Michael Benson Shares The Awesome Beauty We Create When Art and Science Meet

 

Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time – Michael Benson (2014)

            Rarely do I come across a book such as this, one that brings together two of my greatest loves and creates something fabulous.  Author Michael Benson shows us how the worlds of Art and Astronomy are, and have always been, connected and complimentary, and the way he does so is so beautiful, informative, and clever that I am left in awe.  I love this book!

            The objects in our sky, the gorgeous night with its twinkling stars, shiny planets, comets, and meteors, and the beaming sky of day with the Sun and sometimes the Moon visible, have been our companions throughout the whole existence of life on our planet.  Ancient man not only saw, but understood, that the view afforded from Earth allows us to see the passage of time, and the cycles described by the motions of the heavens.  Using just plain, careful, repeated observation, and before the invention of written language, humanity catalogued stars and constellations, predicted eclipses, and calculated the Moon’s cycles.  We also created art to help us describe what we saw, from cave paintings to petroglyphs to carved or molded sculptures.  This is how we know that ancient man understood the cosmos in a deep and meaningful way, something which has been sadly lost to much of our modern human population.

            Cosmigraphics collects some of the most amazing images and artwork created by us to describe the heavens above and our Earth below.  This book captures the artistic legacy of the visual explorations of our cosmos, and provides wonderfully descriptive and informative text with each image.  This book is divided into sections exploring the idea of Creation, our Earth, the Moon, the Sun, the structure of the Universe, etc.  Each chapter is so gorgeous and so indicative of the immense genius required to not only grasp infinitely complex ideas but to also portray them in a visual manner, that they allow for the dissemination of information and the spread of wisdom.  These images tell a million stories.  They are beautiful in their own right, and worthy of the appreciation we rightfully lay upon masterpieces by the likes of Michelangelo or Picasso.

            We marvel at the heavens, and have always done so.  As our scientific knowledge grew, our ideas of the universe grew.  Whereas ancient man had deduced that the Earth is spherical, it was accepted doctrine that the Earth was the center of all creation (Bible bias, always), and that, according to early Greek philosophers, what we see in the sky corresponds to sequential “shells” with each carrying different denizens of the sky.  It was accepted belief that the Moon rotated around the Earth in its own sphere, then the Sun, then each known planet.  At the time, this was Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.  Beyond the planetary “spheres” was a celestial sphere containing the stars in heaven, all fixed and immovable.  It took centuries of human observation, and the perfection of lenses and the telescope, for us to understand that there are no “shells”, that the heavens do move, that our Sun is the center of our solar system, that the planets all rotate around the Sun and not Earth, and that the stars themselves are ridiculously far away from our personal solar system.  Even so, it was assumed that the whole of existence fit within our galaxy, a self-contained universe we refer to as the Milky Way.

            Astronomers and other scientists improved on the initial telescopes, and with the new-found clarity of vision, were able to discern that many of the objects in our night sky were not nebulas internal to the Milky Way, but actually their own island universes, located an inconceivable distance from our own galaxy.  Each new discovery shrunk the old world dictated by religious dogma and human make-em-up, and increased the scope of vision allowed to a human being.  As our knowledge of the universe, its galaxies, and the overall structure of it grew, the idea that humanity was the single reason for everything to exist also dissipated, much to the chagrin of every deluded, brain-dead, dogmatically religious idiot whose entire world-view is based in blind belief and obedience to thousand-year old make-believe. 

            With every new discovery, with every new tool we create to explore our universe, we find more wonder and weirdness than we could ever have imagined. There used to be just one Sun.  Now we know that our galaxy, the cloudy band of light in our night sky called the Milky Way, is composed of billions of individual stars.  We know that outside of our galaxy lie countless trillions of other galaxies, each with their infinity of suns and planets. Hell we even know that everything we can see in the sky above is just a small part of the entire universe.  Estimates now posit our Universe is on the order of 13-15 billion years old, and nearly unimaginably vast, but we can only observe about 36 billion light years distance in any direction.  In its early stages, spacetime itself expanded faster than light, causing much of the Universe to remain occulted from our vantage point.  Any observer on a planet over 36 billion light years away from us would not be able to see Earth either.  It is these type of realities that, while factually and verifiably true, crash against our ideas of “common sense.”  Common sense stated that, if the Earth were actually rotating, all plants, animals, and water would be flung off the planet! (They did not know about gravitation, just as humans in the 1800’s did not know about radiation.  Who knows what all-encompassing truths of the Universe we remain ignorant of today in 2026!)

            Many of my intellectual heroes utilized both Art and Science in their work.  Leonardo da Vinci fused art, science, and engineering in ways we are still coming to grips with today.  Even Richard Feynman, physicist extraordinaire, created a visual and artistic way of describing particle interactions with diagrams named after him still used today to explain quantum processes.  Galileo’s observations of Jupiter and his discovery of its visible moons would not have had the impact they had without his daily drawings of the gas giant and it’s satellites.  These beautiful drawings are included in Cosmigraphics.  An image is truly worth a thousand words and Galileo’s drawings helped to simplify the results from exceedingly complex visual observations, allowing the rest of us to grasp his discoveries. 

            Science, the scientific method specifically, is how we understand the basic truths of our existence.  Art is how we communicate those found truths, whether personal or universal.  In Cosmigraphics, Michael Benson catalogues and examines the confluence of Science and Art, and expands our collective minds in doing so successfully.  This is a masterpiece of artistic and scientific exposition, and I hope someday to find a copy for my own collection.  Almost nothing that we humans do is isolated.  Every field of human endeavor touches every other field, and we are better off for it.  The specialization of humanity’s explorations have led to amazing discoveries, but it is the space between the specialists, the diffuse and vague areas between concrete ideas, where the true synergy of life occurs.  We would all be better off if we recognized this fact and lived our lives accordingly.  If you know of anyone interested in science, art, or the history of humanity’s exploration of our universe, this is the book for them.  It is highly recommended.

(This amazing book can be purchased here: https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/cosmigraphics/author/michael-benson/ )

Pamela Berger Shows How We Devalued the Mother Goddess, Even As We Continued To Ask For Her Help

 

The Goddess Obscured: Transformation of the Grain Protrectress from Goddess to Saint – Pamela Berger (1985)

            Ahhh, the Grain Miracle. What is the Grain Miracle, you may ask?  It is a tale as old as humanity, from a bygone time when agriculture and its yearly seasonal cycles held deeply symbolic and spiritual meanings for us humans.  The story of the Grain Miracle helped us understand the connection between the life of plants and the life within us humans, as well as the correlation between the fecundity of human females and the fecundity of the Earth under our feet.  Even long after the initial impetus for the story was forgotten, or willfully erased, the tale continued its path through the collective consciousness of humanity, altered and shaped to fit the whims of whatever organized religion rose to prominence at the time.

            The original Grain Miracle story arose from our deep past.  Initially a story about the Great Mother Goddess, the divine being that brought forth all life in our world, it was passed on through oral tradition for millennia.  The story goes thusly, The Great Goddess is being pursued, and she arrives at a field, freshly sown by a farmer.  She asks the farmer to help her by telling her pursuers that she had passed by when the grain was freshly planted.  Upon saying this, the grain miraculously grows tall and full of seed, so, when the pursuer soon arrives and is told by the farmer that the Goddess passed by when the field was freshly planted (the truth!), he sees the full growth of grain, and calls off the chase, believing the Goddess to have passed by long before.  What originally served as an allegory for the cyclical nature of growth and death experienced by the initial farming humans was adapted and reformatted to fit in with the current religious ideals, first for the pantheistic religions of ancient Mesopotamia, Europe and Greece, and then for the monotheistic Abrahamic religions.  The main character, the Earth Goddess herself, slowly morphed into a lower deity, then a sainted human, until finally the story was shaped by the catholic church to refer to Mary, the mother of Jesus.

            Humans are shaped by our pattern recognition.  It is one of the skills inherent to our over-developed brains.  We are so good at it that we see patterns where there are none! (For example, visual pareidolia is the scientific name for our ability to see visual patterns, most often faces, in what is otherwise an ambiguous visual field.  This is the “skill” utilized by anyone gazing up at cloud formations, and seeing familiar shapes within.)   This ability to recognize pattern, especially throughout a period of time, is the foundation of much of our cognitive ability.

The largest, all-encompassing pattern on our planet Earth is the yearly cycle of the seasons.  The annual progression from the dead cold of Winter to the warming Spring to the full Sun of Summer to the rains and cooling temperatures of Autumn, and back again to Winter, could not be ignored.  It could also not be ignored that Life seemingly “died” every Winter, only to be “reborn” again in the Spring.  The cycle of the seasons provided the first repeated structures of Life to early humans.  The menstrual cycle of human females provided the second repeated structure.  These two events were not seen as separate by ancient man.  Instead, they were seen as mirrors of one another, as part of the all-encompassing whole of Life.  Ancient man understood that much of the animal world matched the cycles of the plant world, with most of the creatures familiar to us using Spring to impregnate each other, allowing for babies to be born during the plentiful time of the year, and to grow big, strong and fat in time for the hardships of Winter.

With those two cycles in mind, ancient man created allegories, seeking to not only understand the cycles, but to transmit that knowledge to the succeeding generations.  The Grain Miracle arose from the very ancient rituals associated with the planting of seed after the cold Winter.  For over ten thousand years, the arrival of Spring coincided with planting and with the awakening of the natural world.  Ancient humans understood that death precedes life in all things.  They understood that in Winter, the ground “dies” and is then “reborn” once the all-powerful Sun returns in its full glory.  What we call farming was rudimentary in the extreme, and therefore required supernatural help to ensure a good crop and bountiful harvest.  The Great Goddess, symbol of all that is reproductive, was asked to bless the fields before planting. 

According to Pamela Berger’s intensive research, this “blessing” formed into a ritual which humanity carried forward and continued over millennia, all the way up to our modern day.  On the arrival of Spring, (usually sometime in February), before the fields were plowed or furrowed, a figure of the Goddess was put on a cart, and driven around the field to be planted three times, all the while the people supplicated the Goddess with song and dance in order to bless the field, bless the grain to be planted, and bless the natural world to provide good air and rain and sunlight.  Women would bare their breasts as symbols of fecundity, and once completed, the ceremonies ended with revelry, for everyone was satisfied that a great crop of food was to come. In a time before our modern meteorological knowledge, before the use of fertilizers, pest control, etc., planting a field was a seriously risky endeavor.  Birds would eat the planted seed.  Animals such as shrews and deer would eat the young shoots.  Drought, flooding, or unexpected heat or frost would destroy an entire crop, leaving families to starve.  Most families grew their own food, and if unsuccessful, then entire regions could descend into mass-starvation.  The importance of a good harvest was paramount, and the blessing by the Mother Goddess was crucial to the process.

Sometime in the past five thousand years, the matriarchal, Mother Goddess worshipping tribes of what is now Europe were invaded by patriarchal hordes, bringing with them their male, all-powerful, sky deities.  As these male-oriented religions flourished, the Mother Goddess was reduced in scope and power, and transmuted into lesser goddesses, such as Artemis, Asherah, Hera, Cybele, etc.  It was after this societal change that the Grain Miracle stories began, seeking to maintain the respect and adoration of the goddess responsible for their crop’s successes.  The tale initially referred to the goddess, pursued by one of the powerful, invading male gods.  As mentioned above, she came across a farmer sowing his fields, and asked the farmer to tell her pursuers that she had passed by at the time of planting, whereupon the planted seed would miraculously sprout and grow to full height.  This would confuse the pursuers, leaving the goddess to escape.  This became one of the stories sung during the annual procession around the farmer’s fields and served as an allegorical reminder of the past Goddess worship.

The slow demotion of the Goddess continued apace after the christian church codified its dogma and beliefs.  They could not stand to see humans celebrating what they saw as “pagan” rituals and demons.  Their extreme patriarchy and hatred of anything related to female sexuality sought to completely subvert the natural world, the world where females are the source of life, where Mother Earth was seen as a womb, providing life to the planet.  Instead of a Great Mother birthing us all, they somehow managed to get everyone to believe that a male god, and a male Holy Spirit, birthed a male son.  The role of woman was so denigrated that the church, in its never-ending willful stupidity, decided that Jesus’ mom was a chaste virgin, and that she remained a chaste virgin her entire life. (the only ”good” woman is an a-sexual one, according to those deranged perverts they call priests.)  They willfully ignore the specific passages in the New Testament that detail how Mary had to “cleanse” herself after the birth of Jesus, something done by Jewish women to prepare their bodies for the next sexual occasion and possible next pregnancy.  The fear of women from seemingly powerful men is so pathetic and pointless.  It shows just how weak, spineless and corrupt they are.

It is in this mess that the Grain Miracle was transposed from minor pantheistic goddesses to the only female worth worshipping, according to the christian theologians, idiots all.  Instead of a goddess fleeing, the protagonist of the story was changed to one of many early female christian martyrs, eventually settling on Mary. Appending the Grain Miracle to the story of the Flight from Egypt was the only logical choice, and the tale was then dispersed that as they fled Egypt, the holy family asked a farmer to tell King Herod’s men that they had passed by when the seed was just planted, but of course, either Mary, or Jesus caused a miraculous growth, fooling King Herod and his men. 

Even through the repression of the Goddess, these rituals continued, for they spoke something deep and important to the people that work the fields and raise the food we all eat.  Throughout all the changes and thematic drift of the Grain Miracle stories, the simple truths persisted.  Life is cyclical.  The world is a womb, just like all women possess.  The female is the life provider, and the male is just along for the ride (pun intended).  Weak men fear the Female aspect of life.  It is a force too powerful for them to understand.  They seek to lift themselves up by subsuming women, as if that would somehow negate the awesome life-providing continuity which the blessing of childbirth brings and for which the female body was rightfully worshipped through most of human history.  It is through the effort of people like Pamela Berger that we manage to connect history, myth, folklore, and local tales, thereby allowing us modern humans to grasp the ideals and dreams of our ancestors.  For a fairly short book, this tome manages to explore an idea vast and deep within our collective mindtime.  It is highly recommended.

(This book can be purchased here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/204036/goddess-obscured-by-pamela-c-berger/ )

Joan Halifax Elucidates the World of the Shaman for us Wanna-be's

 

Shaman: The Wounded Healer – Joan Halifax (1982)

 

            Sometimes the good books just keep coming!  Whether through synchronicity, plain coincidence, or just dumb luck, this amazing book found its way to my hands, and I am exceedingly glad it did.  Joan Halifax has managed that most-rare of feats, to write a slender volume packed with information and wisdom that is able to elucidate exactly what a shaman is, how they come to be, how their visions and experiences are seemingly universal, and how shamans themselves communicate about the experiences they endure for the betterment or benefit of the tribe around them.  It is eye-opening and quite a departure from the many other ethnographic and historical books I have read about shamanism and the role of the shaman in their respective cultures.

            In a very real and basic sense, the shaman is the one tasked with experiencing pain, death, and rebirth in order for them to understand and act upon the various otherworldly forces and powers that threaten, disrupt, or wrongly influence the tribespeople.  This is why this book is titled “the Wounded Healer.”  Only someone with the experience of death and rebirth can travel the worlds above and below ours.  Only they can talk to the spirits, travel through space and time, and come back to our mortal coil safely with their consciousness intact.

            Joan Halifax describes the various symbols which seem to be near-universal among shamans worldwide.  Some of them, such as the eagle, are emblematic of the shaman’s spirit rising to the world above.  Other symbols, such as the swan, or the water lily, serve as stand-ins for the shaman, for they not only inhabit, but thrive, in all three realms.  The Swan is just as comfortable flying in the heavens, walking around on land, and swimming on and in deep waters, just as the shaman is comfortable existing in our world, the underworld of demons and primal forces, and the aboveworld of the divine and beneficent spirits.  One universal symbol of shamanism is the World Tree, which serves as the Axis Mundi, or center of the world.  The roots of the World Tree reach down into the primordial lower world.  The trunk rises through our corporeal world, and the top of the World Tree reaches into the heavens.  It is this World Tree that shamans “climb” in their journeys and initiations.  The pictographs and artwork showing the World Tree are found everywhere humanity exists.

            One of the most profound statements in this book is a quote from an Iglulik Eskimo (Inuit) shaman told to the explorer Knud Rasmussen,

            “The greatest peril of life lies in the fact that human food consists entirely of souls.  All the creatures that we have to kill and eat, all those that we have to strike down and destroy to make clothes for ourselves, have souls, souls that do not perish with the body and which must therefore be (pacified) lest they should revenge themselves on us for taking away their bodies.”

            It is this truth that runs through all shamanistic activity.  If we have souls, then everything has souls, and because of that, everything has its own consciousness.  Shamans do not claim that a stone is as intelligent as a human, but they do claim that the stone has its inherent right to exist just as we do, and that it carries a form of consciousness which is far older than short-lived human creatures.  The same is true for everything we see around us, including mother Earth, and the Universe itself.

            Shamans know that the process of creation, the birth of the Universe and of Life, is always ongoing.  They also are aware that the process of destruction, of the end of things, is also constantly occurring.  They do not see Time as a linear, step-by-step process, like a recipe, or a list of Ikea furniture instructions.  Everything exists in the ever-present Now, and only our faulty human senses show the world to be past, present, and future.  This is how the energy of creation can be harnessed by the shamans, and how they lose the fear of inevitable destruction that we all experience as the fear of death.  It makes for a powerful, if lonely existence. 

Most shamans lead solitary lives, devoted to their calling, and do not interact much with the tribes they protect.  The wisdom and experience gained by their shamanistic initiations and study distance them from the everyday people they serve.  Many people fear the shaman and their powers, yet they are an invaluable and requisite part of human society.  Our modern world, with its emphasis on technology and scientific advancement, has turned its back on shamans, but even so, individual humans seek out and explore the shamanistic way.  Something in our nature is drawn to the unknown, to the rarely explored, and many of us are especially attracted to the inner life of the mind.  The shamans are still all around us, separating themselves from the day-to-day static noise we call human endeavor, exploring that which cannot be seen, and holding the forces of the universe at bay for the rest of us.

Fred Gettings Gives us Eyes to See and Ears to Hear

 

 The Occult in Art – Fred Gettings (1978)

            “Occultism is the study of the spiritual world which is hidden from ordinary vision.  The word itself is derived from the Latin occulta, ‘hidden things’, and implies that the visible world is not the only one of importance to man.”

            Thus begins the most enlightening and insightful book on the occult images and ideas hidden in classical art I have ever come across.  This Library I work for is a GOLD MINE!  Born in 1937, Fred Gettings wrote extensively on occult and symbological matters, publishing many works before his death in 2013.  This book deals specifically with artists who embedded hidden imagery or knowledge within their artwork, and how to best “read” these works to understand the occult information conveyed within.

            First, I must define the “Occult” and what it means in this context.  As stated in the quote above, occult knowledge just means hidden knowledge.  Too many people buy into the lie told by christian leaders that occult knowledge is inherently evil, or satanic.  This is how they scare the deluded idiots into not asking questions or making their own decisions.  For example, when telling very young children about procreation, the story of the stork is often used.  This story occults the true process of procreation (carnal fornication, male ejaculation inside the female, and the coming together of two zygotes to form a living cell, which then splits and splits, cells differentiating, until a baby is popped out the vaginal tube, ready to breathe the good air of this world), replacing it with an inert and inoffensive tale of a stork that delivers all new babies to their mothers.  Until the child grows up and is taught, or discovers, the actual truth of procreation that knowledge is willfully occulted.  The reality has been hidden from children for their own good, or so many parents used to think.  This is also how religious and political leaders think of the great unwashed masses of humans outside their castles, temples, and private mansions.

            Fred Gettings was exasperated with the state of art criticism and art history at the time of his writing this work.  He was adamant that to understand the art of the past, historians and critics must take into account the intended purposes and meanings portrayed in the art itself, many of which related to the occulted knowledge shared by mystery schools, secret religious orders, and others who seek to retain and disseminate these ancient ideas.  Gettings’ complaints about art critics and historians still ring true today.  Too many art critics analyze work from the past through a very modern lens, one that places importance on modern artistic ideals, instead of the ideals of the artists in question.

            For example, one may view a 300-year-old painting of the crucifixion, which, through modern eyes and ideas, can be analyzed structurally, compositionally, and emotionally.  It is a valid form of criticism, but it leaves out the most important part of the artwork, the theme and subject, as well as the artist’s personal connection to the image he or she created.  William Blake was a well-known mystic and weirdo, yet many of the modern analysis and critiques of his work ignore that most salient point.  Each of Blake’s artworks come from a place of deep wonder and exploration into the metaphysical and spiritual inner mind of man.  In order to share those ideas in a visual medium, new symbols and metaphors must be created.  These symbols and the compositional elements are what Fred Gettings masterfully describes.

            Occult knowledge has a deep human past.  Initially drawn from the ancient Mystery schools that kept the advanced knowledge of our world and universe secret and safe amongst chosen initiates and away from the ignorant and violent masses, this knowledge has reached our modern world, surviving the past two thousand years of omnipresent suppression by the Catholic Church.  Many of the early christians had deeply symbolic and mythical ideas about the trinity, the divinity of Jesus, and the role of man in the cosmos.  It is man’s place in the world that many of the artists in this book analyze and explore.  Because of this, great insight is gained into the work of William Blake, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and other masters.  It is impressive how occult knowledge influenced the creation of abstract art, something modern critics fail to recognize, even as it stares them in the face.

            The main way to maintain occult knowledge and to share it with subsequent generations is through architecture.  It lasts much longer than written texts, or painted images.  The modern fraternal organization of Freemasonry is one of the descendants, at least in spirit, of the early secret societies.  During the first thousand years of organized christianity the builders of the churches designed and decorated them with many occult symbols and ideas.  If the wisdom is displayed in stone, it is available to any and all, even the illiterate and uneducated.  Including esoteric teachings and wisdom in images and architectural details ensured that only those “with eyes to see and ears to hear” understood the message, preserving the hidden knowledge from those that seek to destroy it, namely, the catholic church that styles itself as the supreme arbiter of what is real, important, christian, holy, etc. 

Fred Gettings is clear and concise in his explanations, and astute in his observations.  His attempt to share the hidden world of art serves to expand the mind, and open it up to new ways of seeing, of learning, and of understanding the artistic creations of our ancestors.  I look forward to digging up some more of Mr. Gettings insightful books, and sharing my thoughts about them with my readers.

Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince, reviled by many, may be the most important book ever written about Power and Leadership

 

The Prince – Niccolo Machiavelli (1532)

            Where can I begin? It is hard to say when it comes to the  diplomat, politician and writer Nicolo Machiavelli.  For one, he lived at a time of great tumult in the peninsula we now refer to as Italy.  City-states would war against each other.  Princes from foreign countries would take turns assisting and then attacking various fiefdoms and principalities.  Naples hated Florence.  Pisa hated Naples. The Tuscans hated Pisa.  It was endless.  Nicolo Machiavelli, considered a good public servant, was at times placed in powerful and prestigious political positions, where he availed himself very well.  When revolts happened, as they so often did back then, Nicolo would end up displaced and exiled, only to be asked back by a new leadership.  Eventually, Nicolo Machiavelli was arrested and placed in custody.  He was a middle-aged man at that time, and this is when he began to write the works we know him for today.  Preeminent among them is The Prince, an amazing work of political genius, detailing the lessons Nicolo learned watching, assisting, and escaping from, various princes and kings.

            I learned all of the above once I started reading The Prince, as I did some research into Nicolo Machiavelli’s life.  I mention this because the general knowledge I had on Machiavelli was nearly complete hyperbole.  The name Machiavelli, and the term “Machiavellian,” have come to signify a person without scruples, willing to do anything, even hurt his own people, in order to gain and keep power.  This is a massive over-simplification of what Machiavelli states in his book.  It helps to understand that Nicolo Machiavelli did not begin to write the works we know him for until a regime change in his home forced him into incarceration.  It was as a prisoner that he focused his thoughts and had the time to write, distilling the chaos of the warring nations of Europe and the Italian city-states, as well as the various traits witnessed in the countless princes, kings, regents, governors, etc. whose fortunes rose and fell with the political tide.

            During his incarceration, Machiavelli had time to process his experiences.  Using the books he brought with him, he proceeded to distill the wisdom learned during a lifetime of study and civic duty.  The work that ensued, The Prince, is a masterpiece of political wisdom.

            The first chapters are devoted to explaining the different types of state, and how they are acquired.  He describes the two basic ones, Republics and Principalities, and goes into greater detail about the principalities.  Machiavelli discusses hereditary principalities, those received through a family line, and describes how these type of states have the least difficulty in being held by their prince.  The country and people are long-accustomed to the reigning family, and will continue to support the Prince, unless he is of an extremely low character. 

Mixed principalities are also discussed.  These arise either as new states, or as part of an older country that has decided to form its own government.  New leaders burden the people, forcing them to accommodate strangers, feed invader armies, etc.  Many enemies are created, both the locals who have seen their leaders killed and replaced, and the previous enemies of the new prince, who rail at seeing the prince gain new territory and wealth.  This makes for a very unsteady prince, ripe for revolution, or invasion.  Referring to a new principality located in a foreign land with foreign language, Machiavelli suggests it is far better to create a colony than to erase the old rule completely.  The successful new prince will relocate himself to the new land, to better allow the people to see him, and to better cut off any rise in revolt.  The new prince should make himself the defender and leader of the less powerful neighbors as well, for this keeps a new foreigner from taking over once the people are fed up with the latest prince.

Machiavelli, often in this book, will distill his ideas into statements that, when read out of context, seem like the stereotypical “Machiavellian” ideas.  For example, in discussing the situation explained above, Machiavelli states the following, “…one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.”  This seems cold and calculating, but the mind and decisions of a prince cannot be held to the same morality as that of a peasant.  The enemies of a common person can cause much harm, but the enemies of a prince can destroy whole nations.

In reference to the mighty Roman Empire, Machiavelli states that the reason the empire lasted so long, and was able to annex and absorb countries and peoples from far and wide, was because, for the most part, Rome was not a conqueror of nations.  Rome, instead, would be asked to come take over a region, which they would do via the use of colonial methods.  They would support the neighboring states, but not let them get too powerful.  They kept down the greater powers of their strong enemies, and never allowed them to gain any authority.  The Romans, foreseeing trouble, would immediately take action, never letting any resentment breed into revolution.

Throughout the Prince, Machiavelli provides detailed examples from history.  During his life, France had detached itself from the Roman Catholic Church, which caused the church to rise in power in the neighboring states of Spain and Italy.  The church then helped the princes of Spain and Italy attack France at every turn.  Machiavelli states the following, “From this a general rule is drawn which never or rarely fails: that he who is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined; because that predominancy has been brought about either by astuteness or else by force, and both are distrusted by him who has been raised to power.”

There are too many examples throughout human history showing this to be a truth. New leaders distrust those that helped them achieve their goal, for they may very easily help someone else replace them.  The true genius of Machiavelli was his ability to distill wisdom and experience down to the bare bones.  The most complex of ideas are shared in a way that allows us, nearly half a millennia later, to understand the concepts in a rich and subtle manner.

Machiavelli discusses how and why princes use soldiers and mercenaries.  He details why homegrown soldiers are always preferable, and gives examples of lords and princes whose demise came about due to their injudicious use of their armies.  For example, a chapter is devoted to the ways that the descendants of Alexander managed to maintain control of the kingdom taken from Darius after the great Alexander’s death.  Other chapters explain the difference in holding a kingdom won by one’s own arms and people, a kingdom won by the use of other’s arms and people, or a kingdom won by wickedness. 

Just as there are many ways to gain power, there are an equal number of ways to lose it.  Machiavelli goes into great detail discussing the many issues princes must face and the best ways to handle them.  It is here that many interpreters and readers seem to misunderstand Machiavelli’s intent.  Much like the naturalist who seeks to describe the life of an apex predator, (and most princes and lords are indeed apex predators), Machiavelli needs to explain in an unbiased and, to modern ears, callous manner exactly what works and does not work in maintaining a kingdom.  He is not discussing how to best be a “good” king.”  He is merely expounding on how to best become, and stay, a king. 

A normal person’s actions may affect a few dozen people, but a prince’s actions affect whole nations.  There is not one decision that a prince makes that does not injure someone, either by actual physical, fiduciary, or psychological harm.  Choosing an ambassador, for instance, can grant a person great prestige and rank, but, to those considered but not chosen for the position, enmity and hate can and do arise.  Deciding to send aid to an ally can enrage the people of one’s kingdom who are hungry, or desperate.  Marrying a princess from one nation can cause another nation to wage war on you.  It is for these situations, unusual or unknown to the common man, that Machiavelli applies his wisdom.

A key chapter discusses whether it is best to be loved or feared as a leader.  Machiavelli does not hold back.  Even though love is the Christian virtue, and what all men should seek to share and spread amongst each other, a prince that is loved is in a far more tenuous position than one who is feared.  All it takes is one mistake, one error in judgement, one scandal, and the people whose love was taken for granted can and do turn on a leader with vehemence.  A prince who is loved has a hard time determining who may be lying or plotting.  A prince who is a fair man, but harsh in his punishments, will come to be feared and respected.  The fear comes from an honest place of not wanting to offend or draw the ire of the prince.  The trick for both loved and feared leaders is to work hard to make certain that the fear or love does not transmute into Hate.  A hated prince is in the worst position, for both his allies and enemies can easily find common ground.  There is no safety for a hated prince.  If lucky he may just get deposed, but for the most part, hated leaders end up in tragedy.  They are tortured and killed.  Their families are killed.  Their friends are killed.  Those in the government that worked closely with them are killed.  A hated leader will bring the worst out in humanity.

Machiavelli clearly states that it is best for a leader to be feared.  If not feared, it is better for him to be loved.  These are both abstract and concrete truths.  Machiavelli writes, “…men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”  Machiavelli was not an idealist.  He understood that man is driven by need and desire.  Most people do not care who their prince is.  They just want stability and fairness, regardless of who is in power.  They will only love you if it is to their advantage to do so.  Princes work by rules and so do the people.  A prince whose people see as soft or weak will have his wealth and power slowly and surely eaten away, especially by those closest to him.  A feared prince, however, helps maintain a level of order and place, for a subject must know and accept that they are a subject, just as a leader must know and accept that they are a leader, and fear comes with the territory.  We all know parents whose children pay them no mind, who lack the inherent respect a child should have for their mother or father.  Machiavelli knew that princes see themselves as the father figure for their nation or kingdom.  A smart prince will see that his children/subjects have a healthy fear and respect of his powers.

Frankly, I could write so much more about this relatively short book.  I feel I have just scratched the surface of the countless subjects Machiavelli touches on.  There are writers I have come across who use language freely, writing endless pages and chapters, merely to share a wisdom better served through a short, succinct statement.  Machiavelli is the exact opposite.  He brings so much knowledge, experience, and wisdom to the writing of the Prince that each sentence is loaded with meaning.  This is best type of writing.  It has survived to be read, studied, and pilloried these many centuries because of its inherent value.  Anyone who will rise, or seeks to rise, to a position of power, whether as a leader of a company, city, state, or nation, should read this book carefully.  It provides the most sage advice and profound warnings while sharing the best historical precedents.  There is no fluff in this work.  These doughnuts are all jelly.  I highly recommend this to anyone willing to ignore the cult of personality built around Nicolo Machiavelli.  It will expand your mind and provide you with a deeper understanding of the politics and power plays we experience today, almost five hundred years after Machiavelli laid it all down in his prison cell, (especially if you have just finished watching the series finale of Succession on the HBO). 

(This book can be downloaded and/or read here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm )

 

♦

Charles-François Dupuis shared the truth with us over 200 years ago

 

The Origin of All Religious Worship - Charles-François Dupuis (1795)

 

            One of the very best things about books is that they can transport a reader anywhere and to any time.  Most people love old fiction works specifically for this reason.  I adore older non-fiction books, especially ones that deal with deep exploration of a given subject.  I especially enjoy finding and reading the old books used as references for the more modern works I read.  I have read widely in comparative religion and mythology over the past decade.  There are few seminal works, and Dupuis’ “The Origin of All Religious Worship” is one such masterwork.  It has taken me months to digest it all.

            People remember the French Revolution alongside the American one as a battle to usurp monarchy and instill democracy.  While this is technically correct, what they were fighting against was the power that the European monarchies and the Roman Catholic Church had consolidated in the 1500-1700’s.  For centuries, the super-rich aristocracy and the super-rich Papacy joined teams to control nations and to plunder their wealth for themselves. The scientific method along with obsessive rationality led French leaders to denounce the church, the evils they commit under the guise of “religion,” and everything they teach.  In order to have evidence against the church, to fight the centuries of lies and obfuscation, geniuses like Dupuis sought to study just why the church acts as it does, and where they got their theological ideas.  Before the modern study of comparative religion and mythology, Dupuis set out to explore the historical past of religious worship.  What follows in this book is a detailed excoriation detailing why everything taught by all priests from all religions is sadistic and willful untruth seeking to blind the eyes of the people.  It is awesome.

            Since truly ancient times, the only real concern of humanity has been to study the heavens.  Once the ancient humans understood that the seasons were cyclical, that around the same time each year the days would get longer, signaling the return of spring and summer, they began to understand the world around them and their place in it.  There was a large, overarching pattern to the world and humans lived in harmony with it.  One hundred thousand years ago, there was no thought of “rational” versus “spiritual,” or of “natural” versus “supernatural.”  These are all recent inventions.  The world of ancient humans was equal parts what they saw and experienced, what they dreamed, and what they imagined. 

Dupuis goes back as far as recorded history lets him, considering he lived in the late 1700’s.  While there existed civilizations before the ancient Egyptians, their culture amalgamated and absorbed the wisdom of all the previous millennia.  Ancient man would describe what they saw in the heavens through allusion, metaphor, and anthropomorphism.  They saw patterns in the stars, which, to their eye, never changed.  These became the constellations.  Initially meant purely as a visual code to describe the locations of the stars, the constellations helped mark the passage of the year.  The Sun would rise in the sky in front of a different constellation every month for a year, and then repeat itself.  During parts of the year, the daylight hours grew compared to the nighttime hours, and at the opposite end of the year, the nighttime hours grew while the daylight shrank.  At two specific points each year, the ancient sages noted that the hours of day and night were equal.  These are now referred to as the Spring and Autumnal Equinoxes.

The Spring equinox seemed a perfect time for ancient humanity to designate as the beginning of the yearly cycle.  It marks the day that the warmth and life-giving properties of the Sun start to increase in influence over the Earth (at least for the people in the Northern Hemisphere.  Throughout much of human history, most of our species has lived above the equator.  This includes the ancient cultures of Egypt, India, China, and Mesopotamia.  It is because of this that astrology and such things are north-biased.  The stars that are visible from the southern hemisphere are different from those that make up what most humans call the Zodiac and were one of the reasons ancient sea-faring humans understood the Earth is a sphere.)  Fall and Winter were times where the Sun’s living force diminished.  In Spring and Summer the Sun’s energies were in full power. 

Our recent ancestors did not know of the procession of the stars, something that occurs because our Earth is not only rotating, but also wobbling in space.  Our ancient forebears knew better.  Before around 14,000 years ago, the Spring equinox Sun would rise in the constellation of Taurus, or the Bull, and the Egyptians would sacrifice the apis Bull on that date, signaling the new year.   For the past few thousands of years, the Spring Sun rises in Aries, or the Ram.  On the Spring Equinox, Christians celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ, a stand-in for the Sun in its yearly journey.  Ancient Hebrews would sacrifice lambs, and the Christ is symbolized by the ‘Lamb” for this very reason.  In a few thousand years, the Spring Sun will rise in Aquarius and humanity’s gods will be altered to match.  Each human culture shared this information through their myths and legends.  Ancient stories of Heracles/Hercules were poetic representations of the Sun’s path through the constellations each year.   Each of his Labors correspond to a different constellation.  Dupuis describes this in depth, even explaining how the ancient poets included stars adjacent to the constellation in the epics, disguised but understandable to those with astronomical knowledge. 

Other of our collective human myths are analyzed by Dupuis, each one shown to be a poetic and allusion-filled description of the path of our Sun as it rises in front of a different constellation each month.  From the ancient Vedas of East Asia, to the Osiris myths of Egypt, to the Dionysian myths of the Mediterranean, to the Zoroastrian founding myths, all are shown to be, at their core, astronomical in nature.  He shows how every religion’s main stories come from an attempt to explain the workings of the Heavens, with each god, all the way up to Jesus, being a stand-in for our beneficent and all-powerful Sun, the true life-giver of our world.

It is this idea that is the basis for the main thrust of this work.  Charles-François Dupuis had grand goals when he set out to write this book.  He wanted to provide clear and irrefutable evidence that the many man-made religions and cults that exist in our history took as their basis either a willful or an ignorant misunderstanding of what the ancient poets wrote in the legends.  The genius of our ancient sages lay in the ability to describe the world around them in a way that could be transmitted and repeated by oral means.  These stories eventually became codified by scribes writing in clay or papyrus. 

Dupuis points out one thing that corrupts ancient wisdom.  As long as there have been humans, there have been some among us who seek to increase their wealth and/or power by using our collective knowledge to control and train the rest of us.  These are the sacerdotal classes; whether shamans, rabbis, magi, or priests, and their sole reason for existence is to create the illusion that they are the only ones capable to providing a lowly human with the divine truths.  Before priests, all humans were equally informed and aware of these universal truths.  The Sun provides warmth and life.  The Earth completes a full cycle every year.  Winter is followed by spring is followed by summer, etc.  We are all part of the whole.  The sun is divine.  We, like all life, contain a piece of the divine within us, and when we die, that energy will dissolve back into the universe.  This used to be basic wisdom, sacred wisdom, showing the interconnectedness of everything in creation.  The ancients did not differentiate between good things and bad things.  Anything and everything could be either, at any time, depending on how and who was utilizing it.  Our living spark comes from the Sun and returns to the Sun after death.

Before priests and the sacerdotal classes could use the old wisdom to control the people something else had to happen.  This is something that is hard to pin down, but Dupuis has done a masterful job of it.  The ancient oral wisdom, allegories meant to provide information about the heavens and the yearly cycles began then to be interpreted in non-allegorical ways.  Instead of understanding that the heroes of myth, Osiris, Heracles, were stand-ins for the mighty and all-powerful Sun, “wise men” began to postulate that they were real, actual people, humans who had lived and been so inspired as to become like gods themselves.  A second and critical jump was the dogmatic assertion that, since the Sun/God was all good, there are things in the universe that are all-bad.  They created polar enemies, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Jehovah and Satan, to foster the lie that the universe is a constant battle between that which is good, and that which is evil.  Of course, the priests/rabbis/cult leaders/shamans/gurus were the only ones among us all to know the “true path” to divinity, and to avoid eternal damnation.  It is the oldest grift in the world, to demand that someone behave as you ask in life, while promising riches and peace in death, promises they know they cannot deliver.  In this manner, all form of religion manages to leech the wealth and riches of the populace, continuing to this very day.  Most religions seem to think the living Earth is a pit of despair, abounding in horrors, and that the only true life is the “eternal” life that they promise after death.  This is a sick and twisted view, directly opposite of the wisdom our ancient ancestors tried to impart.

One of the beautiful things about this book is how Dupuis shows respect and admiration for the ancient sage poets that initially composed the solar myths we have all worshipped and fed off of for millennia. Their ability to describe, in poetic form, the passage of our Sun around the zodiac, is just one of the many bits of knowledge the ancients wished to pass down.  Many secret societies teach how to read these old myths, how to understand the scientific and natural wisdom the ancients hoped to pass on.  This was something of the reason why the Templars, Freemasons, and other such societies are viewed as a threat by the church. Who knows how much more the ancients knew?  Modern humans, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, have been around for somewhat over 100,000 years.  The genus Homo Sapiens itself, has been around for over 1,000,000 years.  The ancients seemed to understand this, many of them describing the great circumnavigations, whether labeled ages or Vedas that the world lives through, each covering tens of thousands of our years.  This was not idle fiction.  They wrote about it to share it with us, thousands of years later, the cyclical nature of existence.  It is Dupuis contention that these legends and myths have everything to offer us today, if only they could be divorced from the religions formed to use the ancient wisdom to take advantage of us, keeping them rich, fat, and comfortable, while they preach abstinence, austerity, and forgiveness.

This work was completed around the time when modern humans started to ignore myth and legend to instead focus on industrial and material matters.  The American Revolution had helped overthrow the ancient and false idea of the Divine Right of kings, and the French revolution tried to free the nation from the king and the powers of the Roman Catholic Church.  The Church has engaged in mass murder and genocide in France many times, seeking to exterminate any enclaves of what they termed “heretics.”  These were the initial freethinkers, dangerous to the status quo of a massive church, wealthier and more powerful than any single nation on Earth.  Dupuis stood for all of us when he wrote this work.  The Church has killed writers and philosophers for far less.

I am so glad I found this book.  It came at the right time, which is one of the magical things about books.  Sometimes, the exact book you need to read will come into your life.  Twenty years ago I would not have managed to complete this book, much less grok the immensity of its scope.  Dupuis truly is one of the greats, a hero to freethinkers and a bright guidepost to anyone seeking understanding of our deep mythical past.

(This book can be downloaded as a PDF here: http://iapsop.com/ssoc/1872__dupuis___origin_of_all_religious_worship.pdf )

A Deep Dive Into Humanity's Progress Towards Freedom of Thought and True Liberty

 

A History of Freedom of Thought – J.B. Bury (1914)

            Sometimes a book magically appears to feed your mind.  This is one such book.  After absorbing the latest entry off of Sun Ra’s Reading List (The Loom of Language – Frederick Bodmer) I found this comprehensive yet succinct treatise on the history of humanity’s desire for freedom of thought, where it arose, and the many ways that our societies and governments have tolerated or crushed those seeking the right to believe and discuss what they want.  J.B. Bury’s book should be required reading in any High School history classroom.

As with many of the ideas we consider modern, the acceptance of freedom of thought and speech began in the ancient city-states that eventually coalesced into what we today call Greece.  There are several reasons why this area of the world was conducive to the exploration of ideas and the questioning of established thought.  One of the most important is that the people of Greece did not answer to an unimpeachable higher authority.  Greece did not have a “bible” that purported to be the very word of their gods.  Instead, they understood, as a culture and society, that religious thoughts and ideas are both personal and ever-changing.  The rise of Philosophy and Science (Natural Philosophy) in Greece resulted from this openness to ideas.  As the Greeks did not have to force their views and experiences to match what some holy book said, they were free to explore both the internal nature of humanity and the external natural world around them.  This freedom came at a price, for while the powerful in Greece did not punish blasphemy or heresy, they did punish anyone who they felt was “corrupting” the minds of others, especially young people.  Instead of punishing someone for blasphemy, they instead punished him or her for impiety (meaning they were rude to the religious thoughts that the State considered correct).  In this manner they railroaded Socrates.  Socrates crime was that he asked too many questions, not only about religion, but also about how religion is used by the state to enforce its own agendas.  They executed this great man for a purely bullshit crime, that of “failing to acknowledge the gods that the city acknowledges" and "introducing new deities.”  Pathetic.

Even through suppression, the ideals of Greece and freedom of thought continued in Rome, which sought to base its better qualities on the previous Greek civilization they so admired.  Rome was a different monster though.  The powerful in Rome were mostly irreligious but they would display outward signs of piety in order to rise in their respective fields.  They saw religion as mainly a means of controlling the subordinate population, who they believed too dumb to be good, moral people without the guidance of religion and priests.  Because of this, they allowed free speech and free thought, as long as it did not impede with the powerful Roman’s control of their compatriots.  The moment anyone sought to teach the so-called ignorant masses about this, they were suppressed.  A great example of this is the rise of the Christian church.

People forget that, for the first hundred or so years, the Jewish sect called Christianity was strictly an apocalyptic cult. They saw the world as ending imminently and that Jesus would be back to whup that sinner ass.  While there were many such end-times cults around the Roman Empire, the reason the Christian cult was perceived as a threat was that they were the first to proselytize widely.  While the Hebrew religion also taught that there was one god, and that other gods were false, they did not seek to spread their religion.  Hebrews were born to other Hebrews.  They did not seek to convert anyone.  This reduced the level of threat felt by the Romans, as they knew they could out-breed anyone.  However, the Christian sect that spawned off Judaism actively sought converts of all types, both Jewish and gentile.  (This is one of the reasons that Jesus was killed by the tag-team of Roman government and rabbinical leadership.  Romans did not like that Jesus preached ending subservience to the state, and the rabbis did not appreciate that Jesus taught non-Jews what was seen as purely Jewish wisdom.  Neither liked that Jesus preached that loyalty to state and family and established religion was a sin if it came between one’s loyalties to god.- RXTT)

So, Jesus was executed.  For the next few hundred years there was very little persecution of Christians, until a Roman emperor sought to make an example of them as he tried to force the old Roman religion down everyone’s throats as the officially sanctioned state religion.  Just a century later, a Roman emperor proclaimed himself a Christian, ending the persecutions, but beginning the rise of state-sanctioned Christianity, and the Holy Roman Catholic Church.  In what seems ironic, but is merely stupid, the very same Christianity became the state’s tool by which to control the populace, and bring to an almost complete halt the advancement of freethought, science, and philosophy.  For hundreds and hundreds of years, much of Europe became a stagnant, ignorant cesspool of political/religious tyranny.  Any idea or thought that seemed to contradict the supposedly correct and inviolable contents of the Bible was suppressed in the most violent manner.  Christian states and the Roman Catholic Church murdered and tortured hundreds of thousands of people in the name of their religion.  The Holy Inquisition, which took place throughout Europe, even though we are taught it was a Spanish thing, brought the most gruesome and sadistic terror that the world had yet to see.  Not only were non-believers targeted but anyone who espoused Christian beliefs different from what Rome proclaimed as true was at risk.  Whole populations of people were exterminated because the local leaders had different views on the “truths” forced upon them by the Roman Catholic Church.  It was genocide on a continental level.

Luckily the Greek ideals of freethought and philosophy were kept alive in the Ottoman empire.  The modern world owes so much to the Muslims that preserved the Greek writers and continued to advance the sciences of Astronomy, Mathematics, and Philosophy.  It was their translations that made their way into Europe in the mid 1400’s and sparked up the rebirth of rationalism and enlightenment we now call the Renaissance.  The inevitable breakup of monolithic Catholicism during the Reformation helped a bit, but mainly just ushered a new era where Protestant Christians murdered and brutalized Catholic Christians, just as they had been brutalized initially.  Shit don’t change.  It stays shit.  People were now executed for being Papists.  When a Catholic took over a country, like what happened in England under Bloody Mary, the persecutions and murder of Protestants began again.

            J.B. Bury wrote this small book in the first decade of the 20^th century, ahead of the rise of fascist totalitarian states in Europe.  These states, such as Germany, had initially provided so many of the eminent thinkers that espoused freethought, and the Liberty which is to be gained by all of us for allowing all people the right to think and voice their opinions without threat of blasphemy or sedition.  J.B. Bury warned that, although Enlightenment ideals and rational thought had become the norm in Europe in the late 1800’s, it was a tentative victory, for tyrants and idiots everywhere will always seek to shut down voices and ideas they feel are detrimental to their own personal and political agendas.  I wonder how Mr. Bury, who passed away in 1927, would have reacted to the rise of totalitarian states in Germany, Spain, Italy, Romania, etc.  I believe his heart would have broken to see humanity take such a step backwards, and to see the horrors wrought by these fascist assholes upon the world.

Nothing enrages me as much as willful ignorance.  The worst type of willful ignorance is when freedom of speech is denied in order to protect a state-sanctioned religion, for this affects everyone.  For your “beliefs” to be so fragile that you must suppress opposing views shows how truly baseless your “beliefs” are.  It also shows exactly why those “beliefs” exist, namely, for use in controlling or subjugating any and every person who chooses to believe otherwise.  This is the way of the world.  It is plain to see for anyone who chooses to study history and the rise and fall of states, religious beliefs, and state-sanctioned religions.  Anyone seeking to assert the human right of Freethought is an enemy to tyrannical states. (A minor example- this very book review blog was blocked in China about 3 months into its existence.  China does not like giving their citizens freedom to read what they want - RXTT) 

I feel this book is even more valuable today as state-sanctioned totalitarianism and tyranny are on the rise in supposedly progressive and freedom-loving nations such as the UK and the USA.  Instead of a secular government set up to protect and nourish its citizenry, allowing them to choose whatever religion they feel is right for them, or no religion if they so choose, we are sliding into quasi-religious government inflicting their personal beliefs on the entire population, regardless of personal choice.  The only way to fight this is with education, which is why the ignorant tyrants seek to control state school boards all over the United States.  When beliefs instead of facts direct the path of government, we end up eroding Liberty at its core. This is the main reason freedom of thought, and everything that comes with it, is the most important human right.

(This book can be read/downloaded for free: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10684 )