ADAM AND EVE AND AMANITA
Glimpse (#98) was the back panel of the Painted Monastery of Voronet. Here you see a side panel fresco of Adam and Eve tempted by the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
Startlingly, however, the couple is not eating an apple at the serpent’s behest but a hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria mushroom – recognizable as the classic Disney cartoon mushroom with the red cap and white spots. Sounds hard to believe but there it is, 532 years old. It’s the center panel of a triptych, the left panel has Adam and Eve each grasping an Amanita stalk, the right panel knowing they are naked covering themselves with fig leaves.
In all three panels, the Garden of Eden is an Amanita garden. This is devotional art by deeply devout Christians over 500 years ago. What’s going on? Amanita muscaria is commonly found in the Carpathian forests to this day. Did the Voronet painters engage in Amanita ceremonies giving them visions they used to paint their churches? Did those visions make them decide it was Amanita and not an apple that Eve ate?
From time immemorial, people have used hallucinogenic plants to commune with the spirit world. Researchers have shown that Soma, the god instantiated on earth in the earliest Hindu texts, is Amanita muscaria. And they’ve made another connection. Google Amanita muscaria + Santa Claus to find out. Better be sitting down. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #99 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON IN CHINA??
Something weird is taking place in China but, as of this writing, nobody is quite sure what’s happening. Social media has lit up with information, some of which is verifiable and some of which is pure speculation.
The most widely spread rumor is that there is a coup being carried out against Xi Jinping, but that’s also the least likely thing to be taking place according to experienced China watchers.
We know that, on Saturday, there were fewer commercial flights over Beijing than usual. There’ve also been rumors that trains and buses into and out of Beijing have been canceled, and claims that military vehicles have been seen heading for Beijing, although there’s no reliable provenance for that particular short video.
According to Newsweek, the most prominent source for the story is an Indian politician:
CONTRACT TO DEFEAT BIG GOVERNMENT SOCIALISM
The goal of every American should be to defeat Big Government Socialism. Republicans specifically must develop a contract for 2024 built around restoring the America that works by defeating and replacing Big Government Socialism.
It is not enough to just defeat individual personalities. President Joe Biden might lose or retire because he is at times incoherent and cognitively challenged. Vice President Kamala Harris might lose because of her laugh and her failures at the border (and at every other assignment she has been given).
But failed Democrat personalities will simply lead to new Democrat personalities’ being lifted by party kingmakers. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, or some other favored Democrat will run, arguing that predecessors’ failures were due to personality and not to philosophy.
And modest reforms that simply slow the growth of Big Government Socialism are not enough. We must...
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY DISTINGUISHING WANTING FROM LIKING
What we want, and what we end up liking when we get it are two different things. They each involve different parts of our brain, and different states of mind.
Understanding this difference and bringing more consciousness to what you think you want can save you a huge amount of time, effort… and money.
The difference between what we want, and what we will like when we get it is what researchers Dan Gilbert and Tim Wilson call “Miswanting.” We have a strong bias toward what we want, and we often aren’t very good at predicting how we’ll feel once we get it.
The antidote, as with many things, is to bring awareness to the part of the experience we haven’t been looking at.
HALF-FULL REPORT 09/23/22
Quality in Government
We have a Serious Problem
From one end of government to the other, in nearly every country and every system, we face a problem with Quality.
The electric grid is failing; it has already fallen in many places.
Our politics are based on false counts and false data.
As bad as it is in the West, it's much worse in Russia. Ukraine has learned some critical lessons and made much progress.
Can it be fixed? Can the ship be righted?
YES! Yes, by treating poor quality government as we treat propaganda. Expose it. Fix it.
THE PAPER BEAR
FLASHBACK FRIDAY: A REAL RUSSIAN CHURCH
This is the wooden Russian Orthodox Church in Karakol, Kyrgyzstan. I was here years ago and now again today. It was built in the 1890s when Karakol was a garrison town in the furthermost reaches of the Russian Imperial Empire with China just on the other side of Tien Shan Mountains. In the atheist/communist Soviet Union it was used variously as a school, gymnasium, and warehouse, anything but a church.
After Kyrgyzstan gained its independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was lovingly restored by the people of Karakol. All the various ethnicities comprising Karakol are welcome here – Christian Russians and Christian Kyrgyz, Uighur Moslem refugees escaping Chicom China, ethnic Han Chinese Moslems called Dungans escaping for the same reason, Buddhist and pagan Kazakhs. The interior is lavishly decorated with Christian art and paintings of Christian saints – no Islamic or Buddhist or any other religious art, just Christian. Yet all are welcome to pray in this haven of refuge and peace in their own way.
This is a Russian Church very distinct from those controlled by Moscow run by the Kremlin as a propaganda arm of the KGB/FSB. It is a real Russian Christian Church instead. Come here to feel to the spiritual serenity for yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #221 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 09/22/22
Russia Calls Up the Reserves
Every Russian between 18 and 65 tries to get out before mobilization.
Finland closed its border, and the airlines were ordered to stop selling tickets to military-age males. Things are getting desperate for those on the list because they know that 9 out of 10 Russians killed in Ukraine are killed by artillery and rockets while they sleep. Not on the battle line. It is a meat grinder for Ivan.
Inflation is building a head of steam, and Xiden must redirect the public before the election. He has ways…
Join the story within Skye’s links before the Fourth Turning takes another chunk out of the country we love.
IRREVERSIBLE MOMENTUM FOR UKRAINE
Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast has changed how the world thinks about the war, according to U.S. Lieutenant General (Ret.) Ben Hodges.
Hodges, who served as commander of U.S. Army Europe from 2014-2017 and has helped train Ukrainian soldiers, said the operation ended “the mythology of Russia’s inevitable victory.”
“Now people around the world, in Europe and U.S., start thinking — wow, Ukraine can win,” he told the Kyiv Independent.
To achieve that victory, however, Ukrainians will need to keep the pressure up and deprive Russia of the chance to regroup. That won’t be easy.
THE HANGING MONASTERY
The architectural wonder of the Hanging Monastery was built on a vertical cliff face by the Tuoba people of Inner Mongolia over 1,500 years ago (in the 490s). Devout Buddhists and brilliant engineers, they defied gravity by inserting huge wooden crossbeams deep into the cliff to suspend the monastery’s temples, shrines, and monks’ living quarters, connected with bridges, corridors, and boardwalks, out into space.
Liao Mongols in the 900s rebuilt and sustained it, and it has been carefully refurbished and restored in the centuries since. While it remains primarily Buddhist with statues and depictions of Sakyamuni (the historical Buddha of 5th century BC) and Maitreya (the future Buddha), the monks welcome reverence to Taoism and its founder Lao Tzu (4th century BC), as well as Confucius (551-479 BC). Thus you also see shrines and statues of them like nowhere else.
It is a unique and inspiring experience to be here. We’ll be here again in our next exploration of Inner Mongolia sometime soon. ((Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #116 photo ©Jack Wheeler)