The time has come today... The bootleg version.

Mark this date on your calendar!

It is said in the bible that unless God cuts short the time we have available to us we would destroy ourselves before we could ever be redeemed. As of today world scientists have given us twenty years before the glaciers are completely gone, and I believe we all know what will happen once they are fully melted. The face of the planet is about to be fundamentally altered and we are going to have make some pretty big changes in the way we do things on this backwater ball of mud we call home. Or are we?

The bible has always been a bit wishy-washy when it comes to offering up any type of concrete timetable for exactly when the end times will come. All we’re offered are vague hints like; thief in the night, when you see wars and famines or the ever popular don’t concern yourself with these things. It gets on my nerves and quite frankly I’m a little tired of all the chaos created by groups of well intentioned believers standing on hilltops dressed in white robes waiting for an end that never arrives. (Don’t even get me started on the Kool-aid drinking comet watchers.)

If you’re going to get me all worked up about the end of days I want a date that will get me sweating a little. Grow some balls and prove to me that you’re actually in contact with the Supreme Being. I’m tired of the air of mystery surrounding the Elohim. I want cold hard fact and I want a specific time table. Look, I’m sick to death of trying to pray to a deity whose name was forgotten by its Jewish promoters long before He was hijacked by the medieval church of Catholicism. That’s right, the Jew considered the name of God so holy that it was forbidden to speak it. Then one day they realized it’d been so long since anyone had addressed the big guy by his surname that they’d forgotten what it really was. Thanks guys...

So I’m not the biggest fan of the Judeo Christian faith. It’s just too vague and uncertain for me. That’s why I’ve been looking into the Mayan cosmology and I think these people just might have what I’m looking for. First off, they know God’s name. The big guy in their scheme of things is called, Quetzalcoatl. He is no wishy-washy washer of feet either. This deity is not afraid of getting his fists bloodied in a good old fashioned street brawl. This is a deity that will bust you one right in the chops and call you a sissy if you can't remember his name. Of course, the very best part of it all? The Mayans not only know for a fact the world is coming to an end they give you the exact year and day it will happen. I’m not kidding!

The end of the great cycle of life on our planet is not far off according to the Mayans. December twenty-first in the year of, well, their Lord I guess 2012. Now that is a date I can live with. I’ve still got enough time remaining to live a fairly entertaining life of sin and I will still be young enough to travel to Chichen Itza to watch the sun create the shadow snake crawl down the stairs on the day the world ends. Don’t worry, I’ll drag along my laptop and digital camera to get some good pictures to post on my blog as the end of the world arrives. I am so excited!

Maybe we can get together for a bloggers greet and meet at the Chichen Itza temple on the great day? After all, if we all find out that we have nothing in common what will we have to lose? And we’d have perfect seats in a wonderful venue for the final moment.

Do you think the name the Jews forgot could possibly be, Quetzalcoatl?

The time has come today... Afterwords.

I have seen the past and I know the future.

My personal belief has always been that the only book of the bible worth reading is Genesis. I’ve always had the notion that the book is the collected bits of information remaining from the days just before and shortly after the collapse of the water canopy surrounding our planet. It must have been a truly calamitous event wiping out nearly everything and everyone living upon the surface of our world. The survivors must have known it was going to be a long time before civilization recovered from the event and that many dark days lay ahead of them. They left us a story. They left us a warning.

It is reported in the bible that the rains fell for one hundred and fifty days. God only knows how long it took for the waters to recede. According to the accounts in the bible there were viable cities at that time possessing metallurgical skills, crafts and a thriving arts community. Cities contained brothels, markets and homes protected by walls. The primary source of energy was fire.

Fire provided light at night, heat during the cold seasons, cooking sources and heat for the smelting and production of metal tools. It also would have provided warm water for bathes and warmed the pools in the brothels. I imagine the heat pumped into the atmosphere and the carbon dioxide along with it was considerable. Could the first planetary disaster have been caused by the pollution sent into the atmosphere by cities around the world using fire as their primary energy source? Wood was a fairly cheap and available fuel source in those days.

Before the flood that laid waste to nearly every living thing upon the face of the planet a civilization existed that was wiped away and buried beneath an unimaginable amount of water and debris. I believe a monument still remains from that civilization. I believe that said monument remained hidden in plain sight for a great number of years because it had been altered and thus misled many who viewed it because they attributed its building to the wrong group of people in the wrong epoch of human history. You have seen this monument in hundreds perhaps even thousands of pictures and illustrations. It was the face that fooled you.

Can you guess what monument I’m talking about?

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time a great power was developing amongst the people. This political entity had an alphabet, a system of mathematics capable of erecting marvelous buildings and they had a sophisticated political system capable of motivating large numbers of it citizenry to participate in engineering projects that created a robust economy. This robust nation had mapped out the area surrounding it and traveled great distances to engage in trade with many countries in the known world of its day.

One day as a group of travelers was journeying across a trade route that had been traversed a thousand times by as many caravans before it someone noticed something unusual. It wasn’t long before the leaders of the group realized that what they’d just found in the sand had been manufactured by the hand of man. They began digging to see just what it was they’d discovered and soon realized that the task was going to be far more arduous than anyone had first imagined.

When the leader of the powerful nation was informed of what had been discovered he sent teams of men to excavate the item buried in sand. Now, no one had any idea what was about to be unearthed. As carefully as the area of this kingdom had been studied, mapped and cataloged no one had ever seen anything in this particular area but sand and even more sand. They began to dig and as they dug a figure began to emerge from the ground.

The ruler of the land watched the monument appear beneath the efforts of the excavation team and realizing what a remarkable edifice was being unearthed he decided to take advantage of the opportunity and add to his already considerable glory. He called in a team of artisans and began an immediate alteration to the monument. He had the original face on the great stone construct changed to reflect his very own face. As the excavation continued a new face was created and when the excavation was finished it was discovered that the head of the pharaoh now adorned what appeared to be the body of a great stone lion. That is how the Sphinx came to be. It was not built by the Egyptian peoples; it was simply excavated by them and altered by a glory hungry pharaoh to appease his personal ego.

It took archaeologists a long time to put together the true story of the Sphinx and by time they did so it was already believed by almost everyone in the world to be a monument to the greatness of the Egyptian empire of centuries past. Who really built it and what its original purpose was intended to be is still a mystery.

I like to believe that as the climate began to change the civilization about to be obliterated from the face of the planet decided to leave a legacy. Knowing how little would remain to mark their time upon our planet they decided to build a monument that would reflect the character of what they’d been as a people. I believe they built a lion in the dessert. They built it as a symbol of their strength and the courage of their spirit in the face of impending annihilation. They built a lion in the sand so that when the waters receded and civilization began to recover from the disaster that had nearly destroyed it someone would find the monument and it would fill those who looked upon it with the wonder of what had once been achieved and what could be accomplished in the world again. I believe it was the final statement of a people who knew they were about to be destroyed and did not want to be forgotten. I have always been amazed by the lion in the sand and the fact that no one from the Egyptians who discovered it up to the present day has any idea of who built it. It is a relic of a forgotten civilization.

I do not believe farmers set out to destroy the world. I do believe they provided the means by which our destruction would eventually be guaranteed. The agricultural revolution broke the balance of nature. Through the process of farming man was capable of achieving an evolutionary survival edge that has remained unmatched by any other species with which we share the planet. We have created so many of our species that no real purpose exists for most of us. Consumption is no great and glorious endeavor. The majority of us are truly extraneous and there is no significant reason for us to exist.

Our numbers are in the billions and the way we are doing things is clearly affecting the ecology of our world. The byproducts of our way of life are killing the planet. The Earth has protected its integrity in the past and I believe it will do so again. Pride and hubris have blinded us to the peril we face and I believe that unlike the people who built the lion in the dessert the only monument we will leave behind us is a flaming ball of ruin circling a lonely sun at the end of a spiral arm of a galaxy located in the middle of nowhere.

Even if all we’ve built as a civilization crumbles and falls to the ground in ruins among the flames of destruction there is one thought that brings me great comfort; somewhere on the scorched and despoiled planet remains a monument to a group of people who showed the greatness and character of what we could have been if we’d possessed the strength and character of a lion in the sand. Whoever built that monument may be forgotten by the rest of you but they are always remembered by me. I think about them a lot...

The time has come today... Part two.

"Get thee behind me, Satan!"

So, we now have a tale of two brothers, Cain and Abel, which we are looking at from the perspective of archetypes. Our first question is of course, what archetype does each of the “brothers” represent? In order to understand the characters of the story it is important to understand what setting the characters are framed within. What is the background of the two brothers? In order to arrive at an understanding of the story lets begin by stripping away the extraneous interpretive elements and get down to the very basics of this tale.

First, let’s do away with the theological interpretations. After all, religious interpretations are always themselves open to interpretation and we are only interested in the basic building blocks of this story. Let us set aside whatever spiritual meanings the story may have about any potential relationship with a proposed deity and see what we have remaining. Now, what’s the background within which the characters are operating? What is happening around the two brothers that might explain what they are doing?

At the time of this story there is a conflict in the land. Whatever circumstances that constituted the idyllic surroundings viewed as the Garden of Eden had fallen and men were beginning to dwell in a variety of sociological experiments in an environment that was new and alien to them. Judging from the details of the story concerning the garden the family way of life for Adam and Eve was a nomadic venture spent moving across the land tending their flocks of sheep. Other groups of individuals were experimenting with a different way of life in the forming of permanent settlements around fertile parcels of soil and establishing farming communities. The best known of these settlements was Nod, located to the east of Eden. (Look it up in Genesis, chapter 4:16)

So, now we begin to see the background against which the actions of the characters are taking place. Two groups of people are attempting to compete for available resources using two different methodologies. One is a nomadic approach where once the sheep have fed, and the land is no longer producing the nutrients required to feed the flock the shepherds would move on to the next available food source. The other group of people is forming permanent settlements around parcels of soil upon which plants are grown, harvested and used to support the communities surrounding them.

Which of the methodologies is proving the most successful? Based upon the story involving Adam and his progeny the evidence would seem to support that of the city builders. Abel may be the featured good son in the tale but it is worth noting that it is through the progeny of Cain that metallurgy, music, arts and crafts are developed. (Look at Genesis, chapter 16-22) Now, another son was born to Adam and Eve named Seth but his achievements are not listed in the accounting of the family so we can only assume he continued in the nomadic tradition of his sheep herding family.

If the story of Cain and Abel is indeed about two rival groups of people vying for control over the available resources of the land in which they dwelt the story mechanics begin to make sense. Abel represents a way of life that was once the primary method for survival. Tribes of people roamed the land tending to the animals that provided the basic necessities of survival; skins for clothing, meat for protein rich food and bones for rudimentary tool making. Cain represents a group of people who began leaving the nomadic life for the security of walled communities and enclosed farm lands that were made safe from roaming flocks of hungry animals.

The city builders were a serious threat to the nomads and their way of life and were seriously disliked by them. Look at the monsters they are turned into in this story; the city builders, I.E. Cain, and their agricultural offerings are not only found repulsive in the eyes of God but they are the killers of the kind and gentle nomads, Abel, and are cursed and sent to live as outcasts in the land. This is a story intended as a warning. A way of life was under attack. The entire economic and sociological system of the nomad was falling into obscurity because of the success of the city builders. The nomad could not compete with the forgers of metal or the farmers and their abundant food production. Is there evidence to support this theory of the Cain and Abel story to be found in the framework of the bible?

I believe there is when we look at the origin story of the Israelites. Twelve tribes of nomads were faring so poorly as the new agricultural economic paradigm developed across the landscape that their only hope for survival was to unite and forsake their nomadic ways and lay claim to a piece of landscape before it was all gone and they were left with nothing. That’s right; in order to survive the agricultural tide sweeping the land the twelve tribes of nomads united as one group and imitated the very scourge they hated so much. The real story of the bible is about the evolution of mankind during its evolutionary big bang moment of intellectual growth and development. It is the story of the moment in which we began to take dominion of the world in which we live. It is the story of the end of ecological balance.

Now, why was the sacrifice of Cain viewed as evil? Fruits of the earth can not be the answer because according to the logic of the bible they were created on the third day (Genesis chapter1:11-13) and must have been an important part of God’s master plan because they were behind only the creation of night and day and the separation of the water from the soil. Yes, veggies and whole grains were one of the biggies in God’s plan when he was terraforming the planet. So what was wrong with Cain’s sacrifice?

Could it have been something in his methodology? Could it have possibly been something in his attitude? What was the fatal flaw in Cain’s approach to survival that God found unfavorable? Could we possibly figure it out by listening to something Cain said?

I believe Geneses, chapter 4: 9 clearly spells out the flaw of the city builder; And the Lord said unto Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” And Cain said, “I know not; Am I my brother’s keeper?” You see, when the primary survival technique in the world had been the way of the nomad it required a sense of community in which all members participated together in order to insure mutual survival of the whole tribe. The way of the new city builder fractured the sense of nomadic community and concerned itself only with the members contained within its protective city walls. The city builders broke the world view into insiders and outsiders. They created the concept of individual ownership of land. They created the Republican world view of, “I got mine now you go and get yours.” They created the system of profit at another’s expense.

The story of Cain and Abel is a story of resentment and hostility by a defeated group of sheep herders. It is a bitter tale about the beginning of the end of the nomadic way of life and the dawn of the agricultural way of life that has led to the current state in which mankind stands today; the technological dominance of the planet and the potential end of mankind’s existence as a species. Once the balance was broken and mankind began his assault upon the planet we have raced towards this eventual precipice.

It is an established fact that at one time a great canopy of water surrounded the Earth. I have always wondered what exact climatic change caused it to collapse and flood the world in what is one of the most documented events ever to occur in the course of human history. If the story of Cain and Abel does indeed contain a kernel of truth and does indeed relate the story of the birth of industrialized society what is the deeper warning contained in its tale? Is it a warning about the ability of mankind to affect the ecological environment in which we dwell? If the sequence of the book of Genesis are viewed without framing them in the mysteries of deity worship an interesting pattern unfolds.

1. The global community of man is disregarded as groups of selfish individuals’ band together to form profit minded collectives.

2. As these collectives expand their influence they evolve metallurgical technologies that produce heat and release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

3. The atmosphere begins to grow warmer and the climate begins to change in response.

4. Finally, a major ecological change occurs erasing a great deal of mankind from the face of the planet and balance is once again restored to the planet and it heals from the damage done to it by the human species.

5. The surviving members of our species exit whatever vehicle of survival they loaded themselves into as disaster laid waste to their civilization and the process begins again.

Now, that’s just a pet theory of mine but keep this in mind...

Someone in the good book relates a promise to the future from God that he will not destroy the world with water ever again. When the second planetary cleansing occurs it is his divine mercy that it will be done with fire. Now, if you look at the global temperature things are getting pretty warm. There is also a scripture that says god will come like a thief in the night. Yes, I know a lot of people are looking for signs of his coming in the political arenas’ and in the interactions of men upon the face of the planet, but I think we are distracted from seeing the real warning from where it is really coming from. One piece of scripture has always made me wonder about what it really means and it goes something like this; even if all men forget my name the very rocks and stones shall cry it out.

I think we should be listening to the rocks and the stones of the planet. They are the basic fabric of the planet and I believe the Earth is trying to warn us before it is too late.

It has only been a few thousand years since the events recorded in the old testament. It has not taken us very long to affect the ecology of the planet in substantially negative ways. Look at the damage we’ve done to our environment. Do you think the first technological society knew what they were doing to the environment before the water canopy fell down upon their heads?

Now, go and get the movie An Inconvenient Truth and think about it. We may be ignoring the very prophet we need to be paying the most attention too.

Hey, it has happened plenty of times before.

Goodnight and for God's sake start saving the planet...

The time has come today... Part one.

The good Earth.

There is a theory concerning the biblical story of Cain and Abel I’ve always believed contained a certain amount of veracity. For those of you unfamiliar with the story of Cain and Abel it is a tale of two brothers who bring offerings to God. Abel brings a slaughtered animal which is found worthy and thereafter he is looked upon quite favorably in the eyes of God. Cain on the other hand brings an offering of agricultural harvesting from the land and not only is his offering rejected but so too is he looked upon unfavorably by God. My question of course has always been why? What exactly was wrong with Cain’s sacrifice? What was so right about Abel’s sacrifice? Does God not like vegans? Is God a steak and potatoes kind of conservative republican after all? It vexes me.

Whenever I’ve asked a clergyman about this tale I’ve always been given the same answer, “It’s the blood, boy, it prefigures the eventual sacrifice of Jesus on the cross as propitiation to God for the sins of mankind.” Of course, that is usually the official church answer to any and every question I ever ask about the scriptures. It is a stock response I believe simply serves to obfuscate the obscure and make an ignorant man appear wise when in reality a question has been asked for which he has no good answer at all.

The story of Cain and Abel appears arbitrary in nature. There is no reason or explanation for why one sacrifice is more acceptable than the other. It reeks of the, “because I said so” attitude so often attributed to God by those who claim to speak in the omnipotent one’s name. You know the process as, “do not question the man behind the curtain!” God says it is so and so surely it must be so because he says so. What? Why is God so afraid of being questioned about just what exactly he is doing and why he is doing it in the particular way he is doing it?

Sorry, I digress...

So, we have a tale about two brothers who bring sacrifices before God. One sacrifice is acceptable and one is not. However, the story gets even more perplexing. The vegan brother, after having his offering rejected and labeled as unworthy is so enraged that he kills his brother, Abel. Cain is then cursed, given a special mark and promptly sent out into the world to live as an outcast.

Now, if one adheres to the idea that every single word in the bible is literal and true, representing actual events in the course of human history the story of Cain and Abel can only be accepted at face value. Two brothers work equally hard at their chosen occupation, each willingly take the best fruits of their labors to the house of God to offer as sacrifices and one is rejected by the omnipotent one and the other is embraced. The brother who has been rejected murders the brother who has been accepted. Cain is exiled and Abel is dead. There is an important lesson to be learned here. Really?

Exactly what is that lesson? Does God hate vegetables? I thought God created them and saw that they were good. Was Cain blind to an evil within himself that only God could see? Why did Cain kill Abel? This story has always left me with more questions than answers and it just ticks me off. Perhaps as certain theories suggest, the only real way to arrive at an understanding of the story is to step out of the literal interpretation of the tale and look at it from a different perspective. What if we look at the two brothers as representing archetypes of some sort? What if the archetypes represented two different philosophies of living with the environment? What if the two differing philosophies had indeed reached a pivotal point of conflict where one way of life was indeed threatening the continued existence of the other? What would the lesson of the story be if looked at from this perspective?

To be continued...