

Louie Louie: 1955 Richard Berry

 Written by the blues man Richard Berry, who performed the piece as rock blues in 1989, Louie Louie may be the best candidate for the first Rock song. The 1955 version rocks as much as the Kingsmen, and the lyrics are audible, after the fifties style that reminds of the Platters. A version by Rockin’ Robin Roberts from 1955 adds the comment introducing the rockabilly guitar solo, “All right, now you give it to ‘em.” (You Tube). The Berry performance at J. J’s Blues Cafe indicates yet un-mined possibilities for a Classic Rock version yet to come. Iggy Pop performed the song in Europe, giving the one lyric people usually know, “Me gotta go now” a political, suicidal and punk meaning, making this in a way the punk song, and continuing the tradition of protest against the obvious illiberties of our very modern world, like “America is filling the world with garbage.” (Granted, but Berlin is closer to Chernobyl, where the people have no say, and pollution is worse.) When the Kingsmen released “Louie Louie” in 1963 there was a fury of protest which included bizarre guesses as to what the lyrics, difficult to decipher, might be. Famously, the F.B.I., following the Indiana Governor (who in turn was following the gossip of girls and women) investigated the song for the supposed obscenities which outraged parents imagined that they were hearing in the garbled words of the song. The actual lyrics were written and recorded by Richard Berry in 1955, and recorded in a less famous but arguably superior version. The lyrics tell a love story in three parts:

Fine little girl she waits for me

Me catch the ship for cross the sea

Me sail the ship all alone

Me never thinks me make it home.

(Chorus) Louie, Louie, Oh, no baby, Me Gotta Go

 Three Nights and Days me sail the sea

Me think of girl constantly

On the ship I dream she there

I smell the Rose in her hair.

(Chorus, guitar solo)

 Me see Jamaican moon above

It won’t be long, me see my love

I take her in my arms and then

Me tell her I never leave again

Louie, Louie, (oh no, baby,) me gotta go

Louie, Louie, (oh, baby,) me gotta go

(Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC)

The song is not perverse in the least, but is in fact a rather simple and beautiful Jamaican love song. As will be addressed momentarily, it is about true love rather than the animal appetite, and has of course nothing to do with the perversions imagined by those complaining to the F.B.I. But first, something profound appears from reflecting on Louie Louie. It is written in the most common lyric structure of three verses of four lines with a Chorus in between, making up five parts, or six if the Chorus is repeated at the end. The chorus or refrain, the part repeated amid the stanzas, ought to contain the principle of the song, while the stanzas elaborate the principle by showing its unfolding in the particular. It contains a drama or story in the simplest way possible, abstracted, leaving a great many things out to distill the essential experience of the soul. In its dramatic setting, it is sung by a Jamaican man who has a girl, or, is in love. In his circumstance, she waits for him while he catches a ship aiming to journey across the sea. It is not clear where he is going, but the reason he goes may be how the refrain connects to the three verses. It seems to mean something like “oh, boy, I gotta get out of here.” The circumstance is an example of the content of what Carl Jung might call an “archetype,” indicated by a pattern common to the structure of myth and symbol in many, if not in every, culture of mankind in many places and times. The truth about true love, at least of one sort, is that the lover sets off on a journey of the soul that is compared to the sailing of a ship across the sea, aiming at the transcendent “other shore.” Sometimes the princess is found on the other shore, and this is a different kind of love. Examples are found in Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Midsummer Nights Dream (II, i, 126-127), and many other places. The pattern of land-sea-other shore, or “leaving and returning,” as Steven Rowe took this up,[2] is also found in the quest for knowledge, and is either the same as this quest or a natural image of it, occurring on a lower level in a pattern that is the same or similar. It is evident too in the journey of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. “First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain then there is” is a similar three part expression, borrowed apparently from Buddhist teaching, by Donovan. Five parts to the journey can be seen, if one could include the return across the sea and the return home.

In this case, though, our sailor does not seem to arrive at the other shore, but has an experience of missing her that makes him return home determined never to leave again. It turns out that the ship he caught is a single person sail boat in which he sails all alone. He apparently gets lost, since he thinks he will never succeed at returning home. So ends the first verse.

At the start of the second and central verse, our sailor, in despair of ever returning and thinking he will die, is found sailing the seas for three nights and days. This period of time is the same, for example, as the time between the crucifixion and the resurrection, or the time Jonah spent in the belly of the whale. He thinks of his beloved constantly, and has a hallucinatory dream experience in which he thinks that she is there with him on the ship. The experience is so real that he believes he can smell the rose flower in her hair. The near apparition might be called by Jung an image caused by that in the soul which he calls “anima.” The word derived from Latin simply means soul or life, but it has here a more particular meaning, such as that in “you’re my soul and my inspiration.” The lover, who has never seen any of the higher things before, sees this in the beloved. Jung is the modern authority on this, and introduced the idea, with that of the archetypes, into modern psychology.[3] He was attempting to understand the permanent structures of the human psyche and the spiritual nature of man that is the cause of the notable similarities in the products of the human imagination. He introduced an understanding of the unconscious deeper than the Freudian repository of repressed memories, a living source of myth and symbol, often emerging to compensate the one sided conscious mind. The anima is the feminine unconscious of a man projected in love, the cause of the numinous manifestation and exaggerated beauty of the one loved, as Aphrodite casts her aspersions. The corresponding function in a woman is called by Jung animus, after the Latin word for spirit, and so every love is a dance of spirit and soul. Animus is more the understanding of the hero, as knights would once perform labors for their ladies. Jung writes: Every real love relation consists in the woman finding her hero and the hero his soul, not in dreams, but in palpable reality.” There is, then, a knowledge of the things of love within the human soul.

In the third verse, he has not yet arrived home, but has at least found his bearings again. He sees the Jamaican moon above, indicating that he is on a rout headed home. He has resolved that when he returns, he will take her in his arms and tell her that he will never leave again. The conclusion is then something like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, who concludes that there is no place like home. The song expresses the things about the soul that might be involved for example in a man who leaves his beloved to play the field a bit before marriage, learning what he needed to, that is, how much he really wants his true love permanently. Yet the expression is anything but common. Through the symbol, the particular becomes an image that connects us to the universal human experience, through something like the knowledge in the human soul about itself. According to the ancient teaching, the soul contains knowledge, especially of human things, and if we try and do not give up, it is possible to remember or recollect all things,^[4] or to recollect the access to the contemplation of all things, in a certain sense (Plato, Meno, 81). This knowledge in the soul of man is both the cause of the images produced by the soul and of the numinous attraction that is characteristic of transcendent beauty.[5]

Finally, in an astonishing late note, The lead singer for the Kingsmen, Jack Ely, has said in an interview on the web that the song, or the phrase “Me gotta go,” is sung to a bartender on this shore, by one who was once a sailor, about returning to his love in Jamaica, in Rasta dialect out of affection for the land of his love. This gives the image a five part structure, and makes the song much better, with a successful crossing rather than an aborted crossing of the water, whether he is Jamaican or American. “Me gotta go,” or to sing Louie Louie, is to leave America, or to leave the bar or the gathering of gold here on the other shore, to set off for love and home again, and this, unconsciously, is the most essential rock phrase.

The supposedly obscene rock lyrics are actually a simple love song. As will be shown, when the soul produces a love song, it tends to expresses and uphold true love. These things are difficult to discuss in words, let alone in science, yet we cannot discuss music unless some effort is made. Love is of course different from the animal appetite for sex. It is a human thing, and tends to be disinterested in all others except the one loved, at least for a time. Hence the lover is called “true” or faithful and this sort of love distinguished, as a great blessing, from false love, which only appears to be genuine, and is characterized by infidelity. We, the lovers, surely note that the vast majority seem incapable of true love, though their lives stability depend upon love’s semblance. One astounding thing found in the present study of contemporary music is that, especially among the classics, the love songs about true love outnumber the songs about sex by ten or one hundred fold. Apparently the soul does not write much inspired poetry about the old rock and roll, but rather, writes about love, since this is where the human touches on the immortal. As Socrates tells Phaedrus, beauty is the only one of the eternal forms to be allowed visible manifestation (Phaedrus, 250 c). Even so, beauty must hide and be hidden (Herodotus, I.16). To see for example wisdom in the visible, would overwhelm our natures. This is surprising, and even a bit embarrassing, but as we will see, our study of the best music lyrics will become in part a study of love, and the things that can be learned from lyric poetry about love. As Socrates tells Glaucon, “Surely music matters should end in love matters that concern the beautiful” or “noble,” (403 c5) as the Greek word means both. And would it not be “the fairest sight, for him who is able to see,” “if the noble dispositions that are in the soul and those that agree and accord with them in the form should ever coincide in anyone” (402 d 1-3). It is extremely difficult for us to speak in prose, as distinct from poetry, regarding the things of love, and a prose writer must, like the interpreter of lyrics, beg allowance for a certain awkwardness. We must for example, speak of “lover” and the “beloved,” or the one loved, using a word rarely heard in American English except surrounding funerals. Our only apology is that if we could find less awkward words or ways to describe these things, we would. And we will try not to be too much like one explaining a joke. As Jung writes, in every love, one is more the container and the other the contained by the love, and to varying degrees.[6] The lover is naturally inclined to be faithful or to stay, while the one loved must be persuaded to stay rather than wander. Sometimes the male or masculine, and sometimes the female or feminine, is the lover, and vice versa, so that the attempt to understand love or any particular love is from the beginning very complicated. Yet in each relation, lover and beloved are recognizable. The male as lover is different from the female as lover, and so on for the one loved. Not all people do love, though most can inspire love in some other. Males who do not love see love itself as effeminate, while women who do not love use the things of love for their economic or household advantage. Love has its own morality, or set of ethical principles that pervade common sense, though none are able to give an account of why these principles are everywhere assumed. The study of love and justice, or justice in love, beginning with the things said in middle schools (that one is only “using” another, etc.) would be a worthwhile undertaking, though we lack the theoretical basis that would make the inquiry possible.

Throughout history, it has been difficult to distinguish true love from the mere animal appetite, since these two occur together, and are even mixed in varying degrees. Romeo and Juliet was once seen as a warning against the excesses of passion. There has always been a tradition that is unwilling to admit the distinction, and so there is a perennial conservative position evident in both religion and philosophy that condemns love along with sex as immoral. The princess is to shut up and marry by the convenience and arrangement of the kingdom. The erotics of Socrates, a study that takes the things of love quite seriously, was always questionably received, and nothing like this is to be found in Aristotle, or anywhere else in the tradition of over two thousand years of human study and writing. Augustine left wife and family for his priesthood. The Christian saints generally see love as a temptation away from the life of dedication to God, and it is only with the poetry of the Romantics and Shakespeare that there is an argument for the principle of the Song of Solomon, that love is the life of the soul in the image of God. True love is a rare thing, though it may occur more often than appears. One would like to think it is possible for each once in their lives, but it is more likely that is possible for no more than one in ten. Yet it is the truth of every love that does commonly occur. It is the participation of two in the Edenic harmony, the same as that entered alone and in fullness by the rarest of singular souls. Romeo and Juliet are like the two hands of a praying saint (Romeo and Juliet, I, v 98-112). Hence it is experienced as a divine condition, and the lover wishes that this joy would fill the earth, or that this love would appear everywhere. The agony and anguish of the lover is that this harmonious state is only temporary, subject to our mortality. Either it grows into something different, in the full partnership of the parents in a household, or it sends the lover on a lifelong journey to find again this lost harmony, and be a sending off through pain onto the solitary quest that is philosophy. Maybe it is sometimes both, though this seems unlikely.

When the highest inspiration hits the California Music scene, for example surrounding the harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, it is the inspiration to permanent monogamous unity, the lover calling the usually unattainable beloved to walk with them through life and forever, and the wonder of what might be should this happen. The examples abound, but some of the first to come to mind are Neal Young’s “Cowgirl in the Sand.” attempting to persuade her that she is old enough to take one lover and change her name, or Heart of Gold. What happens in a sense in the history of rock, at least in one strain, is that the liberation of sex leads the musicians to discover love. The pioneers are burned by the freedom of the women they seek, and this collision with reality nearly destroys them in some cases, but permanently changes them. But the natural love is the permanent love that is the basis of the foundation of the family, and so stands at the foundation of all political society, if each family is a pillar. The image of the living oak tree in the home of Odysseus, used to make his bedpost, and so it is here that the natural and conventional meet in human society (Homer, Odyssey XXIII, 183-229). The early song Who Put the Bomp asks who it was that put these irrational elements of rhythm into the music (Who put the bomp in the bomp shu etc.):

“Who was that man

I’d like to shake his hand

He made my baby fall in love

With me

The words, he says, “went right into her heart,” and made her say they’d “never have to part,” and continue to set her heart aglow.^[7]

Love is very difficult to talk about, let alone to write about, which is why no one does it, and a part of why the meaning of music is so awkward to discuss. To this day, the best theoretical writings on love are the Greek discussions, which assume homosexual love. Nowhere except Shakespeare has heterosexual love been discussed in any way comparable. Yet the discussion of popular music assumes a theory of love, and this can be outlined or introduced, as the topics emerge. Love pertains to the political or human rather than the animal part of man, involving the passions of the soul rather than only the appetites of the body. In love, the body goes with the soul, or the two move together. One is tempted to say that the soul draws the body forth. This is a great mystery of man. But from our earliest post-pubescent days, growing up as a fashion hippie of the sort that arose in the seventies, even while growing up without much of the traditional society and its limitation of sex to marriage, we always upheld, even as a point of morality, the belief that love, not appetite, justified lovers. We didn’t think of marriage, and no one we knew was married, but the equivalent of adultery for the adult was infidelity to one’s designated girlfriend or boyfriend, which was synonymous with breaking up, because it means definitively that they do not love you. This is in a way the natural opinion of common sense, even to this day. Even while sex is rampant, (if dampened by the STD), it is still common in every junior high and high school to uphold the distinction between the promiscuous, called “sluts,” and the ladies, who are at least more discreet, holding out on their treasures awaiting the persuasion of the male, the winning of her heart. Love has its own persistent and natural morality that is commonly assumed, and heard daily in the things people say, though no one can really explain the assumptions involved. The assumed injustice of infidelity is an example. One is tempted to say, though, that the world is divided into lovers and non lovers, because those “cheating” do not believe in the common assumptions about love and justice, and do not believe that truth is owed. Many love songs are courtship songs, calling the one loved to come and be together. These songs remind of the mating calls of birds, and can be especially beautiful in this way, as clues to the mysteries and mysterious details of human courtship. These may awaken the beloved to certain conditions or ways of life that are possible, or incite admiration. C. S. Lewis, citing Chesterton, writes, “Those who are in love have a natural inclination to bind themselves with promises. Love songs all over the world are full of vows of eternal constancy.” The promise is… “to be true to the beloved as long as I live.”[8] This seems as true today as in 1943, though for many, it is not so. One part of the drama is the triumph of love over the animal appetite for sex, which is indiscriminate, or not attached particularly to the one loved. This drama occurs in the soul and in life, and is visible through some very common symbolic expressions. One simple example will appear if we consider the early video game Donkey Kong, in which a plumber avoids obstacles and ascends levels of a structure in trying to rescue a girl from an attacking ape. The image is similar, or the same archetype is at work, in the story of King Kong. The ape is a part of the hero himself that he meets as if outside himself, and in every common marriage, the struggle for the male is in part to rescue the woman from the barbarity of his own appetites. The slaying of the dragon for the princess is a similar image, and if this work does not occur, happiness in the household will not be possible. It may be that there is a natural hierarchy of the parts of the soul, and a corresponding natural hierarchy of the priorities of human life. So the passion of the plumber is a part of the very “passion” that is behind the genuine marriages, uniting the couples at the founding of families more permanent than those based on more transitory motives. It is on these marriages that the health and stability of the republic, and the strength of the economy, depends. Even the tradition of courtly love failed to appreciate the significance of love to marriage, because marriage was then so highly conventional that it almost never had anything to do with love. To true love, marriage is the assumed goal, but the conventions are indeed secondary. What occurred, though, is that the breakdown of the traditional morality that secured marriage and family was precursor to a divorce rate of over half the population. Nor can our education, concerned only with science and economically useful technology, prepare our characters so that our loves are more permanent. Traditional marriage was like a trellis or buttress that held families together through the tough times, though admittedly it seems to have been too frequent that the households were private despotisms It is not clear, though, whether any society can survive such a circumstance– it has literally never occurred before, even in the worst degeneration of the old Roman empire, and this we hardly notice. As we accepted the appetites, and lost contact with the symbols and images that take us “higher,” the diffuse tendencies of the appetites destroyed the traditional family.

Yet it is astonishing to consider how often the most popular songs uphold the true and lasting love that is the reason for the teaching of monogamy, that we ought have only one beloved with whom we share even our bodies and natural appetites. So many blues songs are about the pain of the lover at the infidelity of the beloved that if one were to judge from the lasting music of the sixties, he would hardly be able to tell that there was such a theme as “free love.” Consider for example The Kinks “All Day and All of the Night,” which begins by shocking the sixties with a date after hours, but soon rises to “I believe that You and me’d last forever/ Oh yea, all day, and night I’m yours, leave me never.” Cream’s “What you gonna do” off Disraeli Gears, or better yet, the many songs of Led Zeppelin based on the old blues songs written from the agony of the lover, such as “Heartbreaker,” “Communication Breakdown,” “Dazed and Confused,” etc…The agony of the lover is the tragic obverse of the assumption of love that leads to the promises of courtship: The experience of the Edenic harmony carries with it the desire that it continue forever, and hence the desire for immortality, though it is first a desire not to live forever, but to be with the beloved forever. Consummation solidifies the attachment, so that separation disturbs the soul itself. Even songs like “Foxy Lady” and “Let Me Stand Next To Your Fire,” where the rock energy is an expression of the goal of sex, ends up saying she’s “got to be all mine,” and “let me stand next to your fire” means something more than intercourse. He wants to be warmed by her hotness, as our more contemporary slang would put it, but this is also to be made alive by her beauty by being near to it. The blues expresses, and helps us to live with, the otherwise inexpressible anguish that can come with love, shared as the somewhat universal experience of our fellows as well, in the blues and in the sad ballads. Similarly, as in the song “Thank You,” it is the lasting love that inspires the most beautiful poetry. “God only knows what I’d be without you,” is the Brian Wilson song McCartney calls his favorite of all songs. The theme can be heard in nearly every love song, calling the one loved to be faithful and true in love. The rock stars seem a bit embarrassed at the beauty of their love songs, somewhat, as it sometimes seems to me, as Plant was embarrassed before Page, and tried to hide the high classical beauty of his lyrics. He seems to get away with it because Page cares more about the sounds, and will tolerate the good so long as it is deep. Somewhat like the majority in matters of romantic fidelity and justice, most music assumes the things also upheld by common sense, on which the sexual revolution quickly finds its limit. The soul sings not about sex but about love, and love has a nature, or is a certain way according to nature. (I have just heard “Take it on the Run” on our local classic rock station, another example). The list is long, and the examples countless, new and old, while the songs about sex are for the most part transitory, and among classics, rare. The heart sings the song of hearts, even when free to sing rather the song of the body and its rhythms, so that the songs which become popular and lasting are or tend to be those which speak to the hearts of the millions. That a true lover would not leave his love to care for their child alone, nor conversely sleep with the neighbor and have her beloved raise the offspring surreptitiously, need not be said, but is assumed. For all our biological-based psychology about reproductive drives and genetic advantage, it is entirely plausible that the things of love are natural to the human soul, and of primary importance in the founding of happy families. The liberation of the passions and the rhythms of sex seem to have coincided with a near genuine cult of love among the poets: “the lovers will rise up (Cohen);” Children of the sun begin to awake (Led Zeppelin).” It is as though the tradition had become ossified, and it was needed to “Rock the ground whereon these sleepers be.”^[9]

Chivalry and Russofascism

Notes; Essay in progress [any thoughts?]

Medieval chivalry fits together the spiritual and the martial or political- in the way that these two do fit together- by analogy. The conjunction of Christian and martial virtues is formed in the brief Christian period of the empire, 313-476 A. D. Arthur occurs long before Charlemagne, just at the end of the Roman empire when Britain had been separated from ancient Rome, and the “Dark Age” descends onto the area that was in Europe of what was the western Roman empire. Prior to Constantine, the Roman knights were not Christian, and medieval chivalry as Christian developed especially in Christian Britain, on the fringes of the empire. Chivalry occurs as one way of fitting together the spiritual and the political. The spiritual things of the light in man are joined to martial virtue, resulting in “ethical” virtue. Direct theoretical and practical wisdom seem to be replaced by loyalty and obedience, suitable to the spirited and honor seeking part of the soul. Ethical virtue is related to the virtues of the mind by analogy- and so St. George slays the dragon and frees the maiden, somewhat as does the soul ascending past the fear of death out of the cave prison or muddy vesture of decay. Justice, Courage, liberality, magnanimity and moderation or chastity are assumed in the meaning of what is honorable. The oppressed are protected from the strong by the martial virtue of those genuinely best, a natural aristoi.

Our argument will be that Dugin in his Russian-ism advocates tyranny and not aristocracy or chivalry, that the regime and orders are those of a beast and not our image of the best of medieval knights. Apparently, this needs to be said. The Russian argument presents all alternatives to the vices of “democracy” as aristocratic or noble, failing to distinguish the 6 or 7 kinds of regime, and establishing tyranny- a vast degeneration from democracy or the democratic republic.*

But the analogy leads to materialization, and then they literally try to take Jerusalem. In the Revelation, there are no earthly armies battling the beast with Jesus, but 10, 000 of his saints returned. Empire itself- including any Christian, “Judeo-Christian” or Abrahimic empire appears in light of the Babylon of Daniel- as a series of beasts.

The term “chivalry” derives from the Old French term chevalerie, which can be translated as “horse soldiery”.[Note 1] Originally, the term referred only to horse-mounted men, from the French word for horse, cheval, but later it became associated with knightly ideals. Cavalry are few, infantry many. The cavalry are those of the oligarchs, the money seekers, who had the leisure for education- martial and music. The poor cannot afford a horse. Of these are drawn the best of the police and soldiers upholding the nation in domestic and foreign matters.

Largesse or Liberality: generosity was part of a noble quantity. According to Alan of Lille, largesse was not just a simple matter of giving away what he had, but “Largitas in a man caused him to set no store on greed or gifts, and to have nothing but contempt for bribes.”[39]

Mercy to defeated enemies is a part of chivalry. War is not to enact vengeance but to prevent oppression, or the violation of rights the government is obliged to protect- though they had kings, then.

Wiki: “According to William Manchester, General Douglas MacArthur was a chivalric warrior who fought a war with the intention to conquer the enemy, completely eliminating their ability to strike back, then treated them with the understanding and kindness due their honour and courage. One prominent model of his chivalrous conduct was in World War II and his treatment of the Japanese at the end of the war. MacArthur’s model provides a way to win a war with as few casualties as possible and how to get the respect of the former enemy after the occupation of their homeland.^[70] On May 12, 1962, MacArthur gave a famous speech in front of the cadets of United States Military Academy at West Point by referring to a great moral code, the code of conduct and chivalry, when emphasizing duty, honour, and country.^[71]“

Chivalry does not harm civilians, defeated opponents, and protects the honor of ladies-i.e., women, and of course children. The murder and rape occurring in Ukraine betrays the lack or anything but appearance in the use of the human to cover the beast of tyranny. The terror of limitless cruelty is simply used for what appears a tactical advantage to the cold calculator, but is not even cruelty well used, and will seal the defeat of these.

The ideas of chivalry are summarized in three medieval works: the anonymous poem Ordene de chevalerie, which tells the story of how Hugh II of Tiberias was captured and released upon his agreement to show Saladin (1138–1193) the ritual of Christian knighthood;…

…[15] the Libre del ordre de cavayleria, written by Ramon Llull (1232–1315), from Majorca, whose subject is knighthood;[16] and the Livre de Chevalerie of Geoffroi de Charny (1300–1356), which examines the qualities of knighthood, emphasizing prowess.[17]

Kenelm Henry Digby wrote his The Broad-Stone of Honour for this purpose, offering the definition: ‘Chivalry is only a name for that general spirit or state of mind which disposes men to heroic actions, and keeps them conversant with all that is beautiful and sublime in the intellectual and moral world’.

The inspiration by the feminine beautiful to the masculine noble is how love inspires cultivates and perfects the virtues by nature.

Chivalry! – why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection – the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant – Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword.

—Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (1820)

Cavalry are few, infantry many. The cavalry are those of the oligarchs, the money seekers, who had the leisure for education- martial and music. The poor cannot afford a horse. Of these are drawn the best of the police and soldiers upholding the nation in domestic and foreign.

These are those who lay down their lives for their friends every time they punch the clock- Those who are superior to, or in struggle with, the fear of death, etc, and they conquer this, and the enemy by the way.

Russia had Cossacks, and even a noble prince or two, but did not have medieval chivalry as this developed in Europe.

* The pre- Socratics distinguish government by the one, few and many, as in Herodotus. Plato, Aristotle and the Socratic thinkers distinguish 6, dividing the three according to whether the ruling body aims at the common good or the advantage of the stronger ruling element. so these are 1) Of the one, kingship and tyranny, Of the few, Aristocracy and oligarchy, and 3) of the many, democracy and a form called “polity,” or constitutional democracy.

Though these are first the orderings of single cities, they are also the archetypes of the city and soul, and so pertain to politics in the nations as well, if in a qualified way and a wider dimension. Hereditary aristocracy is a derived meaning of the true word, which simply means the rule of the best. Election is of the best, and mixes aristocracy with democracy and the Athenian choice by lot is a degeneration.

In Plutarch’s Lycurgus, we see an example of nobility in war in the laws of Sparta. Plutarch writes:

After they had routed the enemy, they pursued him until they were well assured of the victory, and then they sounded the retreat, thinking it base and unworthy of a Grecian people to cut men to pieces who had given up and abandoned all resistance. This manner of dealing with their enemies did not only show magnanimity, but was politic, too; for knowing that they killed only those who made resistance,and gave quarter to the rest, men generally thought it their best way to consult their safety by flight.”

Dryden ed p. 67

Iris, by RWillowfish from /Cats

Andy Luff, Twitter:

Otters hold hands whilst they are sleeping on the surface of the sea. This stops them from being separated from one another when the tidal currents are strong.

Lisa Willowfish:

Iris #’s 1- 8

   This series is especially stunning with the photos. It shows the purpose of abstract art, as it shows not only the sight seen, but the soul seeing the sight- as with Van Gogh and Picaso’s Guernica.

Lisa RWillowfish

@lisa63artist

Lisa RWillowfish

@lisa63artist

Lisa RWillowfish

@lisa63artist

Lisa RWillowfish

@lisa63artist

Lisa RWillowfish

@lisa63artist

Lisa RWillowfish

@lisa63artist

Lisa RWillowfish

@lisa63artist

St George: Wiki Excerpt

Saint George and the Dragon

Miniature from a 13th-century Passio Sancti Georgii (Verona)

Main article: Saint George and the Dragon

The legend of Saint George and the Dragon was first recorded in the 11th century, in a Georgian source. It reached Catholic Europe in the 12th century. In the Golden Legend, by 13th-century Archbishop of Genoa Jacobus da Varagine, George’s death was at the hands of Dacian, and about the year 287.^[27]

Saint George Killing the Dragon, 1434/35, by Bernat Martorell

 

   The tradition tells that a fierce dragon was causing panic at the city of Silene, Libya, at the time Saint George arrived there. In order to prevent the dragon from devastating people from the city, they gave two sheep each day to the dragon, but when the sheep were not enough they were forced to sacrifice humans instead of the two sheep. The human to be sacrificed was elected by the city’s own people and that time the king’s daughter was chosen to be sacrificed but no one was willing to take her place. Saint George saved the girl by slaying the dragon with a lance. The king was so grateful that he offered him treasures as a reward for saving his daughter’s life, but Saint George refused it and instead he gave these to the poor. The people of the city were so amazed at what they had witnessed that they became Christians and were all baptized.^[28]

   The Golden Legend offered a historicised narration of George’s encounter with a dragon. This account was very influential and it remains the most familiar version in English owing to William Caxton‘s 15th-century translation.^[29]

   In the medieval romances, the lance with which Saint George slew the dragon was called Ascalon, after the Levantine city of Ashkelon, today in Israel. The name Ascalon was used by Winston Churchill for his personal aircraft during World War II, according to records at Bletchley Park.^[30] In Sweden, the princess rescued by Saint George is held to represent the kingdom of Sweden, while the dragon represents an invading army.

Excerpt II:

Veneration

History

The martyrdom of Saint George, by Paolo Veronese, 1564

 

   A titular church built in Lydda during the reign of Constantine the Great (reigned 306–37) was consecrated to “a man of the highest distinction”, according to the church history of Eusebius; the name of the titulus “patron” was not disclosed, but later he was asserted^{[by whom?]} to have been George.

   The veneration of George spread from Syria Palaestina through Lebanon to the rest of the Byzantine Empire—though the martyr is not mentioned in the Syriac Breviarium^[17]—and the region east of the Black Sea. By the 5th century, the veneration of Saint George had reached the Christian Western Roman Empire, as well: in 494, George was canonized as a saint by Pope Gelasius I, among those “whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to [God].”

The early cult of the saint was localized in Diospolis (Lydda), in Palestine. The first description of Lydda as a pilgrimage site where George’s relics were venerated is De Situ Terrae Sanctae by the archdeacon Theodosius, written between 518 and 530. By the end of the 6th century, the center of his veneration appears to have shifted to Cappadocia. The Life of Saint Theodore of Sykeon, written in the 7th century, mentions the veneration of the relics of the saint in Cappadocia.^[35]

Notes:

    Hercules, too, rescued a maiden, a daughter of the father of Priam, Leomedon, from a sea monster, but then was jilted in payment, hence beginning the first Trojan war.

 

Xenophon on the Turn from Presocratic Philosophy: Memorabilia I. 11- 16

 Blog Preface

  At the root of our theoretical attempt to reset the foundation of psychology is the suggestion that we simply follow Socrates in making the turn from pre-Socratic to Socratic philosophy. Our effort is to redirect psychiatry within a new comprehensive context- as distinct from dismissing what has been learned in the attempt to imitate the physical sciences. We assume a narrative: That modernity involved the attempt to turn to nature for an account of the fundamental causes of things, amounting to a Renaissance repetition of the ancient Greek discovery of nature. But the methods and models fail when addressing the human things, demonstrating a fundamental limitation of our science. Regarding man, simply put, our psyche-ology, does not attain knowledge. It addresses accidents and symptoms, while making itself a servant to the baser ends that usually govern mankind. What we say is that the science of the soul is no such slave. The obvious suggestion- if there has been a Renaissance repetition of the ancient Greek discovery of nature- is that we also follow ancient Greece in the emergence of Socratic from pre-Socratic philosophy. The following account of Xenophon allows one the best access to a direct account of the principle shown in the Socratic turn at the root of a psychology that may do more good than harm.

The full original is in the Menu above, accessible by hovering over “Philosophy.”

III. The Second Part of the Answer of Xenophon                        (original, pp. 15-23)

a) On I, i .10 The Impiety of the Other Philosophers in Conversation

b) On I, i .11-15  The Objections of Socrates to the Conversation of the Other                                                 Philosophers

c) On I, i .16 Socratic Conversation

1) The turn of Socrates to the Human Things

2) That Socrates Continued to study the Nature of All Things

3) The “What Is” Questions

4) Conclusion on Socratic Sophia and Phronesis

[From p. 15…

   …In attempting to show that Socrates was rather worthy of great honor from the city, Xenophon distinguishes Socrates from those who study the nature of all things, now called Pre-Socratic. In the second of three sections of the answer of Xenophon to the impiety charge in the indictment, he turns from the lack of impiety in the deeds to the lack of impiety in the speeches of Socrates. The account of the speeches aims to show that the jury “erred in judging what it is not manifest how they knew (I,i, 17).” At least part of the error of the citizens is to suppose that Socrates is the same as others, those who talk about nature. Like the answer of Socrates to the old accusers in Plato’s Apology (18 a-24b), the account of Xenophon here serves to distinguish Socrates from the atheistic tendency  of the natural philosophers. This has been prepared by the discussion of Socrates’ daimon, which surely distinguishes him from the atheistic natural philosophers. It will be our aim here to follow out the theoretical section* of the account of this difference.

   Xenophon begins by saying that Socrates was always in the open, in the gymnasium or marketplace, speaking much to all who would hear, but never was he known to be impious in deeds seen or words heard:

…For he never spoke considering about the nature of all things in the manner of most of the others, as the sophists call the nature of the cosmos and the necessities by which each of the heavenly things comes to be.

                                                                                 (Memorabilia I,i,10)

Those who talk openly about the nature of all things are impious because the discovery of nature at the beginning of philosophy undermines the conventional beliefs in the mythic opinions of the first and most fundamental things, the origin or man and the way of the cosmos. Natural philosophy gives an account of the “necessities by which each thing comes to be” without reference to the gods, in terms of elements and motion. Jaffa gives a good example in his study of Lear: the belief that Zeus will punish human injustice by throwing lightening bolts is undermined by the account of the cause of lightening in terms of electricity. So is the belief that the care of the gods for men ensures that there is no disproportion between one’s just deserts and one’s fortunes (Mem. IV, iii,14; Hesiod, Works and Days, 238-285; Aristophanes, Clouds, 395-97). Men’s sight of the heavens and the earth is purged of the imagination. In the turn from the opinion of the city to natural philosophy, it is found that the gods have fled.

   In Plato’s Apology, Meletus asserts that Socrates believes the sun to be not a god, but a stone (26d). Socrates responds that Meletus has mistaken him for Anaxagoras. The atheism of the pre-Socratic thinkers is much like that of modern scientific “empiricism.” This seems to have emerged through a Renaissance repetition of the ancient Greek discovery of nature. It is the emergence of philosophy as such, rather than Socratic philosophy in particular, that undermines custom and is fundamentally at odds with pious belief. Yet, Socratic philosophy is a kind of philosophy.

   Upon the discovery of nature, it appears that justice or right is not natural, but exists only by human convention and agreement. Justice seems to be without trans-political support in the more general cosmos. Hence, Plato’s Republic. In his description of the discovery of nature at the origin of philosophy, Leo Strauss states:

   It is not surprising that philosophers should first have inclined toward conventionalism. Right presents itself, to begin with, as identical with law or custom or as a character of it.; and custom or convention comes to sight, with the emergence of philosophy, as that which hides nature.

                                                                           Natural Right and History, p. 93)

   According to Xenophon, Socrates, for three reasons, held that even to give thought to such things as the nature of all things, is madness. These reasons are two practical considerations surrounding a central theoretical objection. First, Socrates considered whether such thinkers came to give thought to such things upon believing themselves to see the human things sufficiently, or whether they were “roused from the human things to consider the divine things (ta daimonia) as leading them to what is fitting to do.”

   The question of what is fitting to do is more urgent for men than the question of the nature of all things. Do these thinkers then know this- what is fitting to do- sufficiently from the human things, or do they turn to the divine things in order to learn this? Natural philosophy is criticized for being useless, and for not seeking a good that is human (as is theoretical wisdom, Aristotle, Ethics, vi, 1141b 2-8). The natural philosophers  disregard the human things, which lead to a knowledge of what is fitting to do, knowledge of right action. It is possible that the natural things are called divine in accordance with the beliefs of the city. But again, one wonders if there is not some kind of contemplation of the nature of things that is not useless but leads to what is fitting to do.

   Secondly, Socrates wondered that “it was not manifest to them that human beings were not empowered to discover these things.” (I,i, 13). The evidence of this limitation of humans is that even the “greatest thinking” [Note 11] or hubristic, of these talkers did not agree with one another, but took extreme opposite positions on questions of the nature of all things. In this, they behaved madmen. For as madmen exhibit extremes regarding fear, shame and worship (some even worshiping wood (hule), so these talkers exhibit extreme opinions. Worrying about the nature of all things caused…

…some to believe being to be one, others, infinitely many, and some (to believe) all always to move, others never to move and some (to believe) that all comes to be and passes away, others that nothing ever comes to be and passes away.

                                                                                              I,i, 14

   The extremes of the madman regarding piety are analogous to the extremes in thought of those who give thought to the nature of all things. Aspects of the regard of humans toward the gods are thus set in analogy with thought, corresponding to the distinction between characters of the passions and reason. This pattern of the presentation of the central objection of Socrates points to the question of whether or not the mean regarding piety is likewise analogous to the mean in thought regarding the first principles.

   The third objection of Socrates is, like the first, a practical objection. Socrates considered whether as those learning about the human things hope they are led by what they learn to do what they choose for themselves and others, those who pry into the divine things (ta thea) think that when they know the necessities by which each comes to be, that they will make wind (Aristophanes, Clouds, 385-395; Hippocrates, lost fragment), water seasons and other things when they need these things? Or are they satisfied only to know how each of these things comes to be (I,i, 15)? Do the natural scientists seek to apply their knowledge of the causes to produce the effects of these causes according to need, mastering fortune and the elements as one obeyed by wind and sea? Or are they satisfied with knowledge for its own sake? Is the contemplation of these material and efficient causes, the theoretical wisdom of an Anaxagoras or Thales (Aristotle, Ethics, VI, 7, 1141 b 4-5), the same as that self-sufficient and thus satisfying activity which is the health of the best part of reason (Ibid., 1141 a 4)?

   Socrates own conversation was rather of the human things (I, i, 16). Through this kind of conversation one hopes to learn both what is fitting to do (.12) and to be able to do what one chooses for oneself and others (.15). “Xenophon in the Memorabilia (I,i, 16) links this knowledge to being kaloi te k’agathoi,” noble (beautiful) and good. Xenophon presents the difference of Socrates as that of one who is concerned with an entirely different subject matter than that of the natural philosophers. Xenophon is silent, though, regarding the commonality of Socrates with the other natural philosophers as philosophers. It will be helpful to follow the account of Leo Strauss in attempting to follow the account of Xenophon of the revolution or “turn” by which Socrates was different and yet similar, or the same in part, to those who converse about the nature of all things.

   By the turning from the divine or natural things to the human things, Socrates is said to have been the founder of political philosophy (Leo Strauss, NRH, p. 120, HPP, p. 4). [Note 12] Socrates is said to have been the first who called philosophy down from heaven and forced it to make inquiries about life and manners and good and bad things” NRH, p. 120). According to the most ancient reports, Socrates, after this turning, “directed his inquiry entirely into the human things” (HPP, p. 4). It seems that Socrates was induced to turn away from the study of the divine or natural things by his piety (HPP, p. 4). The account of Xenophon here (I,i,10-16) of the founding of political philosophy appears to agree with these ancient reports in ascribing the complete rejection of natural philosophy to the origin of Socratic or political philosophy.

   But Strauss emphasizes that Socrates continued the study of the nature of all things, even if he did not do this openly. While Socrates was always in the open, Socratic natural philosophy may yet be hidden, even in or through this open conversation. It is not itself open or apparent to all. Strauss reveals an excellent example of this character of Socratic conversation when, in interpreting the central objection of Socrates to the natural philosophers, he finds a piece of Socratic cosmology. Strauss writes that the list of the opinions of the natural philosophers would seem to imply…

That according to the sane Socrates, the beings are numerable or surveyable; those beings are unchangeable while the other things change, and those beings do not come into being or perish, while the other things come into being and perish.

                                                                Xenophon’s Socrates, p. 7

The Socratic cosmology is presented as the silent mean between immoderate extremes, analogous to the mean regarding fear, shame and worship neglected by the madman. Strauss states that “Socrates seems to have regarded the change which he brought about as a return to sobriety and moderation from the madness of his predecessors (NRH, p. 123). “Socrates did worry about the nature of all things, and to that extent, he too was mad; but his madness was at the same time sobriety: he did not separate wisdom (sophia) from moderation” (Xenophon’s Socrates, p. 7; Memorabilia III. 94). The cause of the turn of Socrates to the human things may have been his pursuit of wisdom rather than his piety.

   In describing Socratic conversation, Xenophon presents a list of questions which Socrates would consider. Xenophon, famously, writes:

   His own conversation was always considering the things of humans, what is pious and what impious, what is noble and what is base, what is just and what unjust, what is moderation and what madness, what is courage and what cowardice, what is a city and what a statesman, what is the rule of humans and what is a ruler of humans and what is a ruler of humans, and others, of which knowing would lead one to be noble and good, but ignorance (of which) is justly called slavery.

                                                                                 (Memorabilia, I,i, 16

   The “What is” question points toward the form or idea (eidos) of a thing and identifies this with its nature. Contrary to both custom and pre-Socratic natural philosophy, the nature of a thing is shown not in that out of which a thing has come into being (Memorabilia I,i, 12) but by the end which determines the process of its coming to be (NRH p. 123). Particular examples at their completion are those which most fully show the nature or class character of a thing. Because the kinds or classes are parts of a whole, the whole has a natural articulation, the natural logos. [Note 13] An example of a point of this natural articulation is the fundamental twofold division between the “beings” and the “things” in the conjecture of Strauss of the silent Socratic cosmology presented above. In Book VI of Plato’s Republic, there are two kings, one the king of the intelligible and another king of the visible.

   Through the human things, Socrates discovered a new kind of natural philosophy and a new kind of being. It is due fundamentally to this difference in object that Socratic philosophy differs from pre-Socratic philosophy, and from our natural history and science. Strauss states:

Socrates, it seems, took the primary meaning of the word “nature” more seriously than did his predecessors; he realized that “nature” is primarily form or “idea.” If this is true, he did not simply turn away from the study of natural things, but originated a new kind of the study in which, for example the nature of the human soul or man is more important than, for example, the nature of the sun (HPP, p. 5). Contrary to appearances , Socrates’ turn to the study of the human things was based, not upon disregard of the divine or natural things, but upon a new approach to the study of all things.

                                                                             (NRH, p. 122)

[In Plato’s Apology, Socrates distinguishes between divine wisdom, which belongs not to men but to “the God,” and his own human wisdom, which consists in part in knowing he does not have divine wisdom. There too, though, he claims not to know how to cultivate the human as well. It is strange that we should know the human without knowing the divine, but this is true in one sense, that the human is accessible, or, “first for us”.]

   Socratic philosophy presupposes and emerges out of pre-Socratic natural philosophy. Before turning to the human things, Socrates himself studied natural philosophy (Phaedo 99) Socratic philosophy emerges when the appeal from custom to nature regarding the causes is transferred from the direct inquiries of the natural philosopher into the divine or natural things, to be combined with the political concerns of man with right or justice. Socratic philosophy appeals from customary beliefs to nature in asking the “What is” questions, which are parts of the question of the nature of man and how men should live. [Note 14] The asking of the what is questions implies the attempt to ascend from opinion to knowledge regarding the nature of man. By asking what is the best life for man, Socrates discovered natural; right, and in this founded political philosophy. Strauss writes that ” the distinction between nature and convention which marks the emergence of natural philosophy retains its full significance for Socrates and for classical natural right in general” NRH, p. 121).

   From the inhuman madness of natural philosophy, not unlike the attempt to know “Being” directly in metaphysics since Aristotle, Socrates returns to begin from the things that are first for us” NRH, p. 123-4), from opinion, (NRH, p. 124), from [page 22] the visible looks eidos), or from common sense (NRH, p. 123). Socratic philosophy begins from custom or from the beliefs of the city (Mem. IIV, iv, 30-31; Aristotle, Ethics, 1096 b1-12), regarding the way of the cosmos and the things good and bad for man. This teaching of custom is embodied in “visible” poetic images for apprehension by the human imagination. Conversation regarding the most important things ascends from opinion because opinion proves to point toward knowledge and truth as an artifact points toward its original. Strauss states:

   The opinions prove to be solicited by the self subsisting truth, and the ascent to the truth proves to be guided by the self subsistent truth which all men always divine.                                                                                        (NRH, 124).

   But upon returning to the human things, Socrates does not hold conventional beliefs conventionally, as axioms taken as known from which to reason downward toward a conclusion. For example, he does not begin as do his accusers by assuming that they know what piety is and what Socrates thought, and conclude from this that Socrates is guilty of impiety for not believing in the gods of the city. Believing in the gods in which the city believes may not be the whole of piety. Socratic philosophy rather turns the opinions into “steppingstones and springboards to reach what is free of hypothesis at the beginning of the whole” (Republic 511 b5). Trust in the visible things is transformed into dialectical insight. [Note 15] Socrates cannot believe the conventional opinions as these are conventionally held any more than one could believe the shadows of visible artifacts to be real things (Ibid, 514 b5).

   Strauss writes: We have learned from Socrates that the political things are the key to the understanding of all things” (Thoughts on Machiavelli, p. 19. Also, Xenophon’s Socrates, p. 8). Socratic philosophy replaces the activity of the poet of making myths with the construction in speech of the best regime. On the principle that the political things are the key to the understanding of all things, the most thorough account of the good life and of the highest beings is presented by Socrates not in a dialogue on questions of metaphysics or epistemology, but rather, as in Plato’s Republic, in a dialogue on the regime (politea) which asks the question “What is justice,” and is answered by the theme of the best regime. The just and unjust are the central pair above which the good form has a what and an opposite. The Socratic cosmology is seen reflected in the nature of the soul, which is in turn reflected in the political things, and especially the articulation of the best regime. (501 b1-7; also 506 e1-507 a3, 490 b4-5; 484 c2-d6,540 a8-b1; 368c6-369 a1).

Conclusion

 Socrates held that seeing the things of which the what is question is asked would lead one to be “noble and good (I,i .16). Socratic phronesis and sophia are joined in this activity. In the Socratic work of unfolding and going through the treasures which the ancient wise men have left written in books, Socrates seemed to Xenophon to lead those hearing into the noble and good (I, vi .14). Socrates is one who by his thought is the cause or source of eupraxa, well-doing or right action (Aristotle Politics VII.iii; Memorabilia I, iv .15). By Socrates’ contemplation, he is enriched with virtue (IV, ii. 9), which is wisdom (III, ix, 5), and thus blessed. By the activity of his well ordered soul among his companions (Strauss, XS, p. 116-117), they are led into the virtues, or into the noble and good (NRH p. 128, Aristotle, Ethics, 1144b12, 1145 a1-2).

   Because Socrates goes beyond the beliefs of the city regarding the highest beings, we find again that he is in a way guilty as charged, and that Xenophon hides his account by hiding the wisdom of Socrates. Xenophon hides the wisdom of Socrates because the city cannot judge correctly regarding the whole of wisdom from the appearances which can be made visible to all. The citizens cannot see the difference between Socrates and the natural philosophers which makes his similarity with them an aspect of his virtue. Socrates brings conventional piety to its completion in his contemplation of the beings, his moderate cosmology, just as Socratic foresight is the fulfillment of conventional divination. The attempt to reconcile the city to philosophy is limited to opinion. The philosopher can be reconciled to this limitation. After the ascent from opinion or law to nature, “It appears more clearly than ever before that opinion, or law, contains truth…” (Strauss, HPP, p. 4) It is possible for Xenophon to veil his account of the philosophic activity of Socrates in an account given in terms of opinion because of the analogous relation of opinion to knowledge, or because the many opinions point toward the philosophic life.

Postscript on Modern Psychology

   “What is sanity and what madness” is one of the Socratic questions, showing the place of psychology within Socratic political philosophy. Psychology as a separate science was just emerging, as in the direct essay of Aristotle of the title Psyche, a study of dreams, and of course his Ethics, his “structure and dynamics” of the soul. He follows the fundamental division of the two parts of the soul, distinguishing “ethical” from intellectual virtue so well that it must be argued that the Good is still king of the intelligible, and that there is par excellence good and evil regarding intellectual virtue. The intellectual virtues are the measure of the practical and theoretical faculties disturbed in madness, not so that all the imprudent and unwise might be quickly drugged for the great benefit of the whole, but so that we have any scientific measure at all. The neurons and chemicals cannot provide this. The right functioning of these faculties is not the normal, though the symptoms, say, of what is called “schizophrenia,” or the symbols mis-produced in “psychoses,” cannot be understood without reference to the right functioning, and indeed, we say, the knowledge within. In addition to ethical vice, there is intellectual vice, understood in the collective shadow figures of literature and history. But that Justice is the good of the soul, and either is or is necessary to human happiness, while the unjust soul is in faction with its own true nature and within and with the outside world- this ground is shown most clearly through the best regime beginning from the three part soul, before moving to the two and the transcendent one. The three part city and soul: where three elements appear in a type represented by Monarchy, Aristocracy and Polity, seeking reason, honor and pleasures or compassion- is the basis in thought of the common model or archetype that connects political science and psychology. These arise in each city due to the dominance of the elements of the spirited pursuit of honor and beauty, the wisdom of its assembly, and the baser concerns of the many, as written by Plato at the opening of Book VIII of his Republic.

   Our psychology and psychiatry must now follow the Socratic turn, or the destruction of our civilization is likely. The very science that unleashed these powers has hitherto made it impossible for us to inquire into how these powers might be used well, even telling us that it is impossible to know anything about these matters most important to man, while profiting by the sophistic spread of drugs and first principles hardly better than what is available to the common man. By showing us the Socratic turn to follow the Renaissance repetition of the discovery of nature, Xenophon’s Socrates shows a way to subordinate the new technologies within a genuinely scientific pursuit that is appropriate to the faculties of man, rather than the instruments of science extending the bodily senses.

P. S.: The whole of the paper from which this blog is derived may be typed out from the original printed copy in the Philosophy section, available in the menu above.

Notes [to III, a] pp. 15-

Note 11: Under custom, it is impiety to think big or great thoughts, a hubris the opposite of moderation, punishable by the gods. But Socratic philosophy seems to follow a path that is both great thinking and yet not immoderate toward the gods in the way that the sophists or natural philosophers are, because Socrates did not separate wisdom from moderation (III, ix, 4-6).

Note 12 NRH will be used to refer to Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, HPP to The History of Political Philosophy.

Note 13: There is a similarity between the Socratic turn toward the eidai and the statement of John 1: 1 that the word (logos) was in the beginning.

*Taken from a 1985 paper for the class of Wayne Ambler on Xenophon, at the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas. The Socratic turn has also been described in “Philosophic Psychology” and the Introduction to Philosophy essays in the menu at the top of the page.

The Christmas Story: Re-blog

via The Christmas Story: Re-blog

The Dixboro Ghost: Commentary

   Here is a genuine ghost story for the Halloween season. Our Michigan local history of the Dixboro Ghost is told quite well by Carol Willits Freeman in her book Of Dixboro, Lest We Forget, and by Russel Bidlock, in a 1962 paper, “The Dixboro Ghost,” presented to the Washtenaw County Historical Society. This Michigan Pioneer ghost story, too, is especially astonishing in a number of ways that invite our musing and commentary in the harvest season.

   Among the reasons that this appearance or apparition is astonishing is that the man who experienced it testified in the Washtenaw County Court before the Justice of the Peace, in December of 1845, to nine separate apparitions between September 27 and November 6th of that year. In this, the ghost of Martha Crawford-Mulholland apparently revealed three murders- her own, that of her sister, and possibly of a tin peddler who disappeared when passing through Dixboro, his horse and cart left undisturbed. The ghost may also have prevented a fourth murder, that of her son Joseph, who would likely be in danger from her apparent murderer, James Mulholland. The Ghost herself seems changed- pacified- through the appearances. As she- the ghost of Martha- says in her final word,

I wanted to tell a secret, and I thought I had.

    Isaac Van Woert, the one who saw the ghost, was travelling to Ann Arbor when his wagon broke down, and he was forced to turn back to Dixboro. Isaac had come from Livingston New York seeking a life Michigan with his wife and two children. Even then, Ann Arbor was a flourishing town, while Dixboro seemed to develop less, and became a suburb, as if stuck in time. John Dix had founded the town, but was unpopular. Dix had left in 1833 for Texas, just three years after the brothers James and John Mulholland arrived in 1830. Dix and Mulholland together were assessed a 50$ “indictment” by the United States. And the Mulhollands live on the corner of the general store. James had a wife Ann, who had become ill and disturbed when her sister, a young widow from Canada, came to visit with her young son Joseph, then about 5 years old. Unknown to Isaac and his family, Ann, James and most recently Mary had just died in Dixboro, the pall of the funeral week barely passed. Van Woert saw that Mr. Hawkins had a building under construction, and applied for the work. Needing lodging, he was directed to Joseph Crawford, now about 15, whose mother Martha had just died, and whose house was then available. From where it is that Joseph is summoned, and why he is not himself living in his mothers house is important to our story, but it is noted that Joseph later married Jane, the daughter of a Mr. Whitney, who had recently bought property on the north side of Main street or Plymouth road. Joseph later bought and owned this property until 1864. As He is found by Isaac moving a load of stone, and may have been working in lots 7 and 8 on the Whitney house he would later own with his wife.

   The first time the ghost appeared, she did not speak. Three days after arriving, Isaac was before the front window, his wife gone to visit a neighbor, Mrs. Hammond, two “rods distant,” and his sons playing in the back yard, about sunset. Combing his hair in the window, where one might see a reflection, there appeared…

…a woman with a candlestick in her hand in which was a candle burning. She held it in her left hand. She was a middling sized woman, wore a loose gown, had a white cloth around her head, her right hand clasped in her clothes near the waist. She was a little bent forward, her eyes large and much sunken, very pale indeed; her lips projected, and her teeth showed some.

   She moved slowly across the floor until she entered the bedroom and the door closed. I then went up and opened the bedroom door, and all was dark. I stepped forward and lighted a candle with a match, looked forward but saw no one, nor heard any noise, except just before I opened the bedroom door, I thought I heard one of the bureau doors open and shut.

The courage and open mind of Isaac are noteworthy, as well as his rational and responsible proceedings, given human ignorance regarding such matters. It is interesting too that the ghost chose- or Isaac was able- to see and hear her, rather than for example Joseph, who would have been disturbed and not believed. The purpose does seem to be to make the matter public. A few days later, Isaac spoke of what he had seen, and learned then, for the first time that a widow Mulholland had lived there and had recently died. It is likely he spoke to Mrs Hammond, the neighbor, though it may have been to Jackson Hawkins. It does not seem he spoke directly to his landlord, the 15 year old Joseph.

   The second time Isaac sees her, still early in October, she speaks. she says,

‘Don’t touch me- touch me not.’

Isaac steps back and asks her what she wants She says to him:

‘He has got it. He robbed me little by little, until they kilt me! They kilt me! Now he has got it all!’

Isaac asks her then, “Who has it all” She answers:

‘James, James, yes, James has got it at last, but it won’t do him long. Joseph! Oh, Joseph! I wish Joseph would come away.’

   James had petitioned the court to become executor of the estate of Mary by having her declared incompetent. But as Joseph, and not James, is the landlord, this does not seem to have worked- yet. It is possible too that she refers to something else that James does have, such as money or gold, from the joint enterprise with John. It is not said how John dies, but throughout the story, there is no suspicion that he was murdered by James. It is possible that the event of the ghost prevents the plots of James from occurring. Throughout the appearances, it is as though the ghost were trying to protect her son Joseph, and figuring out gradually how this might be done. In the third appearance, she appears in the night in his room, and he does not know what hour it is, so it is as if he were awakened. Here she says:

James can’t hurt me any more. No! he can’t I am out of his reach. Why don’t they get Joseph away? Oh, my boy! Why not come away?”

It is almost as if she is calling Joseph to come where she is, out of the reach of James. And who is it she thinks of when she she asks, why  “they” do not get Joseph away?

The fourth appearance is an apparition that is of a scene past, rather than of the ghost herself, and includes a person then currently living. The testimony of Isaac is as follows:

   The fourth time I saw her about 11 O’clock P.M. I was sitting with my feet on the stove hearth. My family had retired, and I was heating a lunch, when all at once the front door stood open, and I saw the same woman in the door supported in the arms of a man whom I knew. She was stretched back and looked as if she was in the agonies of death. She said nothing, but the man said, “She is dying. She will die.” And all disappeared, and the door closed without a noise.

   As Carol Freeman relates, “The night before she died, she went to a neighbor’s house where she “fell into a fit of delirium” and was carried home by her brother-in-law. He was heard to say, “She is dying. She will die” (Freeman, p. 23). This neighbor is likely Mrs. Hammond, 2 rods distant. If Isaac has heard this from the ghost for the first time, the confirmation is astonishing.

   The fifth appearance is the first in daylight, at least since the ghost appeared in the window, still in October, “about sunrise.” Isaac testifies, “I came out of my house to go to my work, and I saw the same woman in the front yard. She said:

I wanted Joseph to keep  my papers, but they are ____.

Van Woert explains, “Here, something seemed to stop her utterance. Then she said,

‘Joseph! Joseph! I fear something will befall my boy.’

Van Woert concludes, “And all was gone.” The papers may relate to the interest of the ghost in the bureau drawer, though another possibility for this will soon appear. James may well have stolen the papers from the division of his property with his brother John, which the ghost would intend to be passed on to her son Joseph.

   In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Horatio also sees the ghost, confirming it is not one mind’s delusion. Horatio, a scholar, explains that the ghosts of damned spirits return at sunrise from wandering because they fear “Lest daylight should look their shames upon.” According to Puck and Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, these willfully exile themselves from light, in contrast with the Fairy sort of spirits, who “oft make sport” with the morning’s love.” Some Protestants believed that all ghosts were bad, while others did not believe in them at all, rejecting these with Purgatory. It is not clear what role the Dixboro Methodist church plays in the story. A R. Stoddard is a Methodist minister in Ann Arbor in 1839. But there is not yet a Church and preacher in Dixboro.

   In Hamlet, a ghost too reveals a crime, and there is similarly the difficulty of the protagonist to bring the murderer to Justice when the crime is hidden.

   The sixth appearance is again at night, at midnight, still in October. Again the room became light though no candle was visible, and Isaac sees the same woman standing in the bedroom. Isaac looks at his wife, afraid she will awaken, but the ghost tells him,

‘She will not awake.’

Van Woert testifies: “The ghost seemed to be in great pain; she leaned over and grasped her bowels in one hand and in the other held a phial containing a liquid. I asked her what it was. She replied,

‘Doctor said it was balm of Gilead.’

Then she disappeared. She does not say that it is this balm, but that the doctor said it was such. A balm, though, is not an oil in a vial, but an ointment. “Balm of Gilead” is made in the US from cottonwood trees (and so is similar to turpentine). In the Eastern Hemisphere, it is the original anointing oil, grown in the suburb of Jericho that would be Gilead, and this is a fragrant healing ointment. It is also the name for universal tonics or remedies as were popular at the time and sold by paddlers.

   The last three appearances concern the ghost’s own purgatory. While working at a bench as he did in the evenings, the same woman appeared, saying to him,

 I wanted to tell James something, but I could not. I could not.

Isaac asks her what she wanted to tell James. She answers,

‘Oh, he did an awful thing to me.

Isaac asks her who, and she answers,

‘Oh! he gave me a great deal of trouble in my mind.’ ‘Oh, they kilt me, they kilt me!’

which she repeated several times. Isaac then walks toward her, but she kept the same distance from him, as does a rainbow or mirage. Isaac asks her if she had taken anything that killed her. She answered,

‘Oh, I don’t____. I don’t _____.’

Isaac relates, “The froth in her mouth seemed to stop her utterance,” showing him what she could not tell. Then saying again, “They kilt me,” Isaac asks, “Who killed you,” and she answers: “I will show you.” Isaac then relates:

   Then she went out of the back door near the fence, and I followed her. There I saw two men whom I knew, standing. They looked cast down and dejected. I saw them begin at the feet and melt down like lead melting, until they were entirely melted; then a blue blaze two inches thick burned over the surface of the melted mass. Then all began bubbling up like lime slacking. I turned to see where the woman was, but she was gone. I looked back again, and all was gone and dark.

As copper has a green flame, we might consider whether lead or other metal has such as lead or arsenic happens to have a blue flame. The image of damnation, for murder, is similar to the melting of the Wicked Witch of the West in the movie the Wizard of Oz. The two men known to Isaac are James but not John, nor Joseph, but possibly the peddler selling the balm of Gilead. The only other man in Dixboro we know he knows is Hawkins, on whose building Isaac is employed, though it would seem strange if he already had met the peddler.

   In the eighth appearance, Isaac relates:

   The next time I saw the woman was in the back yard, about Eight O’ clock. P. M. She said, “I want you to tell James to repent. Oh! if he would repent. But he won’t. He can’t. John was a bad man,” and muttered something I could not understand. She then said, “Do you know where Frain’s Lake is? She then asked another question of much importance, and said “Don’t tell of that.”

Van Woert later said that what he was told not to tell pertained to the well at the corner of Mill and Main, near Martha’s house. The well has since been filled in. Frain’s Lake is up the road to the East about a mile or so.

   I asked her if I should inform the public on the two men that she said had killed her. She replied, ‘There will be a time, The time is coming. The time will come. But Oh! Their end! Their end! Their wicked end. She muttered something about Joseph, and all was dark.

   When Martha Mulholland had come to visit her sister Ann in 1835, she begun the courtship with John, and planned to marry him, when Ann, disturbed, told her a terrible secret about John and James that has never been revealed. Martha then attempted to break off the engagement and return to Canada, but according to the story James then threatened that she would never reach Canada alive. Still, it is difficult to explain why she would then remain and marry John, except that she was pregnant. A child Martha had with John had died shortly after his father. One does note that every person standing between James and the property of his brother has died untimely. One wonders about the earthly end of John Mulholland. Martha had been taken to see a doctor Denton at the University of Michigan in 1845, just before she died. She offered to tell the doctor the secret if he would then bleed her to death, as she did not want to live after revealing it. The doctor, though, refused of course, but never did reveal the secret, likely as according to the Hippocratic Oath.

   In the ninth appearance, she is dressed in white, and her hands hang down at her side, as though her doing were done. She “stood very straight,” and “looked very pale.” She said, “I don’t want anybody here, I don’t want anybody here. She then muttered words he could not understand, except occasionally the word “Joseph.” She then said to Isaac, “I wanted to tell a secret, and I thought I had.”

And all was gone and dark.

   The secret may be that James and John killed the peddler, and then killed every person who knew about this: John who told Ann, Ann who told Martha, Martha who told…  But does murder fit the secret which Martha would not want to continue living having disclosed? It is possible that because she told the doctor, and Isaac testified before the Justice of the Peace, the body of Martha was exhumed in January, as the public demanded when the testimony of Isaac became known. It was determined then, famously, that Martha was indeed poisoned, and by a person other than herself, though what the poison was is not said. Notes from this coroner’s inquest would be very interesting with the hindsight of 173 years of the progress of science.

   The well might have been checked for a bottle from poison. The lake, too could now be searched better, and the bodies of both Martha and Ann exhumed, along with that of John. Many records no doubt exist, such as from the lawsuits for slander- none of which were brought against Isaac Van Woert, who speaks quite carefully in his testimony. Isaac continued living in Dixboro for about two years.

   That the Mulholland property was sold at a Sheriff’s sale means that it was not sold when James left Dixboro. He may have disappeared, or even suffered a fate similar to those he made suffer. The alternative explanation for the appearance of the ghost is that it was part of a conspiracy to banish Mulholland “because of his mistreatment of both his wife and his sister in law.” But on the 1874 map of Superior Township, a W. and an S. Mulholland own property just east of Dixboro, so it may be that his wife and some children remained.

   Ellen Hoffman, in an article, “The Dixboro Ghost” in 3 parts [See Appended section], adds some details regarding James and John. The property division was made by John when he was near death and in failing health, and all was not in place when John died. John was two years older than James, though the arrived in Dixboro two years later. James had brought Ann from Canada, though her maiden name, the same as that of Martha-  is yet unknown. The Mulhollands came from County Monaham in Ireland, and later sold 40 acres to Samuel their father. Samuel petitions the court in 1846 to appoint his sons Sam and William executors, but he does not ask that James be so appointed. And these would be those names owning property east of Dixboro on the map of 1874. Hoffman finds the second wife of James as well….

A site called “What Lies Beyond” adds:

However, James didn’t leave the area immediately. In 1838, he had married Emily Loomis and when she died in 1847, the two had four young children, one of whom was only 4-weeks-old. Although there was no evidence to charge him with murder, or any other crime, townsfolk condemned James, then 34, for his greed and blamed him for Martha death. Because he was no longer welcome, he gathered up his family and belongings and departed Dixboro for parts unknown, never to be seen nor heard of again. In 1852, some of his former land holdings were sold at public auction.

In the end, Martha’s son, Joseph Crawford, inherited John Mulholland’s estate and by 1850, he was the only one of the principals with a connection to the Dixboro ghost still living in Superior Township. He was a successful businessman, married in 1855 and later settled in Livingston County.

[Note 1]

   Another reason that the Dixboro apparition is astonishing is the spirit-ology assumed by the ghost and the literary imagery. It is accurate, and includes things of which a carpenter and family man is not likely to think, while excluding anything false that would indicate it was the work of human contrivance. The wish of the ghost that James could repent means that the ghost has been freed from revenge or the inability to forgive, as though making it through purgatory. That James, or such a murderer, cannot repent, as though they had extinguished the light of their own conscience, here too has another example. In these cases, it is as though the soul itself of the community wished to purge the disturbance, as of terrible crime. In murders, bodies are said to rise toward the surface, symbolically true. Socrates too notes that crime of public significance is sometimes revealed by a kind of divine madness (Phaedrus 244d-e). Yet it is difficult to imagine one more sane in his proceeding, having seen and spoken to a ghost, than Isaac Van Woert.

Note 1: Author: Graveyardbride.

Sources: John Robinson, WFMK, April 29, 2017; Ellen Hoffman, GLakes-Tales Blog; Dixboro.com; Washtenaw Impressions, Washtenaw Historical Society; and William B. Treml, Ann Arbor News, October 31, 1972.

 

II The Dixboro Ghost: Psychological Commentary

   What Socrates says to Phaedrus is that love should not be rejected and favors given rather to the non-lover on the grounds that love is a madness, because there are some forms of madness that are a gift from the gods, and love is one, like prophecy, tragedy and lyric poetry. As translated by Hackforth, Socrates tells Phaedrus…

…When grievous maladies and afflictions have beset certain families by reason of some ancient sin, madness has appeared among them, and breaking out into prophecy, has secured relief by finding the means thereto [fleeing to the gods in] prayer and worship, and in consequence thereof, rites and means of purification were established, and the sufferer was brought out of danger, alike for the present and for the future. Thus did madness secure for him that was maddened aright and possessed, deliverance from his troubles…

   The event of the Dixboro ghost is quite like this second form of divine madness, as Isaac is otherwise wholly sound. Phrenology being then the fashion in psychiatry, these were brought in, and the head of Isaac measured. He was judged “bilous” among the four humors.

   The story does not concern Isaac personally, and so is a collective content in the sense of an issue concerning the community.

The phenomenon of apparitions of course occurs, and the question is whether these are what they seem to us to be, or as these present themselves. It is especially interesting when true things are revealed. In this case, it is very odd that Martha shows Isaac the scene of James carrying her from the house of Mrs. Hammonds- showing him an apparition of both herself and one then living, in order to communicate a truth.

   As in the case of Hamlet, the question arises as to whether the event of the appearance of the ghost might not be caused by the conscience of the king, or in this case the conscience of James Mulholland. This is at least an intriguing third possibility that allows us an alternative on the question of whether or not ghosts exist. That a specter is produced for Isaac showing a both James and Martha, and the specter here is distinct from the person of the ghost, is also revealing and intriguing.

   From Shakespeare, a teaching of Horatio on ghosts relates the cause of their trooping home to their beds in Churchyards before the approach of the sun, “for fear lest day should look their shames upon,” as Puck tells Oberon. Oberon explains to Puck, though, that they, the fairies, are “spirits of another sort.” The key indicator is that he often consorts with the dawn sunrise.

   The central of the nine appearances occurs at dawn. An ordering of the nine appearances, in groups of three, also appears.

   And in his Life of Dion, Plutarch writes that Dion and Brutus, both students of Plato, were alike also in seeing an apparition:

…by preternatural interposition both of them had notice given of their approaching death by an unpropitious form, which visibly appeared to them. Although there are people who utterly deny any such thing, and say that no man in his right senses ever yet saw any supernatural phantom or apparition, but that children only, and silly women, or men disordered by sickness, in empty and extravagant imaginations, whilst the real evil genius, superstition, was in themselves. Yet if Dion and Brutus, men of solid understanding, and philosophers, not to be easily deluded by fancy or discomposed by any sudden apparition, were thus affected by visions that they forthwith declared to their friends what they had seen, I know not how we can avoid admitting again the utterly exploded opinion of the oldest times, that evil and beguiling spirits, out of envy to good men, and a desire of impeding their own good deeds, make efforts to excite in them feelings of of terror and distraction, to make them shake and totter in their virtue, lest by a steady and unbiased perseverance they should obtain a happier condition than these beings after death…

It is interesting in comparison that our Isaac Van Woert is not unsteadied, nor is his apparition ethically inferior or jealous of his happiness, but rather learns top hope James will repent.

   The purpose of our strange holiday called Halloween is, or can be, to accustom ourselves to facing terrors, including the innate human fear of the dead. Gazing once as a seven year old out the back car window into an empty field, I asked my mother, “What if there was a dead body out there! She wisely answered, “It is not the dead ones you have to worry about, but the living.” And so in martial arts, we teach overcoming the fear of the dark, and clumsiness, too. We notice too that at night, one approaches not out of the artificial light, but out of the darkness.

Late notes: Here is a breakthrough in Dixboro ghostology: On a hunch, I looked up Independence, Texas, in Washington County, there east of Amerillo and North ‘o Houston. Dix went there from Dixboro, and Mulholland was his buddy. Strangely, I found a very similar Mulholland family in Independence Pennsylvania, with numerous similar names and dates. A James Mulholland also appears in the earliest records of the Seventh Day Adventists out in Iowa, from where the “Spectator” wrote.

Isaac Van Woert turns out to be the grandson of Isaac  Van Wart who captured Major Andre in the Revolutionary War, leading to the arrest of Benedict Arnold. Bidlack reports this, but there is no record of our seer in Livingston county NY. It is rather Livingston city, where Van Wart is from, and has his grave. In capturing Andre, Van Wart and 2 others declined substantial bribes at a crucial turning point in the Revolution. So something of the spirit of his grandfather may have allowed Van Wart to see the ghost.

 

Appendix A: Ellen Hoffman on Mulhollands and the Dixboro Ghost

From “Dixboro Ghost Part 3: Are We Related?

…According to the 1881 History of Washtenaw County, the Mulhollands were a family of weavers in Ireland, but their professions shifted to farming and other trades after arriving in the U.S. James and John Mulholland worked diligently to earn money to buy the kind of large farms not attainable in their homeland. By 1832, the brothers obtained their first land patent for 80 acres in Section 18 of Superior County, the same section in which Captain James Dix, the founder of Dixboro, bought in that year. In 1835, after more of the family had arrived from Ireland, James purchased another 40 acres in Section 20, a parcel which was sold to his father Sam sr. and where my great-great grandfather Samuel Mulholland jr later farmed. The description of this latter property looked like this, rather arcane for those who are not surveyors or deed writers:

 

Sw 1/4 of the Nw 1/4 of Section 20 in township 2 South of Range 7 East [Superior] in the District of lands subject to sale at Detroit Michigan Territory containing 40 acres (Land patent, certificate 8030, issued 9 Oct 1835, to James Mulhollan of Washtenaw County Michigan Territory)

John and James had continued to buy homestead property in Michigan, expanding beyond Washtenaw and picking up large parcels in Livingston and Ingham counties in 1837. In a history of Livingston county, it was pointed out that the Mulhollands never lived on their homestead but sold it off for a profit in the following two years. 

 

The patents show John and James held all but the Section 20 lands in common not in joint tenancy. Just prior to his death and in failing health, court records show John arranged for a division of the land held by himself and his brother. While John attempted to get his estate in order before his death, he was unable to get all in place.

With John’s death in June 1840, Martha became the administrator of John’s estate under Probate Court order to produce an appraisal of “goods, chattels, rights, and credits” in 1840. When the estate had not been appraised, James went back to the Probate Court in 1841 indicating that it needed to be done and that there were debts to be settled and he was the primary creditor. The court ordered a $1000 bond to bring in appraisers, but in 1842 Martha herself indicated she was not able to comply due to failing health, and requested that the court appoint a new administrator to review the estate. Despite continued claims and counterclaims, the estate remained unsettled until 1846, when John’s father Sam sr. petitioned the courts to appoint his sons Sam jr and William, John’s younger brothers, as administrators. In the petition dated 19 Jan 1846, Sam was sworn as stating:

The undersigned Samuel Mulholland would represent that he is the Father of John Mulholland late of Superior in said county deceased that said John Mulholland died at Superior aforesaid sometime in June in the year AD 1840 intestate leaving real and personal property to be administered. The undersigned further represent that the said deceased has no children now living and that it is necessary that some person or persons should be appointed to settle the estate of said deceased as there are debts to be collected and paid. The undersigned would waive his right to administer said estate on account of his extreme old age and requests you to appoint Samuel Mulholland jr and William Mulholland brothers of said deceased and sons of your petitioner administrators for said estate upon their [young hand?] for the faithful discharge of that trust.

With Martha’s death in 1845, eventually most of John’s remaining estate formally went to his stepson Joseph Crawford, Martha’s son from her first marriage as there was no will. If James felt some resentment for Martha’s teenage son, not even a member of the Mulholland family, inheriting the land and money he had worked so hard to attain with brother John, and likely had further plans to exploit, it would not be a surprise.

   James left Ireland and immigrated to Quebec, Canada in 1826 and by 1829 was living in Washtenaw, Michigan. He was an early settler in Dixboro founded by John Dix. In county civil court records from November 1829, James appeared in the court with Dix for an indictment of $50 owed to the United States. The indictment does not indicate the reason for the assessment but it must have been paid, as the two were released on their own recognizance and ordered to pay up or appear at the next court session. They do not appear again at the next court session.

The exact date that James married his first wife, Ann Mulholland, is unknown as is her maiden name, although some reports indicate she came with him to Michigan. By the time of the 1830 census of Panama Township, later divided into Superior and Salem Townships as we know them today, James is listed as living with a woman (most likely his wife Ann) between the ages of 20 and 30, about the same age as her husband, and with a son under five. In 1834, the household had grown to five with the addition of another adult male, presumably brother John who immigrated in 1831, and a daughter under 5. These early census records did not have names for any but the head of household. As a result, the names of most of James’ children have been lost to us unless new records are discovered. Only one son of James is known from a sad story of a toddler who got too close to the fireplace and burned to death when his clothes caught fire. James jr. died after his mother Ann, living from 1835 to 1838.

 

Martha Crawford and son were not listed as living with her sister Ann’s family in mid-1834 when the census data was recorded. She is reported to have arrived in mid-1835 from the later court hearings related to her enigmatic death. John and Martha were married in December 1835 when John was 33. When John died in 1840, he left behind a son reportedly born in 1836 but who died later in the same year as his father.

 

James remarried to Emily Loomis in 1838 after Ann’s death about 1836-7, all before John then Martha died. While the ghost story claimed James and his second wife had only one stillborn child, in fact they had at least two more children. Further, he and his family did not flee immediately after the 1846 inquest, nor were any criminal charges ever filed against him. In an interesting vignette reported in a Universalist Church publication in 1847, Emily Loomis Mulholland’s death is noted, indicating the family remained in Superior Township: 

 

Death. In Superior, on Ap 25 last [1847], Mrs. Emily, wife of Mr. James Mulholland, in the 34th year of her age. She has left a husband and four small children, the youngest about four weeks old, also an aged Father and Mother, to mourn the loss of a faithful child and virtuous Mother. She has been a member of the Universalist Church in Ann Arbor about nine years. (published Dec 1847, The Expounder of Primitive Christianity, v. 4, p. 175)

 

By 1850, only Martha’s son, Joseph Crawford, remained in Superior Township of all the characters from the Dixboro Ghost Story. He retained his inheritances, with the records showing he owned property worth $1000. Joseph married in 1855, and by 1870 he too had left Superior Township, moving initially north in Michigan to Livingston County where other Mulhollands had settled, and later to Ogemaw where he became one of those revered early settlers, dying shortly after his move there.

Mounting Problems for James Mulholland

 

For James Mulholland, the evidence suggests his departure from Superior Township after the ghost inquest may have been as much about finding a wife or caretaker for his four orphaned young children rather than any guilt over what happened to his sister-in-law. He did not flee immediately as has been recorded in legend but did eventually move on, and over time, community sentiment eased after the initial hysteria brought on by the wild tales of Martha’s ghost and perhaps gossip by a few who didn’t like James. Whether the community feud also rendered family ties to his father and siblings is unknown, but Sam jr. did testify to the Probate Court in 1846 that there were unpaid liens on John’s estate, perhaps providing some evidence the family was sympathetic to James’s complaints.

Debts may also have contributed to the disappearance of James as suggested in earlier histories. His lands were seized by the courts for unpaid debts. Initially land in Section 19 of Superior was sold at public auction in late 1849 for debts owed by James, his brother-in-law William Loomis, and David Bottsford, another original land owner in Washtenaw County.James debt problems continued to mount. Frederick Townsend petitioned for redress in the Detroit courts in February 1850 and as a result James’ two remaining lots in Dixboro were seized by the sheriff of Washtenaw County. With no creditors coming forward after 15 months, the lots were auctioned at a sheriff sale in fall 1852. Townsend was allowed, rather conveniently, to purchase the two village lots owned by James for $100, far below the actual value. As history has since recorded, based on Michigan laws at the time, this process of land seizure and repurchase was a corrupt one in which a debtor could collect and profit with little evidence and often few others being aware of the court orders and sale.The ending of the recorded ghost story stating it is uncertain where James Mulholland went remains true, as neither he nor his children have been located in official records after Emily’s death in 1847 and with the loss of his property in 1850. 

 

Appendix II: Isaac Van Woert is a descendant of Isaac Van Wart who captured Major Andre in the Revolutionary War (Bidlock) : From Wikipedia:

Isaac Van Wart (October 25, 1762 – May 23, 1828) was a militiaman from the state of New York during the American Revolution. In 1780, he was one of three men who captured British Major John André, who was convicted and executed as a spy for conspiring with treasonous Continental general and commandant of West Point Benedict Arnold.^[1][2]

Contents

• 1American Revolution
• 2Personal life
• 3Legacy
• 4References
• 5Further reading

American Revolution

A yeoman farmer, Van Wart joined the volunteer militia when New York was a battle zone of the American Revolution. Overnight on 22–23 September 1780, he joined John Paulding and David Williams in an armed patrol of the area.^[1][2] The three men seized a traveling British officer, Major John André in Tarrytown, New York, at a site now called Patriot’s Park. Holding him in custody, they discovered documents of André’s secret communication with Benedict Arnold. The militiamen, all yeomen farmers, refused André’s considerable bribe and delivered him to Continental Army headquarters.^[3] Arnold’s plans to surrender West Point to the British were revealed and foiled, and André was hanged as a spy. With George Washington’s personal recommendation, the United States Congress awarded Van Wart, Paulding and Williams the first military decoration of the United States, the silver medal known as the Fidelity Medallion. Each of the three also received federal pensions of $200 a year, and prestigious farms awarded by New York State.

Personal life

Van Wart was born in the farm country of Greenburgh, New York, near the village of Elmsford. He lived on the frontier and his birthdate is not recorded.

Van Wart married Rachel Storm (1760–1834), a daughter of Elmsford’s most prominent family (from whom the settlement’s original name, “Storm’s Bridge”, was derived). He divided his time between his family, his farm, and his church (he became an elder deacon of the Dutch Reformed Church). Van Wart was buried in the cemetery of the Elmsford Reformed Church in Elmsford, New York.^[4] His tombstone said that he died at the age of sixty-nine.

Legacy

Van Wart died in Elmsford and is buried in the cemetery of the Old Dutch Reformed Church on Route 9.^[5] A marble and granite monument was erected at his grave on 11 June 1829, bears the single emphatic word “FIDELITY”, followed by this epitaph,

On the 23rd of September 1780, Isaac Van Wart, accompanied by John Paulding and David Williams, all Farmers of the County of Westchester, intercepted Major André, on his return from the American Lines in the character of a Spy, and notwithstanding the large bribes offered them for his release, nobly disdaining to sacrifice their Country for Gold, Secured and carried him to the Commanding Officer of the district, whereby the dangerous and traitorous Conspiracy of Arnold was brought to light; the insidious designs of the enemy baffled; the American Army saved; and our beloved country now free and Independent, rescued from most imminent peril.

The three militiamen were highly celebrated in their lifetimes: commemorations large and small abound in Westchester, and can be found in many disparate parts of the early United States. Among other honors, each of the men had his name given to a county in the new state of Ohio (1803): Van Wert County, bearing a common alternate spelling of the name, is in the northwest corner of the state.

Still, Van Wart and the others did see their reputations impugned by some. André at his trial had insisted the men were mere brigands; sympathy for him remained in some more aristocratic American quarters (and grew to legend in England, where he was buried in Westminster Abbey). Giving voice to this sympathy, Representative Benjamin Tallmadge of Connecticut persuaded Congress to deny the men a requested pension increase in 1817, publicly assailing their credibility and motivations. Despite the slight, the men’s popular acclaim continued to grow throughout the 19th century to almost mythic status. Some modern scholars have interpreted the episode as a major event in early American cultural development, representing the apotheosis of the common man in the new democratic society.^[6]

Van Wart and his companions are honored on the monument erected at the site of the capture in Tarrytown, dedicated on June 11, 1829, by the Revolutionary general and congressman Aaron Ward of nearby Ossining.^[7] A Van Wart Avenue is located on the south side of Tarrytown, near the Tappan Zee Bridge. Three streets in the neighboring village of Elmsford, New York, are named for the militiamen, with Van Wart Street being one of the village’s main roads. White Plains, New York, has a Van Wart Avenue in the southwest section of the city, off NY Route 22.

References

1. ^ Jump up to:^a b Raymond, pp. 11–17
2. ^ Jump up to:^a b Cray, pp. 371–397
3. ^ [1]“Vindication.” From New York Courier; reprinted in American & Commercial Advertiser, February 22, 1817. Account of capture of Andre, in rebuttal to criticism by Rep. Tallmadge. Depositions by Isaac van Wart and his neighbors, intended to refute allegations he and his companions were bandits or “Cow-boys”; Retrieved July 25, 2011
4. ^ Austin O’Brien (August 1983). “National Register of Historic Places Registration: Elmsford Reformed Church and Cemetery”. New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Retrieved 2010-12-24.
5. ^ Isaac Van Wart at Find A Grave
6. ^ White, p. 49
7. ^ “In Saw Mill River Valley: Elmsford and its Revolutionary Church and Graveyard” (PDF). The New York Times. 17 November 1895. Retrieved 25 August 2013.

Bibliography

• Bolton, Robert (1848). A History of the County of West Chester. Gould, Alexander S. Retrieved 25 August 2013.
• Cray, Robert E. Jr. (Autumn 1997). “Major John André and the Three Captors: Class Dynamics and Revolutionary Memory Wars in the Early Republic, 1780-1831”. Journal of the Early Republic. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press. 17 (3). doi:10.2307/3123941.
• White, James T., ed. (1892). The Builders of the Nation. New York: Stanley-Bradley Publishing Co. Retrieved 25 August 2013.

Further reading

• Lossing, Benson John (1852). The Pictorial Field-book of the Revolution. New York: Harper & Bros. Retrieved 25 August 2013.
• Raymond, Marcius Denison (1903). David Williams and the capture of André. Tarrytown, NY: Argus/Tarrytown Historical Society. Retrieved 25 August 2013.
• McKernan, Maureen (4 September 1951). “Old Families of Westchester: The Van Wart Family”. The Daily Argus. Mount Vernon, NY. Retrieved 25 August 2013.
• Genealogical and Family History of Southern New York and the Hudson River Valley (1913) Volume II, p. 457

Categories:

• 1828 deaths
• Continental Army soldiers
• New York (state) militiamen in the American Revolution
• People from Greenburgh, New York
• American people of Dutch descent
• Van Wert County, Ohio
• 1762 births
• People of colonial New York

The First Meeting of Jerusalem and Ancient Greece: Josephus on Alexander, 333 B. C.

   Alexander, the pupil of Aristotle for a while, met with the High Priest at Jerusalem on his way to conquer Asia, as reported by Josephus. From Book xi. 4-5, Jaddua the high priest was in terror when he heard that Alexander was coming. Alexander had sent a letter to Jerusalem during his siege of Tyre, asking for provisions, auxiliaries, and suggesting that Jerusalem send tribute now instead to him rather than Darius. The high priest had answered Alexander that…”he had given his oath to Darius not to bear arms against him; and that he would not transgress this while Darius was in the land of the living.” After the siege of Tyre, when Alexander was approaching, he and the people then appealed to God for protection,…

…whereupon God warned him in a dream, which came upon him after he had offered sacrifice, that he should take courage, and adorn the city, and open the gates; that the rest should appear in white garments, but that he and the priests should meet the king in the habits proper to their order, without the dread of any ill consequences, which the providence of God would prevent. Upon which, when he rose from his sleep, he greatly rejoiced; and declared to all the warning he had received from God. According to which dream he acted entirely, and so waited for the coming of the king. And when he understood that he was not far from the city, he went out in procession, with the priests, and the multitude of citizens…

Alexander, when he saw the multitude at a distance, in white garments, while the priests stood clothed with fine purple and scarlet clothing, with his miter on his head, having the golden plate whereon the name of God was engraved, he approached by himself, and adored that name, and first saluted the High priest. The Jews also did altogether, with one voice, salute Alexander, and encompass him about; whereupon the kings of Syria and the rest were surprised at what Alexander had done, and supposed him disordered in his mind. However, Parmenio alone went up to him, and asked him how it came to pass that, when all others adored him, he should adore the High priest of the Jews? To whom he replied, I did not adore him, but that God who hath honoured him with his high priesthood; for I saw this very person in a dream, in this very habit, when I was at Dios in Macedonia, who, when I was considering with myself how I might obtain the dominion of Asia, exhorted me to make no delay, but boldly to pass over the sea thither, for that he would conduct my army, and would give me the dominion over the Persians. whence it is, that having seen no other in that habit, and now seeing this person in it, and remembering that vision, and the exhortation which I had in my dream, I believe that I bring this army under the divine conduct, and shall therewith conquer Darius and destroy the power of the Persians, and that all things will succeed according to what is in my own mind. And when he had said this to Parmenio, and had given the High Priest his right hand, the priests ran along by him, and he came into the city; and when he went up into the temple, he offered sacrifice to God, according to the high priest’s direction, and magnificently treated both the High priest and the priests. And when the book of Daniel was showed him, wherein Daniel declared that one of the Greeks should destroy the empire of the Persians, he supposed that himself was the person intended; and as he was then glad, he dismissed the multitude for the present, but the next day he called them to him, and bade them ask what favors they pleased of him whereupon the high priest desired that they might enjoy the laws of their forefathers, and pay no tribute on the seventh year. He granted all that they desired; and when they entreated him that he would permit the Jews in Babylon and Medea to enjoy their own laws also, he willingly promised to do hereafter what they desired; and when he said to the multitude, that if any of them would enlist themselves in his army on this condition, that they should continue under the laws of their forefathers he was willing to take them with him, many more were ready to accompany him in his wars.

One interesting point in this story is the double true or verdical dream.  That Alexander had seen the name on the breastplate, and the high priest was instructed to show the name is rather astonishing. There is nothing like this in all the history of dreams. Another is of course the interpretation of Daniel. The five are Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, the legs being the East and West empires, then the feet and toes…5 from each, iron and clay, and from this will emerge 10 kings, in ch. 12, etc.

   A personal note: My first history lesson came from Mad Magazine, when at the age of 12 I read from Al Jaffe: Alexander the Great was not really so great.” I wondered about this through all my studies. One wonders why Alexander was not better advised- though he had dismissed Aristotle.

 

1) The goal is not world conquest. Don’t keep going east, but establish and consolidate- and enjoy! Rule for the good of the ruled and the realm: Why not?

2) Deal with the question of succession immediately, and work on institutions that secure Greek liberty. What if Alex had Thomas Jefferson and James Madison?

3) Don’t be all full of yourself. You MIGHT be lucky, but learn what a mortal god is- and go find Diogenes in his bucket!

76 Candidates for the 17 Greatest pure Rock Songs: Happy Fourth!

Next year, we’ll have 76- per obvious- if the creek don’t rise!

   It is Twitter DJ time, with leisure on the Fourth. Our local classic rock station used to do the top 100 countdown for the Fourth, and probably still do- without regard to lyrics and meaning. I will do Candidates for the top 17 Pure Rock songs Twitter DJ M. A. Mac. My Daddy: DJ CJ Mac.

   I will do candidates for the top 17 pure rock songs, spreading a net wide enough to catch at least these, if not the top ten. I will require that these be part of our folk tradition, in the sense that they are well known, anthems rather than ditties, composed , and with exalted lyrics that are good rather than harmful for the soul. Because the Fourth is a noisy holiday, we will leave out all the mellow stuff, the pure folk part of folk rock that is classical rock.We will call this “rock proper,” or “pure rock,” if only for lack of better phrases. Hence, Pink Floyd’s Breathe, Eclipse, and the other great tunes that are a part of the classic rock tradition are left out, because they are not noisy. The Fourth is noisy, not moody blues. So it is the led rather than the Zeppelin we are collecting here for our Twitter DJ show, and we will of course try to select these not because we like them personally, but because they might be among the best objectively. The personal is of course our access to the objective, but not nearly as interesting. Where the popular is the standard, the result is a sort of lowest common denominator that makes a whore of the DJ, and prevents his true function, which is not, for example to flatter but to ennoble a wedding.

   I will list these as they come to mind, then they will appear backward on Twitter, like a countdown. There are not that many. # 1 on the radio stations was always like Floyd or Stairway, but that is not so. Watch:

11:03 AM – 4 Jul 2019

#00 is Hendrix doing Dylan’s All along the Watchtower. This is because the exhilaration of Rock is not Bacchic but apocalyptic. I can explain it to ya, but Ja, I cannot understand it for ya. (Of course, I can’t even understand it for myself!). But I have it way down there at # 30!?

#1: Kashmir – Led Zeppelin https://youtu.be/sfR_HWMzgyc  via @YouTube

“Oh Father of the four winds, fill my sails…”

#2 Jethro Tull – Aqualung https://youtu.be/B0jMPI_pUec via @YouTube

“You poor old sot,

You see its only me.”

And as he dies, the line is: “And the flowers bloom like madness in the Spring.” The Aqualung grabs his rasping last breaths with deep-sea-diver sounds.,..

#3: The Who – Love Reign Over Me https://youtu.be/gDbAtWpoA6k via @YouTube

Jimmy has found the unity of the four parts and his “Quadrophrenia.”

#4: Led Zeppelin- Dazed and Confused https://youtu.be/-rmtJ6-EY1E via @YouTube

The essential White blues. You thought the hipsters were about “free love?” Try following this guy while lied to.

#5: David Bowie – Moonage Daydream (Live) (Great quality) https://youtu.be/SOYNkDPqsso via @YouTube

The live version of this song is it, while the studio, in the context of the album, is even better. A lovesong, too.

 #6 Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here (with lyrics) https://youtu.be/DPL_SV3n7IU via @YouTube

‘Nuff said. A walk on part in The Wall” for the lead role in a cage. Like Achilleus’ choice, too.

#7: The White Stripes – ‘Seven Nation Army‘ https://youtu.be/0J2QdDbelmY via @YouTube

Bleeding words right before the Lord:

Simon says the same.

#8: Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody (Official Video) https://youtu.be/fJ9rUzIMcZQ via @YouTube

“So, you think you can love me and leave me to die?”

Well, that is what tragic love is, and most is tragic. It is because of our guilt, our part as human in the murder of Cain, and an expiation. See the trial? Simon says the same: “Somewhere They Can’t Find Me.”

#9: Eric Burden and the Animals – House of the Rising Sun https://youtu.be/fS5PN5eYCsw via @YouTube

Is this the first “Rock” song? From penance blues. The Hippies get their ethics from the blues, as in Steppenwolf, “The Pusher.”

#10: Bruce Springsteen – Born To Run https://youtu.be/f3t9SfrfDZM via @YouTube

Someday, girl, I don’t know when

We’re gonna get to that place we really wanna go/

And we’ll walk in the sun…but till then.

An everlasting kiss.

#11: Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin IV – Stairway To Heaven https://youtu.be/YmOr9b9G2Lk via @YouTube

Ok, we’ll list it for the Zeppelin part. The meaning is not what most think. Listen, and tell what it means in a couple sentences:

It is the appearance of the light and Christ offered by the Lady, but it is human convention, and so illusion, “as we wind on down the road

Our shadows taller than our souls.” “But if you listen very hard…”the piper”:

Page does not, but Plant, who wrote this, knows.

#12: Uriah Heep – Easy Livin’ https://youtu.be/DKxZY0DIxIk via @YouTube

Love is of course the activity of the image of God in man, and the principle of lyric poetry. Hence a song about falling in love can also be about the breakthrough that is salvation: We thought “Christian” rock bands should ALL play this (but they don’t like wizards?)

#13: Alice Cooper – School’s Out [Lyrics] [HD] https://youtu.be/z4eJHyi13mQ via @YouTube

The profundity of the song: going with “18,” meant to be a high school graduation anthem, taken from a gangster movie where the Phrase “School’s out” means “now things get real.”

#14: The Who : The Real Me https://youtu.be/FTwSKepkmdE via @YouTube

Jimmy the Mod goes to the doctor, then the mother, then the preacher in an attempt to cure his teen age Quadrophrenia. Given that the preacher showed him “to the Golden Gate,” one sees what Plant means about the evangelicals in Stairway. Not that Jimmy needs a robed exorcist! The plea of Jimmy is surely not comprehensible to our science of psychiatry, which is why music is better at the healing of the soul than our over-paid “doctors.” They killed Nick Drake, for Chrissakes!

 

#15 Beatles Day Tripper

Is this the first Beatles excursion from pop into pure rock, as distinct from pop psychadelia? Twist and Shout? Work it on out! But romantic dis-illusionment is a motion of the soul, and distinct from the dancing of the body. It is hard to find Beatles doing noisy rock with high lyrics. Actually, number fifteen should be “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” 

#16 Pink Floyd – Hey You https://youtu.be/jQcBwE6j09U  via @YouTube

One wonders if maybe people who think woman-ness is a primary qualification for intell. and security work are really in the right business to begin. Granted it is ditto for maleness. … Not like the liberal arts departments for the past 20 years, safe to use for gender politics.

#17

Red Button

Caption: George III when he/she read Jefferson: (Or was it when he learned his favorite petticoat was not back yet from the cleaners?)

Mark A. McDonald added,

Red Button @davidredbutton

   ‘Least ‘e remembered t’ poof ‘is f’n whig! Dudes were cross-dressin back then! French fashions.

   Calley the cat has seen it- the fireworks on the Fourth- 19 times, but wants me to make it stop “Not till the Redcoats go home.”

   Man, there’s skirmishes with Redcoats all about in the woods here by the burbs, where the neighbors set off more fireworks than the amount of money I live off in a year. I tell the squirrels et. al, : “Freemen feed the birds and squirrels better!”

   Did I mention that “King” George wears tights? Poofs his wig at the vanity? Lets his horse ride him? Liberty or death, and make the other sucker die for his, come fight freemen, you slaves, or join us against tyranny!

Now, a word from a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson:

#17: Somebody to Love Jefferson Airplane:

When the garden flowers, baby are dead, yes and
Your mind, your mind is so full of red
Don’t you want somebody to love
Don’t you need somebody to love
Wouldn’t you love somebody to love
You better find somebody to love

Your eyes, I say your eyes may look like his
Yeah, but in your head, baby
I’m afraid you don’t know where it is…

Tears are running down and down and down your breast
And your friends, baby they treat you like a guest…

Jefferson Airplane – Somebody to Love (HQ) https://youtu.be/Q7O7ihJCq0w via @YouTube

   These are to be the 76 candidates for the top 17 Rock songs of all time. My first list is in the order that I thought of them, to be reshuffled and selected. I do like the method of spreading a wide net to catch the best:

#76: Here’s some we left out: Hendrix “Third Stone from the Sun” is available only with the amplified message from the aliens on Youtube. Maybe we can get it off “Experience.”

#75 Stay – Station to Station – David Bowie https://youtu.be/MNnR9s7NX-4  via @YouTube

#74 Pink Floyd – See Emily Play https://youtu.be/7c0EDM-Yu9o via @YouTube

#73 White Stripes – Blue Orchid https://youtu.be/QKntY8WkNYQ via @YouTube

# 71 The Byrds Eight Miles High

This is about when the American reverberation of the British invasion landed in London by airplane.

# 70 Amboy Dukes– Journey To The Center Of The Mind https://youtu.be/Beh1ipK3hN0 via @YouTube

This is Crazy Ted BEFORE he took up hunting! Dude did not learn that from a journey to the center of mind! Oh well, he never said we’d MAKE it !

Beyond thought and “what” is of course interesting, because the Lord too is said to be beyond being or logos. He calls it the center, too, as of a circle. He warns of the danger of becoming trapped in the products of the imagination: Jung speaks of getting “possessed” by an “archetype-” the sources of the products of the imagination in the knowledge that is within the soul. We integrate the contents, by understanding, or else these disintegrate us. Hence the danger of psychedelic drugs especially for those who do too much are not friends with themselves, and do not have the patience to sleep off a bad trip. One wonders if Ted did not get possessed as by an Artemis the huntress archetype! Apologies from Michigan!

#69: The Bob Seger System – White Wall https://youtu.be/1CNDIl0mbd8  via @YouTube

This whole album is a classic, with most of favorite Bob on it.

#68: Creed – Beautiful https://youtu.be/8Otwa3exj2k  via @YouTube Self indulgeance: (Not as famous as it should be).

#67: Creed – Higher (Official Video) https://youtu.be/J16lInLZRms  via @YouTube

 #66: Uriah Heep – Traveller In Time – Live 1973 https://youtu.be/Xqszsnt2FTU  via @YouTube

 

#65: Uriah Heep – Wizard https://youtu.be/u0iuaxvkXv4  via @YouTube 

#64: Uriah Heep – Stealin https://youtu.be/j73OsXo19vI  via @YouTube 

#63: The James Gang – Walk Away https://youtu.be/34abRUUeslw  via @YouTube

#62: Fantasy will set you free: Steppenwolf – Magic Carpet Ride 1968 HQ https://youtu.be/U4WiyxXpyZc  via @YouTube

 

HEY GEORGE!: Reenacting the Boston Massacre https://youtu.be/-K2UgQFRr38  via @YouTube

Crispus Attucks | Boston Massacre | Crispus Attucks Boston Massacre https://youtu.be/5ZIkQGFcI1E  via @YouTube

#61: Fortunate Son (Live At Cobo Hall 1986)- Bob Seger (Vinyl Restoration) https://youtu.be/MJYHSdObPJo  via @YouTube

#60 The Bob Seger System – 2 + 2 = ? https://youtu.be/487t88pz-2Y  via @YouTube To be played with Creedence cover:

#59: The Who – Won’t Get Fooled Again (Live at Kilburn 1977) https://youtu.be/WX_96uKZ7yQ  via @YouTube

#58: Jethro Tull – Locomotive Breath (Live) https://youtu.be/eSUdlUmtg3Q  via @YouTube

#57: Deep Purple – Highway Star https://youtu.be/Wr9ie2J2690  via @YouTube

#56: Cream – Strange Brew https://youtu.be/r0FFTd3bS_8  via @YouTube

  

#55: Humble Pie- 30 Days In The Hole https://youtu.be/sdXjm8pZMws  via @YouTube

  “Gimmie my release, Come on…”

#54: Robin Trower – The Fool and Me. https://youtu.be/UIHKI_gd3iA  via @YouTube

 

#53: Robin Trower – Bridge Of Sighs – 07 – Lady Love https://youtu.be/8BHRDXZwApw  via @YouTube

 

#52 Lou Reed – Sweet Jane from Rock n Roll Animal https://youtu.be/7FdWPeHFAMk  via @YouTube

 #51: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page-Layla https://youtu.be/ICpxgxThG7s  via @YouTube

  

#50: Blind Faith – Presence of the Lord https://youtu.be/HIcESt9eYRk  via @YouTube

 

#49: Sunshine Of Your Love https://youtu.be/f3y8jf01UY8  via @YouTube

#48: Cream – White Room – Lyrics https://youtu.be/VR90gQ-SIaY  via @YouTube

#47: Steppenwolf – Born To Be Wild (Easy Rider) (1969) https://youtu.be/egMWlD3fLJ8  via @YouTube

#46: Cream – Tales of Brave Ulysses https://youtu.be/J2CCfxiQ5QY  via @YouTube Ya, we’ll have to redo the order by next Fourth!

Guest Lyricist- some roadie!

Mine is better poetry, but not music: Seeing Nausikka https://mmcdonald77.wordpress.com/2019/06/06/seeing-nausikka/ … via @mmcdonald77

 #45: Higher! Cinnamon Girl – Neil Young – LIve – 1991 [HD] https://youtu.be/DgDy1SQ6hnw  via @YouTube

#44 The Who – Magic Bus – Live At Leeds HQ https://youtu.be/TmfQQC1bsf4  via @YouTube

#43 The Who ~ Shakin’ All Over https://youtu.be/-DHEPTarUQs  via @YouTube

#42: Who’s nod a mod? The Who – I Can’t Explain (Live) https://youtu.be/h3h–K5928M  via @YouTube This is where it began, in a way:

#41: The Who – I Can See For Miles https://youtu.be/Q0iqg2UanEc  via @YouTube

#40: The Who ~ Summertime Blues https://youtu.be/yUBy4ZvpaJc  via @YouTube

#39: The Who ~ Substitute https://youtu.be/lc7RcgMfYng  via @YouTube

Jon Cooper‏ Verified account @joncoopertweets Jul 3

Protesters at Richard Nixon’s July 4th celebration at the Lincoln Memorial in 1970. #BoycottTrump4thOfJuly

…and are doing it now, because WE DON”T GET IT! Could Facebook cause a civil war with targeted marketing? Well, do you think Putin is more villainous but less stupid than Zuck?

Git yer guys in the executive agencies and secure elections and communications from data collection and targeted interference. Restore the security of the 4th Amendment, or you will never have another free election. They messed with the voters themselves, channeled opinion,

David Hemond

Trump would have been eliminated in the primaries. Instead, Putin ran him up the flagpole, and the stupid Americans salute. I do not want to hear another “D” assume they lost a fair election and discuss adjustments on that basis.

Mark A. McDonald added,

David Hemond @david_hemond

As noted by no less an authority than Jimmy Carter. https://twitter.com/lorenza71319/status/1146590929756839941 …

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez‏Verified account @AOC Jul 3

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Retweeted Adam Serwer 🍝

The cruelty is the goal. It’s called “deterrence” – a policy stance that if our country inflicts enough pain on refugees, they will think twice before believing America is worth their dreams & aspirations. Only policy change can end cruelty, not blank checks to the status quo.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez added,

Adam Serwer 🍝Verified account @AdamSerwer

The cruelty is the point. The cruelty is the point. The cruelty is the point. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/ …

Emily No

We cannot be proud of our military might because it no longer upholds justice, the “end of government,” according to Madison: “‘Till liberty be lost in the pursuit.”

Mark A. McDonald added,

Emily No @MfromPa

Bastille Day and Independence Day are holidays to celebrate we the people rejecting Monarchies and tyrants via revolutions. What are we celebrating in DC now with tanks?

Last surviving prosecutor at Nuremberg trials says Trump’s family separation policy is ‘crime against humanity’

Richard Blumenthal

IMPEACH!! REMOVE!! VOID!! This is the consequence of our not acting according to the truth: Trump and the Trumpsters are tyrants. Our tradition of Liberty does not allow that we acquiesce.

Mark A. McDonald added,

Richard BlumenthalVerified account @SenBlumenthal

Shock & shame—& rage. All Americans should weep at this stomach churning, heartbreaking Inspector General Report documenting indecency & inhumanity. But more: Demand accountability. Punish all responsible, & lift up families & children. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/us/politics/border-center-migrant-detention.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share …

ᴊᴇᴍ ʜᴀʟʟ  🌊‏ @ruraldogs Jul 4

ᴊᴇᴍ ʜᴀʟʟ 🌊Retweeted David Hemond

#Nuremburg -> Safe to assume THIS man knows exactly what he’s talking about. #TrumpsCrimesAgainstHumanity

ᴊᴇᴍ ʜᴀʟʟ 🌊added,

David Hemond @david_hemond

Last surviving prosecutor at Nuremberg trials says Trump’s family separation policy is ‘crime against humanity’ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-border-crisis-nazis-nuremberg-trial-ben-ferencz-family-separation-migrants-un-a8485606.html …

Notice that the best songs and the best “Classic Rock” is not pure rock at all.

Pretty good way to conclude. I’m trying to stop the list, but it keeps flowing. We’re on the edges of the Genre, though. No more stuff like Entwistle’s base in “Real Me,” etc, stuff that might make the top 10 and is not mellow, but ROCK, for the Fourth, like fireworks!

  

#38: Jethro Tull – My God https://youtu.be/XG-r7YvcN9I  via @YouTube

37: Time of the Season – The Zombies (Lyrics on the screen) https://youtu.be/wG5R7vyu-mA  via @YouTube

#36: Stevie Wonder Superstition https://youtu.be/0CFuCYNx-1g  via @YouTube Written for Jeff Beck, like white guys could recover the ability to dance!

#35: Janis Joplin – Summertime https://youtu.be/guKoNCQFAFk  via @YouTube a fine way to end the 35 candidates for the top 10 Rock songs of all time, if it’s gettin’ a bit mellow on us…

#34: Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit (1967) HQ https://youtu.be/HWxMj6IQbJc  via @YouTube

#33: janis Joplin – Piece of My Heart https://youtu.be/j0f5ZG9LG6k  via @YouTube

#32: Jefferson Airplane – Somebody To Love, American Bandstand, 1967 https://youtu.be/myVzaR8cmDA  via @YouTube

#31: Neil Young – Southern Man https://youtu.be/p2jyzIrzs5Y  via @YouTube

The Declaration of Independence (as read by Max McLean) https://youtu.be/4uE-tqe0xsQ  via @YouTube

The whole Declaration is to be read on the Fourth, as it was in Lincoln’s day and at the Constitutional Convention. + it has a list of examples of tyranny, + ethics of war. The Second Sentence of the Declaration https://mmcdonald77.wordpress.com/2017/07/04/the-second-sentence-of-the-declaration/ … via @mmcdonald77

There, 30 is a wide enough net to catch the top 10 pure Rock tunes of all time, by Twitter DJ M.A. Mack, the son of DJ CJ Mac @mmcdonald77.Twitter. Gratis all, and Happy Fourth!

#30: The Jimi Hendrix Experience – All Along The Watchtower (Audio) https://youtu.be/TLV4_xaYynY  via @YouTube

#29: Watch “Voodoo Chile” on #Vimeo

#28: Day Of The Eagle – Robin Trower. https://youtu.be/aYJp4qkSoOk  via @YouTube

#27: Heart Crazy On You https://youtu.be/qVcl0Iw3fs8  via @YouTube “I was a willow last night in my dreams…”

Interlude: Some Contemporary Tunes:

 Counting Crows – Mr. Jones (Official Video) https://youtu.be/-oqAU5VxFWs  via @YouTube

One of the great friendship songs, like Stevie’s “Gypsy:”

Counting Crows – Round Here (Official Video) https://youtu.be/SAe3sCIakXo  via @YouTube

Tal Bachman – She’s So High https://youtu.be/_ElORM9O-0U  via @YouTube

Profound lyrics, “for a rock band!) Rock is a crecendo of ascending eros.

#26: Dream On – Aerosmith https://youtu.be/9bAoq7k3tZ0  via @YouTube

Dream On – Aerosmith https://youtu.be/9bAoq7k3tZ0  via @YouTube

Hey, this one might get a number some day: 3 Doors Down – kryptonite (lyrics) https://youtu.be/Tpl6ncyxLGw  via @YouTube

Cake – “Short Skirt/Long Jacket” Live At KROQ https://youtu.be/_1gShXIO6pk  via @YouTube

Cake – War Pigs https://youtu.be/IDJgwUeW7_k  via @YouTube

Cake – I Will Survive https://youtu.be/f9rCUQjmkxU  via @YouTube

Cake: I Will Survive Lyrics from http://Songmeanings.com 

I’m likin’ this new stuff, from the bakers of “Short Skirt Long Jacket:” Cake – i will survive https://youtu.be/7KJjVMqNIgA  via @YouTube

 

Back to our regular programming. The wedding lapel is a white orchid. “Your given a flower:” The White Stripes – Blue Orchid lyrics https://youtu.be/FQ9D8mY-i6A  via @YouTube

 ❤Q tr thn U‏ @ana_may Jul 4

Replying to @mmcdonald77

That was like one of their/his Debut tracks.

#26: Led Zeppelin – The Rover (Physical Graffiti) https://youtu.be/gJ-v0CCfEqE  via @YouTube

#25: Led Zeppelin – Ramble On https://youtu.be/S0NFaQcTJsg  via @YouTube

#24: Queen – Killer Queen (Lyrics) https://youtu.be/aSQwI3rDETk  via @YouTube

Rocked Out yet? Find a DJ that can Rock You Better!

#23: Led Zeppelin – How Many More Times https://youtu.be/MpJDOXxuSLo  via @YouTube

#22: Aerosmith – Sweet Emotion (Official Music Video) https://youtu.be/82cJgPXU-ik  via @YouTube

#21: Led Zeppelin – Rock and Roll HQ https://youtu.be/4bv_ALKkTjQ  via @YouTube

#20: David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust https://youtu.be/XXq5VvYAI1Q  via @YouTube

Translate Tweet

#19: Jethro Tull – Cross-Eyed Mary https://youtu.be/Tvt6lyiDwQc  via @YouTubevia @YouTube

 #18: David Bowie – Panic In Detroit https://youtu.be/Rf0fmqWS-kI  via @YouTube

#17: Mott the Hoople – All the Young Dudes https://youtu.be/VKvNtAVZyOc  via @YouTube#16: The Animals – We Gotta Get Out Of This Place (1965) HD/widescreen ♫ https://youtu.be/Q3mgapAcVdU  via @YouTube

#16: The Animals – We Gotta Get Out Of This Place (1965) HD/widescreen ♫ https://youtu.be/Q3mgapAcVdU  via @YouTube

#15: Day tripper – The Beatles (LYRICS/LETRA) [Original] (+Video) https://youtu.be/oFsqY_5SIic  via @YouTube

14 Candidates for the 10 Greatest pure Rock Songs: Happy Fourth!

#14: The Who : The Real Me https://youtu.be/FTwSKepkmdE via @YouTube

Extra Fourth weekend DJ bonus!: Saturday

The White Stripes-Icky Thump https://youtu.be/ReeVYTB5qng  via @YouTube

Well, Americans What, nothin’ better to do? Why don’t you kick yourself out? You’re an immigrant too Who’s usin’ who? What should we do? Well, you can’t be a pimp And a prostitute too

The White Stripes – ‘Blue Orchid’ https://youtu.be/jW8UlrtcEac  via @YouTube

Where is that f’n pridge…Oh ya, what you oughta know…

Led Zeppelin – Over the Hills and Far Away (Official Music Video) https://youtu.be/o-tT62bpYlU  via @YouTube

Led Zeppelin – How Many More Times (Danmarks Radio 1969) https://youtu.be/wEPog_WdPE4  via @YouTube

Through the invocation, he becomes one with the Jacknife barber- is the best I can figure. At first he is the victim, making Love while he knows the truth and has to deny it to follow the compulsion. Dissociating.

#72: Heartbreaker – Led Zeppelin HD (with lyrics) https://youtu.be/EUFGJvYlPFk  via @YouTube

David Bowie – Suffragette city https://youtu.be/zLnPd7lzT4g  via @YouTube

Ok, Time to Breathe from the Fourth Fest of pure Rock: Pink Floyd – Time (2011 Remastered) https://youtu.be/JwYX52BP2Sk  via @YouTube

David Bowie – Rebel Rebel • TopPop https://youtu.be/Vy-rvsHsi1o  via @YouTube

Translate Tweet

Ja, goeth with “Dazed and Confused.” And “How Many More Times.”

If things get any worse, we’ll lose it= New Orleans prophetic blues: Led Zeppelin – When the Levee Breaks https://youtu.be/aK8a8fykNcs  via @YouTube

I dated that chick, poor Greenie low hanging fruit for the Jack-knife barber.

Sits like a man but he smiles like a reptile She love him, she love him but just for a short while She’ll scratch in the sand, won’t let go his hand He says he’s a beautician and sells you nutrition And keeps all your dead hair for making up underwear Poor little Greenie.

David Bowie – The Jean Genie (Official Video) https://youtu.be/kMYg_Ra4cr8  via @YouTube

But if we do anything mellow: The Elysian Mystery: T.Rex Cosmic Dancer Lyrics https://youtu.be/BRJr38QF0nQ  via @YouTube

Pink Floyd – See Emily Play (1967) HD 0815007 https://youtu.be/5R8EpAv4miA  via @YouTube

The Universe reclining in ‘er ‘air, has she? Brian Wilson’s had such, a word on the wind that lifts her perfume through the air. Bet Patty Boyd had nothin’ such… Plus, she goeth with him to a blossom world!

See Emily Play – Pin Ups [1973] – David Bowie https://youtu.be/qjqN_S5jIy0  via @YouTube

T.Rex ‘Jeepster’ https://youtu.be/w-G7-yLFmCQ  via @YouTube

“The planet queen, perchance to dream… …Well, it’s alright, love is what you want Flying saucer, take me away, gimme your daughter…”

Actually, Marc Bolan just kinda talks that way: T. Rex Planet Queen with Lyrics in Description https://youtu.be/YbI5lzYba1s  via @YouTube

Brian Wilson: “Don’t Worry Baby, from the pre-rock hot rod years, 62-64:”

I guess I should’ve kept my mouth shut

When I started to brag about my car

But I can’t back down now I pushed the other guys too far

She makes me come alive

And makes me want to drive

When she says: “don’t worry, baby” Don’t worry, baby Don’t worry, baby Everything will turn out alright

Don’t worry, baby …

She told me “baby, when you race today

Just take along my love with you

And if you know how much I loved you

Baby nothing could go wrong with you”

Oh what she does to me

When she makes love to me And she says…

With Jeepster, the other Girl-car song. Hot rod guys came about ’63, between racers (James Dean) and Musclecars: Don’t Worry Baby https://youtu.be/9Y-0nWVdBH4  via @YouTube

Car. Girl, head, car:+ Highway Star https://youtu.be/Wr9ie2J2690  via @YouTube “Nobody gonna take my head I got speed inside my brain Nobody gonna steal my head Now that I’m on the road again Oooh I’m in heaven again I’ve got everything Like a moving ground an open road And everything

The Who – Won’t Get Fooled Again (Glastonbury Festival 2015) https://youtu.be/m7hvZjjsO28  via @YouTube

#69 Stay – Station to Station – David Bowie https://youtu.be/MNnR9s7NX-4  via @YouTube

Take Me to the River (2005 Remaster) https://youtu.be/v4azbl96BJY  via @YouTube

Talking Heads – Once in a Lifetime (Official Video) https://youtu.be/5IsSpAOD6K8  via @YouTube

The Stooges – I wanna be your dog (1969) https://youtu.be/vwmU343eBu0  via @YouTube

The Kingsmen – Louie Louie https://youtu.be/3EqzTiDc-1k  via @YouTube

Louie, Louie, oh, oh, me gotta go Louie, Louie, me gotta go Fine little girl she waits for me Me catch the ship for cross the sea Me sail the ship all alone Me never think me make it home Louie, Louie, …

[2/2] Three nights and days me sail the sea Me think of girl constantly On the ship I dream she there I smell the rose in her hair Louie, Louie,… Me see Jamaica moon above It won’t be long, me see my love Me take her in my arms and then I tell her I never leave again

The Kingsmen – Louie, Louie (Shindig 1965) https://youtu.be/fvxH64sB4sE  via @YouTube

IGGY POP – LOUIE LOUIE – Live https://youtu.be/nNXJBXBoiN0  via @YouTube

 

Patti Smith Group – Because the Night (Official Audio) https://youtu.be/c_BcivBprM0  via @YouTube

And I lay right down in my favorite place: The benefits of solitude: Iggy Pop – I Wanna Be Your Dog [Lyrics] [HD] https://youtu.be/hadyNXrAOLw  via @YouTube

RAMONES – We’re A Happy Family https://youtu.be/ZQlM59sDJVo  via @YouTube

#68 Cream Crossroads https://youtu.be/PE9HvSdcaL4  via @YouTube

Ramones – I Wanna Be Sedated (Official Music Video) https://youtu.be/bm51ihfi1p4  via @YouTube

Ramones – “Ramona” – Rocket to Russia https://youtu.be/vlQ9O0HzfPc  via @YouTube

Surely I remembered to list this: Sunshine Of Your Love https://youtu.be/f3y8jf01UY8  via @YouTube

End: I crossed the ocean Where no one could see And I put a time-bomb In your submarine Goodbye to old friends The secret’s in hand With phonied up papers And counterfeit plans You never will understand

#67: Alice Cooper – Halo of Flies https://youtu.be/E2bopbYyYAs  via @YouTube

#00: The Jimi Hendrix Experience – All Along The Watchtower (Audio) https://youtu.be/TLV4_xaYynY  via @YouTube

FRANK ZAPPA COSMIK DEBRIS https://youtu.be/Dp6LT2MdaPI  via @YouTube

Translate Tweet

#66: Frank Zappa – Cosmik Debris https://youtu.be/wtx4ZJ1cwI0  via @YouTube

I also like Van Halen’s Kinks, but AC/DC is just too ugly to watch. I turn off the radio if they play it, especially on Sunday, let alone the Fourth!

Amusing to see the death metal and Ozzie types, Ja, we don’t do them: except some early Sabbath, Paranoid: Sweet Leaf and: “Will you fear when death is near, and say that you may as well worship the sun?”

#65: The Kinks – All Day And All Of The Night (Official Audio) https://youtu.be/fOGMRnKl5co  via @YouTube

Jack White, even Chain by Fleetwood Mack and Stevie Wonder: Top 10 Guitar Riffs of All Time https://youtu.be/vt8Q8L_I1pw  via @YouTube

David Gilmour Shine On You Crazy Diamond Pompeii 2016 https://youtu.be/LyBjrX8jOHw  via @YouTube

David Gilmour – Comfortably Numb Live in Pompeii 2016 https://youtu.be/LTseTg48568  via @YouTube

David Gilmour Comfortably Numb Guitar Solo in HD! https://youtu.be/o5Ht6WIhhmU  via @YouTube

Top 10 Guitar Solos https://youtu.be/f4NOJ42-BKM  via @YouTube

Top 10 Guitar Solos https://youtu.be/f4NOJ42-BKM  via @YouTube

 

Deep Purple – Made in Japan – Highway Star (video) https://youtu.be/7zKAS7XOWaQ  via @YouTube

Car, girl, head.Come take a free man. Deep Purple – Made in Japan – Highway Star (video) https://youtu.be/7zKAS7XOWaQ  via @YouTube

And this again: Deep Purple – Highway Star https://youtu.be/Wr9ie2J2690  via @YouTube

Ya, the question would be whether it is noisy enough for the Fourth. I included “Summertime” on account a she screams and cries a bit: Rock proper.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Remastered 2009) https://youtu.be/bI8P6ZSHSvE  via @YouTube

Correction, this is 15, and Day Tripper is #64! While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Taken from Concert For George) https://youtu.be/CrTMc2i6Lzc  via @YouTube

Watch “Jimi Hendrix Castles Made of Sand lyric video” on #Vimeo

I’m still procrastinating the Mueller report- hard to read on line. I’ll send Tweets out, though, of highlights, if I get to it. I’m still trying to write my paragraph on the context of Arthur, 516-542 AD, what was going on then in Rome, France and Byzantium.

Lets have this one again, Come on in…Humble Pie – 30 Days in the Hole (Lyrics) https://youtu.be/S74n2YF7WOI  via @YouTube

#62: Cream – I Feel Free https://youtu.be/Qb_Uu0eTNWk  via @YouTube

Some Redcoats were still about last night, bomb bursting in air, gorgeous- George- in the field across the street, here in the burbs, where the rich pop off enough fireworks to support a migrant or two- in addition to the ones we are trying to house and failing: LET MY PEOPLE GO!

#61: Here’s some we left out: Hendrix “Third Stone from the Sun” is available only with the amplified message from the aliens on Youtube. Maybe we can get it off “Experience.”

*Woodstock Joni Mitchell as done by Crosby, Stills Nash and Young.

 

On Baptism: A Fragment

   The text for the day celebrating the Baptism of Jesus is John 1, after :19-34, and 3. Jesus does baptize after he is baptized by John. The word “Essene” apparently means “bather,” and with the Mikveh the Jews are likely the first Baptists. In the US, that was Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island.

   The following is from my part of a discussion attempting to answer a question on what Baptism is. The inquirer had been told that baptism is necessary to become a Christian, and is either by water, by blood or by desire. At first, I think I know what they mean, but eventually, I figure out that I do not know what the statement cited intends to say. In the mean time, I have hit the fundamental points from which I would write an attempted account of the meaning of baptism- if I were to try to do that. The thoughtful reader may gather plenty on their own. It is a very hard question. Any comments are most welcome.

I:

   THEY mean rather than infant baptism, taking the ritual by choice. Jesus and John did the outward mystery, but it is especially an inward mystery- John 3::8 with Romans 6.* Anyone near to it might be diagnosed and drugged by our psychiatry.

   Jesus did baptism passively, by John, not actively baptizing others. But I say: Socrates is saved,” a paradox. We align ourselves toward the mysteries. Mom says: “Baptism removes original sin” which is the proper answer. I also say “Noriega is not saved, despite being “baptized.” The mystery is a re-ordering of the soul, which is why one in such penance appears quite confused.

   What no one understands is whether by “water and the spirit” he means the outward ritual and the inward mystery it reminds us of, which comes by penance, or if it means the Christ, shown in the separate sacrament “Confirmation.” Jesus himself did baptism + transfiguration. Mysteries.

II:

   My pop was gonna call me Frank, but the name was already taken. Thanx for the opportunity to try to speak on the mysteries. That is the root of psychology.

III:

   We do baptism, then first communion, Eucharist and wine, then Chrism, anointing, and that seems as good as anyone gets it. Baptists were called rebaptizers, cause they figured a guy has to choose voluntarily. Who knows?

  The relevant scripture here is John 1:34, where John the Baptist contrasts “water,” his baptism, and says Jesus baptizes with the “Holy Spirit-” and we don’t know, again, what this means. But he says to Nic., “Are you a teacher of all Israel, and you don’t get this?” So it is not a new.

   Where is that quotation from? The Christians were not even called Christians until Antioch, in Acts 11-12, When Peter sees the vision and Paul and others begin to preach the way to non-Jews. Jesus did not tell them directly to do that (But it does seem correct).

IV:

   Oh, also, there is a diabolic opposite, as shown in Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” But “Be not afraid. I go before you always.”

  Again, it is the core of psychology, and our psych can barely address it. Jung, Vol. 5, though, “Symbols of Transformation.” The Meno, 81 is just profound, especially with the Allegory of the cave..

   Our part is always penance. There are deep things too: Penance is accompanied by a regression of eros toward the origin, so Nicodemus, “…return to our mother’s womb?’ Through our mortal origin to His eternity, says Augustine. Cohen’s “Suzanne.”

  John, Andrew and James were followers of John the Baptist. Baptism seems to have been passed on from the earliest. It is Israeli: Mikvah. Peter says it is the meaning of Noah, “8 were saved by water.” It seems too to come from the washing of the newborn.

   I’m still trying to figure what that guy meant by “blood” and “desire.” I like how, in the Catholic Catechism, anyone, in a pinch, may do baptism, like if a guy is dying and wants it quick.

   Socrates in the myth of Recollection, in the Meno (81 a-e), and in the Allegory of the Cave (Republic VII), shows the mysteries too. Hence these are about human nature, not customs. The customs align us toward the mysteries, help us recollect- but we don’t do them by human making.

…Right, he could mean like Cohen’s Suzanne and the loss of love…but I doubt it! Romeo and Juliet ARE a saint! Or else it’s Juliet, but not quite Romeo alone. And the “blood” is just bloody weird. Bet it was a Witness. Maybe ‘e means the wine?

Remember? Reblog From Straight Arrow: No “Collusion?” Sater, Cohen and Trump Tower Moscow

Through: A Nibble, A Bite or a Meal, on WordPress, from New York Magazine, Weekend Edition, September 1 2017.

…..But Wait!….There’s More!…..on  ……”the Russian thing”……………

   Just so there’s no confusion: Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer emailed Vladimir Putin’s personal spokesman? Seeking help from the Kremlin on a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow? During the presidential campaign?

   Yes, this really happened. While most attention was rightly focused on the devastating flood in Houston, there was quite a bit of news on the Russia front — all of it, from President Trump’s perspective, quite bad.The revelations begin with a Trump business associate named Felix Sater . A Russian émigré who bragged about his Kremlin connections, Sater was a principal figure in development of the Trump Soho hotel and condominium project in lower Manhattan. Sater wrote a series of emails to Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, touting the Moscow Trump Tower project as a way to help Trump win the presidency.In November 2015 — five months after Trump had entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination — Sater wrote to Cohen that he had “arranged” for Trump’s daughter Ivanka, during a 2006 visit to Moscow, “to sit in Putins private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin.”The email went on, “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected. We both know no one else knows how to pull this off without stupidity or greed getting in the way. I know how to play it and we will get this done. Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this.”

Felix H. Sater, right, attends the Trump Soho Launch Party in 2007 in New York with Donald Trump, left, and Tevfik Arif, center.

Could Sater be just a blowhard who exaggerated his influence with the Russian president? Perhaps. But Ivanka Trump did tell the New York Times that she took a “brief tour of Red Square and the Kremlin” during that 2006 visit. The Times reported she said that “it is possible she sat in Mr. Putin’s chair during that tour but she did not recall it.”

There is no evidence that Cohen, one of Trump’s closest associates, found anything improper in Sater’s pledge to get Putin “on this program.” Nor did Cohen or anyone in the Trump Organization bother to disclose the emails — or the Trump firm’s effort, even during the campaign, to profitably emblazon the Trump name on the Moscow skyline — until the correspondence was turned over to the House Intelligence Committee on Monday.

And there’s more: In January 2016, with the Moscow project apparently stalled, Cohen went straight to the top to get it back on track — or at least tried to. He sent an email to Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s longtime personal spokesman, “hereby requesting your assistance.”

   Peskov confirmed that the email was received but said he did nothing about it and that it was not given to Putin.

So Trump was lying when he tweeted, shortly before his inauguration, that “I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA — NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!” The truth is that in October 2015, on the same day he participated in a GOP candidates’ debate, he signed a letter of intent for the Moscow Trump Tower project.

That is a “deal,” and Trump’s hunger to keep it alive may explain his reluctance to say anything critical about Putin. Or it may tell just part of the story.

The other part involves the whole question of collusion between Russian officials and the Trump campaign to meddle with the election and boost Trump’s chances. Sater’s boasts, by themselves, are hardly definitive. But of course there is the larger context, which includes the infamous meeting that Donald Trump Jr. convened in New York at which he hoped to receive dirt, courtesy of the Russian government, on Hillary Clinton.

Thus far we have the president’s son, son-in-law Jared Kushner (who was at that meeting), then-campaign manager Paul Manafort (also at the meeting) and now his personal lawyer all seemingly eager for Russian help in the election. Who in the campaign wasn’twilling to collude?

All of this is under scrutiny by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and the various congressional committees that are conducting investigations. Some have suggested that Trump’s pardon of Joe Arpaio, the unrepentant “birther” and racial profiler, might have been a message to Trump associates facing heat from prosecutors: Hang tough and don’t worry, you’ll get pardons.

But there was more bad news for the president: Politico reported that Mueller is now cooperating and sharing information with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Presidents can only issue pardons for federal offenses, not state crimes. Uh-oh.

….Moose and Squirrel Must Die…….OR NOT…..Weekend Edition…..

 

   Responding to a Russian government demand to drastically slash its diplomatic staff in Russia, the Trump administration Thursday ordered Moscow to close three of its consular offices in the United States.

Russia will be required to close its Consulate General in San Francisco, the chancery annex in Washington and the consular annex in New York, the State Department announced.

The move was the latest tit-for-tat action in worsening relations between Washington and Moscow, despite President Trump’s expressions of friendliness toward President Vladimir Putin.

Angered over a package of congressionally mandated economic sanctions, Russia had ordered the U.S. to cut its staff in Russia by around two-thirds, to 455.

Reason and Revelation Post

[In progress: draft]

The relation of Leo Strauss to Christianity is obviously a primary question for the students of Strauss that arrive for class from a Christian rather than a Jewish tradition.While Strauss addresses the questions of reason and revelation, he does not directly address the teachings of Jesus, but addresses reason and revelation from the Hebrew rather than the Gentile or non Hebrew Biblical tradition (MI, p. 114 “I speak only of the Jewish version” of the older and newer views regarding reason and revelation). This may be no more surprising for him than it was for Maimonides, following the Spanish persecutions. How then do Christian students of Strauss take up the question of Athens and Jerusalem? The following is an essay or attempt.

Strauss has presented the two sources of Western civilization and the alternatives in the crisis of modernity as the philosophic life from Athens and the life of belief, from Jerusalem. Famously, he presents these two as incompatible- one might pursue one or the other, but not both. One must always be subordinate and handmaid to the other. The ways of faith and reason are incompatible. The alternative- of their conjunction- Strauss attributes to Nietzsche

…The single goal of mankind is conceived by him as in a sense super-human. He speaks of the super-man of the future. The superman is meant to unite in himself Jerusalem and Athens on the highest level.

Athens and Jerusalem, p. 149

While it is not clear immediately what text Strauss draws this from, or what of Athens and what of Jerusalem the Nietzschean conjunction might have in mind, his contrast of reason and revelation is quite clear. A Caesar with the soul of Christ would be a conjoining of Jerusalem and Rome.

In response to this we begin from indicating that the word “revelation” is not used in the scriptures sense in which Strauss uses it. This is as an object of belief received by hearing rather than something uncovered to sight. The word revelation is then not used in this sense contrary to reason. This very contrast is medieval, not ancient, while the Bible is not medieval but ancient. The answers regarding the compatibility of the ways of faith and reason depend upon definitions and understanding of what these are, what faith is and what reason is, and as it turns out, there are various meanings for each- not all of which conflict. Strauss argues that the two, Athens and Jerusalem, agree as to the importance of justice, but disagree regarding what completes “morality-” Athens, the life of the quest for wisdom, Jerusalem a way of faith which assumes but does not seek regarding the first principle.

In the 1950 Athens and Jerusalem lecture of Strauss, at 6: 50 of the second lecture, there occurs this statement, repeated in the Mutual Influence essay (p. 111) which shows in its root the arguments which later emerged into such bloom:

The philosopher sees no necessity in assenting to something which is not evident to him… If he is told that his disobedience to revelation might be fatal, he raises the question “What does fatal mean?” If the philosopher is told that his disobedience to revelation might be fatal to him, he raises the question what does fatal mean? Eternal damnation to Hell fire? The philosophers are absolutely certain that a wise God would not punish with eternal damnation or anything else human beings that were seeking the truth with clarity. (MI, 113).

Strauss draws this simple early statement of the issue between Athens and Jerusalem without reference to any text. The reason may be that the texts do not quite say that. It is never said, exactly, “believe in revelation.” The word is used to describe something– the adherence to law, in the Hebrew Bible, but we would say that law and “revelation” in this sense are not coextensive. Law seems to depend upon the presumption of knowledge. Every code depends upon the presumption of knowledge, every city, and it is this, not “revelation” in any other sense that conflicts with the life of reason. Paul contrasts Grace and law. That Christianity has become a belief and a law is obviously true, but is this what Christianity is in the scripture? A belief enforced by law, with the prosecution of heresy as though it were a political crime, with censors employed, etc.? Another way to say this is that while law goes with hearing, the word “revelation” is always used in scripture as something revealed to sight rather than hearing, as in the uncovering of the apo-kalypse. It is the followers of these texts that say such things, and we will try to show that this is an addition which occurs between an original and its image, two or three times removed, and that the conflict Strauss presents between Jerusalem and Athens is due not to what these two are in themselves, but to the imitation. The very persecution of the Jews committed by Christians which makes it impossible, apparently, for the Jews to consider the truth of the Messiah, did not occur prior to 330 AD. The Christ is not a code or nomos at all. There may not be a single example of a single act of violence by a Christian in persecution of either heretic or Jew prior to this time- of the conjunction of Christianity and political power. The political powers simply continued to persecute as they have always done regardless of having taken up- and being vastly improved by- the Christian and Jerusalem based beliefs and images.

But to begin with the statement itself, what if those “seeking truth with clarity” torture their fellow humans? Is the “philosopher” still quite as certain, that no wise God, etc? He may say that no one seeking the truth with clarity would ever do such a thing or that the combination- of evil and the pursuit of “truth-” is by nature impossible. Yet in his published text on Athens and Jerusalem (p. 149), the example of the attempt to combine Jerusalem and Athens on the “highest level” is the Nietzschean “super-man.” Would a wise God, then, “punish” one who causes an anti-Christian culture of murder, torture and general lowness-crushing among his underlings? We are no longer so “certain.”

But we think the two tpo fit together quite nicely, As philosophy brings to Christianity the healthy skepticism that allows the renunciation of the orders of persecution, so Christianity might bring to philosophy the ability to renounce evil despite perrenial uncertainty which Socrates truly discerns to be the human condition. So too, if Socrates and Jesus are both what they say they are, there is not a diametric opposition. The quest might be higher than belief, but lower than faith; The faith might be higher than sophistry, but lower than the activity of the divine in man by nature.

The philosopher, Strauss explains, is certain that the quest for the most important things is the best way of life because he knows he does not know the most important things.- These most important things would seem to include the truth about the relation of the ways shown by Athens and Jerusalem. This absolute certainty is possible despite our ignorance of a great part of the whole- the most important things. But first, does it follow? Worms are presumably ignorant of the most important things, and it is not clear that the philosophic life is the best life for them. The beginning of Nietzsche too has something to do with the pursuit of truth not being best for man, for him because it destroys what is high or great, for us because it undermines the belief on which even a descent life depends. But can it be shown that certainty regarding a part does not require certainty regarding the whole? Our certainties seem all to depend upon hypotheses of which we are not “certain.” One wonders if Strauss is not stating the positions in this opposition in a way that he knows is exaggerated in common opinion.

II.

But to return: What if Christ is true, and Plato right about the Allegory of the Cave? Notice first that it is theology, not attachment to the Christ, that is in conflict with the way of reason, as we understand the love of wisdom (philo-sophia). If the Christ is true, the issue may be different than it is if the Christ is not true. Though John, in the title of the “Revelation” or Apo-calypse, is called “John the divine,” (theologou: or John the word of God), there is no New Testament way called “theology.” Paul, when writing of such things, switches to the passive: …”Now that you have come to know God, or rather, to be known by God!” (Gal. 4:9; 1 Cor 8:2-3). It may well be that Strauss was forbidden to consider such a possibility, or he may have thought it unintelligible, as he returned more toward the things of Judaism toward the end of his brilliant career. Again, these had seen such a face from the Christian world that reasoning through this appearance may not have been a leading priority. But is there any reason “apriori,” as is said, that these could not both be so? That the Christ is true, but mankind, being in a cave, see only the images and beliefs, and not the nature of the thing itself outside the cave?

   Athens and Jerusalem, Greek philosophy and the Bible, are the two sources that we find when we attempt to return to the roots of Western civilization. (MI, p.111 top). The common ground between these two is what is shown- we will not say “revealed- when we consider the rejection, in a single breath, of both the Socratic best regime and the Biblical Kingdom of God in the famous fifteenth chapter of Machiavelli’s The Prince. Rousseau seems to have read this work as a satire of princes, Contrary to Rousseau, this rejection of both Athens and Jerusalem marks the beginning of modernity. Machiavelli here contrasts his attempt to “go behind to the effectual truth of the thing,” in contrast with “the imagination therof.” By this he means  certain “republics and principates which have never been seen or known to be in truth,” but which “many have imagined” (The Prince, de Alvarez translation). [See note 1] Machiavelli chooses to let go what “ought to be done” for what is actually done, implying, we read, not satire, but that what ought to be done, justice or righteousness, is merely imaginary. Machiavelli indeed upholds a certain rejected part of the life of Western civilization- He attempts to recover Roman political action and ferocity (albeit without even the Roman gods). This became apparent not to Rousseau, but only after the course of modernity had unfolded, and especially in the twentieth century. But from its two roots, the life of Western civilization is primarily one of seeing how one in fact lives, or what is in truth done under the sun, in light of how it is best to live, or what ought to be done. No single man has done more for the recovery of this way of life than Leo Strauss.

   The common ground between the Bible and Socratic philosophy is presented by Strauss as follows: Athens and Jerusalem agree regarding the importance of “morality,” or, ethics and justice, as well as the insufficiency of of morality, but entirely disagree regarding what it is that completes morality, or what the basis of morality is. This assertion, which will be addressed, seems to me to be in part correct, getting hold of a genuine difference between what the Bible and Socratic philosophy present as the best life. But the assertion also seems to under-emphasize a certain very important similarity between these two regarding what completes morality, as indicated above. I do not refer to the similarities between the Bible and the theological or cosmological teachings in the dialogues, which similarity Strauss also addresses J. A., pp. 165-6). rather, the similarity to be taken up here pertains to what the Bible and Socratic philosophy show about what man is. But first let us consider what Strauss writes about the supposedly fundamental conflict between these two. Strauss writes:

It seems to me that the core, the nerve of Western intellectual history, Western spiritual history, one could almost say, is the conflict between the Biblical and philosophic notions of the good life. It seems to me that this unresolved conflict is the secret of the vitality of Western civilization. The recognition of two conflicting roots of Western civilization is, at first, a very disconcerting observation. Yet this realization has also something reassuring and comforting about it. The very life of Western civilization is the life between two codes, a fundamental tension There is therefore no reason inherent in the Western civilization itself, in its fundamental constitution, why it should give up life. [Note 2] But this comforting thought is justified only if we live that life, if we live that conflict. No one can be both a philosopher and a theologian, nor for that matter, some possibility which transcends the conflict between philosophy and theology, or pretends to be a synthesis of both. But every one of us can be and ought to be either one or the other, the philosopher open to the challenge of theology or the theologian open open to the challenge of philosophy.

                                                                   (P. R. 44-45; M.I., p.111)

The two lives are presented as mutually exclusive, though friendly alternatives. The alternatives are friendly because these are based on a common ground: “the common ground between the Bible and Greek philosophy is the problem of divine law” (P. R., p. 35), to which philosophy and the Bible present “two diametrically opposed solutions” (P. R., p. 35; M. I., p. 111). The two lives coexist in a friendly way on the basis of their fundamental agreement, and share a “perfect agreement in opposition to the elements of modernity which led to its crisis (P. R., p. 34.

But no one can be principally guided by both. The Biblical and philosophic lives can co-exist in one civilization or one nation, but cannot be together in one soul. It is not even possible, reasonably, to give up the life based on the tension between souls guided by each, because the supposed refutations of either are based on an indemonstrable hypothesis regarding one of the two.

All the alleged refutations of revelation presuppose unbelief in revelation, and all alleged refutations of philosophy presuppose already faith in revelation. There seems to be no ground common to both and therefore superior to both.

                                                                              (M. I., p. 177)

   Strange, then, that they both have justice or righteousness (it is the same word in the New Testament, dike) in common. The inferior common ground is the agreement between the Bible and philosophy regarding justice and the divine law. Strauss states, “By justice, both understand primarily obedience to the law. The law that requires man’s full obedience is in both cases not merely civil, penal, and constitutional law, but moral and religious law as well” (P. R., p. 34). The two agree also regarding the limitation of obedience to law, and this limitation is related to the problem of divine law. The problem is stated as follows:

The original notion of a divine law or divine code implies that there is a large variety of them. The very variety, and more specifically the contradiction between the various divine codes makes the idea of a divine law in the simple and primary sense of the term radically problematic.

                                                                         (M. I., p. 111)

   It is to this problem that the Bible and Greek philosophy present two diametrically opposed solutions between which there appears to be no common ground. The Biblical solution, which stands or falls by the belief in God’s providence…

As has been suggested regarding what completes “morality, Strauss writes:

…Or is there a notion, a word, that points to the highest in the Bible on the one hand and the greatest works of the Greeks claim to convey? There is such a word: wisdom. Not only the Greek philosophers but the Greek poets as well were considered to be wise men, and the Torah is said in the Torah to be “your wisdom in the eyes of the nations.” We must try to understand the difference between Biblical wisdom and Greek wisdom…According to the Bible the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord; according to the Greek philosophers the beginning of wisdom is said to be wonder…

Jerusalem And Athens p. 149.

Note 1: pp. 93-95. Strauss contrasts the Socratic best regime with the medieval understanding of the Kingdom of God in Chapter IV of Natural Right and History, pp. 144-145.

Note 2: See “Jerusalem and Athens, ” p. 149, top. It is agreed that on the level of “culture,” the conflict cannot and ought not be overcome.

III

   Strauss indeed assumes that the Christ is false. But IF the Christ is true, philosophy is obviously not impossible. Nor, given that a thinker like Strauss could miss that truth or that possibility, is it clear that philosophy will not be necessary. Nor is philosophy impossible due to the multiplicity of laws. Strauss assumes that the Bible is simply a law or divine code, and that piety is the way of life it teaches- piety in the Greek sense, not only for the many who do not philosophize, but also for those who do. None of these assumptions are warranted, but as Strauss says, each assume the other to be impossible alternatives, philosophy and the Bible. “If the Christ is true” can be a self known premise with which Christians enter reasoning, and if the Christ is true, Christian philosophy is possible. The place of the Christian gospel would be little different from the place of truth, and the highersat truths, in Socratic philosophy. And if Plato is right about the allegory of the cave, it would not be surprising that there are shadows, artifacts, and men chained to viewing images in the Medieval as well as the ancients cave. The city killed the philosopher as mankind did the Messiah because what both have in common is ascent from the cave, the earth, the body, etc.

   Long ago we tried to explain why it seemed obvious to us that the Bible and philosophy did not present mutually exclusive alternatives as the last, and not the first word on the issue. The two ways appear that way inside the cave, but are “resolved,” at least potentially, when one considers the nature of man. Consider, for example, that the Sermon on the Mount opens the ministry of Jesus by rejecting 5 teachings derived for the Jews from Mosaic law. Or that the teaching of Jesus on providence is a bit different from the common assumption about providence. And it is not that these things are not difficult, or that the questions go away. We do quite like the final word of Socrates to the Athenians on the immortality of the soul- that we do not know- though is as true in Jerusalem as in Athens. But whether the soul is immortal or not, we hold that the life of justice or phronesis– the Greek intellectual virtue that contains but transcends justice- is the best life either way. Whether one is happy for a short lifetime or an eternal eternity is perhaps not our business. Like wisdom, it may be the possession of the God.” Ours is to do the right thing in each particular, or to aim at this. (Aristotle, Ethics I, ) Those who are good or obedient only for the promised reward may be in obvious difficulty especially if that reward turn out to be true. We learned this very point by considering the speech of Socrates in Book II of the Republic distinguishing the three kinds of goods, and proposed it to a street preacher at the Diag in Ann Arbor, MI. Can people really be saved if they turn to God from their own self-interest, to save their own skin? His answer was that people begin to take the Christ seriously from concern for their own immortal soul. And we are not yet satisfied with this answer.

   The Christ, Socrates, Jefferson, and romantic love are four things that seems to us to fit quite well together in the same cosmos. A Socratic Christianity might be said to replace the sects, a Protestant or Catholic Christianity, etc, replacing the adherence to a belief with the quest, philosophy replacing these in a philosophic Christianity. We do not have divine wisdom, even as Socrates teaches, but everyone supposes that they do, especially the quarreling sects, and Socrates may be the only human to succeed at the knowledge of ignorance. Irv would say: Socrates is boasting! Only Socrates is THE philosopher, able truly to know his own ignorance, despite the marvel that innate knowledge apparently is sufficient for us to know what the questions are. This ignorance is not the same as belief in the Christ, but might replace not the account of being, but the opinions regarding this. We do not know divine physics for example regarding the transubstantiation, but if the Christ is true, we may do that in remembrance. The tradition of “revelation” assumes for itself divine and natural things, from which Socrates returned to the human things. Hence, for us, Socrates and philosophy replace not the account of the first things, the divine and natural things, but the human understanding of this. We say the Christians ought apply the teaching regarding humility here, in our assumption of divine knowledge. It is wonderful to have the word of God, if only we could read it! This solves the problem of the sects in Christianity.

   Jefferson, in the second sentence of the Declaration, sets out the natural rights, recognized because we are a large nation, but also because of human ignorance, and hence the impossibility, for almost all practical purposes, that government be able publicly to know and tend the good of the soul for each. Our psychology and psychiatry are disastrous examples, and soon these may realize that the Constitution forbids their assumed authority of the soul, even as it forbids the medieval Church from burning or otherwise treating “witches” and “heretics.”

   Finally, Shakespeare in Drama sets out a program of poetry that manages to avoid presenting the divine as known- though prior to this Socratic poet, it seems to have been assumed that the function of poetry was to do just that. So, the Christ, Socrates, Jefferson and Shakespeare fill out four sections of the true divided line, properly understood. And these are only examples and guides, but they show the enterprises and the place of each activity- poetry, law, philosophy and “metaphysics.” Or do we have a theologian who understands the mystery of the “trinity” and the Bride? Or an old testament Jew who understands why wisdom is said to be:

…a tree of life to those that lay hold of her,

And those who hold her fast are called happy.

(Proverbs, 3:

If wisdom is the tree of life, the pursuit of wisdom cannot be forbidden by the Bible, nor is it “diametrically opposed” to the Socratic pursuit of wisdom, but rather, to the antichrist. Nor was Moses piously following Abraham, and Abraham following Noah, Noah, Enoch and Enoch, Adam, on the assumption that the old is the good. These are rather the non-philosophic assumptions of the majority, who do not have the time or good fortune to attempt the ascent, but must be provided.

And during the time of trouble, as Michael tells Daniel (Daniel 12:3), “those who are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament.; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.”

IV: From notes 36-37 to Chapter III on King Lear and The Tempest.

In Deuteronomy, where the Law is given with the preface “Hear Oh Israel(6:4)” even here, the revealed things of the law are contrasted with the secret things of the Lord, the higher things that are not revealed (29:29). But indeed, here the things heard are called the things revealed, though the law is not called “revelation.” Just as in the setting of Deuteronomy, the written law does not exist, so during the writing of scripture in the New Testament, the New Testament itself does not exist, and so is not included in Paul’s reference to the inspiration of every word of scripture. The word of God was in the beginning, though there can be two different senses- as when the Prophets say, “God said, ….”.

In one of the most important treatments of reason and revelation, Paul writes, “has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” Acts 17:18 is another important place, where Paul, in the Areopagus at Athens, questioned by Stoic and Epicurean “teachers, comments on the altar to the unknown God.” This Paul says he proclaims. But he does not use the word revelation or call the gospel “revelation” as opposed to \reason.” Jack MacArthur notes that the word “revelation” occurs 18 times in the New Testament, and always indicates that something has become evident to the eye (Revelation, 1973, p. 4). The closest- and perhaps an exception to what is being said, is 1 Peter 1:7; 13, where “the revelation of Jesus Christ” is future, and the same uncovering that is given to John (1 Peter 1:13), though here it is especially said

…whom not having seen, you love, in whom yet not seeing, believing, but you exalt with joy unspeakable and glorified obtaining the end of your faith, the salvation of souls, for which the prophets searched, to whom it was “revealed” that they ministered not to themselves, but “to you.”

The place held for Socrates by the myth of recollection in the Meno (81 b-e) is in the Christian epistemology future rather than past, as in the account of recollection- hence in this life, in the body, we do not come to know or eat from the tree of life. In this life, it is said, we are rather known by the Most High or first principle than knowing this.”Blessed are those who have not seen yet believed,” as Jesus tells Thomas the doubter. These are told then to set their hope fully on the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ,” the second coming. The revelation remains primarily the object of sight, though there is access to this through pisteos– believing, faith, “obtaining the end of your faith, the salvation of (your) souls (psuchon).” In the Bible, revelation means literally an uncovering, as of mysteries that have been hidden (Romans 16:25-26), and so may be precisely a seeing for oneself. Elsewhere in the New Testament, the revelation is the second coming, in the title and first sentence of the last book, Revelation (Title and 1:1). The closest direct contrast of reason and revelation as a divinely given set of principles or beliefs, after Deuteronomy, may be 1 Corinthians 1:22: “For the Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly for the Greeks.” Paul in Galatians 1:12) uses the word revelation in contrast to a teaching “according to man, but even here revelation is a direct perception of the Apostle The gospel is a teaching or doctrine- something like the Apostle’s Creed, and there is concern very early with presenting this correctly. John identifies and opposes certain heresies.

The question is whether this belief or faith, with its emphasis on belief or faith, is necessarily in conflict with the life of reason or philosophy, in a sense in which, for example, belief in the Allegory of the cave is not. Is Christianity or Biblical faith in general consistent with the knowledge of ignorance? Or does faith require that certain things be taken as known when these are not known? For it may be that the gospel, as an object of faith, works in some natural way, like a magnet, to attract and awaken the image of God in the soul by the pattern of the deed of the Savior, as Jung writes, and we believe, drawing out the golden element toward the throne of the soul (Jung, Aion, p. 185).

The two, reason and revelation, would be contrasted in this way, mutually exclusive and diametrically opposed, if Socratic philosophy were a teaching according to man. But these things are notoriously problematic in the Socratic thinker, and Paul has not read Plato. The Platonic Socrates may be, as he is presented in the Apology, equally unimpressed with the wisdom of the world and the knowledge attained by human beings. Reason and revelation or faith would also be contrasted in this way if the Bible or teaching of Jesus could be simply identified with the city or with opinion. Yet there is a conflict in Jerusalem between convention or the city (nation) and the prophets and the Messiah, and the conflict often led similarly to the deaths of those similarly said to have been sent. It is surprising that the Straussians and Hebrew students of Plato do not see or emphasize the obvious similarity of the crucifixion of the Christ by Israel or mankind and the trial and death of Socrates. The same pattern was one of the first thing to us to appear. The same pattern occurs with Romeo and Juliet too regarding the family. Each politea or political body, family, city and mankind or the nation, commits what is oddly like a ritual sacrifice, due to something like a conflict of love and law by nature. The conflict of the city and philosophy in Greece parallels that between the prophets and Israel. Hence Jesus calls them out for killing the prophets, etc. and by this love, philosophy and salvation are accommodated among mankind, or civilization, within the nation, city and family.

Regarding similarity of the teachings of the fool and St.Paul in King Lear and St. Paul’s contrast of faith and philosophy, Laurence Berns writes: For Paul, the foolish of faith possess a wisdom far deeper than anything accessible to natural reason.” (Gratitude, Nature and Piety in King Lear, p. ). He asks, “Is this what Shakespeare suggests by echoing this language about wisdom and folly in his articulation of the problem of morality and justice in King Lear?” Berns apparently answers the question negatively because of 1) the primacy of sight to compassionate love (p. 45); and 2) The absence of the patience based on the expectation of the coming of the Lord (pp. 45, 48); and 3) the disproportion between the sins and the unredeemed suffering of Gloucester and Lear (pp. 46, 48 top). On sight, consider Matthew 6:22-3:

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light.; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be filled with darkness. If, then, the light in you is dearkness, how great is the darkness!”

If compassionate love is the soundness of the heart, this is ultimately dependent upon sight. The teaching of Jesus here is similar to the teaching of Aristotle that once one has the intellectual virtue of phronesis or practical wisdom, the rest of the ethical virtues are there as well. (Ethics, VI, 1144b 11-18). This is the soundness of the body that is dependent upon the eye of the soul. Augustine too distinguishes Plato from the worldly wise as addressed by Paul (City of God, VIII, 10), and writes that philosophy as the attempt to attain virtue by knowledge and the imitation of God fulfills the great commandment (VIII.8). He writes that philosophy as the imitation of God fulfills the great commandment (VIII,8) There is a higher sense of “knowledge, by which the teaching of faith does not contradict the teaching that “by knowledge are the righteous delivered” (Proverbs 11:9). Paul, on one hand, claims, We have the mind of Christ.” (I Cor. 2:6-16). However, he also writes, that now we see “as in a glass dimly, but then face to face” (I Cor. 13: 12), and “we all with face unveiled, seeing as in a mirror, (katoptridzomenoi) the glory (doxan) of the Lord, are being changed into the same image” (2 Cor. 3:18) (Plato, Republic, 500 c-d; 500e-501b1, 510e; 516a; 540b 1).

It seems to be a very difficult, and not an easy question at all, how Socrates and Plato would themselves have reacted to Jesus or the teaching of Christ crucified. A Socratic conversation with Jesus did not take place, but one doubts that Jesus would have considered Socrates impious, or that Socrates would have considered the “way to be diametrically opposed to philosophy of the Socratic or Pythagorean sort. And this too is how Justin Martyr- the first Christian to read Plato of whom we know, fit Christianity and Socratic philosophy together in the same cosmos:

We have been taught that Christ is the first born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably (meta logos), are Christians, even thought they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them; among barbarians, Abraham…Elias…

Justin, Apology,

Strauss was aware of this striking passage, and may indicate that it is an alternative to his presentation of the contrast (Class on Plato’s Gorgias). That Socrates is saved is the possibility. If so, or if as was said, the Christ is true, Athens and Jerusalem will be compatible on the highest level, their difference widening perhaps as we are submerged again into the visible.

The shocking teaching in this regard is that nous– intellect or the eye of the soul is a thing begotten, as distinct from a thing made, and this, we say is the eye of the soul and the image of God in man. So, as John writes, ” In him was life, and the life was the light of men..The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world (John 1: 4,9). We equate this with baptism, and the birth of the soul or man out of the cave or world. Hence the veil that was on the law and the images is lifted (2 Cor 3:13). This is the rebirth of the soul (John 3; Romans 6). It is in one sense common to all men from Noah, or universal. Hence allusions to it appear in the Elysian mysteries as well, or even in the story of Arion in Herodotus, as referenced in the Republic, as they have a hard swim through the conjunction of the male and female guardian classes of the city. From this conjunction is born the begotten nous (Plato, Republic 494; 501b, etc). Still, as Peter indicates, by faith in the gospel, one can be aligned with the image, if if one is not literally reborn in this life- contrary to the teaching of the reborn Christians.

Is it possible that Socrates and Jesus each are what they say they are? That being a philosopher it is proper that Socrates not know the “what of God,” or of the beings in whose work our service would be piety, if we could figure out what work this is Euthyphro, 12-15). Socrates is famous for teaching that the just man harms no one, but Jesus that we should love one another, and even our enemies. Or again, that salvation be brought to a few by one in a human way, and to many more by Jesus, each being in truth just what they say they are?

The two, Athens and Jerusalem, seem then to be mutually verifying on many of the most important points, or in the most important way, and there seems to be no reason to exclude the possibility that the Christ is true, and Plato right about the allegory of the cave. Christianity and philosophy indeed may correct important dangers on the periphery, where most of us will struggle and serve. The confusion over doctrine that occurs due to the cave disappears when one realizes that we are not obligated to know or hold the right opinions about divine physics- simple old ladies obligated regarding such things as “transubstantiation-” ours are the human things, our penance and forgiveness of others, without which we will not be forgiven, believing whatever. Faith, of course is different from belief, if it is related to belief. Christians are too gullible, perhaps, and philosophers, as the Stoic or Epicurean, too faithless. “Natural reason,” in one sense is the child begotten in the soul of the one ascending, who then sees the plants, animals and men along with “the divine images in water” before turning to behold the marvels of the true cosmos, in the new Socratic kind of the contemplation of the heavens. We would surely never think of the things revealed in the Bible, nor be able to contemplate them- such as the incarnation- without the inspiration of the Apostles and prophets. But as we say, it is a wonderful thing to have the word of God, if only we could understand it!

*Revised from King Lear with The Tempest, 2004, p. 74 and note 36-7 to Chapter III, (p. 254)

Bibliography:

Jung, Carl. Aion. p. 185.

Berns, Laurence. Gratitude, Nature and Piety in King Lear.

MacArthur, Jack. Revelation. Eugene Oregon. Vernon I Iverson Co., 1973.

Strauss, Leo Jerusalem and Athens: in Leo Strauss: Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, University of Chicago Press, 1983.

____________. The Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy, in The Independent Journal of Philosophy, (Vienna)1979.

____________. “On the Interpretation of Genesis.”

____________. Progress or Return? The Contemporary Crisis

“As” Lyrics: Stevie Wonder

As around the sun the earth knows she’s revolving
And the rosebuds know to bloom in early may
Just as hate knows love’s the cure
You can rest your mind assure
That I’ll be loving you always

As now can’t reveal the mystery of tomorrow
But in passing will grow older every day
Just as all that’s born is new
You know what I say is true
That I’ll be loving you always

Always
(Until the ocean covers every mountain high)
Always
(Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea)
Always
(Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream)

Did you know that true love asks for nothing
No no her acceptance is the way we pay
Did you know that life has given love a guarantee
To last through forever and another day

Just as time knew to move on since the beginning
And the seasons know exactly when to change
Just as kindness knows no shame
Know through all your joy and pain
That I’ll be loving you always

As today I know I’m living
But tomorrow could make me the past
But that I mustn’t fear
For I’ll know deep in my mind
The love of me I’ve left behind
‘Cause I’ll be loving you always

Always
(Until the trees and seas just up and fly away)
Always
(Until the day that eight times eight times eight is four)
Always
(Until the day that is the day that are no more)
Did you know you’re loved by somebody
(Until the day the earth starts turnin’ right to left)
Always
(Until the earth just for the sun denies itself)
I’ll be lovin’ you forever
(Until dear mother nature says her work is through)
Always
(Until the day that you are me and I am you)
Always
(Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky
Until the ocean severs every mountain high)
Always mm mm

We all know sometimes life hates and troubles
Can make you wish you were born in another time and space
But you can bet your lifetimes that and twice it’s double
That God knew exactly where he wanted you to be placed
So make sure when you say you’re in it, but not of it
You’re not helpin’ to make this earth
A place sometimes called hell
Change your words into truths
And then change that truth into love
And maybe our children’s grandchildren
And their great grandchildren will tell
I’ll be loving you until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky

The 10 Best Love Songs of All Time

Following our old method in aesthetics here, we will attempt to collect candidates for the ten best, hoping to catch the ten in a wider net- which, incidentally, works when fishing for songs. As these swim by, we simply ask: might this be one of the best 10? and these are the candidates, of transcendent height, depth, and beauty.

Two different senses of “love song” are 1) the human song that is like the songs of the birds, a part of our natural courtship ritual, and 2) Songs about love in general, including the sad ones, and the ones about all kinds of love, not only the romantic. About half of all lyric poetry is love songs. As said, we hold that love songs evince the imago Dei of Genesis 1:26, some being like a reflector. The knowledge within is the vehicle of inspiration. These are principles of psychology, more fundamental than what has been accessible to our “science.”

We look especially to the lyrics, and to what it is that lyric poetry is doing, or to the function of lyric poetry. If modern psychiatric science has a better way of collecting data and approaching the questions of love, so that these things are clear and known in the practice of the art, …we have not seen it. A tentative list is as follows:

1. The Wedding Song
2. In My Life
3. Dance Me to the End of Love
4. The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
5. I Don’t Know How to Love Him Superstar
6. Holly Holy
7. Play Me
8. Your Love’s Return
9. I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You
10. Louie, Louie!

Candidates

Air That I Breathe Hollies

Your Song Elton John / Taupin

Tiny Dancer Elton John /Taupin

Into the Mystic Morrison

Brown Eyed Girl Morrison

Tupelo Honey Morrison

Have I Told You Lately Morrison

Evergreen Streisand

Crimson and Clover Tommy James

Golden Lady Stevie Wonder

Sunshine of My Life Stevie Wonder

For Your Love Yardbirds (Gouldman)

I Can’t Explain Who

Close to You Carpenters

We’ve Only Just Begun Carpenters

I Don’t Know How to Love Him Superstar

Hush Herman

*We Gotta Get Out of this place Eric Burden

*Born to Run Springsteen

*Because the Night Patti Smith/ East Street Band Guy

My Love McCartney

Soul Love Bowie

Let it Grow Clapton

Bus Stop Hollies

For Emily Simon

Kathy’s Song Simon

Bridge Over Troubled Water Simon

*Time of the Season Zombies

*Something Beatles (Harrison)

*#9 Dream Lennon (Lennon)

*Twilight Time Platters

Special Angel Helms

I Love Your Way Frampton

Thank You ZeppelinShe’s a Rainbow

*Stones She’s A Rainbow

*Beach Boys Good Vibrations

Wondring Aloud Tull

Songbird Fleetwood Mac

Sad Love songs:

Taxi Chapin

Yesterday Beatles

Against the Wind Seger

Train Man Seger

Fire and Rain James Taylor

Suzanne Cohen

Tomorrow is a long Time Dylan

Stretched on Your Grave Sinead

Ten Years Gone Zeppelin

I’m Not In Love 10cc

Baby I Love Your Way Frampton

Hello, Its Me Tod Rundgren

No Matter What Badfinger

The word love has many meanings, and the honoring of St. Valentine’s Day opens out from romantic love to all sorts of friendship and the love of humanity in general. While our psychology have been for the most part unable to address any of these theoretically, the Greeks had several words for these different kinds: eros, epithumia, philia, agape. When John writes that God is love, the word is agape. The whole scripture ends in the marriage that is said to unite all things, so that one sees that this is more than a mere coincidence of words- the romantic love that joins man and woman at the beginning of each new family. That this love of one for another is what is at the root of all human connection, community and connectedness.

Love as a “metaphysical” idea stands next to “the Good,” and perhaps “thought thinking thought,” as the best of the Names or definitions of the Most High. It is between and around the two, heaven and earth, that make up the creation, between the things that we see and the good there is somehow this love.

“Philanthrope” as the love of man mat be a participation in God. But the love of the higher for the lower is an overflowing, rather than an eros or longing for fulfillment, as of an emptyness.

“I would I love you from my fullness, rather than my emptiness,” some other man has said.

Paul: Eph 5:31- For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself…

So scripture ends in a wedding, of the Bride and Lamb,when the city of God comes down from heaven, Revelation 19-22. …as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, the things in heaven and the things on earth.” (Ephesians 1:10)

Jesus Matthew 19:4 …He who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. …

…So they are no longer two but one flesh. What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.

Tempest Excerpt: Conclusion on King Lear

Last two pages of the book King Lear with The Tempest:

…

There is a similar relation, [to that between Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream] based on a common pattern, between the British tragedy of Lear and the Italian comedy. These are the two non-historical plays that deal especially with a succession of Royal Rule. The unwise management of the three parts of the British kingdom by Lear is contrasted with the wise management of the Italian succession by Prospero. The tragic relation of Lear to his daughter, and perhaps his error regarding her marriage, is contrasted with the success of Prospero in securing a happy life for Miranda. The storm scenes, on the land in the center of Lear and at sea in the opening of the Tempest, indicate a treatment of the same theme, of the dissolution of the conventional orders. [6] The Tempest seems to presuppose the center, and hence the whole of Lear. The conventional kingship of Lear, which in the tragedy comes crashing down,is contrasted with the natural royalty or philosophic statesmanship of wisdom. Ironically, this natural royalty proves in certain ways to be what the flattery of custom told Lear he was as king.

As noted above, there is some parallel between Edgar and Prospero. The Tempest raises the theme of a conflict between brothers to the center of focus. The conflict of two brothers in Lear effects the changes of the kingdom in the main plot only as Edmund rises toward the tyranny, until Edgar, in the decisive duel, prevents Edmund from turning the fall of Lear into a tyranny. As in the Tempest, the victory of the royal nature over tyranny depends on the return of the divested but virtuous character to active rule. Like Prospero, [7] Edgar returns from his divestment to wear the clothing of his true appearance in the end. Edgar develops through the play from a gullible but true son through a series of disguises He takes on the appearance first of a Bedlam beggar, then ascends to the peasant’s clothes in which he leads his father, to the guise of a sailor or seaman who convinces Gloucester that the madman was a fiend. In this guise he slays Oswald, From here he changes clothing again to the knight who appears armed and defeats Edmund. Having completed the recovery of his position as heir to the earldom, he publicly reveals himself as Edgar. From here he ascends again,as he is invited by Albany to share in the ruling of the “gored state” of Britain. He may come to fulfill the royal nature- a perfection of ethical virtue. [Thomas G.] West compares Edgar with King Henry V, in that these two “redeem the time- exercising kingly rule in imitation of the redemption [8]. His foresight and effectiveness indicate that he is, as Berns writes, the paradigm of virtue in the play.” [9]

The wise rule of Prospero is based on a discovery of the higher nature, especially a political knowledge of the human souls, by which for example, he separates each of the three groups on the island [10] and orchestrates the marriage of Ferdinand and Miranda. [11] It is by this higher nature- the same as that revealed in the Socratic turn, that the philosophic Duke knows how each thing would be best, and works with nature to bring this good about. By this knowledge, Prospero sends Ariel to deceive even the King of Naples intpo believing that he has lost his son as punishment for deposing the Duke of Milan It is on the basis of a similar sort of knowledge that Edgar deceives his already penitent father into believing that the gods have acted not in the punishment but in the preservation of his bodily life.

When Lear sees Edgar in the hovel, he takes the disguised appearance of natural virtue, two or three times removed, to be the thing itself. [Lawrence] Berns writes of Edgar:

The same consummate irony that led him, correctly but for the wrong reasons, to be called the “thing itself,” that is, the natural man, by Lear, may be at work also in his being called “philosopher.”

Berns, Gratuitude, Nature and Piety, p. 51

The royal character who is not a philosopher is also an image of the philosopher (Hamlet II,ii, 260-271). This principle allows for the natural prince in the plot of Lear to reflect the action of Prospero, and the highest argument regarding the most fundamental principles, taken up by the playwright himself. He represents the claim of natural merit, although unlike Edmund, Edgar never uses the word “nature.” These two appeals to nature are two fundamental understandings of self interest or the good, one in basic accord with, but the other rejecting, justice. The other rejects natural right not in the sense of the claim to rule by nature- which it has, based on power- but in the sense of the upright character and what is right among human according to nature. The connection of the character of Edgar to the Shakespearean recovery of natural right is veiled in his being the true claimant to all that Edmund attempts to usurp, both in the appeal from custom to natural virtue and in the appeal to Grace, which Goneril made for him. By being in truth what he is by custom, Edgar demonstrates the natural being which is the cause of the reflection in the custom or law. Edgar is not only a knight, but is also the godson of Lear. [13] His being the godson of Lear seems to suggest that the symbolic meaning of the ceremonial orders of the old monarchy is continued in, and possibly fulfilled by, the natural virtue of Edgar.

Like the character of Prospero in the Tempest, the character of Edgar may be autobiographical. Like Prospero, the work of Edgar is to prevent his evil brother, here the embodiment of the principle acquisition or power, from seizing rule. The response of Edgar to this potentially horrifying circumstance would be like the practical aspect of the thought of Shakespeare toward his own circumstance, or like the position of philosophy regarding the soul and the ruling opinion of the West. Contrary to the assertion of Howard White in his Copp’d Hills Toward Heaven,, the project of Shakespeare seems to aim more to oppose the principle introduced into the soul of the West by Machiavelli, than it aims to affirm a classical teaching in contrast with Christian custom or Christianity. [14] One might say that the problem of Prospero is more Antonio than Alonso, and the problem of Edgar more Edmund than Gloucester or Lear.

Unlike Prospero, Edgar does not act to effect the arrangement of royal rule, but acts only to prevent the tyranny of his brother. In this limited governance, the statesmanship of the royal nature is distinguished from the philosophic statesmanship of Prospero, which does address the fundamental orders. The work of philosophy or wisdom inn the political world, as distinct from the magic island,is not literal royal rule, but, as in the care of the American founding fathers, the prevention of tyranny.

Notes

6. Paul Cantor. Prospero’s Republic p. 241.

7. John Alvis, John Postscript.” In Shakespreare’s understanding of honor, p. 10 (443).

8. West, Thomas G. Institute colloquium on King Lear, 1986.

9 Lawrence Berns, “Gratitude, Nature and Piety in King Lear,” p. 50.

10. Allan Bloom; “Interpretive Essay” on Plato’s Republic. p. 361

11. Jaffa writes: “According to Plato, the arrangement of marriages is the central mystery of philosophic rule. The arrangement of the marriage between Ferdinand and Miranda is the culmination of the exercise by Prospero of that wisdom he has gained by making the liberal arts “all my study” (“An Interpretation of the Shakespearean Universe,” p. 281).

12. De Alvarez, The Clearing, Class 2; Berns, p. 51, note 68.

13. Alulis, “Wisdom and Fortune: The Education of the Prince in King Lear.”p. 389 note 21.

14. White, Copp’d Hills, p. 65. There is admittedly a sense in which Shakespeare as a writer is classical rather than Christian. Because of the separation of Church and state, American public life and public education cannot turn to Jerusalem in the attempt to address the erosion of the ethical foundation of self government. The secular solution consistent with American liberty might be to set American public life and education on the foundation of Athenian ethical and political philosophy. This can include Shakespeare, who, like Plato and Aristotle,can be common to all. See Bloom, Introduction to Shakespeare’s Politics, pp. 1-12.

Reading the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Revelation 6

Thinking about the four horsemen, which we failed to understand in writing on the Revelation (pp. 123-129), some advance in clarity is possible. I had determined that Hal Lindsey was on the wrong track, but did not know what to do with this section, except that it leads up to the martyrs seen under the sixth seal. But the church history sought by Erdman and others in the 7 letters rather would be more likely to fit literally here, literally after the things concerning martyrdom that do pertain to the 7 churches. The four horsemen are like the 4 horses in the dream of Zechariah (1:6-10), sent out to patrol. There is also a similarity to the four beasts that arose from the sea in the night vision of Daniel 7, seen to refer to empires over Jerusalem Each is introduced by one of the four “living beings,” the Zoa seen around the throne. The fourth is most terrible, and is specified to effect one fourth of the earth, while an extent is not specified for the first three horsemen. This extent, leading to martyrs, is about the same as the extent of twentieth century totalitarianism. The first, on a white horse goes out to conquer, and did so. This is similar to the Roman empire to 365 AD, though then I lose track of the argument. The sword could be Islam or the general wars that superseded the peace of Rome. The second and third, the red and black horses, whose riders have a sword and then a balance, are not clear. Then the fourth is pale, and his rider’s name was “Death and Hades.”

What if these were something like:

Ancient

Medieval

Modern

Totalitarian

Another might be the nations scattering Jerusalem, Rome, Islam, the knights and then the Turks or the British. But we look especially to huge things like the succeeding empires over Jerusalem addressed in Daniel ( the Babylonia, Mede-Persian, Greek and Roman).effecting the church (es), in keeping with the theme, and resulting in the martyrs seen under the throne. The sixth and seventh seals then concern the completion of their number.

The Michigan Basin Supervolcano: Hypothesis

The Michigan Basin is a bowl shape underneath the mitten of Michigan. It is thought to have been formed by the successive layers being pushed downward. But we think it obvious that there was a very large super volcano, about 2 Billion years ago, along what is called the Midcontinent Rift. This crater then collapsed, to be filled in by the Cambrian and layers following. The Porcupine Mountains and the belt of copper around the Keewanaw Peninsula follow the circumference of the Basin, and these mountains are among the oldest in the world, estimated at 2 Billion years old. The three Great Lakes- Michigan Huron and Erie, are within the Basin, while the deepest lakes, Superior and Ontario, are outside the Basin along the Rift, which seems to have nearly left Canada with Europe when the continents separated throughout the following billions of years. There is a Super volcano at Yellowstone, which last erupted about 640 thousand, that is, less than ONE million years ago years ago, and it is evident from previous eruptions near Yellowstone to the West SW that the crust of the earth has moved from the shaft. What we say is that something similar obviously occurred along the Midcontinent Rift at least as long ago as the Porcupine Mountains were formed

The rings of Michigan bedrock are due to sediments deposited in each of the past geological ages. These filled in the basin, then the softer rock was scoured out by glaciers.

Here is the basin when salt was being deposited:

Here is the Midcontinent Rift:

OLD mountains! The mystery of the Michigan Basin deepens: Wikipedia The Porcupine Mountaims:

These mountains and the copper belt are in the outer layer of the basin, following the circumference, It could still be a meteor, if this disturbed the crust 2B ago…

Hypothesis: The Pocupine Mountains and Michigan copper are from the volcano that made the Michigan basin, 2 Billion years ago.

2

The 5 Oldest Mountain Ranges are: The Barbertown Greenstone Belt (3.6 Billion Years) Country and Origin: South Africa and Swaziland. … The Hamersley Range (3.4 Billion Years) … The Waterberg Mountains (2.7 Billion Years) … The Magaliesberg (2.3 Billion Years) … Guiana Highlands 2

Yellowstone super volcano last went off about 640,000 years ago- more recent than one million, whereas the Michigan basin volcano would be 2 Billion, just after earth was cooling and the land appearing. Similar to the Michigan Basin, Yellowstone did not leave a mountain, and we figured out with some difficulty that it was there at all.

Geologically passive? There just happens to be precambrian mountains and volcanic stuff shaped like the edge of the basin?

Wiki: “The basin appears to have subsided concurrently with sediment infilling. These sediments were found to be mainly shallow-water sediments, many of which are richly fossiliferous. The location was on a geologically passive portion of crust.”

Guess again! But here we see the subduction causing the Basin and the Porcupines may have been later than the huge eruption.

In The Lake Superior Basin’s Fiery Beginning https://www.lakesuperior.com/the-lake/natural-world/243-lake-superior-basin-fiery-beginning/, John C. Green writes:

“In our area, the oldest rocks are about 2.7 billion years old. Found mostly along Lake Superior’s Ontario shores and located in the area called the Superior Province of the Canadian Shield, these ancient rocks date from the Archean Eon.”

The volcanic and granitic rocks tell us of the building of great mountain ranges, perhaps rivaling the Alps but which have since been eroded to the nub. The rocks we see today along the lakeshore in Ontario were once miles beneath the surface, exposed after hundreds of millions of years of erosion removed the overlying rocks.”

“Instead of lava dribbling and drooling down the flanks of large volcanic mountains, imagine huge fountains of intensely glowing lava spurting up from fissures that extended for miles across a barren plain. So much highly fluid lava would erupt in one event that it simply spread out, in many cases for hundreds, or even thousands of square miles, to form a huge, pancake-like lava flow.”

Called a “plume,” this rising cylinder of hot mantle rock came up and spread out under the stiffer lithosphere (the crust and uppermost mantle). This plume (as illustrated on the bottom of this page) apparently centered under where Lake Superior is today and, in fact, determined where our Great Lake would eventually develop.”

Expand

One Geologist comments: that the location of the Michigan Basin “was on a geologically passive portion of crust. The development of the basin and the surrounding arches were likely affected by the tectonic activity of the long-term Appalachian orogeny several hundred miles to the south and east.”

The continents were all together then- New York matches up with Scotland, the lower East coast with Africa. Somewhere in there is where the 3 continents came together- around the Pillars of Hercules.

2 billion years old The Porcupine Mountains themselves arise abruptly from Lake Superior to form a 12 mile long escarpment which parallels the lakeshore for a distance of 1.5 miles. At 2 billion years old, the mountains are a section of one of the oldest mountain chains in the world.;

I’m guessing the Basin was caused by a super volcano in 2 Billion B.C. History of the Earth: March 12. Michigan Basin https://historyoftheearthcalendar.blogspot.com/2014/03/march-12-michigan-basin.html?spref=tw…

All that is required for the supervolcano hypothesis is that the huge plume Green writes of came out right under the Michigan basin, causing a circular collapse of the column.

This is when the salt was being deposited in the basin:

Grand Canyon layers:

These show what was going on during the depositing of each layer. The glaciers have scoured away most of the post Jurassic- so we have few dinosaur bones, though an occasional mammoth from after glacier times. Scoured away and we were repeatedly under water, since the Pennsylvanian

Ray Troll

The end of the last ice age:

In some 12,000 years, it is said Niagra falls, receeding, will arrive at Lake Erie, and the lakes suddenly drain to that level. Buy lakefront property! We could sell water to Colorodo in 11 k years.

Before the continents even separated, we almost left the Canucks with Europe!

Letter on the Epidemic of Shootings in the US

Dear Representative Dingell:

Please consider the possibility that psychiatric drugs, specifically antidepressants are CAUSING the epidemic of mass shootings in our nation.

HIPAA laws prevent the gathering and therefore study of this possibility, so that if it were so we would not know. Factors similar to the Oxy-heroin scam may be occurring. A known side effect on some persons is listed on the bottles- “suicidal ideation.” Might these not also make certain bad persons randomly murderous? The instances where the victims are not known to the shooter are especially interesting. What if 90% “involved” antidepressants? Most are under the care of our “Mental health” systems, which have obviously failed in these instances.

Mass psychiatric drugging is what we are doing that is different from all other armed nations and times, in which these shootings did not occur. While I also strongly advocate any gun control measures possible- if 18% of our people need psychiatric drugs, we may want to rethink that second Amendment!- it becomes gradually clearer that our psychiatry simply does not have the knowledge that would be required to treat the soul with drugs. An example is the recent deposing of the assumption that depression is a chemical imbalance. As a lifelong student of psychology, we submit the opinion that our psychiatry is in a word profitable, but unscientific ineffective and often decisively harmful- though necessary. Nor has it been answerable to any higher judge or authority, allowing great opportunity for pharmacy companies to harvest tax dollars while doing more harm than good.

Thank You,

Your new constituent,

Mark A. McDonald, PhD (Politics)

Menexenus: Constitution of Athens

Who else would write this? It is like a blog on the occasion of the funeral oration. I would append it to my blog on Theseus. But here is a democratic republic most similar to ours- minus a Sicilian expedition!

Then as now, our government was an aristocracy or government of the best which has the approval of the many. For kings we have always had, first hereditary then elected, and authority is mostly in the hands of the people, who dispense offices and power to those who appear to be most deserving of them Neither is a man rejected from weakness or poverty or obscurity of origin, nor honored by reason of the opposite, as in other cities, but there is one principle- he who appears to be wise and good is a governor and ruler. The basis of this our government is equality of birth, for other cities are made up of all sorts and unequal conditions of men, and therefore their governments are unequal- there are tyrannies and there are oligarchies, in which the one party are slaves and the others masters. But we and our citizens are brethren, the children all of one mother, and we do not think it right to be one another’s masters or servants, but the natural equality of birth compels us to seek for natural equality, and to recognize no superiority except in the reputation of virtue and wisdom.

Plato, Menexenus (Jowett), 238c- 239a

The Christ and “Religion”

In discussions with atheists, one impenetrable issue has been the distinction between the way of the Christ and what is common to all mankind in all ages, except in parts of our own age, called “religion.” The insistence is that Christianity is simply one among many false “religions,” which our enlightened age now knows to be false, with no more to say about the soul than unicorns about taxonomy, mere imaginary fables, etc. The assurance these hold demonstrates that this has in a way become our custom or dogma, replacing all others, and allowing us the new banner of toleration, the only virtue, on whose altar we have sacrificed all other virtues.

This question is far more complex than at first appears. Abraham rejected the religion of Babylon, the idols and false gods, when he came forth from Ur to receive the Promise. He hears God directly, and then is taught by Melchizedek about God Most High, the maker of heaven and earth, as distinct from the gods of “polytheism,” which are made of have come to be. Idolatrous religion is different from Mosaic religion, which is intended to replace it as animal sacrifice replaces human sacrifice.

A crucial teaching is contained in a statement of Paul in his Letter to the Galatians.

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings that by nature (phusei) are no gods; but now that you have come to know (gnontes, knowing) God, or rather to be known (gnosthenres) by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits (stoichia,) whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I have labored over you in vain.

Galatians 4:

To worship the gods is a kind of enslavement to the weak elements, and this is related to the keeping of the calendar. That they are not quite said to know God, but rather be known by God, as through baptism, is of course interesting to us, but here the interesting point regards worship. The Christ receives this worship, as though it were formerly improperly given, and the table of the Last supper replaces ritual. The Christian images were then in conflict with every sort of common practice, but gradually, as the world became Christian, these same things continue- cities, laws, territories and conflicting ways, attempts to influence fortune, hierarchies of priests and honoring of the dead, imaginations of Providence. Then Saint Helen began the recovery of the relics, and the Christians could come out of the catacombs, having suffered the ten persecutions by Rome from Nero to Diocletan. Newton,* for example, blames the early Papacy, following Constantine, with introducing the worshiping of dead men’s souls and images, “mazuzahim,” he calls this. While this may in one side be a proper criticism, whom is it better men honor than saints, and are they really taught to worship them? Christian images and doctrines are conflated with the ancient and what Bloom calls “one’s own,” where originally the Way is a leaving behind of all these worldly things. Let the dead bury the dead. Only then is it possible that “Christians, or Christendom persecute of make martyrs, which of course never occurred in a single instance prior to the conversion of Rome. Again, one might ask, is it not better that the orders be Christian? The separation of Church and state was not yet imagined, but is the answer to this problem bequeathed or donated us by Constantine. The Papal states are especially the place where one sees the conjunction of the regimes of cities and nations with the Christian church. This has now been reduced to Vatican City, and Italy has become a unified nation, after Garibaldi.

The appearances of the word “religion” (threskeias) in scripture are rare and revealing, occurring only 5 times in 3 places, and never in the sense used when Christians speak of what they are doing or praise their own “revealed religion,” for example. It would be interesting to note the first time in history that Christianity was even called a religion. Paul and James use the word, while none of the Apostles or Jesus do so, ever. In Acts (26:5), Paul explains “…according to the strictest party of our religion I have lived as a Pharisee” The King James version also uses the word at Gal 1:13-14.

James writes:

“If any one among you thinks to be religious among you, not bridling his tongue, but deceiving his heart, the religion of this one is vain. Religion clean and undefiled before God the father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

This may be the only use of the word in a scripture in a sense that is not derogatory, or only semi- derogatory. Neither the Christians nor the Christ see themselves as establishing a “religion,” and their relation to all these things is a continual question, rather than anything clear. The Protestants at first made a great issue of this point and this was correct. Through all human history, humans have always had an understanding of things divine or above the mundane, and have always been concerned with the dead, and often with the afterlife- as in Egypt, though such things are astonishingly absent from the Hebrew scriptures. There have always been superstitious understandings of the causes, and what one finds is that Christians are not excepted from these ancient and local things merely by taking the name of Christian. The meetings of the earliest Christians around the Eucharist or “Lord’s Supper” would replace the meetings as at the Temple in Jerusalem, but there is nothing like what was to occur when the Christian images and opinions descended upon and over the pagan practices in the Greek and Roman world of Olympian gods and ancient ways quite foreign to Jerusalem, and quite similar to the idolatrous practices which Mosaic law replaced in Canaan, once out of Egypt- where the things said and done regarding the afterlife- including penance and forgiveness- are done amid an idolatrous religion. One point that arises repeatedly is that the Christians persecuted no one prior to the Fourth Century, when Constantine made Rome Christian, and Rome, having once persecuted the Christians and Jews especially for not worshiping the emperor continued to persecute, though now it was heretics, as began with the Donatists, priest reinstated who had be defrocked for fearing to face martyrdom rather than turn over the scriptures in the last Roman persecution. Soon Aryan and Catholic would be the issue, and it was one thing after another, though persecutions did become rare from the sixth until the early twelfth century.

In Rome as in Britain, Christianity was simply superimposed upon “pagan” altars. Rome in the 4th century took on an odd combination of Jewish temple and Roman pontificate, replacing the Rome that once persecuted Christians with the Rome that made martyrs of heretics. Changing the images did not end either war nor persecutions. One must wonder at the blessing when the 10 persecutions over the refusal to worship the emperor as a god gave way to the imposition of a unified doctrine. Humans did become more humane over all, with the difference that Christianity would now take the blame for the sins of the city.

Geoffrey of Monmouth indicates how the new religion was simply superimposed upon the pagan orders and images.*

When King St. Lucius, the first Christian king excepting Abgar, turned Britain to Christianity, about 156 AD,

…Once the holy missionaries had put an end to paganism throughout almost the whole island, they dedicated to the One God and His Blessed Saints the temples which had been founded in honor of a multiplicity of gods, assigning to them various categories of men in orders. At that time there were 28 flamens in Britain and three archflamens to whose jurisdiction the other spiritual leaders and judges of public morals were subject. At the Pope’s bidding, the missionaries converted these men from their idolatry. Where there were flamens, he placed bishops, and where there were archflamens, they appointed archbishops The seats of the archflamens had been in three noble cities: London, York, and the city of Legions, the site of which last is still known by its by the river Usk in Glaumorgan, is still known by its ancient walls and buildings. The twenty-eight bishops were placed under the jurisdiction of these three cities, once the superstitions practiced there had been purged away.

History of the Kings of Britain, IV.20

Coilus, the father of Lucius and the son of a Marius, son of Avarargus, had been friendly with Rome and paid tribute voluntarily- this in a time in the second century of the more decent emperors, and between persecutions, though it is clear that Britain is on the fringes of the Roman empire, and able to have kings and become Christian. The Coilus line continues after Lucius and a few usurpations to Old King Cole and his son Cole, the father of St. Helen who married a young Constantius, father of Constantine, and moved to York, where Constantine was crowned (Eusebius).

Now the principalities and powers are to become Christian- an improvement, maybe, though anti-christian ire will result from the evils of the city and crimes committed under the banner of the Christ. The cave does not cease to be a cave when painted over with christian images- though these may better lead up and out. It is the soul of humans that is caved and will see only shadows and artificial copies of the real beings outside the cave.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses and others reject the customs of Easter and Christmas on the basis of this history of the mixing of Christian and “pagan” ways, and holidays may be what Paul means when he writes, “You observe days and month and years- I fear I have labored over you in vain.” The mixture of the customs of Samhein with all Saints day to become All Hallows Eve is a good example- turnips and disguises being much older among the Irish than the honoring of all the saints.The monk’s calendaration- our favorite pastime- is not a part of Christianity as such at all, but has of course emerged from the melding of common festivals and imaginings with a Christian world. Santa Claus is a good example of how these things emerge, as this is a fairly recent folk tale. It is mixed, though, with the gift giving of the three wise men, and there seems no reason we should cease these things. From the beginning the Christians had something like the meeting at Synagogues or at the Temple in Jerusalem surrounding the celebration of the Eucharist or communion.

Shakespeare addresses these local dieties, the Fairies, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The nights are no longer blessed with hymn of carol, and this leads to disorders. The poet aims to restore this intermediary realm to its legitimate expression. With the advent of Christianity and the Socratic discovery of “hyper-ouranian” being, what once were the gods and personifications of the more collective causes regarding the soul or psyche become intermediary beings, and the psychoid is revealed as subordinate to Being. “Love is not a god but a spirit” is how this appears in the Symposium, who ascends with our prayers and descends with answers, which is the work of love. The image of this is the sea between two lands, and the traveler who journeys and returns is liker one who ascends. The gods were in one sense psychic and not being, archetype and not eidos, subject and not object, collective unconscious and not God. The limitations of phenomenology set by Jung for scientific psychology prevent his science from crossing over to a clearer distinction between the “self” or true self and God, the imago Dei from its original.

Isaac Newton, Commentary on Daniel and the Apocalypse, pp…

Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, IV.20; Bede, I.4.