(no subject)
(http://www.dailygrail.com/blogs/dustincole/2010/7/Devil-be-my-God)
.by Lon Milo DuQuette. "Devil be my God" is an excerpt from "Rebels and Devils: The Psychology of Liberation", New Falcon Publications, 1996, Tempe Arizona.
"In 415 CE Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria Egypt, found himself in a most awkward position. Not only was he burdened with the task of concocting viable doctrines from the muddled and conflicting traditions of the young Christian cult, he was required to do so in the most sophisticated and enlightened pagan city on earth.
Long before the alleged virgin birth of the crucified savior, Alexandria, with her celebrated schools and library, nurtured the greatest minds of the Mediterranean world and Asia. Here, religion and philosophy were lovers, and their union gave rise to dynamic environment of dialog and debate. On more than one occasion Cyril tried to glean converts from the student body of Neo-Platonic Academy, only to be stricken dumb by the discomforting realization that the fledgling philosophers were far more knowledgeable than he about the subtleties and shortcomings of his own faith. They afforded him the opportunity to suffer for his faith. His patience came to an end, however, when his faith and reputation were challenged by a brilliant and charismatic luminary of the Alexandrian School of Neo-Platonism, Hypatia-the greatest woman initiate of the ancient world.
Hypatia of Alexandria was without question the most respected and influential thinker of her day. The daughter of the great mathematician Theon, she took over her father’s honored position at the Academy and lectured there for many years. She, more than any other individual since Plotinus, the father of Neo-Platonism, grasped the profound potential of that school of thought. Her lectures were wildly popular and attracted a universal spiritual order-a supreme philosophy- an enlightened religion to unite all religions. Such was the golden promise of Neo-Platonism, and Hypatia of Alexandria was its virgin prophetess.
Troubled by the continued degeneration of the Christian movement, its intolerance of other faiths and its dangerous preoccupation with miracles and wonders, Hypatia began a series of public lectures dealing with the cult. She revealed the pagan roots of the faith and systematically unmasked the absurdities and superstitions that had infected the movement. Then, with power and eloquence surpassing that of any Christian apologist, she elucidated upon what she understood to be the true spiritual treasures found in the purported teachings of the “Christ”.
Her arguments were so persuasive that many new converts to the cult renounced their conversions and became disciples of Hypatia. Her lectures stimulated enormous interest in Christianity, but not Christianity as it was presented by Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria.
Not blessed with the strength of character necessary to suffer a personal confrontation with Hypatia, Cyril embarked upon a campaign of personal vilification by preaching to his unwashed and fanatical flock that Hypatia was a menace to the faith, a sorceress in league with the Devil. These diatribes seemed to have little effect upon the sophisticated population of urban Alexandria who were beginning to realize that Bishop Cyril’s Christianity was a cult that didn’t play well with other children. Deep in the Nitrian dessert, however, Cyril’s hateful words eventually reached the crude monastery of Peter the Reader.
Years of preaching to the wind and converting scorpions had uniquely qualified Peter to be the cleansing sword of the Prince of Peace, and the thought of a devil-possessed woman attacking his savior was more than this man of God could stomach. Mustering a rag-tag collection of fellow hermits, he marched to Alexandria where they met with officials of the Caesarean church who informed him that each afternoon the shameless Hypatia drove her own chariot from the Academy to her home. Armed only with clubs, oyster shells, and the Grace of God, Peter and his mob ambushed Hypatia in the street near the Academy. Pulling her from her chariot they dragged her to the Caesarean church where they stripped her, beat her with clubs, and finally(because of an on-going debate over the soul’s eternal status if the corpse remained whole) scraped the flesh from her bones with the oyster shells. The scoops of flesh and the rest of her remains were then carried away and burned.
The reaction of the Alexandrian community was one of confusion and shock, and the Neo-Platonist school was dealt a blow from which it never recovered, Cyril took full advantage of the situation and used the terror of the moment to further intimidate the city and establish that the will of the Christian God was to be resisted an one’s own risk.
The martyrdom of Hypatia was certainly not the first example of truth resisting evil and losing, but it did mark the beginning of a prolonged spiritual delirium tremor from which Western Civilization has never fully recovered. Even the bright souls who did not succumb to the universal madness were forced to blossom against the twisted projections of the collective nightmare.
Spiritual growth is not impossible in such an environment. But where wisdom is perceived by the world to be ignorance; love is considered sin, and all that is best in the human spirit is condemned and repressed, the road by which a seeker of enlightenment must travel takes many curious turns. On such a journey one’s companions are outlaws and rebels; sacredness breeds in blaspheme, truth falls from the lips of false prophets, heaven is sought in hell, and God is the Devil himself." --Lon Milo DuQuette
-----------------------------------------------------------------
http://secretsun.blogspot.com/2009/05/real-wonder-woman-hypatia-of-alexandria.html
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
The Real Wonder Woman: Hypatia of Alexandria
I was waiting to see this film Agora, based on the life and death of Hypatia of Alexandria, but it never seemed to get a theatrical release. It's also very hard to find on DVD. Why is that? Well, it seems to have kicked up a controversy over its alleged anti-Christian bias and had a hard time finding an American distributor. Why?
Well, Hypatia was horrifically tortured and murdered by a Christian mob at a time when such events were business as usual. That's not a question of any kind of bias, it's simply a fact. Some apologists try to spin her murder as a result of political intrigue, but it's clear to any rational individual her death was a religious crime. Again, simply a fact.
The fact is that the Fifth Century was not a very enlightened time for the Church, especially in Egypt with its marauding monks wiping out what was left of the pagan world. Not only the temples and the statues, but also education, science, medicine, philosophy and the arts, all of which were seen as afronts to God.
To its credit, the Vatican has asked for forgiveness for many of these kinds of abuses in the past. But the lay groups that condemn movies like Agora are usually made of the kinds of people who are secretly nostalgic for heretic-cleansing. And that's where the trouble begins.
Here's an account of her death in the words of an early Church father (John, Bishop of Nikiu), who speaks quite glowingly of the event:
“And thereafter a multitude of believers in God arose under the guidance of Peter the magistrate -- now this Peter was a perfect believer in all respects in Jesus Christ -- and they proceeded to seek for the pagan woman who had beguiled the people of the city and the prefect through her enchantments. And when they learnt the place where she was, they proceeded to her and found her seated on a chair; and having made her descend they dragged her along till they brought her to the great church, named Caesarion. Now this was in the days of the fast.
And they tore off her clothing and dragged her through the streets of the city till she died. And they carried her to a place named Cinaron, and they burned her body with fire. And all the people surrounded the patriarch Cyril and named him ‘the new Theophilus’; for he had destroyed the last remains of idolatry in the city.”
In fact, a Fifth Century historian recorded that Hypatia's murder took place in a newly-built church, like some psychotic consecration:
(I)t was calumniously reported among the Christian populace, that it was she who prevented Orestes from being reconciled to the bishop. Some of them therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter, waylaid her returning home, and dragging her from her carriage, they took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her by scraping her skin off with tiles and bits of shell. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them.
As brutal as that sounds, it wasn't unusual at all- it was policy. Not only pagans but Gnostics and other heterodox Christians were treated in a similar fashion as Hypatia from the time of Constantine on. And as was always the case in the ancient world- particularly in the absolute theocracy of the Roman Empire in the Fifth Century, those "political machinations" the apologists point to were religious at their core. Professor Michael Deakins:
This is the background to Hypatia's murder. In the year 412 Archbishop Theophilus died and was succeeded by his nephew Cyril. Although Theophilus had razed the temple of Serapis, he had never, in over 30 years, moved against Hypatia. In part this may very well have been a result of his friendship with Hypatia's influential and adoring pupil, Synesius of Cyrene. Synesius himself died in 413 or thereabouts, and so Hypatia was suddenly left without her powerful protectors.
Cyril, making use of a 500-strong private militia, began to exert his authority in the temporal as well as in the spiritual sphere, and thus he came into conflict with the civil governor, Orestes, in the course of a series of increasingly violent confrontations between the various factions in the city.
"Militia." Yeah, that's comforting, given current events. You see, that's the thing about history- it has lessons for us.
So who was Hypatia? Deakins again:
Imagine a time when the world's greatest living mathematician was a woman, indeed a physically beautiful woman, and a woman who was simultaneously the world's leading astronomer.
From another biography:
Throughout her childhood, Theon raised Hypatia in an environment of thought. Historians believe that Theon tried to raise the perfect human. Theon himself was a well known scholar and a professor of mathematics at the University of Alexandria. Theon and Hypatia formed a strong bond as he taught Hypatia his own knowledge and shared his passion in the search for answers to the unknown. As Hypatia grew older, she began to develop an enthusiasm for mathematics and the sciences (astronomy and astrology).
Most historians believe that Hypatia surpassed her father's knowledge at a young age. However, while Hypatia was still under her father's discipline, he also developed for her a physical routine to ensure for her a healthy body as well as a highly functional mind....
Hypatia's studies included astronomy, astrology, and mathematics. References in letters by Synesius, one of Hypatia's students, credit Hypatia with the invention of the astrolabe, a device used in studying astronomy. However, other sources date this instrument back at least a century earlier.
Here are some of the teachings of Hypatia, more relevant today than ever:
“Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing. The mind of a child accepts them, and only through great pain, perhaps even tragedy, can the child be relieved of them.”
“Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.”
“To rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world is just as base as to use force.”
“All formal dogmatic religions are delusive and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.”
“Men will fight for superstition as quickly as for the living truth - even more so, since superstition is intangible, you can't get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.”
.by Lon Milo DuQuette. "Devil be my God" is an excerpt from "Rebels and Devils: The Psychology of Liberation", New Falcon Publications, 1996, Tempe Arizona.
"In 415 CE Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria Egypt, found himself in a most awkward position. Not only was he burdened with the task of concocting viable doctrines from the muddled and conflicting traditions of the young Christian cult, he was required to do so in the most sophisticated and enlightened pagan city on earth.
Long before the alleged virgin birth of the crucified savior, Alexandria, with her celebrated schools and library, nurtured the greatest minds of the Mediterranean world and Asia. Here, religion and philosophy were lovers, and their union gave rise to dynamic environment of dialog and debate. On more than one occasion Cyril tried to glean converts from the student body of Neo-Platonic Academy, only to be stricken dumb by the discomforting realization that the fledgling philosophers were far more knowledgeable than he about the subtleties and shortcomings of his own faith. They afforded him the opportunity to suffer for his faith. His patience came to an end, however, when his faith and reputation were challenged by a brilliant and charismatic luminary of the Alexandrian School of Neo-Platonism, Hypatia-the greatest woman initiate of the ancient world.
Hypatia of Alexandria was without question the most respected and influential thinker of her day. The daughter of the great mathematician Theon, she took over her father’s honored position at the Academy and lectured there for many years. She, more than any other individual since Plotinus, the father of Neo-Platonism, grasped the profound potential of that school of thought. Her lectures were wildly popular and attracted a universal spiritual order-a supreme philosophy- an enlightened religion to unite all religions. Such was the golden promise of Neo-Platonism, and Hypatia of Alexandria was its virgin prophetess.
Troubled by the continued degeneration of the Christian movement, its intolerance of other faiths and its dangerous preoccupation with miracles and wonders, Hypatia began a series of public lectures dealing with the cult. She revealed the pagan roots of the faith and systematically unmasked the absurdities and superstitions that had infected the movement. Then, with power and eloquence surpassing that of any Christian apologist, she elucidated upon what she understood to be the true spiritual treasures found in the purported teachings of the “Christ”.
Her arguments were so persuasive that many new converts to the cult renounced their conversions and became disciples of Hypatia. Her lectures stimulated enormous interest in Christianity, but not Christianity as it was presented by Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria.
Not blessed with the strength of character necessary to suffer a personal confrontation with Hypatia, Cyril embarked upon a campaign of personal vilification by preaching to his unwashed and fanatical flock that Hypatia was a menace to the faith, a sorceress in league with the Devil. These diatribes seemed to have little effect upon the sophisticated population of urban Alexandria who were beginning to realize that Bishop Cyril’s Christianity was a cult that didn’t play well with other children. Deep in the Nitrian dessert, however, Cyril’s hateful words eventually reached the crude monastery of Peter the Reader.
Years of preaching to the wind and converting scorpions had uniquely qualified Peter to be the cleansing sword of the Prince of Peace, and the thought of a devil-possessed woman attacking his savior was more than this man of God could stomach. Mustering a rag-tag collection of fellow hermits, he marched to Alexandria where they met with officials of the Caesarean church who informed him that each afternoon the shameless Hypatia drove her own chariot from the Academy to her home. Armed only with clubs, oyster shells, and the Grace of God, Peter and his mob ambushed Hypatia in the street near the Academy. Pulling her from her chariot they dragged her to the Caesarean church where they stripped her, beat her with clubs, and finally(because of an on-going debate over the soul’s eternal status if the corpse remained whole) scraped the flesh from her bones with the oyster shells. The scoops of flesh and the rest of her remains were then carried away and burned.
The reaction of the Alexandrian community was one of confusion and shock, and the Neo-Platonist school was dealt a blow from which it never recovered, Cyril took full advantage of the situation and used the terror of the moment to further intimidate the city and establish that the will of the Christian God was to be resisted an one’s own risk.
The martyrdom of Hypatia was certainly not the first example of truth resisting evil and losing, but it did mark the beginning of a prolonged spiritual delirium tremor from which Western Civilization has never fully recovered. Even the bright souls who did not succumb to the universal madness were forced to blossom against the twisted projections of the collective nightmare.
Spiritual growth is not impossible in such an environment. But where wisdom is perceived by the world to be ignorance; love is considered sin, and all that is best in the human spirit is condemned and repressed, the road by which a seeker of enlightenment must travel takes many curious turns. On such a journey one’s companions are outlaws and rebels; sacredness breeds in blaspheme, truth falls from the lips of false prophets, heaven is sought in hell, and God is the Devil himself." --Lon Milo DuQuette
-----------------------------------------------------------------
http://secretsun.blogspot.com/2009/05/real-wonder-woman-hypatia-of-alexandria.html
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
The Real Wonder Woman: Hypatia of Alexandria
Click to viewI was waiting to see this film Agora, based on the life and death of Hypatia of Alexandria, but it never seemed to get a theatrical release. It's also very hard to find on DVD. Why is that? Well, it seems to have kicked up a controversy over its alleged anti-Christian bias and had a hard time finding an American distributor. Why?
Well, Hypatia was horrifically tortured and murdered by a Christian mob at a time when such events were business as usual. That's not a question of any kind of bias, it's simply a fact. Some apologists try to spin her murder as a result of political intrigue, but it's clear to any rational individual her death was a religious crime. Again, simply a fact.
The fact is that the Fifth Century was not a very enlightened time for the Church, especially in Egypt with its marauding monks wiping out what was left of the pagan world. Not only the temples and the statues, but also education, science, medicine, philosophy and the arts, all of which were seen as afronts to God.
To its credit, the Vatican has asked for forgiveness for many of these kinds of abuses in the past. But the lay groups that condemn movies like Agora are usually made of the kinds of people who are secretly nostalgic for heretic-cleansing. And that's where the trouble begins.
Here's an account of her death in the words of an early Church father (John, Bishop of Nikiu), who speaks quite glowingly of the event:
“And thereafter a multitude of believers in God arose under the guidance of Peter the magistrate -- now this Peter was a perfect believer in all respects in Jesus Christ -- and they proceeded to seek for the pagan woman who had beguiled the people of the city and the prefect through her enchantments. And when they learnt the place where she was, they proceeded to her and found her seated on a chair; and having made her descend they dragged her along till they brought her to the great church, named Caesarion. Now this was in the days of the fast.
And they tore off her clothing and dragged her through the streets of the city till she died. And they carried her to a place named Cinaron, and they burned her body with fire. And all the people surrounded the patriarch Cyril and named him ‘the new Theophilus’; for he had destroyed the last remains of idolatry in the city.”
In fact, a Fifth Century historian recorded that Hypatia's murder took place in a newly-built church, like some psychotic consecration:
(I)t was calumniously reported among the Christian populace, that it was she who prevented Orestes from being reconciled to the bishop. Some of them therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter, waylaid her returning home, and dragging her from her carriage, they took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her by scraping her skin off with tiles and bits of shell. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them.
As brutal as that sounds, it wasn't unusual at all- it was policy. Not only pagans but Gnostics and other heterodox Christians were treated in a similar fashion as Hypatia from the time of Constantine on. And as was always the case in the ancient world- particularly in the absolute theocracy of the Roman Empire in the Fifth Century, those "political machinations" the apologists point to were religious at their core. Professor Michael Deakins:
This is the background to Hypatia's murder. In the year 412 Archbishop Theophilus died and was succeeded by his nephew Cyril. Although Theophilus had razed the temple of Serapis, he had never, in over 30 years, moved against Hypatia. In part this may very well have been a result of his friendship with Hypatia's influential and adoring pupil, Synesius of Cyrene. Synesius himself died in 413 or thereabouts, and so Hypatia was suddenly left without her powerful protectors.
Cyril, making use of a 500-strong private militia, began to exert his authority in the temporal as well as in the spiritual sphere, and thus he came into conflict with the civil governor, Orestes, in the course of a series of increasingly violent confrontations between the various factions in the city.
"Militia." Yeah, that's comforting, given current events. You see, that's the thing about history- it has lessons for us.
So who was Hypatia? Deakins again:
Imagine a time when the world's greatest living mathematician was a woman, indeed a physically beautiful woman, and a woman who was simultaneously the world's leading astronomer.
From another biography:
Throughout her childhood, Theon raised Hypatia in an environment of thought. Historians believe that Theon tried to raise the perfect human. Theon himself was a well known scholar and a professor of mathematics at the University of Alexandria. Theon and Hypatia formed a strong bond as he taught Hypatia his own knowledge and shared his passion in the search for answers to the unknown. As Hypatia grew older, she began to develop an enthusiasm for mathematics and the sciences (astronomy and astrology).
Most historians believe that Hypatia surpassed her father's knowledge at a young age. However, while Hypatia was still under her father's discipline, he also developed for her a physical routine to ensure for her a healthy body as well as a highly functional mind....
Hypatia's studies included astronomy, astrology, and mathematics. References in letters by Synesius, one of Hypatia's students, credit Hypatia with the invention of the astrolabe, a device used in studying astronomy. However, other sources date this instrument back at least a century earlier.
Here are some of the teachings of Hypatia, more relevant today than ever:
“Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing. The mind of a child accepts them, and only through great pain, perhaps even tragedy, can the child be relieved of them.”
“Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.”
“To rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world is just as base as to use force.”
“All formal dogmatic religions are delusive and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.”
“Men will fight for superstition as quickly as for the living truth - even more so, since superstition is intangible, you can't get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.”