“I have undertaken a labor, a labor out of love for the world, and to comfort noble hearts: those that I hold dear, and the world to which my heart goes out. Not the common world do I mean, of those who (as I have heard) cannot bear grief and desire but to bathe in bliss. (May God then let them dwell in bliss!) Their world and manner of life my tale does not regard: it's life and mine lie apart. Another world do I hold in mind, which bears together in one heart its bitter sweetness and its dear grief, its heart's delight and its pain of longing, dear life and sorrowful death, dear death and sorrowful life. In this world let me have my world, to be damned with it, or to be saved.” - Gottfried Von Strassburg
"A comprehensive anthology and guide to English literature of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Seventeenth Century, Restoration and Eighteenth Century. This site combines several sites first created in 1996 to provide a starting point for students and enthusiasts of English Literature. Nothing replaces a quality library, but hopefully this site will help fill the needs of those who have not access to one.
Luminarium is the labor of love of Anniina Jokinen. The site is not affiliated with any institution nor is it sponsored by anyone other than its maintainer and the contributions of its visitors through revenues from book sales via Amazon.com, poster sales via All Posters, and advertising via Google AdSense.
For all materials, authorities in a given subject are consulted. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Encyclopaedia Britannica, and The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English are some of the general reference works consulted for accuracy of dates and details. Many of the materials collected here reside elsewhere. Quality and accuracy are concerns, and all materials are checked regularly. However, "Luminarium" cannot be held responsible for materials residing on other sites. Corrections and suggestions for improvements are encouraged from the visitors.
The site started in early 1996. I remember looking for essays to spark an idea for a survey class I was taking at the time. It seemed that finding study materials online was prohibitively difficult and time-consuming - there was no all-encompassing site which could have assisted me in my search. I started the site as a public service, because I myself had to waste so much time as a student, trying to find anything useful or interesting. There were only a handful of sites back then (read: Internet Dark Ages) and I could spend hours on search engines, looking for just a few things. I realized I must not be the only one in the predicament and started a simple one-page site of links to Middle English Literature. That page was soon followed by a Renaissance site.
Gradually it became obvious that the number of resources was ungainly for such a simple design. It was then that the multi-page "Medlit" and "Renlit" pages were created, around July 1996. That structure is still the same today. In September 1996, I started creating the "Sevenlit" site, launched in November. I realized the need to somehow unite all three sites, and that led to the creation of Luminarium. I chose the name, which is Latin for "lantern," because I wanted the site to be a beacon of light in the darkness. It was also befitting for a site containing authors considered "luminaries" of English literature."
"All ancient books which have once been called sacred by man, will have their lasting place in the history of mankind, and those who possess the courage, the perseverance, and the self-denial of the true miner, and of the true scholar, will find even in the darkest and dustiest shafts what they are seeking for, - real nuggets of thought, and precious jewels of faith and hope."
- Max Müller, "Introduction to the Upanishads" Vol. II.
"This site is a freely available archive of electronic texts about religion, mythology, legends and folklore, and occult and esoteric topics. Texts are presented in English translation and, where possible, in the original language.
This site has no particular agenda other than promoting religious tolerance and scholarship. Views expressed at this site are solely those of specific authors, and are not endorsed by sacred-texts. Sacred-texts is not sponsored by any religious group or organzation.
Sacred texts went live on March 9th, 1999. The traffic started to increase when sacred-texts was listed at Yahoo! under 'Society and Religion|Texts'. In its first year of operation sacred-texts had about a quarter million hits. By 2004, it was receiving well over a quarter million hits per day.
Today, site traffic often exceeds a million hits a day. Sacred texts is one of the top 20,000 sites on the web based on site traffic, consistently one of the top 10,000 sites in Australia, the US and India, and is one of the top 5 most visited general religion sites (source: Alexa.com).
The texts presented here are either original scans from books and articles clearly in the public domain, material which has been presented elsewhere on the Internet, or material included under fair use conditions in printed anthologies.
Many of the texts included here were originally posted in ftp archives or on bulletin boards before the growth of the World Wide Web and have been lost. In some cases, the texts were posted in such a form as to make them unusable by non-technically oriented users. Some of these texts were on the web at some point but have completely disappeared because the site they were posted on has closed. Thus the need for an archive which organizes this material in a persistent location.
From the start, we have had a special focus on remedying the under-representation of traditional cultures on the Internet. The site has one of the largest collections of transcriptions of complete books on Native American, Pacific, African, Asian and other traditional people's religion, spiritual practices, mythology and folklore. While many of these pre-20th century books are flawed due to orientalist or colonialist biases, they are also eye-witness accounts by reliable observers, typically at the moment of contact. These texts are crucial to the study of tribal traditions, and in many cases, the only link with the past. Locked up in academic libraries for decades, sacred-texts has made them freely accessible anywhere in the world.
We welcome email regarding typographical or factual errors in any file at sacred-texts. Please write us if you spot an error; include the URL and a few lines of context so we can pin down the location.
While all due care has been taken in the reproduction of the texts here, none of the texts or translations here are represented to be sanctioned by any particular religious body or institution. We welcome advice as to errors of fact or transcription.
Some of the material here may be copyrighted. It is our hope that the copyright holders may allow these texts to be posted here in the public interest. If you are the copyright holder of record of a text which you believe has been archived at this site in error, please contact us at the email address listed at the bottom of this page. We have made a good-faith effort to determine the provenance of each text and apologize if we have posted a text in error. Note: If you are requesting the removal of a file, you must be the copyright holder of the file, and you must specify the exact URL of the file.”
"It’s late summer in Anytown, USA: A small platform stands at the edge of a cornfield. A very average-looking person steps up to a microphone and speaks:
"Friends,
I stand here, not to praise you, but to acquaint you with reality, at least as well as I am able. Perhaps that means I should be run out of town. But if so, so be it; I’m tired of living according to someone else’s script… and perhaps you are too.
Like you, I’m continually inundated with slogans and outrages, each one calculated to make me do one thing or another. All of them have told me how to think and act, but none of them have asked what I wanted to be and do. And so I think we need to ask ourselves some basic questions: questions that don’t lead to pre-scripted reactions and narrowly-defined choices. So what, really, do we want? And where should we be headed?
The truth is, as impossible at it may seem, that if we can define what we really want, we can pretty well get it; if we can visualize where we really want to go, we can probably get there.
The great fact of our present situation, as frightening as it may be, is that we’ve transcended scarcity… that poverty and privation are no longer necessary. And by that, I certainly mean that they’re no longer necessary here in America, but I also mean they’re no longer necessary world-wide. For some hard facts to back this up, I recommend Julian Simon’s book "The State of Humanity." Just the graphs should be enough to convince you.
We already know how to produce more than enough food for every inhabitant of this planet, and then some. We know how to build enough houses, cars and so on. We know how to provide excellent medical care. Training and raw materials are no real problem either. The big reason why privation continues is that the systems we’ve been living under were designed for fighting over scarce resources. They continue by frightening populations, collecting their sacrifices, soothing them with promises, and regimenting human action. This last piece, regimenting human action, is of primary importance: Cooperation is the key to mass prosperity. However much it is restrained, that’s how much privation will remain.
Please understand that all governments, everywhere, share an operating statement that’s an embodiment of restraining human cooperation, and it is this: Do what we say or we’ll hurt you. Perhaps saying such a thing out loud is rude, and if so I apologize, but it’s true and important all the same.
So, our technology has given us everything we need for a planet-wide golden age. But in order to get it, we’ll have to reorganize ourselves. In specific, we’ll have to drop the ruling systems we’ve been sacrificing our lives to for thousands of years. And so again I say, we have to decide what we really want. All that talk of peace and love is nice, but are we willing to do what’s required to get it?
What I’d like you to understand is that, if we wanted to, we could step into a golden age. If we bothered to work at it, we’d go down in history as the generation that transformed humanity forever. Doing that, however, will involve the indignity of changing our minds in fundamental ways.
But for some people, perhaps, creating a golden age isn’t worth such indignity. And if so, I’ve just committed a terrible faux pas by making such a case openly. My apologies where applicable. To the rest of you I’m saying just this: We need to talk about these things. Isn’t it odd that the thought of losing scarcity should bother us so badly?
I think scarcity has become a psychological need. I’ll leave the details of this to psychologists and economists, but the systems ruling mankind, since the Bronze Age, have been built directly upon the assumption of scarcity. Should it be a surprise that our personal assumptions would have conformed over so many generations?
Now, rather than continuing on this subject at length, I’ll bring this to a close with a decades-old passage from Eric Hoffer. You can find it in his book, "The Ordeal of Change." Here it is: "Now that the new industrial revolution is on the way to solving the problem of means, and we can catch our breath, it behooves us to remember that man’s only legitimate end in life is to finish God’s work – to bring to full growth the capacities and talents implanted within us. A population dedicated to this end will not necessarily overflow with the milk of human kindness, but it will not try to prove its worth by proclaiming the superiority and exclusiveness of its own nation, race or doctrine."
That appeals to me, but perhaps that’s not what most of us want. We do, after all, have options. If we wanted to, we could go full-Caesar on a significant portion of the world, conquering, stealing the things we like and living it up, and probably for a considerable length of time.
You see, these are things we need to discuss. If we don’t, we’ll end up limping along the way we are, slowly declining and eventually seeing other people summon the guts to kick-start a golden age. I’d like us to build and plant and thrive, and to welcome others to thrive with us. If emotional discomfort is the price we must pay for it, I say we should pay it. You, of course, will make up your own mind. But please, and one last time: These are things we need to talk about. Thank you for not shooting me."
"In this eye-opening episode, we explore the latest banking regulations targeting excessive overdraft fees, with the CFPB proposing a $5 cap that has banks furious. Plus, discover why billionaires are rushing to buy gold at unprecedented rates and what this means for your investment strategy. Learn about the shocking producer price index numbers that reveal the true state of inflation, despite what mainstream media reports. We also discuss the concerning rise of buy-now-pay-later services and their impact on consumer debt."
"One of the interesting things about what is happening in Syria is that it is not just the fall of the government but a collapse of Syrian society. When Assad fled, everyone in his government went into hiding. The people running various parts of the system abandoned their posts, leaving no government at all. The money is worthless, so the economy has ceased to function.
Then you have the gangs of lunatics running around, supported by your tax dollars, making sure nothing is working. Now we are getting word that remnants of the military are forming up into war bands. Soon the various ethnic and religious groups will do the same and the result will be a war zone where lightly armed war bands fight with one another for control of increasingly worthless land.
In other words, Syria collapsed and went from a poorly functioning country to something like a fallen Bronze Age society. This is not just the fall of a government but the collapse of everything, which is not something we often see. The last example is Libya, which was not much a society before we killed Gaddafi. The most recent example is the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago.
That is the show this week. Societal collapse is a rare thing, but Syria is a good reminder that it can still happen. The conditions are pretty similar in all the big examples of collapse. Of course, once you start thinking about those conditions, the West begins to look a bit fragile. Syria is also a reminder that collapse always catches people by surprise, even those causing it."
Excerpt: “Elizabeth Kübler-Ross defined the five stages of coming to terms with grief and tragedy as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, and applied it quite successfully to various forms of catastrophic personal loss, such as death of a loved one, sudden end to one’s career, and so forth. Several thinkers, notably James Howard Kunstler and, more recently John Michael Greer, have pointed out that the Kübler-Ross model is also quite terrifyingly accurate in reflecting the process by which society as a whole (or at least the informed and thinking parts of it) is reconciling itself to the inevitability of a discontinuous future, with our institutions and life support systems undermined by a combination of resource depletion, catastrophic climate change, and political impotence.
But so far, little has been said specifically about the finer structure of these discontinuities. Instead, there is to be found continuum of subjective judgments, ranging from “a severe and prolonged recession” (the prediction we most often read in the financial press), to Kunstler’s evocative but unscientific-sounding “clusterf**k,” to the ever-popular “Collapse of Western Civilization,” painted with an ever-wider brush-stroke.
For those of us who have already gone through all of the emotional stages of reconciling ourselves to the prospect of social and economic upheaval, it might be helpful to have a more precise terminology that goes beyond such emotionally charged phrases. Defining a taxonomy of collapses might prove to be more than just an intellectual exercise: based on our abilities and circumstances, some of us may be able to specifically plan for a certain stage of collapse as a temporary, or even permanent, stopping point."
Excerpt: “As a journalist, I’ve been writing about accidents for more than thirty years. In the last 15 or so years, I’ve concentrated on accidents in outdoor recreation, in an effort to understand who lives, who dies, and why. To my surprise, I found an eerie uniformity in the way people survive seemingly impossible circumstances. Decades and sometimes centuries apart, separated by culture, geography, race, language, and tradition, the most successful survivors–those who practice what I call “deep survival”– go through the same patterns of thought and behavior, the same transformation and spiritual discovery, in the course of keeping themselves alive.
Not only that but it doesn’t seem to matter whether they are surviving being lost in the wilderness or battling cancer, whether they’re struggling through divorce or facing a business catastrophe– the strategies remain the same. Survival should be thought of as a journey, a vision quest of the sort that Native Americans have had as a rite of passage for thousands of years. Once you’re past the precipitating event– you’re cast away at sea or told you have cancer– you have been enrolled in one of the oldest schools in history. Here are a few things I’ve learned that can help you pass the final exam."
"Political disintegration is a persistent feature of world history. The Collapse of Complex Societies, though written by an archaeologist, will therefore strike a chord throughout the social sciences. Any explanation of societal collapse carries lessons not just for the study of ancient societies, but for the members of all such societies in both the present and future. Dr. Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory that accounts for collapse among diverse kinds of societies, evaluating his model and clarifying the processes of disintegration by detailed studies of the Roman, Mayan and Chacoan collapses."
Freely download “The Collapse of Complex Societies” here;
"I used to believe that the only way we were going to get out of this mess was to flip sheep (apologies to those offended by my continued use of the word “sheep” - old habits die hard). Meaning that if we got everyone, or mostly everyone, to see what truly was going on, then we could stop the insanity. In other words, if everyone woke up there would be no more compliance, no more believing in the lies, no more falling into the agenda’s traps. Now I am not so sure.
It seems now that the only way this insanity will work its way out is either by a direct act of God or if we are willing to wait 1,000 years or so when it works out on its own. Maybe we just need to face Armageddon, let it happen, and try to live the best life we can before and while it’s happening. I don’t mean “give up,” I mean to still fight but focus the fight on things other than trying to flip sheep.
I know I’ve said this before, but now I am refining this idea a bit. Although I do believe once we know something, we can’t unknow it - meaning we can’t force ourselves into a state of denial and pretend all is rosy as the sheep tend to do (now that they’ve got Trump to feel dismal about, maybe they won’t be all rosy, but for the wrong reasons). But maybe we should stop focusing on it so much and try to get back to the basics of joyous living. Did I really just say that? No, of course not.
I have found myself envying the sheep. I recently had a friend on FB question something I had posted (a comment actually on someone’s meme about chemtrails). She had said she simply did not understand what was being said negatively about natural contrails that jets innocently leave behind. I turned her on to a James Corbett video interviewing Peter Kirby about chemtrails. She responded with the usual disbelief - “How could people be doing this without anyone knowing - purposefully poisoning the earth and all of the people on it?”
I didn’t push it and just said, “You seem to be enjoying your life, keep doing that and don’t let this cat out of the bag. Let it go.” It was the first time I did something like that, and it felt right. I had the opportunity to possibly flip a sheep, and I didn’t take it. I believe, however, that this “letting go” only applies to sheep. Whereas before, I wanted sheep to learn the truth about the world, now I am not so anxious to be the one to wreck their day. They will figure it out soon enough.
Maybe this is an old person thing, and I am just tired. I have no young kids to look out for like so many of you do. I have little other than myself to sacrifice if the world goes down the tubes. I am not going to be here that much longer anyway. Although I do think some of this bad stuff is going to start happening long before I die, I am not so sure of that either.
Will another scamdemic hit soon, will social credit scores, CBDC, and Digital IDs come upon us that quickly, and if they do, will they have the devastating effect we all believe they will? Will we soon be living like the folks in 1984 or Brave New World?
Now, I don’t think I am going to die before much of that, but maybe the worst of it will not hit for another 20 years. Most likely I will be gone before then. Unless I get some shiny new body parts which will soon be available, but if shiny new parts do become available, I doubt if I will be able to afford them. All I am saying is that we will be faced with it soon enough, and maybe before we are, we should forget about trying so hard to stop it. As I type this I am getting nauseous. What an old geezer-coward I’ve turned out to be.
If it was possible to flip sheep I would say let’s keep flipping them. But since it is not possible to even make a dent in that woolly armour, then I say forget it. Most of you, I believe, quelled this effort long ago.
Maybe fighting at all is useless. When a person has terminal cancer, isn’t there a rational point to stop the effort to beat it and just enjoy what you’ve got left? Is that really a deeply defeatist attitude? I think falling somewhere in the middle might be a consideration. For us, it is different. As I said a minute ago, we don’t have the option, like most sheep do, to slip into complete denial. What we know, we cannot unknow.
The sheep are also not all that happy, happy, joy, joy. They obviously think something is afoot. It is interesting to observe their “inaccurate” concern. In the states, it is all about Trump destroying democracy, the constitution, women’s rights, gay rights, trans rights, and the rights of anyone who is not white and Christian (and male). When Biden was around, it was also about destroying Putin and Russia’s rampage to conquer the world, as well as Palestine and Iran destroying Israel and Islam in general destroying every Jew on Earth. So, sheep have worries, too, but in general, they are distracted from the truth.
I have been confused recently (before the US election) trying to determine who these memes are referring to, Trump or Harris - memes predicting the end of democracy, etc. Both sides are being accused of the same things. One of my recent favourites was a meme of a wolf eating sheep while saying he would protect the sheep and only ate a few of them. The sheep respond by saying to one another, “This guy is going to protect us, he’s the one for us!” I commented to the poster, “Who are the sheep?” The person posting the meme liked my comment, obviously assuming I was on her side. They think we are sheep, too.
I am wondering if there is a less obvious way to continue this fight. Maybe just by trying harder to create community and be more accepting of contrary views. I do think we shrews are better at doing that. Since we have all been categorized Trumpsters (whether we are or not), it is much easier for sheep (who have all been categorized liberals and Harris supporters - which they may or may not be) to hate us and not give us the time of day. This is where the real problem lies.
I am afraid now with the election over, things will only get worse before they get better - assuming they ever will get better. Maybe it is time for us shrews to let go of sheep entirely - to attempt to create community without them. Not to reject them outright, but just not concern ourselves with them unless they voluntarily come into our fold. I don’t like the idea of “sides,” but I don’t think it is possible to ignore the fact that we are indeed polarized.
Although it may seem that I am suggesting we become complacent, I don’t think I am. We cannot become depressed though. When we fight, and then fail, and repeat that cycle, we can bring on depression. We must focus our efforts on success, not on things that are bound to fail, but rather on things we know we can be successful with. Like community, joy, and laughter coupled with a serious critical eye and a continued penchant for sniffing out the truth in a deeply illusional world.
I know it seems strange hearing this from me, Dr. Doom. I don’t have much to say in my writing other than pointing out negative aspects of our experience. I will continue to do this only because I think it is very easy for us to fall back to sleep. Maybe that is exactly what I am doing myself by writing this particular article. Maybe I have started to nod off, breathing in the intoxicating falsity of the good life still to be had that so many seem to be enjoying. If you feel the same, don’t let it happen. Stay awake."
Todd Hayen PhD is a registered psychotherapist practicing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in depth psychotherapy and an MA in Consciousness Studies. He specializes in Jungian, archetypal, psychology. Todd also writes for his own substack, which you can read here.
"The number of job openings in the United States has been “falling off a cliff”, and that is a major red flag. The last four years have been an economic nightmare for most Americans, and that is one of the primary reasons why Donald Trump won the election. But as we approach 2025, things are starting to get frighteningly bad. When the number of job openings in the U.S. drops by 2 million or more, that normally signals that we are either in a recession or that one is about to happen. Well, as you can see from this chart that was posted by Bravos Research on Twitter, we are witnessing a collapse in job openings that is absolutely unprecedented…
I was floored when I saw that chart. I knew that job openings were falling, but I didn’t know that things had gotten this bad. Not too long ago, there were about 12 million job openings in the United States. Unfortunately, here in the second half of 2024 that figure has fallen below 8 million…"There were an estimated 7.4 million unfilled jobs on the last day of September, a drop from August’s revised tally of 7.86 million openings, according to new data released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The largest drop-offs in openings were in industries that have driven much of the job growth in recent years: health care and social assistance, and government, according to the report."
Meanwhile, major employers continue to shed workers all over the nation. For example, the U.S. lost a total of 78,000 manufacturing jobs during a recent three month period…"The manufacturing sector continued to shed jobs in October, bringing its tally of job losses to 78,000 over the past three months. The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday released its jobs report for October, which found that the manufacturing sector lost 46,000 jobs last month, according to the agency’s preliminary analysis. That followed a loss of 6,000 jobs in September, which is also a preliminary figure, as well as a decline of 26,000 jobs in August".
Every day, there are more layoff announcements in the news, and the number of people filing initial claims for unemployment benefits increased much more than experts were projecting last week…"The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the first time jumped significantly last week (from 225k to 242k – well above expectations of 220k) – the highest since the first week of October." On an un-adjusted basis, claims exploded higher (highest since January)…
Throughout the second half of this year, I have been arguing that the U.S. economy is rapidly heading in the wrong direction. Now we have even more confirmation that this is indeed happening. Once we get past the holiday season, retailers are going to be dropping like flies.
According to the Daily Mail, it appears that Party City could soon be forced to declare bankruptcy…"A major party and craft retailer with 850 stores across the nation is considering filing for bankruptcy. Party City has been faced with the possibility of mass closures just a little over a year after the company surfaced from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The celebration retailer, known for selling balloons and essential party supplies, is currently behind on rent at some of its locations, people close to the matter told Bloomberg."
And it is being reported that 670 Family Dollar stores have already been shut down…"Discount behemoth Dollar Tree has shuttered 670 of its underperforming Family Dollar stores so far, about two-thirds of the nearly 1,000 it plans to close, as it considers whether to sell or spin off the struggling chain. The Chesapeake, Virginia-based retailer provided an update on its portfolio optimization efforts when it reported is fiscal third-quarter earnings. Dollar Tree officials also said they were still reviewing options for Family Dollar, with no set deadline or timeline to complete that process."
Overall, thousands upon thousands of retail stores in the U.S. have been shuttered in 2024, and thousands upon thousands will be shuttered in 2025. In many areas of the country, the landscape is absolutely littered with once thriving businesses that have now been boarded up. More than a decade ago, I warned that we were headed for a future when impoverished areas of the U.S. would be filled with boarded up businesses and abandoned buildings. Now we are there.
On top of everything else, inflation is starting to surge once again, and one recent survey discovered that about a third of all U.S. households have been forced to cut back spending just to keep the lights on…"With the cost of things like food and housing still straining people’s budgets, many U.S. households over the past year have found themselves having to pare their spending on basic necessities just to keep the lights on at home.
That’s according to a recent Lending Tree study which analyzed U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey data from Aug. 20, 2024 to Sep. 16, 2024 to find the percentage of Americans 18 and older that had cut back on necessary expenses to pay their energy bill, kept their home at an unsafe or unhealthy temperature, or was unable to pay the full amount on an energy bill at least once over the preceding 12 months. The study found that more than 34% of respondents said they have had to cut back or skip spending on certain necessary expenses at least once over the past year in order to pay their energy bill."
As I discussed the other day, prior to the election most Americans believed that we were already in a recession. Since the election, conditions have only gotten worse. Many are hoping that our economic momentum can be reversed once the new administration takes over. We should all be hoping that is true. But right now we are on a freight train that is steamrolling in the wrong direction, and that is not good news at all."
Tracks from "Sunny Mornings": 1. My Rose 2. Thoughtful 3. Sunny Mornings 4. Sunny Days 5. Early in the Morning 6. Warm Light 7. Morning Whisper 8. Peaceful Day 9. Happy Times
Be kind to yourself, forget all the troubles and horrors
for a little while, and savor this beautiful album.
“Here is one of the largest objects that anyone will ever see on the sky. Each of these fuzzy blobs is a galaxy, together making up the Perseus Cluster, one of the closest clusters of galaxies. The cluster is seen through a foreground of faint stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy.
Near the cluster center, roughly 250 million light-years away, is the cluster's dominant galaxy NGC 1275, seen above as a large galaxy on the image left. A prodigious source of x-rays and radio emission, NGC 1275 accretes matter as gas and galaxies fall into it. The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies, also cataloged as Abell 426, is part of the Pisces-Perseus supercluster spanning over 15 degrees and containing over 1,000 galaxies. At the distance of NGC 1275, this view covers about 15 million light-years.”
"Long considered a harbinger of bad luck, Friday the 13th has inspired a late 19th-century secret society, an early 20th-century novel, a horror film franchise and not one but two unwieldy terms - paraskavedekatriaphobia and friggatriskaidekaphobia - that describe fear of this supposedly unlucky day.
The Fear of 13: Just like walking under a ladder, crossing paths with a black cat or breaking a mirror, many people hold fast to the belief that Friday the 13th brings bad luck. Though it’s uncertain exactly when this particular tradition began, negative superstitions have swirled around the number 13 for centuries.
While Western cultures have historically associated the number 12 with completeness (there are 12 days of Christmas, 12 months and zodiac signs, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 gods of Olympus and 12 tribes of Israel, just to name a few examples), its successor 13 has a long history as a sign of bad luck.
The ancient Code of Hammurabi, for example, reportedly omitted a 13th law from its list of legal rules. Though this was probably a clerical error, superstitious people sometimes point to this as proof of 13’s longstanding negative associations. Fear of the number 13 has even earned a psychological term: triskaidekaphobia.
Why is Friday the 13th Unlucky? According to biblical tradition, 13 guests attended the Last Supper, held on Maundy Thursday, including Jesus and his 12 apostles (one of whom, Judas, betrayed him). The next day, of course, was Good Friday, the day of Jesus’ crucifixion. The seating arrangement at the Last Supper is believed to have given rise to a longstanding Christian superstition that having 13 guests at a table was a bad omen - specifically, that it was courting death.
Though Friday’s negative associations are weaker, some have suggested they also have roots in Christian tradition: Just as Jesus was crucified on a Friday, Friday was also said to be the day Eve gave Adam the fateful apple from the Tree of Knowledge, as well as the day Cain killed his brother, Abel.
The Thirteen Club: In the late-19th century, a New Yorker named Captain William Fowler (1827-1897) sought to remove the enduring stigma surrounding the number 13 - and particularly the unwritten rule about not having 13 guests at a dinner table - by founding an exclusive society called the Thirteen Club.
The group dined regularly on the 13th day of the month in room 13 of the Knickerbocker Cottage, a popular watering hole Fowler owned from 1863 to 1883. Before sitting down for a 13-course dinner, members would pass beneath a ladder and a banner reading “Morituri te Salutamus,” Latin for “Those of us who are about to die salute you.” Four former U.S. presidents (Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison and Theodore Roosevelt) would join the Thirteen Club’s ranks at one time or another.
Friday the 13th in Pop Culture: An important milestone in the history of the Friday the 13th legend in particular (not just the number 13) occurred in 1907, with the publication of the novel "Friday, the Thirteenth" written by Thomas William Lawson. The book told the story of a New York City stockbroker who plays on superstitions about the date to create chaos on Wall Street, and make a killing on the market.
The horror movie "Friday the 13th", released in 1980, introduced the world to a hockey mask-wearing killer named Jason, and is perhaps the best-known example of the famous superstition in pop culture history. The movie spawned multiple sequels, as well as comic books, novellas, video games, related merchandise and countless terrifying Halloween costumes.
What Bad Things Happened on Friday 13th? On Friday, October 13, 1307, officers of King Philip IV of France arrested hundreds of the Knights Templar, a powerful religious and military order formed in the 12th century for the defense of the Holy Land. Imprisoned on charges of various illegal behaviors (but really because the king wanted access to their financial resources), many Templars were later executed. Some cite the link with the Templars as the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition, but like many legends involving the Templars and their history, the truth remains murky.
In more recent times, a number of traumatic events have occurred on Friday the 13th, including the German bombing of Buckingham Palace (September 1940); the murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens, New York (March 1964); a cyclone that killed more than 300,000 people in Bangladesh (November 1970); the disappearance of a Chilean Air Force plane in the Andes (October 1972); the death of rapper Tupac Shakur (September 1996) and the crash of the Costa Concordia cruise ship off the coast of Italy, which killed 30 people (January 2012)."
"In the movie "The 13th Warrior" Antonio Banderas' character, an Arab Muslim, delivered a prayer just before an epic battle that has stuck with me ever since. Some of the words in that prayer are words that have inspired me to say and do and think some of the things that I have since I walked out of the theater on the night that I saw that movie. This prayer, although delivered by a Muslim rather than Christian character, has become part of me. The words are beautiful and simple and eloquent:
"Merciful Father... I have squandered my days with plans of many things. This was not among them. But at this moment, I beg only to live the next few minutes well. For all we ought to have thought and have not thought, all we ought to have said and have not said, all we ought to have done and have not done, I pray thee, God, for forgiveness."
Of course if you think about it this prayer also spawns thoughts to the inverse of the lines used; i.e. Father forgive me for the things that I/we have thought that I ought not have thought, for the things I have said, that I ought not have said, for things I have done that I ought not have done.
Then brave Buliwyf begins to pray, also, to his many pagan gods and to his ancestors, and is joined by all the members of his band:
Buliwyf: "Lo, there do I see my father."
Herger: "Lo, there do I see My mother, and my sisters, and my brothers. Lo, there do I see The line of my people..."
"A great tragedy of our era is that young people have no feeling of what Western civilization was like. In the government owned and operated schools where they sat for years, they were presented with a litany of the West's failures, most of them exaggerated, or even imagined. In this post, and in several that will follow, I'll be ignoring anti-Western propaganda. To obsess on flaws is dishonest and destructive. The fact that the people of the West have been conditioned to require them is not something I'll indulge. All civilizations have had their failures, and our Western civilization stands out, not as the worst, but as the least bad.
My goal for this series of articles is to give you a deep sense of Western civilization and the cultural assumptions that informed it. I'll be careful to stay with the truth of each era, but what I want is for you to understand the West that was, down to your bones.
That's a tall order, of course, especially for short posts, but that's what I'm going for. And to get the best start possible, I'll begin in my own time, describing the America of about 1960. To be precise, I'm probably best describing the years 1953-1963; from the end of the Korean war to the assassination of John Kennedy.
What It Was Like: The first thing to understand about this era is that it was still a time of community. People felt a kinship with their neighbors. They looked out for one another. If something went wrong in your home, you went immediately to your neighbors for help. If your car broke down far from home, you went to the nearest house, knocked on their door and asked if you could use their telephone to call for help. (And were as likely as not to have someone pull out a toolbox and take a look at the car for you.) Crime wasn't that much less in this era, but people still trusted one another, partly of necessity and partly because we weren't inundated with fear every waking moment.
Doctors made house calls on their way home. (I vividly remember my brother being examined on our dining room table.) If you had children, the neighbors, even the ones you argued with, would bring over some milk when there was a heavy snow and you couldn't get to the store. This was standard in more or less every neighborhood. People did stupid and thoughtless things, of course, but we also relied upon one another. We weren't atomized as people are now.
Back in this era, moms would leave their kids outside in their strollers (prams) while they went into stores. I knew quite a few women who did precisely this. I asked one of them about it long after and she told me this: "Oh, sure. We'd meet at [a local restaurant]. They gave us a table at the window and we'd park our kids right in front. If a kid needed attention, one of us, not necessarily that one's mother, would go out, take care of him, then come back in. We all did that then."
And back before air conditioning (which came into homes just after this era), people slept outside on hot nights. In my home town of Chicago, hundreds of families would grab sheets and pillows, head to the lake (it was cooler there) and sleep on the sand.
Moreover, in places like Chicago (though definitely less so in the south or in occasional outbursts), daily race relations tended to be non-hostile. In my early experience, Negros (as they were then called) carried themselves with dignity rather than anger. Certainly I grew up in a nice area and I was sheltered when very young, but I rode the buses and trains by myself at a young age (it would probably be called child abuse now), and observed hundreds or thousands of random people, including at large events.
Another of my observations was that Jews and Blacks felt closer to one another. Both had dark histories of abuse and they felt a kinship. Typically the Jews were bosses and Blacks/Negros employees, but they were loyal to each other. I knew the son of one Black man whose Jewish employers continued to send him paychecks for many years after he became too old to work. That type of loyalty wasn't terribly uncommon at the time.
Divorce was considerably less common in this era, largely because of a different set of incentives. First of all, people believed that the two-parent family was a necessary model, and those expectations (which could be benevolent or otherwise) drove couples to work harder at staying together. Secondly, there were few if any welfare programs that gave a mother more money if she was single. As a result, the nonmarital birth rate was far lower than it is today, and for all ethnicities.
Politics was less vile in this era. Certainly there was corruption and police brutality, those things are eternal where the few rule the many, but politicians and reporters were expected to do their jobs defensibly. Politicians were frequently scrutinized and public affairs were examined at length, rather than in five second sound bites. People read books on a regular basis. Politics had not yet overcome society.
College was where you went if you wanted to learn how to do important things. It wasn't a place to get drunk or to get a work permit for a high status job. K-12 schools were more serious places of learning too (with zero politics), but I should add that there was plenty of bullying and a somewhat higher tolerance for brutality among the students.
Another thing that seems to have made a difference was that we felt we had something to prove. This was the era of the Cold War, and being better than the Soviets mattered to people. As a result, they defended their beliefs, worked to live up to them, and treated others who were likewise interested in the goodness of the American way with loyalty and respect.
We had movies and TV, of course, but the programming was far more family friendly. Not because of laws, but because the viewers had a strong preferences regarding what was appropriate, sometimes enforced with boycotts of advertisers. In other words, people cared about their culture and wanted to keep it strong. They believed in their ways.
This last point, I suppose, was the key to this era: People still believed in their ways. That is, they still thought the civilization of Abraham, Jesus, Raphael, Bernini, Da Vinci, Newton, Mozart, Locke, Jefferson, Brahms, Edison, Bell and the Wright brothers was a blessing to the world. As in all generations, these people had their shortcomings, and were easily abused by those who claimed to be protectors of their civilization, but they still believed in it, and acted like they believed in it.
These people most certainly understood that there was injustice in the world (they had just gone through World War II), and many of them found meaning in fighting injustice. There was plenty of complaining, but most of the complainers were trying to improve Western civilization, not to wipe it away as a curse.
In short, while all the usual human stupidities were present at this time, most people were also committed to a higher standard than their stupidities. And that not only minimized the damage they caused, but maintained an inter-personal environment that was less stressed, more dignified, more reliable, more forgiving, sometimes warmer, and far less suspicious than our present environment."
