Monday, June 10, 2019

Bright Shiny things

If you are an Indiana Jones fan as we are, you may remember the third Jones’ movie, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, that included Sean Connery as Indiana’s father.
When Indiana was searching for the Holy Grail involving a booby-trapped passageway, he avoided the slings and arrows by interpreting “Only a penitent man shall pass.”

 He stooped (as would a penitent man) and thus avoided the arrows.

I extrapolated this to a show we are currently watching, The Curse of Oak Island. You know the story of “The Money Pit,” where treasure hunters have searched for 200 years only to find booby-trapped passageways that cause water to flow into whatever hole the searchers were digging.

 
The show is developing into a search for lost history that could be more precious the gold people had spent untold amounts of money, time, effort, and at least six lives to find. 

There is evidence that supports the belief that the Knight’s Templer, buried something there. (Among other people such as pirates.) 

The Knights Templer were for a time one of the wealthiest and most influential sects in the world.

What were they burying? Gold? Jewels? 

The Knights were created to guard pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. Since they needed money for the journey, and thus had it on their person, they were targets for thieves. The Knights protected them and began the first bank where money was safe from road bandits.

Seventy of the Knights Templer were arrested on trumped up charges, were imprisoned for seven years, tortured and executed on Friday, Oct 13, 1307—the origin of Friday the 13th as a bad luck day.

It is believed that some of the Templars avoided persecution and hid their treasures. The Grand Master endured untold agonies that ended with his death, and never revealed his secrets.

Evidence points to Oak Island as being a depository—for what? Gold? Treasure, manuscripts, sacred artifacts?

Something worth hiding.

People get gold fever. The lure of a treasure chest or a sunken galleon will send them into a feeding frenzy. Oak Island has been torn up, drilled into, and bulldozed until it looked like a strip mine. (It recovered, and looked quite wild and overgrown when the current film makers showed up. (The two men leading the current expedition, Rick and Marty Lagina, are respectful in keeping the integrity of the island.)

I believe some people have found treasures on the island, especially three boys who discovered three chests, and initially the money pit. Consider Samuel Bell, a former slave who moved to the Island to be a cabbage farmer, and ended up one of the richest men in Nova Scotia. That’s telling, isn’t it?

The Knights Templer certainly believed they had something of value to go to the effort they apparently did to preserve it. And these imprisoned tried to leave clues carved into their prison walls with no sharp instruments. Some of the clues are identical with those found on Oak Island.

One such symbol was THE TREE OF LIFE.

An ancient Kabbalistic symbol?

A BC image?

Some think the huge “Cross” depicted on the ground at Oak Island is in actuality the Kabbalistic symbol, The Tree of Life.

I looked up the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and almost fell off my chair.


The tree of Life is a sign of a fresh start in life and immortality. It is a sign of growth and strength. As a tree grows it bears seeds that contain its essence, in this way, the tree becomes immortal.

The Tree of Life is a map of 22 paths to God. It is a connection between God and the human psyche. It is made of nodes, or points, called sephiroths.  Those “sephiroths” are named, the Crown, Wisdom, Mercy, Victory, Understanding, Power, Majesty and the Kingdom. At the center are Beauty and Foundation.

(Well, there is a reaon for percuting people—lovers of truth and beauty.)

The Crown represents the beginning of the universe. It is the point beyond which our comprehension of the origins of life cannot go. This “point” is usually understood among Kabbalists, who don’t envision time and space as pre-existing, as something approaching, “ENERGY.” 

ENERGY?

These Nineth-Century peoples knew about energy?

And then 12 centuries later along comes a man named Einstein saying that E=MC2. (Mass times Light squared equals Energy.) I don’t understand about light speed being squared or how he got it, but I understand that he said matter is neither made nor destroyed, and that mass and ENERGY are interchangeable.

What if these ancients thought their understandings were important enough to preserve?

What if their knowledge is so hidden that it will take a “pertinent” soul to find it? 

And people look for bright shiny rocks.

That’s fine, the lures of treasure is exciting, but what would we do if we thought we would be bombed back to the Stone Age?

Would we bury information? Where? For whom?

We have gained great knowledge regarding how stars are born and die. We understand how solar systems came into being. Quantum Physics is a hot topic now.
Now we know about cells, and molecules, and atoms, and sub-atomic particles.
We have an understanding of medicine and the body and the psyche that far exceeds (I think) what the ancients knew.

How far would we go to preserve this knowledge?

As I was writing the Frog’s Song I came upon this legend, and included it in my book. I guess since I’m quoting myself I can put it here. 

There was a time when ordinary people had access to the knowledge of the gods, but ignored divine wisdom. The gods, tired of bestowing the gift of knowledge only to have it ignored, decided to hide it. They believed that if people had to work for it, they would place a higher value upon the acquisition of wisdom? But where to hide it?

“Buy it in the ocean,” one of the gods suggested.

“No. On day humans will dive to the depth of the ocean,” a second demurred.

“Then bury it in the earth,” suggested another. that,  too, was dismissed, as was the top of the tallest mountain, since one day humans were sure to venture there.

Finally, one of the gods suggested they hide it where the people would never think of looking—inside themselves.”

Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Murder in the Back Forty


I left the truck after spending the last couple of hours there since I couldn’t sleep. Now in the light of day, I saw white feathers at the rear of the property and went to investigate.

While I was in the truck, or maybe it happened earlier, for I heard nothing, Chick-a-dee, my Margaretta-drinking-chicken, was murdered. 


I was in shock, and sad. She was our pet. More of a pet than I knew chickens could be. After losing her sister, she adopted us. One day she sat on the table beside Daughter Dear and stole French fries, and I had mentioned many times how she was a free-range hen and preferred to roost on the back porch. She would have been safe there, but since I wanted a clean porch, I put her in the pen.  



She was in the old pen where she liked to roost on the roof of the little chicken house there. She and her sister had been safe there for a year. We have a run between the two pens, and the other chickens were in the other house. 

I saw where she was dragged under the fence.

Maybe I subconsciously knew mayhem was happening and thus couldn’t sleep. However, I wasn’t clear enough to go check on the chickens.

While I lost one bird today, I saved another. A little bird was caught in the plastic bird netting I have over the pen. She was so tangled that I had to make numerous snips with the scissors to free her while she took numerous snips at me with her beak.
She is free to fly another day.

Chick-a-dee was menopausal and was not laying eggs this summer. I wondered if the murderous critter took her instead of the others, to preserve his food supply. Now I suspect it was he who stole a couple of eggs.


I had gotten up at 3:30 this morning and since I couldn’t get back to sleep, I tip-toed out of the house to the truck where I jacked up the heater and settled down to read my book on my phone via Kindle.

Yep, I bought a Kindle version.

The Frog’s Song is a bargain at any price, the $12.95 paperback or the Kindle version. (I have both.) Don’t let those throw-away books give you the wrong impression that books ought to be cheap. They are losing money on them--poor souls. 

The Kindle version only cost me a little more than the latte I bought this morning when Dutch Bros finally opened. Kind of a shame to spend that much on coffee, but what the heck, I couldn’t sleep. The book will last infinitely longer than did the coffee.

“With great amusement…” I had to laugh, that doesn’t sound like me, but it was in my book.

Once in a while, I will find phrases that sound like my editor, not me, but she spent hours editing it, her publishing company typeset it, created the cover, printed the whole kit and caboodle, and sent me three copies. Talk about a bargain. For that, I can tolerate the whisperings of another voice stuck within my pages occasionally. Jaynie of Regal Publishing “The House That Jaynie Built” is awesome.

But I haven’t shut up now that the book has ended. I’m continuing with a blog on https://thefrogssong.com(more pictures there) which I consider a Chat Room in the Wilds such as Hot Dog Guy had on the Island. 

He set up the cleanest best hot dog stand I’ve ever seen at the Y in the road, and people stopped to chat whether they bought a hot dog or not. On rainy days, which often happened on our side of the Island, he put up a canopy so people wouldn’t have to wring out their hot dogs or themselves. But here you’ll stay dry. Unless, of course, you’re outside, or your roof leaks. 

Want to know why his hot dogs were the best? 


It’s in the book.

Want to know what it’s like to live off the grid?

It’s in the book.

I’ve reached a moral dilemma regarding blogging and book writing. With a book, I’m asking people to plunk down their hard-earned money to buy it and hopefully to read it. And I know from blogging that a large page of text is intimidating to people.  (I have a very literary publisher. who has, herself written a novel.) 

 I’ve asked people to help me sell at least 200 books, so the publisher won’t drop me. 
And it’s embarrassing if you know me—you might not like it. That’s the reason I hesitated to read it. I was afraid I wouldn’t like it either. It had, after all, been out of my hands for two years minus two months. 

Things change. People change. I’m not the same person I was two years ago. How about you? Do you feel that way?

Regarding a blog, I figure it ought to supply information or be something someone is looking for. It ought to be of service somehow, if it’s not of service, then what’s the use of it? (Entertaining is of service.)

My book is my personal experience. It’s an adventure. Is it entertaining? Does it provide value? I don’t know. 

Okay, here I’ll offer some advice. You know I’m not afraid to offer free content. People have asked me about blogging, and what site I use for travelswithjo.com. There I use WordPress, and it requires a learning curve.

Some site carriers will advertise: “Create a blog in 5 minutes.”

Right.

How about a week? 

Some carriers are easier than WordPress, but WordPress is great once you get the hang of it. 

I spent the past week putting together The Frog’s Song, not that it looks complicated, but I totally screwed it up, changing the themes, losing pages, scrambling content, not having the blog work. I was embarrassed if anyone saw it. Finally, I found a plugin that would place the site on “Maintenance.” However, since my computer knew me, every time I checked to see it. as unpublished, it showed me that it was, but only to me. It was playing with me. (Rather like Pele on the island.)

Usually, I want people to read my blogs, but not during that week. But when I was finally satisfied and decided to publish it. Nada.

I finally got it by removing all the plugins.

More than you wanted to know right?

My advice to bloggers? Hang in there.

Now, excuse me, I’m going out to buy a live trap.

How was your day?