Mosaic from royal tomb. Photo Alma E. GuinnessOn the last day of the month, as the moon disappeared, Sumerians gathered to celebrate family ties, everyone bringing food to share. The ancestors also took part in these gatherings. The ceremony was called kishiga meaning “food on the ground” by the Sumerians and later kispu by the Akkadians. “Food on the ground” probably referred to the practice of leaving offerings for the dead on the bare earth. The dead were believed to be slight waifs needing little food or water, but they still required regular feedings. Unfortunately we do not know exactly what food was served, but it was probably simple rather than elaborate fare and no doubt included bread and beer.The timing of the monthly gathering at the disappearance of the moon is curious, because it suggests that menstrual seclusion might not have been practiced among the Sumerians. In most nonindustrial societies women either naturally bled at the disappearing moon, or herbal and other remedies were used to encourage this to happen. The presence of menstruating women at this gathering would mean there were no fears about menstruating women being vulnerable to ghosts, no fears about menstruating women spoiling food, and probably no special diet for menstruating women as well. Either that, or women who were menstruating did not take part in the ceremony and left food preparation to non-menstruating women (or even men). Still another possibility is that the women in menstrual seclusion ate special foods that were prepared for the meal with the ancestors, and they took part in the ceremony not by being present but by having the blessed food brought to them. This last conjecture is plausible because in one myth the gods have a banquet in heaven which the goddess Ereshkigal cannot attend as she is needed at her post in the underworld, and the gods invite her to send a representative to bring banquet food to her. The eating of the food, not presence at the table, counts as participation.The kispu occurred at other times during the year in addition to the monthly holy day, and sometimes the kispu was a state holiday sponsored by the king. He would arrange this meal to honor past kings (including kings from former dynasties), the dead subjects of the kingdom who might not have descendents to make the required offerings, and those soldiers who died in service to the king.The monthly meal for relatives dead and alive was not the same as the funerary meal for the newly deceased. In this ceremony, of which we know very little, bodies were usually buried with food and water. Additional food offerings might be left on the graves, and sometimes there was a clay straw leading from the deceased’s mouth to the surface as a conduit for water.We will wrap up this exploration of the cuisine of Mesopotamia with a look at the food of the gods.SourcesBlack, Jeremy and Anthony Green. Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia. Teresa Lavender Fagan, trans. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1992.Bottero, Jean. The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.Bottero, Jean. Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia. Teresa Lavender Fagan, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.Grahn, Judy. Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.
Review: Starcat’s Corner: Essays on Pagan Livingby N. Starcat ShieldsMoon Books, 2013.A friend called me on the phone awhile back, excited about some people she had met on an airplane. “They had a little girl who was named – what’s the name of your cat again?”“Samhain?” I said.“Yeah that’s right, Samhain. They had a two-year-old girl who was named the same name as your cat. I never heard that word in my life before I met your cat, and now I’m hearing it a second time.”“Oh, so those people were witches,” I said.“What do you mean, witches?”“You know, witches. You’ve been to ritual with me and you know what a witch is. Samhain is Irish for Halloween, and who’s going to name their kid Halloween besides a witch?”“But no, they couldn’t have been witches,” she replied. “These were normal people.”So I guess I’m not “normal people,” I thought to myself. Leaving aside that troublesome revelation, this conversation illustrates the preconceptions people continue to hold about witches, even people who understand that we are followers of an Earth-based religion, and we don’t worship the devil, and we fly around on airplanes, not brooms. Witches are still surrounded by an aura of differentness, considered more foreign than an inhabitant of the most secluded village on Earth, unless that villager also happens to be a witch. We can be glamorous, or spooky, or impenetrable, but at any rate we are not normal.These stereotypes are silly. A witch has far more in common with her fellow Earth citizens than most people imagine. This is beautifully illustrated in N. Starcat Shields’ book Starcat’s Corner: Essays on Pagan Living. In this collection of short essays spanning ten years we follow Starcat as she confronts the challenges of living, some of which are endemic to American life at the turn of the millennium and others which are timeless. She struggles with being a parent, reacting to a natural disaster, hanging out at the hospital while a loved one receives critical medical care. She searches for meaningful employment, makes important financial decisions, visits the chiropractor, and accepts the loss of a beloved animal companion. Her perspective on all of these things is very different from that of a Methodist or a Mormon, not to mention that of an atheist, but she successfully weathers the crises, complexities and banalities of living with decision-making processes that most would consider unconventional.Starcat says that the genesis of these essays was a question that was posed at Vermont Witch Camp: “How do you live your earth-based spirituality, day in and day out, particularly in a culture that doesn’t share your values?” While the question became the premise for an interesting book, I have to say that I don’t think much of the question itself. To me it evokes too much of the politically correct smugness I have noted in some Pagan circles: the idea that we are the good people with the high values surrounded by a sea of the unenlightened who don’t share those values. If you’ve spent a lot of time in different Pagan communities, you know what I’m talking about.“How could witches be judgmental?” my friend who doesn’t think witches can be normal asks me incredulously. The implication behind the question is that as people near the bottom of the scorn pile, perhaps only a step above criminals, we witches should know better. I could provide a list of reading material showing that in this respect, as well as in any other, witches are completely normal.But Starcat’s Corner is not like that, as she reveals herself to be more interested in helping people than judging them. She is the kind of witch we all want to be. I’ll close this review with a short excerpt from Starcat’s Corner:
The negative, or shadow side, of seeking is that we may become perpetual students. Either we absorb some of the teachings and then move on, never content to delve deeply into a particular source of wisdom, or perhaps we continue to study one area so intently that our life becomes imbalanced. We are so focused on the seeking itself that we never allow ourselves to come to any conclusions about what we believe. In order to avoid being stuck in this mode, you might devote yourself to a particular set of teachings for a year and a day. If you are studying on your own, write an article or research paper that encompasses what you’ve been learning. These actions will help you shift from a mode of constant movement and passive receiving into a place of more depth and active sharing.The positive part of seeking is the innocence of the beginner’s mind. In yoga, we are encouraged to approach each pose, or asana, as if it is the first time we have practiced it. This keeps the mind on the present moment. If we are truly seeking and open to finding wisdom, we are never jaded or cynical. We are able to take in that which we see, fully and with an open mind and heart.
Isaac Newton is considered one of the greatest minds of the Enlightenment and the founder of modern physics. Along with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, he set the foundations for calculus. He is best known for his observations on how gravity behaves, the so-called laws of gravity. As Professor Richard Wolfson of Middlebury College emphatically put it during a lecture on modern physics, Newton stated for the very first time that the laws on earth are the same for the rest of the universe.I don’t want to diminish Newton’s standing as one of the greatest contributors to math and physics, but listening to this lecture I couldn’t help but think how wrong is the assumption that Newton was the first to run across this principle. This is a very old metaphysical concept, implicit in the literature of the Akkadians and found among the ancient Greeks as well. It is explicitly set out as a cornerstone of alchemical philosophy in “The Emerald Tablet of Hermes,” probably written in the eighth century and attributed to earlier Egyptian sources. This is the teaching that starts out That which is above is as that which is below, and that which is below is as that which is above, for performing the miracles of the one thing.Listening to Professor Wolfson attribute to Newton not only the foundation of calculus and physics but the core of alchemy, I felt inspired to look up the Tablet of Hermes and read it again. So I went to Sacred Texts, where as expected I found several translations. Imagine my amusement at finding one of the earliest English translations to have been done by Newton! This translation is dated 1680, and Newton published his famous physics treatise in 1687. Obviously, Newton’s genius lies in formulating the ancient truths in a scientific and mathematical framework. Here is Newton’s translation of the Hermes tablet:
Tis true without lying, certain & most true.That wch is below is like that wch is above & that wch is above is like yt wch is below to do ye miracles of one only thing.And as all things have been & arose from one by ye mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.The Sun is its father, the moon its mother,the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth its nourse.The father of all perfection in ye whole world is here.Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth.Seperate thou ye earth from ye fire, ye subtile from the gross sweetly wth great indoustry.It ascends from ye earth to ye heaven & again it desends to ye earth and receives ye force of things superior & inferior.By this means you shall have ye glory of ye whole world & thereby all obscurity shall fly from you.Its force is above all force. ffor it vanquishes every subtile thing & penetrates every solid thing.So was ye world created.From this are & do come admirable adaptaions whereof ye means (Or process) is here in this.Hence I am called Hermes Trismegist, having the three parts of ye philosophy of ye whole world.That wch I have said of ye operation of ye Sun is accomplished & ended.
Footnote: Here’s another article I found while preparing this one, which talks about the scientific community’s uneasiness with the metaphysical influences on Newton’s work, observing “Newton’s alchemy is a bit of an embarrassment to modern scholars.”
More to come in a few weeks on cuisine in Mesopotamia: food and the dead, feasting with the gods and a few other topics. A diversion this week for something too wonderful to pass up.
I don’t know if people remember the essay I wrote on Ratatosk, the Red Scoundrel for Return to Mago blog. In Germanic lore Ratatosk scampers up and down the world tree carrying insults between Nidhogg, the serpent-dragon who nibbles the roots of the tree, and a giant eagle (unnamed as far as we know) who lives in the top branches. Anyway, I found a photo of it! This really is happening, still.
Another record of beer sale. Photo Babelstone.The Sumerians already had the technology of brewing beer when they arrived in Mesopotamia from unknown parts. Dedicated beer drinkers though they were, the Sumerians did not invent the process of fermenting grain and their words related to this process come from an unknown culture. The brew was drunk communally from a large vessel with straws. Mesopotamians consumed beer with food and on its own, and also used beer in cooking and in medicine. Some households made their own beer, but breweries also delivered to houses. Brewing was originally a woman’s occupation, although over time there was encroachment by men into this area. Women owned and managed the taverns.In some ways the taverns of Mesopotamia were like those of today only more so. They were places for gossip and wasting time. Sexual activity often accompanied the drinking, including prostitution and homosexual activity, which is graphically portrayed in pictures. The euphoric effects of alcohol were as much a purpose of drinking in the tavern as the camaraderie, although scholars do not believe that habitual drunkenness was a feature of Mesopotamian life, partly because the drink was not very potent. Rulers looked on the taverns with distaste. It was not the prostitution, homosexuality, or inebriation they objected to – Mesopotamians held no judgment about these things – but the potential public houses presented for political intrigue. There also seems to have been a general disapproval of people habitually indulging in idle gatherings during the afternoons. Priestesses were forbidden to enter the taverns, perhaps because sexual relations with men were not allowed in some priestess roles.The subject of drinking often arises in myth. In his epic search for eternal life, Gilgamesh encounters a female tavern owner who urges him to abandon his quest.
until the end, enjoy your life,spend it in happiness, not despair.Savor your food, make each of your daysa delight, bathe and anoint yourself,wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean,let music and dancing fill your house,love the child who holds you by the hand,and give your wife pleasure in your embrace.That is the best way for a man to live.
The scene sets out starkly the choice humans face of pursuing grand ambitions which may bring frustration and unfulfillment versus the abandonment of dreams for temporal pleasures.SourcesBlack, Jeremy and Anthony Green. Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1992.Bottero, Jean.The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.Mitchell, Stephen.Gilgamesh: A new English version. New York: Free Press, 2004.Beer drinking scene from a cylindrical seal, circa 2600 B.C.E.
Barley field. Photo Daniel Schwen.I don’t know if other priestesses begin to notice a pattern in the goddesses they are attracted to in the various pantheons. With a few exceptions, I seem to gravitate toward the young mother goddesses rather than the crone goddesses, although I respect and acknowledge the crone’s power. A friend of mine seems to like goddesses that are associated with pigs, and she was surprised when I pointed that out. Recently I’ve become aware of another idiosyncrasy in my goddess studies: my unconscious attraction to goddesses who like beer.The Mesopotamians loved their beer. They even had a beer goddess, Ninkasi, and all the gods were enthusiastic beer drinkers. (Ninkasi is one of the eight children of Ninhursaga and Enki mentioned in my book Invoking Animal Magic.) The god Enki, known for his often generous and sometimes erratic behavior, gives the gifts of civilization to Inanna while in an expansive drunken mood. (He regrets this when he sobers up.)Even the Egyptians, who also loved their beer, used wine as well as beer in religious and funerary rites, and pharaohs devoted time and attention to grape cultivation and wine making. In northern Mesopotamia rich men also cultivated grapes, and wine was imported, but nowhere did the fermented grape surpass the fermented grain (though it seems Ninkasi presided over both). Descriptors of beer quality, type, and manufacture rival those in other Mediterranean cultures for wine. The Greeks deplored the Mesopotamian’s fidelity to beer as an unfortunate flaw in an otherwise civilized culture.Beer was made from fermented grains, usually barley. According to Jean Bottero:
Although necessarily different from our beer, it was still essentially made from a base of various grains, first germinated and malted in damp conditions and then, once malting was completed, heated in water into which various aromatic products had been added. (Hops were unknown in that area, but dodder [probably a red vegetable dye–HMR] was used, and many other flavoring agents as well.) Then the mash was left to ferment.
The resulting brew was not very high in alcohol content, and was often further diluted with water, but it nonetheless produced in expansive feeling. Here is an excerpt from a drinking song, translated by Jeremy Black:Receipt written for beer delivery by scribe Ur-Amma. Photo Tom L. Lee.
In the troughs made with bur grass, there is sweet beer. I will have the cupbearers, the boys and the brewers stand by. As I spin around the lake of beer, while feeling wonderful, feeling wonderful, while drinking beer, in a blissful mood, while drinking alcohol and feeling exhilarated, with joy in the heart and a contented liver — my heart is a heart filled with joy! I clothe my contented liver in a garment fit for a queen! The heart of Inana is happy once again; the heart of Inana is happy once again!
We are not done drinking in Mesopotamia. Next week more libations will be poured.SourcesBlack, J.A., Cunningham, G., Ebeling, J., Flückiger-Hawker, E., Robson, E., Taylor, J., and Zólyomi, G., The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/), Oxford 1998–2006.Bottero, Jean. The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.Hornsey, Ian Spencer. A History of Beer and Brewing. Cambridge, UK: Royal Chemistry Society, 2003.
Photo Luigi ChiesaSurprisingly little is discussed about the enjoyment of food in ancient Mesopotamia, even though a rather extensive culinary record is extant. Once the Akkadians and Sumerians of this region began practicing irrigation, the rich soils and hot climate yielded a rich abundance of food that persisted for three millennia. At one time it was believed that agriculture began in this region. We now know this is not true, but the diversity and surfeit of human produced food, as well as the complexity of food preparation, is truly remarkable.Over the next few weeks I will be writing about food, feasting, and drink in Mesopotamia. Most of the information presented here comes from Jean Bottero’s 2004 book The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia. As Bottero notes, all societies develop “routines and rituals, perhaps even myths, to regulate the use of food, indeed, to confer a value upon food that goes beyond the mere consumption of it…”Here is the menu for a feast ordered by Assyrian King Assurnasirpa II (northern Mesopotamia circa 850 B.C.E.) to celebrate the conclusion of a large construction project. This feast was prepared for 69,570 people and included the king’s staff, the population of the city, guests invited from outside the city, plus all the workers who had participated in the project–and of course, all the gods.
1,000 oxen1,000 calves and young lambs14,000 sheep and 200 oxen “from the flocks belonging to Ishtar, my mistress”1,000 fattened sheep1,000 lambs500 deer500 gazelles1,000 large birds1,000 geese and other fowl2,000 suki and qaribe birds (don’t know what those are)10,000 pigeons10,000 doves10,000 small birds10,000 fish10,000 locusts10,000 eggs10,000 measures of beer10,000 skins of winePhoto Bohringer Friedrich.quantities of barley, wheat, sesame, carob, garlic, onions, lentils, turnips, milk, pomegranates, grapes, pistachios, almonds, figs, dates, roses, cumin, aniseed, watercress, and various other foods and spices which cannot be translated.
Sounds like quite a party! Next week I will discuss how all of this food might have been prepared.
Greek healing goddess Hygeia with her snake. Photo by Sailko.Wednesday’s teleseminar on Snake Dreaming with Susun Weed was a lot of fun. We talked about how snakes have historically been used in trance work and how you can bring snake energy into your healing and trance work today.One topic that came up was snake phobias. There was speculation on the role of the Genesis story of Eve and the snake in the widespread prevalence of snake phobias.We could put out a lot of theories about the origin of snake phobias, and the Christian vilification of snakes may indeed be a significant source, but when treating snake phobia – or practically any phobia – the origin is unimportant. Snake phobia is treated with a technique called Systematic Desensitization or Graduated Exposure. Basically this means starting out with a snake interaction that causes only minimal discomfort and building up to more significant interactions slowly over time. This could mean starting by looking at pictures of snakes, then videos of snakes, then going to a place where you can observe snakes behind glass (perhaps with a friend) until eventually you can tolerate handling nonpoisonous snakes or observing them in the wild. (If you can’t tolerate seeing a picture of a snake, you’ll have to start at an even more basic level, perhaps with the help of a therapist.) Listening to the audio of snakes slithering from my website Invoking Animal Magic may be helpful in the process of deflating a snake phobia, but be sure that you can tolerate pictures first. If you move quickly to a level of interaction that produces a great amount of anxiety, this ends up reinforcing the phobia.The link to a replay of the teleseminar is here.
Agora is the Greek word for center, and this 2009 movie is about the many worlds that revolved around the fourth century Alexandrian philosopher Hypatia. There was Alexandria, Egypt as a center – perhaps the center – of learning and culture in the Roman Empire at that time. There was Alexandria as the center of religious and philosophical diversity. There was the maelstrom of repression and destruction by the Christian Empire directed toward Pagans which began before the birth of Hypatia and continued after her death. There was Hypatia as the celebrated center of philosophy in Alexandria, sought for her wisdom by scholars and government officials. And there was the quest for understanding how the universe functions which drove Hypatia.So I really liked the title of this movie, but I have to say that overall I was not impressed. I did like how Hypatia was presented as obsessed with learning rather than with love, although the female porn theme of Hypatia’s devoted slave seemed a bit gratuitous to me. I also liked that the movie showed Christians of the Roman era as the intolerant fearful thugs they were, rather than the martyrs they liked to portray themselves as. The movie also underscores the repression and violence shown by Christians to the Jews. But the film was greatly marred for me by the long and frequent scenes of unremitting violence. You can’t tell this story without some violence, of course, but predictably Hollywood made gore the main course and filled in with bits of a story line here and there. I fast forwarded whenever they took out their swords and by doing so I think I watched the movie in well under half the advertised time. For some reason they toned down Hypatia’s death, which was supposed to be truly grisly. I don’t know whether they thought the audience couldn’t countenance such a beautiful actress being disfigured or if Hypatia’s actual death was too horrible for the film rating. One theme in the movie got me thinking. Hypatia is portrayed as an atheist, which is implausible. She belonged to a Pagan philosophical school that acknowledged the gods as the driving force behind the perfection of the universe. But because she was an INTELLECTUAL and a LOGICAL person interested in SCIENCE and dedicated to the quest for KNOWLEDGE, the screenwriter evidently assumed she could not have entertained any religious notions. The Christians are accurately portrayed in the movie as opposing any thought conflicting with their ideology, but this does not necessarily mean that science is antithetical to all religion.At one time science and religion did not exist in separate spheres. Before Christianity, Paganism was driven by the observation of nature. Or maybe that should be put in the opposite way: religion fueled a need to understand nature on a deeper level. The Babylonians developed their sophisticated mathematics to predict the wanderings of the planets, which in turn directed their magic. We can say that many of their theories turned out to be “wrong,” but that can be said for any understanding of science at any time. Theories get replaced over time with theories that are more correct, which get replaced down the line with theories that are still more correct.There does not seem to be much interest among Pagans today in bringing a scientific understanding to our belief systems. I probably come as close as anybody with my incorporation of biological facts about animals into the folklore of my book Invoking Animal Magic, which is ironic since I don’t even have a background in the hard sciences.I would like to see Paganism incorporate a more twenty-first century understanding of the world into our religion. Yes, today’s scientists can be incredibly narrow minded in how they see the world, but we don’t have to adopt their prejudices; we just need to steal their ideas.
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Review: Starcat’s Corner: Essays on Pagan Livingby N. Starcat ShieldsMoon Books, 2013.A friend called me on the phone awhile back, excited about some people she had met on an airplane. “They had a little girl who was named – what’s the name of your cat again?”“Samhain?” I said.“Yeah that’s right, Samhain. They had a two-year-old girl who was named the same name as your cat. I never heard that word in my life before I met your cat, and now I’m hearing it a second time.”“Oh, so those people were witches,” I said.“What do you mean, witches?”“You know, witches. You’ve been to ritual with me and you know what a witch is. Samhain is Irish for Halloween, and who’s going to name their kid Halloween besides a witch?”“But no, they couldn’t have been witches,” she replied. “These were normal people.”So I guess I’m not “normal people,” I thought to myself. Leaving aside that troublesome revelation, this conversation illustrates the preconceptions people continue to hold about witches, even people who understand that we are followers of an Earth-based religion, and we don’t worship the devil, and we fly around on airplanes, not brooms. Witches are still surrounded by an aura of differentness, considered more foreign than an inhabitant of the most secluded village on Earth, unless that villager also happens to be a witch. We can be glamorous, or spooky, or impenetrable, but at any rate we are not normal.These stereotypes are silly. A witch has far more in common with her fellow Earth citizens than most people imagine. This is beautifully illustrated in N. Starcat Shields’ book Starcat’s Corner: Essays on Pagan Living. In this collection of short essays spanning ten years we follow Starcat as she confronts the challenges of living, some of which are endemic to American life at the turn of the millennium and others which are timeless. She struggles with being a parent, reacting to a natural disaster, hanging out at the hospital while a loved one receives critical medical care. She searches for meaningful employment, makes important financial decisions, visits the chiropractor, and accepts the loss of a beloved animal companion. Her perspective on all of these things is very different from that of a Methodist or a Mormon, not to mention that of an atheist, but she successfully weathers the crises, complexities and banalities of living with decision-making processes that most would consider unconventional.Starcat says that the genesis of these essays was a question that was posed at Vermont Witch Camp: “How do you live your earth-based spirituality, day in and day out, particularly in a culture that doesn’t share your values?” While the question became the premise for an interesting book, I have to say that I don’t think much of the question itself. To me it evokes too much of the politically correct smugness I have noted in some Pagan circles: the idea that we are the good people with the high values surrounded by a sea of the unenlightened who don’t share those values. If you’ve spent a lot of time in different Pagan communities, you know what I’m talking about.“How could witches be judgmental?” my friend who doesn’t think witches can be normal asks me incredulously. The implication behind the question is that as people near the bottom of the scorn pile, perhaps only a step above criminals, we witches should know better. I could provide a list of reading material showing that in this respect, as well as in any other, witches are completely normal.But Starcat’s Corner is not like that, as she reveals herself to be more interested in helping people than judging them. She is the kind of witch we all want to be. I’ll close this review with a short excerpt from Starcat’s Corner:
Isaac Newton is considered one of the greatest minds of the Enlightenment and the founder of modern physics. Along with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, he set the foundations for calculus. He is best known for his observations on how gravity behaves, the so-called laws of gravity. As Professor Richard Wolfson of Middlebury College emphatically put it during a lecture on modern physics, Newton stated for the very first time that the laws on earth are the same for the rest of the universe.I don’t want to diminish Newton’s standing as one of the greatest contributors to math and physics, but listening to this lecture I couldn’t help but think how wrong is the assumption that Newton was the first to run across this principle. This is a very old metaphysical concept, implicit in the literature of the Akkadians and found among the ancient Greeks as well. It is explicitly set out as a cornerstone of alchemical philosophy in “The Emerald Tablet of Hermes,” probably written in the eighth century and attributed to earlier Egyptian sources. This is the teaching that starts out That which is above is as that which is below, and that which is below is as that which is above, for performing the miracles of the one thing.Listening to Professor Wolfson attribute to Newton not only the foundation of calculus and physics but the core of alchemy, I felt inspired to look up the Tablet of Hermes and read it again. So I went to Sacred Texts, where as expected I found several translations. Imagine my amusement at finding one of the earliest English translations to have been done by Newton! This translation is dated 1680, and Newton published his famous physics treatise in 1687. Obviously, Newton’s genius lies in formulating the ancient truths in a scientific and mathematical framework. Here is Newton’s translation of the Hermes tablet:
Agora is the Greek word for center, and this 2009 movie is about the many worlds that revolved around the fourth century Alexandrian philosopher Hypatia. There was Alexandria, Egypt as a center – perhaps the center – of learning and culture in the Roman Empire at that time. There was Alexandria as the center of religious and philosophical diversity. There was the maelstrom of repression and destruction by the Christian Empire directed toward Pagans which began before the birth of Hypatia and continued after her death. There was Hypatia as the celebrated center of philosophy in Alexandria, sought for her wisdom by scholars and government officials. And there was the quest for understanding how the universe functions which drove Hypatia.So I really liked the title of this movie, but I have to say that overall I was not impressed. I did like how Hypatia was presented as obsessed with learning rather than with love, although the female porn theme of Hypatia’s devoted slave seemed a bit gratuitous to me. I also liked that the movie showed Christians of the Roman era as the intolerant fearful thugs they were, rather than the martyrs they liked to portray themselves as. The movie also underscores the repression and violence shown by Christians to the Jews. But the film was greatly marred for me by the long and frequent scenes of unremitting violence. You can’t tell this story without some violence, of course, but predictably Hollywood made gore the main course and filled in with bits of a story line here and there. I fast forwarded whenever they took out their swords and by doing so I think I watched the movie in well under half the advertised time. For some reason they toned down Hypatia’s death, which was supposed to be truly grisly. I don’t know whether they thought the audience couldn’t countenance such a beautiful actress being disfigured or if Hypatia’s actual death was too horrible for the film rating.