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THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
Roger Highfield
Science Editor October 17. 2002
THE orbit of the star closest to the centre of our galaxy confirms that a huge black hole - many millions of times the mass of the Sun - lurks there, according to a study pub-lished today by astronomers. '
A black hole is an object both so masssive and compact that not even light can escape its huge gravity.
Three decades ago, the current Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees, proposed that supermassive black holes, with in excess of a million solar masses, might lurk at the heart of some galaxies.
Today, a European team provides the best evidence to date that black holes are not just theory but fact, with observations of the almost complete orbit of a star at the centre of our galaxy which is located in the southern constellation Sagittarius, 26,000 light-years away.
The vastness of galaxies normally makes the.detection of such move-ment impossible in a lifetime: but while the Sun will take 230 million years to circle the Milky Way, this star completes the orbit in lightning speed, just 15 years, and calcula-tions suggest that it must turn around a highly concentrated mass, a vast black hole.
Although there has been earlier evidence, from measuring the speed and direction of stars in the galaxy, that indicated a black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, there remained the possibility that some other large concentration of mass might have the same effects. In the journal Nature, Prof Rein-hard Genzel, Rainer Schodel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterres-trial Physics in Garching, Germany, and colleagues report firm evidence from an analysis of a decade of high-resolution imaging using adaptive optics, that allow ground based tele-scopes to compensate for the twin-kling caused by the Earth's atmosphere;
The team focused on Sagittarius A* (SgrA*), which has been pin- pointed as the centre of the galaxy and is a strong and unique radio source, thought to receive its power as matter falls into the black hole.
Observations show that the star S2, orbits the centre with a period of 15.2 years, with a closest approach distance of 17 light hours - equiva- lent to only three times the distance between the Sun and Pluto.
At the closest approach it moves at almost 200 times the speed of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. The orbit is rather elongated indi-cating that S2 is about 11 light days away from the black hole at the most distant point.
The team can calculate from this that there is a tiny central body with a mass about 2.6 million times that of the Sun, perhaps even as high as 3.7 million times - a "super-mas-sive" black hole.
"We are now able to demonstrate with certainty that, SgrA* is indeed the location of the central dark mass we knew existed. Even more impor- tant, our new data have 'shrunk' by a factor of several thousand the vol- ume within which those several mil- lion solar masses are contained," said Mr Schodel.
Will the black hole swallow the galaxy? No, according to Sir Martin: "Its mass is about one hundred thousandth the mass of the galaxy so although its gravity dominates right at the central hub of the galaxy, the mass of the rest of the galaxy would dominate one light year away."
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THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
Young science writer awards
Paul Blakemore
Wednesday October 16 2002
Does the Sun have a doomsday twin?
"In 1846, researchers noticed that Uranus was wobbling in a way that confounded Newton's Law of Motion. This meant they had two options: rewrite the most time-honoured of the laws of physics, or "invent" a new planet to account for the extra gravitational pull. Compared to Newton's reputation, an eighth planet seemed much less massive and Neptune was discovered.
Today scientists working in the University of Louisiana have discovered a statistical anomaly of similar proportions. Professors John Matese, Patrick Whitman and Daniel Whitmire have studied the orbits of comets for 20 years, and their recent findings have led to startling theories.
Intrigued by the work of two palaeontologists working for the University of Chicago, Prof Whitmire, along with Nasa colleague Dr Al Jackson, had earlier attempted to explain : the amazing discovery that six apocalyptic events, including : the extinction of the dinosaurs, have all occurred, like clockwork, every 26 to 30 million years. To try to explain this mass extinction cycle, they looked into the possibility that comet showers were to blame.
The latest effort of Matese, Whitman and Whitmire studies 82 comets from the huge cloud of comets, called the Oort cloud, that exists around our solar system. They took the aphelia of these comets, the points on their orbit that are farthest from our Sun, and plotted them on a globe. Expecting to find an even distribution, they instead found that a particular band of sky, about one sixth the total, contained more than one quarter of all the comets, and that about 25 per cent of the comets coming from this cloud have anomalous paths.
So what was affecting the orbits? They went on to theorise that the best explanation is the existence of a previously unknown body - that our solar system is made up of the Sun and a shadowy partner, either a brown dwarf or a massive planet, in a wide binary system. In effect; the solar system had two stars, the Sun and a dark companion, spinning around each other.
Now I know what you're thinking... Surely I'd have noticed a second Sun in the sky? But, as Prof Whitmire explained, the process of assumption based on statistical anomalies has always been a cornerstone of scientific discovery. According to their current theory, he says, "the companion is a brown dwarf star or massive planet of mass between two and six times the mass of Jupiter". A brown dwarf is a star too small to sustain the nuclear fusion that powers out Sun, and so is relatively cool (surface temperature of less than 1500C) and so also very dim, being barely hot enough to give off light.
But it gets worse. Under their original theory, called the Nemesis theory, this small dark star, which lurks at around 90,000 times farther away than the Earth is from the Sun, may be on an orbit that, once every 30 million years, ploughs it into the densely packed inner cloud. Here its immense gravitational pull would drag out several of the Oort comets and give them the "kick" needed to send them towards the Sun on orbits perilously close to the Earth. This explains, in the professor's view, the ominous mass extinction cycle, due to regular periods of increased cometary activity every 30 million years.
However, before we head for the bomb shelters, we should take heed of the professor's words: "As a practical matter our models will never be generally accepted (and shouldn't be) until the actual object is found." However stressing that they are "sufficiently plausible to give incentives for others to look",
Today, their current paper has moved away from the Nemesis theory and proposed, on the basis of comet orbits, a less massive planet about three times the mass of Jupiter. None the less, with an explanation for the mass extinction cycle yet to be found, he has admitted that they may not be mutually exclusive; and that there could be two dark stars, one a failed partner to our own, and another one that is acting almost as an alarm clock for doomsday. Even so, he says: "I'm still hopeful that ultimately these might turn out to be the same object.".
"An original idea in science is often a gut instinct, but this should not influence the development of the idea, " says the professor. "I always try to be my own worst critic". The scientific world remains intrigued but sceptical. However, the recent bombardment of Jupiter is a reminder that if the team is right, there may not be many around to hear them say: "I told you so." "
including : the extinction of the dinosaurs,
have all occurred, like clockwork,
every 26 to 30 million years"
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+ = 99 |
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7 |
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+ = 36 . . . 3 + 6 = 9 |
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+ = 93 |
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+ = 21 . . . 2 + 1 = 3 |
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A |
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+ = 94 |
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+ = 22. . . 2 + 2 = 4 |
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+ = 95 |
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+ = 32 . . .3 + 2 = 5 |
1984- SPRING
A CHOICE OF FUTURES
Arthur C. Clarke
Page 175
Here are the skies, the planets seven,
And all the starry train:
Content you with the mimic heaven,
And on the earth remain.
Additional Poems V
The planets seven? Of course, the only planets known to the ancients ,were Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - a mere five. The extra two were presumably the Sun and Moon, which we would no longer include - though we would add the Earth, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto to make a grand total of nine.
Jenny Joseph 1997
Page167
".There was the thread, the thread you see, and she followed it. Curdie, no that was a boy, Curdie and the thread, the good boy, he got her through. Or there was a fall of rock and it was buried, she had to scrabble with her hands and they never got them out those people trapped underneath when the earthquake collapsed the buildings. I can remember the man with his bare hands, they were bare, raw, that's it, skinned - but it must have been a pic-ture of course.
But the thread was there, sometimes - he was losing it, losing his thought.
Yes, that was the way the thread went, it came and went, elu- sive as thought - now it flashed into focus, now he had it, him sitting reading to his little girl - but he can't have had that book as a child, he hadn't had that sort of childhood.
Thinking about the thread, the idea, myth of the thread was a good way to get you applying yourself, persisting, and he had, hadn't he, he'd gone on searching with his dog in the rubble long after the others had given up.
So that thinking, which he'd thought he'd come to as a solid thing like chipping away shale and muck to get at a bit of core, a thing like a lump of coal, usable, source of energy, so that it didn't
matter what you thought, it was a rope ladder to get you across I
somewhere, get you through the mess, something you pretended, no, not pretended - made up? - to be doing to give a reason for going on. Made up. Ah perhaps something you made, engineered, he'd like it when they called him Monsieur l'Ingenieur, ingenious.
Not for a reason - you don't need a reason for going on, you need
a road, a way, ah yes a means. A way of going. That was tautology. You could just say 'a way'.
'Tell Alice' (you think I don't know she's dead, he heard his crafty thought within his head and in the same flash behaved as if he didn't), 'keep her fingers on the golden thread.' If it's all a fancy, if there isn't something that's true, then there isn't untrue and you were back where you were. He was getting there, getting down that path and this time he would get there, he could still breathe he could still tell them even though they couldn't move the rock off him.
If there isn't anything that's true, the opposite of true was false. But it couldn't be false because you can't have an opposite to some- thing that doesn't exist. Though what about negative numbers? / Page 168 / Alice was cleverer than he was he should have asked her. But she could never explain things like he could but after all he'd been a teacher. So if no true, no false and nothing true means everything false. Yes, he'd got it. 'Useful,' he said. They bent low pretending they could hear to encourage him to speak some more. Useful. It was all useful. Alice's knitting had been useful. The thread and the rope ladder and the bridge were useful. Useful was much more useful than true.
If he had realised that it was his son who was holding his hand he might have tried to speak in his type of hearty old reprobate he'd put on for years for young people and said something in character like 'Bugger the truth' because he knew they thought he thought truth was the pearl so he had it both ways. They would have been his next, last words but he kept his secret from them till the end because he had got beyond the division of time that living beings need in order to negotiate it, to a point where command question statement implying continuing into a future from the past were neither true, false or useful.
The Concise Dictionary Of
QUOTATIONS
T.S.Eliot 1888-1965
Page93
Completing the charm
So the knot be unknotted
The crossed be uncrossed :
The crooked be made straight
And the curse be ended.
The Family Reunion, II.iii
13 Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
Four Qurtets. Burnt Norton, 1
14 Humankind
Cannot bear very much reality.
15 In my beginning is my end.
East Coker,1
16 A way of putting it-not very satis-factory:
A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetic-al fashion,
Leaving one still with the intolerable
wrestle
With words and meanings.
2
17 The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
4
18 Each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticu-late
With shabby equipment always deteriorat-ing
In the general mess of imprecision of
feeling.
5
19 What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a begin- ning.
The end is where we start from.
Little Gidding, 5
20 We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
21 An old man in a dry month.
Gerontion
22 We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
The Hollow Men, 1
23 Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear.
5
24 This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
25 A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp, / Page 94
The very dead of winter.
Journey of the Magi. See 2:11
1 And the cities hostile and the towns un-
friendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices.
2 But set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certain-ly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these King-doms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dis- pensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
3 Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
4 In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes.
5 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
6 I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
7 No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was
meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two.
S I grow old...I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare
to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each;
I do not think that they will sing to me.
9 Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitful-ness and suavity.
At whatever time the deed took place-
MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!
Macavity: The Mystery Cat
10 I am aware of the damp souls of house- maids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
Morning at tile Window
11 Yet we have gone on living,
Living and partly living.
Murder in the Cathedral, pt. I
12 Friendship should be more than biting Time can sever.
13 The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
14 The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
At first you may think I'm as mad as a
hatter
When I tell you a cat must have
THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
The Naming of Cats
15 The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
Preludes, I
16 You'd be bored.
Birth, and copulation, and death.
That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks:
Birth, and copulation and death.
I've been born, and once is enough.
Sweeney Agonistes, Fragment of an Agon
17 The nightingales are singing near
The convent of the Sacred Heart,
And sang within the bloody wood
When Agamemnon cried aloud
And let their liquid siftings fall
To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.
Sweeney Among the Nightingales
18 April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
The Waste Land. 1. The Burial of the Dead
19 And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you,
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
20 A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN
Thomas Mann 1875 1955
Page 541 Chapter Seven
CAN one tell-that is to say, narrate-time, time itself, as such, for its own sake? That would surely be an absurd undertaking. A story which read: "Time passed, It ran on, the time flowed on- ward" and so forth - no one in his senses could consider that a narrative. It would be as though one .held a single note or chord fora whole hour, and called it music. For narration resembles music in this, that it fills up the time. It "fills it in " and breaks it up," so that "there's something to it, "something going on " - to quote, with due and mournful piety, those casual phrases of our departed Joachim, all echo of which so long ago died away. So long ago, indeed, that we wonder if the reader is clear how long ago it was. For time is the medium of narration, as it is the medium of life. Both are in extricably bound up with it, as inextricably as are bodies in space. Similarly, time is the medium of music; music divides, measures, articulates time, and can shorten it, yet enhance its value, both at once. Thus music and narration are alike, in that they can only present themselves as a flowing, as a succession in time, as one thing after another; and both differ from the plastic arts, which are complete in the present, and unrelated to time save as all bodies are, whereas narration -like music - even if it should try to be completely present at any given moment, would need time to do it in.
So much is clear. But it is just as clear that we have also a dif-ference to deal with. For the time element in music is single. Into a section of mortal time music pours itself, thereby inexpressibly enhancing and ennobling what it fills. But a narrative must have two kinds of time: first, its own, like music, actual time, condi- tioning its presentation and course; and second, the time of its con- tent, which is relative, so extremely relative that the imaginary time of the narrative can either coincide nearly or completely with the actual, or musical, time, or can be a world away. A piece of .music called a "Five-minute Waltz" lasts five minutes, and this is / Page 542 / its sole relation to the time element. But a narrative which con-cerned itself with the events of five minutes, might, by extraor- dinary conscientiousness in the telling, take up a thousand times five minutes, and even then seem very short, though long in relation to its imaginary time. On the other hand, the contentual time of a story can shrink its actual time out of all measure. We put it in this way on purpose, in order to suggest another element, an illusory, even, to speak plainly, a morbid element, which is quite definitely a factor in the situation. I am speaking of cases where the story practises a hermetical magic, a temporal distortion of perspective reminding one of certain abnormal and transcendental experiences in actual life. We have records of opium dreams in which the dreamer, during a brief narcotic sleep, had experiences stretching over a period of ten, thirty, sixty years, or even passing the extreme limit of man's temporal capacity for experience: dreams whose contentual time was enormously greater than their actual or mu-sical time, and in which there obtained an incredible foreshortening of events; the images pressing one upon another with such rapidity that it was as though "something had been taken away, like the spring from a broken watch" from the brain of the sleeper. Such is the descrirtion of a hashish eater.
Thus, or in some such way as in these sinister dreams, can the narrative go to work with time; in some such way can time be dealt with in a tale. And if this be so, then it is clear that time, while the medium of the narrative, can also become its subject. There-fore, if it is too much to say that one can tell a tale of time, it is none the less true that a desire to tell a tale about time is not such an absurd idea as it just now seemed. We freely admit that in bring-ing up the question as to whether the time can be narrated or not, we have done so only to confess that we had something like that in view in the present work. And if we touched upon the further question, whether our readers were clear how much time had passed since the upright Joachim, deceased in the interval, had in- troduced into the conversation the above-quoted phrases about music and time - remarks indicating a certain alchemistical height- ening of his nature, which, in its goodness and simplicity, was, of its own unaided power, incapable of any such ideas-we should not have been dismayed to hear that they were not clear. We might even have been gratified, on the plain ground that a thorough-go- ing sympathy with the experiences of our hero is precisely what we wish to arouse, and he, Hans Castorp, was himself not clear upon the point in question, no, nor had been for a very long time - a fact that has conditioned his romantic adventures up here, to a,an / Page 543 / extent which has made of them, in more than one sense, a " time- romance."
How long Joachim had lived here with his cousin, up to the time of his fateful departure, or taken all in all; what had been the date of his going, how long he had been gone, when he had come back; how long Hans Castorp himself had been up here when his cousin returned and then bade time farewell; liow long-dismissing Joachim from our calculations - Frau Chauchat had been absent; how long, since what date, she had been back (for she did come back); how much mortal time Hans Castorp himself had spent in House Berghof by the time she returned; no one asked him all these questions, and he probably shrank from asking him-self. If they had been put him, he would have tapped his forehead with the tips of his fingers, and most certainly not have known- a phenomenon as disquieting as his incapacity to answer Herr Set tembrini, that long-ago first evening, when the latter had asked him his age.
All which may sound preposterous; yet there are conditions-' under which nothing could Keep us from losing account of the passage of time, losing account 'even of our own age; lacking, as we do, any trace of an inner time-organ, and being absolutely in- capable of fixing it even with an approach to accuracy by our-selves, without any outward fixed pomts as guides. There is a case of a party of ,miners, buried and shut off from every possibility of knowing the passage of day or night, who told their rescuers that they estimated the time they had spent in darkness, flickering be-tween hope and fear, to be some three days. It had actually been ten. Their high state of suspense might, one would think, have made the time seem longer to them than it actually was, whereas it shrank to less than a third of its objective length. It would ap-pear, then, that under conditions of bewilderment man is likely to under-rather than over-estirnate time.
No doubt Hans Castorp, were he wishful to do so, could with-out any great trouble have reckoned himself into certainty; just as the reader can, in case all this vagueness and involvedness are re-pugnant to his healthy sense. Perhaps our hero himself was not quite comfortable either; though he refused to give himself any trouble to wrestle clear of vagueness and involution and arrive at certainty of how much time had gone over his head since he came up here. His scruple was of the conscience - yet surely it is a want of conscientiousness most flagrant of all not to pay heed to the time!
We do not know whether wc may count it in his favour that / Page 544 / circumstances advantaged his lack of inclination, or perhaps we ought to say his disinclination. When Frau Chauchat came back - under circumstances very different from those Hans Castorp had imagined, but of that in its place - when she came back, it was the Advent season again, and the shortest day of the year; the begin-ning of winter, astronomically speaking, was at hand. Apart from arbitrary time-divisions, and with reference to the quantity of snow and cold, it had been winter for God knows how long, in-terrupted, as always all too briefly, by buming hot summer days, with a sky of an exaggerated depth of blueness, well-nigh shading into black; real summer days, such as one often had even in the winter, aside from the snow - and the snow one might also have in the summer! This confusion in the seasons, how often had Hans Castorp discussed it with the departed Joachim! It robbed the year of its articulation, made it tediously brief, or briefly tedious, as one chose to put it; and confirmed another of Joachim's disgusted utter-ances, to the effect that there was no time up here to speak of, either long or short. The great confusion played havoc, moreover, with emotional conceptions, or states of consciousness like "still " and "again"; and this was one of the very most gruesome, bewil-dering, uncanny features of the case. Hans Castorp, on his first day up here, had discovered in himself a hankering to dabble in that uncanny, during the five mighty meals in the gaily stenciled dining- room; when a first faint giddiness, as yet quite blameless, had made itself felt.
Since then, however, the deception upon his senses and his mind had assumed much larger proportions. Time, however weakened the subjective perception of it has become, has objective reality in that it brings things to pass. It is a question for professional think- ers - Hans Castorp, In his youthful arrogance, had one time been led to consider it - whether the hermetically sealed conserve upon its shelf is outside of time. We know that time does its work, even upon Seven-Sleepers. A physician cites a case of a twelve-year- old-girl, who fell asleep and slept thirteen years; assuredly she did not remain thereby a twelve-year-old girl, but bloomed into ripe womanhood while she slept. How could it be otherwise? The dead man - is dead; he has closed his eyes on time. He has plenty of time, or personally speaking, he is timeless. Which does not prevent his hair and nails from growing, or, all in all- but no, we shall not repeat those free-and-easy expressions used once by Joachim, to which Hans Castorp, newly arrived from the flat-land, had taken exception. Hans Clastorp's hair and nails grew too, grew rather fast. He sat very often in the barber's chair m the main street of the / Page / 545 / . Dorf, wrapped in a white sheet; and the barber, chatting obsequi- usly.the while, deftly performed upon the fringes of his hair, growing too long behind his ears. First time; then the barber, per-formed their office upon our hero. When he sat there, or when he stood at the door of his loggia and pared his nails and groomed them, with the accessories from his dainty velvet case, he would suddenly be overpowered by a mixture of terror and eager joy that made him fairly giddy. And this giddiness was in both senses of the word: rendering our hero not only dazed and dizzy, but flighty and light-headed, incapable of distinguishing between "now" and " then," and prone to mingle these together in a time-less eternity.
As we have repeatedly said, we wish to make him out neither better nor worse than he was; accordingly we must report that he often tried to atone for his reprehensible indulgence in attacks of mysticism, by virtuously and painstakingly striving to counteract them. He would sit with his watch open in his hand, his thin gold watch with the engraved monogram on the lid, looking at the porcelain face with the double row of black and red Arabic fig-ures running round it, the two fine and delicately curved gold hands moving in and out over it, and the little second-hand taking its busy ticking course round its own small circle. Hans Castorp, watching the second-hand, essayed to hold time by the tail,to cling to and prolong the passing moments. The little hand tripped on its way, Unheeding the figures it reached, passed over, left be-hind, left far behind, approached, and caine on to again. It had no feeling for time limits, divisions, or measurements of time. Should it not pause on the sixty, or give some small sign that this was the end of one thing and the beginning of the next? But the way it passed over the tiny intervening unmarked strokes showed that all the figures and divisions on its path were. simply beneath it, that it moved on, and on. - Hans Castorp shoved his product of the Glashutte works back in his waistcoat pocket, and left time to take care of itself."
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Page 545 continues
"How make plain to the sober intelligenge of the flat-land the changes that took place in the inner economy of our young adven- turer? The dizzying problem of identities grew grander in its scale. If to-day's now - even with decent goodwill- was not easy to distinguish from yesterday's, the day before's or the day before that's, which were all as like each other as the same number of peas, was it not also capable of being confused with the now which: had been in force a month or a year ago, was it not also likely to be mingled and rolled round in the course of that other, to blend with / Page 546 / it into the always? However one might still differentiate between the ordinary states of consciousness which we attached to the words "still," "again," "next," there was always the temptation to extend the significance of such descriptive words as "to- morrow," "yesterday," by which "to-day" holds at bay" the past " and " the future." It would not be hard to imagine the exist-ence of creatures, perhaps upon smaller planets than ours, practis-ing a miniature time-economy, in whose brief span the brisk trip-ping gait of our second-hand would possess the tenacious spatial economy of our hand that marks the hours. And, contrariwise, one can conceive of a world so spacious that its time system too has a majestic stride, and the distinctions between "still," "in a little while," " yesterday," " to-morrow? are, in its economy, possessed of hugely extended significance. That, we say, would be not only conceivable, but, viewed in the spirit of a tolerant relativity, and in the light of an already-quoted proverb, might be considered legiti-mate, sound, even estimable. Yet what shall one say of a son of earth, and of our time to boot, for whom a day, a week, a month, a semester, ought to play such an important role, and bring so many changes, so much progress in its train, who one day falls into the vicious habit..,. or perhaps we should say, yields sometimes to the desire - to say" yesterday" when he means a year ago, and" next year " when he means to-morrow? Certainly we must deem him lost and undone, and the object of our just concern."
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13 Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
Four Qurtets. Burnt Norton, 1
T.S.Eliot 1888-1965
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Page 546 continues
There is a state, in our human life, there are certain scenic sur- roundings - if one may use that adjective to describe the surround- ings we have in mind-within which such a confusion and obliteration of distances in time and space is in a measurejustified, and temporary submersion in them, say for the term of a holiday. not reprehensible. Hans Castorp, for his part, could never without the greatest longing think of a stroll along the ocean's edge. We know how he loved to have the snowy wastes remind him of his native landscape of broad ocean dunes; we hope the reader's recol-lections will bear us out when we speak of the Joys of that straying. You walk,and walk - never will you come home at the right time, for you are of time, and time is vanished. O ocean, far from thee we sit and spin our tale; we turn toward thee our thoughts, our love, loud and expressly we call on thee, that thou mayst be present in the tale we spin, as in secret thou ever wast and shalt be! - A sing-ing solitude, spanned by a sky of palest grey; full of stinging damp that leaves a salty tang upon the lips. - We walk along the springy floor, strewn with seaweed and tiny mussel-shelIs. Our ears are wrapped about by the great mild, ample wind, that comes / Page 547 / sweeping untrarnmelled blandly through space, and gently blunts our senses. We wander - wander - watching the tongues of foam lick upward toward our feet and sink back again. The surf is seething; wave after wave, with high, hollow sound, rears up, re-bounds, and runs with a silken rusde out over the flat strand: here one, there one, and more beyond, out on the bar. The dull, perva-sive, sonorous roar closes our ears against all the sounds of the world. O deep content, O wilful bliss of sheer forgetfulness! Let us shut our eyes, safe in eternity! No - for there in the foaming grey- green waste that stretches With uncanny foreshortening to lose It-self in the horizon,. look, there is a sail. There? Where is there? How far, how near? You cannot tell. Dizzyingly it escapes your measurement. In order to know how far that ship is from the shore, you would need to know how much room it occupies, as a body in space. Is it large and far off, or is it small and near? Your eye grows dim with uncertainty, for in yourself you have no sense-organ to help you judge of time or space. - We walk, walk. How long, how far? Who knows? Nothing is changed by our pacing, there is the same as here, once on a time the same as now, or then; time is drowning in the measureless monotony- of space, motion from point- to point is no motion more, where umformity rules; and where motion is no more motion, time is no longer time.
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"The schoolmen of the Middle Ages would have it that time is an illusion; that its flow in sequence and causality is only the result of a sensory device, and the real existence of things in an abiding pres-ent. Was he walking by the sea, the philosopher to whom this thought first came, walking by the sea, with the faint bitterness of eternity upon his lips? We must repeat that, as for us, we have been speaking only of the lawful licence of a holiday, of fantasies born of leisure, of which the well-conducted mind wearies as quickly as a vigorous man does of lying in the warm sand. To call into question our human means and powers of perception, to ques-tion their validity, would be absurd dishonourable, arbitrary, if it were done in any other spirit than to set bounds to reason, which she may not overstep without incurring the reproach of neglecting her own task. We can only be grateful to a man like Herr Settem-brini, who with pedagogic dogmatism characterized metaphysics as the " evil principle," to the young man in whose fate we are in- terested, ana whom he had once subtly called "life's delicate child." We shall best honour the memory of one departed who was dear to us, if we say plainly that the meaning, the end and aim of the critical principle can and may be but one thing: the thought of duty, the law of life. Yes, law-giving wisdom, in marking off the / Page 548 / limits of reason, planted precisely at those limits the banner of life. and proclaimed it man's soldierly duty to serve under that banner. May we set it down on the credit side of Hans Castorp's account. that he had been strengthened in his vicious time-economy, his baleful traffic with eternity, by seeing that all his cousin's zeal, called doggedness by a certain melancholy blusterer. had but the more surely brought him to a fatal end?
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GOD'S
SECRET
FORMULA
DECIPHERING THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE
AND
THE PRIME NUMBER CODE
Page 107 / .
medium surrounding it, however, has to have one dimension more. This is obviously true in that a piece of paper is a surface and thus two-dimensional. Consequently, the medium in which the piece of paper is located must be three-dimensional. This is true in the case of the room in which the piece of paper is located. However, logic requires that a three-dimensional object must be surrounded by a four-dimensional space. Because this space can not be visualized, mathematicians at the end of the 19th century finally ended the discussion and introduced the idea of any number of dimensions. The notion of 'any number' always leads to the question 'also an infinite number?', and the answer was given that an infinite number of dimensions was perfectly permissible. Mathematics is a human invention and the mathematical mind wanted to free itself from the third and impalpable fourth dimension.
Although I had discovered a totally new geometry - four- dimensional infinite space around every point of finite size, and thus, of course, around every three-dimensional body - I could not expect that my ideas would for a moment be entertained by any mathe.matician. In this world nothing can, or can be
~ allowed to, be wrong which for hundreds of years has been r blessed by scientific approval.
Multi-dimensional space has nothing to do with reality. For that very reason physicists did not take up the idea - because they could not afford to ignore reality. Instead, they created their own fourth dimension (space-time). But space-time is also totally unconnected with reality. To complete the confusion, people have been speaking for the last hundred years about whether space (the universe) is curved. Scientists still have not been able to decide whether it is concave or convex. Because the
k curvature of space has always appeared to me to be nothing [ more than a mental aberration, the idea of any fruitful
discussions with physicists has also proved to be an illusion so far. The matter did have one advantage, however. I would be
forced to come to grips with deeper problems of mathematics if I were to make progress. Whoever wants really to get to the
, bottom of a science has to occupy himself with its history. This t. fact is unfortunately for the most part ignored today. This is one b reason we currently train specialists who totally lack an overall
[ picture of their own field. By investigating the history of III
Page119
CHAPTER TEN '
CONCERNING ELECTRONS
AND PRIME NUMBER TWINS
At the beginning of any study of number theory there is a list of the numerical series in which the prime numbers are identified: we show them here in bold type.
1,2,3,4,5:,6,7,8,9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19,
20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35,
36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, ...
Each of the first three numbers is only divisible by itself or by the number one and all three are prime numbers. Because the
root of the number 1 can be easily calculated (-1 x-I = +1), it
is by definition not considered to be a prime number. The usual sequence of prime numbers is therefore
2,3,5,7,11,13,...
No doubts have ever been raised about this definition, and mathematicians have therefore fallen headlong into a trap of enormous proportions.
A man from classical times would believe that the gods on Olympus had devised a grand trick to play on us, as if they were forced to grant us mathematics as a tool, but to compensate for this permission they blinded us before releasing us into the world. Homeric laughter would echo in the ears of a Greek mathematician when he grasped that the gods had from the very beginning programmed our human arrogance by closing / Page 114 / our eyes to the unit that is at the foundation of all numbers, the number 1.
After 1 was removed from the sequence of prime numbers, the first prime number was the number 2. Among the infinite number of prime numbers, it is the only one that is even. The fact that this was simply accepted was the second major source of error, and led inevitably with the next prime number, 3, to a trap in which we lost sight of the divine order contained in the numbers 1, 2 and 3.
I was now 40 years old and was working in a soundproof room furnished only with a bed, desk and chair, just as I had done as a student. I also had the three necessary tools: paper, pencil and pocket calculator. I had the volume of numbers displayed in front of me and considered the numbers 1,2 and 3. I had found a triplicate in all disciplines. In the myths and legends of all cultures, the numbers 1, 2 and 3 played a very prominent part (eg three guesses, three wishes). Was it not ironic that mathematics, the subject that deals with numbers, should happen to be the one field in which the numbers 1, 2 and 3 have no special significance?
I had wanted to find out what secrets were hidden in silicon hydride. Although I had anticipated the explosion in the laboratory, I had accepted the risk. I now wanted to find out something else, and again I saw an immense danger approaching. Myths and legends are full of stories of people having to choose between three paths, or doors. Like the hero in the story I now had to find the correct door to escape my destruction. I had studied for 20 years and had devoted the next 10 years of my life to my quest to discover the riddle of the universe. If I had not achieved this goal by the time I was 50, I was resolved to cease all my study in science. It would be equivalent to admitting total defeat. All predictions of the future would then be shown to be illusory.
I knew that the first three numbers would contain a very explosive mixture.
What does a bomb disposal expert do when some inner voice tells him that an electronic booby-trap is contained in the fuse of a bomb? The answer is that he keeps well away from the fuse!
And so I started my examination of the prime numbers with the prime number 5:
Page 115
5,2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11,11,., 13, 14, 15, 16, 17,18., 19, 20, 21, 22,23, M, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29,.lQ, 31,32, 33, 34, 35,}.6., 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, .42., 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, .48., 49, ...
When I studied this arrangement I discerned a system that was
related to multiples of the number 6. Around the number 6, the ,
:. prime number twins 5 and 7 are found; around the number 12
i there are the twins 11 and 13; and around 18 the twins 17 and ,
19. When we move on a further six places, we should expect to find the twins 23 and 25. However, here the natural sequence
~ of the three first prime number twins is not continued: 25 is not l a prime number, it is the squa:e of the original ~rime numbe: 5.
Consequently, the number tWIllS 23 and 25 begIn a new sectIon which continues to recur to infinity. Prime numbers or prime number twins will always occur around a number divisible by 6,
: although these positions - around a multiple of 6 - will for : combinational reasons be occupied by products of the previous
prime numbers -
5,7,11,13,17,19,...
- 25 as .product of 5 x 5, 35 as the product of 5 x 7, 49 as the product of 7 x 7, 55 as the product of 5 x 11, etc.
This pattern based on 6 means that the product o x 6 = o must be found at six to the left of the number 6. The number o must therefore also be surrounded by a number twin:
-1,0,1
The sequence of the first four number twins is therefore
(-1;1) -1(5;7) - (11;13) - (17;19)1
Such a coding exemplified by 1 and 3 had been my quest for half a lifetime.
Because electron twins are arranged in circular 'orbits' in the atomic shells, I now left the linear mode of presenting the natural numbers and noted them in a clockwise direction. Between the prime numbers, either one or three numbers are alternately indicated. I therefore had to note three more non- prime numbers after 19.
What I discovered here resembled a clock with a 24-hour / Page 116 / division of time. The double I2-hour clock was invented in ancient Egypt - curiously in the place where, for the first time in history, humans calculated using the decimal system. The ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet consisted of 24 letters (it is a consonantal alphabet). Because the number of signs was greatly expanded by the addition of signs for syllables and words, it is difficult to find an Egyptologist today who is aware that every work in ancient Egyptian can be written with these 24 letters. Unfortunately, no papyrus texts written by a priest of ancient Egypt has survived, for they guarded their knowledge very carefully, particularly the correlation between the numbers
24 and 6, which they considered to be sacred. The story of ; Creation in six days has its origin in this notion. J
When I considered this circular arrangement of numbers 1
deriving from the number 1, I obtained a ring deriving from the number 1 and seven prime numbers. Clearly the position which now contained the number .1 also contained the number 23. This ring is a curious phenomenon. It consists of the number pairs -1, +1 and three further prime number twins. The comparison with the inert gas shell consisting of one s-electron pair and three p-electron twins is astonishing. The number 24 is / Page 117 /also found at point zero; 25 must therefore be located at a superimposed level above the 1, 26 above the 2, etc. The prime number 25 is above the prime number 5.
Figure 2
I prepared a drawing in which I joined all numbers on the first
circle to the centre. The result had - even visually - an astonishing similarity with the atomic model: a minute nucleus of conspicuously small size in relation to the giant surrounding electron shells.
All prime numbers up to the number 48 were located on eight rays. But what about the numbers on the remaining sixteen rays? Sixteen numbers, exactly half of the remaining 32 numbers were divisible by 3 and the other sixteen were multiples of 2. Was it possible that these multiples of 2 and 3 were derived from the basic numbers 2 and 3, just as the prime numbers derive from the number f: I? The numbers 1, 2 and 3 as initial elements of the three number categories of equal size would therefore for logical reasons also have to be prime numbers:
1-"; 5, 7,11,13,17,19,23,25,29,31, ...
2 -"; 4, 8, 10, 14, 16, 20, 22, 26, 28, 32, ...
3 -"; 6,9,12,15,18,21,24,27,30,33, ...
Page118 / And that is what they are in the original sense of the word! The expression 'prime number' comes as a translation from the French (nombre primeur) meaning 'first number'.
These three basic rows can be better illustrated in three separate cyclical sketches than in a simple linear arrangement. It turned out to be a correct decision to have omitted the / Page 119 / -
numbers I, 2 and 3 for the time being. Only by doing so could I develop the unusual concept that the numbers are of three types, even when this idea overturned centuries of dogma concerning prime numbers.
I now had evidence of why all countable matter has the same triple nature which had served me all my life as a faithful signpost.
The recurrence of the number 6 in the prime numbers that I had found had already occurred to another person well before my time. As might have been expected, this was Leibniz.
He perceived that prime numbers larger than 3 always surround multiples of the number 6 with the addition of I or 5 (6n+l or 6n+5 for n = I, 2, 3, ...). He did not manage, however, to reach the correct formula 6n %; 1 for n = 0, 1,2,3,4, ...
It is true that the importance of the number 0 was only just beginning to be realized at that time, for the Baroque period witnessed an intensive study of mathematical theory. But everything smaller than zero (like the number -I) was beyond the bounds of standard logic. (The number 0 as a place-filler in larger numbers and the number -I in accountancy were, of course, known at the time.) Leibniz was thus unable to recognize the triple basis of numbers.
The sum of the numbers I, 2 and 3 (I + 2 + 3) and the product of the numbers 1,2 and 3 (I x 2 x 3) also give the value 6. That both the sum and the product of three numbers have the same value does not occur anywhere else in the infinite set of numbers. The number 6 is therefore the scaffold on which the prime numbers within the natural numbers are built. The reasons for the existence of the prime numbers, whose distribution appears arbitrary when they are observed in the conventional way, is solely and exclusively a result of the structure of the number%; I and the number o. The significance of the distribution of prime numbers simply cannot be seen from a linear presentation of the numbers.
With my first cyclical presentation of the numbers (figures I and 2) I had to account for how the number 24 can occur in the same place as the number o. But the position occupied by the number 0 also happened to be occupied by the number 23.
I managed to solve this problem by inserting a 0 shell below the first circle of numbers. / Page 120 / This decisive step was all the easier for me after I had recognized the connection between my circle of numbers and the atomic model, and because I was aware of the expression 'inner shell' from the latter. Every atom of every element can take at most only two electrons on its innermost orbit. On the next shell there is a maximum of eight electrons. In the case of inert gases, only eight electrons can occur in the outermost shell.
The number -1 did not have a partner on the right-hand side because its logical partner, the number +1, introduces the series of the whole numbers on the shell above (figure 4).
The drawing now shows four double rays on which prime numbers can occur. It was based on a geometrical form that I had seen so often on my brother's uniform when he worked for
St John Ambulance in his youth. This cross of the order of \
Christian knights is still today on almost all medals awarded to people for special achievements!
Page 121
Page 122space time
numbers
can lead us out of .the cul-de-sac of our picture of the world that is trapped in finite concepts. One absolute consequence of this is that numbers must now be granted a real existence.
Numbers can, of course, not be seen. But space and time can also not be seen. Infinite space and infinite time cannot be registered by our finite faculties of imagination. The infinite numbers, however, by virtue of their prime number structure contain not only a numeric aesthetic, but are also the key to the material world and a medium of information to infinity. Only they can provide the background for the natural constants, for beyond the realms of proof infinity necessarily exists by its own right in that 'nothing' can not exist.
And there it was again - the puzzle of my youth. Why does the speed of light have to have the value that we can now measure to so many places after the decimal point? Does this have anything to do with the numeric structure of space?
I became increasingly isolated in my room and searched for some idea that could be of further help to me. Why do the atoms of all elements consist of three atomic particles - proton, neutron and electron? Why do the electrons contain four quantum numbers? Why should precisely 81 stable elements exist, no more and no less?
The number 81 is the product of 3 x 3 x 3 x 3; 34 = 81. The numbers 3, 4 and 81 had been on my mind for years, and suddenly their interrelation appeared as a '3-to-the-power-of- 4 law'.
If God had simply arranged the 81 elements according to the ordinal numbers 1, 2, 3, ... 81, researchers would have discovered this fact a long time ago. They would have come to grips with the problem. Instead of this, the list of stable elements has bismuth, with an atomic number of 83, as the highest element. It was not considered important that two of the elements on the list can only be artificially synthesized.
I have always been interested in the inversion of numbers up to 100 - or, to phrase that better, I have been interested in the special features of these periodic fractions. I remembered that / Page123 / the reciprocal value of 81 had particularly aroused my interest: 1/81 = 0.01234567901234567901... = 0.012345679 The numbers 012345679 recurred, with the number 8 always missing. The fraction 1/81 can also be presented in an even more unusual way:!
1/81 = 0.0123456789(10)(11)(12)(13)...
It is not particularly easy to comprehend this mode of presentation but the effort made will be rewarded by a most satisfactory effect.
Because no numbers exist in the decimal system greater than 9, the numbers 10, 11, 12 etc. are placed in brackets. The number (10) in the familiar decimal form increases the prior 9 to 10, and this in turn increases the prior 8 by 1 to 9. In the recurring fraction 0.012345679 ... the number 8 is missing. This prevents the reciprocal value of 81 being visually linked to all numerical series. This idea appeared wonderful to my eyes because now the number 81 appears as a reciprocal value for the atomic numbers of the elements. The missing 8 is an illusion which had u~til then blocked my way to the novel notion that the reciprocal value of the order of all numbers 00123456789 ... is the number 81.
I have deliberately omitted the decimal point in front of the
first 0 because it serves only to indicate the decimal fraction which is to be read from the left to the right.
It is clear that the 81 elements and their atomic numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... are reciprocally linked to each other (the atomic number 0 is assigned to the neutron). Nature must itself therefore be arranged according to the decimal system. This seemed to be plausible because numerical space around a point requires such a regularity for its expansion. The material that occurs in space and was certainly not generated magically there only fits there if it is constructed according to those regular laws in which the space is arranged, just as a key only fits into a special lock.
Because we humans only have ten fingers, we calculate using the decimal system. This would not have been so summarily consigned to the realm of chance by our mathematicians if they had also been familiar with chemistry, because they would then have known that the stable chemical elements are all / Page124 / categorized in ten types of isotopes.
If the number 1 is divided by 81, it is well known that the 81 must first be expanded to 100. Even when the same calculation
is done in some system other than the decimal system, the division cannot be calculated without combination with the number O.
100/81 = 1 + remainder 19
I had been studying the two numbers 1 and 19 for 20 years because of the 20 amino acids and 20 pure isotopes without making any perceptible progress. Perhaps finally I had now taken up the scent.
The residual value 19 must again be divided by 81:
19/81 = 0.234567 ...
The prime number 19 is responsible for the ensuing chronological numeric series of the decimal system (without the 1).
The result of the calculation 100 -:- 81 is 1 + remainder 19. J
I had finally got behind the secret of the numbers 19 and 81. I was not going to let go now. Suddenly I felt a flash of lightning pass through me. My gaze turned to the calendar on the wall. It was marked with the year 1981.
NOTE '
I The proof for this presentation of 1/81 is simple: 1 1/81 = 1/9 x 1/9 = 0.1111 ... x 0.1111 ...
= 0.0 (I) x (I +1) x (I + I + I) x (I + I + I + I) ... , [Cauchy-product as formulated by the French mathematician A. L. Cauchy] I
.,
O.IIII...xO.IIII... ! 0
01111 ...
01111 ...
01111 ...
0.0123...
= 0.0123456789(10)~11)(12)...
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THE GREAT BOOK OF BRAINTEASERS
Norman Sullivan 2001
Page 354
'I am not" said Horus.
"Anubis is" said Isis.
"Isis is lying", said Anubis.
Only one god was telling the truth, the other two were lying. Who is the greatest?
Page 431
Answers
"I am not" said Horus (LIE)
Anubis is" said Isis (LIE)
"Isis is lying" said Anubis (TRUTH)"
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE OCCULT
Lewis Spence 1988
Page 134
"Egypt: To the peoples of antiquity as well as to those of the modern world. Egypt appeared as the very mother of magic, The reason for this widespread belief is not far to seek. In Egypt the peoples of the ancient world found a magical system much more highly developed than anything within their native knowledge, and again the cult of the dead with which Egyptian religion was so deeply imbued, appeared to the stranger to savour strongly of magical practice. It must be borne in mind that, if the matter of the magical papyri be omitted, the notices which we possess of Egyptian magic are almost wholly foreign, so that it is wiser for a proper understanding of Egyptian occultism to derive our facts concerning it from the original native' sources as far as is possible. Like all other systems, the magic of the Egyptians was of two kinds, that which was supposed to benefit either the living or the dead, and that vhich has been known throughout the ages as "black" magic or necromancy.
The contents of the Westcar Papyrus show that as early as the fourth dynasty, the working of magic was a recog-nised art in Egypt, but in reality we must place the begin-nings of Egyptian magical practice in neolithic times. Throughout the centuries magical practice varied con-siderably, but the principal means for its working remained the same. That is to say, the Egyptians relied for magical effect upon amulets, magical figures, pictures, and formulae, magical names and ceremonies, and the general apparatus of the occult sciences.
The objects for which magic was exercised were numerous. It exorcised storms, protected against wild beasts, poison, disease, wounds, and the ghosts of the dead. One of the most potent methods of guarding against misfortune of any kind ,vas the use of Amulets. It must not be assumed that all ornaments or objects discovered on the mummy are of magical potency. These are frequently the possession of the Ka or double (q.v.), neccessary to its comfort in a future existence. The small crowns, sceptres, and emblems of Osiris, usually executed in faience, are placed beside the dead person in order that he may ,vear them when he becomes one with Osiris, and therefore a king. The scarab, fashioned in the likeness of a scarabceus beetle, symboliscd resurrection. The dad symbolised the human skeleton, and, therefore, perhaps, the dead and dismem-bered Osiris. It has an influence on the restoration of the deceased. The Uza, or eye, signifies the health necessary to the dead man's soul. The so-called "palettes " at one time supposed to have been employed for the mixing of paint, are now known to have been amulets inscribed with words of power placed on the breasts of the dead in neo-lithic times. The amulet of the menat was worn, or held, with the sistrum by gods, kings, and priests, and was supposed to bring joy and health to the wearer. It repre- sented the vigour of the two sexes."
"Spells.-The simplest type of spell in use in Egypt, was / Page 135 / that in which the exorcist threatens the evil principle, or assures it that he can injure it. Generally, however, the magician requests the assistance of the gods, or he may pretend to that which he desires to exorcise that he is a god. Invocations when written, were usually accom-panied by a note to the effect that the formula had once been employed successfully by a god-perhaps by a deified priest. An incomprehensible and mysterious jargon was employed, which was supposed to conceal the name of a certain deity who was thus compelled to do the will of the sorcerer. These gods were almost always those of foreign nations, and the invocations themselves appear to be attempts at various foreign idioms, employed, perhaps, as sounding more mysterious than the native speech. Great stress was laid upon the proper pronunciation of these names, and failure in all cases was held to lie at the door of mis-pronunciation. The Book of the Dead (q.v.) contains many such "words of power," and these were intended to assist the journey of the dead in the under-world of Amenti. It was believed that all supernatural beings, good and evil, possessed hidden names, which if a man knew, he could compel them to do his wiII. The name, indeed, was as much part of a man as his body or soul. The traveller through Amenti must tell not only the divine gods their names, but must prove that he knew the names of a number of the supposedly inanimate objects in the dreary Egyptian Hades, if he desired to make any progress.
(See Gnostics and Names Magical.)
Magical Books.-Many magical books existed in Egypt which contained spells and other formulre for exorcism and necromantic practice. Thus Medical Papyri in the Leipsic collection contain formulre spoken whilst preparing drugs; the Ebers Papyrus contains such spells; the Harris Magical Papyrus, dating from the New Kingdom, and edited by Chabas, contains spells against crocodiles. The priestly caste, who compiled those necromantic works, was known as Kerheb, or " scribes of the divine writings," and even the sons of Pharaohs did not disdain to enter their ranks.
The Ritual of Egyptian Magic. In many instances the ritual of Egyptian magic possesses strong similarities to the ceremonial of other systems and countries. Wax figures were employed in lieu of the bodies of persons to be bewitched or harmed and models of all kinds were utilised in order that the physical force directed against them might react upon the persons or animals it was de-sired to injure. But the principal rite in which ceremonial magic was employed was the very elaborate one of mum-mification. As each bandage was laid in its exact position certain words of power were uttered which were supposed to be efficacious in the preservation of thc part swathed. After evisceration, the priest uttered an invocation to the deceased, and then took a vase of liquid containing ten perfumes, with which he smeared the body twice from head to foot, taking especial care to anoint the head thoroughly. The internal organs ,vere then placed on the body, and the backbone immersed in holy oil, supposed to be an emanation from the gods Shu and Seb. Certain precious stones were then laid on the mummy, each of which had its magical significance. Thus crystal lightened his face, and cornelian strengthened his steps. A priest who personified the jackal-headed god, Anubis, then ad-vanced, performed certain symbolical ceremonies on the hcad of the mummy, and laid certain bandages upon it. After a further anointing with oil the deceased was declared to have "received his head." The mummy's left hand was filled with thirty-six substances used in embalming, symbolic of the thirty-six forms of the god Osiris. The body was then rubbed with holy oil, the toes wrapped in linen, and after an appropriate address the ceremony was completed.
Dreams The art of procuring dreams and their inter- pretation was much practised in Egypt. As instances of dreams recorded in Egyptian texts may be quoted those of Thothmes IV. (B.C. 450) and Nut-Amen, King of Egypt (B.C. 670). The Egyptian magician procured dreams for his clients by drawing magical pictures and the recitation of magical words. The following formulae for pro- ducing a dream is taken from British Museum Papyrus, No. 122, lines 64 ff. and 359 ff.
" To obtain a vision from the god Bes: Make a drawing of Besa, as shewn below, on your left hand, and envelope your hand in a strip of black cloth that has been consecrated to Isis and lie down to sleep without speaking a word, even in answer to a question. Wind the remainder of the cloth round your neck. The ink with which you write must be composed of the blood of a cow, the blood of a white dove, fresh frankincense, myrrh, black writing ink, cin-nabar, mulberry juice, rain-water, and the juice of worm-vood and vetch. With this write your petition before the setting sun, saying, 'Send the truthful seer out of the holy shrine, I beseech thee, Lampsuer, Sumarta, Baribas, Dardalam, Iorlex: O Lord send the sacred deity Anuth, Anuth, Salbana, Chambre, Breith, now, now, quickly, quickly. Come in this very night.' "
" To procure dreams: Take a clean linen bag and write upon it the names given below. Fold it up and make it into a lamp-wick, and set it alight, pouring pure oil over it. The word to be written is this: 'Armiuth, Lailam- chouch, Arsenophrephren, Phtha, Archentechtha.' Then in the evening, when you are going to bed, which you must do without touching food (or, pure from all defilement), do thus: Approach the lamp and repeat seven times the formula given below: then extinguish it and lie down to sleep. The formula is this: ; Sachmu . . . . epaema Ligotereench: the Aeon, the Thunderer, Thou that hast swallowed the snake and dost exhaust the moon, and dost raise up the orb of the sun in his season, Chthetho is the name; I require, O lords of the gods, Seth, Chreps, give me the information that I desire.' "
Medical Magic. Magic played a great part in Egyptian medicine. On this point Weidemann says: The Egyp- tians were not great physicians: their methods ,vere purely empirical and their remedies of very doubtful value, but the riskiness of their practice arose chiefly from their utter inability to diagnose because of their ignorance of anatomy. That the popular respect for the human body was great we may gather from the fact that the Paraskhistai who opened the body for embalmment were persecuted and stoned as having committed a sinful although necessary deed. The prescribed operations in preparing a body for embalmment were never departed from, and taught but little anatomy, so that until Greek times the Egyptians had only the most imperfect and inaccurate ideas of the human organism. They understood nothing about most internal diseases, and especially nothing about diseases of the brain, never suspecting them to be the result of organic changes, but assuming them to be caused by demons who had entered into the sick. Under these circumstances medicines might be used to cause the disappearance of the symptoms, but the cure was the expulsion of the demon. Hence the Egyptian physician must also practise magic
" According to late accounts, his functions were com- paratively simple, for the human body had been divided into thirty-six parts each presided over by a certain demon, and it sufficed to invoke the demon of the part affected in order to bring about its cure-a view of matters funda- mentally Egyptian. In the Book of the Dead we find that different divinities were responsible for the well-being of the bodies of the blessed; thus Nu had charge of the / Page 136 / hair, Ra. of the face, Hathor of the eyes, Apuat of the ears, Anubis of the lips, while Thoth was guardian of all parts of the body together. This doctrine was subsequently applied to the living body, with the difference that for the great gods named in the Book of the Dead there were substituted as gods of healing the presiding deities of the thirty-six decani, the thirty-six divisions of the Egyptian zodiac, as we learn from the names given to them by Celsus and preserved by Origen. In earlier times it was not so easy to be determined which god ,vas to be invoked, for the selection depended not only on the part affected but also on the illness and symptoms and remedies to be used, etc.
"Several Egyptian medical papyri which have come down to us contain formulas to be spoken against the demons of disease as well as prescriptions for the remedies. to be used in specified cases of illness. In papyri of older date these conjurations are comparatively rare, but the further the art of medicine advanced, or rather receded, the more numerous they became
" It was not always enough to speak the formulas once; even their repeated recitation might not be successful, and in that case recourse must be had to other expedients: secret passes were made, various rites were performed, the formulas were written upon papyrus, which the sick person had to swallow etc., etc. But amulets were in general found to be most efficacious, and the personal intervention of a god called up, if necessary, by prayers or sorcery."
Magical Figures. As has been said the Egyptians be-lieved that it was possible to transmit to the figure of any person or animal the soul of the being which it represented. In the Westcar Papyrus we read how a soldier who had fallen in love with a governor's ,vife was swallowed by a crocodile when bathing, the saurian being a magical re-plica of a waxen one made by the lady's husband. In the official account of a conspiracy against Rameses III. (ca B.C. 1200) the conspirators obtained access to a magical papyrus in the royal library and employed its instructions against the king with disastrous effects to themselves. These, too, made waxen figures of gods and of the king for the purpose of slaying the latter.
Astrology: The Egyptians were fatalists, and believed that a man's destiny was decided before he was born. The people therefore had recourse to astrologers. Says Budge: " In magical papyri we are often told not to perform cer- tain magical ceremonies on such and such days, the idea being that on these days hostile powers will make them to be powerless, and that gods mightier than those to which the petitioner would appeal will be in the ascendant. There have come down to us fortunately, papyri containing copies of the Egyptian calendar, in which each third of every day for three hundred and sixty days of the year is marked lucky or unlucky, and we know from other papyri why certain days were lucky or unlucky, and why others were only partly so." "From the life of Alexander the Great by Pseudo-Callisthenes we learn that the Egyptians were skilled in the art of casting nativities, and that knowing the exact moment of the birth of a man they proceeded to construct his horoscope. Nectanebus employed for the purpose a tablet made of gold and silver and acacia wood, to which were fitted three belts. Upon the outer belt was Zeus with the thirty-six decani surrounding him; upon the second the twelve signs of the Zodiac were repre- sented; and upon the third the sun and moon. He set the tablet upon a tripod, and then emptied out of a small box upon it models of the seven stars that were in the belts, and put into the middle belt eight precious stones; these he arranged in the places wherein he supposed the planets which they represented would be at the time of the birth of Olympias, and then told her fortune from them. But the use of the horoscope is much older than the time of Alexander the Great, for to a Greek horoscope in the British Museum is attached an introductory letter from some master of the art of astrology to his pupil, named Hermon, urging him to be very exact and careful in his application of the laws which the ancient Egyptians, with their labori-ous devotion to the art, had discovered and handed down to posterity.' Thus we have good reason for as-signing the birthplace of the horoscope to Egypt. In connection with the horoscope must be mentioned the " sphere " or " table " of Democritus as a means of making predictions as to life and death. In a magical papyrus we are told to ' ascertain in what month the sick man took to his bed, and the name he received at his birth. Calcu-late the course of the moon, and see how many periods of thirty days have elapsed; then note in the table the number of days left over, and if the number comes in the upper part of the table, he will live, but if in the lower part he will die.
Ghosts. The conception that the ka or double of man wandered about after death, greatly assisted the Egyptian. belief in ghosts. "According to them a man consisted of a physical body, a shadow, a double, a soul, a heart, a spirit called the khu, a power, a name, and a spiritual body. When the body died the shadow departed from it, and could only be brought back to it by the performance of a mystical ceremony; the double lived in the tomb with the body, and was there visited by the soul whose habitation was in heaven. The soul was, from one aspect, a material thing, and like the ka, or double, was believed to partake of the funeral offer-ings which were brought to the tomb; one of the chief objects of sepulchral offerings of meat and drink was to keep the double in tho tomb and to do away with the ne-cessity of its wandering about outside the tomb in search of food. It is clear from many texts that, unless the double was supplied with sufficiont food, it would wander forth from the tomb and eat any kind of offal and drink any kind of dirty water ,vhich it might find in its path. But besides the shadow and the double, and the soul, the spirit of the deceased, which usually had its abode in heaven,was sometimes to be found in the tomb. There is, how-ever, good reason for stating that the immortal part of man which lived in the tomb and had its special abode in the statue of the deceased was the' double.' This is proved by the fact that a special part of the tomb ,vas reserved for the ka, or double, which was called the' house of the ka,' and that a priest, called the' priest of the ka,' was specially appointed to minister therein."
Esoteric Knowledge of the Priesthood. The esoteric know-ledge of the Egyptian priesthood is now believed to have been of the description with which the Indian medicine man is credited plus a philosophy akin to that of ancient India. Says Davenport Adams:
" To impose upon the common people, the priestHood professed to lead lives of peculi~,r sanctity. They despised the outer senses, as sources of evil and temptation. They kept themselves apart from the profanium vulglts, 'and,' says Iamblicus, ' occupied themselves only with the know- ledge of God, of themselves, and of wisdom; they desired no vain honours in their sacred practice, and never yielded to the influence of the imagination.' Therefore they formed a world within a world, fenced round by a singular awe and wonder, apparcntly abstracted from thc things of earth, and devoted to the constant contemplation of divine mysteries. They admitted few strangers into their order, and wrapt up their doctrines in a hieroglyphical language, which was only intelligible to the initiated. To these various precautions was added the solemnity of a terrible / Page 137 / oath, whose breach was invariably punished with death." "The Egyptian priests preserved the remaining relics of the former wisdom of nature. These were not imparted as the sciences are, in our age, but to all appearances they were neither learned nor taught; but as a reflection of the old revelations of nature, the perception must arise like an inspiration in the scholar's mind. From this cause appear to have arisen those numerous preparations and purifications the severity of which deterred many from initiation into the Egyptian priesthood; in fact, not in- frequently resulted in the scholar's death. Long fasting, and the greatest abstinence, appear to have been particu-larly necessary: besides this, the body was rendered in-sensible through great exertions, and even through voluntarily inflicted pain, and therefore open to the in-fluence of the mind. The imagination was excited by representations of the mysteries; and the inner sense was more impressed by the whole than-as is the case with us-instructed by an explanation of simple facts. In this manner the dead body of science was not given over to the initiated, and left to chance \vhether it would become animated or not, but the living soul of wisdom \vas breathed into them.
"From this fact, that the contents of the mysteries were rather revealed than taught-were received more from inward inspiration and mental intoxication, than outwardly through endless teaching, it was necessary to conceal them from the mass of the people.
So says Schubert, dealing with the same subject: "The way to every innovation was closed, and outward know-ledge and science could certainly not rise to a high degree of external perfection; but that rude sensuality, inclina-tion for change and variety, was suppressed as the chief source of all bodily and spiritual vices, is clear, as well as that here, as in India, an ascetic and contemplative life was recommended.
"They imparted their secret and divine sciences to no one who did not belong to their caste, and it was long im-possible for foreigners to learn anything; it was only in later times that a few strangers were permitted to enter the initiation after many severe preparations and trials. Besides this, their functions were hereditary, and the son followed the footsteps of his father.
"Concerning that which passed within the temples, and of the manner in vhich the sick were treated, we have but fragmentary accounts; for to the uninitiated the entrance was forbidden, and the initiated kept their vows. Even the Greeks, who were admitted to the temples, have been silent concerning the secrets, and have only here and there betrayed portions. Jablonski says, 'that but few chosen priests were admitted into the sanctum, and that' admission was scarcely ever permitted to strangers even under the severest regulations.' "
Dealing \vith the subject of hypnotism in Egypt, Mont- faucon says: "Magnetism was daily practised in the temples of Isis, of Osiris, and Serapis. In these temples the priests treated the sick and cured them, either by mag-netic manipulation, or by other means producing som- nambulism." Presenting a painting of a mesmeric scene, he says: "Before a bed or table, on which lie the sick, stands a person in a brown garment, and with open eyes, and the dog's head of Anubis. His countenance is turned towards the sick person; his left hand is placed on the breast, and the right is raised over the head of his patient, quite in the position of a magnetiser."
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GENESIS OR NEMESIS
Martin Palmer 1988
Buddhism
" In Chapter 2 we touched on the central Buddhist precept of non-violence, and on the model of compassion which is found in various forms of Buddhism. This model is beautifully captured in the Vow of the Bodhisattva, from the sixth to the seventh century CEo The Vow was taken for all life, not just the human one.
A Bodhisattva resolves: I take upon myself the burden of all sufferings, I am resolved to do so, I will endure it. I do not turn or run away. do not tremble, am not terrified, nor afraid, do not turn back or despair.
And why? At all costs I must bear the burden of all beings, in that I do not follow my own inclinations. I have made the vow to save all beings. All beings I must set free. The whole world of living beings I must rescue, from the terrors of birth, of old age, of sickness, of death and rebirth, of all kinds of moral offence, of all states of woe, of the whole cycle of birth-and-death, of the jungle of false views, of the loss of wholesome dharmas [teach- ings}, of the concomitants of ignorance:--from all these terrors I must rescue all beings. ... I walk so that the kingdom of unsurpassed cognition is built up for all beings. My endeavours do not merely aim at my own deliverance. For with the help of the boat of the thought of all-knowledge, I must rescue all these beings from the stream of Samsara [rebirth and suffering], which is so difficult to cross, I must pull them back from the great preciPice, I must free them from all calamities, I must ferry them across the stream of Samsara. I myself must grapple with the whole mass of suffering of all beings. To the limit of endurance I will experience in all the states of woe, found in any world system, all the abodes of suffering. And I must not cheat all beings out of my store of merit. I am resolved to abide in each / single state of woe for numberless aeons; and so I will help all beings to freedom, in all states of woe that may be found in any world system whatsoever.
(Shantideva's Sikshasamuccaya 280-81, Vajradhvaja Sutra)
This vision of compassionate care has been lived out in
practice
by the community of monks, the Sangha. Their
compassion for all life has meant that temple grounds and
temples have always been places where wildlife was safe from
hunters. In many parts of Asia to this day it is within the
environs of temples, monasteries and sacred mountains that
endangered species still survive, protected by the
compassion of the monks and the reverence of laypeople
towards such holy sites. Indeed, conser-vationists have
begun to appreciate the importance ecologically of Buddhist
sites in places such as Thailand or Sri Lanka. The sacred
nature of such sites has, by accident, permitted the
survival of certain species, as well as providing examples
of balanced human interaction with nature.
However, this sacred sanctity has been a passive concept, one which happened by chance to have beneficial ecological spin-offs. In recent years the Sangha has begun to examine its' role in caring for the natural world, the world of sentient beings.Projects have been established, such as the joint Thai and Tibetan Buddhist "Perceptions of Nature" project which has brought together senior scholars to examine the Buddhist scriptures and to publish studies of the core teachings of Buddhism with regard to nature. Through such study, the monks have realised that they should turn their passive care of nature into an active, teaching, preaching and practical care. The academic studies are now being reworked to provide educational material for Buddhist schools in various parts of the East. For instance, how prophetic and wise is this extract from the stories of the Buddha's previous lives, the Jataka stories:Come back 0 Tigers! to the woods again,
And let it not be levelled with the Plain;
For without you, the axe will lay it low;
You, without it, for ever homeless go.
(TheJataka Vol. II, ed. Prof. E. B. Cowell, The Pali Text Society, London, 1957)"
C.F. Parker. 1936
GENESIS:
THE BOOK OF BEGINNINGS
Page 18
THE first chapter of Genesis records the "begin-ning" of the physical universe and the sequence of creative activities up to the advent of man.
The first verse of Genesis implies the existence of "GOD," before the material creation took place. The Name here used is "Elohim," and is the only Name used in this chapter. "Elohim," then, may be taken as that Name intended to convey to the mind the Creator, creative activities, and created beings and things; that which could bring into being a physical universe is presented in one Name-"Elohim." The writer of Genesis does not here try to explain what "Elohim" is; he attributes the creation to that Being which is all-powerful in the creative realm, though unde-fined and unlimited,. best comprehended as the Creator.
"Elohim" can only in measure be grasped by the human mind. Science cannot yet tell what it was that brought into being the universe. If it could, man could understand more of the implication of "Elohim," for the material things were brought into being by "Elohim."
The existence of the physical universe is stated / Page 19 / to have been sequent to, and subordinate to, that which was non-material energy. "In the begin-ning Elohim created the heaven and the earth," implies the existence of Elohim before matter. Material was brought into being by events in the "immaterial."l This is surprisingly close to the stand of modern physics, in which, as research goes on, matter becomes more and more illusive and less "material" in the ordinary sense of the. word. For many purposes the scientist now treats matter as though it were solely an equation.
Modern science has at last .arrived at the point where Paul left off when he said:
"Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" (Hebrews xi, 3), at least as far as the last clause is concerned.
That Paul's "Modern Physics" were by no means /
1 The works dealing with the structure of matter are very numerous, and many of them exceedingly involved, as they deal with higher mathematics. However, for one wishing to study the structure of matter, perhaps the best heading under which to search would be under that of "Atom."
Linked with the study of the atom are those of radiations- light waves, radIo waves, X-rays, transmutation, etc. Since the atom is the basis of matter it is linked inseparably with the study of any physical science. ,
It is not known what matter is. Its appearance is accompanied by electro-magnetic disturbances and energy. If matter is a manifestation of these, then matter may be but a manifestation of events in the "non-material" realms. /
Page 20 / new is clear from what has just been considered in Genesis. And that a yet-to-be-improved knowledge of physics was current when the early books of the Bible were written is shown in many places, as in Job:
"' "He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing" (xxvi, 7).
At least we can say that the "Ether" which our scientists have substituted for Job's "nothing" cannot be numbered among the elements.
Paul's understanding of "modern physics" came, as he says, "by faith." And he informs us:
"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews xi, I).
Thus, though not able to present a concrete proof of the discontinuity of matter, he was faced with such evidence towards it that he believed in it at least in so far as he commits himself in writing. The modern physicist is essentially Pauline, and does not appear to have accomplished that which Paul apparently had not, although no less certain than the Apostle that "Things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."
And, indeed, Paul was Mosaic; and the modern physicist thus finds himself in the same category.
It is of interest at this point in the consideration of material things to note the words of John iv, 24: "God is a spirit." This confirms Genesis, where we find the spiritual Being before the material things.
Page21
A more detailed study, for which there is 'not space here, will further convince one that the attitude of writers of the Bible physics was essentially in agreement with present knowledge. Moses was no exception; he is confirmed by the later writers, and his statements are also enlarged upon and further illuminated.
That the creation story given by Moses is essentially in agreement with present scientific data will now be considered. Points which cannot be confirmed or proven to be in error must be left to stand; it is not scientific or right to deny records that thus remain.
This is the first act of creation mentioned in Genesis. "The heaven," "the earth," and all that is contained in them, were first set up.
The earth was "without form," and "void." This does not say that the earth was not in existence; to the contrary, the earth was in existence-but in the unorganized state, "empty and desolate." "Without form" might indicate a vast nebular or gaseous state. "Void" confirms this interpretation. A reference to the "Century Dictionary" (1899) gives the following for "void":
Page 22
It must be borne in mind that:
in his Ortus Medicinae, post-humously published in 1648, in the course of his description of the gas now known as carbon dioxide" (Encyc. Brit.).
Thus, the invention of the word "gas" was some years after the rendering of certain versions of the Bible, such as the St. James', and could not have been used in that or any earlier translations. The conception conveyed by the modern "gas" would in the times of translation of the early versions be well expressed by "without form and void."
Students of the first chapter of Genesis have often seen in the first two verses a story of the forming, then the destruction, and finally the re-forming of the earth. The above offers an alternative reading of the same passages.
suggests the absence of light vibrations, and that the story is still in the primeval stage before atomic and electronic vibrations had become those of the light scale. Visible light is only a small section of the whole spectrum, all of which is now known to the scientist as "light." Perhaps the writer speaks of the evolution of light!1
1 Light is apparently older than the organized earth, but not the unorganized. Matter in vibration gives off light. Matter and light may be energy of interchangeable forms.
Page 23
DAY I. The universe has been brought into being by the end of Day I, and the activities that follow in the material realm are those of assem-bling that material..
The use of the word "day" in the Bible is very wide. We find that: A day with the Lord is a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day; Hosea speaks of three great prophetic days which are obviously longer than twenty-four hours each; John speaks of 1260 days, which, taken in con- junction with other prophecies, are obviously days representing a much longer period than twenty-four hours each, etc. The word "day" being flexible in its application, there is no quarrel between the Bible stating creative activi-ties in that unit and the scientist who calculates certain of those days to be of great length of time. It is of interest to note Ferrar Fenton's translation of "periods" and "age."
DAY II. Cosmogony. Following Day I is the forming of heavenly bodies, logically the next step in the evolution of the heavens. What the writer of Genesis means by "waters" is a point of discussion-whether literal water in one or more of its forms, or heavenly matter of a wider sense, or what we might call "ether." Again, "water" has various meanings in the Bible, notably in those books of the Bible in which symbolic language is so vivid. One of the most striking examples of the scope of the use of / Page 24 / "waters" is in the" calling of nations and peoples by that appellation (Psalm cxxiv; Isaiah viii, 7; Revelation xvii).
DAY III. Geology and Oceanography. Heavenly bodies having .been formed, one of them is selected, namely, the earth. At this stage we read that the waters under the heaven were gathered together into one place, and the dry land appeared.. In other words, the earth had solidified, con-tracted, the surface become uneven due to the contraction, and dry land stood out above the water forming the "Seas." This, of course, implies that the earth had become of such tem-perature as to permit water to stay on its face; also that an equalizing atmosphere was about the earth to create the. necessary pressure for water to stay on the surface of the earth.
When conditions were. right. "the earth brought forth," and life appeared by the power of the great creative Being-Elohim. The primitive forms of life first appeared and are enumerated: Grass, the herb yielding seed, the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself. Here the biologist is furnished with the place from which to start his story; if only he would recog-nize the value of the clues given in these few pregnant verses his problem would be much simpler.
Thus far science has yet to demonstrate any inaccuracy in the account of Genesis-if anything, / Page 25 / science tends to support this account, although science itself has nothing more than theories as to these early ages. ZXZXZXZXZXZXZXZXZX
DAY IV. Time. In this period appear the two great luminaries. - Previous to this- nothing has been mentioned from which we might obtain any idea of time. There has been no mention of the earth's orbit or rotation in any form-hence there has been no conception of years, days (24 hours), hours, etc., or even of light-years. U n;til the earth moved in an orbit, no standard of measurement such as we are to-day acquainted with was avail"' able. The fact that in this period the lights established were for signs, seasons, days and years establishes the coming into existence of: The plane of the Ecliptic; the polar inclination; the diurnal rotation; the orbital movement; and possibly, even the Precession of the Equinoxes. All these, with the" possible exception of the last, are called for by the particulars given.
It would seem that life appeared on the earth even as it was swinging into its present established relationship to the sun and the heavens, and that orbital relationship was sequent' to the first appearance of life; Conditions for life became suitable on earth even before its motions were fixed as we at present know them.
The sun is doubtless one of the lights referred to. It is difficult to say what the second light was -whether the moon or stars. The moon's light, / Page 26 / in any case, is only reflected sunlight polarized to a degree; and its ruling the night is difficult to understand. It would seem that the moon is referred to, as it is more apparent at night than the sun; but then, the stars are always present at night, whereas the moon is not.
DAY V. Zoology. Next is the appearance of more advanced forms of life: those forms that "The waters brought forth." This is most interesting in the light of modern belief, in which biologists are of the opinion that the waters were once so thickly populated that they literally became full to overflowing I Then follows the statement that "God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly." A further stage of the same movement is the appearance of land animals, including monsters.
DAY VI. Anthropology. This is the climax of the biological creation, in which the earth brings forth "The beast after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind." And finally man appears. Geology confirms this climax.
The Evolutionist seldom considers what the Scriptures have to say about his subject. In the third period of creation Elohim, the Creator, causes the earth to bring forth; in the fifth the waters; and in the sixth again the earth. All
Page 27 / forms of life up to the advent of man are expressly presented to us by means of the statement: "Let the earth bring forth," or, "Let the waters bring forth." But of man it is written: "God (Elohim) created man in his own image."1 But "God is a spirit."2 Later it is said, "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground." Thus are presented the two sides of the appearance of man: First the non-material or spiritual being; then the material or bodily man made of earth, which in Hebrew is "Adamah," and from which the name "Adam" is derived.
Genesis I closes with a mention of what was apparently the original diet of man. There is no mention of flesh of any form in this statement. The diet is purely vegetarian. One may be inclined to ask how important it is to follow a vegetarian diet, especially in view of its increasing popularity.
1 Genesis i, 27.2 John iv, 24.
INTRODUCTION TO GENESIS
C.F. Parker. 1936
Page 52 Chapter IV
THE different names of God throughout the Bible have long perplexed its students. Critics have used them as a spearhead of attack against the declared monotheism of the Scriptures; and along with certain other specific details, have thrown up a barrage that has very effectively destroyed the faith in the Bible of countless numbers of people. The accusation of polytheism is raised because the different names of God have been assumed by the critics to represent different gods, different writers believing in a different deity (or deities) whose name (or names) they accord- ingly left in their record. The Pentateuch, it is also alleged, is not the authorship of Moses alone, but is the compilation of a number of authors, as evidenced by their writing under the different names of God. In Genesis, for instance, are found "Elohim," "Yahweh" .(Jehovah), "Adon,"
"Gebir," "Elyon El," etc. Accordingly, some books of the Bible have been split up into divisions of alleged authors, each of which is labelled "E"
(Elohim), or "J" (Jehovah), or "J.E." (Jehovah- Elohim, composite) as the case may be.1
In this fashion it has been tacitly assumed that the Scriptures were compiled at a late date, which / Page 53 /
1 Upheld by Driver. See Driver's Genesis.
Page 53 / has been placed even into the Christian era; and that they were the original writings of the then compilers, or the gleanings from earlier poly-theistic records, or both.
Archeology gives information concerning the names of God, and shows that most, if not all the names used in the Old Testament are very old and were in use long before the days of Moses. In the Creation tablets both the names of Bel and Ea appear; these are similar to EI and J ah (or Jhvh). In the records of Sanchuniathon, about 1000 B.C.,l the name "Elioun" (Elyon) is found. In not only the tablets, but in historical writings, "Baal" is probably the name best known to the reader.
The dates of the inscriptions are not fixed exactly, but seem to vary from 800 B.C. to 1500- 1600 B.C., and the records they contain obviously a c of incidents in still earlier times. The names of God could not have been the inventions of the supposed late authors or compilers of the Bible.
Concerning the early appearance of the names of God, Sir Charles Marston says:
"When we turn to the more strictly religious side of the Mosaic code the issue seems equally clear, once it is recognised that Monotheism was the original religion of the Semites, and that polytheism was a corruption. 1 The New Knowledge about the Old Testament, by Sir Charles Marston, pp. 38, 65. This is taken from a quotation of San-chuniathon by Dr. Langdon.
NOTE: The"Allah" of the Mohammedan is the "El" of the Bible. Non-Israel people were entitled to that name, but not to "Jehovah," / Page 54 / "First, there has been found, in Sinai of all places, the very country into which Moses led the Israelites, these relics of a belief and ritual which clearly resemble the Mosaic one, and this contemporary as well as anterior to Moses' time. Similar traces of Semitic beliefs are to be found in Mesopotamia long before Moses, as well as in Palestine and Syria.
"And as though that were not enough to convince any open mind as to the antiquity of Mosaic legislation, there is now given to the world these startling discoveries at Ras Shamra, the records of a race who, if not actually Hebrews, were their own brothers.
"Here are all the Divine names mentioned in the Pentateuch, here are also ritual sacrifices and the like such as ordained by Moses, here are also other identifi- cations, words, phrases, mythology, etc., all familiar to us through the Pentateuch."l
If the allegations and assumptions are to be allowed, evidence indicates an earlier compilation than that assumed; for the longer the time between the incident and the recording of it, the more likely the errors in the record, and, as already seen, the Genesis creation account is accurate, and therefore, from the standpoint of accuracy, the Genesis account should have been written as soon as possible after the events it records, instead of as late as possible. Reductio ad absurdum.
That the different names of God evidence composite authorship and polytheism is ground- less. If the Bible is the compilation of polytheistic records it is to be expected that one god would / Page 55 /
1 The New Knowledge about the Old Testament, pp. 142, 143.
/ Page 55 / clash with another, or that one would be set against all the rest, The facts showing that there is no such conflict and that there is constant harmony in these names, speak for themselves against polytheism, The outcome of religious zeal is 'that the supreme god of the believer is believed to be the superior, and vanquisher of any other gods, No such confliction of belief is to be found in the Scriptures; and instead the names of God harmonize in one great plan which stretches from the infinite past through to the infinite future; and it is emphatically stated that the different names of God are used for one and the same Being (see following Scripture quotations),
The only conclusion that can be drawn as to the import of the names of Godl is that they represent certain aspects, relationships and depart- ments of Divine activity, We have found the creation to be the act of the one God in His department as Creator, or "Elohim," And since creative activities only are recorded in Genesis I, one name of God only appears, In Genesis II a new department of activities is introduced, and with it a new manifestation of God, This new manifestation is in the realm of speech manifested by the new name "Jehovah,"
In support of this progressive revelation we find from the Bible itself:
"God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the Lord (Jahweh):
1 The reader is advised to refer to The Names of God, by Rev. W, Pascoe Goard,
Page 56 /
"And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty (EI Elyon), but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them" (Exodus vi, 2-3).
It is of interest to note that certain names of God are given in the Bible that are yet to be used by the people of the world:
"Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given:
and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." (Isaiah ix, 6).
Here it is seen that there are seven names of God in one verse!
Again (speaking to the Ten Tribes):
"Thy Maker is thine husband; the Lord of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called" (Isaiah liv,5).
Here are six names of God in one verse.
We bear in mind that the Creation was the work of Elohim; .yet in the New Testament we have such testimony as this:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
"The same was in the beginning with God.
"All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made tha~ was made.
"In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
" And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
Page 57
57
"There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
"The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
"He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
"That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
"He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
"He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of <Jod, even to them that believe on his name:
"Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of <Jod.
" And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth" (John i, 1-14).
Clearly, then, it is found that it is the oneness
of God that is emphasized in the Bible, and that through different names He manifests Himself in different departments of activity. What could be more clear in this regard than the above statement that Jesus Christ was God, the Creator (Elohim of Genesis i), the mighty God, the everlasting Father?
The matter is given the indisputable answer by Christ Himself :
"1 and the Father are one."
"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
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There is to be found, even in Christ Himself, the departmentalizing of activities: Christ the Redeemer and Saviour through whom alone (department) sins are forgiven; for in the depart- ment of Jehovah we find:
"The Lord (Jehovah) is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation" (Numbers xiv, 18).
Salvation must come through the way of the
Cross, and not be short-circuited through any
other department.
Under the Mosaic regime we find the penalty of death for certain crimes, yet through Christ we find the forgiveness of those very sins, notably in the cases of the woman taken in adultery and that of the Corinthians, quite in accordance with
His teaching: "I am come that ye may have
life and have it more abundantly." And still there is no clash between the Old Testament and the New. for in the Old propitiation had to be made; in the New propitiation still must be made -but no propitiations are of any avail but those of the person concerned through the one great propitiation of Christ.
At this point perhaps it is well to remember that in the time of Christ the Israelites had put aside the Mosaic code and were for the main part far from Palestine and had not the Mosaic law
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in operation. St. Paul says of these people:
"1 bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge" (Romans x, 2).
Although Christ, in forgiving the sins and granting life in cases where the Law called for the death penalty, may appear on the surface to be doing away with the Mosaic law, such is not the case. The Mosaic law was rendered tem- porarily inoperative by the Israelites refusing to keep it, and that law was not being kept nationally in Palestine by Jew, Gentile, or Israelite during the time of our Lord's life there. The nation in Palestine would not obey the Mosaic code even though Christ Himself tried to get it re-estab- lished.
"Think not that 1 am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: 1 am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
"For verily 1 say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled" (Matthew v, 17-18).
Further, the nation in Palestine would not execute the law, and for this reason our Lord could not put the Mosaic code into national operation because such must be done with the co-operation of the people. To verify this, read the Pentateuch, and it is to be found that certain punishments were to be executed by the people- not the judge, or any single party-and the people themselves were not to be guilty of crime. If the people would not execute justice the penalty could not be executed. In the case referred to / Page 60 / the accusers of the woman were faced with the fact that they themselves were guilty of crime and thus could not execute judgment-we do not find our Lord setting aside the Law; in fact, He gave permission for the Law to be carried out.
The two systems put into operation-the one under Moses and the other under Christ-under different manifestations of the one God, do not in the least clash. The suggestion of polytheism is ridiculous. In the Names of God new steps in the revelation of God are made.
Further study can only convince one more strongly that the Bible is the compilation of writers who are definitely monotheistic, and who wrote conscious of the meanings they wished to convey by use of the names of God.
Now a word as to the origin of polytheism.
Dr. Langdon says:
"In my opinion, the history of the oldest religion of man is a rapid decline from monotheism to extreme polytheism and widespread belief in evil spirits. It is in a very true sense the history of the fall of man" (Field Museum Leaflet 28. Quotation taken from Sir Charles Marston's New Knowledge about the Old Testament, p. 39).
The following is a quotation of Sir Peter Le Page Renouf, the translator of the Egyptian
Book of the Dead:
"M. de Rouge then says that from, or rather before, the beginning of the historical period, the pure mono- / Page 61 / theistic religion passed through the phase of Sabeism. . . . It is therefore more than five thousand years since, in the valley of the Nile, the hymn began to the Unity of God and the immortality of the soul. . . . The belief in the Unity of the Supreme God and in his attributes as Creator and Lawgiver-these are the primitive notions enchased like indestructible diamonds in the midst of the mythological superfetations accumu- lated in the centuries."
"It is incontestably true that the sublimer portions of the Egyptian religion are not the comparatively late result of a process of development or elimination from the grosser" (The Hibbert Lectures, 1897. Taken from Sir Charles Marston's New Knowledge about the Old Testament, p. 40).
That the departmental aspects of God are not confined to the Bible will now be shown. The Babylonian, Egyptian and Mohammedan reli-gions, as well as others, carry the different manifestations of the one God by means of different names for each. This has often been confused with polytheism, which it is not. The following extract from The Babylonian Legends of the Creation is most valuable:
". . . From the above it is clear that a dispute broke out between Marduk and the gods after he had created them, and the tradition of it has made its way into the religious literatures of the Hebrews, Syrians, Arabs, Copts and Abyssinians. The cuneiform texts tell us nothing about the cause of the dispute, but tradition generally ascribes it to the creation of man by the / Page 62 / supreme God; and it is probable that all the apocryphal stories which describe the expulsion from heaven of the angels who contended against God under the leadership of Satan, or Satnael, or Iblis, are derived from a Babylonian original which has not yet been found. The 'Fifty Names,' or laudatory epithets mentioned above, find parallels in 'Seventy-five Praises of Ra,' sung by the Egyptians under the XIXth dynasty, and in the 'Ninety-nine Beautiful Names of Allah,' which are held in such great esteem by the Muhammadans. The respect in which the Fifty Names were held by the Babylonians is well shown by the words of the Epilogue on the Seventh Tablet, where it is said, 'Let them be held in remembrance, let the first-comer (i.e., any and every man) proclaim them; let the wise and the understanding consider them together. Let the father repeat them and teach them to his son. Let them be in the ears of the herdsman and the shepherd.'
"The object of the writer of the Fifty Names was to show that Marduk was the 'Lord of the gods,' that the power, qualities and attributes of every god were enshrined in him and that they all were merely forms of him. This fact is proved by the tablet (No. 4-7,4-06), which contains a long list of gods who are equated with Marduk in his various forms. The tendency in the later Babylonian religion to make Marduk the god above all gods has led many to think that monotheistic conceptions were already in existence among the Babylonians as early as the period of the First Dynasty, about 2000 B.C. It is probable that Marduk obtained his pre-eminence in the Babylonian Pantheon at the end of this early period. But some authorities deny the existence of monotheistic conceptions among the Babylonians at that time, and attribute Marduk's / Page 63 / kingship of the gods to the influence of the political situation of the time, when Babylon first became the capital of the country, and mistress of the greater part of the known world. Material for deciding this question is wanting, but it may be safely said that whatever monotheistic conceptions existed at that time, their acceptance was confined entirely to the priests and scribes. They certainly find no expression in the popular religious texts" (pp. 30-3 I).
It is thus seen that even the records of non- Israelitish peoples testify to the definite purpose of the names of God shown in the Bible, and that secular records are of valuable assistance in supporting the sacred record.
INTRODUCTION
TO
GENESIS
GENESIS:
THE BOOK OF BEGINNINGS
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The 'Fifty Names,' or laudatory epithets mentioned above, find parallels in 'Seventy-five Praises of Ra,' sung by the Egyptians under the XIXth dynasty, and in the 'Ninety-nine Beautiful Names of Allah,' which are held in such great esteem by the Muhammadans. The respect in which the Fifty Names were held by the Babylonians is well shown by the words of the Epilogue on the Seventh Tablet, where it is said, 'Let them be held in remembrance, let the first-comer (i.e., any and every man) proclaim them; let the wise and the understanding consider them together. Let the father repeat them and teach them to his son. Let them be in the ears of the herdsman and the shepherd.'
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