Hands Illuminated
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Happy Easter!
Long time ago around Lithuanian there was a goddess named Eostre that was brought to the Norse along with Perkunas by the people of the Historic Odin; being Eostare and Thor. Eostare was a fertility Goddess of Spring and the word east is named after her because of the rise of the sun. Now tonight, look up at the moon and you will see her little friend with an Easter basket. The Moon is tilted just right and is almost full. You will see a profile of a Rabbit with its ears back and a basket in his hand (The right eye of the Moon being the ears and the nose the body). The egg is the soul and the chick is the resurrection. The Snake is in there too, as the moon fades away it could be thought that a snake with his mouth open is swallowing the moon. Only too begin to birth it out again as an egg in three days time. From Crescent moon to full it will labor for the month just to come back around on it from the other side to swallow it once more.
In ancient Mesopotamia, they practiced regicide. On a astrological cycle they would kill the king and his court and partake of the kings blood and body. Christ reenacted the metaphor at the last supper by breaking the bread and passing the wine.
Also in ancient cultures, Men had three births by ritual. Woman had them as well but by nature through life, menstruation, and motherhood. But Men needed the mind. Boys were born of their mothers. Adolescents were initiated into Manhood in caves and pits by Men. Then to reach enlightenment, Men were initiated by three women and a tomb. The womb and the Tomb through willing sacrifice to the universe. To have such powers had to have a commitment to use it for the benefit of all society. So you had to become selfless and an individual at the same time. All for one, one for all. Odin hung from the world tree for nine days giving himself unto himself. He knew when he hung that he was god, as was Christ on the cross, or as you and me when we realize it. "Lift that stone you will find me." Said Christ in the Gospel of Thomas. Buddha sat under the Boddhi (illumination) tree to gain enlightenment. All three sat at the tree of knowledge.
Now Christ hung to be followed by three hours of darkness by the moon eclipsing the sun (Which in reality the jews did a yearly calendar fix of three hours, like fall back and spring forward of our day light saving time, which would of made it evening quick). Also he was in the tomb for three days. Lazarerous sat in the tomb for the same duration, but for his Manhood initiation. The Moon, the symbol of resurrection and cycles, is vacant for three days in the night sky to be born again by the snake. Christ rose on the new moon, the Crescent, as a gardener. Men might not give birth to children, but give birth to trillions of little lives that think for themselves and swim to lesser or greater degrees. They might be no more intelligent than bacteria, which is also alive. But being the opposite of an egg that is inert and just rolls down hill. So also maybe ten trillion little swimmers might give men some equality to woman in the matter of birth over time? So we see Christ as the sower in the Garden when he finds the Magdalean (The Watchtower one climbs to protect the sheep).
This Easter we have allot to think about with the Da Vinci Code coming out next month and the release of the tossed back and forth between thief and collector of the Gospel of Judas. A Gospel that the Muslims might of known about, for their always was an old tradition of a sacred order from Christ to fulfill his ritual of Crucifixtion, or regicide. From Donkey at Jerusalem to the thirty pieces of silver, reflecting the three women at the tomb , three hours of darkness, three nights of darkness in the tomb. Jesus had said "The man I give this sop of bread to will betray me." He hands it then to Judas and says be quick. Now a man who was the treasurer of the disciples who held their money already, what would he need with another thirty pieces? The new gospel will ask these questions again.
Some speculation, did Judas hang himself by the neck or foot like Odin. Could he have gone through the same ceremony as Odin or Christ?
One day we might find out.
Cheers and happy Easter,
Chris
ps
Don't forget to say hi to the Rabbit in the Moon.
Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin is proprietor of Docspond Life Coach Services providing Individual Counseling, Group facilitation, and key note addresses that speak to the heart of the mission while delivering the bottom line finacial growth. Helping millions find their bliss and return meaning to success! Guaranteed 20% improvement in your quality of life after the first meeting!
Also is the propietor and designer at Norgeforge Illumination Studios that will SEO illuminated design giving Aesthetics to traffic driven sales. So get out of the cold and get Norgeforged!
Everything Is Illuminated - questions about characters in the book?
Lingering questions: At the end, why did Jonathan and Alex decide not to be in contact any longer?
Lista says that Safran (Jonathan's grandfather) lost two babies in the war. One of them is Zosha's. Is the other one Lista's? When she describes her pregnant older sister's treatment at the hands of the Nazis, it becomes clear she is describing her own experience. What isn't clear is who the father of the baby was.
Who was Lista's husband (p. 238)? Perhaps Herschel, which is why she is so angry with Alex's grandfather for betraying him? It would eplain much of the antagonism between Lista and Alex's grandfather.
Why is there an enormous emphasis on Safran's dead arm and hand?
Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer
In hilariously mangled English, a Ukrainian boy describes his efforts to help a young American Jew find the village his grandfather fled in World War II.
By Laura Miller
Page 1April 26, 2002 | There are two stories wound together in this first novel, and as is often the case, one is more engaging than the other. The first describes a visit to Ukraine by a 20-year-old American named Jonathan Safran Foer. (You just have to ignore the fact that the device of putting a character with the author's name in a novel outlived its freshness before Foer was born, in 1977.) This part of the book is told by Alexander Perchov, a Ukrainian, also 20, who gets shanghaied into acting as Foer's tour guide and semi-competent translator when Foer visits the country. Like many Jews of his generation, Foer wants to touch the pulse of his roots, to see the village of Trachimbrod, where his grandfather was born and raised, and to meet the woman whose family saved him from the Nazis. The two young men are trading manuscripts, and so the narrative alternates excerpts from Alex's account of Foer's visit and his letters to Jonathan with installments of Jonathan's own novel.
At first, Alex's version of English resembles an out-of-control garden hose turned on full-force and allowed to thrash away on a summer lawn. He's got a thesaurus and he'll be damned if he's not going to use it. After bragging about the number of girls who "want to be carnal" with him, and his propensity for "performing so many things that can spleen a mother," he explains his love for American-style culture: "I dig Negroes, particularly Michael Jackson. I dig to disseminate very much currency at famous nightclubs in Odessa." His youth and his mangled English at first make him seem simply naive, but that hides a native apprehension that, uninhibited by oversophisticated politesse, can be startling. "There were parts of it I did not understand," he writes of Jonathan's novel. "But I conjecture that this is because they were very Jewish, and only a Jewish person could understand something so Jewish. Is that why you think you are chosen by God, because only you can understand the funnies that you make about yourself?"
If only the fictional Jonathan's novel were really that esoteric. The manuscript he sends to Alex is a tiresomely familiar thing, a folklorical saga of life in the shtetl of Trachimbrod, full of lusty villagers and their quasi-magical adventures. The Alex sections of the book feel utterly alive and teeter invigoratingly between hilarity and a terrible, creeping dread. By contrast, the Trachimbrod sections only remind the reader of other works -- rehashed Chagall and dime-store Garcia Marquez. There are some pretty passages here, but even these have a framed, almost twee quality. (And, in what seems to be an effort at earthiness, the story also strays into the simply gross, as when a male character with a withered arm uses it as a dildo to console all the widows in town.)
Ordinarily, this caveat would make "Everything is Illuminated" unrecommendable, but the Alex portions of the novel are so good that in the final calculation they far outbalance the book's weaknesses. (Plus you can skim the Trachimbrod sections without missing that much.) With Alex's grandfather (who keeps claiming he's blind and insists on bringing along a "seeing-eye bitch" obtained from "the home for forgetful dogs") as their driver, the two youths head into the Ukrainian countryside and the darkness of the past. Their burgeoning friendship and the way that history and chance keep the balance of power between them -- and their capacity to know each other -- in constant flux, make this feel like a story that, astonishingly enough, has never really been told before.
Foer exquisitely executes the book's best jokes: the way that Jonathan's minor flaws -- his vanity, his American cluelessness, his tendency to patronize -- filter through Alex's admiring portrait of the young man he calls his "most premium friend" and "the hero." As the novel shades inexorably into the tragic mode, and as Alex comes to be a much better writer than Jonathan, with both a finer sense of truth and a more urgent understanding of the need for happy endings, his stumbling English incandesces into eloquence. And that alone is worth the price of admission.
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