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Originally posted by lazy1981
reply to post by EnlightenUp
By the way there are also some that think that Thoth/Hermes and Quetzalcoatl are actually the same "deity." That places some emphasis on the intertwined serpents, being that Hermes staff (the Caduceus) was two "opposing" serpents in a double helix form.
I know that the similarities are not to an exact science but maybe it will help.
Originally posted by kshaund
If you can find more on the Merovingian/Thaumaturge Kings that would be awesome - I've looked a few times but not too seriously and found information on them was very scant at best.
In the Middle Ages it was believed that "royal touch", the touch of the sovereign of England or France, could cure the disease. Scrofula was therefore also known as the King's Evil. The kings were thought to have received this power due to their descent from Edward the Confessor, who, according to some legends, received it from Saint Remigius. From 1633, the Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican Church contained a ceremony for this, and it was traditional for the monarch (king or queen) to present to the touched person a coin — usually an Angel, a gold coin the value of which varied from about 6 shillings to about 10 shillings. King Henry IV of France is reported as often touching and healing as many as 1,500 individuals at a time.
Queen Anne touched the infant (later Doctor) Samuel Johnson in 1712[1], but King George I put an end to the practice as being "too Catholic." The kings of France continued the custom until Louis XV stopped it in the 1700s, though it was briefly revived to universal derision in 1825.
In 1768 the Englishman John Morley produced a handbook "Essay on the nature and cure of scrophulous disorders, commonly called the King's Evil". The book starts by listing the typical symptoms and indications of how far the disease had progressed. It then goes into detail with a number of case studies, describing the specific case of the patient, the various treatments used and their effectiveness. The forty-second edition was printed in 1824.
In 1924, French historian Marc Bloch wrote a book on the history of the royal touch: The royal touch: sacred monarchy and scrofula in England and France (original in French).
Originally posted by lazy1981
BTW, what do you make of the Aztec conection if any?
Literally "god mushroom"—compound of the words teo(tl) (god) and nanácatl (mushroom)—the Psilocybe genus of mushroom has a long history of use within Mesoamerica. The members of the Aztec upper class would often take teonanácatl at festivals and other large gatherings. According to Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, it was often a difficult task to procure mushrooms. They were quite costly as well as very difficult to locate, requiring all-night searches.
Both Fray Bernardino de Sahagún and Fray Toribio de Benavente Motolinia describe the use of the mushrooms. The Aztecs would drink chocolate and eat the mushrooms with honey. Those partaking in the mushroom ceremonies would fast before ingesting the sacrament. The act of taking mushrooms is known as monanacahuia, meaning to "mushroom oneself".
At the very first, mushrooms had been served...They ate no more food; they only drank chocolate during the night. And they ate the mushrooms with honey. When the mushrooms took effect on them, then they danced, then they wept. But some, while still in command of their senses, entered and sat there by the house on their seats; they did no more, but only sat there nodding.
it was often a difficult task to procure mushrooms. They were quite costly as well as very difficult to locate, requiring all-night searches.
When the mushrooms took effect on them, then they danced, then they wept. But some, while still in command of their senses, entered and sat there by the house on their seats; they did no more, but only sat there nodding.
Originally posted by lazy1981
I have to ask though I wonder why they (Aztecs) would have eaten honey while they where under the influence of the hallucinogenic mushrooms. It's been my understanding (through friends) that if you take such mind altering mushrooms that anything with a high sugar content such as honey would lessen the effect of it.
Originally posted by lazy1981
In any event they didn't use drugs as western society does today, the use was for spiritual purposes. To commune with the spirit world, (that's why Peyote is still legal in the US for the Native Americans, freedom of religion).
Well, you discovered my little secret. I skimmed through the last post and missed the portion about your discussion of preserving mushrooms in honey. So there was "a flag on the play" and upon further review, you did indeed make reference to this practice. My screw up.
Well....had you paid full attention to my previous post you may have noted that the honey serves as a preservative.
Semantics! Merely a difference of opinion. Just as you say it’s only a difference between a finished and raw product. There are a couple of other plants that have a great effect upon the human body that are illegal in their natural state also. It’s still a drug, in my book (I never took a hard stance against drugs, just the abuse of them). So long as a person uses them responsibly and doesn’t cause “any” harm to any other person in “any” way than it’s there business. And so long as they don’t end up as an addict to some hard stuff.
Firstly, I do not class ethnobotanicals as drugs, they are not processed to produce a finished product,
Actually, they are poinson. That's why they are psychedelic, the effect is your body responding to you poisoning yourself. Same as liquor ect.
a gift of nature and as a friend said to me recently, why is the mushroom psychedelic? Simple, so we will eat it.
Nor I. I don't really trouble myself with what other people do or cast jugement. I was just making a point based upon experience.
However, if the Native Americans want to use religion as their excuse for taking peyote I'm not going to rain on their parade.
They are just a bunch of hypocrites. That's really all it is, if it were booze it wouldn't be an issue, but because it isn't then tyhey are social misfits. All of that's changing now as the 60's and 70's generation is comming into the positions of power. They don't veiw things the same way that the older generation does.
since drug taking is illegal, and a 'fringe' activity, they are considered outsiders from wider society, and their 'spirituality' is dismissed or prosecuted
Originally posted by lazy1981
However, I was asking about the practice of eating honey "with" the mushrooms. Eating it "with" the mushrooms seems to be going out of ones way, where as a mushroom preserved in honey would have honey on it as a byproduct of such a method of preservation and would fall into the are that "you" are getting at.
Semantics! Merely a difference of opinion. Just as you say it’s only a difference between a finished and raw product. There are a couple of other plants that have a great effect upon the human body that are illegal in their natural state also. It’s still a drug, in my book (I never took a hard stance against drugs, just the abuse of them). So long as a person uses them responsibly and doesn’t cause “any” harm to any other person in “any” way than it’s there business. And so long as they don’t end up as an addict to some hard stuff.
Actually, they are poinson. That's why they are psychedelic, the effect is your body responding to you poisoning yourself. Same as liquor ect.
Originally posted by lazy1981
reply to post by EnlightenUp
In any event I hope that I have helped to arouse some memory or steer you in the direction that will give you a greater understanding.
Keep us posted on what you are comfortable sharing.
BTW, what do you make of the Aztec conection if any?
Originally posted by EnlightenUp
One's attempt to grasp at inconceivable concepts has a funny way of doing that.
Because one tries does not mean one's conceptualization is accurate but may at best be a working model and the true nature may only be approachable asymptotically.
Under this premise, the word "formless" is a single-word oxymoron. If the void obtains form through conceptualization, then indeed then conceptualization is the creator of all things and things create conceptualization. This operates on many levels. So, I come back to the addage "thoughts are things" and its converse "things are thoughts" and the veritable explosion of manifestation that results. Sort of the serpent with its own tail in its mouth, excluding the middle. I am that I am-- unity and creation by contradiction?
I did not see it as a battle for perpetual balance but as a battle for supremacy, a battle in which the winner is not a participant in the race at all-- the overwhelminly fervent grasping at an illusion that precludes understanding.
If McKenna's definition is accurate, that which is within the Shaman's domain are things between "beginning" and "end". With modern cosmology, theories break down as T=0 is approached. An answer is to not make T=0 the beginning but to place another cause preceeding it that being the collision of higher-dimensional membranes which gave rise to what we observe as the big bang. As I see it, that just places another turtle underneath all the others in the proverbial tower.
All in all, no human (I assume they're human) musings I have found really seem to truely answer anything fundamental and absolute for me. Even asking "Why is is rather than is not?" begs a cause for something that can have none. Stating that is just "is" and never "wasn't" is a little better but paradoxically only increases the level of frustration I feel. Even stating "there are no absolute answers" is rather oxymoronic too.
Perhaps this is simply being honest with one's self?
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. -Sir Isaac Newton
I didn't really feel it was anything but searching for an understanding.
Originally posted by EnlightenUp
My response to KilgoreTrout was somewhat unedited and in-the-moment and probably raises a big "WTF" flag.
I can't remember which page Maban had brought this topic to light on so I'll give it a go based on memory.
I remember him saying that this "NIA" had been working on groups of "superhuman soldiers" and that the Shards were tracking and destroying the locations where these experiments were taking place.
I also remember him saying that the Shards and Remnants used Hollywood to spread their "propaganda" (if you will).
I bring this up because I was watching "Max Payne" last night and it struck me as being a bit funny due to the similarities in the plot of the movie and Maban's version. Not an exact match yet very similar. Any thoughts.?