#utfa

[spacenutspod]

Blazars occupy an intriguing spot in the cosmic zoo. They’re bright active galactic nuclei (AGN) that blast out cosmic rays, are bright in radio emission, and sport huge jets of material traveling in our direction at nearly the speed of light. Their jets look curvy and snaky. Astronomers have questions. Does a blazar’s central black hole’s appetite affect the jets? Is there some internal activity in the accretion disk that causes the variability in brightness? Or, is something else at work here? According to Silke Britzen of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, it might be more interesting than one black hole (or its accretion disk) doing its thing. “We present evidence and discuss the possibility that it is in fact the precession of the jet source, either caused by a supermassive binary black hole at the footpoint of the jet or – less likely – by a warped accretion disk around a single black hole, that is responsible for the observed variability,” said Britzen from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany. The Galaxy with Two Black Holes The idea of a precessing warped accretion disk around one supermassive black hole is interesting because that motion could affect the jets. It also plays a role in those periodic changes in brightness. That effect shows up in some other galaxies, too. But, what else could cause the precession? Britzen and the team investigated an object called OJ 287 to see if it could give some clues. It appears to have two black holes—essentially a black hole binary—at its core. Studies of this galaxy and 12 other AGNS led to the conclusion that jet curvature may provide a smoking gun clue to the existence of binary black holes in galaxy cores. How would that work? It’s complex, but essentially, you have two black holes doing an orbital dance in the center of the galaxy. One black hole is emitting the jet and the other one’s gravitational influence affects the appearance and behavior of the jet. According to Michal Zajacek, who is a co-author of the study with Britzen, it helps explain the jet’s appearance. “Physics of accretion disks and jets is rather complex but their bulk kinematics can be compared to simple gyroscopes,” he said. “If you exert an external torque on an accretion disk, for instance by an orbiting secondary black hole, it will precess and nutate, and along with it the jet as well, similar to the Earth’s rotation axis that is affected by the Moon and the Sun.”  A magnetized radio jet (yellow), precessing due to a pair of supermassive black holes. The larger one is (black) at the center of the accretion disk. It contains warmer (blue) and cooler (red) gas. The white arrow indicates the spin of the larger black hole. The second black hole orbits (orange) around the central supermassive black hole and the orange arrow shows the orientation of its orbital angular momentum. Due to misalignment, torque from the secondary drives the precession of the accretion disk as well as the launched jet (green circle and arrows).  White curved lines indicate radio emission. Courtesy: Michal Zaja?ek/UTFA MUNI Searching for the Black Hole Binaries If this is the case for other blazars, the meandering jet and brightness variability may well be the clue astronomers need to probe for other binary black holes. It’s not an easy task to find the black holes, even though the AGNS themselves are bright, according to Britzen. “We still lack the sufficient resolution to probe the existence of supermassive binary black holes directly,” she said. “But jet precession seems to provide the best signature of these objects, whose existence is expected not only by the black hole / AGN community but also from the gravitational wave/pulsar community who recently published evidence for the existence of a cosmic gravitational background due to the gravitational waves emitted by the mergers of massive black holes through cosmic history.” Britzen and colleagues investigated OJ 287 and other prominent AGNs using radio observations since these objects are bright radio sources. High-resolution studies took advantage of Very Long Baseline Radio Interferometry (VLBI) techniques. This connected several telescopes over long distances to focus in on the very distant galaxy cores. This is the same technique that allowed the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration to image the shadow of a black hole for the first time, observing the 6.5 billion solar mass black hole in the galaxy M87. The team also modeled the precession of the jets, plus a factor called nutation. That’s a periodic variation in the jet’s axis of inclination. Think of it as a slight rocking or swaying as the jet precesses. That nutation was also a clue pointing at the possible existence of a second black hole. The team applied the model to the OJ 287 jet. What’s Next? The result seems to point strongly toward the binary black hole action at the heart of this and other AGNS. The smoking guns are the wavy jets and variability of brightness. “Blazar variability in many galaxies might predominantly not be of stochastic, but of deterministic nature,” said Britzen. “It is fascinating to decode the inner workings of this black hole machinery with the help of variability studies.” Britzen and the team hope that this work will lead to further studies of blazars. They suggest in their paper that others will move forward with long-term VLBI observations and studies of the spectral energy distribution of the light from these objects and their jets. For More Information A Smoking Gun for Supermassive Binaries in Active Galactic NucleiPrecession-induced Variability in AGN Jets and OJ 287The Smoking Gun for Supermassive Binaries in Active Galactic Nuclei The post Some Galaxies Contain Double Supermassive Black Holes appeared first on Universe Today.

[postsofbabel]

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[lynnfb]

Working on some stuff, and evidently I am a sucker for Dadster being a good father. HNG, too cute, might die from adorableness.

[reyu15ut-blog]

undefined

heya.

[eretzyisrael]

Letter to U of T President Meric Gertler

Meric Gertler                                                                    June 30, 2021

President

Kelly Hannah-Moffat

Vice President

Human Resources and Equity

University of Toronto

The purpose of this letter is to request appropriate responses to an act of bigotry from a member of the University of Toronto faculty. As explained below, speed of reaction matters. As also elaborated below, the situation is a matter of some gravity.

Before the particular act is addressed, a few general remarks are in order. Prejudicial slurs often occur in the form of a noun and an adjective.  The noun refers to the group under attack.  The adjective asserts a stereotype about the group.

These prejudicial slurs may occur generally.  They may also occur in response to a particular incident which, abstracted from the prejudicial slur, may itself be objectionable.  The problem here is not criticism of the incident but rather the attribution to all members of the target group the blame for an incident for which they are not responsible.

Bigotry can occur against a group in whole or in part.  When it occurs in part, the bigoted would say that there are good members of the group and bad members.  The good are those whose behaviour contradicts the stereotype.  The bad are those who conform to the stereotype.  For the bigoted, what they would characterize as the good are exceptions.

Bigotry often engages in victim inversion.  The bigoted often claim that they are the victims and that their targets are the victimizers.  The bigotry here takes the form of claimed defense against the target group.

The bigoted often uses double entendres, words that have both an innocent meaning and a coded meaning to their bigoted cohort. They use dog whistles, sounds with the intent that only their bigoted cohort will appreciate.

The particular remarks we wish to draw to your attention is a statement of University of Toronto Faculty Association president Terezia Zorić made from the floor after a panel discussion at York University Osgoode Hall, June 15, 2021.  A link to the video of her remarks can be found at the link below at the 1:58:50 mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiJ8cRpyzW8&t=3163s

The transcript of her remarks, in their entirety, is this:

“Very, very quickly many thanks to the organizers of this wonderful event on the censure [by the Canadian Association of University of Teachers (CAUT) of the University of Toronto] of u of t [the University of Toronto] and all the activists who’ve made it possible for those of us doing institutional work to have some room to maneuver.

I wanted to offer that, as an early leader who defended the folks at the law school and the principles of academic freedom and collegial governance, there was nothing short of unending harassment and psychological warfare where those of us were supportive of the principles at stake at the heart of the censure. [We] experienced horrible backlash by an entitled powerful Zionist minority that felt that any criticisms of Cromwell [the author of a review report] or anyone else could be met with accusations of antisemitism. And it took an enormous amount of work to get us to a point where we could have even have a conversation about what went on why it went on and so on.

Many graduate students with whom I’ve worked ‑ I teach in the Department of Social Justice Education ‑ have complained that any time they want to talk about a boycott [and] divestment [against Israel in support of] Palestine or anything like that, they feel targeted in similar ways. If you don’t think faculty themselves, including those of us in senior positions, can be intimidated by the powerful response you don’t understand what’s at stake and we continue to be in that position.”

The sentence from the quote above which encapsulates the problematic nature of the remarks of Ms. Zorić is this:

“[We] experienced horrible backlash by an entitled powerful Zionist minority that felt that any criticisms of Cromwell or anyone else could be met with accusations of antisemitism.”

To be even more specific, a phrase and an attitude which imbues her remarks throughout, is this: “an entitled powerful Zionist minority”.  This phrase is an antisemitic slur.

The form of her statement is

“We experienced horrible backlash by a group of [insert here a prejudicial slur against the group] who felt that any criticisms of their views could be answered with accusations of prejudice against the group.”

The very form of discourse is an exercise in bigotry.  The form of discourse is ridiculous because, on the one hand, it rejects the accusation of prejudice and, on other hand, manifests it.  The discourse is internally self-contradictory.  It establishes the charge of bigotry against which it claims to defend.  Ms. Zorić, on the one hand, uses an antisemitic stereotype “an entitled powerful Zionist minority” and, on the other hand, defends herself against the charge of antisemitism.

Robert Wistrich, in 2004, then Professor of European and Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, described antisemitism as including attributing “to Jews excessive power and influence”.  He observed that “‘anti-Zionist’ attacks on Jewish … targets show that we are talking about a distinction without a difference.”[1]

Martin Luther King stated:

“When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking antisemitism.”[2]

That is what is going on here.  When Ms. Zorić criticizes “an entitled powerful Zionist minority”, she means “an entitled powerful Jewish minority”.

The antisemitic stereotype Ms. Zorić uses is the classic, the original, antisemitism, the very source of the term.   Antisemitism, literally, means opposition to semitism and semitism according to Wilhelm Marr, who coined the term, was self‑interested Jewish power. Antisemitism was opposition to this fantasized power.  Marr opposed “the Jewish spirit and Jewish consciousness [which] have overpowered the world”[3]. He founded an organization titled – “The League of Anti-Semites”.

Until the defeat of Nazi Germany, antisemites commonly identified as such.  Before the end of World War II, there was a proliferation of self-identified antisemitic organizations – for instance the Anti-Semitic Union of the Diet of Lower Austria or the Universal Anti-Semitic Alliance of Romania.  The Nazis themselves self-identified as antisemitic.

All of these self-identified antisemitic individuals and organizations espoused the very ideology Ms. Zorić telegraphs with the phrase “an entitled powerful Zionist minority”.  As Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer observed, the term “antisemitism” has now gone out of fashion, even among antisemites.  Even the most virulent antisemites today do not self-identify as antisemites.  Ms. Zorić fits within this pattern, both asserting antisemitic ideology and denying that it is antisemitism.

Zionism may seem objectively to be an innocent or positive term, a national liberation movement for the Jewish people, a short hand for the existence of Israel as the expression of the right to self-determination of the Jewish people.  Yet, it is used by antisemites as, at least among themselves, an acceptable form of antisemitism.

Ms. Zorić uses a dog whistle or double entendre with the term “Zionist”.  To her, there are good Jews and bad.  The bad are the Zionists.

Ms. Zorić uses victim inversion.  She both attacks Jews (Zionists) and claims that she is the victim of the group she attacks.

Adding to the weight of concern is the fact that Ms. Zorić made her remarks publicly as head of the University of Toronto Faculty Association (UTFA).  She was introduced as representing UTFA.  In her remarks, she referred to herself as the “leader” of UTFA.

By making her remarks in a public forum as president of UTFA, she misrepresents UTFA as itself antisemitic.  Her remarks do not just discredit herself.  They discredit the University Faculty Association.

By doing and saying nothing about these remarks, UTFA and the University put themselves in a compromising position.  Silence speaks.  UTFA and the University need to react.  Silence in the face of these remarks becomes complicity, tacit consent, an authorization to continue these sorts of remarks.

Any human rights violation, unless stopped, spreads.  This is particularly true of bigoted discourse, which spreads easily and quickly if not contradicted.  The reaction to bigoted discourse should be swift.

Both UTFA and the University need publicly to disassociate themselves from the remarks of Ms. Zorić.  UTFA should call on Ms. Zorić to resign her position.

The problem that the remarks of Ms. Zorić present go beyond the University of Toronto.  What makes them even more alarming is that they appear to be a driving force behind the CAUT censure of the University of Toronto.

Ms. Zorić refers to her views as “the principles at stake at the heart of the censure” by CAUT of the University of Toronto.  CAUT needs to reconsider its censure in light of the fact that a driving force behind the movement for censure was antisemitism.

We make these recommendations:

1) Ms. Zorić should resign as president of the University of Toronto Faculty Association.  She holds publicly expressed views which are incompatible with that position.  The Faculty Association should request her resignation.

2) The University of Toronto should disassociate themselves from the remarks of Ms. Zorić. The University should state publicly that her views do not represent the views of the University.

3)  CAUT should reconsider its censure of the University of Toronto in light of the publicly expressed views of Ms. Zorić. The impact that those views may have had on the decision to censure justifies the reconsideration.

Sincerely

David Matas

Senior Honorary Counsel

B’nai Brith Canada

602-225 Vaughan Street Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada R3C 1T7 Tel: 1 204 944 1831 Fax: 1 204 942 1494 E-mail: dmatas@mts.net

Cc: Terezia Zorić

University of Toronto Faculty Association

David Robinson

Canadian Association of University Teachers

   [1]  “Anti‑Zionism and Anti‑semitism” Jewish Political Studies Review 16:3‑4 (Fall 2004) page 27 on JSTOR

https://www.jstor.org/stable/25834602?read‑now=1&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents  3/4

[albinopygmyrhino]

Sangheili names in Long Night of Solace files

@somealienswife

Trogdore Dodo Es Jazh Dodo Wefliru Aod Tero Tha Dudoda Tera Sha Brafl Mepho Toizari Ce Mepho Ruwry Venne Dayo Sirelo Nuasoa Dayo Eege Detori Arre Lappo Toce Arre Syexa Ratye Fosto Retase Boinu Fosto Catoir Toyne Dieso Fugah Igido Dieso Sewraas Broso Aeehe Eoor Sidow Aeehe Rubbe Nuto Epud Ruwr Haell Epud Fowhe Ionna Kore Nodis Lysebb Kore Nehy Bra Guno Vange Tsiho Guno Aeyinu Nesi Pore Uesu Cere Pore Hosul Pratta Feda Tete Giehel Feda Realoy Oedoa Lapp Eero Kavahi Lapp Anoise Troosu Kana Sose Jusav Kana Nenole Iazh Dasa Pena Hengu Dasa Desyas Igido Liggoo Seny Wihe Liggoo Fasu Taghoa Thple Dod Sheenee Thpl Tes Tsewo Xida Mutta Xypho Xida Sesa Alco ‘Bobalee Eaco ‘Yajadai Thdo ‘Ramumee Myco ‘Lohadee Stfi ‘Enousee Enfi ‘Owtusee Ayth ‘Atsumee Iege ‘Iovoree Onsi ‘Egaolee Vema ‘Togadee Keyo ‘Ahtulai Nkmo ‘Ehtaree Atdi ‘Aalee Ilhi ‘Ouyulee Oioi ‘Ioadai Ckdu ‘Aulee Onsu ‘Ahcuree Onsu ‘Naduree Dsbi ‘Amsatee Ttbo ‘Dnaolee Nese ‘Enoosee Ciar ‘Yahamee Dstr ‘Ergatee Daga ‘Soculee Tyma ‘Tahosee Atfu ‘Ehtaree Ssre ‘Enkolee Insu ‘Racomee Ixsh ‘Uoyotai Ersu ‘Rtsalee Edam ‘Atsusee Onsu ‘Natusee Ilsu ‘Ualotee Athe ‘Hewosee Ntsu ‘Ramadee Nesu ‘Socodee Orsu ‘Cycadee Eesu ‘Uohamee Ayso ‘Labomee Isbr ‘Ookolee Deog ‘Romaree Atis ‘Xoforee Geba ‘Mowotee Psho ‘Dnaalee Atis ‘Aebomee Desh ‘Siusee Edhu ‘Botadee Lyph ‘Rtsodee Tsal ‘Foaree Ckwt ‘Dnaalee Lyph ‘Safotee Omsu ‘Kibaree Icsu ‘Batosee Chli ‘Ruoadee Irsu ‘Labatee Ist ‘Tahasee Olbr ‘Otsulee Ulre ‘Nubusee Rdwi ‘Ieguree Isch ‘Tuburee Idsn ‘Nacaree Inth ‘Argomee Erne ‘Rabasee Phpr ‘Nutodee Atun ‘Labamee Anha ‘Marusee Ntsu ‘Ilfatee Ersu ‘Kibolee Ndsu ‘Sacosee Utfa ‘Casomee Adin ‘Samomee Seyo ‘Olialee Tepa ‘Dnaolee Ngsu ‘Temulee Enbi ‘Ehturee Vedu ‘Aolee Ssne ‘Mowusee Ndap ‘Ymumai Alsu ‘Dniamee Itre ‘Sujusee Noti ‘Ylfalee Itas ‘Mnialee Wewo ‘Ohsolee Itan ‘Uoyalee Psto ‘Ahtalee Edto ‘Tubaree Toja ‘Mobamee Tsbe ‘Ufaadee Hebo ‘Iksudee Ancu ‘Repomee Bech ‘Lagasee Unko ‘Mikolee Axco ‘Bohomee       Evin ‘Tanolee Stfi ‘Ihtatee Idma ‘Yerusee Nnma ‘Yerasee Itme ‘Sujudee Nedu ‘Refolee Nyir ‘Xocosee Ismo ‘Hakomee Lfba ‘Tihosee Eypa ‘Nabulee Fspa ‘Pusuree Ckmu ‘Vacutee Lydo ‘Resodee Idch ‘Lcmutee Ceha ‘Ehsuree Icmi ‘Bsoatee Ampe ‘Rahutee Enma ‘Yerasee Lych ‘Raboree Heki ‘Gibadee Laca ‘Oksumee

[careerxlsstudyabroad]

U of T to implement salary increase for more than 800 women faculty members

  ~CXL~

The University of Toronto will implement a 1.3 per cent salary increase for all women faculty members who are tenured or in the tenure stream following an advisory group’s findings on gender-based pay equity. More than 800 women will receive an increase to their base salaries.

The planned increase, to be implemented on July 1, 2019, will be applied to base salaries as of June 30. The move is designed to address a gender-based pay gap identified by the Provostial Advisory Group on Faculty Gender Pay Equity through an analysis conducted by faculty with expertise from the departments of economics and statistical sciences, as well as the Rotman School of Management.

The university’s decision arises in part from a pre-grievance mediation between the university administration and the University of Toronto Faculty Association (UTFA), during which the administration and the association shared the results of detailed studies of the relationship between gender and salary at the university. While the mediation process did not result in agreement on the extent and underlying causes of gender-based salary gaps at U of T, both parties agreed there was a gap in the tenure stream of at least 1.3 per cent.

The Provostial Advisory Group’s analysis determined there was no statistically significant difference between the salaries of men and women who are faculty members with continuing appointments in U of T’s teaching stream, and did not address librarians, contractually limited term appointments (CLTAs), part-time faculty or pay differentials attributable to other social identities. UTFA’s analysis did identify gender-based differences for teaching stream faculty, librarians, CLTAs and part-time faculty. However, the parties have not come to any agreement on these issues.

UTFA and the university administration have agreed to examine these and related issues in facilitated working groups and in ongoing mediation.

“We’re taking immediate action to close the pay gap between men and women professors who are tenured or in the tenure stream based on the comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the issue undertaken by the advisory group,” said U of T President Meric Gertler.

“Ensuring fair and equitable compensation is critical to attracting the best and brightest talent from around the world. It’s also the right thing to do.”

Read More at https://www.utoronto.ca/news/u-t-implement-salary-increase-more-800-women-faculty-members

[alleventsalert]

Egy Beauty Expo 2022 - Egybeautyexpo.com

Egy Beauty Expo 2022 – Egybeautyexpo.com

Egybeautyexpo.com – Egy Beauty Expo 2022 are organized by UTFA. It will be held on 01 October – 03 October 2022 in Cairo, Egypt. Egybeautyexpo.com | Egy Beauty Expo 2022 You just need to follow the steps to participate in UTFA. (Egy Beauty Expo). Open your default internet browser.Type www.egybeautyexpo.com it in your address bar. Fill in all the required details.Fill in the verification…

[fycanadianpolitics]

Peterson, who rose to fame in right-wing circles after his outspoken refusal to use gender-neutral pronouns, says he wants to use artificial intelligence to scour university curriculums for what he "calls post-modern neo-Marxist course content.”

"We're going to start with a website in the next month and a half that will be designed to help students and parents identify post-modern content in courses so that they can avoid them," he told CTV's Your Morning in August.

"I'm hoping that over about a five-year period a concerted effort could be made to knock the enrolment down in postmodern neo-Marxist cult classes by 75 per cent across the West. So our plan initially is to cut off the supply to the people that are running the indoctrination cults."

Peterson has not responded to As It Happens' request for comment.

In a speech posted to his YouTube page on July 9, Peterson elaborates on what type of courses he aims to target with the website.

"Women's studies, and all the ethnic studies and racial studies groups, man, those things have to go and the faster they go the better," he said. "It would have been better if they had never been part of the university to begin with as far as I can tell."

"Sociology, that's corrupt. Anthropology, that's corrupt. English literature, that's corrupt. Maybe the worse offenders are the faculties of education."

In another video, he compares the project to "nonviolent warfare."

Peterson's plan doesn't sit well with some of his colleagues.

The University of Toronto Faculty Association told As It Happens it is "alarmed" by Peterson's plans to "place under surveillance certain kinds of academic content."

"Instructors of the potentially targeted courses believe that their autonomy as educators may be under threat. The proposed website has created a climate of fear and intimidation," UTFA said in a written statement. [...]

[cladust]

#taliban says #china is their most important partner and friend in #afghanistan and everywhere. Well the first reason probably being chinese #communist party is genociding #Uyghur #muslims and taliban loves it 'cuz they are very conservative extremist muslim. And second reason will be that chinese communist party and it's leadership being " #atheist ", " " #infidel" & " #communist". 😏

taliban can't win jihadi utfa against infidels without using guns like ak-47 invented and made by infidels in russia and an atheist infidel muslim genocider partner such as china. Looks like #erdogan will soon turn terrorist.🤔

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/china-is-our-most-important-partner-says-taliban-2528576

[kimboscakes]

30th Birthday Cake (at kimboscakes) https://www.instagram.com/p/B-UtFa-JACT/?igshid=pqqypoozdaxg

[lynnfb]

“... do i even want to know,” Sans thought aloud, stiffening as both Alphys and Frisk turned to him in sync, the two of them now sharing the same intense gaze. Oh stars, he’s gonna have to deal with both of them now, huh?

“... nope, nevermind,” He pack peddled, his grin looking more like a grimace as he pointedly avoided the two gazes in the room, “i definitely don’t want to know.”

[worklabournewsresearch]

U of T’s Gender Pay Gap Quick Fix

“The University of Toronto undertook a bit of spring cleaning last week in announcing a 1.3-per-cent salary raise for female tenure-stream faculty members. But the effort doesn’t go nearly far enough in fixing the gender pay gap on campus. Ensuring people a re fairly paid according to their skills and job responsibilities is trickier than it may seem. Seeking to explain salary as a function of professional rank is natural. ... Unfortunately, ... [o]utcomes such as academic rank, grant funding and publication success are themselves prone to gender discrimination. Women are granted tenure, achieve promotions and reach other significant career milestones at lower rates than men, even when the women are equally meritorious.”

“A peer-reviewed study by Bessma Momani, Emma Dreher and Kira Williams, published this month in the Canadian Journal of Higher Education, examined two decades of faculty members’ salary data from the Ontario Public Sector Salary Disclosure, also known as the sunshine list. The authors concluded that the salary wage gap is more extreme in some fields than some might realize, for example 34 per cent in psychiatry and around 10 per cent in both law and economics. For the University of Toronto specifically, Prof. Momani and colleagues estimated the gender salary gap across all faculty members and all fields exceeds 3.5 per cent. This makes the university’s 1.3-per-cent across-the-board adjustment look rather paltry.”

“Adding insult to injury, the University of Toronto plans to implement the raises for women effective this coming June, basically sweeping under the rug all the past years of underpayment. Any serious attempt to remedy the problem would have made the adjustment retroactive. And what about the other women among our ranks, including librarians, part-time faculty and teaching stream faculty, whose salaries remain unchanged?”

The Globe and Mail, April 29, 2019: “The University of Toronto’s attempt to address the gender pay gap isn’t enough,” by Lisa Kramer

Canadian Journal of Higher Education, April 21, 2019: “More Than a Pipeline Problem: Evaluating the Gender Pay Gap in Canadian Academia from 1996 to 2016,” by Bessma Momani, Emma Dreher, and Kira Williams (21 pages, PDF)

University of Toronto Faculty Association (UTFA), April 26, 2019: “U of T Admin Announces Inadequate Pay Increase for Tenure Stream Women Only: A Flawed Process,” by Terezia J. Zoric 

NPR, April 29, 2019: “Where The Gender Pay Gap Is Widest,” by Stacey Vanek Smith and Cardiff Garcia (9:36, audio)

Open Access Government, April 26, 2019: “Gender pay gap: How to improve your organisation’s equality”

[groningsnieuws]

Berenklauw laat zich deze zomer massaal zien in <b>Groningen</b>

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The Circle and the Square -- Temple and Cosmos Beyond this Ignorant Present -- HUGH NIBLEY 1992

The Circle and the Square

What exists on the earth’s surface is supported, much like a troupe of actors, by countless backstage assistants. I’ve often referred to the earth as a stage, to which Joseph Smith gives us the scenario. He talked about the stagehands, forming a network that extends far behind and beyond the theater walls. The props and the stage are there, along with the stagehands. The big question is, Is there a play? Is there a plot? Is there a meaning to it all?

Surprisingly, since ancient times, only Joseph Smith has come up with any kind of a plot. When he faced the world he had nothing to go on, and everything against him; he couldn’t lose. He had something concrete to put up, while the rest of the world had none. They had the abstract, the moralistic, etc., but nothing in the way of the infinities, of the realities of the next world. Only Brother Joseph had something to offer.

Certainly the earth is not the center of the universe. This illusion has been discarded forever. Still, this crowded earth is one of those perhaps innumerable places in the cosmos where both life and consciousness flourish. Many factors united to produce and maintain the right conditions where life was generated by a concentration of mighty forces upon one relatively tiny point.

This is the center I am talking about, and it’s exactly what we read in the book of Abraham, where he says that everything is relative to the individual: the individual is the center. All distances, all times, all places are measured in terms of the “[earth] upon which thou standest” (Abraham 3:5). Its distances, its motions, etc., are not the center of anything. Moses says the same thing: “Tell me, I pray thee, why these things are so” (Moses 1:30). The Lord replies: I’m not going to. “Only an account of this earth . . . give I unto you” (Moses 1:35). You must be content with that, but remember that there are others: “Worlds without number have I created” (Moses 1:33).

“Tell me concerning this earth,” Moses returns. “Then thy servant will be content” (Moses 1:36).

So for us, the earth is the center of things, so long as we’re here.

There arises the question of whether we need a psychological center—some kind of center we can refer to. Thus we frequently quote Yeats’ famous lines: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”1 Our civilization is collapsing, falling apart, because there is no center; everything is loosened.

In the opening lines of the famous first of modern geography books, Ratzel begins, “Every man regards himself as the center of the universe around him.” There is a real center, but it is also relative. There is also each person’s awareness that other people have their centers too, unless you’re a solipsist, or something similar. Since there are other people, there must be other centers. For the purposes of getting together, can we agree on one center—a fictitious center, a model of some sort, and act as if that were the center?

Actually we don’t have to do that, because we have one very real center. If you traveled over the entire earth viewing the heavens, you wouldn’t come to a center, but you would find two places that looked very much alike: the center polestars, of course. They stay fixed, while all else revolves around them. Thus on the west tower of the Salt Lake Temple there is the Big Dipper, pointing up—to the polestar.2 The temple is a point of reference, a place where you take your bearings on the universe.

That’s what the word templum means. Everyone knows what a template is that you put over a map. It’s as if we put a template over the temple in Salt Lake City; most every street in the city, and every city in the state, is measured east, west, north, and south from that arbitrary point. (Certain points on the earth do seem to be particularly suited as central points—they have a special power, charm, or attraction about them.)

So are we there among the stars, or are we not? Giorgio de Santillana said we should not be too sure we aren’t.3

Our present tradition comes from the great migrations, after some kind of Golden Age, which broke up around 3500 to 3000 B.C. This was a horrible time; everything went to smash. Everything was uprooted; everyone became migrants. And, obsessed with the idea of the temple, they took it with them—though it was a different concept from the older, permanent idea. When people are uprooted, they develop two yearnings: a passion for permanence, and a zest for distance and adventure.

As we see in the Odyssey, Odysseus, who wandered for ten years, enjoyed his journey, at least with Calypso. She twitted him about it. Still he blubbered all day long to be home with his dear wife. He loved to travel, but he couldn’t wait to get home. He had to have both. It is like a French geographer’s description of the mad force of the sun and the wise force of the earth. The latter pulls you back, although you want both. This is what our ancestors documented in the great migrations.

Ancient tribal shrines of the Near East are known variously as the cutfa (“the standing place”), the mahmal (“a wagon, or something you ride in”), the markab (“a camping place”), a qubba (“dome, or navel center—something that doesn’t move, like a Navajo hogan”), a bayt (a place where you spend the night only—our words booth, abide, etc.), a Hebrew ‘arôn (“an ark or vessel, like the ark of the covenant”), and an Arabic tabut (borrowed from the Egyptian word for “chest, coffin”)—all these words designate the ancient tribal shrines.4 And they have two characteristics in common:  they are dome-shaped, and they are mounted on a boxlike frame; the two come together in a substructure, merkabah, a vessel or wagon (something you ride on). The word has a great mystical meaning in the Jewish cabbalistic literature. The merkabah is the vessel by which God conveys his wisdom, whatever it might be, to whomever. Whatever its precise meaning, it was meant to provide mobility.

Two recent studies discuss the cosmic nature of the wheel, the dome-shaped shrine, or royal balde, baldekin or baldaekin, or, paradoxical as it may seem, such a symbol of supreme stability as the throne, temple, holy city and even sacred mountain. World mountains are often depicted as revolving wheels or as mounted on wheels.

That’s a strange thing. The Roman quadrata represents the four corners of the earth, and the center of everything; the Romans always drew it this way. But it’s also the picture of a wheel. The Babylonians combined the two very neatly in their cosmic design. It’s the wheel that goes round and round but never moves.

For the nomads, it’s a qubba—a dome; the Latin word is cupola: a cap, cup. It represents the dome of the heavens, and you find it everywhere as the common shape of churches. And the square church accompanies it. The dome, like a stupa in India, is mounted over a perfect cube. To the nomads the qubay, or domed red leather tent of the chief, is the qubba.

The Islamic qibla derives from a root meaning “to face, to receive, to look toward.” When a Muslim prays five times a day, what direction does he face? To Mecca—the center of the world. How does he know where the center is? In his house he has a qibla, a marker that tells the direction he must face, “by which the tribe when it camps, takes its bearings in space; the qibla itself is oriented with reference to the heavenly bodies. For the Asiatics as well as the Romans, the Royal Tent is a templum or tabernaculum.”5

The word tabernaculum is the Roman name for a quickly made booth, a “little house of boards,” something thrown up very quickly of brush, boards, blankets, or anything you might happen to have.6 The Feast of Tabernacles is the sukkôt of the Hebrew, which is the sh of the Egyptians.

It’s the same thing as the outer court of the Greek temple, the temenos, which means “temple,” “to cut”—the point at which the two lines, the cardo and the decumanus, intersect (the axis mundi).7 All space comes together at this absolute, theoretical, perfect point. It is the center of everything, which doesn’t exist. It’s like the singularity that physicists talk about today—things that are real and conceivable, but not describable. Thus it’s a device for taking our bearings on wherever we are. That’s precisely what a temple does: it puts us into the picture of time and space. It’s a sort of sacred observatory, like the tabernacle or the camp of Israel, and at the same time a kind of planetarium, a model of the cosmos.8

The temple at Jerusalem was built to accommodate the ark of the covenant. The ark, ‘arôn, could travel in a tent, because it does travel. Even when housed in Solomon’s temple, the ark had the carrying poles on it, so it could be carried around. It resembles an archaic Egyptian shrine, even to the details.

This double quality (the ever-moving center) caused much dispute among the Doctors of the Jews. Some said that a stone temple that tied down the ark, and hence the chosen people, was an abomination; others said it was the very symbol of endurance and everlasting assurance.9

The central pole of the tent (see Eliade’s work on Shamanism)10 is often identified with the pole (the polestar) of the heavens. “The tent itself is the Weltenmantel, the expanse of the firmament. Other tent poles sometimes represent the four cardinal points or the two turning points of the sun in the summer and winter solstice.”11 The tent pole theme is carried over into the pillars of the temples and palaces, even into the columns of medieval churches and the stately façades of our own public buildings.”12 Thus we all are familiar with the idea.

There are two kinds of temple architecture—the circle and the square. The earliest nine pyramids along the Nile were perfectly square. When I checked this in my pyramid texts, the symbol was drawn thus. At Gilgal twelve stones stand in a circle. Generally, the rites are said to be in the form of a circumambulation. The king goes through the land in a great circle, in his Royal Progress, the “king’s tour.” He visits one by one each holy place, to take possession of his land, something he has to do every year. When he arrives at each, he circumambulates it three times. That’s the combination:  the circle and square.13

In the Pythagorean mystic, the cube represents perfect solidity; the sphere is perfect continual motion. The two must always be together; thus we find them so combined in ancient temples, and in our temple too. The Manti Temple features the square building, but it has a circular staircase. The Provo Temple has a square bottom, but is rounded off (it would have been nice had they made up their minds whether they wanted it square or round). It looks like a typical “stupa.” And of course it has a tall, round ornament at the top. There is always motion around, but also always stability in the center. It is satisfying to have it both ways.

For this reason, the temple lends itself to duplication, an important principle. The ancients often referred to it as “the spark.” We are now into the mechanics of the creation process.

All ancient temples rehearsed the story of the creation, and the establishment of mankind and royal government of God upon this earth. Then they moved into the heavenly sphere and the theology associated with the worlds beyond.

The order and stability of a foundation are achieved through the operation of a “spark.” The spark is sometimes defined as “a small idea.”14 This is interesting, because it reminds us of a contemporary anthropic idea. “That comes forth from God and makes all the difference between what lives and what does not.”15 This spark must go from world to world, and wherever it goes, it sets up a new center; this center in turn goes out and sets up other new centers.16

St. Augustine uses this image, interestingly, when he refers to Jerusalem. The church always fought pilgrimages to Jerusalem, because it was a vote of no confidence for Rome. There must be more than one center in the world, Augustine argued. Just as a fire sends forth sparks, and each new spark lands somewhere and starts a new fire, so did Jerusalem. Despite the fact that there were many centers, they were all the one. There is no need to be disturbed by the existence of multiple centers. Compared with it all, the worlds are but as a shadow, since it is the Spark whose light moves all material things.17

The Latin word fundamentum refers to the lump of butter in the cream you are churning.18 At first there is nothing hard, nothing firm. There’s matter out there, but it’s very thin.19 So the frog starts to churn, starts to work at it, and in time a lump forms, quite mysteriously—as anyone knows who has ever churned butter. This text reads, “The fundamentum of the world begins to take form when it is touched by a scintilla; the spark ceases and the fountain is stopped when the inhabitants transgress.”20 We find this in the vision of Zenez (Kenaz), a record discovered long after Joseph Smith wrote about a Zenos in the Book of Mormon.21

“Matter without light is inert and helpless,” says the Pistis Sophia.22 “It is the first light which reproduces the pattern of the heavenly model, wherever it touches”;23“when the rays from the worlds of light stream down to the earthly world, for awakening mortals.”24 Sometimes the column of light joins heaven to earth,” as in our Facsimile No. 2 (a very important principle), even as the divine plan is communicated to distant worlds by a spark. According to Carl Schmidt, it is the dynamics of light from one world that animates another.25 “God’s assistants, the faithful servants of Melchizedek, rescue and preserve the light particles, lest any be lost in space.”26 The spark is also called “the drop”; the Egyptians call it the prt (“drop”). It is the divine drop of light that man brought forth with him from above, the spark that reactivates bodies that have become inert by the loss of former light.27 It’s like a tiny bit of God himself. Christ calls upon the Father to send light to the apostles.

It is the ultimate particle, the ennas, which came from the Father, of those who are without beginning, emanating from the treasure house of light from which all life and power is ultimately derived. Thanks to the vivifying and organizing power of the Spark, we find throughout the cosmos an infinity of dwelling places, other worlds, kosmoi (topoi is the word always used—the “places”), either occupied or awaiting tenants. These are colonized by migrants from previously established topoi or worlds, all going back ultimately to a single original center.28

The colonizing process is called “planting,” and those spirits which bring their treasures to a new world are called “plants,” more rarely “seeds,” of their father, or “planters” in another world. For every planting goes out from a Treasure House, either as the essential material elements or as the colonizers themselves, who come from a sort of mustering-area called the “Treasure-House of Souls.” (These early Christians had quite a system.29)

With its “planting” completed, a new world is in business. A new treasury has been established from which new sparks may go forth in all directions to start the process anew in ever new spaces; God wants every man to “plant a planting,” nay, he has promised that those who keep his law may also become creators of worlds. Thus you can say there is indeed but one God who fills the immensity of space, yet we are in the act too, as potential creators of worlds.

The idea of the universal center of the race is found throughout the ancient world. It’s the scene of great events.30

At hundreds of holy shrines, each believed to mark the exact center of the universe and represented as the point at which the four corners of the earth converged [the middle omphalos]—”the navel of the earth” [the umbilicus]—one might have seen assembled at the New Year—the moment of creation, the beginning and ending of time—vast concourses of people, each thought to represent the entire human race in the place of all its ancestors and gods.31

Time and place are always coordinated. After all, if you are going to have a universal meeting of people scattered all over the realm, what do you do? You appoint a particular place for them to come to. But if they are to assemble, they must come at a particular time, in a face-to-face meeting. That’s the function of the great assembly at the New Year, the best time, because there’s no planting or reaping going on. But most dramatically, it’s when the sun reaches its lowest point and must be renewed. And we must all participate in the revival of a new year, and a new age, in bringing things to life again, and make our new oaths and covenants for a new time.

A visitor to any of these festivals would have found a market or fair in progress, the natural outcome of bringing people together from wide areas in large numbers, and the temple of the place functioning as an exchange or bank. He could have witnessed ritual contests: foot, horse, and wagon races, odd kinds of wrestling.”32

The Icelandic colony in Spanish Fork, Utah, used to celebrate Icelandic Day in that fashion, at which there was ritual wrestling. It was a type of belt wrestling that is beautifully depicted in some ancient pictures from Egypt. At such festivals there was a Troy Game, beauty contests to choose the queen, etc.33 “All came to the celebration as pilgrims, often traversing immense distances over prehistoric sacred roads.”34

During this time, the King’s Highway was sacred, and to break the peace there was a capital offense. On that free and open passage, the king’s peace prevailed, for anyone who wanted to come to the king’s presence for any purpose. And during the festival, they naturally dwelt “in booths of green boughs,” to protect them from both the heat of the sun and from showers.35 They can have no houses: it’s not a place where the living dwell. When you leave it, as we learn in Exodus and again in Leviticus, you must eat the Passover with your staff in your hand and your shoes on your feet; and there must not be any of the food left by morning.  Then you must hasten away and not look back (Exodus 12:11). It’s a holy place, and when the sun rises, the holy time is over. You no longer belong there. It’s maktos, the place of the spirits, because you had been there with the spirits and others.

“What would most command a visitor’s attention to the great assembly would be the main event, the now famous ritual year-drama for the glorification of the king. In most versions of the year-drama, the king wages combat with his dark adversary of the underworld, emerging victorious after a temporary defeat from his duel with death.”36 This is beautifully set forth in the first chapter of the book of Moses. Moses is proclaimed king after he has overcome many waters of Meribah—death; therefore, God says, “I shall make you king in my place, and you shall rule over my people as if you were God.” Moses is put in God’s place. “Blessed art thou, Moses, because thou hast overcome” (cf. Exodus 7:1; Moses 1:25-26).

So it was with the devil—up and down, up and down. Satan got Moses down, but in his last breath, Moses appealed to God and was rescued. When he saw the bitterness of hell, then it was that he went down (Moses 1:12-22). But he was rescued and became the victor and it was declared, “He shall rule my people and be to them as if he were God. And they shall follow him.”

Everything comes together at a particular time and place, at the center of the universe. “The New Year was the birthday of the human race and its rites dramatized the creation of the world; all who would be found in the ‘Book of Life opened at the creation of the World’ must necessarily attend.”37 You have always had the incisi in Rome, or among our ancestors you had to have your herör, and if you were touched by the king’s arrow, you had to come to the king’s presence; anyone who didn’t come to the New Year’s celebration within three days—whether at Swansea, or at Lund, or at the great Thing in Iceland, or in a hundred different places in England—would be banished from the kingdom for three years. You were considered to be in a state of rebellion, because you didn’t come to acclaim the king. You refused to give him your voice, your acclaim.38 This was all very important. In Rome, during the time of the Republic, you had to come with your family from great distances, even from Sicily, so they could be registered again and receive the annona,39 the yearly gift, a guarantee of prosperity for the new year. If you didn’t come, your name would be struck from the list of the incisi, the huge lead tablets that swung on great, wooden poles in the temple in the capital. If your name was not on that, you were hosticus, an outlaw of the state.

That’s where the word outlaw comes from. If you did not come to the king’s presence when he summoned you, you were outside of the law, because you would not acknowledge the law. That was the case with Cain, who was thrown out.

So if you are not there, and are not found in the Book of Life, which is

opened at the creation of the World. . . . There were coronation and royal marriage rites, accompanied by a ritual representing the sowing or begetting of the human race; and the whole celebration wound up in a mighty feast in which the king as lord of abundance gave earnest of his capacity to supply his children with all the good things of the earth. The stuff for the feast was supplied by the feasters themselves, for no one came “to worship the king” without bringing his tithes and firstfruits.40

No one comes to the presence of the king empty-handed. So here they are, all coming together.

And the omphalos is a three-dimensional center, the origin of the “hierocentric idea,” coined by Eric Burrows,41 the Assyriologist who pointed out in such writings as the poem Enuma Elish what happened on the new year when all the people came together. Enuma elish means “as once above,” “as it once happened above,”42 in the beginning at the creation, when the Lord of life was challenged by the powers of darkness; and in order for the trinity to combat it, the Father begat Marduk in his own image. First Marduk slew the monster Tiamat and made the material world out of its body.43 Tiamat was the great matriarch who plotted to put her son Kingu (who is Satan) on the throne.44 They were overcome and cast out. Then Marduk placed part of the material above, part below. Between these three levels he placed a barrier—a bolt.45 “Then he went the rounds of the heavens (“around them”) and inspected the various holy places, in order to establish there an exact replica of the Apsu, the dwelling of Ea.46 So the Apsu (the abyss) is what is above, and what is below. Ea is water; the Sumerian word for temple is Esagil (Babylonian: Esagila), which is over the waters of the underworld. The idea is that he traced an exact replica of each world on the other (the Egyptian rule of three, which Gardiner tells us about). Whatever happens in this world happens above and happens below. The three levels are related.

Then the Great Lord measured the dimensions of the Apsu and established his own dwelling, his image, Esarra, which shall be his temple on this earth—as Ea is below, and the Apsu is above.47 On this earth is the Esagil (the great palace at Babylon), which has the same dimensions as the Apsu—and Anu, Enlil, and Ea (the great trinity) then occupy their dwellings.48

The Anunnaki, the spirit children who come down to earth, built the great temple of Esagil, a replica of the great abyss, the temple at the Apsu. They represented it by the ziggurat, which is over the Apsu.49

Now Enlil, Ea, and Marduk founded his dwelling, his house. After that, the Anunnaki traced for themselves their sanctuaries upon the earth at Esagil, the great temple, which is the vault of the Apsu—the dome—at which point they would come together and unite themselves. There they received their order from gods.50

This is the Babylonian hymn of the creation. The king of Babylon had to disappear each year, in order to show that he could overcome death. He would disappear in an underground vault, where he would be humiliated. A priest would slap his face until the tears ran down; he would be clothed in a mock robe and crowned with a crown of weeds. A reed would be put in his hand. Then the lord of misrule, the false king, took his place for three days.51

At the end of three days, the king emerged from the tomb triumphant to show that he had overcome death and to rule for a new year. As he came forth, a great hymn, the Enuma Elish, was intoned by all the people. In other words, they were repeating what had happened elsewhere, before—the pattern on which this particular earth was founded: “This is Babylon, the place upon this earth where you shall dwell.”52 (The same thing happened at the beginning of Egypt, much earlier.) The Enuma Elish was written about 1700 B.C., though the rites were much earlier.53

“Come here and rejoice in this play, and celebrate his feastival.”54 That sounds exactly like Deuteronomy. “They served the Zarbabu and inaugurated the festival. In the Esagil . . . all the laws were fixed, and all the destinies were determined.”55 The king would go up to the top of the ziggurat (of seven levels), to a round table which represented four possibilities.

He would cast the dice, which bore 36 possibilities, to find out what would happen each day of the year—to determine the destinies of the year, according to which quarter of the table the dice landed on.

The stations of the heavens and the earth were fixed at this place. [All time and space shall meet here.] The laws were fixed here. [Everything is determined here.] And his fathers exalted the work which he had done [and celebrated God].56

Let the son be exalted, . . . may his power be almighty, may he impose his yoke upon his enemies. Let him exercise his pastorate upon the black heads [which is what they called themselves: the true people]. Let them come to this place under his protection throughout the years. Let them repeat these rituals without ever forgetting any of his exploits [or any of his great deeds for them].57

In the Roman year rites, if there was anything non rite non recte parum solemnitatis that had not been done ritually correct, or without sufficient solemnity, the whole seven-day festival had to be run over again. It could be done as many as seven times over. Remarkably, you find the same pattern pervasively, and it’s very old.

“And let them here burn incense and receive guarantee of nourishment for the year.”58 The Arabic mathal could be translated as “a likeness” in the heavens of that which is done on the earth. What interests me now is how old this stuff is.

I spent eight months in England in 1943 and 1944 preparing for the invasion of Europe, at Grenham Lodge, not far from Avebury, near Marlborough, on the plains of England. This is one of the oldest (2600 B.C.) and largest monuments of Europe, 500 years older than Stonehenge. It’s enormous. Much excavating has been done there. On days off, I had a chance to inspect it, and I was electrified by it. I had a lot of guesses about what had happened there. Silbury Hill (Wiltshire), an artificial mound, was set up there in the place of the assembly, for the mountain of the law.

Excavations have revealed that originally it was a sevenfold tower, like the towers in Babylon, or like the original pyramids (step pyramids) of Egypt, rising in seven stages.59 The author of Prehistoric Avebury, Burl, is a very conservative scholar. He abhors anything sensational. So his conclusions are very interesting. At this same time “in other parts of the British Isles people were already putting up great stone circles for ceremonies. At Stennes in the Orkneys [in Scotland halfway to the North Pole ] twelve steepling columns stood in a ring”60—as Jacob did in Israel, whenever he made a covenant (Genesis 31:45-46).

Twelve steepling columns stood in a ring. . . . In Ireland the chambered round cairn of New Grange with its quartz walls with a passage aligned towards the midwinter sunrise was placed inside a circle of over thirty massive blocks of stone. In the Lake District, source of many stone axes, people were going to splendid stone circles with names that peal like a prehistoric role of honour: Long Meg and Her Daughters, the Carles at Castlerigg, Sunken Kirk, the Grey Horses. Rites inside these sacred rings differed but in every region where there was a fair-sized population circular enclosures where the foci [notice the focus, the center points] of ceremonies, megalithic rings in the north and west, henges of earth or chalk in the stoneless areas of lowland Britain.61

That’s how they differed in form but they always have the ring, and they always do the same thing when they come together. It is vastly older than the pyramids, is beautifully done, and contains magnificent things. These did not necessarily originate from the Near East, as once was thought. Ideas worked both ways.

The point is that our ancestors were doing all this far back in time. The Beaker people didn’t come until 2100 B.C. They were the ones that built Stonehenge, though they hooked into the existing traditions, while bringing their own. In the earliest times, everybody seemed to be doing the same sort of thing, building the same kinds of structures.

Burl is very fond of comparing these things with the “Hopewell Indians of the Ohio,” a good three thousand years after. Why should this be, he asks, that they should be doing the same thing?62

“Avebury became almost a metropolitan centre to which people came from miles around to trade and to settle disputes, to worship in the marvelous stone rings that expressed the barbaric pride of the natives.”63 And the remains are not a few. There are piles of stuff to show what was going on at these places. They were all doing the same sort of thing.

More to the point:

Death and regeneration are the themes of Avebury. The presence of human bones, the pieces of stone, the red ochre, the pockets of fertile earth, the antlers, the shapes of the sarsens, the architecture of the avenues and circles, all are consistent with the belief that Avebury was intended as a temple in which, at various times of the year, the large population could gather to watch and take part in ceremonies of magic and evocation that would safeguard their lives.64

Less than a year ago I received a report from the University of Chicago, in cooperation with a university in Spain, of an excavation of the most ancient of these foundations in the world, very accurately dated to about 13,920 B.C., give or take two hundred years.65 Fourteen thousand years ago is a long time; Avebury is only 2600 B.C. And would you believe it, excavators are finding the same stuff—the same combination of stuff way back then? You can’t get away from it. Primitive man was really up to something; he had a definite idea behind what he was doing.

Gordon Childe [the great Scottish prehistorian] thought of Avebury as a cathedral, Stuart Piggot as an open sanctuary associated with a sky-god, Isobel Smith as a monument dedicated to a fertility cult whose practices included the use of stone discs, balls of chalk and human bones. Jacquetta Hawkes wrote of fertility rites involving the earth and the sun although “what those mysteries were we shall never know.” However generalised these observations there is agreement about a religious centre for fertility cults linked with the earth, the sun [the heavenly bodies in their motions], ritual objects and dead bones [i.e., with the ancestors, and scholars all agree on that]. Not many years ago Patrick Crampton went further, suggesting that Avebury was not only a temple of the powerful Earth Goddess but also a “city,” the first “capital—religious, cultural, commercial—of most of southern Britain.”66

So these concepts were very old. I myself was enormously impressed by the size of the stones, weighing sixty tons, set in a great circle 350 yards across. It was an amazing accomplishment that they dragged them to the site. It required great work, concentration, and leadership. Burl says the population of all Western Europe couldn’t have been more than forty-eight thousand people at the time. But there must have been many more than that.67

The enormous ditch around the stones is thirty feet deep, dug out by use of only deer horns.68 For ritual reasons, they could not use anything else.

I used to fly over the area frequently. You could see radiating from the site great table stones, and the great prehistoric roads that led to the site, from hundreds of miles to the north. From everywhere, people came to Avebury, nearly five thousand years ago, to celebrate the very thing we do in our temples today—the continuity of life.

We do have from this same time the actual full pyramid texts, from the tomb of Unas, who ended his rule in 2524 B.C. The Egyptians did the same things when they met at the sacred points. The reading begins with the council in heaven, followed by a dramatization; from that to the creation of the world and the coming of man; then to the fall and the redemption—all accompanied by ordinances. At that time, only the king received them, but very soon after, the nobility also did, and eventually all the people. They received their washings and anointings, their names, and the whole initiation. As the end of the Shabako Stone says, “to become glorified, a king for eternal exaltation.”69 All were supposed to do that.

The temple as the center of the universe may be a myth, but it is the most powerful myth that ever possessed the human race. Mircea Eliade has written a book on that topic, Cosmos and History: The Myth of Eternal Return, in which he deplores the fact that contemporary man has completely cut that tradition off. He says,

The chief difference between the man of the archaic and traditional societies and the man of modern societies [with reference to the place he assumes in the cosmos] with their strong imprint of Judaeo-Christianity lies in the fact that the former feels himself indissolutely connected with the Cosmos and the cosmic rhythms, whereas the latter insists that he is connected only with History.70

We now live in a technological world; let us not worry about other problems. Technology will solve all those. The other stuff is outdated. But for thousands and thousands of years, our ancestors went through those things. So let us think about it all for five minutes.

Notes

1.

William Butler Yeats, “Second Coming,” stanza 1, lines 14-16; in Joseph Hone,

W.B. Yeats

(New York: Macmillan, 1943), 351.

2. James E. Talmage, The House of the Lord (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1912), 178.

3. Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill (Boston: Gambit, 1969), 383-86, 306-7.

4.  Cf. Hugh W. Nibley, “Tenting, Toll, and Taxing,” WPQ 19 (1966): 602; reprinted in CWHN 10:35; 74, n. 15.

5.  Cf. Werner Müller, Die heilige Stadt: Roma quadrata, himmlisches Jerusalem und die Mythe vom Weltnabel (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1961); and Werner Müller,Kreis und Kreuz: Untersuchungen zur sakralen Siedlung bei Italikern und Germanen (Berlin: Widukind, 1938).

6. Charlton T. Lewis, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969), 1831.

7. Mircea Eliade, Cosmos and History: The Myth of Eternal Return (New York: Princeton University Press, 1974), 12.

8.  Cf. Nibley, “Tenting, Toll, and Taxing,” 603-4; in CWHN 10:41; 76, nn. 25-26.

9.  Hugh W. Nibley, “The Hierocentric State,” WPQ 4 (1951): 226-53; reprinted in CWHN 10:99-147.

10. Mircea Eliade, Le Chamanisme et les techniques archaïques de l’extase (Paris: Librairie Payot, 1951); for translation, see Willard R. Trask, tr., Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstacy (New York: Pantheon, 1964).

11. Cf. Nibley, ” Tenting. Toll, and Taxing,” 604; in CWHN 10:41; 76-77, nn. 27-29.

12. Eliade, Le Chamanisme et les techniques archaïques de l’extase; for translation, see Trask, tr., Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstacy, 260-61.

13. Nibley, “Hierocentric State,” 226-53; in CWHN 10:99-147. Cf. Eric Uphill, “Egyptian Sed-Festival Rites,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 24 (1965): 365-83.

14.  1 Jeu 39, in Carl Schmidt, ed., The Books of Jeu and the Untitled Text in the Bruce Codex, tr. Violet MacDermot (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 88, lines 13-22.

15. Second Gnostic Work 2a-3s; 18a; see Untitled Text 1-3, in Schmidt, Books of Jeu and the Untitled Text, 226-30; cf. Hugh W. Nibley, “Treasures in the Heavens: Some Early Christian Insights into the Organizing of Worlds” DJMT 8 (Autumn/Winter 1973): 83; reprinted in CWHN 1:184.

16.  Pistis Sophia I, 58, in Carl Schmidt, ed., Pistis Sophia (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 112, lines 4-25.

17.  Untitled Text 2, in Schimdt, Books of Jeu and the Untitled Text, 227.

18.  Cf. Lewis, Latin Dictionary, 792.

19. De Santillana and von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill, 383; see the discussion on Amritamanthana.

20. The Vision of Kenaz, which appears in M. R. James, Apocrypha Anecdota, Texts and Studies, ed. J. A. Robinson, 10 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Universtiy Press, 1893), 2:3:179; cf. OTP 2:342.

21. James, Apocrypha Anecdota Texts and Studies, 174-77; cf. Hugh W. Nibley, Since Cumorah (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1967), 322-27; reprinted in CWHN 7:286-90; cf. OTP 2:341-42.

22.  Pistis Sophia I, 55, in Schmidt, Pistis Sophia, 107.

23.  Text 146:14-16, in Alexander Böhlig and Pahor Labib, Die koptisch-gnostische Schrift ohne Titel aus Codex II von Nag Hammadi (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1962), 39; cf. On the Origin of the World II, 98, 14-15, in NHLE, 162.

24.  Ethel S. Drower, The Thousand and Twelve Questions (Berlin: Akademie, 1960), 99-100.

25.  Carl Schmidt, Gnostiche Schriften in koptischer Sprache aus dem Codex Brucianus, in Texte und Untersuchungen 8/1-2 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1892), 331.

26.  Pistis Sophia I, 25, in Schmidt, Pistis Sophia, 34-35.

27.  Sophia Christi 104:4-6; 119:1.

28.  Untitled Text 19-20, in Schmidt, Books of Jeu and the Untitled Text, 261-63.

29.  Mark Lidzbarski, Das Johannesbuch der Mandäer (Giessen: Töpelmann 1915), 60, n. 6.; cf. CWHN 1:209, n. 98.

30. Nibley, “Hierocentric State,” 226-53; in CWHN 10:99-147.

31. Ibid., 226; in CWHN 10:99.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid., 226; in CWHN 10:99-100.

35. Ibid., 226; in CWHN 10:100.

36. Ibid.

37.  Ibid.

38.  Hugh W. Nibley, “The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State,” WPQ 2/3 (September 1949): 330-31; reprinted in CWHN 10:4-5.

39.  Cf. fig. 15 in CWHN 10:159.

40. Nibley, “Hierocentric State,” 226-27; in CWHN 10:99-101.

41.  Eric Burrows, “Some Cosmological Patterns in Babylonian Religion,” The Labyrinth, ed. Samuel H. Hooke (London: SPCK, 1935), 46-48; Nibley, “Hierocentric State,” 226-27; in CWHN 10:99-101.

42.  Enuma Elish I, 1.

43. Enuma Elish, IV, 133-40.

44. Enuma Elish, V, 146-55.

45. Enuma Elish, IV, 138-46.

46.  Enuma Elish, IV, 138-42.

47. Enuma Elish, IV, 142-44.

48. Enuma Elish, IV, 145-46.

49. Enuma Elish, VI, 62-64.

50. Enuma Elish, VI, 68-70.

51. François Thureau-Dangin, Rituals Accadiens (Paris: Leroux, 1921).

52.  Enuma Elish VI, 72.

53. Henri Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 319.

54.  Enuma Elish VI, 77-78.

55. Enuma Elish, VI, 77-78.

56.  Enuma Elish VI, 85.

57. Enuma Elish, VI, 106-9.

58. Enuma Elish, VI, 112-13.

59. Aubrey Burl, Prehistoric Avebury (London: Yale University Press, 1979), 131; cf. Burrows, “Some Cosmological Patterns,” 68-69.

60. Burl, Prehistoric Avebury, 140.

61. Ibid.

62. Ibid.

63. Ibid.

64. Ibid., 200.

65. L. G. Freeman and J. González Echegaray, “El Juyo: A 14,000-Year-Old Sanctuary from Northern Spain,” History of Religions 21 (August 1981): 1-19.

66. Burl, Prehistoric Avebury, 202.

67. Ibid., 178.

68. Ibid., 175-76.

69.  Cf. Shabako Stone, line 64, in Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 3 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1943), 1:56.

70. Eliade, Cosmos and History, xiii-iv; cf. de Santillana and von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill.