#Valentinian the Great
Text
Roman Leaders as Scents:
Aurelian: vanilla ice cream and chocolate cookies
Probus: chocolate and space flavoured pop tart
Diocletian: orange mixed with daisy
Maximian: rose with a hint of sea salt
Constantius Chlorus: honey, mint and scented beaver pop
Constantine: peppermint and pomegranate seeds
Maxentius: cabbages and sweet Dahlia
Constans: candy cane and sugar roads
Constantine II: apple with bananas
Constantius II: star, sky and the clouds
Julian: old books with a tint of earthly delights
Valentinian: cucumber and cherries
Theodosius the Elder: melted steel with light strawberries
Valens: burning fire with a hint of chicken
Valentinian II: maple syrup and artillery fire
Theodosius I: lime and caramel
Honorius: black blood and black liquorice
Arcadius: lion pee and the clouds (for good measure)
Flavius Stilicho: blackberry and flower petals
Flavius Aetius: the manly sweat combined with axe body spray, lavender, Chanel no.5 and jasmine (i what that smelled like)
Anastasius: rainbow pond made from strawberry, grape and bitter green tea
Justin: Red ginseng and a dirt from mars (lol)
Justinian: lollipop with a slow aftertaste and purple magic
Theodora: margarita, summer farm and chilli peppers
Justinian II: lion skin and tiger eyes alongside dried chilli peppers and cherries
Phocas: stinky cheese mixed with lettuce, tomato and mud sauce
Heraclius: cinnamon, cactus flowers, leaves and actual celestial crystals
John: diluted energy drinks and an annoyingly stubborn coffee and mocha scent
Basil I: high acid level rivers and the scent of the skies
Basil II: coconut, banana and pear
Alexios: charcoal burning in fire and a recently trimmed grass alongside some falling orange leaves alongside cinnamon and a champagne flavoured tea
John II: fresh milk with a hint of lemon pepper macaroon, sweet potato and pumpkin
#random stuff#roman empire#magical trips to the rainbow skies and chocolate lands anyone?#Roman history#roman empire shitposting#Not really connected to their personalities but deviating from the interstate road as a bump car rider#Valentinian I#Valentinian the Great#Aetius’ one is so random#Making a magical potion alongside my spell book in order to resurrect these people from the dead
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
Dedication to the Princeps
fanart by @sekihamsterdiestwice
One afternoon in northern Italy around 500 A.D., the young senator Cassiodorus was sent by the Senate of Rome to the court of the Gothic king Theodoric the Great, who then ruled the whole Italy as Princeps. Performing an oration before a monarch is the best way for those young senators who aspire climb up along the cursus honorum with literary talent. In this, Cassiodorus followed what his predecessor Quintus Aurelius Symmachus had done for Emperor Valentinian I.
However, he belonged to the last generation of ancient senators who gained such reputation and prestige through Roman&secular service.
So, cherish this cozy and tranquil afternoon.
57 notes
·
View notes
Photo
“In antiquity and reality, Lucifer, or Luciferus, is the name of the angelic Entity presiding over the light of truth as over the light of the day. In the great Valentinian gospel Pistis Sophia it is taught that of the three Powers emanating from the Holy names of the Three Tριδυνάμεις, that of Sophia (the Holy Ghost according to these gnostics – the most cultured of all) resides in the planet Venus or Lucifer.” (Vol. 2, p. 512)
Lucifer "light-bringer"
Talon Abraxas
84 notes
·
View notes
Photo
Galla Placidia
Galla Placidia (388-450 CE), the future empress, was the half-sister of the Westen Roman emperor Flavius Honorius (r. 395-423 CE), and the daughter of Theodosius the Great (r. 379-395 CE). She was taken hostage by Alaric during the sack of Rome 410 CE. After returning to Rome, she became regent for her young son, Honorius' heir, Valentinian III.
Continue reading...
54 notes
·
View notes
Text
Alright, now if Crusader is going to be coming on as a character here it is important to understand at least one of the faiths of this world (As a reminder this a Henotheisticesque world). That being the Church of Trini ... okay, hold on I just realized that there is an actual religion using the name I had in my notes for this. The Church of the Three Formed God.
Now as a brief note before I continue forward. Like with cultures, none of the faiths within this setting are meant to be representative of real belief systems but they do draw inspiration from them. In this particular case references to trinity and gods physically incarnating will likely draw you to think of Christianity but their doctrines and practices are not meant to match theirs presently or within the era this emulates. Their involvement within crusades, however, are meant to be express perspectives on the actual crusades though.
The Three-Formed God (TFG) draws his name from the fact that three times in history he chose to physically incarnate as a living person within the world. Each form had been human and each had been male, however beyond that they lived quite different lives. While members of the Church, in theory, recognize each incarnation as an aspect of their God and revere each, the differing denominations of the church primarily devoted themselves to the dogma of one particular form. Benedictines, Jagwellian/Jaegars, and Valentinian/Valentines
Benedict the Savior was TFGs first incarnation within the world. In the earliest versions of the church doctrine had been set based only around his own teachings, yet he did speak of incarnating again. Benedict was a healer who came to the people of Dress-Livonia amid a horrific plague. It was through his godly healing that the people were saved and the Three-Formed God revealed himself to the world.
Benedict taught self-sacrifice and to care for others. The greatest of virtues are mercy and healing. Thus the faithful are taught to aid the sick and needy in whatever ways they can. A devotion of charity. Healers, be they magical or natural, are revered by Benedictines. Their temples often double as small hospitals for the needy. They do not view healing as necessarily being about just the physical. Healing can be towards the mind. It can also mean providing food or shelter to those that need it.
Jagwell the Warrior came second, 300 years later in lands now known as the Jaegar States. He came at a time when many of the faithful faced heavy persecution. Their emphasis on helping others was often extended to pacifism. In many lands where the faith had spread, they were controlled through violence. Jagwell put an end to this by leading his followers to fight for their faith and for justice.
He taught to stand for what is right and to oppose oppression at every step. Faith is a force to drive one towards action. In his own lifetime Jaegar acted to see the faithful liberated. In the time since his passing things have changed. Now Jaegars often lead crusades to spread the faith of the Three-Formed God elsewhere, battling those who follow faiths beyond their own. Whether this is something Jagwell would approve of or a bastardization of his teachings is something that has been argued heavily by scholars ever since. Regardless, a number of crusading orders exist to carry on his teachings. Their temples often double as training and mustering grounds.
Valentin the Philospher was the final incarnation to date. His appearance was roughly 320 years after Jagwell. This time he incarnated into the land of Esparda during a period without major crisis. Valentin was a philosopher and scholar. With no looming dangers to preoccupy him, Valentin spent his time exploring and studying the natural world. Many great theories of science were only introduced to Esparda by Valentine's work and much territory was mapped directly by him.
Valentinian dogma is based on following the path set by the man. They revere men of science that study the world around them and any who introduce new knowledge into their sphere. Their churches contain laboratories and often lecture halls. Many explorers have set off for new lands in Valentin's name.
Scholars suggest that each form was an exploration into an aspect of being humans. This is used to explain the differences within their teachings. The vast majority of the faithful agree that all three were incarnations of their god ... however there are those who recognize other incarnations as well. While not universally accepted there are a number of small denominations that recognize an additional incarnation among them. The most well known of these are those that revere Edel the Inquisitor, a heretical movement within the central Jaegar states.
While the primary denominations focus their dogma on that of a single incarnation it is not uncommon for two to overlap. Benedictine and Jagwellian tradition gives birth to knights orders that emphasize charity such as the Knight Hospitallers of real history. The union of Benedictine and Valentinian has led to advanced (for their time) medical institutes that study new ways of healing the body and soul. Finally when Jagwellian and Valentinian come together you get conquistadors, a group that has been gaining great traction within Esparda itself.
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
SAINT OF THE DAY (December 11)
Saint Damasus was born in Rome at the beginning of the fourth century.
His father, a widower, had received Holy Orders there and served as parish priest in the church of St. Laurence.
Damasus was archdeacon of the Roman Church in 355 when Pope Saint Liberius was banished to Berda.
Damasus followed him into exile but returned to Rome afterwards.
On the death of Saint Liberius in 366, our saint was chosen to succeed him, at the age of sixty-two.
A certain Ursinus, jealous of his election and desiring for himself that high office, had himself proclaimed pope by his followers, inciting a revolt against Damasus in Rome in which 137 people died.
The holy Pope did not choose to resort to armed defense, but the Emperor Valentinian, to defend him, drove the usurper from Rome for a time.
Later he returned, and finding accomplices for his evil intentions, accused the holy Pontiff of adultery.
Saint Damasus took only such action as was becoming to the common father of the faithful.
He assembled a synod of forty-four bishops in which he justified himself so well that the calumniators were excommunicated and banished.
Having freed the Church of this new schism, Saint Damasus turned his attention to the extirpation of Arianism in the West and of Apollinarianism in the East. He convened several councils for this purpose.
He sent Saint Zenobius, later bishop of Florence, to Constantinople in 381 to console the faithful, cruelly persecuted by the Emperor Valens.
He commanded Saint Jerome to prepare a correct Latin version of the Bible, since known as the Vulgate, and he ordered the Psalms to be sung accordingly.
He rebuilt and adorned the Church of Saint Laurence, still called Saint Laurence in Damaso.
He caused all the springs of the Vatican to be drained, which were inundating the tombs of the holy persons buried there.
He decorated the sepulchers of a great number of martyrs in the cemeteries, adorning them with epitaphs in verse.
Saint Damasus is praised by Theodoret as head of the famous doctors of divine grace of the Latin church.
The General Council of Chalcedon calls him the "honor and glory of Rome."
Having reigned for eighteen years and two months, he died on 10 December 384, when he was nearly eighty years old.
In the eighth century, his relics were definitively placed in the church of Saint Laurence in Damaso, except for his head, which was conserved in the Basilica of Saint Peter.
He presided over the Council of Rome of 382 that determined the canon or official list of Sacred Scripture.
Throughout his papacy, St. Damasus spoke out against major heresies in the church and encouraged production of the Vulgate Bible with his support for St. Jerome.
He helped reconcile the relations between the Church of Rome and the Church of Antioch. He also encouraged the veneration of martyrs.
3 notes
·
View notes
Note
I greatly encourage you to read about the last century of the western Roman Empire. Not necessarily the moment of the fall itself, because I agree that’s not the most fulfilling. But the last dynasties, Constantinian, Theodosian and Valentinian dynasties. I understand that Rome hasn’t always been the nice guy, but reading about its fall made me sad somehow? As if I was always team Rome? I’m not American, but I’m too from a country that’s a “grandchild” of Rome. What was most surprising to me was that they fought until the very end. No other empire could do what Rome did under its straining circumstances. It was truly amazing. Like the battle of the Catalaunian Plains, when they defeated Attila. That was amazing effort.
I’m so so glad you liked my little ideas. But I have an immense problem with Mikasa as Honoria because either Honoria made a severe political miscalculation, or she was completely delusional in sending that letter. By that time Attila had already ravaged both east and west empires and was considered their number one enemy. To this day there isn’t a reasonable explanation for her sending the letter, because it’s thoroughly perplexing. Like the best I could think of is that Mikasa sends the letter imagining that Eren’s invasion will cripple Kenny’s regime enough to allow her to unseat him? But at the same time she trusts that the Roman army will be enough to stop Attila, while knowing that he’s probably going to destroy Gaul and maybe northern Italy?
But quite frankly I love Attila’s campaign in Italy and his legendary meeting with pope Leo the Great at the gates of the eternal city. I can’t even begin to imagine how that would fit in a storyline but alas. And Eren being this really big threat to the empire? His coming is maybe seen as the end of days, the collapse of the civilization? Idk.
What I do know is that, for Hannibal!Eren, I raise you this: Scipio!Armin and Hannibal!Eren. You’ve probably heard of this (most likely fabricated) anecdote. That in between the Punic Wars, Hannibal went on to serve the Seleucid Empire and had a conversation there with Scipio about who were the best generals. Hannibal said fist Alexander, then Pyrrhus. But, Hannibal says, if he had defeated Scipio, then he would’ve defeated a general stronger than Alexander. The Romans adored making stories up to back their own greatness, didn’t they? Like they needed it, with heir enormous empire. Livy’s claim that Rome would’ve defeated Alexander is laughable. Alexander two-shotted the Persian empire and was busy frying bigger fish in India and Central Asia while Rome was struggling against Pyrrhus of Epirus.
Anyways, Scipio!Armin and Hannibal!Eren knowing each other and having this strained relationship whilst battling gruesomely on opposite sides…
i know what you mean. i think it’s just sobering to read about the collapse of something so magnificent. despite the fact that rome is far from being my favorite of the ancient societies, it still lives on today. most of the languages used today spawned from latin; so many governments modeled themselves after the romans, most notably the US; christianity became a world-wide dominant religion because of the romans. no matter how you slice it, if rome never existed or remained some insignificant city-state, the world today would be unrecognizable. that’s a fact. also the empire lasted (between the west and east) over 2000 years. that’s just incredible.
i agree with you on honoria!mikasa. that’s why i said in my last response that she’d need a really good reason to turn on her own family like that. i like what you said. i don’t see mikasa as particularly ambitious, but maybe she could recognize that kenny is a truly weak and cruel leader and want to usurp him because she understands that she can be better. not out of some bloodthirsty ambition, but because she understands that the west will continue to decay under him, and may be strengthened with a marriage alliance between her and eren, an already notorious and powerful king. perhaps she sees sense in allying herself with him because of his army and genius military strategy. though attila was their biggest threat, he wasn’t their only one.
i have heard that story! yeah it’s definitely, probably apocryphal, but it’s a great one nonetheless. i love the idea of armin being scipio. i think they’re both brilliant strategists so the match works, and rome eventually wins over carthage the way armin (or his team, which includes mikasa lol) wins over eren. i love that even in war, armin and eren could be capable of having a begrudging respect towards one another.
also youre totally right. i know all societies had this (the athenians were so annoying about the superiority of athenian society), but roman arrogance really makes me roll my eyes sometimes. i think it’s insane that they could have such an extreme love affair with alexander and yet repeatedly assert that their generals were better than him. how about this? everything that gets credited as “roman tactics” today were just stolen from the macedonians!!! i’m not even a huge fan of alexander, but the impact he had on rome (and western society at large) was monumental. every single general/conqueror/warlord/etc wanted to be alexander. caesar wanted to be alexander. napoleon wanted to be alexander. every single man with a sword in his hand wanted to alexander. so the idea that SCIPIO was better than him is laughable. i don’t want to take anything away from him. he was obviously brilliant. but i think there’s a reason hannibal is the more famous of the two.
(personally, if i were an important man living in history, i’d want to be cyrus, but i guess alexander’s legend just makes for a better role model🙄)
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
From Hope of Children to Object of God’s Care: Abortion in Classical and Late Antique Society
“Roman law viewed abortion through two specific lenses: husbands’ interests in safeguarding the inheritance of legitimate children and regulation of drugs or poisons. A rescript issued under the father-and-son emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla in the early third century typified one approach. It subjected a woman (by implication, married) who had an abortion to temporary exile because ‘it can seem shameful that she cheated her husband of children with impunity’. Jurists lent this legal approach an aura of antiquity.
Tryphoninus, another jurist active under Septimius Severus, connected the rescript to a case originally recounted by Cicero (d. 43 BCE). A woman from Miletus, a Greek city in Asia Minor, received a capital sentence for deliberately having an abortion after receiving a bribe from rival heirs. In fact, Tryphoninus did not fully explain the background. In Cicero’s account the woman had been recently widowed. Her deceased husband’s interests were at stake. Cicero agreed with the sentence because she had injured the ‘parent’s hope, the memory of his name, the provisions of a race, the heir of a family and a future citizen of the republic’.
Nonetheless, for Tryphoninus, the point was clear. Any woman who ‘has brought violence upon her insides after a divorce, because she is pregnant, so that she does not procreate a son for a hated husband, ought to be forced into temporary exile, which has been written by our most noble emperors’. Abortion could harm male interests. Safeguarding these interests was not just a legal thought experiment.
The second legal approach focused on the use and abuse of drugs, venenae, a term which could also mean poisons. Roman jurists discussed and debated the parameters of legal regulations on drugs, including interpretation of a law dating back to Republican Rome, the Lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficiis. Jurists thought carefully, for instance, about potential problems with the use of drugs in medical practice, including midwifery.
One provision clarified that drugs for healing (ad sanandum) did not fall under the remit of the law, but added that a senatorial decree penalized any woman ‘who not with bad intention, but with bad example, has given a drug for conception, from which a woman who received it has died’. The third-century jurist Paulus brought supply of specifically abortifacient drugs within the remit of the law.
Anyone who dispensed an abortifacient or aphrodisiac drink (abortionis aut amatorium poculum) was liable to be sent to the mines or, if from the upper class, exiled to an island because, ‘although [perpetrators] may do no harm, nonetheless … the matter sets a bad example’. Bad example was ill-defined but it was related to the possibility that such drugs imperiled a woman’s life rather than the life of the fetus she carried.
The principal laws quoted above were collected in the Digest, part of the great legal project undertaken during the reign of Justinian (d. 565). From the perspective of late Roman Christian emperors and their jurists, Roman legal approaches to abortion formed part of an inheritance that was centuries old. The impact of Christianization on Roman law after the conversion of Constantine can be felt in several areas, including in law on infant exposure and abandonment.
A rescript from 374 issued under Valentinian I, Valens and Gratian made infanticide a capital offence under the Lex Cornelia. This law channelled Christianizing dynamics through established legal tradition, though subsequent fifth- and sixth-century law on infant exposure and abandonment increased the distance between classical and late Roman law. But no clear equivalents on abortion were issued.
The closest thing to new legislation on abortion appeared in late Roman imperial legislation on divorce and remarriage, which possibly had abortion in mind. The sixth-century legal compilation, the Novellae, reiterated a law of Theodosius II (d. 450) which granted a husband the right to divorce his wife if she was guilty of specific offences, including being a druggist or poisoner (venefica). A similar law – a man could divorce his wife if it were proven, among other things, that she was a medicamentaria (druggist) or malefica (sorceress) – had been issued a century or so earlier by Constantine (d. 337).
Both laws might have envisaged (or have been interpreted as envisaging) recourse to abortion. Nonetheless, in Roman law abortion constituted a public offence insofar as it harmed husbands’ interests or risked women’s lives. But it was never punishable as the killing of a fetus. Different practices generated different perspectives on what made abortion problematic. For medical writers abortion raised questions about professional conduct and the nature of medicine.
The modern temptation is to start with the Hippocratic Oath. Precisely what the Oath’s provision on abortion might have originally meant and the extent to which it represented the mainstream of ancient Greek (let alone Roman) medical ethics remains debated. Thinking in terms of reception is more illuminating. In the first century Scribonius Largus, physician to the emperor Claudius, used Hippocrates to frame the ethics of medicine.
According to Scribonius, Hippocrates had prohibited teaching about abortifacients or prescribing them to pregnant women. His position was not exactly premised on the idea that destroying the fetus was murder. If people thought that to injure (laedere) the ‘uncertain hope of a person’ was wrong, then how much worse was it to kill (nocere) a perfected being? Abortion compromised the integrity of ‘medicine, the science of healing, not of killing’. Scribonius’s construal of medical ethics might well be an outlier, for his work was not widely read.
Another author, whose Greek work (and its Latin reincarnations) was, makes clear that abortion was subject to ethical and even physiological disagreement among doctors. Soranus of Ephesus famously distinguished between atokion (contraceptive), which ‘does not let conception take place’, phthorion (abortifacient), which ‘destroys what has been conceived’ and ekbolion (expulsive), which some regarded as ‘synonymous with abortion’ but others considered distinct because it entailed ‘shaking and leaping’.
Soranus also reported a ‘controversy’. Some doctors refused to prescribe abortifacients because of the Hippocratic injunction against abortion. According to this camp, the core obligation of medicine was to ‘guard and preserve what has been engendered by nature’. Other doctors prescribed abortifacients ‘with discrimination’ on medical grounds such as when uterine abnormalities made childbirth dangerous, and ‘they say the same about contraceptives as well’. Soranus sympathized with this second position, reasoning that it was ‘safer to prevent conception from taking place than to destroy the fetus’.
There were multiple conceptions of medical ethics and professional norms. Galen chided medical authors for divulging information on abortifacients because many were risibly ineffective and those which did work were dangerous. Pliny the Elder (d. 79), whose Naturalis historia provides an intriguing non-professional perspective on medical (and non-medical) reproductive technologies, refused in principle to provide information on abortifacients except by way of providing warnings.
He did not quite live up to his professed reticence, though much of his relevant information concerned expelling fetuses already dead in the womb and his references to abortion tended to carry warnings. He justified mentioning information on an atocium – an amulet containing worms cut out from a particular kind of spider – because ‘some women’s fecundity, teeming with children, needs such indulgence’. The plurality of perspectives represented, in part, different responses to the tension between safeguarding maternal health and medicine as healing.
The tension was palpable in the Euporiston, a fourth-century work by Theodorus Priscianus. The third book, adapted from Soranus, was devoted to gynaecology and contained a section on abortion. ‘It is never right to give an abortive to anyone,’ it began before quickly referring to Hippocrates. But Priscianus also recognized that complications such as uterine abnormalities or a woman’s age could precipitate dangerous obstetric emergencies. He likened the difficult choice to pruning the branches of a tree or emptying overloaded ships of their cargo during a storm.
Nine abortifacient remedies followed. The obstetric emergencies which these recipes were designed to avoid were real dangers. The most extreme recourse was embryotomy, the surgical excision of living or dead fetuses from the womb. A powerful evocation of the medical dilemma appeared in a tangent on embryotomy in De anima, a theological treatise by the early Christian author Tertullian (d. c. 225).
Tertullian used embryotomy, taught (so he claimed) by the medical heavyweights Hippocrates, Asclepiades, Herophilus, Erasistratus and even the milder (mitior) Soranus, to refute the argument that the soul was not conceived in the womb but only later after birth. If embryotomy killed a fetus, Tertullian reasoned, then the fetus had been alive and animate. He also conveyed some practical details. A special surgical device prised open the womb while an attached blade dissected the fetus. Another instrument with a copper spike took the fetus’s life.
Tertullian’s position on the morality of embryotomy is more difficult to interpret. He described the practice as a crime (scelus), a throat-slitting (iugulatio) and a furtive robbery (caecum latrocinium) performed with a gruesome spiked instrument he called the embryo-slayer (a Greek word, embruosphaktê). But Tertullian’s charged language was also flecked with acknowledgment that the predicament raised difficult choices.
The infant in the womb was ‘butchered with necessary cruelty’ because it threatened to become a ‘matricide unless it dies’. Embryotomy was a final resort. In other words, most medical and moral discussion of abortion focused on much earlier (and more ambiguous) stages of pregnancy. Nonetheless, Tertullian’s tangent dramatized the core medical tension between the life of the fetus and the life of the mother, between healing-not-killing and killing-to-heal. It also demonstrates that a medicalized construal of the problem of abortion could migrate beyond the works of medical writers.”
- Zubin Mistry, Abortion in the Early Middle Ages, c.500-900
15 notes
·
View notes
Text
In their own literature, silence is both the primal state of the ineffable God they seek and a bodily practice in which they engage to withdraw into this primal state as they return to the source of life. The primal God in Gnostic myths is a silent God, and the goal of the Gnostic journey is withdrawal back into this original silence, rest, and stillness. Silence is considered the state of utter transcendence, the very essence of ultimate reality in its original condition.
In order to return to the primal silence, Gnostics learned in their congregations to be silent and still. So it is not surprising that intentional silence and stillness become essential in their rituals. In fact, the Valentinian congregants insist that they must act in such a way that their meeting places will be holy and silent, so that they are made into good spots for the divine unity to visit (Gospel of Truth NHC I.3 25.2–24).
In the Valentinian tradition, the act of baptism for redemption is called Silence because of the quiet and tranquility experienced by the initiates (Tripartite Tractate NHC I.5 128.30–32). As we will see in chapter 8, this redemptive baptism is a second baptism. It is the act of Gnostic initiation, when initiates ascend to the transcendent world to greet and unite with their betrothed angel... Redemptive baptism is an ascent by degrees into God’s wholeness. Its entrance is into “what is silent,” into a place where there is no need for voice, thinking, conceiving, or enlightenment because everything is already light (Tripartite Tractate NHC I.5 123.30–124.25).
Practices of withdrawal and silence are constantly referenced in the famous Sethian treatises Zostrianos and Allogenes the Stranger, which were known to the great Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus, and also the book of Marsanes. Ascent is presented as a withdrawal to the self, a self-imposed silence that results in coming to know the divinity, praising and blessing him (Marsanes NHC X.1 9.10–28)...
Throughout this text, the initiate is counseled first to withdraw and abide silently, and then to stand immobile, mimicking the divinity who exists resting, silent, and inactive. The initiate is supposed to be still, imitating the pattern of quietude modeled by the human spirit intrinsic to his soul. What did this mean? Gnostics like the Sethians believed that the initiate literally has to stop thinking about the incomprehensible God, who cannot be grasped with reason and can barely be known through revelation.
As he follows instructions and withdraws into himself, the initiate comments that he actually feels the stillness of silence bodily within himself. As he does this, he notes that he comes into direct contact with his true self. In this way, the unknown God is revealed to him gradually, at higher and higher, deeper and deeper levels. His spirit is transformed into a divinity like the one he is contemplating (59.26–60.19, 61.25–31).
These texts and others suggest that Gnostics of all stripes cultivated intentional stillness by standing for long periods of time in a prayer posture. In Corpus Hermeticum (XIII.16), the Hermetic instructor tells the initiate that the hymns sung in the transcendent realm by the powers that reside there are something that cannot be taught but instead are concealed in silence.
Then how is this hymnody revealed to the initiate? He is instructed to stand motionless and then to bow in adoration to the setting sun. He is to be still again until dawn, when he is instructed to bow second time, facing the rising sun. In the Gospel of the Egyptians (NHC III.2 67.15–20) we have mention of a silent prayer beginning with the hands folded to the breast, then moving to an outspread position, and finally circling back.
Standing prayer postures were quite common in antiquity. Catacomb frescoes and ancient literature suggest that ancient people commonly performed prayer by standing with outstretched arms, in what we call the orans position. The standing prayer posture among Jews and Christians appears to be mimetic, in imitation of the angels who stand in God’s presence, who have no use for knees but stand praising God for all eternity (1 Enoch 39.12–13, 40.1, 47.3, 49.2, 68.2; 2 Enoch 21.1; Testament of Abraham 7–8; see Fossum 1985, 55, 120–25, 139–42; DeConick 1996, 89–93). It is the posture of the deceased righteous, who stand in God’s presence and participate in heavenly cultic services (Ascension of Isaiah 9.9–10).
Later Christian monks and hermits did the same thing, believing themselves to be like the angels standing in rapture next to God’s throne. Simeon, a Syrian monk, was so convinced of the efficacy of devotional standing that he built a series of ever-higher pillars upon which he stood for his entire adult life, contemplating God. These types of parallels go a long way toward explaining why the Sethian Gnostics called themselves the Immobiles or the Standers, traditionally translated by scholars as the Immovable Race (Williams 1985).
Why bother with such rigorous practices of bodily stillness? Were such practices merely mimetic of the divinities, or did they achieve something more for the Gnostic initiates? The literature suggests that the practice was associated with altered states of consciousness, that the Gnostics stood silent in moments of great ecstasy. Their records remind me of the tale of Socrates, who was known to stand still for twenty-four hours in ecstasy, as if his soul were absent from his body. Were the Gnostics using bodily stillness and silence to prompt ecstasy?
-- April D. DeConick, The Gnostic New Age
6 notes
·
View notes
Text
[ v. empire of the wolf ] - late roman empire
425 AD - Rome was not built in a day, and it did not fall in one either. After years of instability, the great empire has split into two, run by separate emperors, beholden to the same sense of greatness and destiny. In the West, the child-emperor Valentinian III has been placed on the throne- though most with eyes and ears are aware that it is his devoted mother, Galla Placidia, who truly runs the Empire. Through this period of instability and turmoil, a hunter of the newly formed Order of St. George begins her journey.
Annaea Lupa is a member of the ancient gens Annaea, a clan of dreamers known for their love of literary pursuits, whose members include great thinkers and poets such as Seneca and Lucan. Lesser known in the history books is their love of power. Nico is the daughter of prominent Roman general and statesman Gaius Annaeus Lupus, a man eager to seize power whenever he can and often seen at Galla Placida’s side.
Devout Nicene Christians described as “friends of the Church”, her family is of great wealth and influence. She leads a good life, having spent her childhood in her family’s expensive Roman villa, trying to keep up with three elder brothers. It distresses her mother, Claudia Atella, to see her prefer swordplay with her brothers over stitching fabric and racing horses over learning to be a good homemaker. Her need for adventure, for purpose, exists as a fire within her that even the stern reprimands of her oft-absent father cannot fully quell.
As she grows into a woman, her beauty, intelligence, and her family’s power make her a highly sought after bride. Annaea knows that it is expected of her to be married off to whomever her father picks. She has been taught to obey his decision. And still, it horrifies her when he announces her future husband- Cassius Rullianus, a widowed statesman known for his violence and cruelty. In the night, she takes one of her father’s horses and flees to the only place she knows she will be able to find shelter; as a deaconess of the Nicene Church.
Her sanctuary here does not last long. Her father’s position prompts many parties to pursue her, going door to door in their search. If she is not killed for her defiance, she will be dragged back and forced to marry. The priest of the abbey she hides in, Father Boniface, gives her an ultimatum- she may either surrender herself to the state, or accept a role as a hunter for the Order, a position which will grant her to protection she needs and allow her to keep her citizenship. Annaea accepts, and in her new life, adopts a signa of her long forgotten praenomen, Nicola.
It is a treacherous journey filled with old gods, angels and beasts. Yet as Nico traverses the unstable lands her forefathers claimed centuries before, she is confronted with a horrible revelation- perhaps the real monsters are the ones who raised her.
*Nicola has a very unique name for this time period. In another act of defiance against the established order of the Empire, she usually refers to herself by her praenomen rather than her nomen ( Nicola Annaea Lupa ), a convention typically reserved for men. If your muse is familiar with Roman naming conventions, they will find it extremely odd.
*A verse variant set in 316 AD will also be available and tagged as such- several years before Christianity becomes the state religion of Rome. The story is pretty much the same aside from the fact the Order is far smaller in this variant, known instead as the Brotherhood of St. Eustace. Nicola’s family are recent political converts to Christianity from Hellenic paganism.
#[ 𝐕. | empire of the wolf ]#yes i know the eagle was the symbol of the roman empire#and the wolf the monarchy#but tropes! symbolism!
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
I had such a good time at my church's annual Conclave. All of the speakers were great.
Thanks to Dr Justin Sledge of Esoterica giving the keynote speech, I've realised I'm waaaay more Valentinian than I thought. His talk on the Valentinian Demiurge will be very popular when it is uploaded to the AJC youtube channel.
The Mutual Aid as Spiritual Practice talk was the one I was really looking forward to and lived up to expectations. It even came with a zine. I'll definitely be sharing the link to that talk as soon as it is online.
There was a bunch of historical stuff for me to nerd out to with His Eminence Mar Iohannes IV giving a two part exploration of the development of the liturgy within the AJC, a talk on The Gnostic Restoration in Modern France by Dr Siobhan Houston, and one on Joséphin Péladan by Dr Sasha Chaitow. I really need to read up more on Joséphin Péladan's ideas.
Unfortunately the final talk of the weekend fell through but it did provide an opportunity for His Eminence to deliver a Contemplative Eucharist which, even without receiving communion due to it being over Zoom, was just what I needed.
I could bang on about the weekend all day but I won't (not that anyone reads this blog anyway).
#apostolic johannite church#Conclave 2024#gnosticism#Gnostic Christianity#Gnostic Church#Joséphin Péladan#liturgy#contemplative christianity#Valentinian Christianity#Valentinianism#Gnosis#what I did on my weekend
0 notes
Text
Gnostic god said........ such an important read ........
For Yaldabaoth said, “I am God and there is no other God beside me.” ( haven't we heard this before )
According to the ancient Gnostic texts, there is a creator God named Yadabaoth (Ilda-Baoth or Ialdabaoth ) who is described as the Child of Chaos, and was the son of Sophia (wisdom) in Gnostic Cosmogenesis. Yaldabaoth is called an angel in the apocryphal Gospel of Judas.
He is first mentioned in “The Cosmos, Chaos, and the Underworld” as one of the twelve angels to come “into being [to] rule over chaos and the [underworld]”.
In the “Gospel of Nicodemus,” Yaldabaoth is called Satan, and Dante called the Devil simply a worm.
The Theosophists say that Yaldabaoth is identical with the Fetahil of the Codex Nazaraeus, the Demiurge of the Valentinian system (Lucifer, vi, 33), the Proarchos of the Barbelitae (Irenaeus, I, xxix, 4), the Great Archon of Basilides and the Elohim of Justinus. (1)
Yaldabaoth is the creator of the visible realm or what we can call the Matrix (society) and prince of the Creative Forces in humans which he is the Father of the modern man in the form of earthly Adam and Eve of the biblical Garden of Eden.
Serpent worship 2Diodorus Siculus had said that “among the Jews (Phoenicians and Greek Hellenes) they relate that Moses called the God Iao, Iah and Jah of the Hebrews. Yaldabaoth is the fiery serpent (worm) of Moses who becomes the idol brass serpent spoken about in the Scriptures under Numbers 21:8 where it is written;
“So the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the LORD and you; intercede with the LORD, that He may remove the serpents from us.” And Moses interceded for the people.
Then the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten when he looks at it, he will live.” And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.
Therefore when we see the symbols and references to the fiery serpent commonly known as Yaldabaoth all over the world, ( Godself icon).we can safely attribute this symbology to the original Israelites who I believe can be directly connected to the Phoenicians (Cretans, Minoans, Ionians, Atlanteans etc.). The serpent (worm) was the standard, or house insignia of their race and later it became the Phoenix, the harp and the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.
The very people who have brought the serpent and their religion to almost every land in the world which they have left scientific evidence of their symbols, languages and DNA ( tree of life) in this same exact places. Not to mention their book known as the Bible which is the best selling book of all time.
This God Iao of the Iraelites can be easily found later in Greek mythology under the name of Iacchos, more commonly known today as Bacchus of the Secret Mysteries; the God “from whom the liberation of souls was expected — Dionysus, Iacchos, Iahoh, Iah.”
In Pistis-Sophia, Yaldabaoth is spoken of as residing in the “Great Chaos which is the Outer Mist”, mary virgin serpentwhere, with his Forty-nine Daemons, he tortures wicked souls (pg. 382). It is from the serpent (worm) Yaldabaoth (or Ilda-Baoth) that humans are bestowed with the sacred knowledge of God as creators, and their destroyers for those who transgress the universal wisdom of natural laws of God will be punished by the demon parasites of Yaldabaoth.
He is the ruler of this world who is the Chief Archon who is the son of the creator God of Genesis and the demiurge of Platonism. The meaning of the name demiurge is maker which makes him the “creator of the material world.” This fact is key to understanding the meaning and role of Yaldabaoth over the material world or the Gnostic Matrix.
In the Gnostic Nag Hammadi Library under The Apocryphon of John (The Secret Book of John – The Secret Revelation of John), it states that Yaldabaoth is the Chief Archon created by the Goddess Sophia in the “form of a lion-faced serpent, with its eyes were like lightning fires which flash.
She cast it away from her, outside that place, that no one of the immortal ones might see it, for she had created it in ignorance. And she surrounded it with a luminous cloud, and she placed a throne in the middle of the cloud that no one might see it except the Holy Spirit who is called the mother of the living. And she called his name Yaltabaoth.
This is the first archon who took a great power from his mother. And he removed himself from her and moved away from the places in which he was born. He became strong and created for himself other aeons with a flame of luminous fire which (still) exists now. And he joined with his arrogance which is in him and begot authorities for himself.”
The important thing to remember with the story of Yaldabaoth is that it (he and she) is an artificially created life form said to be a lion-faced serpent, with its eyes were like lightning fires which flash that was on a throne surrounded by a blood and no one of the immortal ones could see it. He becomes the Archon (Ark-ON or Spark-On) of the human race.
firefly light 2The word archon is composed of the words Ark and On. Ark meaning a conduit of energy that is the Hu-Man sacred ark, or ark of the testimony, represents the original spark of divinity and knowledge that gave us Sophia or wisdom. Yaldabaoth would be akin to an arc welder that is the power supply to create an electric arc between an electrode and the base material to melt the metals.
In humans, this would be the chemical energy we call “phosphorus” that is the arc welder that creates an electric arc between an electrode being that of Man and the Father with the hopes of alchemically creating Gold Humans (enlightened spiritual humans) out of Lead Humans (unenlightened nonspiritual humans).
Yaldabaoth and his creations are referred to as the serpent which I have discussed before were once written as worm before the Latin Church Doctors had doctored the original Greek texts that simply read worm. Therefore we know Yaldabaoth is a type of human parasite or worm who seeks to rule and or be the Chief Archon over humankind which is further discussed in the Apocryphon of John where he is called ignorant darkness;
“And when the light had mixed with the darkness, it caused the darkness to shine. And when the darkness had mixed with the light, it darkened the light and it became neither light nor dark, but it became dim.
“Now the archon who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaldabaoth, the second is Saklas, and the third is Samael. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, ‘I am God and there is no other God beside me,’ for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come.
“And the archons created seven powers for themselves, and the powers created for themselves six angels for each one until they became 365 angels. And these are the bodies belonging with the names: the first is Athoth, a he has a sheep’s face; the second is Eloaiou, he has a donkey’s face; the third is Astaphaios, he has a hyena’s face; the fourth is Yao, he has a serpent’s face with seven heads; the fifth is Sabaoth, he has a dragon’s face; the sixth is Adonin, he had a monkey’s face; the seventh is Sabbede, he has a shining fire-face. This is the sevenness of the week.
“But Yaldabaoth had a multitude of faces, more than all of them, so that he could put a face before all of them, according to his desire, when he is in the midst of seraphs. He shared his fire with them; therefore he became lord over them. Because of the power of the glory he possessed of his mother’s light, he called himself God. And he did not obey the place from which he came. And he united the seven powers in his thought with the authorities which were with him.
For Yaldabaoth said, “I am God and there is no other God beside me.”
lucifer-statue-madridThis passage is important to understand because we can relate it to the “fall of man or the fallen angels” in which we people living today are the descendants of fallen angels created by and ruled over by the Chief Archon and God of the material world, Yaldabaoth. The king of the demonic serpentary (worms and or parasites) archons (control the central nervous system of humans and thus deaire) who reside in humans were the creations of Yaldabaoth. Archons such as Yao who has a serpent’s face with seven heads, and the fifth archon is Sabaoth,and he has a dragon’s face.
Church Father and bishop of Salamis, Cyprus, Saint Epiphanius in Adversus Haereses had written; “The Ophites reputedly said: “We venerate the serpent because God has made it the cause of Gnosis for mankind.
Yaldabaoth (the Demiurge who was the ‘god of the Jews’) did not with men to have any recollection of the Mother or of the Father on high. It was the serpent, who by tempting them, brought them Gnosis; who taught the man and the woman the complete knowledge of the mysteries from on high. That is why [its] father Yaldabaoth mad with fury, cast it down from the heavens.”
Cast down for his pride like the Christian rebel angel Lucifer who is the same as Yaldabaoth being lucifer3the divine spark in humans, and the chief source of their intelligence as a product of the “Demiurge” which literally means “half-working” or “half-powered.” Yaldabaoth is who we can call the extraterrestrial leader Archon race of the Sons of the Serpent (worm) from the true Sovereign God of the Most High, and Soul of the World, Jupiter.
The Ophites taught the holy hebdomad, whose chief was Yaldabaoth (” Chaosson or chosen one”), and is the God of the Jews. Yaldabaoth was commanded by his father Yahweh (Jehova or Jupiter) to create the earth and man. Some texts make him do this alone, others assign to him demons as his helpers, especially the seven spirits (or seven chemical energies and their elementals, worms or parasites) of the planets. It is said in the Ophite texts that Yaldabaoth created heavens and earth and is the ruler of the seventh heaven.
Man was created by the six angels and by Ialdabaoth, who gave him the divine essence: “When the Spirit and Christ were taken up a drop of light fell into the abyss beneath. This was Sophia Prunikos, who by contact with the waters gave birth to Yaldabaoth, the Demiurgus of the created heavens and earth and the ruler of the seventh heaven. From him came the six angels who rule the six heavens.
He strove to hide the fact that there were any powers above him; but when he boasted that he was the highest, his mother Sophia cried, Thou liest, Yaldabaoth! Man Creation of man was created by the six angels and by Yaldabaoth, who gave him the divine essence.
This passage clearly tells us that it is from Yaldabaoth that man (humans) had received their divine essence which in turn gave them wisdom of both good and evil through the Tree of Life that is their DNA (blood). Instructed by Sophia (wisdom) man gave thanks to the Most High, which deeply offended the ruler of the seventh heaven. In order to degrade him by carnal desires, Yaldabaoth made Eve (from the Hebrew Hevia for serpent), but Sophia saved man by means of the Serpent, who induced Eve to raise herself and her husband by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent (worm) thus became the great benefactor of the human race.
The following allegory of the story is from Irenaeus (I, xxiii-xxviii). “Yaldabaoth the child of the Mother, Sophia, generates a son of himself, without the assistance of any mother, and his son a son in his turn, and he another, and so on until there are six sons generated, one from another. Now these immediately commenced to strive with their father for the mastery; and he in despair and rage gazed into the “purgations of matter” below; and through them begot another son, Ophiomorphos, the serpent-formed, the spirit of all that is basest in matter.
Then being puffed up with pride, he stretched himself over his highest sphere, and proclaimed aloud: “lam Father and God, and there is none above me.” On this, his mother cried out: “Lie not, Ildabaoth, for the Father of All, the First Anthropos (man), is above thee, and so is Anthropds, the Son of Athropos.” And Ildabaoth to prevent his sons attending to the voice, proposed that they should fashion a man. So the six of them made a gigantic man, who lay on the earth and writhed like a worm (the man of the first rounds and races).
And they brought him to his father Ildabaoth, who breathed into him the ” Breath of Life “, and thus emptied himself of his creative power. And Sophia aided the design, so that she might regain the Light-powers of Ildabaoth. Forthwith the man, having the divine spark, aspired to the Heavenly Man, from whom it came. At this Ildabaoth grew jealous, and generated Eve (Lilith) to deprive Adam of his Light-powers. And the six “Stellars ,” impassioned of her beauty, begot sons through her. Thereupon Sophia sent the serpent (intelligence) to make Adam and Eve transgress the precepts of Ildabaoth, who in rage, cast them down out of Paradise into the World, together with the serpent (fourth round and fourth race).
At the same time, she deprived them of their Light-power, that it might not come under the “curse” as well. And the serpent reduced the world-power under its sway, and generated six sons, who continually oppose the human race, through which their father (the serpent) was cast down. Now Adam and Eve in the beginning, had pure spiritual bodies, which gradually became grosser and grosser. Their spirit too became languid, for they had naught but the breath of the lower world, which Ildabaoth had breathed into them. In the end, however, Sophia gave them back their Light-power and they awoke to the knowledge that they were naked.” (1)
Serpent goddess eveYaldabaoth now forbade the man to eat of the tree of knowledge, which could enable him to understand the Gnostic mysteries and receive the graces from above. But man had to be eventually be redeemed from the wrath of Yaldabaoth. Accordingly, Christ descended from above on the one perfect man Jesus, who had been prepared by Sophia. Ialdabaoth seeing in Jesus Christ a power superior to himself, stirred up the Jews to crucify Jesus.
Of course, Christ could not suffer; and he withdrew himself from Jesus in whom he had worked on earth. Christ did not, however, forget Jesus utterly, but raised from the dead the spiritual body of Jesus, which remained on earth eighteen months. At first, Jesus did not fully understand the truth, but Christ enlightened him and he taught his disciples the true doctrine.” (2)
YALDABAOTHS MOTHER IS THE SERPENT SOPHIA (WISDOM)Serpent and woman.......
The Goddess Sophia, or Wisdom, the lowest entity in the realm of perfection, creates Yaldabaoth in an unauthorized attempt to produce a likeness of herself. Yaldabaoth, in turn, creates the world we see today. In the Gnostic theology of Yaldabaoth, we find that his mother, Sophia was the personification of the most sublime wisdom who had the power to procreate but lacked the necessary knowledge.
The Christian Scripture would equate the Goddess Sophia, with the consort of Adam in the Garden of Eden whose name is Eve. The word Eve is derived from the Hebrew Hevia of Evia which is interpreted as “female serpent” in Latin translations of the Bible. In earlier Greek versions, the word serpent would have simply read “worm.” This is where the Church Doctors come in at doctoring these ancient texts in order to hide the truth of man’s creation.
However, we don’t have to search far and or in difficulty to see that this worm God who is both the creator and destroyer had given birth to several God men over the course of human history. In the Scripture it is said, “And from these worms God made angels. We find this passage more correctly rendered in the Hebrew Bible: “Man that is a worm (rimmah), and the son of man which is a maggot” (tole’ah). “But I am a worm and no man. How much more is man rottenness, and the son of man a worm ? “First he said, ” Man is rottenness;” and afterwards, “The son of man a worm:” because a worm springs from rottenness, therefore “man is rottenness,” and ”the son of man a worm.”
Worms manThe Lord said of Himself: “I am a worm and not a man” (Ps 21:7) 33rd Degree Scottish Rite Freemasons and Pontiff, Albert Pike had written about how Christ put on the appearance of a human body in Morals and Dogma, “The Light could not unite with darkness.
It but put on the appearance of a human body, and took the name of Christ in the Messiah, only to accommodate itself to the language of the Jews … He suffered in appearance only … the person of Jesus having disappeared.”
In the Scripture, we find the worm is the mother when it is said, “I have said to the worm, thou art my mother. The worm shall feed sweetly on him.”
Sophia the serpent, or we know of as a worm could not conceive a child, but she desperately had wished for one. The Sethian Gnostics believe that Yaldabaoth was the consequence of her mental desire to have her own child. This is known in science as Parthenogenesis /?p?r??n?’d??n?s?s and is a form of asexual reproduction in which growth and development of embryos that occur without fertilization. I believe this is the result of the Yaldabaoth or worm through the power of thought form and direction by its master being the human or mother is able to fertilize the egg of the mother without he having sex.
This explanation I give and by the Sethians would be similar to that of the meaning of the Egregors who I cover in the what I discuss in the Science of Being Born a Virgin and the Secrets of the Watchers. An Egregore is what is called in the occult a “thought form” or “collective group mind” that is created by a single magician or a group.
These thought forms are based on actually creating a real physical chemical energy being with the power of thoughts, magical elements and action in which a psychic entity is made from the thoughts of the magician or a group of people. These Egregores then form symbiotic relationships with their creators in which they will actually perform tasks and work for them much like an employee would for a corporation or a slave to his master.
Because Sophia could not have a child, this mental fire in the form of desire would spark a spontaneous creation or spark being that of a worm/sperm in the form of Yaldabaoth who then becomes the “yellow or golden boy of hosts.” The Chief speaker, or Hermes (worms) of his worm people in which he is given the authority of the God of this world to be his official scribe as Thoth or Seth.
Yaldabaoth’s mother was a serpent or worm which makes him one as well. However, Sophia became horrified at the sight of her creation which was an ugly, imperfect creature with a body of a serpent (worm), the face of a lion and eyes of fire. According to St Iraenus, his mother, Sophia, had to rebuke by a reminder that above him were the father of all, the first man, and the man, “the son of man.” “She cast him away from her radiance, so that no one among the immortal ones might see him… She joined a luminous cloud with him, and placed a throne in the middle of the cloud.” (Apoc John BG 38, 1-10). Out of shame and disgust, Sophia cast Yaldabaoth out of her pleroma and hid him in a thick cloud. By hiding him behind a cloud, the other aeons would not be able to see him.Venus sulfur
Sophia would be the daughter on the so below of the planet of the as above Venus in the form of sulphur or soul fire.
Madam Blavatsky had written in Isis Unveiled: “In this plurality of heavens the Christians believed from the first, for we find Paul teaching of their existence, and speaking of a man “caught up to the third heaven” {2 Cor., xii, 2). “From these seven angels Ilda-Baoth shut up all that was above him, lest they should know of anything superior to himself.
They then created man in the image of their Father, but prone and crawling on the earth like a worm. But the heavenly mother, Prunikos, wishing to deprive Ilda-Baoth of the power with which she had unwittingly endowed him, infused into man a celestial spark — the spirit. Immediately man rose upon his feet, soared in mind beyond the limits of the seven spheres, and glorified the Supreme Father, Him that is above Ilda-Baoth. Hence the latter, full of jealousy, cast down his eyes upon the lowest stratum of matter, and begot a potency in the form of a serpent, whom they [Ophites] call his son. Eve, obeying him as the son of God, was persuaded to eat of the Tree of Knowledge.”
It is a self-evident fact that the serpent of the Genesis, who appears suddenly and without any preliminary introduction, must have been the antitype of the Persian Arch-Devs, whose head is Ashmog, the “two footed serpent of lies.” If the serpent had been deprived of his limbs before he had tempted woman unto sin, why should God specify as a punishment that he should go “upon his belly”? Nobody supposes that he walked upon the extremity of his tail.(3)”
THE MEANING OF YALDABAOTH (ILDABAOTH)
Jupiter 2The Hebrew name Yaldabaoth is composed of three names being Ya or Yah, Da and Baoth. The meaning of “Ya or Yah (Jah)” is the name of the “Lord, God and or Jupiter. These names often appear in Scripture for the priest names of the True God such as Elijah, Adonai, and even Saint John (Jah-n, Ion, or Iona)
The meaning of the word baoth (tzevaot or saboath) is “hosts” or “armies”, (Hebrew: ?????). Tzevaot or Sabaoth may be found in 1 Samuel 17:45, where it is interpreted as denoting “the God of the armies of Israel”. “Jehovah, God of all flesh” (xxxii. 27 only), “Jehovah, God of Sabaoth, God of Israel” (xxxviii. 17; xliv. 7), “Adonai Jehovah Sabaoth ” (xlvi. 10, 10; 1. 31), ” the living God, Jehovah Sabaoth, our God ” (xxiii. 36), and ” the great El, the Mighty, Jehovah Sabaoth” (xxxii. 18). Also
YHWH Elohe Tzevaot (“YHWH God of Hosts”), Elohey Tzevaot (“God of Hosts”), Adonai YHWH Tzevaot (“Lord YHWH of Hosts”) and, most frequently, YHWH Tzevaot (“YHWH of Hosts”).The Gnostic Nag Hammadi Library states that Sabaoth is the son of Yaldabaoth.
The meaning of the Hebrew Yaldabaoth may also be found today in the English word “yellow or Pan as Jupiteryellow boy.” Ther word yellow in Hebrews is yal’db and signifies a “Being of a bright glaring colour, as gold,”and yellow boy is derived from the Hebrew “ydl’-lb-boy” which is where we get Yaldabaoth.
Hence, Yaldabaoth is who we can call the first-born Gnostic who rebels against God (fallen angel) and is referred to as the “yellow or golden boy of hosts,” and where we get the expression in the hymn, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, or rather Ze-baoth, which signifies, hosts.” We find Yahweh S’Baoth or Jehovah Sabaoth in the Septuagint which means “The God of hosts or Jupiter the Lord of Hosts.”
Sir Godfrey Higgins had written in Anacalypsis an Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil of the Saitic Isis Volume 1; “Here we find the seat of God with its seven earths, emblematical of the sun and seven planets. And the Hindoo Sabha, called congregation, meaning the same as Sabaoth, “Lord God of Sabaoth,” Lord God of the heavenly host, the starry host. We always end with the sun and heavenly host. And here is also Il-avratta, Id-avratta, holy Avratta, or Ararat. The Saba is what we call in the Bible Sabaoth, but in the Hebrew it is the same as the Sanscrit tOJf zba; and generally means Lord of the planetary bodies—O’Ottf n zba-e-smim, though, perhaps, the stars may sometimes be included by uninitiated persons. Here is the origin of the Sabaeans, which has been much sought for. ”
YALDABAOTH’S REST DAY
As mentioned above, Yaldabaoth created humans and though himself to be God. In doing so he became the Chief Archon of all people and powers in the world in which they are but his servants who work as slaves in creating his kingdom. Yaldabaoth does this in stealth inside the human body where he cannot be seen along with his fellow demons who control the carbon matter of their hosts by taking over their central nervous systems (think computer virus) in which the Archons become their Lords and Masters.
This is why Manly P. Hall had said humans have no free will at this time. Their free will has been hijacked and they must become servants to their master Yaldabaoth who commands they build the world that we see today. Hence, he is the creator and in the end, the destroyer.
Just like we all need a day off to rest from our labors, so do the servants of Yaldabaoth who I already mentioned is all of modern humanity and especially that of the Jews who worship Yaldabaoth as God when in reality he is the false God for none is higher than Yahweh/Jehova who is Jupiter and the Father of all mankind.
Sabbath (as the verb Shavath) is first mentioned in the Genesis creation narrative, where the seventh day is set aside as a day of rest and made holy by God (Genesis 2:2–3). Observation and remembrance of Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments (the fourth in the original Jewish, the Eastern Orthodox, and most Protestant traditions, the third in Roman Catholic and Lutheran traditions).
This day of rest for the servants of the False God of Yaldabaoth that we know of as the worm who created man and thought he was God is called the Sabbath ( and is on Saturday for Saturn’s Day.
Jewish Shabbat (Shabbath, Shabbes, Shobos, etc.) is a weekly day of rest, observed from sundown on Friday until the appearance of three stars in the sky on Saturday night. Hence, one of the archonic fallen angel Son of God Yaldabaoth is known as tzevaot or saboath and their day of worship is on the Sabbath.
The day of rest for the true God is the seventh day being that of the Sun day (Sunday) dedicated to the True God Yahweh/Jehova of light who is Jupiter. In ancient literature and with all ancient philosophers, Jupiter is the most high sovereign God and Lord of the Universe who was often called esoterically the sun being that of the second sun whose true day of Sabbath is Sunday.
The Gnostic Jews or Crete and Greece along with Gentiles of other kingdoms eventually became Christians under the unified banner of the global Universal (Catholic) Church with their Jewish crucified savior Jesus Christ as the Cornerstone of their faith.
The Roman emperor Constantine, a sun-worshiper, professed his conversion to Christianity, although his subsequent actions suggest that the “conversion” was more of a political move than a genuine change of heart. Constantine proclaimed himself Bishop of the Catholic Church and then enacted the first civil law regarding Sunday observance in A.D. 321.The Catholics state; “The Church substituted Sunday for Saturday by the plenitude of that divine power which Jesus Christ bestowed upon her!”
YALABAOTH’S COVENANT WITH EGYPT (ISRAEL)
Yaldabaoth then “chose Abraham, and made a covenant with him. ”(Against Heresies 1.30. 10).
The word Abraham is derived from the Hebrew word Ham which is identical with the Old Egyptian name of their country being that of Khem, being properly written Khm, Kham, or Khem. The meaning of Ham is “hot” or “burnt” (Hebrew: ???, Modern H_am Tiberian ?am ; Greek ?aµ, Kham ; Arabic: ???, ?am) and was written by the Greco-Egyptians as “Amon and later Jupiter Amon.”
To the ancient Greeks, Jupiter is the only real God that sits behind the veil of Isis; explained in the book, Anacalypsis: an attempt to draw aside the veil of the Saitic Isis, by Godfrey Higgins; “Ham was nothing but a Greek corruption of a very celebrated Indian word, formed of the three letters A U M. Aum is pronounced like a drawling Amen, and there must be a close connection between the Aum of India, the Amun-Ra and Amun-Knepth of Egypt, and the Jupiter-Ammon of Greece.”
YALDOBAOTH IS SA MA EL
It was from the serpent that man and woman was created, but it is also the adversary named Samael. 33rd Degree Freemason and author, Manly P Hall had written, “In the 3rd chapter of Genesis the adversary is Samael, the Serpent, and like Mephistopholes it is “a spirit of negation; part of the power that still works for good while ever scheming ill.” (4)
In the Old Testament, Samael (also Sammael or Samil) is an important archangel in Talmudic and post-Talmudic lore, a figure who is accuser, seducer and destroyer, and has been regarded as both good and evil. It is said that he was the guardian angel of Esau and a patron of the Roman empire. The meaning of the name Samael (Sam) in Hebrew is; “Sun child; bright sun, and the name Ael or El, signifies God.”
Jupiter zeus-jupiter-ammonGNOSTIC CONCLUSION
Yaldabaoth is the “yellow or golden boy of hosts” who is also in Scripture identified with Samael who is the “sun child of God.” The creator of humans and the benefactor of knowledge who through his luminous wormy body made of phosphorus he bestowed light from his Father Jupiter upon mankind in the form of his Mother Sophia. By doing so, he became the chief archon, angel, devil, creator, king and destroyer of the world all in one.
For his puffed wormy pride, out of lover for her son, his Mother Sophia had taken away Yaldabaoth’s wisdom of where he had come from, who he was and deprived him and his demonic angles of their Light-power. The Sons of God in the form of a worm in a cloud had plunged into the darkness of the DNA of the 666 carbon matter beasts of humanity.
Over time, all races and world powers were held by this Chief Archon ruler or Drakon under its sway. In the end, however, Sophia gave them back their illumination and these demons awoke to the knowledge of the past that they were fallen angels and how to become angels of the True God again.
SOURCES:
Theosophical Review, Volume 6:
MORE RESEARCH AND QUOTES:
By Madam Blavatsky Isis Unveiled:
These Astral gods, whose chief with the Gnostics was Ildabaoth* (from Ilda “child,” and Baoth “the egg”), the son of Sophia Achamoth, the daughter of Sophia (Wisdom), whose region is the Pleroma, were his (Ildabaoth’s) sons. He produces from himself these six stellar spirits: Jove (Jehovah), Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloi, Osraios, Astaphaios,** and it is they who are the second, or inferior Hebdomad. As to the third, it is composed of the seven primeval men, the shadows of the lunar gods, projected by the first Hebdomad.
In this the Gnostics did not, as seen, differ much from the esoteric doctrine except that they veiled it. As to the charge made by Irenaeus, who was evidently ignorant of the true tenets of the “Heretics,” with regard to man being created on the sixth day, and man being created on the eighth, this relates to the mysteries of the inner man. It will become comprehensible to the reader only after he has read Book II., and understood well the Anthropogenesis of the Esoteric doctrine.
Ildabaoth is a copy of Manu. The latter boasts, “Oh, best of twice-born men! Know that I (Manu) am he, the creator of all this world, whom that male Viraj . . . spontaneously produced” (I., 33). He first creates the ten lords of Being, the Prajapatis, who, as verse 36 says . . . “produce seven other Manus.” (The Ordinances of Manu.) Ildabaoth does likewise: “I am Father and God, and there is no one above me,” he exclaims. For which his mother coolly puts him down by saying, “Do not lie, Ildabaoth, for the father of all, the first man (Anthropos) is above thee, and so is Anthropos, the Son of Anthropos” (Irenaeus, b. I, ch. xxx., 6). This is a good proof that there were three Logoi (besides the Seven born of the First), one of these being the Solar Logos. And, again, who was that “Anthropos” himself, so much higher than Ildabaoth? The Gnostic records alone can solve this riddle. In Pistis Sophia the four-vowelled name IEOV is in each case accompanied by the epithet of “the Primal, or First man.” This shows again that the gnosis was but an echo of our archaic doctrine. The names answering to Parabrahm, to Brahm, and Manu (the first thinking man) are composed of one-vowelled, three-vowelled and seven-vowelled sounds. Marcus, whose philosophy was certainly more Pythagorean than anything else, speaks of a revelation to him of the seven heavens sounding each one vowel as they pronounced the seven names of the seven (angelic) hierarchies.
Furst: “The very ancient name of God, Yaho, written in the Greek [[Iao]], appears, apart from its derivation, to have been an old mystic name of the Supreme deity of the Shemites. (Hence it was told to Moses when initiated at HOR-EB — the cave, under the direction of Jethro, the Kenite or Cainite priest of Midian.) In an old religion of the Chaldeans, whose remains are to be found amongst the Neo-platonists, the highest divinity enthroned above the seven heavens, representing the Spiritual Light-Principle (nous)* and also conceived as Derniurgus,** was called [[Iao]] , who was, like the Hebrew Yaho, mysterious and unmentionable, and whose name was communicated to the initiated. The Phoenicians had a Supreme God whose name was trilateral and secret, and he was [[Iao]].”
From the Theosophical Review, Volume 6:
Ildabaoth or Ialdabaoth is identical with the Fetahil of the Codex Nazaraeus, the Demiurge of the Valentinian system (Lucifer, vi, 33), the Proarchos of the Barbelitae (Irenaeus, I, xxix, 4), the Great Archon of Basilides and the Elohim of Justinus, &c. Ildabaoth (the Child of Chaos) was the son of Sophia (Achamoth) in Gnostic Cosmogenesis, in other words, the Chief of the Creative Forces and the representative of one of the classes of Pitris. If we regard the Sophia-Above (Lucifer, vi, 33, pp. 231, et seqq.) as the Akdsa, and the Sophia-Below (Achamoth) as its lower or material planes, we shall be able to understand why Ildabaoth, the material creator, was identified with Jehovah and Saturn, and so follow out the following allegory from Irenaeus (I, xxiii-xxviii). Ildabaoth the child of the Mother, Sophia, generates a son of himself, without the assistance of any mother, and his son a son in his turn, and he another, and so on until there are six sons generated, one from another. Now these immediately commenced to strive with their father for the mastery; and he in despair and rage gazed into the “purgations of matter” below; and through them begot another son, Ophiomorphos, the serpent-formed, the spirit of all that is basest in matter.
Then being puffed up with pride, he stretched himself over his highest sphere, and proclaimed aloud: “lam Father and God, and there is none above me.” On this, his mother cried out: “Lie not, Ildabaoth, for the Father of All, the First Anthr6pos (man), is above thee, and so is Anthropds, the Son of Athropos.” And Ildabaoth to prevent his sons attending to the voice, proposed that they should fashion a man. So the six of them made a gigantic man, who lay on the earth and writhed like a worm (the man of the first rounds and races). And they brought him to his father Ildabaoth, who breathed into him the ” Breath of Life “, and thus emptied himself of his creative power. And Sophia aided the design, so that she might regain the Light-powers of Ildabaoth. Forthwith the man, having the divine spark, aspired to the Heavenly Man, from whom it came. At this Ildabaoth grew jealous, and generated Eve (Lilith) to deprive Adam of his Light-powers. And the six “Stellars “, empassioned of her beauty, begot sons through her. Thereupon Sophia sent the serpent (intelligence) to make Adam and Eve transgress the precepts of Ildabaoth, who in rage, cast them down out of Paradise into the World, together with the serpent (fourth round and fourth race).
At the same time, she deprived them of their Light-power, that it might not come under the “curse” as well. And the serpent reduced the worldpowers under its sway, and generated six sons, who continually oppose the human race, through which their father (the serpent) was cast down. Now Adam and Eve in the beginning, had pure spiritual bodies, which gradually became grosser and grosser. Their spirit too became languid, for they had naught but the breath of the lower world, which Ildabaoth had breathed into them. In the end, however, Sophia gave them back their Light-power and they awoke to the knowledge that they were naked.
0 notes
Text
Saint& Reading: Saturday , May 18, 2024
may 5_May 18
SAINT HILLARY BISHOP OF ARLES (France_449)
St. Hilary of Arles (born 401, probably northern Gaul—died May 5, 449, Arles; feast day May 5) was a Gallo-Roman bishop of Arles who is often regarded as providing the occasion for extending papal authority in Gaul.
While young, Hilary entered the Abbey of Lérins that was presided over by his kinsman Honoratus, who later became bishop of Arles. In 429 Hilary succeeded Honoratus as bishop and vigorously promoted reforms through several councils, including that of Orange (441). His enthusiasm led him to interfere with provinces outside his metropolitan jurisdiction: in 443–444 he deposed Bishop Chelidonius of Besançon, irregularly replacing him with another bishop, Projectus. This act was quashed by Pope St. Leo I, who deprived Hilary of all metropolitan rights but did not remove him from his see. These measures, to which Hilary submitted, were endorsed by a decree of the Western Roman emperor Valentinian III.
Source: Britannica
THE HOLY GREAT-MARTYR IRENE OF THESSALONICA (1st-2sc)
The holy Great Martyr Irene was born in the city of Magedon in Persia during the fourth century. She was the daughter of Licinius, the pagan ruler of a certain small kingdom, and his wife Licinia, and at birth her parents named her Penelope.
Penelope was very beautiful, and her father kept her isolated in a high tower from the time she was six so that she would not be exposed to Christianity. He also placed thirteen young maidens in the tower with her. An old tutor by the name of Apellian was appointed to give her the best possible education. Apellian was a Christian, and during her lessons, he told the girl about Christ the Savior and taught her about the Christian Faith and Christian virtues.
When Penelope reached adolescence, her parents began to think about her marriage. One night Penelope beheld the following vision: a dove entered the tower with an olive branch in its beak, depositing it on the table. An eagle also flew in carrying a wreath of flowers, and left it on the table. Then a raven flew in through another window and dropped a snake on the table. In the morning Penelope woke up and wondered about the meaning of the things she had seen. She related them to her tutor Apellian and he explained that the dove symbolized her superior education, and that the olive branch represented the grace of God which is received in Baptism. The eagle and the olive branch indicated success in her future life. The snake signified that she would experience suffering and sorrow.
At the end of the conversation Apellian said that the Lord wished to betroth her to Himself and that Penelope would undergo much suffering for her heavenly Bridegroom. After this Penelope refused marriage, was baptized by the priest Timothy, and he named her Irene (peace). She even urged her own parents to become Christians. Shortly after being baptized, she smashed all her father’s idols to pieces.
Since Saint Irene had dedicated herself to Christ, she refused to marry any of the suitors her father had chosen for her. When Licinius learned that his daughter refused to worship the pagan gods, he was furious. He attempted to turn her from Christ by having her tortured. She was tied up and thrown beneath the hooves of wild horses so that they might trample her to death, but the horses remained motionless. Instead of harming the saint, one of the horses charged Licinius, seized his right hand and tore it from his arm. Then it knocked Licinius down and began to trample him to death. This caused a great deal of confusion among the people there but Irene consoled them with the words of Christ: “All things are possible to the one who believes” (Mark 9: 23). And indeed, with wondrous faith, she prayed and through her prayers Licinius rose unharmed in the presence of many eyewitnesses with his hand intact. Then, Licinius and his wife were baptized as Christians, along with almost 3000 others who turned away from the worship of inanimate idols. Licinius abandoned his domain and lived in the tower he had built for his daughter. There he spent the rest of his life in repentance.
Saint Irene lived in the house of her teacher Apellian, and she began to preach Christ among the pagans, leading them to the path of salvation.
When Sedekias (Yesdegerd), the new prefect of the city, heard of the miracles performed by the saint, he summoned Apellian and questioned him about Irene’s manner of life. Apellian replied that Irene, like other Christians, lived in strict temperance, devoting herself to constant prayer and reading holy books. Sedekias summoned the saint to him and urged her to stop preaching about Christ. He also attempted to force her to sacrifice to the idols. Saint Irene staunchly confessed her faith before the prefect, not fearing his wrath, and prepared to undergo suffering for Christ. By order of Sedekias she was thrown into a pit filled with vipers and serpents. The saint spent ten days in the pit and remained unharmed, for an angel of the Lord protected her and brought her food. Sedekias ascribed this miracle to sorcery, and he subjected Saint Irene to many other tortures, but she remained unharmed. Under the influence of her preaching and miracles even more people were converted to Christ, and turned away from the worship of inanimate idols.
Sedekias was deposed by his son Sapor, who persecuted Christians with an even greater zeal than his father had done. Saint Irene went to her home town of Magedon in Persia to meet Sapor and his army, and ask him to end the persecution. When he refused, Saint Irene prayed and his entire army was blinded. She prayed again and they received their sight once more. In spite of this, Sapor refused to recognize the power of God. Because of his insolence, he was struck and killed by a bolt of lightning.
After this, Saint Irene walked into the city and performed many miracles. She returned to the tower built by her father, accompanied by the priest Timothy. Through her teaching, she converted five thousand people to Christ.
Next, the saint went to the city of Callinicus, or Callinicum (possibly on the Euphrates River in Syria). The ruler of that place was King Numerian, the son of Sebastian. When she began to teach about Christ, she was arrested and tortured by the pagan authorities. They enclosed her inside three bronze oxen, one after another, which were heated until they were red-hot. When the Great Martyr was placed within the third ox, it began to walk about, and then it split asunder. Saint Irene emerged from it as if from the fires of hell. This resulted in thousands of souls converting to the faith of Christ.
Sensing the approach of death, Numerian instructed his eparch Babdonus to continue torturing the saint in order to force her to sacrifice to idols. Once again, the tortures were ineffective, and many people turned to Christ.
Christ’s holy martyr then traveled to the city of Constantina, forty miles northeast of Edessa. By 330, the Persian king Sapor II (309-379) had heard of Saint Irene’s great miracles. To prevent her from winning more people to Christ, she was arrested, beheaded, and then buried. However, God sent an angel to raise her up again, and she went into the city of Mesembria. After seeing her alive and hearing her preach, the local king was baptized with many of his subjects.
Wishing to convert even more pagans to Christianity, Saint Irene went to Ephesus, where she taught the people and performed many miracles. The Lord revealed to her that the end of her life was approaching. Then Saint Irene left the city accompanied by six people, including her former teacher Apellian. On the outskirts of the town, she found a new tomb in which no one had ever been buried. After making the Sign of the Cross, she went inside, directing her companions to seal the entrance to the cave with a large stone, which they did. She also told them that that no one should move the stone until four days had passed.
Apellian returned after only two days, and found that the stone had been rolled away and the tomb was empty. There are conflicting accounts about her holy relics being taken to Constantinople and other places, including Patras, Samos, and Patmos. According to the Western Martyrologies, Saint Irene was martyred in Thessaloniki after being thrown into the fire, while according to the Menologion of Emperor Basil II, Saint Irene completed her martyric contest by being beheaded.
Saint Irene led thousands of people to Christ through her preaching, and by her example. The Church continues to honor her memory and to seek her heavenly intercession. She is invoked by those wishing to effect a swift and happy marriage. In Greece, she is also the patron saint of policemen. Saint Irene is also one of the twelve Virgin Martyrs who appeared to Saint Seraphim of Sarov (January 2) and the Diveyevo nun Eupraxia on the Feast of the Annunciation in 1831. By her holy prayers, may the Lord have mercy upon us and save us. Amen.
Fragments of Saint Irene's Holy Relics are located at Kykkos Monastery on Cyprus, and in the Greek church of Saint George in Venice.
Source: Orthodox Church in America_OCA
ACTS 5:21-33
21 And when they heard that, they entered the temple early in the morning and taught. But the high priest and those with him came and called the council together, with all the elders of the children of Israel, and sent to the prison to have them brought. 22 But when the officers came and did not find them in the prison, they returned and reported, 23 saying, "Indeed we found the prison shut securely, and the guards standing outside before the doors; but when we opened them, we found no one inside!" 24 Now when the high priest, the captain of the temple, and the chief priests heard these things, they wondered what the outcome would be. 25 So one came and told them, saying, "Look, the men whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people!" 26 Then the captain went with the officers and brought them without violence, for they feared the people, lest they should be stoned. 27 And when they had brought them, they set them before the council. And the high priest asked them, 28 saying, "Did we not strictly command you not to teach in this name? And look, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this Man's blood on us!" 29 But Peter and the other apostles answered and said: "We ought to obey God rather than men. 30 The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you murdered by hanging on a tree. 31 Him God has exalted to His right hand to be Prince and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. 32 And we are His witnesses to these things, and so also is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey Him. 33 When they heard this, they were furious and plotted to kill them.
JOHN 6:14-27
14 Then those men, when they had seen the sign that Jesus did, said, "This is truly the Prophet who is to come into the world." 15 Therefore when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He departed again to the mountain by Himself alone. 16 Now when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea, 17 got into the boat, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was already dark, and Jesus had not come to them. 18 Then the sea arose because a great wind was blowing. 19 So when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near the boat; and they were afraid. 20 But He said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid." 21 Then they willingly received Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going. 22 On the following day, when the people who were standing on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other boat there, except that one which His disciples had entered, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with His disciples, but His disciples had gone away alone - 23 however, other boats came from Tiberias, near the place where they ate bread after the Lord had given thanks - 24 when the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they also got into boats and came to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. 25 And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, "Rabbi, when did You come here?" 26 Jesus answered them and said, "Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. 27 Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.
#orthodoxy#orthodoxchristianity#easternorthodoxchurch#originofchristianity#spirituality#holyscriptures#gospel#bible#wisdom#faith#saints
0 notes
Text
Events 5.15 (before 1930)
221 – Liu Bei, Chinese warlord, proclaims himself emperor of Shu Han, the successor of the Han dynasty.
392 – Emperor Valentinian II is assassinated while advancing into Gaul against the Frankish usurper Arbogast. He is found hanging in his residence at Vienne.
589 – King Authari marries Theodelinda, daughter of the Bavarian duke Garibald I. A Catholic, she has great influence among the Lombard nobility.
756 – Abd al-Rahman I, the founder of the Arab dynasty that ruled the greater part of Iberia for nearly three centuries, becomes emir of Cordova, Spain.
1252 – Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull ad extirpanda, which authorizes, but also limits, the torture of heretics in the Medieval Inquisition.
1525 – Insurgent peasants led by Anabaptist pastor Thomas Müntzer were defeated at the Battle of Frankenhausen, ending the German Peasants' War in the Holy Roman Empire.
1536 – Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, stands trial in London on charges of treason, adultery and incest; she is condemned to death by a specially-selected jury.
1602 – Cape Cod is sighted by English navigator Bartholomew Gosnold.
1618 – Johannes Kepler confirms his previously rejected discovery of the third law of planetary motion (he first discovered it on March 8 but soon rejected the idea after some initial calculations were made).
1648 – The Peace of Münster is ratified, by which Spain acknowledges Dutch sovereignty.
1791 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre proposes the Self-denying Ordinance.
1817 – Opening of the first private mental health hospital in the United States, the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason (now Friends Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).
1836 – Francis Baily observes "Baily's beads" during an annular eclipse.
1849 – The Sicilian revolution of 1848 is finally extinguished.
1850 – The Arana–Southern Treaty is ratified, ending "the existing differences" between Great Britain and Argentina.
1851 – The first Australian gold rush is proclaimed, although the discovery had been made three months earlier.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of New Market, Virginia: Students from the Virginia Military Institute fight alongside the Confederate army to force Union General Franz Sigel out of the Shenandoah Valley.
1891 – Pope Leo XIII defends workers' rights and property rights in the encyclical Rerum novarum, the beginning of modern Catholic social teaching.
1905 – The city of Las Vegas is founded in Nevada, United States.
1911 – In Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, the United States Supreme Court declares Standard Oil to be an "unreasonable" monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and orders the company to be broken up.
1911 – More than 300 Chinese immigrants are killed in the Torreón massacre when the forces of the Mexican Revolution led by Emilio Madero take the city of Torreón from the Federales.
1918 – The Finnish Civil War ends when the Whites took over Fort Ino, a Russian coastal artillery base on the Karelian Isthmus, from Russian troops.
1919 – The Winnipeg general strike begins. By 11:00, almost the whole working population of Winnipeg had walked off the job.
1919 – Greek occupation of Smyrna. During the occupation, the Greek army kills or wounds 350 Turks; those responsible are punished by Greek commander Aristides Stergiades.
1929 – A fire at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio kills 123.
0 notes
Text
SAINT OF THE DAY (November 10)
November 10 is the Roman Catholic Church’s liturgical memorial of the fifth-century Pope Saint Leo I, known as “St. Leo the Great,” whose involvement in the fourth ecumenical council helped prevent the spread of error on Christ's divine and human natures.
St. Leo also intervened for the safety of the Church in the West, persuading Attila the Hun to turn back from Rome.
Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians also maintain a devotion to the memory of Pope St. Leo the Great.
Churches of the Byzantine tradition celebrate his feast day on February 18.
“As the nickname soon attributed to him by tradition suggests,” Pope Benedict XVI said in a 2008 general audience on the saint, “he was truly one of the greatest pontiffs to have honoured the Roman See and made a very important contribution to strengthening its authority and prestige.”
Leo’s origins are obscure and his date of birth unknown. His ancestors are said to have come from Tuscany, though the future pope may have been born in that region or in Rome itself.
He became a deacon in Rome in approximately 430, during the pontificate of Pope Celestine I.
During this time, central authority was beginning to decline in the Western portion of the Roman Empire.
At some point between 432 and 440, during the reign of Pope St. Celestine’s successor, Pope Sixtus III, the Roman Emperor Valentinian III commissioned Leo to travel to the region of Gaul and settle a dispute between military and civil officials.
Pope Sixtus III died in 440 and, like his predecessor Celestine, was canonized as a saint.
Leo, away on his diplomatic mission at the time of the Pope’s death, was chosen to be the next Bishop of Rome.
Reigning for over two decades, he sought to preserve the unity of the Church in its profession of faith and to ensure the safety of his people against frequent barbarian invasions.
Leo used his authority, in both doctrinal and disciplinary matters, against a number of heresies troubling the Western church — including Pelagianism (involving the denial of Original Sin) and Manichaeanism (a gnostic system that saw matter as evil).
In this same period, many Eastern Christians had begun arguing about the relationship between Jesus’ humanity and divinity.
As early as 445, Leo had intervened in this dispute in the East, which threatened to split the churches of Alexandria and Constantinople.
Its eventual resolution was, in fact, rejected in some quarters — leading to the present-day split between Eastern Orthodoxy and the so-called “non-Chalcedonian churches,” which accept only three ecumenical councils.
As the fifth-century Christological controversy continued, the Pope urged the gathering of an ecumenical council to resolve the matter.
At the Council of Chalcedon in 451, the Pope’s teaching was received as authoritative by the Eastern bishops, who proclaimed: “Peter has spoken through the mouth of Leo.”
Leo’s teaching confirmed that Christ’s eternal divine personhood and nature did not absorb or negate the human nature that he assumed in time through the Incarnation.
Instead, “the proper character of both natures was maintained and came together in a single person.”
“So without leaving his Father's glory behind, the Son of God comes down from his heavenly throne and enters the depths of our world,” the Pope taught.
“Whilst remaining pre-existent, he begins to exist in time. The Lord of the universe veiled his measureless majesty and took on a servant's form.
The God who knew no suffering did not despise becoming a suffering man, and, deathless as he is, to be subject to the laws of death.”
In 452, one year after the Council of Chalcedon, Pope Leo led a delegation, which successfully negotiated with the barbarian King Attila to prevent an invasion of Rome.
When the Vandal leader Genseric occupied Rome in 455, the Pope confronted him, unarmed, and obtained a guarantee of safety for many of the city’s inhabitants and the churches to which they had fled.
Pope St. Leo the Great died on 10 November 461.
He was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Pope Benedict XIV in 1754.
A large collection of his writings and sermons survives, which can be read in translation today.
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
Last for today is Justa Grata Honoria:
I was originally going to cover Hypatia of Alexandria today but decided to postpone that to the ultimate rise of Christianity and instead focus on the Classical world in Europe, Iran, the Kushan Empire, and the Han and Three Kingdoms eras of China. So instead the last figure covered today is Justa Grata Honoria, whose scheme against her brother involved none other than Attila the Hun, one of the various Hun warlords who were the western branch of the Xiongnu, along with the 'Hepthalites' that ravaged Sassanian Iran.
Honoria was unhappy with the position allotted her of being required to obey incompetent brothers as her superiors, so she tried the classic approach of 'use the barbarian to pry the annoying sibling out of my life.' Either fortunately or unfortunately given the kind of man Attila was the effort to do this ended in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plain, fought near the Marshes of St. Gond which would be a key part of the future Battle of the Marne, and she never became the wife of Attila she desired in the rather naive view that exchanging her brothers' prisons for that of the great Hunnic warlord would have been anything but a 'bad to worse' leap. It also tells you everything about Valentinian III that she looked at Attila, known perpetrator of atrocities by that time, and said 'Hey, Attila, make me a wife, please OK thanks.'
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
miraculous-renoir
the show with the bug girl & cat boy
admiralkisses
// Admiral Kisses //
confesionesdeunasmadridist-blog1
Confesiones de unas Madridistas
